“On Defining the Renaissance: A Humanistic Approach”!
Central Renaissance Conference
Session on Problems of Definition and Value
University of Missouri – Columbia
Columbia, Missouri
March 29, 1974
Karl J. Fink and James W. Marchand
It seems somehow impolite to challenge the methodological basis of scholarship
in Renaissance studies – to ask whether the questions posed are good ones or if they can
even be posed, but, with due apologies, this is what we wish to do. In so doing, however,
that is, in discussing the question of “What is the Renaissance?”, we hope that we will not
be simply beating a dead horse, for it is to be hoped that those non-productive questions
of yesteryear as to the meaning of the term itself and whether it ought to be applied to this
or that phenomenon are past. We are well aware that there is a large volume of material,
surveyed masterfully by Ferguson and Burdach, for example, on defining the
Renaissance and by Kristeller on related concepts of comparable complexity like
Humanism. There are even those, like Taylor, who have so despaired of arriving at a
reasonable definition of the term Renaissance that they pride themselves on not using it at
all.1 If, however, one surveys all these attempts at a definition of the term the
Renaissance, one will note a lack common to all of them: a lack of attention to the
strategy of definition and the field of concept formation. In other words we are not so
!
This article is based on a talk given at the 1974 Central Renaissance Conference hosted by the University
of Missouri in Columbia. Our discussion is directed primarily to the theme set for the conference –
“Sixteenth-century Civilization: Fulfillment or End of the Renaissance?”, although we feel the issues
involved in defining the Renaissance are significant for other areas of the Humanities.
1
For discussion of various attempts to define and/or delimit the Renaissance, see Konrad Burdach,
Renaissance, Reformation and Humanismus, 2nd ed., (Berlin, 1926), and especially Wallace K. Ferguson,
The Renaissance in Historical Thought, Five Centuries of Interpretations, (Boston, 1948). Concerning the
related concept of Humanism the reader may refer to Paul Kristeller, “Studies on Renaissance Humanism
during the Last Twenty Years,” in Studies in the Renaissance, (New York, 1962), IX, 7-30. H.O. Taylor
prided himself on writing two volumes on Thought and Expression in the Sixteenth Century, (New York,
1920), without having used the forbidden term. much interested in proposing another definition for the Renaissance as we are in
discussing the prior question, namely, how does one go about discussing such a problem.
It is hoped that our deliberations may thus have importance for the question of definition,
delimitation, and periodization in literature in general, as well as for defining the
Renaissance.
The first thing one notices in observing the definitions of the Renaissance is the
question of the appropriateness of the term: was the Renaissance a real rebirth or just a
continuation?2 Or, would it be appropriate to choose another term, such as revitalization,
renewal, reaffirmation, etc.? It is commonly held in works on definition theory that these
are pseudo-questions, since they are nominal and not real, that is, have merely to do with
labels, tags, and not real things, or, as Paul Lehmann put it, they are merely examples of
Etikettierung.3 Before we put the question of name aside with a casual A Rose By Any
Other Name, however, we might do well to look at William Dray’s well-known article
“’Explaining What’ in History.” He points out that a world of importance can be
attached to a word such as revolution when Ramsey Muir says: “It was not merely an
economic change that was beginning: it was a social revolution.”4 Before Dray it was
often maintained that the term applied to a historical event of conglomerate of events was
of no importance; almost no one maintains this today. The first point in our discussion of
strategy is then this: It is quite proper to ask whether the Renaissance was actually a
Renaissance. In discussing this question, it is naturally of importance to be reminded of
the other renaissances, The Carolingian Renaissance, The Ottonian Renaissance, and The
2
See on this question C. H. Haskins’ The Renaissance of the 12th Century, (Cambridge, 1927), 3-32.
Paul Lehmann, “Das Problem der Karolingischen Renaissance,” in: I Problemi della Civilta Carolingia
(Settimane di studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’ Alto Medioevo, I), (Spoleto, 1954), 309-358.
4
William Dray, “’Explaining What’ in History,” in: Patrick Gardiner, Theories of History, (Glencoe,
Illinois, 1959), 403-408.
3
2 Renaissance of the 12th Century,5for the Renaissance is an historical process and, pace
Lehmann, not a historical fact. It is one of several theoretical constructs such as
Humanism, Mannerism, Gothic, or Baroque which are of use to us in explicating some of
the facts of the period, but it is useless to ask when it begins and when it ends, except as
this question helps us in explicating these facts. While some may consider the “rival”
renaissances by now to be superannuated, one ought at all times keep the generality of the
term in mind.6
If there exists renaissances, then, what sort of concept is the notion of
renaissance? Not all concepts are alike, although most of the works on the definition of
the renaissance tacitly assume that they are. There are, for example, non-metrical
concepts such as hot, where the amount of heat necessary to be hot is not only not
defined, but un-definable to anyone but the scientist, who himself cannot make up his
mind. We have porous concepts, such as phone in linguistics, where things keep slipping
though the conceptual framework of the concepts. Or, of vital importance to the human
sciences are dialectical concepts like “democracy” where the antinomy between the One
and the Many cannot be absolutely resolved.7 In fact, there are many different kinds of
concepts and no advance in the philosophy of science over the past quarter-century has
been so important as recent work on the problem of concept formation.8 However, such
questions have always occupied philosophers. This is witnessed by the concern of the
5
See the discussion by Haskins and Lehmann cited above, notes 2 and 3.
The Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. Philip Wiener, (New York, 1973), states that the term
Renaissance is a “synoptic abstraction,” but also expresses the view that it is autonomous and
contemporary with a particular cultural change and with a specific epoch, IV, 121. 7
For a survey of various kinds of concepts see Francis Zartman’s Definition and Open Texture, (University
of Illinois Dissertation, 1964). Others can be located in separate discussion such as the dialectical concepts
found in Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen’s Analytical Economics, (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), 17-46.
8
See Ernan McMullin, “Recent Work in the Philosophy of Science,” New Scholasticism, 40 (1966), 479517.
6
3 1920’s and 1930’s with theory construction: botryology,9 and theory of clumps,10
typology,11 nonmetrical ordering,12 numerical taxonomy,13 to name but a few. In a
number of fields, notably sociology and psychology, there have been attempts to
articulate “languages” of research.14 In other fields, notably biology, attempts at
axiomatization have led to examination of concept formation.15 In spite of the
importance of such matters to literary study, as is seen by the number of works on
terminology, we know of no work which deals with definition of concept formation in
literary study. In this unfortunate state of affairs scholars have expended much energy on
long and involved discussions on terminology rather than actual issues. This is perhaps
nowhere so evident as in prelim questions such as “What literary movement does Mörike
fit into?” or “Define romanticism” and in the interminable series of papers on the
definition of comparative literature. Our present study will present a discussion of the
notions of concept formation and will apply these to the question of the definition of
literary movements in general, to the renaissance specifically.
Concept Formation
Aristotelian concepts are those amenable to Aristotelian (classical) methods of
classification and division. Such concepts are characterized by clear borders, no overlap
with other concepts, and the possibility of uniquely assigning an entity no overlap with
9
I. J. Good, “Botryological Speculations,” in: The Scientist Speculates, ed. I.J. Good, (New York, 1965)
120-132; idem, The Estimation of Probabilities, (Cambridge, Mass., 1965).
10
R. M. Needham, “Applications of the Theory of Clumps,” Mechanical Translation, 8 (1965), 113-127.
11
W. S. Allen, “Classification and Language,” Classification Society Bulletin, 1 (1965), 13-22; Carl G.
Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation, (New York, 1965), 155-171.
12
Carl G. Hempel, Fundamentals of Concept Formation in Empirical Science, (Chicago, 1952), 155-171.
13
R. R. Sokal and P. H. A. Sneath, Principles of Numerical Taxonomy, (San Francisco, 1963).
14
George Mandler and William Kessen, The Language of Psychology, (New York, 1959); Jerome S.
Bruner, J. J. Goodnow and G. A. Austin, A Study of Thinking, (New York, 1956); Robert Bierstedt,
“Nominal and Real Definitions in Sociological Theory,” in: Symposium on Sociological Theory, ed. L.
Gross, (Buffalo, 1959), 121-144.
15
J. H. Woodger, Axiomatic Method in Biology, (Cambridge, 1937); idem, The Technique of Theory
Construction, (Chicago, 1939).
4 other concepts, and the possibility of uniquely assigning an entity to a concept. This is
assured by following the three rules: “1. There must be only one fundamentum divisionis
at each step. 2. The division must be exhaustive. 3. The successive steps of the division
must proceed by gradual stages.”16 Such concepts are rare in literary study, although
there is a strong tendency to treat literary concepts as if they were Aristotelian and to treat
non-Aristotelian concepts as if they were somehow inferior to Aristotelian concepts. For
example, when we ask our students to assign an author to a movement or to define a
movement we are treating the notion of movement as if it were Aristotelian. When we
argue the question as to whether Shakespeare’s works are to be attributed to Bacon, we
are assuming that attribution is an Aristotelian concept. When we argue as to the
definition of the grotesque, we are treating grotesque as if it were Aristotelian.
The existence of non-Aristotelian concepts has been pointed out in a number of
quarters,17 under such terms as “ideal types” (Weber, Hempel), “vagueness” (Runes,
Black), “porosity and open texture” (Waisman), “penumbra” (Georgescu-Roegen), to
name a few, so that the existence of such entities seems assured. Also, the importance of
“ideal type” for literary studies has been noted in Ernst Cassirer’s “Some Remarks on the
Question of the Originality of the Renaissance,” while Morris Weitz has commented on
“open texture” in “The Role of Theory in Aesthetics.”18 Unfortunately, none of these
treatments offers a taxonomy or even gives examples of the use of such concepts in
discourse. Perhaps this is due to the ineffable nature of non-Aristotelian concepts,
16
Cf. Susan Stebbing, A Modern Introduction to Logic, (New York and London, 1930).
See footnote 7. 18
Cassirer, Journal of the History of Ideas, 4 (1943), 49-56; Weitz, in: Problems in Aesthetics, ed. Morris
Weitz, (New York, 1959), 145-56.
17
5 perhaps because of the difficulty one has in explaining them, or the embarrassment one
has in using them. At any rate, we shall discuss only one, the notion of “ideal type”.
According to Hempel,
An ideal type… is a mental construct formed by the synthesis of many diffuse,
more or less present and occasionally absent, concrete individual phenomena,
which are arranged, according to certain one-sidedly accentuated points of view,
into a unified analytical construct, which in its conceptual purity cannot be found
in reality; it is a utopia, a limiting concept, with which concrete phenomena can
only be compared for the purpose of explicating some of their significant
components.19
“Neanderthal man” and “today’s youth” are examples of ideal types. It has been
maintained, for example, that American students read Hesse more than German students,
although publication statistics will show the opposite to be true, and one can easily find
many American students who have never even heard of Hesse. Nevertheless, it is true
that the “American student,” as one usually encounters him in the newspapers, reads
Hesse, in fact it is, like the beard, almost a defining characteristic. It is important to note
that, as Hempel points out, such concepts cannot be defined by genus proximum and
differentia specifica, as can Aristotelian concepts, and that concrete cases cannot be
subsumed under them as instances, that is, they are intensional and not extensional.
Thus, to return to our example, one cannot define “student” as the term is used by our
daily newspapers, for indeed many people who are not studying at universities and
colleges are included, and the majority of those who do attend institutions of higher
19
Carl G. Hempel, “Typological Methods in the Social Sciences,” in: Philosophy of the Social Sciences, ed.
Maurice Natanson, (New York, 1963), 211.
6 learning are excluded, from extension of the term as usually used. It is and ideal type. In
literary study, such notions as “generations,” “genre,” “movement,” and the like are
really ideal types. One cannot point to any archetypal Romantic novel, for example, nor
can one specify a set of characteristics, possession of which assures that a novel will be a
Romantic novel. It is simply an ideal type, a very useful notion, and we have neither
reason to be ashamed of its fuzziness nor to try to change it into an Aristotelian concept
by making up ever newer ad hoc definitions. The logic of the humanities is distinct from
that of the natural sciences.
Definition
A definition states that a certain term is applied to a concrete concept. Its form is
in part dictated by the type of concept being defined. Aristotelian concepts are best
defined by proximum genus and differentia specifica, familiar to us from schoolbook
discussions of definition. Most works on scientific definition permit only this kind.20
But other types are best defined by operations (e.g., Pike’s definition of the phoneme in
terms of the operations performed in order to obtain it21); theoretical terms are best
defined by their position in the theory.22 Since even a scholarly paper is intended to
communicate, one should avoid using accepted terms in new applications.23
Nevertheless, it is obvious that the more a term is used, the more likelihood there is that
new meanings will become attached to it (Zipf’s law24), and a term which covers too
20
For an opposing point of view, see Richard Robinson, Definition, (Oxford, 1954). See also Kenneth
Burke, A Grammar of Motives and a Rhetoric of Motives, (Cleveland, 1962), “per Genus et Differentiam,”
408 ff.
21
Kenneth Pike, Phonemics, (Ann Arbor, 1949).
22
Sandra B. Rosenthal, “The Cognitive Status of Theoretical Terms,” Dialectica, 22 (1968), 3-19; I. M.
Copi, Introduction to Logic, 2nd ed., (New York, 1961), 99 ff.
23
Cf. Robinson, op. cit., (note 20 above), 80 ff.
24
For a discussion of Zipf’s law see Collin Cherry, On Human Communication, (Cambridge, Mass., 1957),
103 ff.
7 many things really applies to nothing (dictum de omne et de nullo). In such cases, it may
be best to scrap the term altogether, and this has been proposed in the case of the
Renaissance. It seems to us that too much emphasis is put on discussions of literary
terms on the proprietas verborum or “fitness of terms.” Unless there is a danger of clash
of terms or psychological conditioning we ought really to maintain that a rose by any
other name would smell as sweet. In the case of the Renaissance, as pointed out above,
there is good reason for worrying about the intrinsic meaning of the word with its
consequent conditioning. Above all, a definition should not make a non-Aristotelian one.
We cannot forego adding here one more admonition concerning definition by systrophe,
which is, we suppose, the most common type of definition in literary studies. It is from
Peachams Garden of Eloquence (1953):
Systrophe of some called Conglobatio, of other Convolutio, is when the Orator
bringeth in many definitions of one thing, yet not such definitions as do declare
the substance of a thing by the general kind [proximum genus] and the difference
[differentia specifica], which the art of reasoning doth prescribe, but others of
another kind all heaped together: such as these definitions of Cicero be in the
second book of an Orator, where he amplifieth the dignity of an history thus: an
historie saith he, is the testimony of the times, the light of veritie, the maintenance
of memorie, the scoolemistresse of life, and messenger of antiquitie.25
If you will look at Symonds’ definition of the Renaissance, you will see that his
discussion is for the most part systrophic.
By the term Renaissance, or new birth is indicated a natural movement, not to be
explained by this or that characteristic, but to be accepted as an effort of humanity
25
Henry Peacham, The Garden of Eloquence, (Gainesville, Florida, 1954), 153.
8 for which at length the time had come, and in the onward progress of which we
still participate. The history of the Renaissance is not the history of the
attainment of self-conscious freedom by the human spirit manifested in European
races. It is no mere political mutation, no new fashion of art, no restoration of
classical standards of taste. The arts and the inventions, the knowledge and the
book, which suddenly become - (became?) vital at the time of the Renaissance,
had long lain neglected on the shores of the Dead Sea which we call the Middle
Ages. It was not their discovery which caused the Renaissance. But it was the
intellectual energy, the spontaneous outburst of intelligence, which enabled
mankind at the moment to make use of them. The force then generated still
continues, vital and expansive, in the spirit of the modern World.26
If the term is to mean anything, it cannot b extended to include everything, and
statements such as “We are still living in the Renaissance” are meaningless, except for
rhetorical purposes.
If then such notions as the Renaissance are ideal types and are not amenable to
delimitation by normal strategies of definition, how shall we deal with them? Are we
reduced to silence by Wittgenstein’s famous dictum: “Was man nicht sagen kann,
darüber muß man schweigen.” The answer is of course No, but we must cease treating
such notions as if they were definable, discrete entities with clear-cut borders. The
question, for example: “Was Erasmus truly a Renaissance man?” cannot be answered by
enumerating the defining characteristics of the Renaissaince and checking to see if
Erasmus possessed these. If we may be permitted a metaphor, the difference between the
high jump and the balance beam in the Olympics is much like the difference between the
26
John A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy: The Age of the Despots, (New York, 1907), 1. 9 concept formation of the sciences and the humanities. There is no question as to who
wins in the high jump, but the gymnastic competition involves judgment and the human
equation; no matter how much the guidelines try to Aristotelianize the judgment by citing
parameters of good performance, in the long run, good performance will be judged by
imponderables. Thus we need not apologize when we find that the term Renaissance is
applied now in one sense, now in another, or when one authority has the Renaissance end
in 1600, another in 1700. The desire for fixed and firm borders and fixed and firm
terminology, for words which always mean the same thing, it seems to us, contrary to the
very logic of the humanities.
A Logic of the Humanities
It is unfortunate that scholars in the humanities have been conditioned to feel that
ideal type concepts are somehow inferior to Aristotelian concepts. In fact, this feeling is
so universal that almost all books on teaching in the humanities espouse such notions as
programmed learning, algorithms, stated goals which are quantized and quantified, so
that many universities are now using cost-effective doctrines in allocation of funds.
These notions, which come to us from the sciences, are of limited application in a field
where the human being is the measure of all things, not the machine. The human learner,
for example, may function better by not having everything carefully spelled out for him,
by being immersed in the subject, for example. The time has come when we must
reaffirm, for example, that linguistics is a human activity, and that mechanical methods of
study are subservient to humans and not vice versa. In literary studies we must reaffirm
the undeniable fact, for example, that whatever information the computer may offer us in
the final instance be weighed by the human mind. Thus it is fallacious to affirm that the
10 computer can solve problems of attribution, for example. Although it may appear that we
are straying from the central problem, we must admit that the scholar’s notions are
invariably conditioned by the ambience, intellectual and otherwise, in which they are
conceived. The prevailing models in science are algorithmic, based on notions of
positivism and computerization, and there is an ever-present danger that the humanities
will be swamped with such notions, so that we must be on the defensive against them.
Above all, we must avoid giving in to methods of quantizing and quantifying and put
forth a logic of the humanities focusing on qualta rather than quanta. Thus, those who
wish to define and delimit the Renaissance in the traditional ways run the risk of
perverting their own concept by applying methods of quantification when measuring
phenomena requiring humanistic judgments.
What then may we propose as a definition of the Renaissance? The Renaissance
is an intellectual movement in Western European thought which may be delimited in time
and space for the purpose of explicating some feature or event, which may be defined
variously for the same purposes, but which must forever remain flexible. It is a floating
concept, and ideal type, a construct much like other terms such as Romanticism, which
are valuable for the Humanist perhaps just because they defy traditional rules of
definition. Thus, to return to our opening statement, questions like “What is
Renaissance” are perfectly valid for the Humanist, if not for the Aristotelian Humanist.
And, rather than being frustrated and humiliated by such “fuzzy” notions, we Humanists
ought to be proud of them and cultivate them. Se non é ben trovato, é vero.
University of Illinois
James W. Marchand
Karl J. Fink
11