Universal man
The universal man ( Italian uomo universale ) is an ideal image of man that emerged at the time of the Renaissance , based on models from Greco - Roman antiquity . In the sense of humanism, a universal person is educated in many ways, open-minded and independent of church dogmas . He becomes creative and ideally lives in harmony with nature.
background
The self-determination , the critical attitude and the turning to ancient languages and scripts are not to be seen as a rejection of the church, but they should free the church from the "aberrations" of the Middle Ages and connect it with antiquity.
Due to his versatile education (which at that time was only possible for the wealthy), the universal person is able to carry out many different activities. The image of the capable ruler that Machiavelli outlines in his work Il Principe ( The Prince ) corresponds to the uomo universale of man insofar as a successful ruler must have a variety of virtues and knowledge.
The new image of man also had an impact on art. Painters , sculptors , architects and other artists saw themselves as uomo universale . Leonardo da Vinci and Leon Battista Alberti are typical embodiments of the universal man .
Leonardo da Vinci as a universal man
Leonardo da Vinci himself lived according to the ideal of the universal man and embodied him. Giorgio Vasari praises Leonardo in his biography The Life of the Florentine Painter and Sculptor Leonardo da Vinci with the words: "Wherever he directed the mind, his talent helped him to bring the most difficult things to completion with ease." Goethe raved about a " Model people ”, Freud of the“ all-round genius ”. Jacob Burckhardt praised him as a "perfect man".
See also
literature
- Karin Laschewski-Müller: Course book history. From antiquity to the present . Ed .: Robert Rauh . Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-06-064743-9 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Karin Laschewski-Müller, Robert Rauh (Ed.): Course book history. From antiquity to the present. Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3060647439 , p. 148.
- ^ Niccolò Machiavelli: Il Principe (1513), in: Opere , ed. v. M. Bonfantini, Milan 1954, chap. 18, p. 54 ff.
- ↑ Inventors & Pioneers: Der Universalmensch , Spiegel Online , by Michael Sontheimer, accessed on December 16, 2013.