Great Ideas of Philosophy

Lecture Twenty-ThreeThe Renaissance⎯Was There One?Scope: From Petrarch in the south to Erasmus in the north the spread of humanistic thought would collide with thedeeper convictions of an age seeking to refine and defend the faith. Renaissance humanism, with itsemphasis on human dignity and a progressivism based on the power of knowledge, wealth, and politicalinfluence, would alarm many of the deeply religious minds of the age.The Renaissance hosted an especially intense form of the age-old conflict between faith and reason, thesacred and the profane, the temporal and the eternal. Two figures vividly exemplify the possibilities:Erasmus and Luther. But there are also such luminaries as Valla and Ficino, Savanarola and GiordanoBruno, Michelangelo and Leonardo. Here in the Renaissance of the south and of the north natural magicwill begin to evolve into natural science, and the revival of classical humanistic thought would occur in thecontext of vulgar extravagance, crass commercialism, and witch hunts.OutlineI. In this lecture, we return to the question: “Was there a Renaissance?” but this time, we look at the Renaissancethat began in Florence in the quattrocento.A. The civic dimensions of life were of utmost concern at the time. The mathematician Alberti’s (1404–1472)text on architecture, De architectura, records the relationship between the physical structure of the city andthe quality of life therein.1. Alberti’s discussions of the sheer joy of his villa and its gardens find him citing Horace and Pliny,revealing one of the characteristics of Renaissance writers: their personal identification with leadingfigures of the classical period. Alberti sees in Rome a heavenly combination of vernal beauty andcleansing atmosphere, and he emphasizes the idea that architectural principles work toward such ends.2. The design of buildings, he says, must be based on “main lines in strict proportion and regularity, lestthe pleasing harmony of the whole should be lost in the attraction of individual parts.” No Gothiccathedral would meet these criteria!3. In 1452, Alberti’s treatise De Re Aedificatoria appeared and would come to be the bible forRenaissance architects. Dedicated to Pope Nicholas V, it defended the classical, harmonious, andessentially “musical” structure of art—its conformity with principles of harmony as abstractly revealedin mathematics.B. In working with two popes and many patrons, Alberti led an aesthetic movement in which politics, finance,piety, and civics were integrated, much to the benefit of all. Concern throughout was with just what it isabout a city that makes it the right kind of place to live.C. The city was now understood as having definite moral purposes. It is a place in which we learn lessons andrealize possibilities, a place in which an essentially progressive being can make his way.1. To be sure, the ancient polis was also understood as having centrally moral purposes, but Athens wasnot the place where one came to make one’s mark as a progressive, organic being, defining oneselfanew, concealing a lackluster past, or parleying one’s talents into sources of wealth and standing.2. The Renaissance, however, embodies this idea of progress: Depending on one’s initiative, one’s life,no matter where it begins, can end in a different place. People can move about and engage in differentkinds of business. This is a safer and more mobile world, and with that mobility, complex social issuesarise.II. Let us briefly consider another Florentine, by adoption, Leonardo Bruni (1369–1444). Bruni served as secretaryto successive popes and briefly as chancellor of Florence in 1410, returning there in 1415 and remaining for therest of his life. Bruni writes a history of Florence so well received as to have Florentine citizenship conferred onhim and his progeny.A. Bruni was the leader of a movement of thought and culture that revived the Greek classics through Latintranslations of Aristotle, Plato, Plutarch, and Demosthenes. His history of Florence emphasizes thefreedoms long enjoyed by Florentines, who were never under the control of imperial Rome. Bruni’s©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 31