Lecture 1 - Renaissance to Descartes

After having the form of the lectures explained to us in introductory lectures we moved swiftly on to our very first History and Context of Journalism lecture. Having read the chapters beforehand I knew the main topics we were likely to discuss were the Italian Renaissance, Machiavelli, the Scientific revolution and Descartes. Although there were more chapters and some overlap in these subjects I found that these were the most interesting topics to me at this point in time.

Of the four just mentioned I found Machiavelli extremely interesting. To find a character in what could be defined as ancient history, (certainly not modern era) that has no particular religious affiliation in their writings is almost unheard of. Even Descartes who comes later uses his famous 'Cogito Ergo Sum' to prove the existence of God. Machiavelli was purely an artistic connoisseur of statecraft, he admired skill not purposes. In The History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell makes the point that Machiavelli would have admired and applauded Hitler's Reichstag fire, his purge of the party, and his breach of faith in Munich. The point being made here is that although Machiavelli might not agree with the things leaders did once in power, if you had the skill to seize that power in free competition you would have been admired by Machiavelli.


If you have ever had an interest in politics or philosophy you will no doubt have heard of Machiavelli and even in popular culture some of his ideas are still apparent to those with even a slight knowledge of world history. The term Machiavellian for example is defined as "the employment of cunning and duplicity in statecraft or in general conduct". It can be argued (as it was in the lecture) that current political figure Peter Mandelson is 'Machiavellian' in his approach to politics, (Machiavelli is first and foremost a political philosopher). The suggestion that someone is Machiavellian is I believe often used wrongly as an insult because of the insinuation that once someone has grasped power through cunning and guile, that they will then use it for bad ends. This does not have to be the case. Machiavelli treated the question of means and ends in a purely scientific manner, without a regard for the goodness or badness of the ends. Machiavellian theory can be applied to any kind of leader or ruler no matter their aims. It seems wrong that Machiavellian principles are so often attributed to those who whilst they are in power abuse that power. (I hope to explore the theories of Machiavelli more in my Seminar paper).

Machiavelli leads me nicely on to the Italian Renaissance which is of course just as important as a whole instead of the figures within it. The Renaissance was defined by its move away from the traditional views of the Dark Ages where much knowledge had been lost. Instead, The Renaissance leaned more towards the philosophers of Ancient Greece.

The painting above is by Raphael and is one of the most famous paintings of the Italian Renaissance. In it, the most eminent figures of Greek philosophy stand in 'The School of Athens' with the two most famous, Aristotle and his teacher Plato framed within the arch, (see close up)

Although the Italian Renaissance stresses the importance of these key Greek philosophers, I believe it also encouraged people to think not only in the ideas of Plato and Aristotle et al, but also to develop new and modern ideas within the unstable system that the Italian states had. In The History of Western Philosophy, Russell says (on page 464) that "Stable systems hamper creativity" and it is this which is at the heart of the Renaissance as the unstable society they inhabited helped them move quickly away from the predictable, and rather dull in terms of invention, Dark Ages.

This eventually took us in the lecture to the Age of Discovery. Men like Columbus and Marco Polo who went out in to the world to bring back technology. It also introduces this idea of a search for a perfect world, linking back to Plato's cave analogy which ends with the idea that only a philosopher can see somethings 'perfect' form. If we know the image of a chair, how do we know it's a chair. It is is only a copy and is merely a reflection of the 'true chair'. In the dark ages, theories like these were stamped out and the one's that suited the way of life became dogma. In the Renaissance and even through to the Reformation and Counter Reformation, theories were developed more and, via the Greeks, humanism became more influential.

The Scientific Renaissance was discussed next and despite what may be expected, it was not necessarily a secular movement. In fact, it was simply a decision by some to look at things a little differently but with links to the past. Galileo for example wanted to know the secrets of the universe but 'in the language of mathematics'. This is very similar to Pythagoras in the Greek time who of course you will have heard of if you have ever done any maths... ever. People like Galileo took the ideas of those before them, checking and evidencing them (linking back to epistemology, how do we know what we know?). So to keep the example of Galileo he took the ideas of Copernicus and since their fields were both astronomy, he was able to check and evidence Copernicus' ideas about the Sun being the centre of the universe and the Earth's diurnal rotation around it. In this way it was not explicitly secular, it just promoted a new way of thinking that challenged the adopted dogma of Aristotle that had been taken almost at face value for hundreds of years.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, (they do say save the best for last) I am going to talk about Descartes. Descartes is extremely important, often seen as the founder of modern philosophy. His most famous saying, "I think therefore I am" has become a mantra for some and whilst some of his theories have been subsequently criticised and in some cases practically disproved, there is no denying his importance. Rene Descartes is perhaps most important to journalists in terms of his theories of Systematic Doubt. It is the idea that nothing you know can be believed because you learnt it from somewhere or someone else. How do you know that the information is reliable. It rests in a similar philosophical ideal as epistemology and as such is an important idea for Journalists in the search for the truth.

Descartes did not like his education and so went travelling in his youth, searching for a new philosophy. This was no use to him either as it only served to show him that each country had its own set of customs that followed no particular pattern from place to place. He decided that if this was so then how can we really be sure about anything? If you can't rely on anything you have learnt by custom or example then your experience and education are useless. This lead Descartes to dismantle everything he knew systematically until the old ideas and knowledge were gone. For example your age can be dismissed because it is possible, no matter how unlikely, that you were lied to. How do you know your age? Were you told it by a parent? If so, is it not just a tiny bit possible that they could of been lying? I'm not saying that they were but if it's possible then you have to discard that knowledge because it is flawed. In the same way, it is totally possible even if it seems unlikely that this is a dream. Are you reading this blog? Or is someone dreaming about you reading this blog? As a reference to the film, The Matrix, how deep does the rabbit hole go? The scene in The Matrix in which the main character Neo is asked to choose between the Blue pill or the Red pill, actually helped me to understand this idea.

This blog went a long way without saying much really. Hopefully though it will help those who maybe didn't understand some of the complicated theories we ran through in the lecture. Also I hope it will also serve as a reminder for me when I panic about the course.