ENGLISH RENAISSANCESA�

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The extraordinary resumption of the art, the literature of the philosophy of the ancients that has begun in Italy already in XIV the century and that it is known like Humanism, only caught up England at the end of A�the XV century. One of the reasons for this delayed arrival was the long period of wars (the War of the Hundret Years, 1338a��1453, and the War of the two roses, 1454a��1485), that distracted the human interests and itcaused one phase of stasis in the creative art. Only when the peace came established with the rise to the throne of the Tudor dynasty, in England the infuence of Humanist Italian was felt. The English students went in Italy in order to attend the university of Paduaa, Florence and Bologna, and long the road of the return to house diffused the new acquaintance that had absorbed. They introduced the study of the Greek (Oxford in 1490) and classic schools were founded (the St. Paul School in 1504). But the effect of the Humanism on the literature in vulgar language was extremely slow in England. English still had not asserted like language in prose. One of the more important works of the English Renaissance , the utopy of Thomas More (1516) was written in Latin and, even though it belongs only indirectly to the English literature (it was translate in English in 1551), had a role in the spiritual development of England and exercised one deep infuence in the writers succeeded

Beyond to the classic teachings, the English Renaissance was the result of other elements:

A�     The infuence of the Italian Renaissance, thatA� had already caught up its maximum splendor and that had been diffused in England through innumerable translations, improved and made refined English, than became one of the greatest and richest languages of the world (it is necessary to keep in mind that the more popular shape in backs of the English Renaissance, the sonet, was introduced in the English literature through several translations and textes adapted of Francisco Petrarch);

A�     The protestant Reform , that carried new cultural and spiritual values; it reinforced the crescent nationalism sense, and through the translation of the Bible and the liturgy in English, gave new prestige to the English language, contributing therefore to the increase of a new sense of cultural and national identity;

A�     The scientific progress (the discovery of Copernico that is the Earth to move)

A�     The patriotic fervor, increased from the Victoria against Spain (the defeat of the Invincible Armada in 1588);

A�     The general prosperity of the Country

There isna��t therefore to be amazed that the splendid flowering of the arts and of the letters,that characterized the English Renaissance,was marked by the exuberance, the optimism, the esteem of himself and from the enthusiasm for the life. The literary product of the so called Elisabethan age (from the rise to the throne of the Queen of 1558 to the dead of Giacomo in 1625) was excellent as far as prose and poetry, but the largest happening literary of the period was the elisabethan theater that developed from the Mistery plays and the Moralities.

After the war of the two Roses a new dynasty emerged: the Tudors. The first king was Henry VII, during his reign England saw a period of stability. In 1509 Henry VIII came to the throne: he was a typical Renaissance prince who maintained a magnificent court because he liked music and dancing. He married six time. To marry Anne Boleyn and divorced to Catherine of Aragon, who had given him Mary I, Henry parted from catholic Church with an Act of supremacy in the 1534 and declared himself a��Supreme Head of the Church of Englanda��. Eventually Anna Boleyn after the marriage, gave him a daughter, Elisabeth I

Elisabeth Tudors was born to London in 1533 and died in 1603; her reign lasted from 1558 to 1603.
It was the last reigning of the Tudor dynasty. She was named the throne after the dead of her brothes Edoardo V Tudor and Maria Tudor, even if a law of 1536 (that allowed Enrico VIII A�to marry the thirdA� wife, Jane Saymour) cancelled the wedding between her A�parents and she became illegittimate daughter.
Of protestant faith, hardly gone up to the throne, she abjured the Catholicism, to which she A�was due to convert during the reign of catholic Maria.
The Anglicanism became state religion, while catholics and puritans A�were watches and sometimes pursued.
The fact thatA� she was not married and therefore hadna��t A�heir, opened the problem of the succession.

In 1586 a conspiracy came blanketed that aimed atA� her murder in order to place on the throne Maria: Elisabeth made her to imprison and then to behead in 1587.
The execution had serious consequences and attracted on her the hostility of most powerful,such as the catholic monarchs of Europe Filippo II of Spain. These endured from years the incursions of the English in the Spanish colonies of the America; he had moreover married the sister Mary of England, remaining but excluded from the succession to the reign in favor of Elisabeth. The dead of the Scottish Queen were therefore an ulterior stimulus in order to intensify the war against English, begun in 1585; in the 1588 Spanish monarch sended against England powerful a fleet called Invincible Army, that was dispersed from the storms and destroyed from English Navy.

tIn the first half of XVII century the bourgeoisie in England, in a fast rise, was not more disposed to leave in the hands of the king the exclusive power to decide on the general conditions of agriculture, the industry, the commerce and, on total politics of the reign. The crashs between the House of common and the Crown, carried to the revolution during the reign of Carl I (1625-l649). The government of Carl remained without the control of the Parliament from 1629 to 1640 and imposed to the Country an absolutist regimen. An uprising in Scotland, from 1638 to 1639, forced the king to convene against the Parliament in order to obtain the financings necessary to lead the repressive action against the rioters, but he had to face the opposition of the deputies, decided to place aim to the will of the monarch. In spite of the premature issolution of the Short Parliament (May 1640), the war against the Scotland forced him to re-call and the demands of the assembly were resumed from Long Parliament (1640-l653).

The Parliament, guided from John Pym, in 1641, introduced a��Grande Rimostranzaa��, asking reforms and condemning the abuses, while the Irish catholics raised themselves. A failed attempt of Carl to arrest to the greater exponents of the opposition (January 1642) triggered the civil war. With the king there were the more rear regions of the Country, nobles; with the Parliament there were the bourgeoisie and the regions more progressed. Oliver Cromwell, man of deep puritan faith and the great political intelligence, organized the army parliamentarian (New Model Army) and guided the Victor. Thanks a fortunate foreign politics (war against Holland to impose it the Action of navigation of 1651; favorable agreements with Denmark, Sweden and Portugal),Cromwell favored the economic development of England, that acquired one position of primary importance on the international .

At his dead(1658), after a short period of chaos, the monarchy was restored and came to the throne Carl II (1660-l685), but when Giacomo II, successor of Carl II, tried to re-establish the absolutism,was placed. Succeeded Guglielmo III of Orange (1689-l702), that was A�recognized like monarch from the Parliament,but only a pact that he would have acceptedA� the Bill of rights, to establish the limits of the regal power. The new regimen was a A�constitutional monarchy, subordinate to a effective control of the Parliament. Within the limits set up from the concrete situation, the principles were put into effect from John Locke who, contested to the doctrines of Thomas Hobbes, theorist of the absolutism, conceived the State like an institution which safeguard the freedom and the a��natural rightsa�� of the citizens.

Thought of Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes (1588 - 1679) was an English philosopher who influenced all the successive western political philosophy. He conceived a huge work, entitled Elements of philosophy, divided in three parts: De cive (of 1642, about the artificial bodies, such as the state), De corpore (of 1655, about the natural bodies), De homine (of 1658, about the human bodies). The De cive,re-written and developed, has given origin to his masterpiece, the Leviatano, of 1651.

Hobbes distinguishes two shapes of acquaintance: a��common acquaintancea��, founded on sensitive experience, in which the language carries out the more important function, the a��original acquaintancea��, because it is the base of all the other acquaintances; and the a��scientifica�� or a��philosophicala�� acquaintance, that derives from the common acquaintance and of which is the rework, for this calledA� also a��derived acquaintancea��. The difference between the two is in the fact that the philosophical acquaintance proposes itself also to explain the causes of the truth, beyond to know it of fact.

The common acquaintance found itself on the images of the single bodies, conserved in the memory, on the base of which the man creates himself in action. The imagination is the ability to form the images of the external objects, also when such objects do not impress more our organs of sense.

The language is a help for the memory because it concurs, through the names, to group classes of images. The a��namea��, for Hobbes, is a��human voice, used like note with which can be provoked in the mind a thought similar to a passed thoughta��. Hobbes takesto the extrems the nominalism: there isna��t nothing of real that corresponds to the names; the choice of particular names to assign to a group of images is arbitrary. The attribution of names has therefore sense only in a convention between the persons who speak, without that it must be any A�ontologicoal responce.

The intellect iconsists in the ability to assign common names arbitrarily to groups of similar things. For Hobbes does not exist universal concepts: the universal concept of a��mana�� doesena��t exist neither in the mind of God, neither in the things, neither in the mind of the man. When it tninks aout the man in general terms, through the common name a��mana��, in our mind there is only the image of a particular individual, that is assumed as symbol of all the other human beings. According to Hobbes, the intellect allows the men to foresee the future and to program to long term its behavior.

A man who was lacking in language, could, if he was put of forehead to the picture of a particular triangle, realize that the sum of the inner angles of it is equal to 180 degrees. But, if he was placed of forehead

A�to an other various triangle, he would have to re-start from head, like if it was the first A�time that he sees one ure of this kind. Instead, the creation of the word a��trianglea��, valid in order to indicate all the ures with three sides and three angles, concents to generalize the observation that a��every triangle has the sum of the inner angles equal to 180 degreesa��. The common name a��trianglea�� allows to pass from that is true here and now for this triangle, to that is true always, for all the triangles.

This form language, characterized from common names, lacks, according to Hobbes, in the animals. In fact, the outcries and the voices of the animals are signs that refer to single emotions, and not to groups of similar things.

Near the intellect there is then the reason, that consists in formulating the judgments, that is the preposition (or connections between the names) and the reasonings or syllogisms (or connections between the judgments).

Hobbes introduces the concept of a��state of naturea�� or a��presocial statea��, that is of antecedent state to the birth of the society. In the state of nature there is the nature right, that is the right of all on all, as in the presocial state, there arena��t laws and therefore all is allowed. Every individual is dominated by the unrestrainable desire to assert himself on all and against all, consequentely he does not hesitate to make war against the others. The men, for nature, are among them indifferents and enemies : every man is a wolf for the other man (homo homini lupus). In the state of nature, like in every state of war, the cardinal virtues are the violence and the swindle, and in it the distinction between the justice and the injustice,between the reason and the twisted one hasna��t any sense,.

The state of nature implies for every individual more damages that advantages. In the state of nature the men live in the continuous risk to lose those that for them are the fundamental assets: the peace and the life. The natural reason says to the man three fundamental laws of nature (lex naturae). The first law:it must search the peace and the conservation of the own existence (pax east quaerenda), in order to avoid the war of all against all, or, better, a��the peace must be searched when we can hav it; when we cana��t have it, it must try to look for some helps for the wara��. The second law is that it must renounce to the right on all (ius in omnia not retinendum); in base on such law, the natural reason advises to the men to stipulate an agreement, or, better, a pact or contract, in virtue of which they convene to renounce to all their powers or rights of nature and in general terms to their freedom (not the right to the life), and to make of delegation a monarch (that can be a physical person or an assembly), to which it promise obedience; the monarch must establish rights and duties of everyone, making to observe them with the force. The third law of nature, at last, is that it must be to the pacts (a��pactis standuma��, a��pacta sunt servanda)

The contract realizes a unification of all the particular citizens in one state driven from the monarch, who reduces all the single wishes to an only will. The state is a species of artificial and gigantic man, in which the monarch is the head, and the citizens are the limbs. Hobbes calls it a��Leviatanoa��, to emphasize the aspect of monstrous omnipotence. The Leviatano is a Biblical monster, a species of gigantic crocodile described in the book of Giobbe like equipped of a advanced force of every other A�a��landa�� being. The Leviatano is therefore the symbol of the sovereign power of the state. The state is also called a��mortal Goda��, because he is the representative of God on the earth, then because to him, like to God, we must obey, and at last because the state guarantees the peace and the defense.

The power of the monarch, according to Hobbes, is absolute, that is the monarch has all the powers (economic, executive, legislative, judicial and police) and all the rights, and he hasna��t no obligation in the isons of the citizens. This for several reasons: in the first place, because the contract is not stipulated between the sovereign power and the people, but only between several individuals; the monarch has not participated to the stipulazione of the contract. Then because the monarch has not received nothing which he already possesses.

The man, for Hobbes, creates himself an A�iron alternative: or the anarchy, that is the chaotic and disordinata violence of single,own of the state of nature, or the tyranny, that is the organized violence of the state. But even if the monarch hasna��t any obligation in the isons of the citizens, has A�however interest to maintain the peace and not to damage the subjects, for his prorperity. The interests of the monarch are equal to those of his subjects.

The monarch hasna��t any duty in isons of the community that has conferred him the power to govern. Vice versa, the subjects are obeyd to the monarch in every thing, without possibility to be left over in his confront demands. Only the monarch establishes what it is right and what it is unjust. In fact, on the state of nature, some laws dona��t exist

Thought of Locke

In his work of greater relief, the Test on human intelligence, Locke exposes his theories on the acquaintance. He agrues the sectiunesian rationalism. He shows his empiricist nature, considering the acquaintance as a fruit of the reason. Therefore Locke succeeds in to formulate a theory based on the senses. Acquaintance derives from the sensitive experience. They are our senses than show us the world, the objects. If at first it is the feeling to show the objects to us, necessarily it follows to it the reflection.In the 1690 Locke, that belonged to the Whig Party (later called Liberal Party), published the Two anonymously deals A�on the government, that contained a apology (moral justification) about the glorious English revolution, a controversy against the absolutism and a model to follow, in which the power of the governors was limited, and the rights of the citizens were respected.

The study of the limits of the human intellect

Locke is the exponent prince of the English philosophy of the second half of the '600 and the empirism

The empirism is an address of modern thought that says above all in England developing himself in parallel with the rationalism. It considers as acquaintance source the sensitive experience and consequently refuses the a��innatismoa��.

Locke concentrates reflections on 3 thematic: the theory of the acquaintance, politics and the religion. Its main scope is to inquire the limits and the possibilities of the human intellect to operate an exation approximately. He wants in concrete terms to determine the operation of human intelligence.

The acquaintance derives from the senses.

Facing the problem of the human acquaintance he asserts that the acquaintance derives from the senses and that which turns out to outside of our experience cana��t be known. Locke proposes to explain the way with which our intellect acquires the knowledge that has of the things and to establish both the degrees of certainty of our acquaintance (knowledge) and the foundations of those sideboards (beliefs) or opinions (opinions) so several and various among A�men.

The analysis of the language

The language is a complex of created names artificially from the man with the scope to simplify the activity of the mind that otherwise would be submergeeed from the infinite number of ideas, each of which corresponds to a particular object. Moreover the language allows the man to communicate. the words are signs of the ideas, since every idea is sign of one thing, . The language is therefore the conventional sign of the ideas;mere instrument through which the man indicates the own ideas and marks the things.