Lorenzo Valla (1407–1457) ranks among the greatest scholars and thinkers of the Renaissance. He secured lasting fame for his brilliant critical skills, most famously in his exposure of the “Donation of Constantine,” the forged document upon which the papacy based claims to political power. Lesser known in the English-speaking world is Valla's work in the philosophy of language—the basis of his reputation as the greatest philosopher of the humanist movement. Dialectical Disputations, translated here for the first time into any modern (...) language, is his principal contribution to the philosophy of language and logic. With this savage attack on the scholastic tradition of Aristotelian logic, Valla aimed to supersede it with a new logic based on the actual historical usage of classical Latin and on a commonsense approach to semantics and argument. Valla provides a logic that could be used by lawyers, preachers, statesmen, and others who needed to succeed in public debate—one that was stylistically correct and rhetorically elegant, and thus could dispense with the technical language of the scholastics, a “tribe of Peripatetics, perverters of natural meanings.” Valla's reformed dialectic became a milestone in the development of humanist logic and contains startling anticipations of modern theories of semantics and language. Volume 1 contains Book I, in which Valla refutes Aristotle's logical works on the categories, transcendentals, and predicables, with excursions into natural and moral philosophy and theology. (shrink)

Surveying this large field with more amplitude and exactitude than anything else on offer, this book will be important for scholars of the humanities and specialists.

Leon Battista Alberti wrote his dialogue Della tranquillita dell animo as a guideline to a life in inner peace. The dialogue is divided into diagnosis, therapy and practical advice and explores the central terms of Stoic philosophy in classical antiquity. Alberti s main orientations were derived from the moral philosophical writings of Seneca, and he provides his dialogue with a large number of quotes and reminiscences from classical antiquity to substantiate his thoughts. Alberti presents himself as a confident uomo universale, (...) who strives to compete with and outmatch the authorities of classical antiquity.". (shrink)

George McClure offers here a far-reaching analysis of the role of consolation in Italian Renaissance culture, showing how the humanists' interest in despair, and their effort to open up this realm in both social and personal terms, signaled a shift toward a heightened secularization in European thought. Analyzing works by fourteenth-and fifteenth-century writers, from Petrarch to Marsilio Ficino, McClure examines the treatment of such problems as bereavement, fear of death, illness, despair, and misfortune. These writers, who evinced a belief in (...) the legitimacy of secular sadness, tried to forge a wisdom that in their view dealt more realistically with the art of living and dying than did the disputations of scholastic philosophy and theology. Arguing that consolatory concerns helped spur the revival of classical schools of psychological thought, McClure reveals that the humanists sought comfort from once-neglected troves of Stoic, Peripatetic, Epicurean, Platonic, and Christian thought. He contends that the humanists' pursuit of solace and their duty as consolers provided not only a forum but perhaps also an incentive for the articulation of prominent Renaissance themes concerning immortality, the dignity of man, and the sanctity of worldly endeavor. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

In his De Constantia of 1584, Justus Lipsius examines the Stoic theory of fate, distancing himself from it by outlining four key points at which it should be modified. The modified theory is often presented as a distinctly Christianized form of Stoicism. Later, in his Physiologia Stoicorum of 1604, Lipsius revisits the Stoic theory, this time offering a more sympathetic reading, with the four modifications forgotten. It is widely assumed that Lipsius’s position shifted between these two works, perhaps due to (...) a better grasp of the Stoic position by the time of the later work. I argue that in fact there is no great distance between the two accounts and that both find only one point of difficulty with the Stoic theory, a point that Lipsius himself presents in both works as merely a matter of expression. (shrink)

[1] The rise of modern paganism.--v. 2. The science of freedom.

Petrarch was the leading spirit in the Renaissance movement to revive literary Latin, the language of the Roman Empire, and Greco-Roman culture in general. My Secret Book reveals a remarkable self-awareness as he probes and evaluates the springs of his own morally dubious addictions to fame and love.

Avec la multiplication des editions et traductions de Seneque le stoicisme revient a la mode a la fin de la Renaissance. Apres La constance de Juste Lipse (1584) fleurissent les traites qui louent la constance, le travail, la force d'ame, la discipline et l'obeissance, la clemence du Prince, etc. Une nouvelle phase de la longue vie de l'Ecole stoicienne commence dans les annees 1580 pour s'achever vers 1650. Mais le neostoicisme est confronte a un probleme ignore de l'ancien: comment concilier (...) cette morale virile, rude et austere certes, mais autosuffisante, avec les enseignements du christianisme? Peut-on etre stoicien en philosophie et chretien? Peut-on faire jouer les belles lettres contre les Lettres sacrees? Juste Lipse, Guillaume du Vair et Pierre Charron l'ont cru, presentant leur defense du stoicisme imperial et romain comme une therapie pour des temps troubles. Une philosophie par gros temps, tel apparait bien le neostoicisme en Europe du Nord, dechiree par les guerres religieuses, les epidemies, les famines, les troubles civils. Ces auteurs qui sont souvent de savants erudits, meme s'ils insistent a juste titre sur la morale, plus assimilable en contexte chretien que la theologie du Portique, entendent bien restituer l'ensemble de cette philosophie, de la physique a la conception de la religion naturelle et universelle. (shrink)

This dissertation is an edition, translation, and critical essay based on Barlaam of Calabria's Ethica Secundum Stoicos, a mid-14th century summary of Stoic ethics in two books. The edition compares the text as found in Migne's Patrologia Graeca volume 151 with the sole manuscript of the work, Clm. 111 in the Munich Staatsbibliothek. The translation makes this interesting and original work accessible to English readers, noting where possible the parallels and sources for Barlaam's work. The essay focuses on the chief (...) point at issue in Book 1, the place of bodily and external goods in human happiness. A survey of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics concludes that the Stagirite's view is ambiguous, allowing for both inclusivist and dominant readings. Barlaam argues in support of the Stoic view and against the Peripatetic view in a novel way, making use of Aristotle's Organon to show the problems with the Peripatetic view. Although his argument is written chiefly against an inclusivist version of the Peripatetic view, it has sufficient strength to be used also against a dominant version of the Peripatetic view. (shrink)