Humans Are Great
For many years, especially during the dark ages, human worth was not very highly regarded. In the medieval times, artists solely created works that dealt with religion, and creations outside of this genre were not well accepted. However, during the renaissance this all changed thanks to men like Francesco Petrarch who challenged this way of thinking.
Petrarch lived in Italy during the commencement of the renaissance. He was a scholar, a philosopher, a poet and most importantly he is considered the father of humanism. Humanism challenged the idea that art should strictly be about religion and it dared artist to create more realistic depictions of humans. Humanism also brought forth a thirst for deeper knowledge and to know more about the earth and how it functions.
Satan often uses lies to make us feel that God does not love us and that our worth is minimal. I believe that this was one of Satan's many lies that was used during the dark ages. By diminishing the value of ourselves, education, art, poetry and other creative works, important things became unimportant and the humans of this time remained stagnant and lost. But thankfully because of Petrarch and other great men we can now see the value in others and most importantly in ourselves.
Thanks for your post. I liked that you brought up the point that it is easy to get mislead to believe that we aren't worth much. One question I had after reading your post is: how widely dispersed was the idea of humanism? Generally, scholars and artists were of a higher class than most people during the Renaissance. I'm just wondering how accessible the idea of humanism was to your everyday peasant. Any thoughts?
ReplyDeleteI liked your conclusion. It made me think about the verse in the Book of Mormon where God says that he "gave unto the Jews things they could not see, because they sought after things the could not understand" (paraphrasing). In my opinion, when we sit around postulating--debating the temperature in heaven or whether or not we'll have halos and wings in paradise, searching for things that have no connection with our Humanity/mortality during our probationary time here on earth--we are missing the mark and the opportunity for God to show us what glorious things these mortal bodies are capable of. After all, we'll be taking them with us, perfected, into the next life. So we might as well learn as much as possible about the beauty of our own human nature.
ReplyDeleteI'm not an expert in humanism, but I understand (like you) that humanism is a shift from awe towards God and his works to awe towards man and his works. A good balanced view of these works focuses on man's accomplishments while still having a humble view of man (since he is mortal and all). Where on this scale do you believe man is today? In my opinion, we have shifted from a pre-humanistic view of God as everything to today's view that man is EVERYTHING. Today, man is so much more narcissistic than he ever was and than he ever should have been.
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