Abstract
The following entry provides a brief overview of the concept known as “civic humanism” as popularized by Hans Baron’s 1955 book The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance. Baron’s hypothesis (often simply called the “Baron thesis”) described the union of humanist and republican values that characterized Florence in the early Quattrocento. The success of this synthesis, he stated, was the result of the profound impact the Florentine-Milanese conflict – culminating in the titular “crisis” – had on the Republic’s culture. Since its conception, many have followed in Baron’s footsteps by ascribing the modern virtue of active citizenship to this strand of humanism. Others have opposed the genesis, originality and accuracy of his presentation, discounting its academic worth and recasting Florentine humanism in their own image. Still, all in all, civic humanism has been one of the most influential notions in Renaissance historiography of the past century.
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Urlings, S. (2022). Humanism, Civic. In: Sgarbi, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14169-5_610
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