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The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy Provides an Introduction to a Complex Period of Change in the Subject Matter and Practice of Philosophy

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THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO RENAISSANCE PHILOSOPHY The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy provides an introduction to a complex period of change in the subject matter and practice of philosophy. The philosophy of the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries is often seen as transitional between the scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages and modern philosophy, but the essays collected here, by a distinguished international team of contributors, call these assumptions into question, emphasizing both the continuity with scholastic philosophy and the role of Renaissance philosophy in the emergence of modernity. They explore the ways in which the science, religion, and politics of the period reflect and are reflected in its philosophical life, and they emphasize the dynamism and pluralism of a period which saw both new perspectives and enduring contributions to the history of philosophy. This will be an invaluable guide for students of philosophy, intellectual historians, and all who are interested in Renaissance thought. JAMES HANKINS is Professor of History at Harvard University and editor of Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections (2000, 2004). Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 2007 Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 2007 THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO RENAISSANCE PHILOSOPHY EDITED BY JAMES HANKINS Harvard University Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 2007 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sa˜o Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB28RU,UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521608930 # Cambridge University Press 2007 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2007 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data ISBN 978-0-521-84648-6 hardback ISBN 978-0-521-60893-0 paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 2007 CONTENTS List of figures vii Acknowledgments viii Notes on contributors ix Chronology xii 1 Introduction JAMES HANKINS 1 PART I CONTINUITY AND REVIVAL 11 2 The philosopher and Renaissance culture ROBERT BLACK 13 3 Humanism, scholasticism, and Renaissance philosophy JAMES HANKINS 30 4 Continuity and change in the Aristotelian tradition LUCA BIANCHI 49 5 The revival of Platonic philosophy CHRISTOPHER S. CELENZA 72 6 The revival of Hellenistic philosophies JILL KRAYE 97 7 Arabic philosophy and Averroism DAG NIKOLAUS HASSE 113 v Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 2007 CONTENTS 8 How to do magic, and why: philosophical prescriptions BRIAN P. COPENHAVER 137 PART II TOWARD MODERN PHILOSOPHY 171 9 Nicholas of Cusa and modern philosophy DERMOT MORAN 173 10 Lorenzo Valla and the rise of humanist dialectic LODI NAUTA 193 11 The immortality of the soul PAUL RICHARD BLUM 211 12 Philosophy and the crisis of religion PETER HARRISON 234 13 Hispanic scholastic philosophy JOHN P. DOYLE 250 14 New visions of the cosmos MIGUEL A. GRANADA 270 15 Organizations of knowledge ANN M. BLAIR 287 16 Humanistic and scholastic ethics DAVID A. LINES 304 17 The problem of the prince ERIC NELSON 319 18 The significance of Renaissance philosophy JAMES HANKINS 338 Appendix: Brief biographies of Renaissance philosophers 346 Bibliography 361 Index 401 vi Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 2007 FIGURES 8.1 Myrobalans page 138 8.2 Pleasures and planets 144 8.3 Evaluating magic 149 8.4 Geode 152 8.5 Crinoid stem 152 8.6 Lion demon 154 8.7 Concentric spheres 155 8.8 Design for a scorpion talisman 159 8.9 Planetary levels of healing 161 9.1 Source: Opera Nicolai Cusae Cardinalis, Paris 1514, vol. I, fol. XLVI verso 189 vii Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 2007 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Hilary Gaskin of Cambridge University Press, who first proposed this project and who has supported it energetically throughout the editing process; Constantin Fasolt, Jill Kraye, David Lines, and Edward P. Mahoney, who advised on topics and contributors; and Patrick Baker, who helped edit the footnotes and bibliography. Cambridge University Press kindly gave permission to reprint in updated form the short biographies presented in the Appendix, which have been selected and adapted from the biobibliographies published in The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy (1988). I should also like to thank Virginia Brown for sharing her editorial expertise as well as for all those hafanZ` that the language of academic prose is inadequate to express. viii Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 2007 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS LUCA BIANCHI is Professor of History of Medieval Philosophy at the University of Eastern Piedmont (Vercelli). His most recent publications include Censure et liberte´ intellectuelle a` l’Universite´ de Paris, XIIIe–XIVe sie`cles (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1999), and Studi sull’aristotelismo del Rinascimento (Padua: Il Poligrafo, 2003). ROBERT BLACK is Professor of Renaissance History at the University of Leeds. He is the author of Humanism and Education in Medieval and Renaissance Italy: Tradition and Innovation in Latin Schools from the Twelfth to the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2001). The first volume of his two-volume Education and Society in Florentine Tuscany: Pupils, Teachers and Schools, c. 1250 to 1500 will be published by Brill in 2007. ANN M. BLAIR is Professor of History at Harvard University. She is the author of The Theater of Nature: Jean Bodin and Renaissance Science (Princeton University Press, 1997) and of articles on early modern science, education and print culture. She is finishing a book on early modern methods of information management. PAUL RICHARD BLUM is T. J. Higgins Professor of Philosophy at Loyola College in Maryland, Baltimore. His publications include Philosophieren in der Renaissance (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2004) and an edition of Giovanni Pico’s De ente et uno. Latin–German (Hamburg: Meiner, 2006). CHRISTOPHER S. CELENZA is a Professor of Italian Studies in the Department of German and Romance Languages at Johns Hopkins University. His most recent book, The Lost Italian Renaissance (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), won the Gordan Prize of the Renaissance Society of America, and he is currently working on humanism and language from Petrarch to Poliziano. BRIAN P. COPENHAVER is Professor of Philosophy and History and Director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at UCLA. His most recent book is an ix Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 2007 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS edition and translation of Polydore Vergil, On Discovery, for the I Tatti Renaissance Library (2002), and he is now writing a book about Giovanni Pico. JOHN P. DOYLE is Professor of Philosophy at St. Louis University. His most recent projects include Francisco Sua´rez, S. J., On Real Relation (Disputatio Metaphysica XLVII): A Translation from the Latin with an Introduction and Notes (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2006), and ‘‘Hervaeus Natalis, O. P. (d. 1323), On Intentionality: Its Direction, Context, and Some Aftermath,’’ in The Modern Schoolman (2006). MIGUEL A. GRANADA is Professor of the History of Renaissance Philosophy at the University of Barcelona. He has published Sfere solide e cielo fluido. Momenti del dibattito cosmologico nella seconda meta` del Cinquecento (Milano: Guerini, 2002), Giordano Bruno. Universo infinito, unio´ n con Dios, perfeccio´ n del hombre (Barcelona: Herder, 2002), La reivindicacio´ n de la filosofı´a en Giordano Bruno (Barcelona: Herder, 2005) and numerous articles on Bruno and the cosmological revolution between the Renaissance and the early modern period. JAMES HANKINS is Professor of History at Harvard University and General Editor of the I Tatti Renaissance Library. His most recent publications are Humanism and Platonism in the Italian Renaissance, 2 vols. (Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2003–4), and Marsilio Ficino: Platonic Theology, 6 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001–6), with Michael J. B. Allen. PETER HARRISON is Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at the University of Oxford. His books include The Bible, Protestantism and the Rise of Natural Science (Cambridge University Press, 1998) and The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science (Cambridge University Press, 2007). DAG NIKOLAUS HASSE is Professor of the History of Philosophy and the Sciences in the Greek, Arabic, and Latin Tradition at the University of Wu¨ rzburg, Germany. He is the author of Avicenna’s De anima in the Latin West (London: The Warburg Institute, 2000) and he is currently completing a book on the reception of Arabic sciences and philosophy in the Renaissance. JILL KRAYE is Professor of the History of Renaissance
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