르네상스와 우리 인문학

Abstract

The Saracens, with no native philosophy and science of their own, but with marvellous power of assimilating the cultures of others, quickly absorbed whatever they found in Western Asia. Arabic translations were made directly from the Greeks as well as from Syriac and Hebrew. To their Greek inheritance the Arabs added something of their own. Certain of the caliphs especially favored learning, while the universal diffusion of the Arabic language made communication easy and spread a common culture through Islam, regardless of political division. As the Crusaders discovered, this "infidal" culture was clearly more advanced in significant respects than that of the Latin West. Little wonder that the Arabs considered the Crusaders barbarian raiders, or that Europeans looked upon the Islamic world with that peculiar combination of fear and admiration. The most important channel by which the new learning reached Western Europe ran through the Spanish peninsula. The chief center was Toledo. From Spain came the philosophy and natural science of Aristotle and his Arabic commentators in the form which was to transform European thought in the thirteenth century. The indebtedness of the Western world to the Arabs is well illustrated in the scientific and commercial terms which its various languages have borrowed untranslated from the Arabics. Words like algebra, zero, cipher tell their own tale. Beginning in the 1150s, Latin editions of the rediscovered writings began to flood the libraries of Europe's scholars. The output of the translation centers in Spain, Provence, and Italy was enormous, numbering in the thousands of manuscript. Aristotle's recovered work was the key to further developments that would turn Europe from a remote, provincial region into the very heartland of an expansive global civilization. It is the Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, which is also known as the Medieval Renaissance. We should let this be a good lesson to ourselves.