Key Philosophers: Ockham, Machiavelli, and Descartes
Text of Ockham
Author: William of Ockham lived in the 13th-14th century and is the highest representative of the nominalist movement, which denies the extra-mental reality of universals. He was also associated with the Spiritual Franciscans, who claimed that Jesus and his apostles lived in poverty and that the Church should live similarly. He belongs to Christian thought, and the time of medieval philosophy ends with him, as he advocated for the separation of church and state (faith and reason).
Topic: Separation of political and religious power.
Ideas:
- Papal power should be removed from political power.
- Political power does not violate Christian dogmas.
- Political power is older than religious power.
- If the Pope invaded the political arena, it would be invalid in law.
List of ideas: For as long as B is met, A must be met based on what C described. In this case, if we fulfill what A says, D would take place.
Explanation of the ideas: This piece provides an answer to the longstanding problem of the relationship between faith and reason (which is reflected in society as the church-state relationship). Ockham states that if the executive does not act in a manner contrary to the honor of God and the law of the Gospel, the Pope, representing the Christian church, should not interfere in matters of this nature. Only if this were the case could the Pope act, but if he does it without political power breaking the Christian dogmas, his actions would be void and illegitimate. Ockham drew up this theory about the separation of church and state after the Pope condemned the heretical claims of the Spiritual Franciscans on the poverty of Christ and of having to live in exile. These statements ended up being more accepted by society, accepting the separation between faith and reason.
Machiavelli Text
Author: Niccolò Machiavelli was a Renaissance philosopher who lived in the 15th-16th century. His work primarily deals with politics, a subject that is treated differently than in medieval philosophy, separating it from the Christian perspective.
Topic: Defense of realism against idealism in government.
Ideas:
- A. Convenience of opting for reality rather than imagination.
- B. If decisions are based on what should be (good man, imagined republics and principalities, etc.) and not on what is, this will bring ruin (of a person, a society, etc.).
- C. It is necessary for a prince (to keep his power) to learn to not be good if necessary.
List of ideas: A uses B to present the arguments to justify its certainty. C is the conclusion to be drawn from A and B of the text. That is, a prince (and not just a prince) should opt for reality rather than imagination and learn to not be good if this is necessary because if you always act with kindness and think about what should be rather than what should not be, that will bring ruin to him and those around him.
Explanation of ideas: The text is an example of Machiavelli’s realistic thinking that tries to break with the ideal, widespread until that time. In his work *The Prince*, to which this passage belongs, Machiavelli gives us a manual that explains to the prince how to get power and how to keep it, based on observations of several governors. The idea that one should opt for reality rather than imagination adds a stab at the thought of great idealists like Plato (against their republic) and Thomas More (against their utopian state) and is supported by the rest of their arguments to demonstrate that this must be so and not otherwise. Machiavelli tells us that one should choose reality and not imagination to avoid falling into disgrace and ruin, according to his thinking, and that if necessary, the prince must act in a way that is not good (which has led to the attribution of the phrase “the end justifies the means” to him) to stay in power.
Text of Descartes
Author: René Descartes is probably, along with Kant, the most important thinker of modern philosophy. Descartes lived in the 17th century and is the founder of rationalism and its greatest exponent.
Topic: Discovery through “I think, therefore I am” that we exist as thinking beings and that, therefore, the truth is “I doubt,” which will base human knowledge.
Ideas:
- A. Using methodical doubt.
- Doubt of the senses.
- Doubt of reason.
- Doubt of reality.
- While doubting, one cannot doubt that one exists, as one is thinking.
- B. Established “I think, therefore I am” as the first principle of the philosophy he sought.
List of ideas: The ideas A.1, A.2, A.3, and A.4 belong to the process carried out in idea A. Idea B is the conclusion that Descartes draws from the process carried out in A, which is extracted from idea A.4.
Explanation of ideas: He looks for evidence to assist in the knowledge base. Due to the importance of the mathematical structure, he used methods to find such evidence, that axiom. To find this evidence, he used methodological doubt, such evidence being that of which it is impossible to doubt, and it is absolutely true (it is a methodical doubt, not skeptical). Because of this process, he will doubt the senses, reason, and reality, to reach the conclusion that the only thing that can not be doubted is that you are in doubt, you are thinking, and thinking needs to be something, then “I think, therefore I am” is the evidence that he was looking for and the grounds for knowledge and every philosophical system. Rationalist Descartes shows that what he is doing is a totally different methodical doubt from the skeptics, who considered distant thought, in the phrase “so secure that even the most extravagant suppositions of the skeptics were not able to shake.”