Humanism
To begin with, humanism was an intellectual movement and was the renewed belief in the value and power
of the individual.
Renaissance humanism appeared in Europe, primarily in Italy in the 1300s, and eventually spread around
Europe by the 1600s. It was a cultural movement united by a translation and revival of the diverse range of
classical texts and ideologies. These included some of the less philosophical works of Aristotle, such as the
Poetics, but also works by authors other than Plato and Aristotle, leading to revivals of stoicism,
skepticism.
Throughout the Middle Ages, the general concept of man's place in the universe was one of obedience.
People were expected to live their lives to worship God, and they were asked by the church to earn their
way into heaven by following the sacraments and through good works.
In the 14th century, intellectuals began to question this purely religious view of life on Earth. They studied
the classical languages of Greek and Latin in order to read the wisdom of writers from the ancient world.
When Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in 1453, many of those ancient texts and the scholars who kept
them made their way to Italy, which reintroduced a treasure trove of writings to Western Europe.
So suddenly, the ideas of ancient writers become available to a whole new audience. Ancient values such as
civic virtue became subjects of conversation, and as more people started reading these texts.
Wealthy families began to support the schools and send their children to the schools to learn Greek and
Latin and gain access to ancient ideas. The problem was that some of those ideas came into conflict with
the teaching and doctrine of the Catholic Church.
Humanism had at its core the belief in two things: individualism and secularism. That is a departure from
religion. However, it's important to understand that humanists didn't really reject Catholicism, and they
didn't reject religion. What they wanted to do is they wanted to take the ideas of the Ancients and use
education to better understand the world while still retaining their Catholic beliefs.
Let take a look at the four of the most influential humanist thinkers:
1. Petrarch is generally regarded as the father of the Renaissance. Writing in the 14th century, he was the
first one who looked at the Middle Ages as a period of darkness and promoted the belief that medieval
culture was ignorant of classical ideals. He was totally wrong about this, and every medieval scholar today
can come up with a long list of reasons why he was wrong. But Petrarch understood that new movements
need to set themselves apart from the current society. He scoured the monasteries of Europe for ancient
texts and promoted the study of classical Latin . He also promoted the use of something called the
vernacular – those are the spoken languages throughout Europe; in his case it was Italian.
By the 15th century, writers began identifying themselves as humanists.
2. Lorenzo Valla from Rome dedicated his adult life to using his humanist education to help the Church. He
even tried to get the job of papal secretary but was unsuccessful, so he set off around Europe, intensely
studying Greek and Latin, finding every text he possibly could, and he pushed the concept that classical
Latin, especially that of about the two hundred years surrounding the birth of Christ, was the purest, most
beautiful form of Latin in history. Now, we all know that languages change over time, and he wanted to
restore Latin to its rightful position over the vernacular.
3. Under the patronage of Cosimo de' Medici, Marsillo Ficino created and promoted the movement known
as Neoplatonism. "Neo" means new, so whenever you encounter movements whose name starts with
"neo," understand that means a revival of an old idea. Anyway, Ficino's Neoplatonism attempted to take
Plato's ideas and join them with Catholicism.
By the late 15th century, humanism had been developing for almost 100 years. It was then that Pico della
Miran dola wrote one of the most famous humanist pieces of all time. It was titled "Oration on the
Dignity’’. He believed that God had created unlimited potential in people. In other words, God gave us all
the potential to become whatever we want. Mirondola had successfully achieved the goals of humanism.
So to review, humanism was the revival of interest in the classical ideals of Greece and Rome, and
humanists used their education to translate the works of classical writers and use them to better
understand the universe and man's place in it. Humanism gave us the foundation for most of modern
Western thought
