Moscow, MSU Publishing House, 1983, 303 p. Publication of a new book by Prof. MSU Doctor of Historical Sciences L. M. Bragina fills a significant gap in the understanding of Italian humanism, in the assessments of which there is still a lot of controversy. In bourgeois historiography, there is a growing tendency to link the worldview of humanists with medieval ideas, to look for conservative and even reactionary ideas in humanism, or to single out as defining features that do not make it possible to understand its true essence. Soviet historians did not agree on everything either. While they oppose the "medievalization" of humanism and link its origin to the genesis of early bourgeois relations, they have different opinions about the nature of this movement, its chronological framework and periodization. Many problems of the Italian Renaissance still await serious study. One of the poorly developed issues in both Soviet and foreign historiography was the question of the social and ethical concepts of humanists. Meanwhile, the formation of a worldview that is opposed to the church-theological one began, as we know, first of all, with the development of a new view of a person, his role in society, morals and norms of behavior. It was "moral philosophy" that was in the center of attention of advanced thinkers of the XIV-XV centuries, closely intertwined with other humanities - history, politics, pedagogy, rhetoric, philology. The researcher identifies the social and ethical theories of Italy in the second half of the 15th century as an independent stage in the history of humanistic social thought and for the first time in historiography sets out to consider its specifics (p. 8). Unlike bourgeois historians, she emphasizes the social significance of humanism, considering it as the main ideological content of Renaissance culture, inseparable from the entire course of historical development Italy. The humanist worldview was certainly progressive, since it was based on the ... Читать далее