Renaissance

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) is one of those rare names whose work divides the history of philosophy into a before and an after. Before him, political philosophy belonged to the genre of the “mirror of princes” — treatises that prescribed to rulers the classical moral virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance) and obedience to divine law. After him, politics became an autonomous domain, with its own logic, irreducible to morality or theology. This rupture is so decisive that many historians make the birth of modern political philosophy coincide with the writing of The Prince (1513). ...

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533–1592) is one of those rare thinkers whose influence is measured not by the construction of a philosophical system but by the invention of a form. By creating the essay — a word he coined himself, from the French essai, meaning attempt or trial — he inaugurated a way of thinking that refuses any claim to final truth and makes the thinking subject both the object and the instrument of inquiry. His Essais, published between 1580 and 1595, remain among the most widely read texts in Western literature, and their philosophical significance has only grown with time. ...

Erasmus of Rotterdam Born in Rotterdam around 1466, Erasmus (Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam) was the greatest humanist of the Northern Renaissance — the “Prince of the Humanists.” An Augustinian canon and priest, he devoted himself to letters and traveled across Europe, forming a friendship with Thomas More in England. An incomparable scholar of Greek and Latin, he made cultivated language an instrument of reform and of irony. He died in Basel in 1536, having refused both the dogmatism of the old Church and the Protestant rupture. ...

Johannes Kepler Born in Weil der Stadt, Germany, in 1571, Johannes Kepler was a fascinating spirit of transition: a devout Protestant, he studied theology at Tübingen but devoted his life to astronomy, convinced that to decipher the order of the heavens was to read the mind of God. He worked as assistant to the great observer Tycho Brahe in Prague and, on inheriting his data of the highest precision — especially on Mars — had at his disposal the material that would make his discoveries possible. ...

Marsilio Ficino Italian philosopher and Catholic priest. Leader of the Platonic Academy of Florence under the patronage of Cosimo de’ Medici. He translated the entire works of Plato into Latin for the first time, as well as the Corpus Hermeticum and Plotinus. Born in Figline Valdarno, Tuscany, in 1433, Ficino came of age in an environment shaped by the extraordinary cultural patronage of the Medici family. When Cosimo de’ Medici decided to establish a Platonic Academy modeled on antiquity, he entrusted its direction to Ficino and charged him with the monumental task of rendering Plato’s dialogues into Latin — a corpus virtually inaccessible to the medieval West — alongside the Neoplatonic writings of Plotinus, Iamblichus, and Proclus, and the recently rediscovered Corpus Hermeticum. This translation project, carried out between the 1460s and the 1490s, was decisive in reintroducing Platonic philosophy into European intellectual debate after centuries of Aristotelian dominance. ...

Martin Luther German Augustinian theologian; initiator of the Protestant Reformation. The 95 Theses (1517) against papal indulgences triggered a rupture that transformed Europe religiously, politically, and intellectually. Key Concepts Justification by faith alone (sola fide): man is not saved by works, merits, or sacraments — only by faith in Christ; against the soteriology of merit in the Catholic Church Sola Scriptura: the Bible is the sole religious authority; tradition and papal decrees have no equivalent authority. He translated the Bible into German — founding modern literary German Priesthood of all believers: all baptized Christians are priests — dissolves the clerical hierarchy as necessary mediation between God and the faithful Two kingdoms (Zwei-Reiche-Lehre): the spiritual kingdom (governed by the Gospel) and the temporal kingdom (governed by law and the sword) — clear separation that influenced political secularization Christian freedom (On the Freedom of a Christian, 1520): “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all things and subject to no one. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all things and subject to everyone” — paradox of inner freedom with service to one’s neighbor Against free will (On the Bondage of the Will, 1525): against Erasmus — human will is enslaved by sin; only irresistible divine grace can liberate; predestination Influenced by Saint Augustine — grace, original sin, predestination Saint Paul — justification by faith (Romans, Galatians) William of Ockham — nominalism and critique of scholastic metaphysics Erasmus — textual humanism (but breaks with him) Influenced Calvin — reformed reformation and absolute predestination Kant — moral autonomy (secularization of Lutheran individual conscience) Kierkegaard — radical and individual faith against the institution Secularization and European political modernity Hegel — Reformation as a moment of Spirit in history Works 95 Theses (1517); On the Freedom of a Christian (1520); On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520); On the Bondage of the Will (1525); Large and Small Catechisms (1529); Bible in German (NT: 1522; complete: 1534). ...

Michel de Montaigne Born in 1533 at his family’s château in the Périgord, Michel de Montaigne received a refined humanist education — raised to speak Latin as his first language. He served as a magistrate in the Parlement of Bordeaux, where he formed a profound friendship with Étienne de La Boétie, whose death would mark him forever. Around 1571 he withdrew to the tower of his château, surrounded by books, and there, amid the bloody Wars of Religion, he began to write a work of an entirely new genre: the Essays. He is one of the fathers of modern thought and the inventor of the essay as a literary and philosophical form. ...

Nicolaus Copernicus Born in Toruń, Poland, in 1473, Nicolaus Copernicus was a canon of Frombork cathedral and a man of the Renaissance: he studied in Kraków and in Italy (Bologna, Padua), devoting himself to law, medicine, and, above all, astronomy. Discreetly and prudently, over decades he matured an idea that would change the image of the world — and that he would publish only at the end of his life. ...

Pico della Mirandola Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Italian prodigy philosopher; knew Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic. Proposed to hold a debate in Rome with 900 theses from all philosophical traditions — Pope Innocent VIII condemned some of them. Died at age 31. Trained at the Platonic Academy of Florence in close dialogue with Marsilio Ficino and within the circle of Lorenzo de’ Medici, Pico represented the apex of Renaissance humanism. In 1486, he composed the 900 Conclusions — theses drawn from sources as diverse as Plato, Aristotle, Avicenna, Averroes, Jewish Kabbalah, and the Corpus Hermeticum — with the ambition of demonstrating that philosophical and religious truth was one, accessible through multiple paths. The project was cut short when a papal commission condemned thirteen of the theses as heretical; Pico fled to France and only returned to Italy under the protection of Lorenzo de’ Medici. ...

Thomas More English humanist, jurist, and statesman. Lord Chancellor of Henry VIII; refused to recognize the king as supreme head of the Church and was beheaded. Canonized by the Catholic Church (1935). Author of the concept of utopia. Thomas More was born in London in 1478, the son of a successful lawyer, and received a rigorous classical education — he studied at Oxford and at the Inns of Court, becoming one of the most respected jurists in Tudor England. His friendship with Erasmus, forged in the early sixteenth century, shaped his intellectual orientation: Christian humanism, which held that society could be reformed through moral renewal and the recovery of good letters, without breaking from the Catholic tradition. Against this backdrop, Utopia (1516) is not merely a literary fantasy but a work of rigorous political philosophy that fuses the Platonic dialogue with Lucianic satire to diagnose the ills of contemporary Europe — land enclosure, noble corruption, dynastic warfare, and the brutality of capital punishment for petty crimes. ...