Modern Society and Humanism

Modern society begins with the eras of the Renaissance and the Reformation as a change in the view taken toward the role and source of authority in public life came into being. The development of humanism in the Renaissance involved a shift in how people thought, and this occurred at the same time that the horizons of the West were expanding, be they geographical, mental, social, economic, or political:

Concurrent with these advances was an important psychological development in which the European character, beginning in the peculiar political and cultural atmosphere of Renaissance Italy, underwent a unique and portentous transformation . . . Whereas in earlier times, the life of the state was defined by inherited structures of power and law imposed by tradition or higher authority, now individual ability and deliberate political action and thought carried the most weight. The state itself was seen as something to be comprehended and manipulated by human will and intelligence. . . .

Tarnas sees this shift as a return to pagan (meaning classical) values. There as a new value placed on individualism and personal genius, and this was a shift from the more collectivist, social view of the medieval period:

The medieval Christian ideal in which personal identity was largely absorbed in the collective Christian body of souls faded in favor of the more pagan heroic mode--the individual man as adventurer, genius, and rebel.

This would be the era of the consolidation of na

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bent in the modern era is for the people to honor the glory of God by seeing to it that the laws are shaped and administered according to certain precepts and with equity. The shift in thought is not sudden and develops over time. The degree of religious authority in civil life recognized as right by Calvin would be quite different from what most Americans would recognize as proper today. Calvin, for instance, still saw the rule of the prince as deriving from God so that he could say that if a prince were to perform his duties badly or against our interests, we still owe our allegiance to him because he represents God's will: But, if we direct our attention to the word of God, it will carry us much farther: even to submit to the government, not only of those princes who discharge their duty to us with becoming integrity and fidelity, but of all who possess the sovereignty, even though they perform none of the duties of their function. Niccolo Machiavelli is a late medieval figure who writes about politics, and he shows in his discussion of the transition from servitude to freedom that a republican form of government is to be preferred if the human beings who make up that form of government are sufficiently good, while a s

Category: Philosophy - M