Comparing The Prince And Quentin Skinner's Views On Humanism
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The Renaissance was widely believed to be a rebirth of new ideas. Scholars and artist came together and changed the perspective on what the focus for all the great works that came out and revolutionized the brilliance of me like Donatello, Michelangelo, Leonardo Di Vinci, Raphael, and many others. This lead to changes in art, literature, philosophy, politics, and gave birth to the ideals of humanism. Machiavelli’s The Prince, was for the purpose of the noble class, in which depicts the way one should rule. Quentin Skinner’s idea for what humanism was can be compared with Machiavelli’s views as both indicates that ideals of humanism was not born from new ideas, instead they were built on the foundation of older ones.
Machiavelli wrote The Prince…show more content… Skinner disagrees with Baron on humanist’s definition of liberty. He further explained that liberty was not a new ideology because the definition had already existed. Looking at both Skinner and Baron’s writings, it shows that Skinner’s critique of Baron’s civic humanism was well reasoned, however Skinner contradicted himself. Skinner also undermines his own arguments when he uses examples that showed that the continuity was not always explicit in the actual sources. Skinner’s definition of humanism was bigger then that of civic humanism. Skinner’s humanism was defined as the literary movement in which was rooted on the classical aspects such as moral philosophy. He also wrote about the importance of vir virtutis or the virtuous manly man and the importance to shape ones destiny. From looking at Skinner, it can be deduced that he thought that the classical ideas were also derived from politics as well. Machiavelli and Skinner both embrace the importance of using classical ideas to shape their definition of…show more content… He had been banished from Florence and was trying to get back into the good graces of the Medici family. The important thing that was taken from this was that you had to either gain the support of the people to rule them, or you had to utterly destroy them so that there would never be any fear of uprisings again. This portrayed that in order to rule the people; you could not be a tyrant or a weakling. The lord must show compassion and also instill the fear of using force without using it. These are prime examples that the humanist ideals for politics were those based off of classical ideas used for centuries. Machiavelli was explaining all this from his experiences and the benefits and mistakes a lord could