Thursday, March 1, 2007
Jim: Topic I: Secular Philosphers
We were poking around the 1450's. One way to look at this might be to consider the prominent thinker of the era. According to the Great Books Society big thinkers of the time were Erasmus and Machiavelli. Copernicus comes in a little later and Chaucer was much before. I'm just spit balling here because I really dig the idea of the Great Conversation.
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Jim: You know, upon closer inspection, Erasmus & Machiavelli were both born in the 1460s. Weird. After Chaucer, there was over a century of silence in the Great Conversation. In fact, Chaucer is obviously a great thinker, but not a philosopher. Dante, a closer call. But from Augustine in the 400s until these guys in the 1500s the only intervening philosopher is Aquinas in the 1200s. (In the Western World, which is the target of our conversation.) It was like some age when there was litte thinking, a sort of intellectual darkness if you will--some might say the Dark Ages.
So, there may be a dirth of writers to shed light on what was behind the mixing racism with the instutition of slavery.
Matt: Baruch Spinoza has been incredibly influential. He's the reason Einstein has been improperly believed to have been religious. When asked about his beleif in God, he answered something like, "I believe in Spinoza's God." which is a secular humanism kind of statement. He lived in the 1600s, so he's somewhat later than the time frame we're discussing now.
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