Paul Oskar Kristeller

Stoic and Neoplatonic sources of Spinoza's ethics

(1984). Stoic and Neoplatonic sources of Spinozas ethics. History of European Ideas: Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 1-15.

Between the Italian Renaissance and the French Enlightenment: Gabriel Naudé as an editor.

A LTH O UGH I am not an expert in French History and Literature, I have been occasionally prompted to touch the borders of this field when studying the history of philosophy and of learning. This paper, in spite of its somewhat pretentious title, deals in fact with a group of minor bibliographical data that are not even completely unknown. Since in my opinion bibliography, although a modest tool of research, is in a way the skeleton or scaffolding of literary and of intellectual history,1 I shall try to add some flesh to the bones of those data, and to use them for gaining a broader perspective. I have now been encouraged to look more closely at some facts and questions of which I had been aware for a long time, but which I had not really faced. For a student of the Renaissance who feels at home in the fifteenth

Florentine Platonism and its Relations with Humanism and Scholasticism

The early humanism in Italy from the second half of the fourteenth to the middle of the fifteenth century, characterized by the discovery and revival of classical antiquity, was at the same time the first expression of modern ideals and feelings. Although it was in several points closely connected with the preceding age, it produced a lively reaction against the medieval civilization and its form of philosophical and scientific thought, scholasticism. Petrarch, the father of humanism, began the polemics against scholasticism which have remained since then a commonplace in the writings of his followers: according to him the scholastics wasted their time in subtle and useless disputations without resolving the basic questions of human life; their unpolished Latin style was a consequence of their barbarous thought; they could not be compared with the great writers and thinkers of classical antiquity whom they were not able to read or imitate; and even their chief authority, Aristotle, in many respects must be considered inferior to his greater master, Plato.

Marsilio Ficino as a Man of Letters and the Glosses Attributed to Him in the Caetani Codex of Dante

*This paper is based on a lecture delivered in Italian in Rome on November 15, 1979 under the auspices of the Fondazione Camillo Caetani and at the invitation of its president, the Hon. Hubert Howard. The Italian text has since been published by the Fondazione under the title Marsilio Ficino letterato e le glosse attribuite a lui nel codice Caetani di Dante (Quaderni della Fondazione Camillo Caetani, 3, Rome, 1981), with a generous introduction by Mr. Howard. I had known of the manuscript before 1937, when I published my Supplementum Ficinianum, but had no opportunity to see it. After the war, I was encouraged by my late friend Myron P. Gilmore to visit the Archivio Caetani, and was introduced to Mr. Howard and to his late consort Donna Lelia Caetani Howard by the late Mr. James G. Van Derpool, then director of the Avery Library of Columbia University. I was graciously invited to visit them and to do some research in their archives. When I enquired about the Caetani Codex of Dante, I was told what I had heard already through indirect sources, namely that the manuscript had been missing since the end of the Second World War and must be considered lost. It was therefore a most pleasant surprise when Mr. Howard informed me in 1976 that he himself had succeeded in relocating the manuscript in a hidden corner of the palace. During my next visit to Rome, I gratefully accepted Mr. Howards invitation to visit him and to see the manuscript. I should like to thank Mr. Howard for his hospitality and for having indicated and shown the manuscript to me. This English version is being published with the permission and with a subsidy of the Fondazione Camillo Caetani, for which I am again indebted to Mr. Howard.

The Renaissance Philosophy of Man

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.

The Theory of Immortality in Marsilio Ficino

In the philosophy of Marsilio Ficino, the leader of Renaissance Platonism (1433-1499), the doctrine of immortality occupies an especially important place. A possible way of dealing with it would be to consider one by one the numerous arguments which Ficino uses to prove the thesis of immortality, examining their content and their logical force and also trying to determine to what extent he modified and enlarged in each case the conceptions and arguments of earlier philosophers. In doing so, we certainly should make some contribution to the history of the problem, but the most significant aspects of Ficinos approach to the question would hardly thereby become apparent. Our intention is rather to interpret this part of Ficinos philosophy in a different way. The doctrine of immortality as such was, of course, an element in a long tradition, and Plato, Plotinus and St. Augustine had already made it the subject of separate treatises, to mention only those philosophers whom Ficino certainly knew and utilized. The new and distinctive feature in Ficino is that he devoted to the problem of immortality his most important and most extensive work, with the sub-title De immortalitate animorum; in other words, that he gave to his main work, explicitly dedicated to the task of expressing his whole philosophical doctrine, at least the external form of a Summa on the immortality of souls, and in it subordinated all other problems and doctrines to that of immortality. The question thus arises why the topic of the immortality of the soul, which occurs so frequently in the history of philosophy as one among many metaphysical problems, became for Ficino the central and organizing one, and why it plays in his system a more dominating role than in the thought of any other thinker before or after him. This question, at least in this form, has never been raised by his interpreters; but the answer given to it seems to be decisive for any real understanding of his philosophy. It is our intention to attempt an answer to this question. For this purpose, we must inquire first of all how the concept of immortality as such is connected with the basic premises of Ficino s philosophy. Many of his separate arguments used for the demonstration of the thesis we shall omit as be-

Philosophy and Medicine in Medieval and Renaissance Italy

The efforts to establish a link between philosophy and medicine in which Hans Jonas has taken an active part and which find expression in the title and content of this volume are of rather recent origin. Earlier during this century, and for most of the nineteenth century, medicine and philosophy had been almost completely separated from each other. The two fields coexisted, to be sure, as different subjects within the common framework of the universities, but the teachers and students, the courses and subjects taught, were entirely different. With some notable exceptions such as, for example, Karl Jaspers or Kurt Goldstein, few philosophers have shown a specific interest in medicine and few physicians in philosophy. Even the philosophers of science have focused their attention on mathematics and physics and have taken little notice of medicine and of its specific problems.

Medieval and Renaissance Studies: Reflections of a Scholar

THE topic of this brief talk has been suggested by my own scholarly experience and professional activities, and I also think that it is quite timely and pertinent for this occasion. Medieval studies have flourished for a long time, ever since the Middle Ages, and certainly during the Renaissance, again during the last century under the influence of Romanticism, and now again in our own century. Jacob Burckhardts essay on the Renaissance, published in 1860, represented a challenge, to be sure, and it led to what Wallace Ferguson has called the revolt of the medievalists that culminated in Haskinss Renaissance of the Twelfth Century and in the massive work of Lynn Thorndike, who tried to abolish the concept and name of the Renaissance altogether. The controversy is not yet completely over, but some of its terms are becoming much clearer. The sixteenth century has never been claimed by the medievalists, and the fifteenth century outside of Italy is still quite medieval, as we have learned from Huizinga. Thus it is the Quattrocento which remains a contested territory, and it is rightly seen in different ways depending on our field of interest. Those of us who focus on the arts and on literature, on classical and historical scholarship, will be inclined to stress the links of fifteenth-century Italy with later periods, whereas the student of economics and of the sciences will emphasize the medieval connections. In my own field, the history of philosophy, the situation is less clear, and the most prudent course is to realize that there is both continuity and change. I have stressed in my own work the continuity between the Renaissance humanists and the medieval grammarians and rhetoricians, and between the Renaissance Platonists and Aristotelians and the medieval philosophers, theologians and physicians. Yet continuity does not exclude change, for each period and century has links both with the past and with the future, and also traits that are peculiar to itself. I think each scholar is free to follow his own interests and preferences. In the long run, it is not the labels or

Latin Manuscript Books before 1600: A Bibliography of the Printed Catalogues of Extant Collections

The study of Latin manuscripts has been of vital importance not only to the student of classical and patristic literature but also to every serious scholar interested in the literature, theology, philosophy and science of the Middle Ages and of the Renaissance. In this field, the manuscripts contain not merely new variants of well-known texts but an often unsuspected amount of new textual material that never got into print but often had as wide a circulation and importance as some of the printed works. This material is by no means easily accessible. If a collection of manuscripts has no printed catalogue, there is no way of investigating its content except by working on the spot. On the other hand, printed catalogues, when available, permit the location of pertinent material from a distance, and hence are a definite scholarly aid and desideratum. Since even the printed catalogues are often inadequate and sometimes rare, it has seemed useful to compile an annotated bibliography of these catalogues, which would serve as a guide to medievalists and Renaissance scholars in general, and in particular to the contributors to the project of ‘Medieval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries,’ which has been undertaken by a group of scholars under the auspices of several learned societies. The present bibliography was originally compiled for the purposes of that project, and it has been decided to print it, since previous bibliographies of a similar nature were either conceived along narrower lines, like Weinbergers, or were inaccurate, like Richardsons.