Charles B. Schmitt

The Cambridge history of Renaissance philosophy

Preface Introduction Part I. The Intellectual Context: The Conditions of Enquiry: 1. Manuscripts John F. DAmico 2. Printing and censorship Paul F. Grendler 3. The Renaissance concept of philosophy Cesare Vasoli 4. Translation, terminology and style in philosophical discourse Brain P. Copenhaver 5. Humanism Paul Oskar Kristeller Part II. Philosophy and its Parts: Logic and Language: 6. Traditional logic E. J. Ashworth 7. Humanistic logic Lisa Jardine Part III. Natural Philosophy: 8. Traditional natural philosophy William A. Wallace 9. The new philosophy of nature Alfonso Ingegno 10. Astrology and magic Brian P. Copenhaver 11. Moral philosophy Jill Kraye 12. Political philosophy Quentin Skinner Part IV. Psychology: 13. The concept of psychology Katharine Park and Eckhard Kessler 14. The organic soul Katharine Park 15. The intellective soul Eckhard Kessler 16. Metaphysics Charles H. Lohr Part V. Problems of Knowledge and Action: 17. Fate, fortune, providence and human freedom Antonino Poppi 18. Theories of knowledge Richard H. Popkin 19. Epistemology of the sciences Nicholas Jardine Part VI. Philosophy and Humanistic Disciplines: 20. Rhetoric and poetics Brian Vickers 21. The theory of history Donald R. Kelley Supplementary material Appendices 22. The availability of ancient works Anthony Grafton 23. The rise of the philosophical textbook Charles B. Schmitt Bibliographies Michael J. Wilmott and Charles B. Schmitt Bibliography Michael J. Wilmott and Charles B. Schmitt Index.

John Case and Aristotelianism in Renaissance England

Dr. Schmitt shows that Case was heir to both the traditions of scholastic interpretation of Aristotle and the new humanistic currents, that his Aristotelianism was strongly eclectic, and that he drew heavily upon Renaissance Neoplatonic and other intellectual traditions in compiling well-rounded philosophical manuals adapted to his age. Schmitt argues that, even though Case was the prime representative of peripatetic thought during Elizabeths reign, he forged strong links with leading figures in such areas of English culture as drama, literature, art, and music, as well as with important ecclesiastical and political figures. He also contends that Aristotelian philosophy had a much more central position in England than has been previously admitted. Cases position in the scholastic revival which marked late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century English intellectual life is charted, and the historical reality of this revival is firmly established.

The Renaissance concept of philosophy

THE ORIGINS OF RENAISSANCE PHILOSOPHY: SCHOLASTIC THOUGHT AND THE NEEDS OF A NEW CULTURE Any approach to the meaning of philosophy in the Renaissance requires some preliminary qualification and explanation. How far, for instance, is it permissible to speak of a specifically Renaissance philosophy – a philosophy that might be said to reflect the growing complexity of intellectual activity in this particular historical situation? May the term be applied to ways of thinking which, though current in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, perpetuate typically medieval thinking? Do the speculative currents which emerged in the mid thirteenth century, above all in Italy, represent continuity or a break with the past? How closely are scholastic natural philosophy and logic connected with the scientific revolution? Was ‘humanist rhetoric’ an obstacle to what might otherwise have been a swift and linear development? The historical significance of many of the issues discussed in this volume cannot be assessed without considering those social factors, which shattered the ideological unanimity of western Christianitas in the thirteenth century, emphasising the difference rather than the similarities between intellectual centres and ushering in new ways of thought. There is little point in trying to define the Renaissance concept of philosophy if no heed is paid to the cultural institutions emerging outside the universities, the social class and status of their members, their aims, their rivalries and their audiences. From the early fourteenth century there was a complex interaction between scholasticism and humanism with the former profiting from the methodological and linguistic advances made by the latter.

Philosophy and Science in Sixteenth-Century Universities: Some Preliminary Comments

In spite of the enormous amount of research which has been devoted to an understanding of the history of universities, much further work is required before we can begin to comprehend fully the place of these institutions in the Western cultural life of the past seven or eight centuries.1 Not only is much basic work left to be done in the documents themselves of even the most important and influential university centers, but we are sorely in need of synthetic and comparative studies relating several universities to one another. Nevertheless, even on the basis of the materials which have already been published, we are in a position to begin some sort of synthesis.2 Though we know a great number of individual facts from various universities concerning philosophy instruction in the sixteenth century, for example, no one has yet attempted an overall evaluation of these materials with an eye towards an eventual synthesis.3 This certainly is not the only question to be faced by historians of universities, but it is one to which little attention has previously been given, and, at the same time, one which is of potential interest to scholars in a variety of different fields.

Essay Review: Reappraisals in Renaissance Science: Hermeticism and the Scientific RevolutionHermeticism and the Scientific Revolution. Papers read at a Clark Library Seminar, March 9, 1974 by WestmanRobert S. and McGuireJ. E. (William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles, 1977). Pp. 150.

ions used in scientific discourse might not be treated as symbols, ~t imprese are not relevant except to the broader cultural history of SCIence. The peculiarly scientific aspects of the history do not play host to symbols except in the (for the art historian) trivial sense of mathe~atical or chemical nomenclature. It matters little whether nitrogen 18 symbolized by N or by Az, but presumably it matters a great deal for the art historian whether a palmette, a fig leaf or a tertium quid is represented in a painting somewhere in an Italian village, While the ambiguous and often obscure nature of symbols appeals to the art historian-s-one often has the impression that the more obscure the symbol is the more they like it-this aspect is less valuable in science. Westman (pp. 34-41) is particularly convincing in raising problems about the symbolic interpretation of the topsail experiment. He is quite plaUsible in suggesting that in hands less capable than a Yates the whole Iconographical method becomes almost a self-travesty. The real diffi~u1ty dealing with symbols is that their use goes specifically against the lde:u of precision which has always been. one of the chief criteria of any valId science. While metaphor and ambiguity play a significant, perhaps even a cardinal, role in painting or poetry, or even metaphysics, in science e:ery effort is made to obtain precise and. unequivocal linguistic formulation. This leads to another telling point made by Westman. He is quite right in my view to criticize Yatess ·ignoring of previous work in history ~ science (pp. 10-11, 12) and then trying to relate Bruno to the scientific tradition. I t is quite true that science in the Renaissance was a brOader and more significant movement than we learn from the banal ~a.dition of general books written on the Italian Renaissance. If Bruno ~ to be related to the history of science, the selection of sources to illuminate him must be more catholic than merely the animistic and Inystical tradition of one variety of Neoplatonism. But, as I said before, the major thrust of Yatess Bruno interpretation is not the scientific side, 204 CHARLES B. SCHMITT and there is some distortion in trying to make it seem so. Perhaps the best and most permanently valuable section of Westmans occasional piece is that devoted to Hermetic reaction to the Copernican theory (pp. 41-68) where attention is given to Francois Foix de Candale, John Dee, Francesco Patrizi, Tommaso Campanella, and Robert Fludd. He provisionally accepts these five as hermeticistsY The results of his investigations are that these five men do not present a unified, characteristically Hermetic, interpretation of the Copernican theory. They all gave some consideration to Copernicuss work and responded to it in some way, but not necessarily in the magical, symbolic way we might be led to expect. Bruno is unique and full credit must be given to Miss Yates for recognizing this, even if perhaps some aspects of a more general thesis about a Hermetic interpretation of Copernicanisrn cannot be sustained. In putting forward his interpretation of these five figures Westman is able to bring to light a bit of little-known information, including a manuscript note by John Dee. I think that the main importance of Westmans piece lies in his clarifying several aspects of the Yates book, which for all of the modifications offered in the Clark Library lectures is still an important and valuable interpretative study marking a significant stage in Bruno studies. Much that Westman says makes good sense and he has added substantially to the articulation of the material treated in Giordano Bruno and the Ilermetic tradition, even if he may have paid too much attention to Bruno as a scientist and too little to other aspects of his multi-faceted personality. If Yates can perhaps be criticized for neglecting earlier scholarship on the history of science, Westmans knowledge of sixteenth century Italian intellectual history is not always above reproach. Te1esio cannot be called, strictly speaking, Campanellas teacher (p. 55). A fairly reliable tradition reports that Campanella got to Telesio only after the latter expired in 1588. Patrizis complexity is somewhat underestimated. It is true that his Nova de universis philosophia was subjected to censorship, but the whole story was much more complex than we can gather from Westmans account. Not only did Patrizi not lose his university position (p, 50), but he was called to the Papal university in Rome to profess Platonic philosophy. It is somewhat sad to relate that Westmans chief source of information on Patrizi is still Yates-the book he is criticizing-and he pays little attention to the basic sources which she has used, Fiorentino, Firpo, Gregory, etc. Has her book been more useful than he imagined? McGuires lecture focuses upon the case of Newton. In 1966 he and P. M. Rattansi jointly published a paper demonstrating that Isaac Newton had not only been aware of, but had to a degree been influenced by, the tradition of prisca theologla in which the Hermetic texts play an REAPPRAISALS IN RENAISSANCE SCIENCE 205 in:portant role. Since then Rattansi has continued to emphasize-though without bringing to light any compelling new information-the Hermetic strands in Newtons thought. McGuire, on the other hand, has ~ught to provide a deeper understanding of the philosophical and theologICal background to what might be called Newtons philosophy of science. On the basis of his present understanding of Newton, McGuire contends that traditions of magic and alchemy did not play a significant role in shaping Newtons conception of nature (p, 132). While he now believes that for a short time in the 1690s Newton accepted certain aspects of a Hermetic ideology of legitimization that at once owes little to the magical world-picture of the Hermetic writings and is separate from the intellectual content of Cambridge Neoplatonism (pp. 132-3), the influence was short-lived. It was during the 1690s, when Newton Was preparing revisions for the Principia, that he flirted with certain magical doctrines (including Hermetic ones) for a short time, but gradually turned his interests to other approaches. McGuires conclusion then is that when all is said and done the dominating traditions of natural philosophy in which Newton worked were Neoplatonism and Stoicism. It is good that he has brought the latter notion into the discussion, for historians tend to lose sight of the important position which Stoic philosophy of nature and (to some degree) logic had in early modem thought. While the importance of Stoic moral philosophy is generally recognized, e.g., in Pomponazzi, Montaigne, Du Yair, Charron, Lipsius, or Spinoza, the impact of the Stoic doctrine of logic and natural philosophy has been little noted. In a sense this is understandable, since our knowledge of these aspects of Stoicism is based upon very fragmentary evidence indeed and no integral original treatises on two of the three branches of Stoic philosophy have survived from antiquity.23 McGuire seems quite right to emphasize the Stoic roots of Newtonian doctrine such as the distinction between active and passive Principles. . Even more b~ic to Newtons philosophical orientation, however, is Neoplatonism, a philosophy which he imbihed during his formative years at Cambridge. Indeed, Newtons active use of the writings of the Cambridge Platonists now seems beyond question, even if direct links are n~t always so well documentable as they might be. The works of Koyrc, McGuire, Rattansi, and Walker, among others, show this. This is not to say that all specific details of Newtons indebtedness to Neoplatonism can be pinned down with precision and, indeed, the very notion of ~(oplatonism is very fluid and susceptible to many different interpretahons. I am not sure, for example, whether Hermeticism can be eliminated from the Neoplatonism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as fUlly as :McGuire would like. With Ficino--·-and even earlier during the 206 • CHARLES B. SCHMITT Middle Ages-certain elements of the Corpus Hermeticum became integrated into the Neoplatonic synthesis, and the two strands cannot now easily be separated. It is true, and McGuire certainly recognizes it, that much discussion of theological issues during the Middle Ages and Renaissance contributed materially to Newtons intellectual make-up. Thus to consider Newtons natural philosophy a combination of Neoplatonic and Stoic elements seems to be on the right track, but it must be realized that much more went into the particular type of Neoplatonism which Newton imbibed than the better known ancient types of that philosophy. McGuire certainly deserves high marks for attempting to clarify the distinction between Hermeticism and Neoplatonism. One of the problems which has become exposed in recent discussions of Hermeticism is the failure of many who use the term to realize that it was Hermeticism which became assimilated into Neoplatonism and seldom, if ever, was Hermeticism itself thought of, even by its Renaissance proponents,as an independent system of ideas. It was Neoplatonism which served as a strong trunk onto which ideas derived from Hermetic, Orphic, Zoroastrian, Neopythagorean, Cabalistic and other sources could be grafted during the, Renaissance, continuing a tendency already begun in antiquity. Neoplatonism was the receptive body of knowledge susceptible to being bent in a number of ways to adapt itself to a rather remarkable range of syncretistic formulations. It was, however, the Neoplatonic system of metaphysics and epistemology which provided a life-giving sap to hold it all together. Since 1964 Hermeticism has been used in a bewildering variety of ways which often give no hint of a recognition of the problems inherent in considering Hermeticism as a self-contained and coherent body of ideas capable of standing alone.

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Summary John Case (d. 1600), the most important English Aristotelian of the Renaissance period, has not yet received the attention he deserves. In his Lapis philosophicus (Oxford, 1599), an exposition of Aristotles Physics, is found a discussion of the relation of nature to art which parallels in many ways that formulated a few years later in the writings of Francis Bacon. Case argues, in a way more reminiscent of the works of Giambattista della Porta than of those of Aristotle, that the natural philosopher can legitimately apply the productive arts in helping nature to fulfill her function. Moreover, while rejecting the excessive claims of the Paracelsians, Case does accept the transmutational claims of the alchemists. In the final analysis, his ‘Aristotelianism’ has been tempered by the tradition of Renaissance natural magic. Like many other Peripatetic thinkers of the period, Case shows himself to be an eclectic, drawing materials from a wide variety of sources and open to many of the new scientific t...