Renaissance Thought: The Classic, Scholastic and Humanistic Strains

by Paul Oskar Kristeller

A revised and enlarged edition of the author's "The Classics and Renaissance Thought." Originally delivered as the Martin classical lectures (Series XV) at Oberlin College.

Contents: The Humanist movement -- The Aristotelian tradition -- Renaissance Platonism -- Paganism and Christianity -- Humanism and Scholasticism in the Italian Renaissance -- The Philosophy of man in the Italian Renaissance.

Includes bibliography, notes, and index.

Genres: History, Philosophy, Renaissance, Nonfiction

169 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1961

About the author

Paul Oskar Kristeller (May 22, 1905 in Berlin – June 7, 1999 in New York, USA) was an important scholar of Renaissance humanism. He was awarded the Haskins Medal in 1992. He was last active as Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Columbia University in New York, where he mentored both Irving Louis Horowitz and A. James Gregor.

During his university years he studied with Werner Jaeger, Heinrich Rickert, Richard Kroner, Karl Hampe, Friedrich Baethgen, Eduard Norden, and Ulrich von Wilamowitz. He also attended lectures by noted philosophers such as Ernst Cassirer, Edmund Husserl, and Karl Jaspers. In 1928, he earned his doctorate from the University of Heidelberg under Ernst Hoffmann with a dissertation on Plotinus. He did postdoctoral work at the universities of Berlin and Freiburg. At Freiburg, Kristeller studied under the philosopher Martin Heidegger from 1931 to 1933. The Nazi victory in 1933 forced Kristeller to move to Italy. At his arrival, Giovanni Gentile secured for him a position as lecturer in German at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. It was at the Scuola Normale that Kristeller completed his first great works in the Renaissance: the Supplementum Ficinianum (1937) and The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino (1943). In 1939, he fled Italy, due to the enactment of Mussolini's August 1938 racial laws, to live in the USA. Thanks to the help of Yale University historian Roland Bainton, he sailed from Genoa in February 1939 and by March was teaching a graduate seminar at Yale on Plotinus. However Kristeller taught for only a short time at Yale University until moving to Columbia University, where he taught until his retirement in 1973, as Frederick J. E. Woodbridge Professor of Philosophy. He continued to be an active researcher after he retired. Paul Kristeller received the Serena Medal of the British Academy in 1958, the Premio Internazionale Galileo Galilei in 1968 and the Commendatore nell'Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana in 1971.

The emphasis of Kristeller's research was on the philosophy of Renaissance humanism. He is the author of important studies on Marsilio Ficino, Pietro Pomponazzi and Giambattista Vico.

An especially important achievement is his Iter Italicum (the title recalls Iter Alemannicum and other works of Martin Gerbert), a large work describing numerous uncatalogued manuscripts. After decades of neglect, Kristeller's lengthy, erudite essay of the early 1950s, "The Modern System of the Arts", in Journal of the History of Ideas, proved to be an influential, much reprinted classic reading in Philosophy of Art.

Kristeller was the chief inspirer of the Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum, the ongoing project that aims to chart the fortune of all extant classical works through the Middle Ages and Renaissance, serving as Founder and Editor-in-Chief for the first two volumes and Associate Editor for the next five volumes.

Reviews

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

This brief work does what it says on the tin: Kristeller guides us through the different intellectual currents which influenced Renaissance thought. Across the rather self-contained chapters or lectures emerge two main concerns: firstly to provide a more exact and therefore meaningful definition of 'humanism.' Secondly to stress the continuity between humanism and the medieval tradition, which was often (and in the popular consciousness still is) seen as a direct repudiation of scholasticism and the blinkered intellectual tyranny of theologians.

Humanism appears as a term used by Cicero and other Romans as a term for an educational program steeped in Greek philosophy aimed and training and refining the initiate. The term was taken up again during the Renaissance by Italian rhetoricians with similar meaning. It placed great value in the study and imitation of the classics to improve the student's mind and abilities as a rhetorician. It was of practical value: the men produced by the humanist schools were in demand as secretaries and letter writers across the courts of Europe. Kristeller stresses a sense of continuity. The humanists emerge from the medieval Italian dictatores, who were teachers of rhetoric. These scholars inherited the Latin scholarship of French universities where it had flourished in the 12th century, adding to it two novel innovations. Firstly, that they repurposed the study of Latin classics as a means for producing better rhetoricians. Secondly, by combining these Latin works with a new wealth of Greek materials.

These were transmitted from largely Byzantine sources where they had been in constant use throughout the early medieval period. (And here we have the historical quirk that study of Greek classics waxed in the West just as it was waning in the senescent East). Greek texts had been extant in the West since the 11/12th centuries thanks to the Arabs, but such works as were available reflect the Arabs' interest in medicine, science, mathematics, astronomy. I have seen it argued elsewhere that this was because Arab poetic and historical tradition was drawn from different wells, both Persian and Indian, and thus they had less need or interest in such works as the Greeks produced on these subjects.

So Humanism is a theory and practice of education as much as it is anything else, and developed from Italian teachers of rhetoric. Such innovations as it made in historiography, philology, etc, were the incidental result of a practical belief in imitating classical sources.

The book also examines the different threads of Platonic and Aristotelian influence. Aristotle was of course a medieval inheritance and central to the work of the arch-scholastic Aquinas. Plato's Timaeus was also known but the vast body of his work was newly rediscovered in the West during the Renaissance. With Plato also came the wider scope of Aristotle's work which had not originally interested the Arabs. Another interesting historical quirk is thus that at the same moment when Aristotle's Poetics was gaining ascendency in theories of art, his Physics was being dethroned by the mechanical philosophers of the Scientific Revolution. Racine and Descartes were contemporaries.

[Benjamin Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really great set of papers on the Renaissance from 1955/65. Mostly concerned with the Renaissance’s debt to the past and thereby showing its distinctive shape. Excellent command of the primary sources and a masterclass in “on their own terms” and the upending of a few teleological readings. At the same time, dogmatically convinced of the value of a humanistic, classical education.

[Christopher Rush · Rating 4 out of 5]

A somewhat loose collation of three different addresses by Kristeller (the first four chapters taken from a series, then two one-offs from sundry years and situations), thus somewhat repetitive by the time the reader gets to the end, nevertheless we have a small picture of Kristeller's large scope of the subject, bouyed along by his helpful, somewhat refreshing declaration Renaissance humanism was not a philosophical movement nor wholly a rejection of medieval scholasticism.

Sadly, the footnotes and bibliography remind us that we are almost insurmountably stupider than we were a century ago, certainly as far as languages are concerned. True, Kristeller was an eminent scholar and addressed these ideas originally to his ilk, but he is also living and writing in a time when passing familiarity with Latin, Greek, and a smidgeon of Italian is taken as a matter of course. Oh to have been born into an educational world that taught students classical and modern languages not as a means of "rescuing" the student from "having to take them in college," but to learn how to participate in the history of ideas and the intellectual heritage of humanity.

This is not a broad survey of the Italian Renaissance, more Kristeller's correctives of what it was not. Still, even the neophyte student of the Renaissance will find fresh ideas here, likely because many of the misapprehensions he sought to correct survived the adumbrating educational world after him. We should not blame the late '60s, though those revolutions are likely the cause, at least in part. Ah, well. Read it, especially is it is unlikely many (if any) of the works cites herein are extant or available in this world of purported information availability. We may have to take what we can get, and continue to praise Harper Torchbooks for trying to forestall the intellectual post-apocalyptical world we are currently in, in which we comfort ourselves that Google Translator is enough and convince ourselves if it is not available for streaming it must not be of value.

[Joseph St Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Why are boys crueler than old men? Insane men crueler than intelligent men? Dull men crueler than the ingenious?

Because they are less men than the others. Therefore the cruel men are called inhumane and brutal. In general those who are far removed from the perfect nature of man by fault of age, a vice of the soul, a sickness of the body, or by an inimical position of the stars, hate and neglect the human species as something foreign and alien. Nero was, so to speak, not a man, but a monster, being akin to man only by his skin. Had he really been a man, he would have loved other men as members of the same body. For as individual men are under one Idea and in one species, they are like one man.

Therefore, I believe, the sages called by the name of man himself only that one among all the virtues that loves and helps all men as brothers deriving in a long series from one father, in other words, humanity.” - Marsilio Ficino

A 140 page mid-century overview of Paul Oskar Kristeller’s thoughts on medieval/renaissance intellectual trends. This book is derived from lectures he had delivered and its breezy style frequently includes phrases such as “if I’m not mistaken”. Kristeller sets out define humanism and then makes the somewhat revisionist case that (rather than being conflicting schools) there is a great deal of continuity between scholasticism and humanism. Kristeller’s history tracks chains of ideas/influences and presents a history where intellectual trends are largely driven by the increasing availability of books/translations throughout the era.

[Scott Bielinski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, a really fun book to read. I have a few quibbles with some of Kristeller's interpretations of Augustine, especially his relationship to Neoplatonism, but, overall, I really liked this book. Though the book necessarily paints with a broad brush (these are lectures), he does an admirable job arguing for humanism as a predominantly literary movement. Kristeller does not succumb to (and rightly rejects) the modern bias against scholasticism, and even acknowledges the often overlapping humanist/scholastic sensibilities in some medieval thinkers. In fact, Kristeller often describes "a long period of peaceful coexistence" between these two. For the most part, humanism's center was grammar, rhetoric, and poetry, while scholasticism's was logic and natural philosophy. In some ways, these two expressions coalesce in Reformed theologians like Calvin. I'd love to read a book on how the Reformed tradition absorbs and modifies humanism and scholasticism.

I stumbled across this in my town's local bookstore and was very happy to pick it up. It is worth far, far more than the 5 dollars I paid!

[Algernon · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Humanism” has a broad definition in most conversations about culture, but here it refers to the study of Greek and Latin literature, and distinguishes that from other currents in the development of what we call imperfectly the Renaissance.

[Bernard English · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like his emphasis on the continuity between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance rather than what differentiates them.

[Bruno Romano · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a collection of lectures and essays, this book is first class. It brings a revisionist perspective on Renaissance studies, with major scholarship and great literary appeal. It reads as light as a novel, but weights big on its consequences for medieval, renaissance and Christian studies.

Main thesis is that humanism was not in itself a worldview, however you may have it, pagan or platonic. Kristeller sees humanism as a scholarly method of learning, continuing from medieval literary studies. It did indeed influence the philosophy of the period, but it was not, in itself, philosophical, nor were the greatest humanists professional philosophers. Humanism was not, though, only scholarly knowledge on antiquity, but a vision of cultural life, expression, conscious imitation and recovery of antiquity.

Humanism was a continuation of the study of medieval grammarians, expanded by discovery of Greek authors, recovery of Latin authors, and practiced by (not only) a new type of student: the laymen, mostly in university departments where they rivaled with philosophers and metaphysicians. The main novelty was the belief that to write and speak well it was necessary to study and imitate the ancients (13), and where, therefore, associated with the tradition of rethoric.

A secondary thesis is that humanism, although not a worldview, had impact on the philosophy of the time. This is explored better by Kristeller in another book (“The Renaissance Philosophy of Man”). This influence is related to the belief in dignity of man and the expression of subjective feelings and notions (“individualism”). Both these aspects are not consequence of reading the classics, but where shared by most humanists of the time. On the other hand, the biggest consequence of this humanistic classical education was the taste for elegance, neatness, clarity (21).

Other secondary thesis:

1) Aristotle continued well and strong through the Renaissance. It was even stronger in this period than in medieval times. No platonic or humanist could offer an organized and systematic method to face Aristotelianism, he was unbeatable.

2) There were many platonisms. In Renaissance, mostly associated with Augustinian Platonism (universals in the mind of God with direct intelligibility, for an example). There is a great section on Platonism in this book with much more in it.

3) Christianity was also alive and strong in the Renaissance. The myth that humanism was anti-Christian was rebutted by the humanists themselves. Humanism gave Renaissance Christians better knowledge of the Bible and of the Fathers and may have influenced the reformation.

There are hints about another, third-class, thesis: that scholasticism is also a method. This is confirmed by the existence protestant scholasticism, but this is not explored in the book.

[Bertrand · Rating 3 out of 5]

A rather dense and old-school set of papers arguing collectively for the redefinition of humanism away from its moralizing and universalist understanding. Kristellar's analysis is thorough and greatly learned as well as clear and organized, but that is not to say it is accessible: the book should not be mistaken for an introduction despite its generalist tone and the small number of pages. Many authors and subjects are glimpsed at but a lot of additional resarch or a solid culture of this era seems necessary to grasp all of the subtlety and originality of Kristellar's reading. In a few words: humanism is the continuation of the medieval rhetoric tradition, transformed by the steady increase of new Greek material from both Byzantian and Arab sources. Scholastic is not Aristotelianism, despite the fact that both currents overlap, and importantly both are continued throughout the Renaissance until the rise of modern science at its twilight.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Revisionist view of the Renaissance .