It developed during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and was a response to the challenge of medieval scholastic education, emphasizing practical, pre-professional and scientific studies. Scholasticism focused on preparing men to be doctors, layers of professional theologians, and was taught from approved textbooks in logic, natural philosophy, medicine, law and theology. Humanists reacted against this utilitarian approach and the narrow pedantry associated with it. They sought to create a citizenry able to speak and write with eloquence and clarity and thus capable of engaging the civic life of their communities and persuading others to virtuous and prudent actions. This was accomplished through the study of the studia humanitatis, today known as the humanities: grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry and moral philosophy.
M.H. Abram's 'A Glossary of Literary Terms' defines Renaissance Humanism, stating that some of the key concepts of the philosophy centered around "the dignity and central position of human beings in the universe' as reasoning creatures, as well as downplaying the "animal passions of the individual. The mode of thought also "stressed the need for a rounded development of an individual's diverse powers as opposed to merely technical or specialized training. "Finally, all of this was synthesized into and perhaps defined by their tendency to minimize the prevalent Christian ideal of innate corruption and withdrawal from the present, flawed world in anticipation of heaven (page 83).
The character of Faustus is reasoning and very aware of the moral (or immoral) status of what he is undertaking. His opening speech is devoted to working out logically why he is willing to sacrifice both the road to honest knowledge and his soul in favor of more power. He exhibits, in his search for power, anything but animal passion; he indeed exhibits a chilling logic as he talks himself out of the possible delights of heaven.