rtentous 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.
In the broadest sense, humanism was an educational movement, and for the humanists the classical writings were unique instruments for extending the consciousness of human beings:
The great humanists of the Renaissance were impelled to revolutionize the curriculum out of the conviction that the classical world had been through a complete cycle of human experience, moral, intellectual, and imaginative, and that the ancients had given a luminously intelligent account of that experience, in perfect form, in imperishable works of thought, art, and literature.
The humanists placed their emphasis on the human being as that individual would be revealed in the written records of classical antiquity. Humanism was a secular movement, and as such it inherently questioned the authority of religious doctrine in social, literary, and political thought.
MACHIAVELLI AND HIS VIEWS ON GOVERNMENT
The shift in the view of the state was reflected in a number of ways by different theorists. The republican form of government was developed during the era of the Roman Republic and then revived during the Italian Renaissance in t...