Peter Carravetta is professor of philosophy at SUNY Stony Brook.

The Humanist Project proposes a humanism for today. Carravetta begins with anti-humanism, that is, attacks on humanism for its alleged faults and limitations by academic philosophers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Then he examines the works of authors from the Middle Ages through the Enlightenment—the majority Italian Renaissance figures—in order to construct a humanism for today. These authors are Dante, Giovanni Boccaccio, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Niccolò Machiavelli, Rudolph Agricola, Petrus Ramus, Tommaso Campanella, and Giambattista Vico. Certain qualities appear repeatedly. Humanism is what is human. It is individuals who possess free will, good judgment, and an understanding of the connection of the individual with society. In addition, Boccaccio was an acute social critic, Machiavelli explained how the will impacts his ideas of the proper way to organize society, Agricola and Ramus explained rhetoric and method, and Campanella realized that temporal and spiritual power cannot be separated. The bibliography on the figures of the past is adequate for Carravetta's purposes. The writing is always clear; Carravetta regularly puts his key ideas into italics. This reviewer sympathizes with the attempt to use history to create humanism for the present. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.

• PrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Humanism at the End of the “Human”Chapter One: Dante: Poetics of Judgment and Birth of HumanismChapter Two: Boccaccio: Contingency, Myth, HistoryChapter Three: Pico: The Hermeneutics of the Human ProjectChapter Four: Machiavelli: Discourse, Will, Social ChangeChapter Five: Agricola to Ramus: Rhetoric of MethodChapter Six: Campanella: The Human Project Between Utopia and RealpolitikChapter Seven: Vico: The Resilience of the HumanConclusion

Peter Carravetta is professor of philosophy at SUNY Stony Brook.

The Humanist Project proposes a humanism for today. Carravetta begins with anti-humanism, that is, attacks on humanism for its alleged faults and limitations by academic philosophers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Then he examines the works of authors from the Middle Ages through the Enlightenment—the majority Italian Renaissance figures—in order to construct a humanism for today. These authors are Dante, Giovanni Boccaccio, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Niccolò Machiavelli, Rudolph Agricola, Petrus Ramus, Tommaso Campanella, and Giambattista Vico. Certain qualities appear repeatedly. Humanism is what is human. It is individuals who possess free will, good judgment, and an understanding of the connection of the individual with society. In addition, Boccaccio was an acute social critic, Machiavelli explained how the will impacts his ideas of the proper way to organize society, Agricola and Ramus explained rhetoric and method, and Campanella realized that temporal and spiritual power cannot be separated. The bibliography on the figures of the past is adequate for Carravetta's purposes. The writing is always clear; Carravetta regularly puts his key ideas into italics. This reviewer sympathizes with the attempt to use history to create humanism for the present. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.

• PrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Humanism at the End of the “Human”Chapter One: Dante: Poetics of Judgment and Birth of HumanismChapter Two: Boccaccio: Contingency, Myth, HistoryChapter Three: Pico: The Hermeneutics of the Human ProjectChapter Four: Machiavelli: Discourse, Will, Social ChangeChapter Five: Agricola to Ramus: Rhetoric of MethodChapter Six: Campanella: The Human Project Between Utopia and RealpolitikChapter Seven: Vico: The Resilience of the HumanConclusion

Peter Carravetta is professor of philosophy at SUNY Stony Brook.

The Humanist Project proposes a humanism for today. Carravetta begins with anti-humanism, that is, attacks on humanism for its alleged faults and limitations by academic philosophers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Then he examines the works of authors from the Middle Ages through the Enlightenment—the majority Italian Renaissance figures—in order to construct a humanism for today. These authors are Dante, Giovanni Boccaccio, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Niccolò Machiavelli, Rudolph Agricola, Petrus Ramus, Tommaso Campanella, and Giambattista Vico. Certain qualities appear repeatedly. Humanism is what is human. It is individuals who possess free will, good judgment, and an understanding of the connection of the individual with society. In addition, Boccaccio was an acute social critic, Machiavelli explained how the will impacts his ideas of the proper way to organize society, Agricola and Ramus explained rhetoric and method, and Campanella realized that temporal and spiritual power cannot be separated. The bibliography on the figures of the past is adequate for Carravetta's purposes. The writing is always clear; Carravetta regularly puts his key ideas into italics. This reviewer sympathizes with the attempt to use history to create humanism for the present. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.

• PrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Humanism at the End of the “Human”Chapter One: Dante: Poetics of Judgment and Birth of HumanismChapter Two: Boccaccio: Contingency, Myth, HistoryChapter Three: Pico: The Hermeneutics of the Human ProjectChapter Four: Machiavelli: Discourse, Will, Social ChangeChapter Five: Agricola to Ramus: Rhetoric of MethodChapter Six: Campanella: The Human Project Between Utopia and RealpolitikChapter Seven: Vico: The Resilience of the HumanConclusion