Humanistic Tradition Conclusion

For my last blog I figured that I would conclude by talking about some of the things that I have learned throughout the course. We began by talking about the Renaissance and then kept going until we reached the Enlightenment. During this time we talked about the difference in painters, scientists, and musicians of the time. We also explored many works by many different people that explored the same thing. In one book we learned about all the different things that go into painting, and what the author actually thought about painting. In another we learned about what it would take to be a prince. Another thing that we did throughout the semester was analyze different works of art. One of the things that helped me learn the most was the critiques that we did throughout the semester. In the critiques we had to put what we learned in the class and use it to judge a cultural event that we attended. This helped me to use what I had learned in an everyday situation.

Serious Movie

This week we watched a video about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table searching for the golden chalice. This movie wasn’t actually that serious of a movie, but it was a good way to end the semester. It begins by showing King Arthur trying to find knights to join and become part of the Knights of the Round Table. Once he has found them God comes to them and tells them to go on a quest for the golden chalice. The movie then follows them as they go to complete the quest. It doesn’t actually end well since King Arthur doesn’t get to retrieve the chalice since he is arrested by the cops. This movie deals with humanities since it is a way of expressing culture. This movie was obviously meant to be a comedy and it wasn’t actually that bad of one in the end. I thought that I would talk about this since I haven’t really discussed film that much before. Film is in a way like a play except you can use special effects and you don’t have to attend it live to view it. Film is probably the top way that culture is spread today since pretty much everybody watches TV.

Raphael's "The School of Athens"

1)      Raphael’s painting “The School of Athens” actually appears to be a school about philosophy. In the painting there is a gathering of opposites. Plato heads one side and Aristotle heads the other. Plato’s side is composed of mathematicians and writers and people who are down to Earth. Aristotle’s side consists of physicists and people who are concerned with the heavens. The way in which Plato and Aristotle are pointing could be analyzed in two ways. The first is that Plato is pointing up to say that you need to know about down to Earth things as well as the heavens to truly understand philosophy and Aristotle seems to be saying the same thing by pointing down at the ground. The other way it could be interpreted is that since Plato uses deduction, which is from general to specific, he is pointing up to symbolize where you should start. He is saying that you should start at the top and then work down. Aristotle is pointing down since he uses induction, which is specific to general, so you start at something specific and then make general conclusions based on that. Overall, this is probably the best painting I have seen this semester.

Pico della Mirandola

                    Pico della Mirandola was the personification of renaissance life because of all that he did. First of all, renaissance means “the rebirth” or the revival of learning and culture. Mirandola was a perfect fit for this since he was extremely smart and sought to relate everything to God, thereby solving the problem of the one in the many. The problem is how everything in the universe relates to the one God. Mirandola stated that all of the things in the universe are symbols of God. Like religion, speech, and philosophy, they are all images and expressions of God. Whereas the medieval view of this was that nothing on Earth resembles God, Mirandola reversed this by saying that everything that humans can think, imagine, and create are expressions of divinity. Since humanism in the renaissance was about relating man and God, Mirandola is a perfect example of making this happen. He went even further by offering to defend 900 theses on religion, natural philosophy, and magic.

The Four Idols

             This week we talked a lot about Francis Bacon. He is known for using the inductive method of thinking.  That is looking at a bunch of facts and then coming to a conclusion based on those facts. But before beginning this the person must clear his mind of certain biases. Bacon also came up with four different types of biases that people experience. The first one is idols of the tribe. That is doing stuff according to your race and culture. The second one is idols of the marketplace. This involves language, since we have to know what it means to understand it. So a scientist must be careful when he is using language so that everyone can understand what he is saying. The third one is idols of the theatre. This one involves whatever religious or philosophical view that you are influenced by. The fourth and final one is idols of the cave. This one involves our own attitudes toward something. So in order to be a true scientist one must be able to put aside all of these biases and think logically.

Hamlet Part 2

I will now start up where I left off the last time with the letters sent to England to kill Hamlet. Hamlet managed to escape this by switching the letters and having the messengers killed instead. When he got back home Laertes challenged him to a duel since Laertes blamed Hamlet for the death of his sister and father. Claudius planned on having Hamlet killed by poisoning wine that Hamlet was meant to drink. Laertes also planned on having an advantage on Hamlet by putting poison on the tip of his sword. In the end when Hamlet and Laertes where fighting Laertes cuts Hamlet but Hamlet manages to kill Laertes. Hamlets mother then drinks the wine and she dies. Hamlet seeing this forces Claudius to drink the wine and Hamlet dies last due to his wound that had been poisoned by Laerte's sword. So all in all the ending was pretty intense.

Hamlet Part 1

This week we focused completely on Shakespeare's book "Hamlet". One of the things that I had never known before was that going to one of Shakespeare's plays wasn't an elegant occasion or anything like I thought that it was. It was instead a casual event that the lower to middle class people attended.

The play started out with us learning that Hamlet's father had just died and his mother was marrying his father's brother. We then see the ghost of Hamlet's father tell Hamlet that his brother killed him by pouring poison into his ear. His father now wants Hamlet to avenge him by killing Claudius. To prevent people from catching on to what he is going to do Hamlet acts like he is mad. One of the things that people wonder about this is if by Hamlet acting mad he actually becomes mad. We finished the the first half by Hamlet sailing off to England where Clausius had sent notes to England to have Hamlet killed.

Overall, I rather enjoyed reading this book. It is pretty easy to read and has a good storyline, other than the fact that Hamlet and his mom have a little thing going on.

Montaigne's "On Repentance" and "That to Study Philosophy is to Learn How to Die"

Right now I am not really sure whether I liked these readings or not. Montaigne had a lot of interesting things to say, but he put it in a way that made it very difficult to read. In the reading "On Repentance" he basically said that we should not regret anything we do because it is part of our nature to do it, and because those experiences build us up to who we are today. Instead of just dwelling on our mistakes we should just look on them with indifference. Another cool thing that we learned during the lecture on this reading is that everything works according to nature by cause then effect. The thing is that in our experiences we experience the effect first and then identify the cause. In the second reading Montaigne was saying that rather than trying to exclude death from our lives we should actually embrace it and try to think about it every day. Death is also the one thing that no one else can do for you. So in conclusion I have to say that these readings gave me a very different way of thinking about these kinds of things.

Northern Humanism vs. Italian Humanism

Italian Humanism arose with the fall of Rome. Italian Humanists dealt mainly with the classics from first century BC to first century AD. As Italian Humanism spread northward it began to change. This was mainly due to big differences in the cultures. When Northern Humanism arose they focused on all the classics. Italian Humanists didn't feel that Christian writers should be counted among the classics, and Northern Humanists mainly focused on Christian writers. After seeing the way that the church used to be run the Northern Humanists sought to reform it to the way it once was. The main way of doing this was improving education so everyone could read about it and hopefully think the same way.

The Protestant Reformation

The protestant reformation brought about a lot of change. It began with Martin Luther and his 95 theses.  Before this reformation occurred the Roman Catholic Church held all the power.  This was due to the fact that the Catholics believed that God appointed the pope and that the pope should have power. Because of this power the church was rich; the kings collected taxes from the people and in turn gave some of their profits to the church and in return the church would help them when needed. Luther argued against power being centralized around the pope and caused the kings to feel that they did not have to give money to the church anymore. Along with this change in people’s views of religion, the protestant reformation also impacted education. With the printing of books more people learned to read. Not only did this help improve education, but it allowed ideas to spread fast enough so the Catholic Church could not prevent them. Despite all of the things that happened in this reformation, most of the providences remained Catholic and the Catholic Church fought to regain the power that it had once had.

Erasmus's "Praise of Folly"

This week we took a look at Erasmus’s “Praise of Folly”. In it he tells about all of the wrongs that the different classes of people do. He wrote this book to amuse his friend Thomas More, but as we can see today the book became much more than that. Even though it was written as a joke, the end turns serious when Folly proclaims the virtues of the religious ideals in which Erasmus was brought up. I liked the way that Erasmus wrote the book, it was easy to read and it made sense. One of the things that I didn’t really like is when he says “But wisdom makes men weak and apprehensive, and consequently you’ll generally find the wise associated with poverty, hunger, and the reek of smoke, living neglected, inglorious, and disliked. Fools, on the other hand, are rolling in money and are put in charge of affairs of state; they flourish, in short, in every way.” I do agree with him that there are a lot of bad people running things like government and large corporations, but I don’t think that being wise makes you weak.

Machiavelli's "The Prince"

                Last week I talked about four theories on why Machiavelli wrote “The Prince”, so now I will talk about what he wrote in his book. I liked how he wrote this book since it is easy to read and understand though some of the things that he writes are a little disturbing. The first two chapters talk about what the book will cover and explains some things that the reader should know. The book then goes on to talk about how principalities are either new or mixed. The new ones are harder to maintain unless the prince sticks to the old laws. Machiavelli then gives some traits that a prince should have to gain and rule over his territories. The prince is supposed to be like a fox and appear trustworthy yet know how to deceive.

                Machiavelli also believed that it is better for a prince to gain power by virtue than to obtain it by fortune. The ones that obtain it by fortune will have a tougher time keeping a hold of it. Throughout this book he also gives hints on attacking and defending and how to obtain the people’s support. During class we talked about whether it is better to be loved or respected. We learned that both have advantages and disadvantages to them though people might be more loyal if they respect the prince, since those that only love the prince have nothing holding them to that love. There are many other things that Machiavelli tells princes to do in this book though I feel that I have covered the main ones, so it is here that I will leave you.

Prince (The Four Theories)

This past week we have been reading “The Prince” by Niccolo Machiavelli. There are four theories on why Machiavelli wrote this book. The first is that he wrote it as a handbook for princes. I can partially understand this one since it sounds like he is explaining how a prince should run things and what he should do or not do. The second is that it is a pagan subversive humanist attack on the church and state. I understand this one also since he is pretty much going against all of the teachings of the church. He feels that a prince should use any means to get what he wants and hold what he owns. The third is that he wrote it as a response to his exile. This one I had a hard time figuring out since I didn’t know Machiavelli’s past, but after we went over it in class I can understand why he might have written the book in response to his exile. The reason that he was exiled was that he was suspected of plotting against the madici. He was first fired from his job, then he was tortured, and then he was exiled. It was during his exile that he produced most of his major works including this book. The fourth is that he wrote it as a satire and parody of the Italian government. In other words he wrote it to make fun of the Italian government. This is the most commonly believed theory. I felt that I should start with these four theories and next week I will begin discussing what Machiavelli actually wrote.

Painting

                This week we read Alberti's book "On Painting". In this book he tells us everything that goes into painting and his opinion of it. He thought that all paintings should have three things: a noble subject, few figures with graceful poses, and a small palette of colors. He felt that there were only four true genre of colors: fire which is red, earth which is ash, air which is blue-gray, and water which is green. Which if you didn't notice are the four basic elements. He also said that "the aim of the painter is to obtain praise, favor, and good-will for his work much more than riches". To do all of these things he says that a painter has to be a good man well versed in the liberal arts. We find out later in the book exactly how highly he thinks of painting when he says that painters are creators, which is comparing them to God.  I liked this reading a lot better than last weeks since I could actually read the book without getting to the next page and being completely lost.
          We also looked at a bunch of paintings this week during class. I liked how the painters would paint in a countryside or style of architecture to make the picture seem like it took place in that country. It was also interesting to learn about all the different characteristics of the painters themselves, like how Da Vinci had a short attention span and Michelangelo was the opposite and would spend all his time on the project until it was finished. I enjoyed hearing these because I have always seen and heard a lot about the paintings, but have never really learned anything about the people that painted them.

The Black Death

When I used to think about the Bubonic Plague I never really understood what the people went through. I guess I probably will never understand since I didn’t go through it, but I now have a better understanding since I read Boccaccio’s Introduction to the Decameron. Throughout his piece he tells about how the plague was affecting everyone’s lives and how they dealt with it. It can’t be easy to confront something that makes people die all around you, but then again most of the people didn’t confront the plague. Most of them either ran or locked themselves up away from the world. The ones that did confront it chose to live their lives by their own rules by going from house to house drinking and partying. There were only a few that actually helped care for the sick and bury them, though in most cases the sick died alone without anyone with them. At one point during the plague the church even refused to perform burial rights. I know that I can’t really judge any of these people since I’ve never had to go through that so I don’t know what I would have done, but I hope that I would have at least tried to do something to help.

During class we watched a video that also showed what happened during the plague. Not only did the sick die during the plague, but even some of the people who weren’t sick were killed during the plague. I know that last bit sounds kind of confusing, but bear with me and I will explain. The video showed people massing together and going after certain groups of people because they thought that those people were the ones that caused the plague. This is what scares me the most about the human race; when something bad happens and people can’t explain it they start blaming each other. Just imagine being one of the people who was targeted. Not only would you have to worry about getting sick, but you would also have to defend yourself against everyone else.