Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

RENAISSANCE AND SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY RATIONALISM 69
Van Helmont’s exposition of Cabbalism gives central place to a recognizably
Neoplatonic paradox: how could the base material world have resulted from a
God who is pure Spirit? How, to put it in what for a Neoplatonist is just another
way, can what is passive and inert be caused by a being whose nature contains
nothing of that kind but who is ‘pure activity’? Van Helmont’s resolution of the
paradox is through a theory that, in the first place, is a theory of emanation,
according to which God immediately produces from Himself things of a purely
spiritual nature. These spirits do, however, degenerate and become dull, clinging
together to form matter. The individual spirit, in this reduced state, is ‘now a
natural Monade or single Being, and a very Atome’. 11 In common with the other
Neoplatonists of the late seventeenth century—Leibniz, arguably, included—van
Helmont produced a monadology that sought to combine a Neoplatonic
metaphysics with contemporary scientific speculation about the nature of matter.
Religious Neoplatonism had some influence in the Iberian Peninsula in the early
sixteenth century, for instance on the thought of the Portuguese Jewish
philosopher Leon Hebreo (or Abarbanel) (c. 1460– c. 1523), who wrote a
dialogue on love. In France the common Neoplatonic view of Plato’s writing as
prisca theologia, as part of a wisdom shared by Moses and other ancient writers,
was taken up by Symphorien Champier and the brothers de la Boderie in the midsixteenth
century. 12 But Platonism’s reputation for containing the seeds of many
heresies was not forgotten. And in the reaffirmation of orthodoxy during the
Catholic reformation and after the Council of Trent (1545–63) Aristotle was
encouraged and Platonism actively discouraged. 13 None the less religious
Neoplatonism continued to be influential, at least in liberal Protestant circles in
Germany and Britain, right into the eighteenth century. 14
ERASMUS AND CHRISTIAN HUMANISM
Christian humanism was not so much a philosophical system but a set of
attitudes which could be held by people who were sympathetic to any or none of
the philosophies of the ancient world. The Christian humanists characteristically
opposed metaphysical dogma with a sceptical outlook, preferring to rely on faith
than to defend the Christian religion by scholastic proofs, and they stressed a
simple undogmatic Christianity rather than doctrinal correctness. 15 They also
gave a place to ordinary human pleasures in opposition to the monastic virtues
and helped to prepare the way for a revival of Epicureanism. 16 The humanists
were very influential in opposing the then academic (scholastic) philosophy and
theology during the Renaissance period. They were inclined to defend certain
philosophical positions, such as belief in free will, but to do so in a nontheoretical
way. Humanism was characteristically a lay movement and naturally
encouraged a tendency to address more applied and topical questions.
The doyen of Christian humanism was undoubtedly the great Dutch scholar
Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536). He was a pioneer in applying the critical
methods of the humanists to the text of the Bible as well as in advocating its