Renaissance and Exploration

This unit argues that the Renaissance relocated authority from divine institution to human capacity, and that relocation had consequences Europeans spent the next five centuries arguing over. Italian humanists did not simply celebrate human potential as an aesthetic preference; they rebuilt the grounds on which any claim to knowledge, power, or legitimacy could be made. The printing press turned that shift from a scholarly conversation into a continental fact. Exploration then extended the argument outward: if human reason can navigate the globe, map new continents, and build colonial economies, the medieval framework for understanding humanity's place in creation cannot hold. Every unit that follows is an argument about what fills the space that breaks open here.

10–15% of exam