Renaissance Philosophy: Art, Politics, and the Nature of the Human
Between the 14th and 16th centuries, pockets of Europe exploded into one of the most vigorous and inventive periods of cultural production in the continent’s history. From Michelangelo’s revolutionary frescos to Montaigne’s innovative explorations of personal emotion and experience, a new spirit of inquiry and expression upended the scholastic pedantry of medieval theology. Rhetoric came to overwrite the predominance of logic, and history and moral philosophy took precedence over questions of epistemology and metaphysics. The aim was cultural renewal, and the means was a classical revival, a return ad fontes (to the sources) to ancient Greek and Roman poetry, rhetoric, and ethics. What resulted was an efflorescence in the study and practice of the “humanities”—of human experience, thought, and culture. But what, exactly, did Renaissance thinkers believe? Was Renaissance philosophy simply a reiteration of classical thought, or did it break the ground for something new, something modern, in the way Europeans thought about art, politics, and the nature and value of the human? How can we understand Renaissance philosophy, and what is its intellectual legacy today?
In this course, we will explore the philosophy of the Renaissance as expressed by its major thinkers, including Desiderius Erasmus, Thomas More, and Giambattista Vico, among others. How did the classical revival lead Renaissance thinkers to reimagine their relationship with ancient Greece and Rome and to religious authority, and to reimagine the nature of history more generally? Can we discover a distinctively Renaissance philosophy of history? Of rhetoric, or religion? Do we still think with and through the categories of Renaissance philosophy, and if so, how?
Course Schedule
Wednesday, 6:30-9:30pm ESTFebruary 02 — March 02, 2022
4 sessions over 5 weeks
Class will not meet Wednesday, February 23rd.
$315.00
Registration Open