Michela Torbidoni The Italian Academies and Rabbi Simone Luzzatto’s Socrate:the Freedom of the Ingenium and the Soul 1Introduction Simone Luzzatto, chief rabbi of the Jewish community of Venice, ahighlytalented classicistconversant with Latin and Greek literature as well as apassionate reader of medievalItalian culture, wasthe author of the well-known apologetic treatise Dis- corso circa il stato degli Hebrei et in particular dimoranti nell’inclita città di Venetia (‘Discourse Concerningthe Condition of the Jews, and in Particular Those Living in the Fair City of Venice’), publishedinVenice in 1638, and also of Socrate overo dell’humano sapere (‘Socrates or on Human Knowledge’), which appearedinVenice in 1651.The scope and purpose of this latter work are indicated in the book’sextend- ed title: Esercitio seriogiocoso di Simone Luzzatto hebreo venetiano.Operanellaquale si dimostraquanto sia imbecilel’humano intendimento,mentre non èdiretto dalla div- ina rivelatione (‘The Serious-Playful Exercise of Simone Luzzatto, Venetian Jew. A Book That ShowsHow Incapable Human IntelligenceCan Be When It Is Not Led by DivineRevelation’). Thus, the work is meantasademonstration of the limits and weaknesses of the human capacity to acquire knowledge without being guided by revelation. Luzzatto achievedthis goal by offering an overviewofthe various and contradictory gnosiological opinions disseminated since ancient times: he analyses the human faculties, namely the functioningofthe external (five)senses, the internal senses (common sense, imagination, memory,and the estimative faculty), the intel- lect,and alsotheir mutualrelation.¹ In his work, Luzzatto gave an accurate analysis of all these issues by getting to the heart of the ancientepistemological theories. The divergence of views, to which he addressed the most attention, prevented him from giving afixed definition of the nature of the cognitive process. This obliged him to come to the audacious conclusion of neither affirmingnor denying anything con- cerninghuman knowledge,and finallyofsuspendinghis judgement altogether. Luz- zatto’sintention contains the promise of agenuinelysceptical investigation into the validity of human certainties, to which he opposed the solidity of the divinetruth. This work unfortunatelyhad little successinLuzzatto’slifetime, and was subse- quentlyalmostforgotten. Onlyafew copies existed before it wasrepublished in See Harry Austrin Wolfson, “The Internal Senses in Latin, Arabic and HebrewPhilosophic Texts,” TheHarvardTheological Review 28 (1935): 69 – 133. OpenAccess. ©2017 Michela Torbidoni, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative CommonsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110527971-005 72 Michela Torbidoni 2013,² for the first time since 1651.The absence of evidence from Luzzatto’scontem- poraries and that of his epistolary have thus increased the difficulty of tracing not onlyits legacyinthe history of philosophical thought, but also of understanding the circumstances surroundingthe writing of his Socrate.³ The present contribution is apreliminary studyaiming to shed some light on the still-obscure intellectual context of Luzzatto’sphilosophicalcommitment.Therefore, it will point out some traces which maystrengthen the hypothesis that Luzzatto’s work maybereadinline with the literature of the Italian Academies,⁴ and,more pre- cisely, with the innovative and bizarre compositions of the Accademia degli Incogniti Simone Luzzatto, Scritti politici efilosofici di un rabbino scettico nella Venezia del Seicento,ed. Giu- seppe Veltri(Milan: Bompiani, 2013). Although thereare some referencestoLuzzatto’sbook in scholarlyliterature,acompletestudyof the entirework has not yetbeen carried out.Besides amention in the Christian Hebraist Giulio Bar- tolocci’s Bibliotheca Magna Rabbinica (Rome: Typographia Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide, 1693)and in Johann Christoph Wolff’s Bibliotheca Hebraea,vol. 3(Hamburg: Christophorus Felginer,1727): 1115–1135,brief references to Luzzatto’s Socrate appeared in some works duringthe nineteenth century:inGiovanni BernardoDeRossi, Dizionario,vol. 2(Parma: dalla Reale Stamperia, 1802):16and in Moritz Steinschneider, Die Italienische Literatur der Juden (Frankfurt a. M.: Kauff- mann, 1901): 418 – 419. Astill-more-detailed description maybefound in Isidor Busch, Kalender und Jahrbuch fürIsraeliten,vol. 6(Wien: Schmid, 1866): 106–108;Heinrich Graetz, Geschichte der Juden,vol. 10 (Leipzig:Oskar Liener,1868), Chap.5:die Wühler (1620–1660): 148 – 153; and Samuel David Luzzatto, Autobiografia (Padova: Crescini, 1882).Inthe 1930s,Jehuda Bergmann published an article entitled “Sokrates in der jüdischen Literatur,” Monatsschriftfür Geschichte und Wissen- schaft des Judentums 80 (1936): 3–13,inwhich he traced the history of Socrates’ appearance in the Jewish tradition, includingLuzzatto’sbook. According to his interpretation, the main issue raised by Luzzattowas the necessity that neither reason nor authority should have supremacy, but that both should be equallyhonoured, because onlybycompleting and limitingone another could they best rule human life. There have onlybeen four morerecent contributions to researchonLuzzatto’s Soc- rate. The first is David Ruderman, “Scienceand Skepticism Simone Luzzattoonperceivingthe Natural World,” in JewishThought and Scientific DiscoveryinEarly Modern Europe,ed. David Ruderman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995): 153–184.Ruderman analysed Luzzatto’sdeep involvement in the naturalistic and scientific studies of his time by focusingonhis appreciation of and proficiencyin mathematicsand astronomy. Furthermore, cf. the dissertation by Ariel Viterbo, written in Hebrew and partlypublished in Italian in 1999:idem, “Lo scetticismo mascheratodiSimone Luzzatto,” Studi Veneziani 38 (1999): 79–128. Viterbo describesthe text’scontents and proposes interpreting it as an intellectual autobiographyofLuzzatto. The most recent contributions to research on Socrate werepublished by Giuseppe Veltri in his edition of Simone Luzzatto, Scritti politici efilosofici (Milan: Bompiani, 2013) and the volumeeditedbyhim entitled Filosofo erabbino nella Venezia del Seicento (Rome: Aracne, 2015). Veltri highlighted the importance of Simone Luzzatto’sworkasthe onlyJewish example of sceptical thoughtinthe earlymodernperiod. In an essaypublished in the last of the above-mentioned volumes, Michela Torbidoni analysedLuzzatto’spractice of doubt in Socrate by ex- aminingthe influenceand role of Sextus Empiricus’ Outlines of Pyrrhonism on the entirestructureof Socrate;cf. Michela Torbidoni, “Il metodo del dubbio nel Socrate,” in Filosofo erabbino nella Venezia del Seicento,ed. Giuseppe Veltri (Rome: Aracne, 2015): 183–245. On the historical reconstruction of the relationships between the Jews and the Academies, see Giu- seppe Veltri and Evelien Chayes, Oltre le muradel Ghetto.Accademie, scetticismo etolleranza nella Venezia barocca (Palermo:New Digital Press, 2016). The ItalianAcademies and Rabbi Simone Luzzatto’s Socrate 73 foundedbythe Venetian aristocrat Giovan FrancescoLoredan (1607–1661), the au- thor of several playful and provocative writings as well as the editor of the collective works of his Academy.⁵ In order to achieve this goal, Iintend to proceed by giving first abrief overview of the main features of the Incogniti’swritingsbystressingthe pivotal role of their anti- dogmatism and their celebration of the free exercise of reason and then discussing how this tendencywas displayedinanew literary genre, thatofthe imprese. Second- ly,Iwill present some evidence gathered from both the frontispieceand the content of Luzzatto’s Socrate recalling the unique literature produced by the Academicians. Thirdly, Iwill present how the issue of freeinquiry cannot be detached from thatof the soul both in the framework of the mission of the Academies and in Luzzatto’s Socrate. Finally, Iwill explain whythe freeand sceptical inquiry carried out by Luz- zatto must be considered to be in continuity with God’srevelation. 2The Accademia degli Incogniti and the Freedom of Ingenium against Dogmatism The fall of gnosiological certainties duringthe seventeenth century motivated anew interest in freeinvestigation and literary experiments. The freedom of the ingenium became anew means for the intellect to inquire and penetrate into the inner and changeable nature of thingsinthis time. From the sixteenthtothe seventeenth cen- tury,learned Academies⁶ became the epicentreofavery lively cultureinItaly; they promoted discussions in awide rangeofdisciplines from literature and philosophy to astronomyormedicine. As an alternative institution to the official universities, they attracted the attention of adifferent kind of scholarand promotedanintellec- tual exchangeamong them that stands out in terms of topics and issues. They were associations or groups of learned people motivated by the desire to freelyadvance their innovative scholarlyarguments and to perform poetry and plays which were sometimesmarked by ludicrous, bizarre, and libertine traits.⁷ Among them, the Incogniti,which included important Venetian and foreign intel- lectuals,futuresenators,and even some members of the Church, playedthe role of an unofficial seat of political power in Venice for almost thirty years. Thankstotheir Thereisavery rich bibliography on Giovan Francesco Loredan and his Academy, cf. Davide Con- rieri, GliIncogniti el’Europa (Bologna: Emyl di Odoya, 2011); Clizia Carminati, “Giovan Francesco Lor-