Humanism and Dialogue

Humanism and Dialogue It has long been recognized that, as Paul Oskar Kristeller puts it, 'the most extensive and direct expression of the thought of the humanists proper must be sought in . . . their treatises and dialogues'.1 Nevertheless, surprisingly little attention has been paid to Renaissance humanist dialogues in terms of what might be called the sociology of their literary form. Though David Marsh has recently studied the form and themes of quattrocento Italian dialogues, he does not develop for the humanist dialogue the awareness of context that Anthony Kenny and Jan Pinborg develop for medieval phdosophical literature, which they argue 'is closely associated with medieval schools and universities as well as with the material and psychological conditions prevading at these institutions'.2 Yet, in the continuing debate over humanism, the important form of the dialogue, with the clues it gives us of its social milieu, may be extremely revealing. The argument of this paper will be that the humanistic dialogue differs in significant respects from the kinds of dialogue that flourished in scholastic contexts. I shall be concerned with Latin dialogues, and I shall treat scholastic dialogues drawn from die Middle Ages, and humanist dialogues drawn from the Renaissance as ideal types of socio-intellectual activity. M y paper is divided into three sections. In the first, I shall briefly summarize some features of two prevalent forms of scholastic dialogue. In the second, I shall discuss some contrasting features of Renaissance humanist dialogues. In the third, I shall sketch the social milieu that is suggested by the humanists' dialogues. I The question of the social milieu of Renaissance humanism has become pressing in the light of interpretations of medieval scholaticism and humanism, which raises problems for the classic interpretation of Renaissance humanism put forward by Kristeller. Kristeller links the nineteenth-century term 'humanism' to the late Renaissance term humanista, which originated in student slang and which 'designated the professional teacher of the studia humanitatis . . . The old term humanista ... reflects the . . . modest, but correct, contemporary ^Renaissance Thought and Its Sources, ed. Michael Mooney, New York, 1979, 28. 2 D. Marsh, The Quattrocento Dialogue: Classical Tradition and Humanist Innovation, Cambridge, Mass., 1980; Kenny and Pinborg, Medieval Philosophical Literature, in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Disintegration of Scholasticism, 1100-1600, ed. N. Kretzmann, A. Kenny and J. Pinborg, Cambridge, 1982, 11. Another recent and valuable study of Humanist dialogues is K.J. Wilson, Incomplete Fictions: The Formation of English Renaissance Dialogue, Washington, DC, 1985, 198 J J7 . Tinkler view that the humanists were the teachers and representatives of a certain branch of learning which at that time was expanding and in vogue, but well limited in its subject matter'. Renaissance humanism, therefore, is just another academic specialization, focussed on the studia humanitatis, which Kristeller calls 'a clearly defined cycle of scholarly disciplines,' comprising grammar, poetry, rhetoric, history and moral philosophy: the relationship between humanism and scholasticism was 'as much a matter of departmental rivalry as it was a clash of opposite ideas or philosophies'. The shortcomings of this picture begin with the nature of scholasticism. As David Knowles observes, 'A "scholastic" was originally one w h o learnt or who taught in a school, specifically in a school of the middle ages, and scholastic philosophy is the kind of philosophy taught in those schools'.4 Thus, for instance, Sten Ebbeson remarks that 'scholastic method was not peculiar to logic, but the twelfth-century renaissance of philosophical studies concentrated on this elementary discipline'.5 It is thus difficult to see how humanism, understood primarily in terms of a clearly defined cycle of scholarly disciplines in the schools and universities, could have been significantly different from scholasticism - except to the extent that, as Richard McKeon argued, there was a shift of emphasis within the Arts course.6 If w e are allowed to trace the term 'scholasticism' beyond the Middle Ages to Antiquity, w e will find Quintilian referring to a student in general - in this case a student of rhetoric - as a scholasticus. 'We have been in a position to acquire varied knowledge, to familiarize ourselves with the principles that should guide our life...