Schmitt C.B. (ed.) The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy
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Translation, terminology and style
97
unimportant.
56
One side of the coin
that
Bruni struck purchased the
conciliatory
response
of
those sixteenth-century editions which, like Giulio
Pace's
Organon,
provided philological notes offering a choice of readings
and versions for difficult words. The obverse, polemical mood issued in
Perion's Ciceronianism, which was impoverished philosophically. Though
Perion's work was philologically fruitful, leading to the Ciceronian lexica
of
Henri Estienne and Alexander Scot, it forced philosophical translators to
choose
either responsivity to the literary fashions of one century or
responsibility to an intellectual tradition of seventeen centuries.
57
Since
so many readers of Latin philosophical translations were
practitioners or students
of
philosophy,
Perion's fate was settled on practical,
professional grounds, but the context for his wish to produce a Ciceronian
Aristotle
was polemic. The relevant debates were not only the famous
controversies involving Gianfrancesco
Pico,
Pietro Bembo and Erasmus
but also the smaller struggles, private and public, spontaneously provoked
by
the role
of
revision
in philosophical translation. The decision to revise or
replace a translation often moved the reviser to belittle it. Opportunities to
conceive
of
one's revision as the latest and crucial improvement in a series of
translations increased as the new printing technology permitted the
multiplication and wide diffusion of editions, but the growth of polemic
did not wait on these changes. At mid-century, Theodore Gaza dedicated to
Nicholas
V his version of the same books of Aristotle
that
George of
Trebizond
had already presented to the pope. His justification was
that
previous
translators had 'either said in Greek what Latin people want to hear
in Latin or wrongly applied the word for one thing to something else or
clumsily
invented new words on their own, and they distorted the meaning
of
the author throughout. . .'.It was clear to contemporaries
that
Gaza was
thinking as much
of
his countryman George
of
Trebizond
as
of
the scorned
barbarians. Gaza's charges of transliteration and neologism, faults bitterly
criticised
in medieval versions, rubbed salt in his rival's wounds.
58
56.
Bruni 1928, pp. 103—4: non video qua in re Latinae litterae a Graecis superentur . . . etsi uberiores
sunt
Graecae quam nostrae, quid tamen vetat, si non verba ut pueri in ludo sed sententias dictorum
sequamur, posse cum elegantia id ipsum Latine dicere quod dictum sit Graece? Nam si pluribus
modis
illi
quam nos quidlibet exprimere possunt, est ilia quidem superabundantia quaedam atque
luxuries,
Latinitas vero nostra . . . mundum certe habet et supellectilem suam, non luxuriosam
quidem, sed tamen opulentam et quae ad omnem usum abunde sufficiat'; cf. ibid., pp. 27-8; Garin
1951,
p. 77;
Seigel
1968, pp. 104-5; George of Trebizond 1984, p. 142.
57.
Schmitt 1983a, pp. 43, 48, 76; Platon et Aristote 1976, pp. 387-9 (Stegmann).
58.
Garin
1951,
pp.
76-81:
'Aut enim graece
illi
dixere quae latine audire homines Latini desiderant, aut
rerum aliarum nomina aliis improprie
tribuerunt,
aut nova ipsi inepte finxerunt. Sententiam vero
auctoris passim . . . depravarunt . . .'; Erasmus 1965, pp.
xxxii-xlix;
Seigel
1968, p.
119;
Schmitt
1983a,
pp. 65-6; Eisenstein 1979, pp.
107-11;
George
of
Trebizond
1984, pp. 107,
132-4,
163, 165,
411,
707-9.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
9
8
Translation, terminology
and
style
Actually,
as
George was aware,
it
was
no
barbarian
but
Cicero
himself
who
had set the
guidelines
for
creating philosophical terminology through
neologisms
and
transliterations
of
Greek into Latin.
In the
dialogue
of
the
Académica,
he
represented
the
learned lexicographer Varro
as
promising
to
speak Latin except where custom already prescribes words like
philosophia
or . . .
dialéctica
.
.
. Thus, what the Greeks
call
7roiÓTrjT€s,
which is a philosophical
rather
than
an ordinary word in Greek, I have named 'qualities'.
.
. None
of
the logicians'
terms is common. They use their own
-
nearly
a
universal practice
in the
arts.
For
new names must
be
given
to new
things
or
else they must
be
transferred from
elsewhere
... If
this
is
what
the
Greeks
do in
[philosophy,]
at
which they have
laboured
for
ages,
how
much more should
be
allowed
to us,
who
are
only
now
beginning
to try to
deal with
it? . . .
Therefore,
. . .
with your approval
we
will
venture
to use new
words
if it is
necessary.
Cicero
wrote
that
Varro 'would earn
the
thanks of [his] countrymen
if
[he]
were
to
enlarge their supply (copia)
not
only
of
facts
but
also
of
words'.
59
Though
the
Latin resources
of the
translator
of the
Ethica nova were
not
Varro's
or
Cicero's,
his
rendering
(see
above,
pp.
89-90)
of
Aristotle's
TTpoaipeois
('purposeful, morally significant choice')
as
proheresis
was
similarly motivated. Such transliteration, whose necessity
to the
growth
of
Latin terminology
Cicero
had
conceded,
was a
hallmark
of
medieval
translation from Greek. Medieval writers also extended
the
philosophical
reference
of
classical Latin terms,
as
when translators
of
the
De
anima used
forma
and
species
to
distinguish real from intentional aspects
of
etSos,
a
difference expressed
in
neither of the ancient tongues. Thus, transliteration
was
not the
only way
of
neologising,
but it
was
the
most conspicuous,
and
so
it
attracted comment from
the
humanists.
Vives
objected
that
words
newly
devised
or
newly applied were private language:
'No one but the
person who invented them can understand many
of
these expressions.'
But
George
of
Trebizond,
who
believed
that
much philosophical Greek
was
untranslatable, called transliteration
an
index
of
good translation.
Valla,
arguing
that
language
was
conventional
and
mutable, echoed Cicero's
59.
Académica 1.7.25:
'enitar
ut
Latine
loquar
nisi
in
huiuscemodi verbis,
ut
philosophiam
aut . . .
dialecticam
. . .
quibus
ut
aliis
multis
consuetude*
iam
utitur
pro
Latinis. Qualitates igitur appellavi
quas
TTOLÓr-qras
Graeci vocant, quod
ipsum
apud
Graecos
non est
vulgi verbum
sed
philosophorum
.
. .
Dialectorum vero verba nulla
sunt
publica; suis
utuntur.
Et id
quidem
commune
omnium
fere
est
artium.
Aut enim nova
sunt
rerum
novarum
facienda
nomina
aut ex
aliis
transferenda.
Quod
si
Graeci faciunt qui
in
his
rebus
tot
iam saecula
versantur,
quanto
id
magis nobis concedendum est
qui
haec
nunc
primum
tractare
conamur?
Tu
vero,
inquam,
Varro,
bene
etiam
meriturus
mihi
videris
de
tuis
civibus
si eos non
modo copia
rerum
auxeris
... sed
etiam
verborum. Audebimus ergo,
inquit,
novis verbis
uti, te
auctore,
si
necesse
erit';
cf.
Académica
11.6.17;
De
óptimo
genere
oratorum
vil.23;
De
jinibus ni.1.3-2.5; Quintilian,
11.14.1-4;
Eucken 1879,
pp.
52-4; Gravelle 1972,
p. 274;
George
of
Trebizond 1984,
p. 143.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Translation, terminology and style
99
point
that
'a new object requires a new term'. Even Erasmus condoned
coining
in moderation, and the practice is evident in several non-Byzantine
translators
of the fifteenth century: P. C. Decembrio, Antonio Cassarino
and Ficino, for example. Vernacular
translators
in particular were keenly
aware of the benefits
of
neologism,
although Dolet preferred non-Latinate
coinages.
Dolet would have been pleased with Ralph Lever's extraordinary
Witcraft,
an English logic manual in which 'proposition' became 'saying',
'predicate' became 'backset' and 'category' became 'storehouse'.
60
In his debate with Bruni, Alonso de Cartagena made the strongest case
for
neologising: 'Latin would be impoverished and altogether
destitute
if
it
were closed within set limits. But its potential is enormous and nearly
infinite; it can take whatever it wants not just from the Greeks but from . . .
every
people of the world.' Alonso knew
that
a philologically rigid Latin
was
philosophically dead, a point whose wider application came to be
generally
appreciated through the Ciceronian controversy. This lesson of
the Ciceronianus
will
not have been lost on the sixteenth-century
translators
and editors who, like Michael Sophianus, wished to preserve their
terminological access to the medieval tradition. Preparing his De
anima
for
the Giunta Aristotle—Averroes of 1552, Sophianus wrote
that
he had
translated 'moderately . . . so as not to move far from the
structure
of the
old
translation and the accustomed terminology of the schools'.
61
Bruni's
very
different reaction to Alonso's brief for verbal invention came in an
earlier time, before argument and experience had soiled the toga of the
heroic Ciceronian
orator.
Bruni applauded Cicero's neologising but
condemned it in medieval translators; they invented out of ignorance, he
out of a perfect command of his mother tongue and of Greek. In De
interpretatione recta, Bruni scolded the barbarians for
leaving
words in Greek . . ., so many
that
a . . . translation seems semi-Greek. Yet
nothing has been said in Greek which cannot be said in Latin! I
will,
nevertheless,
permit some few strange and recondite
terms
if they cannot be readily translated
into Latin, but where we have perfectly good words it is the height
of
ignorance to
60.
Vives
1979a, p. 52: 'Sunt enim pleraque, quae nosse nemo potest nisi is qui confinxit. . .'; L.
Valla
1962,1,
p. 504: 'nova res novum vocabulum flagitat'; Pouilloux 1969, pp.
50—1;
Ebel 1969, p. 596;
Platon etAristote
1976,
pp. 360, 369-71 (Cranz); Dunbabin
1972,
p. 466; Minio-Paluello
1972,
p. 189;
Hubert 1949, p. 220; Dewan 1982, pp. 37-96; Gravelle 1972, p. 278; Stinger 1977, p. 72; Percival
1975,
p. 255; Waswo 1979, p. 260; Chomarat 1981,
11,
pp. 722-3; Erasmus 1965, p. 148; Hankins
1983,
pp. 95-6, 103,
150-1,
208; Howell 1956, pp. 57-63.
61.
Birkenmajer 1922, p. 168: 'inops namque esset et
prorsus
egena si certis finibus clauderetur. Sed
ingens et paene infinita est potentia eius, et nedum a Graecis sed a barbaris et universis mundi
nationibus quicquid ei libet licet accipere'; Aristotle
1562-74,
in, p. 2: 'ita me temperavi ut non ita
longe me a
ratione
veteris
interpretationis
et usitatis scholarum vocabulis removerim'; Platon et
Aristote 1976, p. 363 (Cranz).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
IOO
Translation, terminology and style
leave
them in
Greek.
For why
would
you
leave
me
with
politia
in Greek when
you
can
and should say it with the Latin word res
publica?.
Why force
oligarchia,
democratia
and
aristocratia
upon me in a thousand
places.
. .? Our Latin authors have
said
paucorum potentia
and
popularis status
and
optimorum gubernatio.
The
very durability of the words Bruni wished to replace by clumsy
periphrasis proves Alonso's point and shows how little Bruni yielded to
what
Philipp Melanchthon was to
call
'new and prodigious fancies and
monstrous expressions'.
62
ORDINARY LANGUAGE,
JARGON
AND
BARBARISM
Part
of
Alonso's
defence
of
medieval
transliteration was the claim
that
there
was
'common and public use (usus) . . . of many Greek words' not just in
learned discourse but also in the 'language of the uneducated' and 'vulgar
idiom',
but his examples
—
grammatica, logica, rhetorica, philosophia and
theologia
—
show
that
Alonso
was thinking of the common talk of scholars,
not of ordinary language.
63
He and Sophianus found the jargon of the
schools
useful and indispensable, yet it was precisely to a criterion of usus
that
Bruni also appealed, for it sharply distinguished his philological
approach to translation from Alonso's formalism. In the preface to his
version
of the Nicomachean Ethics, Bruni asked why the medieval translator
had
departed from the customary speech
(usus loquendi)
of
Cicero,
Seneca, Boethius,
Lactantius,
Jerome and other writers
of
our language ... I believe . . .
that
he has
never
read them,
that
he has taken the words
delectatio
[instead
ofvoluptas
for
rjSovrj]
and
tristitia
[instead of
dolor
for
aXyos]
from the common people
(vulgus),
but he
ought
to have read those most uncommon authors for the common people have by
no means proved expert in speaking.
64
62.
Bruni 1928, p. 95: 'Quid de verbis in Graeco relictis dicam, quae
tarn
multa
sunt
ut semigraeca
quaedam eius
interpretatio
videatur? Atqui nihil Graece dictum est quod Latine dici non possit! Et
tarnen
dabo veniam in quibusdam paucis admodum peregrinis et reconditis si nequeant commode
in Latinum traduci. Enim vero quorum optima habemus vocabula, ea in Graeco relinquere
ignorantissimum est. Quid enim
tu mihi "politiam" relinquis in Graeco cum possis et debeas Latino
verbo "rem publicam" dicere? Cur tu mihi "oligarchiam" et "democratiam" et "aristocratiam"
mille
locis inculcas? . . . Latini enim
nostri
"paucorum potentiam" et "populärem
statum"
et
"optimorum gubernationem" dixerunt'; Gravelle
1972,
p. 275; Schmitt 1983a, p. 68; Breen 1968, p.
39-
63.
Birkenmajer 1922, pp.
167—8:
'nedum in omnibus fere scientiis et artibus sed in communi ac forensi
usu loquendi non paucis verbis
utamur
Graecis . . . iam
tarn
doctorum quam indoctorum Unguis
contrita sub vulgari idiomate comprehendi
credantur';
Garin 1951, p. 64.
64. Birkenmajer 1922,
160-1:
'Primum quaero quae causa fuerit ab usu loquendi Ciceronis, Senecae,
Boethii,
Lactantii, Hieronymi et aliorum nostrorum recedendi. Respondebit credo, si vera fateri
volet,
numquam se istos legisse, "delectationis" autem et "tristitiae" verba e vulgo sumpsisse. At
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Translation, terminology and style
101
His claim
that
usus was the right criterion for philosophical diction became a
fundamental humanist position:
Valla
spoke of usus, consuetudo and sermo
communis,
Vives
of usus loquendi communis, loquentium consensus and sensus
communis. Although notions of custom, mutuality and intelligibility were
implied generally in this terminology, the humanists differed among
themselves on the kind of language
that
had these properties - perhaps
because the classical authorities were themselves unclear. Bruni had
precedent in
Cicero
for excluding ordinary talk from a linguistic usus
that
would
be of use to philosophical translators, but
Cicero
had also criticised
philosophers for writing abstrusely, and this oratorical zeal for a genuinely
communicative language lay behind
Valla's
contempt for 'the philosopher
who
disregards use and custom in speaking'. For Bruni the only valid usus
was
that
of'the best authors'
—
a norm also found in medieval writers like
John
of Salisbury
—
but
Valla,
who believed
that
all oratory must have the
power
of public address, was
willing
to take his evidence of linguistic
custom from a wider, public sphere of discourse. 'People speak
better
than
philosophers', he wrote, 'and the greatest
authors
agree with them . . .'
65
This
quarrel over the domain
of
usus was related to a larger debate about
the uses
of
philosophy and to one
of
its most prominent episodes, the
Pico—
Barbaro—Melanchthon correspondence. Was the philosopher a teacher
whose
ideas might lead to public action, as Melanchthon proposed, or was
Pico
correct in making philosophy esoteric,
exclusive,
contemplative?
If
the
latter, then
either Alonso's technical formalism or Bruni's elitist classicising
would
seem appropriate, for both their audiences were composed of
specialists.
But if the ambitions of philosophy were public, as those of
oratory were supposed to be,
then
Vives
would be right in demanding
that
the 'dialectician . . . use those words, those phrases which anyone
will
understand
who knows the language
that
he speaks' and
that
'the
philosopher as much as he can . . . should express what he says in language
and words taken from the people'. Railing against professional logicians,
Vives
called it 'lucky for these men
that
they still dispute ... in some
semblance of Latin speech, for if such madness were understood by the
common people, the whole mob of workmen would hoot them out of
enim
hos
praestantissimos
viros
legisse
oportuit;
nam
vulgus
quidem
haudquaquam
probatus
est
loquendi
magister.'
65. L.
Valla
1962,1,
p. 658:
'Quis
enim
dixerit.
. .
nisi
philosophus,
usum
consuetudinemque
loquendi
pro
nihilo
habens?';
ibid., p. 685:
'Melius
igitur
populus
quam
philosophus
loquitur,
cum quo
summi
quique
autores
consentiunt.
. .';
Vives
1979a,
p. 57;
Vasoli
1957, p. 430;
Percival
1975, pp.
254-5;
Seigel
1968, pp. 24-7, 163;
Kelley
1970a,
pp. 28-9;
Camporeale
1972, pp. 150-1, 190;
Waswo
1980,
pp. 601, 605;
Trentman
1968, p. 288.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
102
Translation, terminology
and
style
town
. . .
with hisses, shouts
and
banging
of
their tools'.
66
His
bitter
joke
unwittingly reveals
why any
clear conception
of
ordinary language
as the
domain
of
usus
was
impossible
in the
early modern period
- for the
humanists
or for
their opponents.
At
some
level
Vives
understood
that
incomprehension must
be the
response
of an
untutored
public
not
only
to
the jargon
of the
'pseudodialecticians'
but to any
learned Latin,
his own
included.
The
range
of
scholastic Latin
was
confined
by the
philosophical
requirement
for a
specialist terminology
and a
formal notation (formaliter
loqui),
though
the
attempt
of
philosophical grammarians
to
make medieval
Latin
its own
metalanguage actually impaired
effective
formalisation.
The
range
of
humanist Latin, even
if
emancipated from Ciceronianism,
was
defined
and
made finite
by a
classical authority
that
resisted terminological
growth.
A
philosophy expressed
in
either kind
of
Latin
was
lost
on
those
who
knew only
the
younger vernaculars. Thus, while oratorical humanism
strongly wished
to be
communicative,
it did not
actually speak
to
many
people,
and
even those
who
insisted most zealously
on an
enlarged domain
for
usus
had
second thoughts.
Vives
confessed
that
the uneducated common people sometimes misuse
[the
meanings
of
words and]
in
ordinary speech people with more education make what allowances they
can for
the common
folk,
though among themselves they think
and
speak differently
. . .
mainly about obscure, philosophical
matters
which
the
people
do not
grasp
as
precisely
as
they
are
understood
by
philosophers.
Though
it was
scarcely democratic,
the
oratorical
view
of
language
that
Vives
preached
was
humanising inasmuch
as it
sought
to
regulate speech
through
the
study
of
human artifacts,
the
classical texts,
not
through rules
abstractly derived.
Man
makes
his
words,
but he
formulates
his
linguistic
conventions
in
historical circumstances whose contingency constrains
all
who
become party
to the
language contract.
67
Bruni maintained
that
the
meaning (significatio)
of
a word could
be
learnt
from
its
denotation
(vis) or
from
its use
(usus): understanding
vis
required
66. Vives
1979a,
pp. 52-4: 'Dialecticus enim iis uti debet verbis, iis enuntiationibus quas nemo non
intelligat qui sciat linguam illam qua is loquitur . . . praeclare agitur cum
istis
hominibus quod
disputant. . . aliqua . . . specie
sermonis
latini, nam si a vulgo tales dementiae intelligerentur, tota
opificum turba
illos
e civitate supploderet sibilis, clamoribus strepituque suorum instrumentorum
eiiceret'; Vives
1782-90,111,
p. 193: 'philosophus . . . quae dicat ea, quoad
eius
facere poterit, lingua
et verbis de vulgo sumtis eloquatur . . .'; Waswo 1980, p. 605; Breen 1968, pp. 15-68
passim.
67.
Vives
1979a,
p. 68: 'sunt et vocibus sua significata, suae vires, quibus nonnunquam indoctior ipsa
multitudo abutitur. Doctiores indulgent utcunque plebi in
sermonis
usu, ipsi inter se et aliter
sentiunt et loquuntur . . et fere in philosophicis abditisque
sint
rebus, quas
ipse
populus non ita
exacte callet ut a philosophis intelliguntur';
ibid.,
pp. 55, 67, 169, 175; Waswo 1979, p. 256;
Ashworth
1974a,
pp. 8-9, 26-7; Bursill-Hall 1975, pp. 209-12; Hubert 1949, pp.
212-15.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Translation, terminology and style
103
etymological
analysis of the word, while usus was investigated by
discovering
instances (testimonia) of its occurrence in texts. The latter
procedure, synthetic and inductive, became the favourite of the humanists
in grammar and lexicography. On the other hand, the modist philosophical
grammars
of
the later Middle
Ages,
which were not written for literary use,
treated language analytically, and they assumed a set of correspondences
between
metaphysical structures (substance/accident), universal linguistic
structures (noun/adjective) and particular linguistic structures (homo/
philosophicus).
Once the timeless structures of the universal language
were
uncovered, language rules could in theory be formulated to represent
them; in practice, however, since
there
was only one tongue available to the
modists, the actual features
of
Latin
tended to blur into the ideal features of
language-in-general.
This confusion impeded the search
of
the modists for a
rational grammar and made their approach to language a scandal to the
humanists, who rejected philosophical grammars with rules designed by
logicians
and metaphysicians and replaced them with philological gram-
mars based on the literary and historical study of Greek and Latin texts.
Valla,
in a 'rhetorical nominalism'
that
resembled earlier nominalist attacks
on the modists, ventured a radical reversal
of
the traditional assumption
that
reality governed language. And in a dispute with
Poggio,
who was
offended
by his remark
that
St
Jerome 'preferred to speak Latin
rather
than
grammar',
Valla
gave impetus to the humanist revival of the non-
philosophical
and literary functions
of
the grammarian. Alexander Hegius,
the teacher
of
Erasmus, proclaimed
that
the grammarian was a teacher who
understood how to speak and write correctly, not a contemplative who
perverted normal usage in a quest for esoteric, philosophical
truth.
The first
step in finding correct usage was to go back to the grammarians of late
antiquity, Donatus and Priscian; the next was to develop new grammars
synthetically
by reading the auctores.
Logic
and metaphysics continued to
influence
humanist grammars, but their role was much diminished until
J. C. Scaliger revived an Aristotelian philosophy
of
language
in his De causis
linguae latinae.
68
By
the time Scaliger published in 1540, the humanist polemic against
philosophical
grammar had driven from the market not only relatively
specialised
works like
that
of
Michel
de Marbais on the modi significandi but
68.
Birkenmajer
1922, p. 202;
Heath
1971, pp. 18, 45-7;
Bursill-Hall
1975, pp.
198-214;
Percival
1975,
pp.
240-7;
Camporeale
1972, p. 149;
Kelley
1970a,
pp. 32-3;
Padley
1976, pp.
58-62;
IJsewijn
1971,
p. 301;
Chomarat
1981,1, pp. 22, 153, 165,
215-24,
232,
259-62,
275-6,
446-9,
602, 608,
680-1,11,
pp. 799, 842,
1123-8.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
104
Translation, terminology and style
even
the very popular Doctrinale
of
Alexandre
de
Villedieu.
The Doctrinale,
written around 1200, long remained so basic a university text for first-year
grammar
that
it saw more
than
two hundred editions by 1525. Before this
decade, grammar was
effectively
a prerequisite to the dialectic of Peter of
Spain's Summule, which was itself presented as a study of language.
Afterwards,
the fashionable humanist manuals eroded this curricular link
between grammar and philosophy, though in the meantime
Valla
and
Rudolph
Agricola
had begun to forge a new bond between rhetoric and
dialectic which envisioned a pragmatic role for the latter discipline much
more to the taste of oratorical humanism
than
traditional, technical
logic.
This
new marriage of the ancient members of the
trivium
would lead
eventually to the Dialectique
of
Petrus Ramus, a minimalist
logic
entirely at
the service of clear and simple pedagogy.
69
The
success of the scholastics, limited as it was, in constructing a
philosophical language capable of formalism, abstraction and fine analysis
was
to many humanists an anathema. They denounced as barbarous and
obscurantist formal devices such as using alphabetical variables to replace
terms or writing the romance article Ty' to mark words used as terms. They
believed
that
the scholastic method of analysis by distinction was an
invitation to sophistry and rancour.
Valla,
in particular, found the very idea
of
abstraction inimical to sound thinking about language, which he
required to be empirical and synthetic. Assailing what he took to be a false
distinction between abstract forma and concrete jigura in the familiar
hylemorphic statue
of
the Aristotelians,
Valla
railed against 'the Peripatetic
breed . . . perverter of natural meanings'.
70
The refinements of later
medieval
logic
seemed a special affront to the 'natural' Latin diction and
syntax of the
summi
auctores. The exaggeration and artificiality of
Vives'
mockery
of sophismata extracted from context does not much dilute his
point; he caricatured sentences in his Adversus pseudodialecticos
that
are hard
to take in any language; this one, for example:
Only
any non-donkey c of any man except Sortes and
another
c belonging to
this
same man begins contingently to be black.
71
69.
Heath
1971, pp.
n-i9;Percival
1975, pp.
240-5;
Ash
worth
1974a,
pp. 10-17, 22;
Chomarat
1981,1,
pp.
204—9;
L.
Jardine
1974a,
pp.
19-25.
70. L.
Valla
1962,1, p. 673: 'O
depravatrix
naturalium
significationum
peripatetica
natio';
Kelley
1970a,
p. 29;
Vives
1979a,
pp. 10, 13-16, 21-2, 61, 65, 93;
Hubert
1949, p. 222;
Camporeale
1972, p. 176;
N. W.
Gilbert
1971, pp. 216-17; L.
Jardine
1974a,
p. 23.
71.
Vives
1979a,
p. 52:
'Tantum
cuiuslibet
hominis
praeter
Sortem
quilibet
non
asinus
c et
alterum
c
ipsiusmet
hominis
nigrum
contingenter
incipit
esse';
cf. ibid., p. 53;
Vives
1979b,
p. 32;
Ashworth
1974a,
pp. 8-9.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Translation, terminology and style
105
Although
some humanists were less hostile
than
others to scholasticism and
its Latin - of which the above is by no means typical - a tradition
well
established since Petrarch's time inclined many to find the speech of
medieval
philosophers bizarre and
ugly.
Some of what seemed absurd or
frivolous
in scholastic language, like the strange sophismata concocted to
teach the doctrine
of
fallacies,
grew out
of
specific
technical requirements in
logic,
but the humanists found the price
of
such progress too high. Since the
fourteenth century, when Petrarch had warned of'a new kind of monster
armed with double-edged enthymemes', humanists had associated the
logic
that
repelled them with aliens, Britons and Teutons, who excelled at it.
Even
the names of the foreigners came to stand for their grotesque way of
talking
—
quisquiliae suicetiae ('suicetial garbage').
72
When
Vives
made fun of'that monstrous terminology [of]
tantum,
alter,
alius, uterque, incipit, desinit [and] immediate', he was chipping away at the
linguistic foundations
of
one
of
the major components
of
the logica moderna,
the analysis
of
syncategorematic terms. Doing away with clumsy language
meant either abandoning the philosophy it expressed or rebuilding the
terminological base. Humanists, in fact, attempted such reconstruction in
various
ways,
none of them altogether enduring. Some were superficial.
Titles
of
familiar works, for example, could become more stylish, as when
De
generatione et corruptione begat De ortu et interitu. Others were more
systematic but still not philosophically motivated. As
part
of his larger
Ciceronian
campaign, Perion tried to beautify commonplace
logical
expressions, making the syllogism a ratiocinatio and a circular argument a
mutua
probation
3
But the boldest venture in terminological reform was
Valla's,
a philological coup
d'etat
which sought to ban from philosophical
discourse any expressions
that
violated grammar — not the rules of a
philosophical grammar constructed
a
priori but the experience
of
a humanist
grammar derived from reading classical Latin texts. The terminology
that
Valla
proscribed or revised was not trivial. It included the categories, the
transcendentals, syncategorematic terms, modal propositions and the
whole
class of abstractions ending in -itas. A successful critique of these
long-accustomed words, resulting in their simplification and replacement,
would
have endangered not only philosophical doctrines as central as
72.
Seigel
1968, pp. 65-7, 80-1, 232,
237-9;
N. W.
Gilbert
1971, pp. 204, 210, 216-17, 219, 224;
Vives
1979a,
pp. 3-7,11-12; Prosatori latini 1952, pp. 56-8;
Harth
1968, p. 43; Platon et Aristote 1976, p. 360
(Cranz);
Breen
1968, pp. nf.; Renaissance Philosophy of Man 1948, p. 135.
73.
Vives
1979a,
pp. 5-8, 48, 214; Platon et Aristote 1976, p. 378
(Stegmann);
Schmitt 1983a,
pp. 75-6,
86-7.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Translation, terminology
and
style
hylemorphism
and
four-term causality
but
also theological dogmas
as
important
as
Providence
and the
Trinity.
In
effect,
Valla's
insistence
that
philosophy should
not be
done without philology meant
that
scholastic
philosophy
was not to be
done
at all. Two
centuries before Descartes,
Europe was
not
ready
for
Valla's
revolution.
His
scrapping
of
the categories
provoked heresy charges,
and his
greatest work
of
philosophy,
the
important
and
difficult Disputationes dialecticae, went
unprinted
for
seven
decades after
its
composition.
74
HUMANISM
AND THE
PHILOSOPHICAL
LEXICON
Unlike
Valla's
project
to
govern philosophy with philology,
the
more
effective
changes
in
philosophical terminology during
the
early modern
period were evolutionary. They were aided
by the
accomplishments
of
humanism
in
translation, grammar
and
lexicography,
but
most were
not
the effects
of a
partisan
ideology like
Valla's
or a
public movement like
Ciceronianism.
It was the
more diffuse humanist conviction
that the
good
fight
was
against barbarism
that had a
direct
and
lasting influence
on the
development
of
a post-medieval language
for
philosophy,
and it
was Bruni
who
best explained what philosophy
had at
stake
in
this struggle:
In this great shipwreck
of
all learning,
in
this great
dearth
of
learned
men, how
could
it be that
these know-nothing [philosophers]
. . ., who
know
no
Latin
literature, much less Greek, would
not be
ignorant
of . . .
[Aristotle]?
It is
impossible
. . . that
they
understand
anything
well,
especially since these books
which
they
say are
Aristotle's have suffered such
a
transformation
that if
anyone
brought them
to
Aristotle
himself
he would
no
more recognize them
for his own
than
Actaeon's dogs knew
him
after
he was
changed into
a
deer.
75
When
the
barbarians emasculated letters they
had
also unmanned philos-
ophy, whose hope therefore
lay in a
reinvigoration
of
learning.
Valla's
historical vision
of
the calamity
was
well
defined.
The
last learned Romans
were Donatus, Servius
and
Priscian. Isidore
and
Boethius announced
the
74.
Camporeale 1972, pp. 8,
38-42,60-2,
105-6,151-66,
175-6;
Vasoli 1957, pp. 425-31; Kelley 1970a,
pp.
30-1; Gravelle 1972, pp. 283-5; L.Jardine 1977, p. 158; cf. Ashworth 1974a, p. 10; Stinger 1977,
p.
112.
75. Prosatori latini
1952, p. 58: 'Quern igitur philosophum ipsi philosophi . . . eo tempore ignorabant
.
. . eum in hoc tanto doctrinarum omnium naufragio, in hac tanta doctorum hominum penuria, isti
nihil sapientes homines, quibus nedum graecae, sed ne latinae quidem litterae satis cognitae sunt, non
ignorabunt?
Fieri non potest . . . ut illi quicquam recte teneant, praesertim cum hi libri, quos
Aristotelis
esse
dicunt, tarn magnam transformationem passi sunt, ut si quis eos ad Aristotelem
ipsum deferat, non magis
ille
suos
esse
cognoscat quam Actaeonem ilium, qui ex homine in cervum
con versus est, canes suae cognoverint.'
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008