Are the Humanities a Trojan Horse

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Aristotle was, one might say, a Trojan who escaped the Horse. Some … First, they are concerned about the Giant Trojan who exits the horse in …

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“Are the Humanities a Trojan Horse?”
The Italian Renaissance as a Model for Invasive Claims
After hearing Dr. Koeller, Dr. Alulis, and Dr. Rabe, known experts in
our field, speak about the Medieval “age” (if I may now use such a category),
I wonder what a NT professor would dare to speak about the Italian
Renaissance. To show you just how na?e I am: when Dr. Snell originally
asked about this topic, I asked this: “Is the early 15 th Century a part of the
Medieval age?”
My standing here reminds me of another situation. As a college student
I attended a large Bible conference, and in the middle of a large session of a
famous preacher, with about 750 people in attendance, suddenly to my left,
about 25 seats away, a man stood up and began to pray aloud. Right in the
middle of a sermon this man stands up and starts praying. Later we learned
the story: the man next to him noticed he was sleeping, jabbed him with his
elbow, and told him the preacher had called on him to pray to close theTrojan Horse and the Humanities 2
session. So, he did. The man still seating could hardly contain his laughter,
but out of reverence didn’t interrupt the man’s prayer. When he was done
there was a bit of a stir, but the sermon trotted along quite nicely.
Well, that’s how I feel: somehow, I sense, someone jabbed me when I
wasn’t alert and now I find myself standing alone in this spot of having, all
eyes upon me, and asked to pray something intelligent about educational
theory by some humanists of the Italian Renaissance.
What I do want to say, whether intelligent or not, is that my muchesteemed
colleague, Dr. Rabe, has set up my paper by going through the
Muslim cultural adjustments when it encountered classical literature. What I
think my paper will do is offer a faint echo of hers, and then suggest how the
Italian Renaissance educators can help us interact with ideas that do not come
from our own worldviews, if there is such a thing as “worldview.”
1.0 The Rediscovery of Aristotle as the Context for the Italian Humanists
Whether we accept “periods” or no, there was a time when not much
Aristotle was…