How Did the Renaissance Change Man's View of Man - Part 1 |
Posted: September 27, 2021 |
The question, "How did the Renaissance change man's view of man?" can be answered by pointing to the fact that the Renaissance marked a high point in human endeavor. Human beings had reached a stage in their development when they could not anymore rely on tools for survival. They were no longer able to survive without material possessions like weapons and armor, and they increasingly depended on religious ideas like belief in God and the Ten Commandments. In this context, how did the renaissance change man's view of man? As far back as the age of Aquinas, philosophers have argued about man's place in the world. According to some, man is insignificant compared to other animals and plants. In the thirteenth century, a famous Italian thinker, Petrini Scaliger wrote that man is insignificant in comparison to animals and plants. In the fourteenth century, Innocent III wrote that man is nothing more than a beast among animals and plants, and that he needs to be respected as such. By the sixteenth century, new ways of thinking about the self were appearing. A trend toward individualism began to shape the way people looked at themselves and others. In response to the problem of how did the renaissance change man's view of man, an essayist named Thomas de la Rouchfoucauld wrote that all men are merely animals looking for ways to survive. visit the website claimed that all men share a common primitive sense of instinctual longing which causes them to seek pleasure and avoid pain, and that these same instincts shape their social behavior. Writing around this time also gave way to new ways of thinking about the self. Descartes argued that man's mind is nothing more than an "intellect" capable of understanding and organizing the world around him. Other minds exist, of course, but human nature does not include other minds. Man exists to think. In the Renaissance, many people came to see the mind as the seat of reason, and man as the master of reason, dictating his own reality. Whether man was the victim of reasoning or of just being unable to stop himself from acting on instinct is up for debate. The Scientific Revolution brought about a major shift in how did the renaissance change man's view of man. This new belief arose around the end of the seventeenth century with the advent of new sciences and technologies. optics and thermodynamics offered new ways of viewing the world, and started to replace long-held beliefs about how the world works. People were beginning to understand that matter isn't made up of atoms and molecules, but that it exists in great number in a vast space beyond the four walls of a building. Ideas about how the world works were changing all around them. The concept of personal knowledge was an important one, too. One might think that this is a Christian concept, but the truth is that man started to think in terms of personal insignia long before Christ came along. Many people were starting to refer to themselves as knowing something or having read something that no one else had ever read. One might argue that this was just the evolution of human language and the borrowing of ideas from other cultures, but the idea that the meaning of a word can change a man's view of that word is an idea that dates back to the beginning of recorded history. How did the Renaissance change man's view of himself and his place in the scheme of things? The most important part of how did the renaissance change man's view of himself was the invention of science and the study of the world around him. People began to look at the effects that they could have on the world and how their actions could be affected. They began to look at how they might be able to direct the climate or the way that Nature behaved. In some cases, people were able to use science to manipulate events or make things happen for them, which would make their lives much more comfortable and less troublesome. Another important part of how did the renaissance change man's view of himself was the advent of the printing press and the Book of contents, or the Bible. People were learning to read, and to write, and the need for a physical book was fading away. People were reading medieval texts, but they were only reading one part of the Bible, the Book of Job. They had not yet learned about the day-to-day dealings of people, the kings and queens, and about politics. This is where reading the Bible became indispensable for man. He could look up and learn who the heads of government of each country were, how they acted, and how they governed.
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