Humanities blog

 After reading The Prince  by Niccolo Machiavelli and then reading the many opinionated articles following the text, I choose to examine Erica Benner's article title "From Machiavelli's Prince: A New Reading". The main idea presented by Benner is the idea that Machiavelli was trying to restore good moral standards in politics or overall ruling. Benner states, "Machiavelli's Prince , I suggest, is a masterwork with ironic writing with a moral purpose" (Benner 300). She explains the two ideas Machiavelli is trying to get across, one being the idea of warning people of power of the danger of asserting total dictatorship over people who value their freedom. Benner then goes into the idea of Machiavelli., teaching ordinary citizens to reconginice the early warning signs of control-hungry behavior in their leaders, and to impress on them the need to establish political and military orders that can keep tyranny at bay" (Benner 301). The overall message I t...

During the Renaissance, we did not have the same technological tools and skills, which made finding the best architectural design behind the Florence Cathedral very difficult - but Brunelleschi found a way      In chapter 12 of the text "Cultures and Values" by Cunningham Lawrence, they go over many topics and important events of the the early Renaissance. In this post, I am choosing to go over the topic of the great Florence Cathedral. There were many complications in regards to correctly building the dome of this Cathedral without the building technologies we have in todays day of age. It was said that no one knew how to go about building the Cathedral because of the technicalities of the support needed on the inside and outside of the dome. However Brunelleschi was up for the challenge, "Brunelleschi worked on this problem between 1417 and 1420, trying, simultaneously, to solve the technical aspects of doming the building and convincing the skeptical cathedral oversee...

  The Renaissance was a time period of rebirth, but how did we get there?       5 individual societies aided in the influence of the Renaissance, those being Ancient Greece, the Romans, Christianity, Islam, and the Middle Ages.  The Greeks The  Acropolis  of Athens  Built between 447 and 432 BCE     I really did not know much about this time  period leading up to the Renaissance, but was interested to learn. The first thing that caught my eye during my research, was the beautiful and elaborate way of Greek architecture. The architecture was said to be focused on being beautiful during this time, which they accomplished. They also always considered religion into the structures, " Greeks builders determined that the columns would look more grand if they were constructed to be sightly narrowed at the column top compared to the bottom.  This created an affect of taller, grander design 'implied by the Gods'" ( Han et al) . I fo...