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The Humanist Spirit

Cosimo, Piero, and Lorenzo de' Medici were all humanists - they believed in the worth and dignity of the individual. Celebrating human reason, spirit, and physical beauty, the humanists echoed the Greek philosopher Protagorus in seeing human beings as the measure of all things. Seeking to discover what was best about humanity, they turned to the culture of classical antiquity. In the literature, history, and philosophy of ancient Greece and Rome, they discovered what the Latin scholar and poet Petrarch (1304 - 72) a century before had called a "golden wisdom." Cosimo and Lorenzo worked to make Florence the humanist capital of theworld, a place where the golden wisdom of the ancients might flourish.

Petrarch is often called the father of humanism, and in many ways he determined it's high moral tone. He believed thatt learning was the key to living a virtuour life, and that life should be an eternal quest for truth. Every individual leading a virtuous life in the pursuit of knowledge and truth would provide a basis for improving humanity's lot. He encouraged an appreciation of beauty, in nature and in human endeavor, which he thought to be a manifestation of the divine. For Petrarch, reading the ancients was like having conversations with them and he took to writing letters to the ancients as if they were personal friends, even family. He called the poet Virgil his brother and Cicero his father. In the writings of the ancients, Petrarch sensed their uniquely human (noble and ignoble) qualities.

In the middle of the fourteenth century, Petrarch's friend, the writer Boccaccio, was one of the first men to study Greek since the classical age itself. During the next fifty years, humanist scholarscombed monestary libraries for long-ignored ancient Greek texts annd translated them into Latin and Italian. y 1400, the works of Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Herodotus, Thucydides, and all of Plato's dialogues were avaliable. In addition, after the fall of Constantinople to the Muslim forces of the Ottoman Turks in 1453, ending the already weakening Byzantine Empire, Greek scholars flooded in to Italy. Greek learning spread with the rapid rise of printing in Italy following Johann Gutenburg's invention of printing with movable type in 1455. Between 1456 and 1500, more books were published than had been copied by manuscript scribes in the previous thousand years. Many of these were in vernacular (or native) Italian, which contributed to the growing literacy of the middle class. By the sixteenth century, many educated persons owned the complex works of Plato.

Erasmus and Northern Humanism

Like Bosch, the northern humanist scholar Desiderius Erasmus (1466 - 1536), born in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, saw the religious world of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century Europe through a critical lense, but he was no iconoclast. In A Pilgramage for Religion's Sake, he marveled at the shrine the Thomas a Beckett in Canterbury Cathdral: "Ye Gods! What a show was there of silken vestments, what a power of golden candlesticks.... Treassures beyond all calculation [were] displayed. The most worthless thing there was the gold, every part glowed, sparkled, and flashed with rare and large gems, some of which were bigger than a goose egg."

Erasmus blended the study of classical civilization with Christian faith. Combining critical intellegence with spiritual conviction, Erasmus brought together the thought of Plato with St. Paul, and the philosophy of Aristotle with that of St. Augustine. Educated by the Brethren of the Common Life, an order of laymen who modeled their lives on that of Jesus Christ, he joined an Augustinian monastery in 1487 and was ordained a priest in 1492. Erasmus traveled widely, studying and teaching in most of the cultural centers of Europe, including England. At Oxford, he became friends with Sir Thomas More; at Cambridge, he was professor of Divinity and of Greek.

Erasmus wrote his Familiar Conversations (1519) to attack abuses within the Catholic Church. Erasmus readers found the satire scathingly accurate. His Conversations was so antagonistic to the clergy that Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, issued an edict that any teacher using the work in the classroom would be liable to immediate execution. Forty editions of the book were published in Erasmus's lifetime, and John Milton, more than a hundred years alter, remarked that everyone was still reading it at Cambridge. His most famous work, however, it The Praise of Folly, a satire of hypocrisy and pretension in his time.

Erasmus did not set himself up as a counterauthority to the Catholic Church. His goal was to purify the church from within by ridiculing its abuses thereby stimulating reform.

Thomas More

Sir Thomas More (1478 - 1535), to whom Erasmus dedicated his The Praise of Folly, was, like Erasmus, a scholar and Christian humanist. More rose to power during the reign of King Henry VIII, the English king who broke away from the Roman Catholic Church to establish the Church of England. A mann of conscience, More lost his life for refusing to support Henry in his split with the Roman Church, and especially in his effort to annul his marriage. Henry had More executed for treason.

More is also known for his Utopia, which depicts an ideal state in which economic and social equality prevail and in which citizens are free to persue religion and learning as hey wish. In More's utopian society, citizens worked, studied, and took recreation in a balanced life guided by moral values and ethical principles, although not dominated by any particular religion.

Rational Humanism

Rational humanism is based on the belief that through rational, careful thought, progress - which is good and benefits everyone - is inevitable. Like the humanists of the Renaissance, the rational humanists believed that progress is possible only through learning and through the individual's freedom to learn. Humans must, therefore, be free to think for themselves. The logic links the rational humanists with the two great political revolutions of the day, in America and in France, and with such political documents as the Declaration of Independance and the Rights of Man and Citizen as well as the Constitution of the United States. The rational humanists believed that any political system that strives to supress freedom of thought must be overthrown as an obstacle to progress.

I am curious... Is there a difference between the two? Are they similar? What are the basic beliefs of the two? Do they have specific creeds that they follow? Can one be considered atheist, but not humanist? Can one be both?

I may have more questions later.

Humanism is a philosophy, atheism is a religion...or lack of religion, I suppose you could say.

re·li·gion   /rɪˈlɪdʒən/ Show Spelled[ri-lij-uhn] Show IPAnoun

1.a setof beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.

2.a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects: the Christian religion; the Buddhist religion.

3.the body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices: a world council of religions.

4.the life or state of a monk, nun, etc.: to enter religion.

5.the practice of religiousbeliefs; ritual observance of faith.

a·the·ism   /ˈeɪθiˌɪzəm/ Show Spelled[ey-thee-iz-uhm] Show IPAnoun

1.the doctrine or belief that there is no God.

2.disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings.