Posted on 08/22/2008 9:38:37 PM PDT by WesternCulture
- YES!
To begin with, let's try and fully understand what Renaissance Florence actually has accomplished, apart from making tourists feel like this:
"I was in a sort of ecstasy, from the idea of being in Florence, close to the great men whose tombs I had seen. Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty ... I reached the point where one encounters celestial sensations ... Everything spoke so vividly to my soul. Ah, if I could only forget. I had palpitations of the heart, what in Berlin they call 'nerves.' Life was drained from me. I walked with the fear of falling."
(Words originating from the year of 1817, written by the author Stendahl)
Before having visited Florence, Italy, intellects tend to be lacking in vigor as well as tenacity.
Why don't we Westerners of today, while being members of the best educated, best technologically equipped and most scientifically advanced civilization history has ever known, make full use of this enormous privelige of ours?
Does a civilization really have to experience something like the Black Death in order to gear up and make use of its full capacity?
It might well seem so.
In my part of the world, Europe, we still haven't gotten over the two disastrous world wars - at least from a psychological viewpoint - that haunted our continent just some decades ago. Likewise, many families of US, Canadian, Australian, Indian, New Zealand nationality etc have paid the ultimate price for defending democracy and it sure has influenced the way in which these nations too, at large, conceive of the development of mankind.
Still, these recent experiences were, comparatively speaking, less challenging than those of the Black Death was to Medieval Europe in the way that the people exposed to the latter weren't able of fully understanding the very nature of the horror plaguing their time.
The victims of the WWI and WW2 could, at least, mentally grasp what was going on around them, namely a devastating war between nations, but this was not the case concerning the Black Death - an epidemic killing around half of Europe's population at that time.
It has often been pointed out, during the last 20-30 years or so, by experts in the field that people living during the Renaissance itself were much more influenced by Medieval culture than generally has been believed since the late 19th century.
To some extent, this objection towards the traditional, modern image of Renaissance European holds water, but on the other hand the scholars who've launched these "alternative" perspectives probably underestimate the indirect influence of revolutionary thinkers like Pico della Mirandola and Erasmus among the broad layers of Western civilization at that time.
Even if ordinary people of Renaissance Florence slaving for 14 hours (and being awarded a loaf of bread and a jar of something called "vino" that no member of this forum would be brave enough to taste) didn't understand much of the enormous breakthroughs of their own time, they probably sensed that they were part of something unique - despite wars, despite plagues.
The people of Renaissance Italy, not only its intellectuals, displayed very much of a dualism in terms of attitudes towards what was going on in the immediate reality surrounding them and to them reality looked liked this; either God was with them or God wished to make them "liable", make them pay for their "sins".
In this sense, they were trapped within a Medieval structure of thought, shunning the central idea of the Renaissance (at least from a theological point of view); that the idea of Man having been created in the image of God manifests itself through the fact that Man, evidently, being able of shaping the Earth - as well as himself - according to his own, free will.
It is true most Europeans were unable of viewing things this way at that time. Most of them were in fact unable of understanding what their religious leaders were on about at all as all ceremonies were held in Latin before Luther came along and ordinary people neither in Holland, Bohemia, Sicily or anywhere else understood medieval church Latin.
However, (anti-Conservative) scholars who argue like the Renaissance never happened and probably believe we still are living in the Middle Ages, all have forgotten something of major importance.
Ordinary renaissance people (at least the majority of city dwellers) viewed themselves as being the inferiors of their heathen, although highly admirable predecessors, more precisely their distant, yet omnipresent ancestors who lived during the days of the Roman Empire.
Claiming that average inhabitants of the Italian peninsula living in the days of Dante - just prior to the Black Death (and prior to the Renaissance of course) - felt as if they spiritually and culturally were living in the shadow of their culturally superior forebears might sound like the brainchild of a 19th century, second rate, Goethe wannabee, Romanticist charlatan.
All the same, it stood clear to Medieval intellectuals, engineers and masons alike that they were unable of erecting structures like the Colosseum, the aqueducts and the Pantheon.
I doubt people of today are able of fully understanding what it actually means to live in an environment like this, an environment making you think mankind day by day is LOSING intellectual ground once gained.
Today, most people take for granted that our ancestors were ignorants compared to us in all fields. It has not always been like this.
In this context, I'd say two major factors contributed to a revolutionary change in the mindset among 15th and early 16th century Europeans;
1. The recovery from the Black Death
But also
2. The marvels of Renaissance engineering and science. Not so much the genius of Leonardo da Vinci in fact (even if we by today understand why already Vasari, in 1550, wrote that "grandissimi doni" - the greatest of gifts - had been bestowed upon him.)
Let's focus on two things here.
Engineering and the way common people of that very time experienced their reality.
To begin with, the PSYCHOLOGICAL impact on contemporary societal and cultural life following the completion of the dome of the Florence Cathedral/(Basilica di) Santa Maria del Fiore, is painfully overlooked and underestimated by most academies of today.
Through Brunelleschis architectural triumph, Renaissance Florence beat everything the ancient Romans were able of erecting - as well as anything the revolutionary Gothic vaults were able of supporting.
Even by today, we do not fully understand how Brunelleschi went ahead bringing about his architectural revolution. But we do know he combined forgotten/rediscovered building techniques of ancient Rome and Gothic principles of architecture.
Imagine to be a simple peasant from "il Contado", the immediately surrounding countryside of Florence, visiting this leading city of medieval Europe a beautiful morning for the first time in your life.
To you, the meaning of words like "life" and "reality" are very much restricted to whatever is going on in the village you belong to.
The elders of this community, men you respect, men you'd better respect and likewise men who have more of a say in your own life than you do yourself til you reach their age, lately have spoken a lot of a certain miracle that recently has taken place in Florence. They have heard news of "La Cupola" having been completed.
Being a curious person in the possession of a vivid imagination, you've sometimes allowed yourself to get carried away listening to discussions between these elders and the local priest.
Even though the priest is far from old, he is an educated man who in fact knows how to read, how to write and even how to count without using his fingers, small stones or sticks.
Something these men once got very excited over was a fascinating discussion dealing with the bygone age when Rome - a distant, but yet not too distant city, ruled all of the world.
At that particular occasion, these old men made the impression of having a great deal of insight into the history of ancient Rome. Too bad most of them lack teeth and the local wine produced that year turned out a very strong one.
Anyhow, these highlights of local village life somehow inspired you to explore the world outside your home terrain.
You've understood that the Roman Empire was a "golden" age and as far as you've understood things, almost everyone back then was noble, brave and knew how to read and write - and now some claim Florence of your time has found out the secret behind it all!
Despite the fact that you nourish mixed emotions regarding the cocky "Fiorentini" - the people living in the city itself - resisting the desire of experiencing the "new Rome" on everybody's lips at first hand is futile.
Carried by winding roads, you approach Florence. The noise and the stench of her gutters drag you into an endless labyrinth.
You hear excited tounges throwing the words "la cupola" all around them, but "la cupola" seems nowhere to be found.
Then, given no forewarning, you are instantly struck, dwarfed into utter nothingness by a giant, cupped hand coming out of the sky - the hand of God.
Everything people have been telling you about it all you realize to be true.
Surrounded by likewise dumbfounded men wearing much fancier clothing than you and children running around shouting things like "Ecco la cupola, ecco la cupola, apri gli occhi vecchia letrosa, ecco Fiorenza!!" you admit to yourself:
In Florence, a new golden age has been born.
This story has no end.
Just like the struggle for freedom is eternal, humanity can not allow itself to embrace each and every idiotic doomsday prophecy being presently being marketed by the least responsible occupational group throughout the entire history of mankind; journalists.
Western Civilization finally survived the Black Death and in the middle of the former century, Europe (where I live) went from the chaos, starvation and scorched earth following WWII to a prosperity never experienced before in the history of the continent (a development much aided by the US - in several ways).
We all know life isn't easy, but that doesn't mean whining is the solution to anything.
Once we Westerners of today decide to do away with the PC notion consisting in our civilization being morally inferior compared to all others and doomed for one reason or the other and all of that nonsense, we will found an age more "golden" than the Renaissance. An era actually even more golden than the sum of all tacky accessories that troughout history has hindered hip hop/R&B celebs and their entourage from moving around like normal persons.
Believe me, developing a confidence in one's own dignity, in the ability of your own country and the future possibilities of true civilization is something more fruitful and rewarding than running around, constantly cackling about the end of the world.
"What, me worry?"
(Alfred E. Neuman)
In 1527, a leaderless mercenary army took and sacked Rome. For three days the citizens of Rome were subjected to torture, murder, rape, pillage and all the other evils the kind of men a mercenary army was composed of could subject the citizens to.
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At this point they would probably more accurately be called an “ex-mercenary” army. Nobody was paying them, which is pretty much why they attacked Rome. Loot would have to pay if Charles V or somebody else wouldn’t.
This is also well after the condottieri era, being a phase in the wars between France and Spain/Empire over control of Italy.
How about Reformation?
Two are in progress. The first is the Fanatic Ilsamic attempt thet has as its goal the rigid enforcement of Koranic thought.
The second reform is the secular liberal enlightenment movement that is already sucessful in much of Europe and well on its way in America.
Neither will be a Rennasiance and both are likely to produce Dark Ages.
All I know I learned from Will Durant and his 11 volumes
When I was young our parish built a new church in the modernist mode. It looks something like a very large egg. I had a high school priest who exalted in the modernism of my new parish church over the "old" (and thereby invalid in his mind) forms of the other catholic churches in the city.
The modernist fanatics have the same mindset of all the "experts" in the arts. The fallacy in their thinking is that new is always superior to old...even if it looks inferior. They never consider that maybe all the best designs have been made. I'm not saying that some future architect, painter, composer, etc. might come up with something brilliant. But we may have exhausted most of the great forms. At any rate I much prefer old (pre-twentieth century) to new in just about any art form you can name.
You are of course right.
This mindset carries over into other fields where it may be even more inappropriate. Thus the campaign slogans about “change,” with no real attention being paid to what type of change is meant. The assumption being that anything new is preferable to anything old.
No, it wasn't clear at all. I thought you were simply dismissing the last 30 years of Einstein's research. Whatever his earlier views might have been, in his mature years he was keenly aware that relativity and quantum mechanics contradict each other. And as Aristotle knew and ever Schoolman knew in the Middle Ages, a contradiction is always false. And Einstein knew that too.
(Or maybe you haven't had a real drink yet this weekend, fellow freeper:D? - Just joking).
I am a Vodka drinker. So tonight I will toast you when I have my third drink. Santé, cincin.
Actually, this, rather well known dilemma of Monsieur Einstein is exactly what I was aiming at in my comment. My impression too is he was, at least somewhat, distressed by the problems he faced. However, to genuine theorists like Einstein this problem could easily be done away with.
Well, I don't think it is a matter of an impression. It is a fact that Einstein spent the last 30 years of his life looking for a unified field theory. He knew there was a contraction between his theory and quantum mechanics. And no, the problem cannot be easily done away with unless you decide to throw logic out the window. Einstein tried for 30 years to find a solution, but he failed to find a theory that would resolve the contradiction.
Physicists today are still trying to find a solution. Super string theory and M-theory may be the key to unlock this tangled problem, but there still isn't a consensus among scientists. And then there is the problem of experimental data. There simply aren't any instruments sensitive enough to detect these proposed strings.
The logic that a contradiction is false hasn't change since ancient Greece, the Middle Ages, or the Renaissance. (Unless of course a man agrees with Martin Luther that reason is a great whore.) There may indeed be things in life that logic cannot explain. But that is no excuse to discard logic in its legitimate fields of application like science. In science as in logic and mathematics, a contradiction is still false.
With respect to WWII and WWI: IMHO Western Civilization has tried to rip itself apart two times within less than 100 years. What does that say about its future?
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