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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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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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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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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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8American 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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321Die 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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53I felt so tall within: Anthroplogy in Slave NarrativesAnnals of Cultural Studies (Roczniki Kulturoznawcze) 4 (2): 21-39. 2013.
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28Elisabeth Blum and Paul Richard Blum, both Loyola University Maryland, jointly published: Giordano Bruno: Spaccio della bestia trionfante / Austreibung des triumphierenden Tieres, a translation form the Italian into German with introduction and extensive commentary at Meiner Verlag in Hamburg (Germany) 2009. ISBN: 978-3-7873-1805-6.
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8Federico Cesi e la fondazione dell'Accademia dei Lincei. Mostra bibliografica e documentaria. Hrsg. von Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici, CERN. Napoli: Nella Sede dell'Istituto 1988. XVII und 142 Seiten (review)Berichte Zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 12 (4): 257-257. 1989.
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33Platonic References in Pererius’s Comments on the BibleQuaestio 14 215-227. 2014.Benedictus Pererius as a 16th-century Jesuit integrated Platonic and Neo-Platonic sources in his philosophical and theological works as long as they were compatible with Catholic theology. His commentary on Genesis and his theological disputations on St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans gave occasions to calibrate philosophy against theology. Pererius judges that pagan thinkers may be laudable for acknowledging the existence of God but cautions Christian readers as to the orthodoxy of such findings. …Read more
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17Daniel P. Walker: Il concetto di spirito o anima in Henry More e Ralph Cudworth. Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici, Lezioni della Scuola di Studi Superiori in Napoli 5. Napoli (Bibliopolis) 1986. 98 Seiten (review)Berichte Zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 10 (3): 189-190. 1987.
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1Philosophie der frühen Neuzeit in den böhmischen LändernIntellectual History Review 20 (4): 531-533. 2010.No abstract
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8Maja Kallinen: Change and Stability. Natural Philosophy at the Academy of Turku (1640–1713). (Suomen Historiallinen Seura ‐ Finnish Historical Society: Studia Historica, Bd 51) Helsinki 1995. 439 Seiten. ISBN 951‐710‐001‐6 (review)Berichte Zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 21 (1): 4-4. 1998.
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80Wonder and Wondering in the RenaissanceIn Michael Funk Deckard & Péter Losonczi (eds.), Philosophy Begins in Wonder. An Introduction to Early Modern Philosophy, Theology, and Science, Pickwick. 2010.Wonder, miracle, occult science, poetry, and the epistemological implications in Renaissance authors: Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico, Pietro Pomponazzi, Agrippa of Nettesheim, Giordano Bruno, Francesco Patrizi, Tommaso Campanella, Francisco Suárez
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1124MICHAEL POLANYI: CAN THE MIND BE REPRESENTED BY A MACHINE?Polanyiana 19 (1-2): 35-60. 2010.In 1949, the Department of Philosophy at the University of Manchester organized a symposium “Mind and Machine” with Michael Polanyi, the mathematicians Alan Turing and Max Newman, the neurologists Geoff rey Jeff erson and J. Z. Young, and others as participants. Th is event is known among Turing scholars, because it laid the seed for Turing’s famous paper on “Computing Machinery and Intelligence”, but it is scarcely documented. Here, the transcript of this event, together with Polanyi’s original…Read more
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Jacques Maritain Against Modern Pseudo-Humanism, in: Atti del Congresso Tomista Internazionale su l’Umanesimo Cristiano nel III Millennio: La Prospettiva di Tommaso d’Aquino, 21-25 Settembre 2003, Vatican City (Pontificia Academia Sancti Thomae Aquinatis) 2004, 780-791 (also available at: http://e-aquinas.net/pdf/blum.pdf). (review)http://e-aquinas.net/pdf/blum.pdf. 2004.
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103The immortality of the soulIn James Hankins (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy, Cambridge University Press. 2007.
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 |