Thoughts About Petrarchan Humanist Philosophy for My Brother

Thursday, June 16, 2016

Dear Rhen, 

This semester, I have learned about the importance of making connections from the past to the present through self-directed learning. In my Rhetoric and Western Civilizations 2 class, Professor Gideon Burton encouraged us to dig into primary sources; experience time periods through a number of hands-on activities, like visiting museums, going to plays, baking food, creating art, or composing music (see Gideon Burton's post A Guide to Self-directed Learning for more details). 

One time period that particularly interested me was the Renaissance because of its humanist philosophy. One of the very first humanist thinkers was Petrarch, a 14th-century philosopher. Petrarch rediscovered Greek classics detailing the importance of human accomplishment but also enjoyed the teachings of recent Christian scholars such as St. Augustine. Petrarch asserted that individual accomplishment enhances rather than detracts from faith. In a world steeped with secular humanism, which asserts that the purpose of life is altruistic human accomplishment and the nonexistence of God, we can look to Petrarch to understand how individual human accomplishment can inspire us to live our faith rather than leading us to believe that God doesn't exist because we don't need Him. 

How Public Access to Information Shapes the Ideals of Women

Although public access to information may cause distorted expectations in women, this information ultimately empowers them by enabling them to become more aware of unexplored opportunities.

As BYU student Alec Parkinson remarked, "there really is a whole lot of good that's done by spreading information, even if sometimes there is bad that goes along with it" (Digital Dialogue on LearningSuite.byu.edu, an online forum). 

The Media and Women's Education

The media have the power to either enslave women in ignorance or free them through education. Which will it be? 

Although the media can promote female ignorance, leading to an imbalance of power between the sexes and skewed social expectations, these same media can effectively promote female education, leading to equality between the sexes and empowering women to champion needed social, economic, and political change that benefits nations. The extent to which education prevails against ignorance is directly related to the effectiveness with which society utilizes the media to advocate for the former.