Renaissance Humanism: Human Dignity, Learning, and the Arts

Introduction to Renaissance Humanism

Renaissance humanism refers to a period of history marked by a move away from the ideas of State and religion as the basis of society and toward 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. Its foundation was a return to the study of the humanities, which included music, art, poetry, science, and virtue. The one idea that underlined both ancient philosophy and Renaissance humanist thought was that the importance of humans lay in their ability to interact as individuals with the world around them and to extract meaning from it. Man himself became the measure of all things.

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

The Humanities as the Foundation of Education

Pico della Mirandola produced a work that described human achievement in his Oration on the Dignity of Man. His work is entirely focused on remapping society with an emphasis on both human capacity and human perspective, and it is often regarded as the text that most eloquently and fully articulates the ideas of the humanists.

Human Dignity and Individual Capacity: Pico and Guarino

Pico demonstrates 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 addresses the way Scholasticism, 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 essential nature and was, in fact, a gift unique to humankind. He believed that training in the humanities was essential not only to individual men, but to mankind as a whole, and that this foundational training was a springboard for all other pursuits. In his own 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 aimed at providing a new method of teaching — one that incorporated humanistic ideas.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we see that learning is the basis for how people are able to react to their world, and what they are taught should allow them to react on an individual basis. By being taught the humanities, individuals are able to experience life as autonomous agents, and it is this experience that is the true measure of both life and society.