Two Aristotelians Of The Italian Renaissance

This volume deals with the psychological, metaphysical and scientific ideas of two major and influential Aristotelian philosophers of the Italian Renaissance - Nicoletto Vernia (d. 1499) and Agostino Nifo (ca 1470-1538) - whose careers must be seen as inter-related. Both began by holding Averroes to be the true interpreter of Aristotle's thought, but were influenced by the work of humanists, such as Ermolao Barbaro, though to a different degree. Translations of the Greek commentators on Aristotle (Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius and Simplicius) provided them with new material and new ways of understanding Aristotle - Nifo even put himself to learning Greek - and led them to abandon Averroes, especially as regards his views on the soul and intellect. Nevertheless, both Vernia and Nifo engaged seriously with the thought of medieval scholars such as Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas and John of Jandun. Both also showed interest in their celebrated contemporary, Marsilio Ficino.

Despite our admiration for Renaissance achievement in the arts and sciences, in literature and classical learning, the rich and diversified philosophical thought of the period remains largely unknown. This volume illuminates three major currents of thought dominant in the earlier Italian Renaissance: classical humanism (Petrarch and Valla), Platonism (Ficino and Pico), and Aristotelianism (Pomponazzi). A short and elegant work of the Spaniard Vives is included to exhibit the diffusion of the ideas of humanism and Platonism outside Italy. Now made easily accessible, these texts recover for the English reader a significant facet of Renaissance learning.

Examines the major philosophical movements of the early Italian Renaissance.

This study contends that Aristotelian currents in Italian Renaissance philosophy are complex, distinctive and significantly relevant to a complete history of philosophy for the period from the 14th to 17th centuries. It provides detailed expositions of the work of Aristotelian authors.

The impact of classical thought on Renaissance philosophy is the subject of this volume. In the first part Dr Kraye deals with the interpretations of ancient philosophy put forward by various thinkers of the Italian Renaissance, including the humanist Angelo Poliziano and the Platonist Marsilio Ficino; in the second, she examines the central role of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics within Renaissance moral philosophy and considers the influence of other classical treatises on ethics, especially the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. The final section explores controversies concerning the authenticity of works in the Aristotelian canon, together with the early printing history of Aristotle. All the articles aim to locate philosophical questions within the historical and cultural context of the Renaissance, and particular attention is paid to the importance of philological scholarship within philosophical debates. The collection includes an essay on Philipp Melanchthon's ethical commentaries and textbooks which has previously appeared only in German translation.

This monograph is the first to analyze Julius Caesar Scaliger’s Exotericae Exercitationes (1557). In order to make this late-Renaissance work accessible to modern readers, Kuni Sakamoto conducted a detailed textual analysis and revealed the basic tenets of Scaliger’s philosophy.

Elijah Del Medigo (1458-1493) was a Jewish Aristotelian philosopher living in Padua, whose work influenced many of the leading philosophers of the early Renaissance. His Two Investigations on the Nature of the Human Soul uses Aristotle's De anima to theorize on two of the most discussed and most controversial philosophical debates of the Renaissance: the nature of human intellect and the obtaining of immortality through intellectual perfection. In this book, Michael Engel places Del Medigo's philosophical work and his ideas about the human intellect within the context of the wider Aristotelian tradition. Providing a detailed account of the unique blend of Hebrew, Islamic, Latin and Greek traditions that influenced the Two Investigations, Elijah Del Medigo and Paduan Aristotelianism provides an important contribution to our understanding of Renaissance Aristotelianisms and scholasticisms. In particular, through his defense of the Muslim philosopher Averroes' hotly debated interpretation of the De anima and his rejection of the moderate Latin Aristotelianism championed by the Christian Thomas Aquinas, Engel traces how Del Medigo's work on the human intellect contributed to the development of a major Aristotelian controversy. Investigating the ways in which multicultural Aristotelian sources contributed to his own theory of a united human intellect, Elijah Del Medigo and Paduan Aristotelianism demonstrates the significant impact made by this Jewish philosopher on the history of the Aristotelian tradition.

This volume studies the teaching of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics (the standard textbook for moral philosophy) in the universities of Renaissance Italy. Special attention is given to how university commentaries on the Ethics reflect developments in educational theory and practice and in humanist Aristotelianism. After surveying the fortune of the Ethics in the Latin West to 1650 and the work’s place in the universities, the discussion turns to Italian interpretations of the Ethics up to 1500 (Part Two) and then from 1500 to 1650 (Part Three). The focus is on the universities of Florence-Pisa, Padua, Bologna, and Rome (including the Collegio Romano). Five substantial appendices document the institutional context of moral philosophy and the Latin interpretations of the Ethics during the Italian Renaissance. Largely based on archival and unpublished sources, this study provides striking evidence for the continuing vitality of university Aristotelianism and for its fruitful interaction with humanism on the eve of the early modern era.