Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2019
Since humanism has been traditionally considered as one of the chief intellectual movements of the Renaissance period, it should probably not cause any surprise that humanism in recent years has had the dubious distinction of becoming as much of a historical problem as the Renaissance itself has been for some time. As a matter of fact, the concept of humanism is of comparable complexity, and if we choose to extend it beyond the chronological limits of the Renaissance period, it is almost equally broad. Humanism can be, and has been, defined in a variety of ways, and we might very well take the view that any definition is acceptable provided it is explicitly formulated, the range of its application is clearly indicated, and its original meaning is consistently maintained, especially if the definition seems to have some relevance or validity for the phenomena which it is intended to describe.
This paper is based on a talk given before the New England Renaissance Conference at Brown University on 17 October 1959. In a way, this paper is a sequel to a survey which I published Jointly with John H. Randall Jr. and which covered relevant publications up to about 1940 (‘The Study of the Philosophies of the Renaissance’, Journal of the History of Ideas II [1941], 449-496, reissued in Surveys of Recent Scholarship in the Period of Renaissance, compiled for the Committee on Renaissance Studies of the American Council of Learned Societies, First Series, 1945). Yet the scope of the present paper is different since it covers also the non-philosophical aspects of Renaissance humanism and disregards those Renaissance philosophers who were not a part of the humanist movement, that is, the Aristotelians, the philosophers of nature, and even the Platonists. The present paper also overlaps with another recent paper of mine ('Changing Views of the Intellectual History of the Renaissance since Jacob Burckhardt', in The Renaissance, ed. T. Helton [Madison, 1961], pp. 27-52) where I discussed many intellectual currents of the Renaissance besides humanism, and mentioned many studies written between i860 and 1940. In order to avoid overloading the present paper with footnotes, I have appended to it a selective bibliography which is arranged alphabetically and is mainly limited to relevant books published between 1941 and 1961. Only a few articles have been included, and I must apologize for the omission of any relevant books that I may have overlooked. The bibliography covers primarily, but not exclusively, Italian humanism.