The humanists did not believe in erudition for its own sake, however.
Erudition was always for the sake of some benefit; they believedfirmly that
study of the ancient texts improved one in some way. And as for their own
writings, they aimed at what they sometimes calledpersuasio.^5
It was at this point especially that they can be seen as carrying on the ancient
rhetorical tradition. Indeed, they self-consciously perceived themselves as
carrying on that tradition, using its orations as exemplars, its rhetorical
principles as guidelines, etc. Let me quote what Bouwsma says on the matter.
For the humanists, effective communication
required more thanfidelity to truth, the sole aim of philosophical discourse,
which accordingly, refusing to make concessions to a general audience, employed
a specialized vocabulary. A humanist, in contrast, recognized that the distance
between one human being and another can be bridged only by the essential
rhetorical virtue, decorum—that is, deliberate adaptation to one’s audience for
the sake of persuasion.^6Our word‘persuasion’comes, obviously, from the Latinpersuasio. I judge,
however, that the present connotations of our word mislead us as to what the
humanists had in mind. What they aimed at can better be called, I think,
formation. They all believed that what they wrote should be useful in some
way; they never tired of polemicizing against the uselessness of scholastic
writings. But their aim was not, strictly speaking, persuasion; nor was it utility
in the modern sense. They did not insist that learning be useful for holding
down a job, useful for making money, useful for building bridges. What they
aimed at was formation of the character of the reader, her virtue, her piety.
The writings and the studies of the Renaissance humanists originated what
today we call the humanities. Renaissance humanism was not an anti-
Christian movement; most of the members of the movement were clearly
Christian. It was an anti-scholastic movement. The study of the humanities
was to replace the philosophy and theology of the schools; and the study of
the humanities was for the sake of character formation. (The attacks of the
humanists on the scholasticsfind a clear echo nowadays in the attacks by
representatives of the humanities on the supposed‘logic chopping’of analytic
philosophers.)
In the early sixteenth century, a distinct wing of the humanist movement
emerged in north-west Europe, the most prominent founders of this wing
being the Dutchman Desiderius Erasmus, and two Frenchmen, Guillaume
Budé and Lefèvre d’Étaples. Bouwsma appropriately calls this wing of the
movementevangelical humanism.^7
(^5) Bouwsma,John Calvin, 117. (^6) Bouwsma,John Calvin, 116.
(^7) Bouwsma,John Calvin,9.
80 Nicholas Wolterstorff