Medieval and Renaissance Thought

Early Christian philosophers sought to integrate Greek philosophy into the Christian religion. They searched for a rational justification for the belief in god and the soul. As the Roman Empire, strank and eventually fail, Europe sank into the dark age, and most of the culture it had inherited from Greece and Rome disappeared, the church held the monopoly on learning, and the only true philosophy that survived was a form of platonism, deemed compatible with christianity.

Renaissance is a cultural movement that begin in Italy in the 14th century and placed humans rather than gods at its center. This new humanism was first reflected in the order, and then the political structure. Republic such as Florence and Venice, soon abandoned Medieval feudalism in favor of plutocracies, in which commerce florist alongside the new scientific discoveries. The triumph of scientific discovery over Christian dogma epitomized the thinking of the 17th century, British philosophers, notably Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes took the lead in integrating scientific and philosophical reasoning. It was the beginning of the period that became known as the Age of Reason, which produced the first great modern philosophers and revived the connection between philosophy and science, especially mathematics that dated back to pre-Socrates, Greece. They believed that mathematical reasoning provided the best model for how to acquire all our knowledge of the world Descartes investigation of the question, "what can I know?" led him to position of rationalism- The belief that knowledge comes from reason alone, which was to become the predominant belief in continental Europe for the next century. At the same time, a very different philosophical tradition of was being established in Britain, following the scientific reasoning espoused by francis bacon and john locke came to the conclusion that our knowledge of the world comes not from reason but experience. this view known as EMPIRICISM, characterized by british philosophy during seventeenth and eighteenth century. Despite the division between continental rationalism and British empiricism, both put the human being at the center of their enquiries. Both had moved from asking questions about the nature of the universe-which were being answered by scientists, such as Isac Newton-to questioning how we can know what we know. And they now begin to investigate the nature of the human mind and self. But this new philosophical strands had moral and political implications. Just as the church's authority had been undermined by the ideas of the Renaissance, so the aristocracies and monarchies who were threatened by the new ideas of enlightenment as this period came to be known. If the old rulers were removed from power, what sort of society was to replace them?