What role did Aristotle play in the Renaissance?

Question

Influence of Aristotle ideas in Italian Renaissance

Answer 1

~None whatsoever - he had been dead for centuries by the time the Renaissance rolled around. Duh.

Answer 2

You can't say none even though Aristotle had been dead about 1800 years when most date the beginning of the Renaissance. BUT part of the Renaissance has to do with Christian Humanist who went about resurrecting old texts of Greece (primarily) and Aristotle's work would have been among them. So Aristotle did not play a direct role, the Western World had just found him after 1800 years.

Answer 3

Which Renaissance? There were many, over a few hundred years, till the Renaissance, as a departure from the shibboleths of the Medieval period, really took off. In the Renaissance of the 12th century (originally postulated by Huizinga), the rediscovery of Aristotelian science and philosoophy (preserved by the Arabs and Jews, and transmitted to be rediscovered in Europe) played a positive role: it led to an infusion of a rediscovered logic and a body of scientific-philosophic beliefs into the traditional society (e.g., as codified by Acquinas, but not solely by and through him). But once this element was injected into European thought, it constituted a set of ideas that became a target for challenge and for improvement, and part of the improvement was the development of a counterforce of scientific humanism and later of empirical investigation. By the time the last phases of the Renaissance (the Northern Renaissance of the 16th century laid the foundation of the era of scientific empiricism), the revival of Aristotelian thought which had made a major contribution to the rise of a rational and humanist traditiion began to be seen as a impediment to, rather than a generator of, modern civiliization.

Answer 4

Aristotle's system of thought remains the most marvellous and influential one ever put together by any single mind. It may be doubted if any other thinker has contributed so much to the enlightenment of the world.[4]He single-handedly founded the sciences of Logic, Biology and Psychology. He also anticipated the coming of the Industrial revolution, a full two thousand years in advance by writing in his Politics (i, 4): "If every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others,... if the shuttle would weave, or the plectrum touch the lyre, without a hand to guide them, then chief workmen would not need assistants, nor masters slaves".[5]

Aristotle is referred to as "The Philosopher" by Scholastic thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas. These thinkers blended Aristotelian philosophy with Christianity, bringing the thought of Ancient Greece into the Middle Ages. It required a repudiation of some Aristotelian principles for the sciences and the arts to free themselves for the discovery of modern scientific laws and empirical methods.

Answer 5

You can refer to www.encarta.com