A renaissance wo/man, also known as a polymath, is a person who has expertise in a number of different areas.  The term comes from the Renaissance ideal of a well-rounded education.  This ideal was grounded in the humanist tradition, a philosophical approach that considered man (at the time it was ‘man’) to be the centre of the universe.  According to this philosophy, humans were limitless in their capacity for knowledge and development, and should therefore embrace all knowledge to develop their capacities as fully as possible. 

This approach to education contributed to the development of Universities as places where a universal education could be found.  Rather than specializing in one area, students learned about a vast range of different subjects.  This attitude elevated the “Renaissance Man”: a man gifted in art, philosophy, theology, math, and physical sciences.  The most obvious example of a Renaissance man is Leonardo Da Vinci: a painter, sculptor, architect, writer, engineer, astronomer, anatomist, biologist, physicist, scientist, mathematician, philosopher…  the list goes on. 

But what does all of this have to do with nonviolence? 

To me, nonviolence is a holistic way of interpreting and interacting with the world around us.  It means seeing the connections and unity between society’s dualisms of good/evil, man/woman, right/wrong, rich/poor, happy/sad, strong/weak, powerful/powerless, etc…  We cannot see these connections when we allow ourselves to be consumed with our own individual lives, areas of study, and needs and wants (which we often confuse).  Our age is obsessed with experts and specializations.  “Jack of all trades and master of none” is a common derogatory expression for those lacking a specialization.  We must find our niche and focus our energies in one area to be successful.  And because we become focussed on our own particular niche, we come to see the world only in that framework, using that lens.  Using our own lens, we come up with solutions to what we deem to be problems.  But because we are restricted to one lens, we fail to see the hundreds of other ways of understanding the problem, the hundreds of other concerns people have about the problem, and the hundreds of other ways that the problem could be fixed.  Gandhi viewed truth as a complex, multifaceted, concept that none of us ever grasps completely.  According to him, we each hold a piece of the larger truth.  Therefore, we must endeavor to collect as many pieces of that truth as possible. 

Take a failing economy, for example.  An economist would use his/her lens to determine what was causing the economy to fail.  S/he might determine that the reason the economy is failing is due to the inefficiency of goods and services in the public sector.  His/her recommendation, therefore, could be to privatize these services.  But a feminist might analyze the same economy and determine that its failure is due to sexism and inequality built into the structures.  His/her recommendation, therefore, could be to empower women by giving them micro-loans.  But an anthropologist might believe that what is being called economic problems is merely a reflection of the local culture and the way that things have always been done in a particular society.  His/her recommendation could be entirely different in nature than the feminist or the economist.  And then a geographer …   You get the picture.

The point here is that each of these people - the economist, the feminist, and the anthropologist - could spend hours, days, or even months arguing about what the problem is and how to solve it without appreciating one another’s perspectives and the complexity of the problem.  Where are our Renaissance men and woman?  Why have we lost our ability to look at things at the macro-level, to consider other points of view, and to investigate from different angles?  If we want our world to be whole, we must approach it as such.  And when we approach the world as whole, we also learn to appreciate and respect our own wholeness of body, mind, and heart.  So will the Renaissance wo/man please stand up?