[Encyclios]

Humanism and the Renaissance

With humanism and the Renaissance, philosophy continues to be a form of totalizing knowledge, but its accent changes, because it begins to assume those characteristics of mundanity that are generally thought of when we speak of modern thought. As such, it is essentially focused on the earth, the individual, the historian, all interests that are obviously not absent in medieval philosophy and culture, but are clearly surpassed by the interest in the transcendent. Nor, on the other hand, can it be said that the philosophy of humanism and the Renaissance is an irreligious philosophy. But the religious necessity arises from the dignity of man himself, from his superiority over other creatures, from his centrality in the universe, from his being made in the image of God. The new attitude is manifested in the rediscovery of the classics, in the controversy against scholastic logic, in the controversy against theological disputes. The rediscovery of the classics is not a simple philological rediscovery, but rather their “imitation” and, at the same time, the creation of a new ideal of life taken from these models.

The polemic against scholastic (and Aristotelian) logic is configured as a polemic against an abstract discipline, in the sense of being artificial and useless for research. The polemic against theological dispute is also a polemic against insubstantial and gratuitous mental contrivances. These forms of “abstraction” are opposed, on the one hand, to attempts at other logics that are closer to the concrete processes of the mind and the psychological knowledge of man, and, on the other hand, to the concrete religious experience as lived by the believer. In this way, the principle of tolerance is affirmed, which derives from the importance of the common features of the various religions and from the insignificance of the elements that differ and contrast.