Defining Philosophy in Fifteenth-Century Humanism: Four Case Studies

CHAPTER 13 Defining Philosophy in Fifteenth-Century Humanism: Four Case Studies David A. Lines Paul Oskar Kristeller’s famous formulation that Renaissance humanism en- compassed particularly the subjects of grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and moral philosophy is evidently of one cloth with his other well-known pro- nouncement, that Renaissance humanists not only did not ‘do’ philosophy, but were in fact ‘no philosophers at all.’1 Kristeller therefore did his utmost to link the humanists with the tradition of medieval grammarians, rhetoricians, and experts of the ars dictaminis rather than with earlier or contemporary writers of philosophy. Allergic as he was to any ideological label that scholars might try to affix to these lovers of the studia humanitatis, Kristeller resolutely main- tained (particularly against Eugenio Garin and his school) that the glue that bound the humanists to one another lay in their disciplinary orientation and in their interest in eloquent, persuasive speech rather than in any common philosophical position. He robustly rejected any suggestion that they were the (conscious or unconscious) harbingers of modernity, particularly in Garin’s sense of freeing mankind from the shackles of religion and superstition and bringing about a clear-eyed vision of the past. Again, to him that probably sounded too much like an –ism. He did concede that Renaissance humanists had in common a sense of optimism in terms of man’s abilities and openness to change, but he was careful to distinguish the Renaissance version of this movement from its modern, atheistic counterpart. Kristeller’s extraordinary influence on Anglo-American scholarship of humanism is well known.2 On the one hand, his view of humanistic subjects could encourage the interdisciplinary study of the interrelationships among the five disciplines he identified, although this probably happened less often than he had hoped. On the other, his explicit distinction between the studia 1 Paul Oskar Kristeller, ‘Humanism and Scholasticism in the Italian Renaissance’ (1944), rpt. in idem, Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters, 4 vols (Rome, 1956–1996), 1:553–583. 2 For helpful perspectives see Kristeller Reconsidered: Essays on His Life and Scholarship, ed. John Monfasani (New York, 2005), and John Monfasani, ‘Paul Oskar Kristeller and Philosophy’, Bulletin de philosophie médiévale, 57 (2015), 383–413. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��8 | doi ��.��63/97890043553�3_0�4 282 Lines humanitatis and philosophy (except for moral philosophy) created an artifi- cial and distorting separation within the panorama of Renaissance culture.3 With her usual lucidity, Jill Kraye has highlighted this problem in her numer- ous studies on the relationship of humanism and philosophy. She showed in an extremely rich and now classic survey (as well as in a two-volume collection of primary texts) that moral philosophy was not the particular preserve of the humanists, since it was a fundamental topic of concern for many medieval and Renaissance scholastic thinkers.4 Recently she has underlined how Kristeller’s formulation gives the mistaken impression that Renaissance humanists were generally uninterested in natural philosophy.5 This essay builds on these interests and conclusions from a slightly different angle. It starts from a simple observation: that the relationship between Renaissance humanism and philosophy cannot be rightly understood unless one interprets both of these terms according to contemporary usage. On the basis of various studies we are now fairly well informed about what umanista meant in Renaissance parlance, particularly in relationship to a programme of studies.6 Surprisingly, we know much less about contemporary understandings of philosophia. As a tribute to Jill’s expertise and interests, this essay therefore provides an analysis of some discussions in fifteenth-century Italy about the nature of philosophy. It would have been tempting to focus on major philosophical figures such as Lorenzo Valla and Marsilio Ficino. I have opted, instead, to analyse less sys- tematic discussions that nevertheless shed light onto what was commonly accepted as philosophy in the period. Particularly helpful are prefaces and prolusions to lectures that both define philosophy and place the particular 3 This was a point that Kristeller’s work shared with that of Garin and others; see Kristeller, ‘L’etica nel pensiero del Rinascimento’, Il Veltro, 24 (1980), 249–259; Garin, L’Umanesimo ital- iano (Bari, 1970); Antonino Poppi, ‘Beroaldo e Codro sulla natura della filosofia e dell’etica’, in idem, L’etica del Rinascimento tra Platone e Aristotele (Naples, 1997), 143–175, esp. 143–144. 4 Jill Kraye, ‘Moral Philosophy’, in The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. Charles B. Schmitt, et al. (Cambridge, 1988), 303–386; Cambridge Translations of Renaissance Philosophical Texts: Moral Philosophy, ed. Jill Kraye, 2 vols (Cambridge, 1997). 5 Jill Kraye, ‘Beyond Moral Philosophy: Renaissance Humanism and the Philosophical Canon’, paper presented at the conference The Place of Renaissance Humanism in the History of Philosophy (Groningen, 13–15 June 2013) and now published in Rinascimento 56 (2016), 3–22. 6 Augusto Campana, ‘The Origin of the Word “Humanist” ’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 9 (1946), 60–73; Paul F. Grendler, ‘Five Italian Occurrences of Umanista, 1540–1574’, Renaissance Quarterly, 20 (1967), 317–25; Benjamin G. Kohl, ‘The Changing Concept of the Studia Humanitatis in the Early Renaissance’, Renaissance Studies 6 (1992), 185–209; Carlo Dionisotti, ‘Ancora humanista–umanista’, in Studi in memoria di Paola Medioli Masotti, ed. Franca Magnani (Naples, 1995), 67–71..

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