Lodi Nauta

Hobbes on Religion and the Church between The Elements of Law and Leviathan : A Dramatic Change of Direction?

It has become something of an orthodoxy among Hobbes scholars to see a dramatic change in Hobbes’s intellectual development in the 1640s, that is, between the earlier works The Elements of Law Natural and Politic (1640) and De Cive (1642) on the one hand and Leviathan (1651) on the other. Various accounts have been given to explain these differences, dependent on the issue at stake (rhetoric, methodology, political philosophy, theology, ecclesiastical polity), but what they have in common is their stress on the radical character of Hobbes’s turn of mind in that crucial decade of his exile. David Johnston, for example, has claimed that Leviathan is an intensely polemical work that differs significantly in style and content from the earlier works: “this dramatic change in literary form was connected with important changes in the substance of his political theory, and [was] ultimately symptomatic of an underlying metamorphosis in his conception of the nature and aims of political philosophy.” He sees the cause of this metamorphosis in Hobbes’s growing realization that reason cannot assert itself. Most people are superstitious, gullible, and irrational, and these features are ingrained in them. Hence what Hobbes wants to do in Leviathan is to initiate a “cultural transformation” by bringing people to see their own blindness, thereby leading “men toward that enlightened, rational understanding of their own interests which he believes will form the firmest foundation possible for a truly lasting commonwealth.” Quentin Skinner too argues that “Leviathan embodies a new and far

From universals to topics: The realism of Rudolph Agricola, with an edition of his reply to a critic

Abstract Rudolph Agricola’s De inventione dialectica has rightly been regarded as the most original and influential textbook on argumentation, reading, writing, and communication in the Renaissance. At the heart of his treatment are the topics (loci), such as definition, genus, species, place, whole, parts, similars, and so on. While their function in Agricola’s system is argumentative and rhetorical, the roots of the topics are metaphysical, as Agricola himself explicitly acknowledges. It has led scholars to characterize Agricola as a realist or even an extreme realist. This article studies two little treatises on universals by Agricola that throw further light on his realism. It is suggested that they could be viewed as an early step in his long-term project of revising and re-organizing the systems of topics as he encountered them in Aristotle, Cicero, and Boethius. The article offers a close analysis of the treatises, suggesting that Agricola’s realism owes a (general) debt to the school of the Scotists. In both earlier and later work Agricola emphasizes the common aspects of things that enable us to categorize and talk about things without denying their fundamental unicity and individuality. An edition of Agricola’s second treatise on universals—a reply to a critic—is added.

Anti-Essentialism and the Rhetoricization of Knowledge: Mario Nizolio's Humanist Attack on Universals *

Well-known for his Ciceronianism as well as for his crass nominalism and virulent attack on universals, the humanist Mario Nizolio (1488–1567) is often considered to be a forerunner of early modern philosophy. But although his name duly features in general accounts of Renaissance humanism and philosophy, his work, edited by Leibniz in 1670, has hardly been the subject of a philosophically sensitive analysis. This article examines Nizolio’s attempt to reform scholastic philosophy, paying particular attention to the way in which he de-ontologized the scholastic categories and predicables (genus, species, etc.) and replaced philosophical abstraction with the rhetorical concept of synecdoche. His views on science, proof, argumentation, and rhetoric are discussed,as wellas the humanist inspiration from which they issue. We willthenbe able to evaluate the strength and limitations of Nizolio’s program in the wider tradition of early modern philosophy.

Philology as philosophy: Giovanni Pontano on language, meaning, and grammar

This article studies the views on language of an important yet understudied humanist, Giovanni Pontano (1429–1503). Attention is paid to his ideas on the origins of language; the emotive and active functions of language; the intrinsic connection between language and sociability; and his grammatical work. When compared to developments in the Enlightenment his views turn out to be philosophically interesting and relevant. As such this article underscores a still undervalued point that, even though humanists were perhaps not philosophers, philosophical assumptions and convictions did drive their textual-philological studies, having important implications for their wider views on history and culture.

William of Ockham and Lorenzo Valla: False Friends. Semantics and Ontological Reduction *

At first glance, Lorenzo Valla has much in common with William of Ockham. Both see language as the key to an understanding of the world, criticizing realist ontologies which admit of various abstract entities. Modern scholars have therefore often argued that Vallas transformation of medieval metaphysics and logic is nominalist in spirit and continues Ockhamist nominalism. The article criticizes this widely held interpretation. At closer inspection, Vallas views on ontology and semantics are very different from Ockhams. Apart from the obvious differences in cultural background, they show widely different approaches, methods, and arguments at a more philosophical level.

Latin as a Common Language : The Coherence of Lorenzo Valla’s Humanist Program

In his critique of the language and thought of the Scholastics, Lorenzo Valla contrasts classical Latin as a natural, common language to the so-called artificial, technical, and unnatural language of his opponents. He famously champions Quintilian’s view that one should follow common linguistic usage. Scholars, however, have disagreed about the precise interpretation of these qualifications of Latin. This article argues that, depending on the historical, rhetorical, and argumentative contexts, Valla uses notions such as common and natural in different ways to suit different purposes. Such a contextualized reading has repercussions for an evaluation of the coherence of Valla’s humanist program.

The Order of Knowing: Juan Luis Vives on Language, Thought, and the Topics

This article seeks to locate Vives’s work in the tradition of humanist thought that criticized the linguistic and philosophical abstraction of the scholastics. After discussing Vives’s views on language and knowledge as functions of man’s biological nature, the article argues that for Vives the topics, as seats of argumentation, are a reflection of the ontological order and as such an instrument and heuristic aid for the human mind. They form a grid through which knowledge can be acquired and arguments be formulated. The topics bridge the world of (unknown) essences and man’s epistemic categories.

From an Outsider's Point of View: Lorenzo Valla on the Soul

In his Repastinatio. . . Lorenzo Valla launched a heavy attack on Aristotelian-scholastic thought. While most of this book is devoted to metaphysics, language and argumentation, Valla also incorporates chapters on the soul and natural philosophy. Using as criteria good Latin, common sense and common observation, he rejected much of standard Aristotelian teaching on the soul, replacing the hylopmorphic account of the scholastics by an Augustinian one. In this article his arguments on the souls autonomy, nobility and independency from the body are studied and analysed. His critique of Aristotles opinions on natural phenomena as being untrue to what we observe will also be briefly studied. His arguments do not show him always to be deep or consistent thinker, but the critical review of Aristotelian philosophy proceeds from some philosophically interesting assumptions. Moreover, from a broader historical perspective his undermining of Aristotles authority may be regarded as a contribution to the final demise of the Aristotelian paradigm, even though the humanist critique was just one factor in this process.

Review of Karl Schuhmann. Selected Papers on Renaissance Philosophy and on Thomas Hobbes

known writings such as De inventione and Pro Sestio. Sullivan’s expectation that the English texts before her will conform to Hobbesian/liberal or Machiavelli/modern republican theories colors her vision of their actual words. As a result, a forced quality occasionally creeps into her interpretations. None of this ultimately detracts from the stimulation that Sullivan’s book is sure to induce in the reader. She presents a convincing case that the story of English political thought from ca. 1650 into the early eighteenth century requires a more complex and multifaceted narration than political theorists usually allow. She also provides a useful and powerful corrective to the virtual stranglehold that Pocock has exercised over this field of study. Machiavelli, Hobbes, and the Formation of a Liberal Republicanism in England deserves to find a wide audience among scholars of early modern history as well as among students of political thought. CARY J. NEDERMAN Texas A&M University, College Station