RENAISSANCE HUMANISM

 

Humanism is, specifically, an European phenomenon, that includes worldly and secular philosophy. It is anthropocentric. It aims to ennoble and dignify man. It was the product of European Renaissance. The term ‘Renaissance ‘was coined by French historian, Jules Michelet in his Historie de France, published in 1855.It has been defined as the birth of the new world of culture, literature, art and science out of the dilapidated remains of  the dark medieval ages. In the 16th century, the term humanism was coined to signify studia humanitatis. The humanists were concerned with moral, educational and political themes. They were influenced by classical ideas of Aristotle, Plato, Cicero. Later in the 19th century the term was applied to denote the view of general nature, general values, and educational ideas to which the Renaissance Humanists espoused to.(M.H.Abrams) . The humanists were scholars of literae humaniores, precisely, the Greek literature, and they were Latin poets, dramatists, philosophers, historians and rhetoricians. Classical literature and medieval scholasticism were revived.(Cuddon)To sum it up, Humanism is the rediscovery and reinterpretation of antiquity that engendered a new culture.

 

Humanism enables a man to realize his true potential and to be civilized. Later, humanism turned out to be a form of philosophy, a movement, a way of dealing with the disequilibrium created by the conflict between belief and doubt. The extreme forms of humanistic attitude tend to regard man as the crown of all creation, as mentioned in Shakespeare’s Hamlet,

…What a piece of work is man.

Later, Alexander Pope asserted in his Essay on man, (1733-34)

“Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,
The proper study of mankind is Man.”

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