TTC【双语字幕版】：西方文明的基础（S02E04：文艺复兴的人文主义精神）

Renaissance Humanism

• Starting in Italy, intellectuals, kings, nobles and merchants began to be interested in studying ancient Greek and Roman works on their own sake.
• Because of the Italian wealth of Venice, Genoa, Milan, Naples and Florence between 1250 and 1550, it was an urban and human phenomenon.
• The shift from heavenly objects towards individuals

Christian Humanism

• Some humanist scholars applied more critical scholarship and other humanist methods to more accurate translations of the Bible and early Christian texts.

e.g. Desiderius Erasmus 1469-1536

Paintings

• The qualities of individualism and humanity, and the portrayal of human emotions in paintings
• Self-consciousness and self-promotion of artists

Literature

• more about human beings and less about god and kings
• Dante Alighieri 1265-1321, the Divine Comedy
• Francesco Petrarca, "Petrarch", 1304-1374
• Giovanni Boccaccio, 1313-1375
• Pico della Mirandola, 1463-1494
• Lorenzo de' Medici, 1449-1492, patron
• In England, Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Shakespeare, Ben Johnson
• In Spain, Don Quixote by Cervantes
• In France, Montaigne and Rabelais

Music

• In secular music, madrigals and motets were intended to be performed in people's homes.
• Claudio Monteverdi, 1567-1643, wrote operas based on classical stories

Education

• Humanist scholars advocated a reform of education, namely less theology, less abstract logic, less rote memorization of past knowledge, less narrow professionalism.
• They were more open to new ideas, learning from observations and deduction, more willing to question first principles.
• They also preferred more emphasis on history, poetry and ethics (the human application of moral principles).
• They wanted the examination and criticism of original texts.
• They wanted a practical education so that people would become good citizens.

The de-emphasis of God for the human and the emphasis on human concerns and capacities also threatened to degenerate into a glorification of expediency over virtue, practicality over idealism, and success over morality.

• Baldassare Castiglione 1478-1529, The Book of the Courtier
• Niccolo Machiavelli, 1469-1527, The Prince
• Erasmus
• Thomas More, 1477-1535, Utopia
• William Shakespeare, 1564-1616
• Michel de Montaigne, 1533-1592