Renaissance Humanism — Human
"Man is the measure of all things"
Petrarch · 14~15세기
Renaissance Humanism — Human — "Man is the measure of all things". Renaissance Humanism did not deny God — it moved humans to center stage.
📜 Origin
For a thousand medieval years, Europe placed God at the center. Then in the 14th century, Petrarch climbed Mont Ventoux and noted in his journal: "My feet tremble. The very fact that I see this mountain is meaningful." A century later, Pico della Mirandola in his Oration on the Dignity of Man proclaimed — God gave humans no fixed place (unlike animals) so that humans might shape their own.
💡 Meaning
Renaissance Humanism did not deny God — it moved humans to center stage. Leonardo's Vitruvian Man — limbs outstretched within circle and square, becoming the measure of the cosmos. One drawing as humanism's visual manifesto.
🌏 Eastern Classic Cross-link
Donghak's Choi Je-u: "In Nae Cheon" — Human is Heaven. Renaissance Humanism said "human is the measure"; five centuries later Donghak said "human is the divine." East and West reaching the same summit by different paths.
"人" depicts a person standing on two legs, seen from the side. The simplest hanja, and the deepest. All of humanism compresses into this one character — that a human stands is itself the cosmos's greatest event.
🌐 Modern Application
Declarations of human rights, patient-centered medicine, Korea's civic movements, and the UN SDGs' pledge to "leave no one behind."
⚠️ Caveat
"Human-centeredness" risks spilling into indifference toward the environment — 21st-century environmental ethics calls for an expansion of humanism.
🔗 Related Thoughts
To explore the hanja deeper
📜 Cheonjamun 1000 Hanja →