Renaissance humanism and postmodernity: A rhetorical history

This dissertation explores the intellectual history and philosophical concepts that inform the understanding of Renaissance humanism in the twentieth century. It promotes a dialogue among a number of academic disciplines by paralleling (1) the philological projects that produced Werner Jaeger's "Third Humanism" and Martin Heidegger's "antihumanism"; (2) the alternative interpretations of the Latin-Humanist rhetorical heritage offered by the hermeneutics of H-G. Gadamer, P.O. Kristeller, and Ernesto Grassi (three students of Heidegger); and (3) the historicist approaches that in the Italian intellectual tradition connect Bertrando Spaventa to Eugenio Garin, through the neoidealism of Benedetto Croce and Giovanni Gentile. This study shows how the current understanding of the Renaissance evolved together with and informed the emergence of our postmodern historical consciousness. It retells the enduring contribution of humanism and advances its study into the twenty-first century.