Poussin, Dance to the Music of Time,c. 1638

Revelle College Humanities 3Fall 2010

Renaissance, Reformation andEarly Modern Europe

Professor Don Rutherford

Antony LyonDamon CrockettAmy EdwardsWilliam Skiles

Amanda Solomon

Introduction to Hum 3

• Business• Class website• Scope of the course• What are the humanities, and

Why do they matter?

What you should know for Hum 3• God and the Hebrew Bible• Greek mythology• Greek philosophy (esp. Plato, Aristotle)• Christianity (Jesus Christ) and basis of Christian

theology (Paul, Augustine, Trinitarianism)• Perennial conflict among the major monotheistic

religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam (Crusades,anti-semitism)

• The preservation of ancient Greek learning (esp.Aristotle) in the Arabic and Jewish worlds and inthe monasteries and universities of medievalEurope

Scope of Hum 3

• Renaissance (14-16th c.)(Machiavelli, Las Casas)

• Reformation (1517-)(Erasmus, Luther)

• Early Modern (late 16th-17th c.) (Montaigne, Shakespeare; Bacon, Galileo,

Descartes, Hobbes; Milton)

TopicsPolitics

Religion

Science Art

Assumptions

• Ideas matter, especially ideas of what it is to behuman and of what is valuable about human life

• Ideas have content to the extent that they can bearticulated in language

• Ideas are justified to the extent that they can bedefended by rational argument

Universality

• To realize one’s humanity is to know�oneself in relation to other human beings(from other cultures, other times, etc.)“I am a human being; I believe that nothinghuman is foreign to me”--Terence, d. 159BCE)

Four Key Questions

• What are we?

• Who are we?

• What do we know?

• What can we say?