Renaissance Humanism Refers to a Period of

Renaissance humanism refers to a period of history where there was a move away from the ideas of State and religion as the basis of society and a move towards human experience and interaction. It was a rebirth in that it rejected the ideas of the Middle Ages and reinvented the ideas of the ancient philosophers. The basis of it was a return to the study of the humanities which included music, art, poetry, science, and virtue.

The one thing that underlined both the ideas of the ancient philosophers and the ideas of the Renaissance humanists was that the importance of humans lay in their ability to interact as individuals with the world around them and extract meaning from it. Man himself became the measure of all things. It is first worth noting that the humanist ideas were the ideas of scholars.

For this reason, much emphasis was put on what people learn, with a move away from the current schooling system known as Scholasticism, which taught law, logic and the sciences. It is also important to note that the humanist thinkers were not against the study of law or sciences, but they saw these as part of what should be a well-rounded education with humanities as the starting point. The subjects, collectively called the humanities, included grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, politics, and moral philosophy.

Pico produced a work that described human achievement in his work, 'Oration on the Dignity of Man.' His work is entirely focused on remapping society with a focus both on human capacity and human perspective, and is often labeled as the work that most eloquently and fully describes the ideas of the humanists.

Pico shows his interest in returning to the ideas of the ancients, as well as his belief in a well rounded education, "for it seems to me that by the confrontation of many schools and the discussion of many philosophical systems that 'effulgence of truth' of which Plato writes in his letters might illuminate our minds more clearly, like the sun rising from the sea." He also refers to the way Scholastism, while focusing on logic actually moves away from real truth, "any school which attacks the more established truths and by clever slander ridicules the valid arguments of reason confirms, rather than weakens, the truth itself, which like embers, is fanned to life, rather than extinguished by stirring." Guarino was also a firm believer in the ideas of the ancient Greeks in particular and wrote a treatise on the method of teaching and reading classical authors.

Guarino believed that the need to learn was part of an individual's requirements and was in fact a gift of man. He believed that training in the humanities was essential not only to man, but to mankind and that this basic training was a springboard for all other pursuits.

To put it in his words, "learning and training in Virtue, which the ancients called the "Humanities," are peculiar to man, for they are the pursuits and the activities proper to mankind." Guarino's work was aimed at actually providing a new method of teaching, one that incorporated humanistic ideas. There is also a new focus on the individuals ability to interact with the world.

With these ideas, art and literature flourished, with both being seen both as a way to recognize the beauty and depth of society and also to represent and share an individuals reaction to it.

Palmieri gives his views on the importance of this when he says, "anyone of intelligence should thank God for being born in these times, in which we enjoy a more splendid flowering of the arts than at any other time in the last thousand years." He also presents his views on the lack of arts in the Middle Ages by saying, "for some centuries now the noble arts, which were well understood and practiced by our ancient forebears, have been so deficient that it is shameful how little they have produced and with what little honor." Pico, Guarino and Palmieri have also made clear something else common to humanist thinkers, which is their return to the thinking of ancient times.

Humanist thinkers were not the creators of these ideas, they rediscovered them from ancient times, which is why they are known as Renaissance thinkers, a term which literally means rebirth. As Crowley says of these ancient thinkers, "all their life was not spent in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure. They rose out of their beds when they thought good: they did eat, drink, labor, sleep, when they had a mind to it, and were disposed for it..

In all their rule, and strictest tie of their order, there was but one clause to be observed, DO WHAT THOU WILT." This is an idea common to the humanist thinkers, an idea that State control limits individual pursuits. Crowley's idea was that a man brought up well and educated well will live well by his own honor, something that will not occur in a system where men are so controlled by.