Jill Kraye

Against the backdrop of Walter Benjamin's famous essay, “Unpacking My Library”, this article, by the Librarian of the Warburg Institute, tells the story of the many times that the Warburg Library has been packed and unpacked. First it was the private collection of Aby Warburg, later a public institution, originally in Hamburg and then in London from 1933 to the present. This essay also explores the various ways in which books have been — and continue to be — acquired by the Warburg Library, including publication, donation, recommendation, and purchase. Each of these methods is not only discussed but also examined in light of Benjamin's account of the acquisition of his own library. Moreover, Benjamin's view that collections lose their meaning when they cease to be personal is challenged by the example of the Warburg Library, which has been transformed from a private collection containing around 15,000 books in 1911 to a public institution today housing over 350,000 volumes, while still maintaining its unique character.

The Renaissance, known primarily for the art and literature that it produced, was also a period in which philosophical thought flourished. This two-volume anthology contains 40 new translations of important works on moral and political philosophy written during the Renaissance and hitherto unavailable in English. The anthology is designed to be used in conjunction with The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, in which all of these texts are discussed. The works, originally written in Latin, Italian, French, Spanish, and Greek, cover such topics as: concepts of man, Aristotelian, Platonic, Stoic, and Epicurean ethics, scholastic political philosophy, theories of princely and republican government in Italy and northern European political thought. Each text is supplied with an introduction and a guide to further reading.

Jill Kraye - Giordano Bruno: Philosopher of the Renaissance - Journal of the History of Philosophy 43:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 43.3 357-358 Hilary Gatti, editor. Giordano Bruno: Philosopher of the Renaissance. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2002. Pp. xxiv + 424. Cloth, $89.95. The Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake on 17 February 1600 in the Campo de' Fiori in Rome. The four-hundredth anniversary of this dramatic event, which has come to symbolize the end of the High Renaissance, was a rather tepid and bland affair compared to the third centenary, which occurred at the height of "Brunomania," with all its attendant ideological fervor and political partisanship. In their struggle against the Church and other conservative elements in Italian society, nineteenth-century liberal and anti-clerical thinkers had transformed the renegade Dominican, whose radical ideas and heretical views were expressed in bombastic Italian prose and..