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The word humanism has been freely applied to
a variety of beliefs, methods, and philosophies that place central emphasis on
the human realm. Most frequently, however, the term is used with reference to a
system of education and mode of inquiry that developed in northern Italy during
the 14th century and later spread through Europe and England. Alternately known
as "Renaissance humanism," this
program was so broadly and profoundly influential that it is one of the chief
reasons why the Renaissance is viewed as a distinct historical period. Indeed,
though the word Renaissance is of more
recent coinage, the fundamental idea of that period as one of renewal and
reawakening is humanistic in origin. But humanism sought its own philosophical
bases in far earlier times and, moreover, continued to exert some of its power
long after the end of the Renaissance.
The history of the term humanism
is complex but enlightening. It was first employed (as humanismus)
by 19th-century German scholars to designate the Renaissance emphasis on
classical studies in education. These studies were pursued and endorsed by
educators known, as early as the late 15th century, as umanisti: that is, professors or students of classical literature.
The word umanisti derives from the studia
humanitatis, a course of classical studies that, in the early 15th century,
consisted of grammar, poetry, rhetoric, history, and moral philosophy. The studia humanitatis were held to be the equivalent of the Greek paideia.
Their name was itself based on the Latin humanitas,
an educational and political ideal that was the intellectual basis of the entire
movement. Renaissance humanism in all its forms defined itself in its straining
toward this ideal. No discussion, therefore, of humanism can have validity
without an understanding of humanitas.
(see also education,
history of , studia humanitatis, paideia)
Humanitas
meant the development of human virtue, in all its forms, to its fullest extent.
The term thus implied not only such qualities as are associated with the modern
word humanity--understanding,
benevolence, compassion, mercy--but also such more aggressive characteristics as
fortitude, judgment, prudence, eloquence, and even love of honour. Consequently
the possessor of humanitas could not
be merely a sedentary and isolated philosopher or man of letters but was of
necessity a participant in active life. Just as action without insight was held
to be aimless and barbaric, insight without action was rejected as barren and
imperfect. Humanitas called for a fine
balance of action and contemplation, a balance born not of compromise but of
complementarity. The goal of such fulfilled and balanced virtue was political in
the broadest sense of the word. The purview of Renaissance humanism included not
only the education of the young but also the guidance of adults (including
rulers) via philosophical poetry and strategic rhetoric. It included not only
realistic social criticism but also utopian hypotheses, not only painstaking
reassessments of history but also bold reshapings of the future. In short,
humanism called for the comprehensive reform of culture, the transfiguration of
what humanists termed the passive and ignorant society of the "dark"
ages into a new order that would reflect and encourage the grandest human
potentialities. Humanism had an evangelical dimension. It sought to project humanitas
from the individual into the state at large.
The wellspring of humanitas was classical literature.
Greek and Roman thought, available in a flood of rediscovered or newly
translated manuscripts, provided humanism with much of its basic structure and
method. For Renaissance humanists, there was nothing dated or outworn about the
writings of Plato, Cicero, or Livy. Compared
with the typical productions of medieval Christianity, these pagan works had a
fresh, radical, almost avant-garde tonality. Indeed, recovering the classics was
to humanism tantamount to recovering reality. Classical philosophy, rhetoric,
and history were seen as models of proper method--efforts to come to terms,
systematically and without preconceptions of any kind, with perceived
experience. Moreover, classical thought considered ethics qua ethics, politics
qua politics: it lacked the inhibiting dualism occasioned in medieval thought by
the often conflicting demands of secularism and Christian spirituality.
Classical virtue, in examples of which the literature abounded, was not an
abstract essence but a quality that could be tested in the forum or on the
battlefield. Finally, classical literature was rich in eloquence. In particular
(since humanists were normally better at Latin than they were at Greek) Cicero
was considered to be the pattern of refined and copious discourse. In eloquence
humanists found far more than an exclusively aesthetic quality. As an effective
means of moving leaders or fellow citizens toward one political course or
another, eloquence was akin to pure power. Humanists cultivated rhetoric,
consequently, as the medium through which all other virtues could be
communicated and fulfilled.
Humanism, then, may be accurately
defined as that Renaissance movement which had as its central focus the ideal of
humanitas. The narrower definition of
the Italian term umanisti
notwithstanding, all the Renaissance writers who cultivated humanitas,
and all their direct "descendants," may be correctly termed humanists.
It is small wonder that a term as
broadly allusive as humanism should be
subject to a wide variety of applications. Of these (excepting the historical
movement described above) there are three basic types: humanism as classicism,
humanism as referring to the modern concept of the humanities, and humanism as
human-centredness.
Accepting the notion that Renaissance
humanism was simply a return to the classics, some historians and philologists
have reasoned that classical revivals occurring anywhere in history should be
called humanistic. St. Augustine, Alcuin, and the scholars of 12th-century
Chartres have thus been referred to as humanists. In this sense the term can
also be used self-consciously, as in the New Humanism movement in literary
criticism led by Irving Babbitt and Paul Elmer More in the early 20th century.
The word humanities, which like the word umanisti
derived from the Latin studia humanitatis,
is often used to designate the nonscientific scholarly disciplines: language,
literature, rhetoric, philosophy, art history, and so forth. Thus it is
customary to refer to scholars in these fields as humanists and to their
activities as humanistic.
Humanism and related terms are
frequently applied to modern doctrines and techniques that are based on the
centrality of human experience. In the 20th century the pragmatic humanism of Ferdinand
C.S. Schiller, the Christian humanism of Jacques
Maritain, and the movement known as secular humanism, though differing
from each other significantly in content, all show this anthropocentric
emphasis.
Not only is such a large assortment of
definitions confusing, but the definitions themselves are often redundant or
impertinent. There is no reason to call all classical revivals humanistic when
the word classical suffices. To say that professors in the many disciplines
known as the humanities are humanists is to compound vagueness with vagueness,
for these disciplines have long since ceased to have or even aspire to a common
rationale. The definition of humanism as anthropocentricity
or human-centredness has a firmer claim to correctness. For obvious reasons,
however, it is confusing to apply this word to classical literature.
Underlying the early expressions of
humanism were principles and attitudes that gave the movement a unique character
and would shape its future development.
Early humanists returned to the classics
less with nostalgia or awe than with a sense of deep familiarity, an impression
of having been brought newly into contact with expressions of an intrinsic and
permanent human reality. Petrarch, the
acknowledged founder of the humanistic movement, dramatized his feeling of
intimacy with the classics by writing "letters" to Cicero and Livy. Coluccio
Salutati remarked with pleasure that possession of a copy of Cicero's
letters would make it possible for him to talk with Cicero. Niccolò
Machiavelli would later immortalize this experience in a letter that
described his own reading habits in ritualistic terms:
Evenings I return home and enter my
study; and at its entrance I take off my everyday clothes, full of mud and dust,
and don royal and courtly garments; decorously reattired, I enter into the
ancient sessions of ancient men. Received amicably by them, I partake of such
food as is mine only and for which I was born. There, without shame, I speak
with them and ask them about the reason for their actions; and they in their
humanity respond to me.
Machiavelli's term umanità ("humanity") means more than kindness; it
is a direct translation of the Latin humanitas.
Machiavelli implies that he shared with the ancients a sovereign wisdom of human
affairs. He also describes that theory of reading as an active and even
aggressive pursuit that was common among humanists. Possessing a text and
understanding its words were not enough; analytic ability and a questioning
attitude were necessary before a reader could truly enter the councils of the
great. These councils, moreover, were not merely serious and ennobling; they
held secrets available only to the astute, secrets the knowledge of which could
transform life from a chaotic miscellany into a crucially heroic experience.
Classical thought offered insight into the heart of things. In addition, the
classics suggested methods by which, once known, human reality could be
transformed from an accident of history into an artifact of will. Antiquity was
rich in examples, actual or poetic, of epic action, victorious eloquence, and
applied understanding. Carefully studied and well employed, classical rhetoric
could implement enlightened policy, while classical poetics could carry
enlightenment into the very souls of men. In a manner that might seem
paradoxical to more modern minds, humanists associated classicism with the
future.
Early humanists shared in large part a
realism that rejected traditional assumptions and aimed instead at the objective
analysis of perceived experience. To humanism is owed the rise of modern social
science, which emerged not as an academic discipline but rather as a
practical instrument of social self-inquiry. Humanists avidly read history,
taught it to their young, and, perhaps most importantly, wrote it themselves.
They were confident that proper historical method, by extending across time
their grasp of human reality, would enhance their active role in the present.
For Machiavelli, who avowed to treat of men as they were and not as they ought
to be, history would become the basis of a new political science. Similarly,
direct experience took precedence over traditional wisdom. Leon Battista
Alberti's dictum that an essential form of wisdom could be found only "at
the public marketplace, in the theatre, and in people's homes" would be
echoed by Francesco Guicciardini:
I, for my part, know no greater
pleasure than listening to an old man of uncommon prudence speaking of public
and political matters that he has not learnt from books of philosophers but from
experience and action; for the latter are the only genuine methods of learning
anything.
Renaissance realism also involved the
unblinking examination of human uncertainty, folly, and immorality. Petrarch's
honest investigation of his own doubts and mixed motives is born of the same
impulse that led Giovanni Boccaccio in the Decameron
to conduct an encyclopaedic survey of human vices and disorders. Similarly
critical treatments of society from a humanistic perspective would be produced
later by Erasmus, More, Castiglione, Rabelais, and Montaigne. But it was typical
of humanism that this moral criticism did not, conversely, postulate an ideal of
absolute purity. Humanists asserted the dignity of normal earthly activities and
even endorsed the pursuit of fame and the acquisition of wealth. The emphasis on
a mature and healthy balance between mind and body, first implicit in Boccaccio,
is evident in the work of Giannozzo Manetti,
Francesco Filelfo, and Paracelsus; it is
embodied eloquently in Montaigne's final essay, "Of Experience."
Humanistic tradition, rather than revolutionary inspiration, would lead Francis
Bacon to assert in the early 17th century that the passions should become
objects of systematic investigation. The realism of the humanists was, finally,
brought to bear on the Roman Catholic Church, which they called into question
not as a theological structure but as a political institution. Here as
elsewhere, however, the intention was neither radical nor destructive. Humanism
did not aim to remake humanity but rather to reform social order through an
understanding of what was basically and inalienably human.
Humanistic realism bespoke a
comprehensively critical attitude. Indeed, the productions of early humanism
constituted a manifesto of independence, at least in the secular world, from all
preconceptions and all inherited programs. The same critical self-reliance shown
by Coluccio Salutati in his textual emendations and Boccaccio in his
interpretations of myth was evident in almost the whole range of humanistic
endeavour. It was cognate with a new specificity, a profound concern with the
precise details of perceived phenomena, that took hold across the arts and the
literary and historical disciplines and would have profound effects on the rise
of modern science. The increasing prominence of mathematics as an artistic
principle and academic discipline was a testament to this development.
These attitudes took shape in concord
with a sense of personal autonomy that first was evident in Petrarch and later
came to characterize humanism as a whole. An
intelligence capable of critical scrutiny and self-inquiry was by definition a
free intelligence; the intellectual virtue that could analyze experience was an
integral part of that more extensive virtue that could, according to many
humanists, go far in conquering fortune. The emergence of Renaissance individualism
was not without its darker aspects. Petrarch and Alberti were alert to the sense
of estrangement that accompanies intellectual and moral autonomy, while
Machiavelli would depict, in The
Prince, a grim world in which the individual must exploit the
weakness of the crowd or fall victim to its indignities. But happy or sad, the
experience of the individual had taken on a heroic tone. Parallel with
individualism arose, as a favourite humanistic theme, the idea of the dignity of
man. Backed by medieval sources but more sweeping and insistent in their
approach, spokesmen such as Petrarch, Manetti, Valla, and Ficino asserted man's
earthly preeminence and unique potentialities. In his noted De
hominis dignitate oratio ("Oration on the Dignity of Man"),
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola conveyed this
notion with unprecedented vigour. Humanity, Pico asserted, had been assigned no
fixed character or limit by God but instead was free to seek its own level and
create its own future. No dignity, not even divinity itself, was forbidden to
human aspiration. Pico's radical affirmation of human capacity shows the
influence of Ficino's recent translations of the Hermetic writings. Together
with the even bolder 16th-century formulations of this position by Paracelsus
and Giordano Bruno, the Oratio
betrays a rejection of the early humanists' emphasis on balance and moderation;
it suggests the straining toward absolutes that would characterize major
elements of later humanism.
The emphasis on virtuous action as the
goal of learning was a founding principle of humanism and (though sometimes
sharply challenged) continued to exert a strong influence throughout the course
of the movement. Salutati, the learned chancellor of Florence whose words could
batter cities, represented in word and deed the humanistic ideal of an armed
wisdom: that combination of philosophical understanding and powerful rhetoric
which alone could effect virtuous policy and reconcile the rival claims of
action and contemplation. In De ingenuis moribus et liberalibus studiis ("On the
Manners of a Gentleman and Liberal Studies"), a treatise that influenced
Guarino Veronese and Vittorino da Feltre, Pietro Paolo
Vergerio maintained that just and beneficent action was the purpose of
humanistic education; his words were echoed by Alberti in Della famiglia ("On the
Family"):
As I have said, happiness cannot be
gained without good works and just and righteous deeds. . . . The best works are
those that benefit many people. Those are most virtuous, perhaps, that cannot be
pursued without strength and nobility. We must give ourselves to manly effort,
then, and follow the noblest pursuits.
Matteo Palmieri wrote that
the true merit of virtue lies in
effective action, and effective action is impossible without the faculties that
are necessary for it. He who has nothing to give cannot be generous. And he who
loves solitude can be neither just, nor strong, nor experienced in those things
that are of importance in government and in the affairs of the majority.
Palmieri's philosophical poem, La
città di vita ("The City of Life"), developed the idea that
the world was divinely ordained to test human virtue in action. Later humanism
would broaden and diversify the theme of active virtue. Machiavelli saw action
not only as the goal of virtue but also (via historical understanding of great
deeds of the past) as the basis for wisdom. Baldassare
Castiglione, in his highly influential Libro
del cortegiano (Book
of the Courtier), developed in his ideal courtier a psychological
model for active virtue, stressing moral awareness as a key element in just
action. François Rabelais used the idea
of active virtue as the basis for anticlerical satire. In his profusely
humanistic Gargantua, he has the
active hero Friar John save a monastery from enemy attack, while the monks sit
uselessly in the church choir, chanting meaningless Latin syllables. John later
asserts that, had he been present, he would have used his manly strength to save
Jesus from crucifixion, and he castigates the Apostles for betraying Christ
"after a good meal." Endorsements of active virtue, as will be shown,
would also characterize the work of English humanists from Sir Thomas Elyot to
John Milton. They typify the sense of social responsibility, the instinctive
association of learning with politics and morality, that stood at the heart of
the movement. As Salutati put it, "One must stand in the line of battle,
engage in close combat, struggle for justice, for truth, for honour." (see
also "Gargantua
and Pantagruel")
The influence of Petrarch
(Francesco Petrarca, 1304-74) was profound and many-sided. As the most prominent
man of letters of the 14th century, he promoted the recovery and transcription
of classical texts, providing the impetus for the important classical researches
of Boccaccio and Salutati. He threw himself into controversies in which he
defined a new humanism in contradistinction to what he considered to be the
barbaric influence of medieval tradition. He carried on an energetic
correspondence that established him as a cultural focal point and would provide,
if all his other works were lost, an accurate index of his views and their
development. As a theologian (he was an ordained priest) he advanced the view,
held by many humanists to follow, that classical learning and Christian
spirituality were not only compatible but also mutually fulfilling. As a
political apologist, he gave hearty support to Cola di
Rienzo's brief revival of the Roman Republic (1347). As a poet, he was
the first Renaissance writer to produce a Latin epic (Africa), but he was even more important for his compositions in the
vernacular. His Canzoniere
provided the model on which the Renaissance lyric was to take shape and the
standard by which future productions would be judged. His work established
secular poetry as a serious and noble pursuit. His eloquent and forceful
presence made him a personal symbol of his own ideas. Crowned with laurel,
favoured by rulers, legates, and scholars, he became the human focus for the new
interest in classical revival and literary artistry.
It was, however, as a philosophical
spokesman that Petrarch exerted his greatest influence on the history of
humanism. In his prose works and letters he established many of the positions
that would be central to the movement and broached many of the issues that would
be its favourite subjects for debate. His idea of the poet as a philosophical
teacher and thus as a champion of culture would inspire humanists from Boccaccio
to Sidney. His endorsement of the study of rhetoric and his underlying notion of
language as an informing principle of the individual and society would become
crucial subjects of humanistic discussion and debate. His view of classical
culture, not as an undifferentiated element of the past but as an authentic
alternative to his own medieval society, was of equal historical importance.
Petrarch broke with the past and helped to reestablish the Socratic tradition in
Europe by specifying self-knowledge as a primary goal of philosophy. This
attitude and his unfailing insistence on moral autonomy were early and important
signs of the individualism that would become a Renaissance hallmark. He
emphasized human virtue as opposed to fortune, thus setting the stage for
numerous famous treatments of this theme. He struggled repeatedly with the
dilemma of action versus contemplation, establishing it as a favourite topic for
humanistic debate. Petrarch did not invent these subjects, nor does he usually
treat them with overwhelming power. His preeminence lies in the fact that he was
the first writer since antiquity to assert that they and other human matters
were valid issues for philosophical inquiry in and of themselves, and in the
energy and eloquence with which he made his work their forum.
Petrarch's influence was immediately
apparent in the work of two major Florentine humanists, Giovanni Boccaccio and
Coluccio Salutati. A close friend and devoted supporter of Petrarch, Boccaccio
(1313-75) not only enlarged upon his preceptor's ideas but also made important
humanistic contributions of his own. His Teseide
was the first classical epic to have been written in the vernacular and
influenced the more famous Italian epics of Ariosto and Tasso. His De
genealogia deorum gentilium ("On the Genealogy of the Gods of
the Gentiles"), a scholarly interpretive compendium of classical myth, was
the first in a long line of Renaissance mythographies; it includes a celebrated
defense of poetry as a medium of hidden truth, a stimulant to virtue, and a
source of mental health. His most memorable contribution to humanism, however,
was probably the famous Decameron.
Ostensibly this work is no more than a collection of 100 tales about love. But
subjected to the interpretive scrutiny that Boccaccio himself recommends in De
genealogia deorum gentilium, the Decameron
takes on a far more serious tone. The opening phrase "Umana cosa è" ("It is a human thing") is
deeply thematic, reminding us that the author structured his work on Dante's
spiritual epic, La divina commedia. A
close reading of the Decameron
suggests that in it Boccaccio is trying to establish for the human realm the
same sort of comprehensive understanding that Dante established for the life of
the spirit. Through moral fable and direct address to the reader, he undertakes
a reinterpretation of human experience based not on traditional doctrine but
rather on perceived reality. Appealing repeatedly to reason and nature, and
constantly implying the superiority of awareness to innocence (which he equates
with ignorance), he calls for a moral order built fairly and solidly on the
potentialities of human nature. His 10 storytellers, who leave the
plague-ravaged and chaotic city of Florence and reestablish themselves at a
delightfully landscaped villa, suggest the remaking of culture through
disentanglement with the past, unprejudiced analysis, and enlightened
imagination. Rightly considered to be the wellspring of Western realism, the Decameron
is also a monument to humanism. Though it makes little mention of classical
thought, Boccaccio's great work rings with a tone that was even more basic to
the humanistic movement: an emphasis on the human capacity for self-knowledge
and willed renewal.
Other humanistic elements implicit in
Petrarch's thought were developed in the life and work of Coluccio
Salutati (1331-1406). Like Petrarch, Salutati collected manuscripts,
wrote on morality and politics, and carried on a voluminous correspondence. He
was an aggressive and scientific philologist, instrumental in establishing
principles of textual criticism that would become key elements of the humanistic
method. He was a forceful apologist for the active life, and his theories bore
fruit in his own career as chancellor of the Florentine
republic. His use of classical eloquence in the service of his state was an
early documentation of the humanistic faith in the political power of rhetoric;
it led a bitter enemy, Gian Galeazzo Visconti of
Milan, to say that a thousand Florentine horsemen had hurt him less than the
letters of Coluccio. Salutati was succeeded in the Florentine chancellorship by
two scholar-statesmen who reflected his influence, first Leonardo
Bruni (1369-1444) and then Gian Francesco Poggio Braccioloni (1380-1459).
Bruni was a pioneer in the advocacy of humanistic education, holding that the studia
humanitatis shape the perfected man and that the goal of this perfected
virtue is political action. His theory of education stressed the importance of
practical experience (implicit in the work of Boccaccio) and put heavy emphasis
on historical studies. His history of Florence is considered to be the first
work of modern historiography; and, under the influence of Emmanuel Chrysoloras
(1368-1415), a Byzantine teacher who had lectured at Florence and Pavia, he
produced Latin translations of Plato and Aristotle that broke with medieval
tradition by reproducing the sense of the Greek prose rather than following it
word by word. Poggio, the foremost recoverer of
classical texts, was also a moralist, a historian, a brilliant correspondent,
and an early scholar of architectural antiquities. His long career, which
included service to both church and state and friendships with Salutati, Bruni,
Niccolò Niccoli, Guarino, Nicholas of Cusa, Donatello, and Cosimo de'
Medici, exemplifies the scope and vitality of Italian humanism. Together these
Florentine chancellors, whose active lives spanned almost a century,
strengthened and consolidated the humanistic program. Moreover, their leadership
strongly influenced the cultural developments that would make 15th-century
Florence the most active intellectual and artistic centre in Europe.
As one proceeds with the history of
humanism, the following major points about its development in the 14th century
ought to be kept in mind. Humanism received its crucial imprint from the work of
a single man and thence developed among men who maintained close touch with each
other and acknowledged a shared mission. Humanism was not originally an academic
movement but rather a program defined and promoted by statesmen and men of
letters. Its proclaimed goal was widespread cultural renewal; therefore, it
chose its subjects for consideration from the phenomena of human life as lived
and adopted the Ciceronian model of philosopher as citizen in preference to the
contemplative ideal. The heavy emphasis on civic action is connected with the
fact that humanism developed in a republic rather than a monarchy.
By the turn of the 15th century, all of
the key elements that came to define humanism were in place except for two: its
detailed educational system and what might be called its Greek dimension. The
founders of the first humanistic schools were Vittorino
da Feltre (1373-1446) and Guarino Veronese
(Guarino da Verona, 1374-1460). Vittorino and Guarino were fellow students at
the University of Padua at the turn of the century; they are said later to have
tutored each other (Guarino as an expert in Greek, Vittorino in Latin) after
Guarino had opened the first humanistic school (Venice, c. 1414). Vittorino taught in both Padua (where he was briefly
professor of rhetoric) and Venice during the early 1420s. In 1423 he accepted
the invitation of Gianfrancesco Gonzaga, marquis
of Mantua, to become tutor to the ruling family.
At this post Vittorino spent the remaining 22 years of his life. His school,
held in a delightful palace that he renamed "La Giocosa," had as its
students not only the Gonzaga children (among them the future marquis, Ludovico)
but also an increasing number of others, including sons of Poggio, Guarino, and
Filelfo. The eminent humanist Lorenzo Valla studied there, as did Federico da
Montefeltro, who later promoted humanistic institutions as duke of Urbino.
Vittorino's school in Mantua was the first to focus the full power of the
humanistic program, together with its implications in other arts and sciences,
upon the education of the young. Latin literature, Latin composition, and Greek
literature were required subjects of study. Heavy emphasis was placed on Roman
history as an educational treasury of great men and memorable deeds. Rhetoric
(as taught by Quintilian) was a central topic, not as an end in itself but as an
effective means of channeling moral virtue into political action. Vittorino
summed up the essentially political thrust of humanistic education as follows:
(see also education, history of )
Not everyone is called to be a
physician, a lawyer, a philosopher, to live in the public eye, nor has everyone
outstanding gifts of natural capacity, but all of us are created for the life of
social duty,all are responsible for the personal influence that goes forth from
us.
Other studies at Mantua included music,
drawing, astronomy, and mathematics. The meadows around La Giocosa were turned
into playing fields. Vittorino's educational policy spoke at once to mind and
body, to aesthetic enjoyment and moral virtue. His work embodied a more
comprehensive appeal to human perfectibility than had been attempted since
antiquity. Humanists were not unaware of the originality and ambitiousness of
this project. With reference to a similar program of his own, Guarino's son
Battista remarked that "no branch of knowledge embraces so wide a range of
subjects as that learning that I have now attempted to describe."
Guarino had learned his Greek in
Constantinople under the influence of Chrysoloras, whose dynamic presence had
done much to foster Greek studies in Italy. During the course of the 15th
century, which saw the famous council of Eastern
and Western churches (Ferrara-Florence, 1438-45) and later the fall of
Constantinople to the Turks (1453), Italy received as welcome immigrants a
number of other eminent Byzantine scholars. George
Gemistus Plethon (1355-1450) was a major force in Cosimo de' Medici's
foundation of the Platonic Academy of Florence. George
of Trebizond (Georgius Trapezuntius, 1395-1484), a student of Vittorino,
was a formidable bilingual stylist who wrote important handbooks on logic and
rhetoric. Theodore Gaza (c. 1400-75)
and Johannes Argyropoulos (1410-90) contributed major translations of Aristotle.
John (originally Basil) Bessarion (1403-72), who
became a cardinal in 1439, explored theology from a Platonic perspective and
sought to resolve apparent conflicts between Platonic and Aristotelian
philosophy; his large collection of Greek manuscripts, donated to the Venetian
senate, became the core of the notable library of St. Mark. This infusion of
Byzantine scholarship had a profound effect on Italian humanism. By making Greek
texts and commentaries available to Western students, and by acquainting them
with Byzantine methods of criticism and interpretation, the teachers from
Constantinople enabled Italian humanists to explore the bases of classical
thought and to appreciate its greatest monuments, either in the original or in
accurate new Latin translations. (see also Old Library)
As Italian humanism grew in influence
during the 15th century, it developed ramifications that connected it with every
major field of intellectual and artistic activity. Moreover, the advent of
printing at mid-century and the contemporaneous upsurge of publication in the
vernacular brought new sectors of society under humanistic influence. These and
other cultural impetuses hastened the export of humanistic ideas to the Low
Countries, France, England, and Spain, where significant humanistic programs
would be in place by the early 16th century. Even as these things were
happening, however, other changes were deeply and permanently affecting the
character of the movement. The concerns of many major humanists were narrowed by
inevitable historical processes of specialization, to the extent that, in a
large number of cases, humanism lost its comprehensive thrust and became a
predominantly academic or literary pursuit. The political élan of
humanism was weakened by the decline of republican institutions in Florence.
Ambiguities and paradoxes implicit in the original program developed into open
conflicts, dividing the movement into camps and depleting much of its original
integrity. But before considering these developments, one might do well to
appreciate three 15th-century examples of humanism at its height: the career of
Leon Battista Alberti and the humanistic courts at Florence and Urbino.
The achievement of Leon Battista Alberti
(1404-72) testifies to the formative power and exhaustive scope of earlier
Italian humanism. He owed his boyhood education to Gasparino
da Barzizza (1359-1431), the noted teacher who, with Vergerio, was
influential in the development of humanism at Padua. Alberti attended the
University of Bologna from 1421 until 1428, by which time he was expert in law
and mathematics and so adept at humanistic literary skills that his comedy Philodoxeos
was accepted as the newly discovered work of an ancient author. In 1428 he
became secretary to Cardinal Albergati, bishop of Bologna, and in 1432 he
accepted a similar position in the papal chancery at Rome. His service to the
church soon brought him incomes that permanently secured his livelihood, and he
spent the remainder of his life at a variety of literary, philosophical, and
artistic pursuits so dazzling as to challenge belief. He was a poet, essayist,
and biographer. His moral and philosophical works, especially Della
famiglia, De iciarchia ("On the Man of Excellence and Ruler of His
Family"), and Momus, are
humanistic statements that nonetheless bear the mark of a unique individual. He
wrote a rhetorical handbook and a grammatical treatise, the Regule
lingue Florentine, which bespeaks his strong influence on the rise of
literary expression in the vernacular. He contributed an important text on
cartography and was instrumental in the development of ciphers. A prominent
architect (e.g., the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini and the facade of Sta. Maria
Novella in Florence), he was also an eminent student of all artistic ideas and
practices. His three studies--De pictura
(On Painting), De
statua (On Sculpture), and De re
aedificatoria (Ten Books on
Architecture)--were landmarks in art theory, powerful in developing the
theory of perspective and the idea of "human" space. His theoretical
and practical reliance on mathematics (which he considered to be the basic,
unifying element of all science) is rightly seen as an important step in the
early development of modern method.
Behind these achievements was a man of
startling physical prowess and inexhaustible sanguinity. He said outright that
an individual could encompass whatever project he truly willed, and his own life
bore witness to this radical thesis. In the 19th century Jacob
Burckhardt would write of him as a "universal man" of the
Renaissance, while his own contemporary Politian described him with wonderment:
"It is better to be silent about him than not to say enough."
Alberti's theory and practice bore an undeniably humanistic stamp. His passion
for mathematics was in all likelihood an outgrowth of the educational program at
Padua (Vittorino, himself an avid mathematician, was also a student of
Barzizza). His omnivorous pursuit of knowledge recalls Barzizza's conviction
that humanitas was the unifying principle of many arts. An advocate of
classical erudition in art and architecture as well as in literary activity, he
extended into his artistic studies the same sense of precision and specificity
that earlier humanists had applied to philology. His sense of human dignity,
evident in all his productions, was supported and indeed justified by a
strenuous realism. His advocacy of the vernacular disturbed a number of more
doctrinaire humanists, who favoured total Latinity. But this predisposition,
rather than a divergence from humanistic principle, was a direct outgrowth of
its evangelistic thrust. In short, Alberti uniquely fulfilled the humanistic
aspiration for a learning that would comprehend all experience and a
philosophical heroism that would renew society.
The 15th century saw the rise of the
Platonic Academy of Florence and the great humanistic courts. Close ties between
Poggio and the Medici helped make that ruling family of Florence the new
custodians of the humanistic heritage. Cosimo de'
Medici (Cosimo the Elder, 1389-1464), who had personally lured the great
council of churches from Ferrara to Florence in 1439, became so enamoured of
Greek learning that, at the suggestion of Gemistus Plethon, he decided to found
a Platonic academy of his own. He amassed a
great collection of books, which would form the nucleus of the Laurentian
Library. He generously supported the work of scholars, in particular encouraging
the brilliant Marsilio Ficino (1433-99) to
undertake a complete Latin translation of Plato. Other notable members of the
academy were Politian, Cristoforo Landino
(1424-1504), and Ficino's own student, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-94).
The Medici family was equally notable in its
patronage of the arts, supporting projects by a list of masters that included Brunelleschi,
Michelangelo, and Cellini.
Cosimo's famous grandson Lorenzo (Lorenzo the
Magnificent, 1449-92) was of a thoroughly humanistic disposition. Lorenzo's
versatile and energetic nature lent itself equally to politics and philosophy,
to martial arts and music. He wrote poetry and literary commentary and formed
close ties with Ficino, Pico, and other leading scholars of the academy. He
continued his grandfather's lavish patronage of art and learning and was said to
have spent half of his city's revenues on the purchase of books alone. Active in
many fields, he nonetheless acknowledged the preeminence of the life of the
mind. When chided by a friend for sleeping late and not going out to work,
Lorenzo replied, "What I have dreamed in one hour is worth more than what
you have done in four."
The influence of humanism was evident in
many 15th-century Italian courts, including Rome itself, which boasted, in Pius
II (Enea Silvio Piccolomini, also known as Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini,
1405-64), a humanist pope. It manifested itself strikingly at Urbino,
where Federico da Montefeltro (1422-82) turned
an isolated hill town into a treasury of Renaissance culture. Schooled by
Vittorino in Mantua, Federico chose warfare as his calling. As a mercenary he
gained a reputation for winning his battles and keeping his word, and the
fortune he accumulated in fees and prizes became the medium for his city's
renewal. He brought architects, artists, and scholars to Urbino and built a
great palace whose unadorned exterior concealed magnificent chambers, a graceful
courtyard, and a secret garden. Federico was enthusiastically devoted to the
collection and preservation of books. His library, described by Vespasiano
Bisticci as being even more complete than that of the Medici, contained an army
of 30 to 40 scribes who were constantly at work. His own virtues were so notable
and diverse as to mark him as a possible model for Rabelais's humanistic giant,
Gargantua. Mighty at arms, he was also conscientious in religious observances;
supremely powerful, he was nonetheless a modest and courteous companion. Beneath
the ivied tranquility of his secret garden stretched an indoor equestrian arena.
He commissioned paintings by Piero della Francesca
and was the object of humanistic dedications by Poggio, Landino, and Ficino. He
kept two organists at court and maintained five men to read the classics aloud
at meals. Federico's intellectual accomplishments were impressive. His skill at
mathematics shows the influence of Vittorino. He was a good Latinist and as a
student of classical history was able to hold his own in conversation with the
erudite Pius II. At philosophy Federico was even more astute. Vespasiano wrote
that
he began to study logic with the
keenest understanding, and he argued with the most nimble wit that was ever
seen. After he had heard (Aristotle's) Ethics
many times, comprehending it so thoroughly that his teachers found him hard to
cope with in disputation, he studied the Politics
assiduously. . . . Indeed, it may be said of him that he was the first of the
Signori who took up philosophy and had knowledge of the same. He was ever
careful to keep intellect and virtue to the front, and to learn some new thing
every day.
Federico's balance and versatility made
him, even more than Lorenzo, an example of the humanistic program in action.
Baldassare Castiglione, perhaps the most thoughtful of the later Italian
humanists, would speak of him as "the light of Italy; there is no lack of
living witnesses to his prudence, humanity (umanità),
justice, intrepid spirit, (and) military discipline." Castiglione described
Federico's residence as seeming to be less a palace than "a city in the
form of a palace"; one might say as well that this structure, with its
elegant accommodation for every creative human activity, was an architectural
image of the humanistic mind.
The achievement of Alberti, Federico,
and the Medici up to Lorenzo may be seen as the effective culmination of Italian
humanism, the ultimate realization of its motives and principles. At the same
time as these goals were being achieved, however, the movement was beginning to
suffer bifurcation and dilution. Even the enthusiastic Platonism of the
Florentine academy was, in its idealism and emphasis on contemplation, a
significant digression from the crucial humanistic doctrine of active virtue,
and Pico della Mirandola himself was politely admonished by a friend to forsake
the ivory tower and accept his civic responsibilities. The conflicting extremes
to which sincere humanistic inquiry could drive scholars are nowhere more
apparent than in the fact that the arch-idealist Pico and the arch-realist
Machiavelli lived in the same town and at the same time. Castiglione, who had
belonged to the court of Federico's son Guidobaldo,
would be saddened by its decline and shocked when another of his patrons, the
"model" Renaissance prince Charles V,
ordered the sack of Rome. To a large extent, the cause of these and other
vicissitudes lay in the nature of the movement itself, for that boundless
diversity which nourished its strength was also a well of potential conflict.
Humanists' undifferentiated acceptance of the classical heritage was also in
effect an appropriation of the profound controversy implicit in that heritage.
Rifts between Platonists, monarchists, and republicans; positivists and
skeptics; idealists and cynics; and historians and poets came to be more and
more characteristic of humanistic discourse. Some of these tensions had been
clear from the start, Petrarch having been ambiguous in his sentiments regarding
action versus contemplation, and Salutati having been not wholly clear about
whether he preferred republics to monarchies. But the 15th century, bringing
with it the irreconcilable heterogeneity of Greek thought, vastly multiplied and
deepened these divisions. Of these schisms, the two that perhaps most deeply
influenced the course of humanism were the so-called res-verbum
("thing-word") controversy and the split between Platonic idealism and
historical realism.
Simply put, the res-verbum controversy was an extended argument between humanists
who believed that language constituted the
ultimate human reality and those who believed that language, though an important
subject for study, was the medium for understanding an even more basic reality
that lay beyond it. The origin of the controversy lay in the debate in the
5th-4th century BC between the Socratic school, which held that language was an
important means of understanding deeper truths, and the Sophistic-rhetorical
school, which held that "truth" was
itself a fiction dependent on varying human beliefs and therefore that language
had to be considered the ultimate arbiter. Petrarch, who had no direct contact
with the works of Plato and little detailed knowledge of his ideas, drew on
Cicero and St. Augustine in his development of a Christian-rhetorical position,
holding that "it is more satisfying (satius) to will the good than to know the truth" and espousing
rhetoric as the effective means of convincing people "to will the
good."
This assertion would critically shape
the character of humanism through the Renaissance and beyond. It was never
effectively challenged by Renaissance Platonists because, for reasons discussed
below, Renaissance Platonists, though strong in Platonic idealism, were weak in
Platonic analytical method. The enthronement of language as both subject and
object of humanistic inquiry is evident in the important work of Lorenzo Valla
(1407-57) and Politian (Angelo Poliziano, 1454-94). Valla
spoke of language as a "sacrament" and urged that it be studied
scientifically and historically as the synthesis of all human thought. For
Valla, the study of language was, in effect, the study of humanity. Similarly, Politian
held that there were in fact two dialectics: one of ideas and one of words.
Rejecting the dialectic of ideas as being too difficult and abstruse, he
espoused the dialectic of words (i.e.,
philology and rhetoric) as the proper human study. This project would bear fruit
in the intensive linguistic-philosophical researches of Mario Nizolio
(1498-1575). Though anticipated by Petrarch, the radical emphasis on the primacy
of the word constituted a break with the teaching of other early humanists, such
as Bruni and Vittorino, who had strongly maintained that the word was of value
only through its relationship to perceived reality. Nor did the old viewpoint
lack later adherents. In an epistolary debate with Ermolao Barbaro (1454-93),
Pico asserted the preeminence of things over words and hence of philosophy over
rhetoric: "But if the rightness of names depends on the nature of things,
is it the rhetorician we ought to consult about this rightness, or is it the
philosopher who alone contemplates and explores the nature of everything?"
Appeals of this sort, however, were not to win the day. Philosophical humanism
declined because, though rich in conviction, it had failed to establish a
systematic relationship between philosophy and rhetoric, between words and
things. By the 16th century, Italian humanism was primarily a literary pursuit,
and philosophy was left to develop on its own. Despite significant challenges,
the division between philosophical and literary studies would solidify in the
development of Western culture.
The idealism so prominent in the
Florentine academy is called Platonic because of its debt to Plato's theory of
Ideas and to the epistemological doctrine established in his Symposium and Republic. It
did not, however, constitute a complete appreciation or reassertion of Plato's
thought. Conspicuously absent from the Florentine agenda was the analytic method
(dialectic), which was Socrates' greatest contribution to philosophy. This major
omission cannot be explained philologically, at least after Ficino's work had
made the complete Platonic corpus available in
clear Latin prose. The explanation lies rather in a specific cast of mind and in
a dramatically successful forgery. The major Platonists of the mid-15th century,
Plethon, Bessarion, and Nicholas of Cusa
(Nicholaus Cusanus, 1401-64), had all concentrated their attention on the
religious implications of Platonic thought; and, following them, Marsilio Ficino
(1433-99) sought to reconcile Plato with Christ in a pia
philosophia ("pious philosophy"). The transcendental goals of
these philosophers left little room for the painstaking dialectical method that
sifted through the details of perception and language, even though Plato himself
had repeatedly alleged that transcendence itself was impossible without this
method. Along with Plato, moreover, Ficino had translated into Latin the works
of the so-called Hermes Trismegistos. These
books, which also emphasized transcendence at the expense of method, laid claim
to divine authority and to an antiquity far greater than Plato's. They were, in
fact, forgeries from a much later period, and are in many ways typical of the
idealized and diluted versions of Plato that are called Neoplatonic. But the
academy, and for that matter all the other Platonists of the 15th century,
bought them wholesale. The result of these factors was a Platonism sans Platonic
method, a philosophy that, straining for absolutes, had little interest in
establishing its own basis in reality. Near the end of The
Book of the Courtier, Castiglione puts a speech typical of Florentine
Platonism in the mouth of his friend, the Platonist Pietro
Bembo (1470-1547). As Bembo finishes his oration, a female companion tugs
at the hem of his robe and says, "Take care, Master Pietro, that with such
thoughts your soul does not forsake your body."
Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527),
whose work derived from sources as authentically humanistic as those of Ficino,
proceeded along a wholly opposite course. A throwback to the
chancellor-humanists Salutati, Bruni, and Poggio, he served Florence in a
similar capacity and with equal fidelity, using his erudition and eloquence in a
civic cause. Like Vittorino and other early humanists, he believed in the
centrality of historical studies, and he performed a signally humanistic
function by creating, in La
Mandragola, the first vernacular imitation of Roman comedy. His
characteristic reminders of human weakness suggest the influence of Boccaccio;
and like Boccaccio he used these reminders less as satire than as practical
gauges of human nature. In one way at least, Machiavelli is more humanistic (i.e.,
closer to the classics) than the other humanists, for while Vittorino and his
school ransacked history for examples of virtue, Machiavelli (true to the spirit
of Polybius, Livy, Plutarch, and Tacitus) embraced all of history, good, evil,
and indifferent, as his school of reality. Like Salutati, though perhaps with
greater self-awareness, Machiavelli was ambiguous as to the relative merits of
republics and monarchies. In both public and private writings (especially the Discorsi
sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio ["Discourses on the First Ten
Books of Livy"]) he showed a marked preference for republican government,
while in The Prince he developed, with
apparent approval, a model of radical autocracy. For this reason, his goals have
remained unclear.
His methods, on the other hand, were
coherent throughout and remain a major contribution to social science and the
history of ideas. Like earlier humanists, Machiavelli saw history as a source of
power, but, unlike them (and here perhaps influenced by Sophistic and
Averroistic thought), he saw neither history nor power itself within a moral
context. Rather he sought to examine history and power in an amoral and hence
(to him) wholly scientific manner. He examined human events in the same way that
Alberti, Galileo, and the new science examined physical events: as discrete
phenomena that had to be measured and described before they could be explained
and evaluated. To this extent his work, though original in its specific design,
was firmly based in the humanistic tradition. At the same time, however,
Machiavelli's achievement significantly eroded humanism. By laying the
foundations of modern social science, he created
a discipline that, though true to humanistic methodology, had not the slightest
regard for humanistic morality. In so doing, he brought to the surface a
contradiction that had been implicit in humanism all along: the dichotomy
between critical objectivity and moral evangelism.
Though Italian humanism was being torn
apart by the natural development of its own basic motives, it did not thereby
lose its native attractions. The humanistic experience, in both its positive and
negative effects, would be reenacted abroad. Baldassare
Castiglione (1478-1529), whose Book
of the Courtier affectionately summed up humanistic thought, was one
of its most powerful ambassadors. Alert to the major contradictions of the
program, yet intensely appreciative of its brilliance and energy, Castiglione
wove its various strains together in a long dialogue that aimed at an equipoise
between various humanistic extremes. Ostensibly a treatise on the model
courtier, The Book of the Courtier is more seriously a philosophically
organized pattern of conflicting viewpoints in which various
positions--Platonist and Aristotelian, idealist and cynic, monarchist and
republican, traditional and revolutionary--are given eloquent expression. Unlike
most of his humanistic forebears, Castiglione is neither missionary nor
polemical. His work is not an effort at systematic knowledge but rather an essay
in higher discretion, a powerful reminder that every virtue (moral or
intellectual) suggests a concomitant weakness and that extreme postures tend to
generate their own opposites. The structure of the dialogue, in which Bembo's
Platonic ecstasy is balanced by Bibbiena's assortment of earthy jests, is a
testament to this intention. While Castiglione's professed subject matter would
epidemically inspire European letters and manners of the 16th century, his more
profound contribution would be echoed in the work of Montaigne and Shakespeare.
His work suggests a redefined humanism, a virtue matured in irony and directed
less toward knowledge than toward wisdom.
In 16th-century Italy, humanistic
methods and attitudes provided the medium for a kaleidoscopic variety of
literary and philosophical productions. Of these, the work that perhaps most
truly reflected the original spirit of humanism was the Gerusalemme
liberata of Torquato Tasso (1544-95).
New humanistic translations of Aristotle during
the 15th century had inspired an Aristotelian Renaissance, and the attention of
literary scholars focused particularly on the Poetics. In constructing his epic
poem, Tasso was strongly influenced by Aristotle's views regarding the
philosophical dimension of poetry; loosely paraphrasing Aristotle, he held (in
his Apologia) that poetry, by
incorporating both particulars and universals, was capable of seeking truth in
its perfect wholeness. As a vehicle for philosophical truth, poetry consequently
could provide moral education, specifically in such virtues (reinterpreted from
a Christian perspective) as Aristotle had described in the Nichomachean
Ethics. The Aristotelian Renaissance thus facilitated the revival of one of
the chief articles in the original humanistic constitution: the belief in the
poet's role as renewer of culture.
Though humanism in northern Europe and
England sprang largely from Italian sources, it did not emerge exclusively as an
outgrowth of later Italian humanism. Non-Italian scholars and poets found
inspiration in the full sweep of the Italian tradition, choosing their sources
from Petrarch to Castiglione and beyond.
Erasmus (c. 1466-1536) was the only other humanist whose international fame
in his own time compared with Petrarch's. While lacking Petrarch's polemical
zeal and spirit of self-inquiry, he shared the Italian's intense love of
language, his dislike for the complexities and pretenses of medieval
institutions both secular and religious, and his commanding personal presence.
More specifically, however, his ideas and overall direction betray the influence
of Lorenzo Valla, whose works he treasured. Like Valla, who had attacked
biblical textual criticism with a vengeance and proved the so-called Donation of
Constantine to be a forgery, Erasmus contributed importantly to Christian
philology. Also like Valla, he philosophically espoused a kind of Christian
hedonism, justifying earthly pleasure from a religious perspective. But he was
most like Valla (and indeed the entire rhetorical "arm" of Italian
humanism) in giving philology prominence over philosophy. He described himself
as a poet and orator rather than an inquirer after truth. His one major
philosophical effort, a Christian defense of free will, was thunderously
answered by Luther. Though his writings are a well of good sense, they are
seldom profound and are predominantly derivative. In Latin eloquence, on the
other hand, he was preeminent, both as stylist and theorist. His graceful and
abundant Ciceronian prose (whose principles he set down in De copia verborum et rerum) helped shape the character of European
style. Perhaps his most original work is Moriae
encomium (The Praise of Folly), an elegant combination of satire and poetic
insight whose influence was soon apparent in the work of More (to whom it was
dedicated) and Rabelais.
Erasmus' associates in France included
the influential humanists Robert Gaguin (1433-1501), Jacques
Lefèvre d'Étaples (c.
1455-1536), and Guillaume Budé;
(Guglielmus Budaeus, 1467-1540). Of these three, Budé was most central to
the development of French humanism, not only in his historical and philological
studies but also in his use of his national influence to establish the Collège
de France and the library at Fontainebleau. The influence of Francis
I (1494-1547) and his learned sister Margaret of
Angoulême (1492-1549) was important in fostering the new learning.
The diversity and energy of French humanism is apparent in the activities of the
Estienne family of publishers; the poetry of Pierre de
Ronsard (1524-85), Joachim du Bellay (c.
1522-60), and Guillaume du Bartas (1544-90); the political philosophy of Jean
Bodin (1530-96); the philosophical methodology of Petrus
Ramus (Pierre de la Ramée, 1515-72); and the dynamic relationship
between humanistic scholarship and church reform (see below, Humanism
and Christianity ). Hampered by
religious repression and compressed more severely in time, the French movement
lacked the intellectual fecundity and the programmatic unity of its Italian
counterpart. In François Rabelais and Michel de Montaigne, however, the
development of humanistic methods and themes resulted in unique and memorable
achievement.
Rabelais
ranks with Boccaccio as a founding father of Western realism. As a satirist and
stylist (in his hands French prose became a free, poetic form), he influenced
writers as important as Jonathan Swift, Laurence Sterne,
and James Joyce and may be seen as a major
precursor of modernism. His five books concerning the deeds of the giant princes
Gargantua and Pantagruel constitute a treasury
of social criticism, an articulate statement of humanistic values, and a
forceful, if often outrageous, manifesto of human rights. Rabelaisian satire
took aim at every social institution and (especially in Book III) every
intellectual discipline. Broadly learned and unflaggingly alert to jargon and
sham, he repeatedly focused on dogmas that fetter creativity, institutional
structures that reward hypocrisy, educational traditions that inspire laziness,
and philosophical methodologies that obscure elemental reality. His heroes,
Gargantua and his son and heir Pantagruel, are figures whose colossal size and
appetites (Rabelais's etymology for Pantagruel
is "all-thirsty") symbolize the nobility and omnivorous curiosity that
typified the humanistic scheme. The multifarious educational program detailed in
Gargantua is reminiscent of Vittorino, Alberti, and the Montefeltro
court; and the utopian Abbey of Thélème, whose gate bears the
motto "Do as you please," is a tribute to enlightened will and
pleasure in the manner of Valla, Erasmus, and More. Characteristically
overstated and never wholly free of irony, Rabelais's work is a far cry from the
earnest moral and educational programs of the early humanists. Rather than
rebuild society, he seeks to amuse, edify, and refine it. His qualified
endorsement of human dignity is based on the healthy balance of mind and body,
the sanctity of all true learning, and the authenticity of direct experience.
Montaigne's
famous Essays
are not only a compendious restatement and reevaluation of humanistic motives
but also a milestone in the humanistic project of self-inquiry that had been
originally endorsed by Petrarch. Scholar, traveler, soldier, and statesman,
Montaigne was, like Machiavelli, alert to both theory and practice; but while
Machiavelli saw practice as forming the basis for sound theory, Montaigne
perceived in human events a multiplicity so overwhelming as to deny theoretical
analysis. Montaigne's use of typical humanistic modalities--interpretation of
the classics, appeals to direct experience, exclusive emphasis on the human
realm, and universal curiosity--led him, in other words, to the refutation of a
typical humanistic premise: that knowledge of the intellectual arts could teach
one a sovereign art of life. In an effort to make his inquiry more inclusive and
unsparing, Montaigne made himself the subject of his book, demonstrating through
hundreds of personal anecdotes and admissions the ineluctable diversity of a
single human spirit. His essays, which seem to move freely from one subject or
viewpoint to another, are often in fact carefully organized dialectical
structures that draw the reader, through thesis and antithesis, stated subject
and relevant association, toward a multidimensional understanding of morality
and history. The final essay, grandly titled "Of Experience," counsels
a mature acceptance of life in all its contradictions. Human dignity, he
implies, is indeed possible, but it lies less in heroic achievement than in
painfully won self-knowledge. In this sense Montaigne's attitude toward the
humanistic tradition is generally similar to that suggested in the work of
Castiglione and Rabelais. While effectively taking issue with a number of the
more extreme humanistic contentions, he retained and indeed justified the basic
attitudes that gave the movement its form.
English humanism flourished in two
stages: the first a basically academic movement that had its roots in the 15th
century and culminated in the work of Sir Thomas More, Sir Thomas Elyot, and
Roger Ascham, the second a poetic revolution led by Sir Philip Sidney and
William Shakespeare.
Though continental humanists had held
court positions since the days of Humphrey of Gloucester, English humanism as a
distinct phenomenon did not emerge until late in the 15th century. At Oxford William
Grocyn (c. 1446-1519) and his
student Thomas Linacre (c.
1460-1524) gave impetus to a tradition of classical studies that would
permanently influence English culture. Grocyn and Linacre attended Politian's
lectures at the Platonic Academy of Florence. Returning to Oxford, they became
central figures in a group that included such younger scholars as John
Colet (1466/67-1519) and William Lily
(1468?-1522). The humanistic contributions of the Oxford group were philological
and institutional rather than philosophical or literary. Grocyn lectured on
Greek and theology; Linacre produced several works on Latin grammar and
translated Galen into Latin. To Linacre is owed the foundation of the Royal
College of Physicians; to Colet, the foundation of St. Paul's School, London.
Colet collaborated with Lily (the first headmaster of St. Paul's) and Erasmus in
writing the school's constitution, and together the three scholars produced a
Latin grammar (known alternately as "Lily's Grammar" and the
"Eton Grammar") that would be central to English education for decades
to come. (see also Oxford,
University of)
In Sir Thomas
More (1478-1535), Sir Thomas Elyot (c.
1490-1546), and Roger Ascham (1515-68), English
humanism bore fruit in major literary achievement. Educated at Oxford (where he
read Greek with Linacre), More was also influenced by Erasmus, who wrote The Praise of Folly (Latin Moriae
encomium) at More's house and named the book punningly after his English
friend. More's famous Utopia,
a kind of companion piece to The Praise of
Folly, is similarly satirical of traditional institutions (Book I) but
offers, as an imaginary alternative, a model society based on reason and nature
(Book II). Reminiscent of Erasmus and Valla, More's Utopians eschew the rigorous
cultivation of virtue and enjoy moderate pleasures, believing that "Nature
herself prescribes a life of joy (that is, pleasure)" and seeing no
contradiction between earthly enjoyment and religious piety. Significantly
indebted both to classical thought and European humanism, the Utopia
is also humanistic in its implied thesis that politics begins and ends with
humanity: that politics is based exclusively on human nature and aimed
exclusively at human happiness. Sir Thomas Elyot chose a narrower subject but
developed it in more detail. His great work, The
Book Named The Governor, is a lengthy treatise on the virtues to be
cultivated by statesmen. Born of the same tradition that produced The
Prince and The Courtier, The Governor
is typical of English humanism in its emphasis on the accommodation of both
classical and Christian virtues within a single moral view. Elyot's other
contributions to English humanism include philosophical dialogues, moral essays,
translations of ancient and contemporary writers (including Isocrates and Pico),
an important Latin-English dictionary, and a highly popular health manual. He
served his country as ambassador to the court of Charles V. Finally, the
humanistic educational program set up at the turn of the century was vigorously
supported by Sir John Cheke (1514-57) and
codified by his student Roger Ascham. Ascham's famous pedagogical manual, The
Schoolmaster, offers not only a complete program of humanistic education but
also an evocation of the ideals toward which that education was directed.
Ascham had been tutor to the young
princess Elizabeth, whose personal education was
a model of humanistic pedagogy and whose writings and patronage bespoke great
love of learning. Elizabeth I's reign (1558-1603) saw the last concerted
expression of humanistic ideas. Elizabethan humanism, which added a unique
element to the history of the movement, was the product not of pedagogues and
philologists but of poets and playwrights.
Sir Philip Sidney
(1554-86) was, like Alberti and Federico da Montefeltro, a living pattern of the
humanistic ideal. Splendidly educated in the Latin classics at Shrewsbury and
Oxford, Sidney continued his studies under the direction of the prominent French
scholar Hubert Languet and was tutored in science by the learned John
Dee. His brief career as writer, statesman, and soldier was of such
acknowledged brilliance as to make him, after his tragic death in battle, the
subject of an Elizabethan heroic cult. Sidney's major works, Astrophel
and Stella, the Defence of Poesie,
and the two versions of the Arcadia,
are medleys of humanistic themes. In the sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella, he surpassed
earlier imitators of Petrarch by emulating not only the Italian humanist's
subject and style but also his philosophical bent and habit of self-scrutiny. The
Defence of Poesie, composed
(like Erasmus' Praise of Folly) in the
form of a classical oration, reasserts the theory of poetry as moral doctrine
that had been articulated by Petrarch and Boccaccio and revived by the Italian
Aristotelians of the 16th century. The later or "new" Arcadia
is an epic novel whose theoretical concerns include the dualities of
contemplation and action, reason and passion, and theory and practice. In this
ambitious and unfinished work, Sidney attempts a characteristically humanistic
synthesis of classical philosophy, Christian doctrine, psychological realism,
and practical politics. Seen as a whole, moreover, Sidney's life and work form a
significant contribution to a debate that had been smoldering since the decline
of political liberty in Florence in the 15th century. How, it was asked, could
humanism be politically active or "civic" in a Europe that was almost
exclusively monarchic in structure? Many humanists had counseled retirement from
active life, while Castiglione had seen his learned courtier rather as an
advisor than as a leader. Sidney and his friend Edmund
Spenser (1552/53-1599) sought to resolve this dilemma by creating a form
of chivalric humanism. The image (taken on personally by Sidney and elaborated
upon by Spenser in The Faerie Queene) of the hero as
questing knight suggests that the humanist, even if not empowered politically,
can achieve a valid form of activism by refining, upholding, and representing
the values of a just and noble court. Spenser's poetic development of this
humanistic program was even more specific than Sidney's. In his famous letter to
Raleigh, he asserts that his purpose in The
Faerie Queene is "to fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous
and gentle discipline" and describes a project (never to be completed) of
presenting his idea of the Aristotelian virtues in twelve poetic books. As with
Sidney, however, this moral didacticism is neither self-righteous nor pedantic.
The prescriptive content of The Faerie
Queene is qualified by a strong emphasis on moral autonomy and a mature
sense of the ambiguity of experience.
The poetry and drama of Shakespeare's
time were a concourse of themes, ancient and modern, continental and English.
Prominent among these motives were the characteristic topics of humanism. George
Chapman (1559?-1634), the translator of Homer, was a forthright exponent
of the theory of poetry as moral wisdom, holding that it surpassed all other
intellectual pursuits. Ben Jonson (1572-1637)
described his own humanistic mission when he wrote that a good poet was able
"to inform young men to all good disciplines, inflame grown men to all
great virtues, keep old men in their best and supreme state, or, as they decline
to childhood, recover them to their first strength" and that the poet was
"the interpreter and arbiter of nature, a teacher of things divine no less
than human, a master in manners." Jonson, who sought this moral goal both
in his tragedies and in his comedies, paid tribute to the humanistic tradition
in Catiline, a tragedy in which Cicero's civic eloquence is portrayed
in heroic terms.
Less overtly humanistic, though in fact
more profoundly so, was William Shakespeare
(1564-1616). Thoroughly versed (probably at his grammar school) in classical
poetic and rhetorical practice, Shakespeare early in his career produced
strikingly effective imitations of Ovid and Plautus
(Venus and Adonis and The
Comedy of Errors, respectively) and drew on Ovid and Livy for his
poem The Rape of
Lucrece. In Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra,
and Coriolanus
he developed Plutarchan biography into drama that, though Elizabethan in
structure, is sharply classical in tone. Shakespeare clearly did not accept all
the precepts of English humanism at face value. He grappled repeatedly with the
problem of reconciling Christian doctrine with effective political action, and
for a while (e.g., in Henry
V) seemed inclined toward the Machiavellian alternative. In Troilus and Cressida, moreover, he
broadly satirized Chapman's Homeric revival and, more generally, the humanistic
habit of idolizing classical heroism. Finally, he eschewed the moralism,
rationalism, and self-conscious erudition of the humanists and was lacking as
well in their fraternalism and their theoretical bent. Yet on a deeper level he
must be acknowledged the direct and natural heir of Petrarch, Boccaccio,
Castiglione, and Montaigne. Like them he delighted more in presenting issues
than in espousing systems and held critical awareness, as opposed to doctrinal
rectitude, to be the highest possible good. His plays reflect an inquiry into
human character entirely in accord with the humanistic emphasis on the dignity
of the emotions, and indeed it may be said that his unprecedented use of
language as a means of psychological revelation gave striking support to the
humanistic contention that language was the heart of culture and the index of
the soul. Similarly, Shakespeare's unparalleled realism may be seen as the
ultimate embodiment, in poetic terms, of the intense concern for specificity--be
it in description, measurement, or imitation--endorsed across the board by
humanists from Boccaccio and Salutati on. Shakespearean drama is a treasury of
the disputes that frustrated and delighted humanism, including (among many
others) action versus contemplation, theory versus practice, res versus verbum,
monarchy versus republic, human dignity versus human depravity, and
individualism versus communality. In treating of these polarities, he generally
proceeds in the manner of Castiglione and Montaigne, presenting structures of
balanced contraries rather than syllogistic endorsements of one side or another.
In so doing, he achieves a higher realism, transcending the mere imitation of
experience and creating, in all its conflict and fertility, a mirror of mind
itself. Since the achievement of such psychological and cultural self-awareness
was the primary goal of humanistic inquiry, and since humanists agreed that
poetry was an uncommonly effective medium for this achievement, Shakespeare must
be acknowledged as a preeminent humanist. (see also "Venus
and Adonis", "Antony and
Cleopatra")
One cannot leave Shakespeare and the
phenomenon of English humanism without reference to a highly important aspect of
his later drama. Throughout his career, Shakespeare had shown a keen interest in
the concept of art, not only as a general idea but also with specific reference
to his own identity as dramatist. In two of his final plays, The
Winter's Tale and The
Tempest, he developed this concept into dramatic and thematic
structures that had strongly doctrinal implications. Major characters in both
plays practice a moral artistry--a kind of humanitas
compounded of awareness, experience, imagination, compassion, and craft--that
enables them to beguile and dominate other characters and to achieve enduring
justice. This special skill, which is cognate with Shakespeare's own dramatic
art, suggests a hypothetical solution to many of the dilemmas posed in his
earlier work. It implies that problems unavailable to political or religious
remedy may be solved by creative innovation and that the art by which things are
known and expressed may constitute, in and of itself, a valid field of inquiry
and an instrument for cultural renewal. In developing this idea of the
sovereignty of art, Shakespeare made the final major contribution to a
humanistic tradition that will be discussed in the two sections that follow.
Humanistic themes and techniques were
woven deeply into the development of Italian Renaissance
art; conversely, the general theme of "art" was prominent in
humanistic discourse. The mutually enriching character of the two disciplines is
evident in a variety of areas.
Humanists paid conscious tribute to
realistic techniques in art that had developed independently of humanism. Giotto
di Bondone (c. 1266-1337), the Florentine painter responsible for the movement
away from the Byzantine style and toward ancient Roman technique, was praised by
Vasari as "the pupil of Nature." Giotto's own contemporary Boccaccio
said of him in the Decameron that
there was nothing in Nature--the mother
and ruling force of all created things with her constant revolution of the
heavens--that he could not paint with his stylus, pen, or brush or make so
similar to its original in Nature that it did not appear to be the original
rather than a reproduction. Many times, in fact, in observing things painted by
this man, the visual sense of men would err, taking what was painted to be the
very thing itself.
Boccaccio, himself a naturalist and a
realist, here subtly adopts the painter's achievement as a justification for his
own literary style. So Shakespeare, at the end of the Renaissance, praises
Giulio Romano (and himself), "who, had he himself eternity and could put
breath into his work, would beguile Nature of her custom, so perfectly he is her
ape" (The Winter's Tale). It
should be noted that neither Vasari, Boccaccio, nor Shakespeare endorses
realistic style as a summum bonum:
realism is rather the means for regaining touch with the sovereign creative
principle of Nature.
Like the humanists, Italian artists of
the 15th century saw a profound correlation between classical forms and
realistic technique. Classical sculpture and Roman painting were emulated
because of their ability to simulate perceived phenomena, while, more
abstractly, classical myth offered a unique model for the artistic idealization
of human beauty. Alberti, himself a close friend of Donatello and Brunelleschi,
codified this humanistic theory of art, using the fundamental principle of
mathematics as a link between perceived reality and the ideal. He developed a
classically based theory of proportionality between architectural and human
form, believing that the ancients sought "to discover the laws by which
Nature produced her works so as to transfer them to the works of
architecture."
Humanism and Italian art were similar in
giving paramount attention to human experience, both in its everyday immediacy
and in its positive or negative extremes. The religious themes that dominated
Renaissance art (partly because of generous church patronage) were frequently
developed into images of such human richness that, as one contemporary observer
noted, the Christian message was submerged. The human-centredness of Renaissance
art, moreover, was not just a generalized endorsement of earthly experience.
Like the humanists, Italian artists stressed the autonomy and dignity of the
individual. High Renaissance art boasted a style of portraiture that was at once
humanely appreciative and unsparing of detail. Heroes of culture such as
Federico da Montefeltro and Lorenzo de' Medici, neither of whom was a
conventionally handsome man, were portrayed realistically, as though a
compromise with strict imitation would be an affront to their dignity as individuals.
Similarly, artists of the Italian Renaissance were, characteristically,
unabashed individualists. The biographies of Giotto, Brunelleschi, Leonardo, and
Michelangelo by Giorgio Vasari (1511-74) not only describe artists who were well
aware of their unique positions in society and history but also attest to a
cultural climate in which, for the first time, the role of art achieved heroic
stature. The autobiographical writings of the humanist Alberti, the scientist Gerolamo
Cardano (1501-76), and the artist Benvenuto
Cellini (1500-71) further attest to the individualism developing both in
letters and in the arts; and Montaigne dramatized the analogy between visual
mimesis and autobiographical realism when he said, in the preface to his Essays,
that given the freedom he would have painted himself "tout
entier, et tout nu" ("totally complete, and totally nude").
Italian Renaissance painting, especially
in its secular forms, is alive with visually coded expressions of humanistic
philosophy. Symbol, structure, posture, and even colour were used to convey
silent messages about humanity and nature. Renaissance style was so articulate,
and the Renaissance sense of the unity of experience so deeply ingrained, that
even architectural structures could be eloquently philosophical.
Two features of Federico's palace at Urbino exemplify the profound
interrelationship between humanistic principle and Renaissance art. The first
feature is architectural. On the ground floor of the palace two private chapels,
of roughly the same dimensions, stand side by side. The chapel at the left is a
place of Christian worship, while that at the right is dedicated to the pagan
Muses. Directly above these chapels is a study, the walls of which are covered
with representations (in intarsia) of assorted humanistic heroes: Homer, Plato,
Aristotle, Cicero, Virgil, Seneca, Boethius, St. Augustine, Dante, Petrarch,
Bessarion, and Federico's revered teacher Vittorino, among others. The message
conveyed by the positioning of the three rooms is hard to ignore. Devotion to
the opposed principles of Christianity and earthly (pagan) beauty is rendered
possible by a humanistic learning (represented by the study) so generous and
appreciative as to comprehend both extremes.
The second feature is iconographic--a
portrait of Federico and his son Guidobaldo (probably by Pedro
Berruguete) that occupies a central position on the wall of the study. It
depicts the Duke, his full coat of armour partly covered by a courtly robe,
sitting and reading. The son stands beside his father's chair, gazing out of the
picture toward the viewer's left. An abbot's mitre rests on a shelf in the upper
left, while the Duke's helmet sits on the floor in the lower right. Here also a
typically humanistic message is evident. The Duke's scholarly attitude and
curious attire suggest his triple role as warrior, ruler, and humanist. The two
main axes of the picture--the line between mitre and helmet and the line between
father and son--converge at the book, symbolizing the central role of humanistic
learning in reconciling the concerns of church and state and in conveying
humanistic virtue from generation to generation. The boy's outward gaze implies
the characteristic direction of humanistic learning: into the world of action.
The scope and organic wholeness of Federico's humanistic iconography are so
striking as to rival great expressions of religious faith. The private heart of
his palace concealed, like a genetic code, the principle that had given shape to
the edifice and informed the state.
It is impossible to speak knowledgeably
about Renaissance science without first understanding the Renaissance concept of
art. The Latin ars (inflected as artis)
was applied indiscriminately to the verbal disciplines, mathematics, music, and
science (the "liberal arts"), as well as to painting, sculpture, and
architecture; it also could refer to technological expertise, to magic, and to
alchemy. Any discipline involving the cultivation of skill and excellence was de
facto an art. To the Renaissance, moreover, all arts were "liberal"
arts in their capacity to "free" their practitioners to function
effectively in specific areas. The art of rhetoric empowered the rhetorician to
convince; the art of perspective empowered the painter to create visual
illusion; the art of physics empowered the scientist to predict the force and
motion of objects. "Art," in effect, was no more or less than
articulate power, the technical or intellectual analogy to the political power
of the monarch and the divine power of the god. The historical importance of
this equation cannot be overestimated. If one concept may be said to have
integrated all the varied manifestations of Renaissance culture and given
organic unity to the period, it was this definition of art as power. With this
definition in mind, one may understand why Renaissance humanists and painters
assigned themselves such self-consciously heroic roles: in their artistic
ability to delight, to captivate, to convince, they saw themselves as
enfranchised directors and remakers of culture. One may also understand why a
humanist-artist-scientist like Alberti would have seen no real distinction
between the various disciplines he practiced. As profoundly interconnected means
of understanding nature and humanity, and as media for effective reform and
renewal, these disciplines were all components of an encompassing art. A similar
point may be made about Machiavelli, who wrote a book about the "art"
of warfare and who used history and logic to develop an art of government, or
about the brilliant polymath Paracelsus, who spent his whole career perfecting
an art that would comprehend all matter and all spirit. With the equation of art
and power in mind, finally, one may understand why a revolutionary scientist
like Galileo (1564-1642) put classical and medieval science through a winnowing
fan, keeping only such components as allowed for physically reproducible
results. Since every Renaissance art aimed for a dominion or conquest, it was
completely appropriate that science should leave its previously contemplative
role and focus upon the conquest of nature. (see also science, history of)
Humanism benefited the development of
science in a number of more specific ways. Alberti's technological applications
of mathematics, and his influential statement
that mathematics was the key to all sciences, grew out of his humanistic
education at Padua. Vittorino, another student at Padua, went on to make
mathematics a central feature of his educational program. Gerolamo
Cardano, a scholar of renowned humanistic skills, made major
contributions to the development of algebra. In short, the importance of
mathematics in humanistic pedagogy and the fact that major humanists like
Vittorino and Alberti were also mathematicians may be seen as contributing to
the critical role mathematics would play in the rise of modern science.
Humanistic philology, moreover, supplied scientists with clean texts and clear
Latin translations of the classical works--Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, Archimedes,
and even Ptolemy--that furthered their studies. The richness of the classical
heritage in science is often underestimated. Galileo,
who considered Archimedes his mentor, also prized the dialogues of Plato, in
particular the Meno. The German
philosopher Ernst Cassirer has demonstrated the
likelihood that Galileo was fond of the Meno
because it contained the first statement of the "hypothetical" method,
a modus operandi that characterized Galileo's own scientific practice and that
would come to be known as one of the chief principles of the New Science.
Humanism may also be seen as offering, of itself, methods and attitudes suitable
for application in nonhumanistic fields. It might be argued, for example, that
the revolutionary social science of Machiavelli and Juan
Luis Vives (1492-1540) was due in large measure to their application of
humanistic techniques to fields that lay outside the normal purview of humanism.
But most of all it was the general spirit of humanism--critical, questing,
ebullient, precise, focused on the physical world, and passionate in its quest
for results--that fostered the development of the scientific spirit in social
studies and natural philosophy.
Though much humanistic activity was
specifically Christian in intention, and though the majority of humanists made
firm avowals of faith, the relationship between Christianity
and humanism is complex and not wholly untroubled. First, humanists from
Petrarch onward recognized that the classical (pagan) direction of humanism
necessarily constituted, if not a challenge to Christianity, at least a breach
in the previous totality of Christian devotion. The Christian truth that had
been acknowledged as comprehending all phenomena, earthly or heavenly, now had
to coexist with a classical attitude that was overwhelmingly directed toward
earthly life. Humanistic efforts to resolve the contradictions implied by these
two attitudes were, if one may judge by their variety, never wholly successful.
In particular, the extent to which humanistic inquiry led scholars toward the
secular realm, and the extent to which humanistic pedagogy concentrated on
secular subjects, suggest erosions of the domain of faith. Coluccio Salutati,
who urged the young Poggio not to let humanistic enthusiasm take precedence over
Christian piety, thereby acknowledged a dualism implicit in the humanistic
program and never wholly absent from its historical development.
Second, the humanistic philology
that meticulously compared ancient sources and "cleaned up" the texts
of important Christian writings was a serious challenge to the authority of the
church. With new authorities or refined texts in hand, humanists found fault
with established commentaries and questioned traditional interpretations.
Valla's arraignment of the Donation of Constantine and Bessarion's discovery
that the supposed Dionysius the Areopagite (later called Pseudo-Dionysius) had
borrowed some of his material from Plato exemplify the uneasy relationship
between humanism and Catholic dogma. Third, the independent and broadly critical
attitude innate to humanism could not but threaten the unanimity of Christian
belief. Intellectual individualism, which has never been popular in any church,
put particular stress on a religion that encouraged simple faith and alleged
universal authority. Finally, humanism repeatedly fostered the impulse of
religious reform. The humanistic emphasis on total authenticity and direct
contact with sources had, as its religious correlative, a desire to obliterate
the medieval accretions and procedural complexities that stood between the
worshiper and his god. The reform-mindedness of such humanists as Petrarch,
Boccaccio, Erasmus, and Rabelais was balanced on the religious side by reformers
such as Calvin and Melanchthon, who employed humanistic techniques in their own
cause. And the reform movement, while it may have modernized and thus preserved
Christianity, rang the death knell for a medieval culture whose essential
characteristic had been participation in a universal church.
Shakespeare may be seen as the last
major interpreter of the humanistic program. Sir
Francis Bacon and John Milton, though
formidably adept at humanistic techniques, diverged in their major work from the
central current of humanism, Bacon toward natural science, Milton toward
theology. If Bacon's rationalism may be seen as a link between humanism and the
Enlightenment, his strong emphasis on nature (rather than humanity) as subject
matter presaged the permanent separation of the sciences from the humanities. In
Milton's theocentricity, on the other hand, lay the Christian distrust (going
back, perhaps, to Luther) of humanistic secularism. These epochal divergences,
moreover, were complemented by a series of rifts and ramifications within the
humanistic movement. The split between philosophy and letters was, over future
generations, to be compounded by the development of countless discrete
specialties within both fields. Philosophers came more and more to define
themselves within narrow boundaries. Creative writers and "critics"
took up distinct positions and assumed adversarial relationships. The profound
loss of coherence in humane letters was furthered by the gradual decline of
Latin as the lingua franca of European intellectuals and the consequent
separation of national traditions.
By the 19th century, humanism was such a
lost art as to have to be reassembled, like a disjointed fossil, by careful
historians. Of course there were exceptions. Jonathan
Swift (1667-1745) reasserted humanistic values in a broad-based attack on
contemporary institutions, and in Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) can be
found the serious intention and multifarious curiosity that characterized
humanism at its best. Strong humanistic motives may be found in Germany at the
turn of the 19th century, particularly in the work of Gotthold
Ephraim Lessing (1729-81), Friedrich von
Schiller (1759-1805), and Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831); while Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) was perhaps the last individual whose
breadth of achievement and sense of the unity of experience lived up to the
ideal established by Alberti.
More recently, the mode of inquiry and
interpretation developed by the political philosopher Leo
Strauss (1899-1973) showed strong signs of the humanistic spirit. But in
general the traces of the original program have been scattered. To the modern
mind, a "humanist" is a university scholar, walled off from the
interdisciplinary scope of the original humanistic program and immune to the
active experience that was its basis and its goal. This decline is easy enough
to explain. Had there been nothing else, one external factor would have made the
cultivation of humanitas, as
originally practiced, more and more difficult from the beginning of the 16th |
