AgathonAgathon (centre) greeting guests in Plato's Symposium, oil on canvas by Anselm Feuerbach, 1869; in the Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe, Germany.http://www.zeno.org-Zenodot Verlagsgesellschaft mbH
These limitations notwithstanding, Hermeticism exerted a stabilizing force on culture and paved the way for change. In supplying a quasi-religious endorsement of reason and nature, it provided an alternative for those who had been unable to reconcile Christian doctrine with life as lived. In authorizing the unhindered exercise of the human intellect, Hermeticism also fed into the scientific revolution, earning praise from Francis Bacon. Lines of hermetic influence would extend to later developments, including Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry, and the Enlightenment itself. Machiavelli’s realism
Niccolò Machiavelli, whose work derived from sources as authentically humanistic as those of Ficino, proceeded along a wholly opposite course. A throwback to the chancellor-humanists Salutati, Bruni, and Poggio, he served Florence in a similar capacity and with equal fidelity, using his erudition and eloquence in a civic cause. Like Vittorino and other early humanists, he believed in the centrality of historical studies, and he performed a signally humanistic function by creating, in La mandragola (1518; The Mandrake), the first vernacular imitation of Roman comedy. His unswerving concentration on human weakness and institutional corruption suggests the influence of Boccaccio; and, like Boccaccio, he used these reminders less as topical satire than as practical gauges of human nature. In one way at least, Machiavelli is more humanistic (i.e., closer to the classics) than the other humanists, for while Vittorino and his school ransacked history for examples of virtue, Machiavelli (true to the spirit of Polybius, Livy, Plutarch, and Tacitus) embraced all of history—good, evil, and indifferent—as his school of reality. Like Salutati, though perhaps with greater self-awareness, Machiavelli was ambiguous as to the relative merits of republics and monarchies. In both public and private writings—especially the Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio (1531; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy)—he showed a marked preference for republican government, but in The Prince (1532) he developed, with apparent approval, a model of radical autocracy. For this reason, his goals have remained unclear.
Niccolò Machiavelli, oil on canvas by Santi di Tito; in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.Mondadori Portfolio/age fotostock
His methods, on the other hand, were coherent throughout and remain a major contribution to social science and the history of ideas. Like earlier humanists, Machiavelli saw history as a source of power, but, unlike them, he saw neither history nor power itself within a moral context. Rather he sought to examine history and power in an amoral and hence (to him) wholly scientific manner. He examined human events in the same way that Alberti, Galileo, and the “new science” examined physical events: as discrete phenomena that had to be measured and described in context before they could be explained and evaluated. To this extent his work, though original in its specific design, was firmly based in the humanistic tradition. At the same time, however, Machiavelli’s achievement significantly eroded humanism. By laying the foundations of modern social science, he created a discipline that, though true to humanistic methodology, had not the slightest regard for humanistic morality. In so doing, he brought to the surface a contradiction that had been implicit in humanism all along: the dichotomy between critical objectivity and moral evangelism. The achievement of Castiglione
Although Italian humanism was being torn apart by the natural development of its own basic motives, it did not thereby lose its native attractions. The humanistic experience, in both its positive and negative effects, would be reenacted abroad. Baldassare Castiglione, whose The Book of the Courtier affectionately summed up humanistic thought, was one of its most powerful ambassadors. Alert to the major contradictions of the program yet intensely appreciative of its brilliance and energy, Castiglione wove its various strains together in a long dialogue that aimed at an equipoise between various humanistic extremes. Ostensibly a treatise on the model courtier, The Book of the Courtier is more seriously a philosophically organized pattern of conflicting viewpoints in which various positions—Platonist and Aristotelian, idealist and cynic, monarchist and republican, traditional and revolutionary—are given eloquent expression. Unlike most of his humanistic forebears, Castiglione is neither missionary nor polemical. His work is not an effort at systematic knowledge but rather an essay in higher discretion, a powerful reminder that every virtue (moral or intellectual) suggests a concomitant weakness and that extreme postures tend to generate their own opposites. The structure of the dialogue, in which Bembo’s Platonic ecstasy is balanced by Bernardo Cardinal Dovizi da Bibbiena’s assortment of earthy jests, is a testament to this intention. While Castiglione’s professed subject matter would epidemically inspire European letters and manners of the 16th century, his more profound contribution would be echoed in the work of Montaigne (see below Michel de Montaigne) and William Shakespeare (see below Chapman, Jonson, and Shakespeare). His work suggests a redefined humanism, a virtue matured in irony and directed less toward knowledge than toward wisdom.
Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, oil on canvas by Raphael, 1516; in the Louvre, Paris. 82 × 66 cm.Erich Lessing/Art Resource, New York
Tasso’s Aristotelianism
In 16th-century Italy, humanistic methods and attitudes provided the medium for a kaleidoscopic variety of literary and philosophical productions. Of these, the work that perhaps most truly reflected the original spirit of humanism was the Gerusalemme liberata (1581; “Jerusalem Liberated”) of Torquato Tasso. New humanistic translations of Aristotle during the 15th century had inspired an Aristotelian Renaissance, with the attention of literary scholars focused particularly on the Poetics. In constructing his epic poem, Tasso was strongly influenced by Aristotle’s views regarding the philosophical dimension of poetry. Loosely paraphrasing Aristotle, he held (in his Apologia [1585]) that poetry, by incorporating both particulars and universals, is capable of seeking truth in its perfect wholeness. As a vehicle for philosophical truth, poetry consequently could provide moral education, specifically in such virtues (reinterpreted from a Christian perspective) as Aristotle had described in the Nichomachean Ethics. The Aristotelian Renaissance thus facilitated the revival of one of the chief articles in the original humanistic constitution: the belief in the poet’s role as renewer of culture. Northern humanism
Although humanism in northern Europe and England sprang largely from Italian sources, it did not emerge exclusively as an outgrowth of later Italian humanism. Non-Italian scholars and poets found inspiration in the full sweep of the Italian tradition, choosing their sources from the earliest humanists to Castiglione and beyond. Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus was the only humanist whose international fame in his own time compared to Petrarch’s. While lacking Petrarch’s polemical zeal and spirit of self-inquiry, he shared the Italian’s intense love of language, his dislike for the complexities and pretenses of medieval institutions both secular and religious, and his commanding literary presence. More specifically, however, his ideas and overall direction betray the influence of Lorenzo Valla, whose works he treasured. Like Valla, who had attacked biblical textual criticism with a vengeance and proved the so-called Donation of Constantine to be a forgery, Erasmus contributed importantly to Christian philology. Also like Valla, he philosophically espoused a kind of Christian hedonism, justifying earthly pleasure from a religious perspective. But he was most like Valla (and indeed the entire rhetorical “arm” of Italian humanism) in giving philology prominence over philosophy. He described himself as a poet and orator rather than an inquirer after truth. His one major philosophical effort, a Christian defense of free will, was thunderously answered by Martin Luther. Although his writings are a well of good sense, they are seldom profound and are predominantly derivative. In Latin eloquence, on the other hand, he was preeminent, both as stylist and theorist. His graceful and abundant Ciceronian prose helped shape the character of European style.