León Battista Alberti and the non-­‐‑harmonic origin of Humanism

Abstract

It  is  very  usual,  for  the  philosophers,  to  join  excessively  the

notion   of   humanism   to   theEnlightenment.   That   is   why   the

Renaissance  origin  of  the  concept  is  forgotten.  This  notion  is

usually   understood   from   the   eighteenth-­‐‑

century   assumptions   established   by   Voltaire   or   Kant.   If   we

recover  the  Renaissance  origin  of  the  concept  of  humanism,

the  reading  made  by  Derrida,  which  is  based  in  the  thesis  of

a   historical   and   essential   communion   between   the   concepts

of   ‘humanism’   and   ‘fraternity’,   makes   no   sense.   From   that

point  of  view,  this  paper  suggests  a  revision  of  the  original

approaches  of  the  Renaissance  humanism.  It  will  be  focused

on  one  of  its  most  outstanding  exponents:  Alberti.