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Warburton, Nigel
Philosophy
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5 book(s) with the same title
Popularization of Philosophy in Medieval Islam, Judaism, and Christianity
, Brepols, 2022 Hardback, 465 pages, Size:156 x 234 mm, Language(s):English, Arabic, Hebrew. ISBN 9782503577838.
Summary This volume explores attempts at the popularization of philosophy and natural science in medieval Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Medieval philosophers usually wrote their philosophical books for philosophers, so the desire to convey psychological, cosmological, metaphysical, or even physical teachings to the 'vulgus' may seem surprising. This disdain for the multitude and their weak intellectual capabilities is expressed most clearly in the medieval Islamic and Jewish Aristotelian traditions of philosophy, but is certainly found among the Scholastics as well. Yet philosophy was taught to non-philosophers and via a variety of literary genres. Indeed, scholars have argued that philosophy most influenced medieval society through popular forms of transmission. Among the questions this volume addresses are the following: Which philosophers or theologians sought to direct their philosophical writings to the many? For what purposes did they seek to popularize philosophy? Was the goal to teach philosophical truths? Were certain teachings not transmitted? Which teachings were transmitted most often? For whom exactly were these popularized texts written? Were the authors of popularized philosophy always aware they were writing for non-philosophers? How did they go about teaching philosophy to a wide audience? How successful were these attempts? In what ways did popularized philosophy impact upon society? To what extent were the considerations and problems in the medieval popularization of philosophy the same or different in the various religious traditions of philosophy? How philosophical was the popularized philosophy? In addressing these questions, this pioneering volume is the first of its kind to bring together scholars of medieval Islamic, Jewish, and Christian thought to discuss the popularization of philosophy in these three religious traditions of philosophy. TABLE OF CONTENTS General Introduction ? Marieke Abram and Steven Harvey PART I: INTRODUCTORY REMARKS 1. Philosophy as Literature: Appraisal, Defence, and Satire of Rational Thought in Classical Arabic Poetry and Prose ? Gerhard Endress 2. Broadening the Audience for Philosophy Among Medieval Jews ? Charles H. Manekin 3. Popularization of Philosophy in the Latin West: The Philosophical Opportunities of Popularization ? John Marenbon PART II: POPULARIZATION OF PHILOSOPHY VIA THE MEDIEVAL ENCYCLOPEDIAS 4. Introduction ? Steven Harvey 5. Anonymous Philosophical Compendia: An Attempt at Vulgarization? ? Elvira Wakelnig 6. Levels of Philosophical Sophistication in Medieval Hebrew Encyclopedias of Philosophy and Science ? Resianne Fontaine 7. The Summa dictorum: A Theological-Philosophical Encyclopedia for Monks ? Guy Guldentops PART III: POPULARIZATION OF PHILOSOPHY VIA BOOKS OF INSTRUCTION 8. Introduction ? Sarah Stroumsa 9. Between Popularity and Marginality: al-Ba?alyaws?'s Book of Imaginary Circles ? Ayala Eliyahu 10. Rua? ?en: An Early Popular Hebrew Introduction to Science ? Ofer Elior 11. Medieval Philosophy of Nature Popularised? Albert the Great's De animalibus ? Katja Krause PART IV: POPULARIZATION OF PHILOSOPHY VIA MYSTICAL LITERATURE 12. Introduction ? Yossef Schwartz 13. Popularization of Philosophy in the Sufi Milieu: The Reception of Avicenna's Doctrine of the Origination of the Human Soul in ?Ayn al-Qu??t al-Hamad?n?'s Writings ? Salimeh Maghsoudlou 14. Myth and Metaphysics: The Popularization of Platonic and Neo-Platonic Motifs through Kabbalistic Theosophy ? Tanja Werthmann 15. Popularized Philosophy in Hendrik Herp's Mystical Guide, the Spieghel der volcomenheit ? Marieke Abram PART V: POPULARIZATION OF PHILOSOPHY VIA SCRIPTURAL EXEGESIS AND SERMONS 16. Introduction ? Howard Kreisel 17. The Conception of Philosophical Problems in Fakhr al-D?n al-R?z?'s Qur??n Commentary (Maf?t?? al-ghayb) and the Popularization of Philosophy ? Lukas Muehlethaler 18. Fifteenth-Century Synagogue Sermons ? Chaim Meir Neria 19. Approaching Wisdom: The 'Anonymous of Tegernsee' and his Translation of Bernard's Sermones super Cantica Canticorum ? Lydia Wegener PART VI: POPULARIZATION OF PHILOSOPHY VIA POETRY 20. Introduction ? Anne Eusterschulte 21. Intellectual Poetry in the Medieval Islamicate World: Verse and the Popularization of Philosophical Knowledge ? M. A. Mujeeb Khan 22. The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Philosophers: The Ladder of Knowledge in Immanuel of Rome's Hell and Heaven ? Yehuda Halper 23. 'Donna gentile': Philosophy in and around the Vita nuova ? Myrtha de Meo-Ehlert PART VII: CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS 24. Religious Critique as a Popularization of Philosophy ? Frank Griffel 25. Jewish Averroists contra the Popularization of Philosophy: The Case of the Philosophists ? Shalom Sadik 26. Popular Philosophy is the True Philosophy ? Warren Zev Harvey 27. The Modern Popularization of Medieval Philosophy ? Peter Adamson 28. Some Remarks on Vulgarization of Philosophy in the Middle Ages ? Loris Sturlese INDICES Index of Names, Ancient and Premodern Index of Names, Modern and Contemporary Index of Books, Ancient and Premodern Index of Subjects
History of the Inductive Sciences. From the Earliest to the Present Times. In three volumes. + The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded upon their History. In two volumes. Five volumes in all. - [COINING THE TERM ""SCIENTIST""]
London, 1837 + London, 1840. Five volumes 8vo. Bound in five contemporary, uniform brown half calf bindings (The Philosophy...-volumes slightly darker brown) with raised bands and gilt spines. Marbled edges. A bit of light edge-wear, but overall very fine and fresh. Some marginal pencil markings to first part of vol. 1 of ""The Philosophy..."", otherwise also internally very nice and clean. All five volumes with the same engraved amorial bookplate to inside of front boards. A very nice, uniform set of the five volumes that make up the two works. XXXVI, 437, (3)" XI, (1), VI pp., pp. (7)-534, (2) XII, 624 pp. + CXX, 523, (1)" IV, 586 pp. + folded plate.
Uncommon first editions of both these splendid works (the ""Philosophy"" is particularly scarce), Whewell's two main works, both seminal in the history of science and philosophy of science. The first of the two works, the ""History"" is considered ""one of the important surveys of science from the Greeks to the nineteenth century"" (DSB), and it is in the second of them, ""The Philosophy..."" - ""one of the masterpieces of Victorian philosophy of science"" (DSB) - that he coins the word ""scientist"", to describe a cultivator of science in general. “William Whewell (1794–1866) was one of the most important and influential figures in nineteenth-century Britain. Whewell, a polymath, wrote extensively on numerous subjects, including mechanics, mineralogy, geology, astronomy, political economy, theology, educational reform, international law, and architecture, as well as the works that remain the most well-known today in philosophy of science, history of science, and moral philosophy. He was one of the founding members and a president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, a fellow of the Royal Society, president of the Geological Society, and longtime Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. In his own time his influence was acknowledged by the major scientists of the day, such as John Herschel, Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell and Michael Faraday, who frequently turned to Whewell for philosophical and scientific advice, and, interestingly, for terminological assistance. Whewell invented the terms “anode,” “cathode,” and “ion” for Faraday. In response to a challenge by the poet S.T. Coleridge in 1833, Whewell invented the English word “scientist""” before this time the only terms in use in that language were “natural philosopher” and “man of science”.” (SEP). ""First published in 1840, this two-volume treatise by Cambridge polymath William Whewell (1794-1886) remains significant in the philosophy of science. The work was intended as the 'moral' to his three-volume History of the Inductive Sciences (1837)... Building on philosophical foundations laid by Immanuel Kant and Francis Bacon, Whewell opens with the aphorism 'Man is the Interpreter of Nature, Science the right interpretation'. Volume 1 contains the majority of Whewell's section on 'ideas', in which he investigates the philosophy underlying a range of different disciplines, including pure, classificatory and mechanical sciences. Whewell's work upholds throughout his belief that the mind was active and not merely a passive receiver of knowledge from the world. A key text in Victorian epistemological debates, notably challenged by John Stuart Mill and his System of Logic, Whewell's treatise merits continued study and discussion in the present day."" (Cambridge University Press). ""From the late 1830's until his death, Whewell worked mainly in the history and philosophy of science. His three-volume ""History of the Inductive Sciences"" appeared in 1837" in 1838 he was appointed professor of moral philosophy" and the first edition of his two-volume ""The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded Upon Their History"" was published in 1840. Both the ""History"" and the ""Philosophy"" were ambitious works, and together they constitute Whewell's major scholarly achievement. The ""History"" had no rivals in its day and remains, despite unevenness, one of the important surveys of science from the Greeks to the nineteenth century. Whewell appreciated the importance of Greek science, especially astronomy, but showed typical disregard for the contributions of medieval scientists. His assessment of the importance of contributions of such major figures as Galileo and Descartes suffers from a heavy intrusion of religious and philosophical biases. But his treatment of Newton and other modern mathematical scientists is fair and sometime brilliant, and is based throughout upon detailed considerations of texts. Wheweel's ""Philosophy"" stimulated major philosophical exchanges between its author and Sir John Herschel, Augustus De Morgan, Henry L. Mansel, and John Stuart Mill. Alongside Mill's ""System of Logic"" and Herschel's ""Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy"", the work ranks as one of the masterpieces of Victorian philosophy of science. Whewell's effort in these works was unique in his attempt to derive a philosophy of science from the general features of the historical development of empirical science. The importance of this attempt has not been fully appreciated. Whewell thought that the history of science displayed a progressive movement from less to more general theories, from imperfectly understood facts to basic sciences built upon a priori foundations that he called ""Fundamental Ideas."" All science was theoretical in that no body of data comes to us selforganized"" even collection of data involves the imposition of a guiding interpretive idea. Major advances in science occur in what Whewell called an ""Inductive Epoch,"" a period in which the basic ideas of a science are well understood by one or more scientists, and in which the generality and explanatory power of a science are seen to be much more illuminating than those of rival theories. Each such ""Epoch"" had a ""Prelude,"" a period in which older theories experienced difficulties and new ideas were seen to be required, and a ""Sequel,"" a period in which the new theory was applied and refined. Largely ignoring the British tradition of empiricist philosophy and methodology, Whewell erected a philosophy of science upon his understanding of history that derived partly from Kant and Plato, and partly from an anachronistic theological position. Like his British predecessors, he thought that induction was the basic method of science. He understood induction not as a form of inference from particulars to generalizations, but as a conceptual act of coming to see that a group of data can best be understood and organized (his term was ""colligated"") under a certain idea. Furthermore, induction was demonstrative in that it yields necessary truths, propositions the logical opposites of which cannot be clearly conceived. The zenith of the inductive process was reached when a ""consilience of inductions"" took place-when sets of data previously considered disjoint came to be seen as derivable from the same, much richer theory. Although Whewell thought that the paradigm form of a scientific theory was deductive, he departed from the orthodox hypothetico-deductivist view of science by claiming that tests of the acceptability of given theories are extraevidential, based on considerations of simplicity and consilience. He made some attempt to justify the necessity of the conclusions that induction yields by arguing for the identity of facts and theories, and for the theological view that we know the world the way it is because that is the way God made it. In physical astronomy Whewell's work on the tides ranks second only to that of Newton. Also of great importance was his lifelong effort to modernize and improve science education at Cambridge. The achievement in history and philosophy of science probably is less significant, although recent revival of interest in Whewell has centered mainly upon his insights in philosophy of science and methodology. Interest is growing in the interrelations of history and philosophy of science"" and so long as this interest continues to be fruitful, it will be well worthwhile considering what Whewell had to say on the nature of scientific discovery, inductive methodology, and the characteristics of scientific progress."" (DSB, XIV, pp 293-94)
De divisione naturae [also known as the Periphyseon]. Libri quinque. Accedit appendix et ambiguis S. Maximi Graece & Latine. - [""WITH HIM TRUE PHILOSOPHY FIRST BEGINS"" (HEGEL)]
Oxford, E Theatro Sheldoniano, 1681. Folio. Nice contemporary full calf with five raised bands and single gilt line-decorations to spine. Gilt title-label and gilt lettering to spine. Double blindstamped borders to boards. All edges of boards gilt. A bit of wear to hinges and capitals, but overall very nice. Internally very clean and fresh with only minimal, light occasional browning. With the book-plate of Gaddesden Library to inside of front board. Engraved device to title-page. (14), 312"" (4), 88 pp.
Rare first edition of the founding work of Western medieval philosophy, the main work by ""the one important philosophical thinker to appear in Latin Christendom between Augustine... and Anselm."" (Encycl. of Phil.). This magnum opus of medieval thought is considered the ""final achievement"" of ancient philosophy (Burch: Early Medieval Philosophy, 1951) and is one of the few true defining moments of medieval philosophy. It not only marks the beginning of Western medieval philosophy, it also anticipates German idealism. Kolakowski identifies ""De divisione naturae"" as the archetype of Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind (see ""Main Currents of Marxism""), the Hegelians considered him the father of German idealism, and Hegel states that ""Scholastic philosophy is considered to begin with John Scotus Erigena who flourished about the year 860, and who must not be confused with the Duns Scotus of a later date... With him true philosophy first begins, and his philosophy in the main coincides with the idealism of the Neo-Platonists."" (From Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Part Two. Philosophy of the Middle Ages). As the dialectical reasoning in the “De divisione naturae” prefigures Hegel, its theory of place and time as defining structures of the mind anticipates Kant. As Gordon A. Leff also points out, Eriugena stands out as the one original thinker in the period from Boethius to Anselm. He is responsible for a revival of philosophical thought which had remained largely dormant in Western Europe after the death of Boethius and creates the only philosophical system to emerge in more than half a millenia. He is the forerunner to speculative idealism, considered a “Proclus of the West” (Hauréau, 1872) and the “Father of Speculative Philosophy” (Huber, 1861). According to The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Eriugena is ""the most significant Irish intellectual of the early monastic period. He is generally recognized to be both the outstanding philosopher (in terms of originality) of the Carolingian era and of the whole period of Latin philosophy stretching from Boethius to Anselm"""" Gersh praises his notion of structure, which places him amongst modern writers rather than medieval ones, stating also that ""(i)n some respects, Western medieval philosophy can be viewed as beginning with the brilliant and controversial ninth-century thinker JohnScotus Eriugena."" (Gersh, p. 125). His magnum opus ""synthesizes the philosophical accomplishments of fifteen centuries and appears as the final achievement of ancient philosophy"" (Burch). Eriugena became extremely influential throughout the later Middle Ages and directly influenced Bernard of Clairvaux, Hildegard van Bingen, and Nicolas of Cusa. He also anticipates Thomas Aquinas in saying that one cannot know and believe a thing at the same time, and exercised a direct influence on modern philosophy. After the rediscovery of his magnum opus, which was printed for the first time in 1681 (the present work), his astonishingly modern train of thought and his immensely important philosophical system came to directly influence some of the most important thinkers of the modern era, most significantly probably Hegel. Eriugena is often referred to as “the Hegel of the 9th century”, and he thus also became a primary influence upon Marx’ dialectical form. Schopenhauer stresses the importance of the rediscovery of Eriugena with the present publication and says in Parerga and Paralopomena (vol. I) “ After Scotus Erigena had been lost and forgotten for many centuries, he was again discovered at Oxford and in 1681, thus four years after Spinoza's death, his work first saw the light in print. This seems to prove that the insight of individuals cannot make itself felt so long as the spirit of the age is not ripe to receive it.” “In the later Middle Ages both Meister Eckhart of Hochheim (c.1260–c.1328) and Nicholas of Cusa (1401–64) were sympathetic to Eriugena and familiar with his “Periphyseon”. Cusanus owned a copy of the “Periphyseon”. Interest in Eriugena was revived by Thomas Gale’s first printed edition of 1687 (recte: 1681). However, soon afterwards, Thomas Gale’s first printed edition, the “Periphyseon”, was listed in the first edition of the “Index Librorum Prohibitorum”, and remained on it, until the Index itself was abolished in the 1960s. In the nineteenth century, Hegel and his followers, interested in the history of philosophy from a systematic point of view, read Eriugena rather uncritically as an absolute idealist and as the father of German idealism. The first critical editions of his major works were not produced until the twentieth century (Lutz, Jeauneau, Barbet) [...] Eriugena is an original philosopher who articulates the relation between God and creation in a manner which preserves both divine transcendence and omnipresence. His theory of human nature is rationalist and intellectualist but also apophatic. His theory of place and time as defining structures of the mind anticipates Kant, his dialectical reasoning prefigures Hegel. But above all, Eriugena is a mystic who emphasizes the ultimate unity of human nature and through it of the entire creation with God.” (SEP). Eriugena - who Bertrand Russel also considered ""the most astonishing person of the ninth century"" - had been commissioned by Charles the Bald to translate the writings that were then thought to be by Dionysius (the learned pagan converted by St. Paul). Eriugena had taught himself Greek and succeeded in an excellent translation. ""He went on to translate various other Greek Christian texts, by Gregory of Nyssa and the seventeenth-century Maximus the Confessor. All these influences along with his wide reading of the Latin fathers (especially Ambrose and Augustine) and his enthusiasm for logic.. are combined in his masterpiece ""Periphyseon (""About Nature"""" it is also sometimes known as ""De divisione naturae"", ""On the division of nature""), written in the 860s. The ""Periphyseon"" has been seen by some as continuing a tradition of Greek Neoplatonic thought, and by some as anticipating nineteenth-century German Idealist philosophy"". (Stephen Gersh, Johannes Scotus Eriugena and Anselm of Canterbury, p. 121. In: Marenbon, Medieval Philosophy, 2004). Although the beautiful Oxford-imprints from the second half of the seventeenth century are usually not rare in themselves, the present work is very scarce indeed. A reason for this might be that the book was placed on the “Index Librorum Prohibitorum” right after publication and remained on it, until the Index itself was abolished in the 1960s. This editio princeps of Eriugena’s main work also contains Eriugena’s translation of one of the works that influenced him the most, namely the “Scholia Maximi in Gregorium Theologium”, which also appears here in print for the first time. Johannes (c.800–c.877), who signed himself as “Eriugena” in one manuscript, and who was referred to by his contemporaries as “the Irishman” (scottus—in the ninth century Ireland was referred to as “Scotia Maior” and its inhabitants as “scotti”) is the most significant Irish intellectual of the early monastic period. He is generally recognized to be both the most outstanding philosopher (in terms of originality) of the Carolingian era and of the whole period of Latin philosophy stretching from Boethius to Anselm… Eriugena’s uniqueness lies in the fact that, quite remarkably for a scholar in Western Europe in the Carolingian era, he had considerable familiarity with the Greek language, affording him access to the Greek Christian theological tradition, from the Cappadocians to Gregory of Nyssa, hitherto almost entirely unknown in the Latin West… Eriugena’s thought is best understood as a sustained attempt to create a consistent, systematic, Christian Neoplatonism from diverse but primarily Christian sources. Eriugena had a unique gift for identifying the underlying intellectual framework, broadly Neoplatonic but also deeply Christian, assumed by the writers of the Christian East… Overall, Eriugena develops a Neoplatonic cosmology according to which the infinite, transcendent, and “unknown” God, who is beyond being and non-being, through a process of self-articulation, procession, or “self-creation”, proceeds from his divine “darkness” or “non-being” into the light of being, speaking the Word who is understood as Christ, and at the same timeless moment bringing forth the Primary Causes of all creation. These causes in turn proceed into their Created Effects and as such are creatures entirely dependent on, and will ultimately return to, their sources, which are the Causes or Ideas in God. These Causes, considered as diverse and infinite in themselves, are actually one single principle in the divine One. The whole of reality or nature, is involved in a dynamic process of outgoing (exitus) from and return (reditus) to the One. God is the One or the Good or the highest principle, which transcends all, and which therefore may be said to be “the non-being that transcends being”. In an original departure from traditional Neoplatonism, in his dialogue Periphyseon, this first and highest cosmic principle is called “nature” (natura) and is said to include both God and creation. Nature is defined as universitas rerum, the “totality of all things”, and includes both the things which are (ea quae sunt) as well as those which are not (ea quae non sunt). This divine nature may be divided into a set of four “species” or “divisions” (divisiones) which nevertheless retain their unity with their source. These four divisions of nature taken together are to be understood as God, presented as the “Beginning, Middle, and End of all things”.” (SEP).
De Rerum Natura iuxta propria principia, Liber Primus, & Secundus, denuò editi. - [THE MANIFESTO OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY - DEFINING ""SPACE"" FOR THE FIRST TIME PROPER]
Napoli, Apud Iosephum Cacchium, 1570. 4to. Contemporary limp vellum with handwritten title to spine. Remains of old paper-labels to top and bottom of spine. Spine with loss of ab. 3x2 cm. of vellum to middle, not affecting the book block, which is sound and fine underneath. Some soiling to binding, but all in all fine and unrestored, albeit a bit loose. Some brownspotting to title-page (not heavy), otherwise just a bit of scattered brownspotting. All in all internally very nice and clean, and with good, wide margins. Old owner's name (Juliani Riccii) to front free end-paper and title-page, which also has his inventory number in neat hand: ""no/ 634""). Telesio's woodcut title-device (a beatiful naked woman, all alone, far from the troubles of the world, illuminated by the sun, surrounded by a border carrying the saying in Greek: ""mona moi fila"" - presumably depicting the goddess of Truth), and numerous lovely, illustrated woodcut initials throughout. 95 ff.
The rare and important first edition thus, being the much enlarged (by treatises on specific questions of natural philosophy) and revised second edition and the first edition under the canonical title ""De Rerum Natura"" (clearly referring to Lucretius's great work), of Telesio's revolutionizing main work, which established a new kind of natural philosophy and earned him the reputation as ""the first of the moderns"" (Francis Bacon). The work is a manifesto for natural philosophy emancipated from peripatetic rationalism, expressed clearly in the subtitle to the first book of the work: ""the structure of the world and the nature and magnitude of bodies contained in itare not to be sought from reason, as the ancients did"" they must be perceived from sensation and treated as being things themselves."" (translation of the Latin of the present work, p. 2). ""Taken as a whole, the book is a frontal assault on the foundations of Peripatetic philosophy accompanied by a proposal for replacing Aristotelianism with a system more faithful to nature and experience."" (Copenhaver & Schmitt, p. 311). Telesio's ""De Rerum Natuna"" constitutes one of the first serious attempts to replace Aristotle's natural philosophy, and his seminal, novel theory of space and time anticipates Newton's absolute time and absolute space. It furthermore even seems that it is in the present work that the word ""space"" (""spatium"") is used for the first time to determine what we now mean by space - thus Telesio has here created an entirely new terminology for one of the single most important phenomenons within physics, astronomy, philosophy, etc., giving to it a terminological precision that is unprecedented and which has influenced the entire history of science and philosophy. ""[i]n some of his characteristoc theories, Telesio appears as a direct or indirect forerunner of Newton and Locke."" (Kristeller, Eight Philosophers, p. 107). ""Bernardino Telesio (1509-1588) belongs to a group of independent philosophers of the late Renaissance who left the universities in order to develop philosophical and scientific ideas beyond the restrictions of the Aristotelian-scholastic tradition. Authors in the early modern period referred to these philosophers as 'novateurs' and'modern'. In contrast to his successors Patrizzi and Campanella, Telesio was a fervent critic of metaphysics and insisted on a purely empiricist approach in natural philosophy-he thus became a forerunner of early modern empiricism. He had a remarkable influence on Tommaso Campanella, Giordano Bruno, Pierre Gassendi, Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes and authors of the clandestine Enlightenment like Guillaume Lamy and Giulio Cesare Vanini."" (SEP).Telesio was born in Cosenza ""and in a sense he opens the long line of philosophers through which the South of Italy has asserted its Greek heritage, a line that links him with Bruno and Campanella, with Vico in the eighteenth century, and with Croce and Gentile in our own time."" (Kristeller, Eight Philosophers, p. 97). He was educated by his uncle, the humanist Antonio Telesio, in Milan and Rome, and he studied philosophy and mathematics at the university of Padua, where he got his doctorate in 1535. He had a great respect for the famous Aristotelian Vicenzo Maggi, with whom he discussed his magnum opus, obtaining his approval before publishing the seminal second version of it in 1570. He was closely connected not only with Maggi, but also with the other leaders of the most intelligent and official Aristotelianism of his age. But Telesio opposes the Aristotelianism of both his own and earlier times, claiming that they all erected arbitrary systems that consisted of a strange mixture of reason and experience. They created their systems without consulting nature, and thus they merely obtained arbitrary ideas of the world. What separates Telesio and his contemporaries from the great Renaissance thinkers that had gone ahead is not merely the passing of a few decades, but the emergence of a completely different intellectual atmosphere. ""The tradition of medieval thought, which was still felt very strongly in the fifteenth century and even at the beginning of the sixteenth, began to recede into the more distant background, and it was now the tbroad thought and learning of the early Renaissance itself which constituted the tradition by which the new generations of thinkers were shaped, and against which their immediate reactions were directed."" (Kristeller, Eight Philosophers, p. 91). Telesio belongs to a group of thinkers that we call the Renaissance philosophers of nature. They are considered a group by themselves, different from the humanists, Platonists, and Aristotelians that we usually group other Renaissance thinkers into. What distinguished these philosophers of nature, however, was not a different subject matter from that of the Aristotelians and the Platonists (of both contemporary and earlier times), but their clear claim to explore the principles of nature in an original and independent way, tearing themselves loose of an established tradition and authority that kept them in binds. They formulated novel theories andfreed themselves from the ancient philosophical authorities, especially Aristotle, who had dominated philosophical speculation, not least natural philosophy, for centuries. Telesio, of course, did not stand alone in this group of bold, original thinkers that we call the Renaissance philosophers of nature, and whose quest it was to make new discoveries and to attain knowledge unaccessible to the ancients, it also included for instance Fracastoro, Cardano, Paracelsus, and Bruno. But Telesio in particular protrudes, as his thought is distinguished by such clarity and coherence, and his ideas anticipate important aspects of later philosophy and science. His magnum opus, the extremely influential ""De Rerum Natura"", is that which by far best expresses his novel thoughts and that which most profoundly influenced the thought, philosophy, and science of the cnturies to come. ""[b]y 1547 his ideas seem to have been in public circulation, and within a few years he was at work on his first treatise ""On the Nature of Things According to Their Own Principles"", one of the more incisisve titles in Renaissance philosophy and a clear allusion to Lucretius. [...] Pressed by his followers, he published the original two book version of ""De rerum natura"" [the title of this being ""De Natura iuxta propria principia liber""] in 1563 [recte: 1565], having previously testing the soundness of his arguments in conversations with Vincenzo Maggi, a noted Paduan Peripatetic. Another edition followed in 1570" in 1575 Antonio Persio gave public lectures on the Telesian system in Venice, Padua, Bologna, and the south" and in 1586 appeared the definitive expansion to nine books. The author died two years later in Cosenza."" (Copenhaver & Schmitt, p. 310). In the preface to the work, Telesio rejects Aristotle's doctrine as being in conflict with the senses, with itself, and with the Scriptures, and he claims that his own doctrine is free from these defects. As we have seen above, in the introduction, or sub-title to the first book, he furthermore insists that unlike his predecessors, he has followed nothing but sense perception and nature. He then proceeds to expound the principles of his natural philosophy, positing heat and cold as the two active principles of all things, and matter as a third, passive, principle. Having developed and applied these principles, he concludes the first work with a very interesting treatment of space and time. After having set forth his own position, he examines and refutes the views of earlier philosophers, expecially those of Aristotle, whom he considers superior to all others. ""So far as Telesio's relation to Aristotle is concerned, we must admit that he shows considerable independence, both in his own theories and in his detailed criticism of Aristotle's views, and this independence is more valuable since it is based not on ignorance, but on a thorough knowledge of the Aristotelian writings, and is accompanied by a genuine respect for the relative merits of Aristotelianism."" (Eight Philosophers, pp. 101-2). The only sources apart from Aristotle that Telesio quotes at length are medical, i.e. Hippocrates and Galen, from which he got his notions of human physioglogy. He does, however, draw upon other sources, borrowing notions, though not quotiong them (e.g. Fracastoco, the Epicureans, the Stoics, the Neoplatonists, Ficino). ""These apparent borrowings from various sources should certainly not be overlooked, but one's final impression is that in transforming and combining these ideas, and in formulating some important new ones, Telesio was remarkably original. In his cosmology, the role assigned to heat, cold, and matter is chiefly of historical interest, since it is one of the first serious attempts to replace Aristotle's natual philosophy. We may give him credit, too, for apparently doing away with the sharp disinction between celestial and terrestrial phenomena, which was one of the chief weaknesses of the Aristotelian system. Of greater significance are his theories of the void, and of space and time. His assertion of an empty space was in a sense a return to the position of the ancient atomoists, which Aristotle had tried to refute"" this position must have been known to Telesio, from Lucretius and also from Aristotle himself, but the evidence on which he based himself was partly new and, so to speak, experimental.Still more important is his theory of space and time. Whereas Aristotle had defined time as the number or measure of motion, thus making it dependent on motion, Telesio regards time as independent of, and prior to, motion, like an empty spectacle. He thus moves a long step away from Aristotle in the direction of Newton's absolute time. In the case of space, the change in conception is even more interesting. The Greek term ""Topos"", which we often translate as space has the primary meaning of place, and Aristotle's theory that the ""topos"" of the contained body is the limit or border of its containing body makes much better sense when we translate ""topos"" as place rather than space. Telesio seems to be aware of this ambiguity, for he uses not only the term ""locus"", which had been the standard Latin translation of Aristotle's ""topos"", but also ""spatium"", which is much more appropriate for his notion of an empty space in which all bodies are contained. Thus he again moves away from Aristotle in the direction of Newton's absolute space"" but, more than this, I am tempted to believe that it was Telesio himself who gave terminological precision to the word ""spatium"" (space) and substituted it for ""locus"", a usage for which I do not know any earlier clear instances"". (Kristeller, Eight Philosophers, pp. 103-4).Telesio's theories and entire world-view proved to be extremely influential, and his is considered a forerunner - directly as well as indirectly - of not only Newton and Locke, but also Descartes and Bacon, and a strong direct influence on Bruno, Campanella, and Patrizi. ""Telesio dedicated his whole life to establishing a new kind of natural philosophy, which can be described as an early defense of empiricism bound together with a rigorous criticism of Aristotelian natural philosophy and Galenic physiology. Telesio blamed both Aristotle and Galen for relying on elaborate reasoning rather than sense perception and empirical research. His fervent attacks against the greatest authorities of the Western philosophical and medical traditions led Francis Bacon to speak of him as ""the first of the moderns"" (Opera omnia vol. III, 1963, p. 114). He was perhaps the most strident critic of metaphysics in late Renaissance times. It was obviously due to his excellent relationships with popes and clerics that he was not persecuted and was able during his own lifetime to publish his rather heterodox writings, which went on the index shortly after his death."" (SEP)""Giordano Bruno speaks of the ""giudiciosissimo Telesio"" in the third dialog of ""De la causa"", whilst Francis Bacon based his own speculative philosophy of nature on a blend of Telesian and Paracelsian conceptions (Giachetti Assenza 1980" Rees 1977 1984). Thomas Hobbes followed Telesio in the rejection of species (Schuhmann 1990" Leijenhorst 1998, p. 116ff.) The physiology of René Descartes in ""De homine"" shows close similarities to Telesio's physiological theories as they are presented in ""De natura rerum"" (Hatfield 1992). Telesio also had some influence on Gassendi and on libertine thinkers (Bianchi 1992)."" (SEP)""His sense of empirical science, which included progressive ideas on space, vacuum, and other physical topics, grew out of a disenchanted world-view remarkable for its hard-headed clarity."" (Copenhaver & Schmitt, p. 314). Adams: T:292"" Thorndyke: VI:370-71.Paul Oskar Kristeller: ""Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance"", 1964"" ""Renaissance Thought and its Sources"", 1979.Eugenio Garin: ""Italian Humanism. Philosophy and Civic Life in the Renaissance, 1965Copenhaver & Schimtt: ""Renaissance Philosophy"", 1992. Ernst Cassirer: ""Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der renaissance"", 1927.D.S.B. XIII:277-80. (""Telesio also introduced concepts of space and time that anticipated the absolute space and time of Newtonian physics"").
(De Consolatione Philosophiae / Consolation Philosophiae i.e. The Consolation of Philosophy). Original handwritten Medieval manuscript on paper. - [15TH CENTURY MANUSCRIPT COPY OF THE KEY WORK OF MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY]
(Venice, 1470'ies - 80'ies). 4to. 210x240 mm. In a lovely, strictly contemporary Italian binding. Original wooden boards with beveled edges. Top outer edge of front board chipped and a small split at bottom outer edge. Boards with remnants of the original leather previously partially covering boards, revealing the leather cords, and with an exposed spine revealing four strips of Medieval parchment that hold the quires together (along with a bit of restoration glue, barely noticeable). The top strip with red paint and the other three with fourteenth-century Gothic script. Original brass clasps to front board. An excellent, solid, contemporary binding. 70 ff. (f.70 blank), complete (i-v 12, vi 10), 29 lines to a page, mostly with ruling, occasionally only with frame ruling (150 x 77 mm). Vertical catchwords at the bottom of verso of the last folio of each of quire (i.e. ff. 12, 24, 36, 48, 60), surrounded by wave lines. Written in an easily legible, experienced Italian humanist miniscule. Space (sometimes with cue letters) for initials left blank. No rubrication, but majuscule lettering as headlines at new beginnings or major text divisions. Large, detailed drawing of pointing hand on f. 3, in contemporary hand. Ff. 8v and 24v with scribbled border in light brown ink around the textblocks, in an early modern hand. Another later hand, presumably a later owner, has added “Jacopi – che qui anno 1693 i Viterbo 1693” in runny ink on f. 29v. Crudely written calculations in the same hand to ff. 59v and 61r. Front pasted-down end-paper with paste stains, presumably from a previous bookplate, and with a note in 19th century German script to top. Foliation in modern pencil in top right corner throughout. F1 a bit dusty and with brownspotting. Occasional minor brownspotting. Minor damp staining to margins of last two quires, no loss and not affecting text. Otherwise generally in excellent condition. Two different watermarks in the paper: 1) a scale inside a circle (see ff. 52+57, at inner margin) – this is described in Briquet (Les filigranes…, 1923) as “Balance dens un cerele, à plateau concaves”, nr. 2474 – Venice, 1480. 2) the letter P with loop through shaft also (see ff. 64+70, at inner margin). We have not been able to identify this. The text is divided into the major setions divided mostly by Majuscule ""headlines"", and begins thus: 1) “[C]ARMINA QVI Condam studio florente peregi..."", ending (f. 9v) ""hec ubi regnant”"" 2) beginning “[P]POST HEC PAVLIS PER opticuit Atentionem..."", ending (f. 21v) ""Quo celum regitur regat”"" 3) beginning “[I]AM CANTUM illa finierat…"", ending (f. 41) ""Perdit dum videt inferos”"" 4) ""Explicit iii Incipit iiii L"", beginning “[H]EC cum Phylosophia dignitate vultus..."", ending (f. 58) ""Si dera donat”"" 5) beginning “[D]IXERUNT Orationisque cursum ad alia..."", ending (f. 69v) ""cum ante oculos agitis iudicis cuncta cernentis / GRATIAS DEO Amen”. F70 blank. Complete version of the text, with some minor word and orthographic variations in comparison to the printed standard version, and without the printed edition’s few lines in Greek. No space has been left for these and they were clearly not intended to be added later.
A truly magnificent and rare complete Medieval manuscript copy of one of the most significant philosophical texts ever written, Boethius’ magnum opus. The seminal Consolation of Philosophy revolutionized modern thought and influenced medieval and renaissance philosophy to an unprecedented degree. Although one of the most widely read and studied works of the Middle Ages, Medieval manuscript copies of the “Consolation of Philosophy” are very rare on the market. The present manuscript is written in a steady, easily legible, clearly very experienced humanist hand. It does not have the gloss found in most contemporary manuscripts of this sort of text, and is therefore arguably not one of the more usual schoolbooks from the period. It has possibly been copied for the humanist scribe’s own use – in or around Venice during the last quarter of the 15th century – and has thus possibly functioned as a template for other manuscript copies of the text. Boethius (480-ca. 525) is a difficult figure to place in the history of philosophy. Chronologically, he clearly belongs to late Antiquity, but he is a Christian and he writes in Latin. Thus, as a late antique philosopher, a Christian, and one of the thinkers that influenced the middle ages the most, he has come to represent the very centre of a tradition that goes directly back to Plotinus and thereby indirectly back to Plato and Aristotle. As such, he constitutes one of the single most important thinkers in the entire history of philosophy. ""Only Aristotle himself, and perhaps Augustine, were more important and wide-ranging in their influence... In short it would be hard to understand the development of philosophy in the medieval Latin West without looking carefully at Boethius' work..."" (Marenbon pp. 11-12). Accused of treason against the gothic regime as well as of sorcery, Boethius was imprisoned and later executed, in spite of denying the claims against him. His own theory was that his political activity - as a court official known for defending the weak - was at the core of the accusations against him. He was simply too upright and his enemies were too many. According to historians, the most plausible explanation is that Theoderic doubted the loyalty of the Roman aristocracy and thereby especially the outspoken Boethius. While in prison, Boethius wrote what was to become one of the most widely read, commented upon, and influential works in the history of philosophy. This highly original work, composed as a philosophical conversation between Boethius himself and the goddess of Philosophy, paved the way for a genre completely unknown at the time"" both its style, composition, and contents matter has been imitated hundreds of times since its first appearance. Though always true to Christianity, this philosophical magnum opus contains many allusions to pagan neo-platonism. During the Middle Ages, however, all passages of the work were very popularly interpreted, in full accordance with Christianity. Few thinkers have been of such seminal importance to Medieval and Renaissance philosophy and religion as Boethius. Few books were so widely read during the Middle Ages as the ""Consolation of Philosophy"", and virtually no book has been as major a source of ancient philosophy from the early Middle Ages and throughout the Renaissance as this one. As well of being of great textbook value, this work profoundly inspired and influenced a wide range of influential religious, philosophical and literary writers. ""For some writers, such as the Middle English poet, Chauser, the ""Consolation"" seems to have provided a model for writing about serious issues in a way which presupposes no commitment to Christianity, a philosophical precedent for the use of pagan setting in a literary fiction."" (John Marenbon, Medieval Philosophy, 1998, p. 24). With the death of Boethius, ""The first scholastic"" (Copenhaver & Schmitt, p. 130), came also the end of ancient tradition of philosophy in the Latin West, though through his writings, the influence of this philosophical tradition was preserved during the Middle Ages and through to the Renaissance and early modern times. ""The last roman author of significance, Boethius, was not a rhetorician, though he had surely received a rhetorical education, but a trained philosopher thoroughly familiar with Greek philosophy and literature. He was a Christian and wrote a few treatises on theology, but his philosophical works show no Christian influence. The ""Consolation of Philosophy"" is a highly personal and original work imbued with Stoic and Neoplatonic conceptions that has continued to impress its readers to its present day although it is no longer as widely read as it was in former centuries."" (Kristeller, p. 226). ""The crowning work of his life, the ""Philosophiae Consolatio"", was composed in prison not long before his death. It is in the form of a dialogue, and includes 39 short poems in 13 different metres... Throughout the work there is no evidence of distinctively Christian belief, but there are a few phrases of apparently Christian origin... But the absence of all reference to the consolations of religion is much more remarkable than the presence of a few phrases such as these... He does not oppose any Christian doctrine, but his attitude is that of a Theist and not that of a Christian. He supplied the Middle Ages with an eclectic manual of moral teaching severed from dogma and endued with all the charm of exquisite verse blended with lucid prose"" and, as the latest luminary of the ancient world, he remained long in view, while the sources of the light he reflected were forgotten. The masterpiece which was his last legacy to posterity was repeatedly translated, expounded and imitated in the Middle Ages, and these translations were among the earliest literary productions of the vernacular languages of Europe, - English, French, German, Italian and Spanish among the translators being names of no less importance than king Alfred, Chaucer and queen Elizabeth. It was also translated into Greek by Maximus Pledanus (d. 1310). The emperor Otho III, who died in 1002, a hundred years after Alfred, placed in his library a bust of Boëthius, which was celebrated by the best Latin poet of his age, the future pope Silvester II. Three centuries later, he is quoted more than 20 times in the ""Convito"" and elsewhere by Dante, whose best-known lines ""Nessun maggior dolore Che ricordarsi del tempo felice Nelle miseris"", are a reminiscence of Boëthius... Dante places him in the Fourth Heaven among the twelve ""living and victorious splendours"" which are the souls of men learned in Theology... Two hundred years after Dante, the book of Consolation composed by Boëthius in the ""Tower of Pavia"" brought solace to Sir Thomas More in the Tower of London. It has since won the admiration of the elder Scaliger and Casaubon, and has been described as a ""golden volume"" by Gibbon, who eulogises its author as ""the last of the Romans whom Cato or Tully could have acknowledged for their countryman."" (Sandy's I: 256-58).
