Great Ideas of Philosophy

historical volumes tell Florentines what they will agree with, because by the time of their publication,Florence is the center of Renaissance humanism.B. In his biographies, Bruni devotes the same attention to Petrarch (1304–1374) and Dante (1265–1321) as toAristotle and Cicero! Both were geniuses of the 1300s, closer to the culture of the High Middle Ages thanto that of Renaissance Florence.1. Dante’s love of Beatrice began when the poet was 9 years old and would continue over the course ofdecades. In his first book, Vita Nuova, he confesses this love and will spend years seeking an idiom ofperfected love with which to record what he judges Beatrice to deserve.2. Where does he find this elusive idiom? In philosophy and, more particularly, in Scholastic philosophy.His masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, presents the journey out of hell as a journey from darkness tolight by way of the moral and intellectual virtues under the light of natural reason.3. Who in this allegory represents Divine Philosophy? None other than Beatrice, who helps the authorcomplete his journey to true Paradise, which is the sight of God. In this, might we not regard theDivine Comedy as the last great romance of the High Middle Ages?4. Petrarch is well known for his vast classical knowledge and glorious poetry. He also wrote treatisesbearing such titles as “Concerning contempt of the world,” as well as dialogues between himself andSt. Augustine conducted before Truth.5. To these might be added his famous Trionfi, in which the triumphal procession is led by Love, Death,Fame, Time, Chastity, and Divinity, the last triumphing over all. Again, this seems very much in themode of medieval expression and tied to the substantive concerns of the medieval world.C. The Florentines thought of themselves as recovering something that had been lost, that is, the classicalworldview. This view included a devotion to the humanizing and humanistic arts and to a centeredperspective on human nature and what is right for it. They thought what had been lost was all of the poetryand music and splendor of life—the great sculpture, the great orderliness, the great beauty.D. One of the great paintings of the time is surely Raphael’s School of Athens, which conveys one of thecharacteristic themes of the Renaissance: the world of classical genius.1. The subjects depicted, however, constitute the curriculum of the medieval university. The liberal artssurround mathematics, which is the queen of the sciences. Logic is central.2. Aristotle and Plato are represented, with Plato pointing up toward considerations of a transcendentnature, and Aristotle keeping himself and everything else at ground level.3. We even have an Arab scholar, maybe the Prophet himself, illustrating the Hellenic-Islamicconnection so fruitful and so problematic throughout the High Middle Ages.III. The Renaissance certainly saw a renewed interest in the purely human and earthly dimensions of life and thepart played in that life by art, architecture, poetry, song, and drama. Those who engaged in studies of this kindreferred to themselves as umanisti, “humanists.”A. Although humanistic enterprises flourished in the classical period, it is less these than the power andoriginality of philosophy that characterizes the Hellenic and Hellenistic achievement. But by that standard,the term Renaissance would seem especially misleading, because the Renaissance produced nophilosophers of significance.B. The Renaissance is remarkable in the number of patrons arising at the time, many of whom were wealthymerchants and bankers. Cosimo de’ Medici, for example, supported the artists, writers, and scholars of hisage. He also supported the formation of a center in Florence, rather presumptuously called The Academy.1. In 1460, Brother Leonardo of Pistoia delivered to Cosimo the Greek-language edition the CorpusHermeticum, a body of scientific writings presumably inspired by the god Hermes. The Latintranslation of this work, Pimander, was published in 1471 and would go through 16 editions beforethe end of the 16 th century.2. We discover here something revealing about the science of the period. If the Renaissance is to be seenas the birth of the modern world and if we identify modernity with scientific achievement, what do wemake of the Pimander, with its nonsensical cures and theories and with whole communities ofFlorentine savants accepting these as pure wisdom?C. Perhaps the best view of the Renaissance is as a transitional period. It is an age that spends more timelooking back to antiquity than forward to modernity—or perhaps we should say that it’s an age that istrying to look in both directions at the same time.32©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership