Volume 3, Number 7 · November 19, 1964
No Man's Land
By Frances A. Yates
Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance
by Paul Oskar Kristeller
Stanford, 194 pp., $5.00
Renaissance philosophy is something of a no-man's-land in the history of thought. Ancient philosophy, medieval philosophy, modern philosophy beginning from Descartes—all these stand as monuments in the landscape having recognizable shapes. But what is Renaissance philosophy? A rather vague area populated by elusive formulae such as 'humanism' and 'Neoplatonism.' One way of clarifying this situation is to recognize with Professor Kristeller that 'humanism' and 'humanist philosophy' should be separated from 'Renaissance philosophy' as a whole, as a distinct branch having different origins and a different history. The eight philosophers of his book, which is based on lectures given at Stanford University in 1961, are classified as humanist philosophers (Petrarch and Valla), Neoplatonists (Ficino and Pico), Aristotelian (Pomponazzi), and naturalists (Telesio, Patrizi, Bruno). The excellent and, I believe, quite original plan of starting a book on Renaissance philosophy with Petrarch and Valla enables Professor Kristeller to expound with admirable lucidity that interpretation of the meaning of the much abused term 'Renaissance humanism,' of which he himself has laid the foundations by brilliant original research. I well remember the interest aroused by his article of 1944, since expanded, which put the word 'humanism' in a new perspective for Renaissance scholars, and which was confirmed by Dr. Augusto Campana's examination of the meaning of the word umanista as actually used in the Italian Renaissance.
Review, 2140 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |