The History of Western philosophy Book 3 chapters 1-9 and Lecture 2

This history of Western philosophy chapters 1-9 were so far the hardest to grasp out of the texts I have read so far, however this reading combined with the second lecture should help to provide me with a better grasp of the knowledge which I am taking in. However I still feel that I have managed to gain enough understand to give an analysis of the chapters. 

The beginning of the chapters allow the reader to take an understanding of the beginnings of science and the diminishing authority of the church, with a continuous battle between the church and science. We are displayed with individualism and the beginnings of the set up of power today with governments and democracy replacing monarchs. This diminishing authority of the Church is as a result of science being viewed more and more as social journey with greater findings and evidence to prove science. This along with the increasing want for government and a spread of learning and education made the church less of a dominant power; epitomised by the reformation and the rejection of the pope’s authority.

 There is an evolution of ideas throughout the 16^th and 17^th centuries which are a result of the obvious changing of ideas and direction from Plato and Aristotle’s teachings from sacred books, to a sense of individualism and a need to find evidence and reasons for why things are the way they are; Epistemology.  Noticeable advances included Keplers laws of planetary motion, Galileo’s discovery of acceleration in dynamics, Newton’s discovery of gravity and Harvey’s discovery of circulation to name a few which allowed civilisation to continue moving rather than becoming stagnated by teachings which would otherwise not encourage finding truths of finding out why things are the way they are, and bring education to a modern age.  This social exploration of science by philosophers continues through to Francis Bacon with a clear example of experiments and logical presentation of ideas and results, which is shared by Hobes, to provide clear answers to questions posed by philosophers.

I then proceeded after reading these chapters, to my second lecture on the topic of the history and context of Journalism. Here I was presented with the influential figures in philosophy of Aristotle and Plato. This included an interesting view into the teachings of Plato’s forms. His view shows the starting forms of epistemology and a sense of not settling for the teachings of books, but discovering, and then reporting back his findings to those who are unaware of this information; much like a journalist. 

We then looked into much more depth about the Renaissance; and an obvious expression of Greek ideas reborn, a new world and new technologies increasingly moving away from the power of the church and the teachings of the church which didn’t celebrate the human as the art and celebration of the human seen in the Renaissance,  this is interlinked with the changing of ideas of the human; from the importance of sacred books of the church and teachings from Plato, to more modern and recent ideas of  no longer seeing the body as something which is in sin and needs saving to something of greater importance. This shows the power of the church diminishing further as the likes of Galileo and Machiavelli decide to break the conventions of the time with Galileo’s belief that the bible shouldn’t influence science and Machiavelli’s controversial book ‘The prince’. The writing of this book is very against the feeling of right and wrongs of the time and therefore could have landed Machiavelli in trouble; however his ideas show a real lack of concern for this with ideas such as, ‘If you plan to take power through villainy it is best to do it all at once and get someone else to do it’.

 The age of reason brought about further change which brings us to modern philosophy developed by Rene Descartes who found information he received, which he felt held him back. Descartes believed that he was being held back by teachings of Plato and Aristotle however these teachings as previously mentioned would also hold back civilisations progression and therefore the new ideas by Rene Descartes are extremely important in modern philosophy but also the huge progress in civilisation after this point.  Rene Descartes dismissed anything which he could not prove was fact helping him to prove his existence; this also links to journalism as a journalist must not believe anything that is presented to them unless it can be proven as pure fact without a chance of impossibility.

Descartes however had the idea to prove that God exists however I do not agree with the controversial way in which Descartes presents his idea of God; I feel that Descartes managed to strip down everything to its roots to make sure that it was fact, however as a result of his belief for God through Christianity, Descartes works around proving that God doesn’t exist, to ensure that he can prove that God does exist. I believe that Descartes could have proved that God didn’t exist however more people, including himself were more entitled to believe that God did exist.