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Lecture notes: Humanities 104, Class I

What do we know?

From about 6000-3000 BCE, man mined and used copper. By 3000 BCE bronze was being produced, and gold and silver were being worked. Around 2000 BCE iron and steel came into use. By 500 BCE, most weapons were made from them. No army was victorious using other metals for weapons.

Writing developed in several places including Sumeria in Mesopotamia around 3000 BCE. Since history is written record, this is the beginning of recorded history. The same civilization introduced the lunar calendar, a math computation system, etc. Remember, this course is western cultures; China introduced much at similar time or earlier.

Hammurabi’s Code emerged around 1700 BCE. Judaism emerged about 2000 BCE, and became the first religion to recognize the God of Abraham as the God.

The Hellenic Age of Greece began around 479 BCE and is the first of the classical civilizations in the west. Democracy appeared in this age but disappeared by the beginning of the Roman rule over the known western world in 148 BCE when Rome defeated Macedonia a 4th and last time. The Roman Republic lasted from 509 BCE until 44 BCE and the Empire lasted until 476 CE in the west and until 1453 CE in the east.

Christianity, the second religion to follow the God of Abraham began when BCE moved to CE. The third religion of the God of Abraham was begun by The Prophet Mohammed in 622 CE.

Philosophy and Man

Scholasticism began to develop around 1100 CE. It was a move educationally from art to logic as a focus for schools and universities. Instead of turning to the church for answers to problems of understanding, human reasoning began to be applied. The major issue of philosophy in this time was the question of universals or not: ie do general concepts, such as human being and church exist in reality or only in the mind. The schools of thought were known as realism and nominalism. The realists thought that the universals existed independent of physical objects or the human mind. Nominalists say only particular objects are real, so things like human being and church exist only in particular instances. Peter Abelard said that extreme realism denied individuality and was contrary to the bible. His form of realism was moderate and held that universals existed, but only as mental concepts and devises to sharpen and focus thinking. When new translations of Aristotle became available, his thinking supported much of Abelard’s. Much of Aristotle’s (384-322 BCE) work became available via Latin translations of medieval Arabic translations from the original Greek.

In the 12 hundreds, Scholasticism continued to grow. Learning and law were systemized. Leading practitioners were Gratian, who catalogued a manual for canon law with more than 4000 entries. Peter Lombard wrote 4 books cataloging most of Christian faith under the Trinity, Creation and Sin, the Incarnation, and the Virtues, and the Sacraments. Islamic thinker, Rushd or Averroes was an Aristotle scholar who wrote major commentaries on Aristotle’s beliefs concerning the eternity of matter and the denial of individual immortality. Scholars reading these commentaries in Paris believed that these writings could be reconciled with Christian doctrine. By 1255, there was dispute over the teaching of Aristotle’s Metaphysics and writings on natural science. Averroists wanted to keep philosophy and theology separate, but others said this was a double truth approach. Thomas Aquinas reconciled the breach with the middle way which gave Aristotle a central role in theology while honoring traditional beliefs. He advocated the study of nature and natural phenomena as ways to discover God’s purposes. Hence, with some exceptions, a tradition of rational thought that arose in Hellenic Greece and passed through medieval Islam, was introduced to Renaissance thought and lead toward the Scientific Revolution that would introduce modern times.

By the late middle ages, Aquinas’ via media (Thomism) was being attacked and called the Via Antiqua. The Via Moderna made a complete separation between faith and reason. Via Antiqua disappeared then until the 19th century. Via Moderna was championed by William Ockham who felt that faith and reason were both valid but separate paths to truth. Humans can have clear, distinct knowledge only of the physical world. No real knowledge of the spiritual world can be gained through reason or the senses. 14th century scholars such as Robert Grosseteste, and Roger Bacon refined the experimental scientific method and foreshadowed the approach of modern science.

The Middle Ages were once called the Dark Ages on the basis of the feeling that light had disappeared from the world with the fall of the Roman Empire in the west in 476 CE. The time is now called Middle or Medieval and has no basic negative connotation. As the Medieval period ended at different times in different places, the Renaissance began to emerge.

In the early Renaissance, most of the 15th century, Italy consisted of separate states including the Republic of Venice, the Duchy of Milan, the Republic of Florence, The Papal States, and the Kingdom of Naples. They warred among themselves for the first half of the 15th century. Florence, the capital of Tuscany, was most prominent. It went from republic, to oligarchy, to autocracy (Medici family).

The Papacy had reunited in Rome after having been split between Rome and Avignon, France. It brought artistic wealth to the era but lowered its morale standing by accepting bribes for church offices. Pius II was most representative of Renaissance popes because of his interest in Greek and Roman classicism, the arts, and his ability to wage war or to depend on diplomacy. Sixtus IV had the Sistine Chapel built and then adorned with the efforts of Botticelli, Perungi, and Michelangelo.

Philosophy began to move toward individual fulfillment instead of social and religious conformity. Humanism gained influence and scope. It implied a concern with things Greek and Roman, but it also expressed itself in history, rhetoric, poetry, and philosophy. Schools sprang up throughout Italy that expressed the Renaissance ideal of education which was to free or liberate the mind. They read classic literature and practiced rhetoric.

Art returned to being light and beautiful. The female nude was reintroduced, though always modestly posed, for the first time since Greece and Rome. Botticelli was the first to move in that direction. Sculpture and painting became art forms independent of architecture. Filippo Brunelleschi invented linear perspective. It provided a math based formula to allow a two dimensional surface to show the third dimension, depth. In the 1800s, early cameras proved his equation. The Cathedral Dome, built between 1420-1436 in Florence, was done by Brunelleschi and rises 367’ above the floor. Mail nudes reappeared in sculpture with Donatello’s bronze David. The marble David of great fame was done by Michelangelo beginning in 1501.

Leanardo Da Vinci was one of the great minds and talents of the era. His painting of the Last Supper brought fame during his lifetime while the Mona Lisa was discovered after his death. It brings him recognition as an immortal of western art.