Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

CHAPTER 2
Renaissance philosophy outside Italy
Stuart Brown
Italy might justly be described as the home of Renaissance philosophy. Many of
the important cultural developments of the period originated in Italy and only
gradually spread north and west to other countries. But each of the other major
centres 1 of West European cultural activity —the German States, France, the
Iberian Peninsula, England and the Low Countries—provided a distinct context
for philosophical activity. Their very different political and religious histories
had a more or less direct effect on the kind of philosophy that flourished in each
country or region. Each, in its own way, added to what it inherited from Italy and
developed what it received from elsewhere in Europe. In different ways and to
varying extents, they prepared for or anticipated the transition to modern
philosophy. In one way or another, Renaissance philosophy and philosophies
continued to develop and flourish somewhere in Europe throughout the
seventeenth century. They provided an often neglected part of the context for
modern philosophy, both in some ways being continuous with it and in other
ways shaping some of the responses to it. There are a number of philosophers,
indeed, such as Gassendi and Leibniz, 2 who can fruitfully be represented as
Renaissance as well as early modern philosophers.
A distinguishing mark of Renaissance philosophers was their deference to the
thought of the ancients. Their arguments often consisted in citing the support of
some ancient authority or the consensus of a number of ancient authorities for
the view they wished to advance. The tendency of modern philosophers, by
contrast, was to rely on appeals to reason and experience rather than on citing
authorities to advance their arguments. Some, of course, did both and the
decision whether to call them modern or Renaissance philosophers might
depend on whether their arguments turned more on one kind of appeal than the
other.
Renaissance philosophy needs also to be distinguished from the earlier style of
scholastic philosophy. And Renaissance philosophy, at least originally, was in
part a reaction against the philosophy of the academic and ecclesiastical world. A
reliance on authority was also a feature of scholastic philosophy, though it is in
some ways more difficult to locate. The scholastics relied on a tradition of
interpreting Aristotle in which appeals to reason, tradition and the word of ‘the