John Monfasani

In a recently discovered set of philosophical fragments, the late Byzantine Aristotelian George Amiroutze argues against the transmigration of souls because of necessity metempsychosis would be grounded in moral evil. If souls were of the same nature (homoeideis), then metempsychosis entails like exploiting and killing like. If one attempts to escape the moral dilemma through vegetarianism, then one falls into another moral dilemma, namely, the view that nature and the author of nature are evil since the order of nature requires that organisms exploit and devour other organisms. Amiroutzes bases much of his argument on the criterion of “common notions”; he is clearly seeking in this fragment to rebut Plotinus.

Part charlatan, part wunderkind, and part learned scholastic, Fernando of Cordova burst upon the European scene in 1444-1446 when he traveled to different parts of Europe. He astounded audiences by his command of the subject matter in all univ. subjects, his mastery of oriental languages, his skill in painting, music, and instrument making, and his expertise in knightly warfare. After disappearing in 1446, he reappeared in 1466 as a Roman curialist active in several controversies. He died in 1486. Fernando's philosophical, theological, and scientific writings cover a wide range of topics important to his age, and his biography has a special value because of what he did and whom he impressed in his travels in the cities, courts, and universities of Europe.

Trained by some of the most notable philosophers and scholars in Germany before World War II, Paul Oskar Kristeller was one of the great scholars of the twentieth century. He spent his whole career in America in the Philosophy Department of Columbia University, where he became the internationally recognized authority on Renaissance thought. Yet he failed to establish Renaissance philosophy as an ordinary subject of study in American philosophy departments. His publications in philosophy were wide-ranging and influential, but it was his writings in many other fields that confirmed his pre-eminent scholarly status. This essay explores his relationship with the American philosophical establishment and discusses his various works in the history of philosophy and on the relationship between history and philosophy.