Theological Origins of Modernity

60 chapter two
social life is dominated by the opinions and values of the multitude, who
are invariably slaves to their passions. Man in society is thus not a free
being who seeks his own good but a slave who desires the praise and fears
the blame of others and who consequently wants only what others want.
Th ose engaged in public aff airs,
are ruled by the power of another man’s nod and learn what they must do
from another man’s look. Th ey claim nothing as their own. Th eir house,
their sleep, their food, is not their own, and what is even more serious, their
mind is not their own, their countenance not their own. Th ey do not weep
and laugh at the promptings of their own nature but discard their own emotions
to put on those of another. In sum, they transact another man’s business,
think another man’s thoughts, live by another man’s grace. 108
Th e multitude thus merely follow one another, which is to say, they are
dominated by the lowest desires and turn the satisfaction of these desires
into objects of praise. 109 Under such circumstances, virtue is impossible
and man necessarily becomes vicious, prey to envy and resentment. Th e
busy man’s heart is wholly fi xed on treachery, and he becomes pernicious,
unstable, faithless, inconstant, fi erce, and bloody. 110
Th e intellectual life also disappears in the public sphere, for public life
is devoted to the cultivation of estates and not minds. 111 In fact, minds are
deadened under such circumstances by the mania for talk, noise, and disturbance.
112 Petrarch admits that there are some saintly active men (such as
Scipio), but he believes that they are very few and that they are not happy. 113
In his view a noble spirit will never fi nd repose save in God or in himself
and his private thoughts, or in some intellect united by a close sympathy
with his own. 114
It is only in private life, only in what Petrarch calls solitude or retirement,
that man can be true to himself and enjoy his own individuality.
Th is idea is a fundamental departure from the medieval tradition. Scholasticism
had understood man not in his particularity and uniqueness but
as a species, as the rational animal. Human happiness for scholasticism
consisted in actualizing one’s natural potentialities and fulfi lling one’s
supernatural duties. Ockham and the nominalist movement rejected this
view, arguing that all beings are radically individual, created directly by
God. Th us, there are no universals or species, and all supposed species are
merely names or signs. Petrarch had similar doubts that humans could be
understood as a species. In a letter to his brother Gherardo, he argued that
“human inclinations confl ict not only for man in general but also for the
individual: this I confess and cannot deny, since I know others and myself