Renaissance Humanism Refers to a Period of Term Paper

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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.

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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….....

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