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Renaissance philosophy outside Italy
Renaissance philosophy outside Italy Stuart Brown Italy might justly be described as the home of Renaissance philosophy. Many of the important cultural developments of the period originated in Italy and only gradually spread north and west to other countries. But each of the other major centres1 of West European cultural activity —the German States, France, the Iberian Peninsula, England and the Low Countries—provided a distinct context for philosophical activity. Their very different political and religious histories had a more or less direct effect on the kind of philosophy that flourished in each country or region. Each, in its own way, added to what it inherited from Italy and developed what it received from elsewhere in Europe. In different ways and to varying extents, they prepared for or anticipated the transition to modern philosophy. In one way or another, Renaissance philosophy and philosophies continued to develop and flourish somewhere in Europe throughout the seventeenth century. They provided an often neglected part of the context for modern philosophy, both in some ways being continuous with it and in other ways shaping some of the responses to it. There are a number of philosophers, indeed, such as Gassendi and Leibniz,2 who can fruitfully be represented as Renaissance as well as early modern philosophers. A distinguishing mark of Renaissance philosophers was their deference to the thought of the ancients. Their arguments often consisted in citing the support of some ancient authority or the consensus of a number of ancient authorities for the view they wished to advance. The tendency of modern philosophers, by contrast, was to rely on appeals to reason and experience rather than on citing authorities to advance their arguments. Some, of course, did both and the decision whether to call them modern or Renaissance philosophers might depend on whether their arguments turned more on one kind of appeal than the other. Renaissance philosophy needs also to be distinguished from the earlier style of scholastic philosophy. And Renaissance philosophy, at least originally, was in part a reaction against the philosophy of the academic and ecclesiastical world. A reliance on authority was also a feature of scholastic philosophy, though it is in some ways more difficult to locate. The scholastics relied on a tradition of interpreting Aristotle in which appeals to reason, tradition and the word of ‘the philosopher’ were confused. Some Renaissance philosophers turned their backs on the Aristotelian tradition and, as we shall see, all the ancient philosophical systems were revived at one time or another during the Renaissance. But, quite characteristically, Renaissance philosophers had a high regard for Aristotle and accused the scholastics of perverting Aristotle’s meaning.3 Nor did scholastic philosophy remain the same in the Renaissance period. On the contrary, the criticisms from the humanists were often taken to heart and new developments outside were often reflected in changes within the scholastic tradition. Thus the Renaissance did not merely bring back neglected traditions of philosophy but also revitalized the scholastic tradition itself. It is convenient for the historian of philosophy to label periods by the style of philosophy that predominates or is most significantly new in them. Any period of philosophy, however, is always a period of transition and includes both individuals and movements that are difficult to place. Such qualifications are particularly needed when writing about the significant movements in European philosophy over a period of two centuries or more. For while the sixteenth is the main century for Renaissance philosophy outside Italy, we need to acknowledge some figures who flourished earlier. We also need to recognize its continuing vitality well into the period of modern philosophy and even in the eighteenth century.4 For ease of exposition the leading philosophical figures will be grouped under distinct strands within Renaissance philosophy. The strands are often interwoven, however, and, whilst some individuals belong straightforwardly within one strand, other more complex philosophers can be related to two or more. There are even those, such as Nicholas of Cusa, who should arguably be assigned to the late medieval period and others, such as Agrippa, whom some would represent as early modern philosophers. The value of such debates lies less perhaps in the prospect of their receiving a definitive resolution than in the light thrown on the individual philosophers discussed by the possibility of seeing them from quite different perspectives. CUSANUS (NICHOLAS OF CUSA) AND RELIGIOUS NEOPLATONISM Nicholas Kryfts or Krebs was born (in 1401) in the German town of Kues or Cusa, hence his Latin name of Cusanus. He became a priest and eventually a bishop, playing an important role in the debates concerning the authority of the Pope and the Church Councils and in negotiations towards a reunion of the communions of Rome and Constantinople. He wrote many theological works and, by the time he died in Italy in 1464, he was a cardinal. His philosophical writings reflect his concern with the nature and knowledge of God. But he was a man of great learning who wrote treatises on science and mathematics. He was influenced by the Italian humanists, learning Greek and amassing a considerable library of manuscripts. Together with his younger contemporary, Ficino, he played an important part in the Renaissance revival of Platonism. Cusanus and his contemporaries did not make the distinction now recognized between Plato and the school of Neoplatonism begun by Plotinus. By the end of the seventeenth century Leibniz had begun to make distinctions between the true Plato and the distortions of and accretions to his thought to be found in the writings of his successors.5 But such distinctions were not made by the religious Neoplatonists of the Renaissance. They inherited a tradition in which Plato had been presented in a Christianized form. Important as a background source for Cusanus are the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius—the writings falsely attributed to St Paul’s first Athenian convert Dionysius the Areopagite. These writings had influenced Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–1327) and the medieval Rhineland school of mysticism to which Cusanus was indebted. He was also indebted to Proclus and commissioned a translation of his Platonic Theology. Typically of the religious Neoplatonists Cusanus took God’s creation of the world to imply that the world reflected God’s infinite nature. The world, for him, is a ‘contraction’ of God and each finite thing is in turn a ‘contraction’ of the larger universe. It follows that all things, including contradictory opposites, coincide in a harmonious unity. If that is so then the principle of contradiction is not a necessary condition of truth and human reason is not equal to grasping the true nature of the world. Cusanus accordingly taught what he called ‘learned ignorance’, partly in opposition to the Aristotelians and their insistence on the principle of contradiction. He also taught the ‘negative theology’ of Pseudo- Dionysius, that God transcends all positive knowledge we can have of Him. Cusanus’s Platonic tendency to mysticism and scepticism in religious matters did not prevent him from having definite opinions in cosmology. If, for example, the universe is a mirror of God then it should, he thought, be conceived as having no determined boundary. The view that everything in the universe is a microcosm of the whole also committed him to rejecting the Aristotelian orthodoxy that the heavenly bodies were made of a different substance from the earth. Cusanus departed in these and in a number of other respects from the established cosmology of Ptolemy and Aristotle. The case of Cusanus illustrates how Neoplatonism helped to liberate some from the (as it happens, false) assumptions of Aristotelian science and thus contributed to the development of what, with the benefit of hindsight, we would judge to be a truer view of the world. The influence of Neoplatonism on how people thought about the world was not, however, invariably helpful in this way. The view that man is a microcosm of the universe (the macrocosm) played a central part in the thought of Paracelsus and the very influential tradition of occult philosophy during the Renaissance. That view, to which we shall return,6 led to a number of false beliefs, for instance about what in nature could be used to cure what diseases in humankind. Cusanus was himself part of a tradition of philosophy in Germany which was to continue throughout the Renaissance period and beyond. That, no doubt, is why he appears to anticipate later German philosophy as much as he does. Cusanus held, for instance, a number of characteristically Leibnizian doctrines such as that each thing in the world is a reflection not only of God but of all other things.7 Moreover, his doctrine of the coincidence of opposites in God seems like Schelling’s theory of the Absolute as the point at which all contrasts and distinctions disappear. But Cusanus, though perhaps the major Renaissance Neoplatonist outside Italy, was neither the first nor the last in the German tradition of Neoplatonism and religious mysticism. Nor were these doctrines peculiar to him. The thought that God’s nature is reflected in every created thing is a natural consequence of the characteristically Neoplatonist doctrine of emanation, according to which the world comes about by a kind of overflowing of the divinity. Nor was Cusanus the only German philosopher of the period to hold that in God all contrasts and differences disappear. One philosopher in the German tradition to hold both of these views was Jakob Boehme (1575–1624), a self-educated artisan. Boehme’s ideas were the result of much reading and reflect the work of the occult philosopher and doctor Paracelsus (see pp. 77–8) as well as the mystic Valentin Weigel (1493–1541). But he included highly idiosyncratic elements of his own. For instance he identified God the Father with the Will, the Son with the Heart and the Holy Spirit with the ‘moving life’ that emanated from these, giving rise to the spiritual world. In Boehme, as in other Neoplatonists, the material world results by a process of degeneration. His stress on religious intuition put him outside philosophy, as it put him outside religious orthodoxy. He was immensely influential, however, not only in his own time (some of his followers formed themselves into a religious sect) but also, much later, when his work was rediscovered by German Romantics such as Schelling. Another strand of religious Neoplatonism that became assimilated into the German tradition was that of the Christian Cabbala. ‘Cabbala’ is a Hebrew word (variously transliterated) which means ‘tradition’ and became attached to an occult tradition for interpreting the Bible which legend had it Moses passed down through a succession of Jewish leaders. Some of the earlier Italian Renaissance philosophers, such as Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Francesco Giorgi, had taken a Christian interest in the Cabbala.8 This interest was pursued in Germany by the humanist Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522)9 and culminated in the late seventeenth century in a project to put together in Latin translation the Hebrew writings known as the Zohar with other expository material. This project involved the collaboration of two older contemporaries and friends of Leibniz, Christian Knorr von Rosenroth (1636–89) and Francis Mercury van Helmont (1618–99). Knorr was responsible for the main work of editing and seeing through the publication of Kabbala Denudata (1677–84). But amongst van Helmont’s contributions was a short Cabbalistical Dialogue in which he sought to expound Cabbalism and defend it from some of the criticisms levelled against it by one of its former admirers, the distinguished Cambridge Platonist Henry More (1614–87).10 Van Helmont’s exposition of Cabbalism gives central place to a recognizably Neoplatonic paradox: how could the base material world have resulted from a God who is pure Spirit? How, to put it in what for a Neoplatonist is just another way, can what is passive and inert be caused by a being whose nature contains nothing of that kind but who is ‘pure activity’? Van Helmont’s resolution of the paradox is through a theory that, in the first place, is a theory of emanation, according to which God immediately produces from Himself things of a purely spiritual nature. These spirits do, however, degenerate and become dull, clinging together to form matter. The individual spirit, in this reduced state, is ‘now a natural Monade or single Being, and a very Atome’.11 In common with the other Neoplatonists of the late seventeenth century—Leibniz, arguably, included—van Helmont produced a monadology that sought to combine a Neoplatonic metaphysics with contemporary scientific speculation about the nature of matter. Religious Neoplatonism had some influence in the Iberian Peninsula in the early sixteenth century, for instance on the thought of the Portuguese Jewish philosopher Leon Hebreo (or Abarbanel) (c. 1460– c. 1523), who wrote a dialogue on love. In France the common Neoplatonic view of Plato’s writing as prisca theologia, as part of a wisdom shared by Moses and other ancient writers, was taken up by Symphorien Champier and the brothers de la Boderie in the midsixteenth century.12 But Platonism’s reputation for containing the seeds of many heresies was not forgotten. And in the reaffirmation of orthodoxy during the Catholic reformation and after the Council of Trent (1545–63) Aristotle was encouraged and Platonism actively discouraged.13 None the less religious Neoplatonism continued to be influential, at least in liberal Protestant circles in Germany and Britain, right into the eighteenth century.14 ERASMUS AND CHRISTIAN HUMANISM Christian humanism was not so much a philosophical system but a set of attitudes which could be held by people who were sympathetic to any or none of the philosophies of the ancient world. The Christian humanists characteristically opposed metaphysical dogma with a sceptical outlook, preferring to rely on faith than to defend the Christian religion by scholastic proofs, and they stressed a simple undogmatic Christianity rather than doctrinal correctness.15 They also gave a place to ordinary human pleasures in opposition to the monastic virtues and helped to prepare the way for a revival of Epicureanism.16 The humanists were very influential in opposing the then academic (scholastic) philosophy and theology during the Renaissance period. They were inclined to defend certain philosophical positions, such as belief in free will, but to do so in a nontheoretical way. Humanism was characteristically a lay movement and naturally encouraged a tendency to address more applied and topical questions. The doyen of Christian humanism was undoubtedly the great Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536). He was a pioneer in applying the critical methods of the humanists to the text of the Bible as well as in advocating its translation into the languages of the people. Erasmus wrote a sceptical work (In Praise of Folly) which, if not itself rigorously philosophical, helped to establish the role of Christian sceptic that others adopted in the late sixteenth and the seventeenth century. Like Martin Luther (1483–1546), Erasmus was hostile to scholasticism. More tolerant and less dogmatic than Luther and not in the least schismatic, he remained a moderate and conservative but liberal and sceptical Catholic to the end of his life. The two men engaged in a debate about free will, Luther denying that men were able to achieve salvation of their own accord. Erasmus for his part defended the availability of divine grace and human freedom to accept or refuse it.17 Amongst the Christian humanists in England, also distinguished followers of Erasmus, were Thomas More (1478–1535) and John Colet (c. 1467–1519). More’s Utopia shows some debt to Plato’s Republic, for instance in its communistic rather than individualistic ideal of human living. Yet his utopians are given to a life of pleasure and the work is Epicurean rather than Stoic or Platonic in its view of the highest good. At the same time the higher pleasures of reading literature are important to them. More’s work had a considerable influence on English literature, for instance on Bacon’s New Atlantis. Colet was an educational reformer who was strongly influenced by the Italian Neoplatonist Ficino.18 Erasmus also enjoyed a very considerable following in Spain where the erasmitas were influential both at court and in the universities until the midsixteenth century. One of the most outstanding Spanish Christian humanists was Juan Luis Vives (1492–1540). Vives was a keen opponent of Aristotelianism and was sceptical about the attainment of knowledge as understood in Aristotelian terms. His thought anticipates the ‘mitigated scepticism’ of many of the early modern philosophers. He advocated a form of inductive method and a more limited view of what could be achieved in science.19 His views influenced another sceptical Spanish philosopher, Sanches. Vives was not only a theoretician but also a social reformer who criticized the Church for failing to do enough for the poor and who advocated a system of poor relief. After the Council of Trent and the revival of orthodox belief and piety in Catholic Spain, the erasmitas lost their positions of importance. But their influence was strongly felt in the writings of the new scholastics who emerged in their place. The new scholastics adopted a less formal style of writing than in earlier scholasticism and often their philosophical writings were reflections on problems of practical life. The humanist concern with practical problems was shared by many of the Spanish Jesuits, notwithstanding their commitment to doctrinal orthodoxy and their involvement in doctrinal controversies. This concern was shown by Juan de Mariana (1536–1624), who risked trouble with his Order and with the Spanish authorities through his pronouncements on the problem of poverty. Mariana also created trouble for himself by a book he wrote that offered guidance on the rights and duties of kings.20 This book became notorious by appearing to sanction regicide in certain circumstances. Its author went so far as to refer to the assassin of Henry III as ‘the eternal glory of France’, words which his Order required him to delete from later editions. Such lapses of discretion were perhaps a hazard for a work which adopted the relaxed and personal style of the humanists and which developed its arguments through discussions of particular cases. At the same time Mariana wrote within the intellectual framework for discussing political philosophy provided by Aristotle and Aquinas. His book was thus very traditional and very topical and provocative at the same time. When Henry IV was also assassinated part of the blame fell on Mariana’s book, copies of which were publicly burned in Paris. He himself spent some time in prison, but no charges were brought against him in Spain. It is not certain how much Mariana would have acknowledged a humanist influence on his practical concerns and on his style of writing. But one figure who represented himself as a Christian humanist and who sought the support of Erasmus was the German “occult philosopher’ Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486–1535). Agrippa wrote a highly iconoclastic book to expose the ‘uncertainty’ and ‘vanity’ of the arts and sciences. He wrote the book, as he explained in the preface he wrote for the reader, ‘because I see that so many men, puffed up with human knowledge and learning, not only condemn and despise the words of the Sacred Scriptures, but also prosecute and deride it with the same contempt…’. To the extent that he sought to encourage scepticism about human learning and institutions and a return to a simple biblical Christianity, Agrippa was similar to Erasmus. But he was more radical though perhaps even less consistently sceptical. He sought to demolish the edifice of received wisdom in order to remove the barriers to the discovery of truth that were placed in people’s way by deference to established authorities. Thus he could exclaim: ‘how impious a piece of tyranny it is, to capture the minds of students for prefixed authors, and to deprive them of the liberty of searching after and following the truth….’21 This suggests that Agrippa was by no means content to accept an Erasmian fideism. On the contrary, he seems to have believed that there was a method of attaining truth that was not vulnerable to the sceptic’s attack.22 He remained a Catholic but he was by no means disposed to accept the authority of the Church. Erasmus, by contrast, whilst acknowledging the fallibility and imperfection of the Church and its institutions, taught that in matters of faith they provided the best guide available. PARACELSUS AND THE TRADITION OF OCCULT PHILOSOPHY It is perhaps artificial to distinguish religious Neoplatonism from its manifestations in what has become known as ‘occult philosophy’. The former is concerned with the relation of humankind to God and only in a metaphysical way with the material world. The latter is more concerned with the relation of humankind to the world and with possible ways of manipulating the world for human benefit. There is no reason why these concerns should not be shared by the same people, as to some extent they were. They might, moreover, be given almost equal emphasis, as they were in the case of the Christian Cabbalist F. M.van Helmont, who in his own day was celebrated throughout much of Europe as a physician whose alternative medicine brought some spectacular cures where other doctors had failed. None the less there is some justification for the distinction between religious Neoplatonism and the occult philosophy. If the theoretical claims of the former brought charges of heresy, the practical bent of the occult philosophers led them to attach importance to experience. One of the most influential figures in the Renaissance tradition of occult philosophy was Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (c. 1493–1541), who styled himself and is generally known as Paracelsus. Paracelsus was a self-taught Swiss physician who, like Agrippa and perhaps partly under his influence, set himself against all established scientific authority. ‘My proofs’, he insisted, ‘derive from experience and my own reasoning, and not from reference to authorities.’23 In some ways Paracelsus and Agrippa belong in the modern period. But their empiricism was unrigorous and their rejection of past assumptions and traditional authorities was not thoroughgoing. Both accepted the Neoplatonic view of humankind as a microcosm of the universe. Paracelsus based his medicine on this assumption. There are, for him, all sorts of correspondences between what we discover in man and what we discover in nature. These correspondences are evidence of hidden causal relations which the occult philosopher can learn to trigger and so manipulate the course of nature in a magical way. The discovery of such correspondences is a matter of what Agrippa termed ‘long experience’. But the occult philosophers lacked a rigorous methodology for identifying them reliably. The kidney bean may look like a kidney but, contrary to what Paracelsians supposed, such beans have no special powers to cure kidney disorders. Paracelsus, like other practitioners of an alternative medicine, had an erratic career as a physician, but he was credited with some spectacular cures. He did introduce some specific treatments of value, such as the use of laudanum as a pain-killer. Moreover some of his ideas would have been of great benefit had they been adopted. On his account all disease is natural and this led him to reject the view that mental disorders are due to inhabitation by demons. At the same time he was overly optimistic in his belief that nature had a cure for every disease. Amongst the Paracelsians were some, including Boehme and the younger van Helmont, who have here been categorized as religious Neoplatonists. Mention should be made, however, of John Baptiste van Helmont (1577–1644)—who, though less of a philosopher than his son, is an important figure in the history of chemistry and is credited with the discovery of gases.24 The Paracelsians were influential through much of the seventeenth century, when they were represented in England by Robert Fludd (1574–1637) and others.25 But they and many of the religious Neoplatonists were opposed by, and some later opposed themselves to, the mechanical philosophy. Gassendi wrote a book attacking Fludd, and the moderns, especially the rationalists, tended to dismiss the occult philosophers and Neoplatonists generally precisely because they rejected such ‘hidden’ or unintelligible factors in the explanations for phenomena.26 ARISTOTELIANISM AND ITS OPPONENTS During the medieval period, Aristotle’s authority was undisputed and he was usually referred to simply as ‘the philosopher’. But, though Aristotle remained by far the single most important philosopher during the Renaissance, this monopoly came to an end. Some of the Italian Renaissance humanists like Lorenzo Valla (see Chapter 1) associated Aristotle with the scholasticism they rejected. Others, however, such as Ermolao Barbaro (1454–93), sought to revive what they regarded as the true Aristotle, studied in the Greek, as against the distorted Aristotelian doctrines taught by the scholastics. Some, like Ficino, turned to other traditions, particularly the Platonic. Others, like Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, sought to reconcile Aristotle with those other traditions. These were just some of the responses available also to those outside Italy. Martin Luther seems to have taken the extreme view of Valla and largely opposed himself to all philosophy, taking the view that Christianity had been corrupted by the Greek philosophical influence. Such a view could hardly be sustained in the long run in view of the central role that philosophy played both in the articulation of theological doctrine and in the educational curriculum. Not surprisingly, therefore, one of Luther’s closest associates, Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560), went back to an eclectic Aristotelianism. Melanchthon played a key role in the consolidation of Lutheranism in Germany, partly through his published works such as the Loci communes. Though this was a basically theological work, Melanchthon adopted a broadly Aristotelian framework. At the same time he was willing to interpret Aristotle in a modern way (for instance, as a nominalist) and, where the defence of religion might be advantaged by it, he did not refrain from incorporating notions that are quite foreign to Aristotelianism, such as the doctrine of innate principles. Within the German university context a kind of Renaissance Aristotelianism became possible which embraced the humanist critique of the scholastics but insisted that they had distorted Aristotle’s meaning. This had been the position of the so-called ‘father of German humanism’, Roelof Huysman (1444–85), known by his Latin name of Rodolphus Agricola. It was to become a common humanist position—one held, for instance, by the French humanist Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples (c. 1460–1536), who sought to reform Aristotelianism via more accurate texts.27 The thought that the scholastics had debased Aristotle and departed from his true teachings invited, within the Protestant context, a comparison with the religious Reformation and its return to the correct text and true teachings of the Bible. There could be reformers (reformatores) in philosophy who would call for a return to the true Aristotle—the thought being that Aristotle was right after all and not to be condemned on account of the errors and obscurities of the scholastics.28 In reality, however, the distinction between such a pure Aristotelianism and scholasticism was virtually impossible to sustain. In the short run, at least, the tacit and unthinking influence of traditional interpretations of Aristotle, like traditional interpretations of the Bible, was likely to be greater than new interpretations based on a humanist treatment of the Greek texts. Moreover the virtual equivalence of Aristotelianism with rationality disposed many to credit Aristotle with any view that had the authority of reason. Aristotelian and scholastic philosophy were inevitably confused and the assignation of individuals to one category rather than another is often highly problematic. Some of the new scholastics (see pp. 81–3) seem to have played an important part in ensuring that Aristotle’s texts continued to receive attention. Indeed it is a remarkable fact that the publication of Aristotle’s texts reached a high point in the mid-sixteenth century when the Catholic Reformation was at its peak.29 The return to Aristotle in philosophy may have seemed like a return to good order in intellectual life. That, at any rate, seems to have been the thinking of Ignatius of Loyola, whose quasi-military teaching order, the Society of Jesus (founded in 1534), was committed to the restoration of papal authority, to Aquinas in theology and to Aristotle in philosophy. If it is difficult to treat scholastics and Aristotelians as a separate class, there is no difficulty about separating the anti-Aristotelians from either of them. One of the most prominent and influential opponents of Aristotle was the French convert to Calvinism, Pierre de la Ramée (1515–72), usually known by his Latin name of Ramus. Ramus’s criticisms fastened on the artificiality of Aristotelian logic which, in common with other humanists, he claimed was useless for discovering new truth. What was needed was a ‘natural logic’ that reflected human thought processes. What was needed was an art of discovery and an art of judgement. Ramus’s writings were much more influential than they were original. In particular they helped to focus the preoccupation with method characteristic of such early modern philosophers as Descartes and Leibniz.30 SUAREZ AND THE NEW SCHOLASTICISM I suggested in discussing Christian humanism (pp. 75–7) that part of what was new about the new scholasticism of the late sixteenth century was its reflection of humanistic values. This is already evident in the writings of the Dominican Francisco de Vitoria (c. 1492–1546), who had been acquainted during his time in Paris with Erasmus, Vives and some of the other leading humanists. Vitoria was appointed in 1526 to the most important theological chair at Salamanca and it is partly through this appointment that he was to exercise such a formative influence on the new scholasticism that flourished in Spain in the late sixteenth century. Vitoria is best remembered for his pioneering work in international law.31 He gave lectures at the university on current issues and the notes of some of these were published as relectiones on particular topics. In his De Indis (1532) he considered and defended the rights of the American Indians against the Spanish colonizers. In the same year he also produced a study of the rights and wrongs of war, his De Jure Belli, in which he argued for proportionality in the use of force as well as for the rights of non-combatants. Although Vitoria accepted there could be a ‘just war’, he rejected religious grounds as a ‘just cause’. Thus the Spanish had no right, on his arguments, to make war on the American Indians or to dispossess them of their property merely because they were heathens. Vitoria was arguing within a framework of natural law that derived from Aristotle and Aquinas. But his concern with applied questions, which led to his being consulted by Charles V on matters of state, shows the influence of humanism. As well as lecturing on such topics as the just war, Vitoria also lectured on theology. Here he broke with a centuries-old tradition by lecturing on Aquinas’s Summa Theologica instead of the Sentences of Peter Lombard. This had already been done by another Dominican in Italy, Thomas de Vio, commonly known as Cajetan (1468–1534). But Vitoria pioneered the change in Spain. In doing so he prepared the way for even greater changes from traditional styles of presentation. These were initiated by his pupil, Francisco Suarez (1548–1617), perhaps the most important systematic philosopher of the period.32 The traditional scholastic mode of presentation was the commentary. Suarez’s most important work, his Disputationes metaphysicae (1597), was the first systematic and independent treatise on metaphysics. It dealt with a wide range of topics, from the nature of metaphysics to the existence of God, from universals to our knowledge of singulars, causality, freedom, individuality and many others. Although, as a Jesuit, Suarez was committed to Aquinas in theology, he departed from St Thomas in treating philosophy as independent of theology. His Latin was easy to read by comparison with the usual run of scholastic writings. Moreover some of his thought, for instance his nominalism, already reflected a critical approach to traditional scholasticism, and some accommodation to the ‘modern way’ of William of Occam and his followers. These are among reasons why he may have been so influential. But the pervasive influence of Suarez on seventeenthcentury philosophy was not due entirely to the virtues of his own writings—remarkable though they were. Suarez was the major philosopher of the Society of Jesus and the Jesuits played a key role in the best educational institutions of Catholic Europe. Suarez’s metaphysics also found its way into textbooks and was widely taught in Protestant universities. In these diverse ways his Disputations became an important part of the background to Descartes33 in a Catholic context and to Leibniz in his Protestant German context.34 Suarez was also very influential as a political philosopher. The Dutch theorist Huig de Groot (1583–1645), known by his Latin name of Grotius, was indebted to Suarez and the Thomist tradition of natural law.35 Grotius, who is regarded as the first theorist of natural rights, found in this tradition an answer to the relativism of Montaigne. Suarez himself drew rather conservative conclusions. Although he held the view that government derives its authority from the consent of the people, Suarez held that the community corporately invested its authority in the monarch in such a way that it could not be taken back. Unlike the more radical Jesuit Mariana,36 Suarez thought it was almost never right to kill a tyrant, unless he was threatening to destroy the community. Again Suarez distinguished the ius gentium from natural law by making the former depend on customary practices of states rather than on what was true for all states. Since slavery conformed to the ius gentium, Suarez did not condemn it. Suarez’s work had great influence within the Jesuit order. Some took to writing systematic treatises on philosophy. The Spaniard Roderigo de Arriaga (1592–1667) wrote a systematic introduction to philosophy called Cursus philosophicus (1632) which was widely read and cited throughout the century. Others engaged in applied philosophy. One of Suarez’s pupils, the Flemish Jesuit Leonard Lessius (1554–1623) wrote a book largely devoted to what nowadays would be called ‘business ethics’.37 Lessius, who taught theology in Louvain, travelled regularly to Antwerp to learn at first hand about business practices in what was then one of Europe’s major financial centres. His De jure et justitia drew on the thought of Aquinas but sought to answer contemporary moral problems, including the fraught problem of usury. Lessius was the first Catholic theologian to defend the view that lending money with interest was not wrong in itself. Throughout the late Renaissance period Jesuit philosophers were to be found at the frontiers of the subject. That is not to say that they did not engage in debates relating to traditional philosophical topics. One frequent topic of Renaissance philosophy was free will, and the traditional problem of how this could be reconciled with God’s foreknowledge and preordination was addressed by, amongst others, Luis de Molina (1535–1600).38 Molina, as also Suarez, held that God knows through what he called the ‘middle science’ (scientia media) what any individual would do (freely) if given sufficient grace to do it. In extending sufficient grace and so preordaining a right action God does not detract from the freedom of the individual. Such freedom is quite consistent, Molina argued, with the fact that nothing happens but God knows it will happen and ordains that it will happen. Others of the Society of Jesus worked and wrote commentaries on the texts of Aristotle. One who influenced Suarez himself was ‘the Portuguese Aristotle’, Peter da Fonseca (1528–99). Fonseca’s own books—one of which went into fifty-three editions between 1564 and 1625—were by themselves highly influential in restoring Aristotelianism.39 Moreover, as a teacher at the University of Coimbra, he was able to instigate the work of a team of Jesuit scholars to produce a set of texts and commentaries on Aristotle’s major works. The Coimbra commentaries (1592–1606) were often reprinted and widely used throughout the seventeenth century. JUSTUS LIPSIUS AND THE REVIVAL OF STOICISM Stoicism was one of the great systems of ancient Greek philosophy and one that was adopted by some of the greatest writers of the Roman world, such as Seneca and Cicero. The Stoics believed that events in the material world were profoundly and necessarily interconnected. They believed that there was an underlying cause of these events but did not identify this first cause with a providence. Wise men do not allow themselves to be dependent on the way the world goes but seek to achieve tranquillity through recognizing the interconnection of things. The Renaissance revival of Stoicism is due, in particular, to the Flemish humanist Joest Lips (1547–1606), usually known by his Latin name, Justus Lipsius. Lipsius’s first Neostoic work was his De constantia (1584),40 a dialogue set during the revolt of the Low Countries against Spanish rule. The work commends the virtue of steadfastness (constantia)—of being unmoved by changes in external circumstances. Lipsius’s main accounts of Stoicism were his Physiologia Stoicorum and Manuductio ad stoicam philosophiam, both published in 1604. He also produced an edition of the texts of Seneca. Stoicism was introduced into Germany by Kaspar Schoppe (1576–1649), known by his Latin name of Scioppius, and seems to have become well established in the Low Countries.41 It was also influential in France,42 thanks partly to Guillaume Du Vair (1556–1621). Du Vair wrote several works in French, including his De la philosophie morale des Stoïques, which he wrote as a preface to his French translation of Epictetus’s Enchiridion in 1594. Like Lipsius, he advocated a Christianized Stoicism. Both were translated into English in the late sixteenth century—Du Vair’s Moral Philosophie of the Stoicks being favoured with two translations.43 Stoicism was highly influential at the beginning of the seventeenth century, when it was taken to be entirely compatible with Christianity.44 During the century, however, this compatibility came to be questioned and its influence declined.45 Epicureanism, on the other hand, seems to have become regarded more favourably.46 For long misrepresented and dismissed as a debased philosophy, it was revived in a Christianized form by Pierre Gassendi, who published three books on Epicurus in 1647–9. Gassendi was able to do this by presenting Epicurean atomism as a hypothesis and combining it with scepticism as to whether humans are capable of arriving at definitive knowledge of the world.47 Stoicism and Epicureanism, together with Platonism and Aristotelianism, comprised what were seen as the four great ‘dogmatic’ philosophical systems of the ancient world. As we have seen, each of them was revived and defended in the late Renaissance period. The embarrassment of choice was no doubt one factor promoting a more persistent revival, that of scepticism, which opposed itself to the claims of such dogmatic systems. Yet some, like Gassendi, found it possible in practice to combine scepticism with a suitably tempered allegiance to any of the ancient ‘schools’, except Aristotelianism. Montaigne began as a Stoic before rejecting that System for the scepticism of his later period. But his associate and disciple Pierre Charron (1541–1603) combined his scepticism with a Stoic moral philosophy.48 MONTAIGNE AND THE REVIVAL OF ANCIENT SCEPTICISM We have already seen that the Christian humanists, in their reaction against academic philosophy and theology, tended to adopt a highly sceptical view of human aspirations to knowledge apart from revelation. In the case of Agrippa this scepticism was argued for in a comprehensive and systematic way by a critical and highly iconoclastic treatment of the pretensions of all the known arts and sciences. Agrippa alluded to the ancient Greek sceptics but made little use of their arguments. Renaissance philosophers often argued by seeking to establish a consensus amongst ancient authorities. Agrippa turned this mode of argument on its head and sought to argue, on the contrary, that on every major point the ancient authorities contradicted one another. During the Renaissance period some of the important sources for classical scepticism were rediscovered, including Cicero’s Academica, Diogenes Laertius’s Life of Pyrrho and the collected writings of Sextus Empiricus.49 These arguments were frequently taken up in a Christian humanist way—in the first place, to discredit the claims of Aristotelian and scholastic philosophy and, more positively, to underline the ‘fideist’ claim that humans could not achieve knowledge by their own resources and should rely instead on faith and divine revelation. The Christian Pyrrhonist, François de La Mothe le Vayer (1588–1672), wrote as if the entire purpose of scepticism was to reduce people to a total suspense of judgement (called the Epoché). In that state of mind they had abandoned the arrogance of the scholastics (referred to abusively as ‘the Pedants’) for the humility of those able to receive the fruits of faith: ‘O precious Epoché! O sure and agreeable mental retreat! O inescapable antidote against the presumption of knowledge of the Pedants!’50 There is little doubt that La Mothe le Vayer was sincere in his profession of a religious motivation. It was so usual, however, to plead such a motivation that it became something of a convention adopted later by many of the best-known sceptics of the modern period such as Pierre Bayle and David Hume. Just because it was a way of making scepticism publicly acceptable and a way of avoiding the charge of subversion, it was a motive that might readily be professed insincerely, either because it was not the motive at all or because it was not as important a motive as was made out. For this reason the interpretation of the writings of Renaissance sceptics such as Agrippa, Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) and Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) has been fraught with difficulty and controversy.51 Agrippa sought to present himself, as we have seen, as an Erasmian sceptic whose purpose was to make people turn back to a simple biblical Christianity. But, as the author of De occulta philosophia he was represented in the late sixteenth century as a Faust figure, who had made a pact with the devil in order to obtain a knowledge of the magical arts. This evil reputation should probably be regarded as an almost total fabrication, as a propaganda coup by the monks to whom Agrippa was so bitterly opposed. At the same time it is notable that one form of magic—a natural or empirical magic—was exempted from the otherwise complete scepticism of Agrippa’s De vanitate. This makes him appear as a Faust figure in a more positive way, as someone who rejected established knowledge as of no value to human beings and who sought rather to unlock the secrets of nature so as to use natural powers for human benefit. But it may be wrong to expect a simple consistent interpretation of the thought of such figures as Agrippa. The existence of tensions and inconsistencies in their thought may more fruitfully be seen as a reflection of what has been identified as the deepening ‘sceptical crisis’52 of Renaissance and early modern philosophy. Montaigne’s Apologie de Raimond Sebond (1580) used the arguments of the ancient sceptics in order to cast doubt on the reliability of the senses, to show how human judgements are made fallible by all sorts of social and cultural factors. Montaigne advocated the Pyrrhonian suspension of judgement and urged that people should live in accordance with nature and custom. He professed Christian fideism but at least part of his purpose in using sceptical arguments seems to have been to oppose bigotry and promote greater tolerance. He seems to have been a conservative, suggesting that people, having been led to a due sense of the limitations of human faculties, should accept the guidance of established authority, be it civil or ecclesiastical. Another direction in which scepticism might be pursued was to the conclusion that only God, strictly speaking, was capable of knowledge, if knowledge be understood in the Aristotelian sense of giving necessary reasons or causes for phenomena. Human beings could not hope to achieve such knowledge. This is the conclusion, for instance, of the arguments put forward by the Portuguese physician and philosopher Francisco Sanches (c. 1550–1623) in his Quod Nihil Scitur.53 One corollary Sanches drew was the fideistic one, that the Christian religion cannot be defended by philosophy and depends wholly on faith. But he also, and quite consistently, proposed an experimental method that would lead to a true ‘understanding of natural phenomena’. Sanches thus anticipated one kind of response to scepticism in modern philosophy (for instance in Gassendi and Locke) which was to accept the impossibility of knowledge but to seek a reliable substitute through methods which would at least give results that were highly probable. The arguments of the sceptics provided an important part of the intellectual context in which Descartes (see Chapters 5 and 6) developed his philosophical thought. Descartes sought to meet the sceptics on their own ground. Yet it is not known that any sceptic thought he had been refuted by Descartes’s arguments. On the contrary, the sceptics, notably Simon Foucher (1644–97), were amongst his keenest critics. Foucher presented himself, in Renaissance style, as an apologist for the sceptics of the ancient Platonic Academy. His characteristic mode of attack was to identify the underlying assumptions of the metaphysical dogmatists (Descartes and Malebranche particularly) and then complain that these had not been demonstrated.54 He did believe that certain truths (e.g. the existence of God) could be demonstrated but denied Descartes’s demonstration of the existence of the material world. Foucher was an early critic of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. He played an important role in showing how Cartesianism tended towards idealism.55 Indirectly, through Bayle and Berkeley, Foucher’s scepticism is linked with that of David Hume.56 CONCLUDING REMARKS It is convenient to distinguish Renaissance from early modern philosophy. But, in some respects, modern philosophy continued tendencies that already existed beforehand. Humanism took philosophy out of the schoolroom and the cloister and made it, to a degree unprecedented in the history of Christendom, a layperson’s subject. Whereas previously Latin had been the language for philosophy as for academic discourse generally, the development of printing and a wider lay readership made translation into vernacular languages an increasingly common practice. This in turn led, particularly in France, to the practice of writing philosophical works in the vernacular. Amongst late-sixteenth-century philosophers, Montaigne, Du Vair and Charron all wrote in French. Another modern tendency already apparent in the late sixteenth century was to treat philosophy as a subject independent of theology. This showed itself even in the new scholasticism, a movement which originated amongst clergy. It is a curious feature of the Catholic reformation that it promoted a more secular view of philosophy. Grotius put it famously, if controversially, in his suggestion that the obligations of natural law hold even ‘if we concede that there is no God’. In this respect his view of natural law was no different from that of the Jesuit Suarez, to whom he acknowledged a considerable debt. It seems clear that one reason why Suarez and other Jesuits gave so much time to political theory was that they wished to see a radical separation between the authority of a monarch and the authority of the Church. Whereas the authority of a monarch was secular and derived ultimately from the consent of the people, the Church and papal authority was directly ordained by God. The respect in which Renaissance philosophy is most obviously different from that of modern philosophy is in its willingness to use arguments that rely upon appeal to traditional authorities. Renaissance philosophers believed, or affected to believe, that they were reviving the thought of the ancients. For some this meant believing in an ancient wisdom that had been lost and needed to be recovered. But ancient authorities could be found to disagree with one another. This consideration left a choice between becoming a partisan of a particular ancient ‘sect’ or becoming a sceptic. One might, of course, combine a moderate scepticism with the qualified adoption of one of the ancient systems.57 To do this consistently, however, it would be necessary to find a basis for accepting what the ancient authors had said which did not consist simply in the fact that they had said it. To do that was to begin to be a modern philosopher. To the extent that this is what Gassendi did in his defence of Epicureanism, he is properly regarded as a modern philosopher. Some of the early modern philosophers have, like Gassendi, a Renaissance face and indeed philosophy could still be presented in a Renaissance style right through the seventeenth and even in the eighteenth century.58 But, if moderns could sometimes behave like Renaissance philosophers, it is also true that some Renaissance philosophers were in some respects early moderns. For instance, many of the most sceptical and iconoclastic figures, such as Agrippa, Vives, Sanches and Ramus sought independent methods of making discoveries and verifying them. Methodology was already becoming a preoccupation of late Renaissance philosophy, as it was for the early moderns. The two periods of philosophy are to that extent continuous. For this reason the sixteenth century may as aptly be represented as a period of transition as a period of revival or ‘renaissance’. NOTES 1 These countries and regions were home to most of the major Renaissance philosophers outside Italy. Mention should also be made of Switzerland, which was the native country of Paracelsus. Renaissance philosophy was not, of course, confined to these countries. But other parts of Europe are largely neglected in the literature. For accounts of humanism in Croatia, Hungary and the Czech Lands, see Rabil [2.96], Part III. 2 See, for instance, Brown [2.171], See also Heinekamp [2.176]. 3 See pp. 79–81. 4 See note 14 below. 5 See note 26 below. 6 See pp. 77–9. 7 In his Discourse on Metaphysics, sec. IX, for instance, Leibniz put forward a number of paradoxical propositions, beliefs made more credible by his theory of substance, including that no two substances are exactly alike and that each substance is a mirror of God and of the entire universe. These doctrines are all anticipated in De docta ignorantia, but it is unlikely that Leibniz owed any of them directly to Cusanus. Indeed he wrote as if the first of them was a refinement by him of a doctrine of Aquinas. 8 See Chapter 1, pp. 45–6, for a more detailed account of the interest in the Cabbala in the Italian Renaissance. 9 See Reuchlin [2.56], particularly the introduction by G.Lloyd Jones. 10 Henry More is discussed in vol. 5, Chapter 1, as is another Neoplatonist, Ann Conway. For a discussion of the connection between these two philosophers, F.M.van Helmont and Leibniz, see Brown [2.170]. 11 Van Helmont, [2.62], 13. 12 On the influence of Champier, see Copenhaver [2.115]. On the ‘ancient theology’ in sixteenth-century France, see Walker [2.108], ch. 3. 13 For the encouragement of Aristotle’s philosophy, see note 29 below. The fate of Bruno discussed at the end of the previous chapter is symptomatic of the reaction against Neoplatonism in Catholic orthodoxy. For an account of the reaction against the occult philosophy, see also Yates [2.109]. 14 Thus Berkeley, in his late work Siris (1744), sought to argue that ‘the Pythagoreans and Platonists had a notion of the true System of the World’ (sec. 266) and explicitly acknowledged key Neoplatonic figures such as Plotinus, Proclus and Iamblichus. 15 Some of those discussed as sceptics on pp. 85–7, such as Montaigne, may also be classed as Christian humanists. Erasmus, Vives and perhaps Agrippa can also be discussed under both heads. 16 See pp. 83–4. See also Allen [2.75] and Jungkuntz [2.93]. 17 There is a version of this debate edited and translated by E.W.Winter as Erasmus- Luther: Discourse on Free Will, New York, 1961. 18 See Miles [2.137]. 19 See Limbrick [2.162], 3off. 20 See Mariana [2.54]. See also Talmadge [2.148], 21 Agrippa [2.46], from the preface ‘To the Reader’. 22 Agrippa also (see pp. 77 and 85–6) had positive commitments to the occult philosophy, in particular to natural magic. Whether his overall position is a consistent one has puzzled those who have studied his work. See Bowen [2. 127], Nauert [2.128] and Zambelli [2.129], 23 Quoted from Paracelsus [2.42], 55. 24 See Redgrove and Redgrove [2.166]. 25 See Debus [2.111], 26 The Paracelsians invoked an ‘Archeus’ or ‘world soul’ as a kind of universal cause and the Neoplatonists generally sought to defend a vitalistic view of the world in opposition to the mechanical philosophy. Leibniz frequently criticized them for doing this (e.g. L.E.Loemker (ed.) Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Philosophical Papers and Letters (Dordrecht, Reidel, 2nd edn, 1969), p. 409; P.Remnant and J.Bennett (eds) G.W.Leibniz: New Essays on Human Understanding (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 72). That is partly why he distinguished the Renaissance Neoplatonists from and contrasted them unfavourably with Plato. Thus he criticized Ficino for launching into extravagant thoughts and abandoning what was more simple and solid. ‘Ficino speaks everywhere of ideas, soul of the world, mystical numbers, and similar things, instead of pursuing the exact definitions Plato tries to give of notions’ (C.I. Gerhardt (ed.) Die Philosophischen Schriften von G.W.Leibniz (Berlin, 1875–90), vol. i, p. 380). 27 Lefèvre d’Étaples was not exclusively interested in Aristotle. He was also influenced by Neoplatonism and edited Neoplatonic works. 28 Leibniz cast himself as such a reformer of philosophy, as a reviver of the true Aristotle against the distortions of the scholastics in a letter to his former teacher, Jacob Thomasius, in 1669. He interpreted Aristotle as a nominalist and argued that modern philosophy was consistent with Aristotle’s physics. (See Loemker, op. cit., pp. 93ff.) 29 C.B.Schmitt [2.100] has cited the (probably incomplete, but none the less significant) statistical information, which shows the number of Aristotle editions dipping to fifty-one in the 1520s and rising to 219 in the 1550s. The first two sessions of the Council of Trent were held in 1545–7 and 1551–3. The conjecture that this revival of Aristotle owes a good deal to the Catholic Reformation is my own. 30 Leibniz was less dismissive of scholastic logic than was Descartes. But he contrasted the ‘true logic’ with ‘what we have previously honoured by that name’ and offered a Ramist redefinition of the subject as ‘the art of using the understanding not only to judge proposed truth but also to discover hidden truth’ (Loemker, op. cit., p. 463). 31 See Scott [2.167]. See also Hamilton [2.124]. 32 See Mora [2.164]. 33 Descartes studied at the Jesuit College of La Flêche and is reputed to have carried a copy of the Disputations around with him on his travels. On Descartes’s debt to Suarez, see Cronin [2.173] and Wells [2.186]. 34 See Lewalter [2.177] and Wundt [2.187]. Suarez’s followers in Germany included Leibniz’s teacher, Jacob Thomasius. Leibniz himself claimed that, as a young man, he could read Suarez like a novel. There is a direct influence of Suarezian nominalism on Leibniz’s early dissertation on the principle of individuation. Though his thought developed along quite different lines, Leibniz included Suarez amongst the ‘deeper scholastics’ and not amongst those whom, as a modern, he frequently abused. 35 See Grotius [2.52]. See also Tuck [2.144]. 36 See pp. 76–7 for a brief account of Mariana. 37 Lessius [2.27], See Chamberlain [2.146]. 38 See Molina [2.33]. See also Pegis [2.151]. 39 See Ferreira Gomez [2.142]. 40 This work was translated into English in 1595 and has been reprinted. See Lipsius [2.53]. 41 Lipsius is further discussed in connection with Spinoza in Chapter 9, pp. 316–17. See also Kristeller [2.178]. 42 Chesneau [2.114] gives an account of the history of Neostoicism in earlyseventeenth- century France. 43 The new Stoicism seems to have been well received in England. There were two English translations of Du Vair’s treatise and one of Lipsius’s De constantia at the end of the sixteenth century. 44 The assumption that it was an inherently Christian philosophy was not confined to lay people. One of the adherents of Stoicism in England was the Anglican Bishop, Joseph Hall. 45 Stoicism was attacked as a naturalistic and unChristian philosophy by the Jansenists, especially by Biaise Pascal. In a paper attacking the ‘two sects of naturalists in fashion today’, Leibniz placed Hobbes within the Epicurean tradition and Spinoza within the tradition of Stoicism. He criticized Spinoza and the Stoics for their fatalism and for seeking to make a virtue of enforced ‘patience’. (See G.W.Leibniz: Discourse on Metaphysics and Related Writings, ed. and trans. R.N.D.Martin and S.Brown (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1988), pp. 104f.) 46 See Jungkuntz [2.93]. 47 Gassendi’s philosophy is discussed more fully in Chapter 7. 48 See Charron [2.16]. 49 See Schmitt [2.98] and Schmitt [2.101]. 50 Quoted from Popkin [2.95], 93. The original is from La Mothe le Vayer’s ‘Petit Traitté Sceptique sur cette façon de parler’, La Mothe le Vayer [2.5], IX, 280. 51 Few modem commentators and probably few of his contemporaries have supposed that Hume’s fideistic conclusion to his sceptical essay ‘Of Miracles’ is anything other than ironic. But many of the Renaissance sceptics seem to have been perfectly sincere in their fideism, even as late as Bayle, whom Elizabeth Labrousse [2.131] has suggested should be so interpreted. 52 The phrase is that of Richard Popkin, whose pioneering book [2.182] on the history of scepticism in the early modern period remains one of the most original and perceptive treatments of this topic. 53 This work was written in 1576 and published in 1581. It is available in a modern English translation [2.57] with a good introduction. 54 For an account of late seventeenth-century philosophy that gives some prominence to Foucher, see R.A.Watson, The Breakdown of Cartesian Metaphysics (Atlantic Highlands, N.J., Humanities Press, 1987). 55 Foucher seems to have been responsible for Leibniz’s perception of Descartes as a Renaissance philosopher, whose most important contribution had been to restore the study of Plato and to add to it the doubts (concerning the senses) of the Platonic Academy. (See, for instance, Loemker, op. cit., p. 469.) 56 Hume’s scepticism is treated in the next volume of this series, vol. 5, Chapter 6. 57 See pp. 83–4. 58 When Leibniz wrote his Specimen of Dynamics, he presented it as a restoration of Aristotelianism: Just as our age has already saved from scorn Democritus’ corpuscles, Plato’s ideas, and the Stoic’s tranquillity in light of the most perfect interconnection of things, so now we shall make intelligible the teachings of the Peripatetics concerning forms or entelechies… (G.W.Leibniz, Philosophical Essays, ed. and trans. R.Ariew and D. Garber (Indianapolis, Ind., Hackett, 1989), p. 118) Leibniz was himself in many ways a late Renaissance philosopher. But in the early 1690s he was still willing to present himself as a post-modern or néo- Renaissance philosopher, arguing in a modern way without appeals to ancient authority but none the less claiming that, properly understood, his conclusions were not really entirely novel but important confirmation of truths taught by a ‘philosophy accepted for so many centuries’. Berkeley’s late defence of the Neoplatonists should perhaps also be understood as such a development. See note 14. BIBLIOGRAPHY Original language editions Complete and selected works 2.1 Agrippa von Nettesheim, Henricus Cornelius, Opera, Lyons, 1600; reprinted, R.H.Popkin (ed.), Hildesheim, Olms, 1976 2.2 Conimbricenses, Commentarii Collegii Conimbricensis…in universam dialecticam Aristotelis, Cologne, 1607; reprinted, Hildesheim, Olms, 1976. 2.3 Cusanus, Nicolaus, Opera omnia, Leipzig, Felix Meiner, 1932. 2.4 Erasmus, Desiderius, Opera omnia, ed. J.Leclerc, 10 vols, Leiden, 1703–6; reprinted, Hildesheim, Olms, 1961–2. 2.5 La Mothe le Vayer, François de, Oevres, 15 vols, Paris, 1669. 2.6 Lipsius, Justus, Opera omnia, Basle, 1675. 2.7 Montaigne, Michel de, Oevres complètes, ed. A.Thibaudet and M.Rat, Paris, Gallimard, 1976. 2.8 Paracelsus, Theophrastus, Sämtliche Werke, ed. K.Sudhoff and E.Matthiessen, 14 vols, Munich, 1923–33; reprinted, Hildesheim, Olms. 2.9 Suarez, Francisco, Opera omnia, ed. M.Andre and C.Berton, 28 vols, Paris, 1856–78. Separate works 2.10 Agrippa, Henricus Cornelius, De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum atque artium declamatio, Antwerp, 1530. 2.11 Agrippa, Henricus Cornelius, De occulta philosophia libri tres, Cologne, 1533. 2.12 Arriaga, Rodrigo de, Cursus philosophions, Antwerp, 1632. 2.13 Bayle, Pierre, Dictionaire historique et critique, 1692–1702, Amsterdam, 5th edn, 1740. 2.14 Berkeley, George, Siris, first published as A Chain of Philosophical Reflexions and Inquiries concerning the Virtues of Tar-Water, and diverse other Subjects connected together and arising from one another, Dublin and London, 1744. 2.15 Boehme, Jakob, Aurora, oder die Morgenrote im Aufgang, 1612. 2.16 Charron, Pierre, De la sagesse, ed. A.Duval, 3 vols, Paris, 1824; reprinted, Geneva, Slatkine Reprints, 1968. 2.17 Du Vair, Guillaume, De la sainte philosophie. Philosophie morale des Stoïques, ed. G.Michaut, Paris, Vrin, 1945. 2.18 Ebreo, Leone, Dialoghi d’amore, Rome, 1535. 2.19 Fludd, Robert, Philosophia Moysaica…, Gouda, 1638. 2.20 Fonseca, Pedro da, Commentarii in libros metaphysicorum, Lisbon, 1577–89; reprinted, Hildesheim, Olms, 1964. 2.21 Foucher, Simon, Dissertation sur la recherche de la vérité, contenant l’apologie des academiciens…, Paris, Estienne Michallet, 1687. 2.22 Gassendi, Pierre, Exercitationes Paradoxicae Adversus Aristoteleos, Paris, 1624. 2.23 Gassendi, Pierre, Epistolica exercitatio, in qua praecipua principia philosophiae Roberto Fluddi…reteguntur, Paris, 1630. 2.24 Grotius, Hugo, De iure belli ac pacis libri tres, Paris, 1625. 2.25 Knorr von Rosenroth, Christian (ed.), Kabbala Denudata Seu Doctrina Hebraeorum Transcendentalis et Metaphysica, Sulzbach, vol. 1, 1677, vol. 2, 1684; reprinted, Hildesheim, Olms, 1974. 2.26 La Mothe le Vayer, François de (under pseudonym of Oratius Tubero), Cinque Dialogues, faits à l’imitation des anciens, Mons, 1671. 2.27 Lessius, Leonard, De Jure et Justitia, Louvain, 1605. 2.28 Lipsius, Justus, Manuductionis ad Stoicam philosophiam libri tres, Antwerp, 1604. 2.29 Lipsius, Justus, Physiologia Stoicorum, Antwerp, 1604. 2.30 Mariana, Juan de, De Rege et Regis Institutione, Toledo, 1599. 2.31 Melanchthon, Philipp, Compendiaria dialectes ratio, Wittenberg, 1520. 2.32 Montaigne, Michel de, ‘Apologie de Raymond Sebond’ (1576), in Les Essays de Michel de Montaigne, ed. P.Villey, Paris, Alcan, 1922. 2.33 Molina, Luis de, Liberi Arbitrii cum Gratiae Donis, Divina Praescientia, Providentia, Praedestinatione et Reprobatione Concordia, Lisbon, 1588. 2.34 Ramus, Petrus, Dialecticae institutiones. Aristotelicae animadversiones, Paris, 1543; reprinted, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, Friedrich Frommann, 1964. 2.35 Sanches, Francisco, Quod Nihil Scitur, 1581. 2.36 Suarez, Francisco, Metaphysicarum disputationum, in quibus et universa naturalis theologia ordinate traditur, et quaestiones ad omnes duodecim Aristotelis libros pertinentes, Maguntiae, 1697; reprint of Paris, 1866, edition by Olms, Hildesheim, 1965. 2.37 Suarez, Francisco, Tractatus de legibus ac Deo Legislature, Conimbriae, D. Gomes de Loureyo, 1612. 2.38 Vitoria, Francisco de, Relectiones de Indis et De Iure Bello, Salamanca, 1557. 2.39 Vives, Juan Luis, Adversus Pseudodialecticos, Selestadii, 1520; critical edition by C.Fantazzi, Leiden, Brill, 1979. English translations Complete and selected works 2.40 Erasmus, Collected Works, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1974–. 2.41 Montaigne, Michel, The Complete Essays of Montaigne, trans. D.M.Frame, Stanford, Calif., Stanford University Press, 1958. 2.42 Paracelsus, Selected Writings, ed. J.Jacobi, trans. N.Guterman, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1951. 2.43 Paracelsus, Hermetical and Alchemical Writings, trans. A.E.Waite, 2 vols, New Hyde Park, N.Y., University Books, 1966. 2.44 Suarez, Francisco, Selections from Three Works (incl. On the Laws), trans. G.L.Williams, Classics of International Law Series, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1944. 2.45 Vitoria, Francisco de, Political Writings, ed. A.Pagden, trans. L.Lawrance, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991. Separate works 2.46 Agrippa von Nettesheim, Henricus Cornelius, Of the Vanitie and Uncertaintie of Artes and Sciences, trans. James Sandford, London, Henry Wykes, 1569; reprinted, C.M.Dunn (ed.), Northridge, Calif., California State University Press, 1974. 2.47 Bayle, Pierre, Historical and Critical Dictionary (Selections), ed. and trans. R. H.Popkin, Indianapolis, 1965; reprinted, Indianapolis, Ind., Hackett, 1991. 2.48 Cusanus, Nicholas of Cusa on Learned Ignorance: A Translation and Appraisal of De Docta Ignorantia, ed. and trans. J.Hopkins, Minneapolis, Minn., Arthur J.Banning Press, 1981. 2.49 Du Vair, Guillaume, trans. T.James, London, 1598; in R.Kirk (ed.), The Moral Philosophie of the Stoicks, New Brunswick, N.J., Rutgers University Press, 1951. 2.50 Erasmus, Desiderius, In Praise of Folly and Letter to Dorp, trans. C.H.Miller, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1979. 2.51 Fludd, Robert, Mosaicall Philosophy, grounded upon the essentiall truth or eternal sapience. Written first in Latin, and afterwards thus rendred into English, London, 1659. 2.52 Grotius, Hugo, De iure belli ac pacis libri tres, trans. F.W.Kelsey and others, Oxford, Clarendon, 1925. 2.53 Lipsius, Justus, Two Books of Constancie, trans. J.Stradling, London, 1595; reprinted, R.Kirk (ed.), New Brunswick, N.J., Rutgers University Press, 1939. 2.54 Mariana, Juan de, The King and the Education of the King, trans. G.A.Moore, Maryland, The Country Dollar Press, 1948. 2.55 Melanchthon, The Loci Communes of Philipp Melanchthon, trans. C.L.Hill, Boston, Meador, 1944. 2.56 Reuchlin, Johann, De arte cabalistica. On the Art of the Kabbalah, trans. M. and S.Goodman, New York, Abaris Books, 1983. 2.57 Sanches, Francisco, That Nothing is Known (Quod Nihil Scitur), ed. E.Limbrick and D.F.S.Thomson, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988. 2.58 Suarez, Francisco, Francis Suarez: On the Various Kinds of Distinction, Disputationes metaphysicae, disputatio VII, ed. and trans. C.Vollet, Milwaukee, Wisc., Marquette University Press, 1947. 2.59 Suarez, Francisco, Suarez on Individuation. Metaphysical Disputation V: Individual Unity and Its Principle, ed. and trans. J.J.E.Gracia, Milwaukee, Wisc., Marquette University Press, 1982. 2.60 Suarez, Francisco, Francis Suarez: On Formal and Universal Unity, ed. and trans. J.F.Ross, Milwaukee, Wisc., Marquette University Press, 1964. 2.61 Suarez, Francisco, The Metaphysics of Good and Evil according to Suarez: Metaphysical Disputations X & XI, ed. and trans. J.Gracia, Munich, Philosophia, 1989. 2.62 van Helmont, Francis Mercury, A Cabbalistic Dialogue in Answer to the Opinion of a Learned Doctor in Philosophy and Theology that the World was made out of Nothing, as it is contained in the second part of the Cabbala Denudata & appears in the Lib. Sohar, London, 1682. 2.63 Vitoria, Francisco de, De Indis et de iure belli relectiones, trans. J.Pawley, Classics of International Law Series, Washington, D.C., Carnegie Institution, 1917. 2.64 Vives, Juan Luis, Against the Pseudodialecticians. A Humanist Attack on Medieval Logic, ed. and trans. R.Guerlac, Dordrecht, Reidel, 1979. Bibliographies and concordances Bibliographies 2.65 Cranz, F.E. and Schmitt, C.B. A Bibliography of Aristotle Editions, 1501–1600, Baden-Baden, V.Koerner, 1971; 2nd edn, 1984. 2.66 Kleinen, H. and Danzer, R. ‘Cusanus-Bibliographie, 1920–1961’, Mitteilungen und Forschungenbeiträge der Cusanus-Gesellschaft I (1961) 95–126. 2.67 McCormick, J.F. A Suarezian Bibliography, Chicago, Ill., Loyola University Press, 1937. 2.68 Margolin, Jean Claude, Douze années de bibliographie érasmienne, 1950–1961, Paris, Vrin, 1963. 2.69 Nore a, C.G. A Vives Bibliography, Studies in Renaissance Literature, vol. 5, Lewiston, Edwin Mellon Press, 1990. 2.70 Schmitt, C.B. A Critical Survey and Bibliography of Studies on Renaissance Aristotelianism, 1958–1969, Padua, Antenore, 1971. 2.71 Smith, G. ‘A Suarez Bibliography’, in G.Smith (ed.) Jesuit Thinkers of the Renaissance, Milwaukee, Wisc., Marquette University Press, 1939, 227–38. Concordances 2.72 Bolchazy, L.J. (ed.) A Concordance to the Utopia of St. Thomas More and A Frequency Word List, Hildesheim, Olms, 1978. 2.73 Wedick, H.E. and Schweitzer, F. (eds) Dictionary of the Renaissance, New York , Philosophical Library, 1967. 2.74 Zellinger, E. Cusanus-Konkordanz, Munich, Huber, 1960. Background and influences on Renaissance philosophy outside Italy 2.75 Allen, D.C. ‘The Rehabilitation of Epicurus and his Theory of Pleasure in the Early Renaissance’, Studies in Philology 41 (1944) 1–15. 2.76 Burnyeat, M. (ed.) The Sceptical Tradition, Berkeley, Calif., University of California Press, 1983. 2.77 Gibson, M. (ed.) Boethius: His Life, Thought and Influence, Oxford, Blackwell, 1981. 2.78 Gandillac, M.de, ‘Neoplatonism and Christian Thought in the Fifteenth Century (Nicholas of Cusa and Marsilio Ficino)’, in D.J.O’Meara (ed.) Neoplatonism and Christian Thought, Norfolk, Va., International Society for Neoplatonic Studies, 143–68. 2.79 Hillgarth, J.N. Ramon Lull and Lullism in Fourteenth-Century France, Oxford, Clarendon, 1971. 2.80 Klibansky, R. The Continuity of the Platonic Tradition during the Middle Ages. Plato’s Parmenides in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Munich, Kraus International Publications, 1981. 2.81 Kristeller, P.O. Renaissance Thought and its Sources, ed. M.Mooney, New York, Columbia University Press, 1979. 2.82 Lovejoy, A.O. The Great Chain of Being, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1936. 2.83 Schmitt, C. Aristotle and the Renaissance, The Martin Classical Lectures 27, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1983. 2.84 Wallis, R.T. Neoplatonism, London, Duckworth, 1972. General surveys of Renaissance philosophical movements and aspects of Renaissance philosophy 2.85 Blau, J.L. The Christian Interpretation of the Cabala in the Renaissance, New York, Columbia University Press, 1944. 2.86 Cassirer, E. The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy, trans. M. Domandi, New York, Harper & Row, and Oxford, Blackwell, 1963. 2.87 Conger, G.P. Theories of Macrocosms and Microcosms in the History of Philosophy, New York, Russell & Russell, 1922. 2.88 Copleston, F. A History of Philosophy, vol. 3, Late Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy, Part II, The Revival of Platonism to Suarez, Maryland, The Newman Press, 1953. 2.89 Coudert, A. ‘Some Theories of a Natural Language from the Renaissance to the Seventeenth Century’, Studia Leibnitiana (Sonderheft) 7 (1978) 56–114. 2.90 Giacon, C. La Seconda Scolastica, Milan, Fratelli Bocca, 3 vols, 1944–50. 2.91 Gilbert, N.W. Renaissance Concepts of Method, New York, Columbia University Press, 1960. 2.92 Henry, J. and Hutton, S. (eds) New Perspectives on Renaissance Thought, London, Duckworth, 1990, 2.93 Jungkuntz, R.P. ‘Christian Approval of Epicureanism’, Church History 31 (1962) 279–93. 2.94 Oestreich, G. Neostoicism and the Early Modern State, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982. 2.95 Popkin, R.H. The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza, Berkeley and Los Angeles, Calif., University of California Press, 1979. 2.96 Rabil, A., Jr (ed.) Renaissance Humanism. Foundations, Forms and Legacy, vol. 2, Humanism Beyond Italy, Philadelphia, Penn., University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988. 2.97 Rice, E.F. The Renaissance Idea of Wisdom, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1958. 2.98 Schmitt, C.B. ‘Towards a Reassessment of Renaissance Aristotelianism’, History of Science 11 (1973) 159–93; reprinted in Schmitt, C.B. Studies in Renaissance Philosophy and Science, London, Variorum Reprints, 1981. 2.99 Schmitt, C.B. Cicero Scepticus: A Study of the Influence of the ‘Academica’ in the Renaissance, The Hague, Nijhoff, 1972. 2.100 Schmitt, C.B. Studies in Renaissance Philosophy and Science, London, Variorum Reprints, 1981. 2.101 Schmitt, C.B. ‘The Rediscovery of Ancient Skepticism in Modern Times’, in M.F.Burnyeat (ed.) The Skeptical Tradition, Berkeley and Los Angeles, Calif., University of California Press, 1983, 225–31. 2.102 Schmitt, C.B. and Skinner, Q. (eds) The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988. 2.103 Secret, F. Les Kabbalistes chrétiens de la Renaissance, Paris, Dunod, 1964. 2.104 Skinner, Q. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1978. 2.105 Smith, G. (ed.) Jesuit Thinkers of the Renaissance, Milwaukee, Wise., Marquette University Press, 1939. 2.106 Sommervogel, C. (ed.) Bibliothèque de la Companie de Jesus, Brussels, Schepens, and Paris, Picard, 11 vols, 1890–1932. 2.107 Vedrine, H. Les philosophies de la Renaissance, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France , 1967. 2.108 Walker, D.P. The Ancient Theology: Studies in Christian Platonism from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century, London, Duckworth, 1972. 2.109 Yates, F.A. The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age, London, Routledge, 1979. Works on Renaissance philosophy in different countries England 2.110 Cassirer, E. The Platonic Renaissance in England, trans. J.P.Pettegrove, London, Nelson, 1953. 2.111 Debus, A.G. The English Paracelsians, London, Oldbourne, 1965. 2.112 Schmitt, C.B. John Case and Aristotelianism in Renaissance England, Kingston and Montreal, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1983. 2.113 Schoeck, R.J. ‘Humanism in England’, in A.Rabil, Jr (ed.) Renaissance Humanism. Foundations, Forms and Legacy, vol. 2, Humanism Beyond Italy, Philadelphia, Penn., University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988, 5–38. France 2.114 Chesneau, C. ‘Le stoïcisme en France dans la première moitié du XVII siècle: les origines 1575–1616’, Etudes franciscaines 2 (1951) 389–410. 2.115 Copenhaver, B.P. Symphorien Champier and the Reception of the Occultist Tradition in Renaissance France, The Hague, Nijhoff, 1977. 2.116 Rice, E.F. ‘Humanism in France’, in A.Rabil, Jr (ed.) Renaissance Humanism. Foundations, Forms and Legacy, vol. 2, Humanism Beyond Italy, Philadelphia, Penn., University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988, 109–22. Germany 2.117 Beck, L.W. Early German Philosophy. Kant and His Predecessors, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1969. 2.118 Brann, N.L. ‘Humanism in Germany’, in A.Rabil, Jr (ed.) Renaissance Humanism. Foundations, Forms and Legacy, vol. 2, Humanism Beyond Italy, Philadelphia, Penn., University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988, 123–55. 2.119 Petersen, P. Geschichte der Aristotelischen Philosophie im Protestantischen Deutschland, Leipzig, Meiner, 1921. 2.120 Spitz, L.W. The Religious Renaissance of the German Humanists, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1963. Low countries 2.121 Dibon, P. La Philosophie néerlandaise au siècle d’or, Amsterdam, Elsevier, 1954. 2.122 Ijsewijn, J. ‘Humanism in the Low Countries’, in A.Rabil, Jr (ed.) Renaissance Humanism. Foundations, Forms and Legacy, vol. 2, Humanism Beyond Italy, Philadelphia, Penn., University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988, 156–215. Spain 2.123 Di Camillo, O. ‘Humanism in Spain’, in A.Rabil, Jr (ed.) Renaissance Humanism. Foundations, Forms and Legacy, vol. 2, Humanism Beyond Italy, Philadelphia, Penn., University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988, 55–108. 2.124 Hamilton, B. Political Thought in Sixteenth-Century Spain: A Study of the Political Ideas of Vitoria, De Soto, Suarez and Molina, Oxford, Clarendon, 1963. 2.125 Norea, C.G. 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