ABSTRACT
In his classic article “The Two Faces of Humanism: Stoicism and Augustinianism in Renaissance Thought,” the historian William Bouwsma postulated a confrontation between two polarities in Western culture and explored the ways in which the tension between them constituted an internal struggle within early modern humanism. Noting that “pure” Stoics or Augustinians are hard to find, he nevertheless suggested that the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus (c.1467–1536) exhibited stronger Stoic tendencies, while the French religious reformer John Calvin (1509–64) found in the Latin church father Augustine of Hippo (354–430) “a model of the open, developing spiritual life, of the mind in movement which [was] perhaps the central feature in Augustine’s significance for the Renaissance” (Bouwsma 1990: 52, 68). Subsequent scholarship has sought to answer Bouwsma’s call for closer study of individual figures and to nuance his image of Stoicism in the era of the Renaissance, which Christoph Strohm has rightly criticized as unspecific (Strohm 1996: 121–2). Jill Kraye has argued that Erasmus’s editorial engagement with Seneca (c.4 bce to 65 ce) launched a “humanist re-evaluation of Seneca” and in particular his moral philosophy that was advanced by Marc-Antoine Muret (1526–85) and found its culmination in the work of Justus Lipsius (1547–1606) (Kraye 2005: 328). At the same time, Peter Walter has questioned Bouwsma’s placement of Erasmus among the more Stoic-minded in light of Erasmus’s clear rejection of traditional Stoic views of the affections (Walter 2008: 522–3). Judgments concerning Calvin’s relationship to Stoicism have been even more diametrically opposed; some have claimed that he baptized Stoicism, while others contend that he was sharply critical of Stoic philosophy and ethics (see Battles and Hugo 1969: 46*–47*). Two recent and nuanced reassessments that find continuity between certain aspects of Stoic anthropology and Calvin’s mature understanding of human agency and his view of the nature of the emotions are by Paul Helm (2012) and Kyle Fedler (2002).
