Pluralism was the biggest innovation of the Renaissance

Episode Summary 

We live in an uncertain age, one in which wealthy and powerful forces are working tirelessly to overthrow democracy, turn back the clock on human progress and destroy the middle class. The sheer magnitude of the West’s crisis of democracy can be overwhelming, however, and that’s why in this episode, I wanted to take more than a few steps back to explore the Renaissance, a period of world history that is much discussed in popular media, but often in a way that overshadows the real people and their actual intentions. Where did the Renaissance come from and what exactly were the people who made it hoping to achieve with their efforts? And are there any lessons that we can take from that time period for today?

These are very big topics, needless to say, and I could think of no better person to discuss them with than Ada Palmer. She’s a historian who teaches at the University of Chicago, and she’s written a fantastic review of the entire time-period called “Inventing the Renaissance,” which also discusses the historiography of one of humanity’s most written-about eras.

Besides this and other history books, Ada writes science fiction as well, which we get into at the very end of our conversation in the context of what lessons modern people can take from the Renaissance.

The video of our conversation is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full page.

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Audio Chapters

00:00 — Introduction

07:04 — The continual mythic refounding of the Renaissance

09:51 — Solidarity vs. unity in Italy

14:13 — Rediscovery of ancient texts

16:18 — Petrarch's plan to unify Italy through classical education

24:23 — Machiavelli's new interpretations

30:18 — The myth of underground modernists during the Renaissance

36:52 — The rise of pluralism

40:59 — The rarity of Renaissance atheism

49:32 — The try-everything age

52:31 — Growth through debate

57:34 — Diderot and the promise of the future unknown

Audio Transcript

The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.

MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: So your book is called Inventing the Renaissance; before we get into the stories that you tell in the book, let’s just get into the large