Definition: the human being is exceptional in the world of things, it is the sole thing we know to have a mind, reason, will. It makes its decisions for itself and is not determined by nature or other objects.
Claim: we understand ourselves as individuals responsible for our actions and deserving of the consequences
The point of will is the mind or decision which is a property only of human beings.
Example: in education, you are marked for the essays you produce which express your individual talent, labour, effort and so on. This is why plagiarism is so heavily policed. In justice, we punish a perpetrator and not their family, the buck stops with the individual.
Humanism was not a philosophical movement – the term humanism was first used in 1808 by a German, Niethammer – nor was it so radically different from the main doctrines of the middle-ages to yet be termed modernity. However, it is this ostensibly educational movement which sowed many of the seeds (or reflected the underlying changes) that would lead to the flourishing of the modern age.
The Renaissance is best understood as the rebirth of the Classical world through the rediscovery of Greek and Latin texts: prior to 1453 many scholars in the Italian city states travelled to Constantinople and brought back the original texts in Greek where, previously, many had relied on translations or commentaries of these originals. For example, Sophocles and Thucydides were first brought into Europe by Aurispa in 1423.
Humanism is often characterised by the dignity it confers on the human being and a shift in knowledge away from theology and logic to the human sciences, but this is only a partial account of its main themes. It is true that the human being began to occupy a privileged position in humanist thought, but this had already been the case in much medieval thought. The shift in knowledge is also partially true: the humanists did not reject logic and theology, but the burden of truth changed from the syllogism and certainty as promoted by the scholastics to the probable and arguments intended to persuade rather than convince. The shift in knowledge is perhaps a misunderstanding of the humanist curriculum which was introduced: the studia humanitas which were necessary according to the humanists for the human being to be free (hence, the liberal arts). Students studied a combination of grammar (including literary criticism), logic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy and music. The only departure from the traditional curriculum was the movement away from theology and the natural sciences. However, it should be stressed that the first humanists were not educators (and therefore not clergy), but private individuals who were independently wealthy (like Petrarch, 1304-1374) or lawyers (Salutati, 1331-1406).
The idea of the humanists of the Italian renaissance was one of reorientation of knowledge away from the abstractness of logic, metaphysics and theology, to the proper study of man. Man was the peak and telos of God’s creation, and man’s relation to the world about him was the proper basis of all metaphysical, scientific or ethical study. Man was placed at the centre of the creation and any science or knowing which did not do so was either wrong or irrelevant. This was to develop into the dignity of the human being and the modern principle of the sanctity of human life (human life has intrinsic worth, the right to life, etc.) However, in the Humanists that was expressed in the theological language of their time: the human being occupies a special place in creation and has a special relationship to God. Pico himself brought in a new and fascinating idea: everything else is as it is, but man must change and transform himself to achieve salvation. Therefore, the highest of all studies ought to be ethics: how to live one’s life. And the humanist curriculum was the way in which one could be saved by the cultivation of oneself.
Such an openness meant the pagan writers of Antiquity could take their rightful place alongside Christian thinkers: truth can be expressed in different ways and even error is useful to the pursuit of truth, therefore we must read as much and as well as possible. When the aim of an argument is persuasion and not conviction then the art of logic changed into a more imaginative and creative process. Its main question was not: how do I establish the truth of this assertion?, but how do I persuade the other of my point of view?
The skills of interpretation also blossomed under the humanists since the objects were now the original texts in their original languages and not translations or commentaries. This extended even to the Bible in an attempt to overcome corruptions in the Latin version and return to the original spirit of Christianity. Humanism began to rethink social organisation and worldviews on the basis of these ancient texts and arguments.
Italian humanists
Some of the principal figures in the Italian humanist movement were:
Mussato (Epistole iv, vii, xviii;1261-1329) what is the origin and function of imaginative thought? Poetry has a sacred function because it makes reality manifest in its concreteness and differentiates the structure of history, divinity, sociality and obscenity. With poetry one seeks the particular, historical appearance of a thing and not “truth” as a universal object.
Petrarch (1304-1374): poet and letter writer. Collected Latin manuscripts and recovered much knowledge from writers of Rome and Greece. He commissioned the first Latin translation of Homer and saw his programme as somehow freeing man from the historical ignorance into which they had fallen.
Boccaccio (Genealogia Deorum 1313-1375)) proposes a theory of induction that does not move from multiplicity to common property, but one which expresses a common property in order to give meaning to the multiplicity (poetic expression).
Salutati (1331-1406) De Laboribus Herculis Poetry directs bestial man away from the world of the senses. Truth, as poetry, is the historical manifestation of the human world. Poetry, not reason, separates us from the animals. [See also Pontano 1426-1503, Egidio.]
Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494): all discourses are aspects of God’s creation and reflect his plan, there is not one which can be privileged. Man is not only understood in terms of his ontological position in the hierarchy of creation, but his unique capacity to move from one point to the next. [Oration on the dignity of man]
So, Italian humanism can be said to implicitly embody these claims:
1. Man is the central concept for all knowledge claims and systems;
2. Poetic creation and the faculty of imagination are ways of knowing;
3. This imaginative faculty separates us from beast (they differ on whether this is in addition to or an alternative for the commonly held view that reason separates us from beasts).
4. There are different discourses of knowledge and all of them reveal the world, but none can be privileged over the others.
Modern varieties of humanism are generally secular in nature and seek an ethical basis for the exceptionalism of the human being.