Decolonizing Renaissance Humanism

McManus, Stuart M.

doi:10.1093/ahr/rhac217

Cited by 3 publications

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“…Some would argue that the Renaissance was fundamentally a cultural movement that once again brought Western society to a path of progress despite the fall of the Roman empire almost nine centuries back and sustaining multiple wounds of war, dissidence, and pestilence through the medieval dark ages. The Renaissance helped this cumulative social and cultural narrative evolve and, in some instances, mould itself into a rather unexplored landscape where humanism was poised to take centre stage (McManus, 2022 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Sun Also Rises: Tracing the evolution of humanistic values in anatomy pedagogy and research, including cadaveric acquisition practices

Bhattacharjee

Ghosh

2023

Journal of Anatomy

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Anatomy has always been at the intersection of the socio‐cultural and political landscape, where new ideas constantly replace older wisdom. From ancient Egyptians through the Greeks, and then the Romans, finally culminating into the European Renaissance—all the significant eras of human civilisation have left their insignia and distinct marks on the evolution of anatomical practices. Despite its utility as a tool for anatomy pedagogy and research that has proven its worth over millennia, cadaveric dissection has particularly been subject to political and social vicissitudes. A major debate about anatomical dissection lay with the ethical considerations, or its lack thereof, while acquiring corpses for demonstration in the dissection halls. From antiquity, anatomical dissection—often synonymous with medical studies—had typically been carried out on the dead bodies of executed criminals with certain laws, such as the Murder Act of 1752, facilitating such uses. Gradually, the uses of unclaimed bodies, resourced primarily from the impoverished sections of society, were also introduced. However, these body acquisition protocols often missed the crucial element of humanism and ethical considerations, while knowledge augmentation was taken as sufficient reasoning. Unfortunately, a gross disregard towards humanistic values promulgated heinous and illegal practices in acquiring corpses, including grave robbery and even murders like in the case of Burke and Hare murders of 1828. Follow‐up legislation, such as the Anatomy Act of 1832, and comparable laws in other European nations were passed to curb the vile. What distils from such a historical discourse on humane values in anatomy dissection, or medical science in general, is that the growth and integration of humanism in anatomy have never been linear, but there were intermittent and, yet, significant disruptions in its timeline. For example, there were serious human rights violations in anatomical practices during the Third Reich in Germany that perpetrated the holocaust. The medical community has kept evolving and introducing new moral values and principles while using such egregious events as lessons, ultimately resulting in the Declaration of Helsinki in 1964. This article revisits the heterogeneous journey of integrating humanistic values in anatomy practice. Such humanistic traits that, like medical science, have also developed over centuries through the inputs of physicians, researchers, and philosophers—from Greece to modernity with an important stopgap at the Renaissance—are a fascinating lore that deserves to be re‐envisioned through the lens of contemporary values and ethos. In parallel to human medicine, humanistic values continue to influence veterinary medicine, a welcome development, as our society condemns animal cruelty in any form. There are lessons to be learned from this historical journey of how humanism shaped many of the concepts that anatomists use now. Finally, and most importantly, it might prevent the medical community from repeating the same mistakes by cautioning against the traps that are there, and in a convoluted world where morality as such is eroding from our social fabric, will always be there. Such historical account acts as a righteous, ethical, and contextual compass to guide the existing and upcoming anatomists in discerning between light and dark, right and wrong, and roads—to be or not to be—taken.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Sun Also Rises: Tracing the evolution of humanistic values in anatomy pedagogy and research, including cadaveric acquisition practices

Bhattacharjee

Ghosh

2023

Journal of Anatomy

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African Latin in Early Modern Thought: Language, Race, and Philology

Vozar

2024

Renaiss. Reform.

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This article takes John Milton’s description of the “knotty Africanisms” of the Church Fathers as the launching point for an investigation of African Latin in early modern thought. The first part traces the development of a conception of Africitas or Africanismus as a peculiarly African form of Latin in Western scholarship from Erasmus to the early eighteenth century. The second part considers early modern African Latinists such as the Granada professor Juan Latino and the Jamaican poet Francis Williams and their reception in this light. The concept of Africitas is shown to have taken hold at the same time as the globalization of Latin.

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Rome vue de l’Empire portugais: Manuel Godinho de Erédia (1558?-1623) et sa Summa de Arvores e Plantas da Índia intra Gangez

Couto

2023

Cuad. hist. mod.

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A partir del itinerario y la obra de una figura original de la sociedad imperial portuguesa, Manuel Godinho de Erédia (1558?-1623), el artículo reflexiona sobre las complejas relaciones entre dos capitales, entre dos Romas de la segunda mitad del siglo XVI: aquella presente en los mapamundi de nuestras historiografías ordinarias, del imperio espiritual de la catolicidad postridentina fundado sobre las ruinas del gran imperio antiguo; y la menos familiar, la segunda capital de un imperio portugués en vías de expansión hacia el Este y finalmente extendido a escala mundial. Destaca el doble sistema de referencias que nutre y pretende fortalecer el crédito erudito de Erédia, hombre de la Roma de Oriente, terreno humanista de una cultura compartida con sus contemporáneos más allá de las distancias: el horizonte renovado, portado por la corona ibérica, de una construcción imperial que no iguala sino que supera a la de la antigua Roma. La lectura que se propone de las numerosas producciones de Erédia, en particular de su Atlas o de su Summa de Arvores e Plantas da Índia intra Gangez, pretende arrojar luz sobre este doble sistema de referencias que teje así otra visión de la producción de conocimiento, con, contra o desde Roma, a finales del siglo XVI.

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Decolonizing Renaissance Humanism

Cited by 3 publications

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The Sun Also Rises: Tracing the evolution of humanistic values in anatomy pedagogy and research, including cadaveric acquisition practices

The Sun Also Rises: Tracing the evolution of humanistic values in anatomy pedagogy and research, including cadaveric acquisition practices

African Latin in Early Modern Thought: Language, Race, and Philology

Rome vue de l’Empire portugais: Manuel Godinho de Erédia (1558?-1623) et sa Summa de Arvores e Plantas da Índia intra Gangez

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