Renaissance humanism
Renaissance humanism was a worldview centered on the nature and importance of humanity, that emerged from the study of Classical antiquity. This first began in Italy and then spread across Western Europe in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. During the period, the term humanist (Italian: umanista) referred to teachers and students of the humanities, known as the studia humanitatis, which included the study of Latin and Ancient Greek literatures, grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, and moral philosophy. It was not until the 19th century that this began to be called humanism instead of the original humanities, and later by the retronym Renaissance humanism to distinguish it from later humanist developments.[2] During the Renaissance period most humanists were Christians, so their concern was to "purify and renew Christianity", not to do away with it. Their vision was to return ad fontes ("to the sources") to the simplicity of the Gospels and of the New Testament, bypassing the complexities of medieval Christian theology.[3]
This article is about the study of the humanities during the Renaissance. Not to be confused with the broader human-centered philosophy, Humanism.
Under the influence and inspiration of the classics, Renaissance humanists developed a new rhetoric and new learning. Some scholars also argue that humanism articulated new moral and civic perspectives, and values offering guidance in life to all citizens. Renaissance humanism was a response to what came to be depicted by later whig historians as the "narrow pedantry" associated with medieval scholasticism.[4]
Renaissance humanists sought to create a citizenry able to speak and write with eloquence and clarity, and thus capable of engaging in the civic life of their communities and persuading others to virtuous and prudent actions. Humanism, while set up by a small elite who had access to books and education, was intended as a cultural movement to influence all of society. It was a program to revive the cultural heritage, literary legacy, and moral philosophy of the Greco-Roman civilization. There were important centres of Renaissance humanism in Bologna, Ferrara, Florence, Genoa, Livorno, Mantua, Padua, Pisa, Naples, Rome, Siena, Venice, Vicenza, and Urbino.
Evolution and reception[edit]
Widespread view[edit]
Historian Steven Kreis expresses a widespread view (derived from the 19th-century Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt), when he writes that:
Historiography[edit]
The Baron Thesis[edit]
Hans Baron (1900–1988) was the inventor of the now ubiquitous term "civic humanism." First coined in the 1920s and based largely on his studies of Leonardo Bruni, Baron's "thesis" proposed the existence of a central strain of humanism, particularly in Florence and Venice, dedicated to republicanism. As argued in his chef-d'œuvre, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny, the German historian thought that civic humanism originated in around 1402, after the great struggles between Florence and Visconti-led Milan in the 1390s. He considered Petrarch's humanism to be a rhetorical, superficial project, and viewed this new strand to be one that abandoned the feudal and supposedly "otherworldly" (i.e., divine) ideology of the Middle Ages in favour of putting the republican state and its freedom at the forefront of the "civic humanist" project.[32] Already controversial at the time of The Crisis' publication, the "Baron Thesis" has been met with even more criticism over the years. Even in the 1960s, historians Philip Jones and Peter Herde[33] found Baron's praise of "republican" humanists naive, arguing that republics were far less liberty-driven than Baron had believed, and were practically as undemocratic as monarchies. James Hankins adds that the disparity in political values between the humanists employed by oligarchies and those employed by princes was not particularly notable, as all of Baron's civic ideals were exemplified by humanists serving various types of government. In so arguing, he asserts that a "political reform program is central to the humanist movement founded by Petrarch. But it is not a 'republican' project in Baron's sense of republic; it is not an ideological product associated with a particular regime type."[6]
Garin and Kristeller[edit]
Two renowned Renaissance scholars, Eugenio Garin and Paul Oskar Kristeller collaborated with one another throughout their careers. But while the two historians were on good terms, they fundamentally disagreed on the nature of Renaissance humanism. Kristeller affirmed that Renaissance humanism used to be viewed just as a project of Classical revival, one that led to great increase in Classical scholarship. But he argued that this theory "fails to explain the ideal of eloquence persistently set forth in the writings of the humanists," asserting that "their classical learning was incidental to" their being "professional rhetoricians."[34] Similarly, he considered their influence on philosophy and particular figures' philosophical output to be incidental to their humanism, viewing grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and ethics to be the humanists' main concerns. Garin, on the other hand, viewed philosophy itself as being ever-evolving, each form of philosophy being inextricable from the practices of the thinkers of its period. He thus considered the Italian humanists' break from Scholasticism and newfound freedom to be perfectly in line with this broader sense of philosophy.[35]
During the period in which they argued over these differing views, there was a broader cultural conversation happening regarding Humanism: one revolving around Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger. In 1946, Sartre published a work called "L'existentialisme est un humanisme," in which he outlined his conception of existentialism as revolving around the belief that "existence comes before essence"; that man "first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards," making himself and giving himself purpose.[36] Heidegger, in a response to this work of Sartre's, declared: "For this is humanism: meditating and caring, that human beings be human and not inhumane, "inhuman", that is, outside their essence."[37] He also discussed a decline in the concept of humanism, pronouncing that it had been dominated by metaphysics and essentially discounting it as philosophy. He also explicitly criticized Italian Renaissance humanism in the letter.[38] While this discourse was taking place outside the realm of Renaissance Studies (for more on the evolution of the term "humanism," see Humanism), this background debate was not irrelevant to Kristeller and Garin's ongoing disagreement. Kristeller—who had at one point studied under Heidegger[39]—also discounted (Renaissance) humanism as philosophy, and Garin's Der italienische Humanismus was published alongside Heidegger's response to Sartre—a move that Rubini describes as an attempt "to stage a pre-emptive confrontation between historical humanism and philosophical neo-humanisms."[40] Garin also conceived of the Renaissance humanists as occupying the same kind of "characteristic angst the existentialists attributed to men who had suddenly become conscious of their radical freedom," further weaving philosophy with Renaissance humanism.[35]
Hankins summarizes the Kristeller v. Garin debate quite well, attesting to Kristeller's conception of professional philosophers as being very formal and method-focused.[35] Renaissance humanists, on the other hand, he viewed to be professional rhetoricians who, using their classically-inspired paideia or institutio, did improve fields such as philosophy, but without the practice of philosophy being their main goal or function.[34] Garin, instead, wanted his "humanist-philosophers to be organic intellectuals," not constituting a rigid school of thought, but having a shared outlook on life and education that broke with the medieval traditions that came before them.[35]