Hardly ever after the Risorgimento era, since the heroic struggle of the Italian people against foreign and domestic feudal enslavers, for the unification of their homeland, has Renaissance culture attracted so much attention as it does today. Even the time of J. Burckhardt did not generate such a flow of research on various aspects of the Renaissance as the post-war thirtieth anniversary was marked. And this is after almost 80 years, especially in the first half of the twentieth century and most of all in the 20s and 30s, in the period between the two World Wars, clerics and reactionaries of various persuasions in every way proved both the unoriginality of the Renaissance and its complete dependence on the ideology of Catholicism, on the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas - in general, its dependence on the Middle Ages, in which it seems to be completely dissolved, so it is still a question of whether it really existed. It also proved the servility of the Renaissance in relation to the church and the lords of this world, in whose courts it supposedly grew up and was brought up. It was argued that by their fascination with antiquity, the humanists allegedly slowed down the formation of national cultures of European peoples, and the destruction of Christian morality contributed to the reign of immorality. It was proclaimed that the creators of this great culture were self-serving politicians or cold egoists who lived only for the guild interests of a narrow circle of the intellectual elite, alien to the people and deeply indifferent to their suffering, to social problems in general. Finally, the Neotomists even tried to prove that in comparison with the high culture of the Middle Ages, with the magnificent harmony of scholasticism, the Renaissance not only did not produce anything new, but was a step back, nothing more or less than a "great degeneration".

No matter how fantastic, no matter how wild such judgments are, there is nothing improbable in them for the historian. The rebirth was brought to life by the revolutionary era and itself signified a profound revolutionary shift in the consciousness of humanity .1 Naturally, during periods of reaction - feudal-Catholic, noble-Romantic, bourgeois-imperialist - it became the object of hatred and vicious attacks. It is not surprising that such "interpretations" in the camp of modern obscurantism do not run out to this day. But the point is that our time is not only an era of the growing collapse of the entire system of bourgeois rule and the crisis of bourgeois social and historical consciousness, but also a time of the rapid rise of the liberation movement of peoples, of the growing influence of advanced ideas. That is why today, according to the apt expression of I. N. Golenishchev-Kutuzov, the fashion for

1 See K. Marx and F. Engels, Op. 20, pp. 346-347,

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The" unfashionableness " of the Renaissance is increasingly going out of fashion , 2 and the indifferent and dismissive attitude towards the Renaissance is being replaced by a growing interest in it, a desire to understand the amazing phenomenon of the Renaissance, the source of power that makes the cultural heritage of this long-standing era alive and urgently needed by people in our time. Even if these attempts do not always reach the goal, especially in their entirety, even if there is still no shortage of misconceptions, the dominant trend is beyond doubt. The increasing flow of works on the history of the Renaissance in different countries, the strengthening of sound, more objective tendencies in it, is the dictates of time, a reflection of the great revolutionary shifts of our time, evidence of the powerful influence of the ideas of Marxism-Leninism - the most advanced ideology of our era.

For Soviet historical science, a deep understanding of the Renaissance culture - its social origins, ideological content, rhythm of development, internal contradictions, its strengths and weaknesses - is all the more urgent because it has not only historical, but also considerable cultural and creative significance. At the dawn of our revolution, V. I. Lenin, in an irreconcilable struggle against the nihilistic-vulgarizing proletarians who called for the rejection of the cultural achievements of the past, tirelessly pursued the idea that a new, socialist culture can be created only on the basis of mastering all the cultural riches developed by humanity, on the basis of their critical processing and rethinking in a new, higher synthesis .3 For the socialist proletariat, which is paving the way for the bright future of all mankind, is the only legitimate and historically called heir to all the treasures of human culture. From this Leninist understanding of the tasks of the working class in creating a new culture and its relationship to the cultural heritage of the past, the CPSU Program proceeds, defining ways to form a national, universal culture of communist society, which, "absorbing and developing all the best that has been created by world culture, will be a new, higher stage in the cultural development of mankind."4 This again and again confronts us with the grandiose task set forth by Lenin: to master, that is, from a scientific, Marxist standpoint, in all its depth, to comprehend and rework the cultural wealth that has been left behind for centuries, and to discard all that is limited, class-based, self-serving, and belittling to man, to extract, reveal, and develop on a new basis all that is most human. contained in this great legacy.

In the cultural creativity of past times, hardly any other historical epoch has meant more for subsequent cultural progress, has left a mark more indelible and more fruitful than the Renaissance. It is natural, therefore, that a deep Marxist-Leninist understanding of the nature and dynamics of Renaissance culture and the ideology of humanism that guided it is an essential task. Moreover, no matter how much bourgeois thought tries to evaluate the achievements of the Renaissance under the influence of new forces and new trends of revolutionary modernity, while remaining idealistic, it constantly returns to slightly updated old misconceptions. An acute ideological struggle over the legacy of the Renaissance remains a leading feature of scientific development in this area. For Marxist thought, the protection of historical truth in relation to the Renaissance culture is all the more important because the values of this culture remain to this day a great testimony to the creative power of realistic art and culture.-

2 See I. N. Golenishchev-Kutuzov. Italian Renaissance and Slavic Literatures, Moscow, 1958, p. 7.

3 See V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 41, pp. 4-305, 337. - .

4 "Program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union", Moscow, 1961, p. 130.

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We are a weapon in the struggle for the realism of our time, against the decadent art of modern modernism.

When approaching the complex set of problems of Renaissance, the first question that needs to be answered is the historical certainty of this concept. Are we dealing with a general, non-historical category, or with a specific phenomenon that is unique in its qualitative definiteness? For Marxist thought, the concrete conditionality and limitation of the phenomenon of European history, which has been called the Renaissance, is obvious .5 It is well known to what wilds of arbitrary constructions (up to identification with Augustinism, with the spirit of the epistles of the Christian apostles and the Old Testament prophets, with a certain eternal and elusive "spirit of renewal", etc.) other bourgeois researchers were led by the non-historical interpretation of the Renaissance, 6 so attractive to all (let us use the well-known expression of B. Croce) "merchants of paradoxes". The recent discussion in our literature about the Italian Renaissance and the "world Renaissance" has once again shown that the complex phenomenon of the Renaissance can only be scientifically understood on the basis of strict historicism, in an indissoluble connection with a certain stage of the historical development of Europe and, first of all, Italy. 7
However, this does not remove the question of the validity of the concept of "Renaissance". A chronological and, therefore, universal interpretation of this concept, when it includes all economic, social, political, ideological, cultural phenomena and events that occurred between two dates, 8 leads to the most unexpected results. The Renaissance automatically includes the wars and intrigues of the French and Neapolitan kings, the conquests of Cardinal Albornoz and Cesare Borgia, the fanatical frenzy of Catherine of Siena, and the penitential sermons of Savonarola. Meanwhile, another F. Engels emphasized that neither the Renaissance nor the Reformation exhaust the content of the historical epoch that gave them birth .9 Indeed, this was the era of so-called primitive accumulation, the transition from feudalism to capitalism. The powerful anti-feudal forces that emerged at that time were manifested not only in acts of open social struggle, but also gave rise to an unprecedented liberation movement in the field of ideology and culture, called the Renaissance. Thus, we should be talking about the culture of Rebirth 10 . The Renaissance is only one of the manifestations, one of the aspects of those processes that defined the essence of that era.

But in this case, is the term "Renaissance" acceptable? Undoubtedly, it is permissible, but only as an epoch in ideological and cultural development, and not as J. Michelet or J. Burckhardt imagined it, not as a synonym for the historical epoch as a whole. At the same time, we will not lose sight of the fact that both the economy and politics, as well as the ideological and cultural sphere at that time, were the scene of the sharpest struggle, where, along with the advanced, Renaissance, reactionary, anti-renesians were actively active.-

5 See S. D. Skazki n. Izbrannye trudy po istorii [Selected Works on History], Moscow, 1973, pp. 358-363, 368-370.

6 See, for example: K. Burdach. Sinn und Ursprung der Worte Renaissance und Reformation. "Sitzungsberichte der preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften". B. 1910, S. 594 - 646; J. Hujzinga. Das Problem der Renaissance. Darmstadt. 1971. (Ed. 1-E. 1920).

7 See V. I. Rutenburg. Italian Renaissance and "World Renaissance". Voprosy Istorii (Questions of History), 1969, N I; ime. Italy and Europe on the eve of the New Time, L. 1974 (part 1).

8 See, for example, E. R. Labande. L'ltalie de la Renaissance. Ducento- Trecento-Quattrocento. P. 1954.

9 SEE K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch. Vol. 20, p. 345.

10 S. D. Skazkin. Op. ed., p. 358.

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sans forces, and that, therefore, even here not everything can be attributed to Rebirth.

It is equally important to define the content of another concept - "humanism". In the old literature (and to a large extent among bourgeois authors still) it was customary to call theoretical writers humanists. At the same time, artists - creators of the imperishable values of the Renaissance - are outside of humanism or, at best, only exponents and illustrators of other people's ideas. But was Leonardo da Vinci just a mouthpiece for other people's thoughts? A careful analysis of any of his most important works proves that the unfinished "Adoration of the Magi", "Madonna in the Grotto", "The Last Supper", "Gioconda", "Battle of Anghiari", and "John the Baptist" not only each time opened up new horizons of art, but at the same time carried a message to the world. This is an epiphany of new deep and bold ideas that have extraordinarily enriched the ideological treasury of humanism.

The ideal of man-citizen, Republican, fighter, hero - has been making its way in the writings of a number of Italian humanist thinkers for a century and a half. But it was the artist Michelangelo who really developed this rebellious ideal. It is unlikely that he read it from L. Bruni or M. Palmieri - it took time. Endowed with an unusually acute sense of the pulse of the epoch, Michelangelo from his youth longed for this heroic ideal, he suffered and endured it in his soul, and creative thought poured out in a boiling stream of titanic images. Only a philosopher could have created" David"," Moses", and the violent prophets of the Sistine ceiling, and" Brutus", and" The Rebellious Slave". Michelangelo's art seemed to foresee Giordano Bruno, Thomas More, and T. Campanella. The great Renaissance artists were all deep thinkers. If we lose sight of this, we will not understand the whole ideological depth of the work of Antonello da Messina, Raphael, Giorgione, or Titian.

The narrow understanding of humanism, which is widespread in modern Western literature, as a guild designation for the gu* manitars, who were fond of antiquity and rhetoric, is also unacceptable. According to the American historian P. O. Kristeller, "the main ideal of Renaissance humanism is classical scholarship and literary grace." 11 Such an interpretation deprives humanism of its social and ideological content, de-ideologizes it, and tries to turn humanists, despite the facts, into an intellectual and aristocratic elite detached from the battle of life. But the history of the Renaissance shows that humanism was the ideological core of this huge cultural movement.

To determine the lower limit of the Renaissance, the question of its watershed with the Middle Ages, the connection and correlation between them, is crucial. This age-old dispute is still ongoing. There is no need to argue with the haters of the Renaissance, who at all costs seek to dissolve it in the "Catholic Middle Ages". But the connection between the concrete phenomena hidden behind these concepts is also beyond doubt. Especially if you do not lose sight of the fact that not only the connection - continuation, but also the connection-repulsion is possible.

The solution of this question requires, first of all, clarification of the concepts of "Renaissance"and" Middle Ages". If the Renaissance is not a synonym for the historical epoch, but a designation of the cultural movement generated by the new epoch, then it should be compared not with the Middle Ages in general, but with medieval culture. But the culture

11 See R. O. Kristeller. Changing Views of the Intellectual History of the Renaissance since J. Burckhardt. "The Renaissance. A Reconsideration". Madison, 1964, pp. 36, 39 - 40.

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this, like the culture of any antagonistic society, was by no means unambiguous. Within the framework of the relative unity of medieval culture, a deep duality is revealed, a constant struggle of opposing tendencies inspired by opposing ideological aspirations: the ruling feudal class, on the one hand, and the oppressed working people, the feudally dependent peasantry and the mass of medieval townspeople, on the other. If these two socially heterogeneous phenomena are so different, comparing the Renaissance culture with each of them will also give different results: in the first case, the connection will be expressed as a repulsion, in the second-to a large extent as a continuation. Of course, the new, the Renaissance, breaking away from the old, rejecting it, could not completely avoid its known influence and for a long time still bore some traces of the past. Moreover, this old one was still far from becoming the past, it still lived nearby, around, was very aggressive and even dangerous 12 . All these traces of the past entailed a certain inconsistency and inconsistency of humanism, but they cannot obscure its qualitative novelty, its fundamental opposition to the old, theological worldview of the Middle Ages.

If we can speak of continuity between medieval culture and Renaissance culture, it is obviously only in relation to the second, "unorthodox", folk culture (as far as such was able to take shape under feudal oppression), and above all urban culture. But this was not an immediate succession or a purely quantitative increase, as it seems to continuitivists. There are elements of the new within the framework of the old system; here is the birth of a completely new ideological system, which still retains some of the elements of the old. There is an endless search for new constructions within the framework of the same eternal duality of flesh and spirit, here - the deepest indifference to any variants of the spiritualistic interpretation of man and his place in the world, a bold attempt to create a holistic, harmonious concept of man and nature. The essence of the connection of the Renaissance with the urban culture of the Middle Ages cannot be defined otherwise than as a dialectical leap, that is, a negation that includes (in the removed form) and continuation. In other words, the culture of medieval cities was not the beginning of the Renaissance, but only to a certain extent prepared it for a different historical stage.

It couldn't have been any other way. The city of developed feudalism was based on independent simple commodity production in industry - free craft. For its time, the birth of this new economic order, in which the worker was also the owner, was a powerful factor of progress, turning cities into "citadels of freedom and free labor"13 . The contradiction of this advanced way of life with the feudal-local environment and the predatory seignorial regime gave rise to guild unions of artisans ,and the liberation communal movement, and a completely new urban law, and the first sprouts of self-consciousness of medieval townspeople. 14 But in the above-mentioned specifics of the small-scale commodity system, its limitations were also laid down: by ripping out individual (fleeing to the cities) peasants from the power of large-scale land ownership, it, although in a different way, without feudal allotment, again connected the producer with the means of production,

12 The history of the struggle between Renaissance and anti-Renaissance forces in Italy of the XIV-XVI centuries is still waiting for a deep study.

13 S. D. Skazkin. Decree op., p. 171.

14 See K. Marx and F. Engels. Soch. Vol. 3, pp. 53, 77; vol. 21, pp. 406-409, 412-415; vol. 23. pp. 597, 771-772.

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This means that he had neither the need nor the ability to overthrow the feudal system .15
That is why neither politically nor ideologically the medieval city did not go beyond the framework of opposition to feudalism. This is why, although mature feudalism gave rise to flourishing craft and trade centers in all countries of Western Europe, until the beginning of early capitalist development in fourteenth-century Italy, we will not find a Renaissance culture anywhere. Obviously, this particular moment of socio - economic development was crucial for the emergence of a new culture and the underlying ideology, and it is precisely this moment that determines the qualitative leap that separates the revolutionary culture of the Renaissance from the oppositional culture of the medieval burghers. And that, by the way, is why, despite some impulses of similar coloring, the Renaissance culture did not arise in the countries of the East.

But is the fact of the emergence of capitalist production so important? Were not merchants and moneylenders the bearers of advanced cultural demands and progressive tendencies? Why couldn't they put forward a solid anti-feudal worldview? First of all, let us remind you that the figures of the merchant and usurer are just as characteristic of the city of the classical Middle Ages as the guild artisans. The "antediluvian forms of capital"represented by them, in the words of Karl Marx, 16 also suffered from feudal oppression, but they had neither the ability nor the need to eliminate the feudal system of production (usurious capital also played a significant preserving role). Industrial capital is another matter. Its vital basis was the exploitation of wage workers, who were free from both feudal coercion and the possession of the means of production. And this required the destruction of feudalism. After all, the latter was based on the union of the worker with the means of production, and as long as this union was maintained, industrial capital could not enter into full force. The separation of the mass of producers from the means of production, that is, the destruction of the very foundations of feudalism, is a necessary prerequisite for the free functioning of industrial capital. It was here that the economic necessity of the anti-feudal revolutionism of the industrial bourgeoisie lay.

Considering the process of so-called initial accumulation and noting that the beginning of the capitalist era dates back to the sixteenth century, Marx felt it necessary to make a reservation: "The first rudiments of capitalist production are found sporadically in individual cities along the Mediterranean Sea as early as the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries."17 . He was referring to the most developed cities in Italy (primarily Florence).18 . Marx and Engels called Italy the country of "the first flourishing of manufactories." 19 In Italy, Marx wrote, "capitalist production developed first of all"20 and at the same time emphasized that the prerequisite for this development was the process of de-landization of rural peasants in the most developed urban communes of Northern and Central Italy, which in the second half of the thirteenth century, in the struggle against the feudal lords, pursued a policy of forced emancipation of serfs, which, however, did not-

15 See Stam. Driving contradictions in the development of a medieval city. "Voprosy istorii", 1965, No. 7; his zh. e. Folding the social structure of a medieval city. "The Middle Ages". Issue 32, Moscow, 1969; his. Medieval city and the problem of the emergence of non-feudal forms of ownership. "Medieval city". Issue No. 2. Saratov. 1974.

16 K. Marx and F. Engels, Op. 25, part II, p. 142.

17 K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch. Vol. 23, p. 728.

18 See The Archive of Marx and Engels, vol. VI, p. 260.

19 K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch. Vol. 3, p. 55.

20 K. Marx and F. Engels, Op. 23, p. 728, note 189.

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They lost their land and were forced to go to the cities that liberated them, where they became proletarians 21-wage workers in manufactories.

This is how Italian early capitalism first emerged in Europe. It was still very immature, it developed not on the scale of the whole country, but within the narrow limits of individual cities and their districts, and at the same time only in certain branches of production, primarily in cloth making (then also in silk and cotton weaving). Nevertheless, this was undoubtedly capitalist production, which was based on the exploitation of wage workers. As early as the 1940s, the first workers ' strikes broke out in Florence, and in 1378, the great Ciompi uprising, a protest of hired workers who tried to seize power in the republic. Nothing like this was known at that time in medieval cities outside of Italy. This is why Engels called Italy "the first capitalist nation," and Dante's time, the beginning of the fourteenth century in Italy, "the beginning of the modern capitalist era." 22
This understanding of the social basis of the Renaissance does not allow for" economic - materialistic " straightforwardness or modernization. A. N. Veselovsky tried to identify the connection of this culture with its social prerequisites and build its periodization on this basis. However, his scheme was not consistent with historical facts. Thus, according to Veselovsky, the Florentine bourgeoisie, after the suppression of the Ciompi uprising, has outlived its progressive possibilities .23 Meanwhile, it is from the first years of the 15th century that the rapid rise of Florentine humanism begins, that brilliant flourishing of Renaissance art, which defined the face of this entire cultural stream. Obviously, the nature and dynamics of the base - superstructure relationship is much more complex than it sometimes seems. Therefore, attempts to connect or even explain the High Renaissance, this greatest rise of humanistic art, imbued with the spirit of struggle, freedom and human power, with the triumph of tyranny in a number of urban centers of Italy at this time, are equally far from the truth.

But it's not just that. Veselovsky's scheme lacks historicism. It proceeds from the idea of humanism as the ideology of the mature bourgeoisie. Meanwhile, the specifics of early capitalism consisted in the fact that the new economic and social system was only being formed in the struggle against the prevailing feudalism. In Italy, moreover, the centers of early capitalism in the most developed cities were surrounded by a sea of feudal and semi-feudal orders, and the early bourgeois republics that emerged in these cities had to constantly defend their existence against the internal conspiracies of grandees and the onslaught of feudal tyrannical forces from outside. Although this society was already shaken by the first conflicts between the bourgeois and proletarians, the main social contradiction of the era remained the antagonism between the emerging capitalist society and the feudal environment:

21 See ibid.

22 K. Marx and F. Engels, op. cit. vol. 22, p. 382; see also vol. 25, part I, p. 25: In the works of some bourgeois authors of the first half of the 20th century (primarily the German historian A. Doren), the first attempts were made to analyze the early stage of capitalist development in Florence. From the Marxist point of view, this process, as well as the very structure of early capitalist production in Italy, are thoroughly and deeply studied in the fundamental work: V. I. Rutenburg. " Essay on the history of early capitalism in Italy. Florentine Companies of the XIV century l. 1951; see also; his. Popular movements in Italian cities. XIV-the beginning of the XV century Moscow -L. 1958; M. A. Gukovsky. Italian Renaissance, Vol. I. L. 1947, pp. 230-236; "History of Italy", Vol. I. M. 1970, ch. 5.

23 See A. N. Veselovsky. Collected Works, vol. 3, St. Petersburg, 1908, pp. 218-223. It is noteworthy that the most brilliant period of Italian history and culture seemed to Veselovsky to be the XIV century (see ibid., p. 124); the subsequent era "prepares the way for the principate" (Medici) and "the so-called revival of the XV and XVI centuries" - a time of "significant losses" and only "kazovye acquisitions" (pp. 218-219).

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Therefore, the main driving impulse of the entire humanistic culture of the Renaissance was its anti-feudal liberation orientation.

For the same reason, straightforward unambiguity is completely unsuitable for determining the social content of humanistic ideology and the entire Renaissance culture. In fact, the bourgeois nature of humanism is beyond doubt: the justification of private property, wealth, the principle of personal interest as the basis of public morality, sometimes even individual anti-democratic tirades. But at the same time, there is a deep nationality of the works of Boccaccio, Sacketti, Masaccio, the most lively interest of Alberti and even Poliziano in the common people and in various labor processes and crafts; Dante's angry philippics against greed as the worst of vices, Leonardo da Vinci's annihilating contempt for a spiritlessly consumerist existence. How do I coordinate one with the other? The source of this contradiction lies in the inconsistency of this stage of social development, the earliest bourgeoisie. Vital class interests forced it to engage in a revolutionary anti-feudal struggle (let us say in parentheses: contrary to the" frightening " calculations of the American historian L. Martinez, 24 the most bourgeois wealth in that era was objectively an anti-feudal force), forced it to seek an alliance with the people. At the same time, the working masses of the city and countryside were no less interested in destroying the feudal estate regime. Therefore, as Engels rightly argued, in the struggle against feudalism, the bourgeoisie had a certain right to speak on behalf of all the working people .25 That is why in early bourgeois ideology and culture, bourgeois and popular principles are different, but organically intertwined. This was, in fact, the ideology and culture of all the anti-feudal forces.

In addition, the solution of this contradiction of Renaissance humanism should be sought in a correct understanding of the complexity and dialectical nature of the process of developing the social ideal of a given class. In fact, why did Dante so indignantly attack greed as the most abominable vice? After all, this is an essential quality of the bourgeoisie. Perhaps this is a manifestation of the old noble traditions? But the noble tendencies of the thinker who wrote: when he hears someone rant about the class nature of nobility, he wants to grab a knife?! Then, perhaps, the bourgeois narrowness of the modest popolan of the communal era, his fear of the emerging predatory capital, was reflected here? But the idea of religious tolerance, which was hardly unheard of at the beginning of the fourteenth century, the admiration for the fearless feat of Ulysses (like the providence of Columbus), the whole implacable and rebellious spirit of the great Florentine's work fit in with the timid modesty of a small townsman of the Middle Ages. Even if Dante is only a harbinger. Leonardo da Vinci is known to have expressed contempt for wealth and money-grubbing: "The poor are the ones who want to have a lot of things," and a consumer existence is worthy of cattle breeding .26 Throughout the entire history of humanism - from Petrarch, through Alberti and Leonardo to Giordano Bruno - we can trace the idea of work as the most important manifestation of virtue, as the first vocation of a person. Alberti rebelled against the acquisitiveness that enslaves the soul, in fact, he even considered it a crime.-

24 See L. Mar tines. The Social World of the Florentine Humanists. Princeton. 1963. This line is continued by the work of R. A. Goldthwaite. Private Wealth in Renaissance Florence. Princeton. 1968.

25 See K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch. Vol. 20, p. 17.

26 "The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci". N. Y. 1954, p. 1122 (ed. E. McCurdy). Cod. Atl., 71 г.; Forst., Ill, 74 v.

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considered unworthy to appropriate the work of others 27 . And this is the bourgeois ideal? The facts attest to the profound truth of Engels ' observation: the humanists were anything but bourgeoisly narrow-minded people .28
The problem of the emergence of the ideology of the advanced class, in particular the development of its ethical ideal, still awaits a Marxist understanding. But there is no doubt that ideology is not born as a mechanical impression of the everyday economic practice and life empiricism of this class. It is only prepared by his social psychology, but in no way can it be reduced to it. It is created by ideologues inspired by the best, liberating, creatively promising opportunities that are objectively contained in the economically creative, socially transformative activities of this class, understood as a universal task. On the contrary, the negative aspects inherent in the activities of the same class are ignored, ignored, or even strongly rejected. In the emerging new (in fact, early bourgeois) order, the humanists were attracted not by the greed or greed of the "fat popolans", but by the struggle of the people against the grandees, that is, against class inequality, which was interpreted as a struggle for freedom and equality of all people; their activity,which opposed the laziness and parasitism of the nobles and churchmen; criticism, inquisitiveness of thought, which allowed us to overthrow the oppressive power of eternal authorities; rationalism of thought and action; confidence in the reality and value of this world, which was rediscovered as a field of boundless creativity and achievable harmony.

One of the most important questions of the content and evolution of humanism is the question of Renaissance individualism. Burckhardt declared individualism to be the main feature of the entire Renaissance. He equated it with selfishness, in fact merged it with the despotism of condottieri and tyrants. As a result, the ethical thread of the Renaissance was drawn almost from Pope Gregory VII, and Petrarch, whom Burckhardt tried to protect and appreciate highly, was bluntly declared by the successors of this semi-Nietzschean interpretation of the Renaissance to be a socially indifferent egoist who never loved anyone but himself.

Such an extrahistorical approach is alien to Marxist thought. In the article "On the methodology of the history of Renaissance and humanism" S. D. Skazkin introduced the concept of Renaissance individualism within the framework of historical certainty, revealing the social conditionality of this phenomenon generated by the triumph of commodity production relations. It is precisely this economic system, in which the activity of a mass of isolated commodity producers is united and controlled by the market, with the ruthless element of competition dominating it, that requires the indispensable freedom of the commodity producer to dispose of his person, property, and time. Moreover, it requires calculation, perseverance, resourcefulness, ingenuity, requires the greatest exertion of all the physical and spiritual forces of the individual to survive in this fierce struggle, because in the course of competition it has no one to rely on but itself. All this creates in the consciousness of the individual the idea of the highest value of his " I "as the center of the universe, as the focus of unlimited internal possibilities, the only condition for the realization of which is his rationally directed will with complete freedom of its manifestation. 29 But the relations of commodity production acquire the quality of universality, and become dominant in the general economy.-

27 L. B. Albert i. I primi tre libri della famiglia. Firenze. 1946, pp. 222 - 224,

28 See K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch. Vol. 20, p. 346.

29 S. D. Skazkin. Decree, op., pp. 371-375.

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only with the emergence of the capitalist system 30 . Hence the obvious bourgeois conditionality of Renaissance individualism and its historical significance. Did it contain the possibility of selfishness and immorality? Undoubtedly. But at the early bourgeois stage, this is only a potency or a sporadic tendency. The Burckhardt-Nietzschean interpretation of Renaissance individualism is also unhistorical because it is based on the ideas of a different era. Renaissance individualism, as opposed to late bourgeois individualism, was alien to an antisocial orientation.

What did the thirst for glory mean, for example, in the conditions of the XIV century? First of all, a violation of the main Christian commandment of humility, a penitent consciousness of one's own insignificance. It was a sin of pride from the church's point of view-one of the gravest of all human sins. Moreover, the Church has declared contempt for the world and for worldly glory to be an indispensable condition for acquiring eternal life in the world beyond. Those who aspired to glory here on earth probably no longer believed too strongly in the reality of eternal bliss. Let Dante not yet realize that his thirst for glory, his demand for man to leave a mark on the earth with great deeds, must close the gates of paradise even more tightly before him than before Virgil. Petrarch no longer harbors illusions: he seeks glory here on earth, knowing that by doing so, he closes his access to an otherworldly "salvation". His "secret" (not written for other people's eyes) dispute with Augustine is an attempt to find out to the end whether everything that has matured in his soul, and above all the ardent desire for the fullness of earthly life, is really incompatible with the precepts of religion. In the name of the happiness of this life - earthly love and glory - he is ready to give up eternal bliss. From a man who had just begun to break away from a thousand-year-old faith, such renunciation required exceptional strength of spirit. But it is indisputable: the indispensable prerequisite for such a renunciation could only be the doubt that has settled in the consciousness about the reality of the soul's afterlife. From the very beginning, the humanistic thirst for glory was a denial not only of moral imperatives, but also of the fundamental ontological foundations of the Christian worldview.

The question of the relationship between humanism and religion is complex. Least of all, it can be resolved by an unambiguous answer. If it is obvious that the statements of the clerical literature (in any of its variants-from J. Toffanin to J. Toffanin) can be used as an example. Walsh's ideas about the Christian nature of humanism are in blatant contradiction to the facts, but the thesis about the direct atheism of the Renaissance is not much more correct. The antithesis of humanism to the theological worldview of the Middle Ages is beyond question, but how should it be defined? It is often presented as follows: humanism was hostile to scholasticism and the scholastics, to the monks whom it ridiculed, and to a certain extent to the churchmen in general, and these anti-ecclesiastical tendencies sometimes led individual humanists to attack and attack religion. It seems that the reverse course of thought will be closer to reality: an ideology that placed man at the center of the universe and, in any case, at the center of the ethical universe, in which, so to speak, the starting point was man, not God, knowledge, not faith, such an ideology from the very beginning contained the grain denials of religion. Another thing (and this is quite natural) is that far from all humanists did not immediately realize this opposite, far from everyone had the courage and consistency of thought to draw all the conclusions that this opposite required.

But despite all the inconsistencies, humanism from the very first steps (this is clearly revealed already in Petrarch) irreconcilably rejected the asceticism and spiritualism of Christian ethics, thereby undermining the entire system of Christian ethics.-

30 See K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch. Vol. 23, pp. 180, 181; vol. 24, pp. 40, 42, 43.

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the topic of moral values of religion and replacing them with fundamentally different, humanistic values. Then (this is perhaps especially evident in Balla, Callimachus, and Pontano) humanism, using the ideological arsenal of the renewed Epicureanism and Lucian criticism, proceeds to ridicule the very foundations of the religious worldview and develops a more or less complete system, which would be more or less correct to call the system of Renaissance freethinking, and without which no humanistic concept can be understood. neither ideology nor Renaissance art. For they carried within them the denial of fear, suffering, sacrifice, submission - all that formed the basis of the religious and moral ideal. It is only in Leonardo da Vinci that this free-thinking reaches a more or less consistent atheistic and materialistic maturity, and then this atheism breaks through in separate but sharp strokes under the pen of N. Machiavelli and F. Schulz. Guicciardini.

The problem of the relationship between the Renaissance and religion is still waiting for a special study, but there is no doubt: the anti-feudal nature of Renaissance humanism manifested itself primarily as an anti-ascetic and anti-clerical orientation, as the opposite of the entire theistic worldview of the Middle Ages. This antithesis, so to speak, was contained in the grain already in the Renaissance-individualistic thirst for glory. As we have seen, its negative content side already had a powerful explosive force. No less expressive is its reverse, positive side: the demand for an active, active, creative life of the individual-the imperative of heroic daring, which permeates the entire Renaissance culture-from Dante to Michelangelo and Giordano Bruno. What is called Renaissance individualism actually meant the emancipation of man from the regime of feudal-ecclesiastical-class discrimination, leveling and suppression, that "rise of the sense of personality", "protest of the individual", in which Lenin saw one of the important manifestations of the progressive significance of capitalism .31 Again, every affirmation is primarily a negation. Renaissance individualism rejected the Christian ideal of a contemplative life, vita contemplativa, by demanding the earthly activity of the human personality, and opposed it as the highest virtue to vita activa; it openly preferred the active Martha to the passively contemplative Mary, which the Church praised. It wasn't just a revolt against the church. Renaissance individualism, proclaiming.the duty of each person to become a person, a creator and the right of each person to valor and glory, challenged the entire feudal-estate system. Nobility is not inherited, it is not an attribute of noble nobility. It can only be the merit of the individual himself - his mind, greatness of spirit and deeds. This is something that Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Poggio never tire of repeating. But already full of bitterness and anger, the words of Dante, who was ready to "grab a knife", eloquently testify to the power of protest (social!), what hatred of the arrogant feudal nobility, to the injustice of the class inequality of people lay at the heart of the ideological complex that was called Renaissance individualism.

In this light, the author reveals the anti-feudal and creative meaning of the demand for self-deepening, self-understanding and self-disclosure, which was made by both Petrarch and Leonardo da Vinci and which so often served as a reason for accusing them of egoism, and Renaissance humanism in general - of social indifferentism. This thesis, the fruit of a superficial approach, is refuted not only by Leonardo's motto "It is better to lose the ability to move than to cease to be useful", confirmed by the titanic work of his whole life, but already

31 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 1, pp. 433, 434

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the most basic position of the humanists. From the very beginning, they made it a priority for people to understand, in the words of Petrarch: who are they in this world, where did they come from and why? They brought moral philosophy to the fore, that is, they turned sharply from theological speculation to the sphere of direct social behavior of a person, as if the church did not give (a thousand years ago!) their "comprehensive" answers to all these questions. But there was an argument from God, here, on the contrary, from man. So it was not only a deeply social task, but also a fundamentally new solution to it.

Humanism wanted to find the way to a perfect, harmonious existence of humanity on this beautiful earth. It seemed to him that this was quite achievable: through a person who was free, creatively active,and constantly improving. It was an individualistic, essentially bourgeois approach to the problem. But this individualism at that time was a powerful anti-feudal liberation factor. With its help, a holistic worldview was built, in which man, endowed with unlimited creative abilities and titanic power, actually supplanted God. How much poorer (not to say spiritually impoverished) would humanity have remained without the" individualistic " discovery of man that the humanists made! It was historically necessary, a great step towards the liberation of humanity.

If, therefore, the militant sociality of Renaissance individualism is obvious, then the emergence of an openly civil principle, that "civil humanism", to which the research of the American scientist G. Baron so reasonably attracted attention, is also natural .32 These are two sides of the one. At various periods, one or the other side came to the fore mainly. Renaissance historians have yet to find out the patterns of these trends and come to a deeper understanding of the internal periodization of this complex cultural movement. But the organic unity of these two sides cannot be doubted: in all the significant manifestations of humanism, one has never completely dispensed with the other.

If Bruni highly valued the public interests and responsibilities of the people, the focus and guarantee of which was the republic, then his republic should have consisted of well-developed and socially active individuals. That is why he attached so much importance to education. It's the same in Renaissance art. Of course, the frescoes of Masaccio (Brancacci Chapel) are imbued with the spirit of harsh citizenship. But isn't it the first time that man himself is represented in such an exalted, deeply dignified way-down to the last beggar? And the saints in these frescoes are individualized, heroically exalted people from the common people. Similarly, the pathos of patriotism and citizenship permeates the entire work of Michelangelo, and at the same time, each image in his galaxy of titans is a unique personality with its own special facets of individuality. Perhaps the most striking example is his amazing Brutus. Heroic citizenship is realized in him through a heroic personality. This is not only the way of Renaissance art. Without discovery, self-awareness, and the nurturing of individuality, would the feat of Giordano Bruno and so many other heroes and martyrs-the relentless seekers of truth born of the Renaissance-have been possible?

32 H. Baron. The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance. 2 vols. Princeton. 1955; ejusd. Humanistic and Political Literature in Florence and Venice at the Beginning of the Quattrocento. Cambridge (7-iass.). 1935.

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Thus, there is an organic unity and interpenetration of two seemingly opposite trends in humanistic ideology. At the same time, it is obvious that for all its importance and inherent humanism, individualism does not exhaust the ideological content of humanism. Contrary to Burckhardt's ideas, it cannot be recognized as an exclusive, defining feature, also because, as is well known, individualism was also the basis of various reform-religious teachings - this second most important manifestation of early bourgeois, that is, also anti-feudal, ideology. The deep inner kinship of these two major ideological streams of the so-called primitive accumulation era is unquestionable, but their fundamental dissimilarity is no less certain. They were divided not by individualism, but by anthropocentrism. Apparently, it is in him, in anthropocentrism, that we should see the main ideological basis and the fundamental distinguishing feature of humanism as the ideological core of the entire Renaissance culture.

This approach, we think, allows us to find some new reference points for solving the issues of internal periodization of this culture. Undoubtedly, its main channel was the visual arts. Perhaps it is in its development that we should look for crucial milestones for building a general periodization of the Renaissance? And indeed, there is a lot of evidence in favor of this approach. The proto-Renaissance is very convincingly dated by Giotto's work, which also chronologically and ideologically almost coincides with Dante's. But then the difficulties immediately begin: almost 70 years pass after Giotto, and Florentine art not only cannot rise to the next level, but is not even able to comprehend and master the great ideological and artistic achievements of Giotto, to stay at the height to which he raised it - there is a pathetic epigonism, even a backward movement. They point to the Sienese, but although some of their achievements are undeniable, it is difficult to recognize the work of the Sienese as a continuation of the path laid out by Giotto's art, a new stage in the ascent of Renaissance realism. Meanwhile, there was no stagnation in the Renaissance culture at this time. It was in the middle and second half of the XIV century. Petrarch and Boccaccio made such a step forward, without which the further progressive development of humanistic culture as a whole would have been simply impossible. But - in the sphere of literature and thought.

At the beginning of the 15th century, everything seems to fall into place: an unprecedented flourishing of art begins in Florence. In the works of Brunelleschi and Ghiberti, Masaccio and Donatello, the foundations of Renaissance humanistic realism are laid. At the same time, a rapid upsurge is observed in the socio-political consciousness of the Florentine Republic and in the ideology of humanism, and an organic connection between all these phenomena is obvious.

Approximately in the middle of the 15th century, the development of Florentine art began to show a slowdown, a lack of new creative ideas, and in the third quarter of the same century, trends of refinement, uncertainty, and growing inner fracture began to set the tone. (True, at the same time, there is a fruitful search for a deeper insight into reality and the unfolding of the humanistic ideal in art, but only sporadically and mainly outside of Florence, most of all, perhaps, in the work of Antanello da Messina.) The crisis of humanistic art erupts in the last quarter of the 15th century. In the works of a number of artists, the tendencies of aristocratic sophistication, languid melancholy, finally, gloomy despair, departure from reality and even a return to Gothic anguish and mystical exaltation prevail. Moreover, these phenomena reveal a significant correlation with profound changes in the socio-political system.

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the life of Florentine society, with the obvious aristocratization of its bourgeois elite, and then the establishment of open tyranny, and finally with the extreme tension of the social and ideological crisis, which broke through with the overwhelming flow of the Savonarola movement.

But in a striking way, at the same time, in the same Mediaeval Florence, the opposite direction in art is being born. It finds the strength not only to reject the fad of effeminate fashion, not only to step over this fad and absorb all the healthy juices of Quattrocento, but also to comprehend the humanistic ideal with such depth and express it with such force and completeness (especially in the works of Leonardo da Vinci), which were completely inaccessible to previous generations. This is how the High Renaissance develops, the peak stage of this culture, which brought the classical embodiment of the realistic ideal of Renaissance humanism. In Michelangelo's work, this ascent reaches a climax, and then there is a break. Mannerism triumphs, and the face of art changes beyond recognition. According to the accepted criterion, the end of the Renaissance is evident. All the more so since the Counter-Reformation is also beginning at this time, and the disasters of the Italian wars are driving the country to a desperate situation. Thus, the end of this epoch was determined by J. Burckhardt and J. Schulz in the early 20th and early 19th centuries. Simonds, then D. Frey and M. Dvorak.

But the credibility of this dating is "hindered" by the mighty Venetian Renaissance. In addition, the chosen criterion excludes from the Renaissance all the brightest works of Italian thinkers-humanists, natural philosophers and natural scientists of the XVI century-from Leonardo da Vinci to Bauno and Campanella. Let us not forget that the strength of Renaissance art was determined by the greatness of the new ideas that inspired it. Obviously, the measure of cultural periodization should be sought in the ideology that drove it, of course, without losing sight of the social conditionality of the evolution of the ideology itself. Then wouldn't it be best to take the development of philosophy as a criterion? After all, it forms the most general theoretical basis of any worldview. But then immediately there are difficulties. How to determine the philosophical position of the first humanists? Although they studied the ancient thinkers more thoroughly than anyone else, they did not consider themselves either peripatetics or Platonists, and later attempts to link them to one of these traditional schools (in our time especially strongly to Platonism) always remained more or less obvious stretch marks. For some reason, they showed almost complete indifference to the issues of ontology. Modern neotomists (l. Thorndike) this even gave rise to accusations of laziness of thought (!)33 .

Since the 1460s, when the Platonic Academy was founded in Florence, the situation has become clearer-the period of Platonism obviously begins. True, the dominance of this philosophical school was by no means complete. Even among the thinkers of the Medichesky krut, who generally followed the same line, there were convinced peripatetics, for example, Argyropulo 34 . The influence of Aristotle is also felt in the views of Pico della Mirandola. And the titan of the era, Leonardo da Vinci, remained indifferent to Neoplatonism and went a completely different ideological path. But even if we accept such a periodization, the question remains unclear: how to determine the position of the Platonists themselves in relation to humanism? Was their neo-Platonism a continuation, a most complete reflection, or a negation of humanism? In other words, does this periodization mean that the humanists of the previous century and a half were immature?-

33 See L. Thorn dik. Science and Thought in the Fifteenth Century. N, Y. 1929, p. 13.

34 See L. M. Bragin. Argyropulo. "The Middle Ages". Issue 31, Moscow, 1968.

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or that the beginning of the neo-Platonic stage is the end of the humanistic stage? In addition, what does this criterion provide for understanding the brightest phenomenon of the era - fine art? Should the triumph of Neo-Platonism be seen as the source of the great rise of the High Renaissance, or of the crisis break revealed in the works of Botticelli, Filippino Lippi, Piero di Cosimo?

Further, in one way or another, this period is limited to the XV century. Although some of the ideas of Neo-Platonism had a considerable influence on the development of thought in the sixteenth century, there is no doubt that Artistothelism also had a powerful influence. Just name the Pomponazzi. Again, ideological evolution does not fit into the framework of strict adherence to traditional schools, and this stage of development of the Renaissance ideology in the general direction that prevailed in it is most convenient to call natural philosophy. But again, the question is: in what relation does this trend and this stage stand to humanism? What is it-its continuation, rebirth or negation? As a result, it is impossible not to come to the conclusion that, for all its attractiveness, the periodization of Renaissance on the basis of purely philosophical criteria does not meet the requirements of the object under study itself. In fact, if we recognize that there are three fundamentally different periods in the sphere of ideology, then was a single Renaissance culture even possible?

But let's go back to humanism and the first humanists. How do you define their philosophical position? Back in the 1930s, the English historian N. Robb warned against too straightforward an interpretation of all humanism as Platonism .35 It is true that Petrarch argued with the Paduan Aristotelians, but even earlier he began his heated argument with the Neo-Platonist Augustine. Bruni translated Plato, but even more so Aristotle. And Pontano could laugh at both the peripatetics and the Platonists. In addition, there is a considerable amount of stoicism and epicureanism in the views of the early humanists. What an amazing illegibility! And at the same time, almost complete indifference to the most important ontological problems for philosophers.

And yet, perhaps, there was no frivolity or notorious eclecticism in this. Perhaps, with more reason, we ourselves deserve the reproach of pedantry and bias in the belief that the philosophical schools and trends abandoned by antiquity are integral and coherent systems of worldview that allow only an alternative solution to all questions of being and knowledge. For humanists, such a choice could not even arise. They put forward the idea of man as the measure of all things, as the center and goal of all things. Objectively, this was a completely new worldview, which basically rejected the thousand-year-old theocentric ideology of the Middle Ages, in which God was the starting point, source and goal of everything. The new worldview was integral precisely in its humanism. Could it have sought support solely in Aristotelianism, which became the logical foundation of ecclesiastical scholasticism, or in Platonism, which the church from the very beginning managed to make its philosophical squire? It is known that both philosophical systems of antiquity were thoroughly "corrected", adapted to the needs of church ideology. But it is important that they could be so adapted. The theological worldview, while maintaining a certain integrity on a theistic basis, could to a certain extent be based on. both philosophical systems. If this allows us to speak about the inconsistency of theological consciousness, then, apparently, also about the inconsistency of these philosophical systems, about the presence in them of different and even opposite epistemological potentials. In any case, it is obvious that under these conditions in the non-commitment of the gu-

35 N. Robb. Neoplatonism of the Italian Renaissance. L. 1935.

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There was no ideological inconsistency between manism and any one school of philosophy. Its consistency consisted in its humanistic anthropocentrism. The appeal to this or that old philosophical system for solving certain questions of ontology or epistemology played, in fact, a subordinate role - it did not violate its original ideological principle, but it was supposed to serve as an additional justification for it.

From the very beginning, humanism has focused on ethical issues. Abstract questions of ontology were relegated to the background - humanists preferred not to deal with them. This was hardly philosophical levity. In the real conditions of that time, when the natural sciences did not yet exist, and the timid sprouts of knowledge of nature were making their way through the weeds of scholastic intricacies, any attempt to rethink the Universe had to result only in a different rearrangement of the inevitable components of the same scholastic speculation, only in a different version of the theological worldview. By necessarily avoiding (for the time being) the issues of abstract ontology and bringing to the fore the problem of man (and not God), humanism, in fact, solved the problem of building a new worldview, but solved it with the most reasonable and effective means for that era. Humanistic anthropocentrism was the Archimedean point of support, based on which, in those conditions, it was really possible to turn the entire cosmos of the medieval worldview upside down. The great historical task of negation, which humanist ideology was called upon to perform, determined all the richness of its positive content. Regardless of any previous philosophical school, humanism was an original, independent and integral ideological system. Without taking this into account, we will not understand the essence, evolution, or historical role of humanism as the ideological basis of the entire Renaissance culture.

The objective content of the ideological trend that prevailed in Florence in the second half of the 15th century cannot be exhausted by the concept of Neo-Platonism. Neo-Platonism was a profoundly contradictory philosophical doctrine, which, as history shows, could lead its adherents sometimes in exactly opposite directions: from orthodox church theology or the extreme irrationalism of ecstatic mysticism to mystical-pantheistic anti-church heresies and even to rationalistically oriented pantheistic freethinking. In the views of such leading thinkers of the Florentine Academy as Pico, Landino, and even Ficino, under the cover of idealistic platonism, one finds (in some cases more fully, in others less preserved)a certain degree of freedom. the anthropocentric basis. It cannot be attributed to platonism. In this case, we should be talking about platonically colored humanism. In other words, if it is impossible to agree with the interpretation of Florentine Platonism as the only genuine, "true" humanism, then the opposite idea of this ideological trend as a kind of negation of humanism, which means the triumph of completely new ideological principles, is no more consistent with the facts. Obviously, we are only facing a new stage in the development of Renaissance humanism.

How should this stage be evaluated? An unambiguous answer is hardly appropriate here. The Florentine Platonists to a certain extent turned to the problems of ontology, in this they went further than the early humanists. But, first of all, this problem did not receive any significant development among them, it remained a purely secondary sphere-ethics was still the focus of the entire system of thinking for them (and this also clearly reveals its humanistic nature). And secondly, what is the ontology?- the weakest side of their worldview-

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vision. While the early humanists based their entire ideological system on man based on nature, Ficino again brought to the forefront God as the primary source of what is and should be, as the highest being, the highest good, the highest power, the highest mind and the highest will. That is, God was again placed over man, both ontologically and ethically. Ficino considered it necessary to make a Platonic theology out of Platonic philosophy. Perhaps this theology is not entirely Christian: too much of it is from ancient pantheism (although Ficino's pantheism is not naturalistic, but mystical), as well as from some kind of universal, syncretic religion that is being sought. This is hardly Christian humanism, but it is certainly religious humanism. Let the Ficino god (as opposed to the church-mystical one) be known (more precisely, ethically comprehended). While previous humanists appealed to the self-awareness of man as the primary source of morality, in Ficino a man can realize himself only through God. And since any "knowledge" of God cannot but be mystical, Florentine Platonism naturally acquired a rather expressive religious and mystical coloring. Justice demands that we recognize that the ontological constructions of the Florentine Platonists did not lead their humanism forward, but backward .36
The Platonists ' unquestionable merit should be recognized as the development of the doctrine of harmony, which humanistic ideology and art urgently needed, to which they went and the foundations of which, undoubtedly, they laid, but they have not yet been able to complete this building. However, Ficino's theory of harmony received a purely idealistic interpretation, as a reflection of the spiritual unity of the world, conducted by the supreme power of divine love. Thus, the platonized humanism of the second half of the 15th century, while there are undoubtedly some significant steps in the progressive direction, was generally imbued with a tendency to spiritualize the humanistic worldview and therefore should be considered as a reflection of certain crisis phenomena in Renaissance humanism.

But perhaps it is unwise to demand more from the thinkers of the fifteenth century? It is well known how often, even in the sixteenth century, advanced ideological systems were clothed in a more or less definite platonic-pantheistic form. But the point is that Platonism by no means exhausted all the advanced ideological aspirations of the epoch. It was in the last quarter of the 15th century, when it would seem that Platonism became the undisputed ruler of the thoughts of Italian humanists, that a new direction was born in humanism, which seeks completely different ways to solve the same fundamental questions of being and knowledge: not in a philosophically decorated god, but in nature itself, not in the authority of the ancients and not in an abstract speculation, but in an experimental insight into the secrets of nature - its laws connected by a single thread of natural necessity. This is the way Leonardo da Vinci went. Resolutely rejecting both mysticism and speculative speculation, recognizing nature as the only source of truth that can be grasped through experience, and continuously experimenting, he developed not only the basis of a new epistemology.-

36 Interesting in this connection are the words of P. O. Kristeller, who worked harder than anyone else in the field of" platonization "of the Renaissance:" Renaissance Platonism contained many sources, interests and ideas that clearly lead it beyond the limits of humanism as a definite movement. It was intertwined with medieval scholasticism, Augustinian piety and mysticism, and it was associated with metaphysical and cosmological speculations that were completely alien to the humanists of previous generations and even to their (Platonic) own time. In the ancient ideological heritage, he sought support in the philosophical thought of Plato and the Neo-Platonists, adding to them theological speculations attributed to Orpheus, Zoroaster and Hermes Trismegistus, as well as the Jewish Kabbalah... Most Platonists insisted on a harmonious correspondence between the foundations of Platonic philosophy and Christian theology "(P. O. Kristeller. Op. cit., pp. 40-41).

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but also a fundamentally new ontological system, the driving spring of which was an internal necessity inherent in nature itself. In his search for a natural explanation of natural phenomena, he essentially arrived at a materialistic understanding of the foundations of the cosmos and human existence, alien to any spiritualization. Leonardo da Vinci also based his doctrine of harmony on the same naturalistic - natural-scientific and artistic - realistic-principles, and not on a platonic-mystical speculation.

Without taking into account Leonardo's brilliant philosophical discoveries, there can be no true picture of the development of Renaissance humanistic thought. At the same time, with all the exclusivity of Leonardo's genius, it would be wrong to present it as a unique or isolated phenomenon, left out of the main stream of humanistic thought. Despite all the peculiarities and deviations dictated primarily by the influence of the epoch (starting from the 30s of the XVI century), in the ideological systems and method of cognition of N. Copernicus, J. Bruno, T. Campanella, and G. Galileo, there is a continuation and development of the same initial principles. And the fact that Leonardo da Vinci's worldview, in all its richness of content, remained almost unknown to his contemporaries and immediate descendants, only further highlights the deep regularity of this ideological community.

The tendency that has spread in Western literature in recent decades to exaggerate the positive role of neo-Platonism in the development of Renaissance culture has led to persistent attempts to present the greatest achievements of Renaissance art as a consequence of the beneficial effects of Platonism. The falsity of such statements is perhaps most clearly shown in the point at which such proofs are most readily fixed - in the work of Michelangelo, which is regarded almost as the most complete realization of the doctrine of Platonism in the sphere of art. The main thing that neo-Platonism brought to ethics, the field closest to art, was the principle of contemplation as the highest perfection. This idealization of passivity (a step back to the ecclesiastical ideal of a contemplative life) was profoundly alien to the morality of early humanism, imbued with the spirit of irrepressible creative activity. But in the whole history of the Renaissance, it is impossible to find a phenomenon more resolutely and implacably opposed to all passivity than the work of the violent Michelangelo. For all ages, it has remained a trumpet voice that wakes up a person, calling him to action, to struggle, to heroic feat. It is impossible to imagine anything more distant from the contemplative ideal of the Platonists.

The sixteenth century, with its preponderance of natural philosophy and interest in natural science, may seem independent of humanism, 37 since humanists, in the name of understanding man and his life's purpose, openly neglected to know nature from the very beginning. However, in fact, they had to appeal to nature very soon (not only Balle, but already Petrarch, not only Brunelleschi, but already Giotto), because if a person stopped looking for support in the deity, he could only rely on nature. Naturalism was objectively programmed in anthropocentrism. Not surprisingly, the greatest natural philosophers of the sixteenth century were also great humanists, from Leonardo da Vinci to Giordano Bruno and Campanella. The greatness of Leonardo was that

37 H. Haydn calls this a "counter-renaissance" (see N. Haydn. The Cbunter-Renaissance. N. Y. 1950). But even earlier, J. R. R. Tolkien Toffanin broke away from humanism and contrasted it with the Renaissance as a development of natural philosophy and experimental natural science (see G. Toffanin. Storia deH'umanesirrio. Napoli. 1933).

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he was the first to understand the insufficiency of aesthetic assimilation of reality and, proceeding from the same humanistic premises, rushed into the battle for the knowledge and subordination of nature to man. Apparently, the natural philosophical humanism of the sixteenth century is, in fact, the third and final stage in the development of the humanistic worldview: here it is completed and exhausts itself.

The problem of the late Renaissance, the crisis, and the disintegration of the humanist ideal is still awaiting investigation. But there can hardly be any doubt (and a comparison with the Northern Renaissance serves as additional proof) that, for all the significance of the Italian Wars and the Counter-Reformation, the decisive causes of the Renaissance crisis were rooted within this phenomenon, ultimately-in the completion of the so-called initial accumulation and (in one form or another) the triumph of the bourgeoisie at this historical stage.

A careful study of the Italian (primarily Tuscan) economy and politics of this time makes us abandon the simplistic view of the complete collapse of Italian early capitalism in the XVI century, of simple "refeodalization". The phenomena of backward development undoubtedly took place, but the bourgeoisie retained for a long time the most important positions in the economy. 38 Due to its historical limitations (still very low degree of maturity) it was unable to carry on the banner of freedom that it had originally raised so proudly, unable to maintain its own autocracy, and compromised with the aristocracy (often also semi-bourgeois) by ceding it the political limelight. Her anti-feudal fervor was exhausted. The early capitalist stage was coming to an end; the realm of heartless purity and egoistic calculation was being laid bare with cynical frankness; the beautiful harmonious ideal of humanism was losing its vitality and collapsing.

And here we come to another little-studied question - the internal contradictions of Renaissance humanism. The abstractness inherent in this humanism was dictated by its anti-feudal nature, and it was its strength in the struggle against the morality of feudal-aristocratic society. Humanism and its art contrasted feudal-class differentiation and discrimination with a person, a person in general, free from hierarchical constraint, from the obsessive tinsel of clothing and regulations dictated by the traditional order of ranks, titles and states of class society; a person who is beautiful in his proud natural nakedness, in freedom of his will and creative activity. This was primarily due to the striking charm, and most importantly, the unheard-of duration of the impact of Renaissance art. But what at the stage of early capitalism, in the general animation of the anti-feudal, liberation struggle, was a strength and, in a certain sense, a great truth, became a weakness and a lie when history no longer confirmed this beautiful illusion, which previously gave rise to real miracles of creativity and living titans... But the crisis of Renaissance humanism was resolved by the birth of the great ideal of utopian socialism.

38 See A.D. Rolov. On the state of industry in Florence in the second half of the sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth centuries. "The Middle Ages". Issue No. 23. Moscow, 1963; its own. The main features of Italy's economic development in the XVI-XVII centuries. "The emergence of capitalism in industry and agriculture in the countries of Europe, Asia and America", Moscow, 1968. Florence and the problem of Italy's economic decline (second half of the XVI-beginning of the XVII century). Author's abstract. doct. Diss. L. 1974; "History of Italy", Vol. I, p. 286; V. I. Rutenburg. Italy and Europe on the eve of the New Age, pp. 9-16.

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