Last Post on Renaissance Humanism

After being blessed with a shocking revelation by XY that the "path of God and to be close to Him is fundamental to renaissance humanist scholars", I have been doing a bit of my own research to see where he is coming from.

A quick Google search put up articles that support the notion that renaissance humanism is about "Man" and his relationships with nature, arts etc. See here http://atheism.about.com/od/abouthumanism/a/renaissance.htm, here http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/humanism.html and http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/REN/HUMANISM.HTM.

A rather sophisticated discussion of renaissance humanism can be found http://historyofideas.org/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv4-19. I find this post rather informative as it comprehensively covers the major aspects of renaissance humanism. Among other things, it talks about the concept of "return to origins" and how writers in the period tried to reconcile Neo-Platonism and Aristotelianism with the Christian faith.

As I pointed out earlier in a reply on XY's website, history is a continuum and given the stranglehold that the Christian Church has on all aspects of social and political life, it would be strange not to expect writers, (who are after all, social products of their times), to try to reconcile the rediscovery of ancient Greek and Latin knowledge with their Christian faith.

But, as I reiterate again, the emphasis of the whole movement is not on God, but on Man. The discussion of Man's relationship with God is only one of many aspects of Man's life on earth which undergoes a dramatic reevaluation using methods of inquiry lost during the Dark Ages. The whole movement entails a movement away from faith, supernaturalism, obedience and other traits associated with the medieval Christian faith. I have no objection, if one calls the Reformation, a movement concerned with finding a “path to God”, for it is distinctly religious in character, at the same time influenced by a return to source-the bible, and man’s personal relationship with God. But not Renaissance Humanism. Let’s call a spade a spade.

It seems that you like to use the rhetorical statement “it still is a mystery to me,” indeed, you hold a lot of mysterious views that can only be explained by a distinct, mysterious outlook on human history and knowledge, through a mysterious Christian religious worldview. Is Greek society religious? Yes, but you completely miss my point. The many Greek heroes like Hercules can seek glory and honor, go against the Gods and win at times. Such individualistic notion of a hero in pursuit of selfish interests would not be possible under the Christian faith. Most folks, actually all the folks that challenged the Christian God end up in Hell.

To XY, you discussed a lot of other stuff like Plato, Hippocrates and the spread of Christianity despite Roman persecution. What has that got to do with my earlier post? Anyway, as a general guide, I urge you to not to look at the religious overtone of any discipline at the first instant. Almost everything can be religious, if you look hard enough. And yes, I studied the Bible, Humanism and European Civilization and Intellectual Development for a semester in Vienna.