Leon Battista Alberti and Humanism

As a humanist, Leon Battista Alberti stood abreast with elemental reasoning and empiricism. As a participant of the Early Renaissance, he pioneered philosophical and sociological treatises which were revolutionary for their audiences. These opposing factors represent the crux of Alberti’s societal impact. His ability to actualize ancient knowledge and the capacity to parlay its wisdom to the populous solidify his role as a literati of the Italian Renaissance.

Social climate forecasting was Alberti’s specialty. As a great contributer of the Florentine debate, Alberti, “projected issues that were to flourish in the second half of the fifteenth century” (Mazzocco, 5). Such socio-political foresight later manifested itself in several treatises. One of particular social importance, though, was his familial projection, On The Family.

“The treatise…is the first of several dialogues on moral philosophy upon which his reputation as an ethical thinker and literary stylist largely rests” (Britannica, Leon Battista Alberti: Contribution to philosophy, science, and the arts).

Throughout the account Alberti purports close familial relationships as being essential to human prosperity and durability. His mode of reasoning here is rectifiable by the period’s elitist socio-political attitudes. Because aristocracy was the persuasive force in most societal affairs and Alberti subsumed this social class, it was only natural for him to write about such culturally relevant and “popular” philosophical discourse. The extent to which it accurately represented familial affairs, though, is questionable. Withal, his focus remained grounded by the persistent conduct of humanist thinking. But what is humanist thinking, really?

While objective deconstructions of variable human behaviors, their dependencies, and their consequences are each worthy humanistic practices, what constitutes humanism’s core? Perhaps, “a philosophy that usually rejects supernaturalism and stresses an individual’s dignity and worth and capacity for self-realization through reason” (Merriam-Webster, humanism), is the main tenet of humanism, atop which all else rests. But because complete objectivity is inevitably one person’s “empirical perception of reality”, and is not universally prescriptive whatsoever, each person’s psyche ultimately remains subjective to her own personal history.

So self-realization by way of semantic reasoning is perhaps the most elemental yet most refined form of humanism. By that, measures of pure objectivity are unattainable; however, learning through incremental degrees of subjectivity seems relatively intuitive and logical. Therefore, like building blocks, logical learning can be consistently broken down and reassembled to achieve new perspectives; essentially, new knowledge. This idea frames the humanist rationale with which Alberti constructed his treatise, On The Family.

Therein, Alberti explained the familial stratifications of Cinquecento Italy and then forecast their outcomes for the following century. To aid his readership, Alberti utilized the progressive Italian vernacular to convey what traditional Latin lacked in its old age, critical mass. With this effective linguistic medium, he forged a new social understanding founded upon three main ideals: family kinship, its economic pursuit, and its political function. The following excerpt illustrates the most micro level of his familial hierarchy:

“My first consideration would only be to make my children grow up with good character and virtue. Whatever activities suited their taste would suit me” (On the Family, 1).

Here, one may observe how Alberti employs empiricism as his primary instrument in familial deconstruction. By maintaining critical objectivity, he slowly disassembles the verbose complexities of family relations. (What Alberti might have meant by the excerpt above is that instilling humane value upon one’s children is like planting a seed that will continually nurture its gardener and renew its life supply). Then, he reconstructs the multitudinous, multidimensional units of family rapport such that they project an image of the familial behavior for Seicento Italians.

And through the generational renewal of family members and financial prosperity, this nuclear image reconstructs itself to reveal the second stage of Alberti’s hierarchy, economic pursuit. This stage even entails the governance of marriage as commercial gains and later, via networking, promotes political groups to affiliate. Thus, Alberti reformulates the disassembled building blocks of human rapport to cast light upon the importance of family values and human development from a young age forward. Clearly, the significance of the family during the Italian Renaissance was immense.