To the doctrines which realize historical forces, such as “the spirit of the people”, the nation, the race, humanity, there corresponds a philosophy of nature which sees in nature and natural forces a stable and permanent reality; here again unity … Read More
What are the current philosophical opinions around 1880? We see only defenses, negations, reductions that annihilate being and intellectual or moral values; the Spencerian prohibition that stops the mind at the barrier of the unknowable, and which thinks to expel … Read More
Duns Scotus also seems to abandon the principle of universal analogy which, for Bonaventure and even for Saint Thomas, was the great driving force of continuity. By declaring that Being has a univocal and not equivocal meaning with regard to … Read More
World Philosophy Day, celebrated annually on the third Thursday of November, is a global recognition of the enduring value of philosophy in shaping human thought, ethics and society. Established by UNESCO in 2002, the day serves as an opportunity to … Read More
What interests the history of philosophy is less dialectic as an art of discussion than the use we try to make of it to arrive at a conception of reality. To clarify, let us recall that Boethius’ collection posed several … Read More
One of the most characteristic productions of the century is De jure belli et pacis (1625) by Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), the author of the doctrine of the law of nature, which claims to find universal rules and obligatory for all … Read More
Generally speaking, removing from previous doctrines everything which gives them their apocalyptic and visionary character, you obtain new doctrines which have a skeptical and discouraged aspect, or which, conversely, expect a lot from human forces and very little from natural … Read More
The middle of the century saw the end of all the hopes, more or less sincere, that were placed in the great philosophical and social constructions. The second period opened which lasted until around 1890. The general theme of thought … Read More
From 1800 to the present day, we can distinguish three large, fairly well-defined periods: from 1800 to 1850, an extraordinary flowering of broad and constructive doctrines, which claim to reveal the secret of nature and history and to make known … Read More
Between the great theological systems of Malebranche, Leibniz, Spinoza, and the massive philosophical architectures of Schelling, Hegel and Comte, the eighteenth century seems to be a moment of relaxation for the synthetic and constructive spirit. It has been variously appreciated: … Read More
Never has a century, less than the seventeenth century, had confidence in the spontaneous forces of a nature abandoned to itself: the natural man, the one who is delivered without rule to the conflict of passions, where can one find … Read More
In humanist environments of the 15th century, so different from the Universities, under the protection of princes or popes, secular and ecclesiastical people met indifferently, at the Platonic Academy in the Florence of Lorenzo the Magnificent, as at the Aldine … Read More
