From the beginning of the 15th century, a transitional era begins in the history of Western Europe, which creates its own brilliant culture. At this time, the collapse of the feudal system and the development of the capitalist system began: magnificent cities in Italy developed, one after the other, the greatest historical discoveries took place - firearms, the beginning of printing, cartography and geography as scientific disciplines appeared. In mathematics, symbolic notations are introduced, medical chemistry continues its development in the knowledge of the chemical phenomena of the human body and the study of medicines. Astronomy is achieving great success at this time, Vasco da Gama opens the sea route to India, Columbus finds America, and Magellan proves the sphericity of the earth, setting off on his first round-the-world trip.
However, the most important discovery at this time is the overthrow of the dictatorship of the church, a new philosophy of the Renaissance is being formed, and it was this that served as a special impetus to the flourishing of culture. The feudal asceticism of the ghostly world was forever buried under new trends, the basis of which was the anthropocentrism of the philosophy of the Renaissance. It was as if a rational man had regained consciousness from a long sleep and was ready to create for the good of his Motherland; it was not by chance that the creative formation of the greatest Italian poets of that time took place at that time: Petrarch, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Rabelais, Boccaccio.
The philosophy of the Renaissance was formed under the influence of the greatest people of that time, talented artists, architects and sculptors made their contribution to the development of the new empire. Leonardo da Vinci devotes his best works to his greatness - Homo sapiens. As the author of the unsurpassed “Mona Lisa” and “Last Supper”, he has a huge impact on the aesthetic principles of the Renaissance. Michelangelo Buonarroti’s canvases were no less powerful in energy at that time; they, like his sculptures, magnified the spiritual and physical beauty of man, his enormous inner potential. At the same time, a new revival architecture is being formed, which reaches unprecedented heights, due to the breadth of flight of creative thought.
The whole philosophy of the Renaissance is saturated with recognition of a person as an independent person and affirms his right to the manifestation of his abilities and free personal growth. The first stage of the Renaissance passed as a freethinking, opposing the spiritual domination of the church and medieval scholasticism. The ancient philosophical heritage is assimilated and restored in full, the philosophical schools are opened again, so unjustifiably forgotten in the Middle Ages. Freed from the scholastic shell and rethought the works of the great ancient philosophers - Plato and Aristotle. The philosophy of the Renaissance no longer calls for asceticism, repentance, submission to the will of God, but even on the contrary glorifies any initiative in the field of creativity and personal development. The desire to gain power over one’s destiny is no longer feudal or even Christian ideas, it’s the seedlings of a new bourgeois system.
A special place in the philosophy of the Renaissance is occupied by Nikolai Kuzansky, unlike other humanists, he devoted a huge amount of time to mathematics and science, and even created a special direction in the philosophy of that time - Christian naturalistic pantheism. The concept of this teaching is that God exists in the world and the world exists in God, and since God is absolutely infinite and unlimited, it means that the world is also infinite and any boundary in it can be freely crossed. The consequence of this teaching is a great revolution in the worldview of Europeans, the geocentric picture of the development of the Universe collapses, and a new stage begins in the development of the philosophy and science of the Renaissance.