The Influence Of Humanism During The Renaissance

Thesis

Human life, according to Montaigne, does not fit a standard mode of operation, and people should be free to express their thoughts. Why it took so long to come to fruition could be contributed to the inconsistency Charles Trinkaus was so concerned with in his In Our Image and Likeness. What he was saying is that humanists failed to see the forest for the trees because they too were part of a world in which the unfair treatment of human beings was the norm.

Humanists during the Renaissance were apt to expand upon the idea that human beings were worth something more than many dogmatic ideas of the 15th and 16th Century would normally condemn them to. Most people lived lives of quiet desperation during this time in history; common people, mostly serfs or slaves that worked long hours for low pay (if for any money at all) and died in the dirt, forgotten. Into this void of humanitarian concerns came the idea that men and women deserved to be treated better, that people were living breathing creatures that should be given more respect.

Instead of the stolid, dogmatic focus on ruling cultural fixtures such as the church, humanists were more open-minded to the idea that people and their individual enterprises were much more interesting. There was diversity to thinking, to human endeavor that had never been considered before, and philosophers like Michel de Montaigne were open to the idea that this human activity was worth more consideration than ever considered before (Michel de Montaigne, 2014). Humankind’s place in the world became a much more secure, dominate force due to this writer’s ideas, and many others were later inspired to believe the