Schmitt C.B. (ed.) The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy
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PREFACE
The
present History had a complex genesis, so it may be best to begin by
explaining how the project took shape. During the summer of 1980, Dr
Jeremy Mynott of the Cambridge University Press invited me to submit a
proposal for a volume to
follow
The Cambridge History of Later Medieval
Philosophy. The scheme I originally drew up, which sought to cover much
of
the seventeenth century as
well
as the Renaissance, was
then
sent out to a
number of experts for their comments. One of the referees chosen by the
Press was, naturally, Charles Schmitt. He responded with such a robust set
of
criticisms, and such a persuasive commitment to the idea of a volume
entirely devoted to Renaissance philosophy,
that
Dr Mynott invited him to
collaborate in producing an alternative proposal along the lines he had
sketched. This he duly did, and after further consultations and revisions the
Press Syndicate
of
the University
of
Cambridge finally accepted the scheme
in December 1981. Charles was thereupon appointed general editor of the
History, I agreed to serve as one
of
its two editors, and at Charles' suggestion
Professor Eckhard Kessler was called in to complete our team.
Charles proved a superb editor, moving
swiftly
to commission the
individual chapters and persuading virtually all our contributors to deliver
their manuscripts by the beginning of 1984. These were
then
submitted to a
panel
of
experts agreed by the Press in addition to being read and discussed
by
Charles, Eckhard Kessler and me. We are deeply grateful to all those who
helped us with their many and searching criticisms at
that
crucial stage:
Professors Ashworth, Copenhaver, Grafton, Grendler,
Kelley,
Kristeller,
Park, Rubinstein and
Wallace.
Although
most of the History was ready in draft by the beginning of
1984,
the stringent refereeing procedures on which Charles had rightly
insisted meant
that
we were unable to deliver our typescript to the Press as
soon as we had originally hoped. By the end of 1985, however, practically
all
the revisions and additions we had asked our contributors to make had
been cheerfully completed. When Charles left in
April
1986 to deliver some
lectures in Padua, he took with him the notes for our introduction,
xi
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xii
Preface
intending to complete
that
one remaining section of the book before
returning
at the end of the month.
From Padua came the appalling news of Charles' sudden death on
15
April
1986. It is no consolation, but it is at least some relief, to be able to
record
that
- as I learnt from a letter which arrived after his death - Charles
had finally satisfied
himself
that
our History had reached the
standard
he had
set for it. It is now our earnest hope
that
it may serve as something of a
memorial to him: to his astonishing erudition and the unassuming air with
which
he wore it, to his exemplary
(if
daunting)
standards
of
scholarship, to
his invariable helpfulness to fellow-workers in the field.
We
were left with several problems to surmount before our volume
could
be
printed.
The introduction still had to be put into final form, a task I
finished on the basis of Charles' almost completed drafts. But our main
problem was of course posed by the sheer amount of work involved in
seeing
such a large book through the press. The division of labour within
our editorial team had been such
that
this was to have been Charles' task.
His death came at an exceptionally busy time for both Eckhard Kessler
and me, with the result
that
neither of us was in a position to
under-
take this further obligation except at the cost of seriously delaying
the appeareance of the book. We were therefore very fortunate
that
Jill
Kraye
of the Warburg
Institute,
whom Charles had already involved
informally in our project, agreed at
that
point to join us as associate
editor with the job of putting the History into final shape. She read
the revised versions of all the contributions, as
well
as checking the
bibliographies and biobibliographies. She worked
closely
with Ms P. R.
Marsh, the subeditor appointed by the Press, to whom we are also very
grateful for the patience, care and technical expertise she brought to bear on
our vast and unwieldy typescript.
Jill Kraye would never have been in a position to shoulder these heavy
burdens if she had not been granted special leave from her position as
assistant librarian at the Warburg
Institute.
We accordingly owe a special
debt of gratitude to the Director of the Warburg, Professor J. B. Trapp,
who
has been a kind and enthusiastic friend to this History from its
inception, and who generously arranged to reorganise Jill's library duties in
such a way as to leave her free to work on the volume throughout the whole
of
July 1986.
The
list of other scholars and institutions to whom we are beholden is a
long
one. I should like first of all to offer our warm thanks to the officers of
the Cambridge University Press, particularly to
Dr
Jeremy Mynott. He not
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Preface
xin
only
initiated this History, but steered it to completion with an unfailingly
sure
and tactful
hand.
The other Press officers to whom we
feel
especially
indebted are
Jonathan
Sinclair-Wilson, who played a large
part
in planning
the volume, and
Joanna
Rainbow, who worked in close and effective
cooperation with Jill Kraye and Ms Marsh in the final stages.
At
the time when contributions were arriving, Charles called upon the
help of a number of scholars, most of them connected with the Warburg
Institute,
to whom I should also like to extend our grateful thanks. Constance
Blackwell
read and commented on several chapters. Dr Angus Clarke
translated the
three
chapters originally written in Italian; David Membrey
typed a great deal
of
material into Charles' computer and Richard Simpson
printed
it out on the Warburg's laser
printer
(for access to which we are also
very
grateful); Dr Michael Wilmott helped to compile the two consoli-
dated bibliographies, in addition to writing most of the biobibliographical
section in collaboration with Charles himself For supplying some of the
funds needed to secure this assistance, I should also like to express my
appreciation to the managers
of
the Political Science Fund
of
the University
of
Cambridge.
Above
all, however, it would have been Charles Schmitt himself, I am
sure, to whom everyone connected with the production of this History
would
have wished to offer their most heartfelt thanks. The design of the
History was very much an expression of his mind; I hope it may
stand,
not
unworthily, as a monument to his work.
Cambridge
Quentin Skinner
1987
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Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
INTRODUCTION
As
the scale of this volume attests, the period of the Renaissance was one of
intense philosophical activity. It is only recently, however,
that
the extent of
this activity has come to be recognised
fully.
Although eighteenth-century
historians of philosophy such as Jakob Brucker saw in the Renaissance an
important period of reorientation, their awareness did not in general carry
over
into nineteenth-century attempts at historical synthesis. Burckhardt's
celebrated essay remained virtually silent about the contributions of
philosophy to the civilisation of the Renaissance, while
Anglo-Saxon
traditions of scholarship generally treated the two centuries after the death
of
William of Ockham, if at all, merely as a backdrop to the heroic age of
Francis Bacon and the 'new philosophy'. A few Renaissance thinkers -
Ficino,
Bruno, Campanella
—
occasionally found a place in nineteenth-
century histories, but even then the interpretation of their work tended to
remain deficient in several respects. One problem was
that
the kind of
historical research needed to make possible a comprehensive evaluation of
Renaissance philosophy largely remained to be carried out. A further
weakness
derived from the fact
that
most nineteenth-century historians
were
more interested in tracing the roots of 'modern' thought
than
in
considering the ebb and
flow
of philosophical teaching and speculation at
different times. Even when Renaissance writers were discussed, they were
generally
treated as pawns in the philosophical battles
of
later centuries, not
as thinkers of their own age and in their own right.
It was during the latter
part
of
the nineteenth century, however,
that
this
situation first began to improve. Pioneering work by Renan, Mabilleau,
Fiorentino,
Tocco,
Amabile and a few others brought to light a great deal of
new
information, and began to establish a body of monographic literature
on which future historians could build. A further important step was taken
in the first
quarter
of
the present century, when the efforts
of
two
scholars in
particular gave a much clearer definition to the physiognomy of Renais-
sance philosophy. One was Giovanni Gentile, who wrote pioneering
studies on Bruno, Telesio and other philosophers
of
the Italian Renaissance.
I
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2
Introduction
The
other was Ernst Cassirer, the first volume of whose massive Das
Erkenntnisproblem tried for the first time to trace the rise of modern
philosophical
concerns to the period of the Renaissance. Cassirer's
contribution, extended in many subsequent works, was of special signifi-
cance.
Paying little or no heed to modern linguistic or national boundaries,
he began to do justice to one of the most essential factors separating
Renaissance from later philosophy - its
fully
international character, based
on the use of Latin as an almost universal language of scholarship.
Out
of these and other early initiatives, an increasingly scholarly and
sophisticated approach to the study
of
Renaissance philosophy has gradually
developed
over the past
fifty
years. For the most
part,
however, the fruits of
these researches have yet to find their proper place within the broad outlines
of
the history of the subject. This applies above all to English-language
histories, most of which remain defective in a number of obvious
ways.
They
still
tend
to be written by scholars who are not specialists in the
Renaissance,
and accordingly lack an adequate grasp of both the primary
and secondary literatures. They
tend
to focus on an eccentric group of
thinkers, frequently devoting more space to such figures as Leonardo da
Vinci,
Columbus or Paracelsus
than
to writers whose professional interests
lay
within philosophy.
Above
all, they
tend
to characterise the boundaries
of
the discipline in an anachronistic fashion, omitting much
that
was vital as
well
as concentrating on much
that
was inessential to philosophy as it was
then
understood.
We
feel,
therefore,
that
there
remains an especially pressing need for a
readable and reliable outline in English
of
the varied and intense activities of
the philosophers
of
the Renaissance period. As a glance at the bibliography
in the present volume
will
reveal, an immense amount
of
detailed research
continues to go forward in the field of Renaissance thought. What has
hitherto
been lacking is an
attempt
to distil these findings into a series of
synthetic and comprehensive accounts. It is this task
that
the present volume
aspires so far as possible to discharge.
The
main ambition we hold out for this History is
that
it should offer its
readers as balanced an account of as many facets of its subject as possible.
One
imbalance we have sought to counter is the tendency, evident in a
number of recent histories, to equate the most
important
with the most
novel
features of Renaissance philosophy. Although we have of course
included surveys
of
Neoplatonism, and
of
the astonishing developments in
the philosophy of
nature,
we have tried not to imply
that
their
distinctiveness makes them alone worthy of sustained attention. We have
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Introduction
3
also made a conscious effort not to over-emphasise Aristotelianism. Recent
scholarship has stressed the extent to which the Aristotelian synthesis
remained the most widely known in the Renaissance, in addition to being
the approach most generally favoured in the institutional dispensation of
philosophical knowledge. While taking note of these re-evaluations, we
have striven to avoid extreme claims about the influence and originality of
this school of thought.
The
balance we have sought to strike is one
that
seeks above all to avoid
anachronistic
views
about what should count as philosophy. The teaching
of
logic,
so central to current
Anglo-Saxon
conceptions
of
the subject, was
an important but by no means a dominant concern in the Renaissance, and
we
have tried to
treat
it accordingly. By contrast, we have sought to
underline the fact
that
certain topics
—
such as rhetoric, poetics and history -
enjoyed
an important place in the schemata
of
philosophy which they have
since largely forfeited. Lastly, we have tried to acknowledge (but not be
carried away by) the thought
that
magic and astrology not only occupied an
accredited position in the hinterland
of
philosophy during the Renaissance,
but also entered from time to time into 'purely philosophical' contexts from
which
they have since been indignantly removed.
An
earlier plan for this History included an even broader range
of
topics,
including the relations of philosophy to music, literature, law and several
other subjects. Although we decided at an early stage
that
such an outline
ran the obvious risk
of
becoming too unwieldy, we still hope
that
the plan
we
eventually adopted
will
be sufficient to illustrate our fundamental
historiographical point. This is, of course,
that
there
can be no hope of
writing satisfactory histories of philosophy so long as we find ourselves
tempted to assume
that
the discipline is constituted by a certain determinate
range
of
themes. To work with this assumption leads all too naturally to the
unhistorical conclusion
that
the most satisfactory histories
will
be those
which
concentrate on the
parts
of the subject most readily recognisable as
philosophical to twentieth-century students. We have attempted, by
contrast, to
follow
out the implications of the fact
that
the term
'philosophy' in the Renaissance comprehended a
rather
different and above
all
a much broader range of topics
than
the same term comprehends in
present-day universities
of
the English-speaking world. We see the resulting
volume
not just as a history of what might nowadays be considered the
more 'philosophically interesting' aspects of the subject, but as a more
broadly based introduction to the intellectual world
of
the Renaissance as a
whole.
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4
Introduction
The
outcome of this approach should not be thought of, however, as an
inter-disciplinary or a cross-disciplinary work. Rather we have sought to
identify the ramifications of one particular discipline at a particular period
of
time. Later ages split up this unity into a large number
of
different areas of
knowledge.
The aim of the present History is to join the pieces together
again, seeking to furnish a guide to the subject as far as possible in its own
terms.
To
this end, we have divided the volume into
three
component parts.
Part
i considers the intellectual background of Renaissance philosophy, as
well
as indicating the type
of
framework within which the various branches
of
the subject functioned in the Renaissance. The institutional setting, the
restrictions philosophers faced, the techniques and sources available to them
are all surveyed.
Part
2 constitutes the core of the volume, focusing on the different
branches of philosophy in themselves. Within the Renaissance textbook
tradition, the subject was in general divided into four main
fields:
logic,
natural
philosophy, metaphysics and moral philosophy. As our contents list
indicates, we have tried so far as possible to articulate the various
parts
of
our
treatment
in the same way. We have felt free, however, to break down
some of these headings into smaller and more manageable
units
— for
example,
by marking a division (as some Renaissance philosophers did)
between moral and political philosophy. And at one point we have felt
compelled
to resort to more modern categories, in particular to accommo-
date
questions about knowledge and
belief
and about the epistemology of
the sciences.
Part
2 ends with a survey of the general character of
Renaissance philosophical knowledge and its position in relation to a
number of humanistic disciplines
closely
affiliated with philosophy
throughout our period.
Part
3 consists of various supplementary materials. The appendices add
to the information contained in
Part
1 by describing available philosophical
authorities and the means by which their doctrines were usually imparted to
students. The biobibliographies offer brief accounts of approximately 140
of
the more prominent figures discussed in the volume, and are meant at the
same time to form a basis for further study. The bibliography is mainly
confined to authorities cited by individual contributors, although a number
of
other items of particular importance have been added.
The
system
of
references employed throughout the volume is as
follows.
References
in footnotes are
given
in the most abbreviated form possible;
these are
then
keyed, as appropriate, to the bibliography of primary and
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Introduction
5
secondary sources. References to classical or medieval
authors
are normally
given
in the generally accepted style - for example,
Cicero,
Academica
11.38.119.
To make the best use
of
the volume, it is also
important
to bear in
mind
that
information supplied in the biobibliographies is not usually
repeated elsewhere.
As
the above account indicates, we have basically chosen to organise the
History around the different fields of philosophy. While this approach has
the
effect
of breaking up the work of individual thinkers into several
fragments, it embodies what we take to be the major virtue of presenting
the internal development of individual aspects of the subject — such as
metaphysics or ethics
—
as coherent and
evolving
structures
of
thought. For
us it is no great demerit
of
this approach
that
it
tends
in consequence to play
down
the role of dominant individuals. We are more interested in long-
term
developments and a continuing preoccupation with certain central
problems; we are in any case unhappy with the assumption
that
even the
most influential thinkers can be said to embody anything like the spirit of
the age. We hope, moreover, to do justice to the fact
that
—
with some very
significant exceptions — the philosophers of the Renaissance saw their
enterprise very much as a corporate and cooperative search after
truth.
For
any reader who may regret the lack
of
specific
sections on particular figures,
however,
we hope
that
the biobibliographies may do something to
reinstate
a more traditionally individualist perspective.
We
must end by emphasising
that,
although we invoke the word
'Renaissance' in our title, we are not committed
—
nor have we sought to
commit our contributors
—
to upholding any particular ideological position
with
respect to the employment of
that
much-discussed term. Despite the
vast
literature
on the meaning, the chronological scope and the geographi-
cal
boundaries
of
the Renaissance, we have decided to avoid discussing such
issues as much as possible. The most we
feel
inclined to say is
that
the volume
seeks
to cover philosophical activity within the area in which Latin was used
as a cultural language from the age of Ockham to the revisionary work of
Bacon,
Descartes and their contemporaries. But even this suggests too
precise a characterisation of what we have attempted. Some contributors
have necessarily ranged more
widely,
taking in earlier developments
indispensable to the understanding
of
our period; others have focused more
narrowly, treating the concept
of
the Renaissance as the name
of
a category
or style
of
thought within our period as a whole. This has
of
course resulted
in some inconsistencies and even disagreements. But we believe
that
this
also reflects the
current
state
of
scholarly
opinion in the subject. It is certainly
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6
Introduction
clear
that
there
is no standard or unified
view
among specialists about the
relative importance of the various
strands
of thought which, as the rest of
this volume
will
seek to demonstrate, went to make up the rich and often
strange fabric of Renaissance philosophy.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008