Stumbled into a humanities lecture—
The gist: 'The Middle Ages were not an age of darkness.'
On the contrary, it was the first time humanity came face to face with the human as an individual,
and at the same time the seeds of the force that would allow humanity to face the world began to sprout.
So it is more apt to say that the Middle Ages were the dawn leading into the Renaissance.
1.
"Augustine": Discovering the human
He was a famously brilliant mind. Yet even so, as he looked at his own desires and lusts,
he began to doubt Greek and Roman philosophy (that humans are rational beings).
In the end he concluded that human intellect and learning do not translate directly into goodness.
(Simply put: 'Being well-educated doesn't make you good.' It sounds like common sense now, but apparently it wasn't at the time.)
This is a very important event. It's the rediscovery of human nature.
Why, even though they've learned much and know what is bad, people still can't fully control it? Pondering that,
he began to 'understand the human in a new way.'
He then wrote the work called the [Confessions] — often called the 'first autobiography.'
For the first time, not the confession of a hero or philosopher but that of an ordinary human being
became the basis for a new philosophical theory. Human weakness and limits became a primary subject of philosophy.
Later, this forms the basis of 'Hebraism.'
His work and works and writers he influenced
Confessions, Book 10
-> The dawn of the Renaissance, the starting point of the humanities, discovering the meaning of the human
Petrarch
-> His works — including My Secret, which tries to untie the anguish of the heart by borrowing Augustine's thought — are important. He was a modern figure tormented by two conflicting desires: seeking secular pleasure and fame while also sinking into religious solitude.
-> As the greatest Italian poet after Dante, he had a huge influence on later generations.
The 16th-century French Renaissance was especially influenced by Petrarch, and this influence was even named pétrarquisme.
The Birth of Venus
-> Through the nude it opens up human nature and at the same time reveals, without hesitation, the limits of the human being that also coexist there.
2.
"Thomas Aquinas": Discovering the world
Strongly influenced by Aristotle.
Shaped by the separation of theology and philosophy (reason).
He was born into a wealthy family, but he wanted to enter the Dominican Order, which regarded poverty as a virtue, to become a priest.
His family resisted and tried to dissuade him fiercely. A famous episode: the painting 'The Angelic Doctor (Expelling the Prostitute),'
where his family secretly sent a prostitute into his room to stop Aquinas from becoming a priest, and the painting depicts Aquinas controlling his desire and driving her out.
Having mastered his desires, he went on to study at the University of Paris, where he met his teacher Albertus Magnus, and afterwards moved with Magnus to the University of Cologne (Germany), eventually returning to become a professor at the University of Paris.
His famous books include the Summa Theologica and the Summa Contra Gentiles.
He actually stopped writing the Summa Theologica partway through, saying speculative theory without experience had little meaning.
His other work, the 'Summa Contra Gentiles' (against the pagans — Islam, Muslims — from Spain),
: Served as a foundation that enabled the discovery of the world, by getting people to ask: "How can we communicate and have a dialogue with non-Christians?" — allowing philosophical debate about the human being and a neutral attitude toward the theory of Averroes.
As a driving force for the Renaissance, the 'Summa Contra Gentiles' had a huge impact.
By saying that in the heart of every person (even those who don't believe in Christ) there is the possibility of rationally understanding the absolute, it opened up, for the first time, the possibility of affirming a world outside of Christ.
The shock of Columbus at that time wasn't just 'the earth is round.'
It was 'as if Apollo 11 went to the moon and came back with the hypothesis that another humanity exists there.'
In the end, Aquinas's Summa Contra Gentiles
became the starting point of the new continent and East-West cultural exchange — in other words, the theoretical foundation that lets each side understand the other through dialogue.
The Birth of Venus became the driving force that gave positive meaning to the new world.
A conclusion that isn't really a conclusion
In the end the Middle Ages became
the foundation of the Renaissance — an age of light, beauty, and creation.
How does that compare with us?
Can Psy topping the Billboard chart, Samsung's technology and globalization, and the globalization of Korean cuisine alone really revive Korea?
The radiant kind of growth like the Renaissance requires that the universal majority be able to understand the "universal value of the human being."
That means understanding of the world has to come first.
P.S.
Thank you, EBS~
