By the end of the 20th century, however, humanism was such a lost art as to have to be reassembled, like a disjointed skeleton, by careful historians. To the modern mind, a “humanist” is a university scholar, walled off from the interdisciplinary scope of the original humanistic program and immune to the active experience that was its basis and its goal. This decline is easy enough to explain. Had there been nothing else, one external factor would have made the cultivation of humanitas, as originally practiced, more and more difficult from the beginning of the 16th century on. The proliferation of published work in all fields, and the creation of many new fields, made increasingly impracticable the development of the comprehensive learning and awareness that were central to the original program. In 1500 the major texts constituting a humanistic education, though numerous, could still be counted. By 1900 they were legion, and people had long ceased agreeing about exactly which ones they were. But problems implicit in the movement were equally responsible for its demise. The characteristic emphases on rhetoric and philology, which gave the humanistic movement vitality and made it available to countless students of moderate intellectual gifts, also betokened its impermanence. Weak in dialectic or any other comprehensively analytic method, the movement had no instrument for self-examination, no medium for self-renewal. By the same token, neither had humanism any valid means of defense against the attackers—scientists, fundamentalists, materialists, and others—who camped in ever-larger numbers on its borders. Lacking an integral method, finally, humanism in effect lacked a centre and became prey to an endless series of ramifications. While eloquent humanists rambled through Europe and spread the word about the classics, the method that might have unified their efforts lay, available but unheeded, in texts of Plato and Aristotle. Given this core of rigorous analysis, humanism might (all other challenges notwithstanding) have retained its basic character for centuries. But, ironically, it might also have failed to attract followers. Conclusion
Though lacking permanence itself, humanism in large measure established the climate and provided the medium for the rise of modern thought. An impressive variety of major developments in literature, philosophy, art, religion, social science, and even natural science had their basis in humanism or were significantly nourished by it. Important spokesmen in all fields regularly made use of humanistic eloquence to further their causes. More generally, the so-called modern awareness—that sense of alienation and freedom applied both to the individual and to the human race—derives ultimately, for better or worse, from humanistic sources. But with humanism, as with every other historical subject, one should beware, lest valid concern about changes, crises, sources, and influences obscure the even more important issues of human continuity and human value. Whatever its weaknesses and inner conflicts, the humanistic movement was heroic in its breadth and energy, remarkable in its aspirations. For human development in all fields, it created a context of seldom-equaled fertility. Its characteristic modalities of thought, speech, and image lent themselves to the promptings of genius and became the media for enduring achievement. Its moral program formed the basis for lives that are remembered with admiration. Robert Grudin
Citation Information
Article Title: Humanism
Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica
Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Date Published: 03 July 2019
URL: https://www.britannica.com/topic/humanism
Access Date: August 19, 2019
Additional Reading General treatments
The three general studies most helpful in approaching the phenomenon of humanism are Eugenio Garin, Italian Humanism: Philosophy and Civic Life in the Renaissance, trans. from Italian (1965, reprinted 1975); Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and Its Sources (1979); and Charles Trinkaus, The Scope of Renaissance Humanism (1983). Garin’s book is probably the most unified and incisive treatment of Italian humanism yet produced, while Kristeller and Trinkaus offer extremely well-documented analyses of major issues in the history and historiography of humanism.
Other valuable readings include Quirinus Breen, Christianity and Humanism: Studies in the History of Ideas (1968); Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Period of the Renaissance in Italy: An Essay (1878; originally published in German, 1860), available in later English-language editions; Douglas Bush, The Renaissance and English Humanism (1939, reprinted 1972); Ernst Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy (1964, reprinted 1972; originally published in German with appendixes, 1927); Jack D’Amico, Knowledge and Power in the Renaissance (1977); Myron P. Gilmore, The World of Humanism, 1453–1517 (1952, reprinted 1983); Denys Hay, The Italian Renaissance in Its Historical Background, 2nd ed. (1977); Jill Kraye (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism (1996); Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Concepts of Man, and Other Essays (1972); Edward P. Mahoney (ed.), Philosophy and Humanism (1976); Robert Mandrou, From Humanism to Science, 1480 to 1700 (1979; originally published in French, 1973); Charles G. Nauert, Jr., Humanism and the Culture of Renaissance Europe, 2nd ed. (2006); Heiko A. Oberman and Thomas A. Brady, Jr. (eds.), Itinerarium Italicum: The Profile of the Italian Renaissance in the Mirror of Its European Transformations (1975); Albert Rabil, Jr. (ed.), Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy, 3 vol. (1988); Charles B. Schmitt, Studies in Renaissance Philosophy and Science (1981); John Addington Symonds, Renaissance in Italy, 7 vol. (1875–86, reprinted 1971–72); Guiseppe Toffanin, History of Humanism (1954; originally published in Italian, 1933); Berthold L. Ullman, Studies in the Italian Renaissance, 2nd ed. (1975); and Roberto Weiss, The Spread of Italian Humanism (1964).
Works addressing humanism’s Classical and medieval backgrounds include Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (1973; originally published in German, 1948); Moses Hadas, Humanism: The Greek Ideal and Its Survival (1960, reprinted 1972); and Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, 2nd ed., 3 vol. (1965; originally published in German, 1934). Specific topics
Various specific topics are treated in the following works: T.W. Baldwin, William Shakspere’s Small Latine and Lesse Greeke (1944, reprinted 1966); Hans Baron, From Petrarch to Leonardo Bruni: Studies in Humanistic and Political Literature (1968); Gene Brucker, Renaissance Florence (1969, reprinted 1983); Terence Cave, The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance (1979, reissued 1985); Ernst Cassirer, “Galileo’s Platonism,” in M.F. Ashley Montagu (ed.), Studies and Essays in the History of Science and Learning, pp. 277–297 (1946, reprinted 1975); Virginia Cox, “Ciceronian Rhetoric in Italy, 1260–1350,” Rhetorica 17(3):239–288 (Summer 1999); Virginia Cox and John O. Ward (eds.), The Rhetoric of Cicero in Its Medieval and Early Renaissance Commentary Tradition (2006); Joan Gadol, Leon Battista Alberti (1969); Eugenio Garin, Science and Civic Life in the Italian Renaissance (1969, reissued 1978; originally published in Italian, 1965); Hilary Gatti, Essays on Giordano Bruno (2011); Michael Grant’s introduction to Cicero, On the Good Life (1971), a collection of Cicero’s essays, trans. by Michael Grant; Michaela Paasche Grudin and Robert Grudin, Boccaccio’s Decameron and the Ciceronian Renaissance (2012); James Hankins, Plato in the Renaissance (1990); Julia Bolton Holloway, Twice-Told Tales: Brunetto Latino and Dante Alighieri (1993); Paul Oskar Kristeller and Philip P. Wiener (eds.), Renaissance Essays (1968); Lauro Martines, The Social World of the Florentine Humanists, 1390–1460 (1963), and Power and Imagination: City-States in Renaissance Italy (1979, reissued 2002); James J. Murphy (ed.), Renaissance Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Renaissance Rhetoric (1983); Irwin Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art, 2 vol. (1960, reissued in 1 vol., 1969); J.H. Plumb (ed.), Renaissance Profiles (1965); Pasquale Rotondi, The Ducal Palace of Urbino: Its Architecture and Decoration (1969; originally published in Italian in 2 vol., 1950–51); Charles B. Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance (1983); Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics, vol. 2, Renaissance Virtues (2002); Charles Trinkaus, In Our Image and Likeness: Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist Thought, 2 vol. (1970); B.L. Ullman, The Humanism of Coluccio Salutati (1963); Bernard Weinberg, A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance, 2 vol. (1961); Ronald Witt, In the Footsteps of the Ancients: The Origins of Humanism from Lovato to Bruni (2000); Neal Wood, Cicero’s Social and Political Thought (1988); William Harrison Woodward, Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators (1897, reissued 1970), and Studies in Education During the Age of the Renaissance, 1400–1600 (1906, reissued 1967); and G.F. Young, The Medici, 2 vol. (1909, reissued in 1 vol., 1933). Works of the humanists