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6Giovanni Pico’s warning against pantheistic implications in Ficino’s NeoplatonismIntellectual History Review 34 (1): 49-66. 2024.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
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22Pantheism and panpsychism in the Renaissance and the emergence of secularismIntellectual 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...
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27This 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.
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14Philosophy in the Renaissance: an anthology (edited book)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
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Ramón Llull (1232-1316) : Felix, or the Book of WondersIn Paul Richard Blum & James G. Snyder (eds.), Philosophy in the Renaissance: an anthology, The Catholic University of America Press. 2022.
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4Giordano Bruno’s Changing of Default PositionsIn Anne Eusterschulte & Henning S. Hufnagel (eds.), Turning traditions upside down: rethinking Giordano Bruno's enlightenment, Central European University Press. pp. 11-18. 2013.
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16Giordano BrunoInternet 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 →
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9American slave narratives as autoethnographic paradigmHuman 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
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9Studies on Early Modern AristotelianismBrill. 2012.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
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4History and theory: the paradox in Francesco PatriziIntellectual History Review 29 (4): 649-654. 2019.
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6Principles 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
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25In fugam vacui– Avoiding the Void in Baroque ThoughtQuaestio 17 427-460. 2017.The era of the Baroque witnessed a fierce debate over the interpretation of some experiments about the vacuum. It was riddled with fear of annihilation. My focus will not lie on the development of...
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9How to think with the head of another? The historical dimension of philosophical problemsIntellectual History Review 26 (1): 153-161. 2016.
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33Philosophie des Humanismus und der RenaissanceStudia Neoaristotelica 14 (2): 219-224. 2017.This paper is a review of the book "Philosophie des Humanismus und der Renaissance (1350–1600)" by Thomas Leinkauf.
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322Die Geschmückte Judith. Die Finalisierung der Wissenschaften bei Antonio Possevino S. JNouvelles de la République des Lettres 1 113-126. 1983.Es ist wahr, die frühe Neuzeit hatte nur einen Descartes. Aber sie hatte hunderte schreibende Gelehrte. Auch solche, die Descartes und allen anderen zeigten, wer was wo schon geschrieben hatte. Solche Universal-Gelehrten dachten an den einzelnen Schreiber, sie halfen ihm absichtlich nicht, die Quellen zu verbergen, sondern sie zu finden. Keine Träumereien an französischen oder schwäbischen Kaminen, sondern effiziente Arbeit am Jesuitenkolleg waren Ziel und Inhalt z.B. der Bibliotheca selecta , i…Read more
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1God and individuals. The Arbor-Porphyriana in the 17th and 18th centuriesRivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica 91 (1): 18-49. 1999.
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Pico, theology, and the churchIn M. V. Dougherty (ed.), Pico Della Mirandola: New Essays, Cambridge University Press. 2007.
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44Das Wagnis, ein Mensch zu sein: Geschichte - Natur - ReligionLit Verlag. 2010."Die eigentliche Optik Paul Richard Blums sollte man akkurat als holistisch bezeichnen. Es handelt sich um ein verborgenes Streben nach Ganzheitlichkeit, das diesem Buch eine methodologische Einheit gibt. ... Ein Mensch zu sein nach dem Zeitalter der Renaissance und Moderne ... bedeutet die Aufgabe, sich in einer strukturellen und inhaltlichen Offenheit zu situieren, die die verschiedenen Antworten auf die Frage: Was heißt es, ein Mensch zu sein? in der paradoxen Einheit eines neuen Humanismus z…Read more
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14„A pretty curious circumstance in the history of sciences”︁: David Humes Naturalisierung der ReligionBerichte Zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 23 (2): 143-155. 2000.
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269Michael Polanyi: Can the Mind Be Represented by a Machine?Existence and Anthropology. 2010.On the 27th of October, 1949, the Department of Philosophy at the University of Manchester organized a symposium "Mind and Machine", as Michael Polanyi noted in his Personal Knowledge (1974, p. 261). This event is known, especially among scholars of Alan Turing, but it is scarcely documented. Wolfe Mays (2000) reported about the debate, which he personally had attended, and paraphrased a mimeographed document that is preserved at the Manchester University archive. He forwarded a copy to Andrew…Read more
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1Agrippa Von nettesheim (1486-1535) : Philosophical magic, empiricism, and skepticismIn Paul Richard Blum (ed.), Philosophers of the Renaissance, Catholic University of America Press. 2010.
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592Péter Pázmánys SeelenlehreIn Alinka Ajkay Rita Bajáki (ed.), Pázmány Nyomában. Tanulmányok Hargittay Emil tiszteletére, Mondat. 2013.Péter Pázmány taught philosophy at the Jesuit university of Graz, end of 16th century. This analyzes his interpretation of Aristotelian psychology.
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18Jesuiten zwischen Religion und WissenschaftBerichte 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
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23The 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
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39Giordano Bruno, Matthias Aquarius und die eklektische ScholastikArchiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 72 (3): 275-300. 1990.
Ludwig Maximilians Universität, München
Faculty of Philosophy, Philosophy of Science and Study of Religion
PhD, 1978
Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Religion |
Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |