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The Renaissance Creation of Man
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
The human animal feels fear: the ancient tranquil hordes, inhabitants of infinite plains where time stood still, have dissolved into a swarming, formless mass rushing into the future as if into the void: without a plan, without a leader, without roots; perhaps the only thing that guides it is the vague feeling of being a body whose limbs can not survive if separated.
1. See I. Berlin, The Crooked Timber of Humanity, New York, 1991.
2. F. Braudel, Les Structures du quotidien, Paris, 1979.
3. A. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, New York, 1937, esp. Books III and IV.
4. W. Prescott Webb, The Great Frontier, Austin, Texas, 1964, p. 4.
5. F. Braudel, Le Temps du Monde, Paris, 1979.
6. E. Garin, Moyen Age et Renaissance, Paris, 1969, p. 76.
7. Ibid., p. 81.
8. See C.H. Lohr, “Metaphysics,” in: The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philoso phy, Cambridge, 1988, pp. 537-638.
9. “During the sixteenth century,” Richard Popkin writes in this regard, “various naturalistic theories concerning the world were advanced; combining empirical and speculative elements, they offered an ample assortment of theories of man, of his place in nature and his relationship to God…. The confusion that arose from these competing theories of man, of nature and God led, in part, to the development of a new spirit of critical skepticism in a reborn philosophy and science.” “'Theories of Knowledge,” in: Ibid., p. 678.
10. See J. Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages, New York, 1954.
11. Atheism came only much later. See L. Lucien Febvre, Le Problème de l'incroyance au XVe siècle, Paris, 1968.
12. “The problematic of the New World revolved around the rights of expropria tion, the grounds for war, and the limits of cohabitation.” Cristopher Strosetzki, “L'Utopie de Thomas More: une réponse au débat sur le nouveau monde” in: Moreana, 101/2 (1990), p. 18.
13. The propagation of the fascination with the “foreign” would not have been pos sible without the invention of the printing press. Although its beginnings were slow, once the printing press was perfected its spread was phenomenal. By the beginning of the sixteenth century there were already ten million books in print, which created another extra-feudal enclave - that of non-religious knowl edge. The narrative, the scribe, the slow pace of life, the oneness and the secret of the Monastic libraries, the crystallization of a human dream on a barely revealed mystery: these are replaced by the printing press. Suddenly there is mass production, rapidity, universality, demystification, and an openness of the world to these new strata of the secular population, hungry for words to express themselves, to sell themselves and thus to exist.
14. See R. Bodéus, “Entre l'esprit et la nature. Aristotle à la Renaissance,” in: Le Beffroi, 1988.
15. F. Caspari, Humanism and the Social Order in Tudor England, New York, 1968, p. 61.
16. “It is reason, before and above all, that invites us to live personally with the fewest number of worries and greatest amount of happiness possible and, by virtue of our being members of the community of nature, to seek to help others in order to reach our common goal.”
17. See R. Lenoble, Esquisse d'une théorie de l'idée de nature, Paris, 1969.
18. “If I cannot, like you, cite authorities, I will cite something much greater and more worthy, experience, which is the mistress of your masters.” See E. Cas sirer, Individu et cosmos dans la philosophie de la Renaissance, Paris, 1983, p. 245.
19. N. Morgan, “”Utilitas et Honestas: l'étrange pari de Thomas More et Machi avel,“ in: Carrefour, 1992.
20. J. Simon, The Ultimate Resource, Princeton, 1994.
21. F. Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, New York, 1992.
22. A. and H. Toffler, Creating a New Civilization. The Politics of the Third Wave, Atlanta, 1995.
23. We too easily forget the anguish of the heroes of the Renaissance who, more over, risked and sometimes lost their lives in the defense of humanity.
24. Commission canadienne de l'Unesco. Colloque sur la Science et la Culture pour le XXIe siècle: un programme de survie, 1989.
25. Ibid., p. 14.
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