Francesco Petrarca - diskusijos apie pasaulio pradžią dalyvis?
Is Franscesco Petrarca a Participant in the Discussion on the Beginning of the World?

Summary/Abstract: This article deals with the philosophical thought of Francesco Petrarca, the Italian humanist, poet and scholar. He is the first great representative of Renaissance humanism, but it is not easy to find original ideas in his philosophy. An important thought (not typical for the Renaissance) is on the weak possibilities of human cognition. One of the themes of Petrarca’s treatise “On His Own and Many Other People’s Ignorance is the problem of the beginning of the world and time. All the arguments that are presented by Petrarca one can find in Plato’s Timaeus, Cicero’s treatise “On the Nature of Gods” and Augustine’s “The City of God”. Petrarca accepts Cicero’s opinion that the world had a temporal beginning, only God is eternal. So he meets the problem of time when there was no time. There is no investigation of the problem in Petrarca’s treatise, but there is a reference to Augustine’s opinion on it. Augustine shows that the proposition about the creation of time by God implies the proposition that there was a time before time. One cannot think of time co-eternal with its Creator as well. Those propositions are incompatible. Petrarca gives no last answer to the questions, but presents us with the possibility to inquire into the problem.

• Details
• Contents