르네상스 휴머니즘, 과거와 현재의 교차로

Renaissance Humanism, a Crossroad between the Past and the Present

Renaissance humanism is one of the most controversial terms in Renaissance studies and the general history of ideas as well. The present study is a historiographical sketch of how such a contentious concept has been interpreted through the 20th century up to now. Further more, based upon that historiographical survey, it suggests a new approach toward the better understanding of Renaissance humanism and its historical significance. By the middle of the 20th century, the three broad tendencies were already in advance and prevailed the scholarship of Renaissance intellectual history: Eugenio Garin's view that Renaissance humanism was a philosophy of man, Hans Baron's understanding of it as a social reforming movement which he labelled civic humanism, and the interpretation of it as a literary and educational movement espoused by Paul Oskar Kristeller. In a word, Garin, Baron, and Kristeller were such gigantic figures who deepened and elaborated Renaissance studies after the Second World War. But, in spite of insightful, coherent, and historicist interpretation of Renaissance humanism based upon wide and thorough archival researches, their views are in need of redirection or correction. Simply put, as exemplified in new studies about Renaissance humanism in the second half of the twentieth century by Ronald G. Witt, Robert Black, and Riccardo Fubini, three giants' interpretations were either too static or limited to a particular intellectual tendency of the times, and even more they all strived to present a meta thesis about Renaissance humanism. The present study suggests the several works of Anthony Grafton, today's one of the most prolific researchers in Renaissance studies, as new possibilities of overcoming three giants's limits. In particular, Grafton's broad interest in material cultures in general would open the new horizon of understanding Renaissance humanism. Consequently, this study argues that the best way of interpreting Renaissance humanism is to understand it as a set of textual practice mediating between a venerated antiquity and the contemporary age, and as a critical culture emerged from classical studies.