ABSTRACT
Outside the domain of classical scholarship the phrase 'man and society' defines the achievements of the Italian Renaissance. Yet this raises a problem. If the Renaissance contributed so much in this direction, why is it so faintly praised? As an intellectual group the humanists of Italy and the north failed to break the Aristotelianism of the universities. In fact, they were content with the Socratic and Ciceronian approach of avoiding abstraction for the actual ways of men. The frailty of this position is illustrated by Petrarch's riposte to certain Aristotelian critics in On His Own Ignorance. He made some telling points in his rejection of speculative knowledge (see above, pp.35-39), but for the most part he was forced to retreat into the tenet of St Paul that the wisdom of this world is 'foolishness with God'. This was only an effective defence of his intellectual stand and use of classical morals if the latter were held to possess no value indeoendent of Christian ethics.
