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	the humanistic origin of literary texting gary e. davis	February 13, 2026

Virtue, saintliness, angelic exemplarity… Conceptions of better being have long oriented lives, most notably by early Greeks, from the odyssey experience of transformational striving through Aristotelian eudaimonia. That lost lineage was found to inspire Renaissance humanism, exemplified by the Aristotelian Pico della Mirandola, ”who declared in 1486, in his Oration on the Dignity of Man, that ‘Man is his own maker’” (ref.2.11: 94ff.), i.e., one’s humanity can advance without needing to posit causal Otherworldliness (though Aristotelian influence became entwined with Christian notions of virtue and folk notions of happiness [ref.2.12]). The humanistic spirit spread through western Europe to the Amsterdam of Erasmus and to Elizabethan England where, according to Harold Bloom, “Shakespeare not only invented the English language, but also created human nature as we know it today,” echoed later by the Romantic movement, and now by humanities generally. In short, the original appeal of orientation by better angels, Our better humanity, was existential—about flourishing—rather than basically aesthetic (let alone otherworldly). Aestheticism in literary studies conceals the primordial appeal of actualizing one’s potential for being here now, whose ideal of “personal best” (let alone perfectibility) is never wholly fulfilled because sophistication extends horizons of aspiration, drawing us in always receding as we’re advancing possibilities of being, advancing conceivability.

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Be fair. © 2026, gary e. davis