We bring a selection from the book “The Spirit of the Renaissance” by Isabella Ohmann and Fernando Schwarz, which reveals hidden sources and drivers of a historical period in which the medieval worldview is fundamentally changing and sheds light on the position of man in the Universe.
The Renaissance, inspired by the spirit of ancient tradition, places the highest human values at the center of cultural activity, restoring dignity to man and his active historical role.
The humanism of the Renaissance accelerated the process of “cultural changes” that shaped a new picture of the world and a new understanding of man. The Renaissance (rebirth) originated in the rediscovery of moral, intellectual, and spiritual values contained in the traditions of the Mediterranean basin (Greek-Latin, Hebrew, Egyptian, and Chaldean) and their adaptations to the needs of the new era. Rising against the dogmatism and sterility of the medieval spirit, humanism succeeded in renewing a living connection with the ancient tradition, not only to imitate it but also to be inspired by it. He created new forms of expression and opened up unimaginable horizons to the people of that time, fueling, in less than two centuries, a cultural flourishing of art, literature, science, philosophy, education, religious life, and customs.
The Renaissance, like other historical periods, does not have a precise beginning or end. It is a spirit that came to the forefront mostly during the 15th and 16th centuries. Its origins can be found in the migration of Greek scholars fleeing the Turkish invasion from Constantinople to Italy in the early 15th century (Italian Quattrocento). Thus, Florence became the successor of Neoplatonism and the cultural capital of the Renaissance. By the late 15th and early 16th centuries, this center of humanism spread throughout Europe, partly due to continuous exchanges among scholars and artists, but also due to wars (such as French-Italian conflicts) that resulted in cultural blending. (…)
The Philosophy of Humanism
Humanism was a catalyst for the culture that Man saw his relationship with the world in a completely different way.
This cultural movement initially presented itself as a philosophy of action of people involved in city life. From the climate of religious hope that prevailed in the Middle Ages, the human mind turns to discovering its own dignity through a different way of feeling, thinking, and accepting new and different awareness of its position in the world. The ideal of the free man became the spiritual guide of the time. From a passive observer in the immovable world established by medieval Aristotelian scholasticism, man becomes an active and creative participant in a dynamic world whose different parts were connected in a complex network of correspondence. In comparison that derives from that time, the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance resembled the transition of a body from a position of rest to movement. It is a transition from the perception of a being closed in on itself, subject to a given order, to the poet, the creator who has endless possibilities ahead of him. and of limitless ability. This transition was not painless because man was transitioning from a secure and peaceful world to an uncertain world that was not predetermined, a world in which he had to face his own responsibilities. Uncertainty takes the place of security. According to Eugenio Garin, humanism is above all a school for the new education of man, a method free from all prejudices and authorities, the action of a spirit liberated from all limitations.
But for humanists, this education needs to be effective: its goal was to change the world and man himself. This desire for change will lead to the birth of the scientific culture of the Renaissance. Its richness and originality lie in the fact that it stems from a philosophical, rather than empirical, standpoint.
The humanists of the Quattrocento demanded the merging of scientific culture and the art of civic action, creating a philosopher-citizen in accordance with the Platonic tradition. (…)
To make man free and make him a creator. :Thus, we can define the humanistic ideal of the Renaissance, combined with fervent and continuous calls for the construction of a new world and the certainty that man is fully capable of building it himself.
However, this freedom and power are never separated from celestial forces, from God and divine influences that are expressed at all times through various aspects of nature. This multitude of divine expressions was connected to the rediscovered ancient wisdom. Every great representative of perennial philosophy, from Zarathustra to Plotinus, through Hermes Trismegistus, Pythagoras or Plato, is an example of the discovery of the divine spirit whose message spreads and thus inspires others. The connection with teachers, as Ficino says, has a stimulating effect that allows our own birth. Therefore, it is quite natural that this new humanism promotes a tolerant “ecumenism” that gives greater importance to the search for the unity of the divine message than to the study of its different forms. (…)
The Life Force of Philosophy
Mid in društvu i za njegovo moralno djelovanje. Filozofi su istraživali ljudsku prirodu, društvene odnose i etičke vrijednosti. Oni su težili racionalnom razumijevanju svijeta i čovjekove uloge u njemu.
Upravo zbog toga, renesansna filozofija je bila temelj za razvoj modernog mišljenja i znanosti. Ona je otvorila vrata različitim idejama i perspektivama, potičući kritičko razmišljanje i napredak u mnogim područjima ljudskog stvaralaštva.
In the Universe, its relationship with the divine, its power over nature, the Neoplatonic and Hermetic philosophy, which resurfaced in Florence, became the starting point of new creativity.
Inner man
I wonder what is the point of knowing the nature of wild animals, fish, and snakes if we do not know or attempt to understand the nature of man – why we are born, where we come from, where we are going. Petrarch
The central theme of Renaissance philosophy is the inner man, or the immortal soul. According to Plotinus, the soul animates and rules the body it contains, rather than being contained within the body. According to Pico della Mirandola, man has two bodies: one, which Platonists call divine transposer (or nous), an unfathomable envelope of the rational soul (psyche), and the other, which consists of other elements and is subject to the laws of growth and decay. (Commento sopra una canzone d’amore, 1486.) This brings us back to the Hermetic tradition, which describes man as a dual being – mortal in body, immortal in soul. The true man (Corpus Hermeticum, I, 15). According to Ficino, a person’s mortal envelope does not make them a true man, but rather their immortal soul, and only those who can see that soul will see the person. Ficino also states that the human soul has two “natural inclinations”. Like a stone that weighs downwards, the natural inclination drives the soul to descend into the body; and like fire that tends upwards, the other inclination drives the soul to rise towards God. The simultaneous existence of different inclinations in human consciousness, one oriented towards the sensory world and the other towards the intelligible world, explains the central position that the human soul occupies in the Universe. Similar to Janus with two faces, who looks simultaneously in two directions, the soul is an intermediary form between higher and lower forms and is the cause of the changing and living unity of the world.
The Triple World
Therefore, man is triple, composed of body (soma), soul (psyche), and spirit (nous), just as the world is also triple. There is the Mind of the world, the Body of the world, and between them, the Soul of the world.
Marsilio Ficino explains in his comments on Plato’s Symposium: “The number three is the measure of all things, and therefore I believe that God governs all things with the help of the number three, and likewise, all things are perfected by that number.” Therefore, a triad can serve as the key to the whole Universe, because creation contains traces of the divine Trinity, as transmitted to us by authors from St. Augustine to Pico della Mirandola.
“Anyone who deeply and intellectually understands how the unity of Venus is divided into a trinity of the Graces, the unity of fate into a trinity of the Fates, and the unity of Saturn into a trinity of Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto, will see the way to progress correctly in Orphic theology,” declares Pico della Mirandola (Conclusions of Orphic Hymns, no. 8). (…)
Individual and Cosmos
Man is not only a microcosm (a small world), but he is the meeting point of the entire Creation, the link between the divine world and nature. In Ficino, we find the theme of man as the eye of the world, a mirror of the Universe that reflects the omnipresent “The aim of philosophy is to establish communication between these two worlds: Man (microcosm) and the Universe (macrocosm). Man is the ‘dome’ of the world, according to the famous expression of Pico della Mirandola, or the physical connection between the upper and lower realms. Although the structure of the Universe is hierarchical in nature, unity prevails. Man is the image of God, while gradually rising to contemplate the divine image that shines within his soul. As a microcosm, man is the focal point where all levels of reality merge in a spiritual marriage – where the upper world is united with the lower world. Therefore, Pico della Mirandola writes (Heptalus, V, vi): ‘There is a difference between man and God: God contains all things because He is the source, while man contains all things because he is the center.’”