Historical Humanism: Humanist Philosophy in Greece, Rome, Italy
As a label for a philosophical movement, Humanism dates the Italian the Renaissance. It did not, however, spring fully formed from the writings of a few Italian scholars. These early humanists created a philosophical movement based upon what they discovered in ancient Roman and Greek manuscripts. Humanist thought can also be found in ancient China, India, and other cultures. Humanism as a spirit of inquiry and thinking has a more ancient pedigree and a more widespread influence on human culture.
Leonardo Da Vinci is usually thought of first and foremost as an artist but he was also a very important humanist, scientist, and naturalist in the Renaissance. These aspects of Leonardo's life and work may not always be clear because he was an original Renaissance Man: Leonardo's art, scientific investigations, technological inventiveness, and humanistic philosophy were all bound together — and all were often integrated in a life dominated by the Christianity and Church of his age.
Although the term 'humanism' was not applied to a philosophy or belief system until the European Renaissance, those early humanists were inspired the ideas and attitudes which they discovered in forgotten manuscripts from ancient Greece. This Greek humanism can be identified by a number of shared characteristics...
Although much of what we regard as the ancient forerunners of humanism tend to be found in Greece, the original humanists of the European Renaissance first looked to the forerunners who were also their own ancestors: the Romans.
The title 'Renaissance Humanism' is applied to the philosophical and cultural movement that swept across Europe from the 14th through 16th centuries, effectively ending the Middle Ages and leading into the modern era. Pioneers of Renaissance
It is a historical irony that the Reformation created a political and religious culture in northern Europe that was especially hostile to the spirit of free inquiry and scholarship that characterized Humanism. Why? Because the Protestant Reformation owed so much to the developments of Humanism and the work done by humanists to change how people thought.
Deism is not generally thought of as a type of humanism, but it did play an important role in the development of humanist thinking in Europe. For deists, the universe was believed to be rational and ordered because that is how God wanted it to be; God, in turn, is also a rational being with rational desires, rational goals, and rational methods which are understandable through human reason.
