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    This edition of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s “De ente et uno” (“On being and the one”) offers for the first time a key text for the reformation of metaphysics in Renaissance philosophy in German translation. The Latin text is added. The detailed introduction and careful commentary reveal the guiding points Pico has set with this work.
  •  18
    Religion – Gesellschaft – Demokratie. Ausgewählte Aufsätze (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 58 (1): 177-178. 2004.
    Western Creed, Western Identity: such was the title of a volume of collected essays by Jude P. Dougherty published in 2000; most of these essays are now made available in this German translation. Since the author is well known to the readership of the Review of Metaphysics, which he has served as editor for thirty years, his thought need not to be introduced by way of a book review; rather, it will be of interest to emphasize the timeliness of these studies for the German audience.
  •  16
    The Lost Italian Renaissance: Humanists, Historians, and Latin's Legacy (review)
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 43 (4): 485-487. 2005.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Lost Italian Renaissance: Humanists, Historians, and Latin’s LegacyPaul Richard BlumChristopher S. Celenza. The Lost Italian Renaissance: Humanists, Historians, and Latin’s Legacy. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. Pp. xx + 210. Cloth, $45.00This is a programmatic book about why and how philosophy should care about Renaissance texts. Celenza starts with an assessment of the neglect of the wealth of …Read more
  •  16
    Soldier or Scholar: Stratocles or War
    with Pontanus,S. J. , Jacobus and Thomas McCreight
    Apprendice House. 2009.
    ISBN-13: 978-1934074480
    Plot Summary from the book:
    "An aristocratic young man, fed up with his studies, contemplates military service. His teacher is unable by any reasoning to call him back him from the path he has embarked upon. The young man enlists another youth who commits himself to the journey, dressed in military garb, and he happens upon two deserting soldiers, unsightly and ill-used both in their dress and in their hygiene. Both young men are so moved by the deserters’ remarks depl…

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  •  15
    Humanism and Early Modern Philosophy (review)
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 40 (1): 121-122. 2002.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.1 (2002) 121-122 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Humanism and Early Modern Philosophy Jill Kraye and M. W. F. Stone, editors. Humanism and Early Modern Philosophy. New York: Routledge, 2000. Pp. xii + 270. Cloth, $75.00 Early-modern philosophy begins in the seventeenth century. This book, based on a colloquium at the Warburg Institute, London in 1997, strives at extending the limits of this…Read more
  •  13
    Jesuiten zwischen Religion und Wissenschaft
    Berichte Zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 18 (4): 205-216. 1995.
    Natural sciences and natural philosophy of the Jesuits are based on theology. At least the concept of God is an integral part of their theoretical structure. Examples are taken from Rudjer Boskovic, Honoré Fabri and Nicolaus Cabeus. In fact, the Jesuits, e.g. Theophil Raynaud, dealt with natural theology as the spiritual foundation of knowledge independent of revelation. But natural theology, as in Raimundus Sabundus, has an anthropocentric and hence moral dimension: it links knowledge with reli…Read more
  •  11
    Giordano Bruno
    Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2021.
    Giordano Bruno Giordano Bruno was an Italian philosopher of the later Renaissance whose writings encompassed the ongoing traditions, intentions, and achievements of his times and transmitted them into early modernity. Taking up the medieval practice of the art of memory and of formal logic, he focused on the creativity of the human mind. Bruno … Continue reading Giordano Bruno →
  •  10
    Erfahrung, Weltbild und Erkenntnis bei Nikolaus Cusanus†
    Berichte Zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 14 (2): 97-105. 1991.
    To explain the interaction of stillness and motion of thought, Nicholas Cusanus formulated his renowned comparison with a cosmographer, which through five gateways, corresponding to the five senses, receives information about the world in the form of messages. What follows therefrom is not directly an analysis of the world but of the Creator, whom the philosopher mirrors in himself as a creator of scientific symbols.Cusanus was repeatedly suspected of Pantheism. What is crucial, however, for the…Read more
  •  8
    Philosophy in the Renaissance: an anthology (edited book)
    with James G. Snyder
    The Catholic University of America Press. 2022.
    The Renaissance was a period of great intellectual change and innovation as philosophers rediscovered the philosophy of classical antiquity and passed it on to the modern age. Renaissance philosophy is distinct both from the medieval scholasticism, based on revelation and authority, and from philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who transformed it into new philosophical systems. Despite the importance of the Renaissance to the development of philosophy over time, it has remain…Read more
  •  8
    Pantheism and panpsychism in the Renaissance and the emergence of secularism
    with Elisabeth Blum, Tomáš Nejeschleba, and Martin Žemla
    Intellectual History Review 34 (1): 1-3. 2024.
    Pantheism, Panpsychism, and secularism? To any historian of ideas still under the die-hard spell of the Enlightenment narrative, this would appear as an unlikely connection.1 If ever the theory of...
  •  7
    Istoriar la figura
    American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 77 (2): 189-212. 2003.
    Syncretism is a challenge to modern philosophy, but it was the main characteristic of Giordano Bruno’s thought. This has been made clear by Frances A. Yates, who in interpreting Bruno and Renaissance Hermeticism was not afraid of connecting theories and cultural expressions which on the surface are alien to philosophy. In doing so Yates was congenial to her object of study, as syncretism of theory was no mere side effect of Hermeticism, but had a philosophical aim. This aim can be identified as …Read more
  •  7
    American slave narratives as autoethnographic paradigm
    Human Affairs 31 (2): 236-245. 2021.
    Ever since the publication of the Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass in 1845, autobiographical testimonies were a mainstay of the abolition movement in the United States. Being or having been held as slaves and all the attendant injury is the very theme of the documents in question, which are testimonies, rather than theoretical works, because the authors maintained the first-person point of view. Since autoethnography aims at overcoming the preset mentality of the researcher in order t…Read more
  •  7
    Platonische Liebe: Eine wahre Geschichte
    In Günter Frank, Anja Hallacker & Sebastian Lalla (eds.), Erzählende Vernunft, Akademie Verlag. pp. 19-28. 2006.
  •  5
    In Studies on Early Modern Aristotelianism Paul Richard Blum shows that Aristotle’s thought remained the touchstone of modern philosophy; for it was the philosophy taught at universities. The concept of philosophy at Jesuit schools forms the first part of this book. Their impact on the sciences and mathematics in combination with Renaissance ideas of nature is the topic of the second part. The transformation of Aristotelian metaphysics and theology under the influence of the Renaissance is the t…Read more
  •  4
    Principles and powers: How to interpret Renaissance philosophy of nature philosophically?
    Minerva - An Internet Journal of Philosophy 5 (1). 2001.
    The history of philosophy has to understand the problems to which past theories are intended as answers, rather than taking the latter as sets of doctrines, which may be correct or mistaken. Examples from the Renaissance are Nicholas of Cusa, Marsilio Ficino, Bernardino Telesio, Girolamo Cardano, and Benedictus Pererius: they show that Renaissance thinkers sought for principles of nature in terms of active powers. Whoever denies the validity of such ideas has the burden of proof that alternative…Read more
  •  3
    Bildung und Unbildung im 16. Jahrhundert Ein Gastseminar in Wolfenbüttel
    Berichte Zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 6 (1-4): 194-194. 1983.
  •  3
    "Philosophieren in der Renaissance" - das Thema dieses Bandes ist zugleich bescheiden und voraussetzungsreich. Zwar kann der Autor bei weitem keine "Geschichte der Philosophie der Renaissance" versprechen, er beansprucht aber zeigen zu konnen, was in der Epoche der Renaissance zu philosophieren bedeutet hat. Dabei sollen zentrale Themen des Renaissance-Denkens zur Sprache kommen: Wurde des Menschen, Freiheit des Individuums, Mensch und Welt, Religionsfreiheit, Humanismus, Natur, Naturliche Theol…Read more
  •  2
    The famous controversy between Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola is known to regard the proper use of Platonism in humanist and Christian context. With special attention to Pico’s Commentary on a Canzone, the point of disagreement with Ficino, which is not at all obvious, is examined through a close reading. The result is that Pico sees the temptation of a pantheistic and anthropocentric understanding of the relationship between the human realm and God. Whereas Ficino engaged in …Read more