Pico Della Mirandola's On The Dignity Of Man

Originated in the fourteenth century in Italy, the concept humanism was the result of an attempt to make a distinction between the study of humanity – the disciplines of grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history and moral philosophy and the study of divinity - of natural philosophy and vocational disciplines such as law and medicine. The humanists of the 14th and 15th centuries were particularly interested in reviving the classical learning of the ancient Greece and Rome finding an ideal of human life in them. Pico della Mirandola’s On the Dignity of Man was an attempt to integrate the ancient human values and the Christian ideals of life. Pico however, gave a new emphasis to Christian values by asserting the distinctive human capacity for free choice. However, it is basically a philosophical and ethical theory that postulates the value and freedom of the individual

Its assumptions are based on the critical thinking capacity of the individuals based on rationalist and empiricist evidences. It is understood in the modern times as aligning itself with secular and non- theistic position and reacts against superstition and traditional beliefs. Rather than depending on divine revelation humanism seeks the explanation of mystery of life in science and scientific evidences.

The first German use of the term humanism had been effectively made by Burckhardt. Burckhardt considers humanism not merely as educational curriculum, but as a cultural phenomenon. This same concept of humanism was later reaffirmed by

John Addington Symonds in 1877. According to him, “The essence of humanism consisted in a new and vital perception of the dignity of man as a rational being apart from theological determinations, and in the further perception that classical literature alone displayed human nature in the plenitude of intellectual and moral freedom” (52).