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RENAISSANCE HUMANISM.   Term Paper ID:29273 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Discusses the historical and cultural context.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Discusses the historical and cultural context. Change of thought from the Age of Belief. Legal, economic, social, religious, philosophical and educational ideas that affected the structure of Western Europe. Religious content of the Middle Ages and secularism of the Renaissance. Man, not the Church, as the measure of all things. Importance of classical Greek and Roman models. Advancement of critical thinking. Invention of printing and growth of universities. Paper Introduction: This research examines the attributes of Renaissance humanism as it emerged in Europe after the 13th century. The research will discuss the historical and cultural context in which ideas associated with humanism began to resonate in intellectual discourse, and then discuss how the confluence of various legal, economic, social, religious, philosophical, and educational dynamics affected the structure of Western European thought from the Renaissance and into the modern period. It is Protagoras (480-410 BC) who is credited with the declaration that "man is the measure of all things" (976). But Protagoras's declaration was an exercise in ontology and the legitimation of human reason; the whole of his statement reads thus: "Man is the measure of all things, of being things that they exist, and of nonentities that they do not exist" (Prot Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. New York: Pantheon Books, 196 .Protagoras. ed. Norton & Company, 1981.Pieper, Josef. Vol. Whenever lords could exploit their serfs, they did. Dagobert Runes. The key scholastic, ThomasAquinas, was preoccupied with connecting theology with philosophy. Ed. T.H. . Norton & Company, 1994.Freemantle, Anne. Despite thepersistence of feudatory class divisions and "very complex and very lengthystruggles" (Cipolla, p. Thompson (286) says that hewas disliked by orthodox Churchmen and Protestants alike because he was"neither a servant of reform nor a slave of reaction" but rather a criticalthinker. 4 vols. Scholasticism: Personalities and Problems of Medieval Philosophy. New York: Philosophical Library, 1955. Europe's adultpopulation became younger, more enterprising, more urbanized. 975-6.Taylor, H.O. Occam's "razor," meanwhile, had showed "how difficult was the proof ofany correspondence between the propositions formed by the mind and thematerial realities of the world . New York: Mentor/New American Library, 1954.Hayes, Carlton J.H., Baldwin, Marshall Whitehead, and Cole, Charles Woolsey. The Black Death rendered the feudal experienceirrelevant in ways that peasant revolts could not. The point is this: The religious content of Middle Ages culture wasinterrogated by Renaissance thinkers and artists in unprecedented ways. for he who knows himself [not God!] in himself knows all things (Mirandola, in Thompson 283-5). Works CitedBarzun, Jacques. The Age of Belief: The Medieval Philosophers. What Fremantle describes as the Age of Belief, in which thephilosophical questions occupying the scholastics had to do withreconciling with faith and reason (x-xi). C. 12 ) between ruling and underclasses, merchant andprofessional classes were centrally involved in economic activity, as wellas serfs and villeins seeking independence from the landed gentry. 2 of Classics of Western Thought®MDNM¯. . 2. New York: HarperCollins, 2 .Cameron, Rondo. . 3rd. scholasticism became decadent,overloaded with logic, and inflated to perdition with words and sterilesubtleties" (Taylor 269). Untilthe sixteenth century this Italian invention was unknown in northern Europe(Cipolla 163-4), which gave Italy's city-states a strategic financialadvantage. 352-3), contributed to adistrust of familiar institutions. Structure and Change in Economic History. Growth of universities was coeval withemergence of double-entry bookkeeping and rationalization of coinage. The so-calledprince of humanists and schoolmaster to the Renaissance was Erasmus, whosePraise of Folly is partly an indictment of the "scandalous life" ofchurchmen but more generally a social critique. . Although theactual students seem to have been a bit sociopathic during their tenure inuniversity towns (Barzun 229), the university ideal was that "the ordinaryman is neither the slave of an absolute monarch nor of a demagogue-ruledstate, but an informed, inspired, and consulted part of the community"(Wells 62 ). Thought and Expression in the Sixteenth Century. Nevertheless, "the immediate past was 'Gothic' inlanguage, thought, and sensibility," and antiquity was venerated as a morereliable model for the highest and best of human experience (Barzun 47). Barzun (228) points out that studyof the liberal arts curriculum (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music,grammar, logic, and rhetoric) fostered the idea that "any future leader incivilian life or government" would be equipped to serve. Why classical (Greek and Roman) models were so important toRenaissance humanists can be discerned partly from the squalid facts ofhistory. Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1971. Such conventions, reinforced by theglobal voyages of discovery that got under way during the Renaissance,greatly benefited the merchant classes and gave force to the triumph ofsecularism throughout northern and western Europe. This research examines the attributes of Renaissance humanism as itemerged in Europe after the 13th century. . Reinforcing the secularization of European culture was the fact thatnovel mechanisms of civil organization were developing a life of their own.The structure of feudal/medieval society fostered the growth of towns, "anelement of innovation, a place to seek one's fortune" (Cipolla 119). Medieval Culture and Society. It was like going up to the attic and polishing up semi- discarded treasures (Barzun 46).Barzun cites "the usual pride of advanced thinkers" as explaining why self-aware Renaissance men failed to appreciate the scholastics' preservation ofworks of antiquity. The Peasants' War in England, the Ciompi rebellion in Florence, theexile of the papacy from Rome to Avignon, the decline of the cult ofchivalry--all of these, aggravated by the infamous papal inquisitorTetzel's selling of indulgences (Hayes, et al. "Fragments." Treasury of Philosophy. But Protagoras's declarationwas an exercise in ontology and the legitimation of human reason; the wholeof his statement reads thus: "Man is the measure of all things, of beingthings that they exist, and of nonentities that they do not exist"(Protagoras 976). and toadjust the side of the landholding of peasants to the bare minimum andthereby increase the demesne (and income) of the lord" (North 131).Meanwhile, plow design, crop rotation, harvesting sickle, and fertilizer(Cameron 51-4) fostered both agricultural efficiency and feudal power. Thetendency was toward secularism. The invention of printing from movable type in 1446 dramaticallyincreased literacy. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1959.Thompson, K.F. From Dawn to Decadence: 5 Years of Western Cultural Life, 15 to the Present. New York: Harper & Row, 1968Kirchner, Walther. In thatregard, Herlihy explains scholasticism as an exercise in logic, "takingpropositions initially from Christian dogma, then also from naturalphilosophy as expounded by Aristotle" (Herlihy 161). W. Harper Torchbooks. Vol. ed. . From the philosophical standpoint, insteadof reason and religion, reason and nature were to be reconciled. Greer. Barzunsums up the intellectual atmosphere: In the 15th and 16C [sic] the continuing enthusiasm for the ancients was reinforced by the feeling that the inherited culture was dissolving and here was a storehouse of ideas and attitudes with which to rebuild. Concise Economic History of the World: From Paleolithic Times to the Present. Vol. . Physical freedom from the land fostered freedom of thought associatedwith Renaissance humanism. Warfare was not disposedof, but competition between all-secular nation-states rather than betweenprinces and popes bent on unifying Christendom characterized warfare afterthat (Wells 685-7). New York: W. . New York: Oxford U P, 1997.Cipolla, C. Barzun goes further, explaining that the university system fedand dominated the civil service, especially of England, from theRenaissance to the 2 th century. Towns andmerchants supplied the void that agriculture production had filled. . who [] rejected parts of the immediate past in favorof the culture they perceived in the classics of ancient Rome" (Barzun 44).The "Oration on the Dignity of Man" by Mirandola, a 15th-century cleric whoskirted the edges of heresy, has been described as "an excellent reflectionof the aspirations of Renaissance humanism" (Thompson 276): But indeed not only the Mosaic and Christian mysteries but also the theology of the ancients show us the benefits and value of the liberal arts . Butcertain cooperative farming strategies forced on the serfs because plots ofland allotted to them as individuals were few and far between increasedefficiency and self-sufficiency (Cameron 54). What is called Northern Humanism wasparticularly characterized by "the spirit of free inquiry" (Kirchner 261)associated with university education. Critical thinking appears to be the most important legacy of theRenaissance attitude toward education. 3rd. Could peasant revolts be far behind? The Outline of History, Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind. New York: W. Barzun's analysis ofthe term is that it was coined retrospectively in the 19th century "byGerman scholars . New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1961.North, D. By the time of the 15th century, the fact that man wasthe measure of all things had a different connotation, in that man as areasoning individual was to be distinguished from what for more than 1, years had assumed measurement authority over things, from the real to thebeautiful to the moral: the Church. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1967.Herlihy, David. The research will discuss thehistorical and cultural context in which ideas associated with humanismbegan to resonate in intellectual discourse, and then discuss how theconfluence of various legal, economic, social, religious, philosophical,and educational dynamics affected the structure of Western European thoughtfrom the Renaissance and into the modern period. Feudalism as a system of social and economic organization did not dieeasily. 2. Ed. . Universities, starting in Bologna, Italy, and extending northward andwestward, lent academic credence to Renaissance thought. The Black Death of 1348 drastically reduced the population ofEurope and threw civil society into such chaos that existing institutionswere deemed unable "to cope with the mounting problems of the age" (Herlihy342). History of Western Civilization. Ed. It is Protagoras (48 -41 BC) who is credited with the declarationthat "man is the measure of all things" (976). For example,scattering serfs' proprietary farms in patches across the manor allowedlandlords "to monitor the output . Thisis the milieu of mercantilism and an emerging bourgeoisie. Western Civilization to 15 . to reduce shirking . M. W. The Bible was translated into multiple vernaculars, andby 1517 the inevitably variant interpretations of it had given momentum tothe Reformation, a religious Renaissance within the larger Renaissance(Barzun passim; Wells passim). New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 198 .Wells, H.G. What is important to recognize is thatthis civil service was increasingly secular, not religious, in composition.That was especially true after Henry VIII's break with Rome in England forpersonal and political reasons in 153 , Luther's break with Rome in Germanyfor reasons of religious reform (he despised Tetzel and the pope) in 1517,and the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which concluded the Thirty Years' War,the last Protestant-Catholic war on the Continent. Indeed, the study of Roman law led tothe development of universities, "regular meeting place for outstandingteachers and mature students, who organized themselves into a closely knitcommunity" (Kirchner 184), or an intellectual forum for speculativephilosophy and theology. Wells. 13 4) had clerical careers. But the increase of bookkeeping and banking conventionsincreased market liquidity, credit, and confidence, even in the face ofshortages of tangible metal coin. Second Edition. Cameron cites famine, plague, andwar that peaked with peasant revolts in 1358 in France, in 1381 in England,and in 1378 in Italy, as contributing to peasants' "freedom from manorialbondage" (Cameron 76). Intellectualinquiry in the Renaissance had increased concern about human reason andpotentiality, even though many of the Renaissance thinkers and artists(e.g., Petrarch, b. Aquinas's work was undertaken in the service of faith. It isanother way of saying that man and not the Church was the measure of allthings. Raymond Postgate and G.P. Before the Industrial Revolution: European Society and Economy, 1 -17 . According to Barzun, theterm humanism is "elastic," but its most prominent feature is that it de-linked human concerns from concerns with the hereafter, whereas thescholastics had emphasized the linkage (Barzun 43-4). 3rd ed. Small wonder that intellectual life turned awayfrom God and God's institutions and toward rational man, the most readilyavailable historical models for which lay in classical antiquity. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.