Thomistic Logic in Renaissance Italy: Girolamo Savonarola, Paolo Barbò, Crisostomo Javelli

This paper is devoted to the formation of a ‘Thomist logic’ in Renaissance Italy. After having expounded the principles that should inspire any logic ad mentem Divi Thomae, the article focuses on three textbooks of ‘Thomist logic’: Girolamo Savonarola’s Compendium Logicae, Paolo Barbò’s Expositio in Artem veterem, and Crisostomo Javelli’s Compendium Logicae. I show that these textbooks display common features, such as the presentation of logic according to the order of the books traditionally included in the Organon.Savonarola maintained that propositions can only be in the present tense and cannot generate insolubilia. Barbò’s contributions to philosophy of logic are conspicuous and include an original discussion of the subiectum of logic and of the doctrine expounded in the Categories. Under the possible influence of Renaissance humanism, Javelli’s textbook includes a history of logic and historical and philological analyses

Logic teaching at the University of Oxford from the Sixteenth to the early Eighteenth Century

This paper considers the nature of the changes that took place in logic teaching at the University of Oxford from the beginning of the sixteenth century, when students attended university lectures on Aristotle’s texts as well as studying short works dealing with specifically medieval developments, to the beginning of the eighteenth century when teaching was centred in the colleges, the medieval developments had largely disappeared, and manuals summarizing Aristotelian logic were used. The paper also considers the reasons for these changes, including changes in English society, and the effect of humanism and the more scholarly Aristotelianism that it produced

The Humanistic, Fideistic Philosophy of Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560)

This dissertation examines the way Philip Melanchthon, author of the Augsburg Confession and Martin Luther\u27s closest co-worker, sought to establish the relationship between faith and reason in the cradle of the Lutheran tradition, Wittenberg University. While Melanchthon is widely recognized to have played a crucial role in the Reformation of the Church in the sixteenth century as well as in the Renaissance in Northern Europe, he has in general received relatively little scholarly attention, few have attempted to explore his philosophy in depth, and those who have examined his philosophical work have come to contradictory or less than helpful conclusions about it. He has been regarded as an Aristotelian, a Platonist, a philosophical eclectic, and as having been torn between Renaissance humanism and Evangelical theology. An understanding of the way Melanchthon related faith and reason awaits a well-founded and accurate account of his philosophy. Having stated the problem and finding it inadequately treated in the secondary literature, this dissertation presents an account of Melanchthon\u27s philosophical development. Finding that his philosophy was ultimately founded upon his understanding of and method in rhetoric and dialectics, this dissertation explicates his mature accounts of these arts. It then presents an account of Melanchthon\u27s philosophy as both humanistic (i.e., rhetorically based and practically rather than speculatively oriented) and fideistic (i.e, skeptical about the product of human reason alone, but finding certainty in philosophy founded upon, and somewhat limited by, Christian faith). After a final assessment of claims about Melanchthon\u27s philosophy from the secondary literature, this dissertation considers how such a humanistic, fideistic philosophy might be helpful for Christians in a philosophically post-modern situation

From Wit to Shit: Notes for an “Emotional” Lexicon of Sophistry during the Renaissance

From the late fourteenth century to the early sixteenth century, authors of neo-Latin literature developed an ever-increasing catalogue of disparaging terms aimed at their perceived rivals, the ancient and contemporary sophists. This extensive vocabulary was deployed against the sophists’ perceived attempts to confuse their listeners, misguide their interlocutors, and corrupt classical learning. This vocabulary ranged from philosophical jargon, to straightforward critiques, to directly derogatory sobriquets. In these pages, I seek to tease out the origin, evolution, and adscription of these terms. In addition, I argue that the study of this lexicon can shed light on the role played by sophistries in the culture of disputation, conversation, and intellectual exchange during the Renaissance. Finally, I will clarify some issues related to the evolution of Latin during the sixteenth century.

Exploring Greek Manuscripts in the Library at Wellcome Collection in London

This book offers new insights into a largely understudied group of Greek texts preserved in selected manuscripts from the Library at Wellcome Collection, London. The content of these manuscripts ranges from medicine, including theories on diagnosis and treatment of disease, to astronomy, philosophy, and poetry. With texts dating from the ancient era to the Byzantine and Ottoman worlds, each manuscript provides its own unique story, opening a window onto different social and cultural milieus. All chapters are illustrated with black and white and colour figures, highlighting some of the most significant codices in the collection

Exploring Greek Manuscripts in the Library at Wellcome Collection in London

This book offers new insights into a largely understudied group of Greek texts preserved in selected manuscripts from the Library at Wellcome Collection, London. The content of these manuscripts ranges from medicine, including theories on diagnosis and treatment of disease, to astronomy, philosophy, and poetry. With texts dating from the ancient era to the Byzantine and Ottoman worlds, each manuscript provides its own unique story, opening a window onto different social and cultural milieus. All chapters are illustrated with black and white and colour figures, highlighting some of the most significant codices in the collection

Exploring Greek Manuscripts in the Library at Wellcome Collection in London

This book offers new insights into a largely understudied group of Greek texts preserved in selected manuscripts from the Library at Wellcome Collection, London. The content of these manuscripts ranges from medicine, including theories on diagnosis and treatment of disease, to astronomy, philosophy, and poetry. With texts dating from the ancient era to the Byzantine and Ottoman worlds, each manuscript provides its own unique story, opening a window onto different social and cultural milieus. All chapters are illustrated with black and white and colour figures, highlighting some of the most significant codices in the collection

Logica laurentiana. Studio sui libri II e III della dialettica di Lorenzo Valla

2015 - 2016My PhD thesis is concerned with logic developed by Lorenzo Valla in the second and third book of the Dialectica, his main philosophical work. Valla’s logic, by himself named «logica laurentiana», aim to reform aristotelian and medieval logic introducing a series of principles borrowed by rhetoric and grammar. The purpose of my thesis is to show the deep influence of this principles on the aristotelian paradigm, at least on moments that Valla is concerned with. Far from separate rhetoric from logic, or the oratorical point of view from the philosophical/logical point of view, Valla intends to give birth to a new course of logic through a refoundation of old method. In light of that, it must be reviewed another exegetical topos widespread among Dialectica’s scholars: the reduction of dialectic to rhetoric. Valla mantains the autonomy (but not the indipendence) of dialectic from rhetoric, and he grants to the first a separate space from second because the obiect of these two artes is different. [edited by Author]XXIX n.s