Humanism Essay

953 Words2 Pages

The Renaissance is the guidance of ideology for the Western European from the medieval society to the modern excessive cultural and ideological movements. Humanism is the core of thought. Humanism is a people-oriented rational thought, mainly concern about human and human nature. It includes human dignity, the value of the human being. The humanism was based on the ancient Greek and Roman literature study, advocate the basis of man’ dignity, think that a man can control his/her own destiny and confirm the value of human. As the rebirth of literature, scholars found out importance of thinking and the power of reason. Therefore, many significant literatures had written by scholars during the Renaissance. Pico della Mirandola and Niccolo Machiavelli were the two of the important humanists during the Renaissance. Pico della Mirandola wrote about the human dignity. His work “Oration On The Dignity Of Man” has brought a new view of belief and influenced the later scholars. Niccolo Machiavelli’s work “The Prince” pointed out the significant being as a king.
“Oration on the dignity of man” by Pico della Mirandola pointed out that human was born in free and don’t have set nature. People can choose whatever they want to be. Man can determinate he/her own destiny. The thought was completely new during the medieval age. Under the control of religions such as Christianity, people were believed in divinity. The ideals of God’s control and determinate of the world had spread over of the western. People have to follow and limited by religions therefore to have a better life after their death. Divinity has control all of the human being and the nature. Under a thousand years of the middle age, Christianity as the dominant ideology, the god in...

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...r capitalism came up. Machiavelli’s idea made a huge influence for the modern society. In the modern political system totally separated religions and moral limitation.
Renaissance humanism is manifestation of social progress and promote the human society is composed if the feudal society to the capitalist society’s transition. It brought the liberty of the human thought and broke several old view of the western to see the world, society and human. It also broke the thought of religion idea and brought a new view for people to see themselves. Therefore, later on people started to discover new lands, to have the imagination to create. Renaissance humanism made people to think that self is self action of internal resources, the pursuit of self realization. The importance of self realization is it found out the value of self and to development the individual potential.

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