Renaissance: Politics, Society, and Culture
The Renaissance: Political and Social Context
The Renaissance was a period of transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern Age. It began in Italy in the 14th century and spread throughout Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries. Precursors of the Italian Renaissance include Dante (13th-14th century), Petrarch (14th century), and Boccaccio (14th century).
- It coincided with the decline of feudalism and the rise of absolutism.
- There was a separation of power between the Emperor and the Pope. The Papacy struggled to prioritize its temporal (material or earthly) interests and organized itself as a modern state (the Vatican).
- The great geographical discoveries, such as that of America, played a role in the transformation of the economy.
- Trade with new materials from America, China, and India led to the creation of a banking system to ensure and expedite business transactions. This represented the first phase of capitalism.
- Humans developed a new awareness of their ability to transform and improve their economic and social situation through the effort of their work. A new kind of bourgeois social class appeared.
- The bourgeoisie was supported by the nobility and grew economically, allowing it to maintain power. Power was the principal engine of change.
- Women began to take part in society; the courtesan (a prototype of the Renaissance woman) helped to create luxury, ostentation, and aesthetics.
General Direction of Renaissance Culture
There were many trends, but a dominant theme was generally secular. The identity of the cleric and the cultured man disappeared; the new wisdom was that of the humanist, emerging from the middle class and receiving the patronage of the nobility.
- Man became the protagonist (anthropocentrism versus the theocentrism dominant in the medieval period). Everything earthly was appreciated, and people began to enjoy this life.
- Moral virtue was now seen as being brave and overcoming any obstacle. Man felt like the creator and protagonist of the story.
- God was conceived as a great employer who would reward productive effort and value man’s success.
- Religious experience was dispensed with; religion became an empty set of rites that were met externally. Despite all this, we cannot say that the Renaissance was an anti-religious era. The Protestant Reformation was a movement to denounce the situation of the Church, preaching a return to primitive religiosity as expressed in the Gospels.
- Regarding nature, there was, on the one hand, an attitude of aesthetic contemplation, and on the other, an attitude of mastering and submitting it to human interests and needs. It was considered that nature could be explained mechanically and understood mathematically.
- Science emerged, represented by Bacon, Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, along with modern techniques and inventions such as the telescope and the compass.
- A desire for renewal dominated throughout (in art, philosophy, religion, ethics, and politics). This was achieved through a return to principles and sources (Renaissance), a return to the classical ideals of antiquity (Humanism), and a return to the sources of the Gospels (Reformation).
- Political organization would be based on the principles of reason, i.e., natural law (jusnaturalism); this would be the new emerging political thought.
The Renaissance achieved its maximum splendor in the arts. In philosophy, it is an imprecise term, but in this aspect, it can be considered to have ended in the 18th century, with the 17th-century publication of Descartes’ Discourse on the Method.