页码，1/288 A History of Western Philosophy: 3 Renaissance Philosophy BRIAN P. COPENHAVER AND CHARLES B. SCHMITT Oxford New York OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS -iii- Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogotá Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris São Paulo Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press © Brian P. Copenhaver and the estate of Charles B. Schmitt 1992 First published 1992 as an Oxford University Press paperback and simultaneously in a hardback edition All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press. Within the UK, exceptions are allowed in respect of any fair dealing for the purpose of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of the licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms and in other countries should be tent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Copenhaver, Brian P. Renaissance philosophy / Brian P. Copenhaver, Charles B. Schmitt. p. cm.--( A History of Western philosophy; 3 ). "An OPUS book"--Ser. t.p. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Philosophy, Renaissance. I. Schmitt, Charles B., 1933-1986. II. Title. III. Series. 190'.9'031--dc20 B775.C67 1992 91-39554 ISBN 0-19-219203-5 file://I:\01西方文献\1_哲学史.思想史.文化史\2a_西方哲学通史\牛津多卷本... 2008-07-08 页码，2/288 ISBN 0-19-289184-7 (pbk.) 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 Printed in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd. Reading, Berkshire -iv- P. O. Kristeller indagatori terrae renatae indefesso -v- [This page intentionally left blank.] -vi- Foreword by Paul Oskar Kristeller The philosophy of the Renaissance -- that is, of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries -- unlike the political and religious developments, the literature, and the art of the same period, and unlike the philosophy of classical antiquity, of the modern period after Bacon and Descartes, and even of the Middle Ages, has been the subject of serious historical study only for the last hundred years or so, and most of the detailed monographs and text editions have been published only since the end of the First World War. Recent contributions have been so numerous and so widely scattered that bibliographical control of the relevant monographs and editions, and especially of the comprehensive or marginal studies pertinent to the subject, has become increasingly difficult. The recent publication of comprehensive handbooks in English is especially welcome, therefore, since they will serve as introductions and reference works for scholars and non- specialists, for teachers and students alike, keep the interest in the field alive, make the available information easily accessible, and also stimulate the further investigation of authors, problems, and their connections that have remained unexplored so far. The books I have in mind are Arthur Rabil Renaissance Humanism, The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, edited by the late Charles B. Schmitt, Quentin Skinner, Eckhard Kessler, and Jill Kraye ( Cambridge University Press, 1988), and the present volume -- begun by Charles B. Schmitt and completed by Brian P. Copenhaver. These three works are all different in scope and content, and hence do not compete with but supplement each other. Rabil limits himself to Renaissance humanism, a movement which made important direct and indirect contributions to Renaissance thought, and especially to its moral philosophy, but which constitutes only one sector of Renaissance philosophy and which, on the other -vii- hand, comprises many subjects that fall outside the area of philosophy, even when broadly understood, such as rhetoric and historiography, poetry, and grammatical as well as classical studies. The Cambridge History, on the other hand, covers all areas of Renaissance philosophy, but is divided into chapters, contributed by a number of scholars, that cover separately the main philosophical disciplines such as logic and natural philosophy, and includes a substantial file://I:\01西方文献\1_哲学史.思想史.文化史\2a_西方哲学通史\牛津多卷本... 2008-07-08 页码，3/288 introduction and a comprehensive bibliography. The present volume is conceived differently and serves a different purpose. It will be useful for those familiar with the Cambridge History but will also attract additional readers. It is much shorter, and therefore more suitable for continuous reading, although it may be used as a reference book. It is written by just two authors and hence is more uniform in its conception and content, and it is arranged according to the major schools of Renaissance philosophy, such as Aristotelianism, Platonism, Stoicism, Epicureanism, Scepticism, and the Philosophy of Nature, and gives a concise monographic treatment of all major thinkers of the period, including Pomponazzi and Zabarella, Cusanus, Ficino, Pico and Patrizi, Valla, Ramus, Montaigne and Lipsius, Cardano, Telesio, Bruno and Campanella, More and Machiavelli. A substantial introduction provides the ancient, medieval, and Renaissance context and deals with humanism and also with the political and religious background. The last chapter relates Renaissance philosophy to modern and contemporary thought and will be of special interest to students of philosophy, many of whom ignore the history of philosophy or dismiss it as irrelevant. I have found the volume most interesting, informative, and reliable; I greatly appreciate it as a balanced, concise, and well-written treatment of a difficult and complex subject; and I hope that most readers will agree with me. I also wish to congratulate Brian Copenhaver, who has carefully and successfully carried out Charles Schmitt's intentions and also added many valuable insights of his own. Columbia University, New York November 1990 -viii- Preface Anyone who had the good fortune to know Charles Schmitt, to study with him, or to read his many books and articles will know how much better this history would have been had so learned and creative a scholar lived to finish it. The present volume (not counting notes and bibliography) runs to about 117,000 words. Charles left a draft of about 40,000 words, of which perhaps a fifth dropped out in rewriting. The book's framework was his conception -- six chapters corresponding more or less to those that follow. The first two chapters contain more of his writing, down to the sentence level, than the last four, where his voice can be heard more in the larger structure of the chapters than in their sentences. The whole of the present text represents a considerable expansion of what he left. The first chapter of his draft had no section on church and state. In Chapter 2 the sections on Trapezuntius, Lefèvre, Mair, and Vitoria are additions. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 are much larger than the corresponding parts of the draft: Charles's 22,000 words in those three chapters grew to 66,000. Charles left only a title, slightly different than the present wording, for chapter six. Charles's views on larger issues pertinent to this volume will be well known to many readers, and I have tried to preserve his opinions even in some cases where mine are different. Aristotelian and sceptical thought are prominent because Charles rightly believed that early modern philosophy owed more to them than past interpretations have allowed. A number of topics and figures on which he was expert stand out in this history: the importance of natural philosophy; the role of university education; the development of the textbook tradition; the revival of the ancient Peripatetic commentators and the continuation of Averroist influence; the place of Cicero among ancient authorities or of the younger Pico among Renaissance thinkers. These and many other points of fact and -ix- interpretation were his special contributions to the history of philosophy, and they are visible in what follows. However, because he was prevented by his untimely death in April 1986 from completing this volume, it doubtless includes some things that he would have excluded and may omit others that he would have added. Few mistakes that remain would have survived his scrutiny. Given my own interests, the book probably contains more about language, logic, file://I:\01西方文献\1_哲学史.思想史.文化史\2a_西方哲学通史\牛津多卷本... 2008-07-08 页码，4/288 Platonism, and occultism than it might have, perhaps less about natural philosophy. Charles's draft included little about contemporary historiography; he may have left it for the last chapter, for which he supplied only a title. 1 The current text says a good deal about early modern history of philosophy as the foundation of the contemporary canonical picture, but beyond mentioning a few founders of Renaissance studies -- Burckhardt, Cassirer, Warburg, Kristeller -- it contains little about twentieth-century scholarship. Twentieth-century philosophy comes up in the concluding chapter, which offers a few suggestions about links with the early modern period that may interest contemporary students of philosophy. The bibliography is not a comprehensive or even a representative collection of literature on Renaissance philosophy; it lists works that were crucial to the writing of the book, but it also provides a general bibliographical orientation on the more important thinkers and issues.