St Aquinas And Humanism

Thus, it was unsurprising to find that Pope Sixtus IV built a library that still remains as one of the richest repositories holding ancient, medieval documents. This movement of humanism was largely praise because the viewed humanity through a Christian lens as Renaissance humanists strongly believed that men and woman were made in the image and likeness of God. For example, Pico Mirandola represented man as one in possession of great dignity in his essay, ‘On the Dignity of Man’. Further, Renaissance humanism caused individuals to become increasingly self-conscious about their current lifestyles and their realization of human potential. Humanism heavily influenced much of the Renaissance culture, causing people to depend upon intellect its role in humanity breakthroughs.

Before the early thirteen hundreds, there was a time called the Midieval era, where life was devoted and owned by the church. People were lied to by the thought of paying and working to go to heaven. When the thirteen hundreds came, alongwith it cam the renaissance that lasted until the late sixteen hundreds. The renaissance had a very important movement that changed all of Europe. Many new cultures and ways of life had changed because of this era, and one of the bigger ones is called Humanism. Humanism caused a very large impact on a person’s thoughts, actions, and art.

Arguably the greatest and longest impacting movement brought about by the forward thinkers of the Renaissance was humanism. Humanism was a cultural and intellectual movement that emphasized the human potential to attain excellence through direct study of the literature, art, and civilization of the classical Greek and Roman societies (Merriam-Webster). The scholars and believers in humanism sought to change the course of society away from the narrow pedantry of medieval scholasticism and utilitarianism. Humanism was a basic desire for every citizen to be able to speak with eloquence and read and write with clarity, so that common citizens were capable of engaging in the civic life of their communities (Gray). The movement also emphasized the value of a human being as well as the importance of rational thought rather than blind faith in spiritualism or superstition. It also pushed people to explore human desires and pleasures while also enriching their minds. The influential nature of humanism was far reaching and most notable for its effects on Renaissance art, literature, and philosophy.

At first, humanism was actually thought by some to be a way of validating and supporting the Church. With man being viewed as the measure of all things, and man being created in the image of God, it would be shown how God is perfect in every way. Pico della Mirandola's literary work Oration on the Dignity of Man is a clear example of how the early goal of humanism was to create a better understanding of God, stating how humanity is the apex of creation, creating a link with the world of God and of the creation (Cunningham 24).

Humanism is a philosophical and ethical stance on the value of human beings. The idea of humanism started around the early to mid-14th century starting with Petrarch, who is considered to most, as the “father of humanism.” Petrarch’s expertise in the promotion of this study earned him the name as the first great humanist. Humanism first started to become popular in the mid-15th century though during the Italian Renaissance due to many factors but at the same humanism was spreading all throughout Europe and became increasingly popular in Northern Europe, but didn’t spread as fast. With humanism spreading around in different areas of the world it was safe to assume that the teachings and practice of humanism from these areas would also be

Thomas Aquinas also had a critique of the ontological argument, that we as humans cannot know Gods nature, humans will all conceive of God in different ways, some conceptions of God even assign him a body; this argument couldn’t apply to all these conceptions, some of which are contradictory, this would mean it’s impossible to conceive of God in the way that Anselm has put forward. In order for the ontological argument to work you would need to know God perfectly, and since only God knows itself perfectly, only God could use this argument. The phrase “a being than which none greater can be imagined” is far too vague to be used in a strong argument.

Thomas Aquinas lived in the thirteenth century. He lived during the time of Aristotle, who was starting to lose his quality of being liked a lot in Western Europe. The works gave people a whole new way of seeing things / sensible view of what is and is not important of the world. Thomas somehow managed to stay Christian and still believed in the ideas of Aristotle. Aquinas spent much of his life living on the edge of church support.

Thomas Aquinas was the creator of Medieval Christian Synthesis. Born during the Medieval time, from 1225-73, Aquinas' family was wealthy and provided to him a strong education. After completing his studies in the University of Naples, he decided to join the Dominicans and was ordained a priest. The Dominicans at that time, was viewed as one of the most academically talented scholars in the Christian church. However, Aquinas family did not agree with his decision because as a Dominican he would lose the family's wealth.

The philosopher Aquinas had a unique thought process on the way humans acquire knowledge. He believed that by being “born with a blank slate” humans could gain knowledge through experiences and other methods. Aquinas believed that the soul plays a major part in the inquiry of knowledge. Unlike philosophers of old he believed that the soul and body were intertwined. Working together to push the soul forward in its quest to gain knowledge in this life.

Several hundred years ago, two great philosophers Thomas Aquinas’s and Rene Descartes used the method of ontological argument for the existence of God and used intuition and reason alone to get to each other’s theory. Rene Descartes wrote out several mediations, but the one we’re going to touch base on is meditation III that he wrote in the 1600’s; While Thomas Aquinas’s wrote his five proofs of God in 1270 that specifies God’s existence in each proof; the one that gives the best argument is the existence of God in his III proof. While both philosophers provide great information about their reason about God, Thomas Aquinas’s and Rene Descartes both attempt to prove the existence of God, but

Scholasticism, which experienced its height around 1250, was the conjunction of faith and reason directed toward understanding the contradictions in the bible and Church teachings. The goal was to strengthen the Church’s teachings by validating them against argument and critical analysis (at least more critically than previously had been allowed with the sole goal of producing results positive toward the Church.) There were warnings made by Anselm of Canterbury that reason and religious studies don’t blend well since religious studies should be based on faith and not reason. It is important to note that the majority of scholars, philosophers and thinkers were theologians ecclesiastically employed, and that the educational institutions

Michaelangelo believed that without God, Adam could not live. Even so, he has portrayed him as strong, relaxed and unafraid. Michaelangelo's painting shows us that, for some Renaissance artists,

The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were ripe religious turmoil within the Catholic Church as many had begun to question practices that had arisen over the centuries, which had focused more on the material and physical devotion to God rather than a spiritual connection. It was a time of great advancement in art and literature as Europe was entering the Renaissance and began to prosper both economically and culturally. During this time humanists began to question teachings made by Church officials in regards to everyday life and piety that one must follow a specific guideline in life so as to enter heaven upon death. These humanists emphasized a focus on human form and the use of reason to dictate their lives as they saw fit rather than

Scientists’ new way of solving problems was a product of people learning from each other’s discoveries and theorems. The Protestant Reformation arose from Luther criticising and questioning authority, and traditions of the Catholic Church, and finding the alternative, Protestantism. Humanism’s toll on artists and writers brought forth works that are priceless today, like The Last Supper, painted by Leonardo Da Vinci, and Hamlet, written by William Shakespeare, and the idea that individuals should be free to pursue their own interests is now

1.) Thomas Aquinas believes that humans are born with a clean slate in a state of potency and acquire knowledge through sense experiences by abstraction of the phantasms. His view on how man acquires knowledge rejects Plato’s theory that humans are born with innate species. Along with Plato’s theory of humans understanding corporeal things through innate species, Aquinas also rejects Plato’s theory that in being born with innate species, humans spend their lives recollecting their knowledge.