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Career of Philosophy Vol. I: From the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment
Hardcover
Published January 1, 1966
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April 27, 2024
Almost a thousand pages, this is the most comprehensive secondary work I have read on what my college classes called "early modern philosophy"; I have been reading it on and off for over a month. The organizing ideas are that modern philosophy is not a complete break with the past, but has a continuity with the philosophy of the later middle ages, and that it is largely an attempt to do two things, assimilate the new science of Galileo and Newton, and justify the struggles of the rising capitalist class (which he refers to throughout as "the middle class" — a perfect example of how vague that term is, and how absurd it is that certain leftists today try to make it synonymous with the Marxist term "petty bourgeois" — against the Church and the feudal system. Given that perspective, it is almost as much a history of the rise of science as it is a history of philosophy.
The volume is divided into four very unequal "books"; the first book is 43 pages, and the fourth book is over 500. The first book is essentially an introduction. It is rather schematic and his comparisons with contemporary ideas struck me as generally wrong, perhaps because he is a specialist on the late mediaeval and early modern periods, while his knowledge of the present, especially in science, is basically that of an "educated layman" (and like most American academics, he misunderstands Marxism, and confuses it with the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union). His own bias is never quite made clear, but I would say he is essentially a pragmatist and a liberal, as one would expect given that he was a student of John Dewey; his references to "sound theology" suggest that he is also probably at least nominally a liberal Christian. None of this really matters once he enters into the detailed study of the philosophers.
He begins with the recovery of the "new" Aristotle via the Moslem commentators (Averroes) at the end of the twelfth century, and briefly summarizes the three main tendencies in thirteenth-century philosophy: the older Platonic tradition stemming from St. Augustine, the Aristotelian tradition of Duns Scotus (and its theological variant of Thomism), and moving into the fourteenth century, the via moderna of William of Ockham's "terminism". In the first part of the second book, he turns toward the early Humanists, discusses the recovery of the "Hellenic" Aristotle (i.e. Aristotle in Greek, and the Alexandrian commentaries), then describes the introduction of Humanism north of the Alps and the Reformation, ending up with a discussion of sixteenth-century political theories. He does a good job of explaining what seems to the contemporary reader so paradoxical, that it was the supporters of absolute monarchy and the divine right of kings who were the progressives of the time (looking to the monarchy to suppress the power of the Church and feudal nobility), while the more modern-seeming writers who favor a limited monarchy and natural law were the reactionaries who were supporting the traditional feudal-ecclesiastical establishment. It was only after the nobles were deprived of independent power and the Church tamed (or replaced by the more Erastian Protestants) that the bourgeoisie in the next century turned against the kings and began favoring natural rights (especially of course the absolute right to private property.) The main interest of book two, however, is the discussion of the Padua Aristotelians, who combined Ockhamism with the Alexandrian Aristotle. Randall had previously written a book specifically on the Padua tradition, so here he is at his most detailed. (Padua had no theological faculty; it was primarily a medical school, and so Aristotle from the beginning was treated as a secular scientist rather than a metaphysician.)
Part two of the second book deals with the Italian nature philosophers, both Platonists and Aristotelians, investigates the mediaeval heritage leading up to Galileo (in an interesting discussion which confronts Pierre Duhem's account with his later critics) and continues the discussion of Padua, ending with a chapter on Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Giordano Bruno. Book three deals with the attempts to interpret the new science, and the scientific method, with the inherited traditions about the sources of knowledge: Descartes and the Cartesians, building upon the Augustinian tradition, Spinoza combining the traditions into a consistent system, and the British Empiricists building upon the Ockhamist tradition; the book ends with a chapter on Hobbes.
The fourth and longest book begins with Newton's philosophy of nature, then covers Locke, Berkeley, and Hume as epistemologists. This is followed by a chapter on Locke's political theories, and chapters on rational religion (the rise of Deism), and rational morality (the Cambridge Platonists); and follows the further development of ethics in Shaftsbury and so forth, ending with another chapter on Hume. The book then turns to the French Enlightenment, with chapters on Voltaire, the Encyclopedists, the materialists such as LeMettrie and Holbach, and the psychology of association. Finally, the book ends with the political theories of Montesquieu, Vico, the Physiocrats, and Rousseau.
All the philosophers I studied in my college class in "Early Modern Philosophy" (or "Philosophy Before Kant" — I assume the second volume will begin with him) are discussed at length, except for some reason Leibniz, who isn't dealt with at all. This was a dense and comprehensive work, and it has tempted me to reconstruct my TBR list for the next two years to include more philosophy and fill in the gaps in my reading.
The volume is divided into four very unequal "books"; the first book is 43 pages, and the fourth book is over 500. The first book is essentially an introduction. It is rather schematic and his comparisons with contemporary ideas struck me as generally wrong, perhaps because he is a specialist on the late mediaeval and early modern periods, while his knowledge of the present, especially in science, is basically that of an "educated layman" (and like most American academics, he misunderstands Marxism, and confuses it with the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union). His own bias is never quite made clear, but I would say he is essentially a pragmatist and a liberal, as one would expect given that he was a student of John Dewey; his references to "sound theology" suggest that he is also probably at least nominally a liberal Christian. None of this really matters once he enters into the detailed study of the philosophers.
He begins with the recovery of the "new" Aristotle via the Moslem commentators (Averroes) at the end of the twelfth century, and briefly summarizes the three main tendencies in thirteenth-century philosophy: the older Platonic tradition stemming from St. Augustine, the Aristotelian tradition of Duns Scotus (and its theological variant of Thomism), and moving into the fourteenth century, the via moderna of William of Ockham's "terminism". In the first part of the second book, he turns toward the early Humanists, discusses the recovery of the "Hellenic" Aristotle (i.e. Aristotle in Greek, and the Alexandrian commentaries), then describes the introduction of Humanism north of the Alps and the Reformation, ending up with a discussion of sixteenth-century political theories. He does a good job of explaining what seems to the contemporary reader so paradoxical, that it was the supporters of absolute monarchy and the divine right of kings who were the progressives of the time (looking to the monarchy to suppress the power of the Church and feudal nobility), while the more modern-seeming writers who favor a limited monarchy and natural law were the reactionaries who were supporting the traditional feudal-ecclesiastical establishment. It was only after the nobles were deprived of independent power and the Church tamed (or replaced by the more Erastian Protestants) that the bourgeoisie in the next century turned against the kings and began favoring natural rights (especially of course the absolute right to private property.) The main interest of book two, however, is the discussion of the Padua Aristotelians, who combined Ockhamism with the Alexandrian Aristotle. Randall had previously written a book specifically on the Padua tradition, so here he is at his most detailed. (Padua had no theological faculty; it was primarily a medical school, and so Aristotle from the beginning was treated as a secular scientist rather than a metaphysician.)
Part two of the second book deals with the Italian nature philosophers, both Platonists and Aristotelians, investigates the mediaeval heritage leading up to Galileo (in an interesting discussion which confronts Pierre Duhem's account with his later critics) and continues the discussion of Padua, ending with a chapter on Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Giordano Bruno. Book three deals with the attempts to interpret the new science, and the scientific method, with the inherited traditions about the sources of knowledge: Descartes and the Cartesians, building upon the Augustinian tradition, Spinoza combining the traditions into a consistent system, and the British Empiricists building upon the Ockhamist tradition; the book ends with a chapter on Hobbes.
The fourth and longest book begins with Newton's philosophy of nature, then covers Locke, Berkeley, and Hume as epistemologists. This is followed by a chapter on Locke's political theories, and chapters on rational religion (the rise of Deism), and rational morality (the Cambridge Platonists); and follows the further development of ethics in Shaftsbury and so forth, ending with another chapter on Hume. The book then turns to the French Enlightenment, with chapters on Voltaire, the Encyclopedists, the materialists such as LeMettrie and Holbach, and the psychology of association. Finally, the book ends with the political theories of Montesquieu, Vico, the Physiocrats, and Rousseau.
All the philosophers I studied in my college class in "Early Modern Philosophy" (or "Philosophy Before Kant" — I assume the second volume will begin with him) are discussed at length, except for some reason Leibniz, who isn't dealt with at all. This was a dense and comprehensive work, and it has tempted me to reconstruct my TBR list for the next two years to include more philosophy and fill in the gaps in my reading.
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