Generally speaking, western thoughts are divided into three different modes to look at people and the universe. The first mode is to transcend nature and focus on God, who is a part of God's creation. The second model is nature, focusing on nature, that is, the scientific model, and man is a part of the natural order; The third mode is humanistic mode, which is people-oriented, and takes human experience as the starting point for people to know themselves, God and nature.
The most attractive thing about ancient Greek thought is that people are the center, not the god. Humanism sharply attacked scholasticism. Because they are absorbed in logical categories and metaphysical problems, their abstract thinking and logical reasoning are divorced from people's daily life. However, humanism in the Renaissance did not want to replace scholasticism with another philosophy, but only wanted to revive the neglected role of scholasticism.
The core of humanistic world outlook is "man", not God. It holds that man lives not for the world, not for God, but for the enjoyment of secular life. Man is not the lamb of God, but the master of life. Therefore, we strongly advocate anti-feudalism, anti-theocracy, anti-asceticism, individual freedom, human liberation, facing reality and nature, pursuing science and so on; People who have this idea are called humanists.
With the germination of capitalist economy, the emerging bourgeoisie ideologically demanded to get rid of the rule of theology, and humanism came into being. Humanism originated in Italy, especially in Florence and the Republic of China. /kloc-In the second half of the 4th century, the first humanists, led by Petrarch and Boccaccio, appeared. Humanism flourished in Italy in the15th century, and spread in Germany, France, Britain and Western Europe in the16th century. Humanism mainly opposes the ascetic dogma of religious theology, affirms life, praises human nature and attacks the darkness and ignorance of church rule. Humanists believe that Greek and Roman classical culture is the essence of all secular cultures, so they spare no effort to study and study classical culture, regard it as a mentor, and call the new culture the revival of classicism. However, humanism did not fundamentally oppose religion and church, and its emphasis on human nature did not go beyond the limitations of bourgeois individualism in some aspects.
The favorite topic of humanistic discussion is active life or contemplative life, which is better? Meditation life no longer occupies the most important position as it did in the Middle Ages.
The second topic is the impermanence of fate and the spirit of refusing to yield to fate. This determination to conquer fate has aroused people's interest in human personality and self-awareness, so the number of portraits, self-portraits, biographies and autobiographies is increasing, and they are written in a realistic way, rather than in a symbolic or figurative style.
The conflict between the evil in Augustine's works and the views of Renaissance people is inevitable. Most Renaissance people were not bothered by this conflict and continued to take Christianity for granted.
For a few people who are confused, we can take two paths: neo-Platonism and biblical humanism, which represent the religious factors in Renaissance humanism in different ways.
Neo-Platonism holds that harmony and symmetry are the fundamental principles of the universe, and people can make these two principles consistent through meditation, which is very attractive to thinkers in the Renaissance. In the hierarchical system of the universe, man is the center of creation, and his connection with everything that has been created belongs to the lower level of matter, but he can still improve himself and seek communication with God.
It is easy to move from neo-Platonism to mysticism, so the Renaissance was also fascinated by magic and astrology, and was interested in Pythagoras' digital symbolism, myths and fables, which had a far-reaching impact on European literature and art.
Biblical humanism is the application of humanistic research methods to the study of biblical texts and works of church elders. For them, although the Renaissance was people-centered, its religiosity was not necessarily weak. Biblical humanism is dominant in northern Europe, so northern Europe has become one of the most important sources of religious reform. Many Christian humanists began to have the purpose of reforming the church. They believe that mastering classical studies and applying them to the Bible is the key to restoring the true nature of Christianity. Moreover, Luther's middle role in the pastor, insisting on direct communication between the individual and God, can be regarded as the natural development of humanism, just as he insisted on translating the Bible into the local languages of various countries.
In Germanic territory, Luther was very attractive to the new national feelings, but outside Germanic, other Christian humanists had to clear at least two obstacles to follow him: 1. Luther became more and more extreme in abandoning the church tradition and belief, and finally broke with the church. 2. Luther and Calvin resumed their emphasis on the evil of human nature; This will eventually be completely incompatible with humanitarianism.
Buckhart famously said that the Renaissance was about discovering the world and people. Back to nature, the ancients were imitators of all visible scenery.
They describe concrete and universal things and combine universal truth with concrete experience.
1527 After Rome was robbed, Naples and Florence were besieged, followed by famine and plague. The only remaining Republic in Italy is Venice, which survived because it is good at adapting to the changes of the times.
When Brezel painted Victory of Death, the early humanists' confidence in human dignity and creativity turned into a satire on the actual situation. This irony will reappear after the collapse of confidence in progress in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and in the twentieth century. If you want to stick to your faith in this disillusionment, you have to be satisfied with tragedy. This is the reason behind Shakespeare's tragedy. Shakespeare no longer believes that courage and virtue can control fate, and all one can do is face his failure with perseverance.
The failure of civic spirit in the Republic of China also led to Machiavelli's On Kings: do whatever it takes to achieve the goal.
They don't look at people like New Polat: like gods, or Michelangelo: like heroes. However, despite this, people are still the center.
During the religious war, both Protestant reform and Catholic anti-reform began to suppress people's spiritual freedom and no longer emphasized the life of this life.
Renaissance humanism belongs to individualism in essence, so as a historical force, it has obvious weaknesses, and this weakness is even more obvious when some people organize to suppress it as heresy or false fantasy. However, the thought it represents, its central position in human experience and value, and its insistence on human dignity are all too powerful. Once they are restored and put forward again, they will become too powerful.
Humanism broke through the shackles of the feudal church during the Renaissance, and under the influence of this thought, many brilliant cultural and artistic masterpieces were produced. Humanism also played an important role in education reform, ancient books excavation and collation, which laid the foundation for modern European education and humanities research. Because humanism advocates attaching importance to reality and free thought, it also provides ideological weapons for the two great historical movements in the Renaissance-the religious reform and the rise of natural science.