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This volume provides the first assessment of the blurred relationship between Plato and Aristotle between the fifteenth and the seventeenth centuries. Assuming a transnational and emic perspective, the case studies discussed in this volume explore the complex and ambiguous interplay between the two ancient philosophers' systems of thought.
List of contents
- List of Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I: Ficino and Beyond: Philosophy and Religion
- 1: STEPHEN GERSH: Styles and Methods of Philosophical Interpretation in Marsilio Ficino's Commentary on Plotinus
- 2: ANNA CORRIAS: Reading the De Anima with Aristotle's Student: Marsilio Ficino on Theophrastus on the Intellect
- 3: GUIDO GIGLIONI: Theory and Theurgy, or How Ficino Wished to Dispatch the Averroist Intellect through Platonic Good Works
- 4: ALLEGRA BAGGIO-CORRADI: The Paduan Philosopher at Prayer: The Continuity of Being in Niccolò Leonico Tomeo's Sadoleto
- Part II: Enemies of Plato and Aristotle
- 5: GEORGE KARAMANOLIS: Pletho and Scholarios on Using and Abusing Plato and Aristotle
- 6: DOUGLAS HEDLEY: Samuel Parker's Free and Impartial Censure of the Platonick Philosophie
- Part III: Academies and Universities
- 7: CRAIG MARTIN: Interpreting Plato's Geometrical Elements in Renaissance Aristotle Commentaries
- 8: EVA DEL SOLDATO: Between Past and Present: Paganino Gaudenzi (1595-1649) and the Comparatio Tradition
- 9: ELEANOR WEBB: Platonic Love and Aristotelian Ethics in Alessandro Piccolomini's Institutione (1542)
- 10: TOMMASO DE ROBERTIS: Platonic Science in the Vernacular. Sebastiano Erizzo's Italian translation of Plato's Timaeus (1557)
- Index
About the author
Anna Corrias is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Cambridge, UK, and the University of Toronto, Canada, where she works on the reception of late ancient philosophy in the early modern period, with a special focus on the Platonic tradition. She authored the monograph The Renaissance of Plotinus: The Soul and Human Nature in Marsilio Ficino's Commentary on the "Enneads" (London, 2020), and several articles.
Eva Del Soldato is Associate Professor of Romance Languages at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Executive Secretary of the American Association for Italian Studies (AAIS). Her work focuses mainly on the reception of the Aristotelian and Platonic traditions in the early modern period. Her publications include the monographs Simone Porzio (Rome, 2010) and Early Modern Aristotle (Philadelphia, 2020).
Summary
Plato and Aristotle were very much alive between the fifteenth and the seventeenth centuries. The essays in this volume investigate the interaction, both in terms of harmony and contrast, between the two philosophers in early modernity, that is in a time when long-forgotten texts became available and a new philological awareness was on the rise. Dealing with famous and less famous early modern interpreters and philosophers, in a transnational and translinguistic perspective, this volume reveals the agendas behind the discussions on Plato's and Aristotle's philosophies. In studying these texts, it is hard to imagine a more significant collision of big names with big ideas. This project takes us to the centre of the intellectual life of the period and its most exciting debates.
Additional text
Harmony & Contrast is a coherent volume containing significant contributions to the dynamic way in which Plato and Aristotle were harmonized or set at odds with each other in the Early Modern world, whether as in formal comparatio or as part of various philosophical and philological projects of a newly invigorated Platonism.
