Christopher D. Johnson
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801477423
- eISBN:
- 9780801464065
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801477423.003.0007
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
This chapter traces how Warburg came to view Giordano Bruno's cosmography, imagery, and biography as confirming the central motifs of the Mnemosyne project. It details Warburg's and Gertrud Bing's ...
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This chapter traces how Warburg came to view Giordano Bruno's cosmography, imagery, and biography as confirming the central motifs of the Mnemosyne project. It details Warburg's and Gertrud Bing's attempts during their late September 1928 to June 1929 sojourn in Italy to explicate Bruno, and then it considers Cassirer's insistence that the interdisciplinary Warburg was the thinker best suited for this task. Such praise, this chapter contends, acquires still greater weight if we ponder Warburg's appropriation of Bruno's cardinal notion of synderesis, which signals both an ironic conscience and the faculty of intuition needed to join disparate things in a single vision.Less
This chapter traces how Warburg came to view Giordano Bruno's cosmography, imagery, and biography as confirming the central motifs of the Mnemosyne project. It details Warburg's and Gertrud Bing's attempts during their late September 1928 to June 1929 sojourn in Italy to explicate Bruno, and then it considers Cassirer's insistence that the interdisciplinary Warburg was the thinker best suited for this task. Such praise, this chapter contends, acquires still greater weight if we ponder Warburg's appropriation of Bruno's cardinal notion of synderesis, which signals both an ironic conscience and the faculty of intuition needed to join disparate things in a single vision.
Gatti Hilary
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197264133
- eISBN:
- 9780191734649
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264133.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter traces the more secular spirit of Giordano Bruno's Petrarchism. It suggests that Bruno's originality can be seen in the fact that he brings his Italian experience of the Petrarchan and ...
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This chapter traces the more secular spirit of Giordano Bruno's Petrarchism. It suggests that Bruno's originality can be seen in the fact that he brings his Italian experience of the Petrarchan and anti-Petrarchan debate to Britain and that he confronted the principal English Petrarchan poet of his time, Sir Philip Sidney. It discusses Bruno's dedication of the Gli eroici furori to Sidney and his belief that the Petrarchan sonnet is a suitable vehicle for philosophical enquiry in the post-Copernican, infinite universe.Less
This chapter traces the more secular spirit of Giordano Bruno's Petrarchism. It suggests that Bruno's originality can be seen in the fact that he brings his Italian experience of the Petrarchan and anti-Petrarchan debate to Britain and that he confronted the principal English Petrarchan poet of his time, Sir Philip Sidney. It discusses Bruno's dedication of the Gli eroici furori to Sidney and his belief that the Petrarchan sonnet is a suitable vehicle for philosophical enquiry in the post-Copernican, infinite universe.
Giordano Bruno
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300092172
- eISBN:
- 9780300127911
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300092172.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Language
Giordano Bruno's The Cabala of Pegasus grew out of the great Italian philosopher's experiences lecturing and debating at Oxford in early 1584. Having received a cold reception there because of his ...
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Giordano Bruno's The Cabala of Pegasus grew out of the great Italian philosopher's experiences lecturing and debating at Oxford in early 1584. Having received a cold reception there because of his viewpoints, Bruno went on in the Cabala to attack the narrow-mindedness of the university—and by extension, all universities that resisted his advocacy of intellectual freethinking. The Cabala of Pegasus consists of vernacular dialogues that turn on the identification of the noble Pegasus (the spirit of poetry) and the humble ass (the vehicle of divine revelation). In the interplay of these ideas, Bruno explores the nature of poetry, divine authority, secular learning, and Pythagorean metempsychosis, which had great influence on James Joyce and many other writers and artists from the Renaissance to the modern period. This book, the first English translation of The Cabala of Pegasus, contains both the English and Italian versions as well as annotations.Less
Giordano Bruno's The Cabala of Pegasus grew out of the great Italian philosopher's experiences lecturing and debating at Oxford in early 1584. Having received a cold reception there because of his viewpoints, Bruno went on in the Cabala to attack the narrow-mindedness of the university—and by extension, all universities that resisted his advocacy of intellectual freethinking. The Cabala of Pegasus consists of vernacular dialogues that turn on the identification of the noble Pegasus (the spirit of poetry) and the humble ass (the vehicle of divine revelation). In the interplay of these ideas, Bruno explores the nature of poetry, divine authority, secular learning, and Pythagorean metempsychosis, which had great influence on James Joyce and many other writers and artists from the Renaissance to the modern period. This book, the first English translation of The Cabala of Pegasus, contains both the English and Italian versions as well as annotations.
Martin McLaughlin, Letizia Panizza, and Peter Hainsworth (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197264133
- eISBN:
- 9780191734649
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264133.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Petrarch was Italy's second most famous writer (after Dante), and indeed from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries he was much better known and more influential in English literature than Dante. ...
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Petrarch was Italy's second most famous writer (after Dante), and indeed from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries he was much better known and more influential in English literature than Dante. His Italian love lyrics constituted the major influence on European love poetry for at least two centuries from 1400 to 1600, and in Britain he was imitated by Chaucer, the Elizabethans, and other lyric poets up until the end of the eighteenth century. With Romanticism Dante ousted Petrarch from his pre-eminent position, but in our post-Romantic age, attention has now started to swing back to Petrarch. This volume is a survey of Petrarch's literary legacy in Britain. Starting with his own views of those whom he called the ‘barbari Britanni’, the volume then explores a number of key topics: Petrarch's analysis of the self; his dialogue with other classical and Italian authors; Petrarchism and anti-Petrarchism in Renaissance Italy; Petrarchism in England and Scotland; and Petrarch's modern legacy in both Italy and Britain. Many important texts and poets are considered, including Giordano Bruno, Leopardi, Foscolo, Ascham, Sidney, Spenser, and Walter Savage Landor.Less
Petrarch was Italy's second most famous writer (after Dante), and indeed from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries he was much better known and more influential in English literature than Dante. His Italian love lyrics constituted the major influence on European love poetry for at least two centuries from 1400 to 1600, and in Britain he was imitated by Chaucer, the Elizabethans, and other lyric poets up until the end of the eighteenth century. With Romanticism Dante ousted Petrarch from his pre-eminent position, but in our post-Romantic age, attention has now started to swing back to Petrarch. This volume is a survey of Petrarch's literary legacy in Britain. Starting with his own views of those whom he called the ‘barbari Britanni’, the volume then explores a number of key topics: Petrarch's analysis of the self; his dialogue with other classical and Italian authors; Petrarchism and anti-Petrarchism in Renaissance Italy; Petrarchism in England and Scotland; and Petrarch's modern legacy in both Italy and Britain. Many important texts and poets are considered, including Giordano Bruno, Leopardi, Foscolo, Ascham, Sidney, Spenser, and Walter Savage Landor.
Hilary Gatti
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691163833
- eISBN:
- 9781400866304
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691163833.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This chapter addresses the question of liberty in sixteenth-century religious debates. It first takes a look at the discussion between the Augustinian friar Martin Luther and Dutch humanist Erasmus ...
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This chapter addresses the question of liberty in sixteenth-century religious debates. It first takes a look at the discussion between the Augustinian friar Martin Luther and Dutch humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam concerning the freedom of the will. The chapter then turns to the theological thinking of John Calvin and the reintroduction into the Protestant world of the notion of heresy. Hereafter the chapter details the circumstances surrounding the dramatic rupture between the friar Giordano Bruno and the Dominican order, including the philosophical doctrines which eventually landed him in the Inquisition. Finally, this chapter follows up on Bruno's insights through the commentary of theologians Richard Hooker and Jacob Harmensz, who is more widely known as Jacobus Arminius.Less
This chapter addresses the question of liberty in sixteenth-century religious debates. It first takes a look at the discussion between the Augustinian friar Martin Luther and Dutch humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam concerning the freedom of the will. The chapter then turns to the theological thinking of John Calvin and the reintroduction into the Protestant world of the notion of heresy. Hereafter the chapter details the circumstances surrounding the dramatic rupture between the friar Giordano Bruno and the Dominican order, including the philosophical doctrines which eventually landed him in the Inquisition. Finally, this chapter follows up on Bruno's insights through the commentary of theologians Richard Hooker and Jacob Harmensz, who is more widely known as Jacobus Arminius.
Daniel Selcer
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804763806
- eISBN:
- 9780804773508
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804763806.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Focusing on Galileo's Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo (1632) and Giordano Bruno's La Cena de le Cenari (1584), this chapter explores the role of performative allegory in the written ...
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Focusing on Galileo's Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo (1632) and Giordano Bruno's La Cena de le Cenari (1584), this chapter explores the role of performative allegory in the written text and assesses the impact of allegory within philosophical discourse on what it calls the baroque ontology of the page. It shows that the drawing (or misdrawing) of Nicolaus Copernicus's cosmological diagram in De revolutionibus (1543) within the dialogues of Galileo's and Bruno's texts is itself a staging that takes place on the surfaces of the pages themselves, “a materialization of natural contemplation.” It also argues that Galileo's text advocates a “script” of “naturalized allegory” in which the book of the universe is written, while Bruno considers philosophical contemplation to be the only means to control the extreme tendencies of allegorical language. In the allegorical nature of nature, readers are required to read allegorically. Both Bruno and Galileo view the philosophical-scientific text as a performance of allegory requiring the participation of the authors, the characters, and the readers.Less
Focusing on Galileo's Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo (1632) and Giordano Bruno's La Cena de le Cenari (1584), this chapter explores the role of performative allegory in the written text and assesses the impact of allegory within philosophical discourse on what it calls the baroque ontology of the page. It shows that the drawing (or misdrawing) of Nicolaus Copernicus's cosmological diagram in De revolutionibus (1543) within the dialogues of Galileo's and Bruno's texts is itself a staging that takes place on the surfaces of the pages themselves, “a materialization of natural contemplation.” It also argues that Galileo's text advocates a “script” of “naturalized allegory” in which the book of the universe is written, while Bruno considers philosophical contemplation to be the only means to control the extreme tendencies of allegorical language. In the allegorical nature of nature, readers are required to read allegorically. Both Bruno and Galileo view the philosophical-scientific text as a performance of allegory requiring the participation of the authors, the characters, and the readers.
Mary-Jane Rubenstein
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231156622
- eISBN:
- 9780231527422
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231156622.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
This chapter begins by discussing how St. Thomas Aquinas aligns God with Aristotle’s prime mover wherein the existence of God puts a stop to worldly endlessness. The doctrine of plurality jeopardizes ...
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This chapter begins by discussing how St. Thomas Aquinas aligns God with Aristotle’s prime mover wherein the existence of God puts a stop to worldly endlessness. The doctrine of plurality jeopardizes Aquinas’ theological infrastructure, since there is no starting point for God to occupy if worlds have existed from eternity. The chapter also examines Cusa’s one universe and its structure—its plural worlds that do not only interact with but also compose one another. Cusa’s cosmology seems like a Christianized Atomism, consisting of a staggering plurality of worlds, plus God, but minus the unqualified “infinity.” In addition, Giordano Bruno’s neo-Cusan multiverse claims that the universe is neither monistic, dualistic, nor pluralistic; rather it is irreducibly “multimodal” as a result of its infinite multiplicity, with the whole reflected in each of its parts.Less
This chapter begins by discussing how St. Thomas Aquinas aligns God with Aristotle’s prime mover wherein the existence of God puts a stop to worldly endlessness. The doctrine of plurality jeopardizes Aquinas’ theological infrastructure, since there is no starting point for God to occupy if worlds have existed from eternity. The chapter also examines Cusa’s one universe and its structure—its plural worlds that do not only interact with but also compose one another. Cusa’s cosmology seems like a Christianized Atomism, consisting of a staggering plurality of worlds, plus God, but minus the unqualified “infinity.” In addition, Giordano Bruno’s neo-Cusan multiverse claims that the universe is neither monistic, dualistic, nor pluralistic; rather it is irreducibly “multimodal” as a result of its infinite multiplicity, with the whole reflected in each of its parts.
Robert S. Westman
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520254817
- eISBN:
- 9780520948167
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520254817.003.0011
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
In the 1580s, second-generation interpreters of De Revolutionibus, mostly Nullists, rapidly produced a spate of new readings. These readings opened up issues that Nicolaus Copernicus himself had ...
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In the 1580s, second-generation interpreters of De Revolutionibus, mostly Nullists, rapidly produced a spate of new readings. These readings opened up issues that Nicolaus Copernicus himself had tersely bounded off (such as the universe's infinitude), merely used as a piece of his main argument (the Capellan arrangement of Venus and Mercury), altogether neglected to develop (heliocentric and geocentric transformations), or treated ambiguously (the ontology of the spheres). Planetary order, left out of consideration by the Wittenbergers, now moved from liminal to central consideration, making it at times a matter of aggressive advocacy and defense of priority. By 1588, a via media had become the site of a highly contentious priority struggle within which Tycho Brahe's geoheliocentric scheme emerged as the most visible and, ultimately, the most influential alternative. Brahe's encounter with Paul Wittich nicely frames the problematic of the via media. More likely, Christopher Rothmann followed a path somewhat like that of Wittich and the early Tycho. Giordano Bruno, an immediate contemporary of Wittich, Rothmann, and Brahe, was a second-generation advocate of Copernicus's theory.Less
In the 1580s, second-generation interpreters of De Revolutionibus, mostly Nullists, rapidly produced a spate of new readings. These readings opened up issues that Nicolaus Copernicus himself had tersely bounded off (such as the universe's infinitude), merely used as a piece of his main argument (the Capellan arrangement of Venus and Mercury), altogether neglected to develop (heliocentric and geocentric transformations), or treated ambiguously (the ontology of the spheres). Planetary order, left out of consideration by the Wittenbergers, now moved from liminal to central consideration, making it at times a matter of aggressive advocacy and defense of priority. By 1588, a via media had become the site of a highly contentious priority struggle within which Tycho Brahe's geoheliocentric scheme emerged as the most visible and, ultimately, the most influential alternative. Brahe's encounter with Paul Wittich nicely frames the problematic of the via media. More likely, Christopher Rothmann followed a path somewhat like that of Wittich and the early Tycho. Giordano Bruno, an immediate contemporary of Wittich, Rothmann, and Brahe, was a second-generation advocate of Copernicus's theory.
Sabrina Ebbersmeyer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199579914
- eISBN:
- 9780191745959
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199579914.003.0008
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
The paper deals with the reception of the Platonic theory of love during the Italian Renaissance. Plato's theory offers a specific conception of love, in which personal love is understood only as a ...
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The paper deals with the reception of the Platonic theory of love during the Italian Renaissance. Plato's theory offers a specific conception of love, in which personal love is understood only as a part of a broader concept of love, which has specific relevance to the philosopher. In particular, this love figures as a means to acquire self-improvement and self-perfection. After outlining the Platonic theory of love to show how the erotic attraction to another person based on the perception of the beautiful is linked to the philosopher's desire for wisdom, the paper explores the reception of this theory by three well-known Renaissance philosophers, i.e. Marsilio Ficino, Leone Ebreo, and Giordano Bruno, and their appropriation of it to different ends.Less
The paper deals with the reception of the Platonic theory of love during the Italian Renaissance. Plato's theory offers a specific conception of love, in which personal love is understood only as a part of a broader concept of love, which has specific relevance to the philosopher. In particular, this love figures as a means to acquire self-improvement and self-perfection. After outlining the Platonic theory of love to show how the erotic attraction to another person based on the perception of the beautiful is linked to the philosopher's desire for wisdom, the paper explores the reception of this theory by three well-known Renaissance philosophers, i.e. Marsilio Ficino, Leone Ebreo, and Giordano Bruno, and their appropriation of it to different ends.
Robert S. Westman
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520254817
- eISBN:
- 9780520948167
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520254817.003.0014
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
The relationship between Johannes Kepler and Galileo has a pronounced historiographical profile, in part because both were followers of Nicolaus Copernicus. The failures of that relationship would ...
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The relationship between Johannes Kepler and Galileo has a pronounced historiographical profile, in part because both were followers of Nicolaus Copernicus. The failures of that relationship would have heavy consequences for seventeenth-century heavenly science and natural philosophy. By the following decade, Kepler and Galileo were already engaging one another within the discursive space created by the second-generation Copernicans and the practitioners of the contested via media. This chapter examines how those differences evolved in the decade prior to the telescopic discoveries and the elliptical astronomy. It discusses Galileo and the science of the stars in the Pisan period, Galileo and the Wittenberg and Uraniborg-Kassel networks, Galileo's exchange with Jacopo Mazzoni, Gian Vincenzo Pinelli's circle and Edmund Bruce's letters to Kepler, Giordano Bruno's execution, William Gilbert's project for a magnetical philosophy, Galileo's first run-in with the Inquisition, and Kepler's continuing search for astrology's foundations.Less
The relationship between Johannes Kepler and Galileo has a pronounced historiographical profile, in part because both were followers of Nicolaus Copernicus. The failures of that relationship would have heavy consequences for seventeenth-century heavenly science and natural philosophy. By the following decade, Kepler and Galileo were already engaging one another within the discursive space created by the second-generation Copernicans and the practitioners of the contested via media. This chapter examines how those differences evolved in the decade prior to the telescopic discoveries and the elliptical astronomy. It discusses Galileo and the science of the stars in the Pisan period, Galileo and the Wittenberg and Uraniborg-Kassel networks, Galileo's exchange with Jacopo Mazzoni, Gian Vincenzo Pinelli's circle and Edmund Bruce's letters to Kepler, Giordano Bruno's execution, William Gilbert's project for a magnetical philosophy, Galileo's first run-in with the Inquisition, and Kepler's continuing search for astrology's foundations.
Federico Sabatini
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780813042459
- eISBN:
- 9780813043081
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813042459.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Considers the relationship between writing and the arts in Joyce's works, where it is possible to conceive figurative arts and music not only as major themes in the narrative, but also and more ...
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Considers the relationship between writing and the arts in Joyce's works, where it is possible to conceive figurative arts and music not only as major themes in the narrative, but also and more poignantly as crucial influences for the style and for the form of the texts. The non-literary artistic disciplines become prominent and significant devices for a writing which markedly employs phonosymbolism and which possesses plastic qualities deriving from the “spatial arts.” Joyce's experimentation increasingly focuses on such an “intermedial” discourse, revealing a constant concoction of various artistic disciplines and methods as well as the intersection between the artistic discourse and the scientific one. Such a stylistic peculiarity points to the influence of Giordano Bruno, who also advocated a tangled combination of arts and sciences and whose work was overtly praised by Joyce beginning with his essay “The Philosophy of Bruno” (1903). Bruno's work later became a philosophical source for the structure and language of Finnegans Wake. Besides Bruno's famous theory of the coincidence of contraries, which is applicable to Joyce's poetics as well, a similar “intermedial” and interdisciplinary discourse can be found in Bruno's aesthetics and philosophy.Less
Considers the relationship between writing and the arts in Joyce's works, where it is possible to conceive figurative arts and music not only as major themes in the narrative, but also and more poignantly as crucial influences for the style and for the form of the texts. The non-literary artistic disciplines become prominent and significant devices for a writing which markedly employs phonosymbolism and which possesses plastic qualities deriving from the “spatial arts.” Joyce's experimentation increasingly focuses on such an “intermedial” discourse, revealing a constant concoction of various artistic disciplines and methods as well as the intersection between the artistic discourse and the scientific one. Such a stylistic peculiarity points to the influence of Giordano Bruno, who also advocated a tangled combination of arts and sciences and whose work was overtly praised by Joyce beginning with his essay “The Philosophy of Bruno” (1903). Bruno's work later became a philosophical source for the structure and language of Finnegans Wake. Besides Bruno's famous theory of the coincidence of contraries, which is applicable to Joyce's poetics as well, a similar “intermedial” and interdisciplinary discourse can be found in Bruno's aesthetics and philosophy.
Howard Hotson
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198208280
- eISBN:
- 9780191677960
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198208280.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History
Johann Heinrich Alsted, professor of philosophy and theology at the Calvinist academy of Herborn, was a man of many parts. A deputy to the famous Synod of Dort and greatest encyclopaedist of his age, ...
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Johann Heinrich Alsted, professor of philosophy and theology at the Calvinist academy of Herborn, was a man of many parts. A deputy to the famous Synod of Dort and greatest encyclopaedist of his age, he was also a pioneer of Calvinist millenarianism and a devoted student of astrology, alchemy, Lullism, and the works of Giordano Bruno. From the mainstream Reformed tradition, Alsted and his circle inherited the zeal for further reformation of church, state, and society; but with this they blended hermetic dreams of a general reformation and the restoration of primordial perfection to the fallen human nature through Lullist and alchemical panaceas. However paradoxical from a strictly Calvinist standpoint, this loose synthesis helped prepare the programme of Alsted's greatest student, Johann Amos Comenius, and the following generation of central European universal reformers. Alsted's intellectual biography opens up unexpected perspectives on the reforming movements of the 17th century, and provides an invaluable introduction to many of the central ideas, individuals and institutions of this neglected era of central European intellectual history.Less
Johann Heinrich Alsted, professor of philosophy and theology at the Calvinist academy of Herborn, was a man of many parts. A deputy to the famous Synod of Dort and greatest encyclopaedist of his age, he was also a pioneer of Calvinist millenarianism and a devoted student of astrology, alchemy, Lullism, and the works of Giordano Bruno. From the mainstream Reformed tradition, Alsted and his circle inherited the zeal for further reformation of church, state, and society; but with this they blended hermetic dreams of a general reformation and the restoration of primordial perfection to the fallen human nature through Lullist and alchemical panaceas. However paradoxical from a strictly Calvinist standpoint, this loose synthesis helped prepare the programme of Alsted's greatest student, Johann Amos Comenius, and the following generation of central European universal reformers. Alsted's intellectual biography opens up unexpected perspectives on the reforming movements of the 17th century, and provides an invaluable introduction to many of the central ideas, individuals and institutions of this neglected era of central European intellectual history.
Howard Hotson
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198208280
- eISBN:
- 9780191677960
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198208280.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History
Samuel Hartlib, John Dury, and Johann Amos Comenius step from central Europe's Reformed world into the pages of English intellectual history as if from out of a void. The places where they studied — ...
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Samuel Hartlib, John Dury, and Johann Amos Comenius step from central Europe's Reformed world into the pages of English intellectual history as if from out of a void. The places where they studied — Elbing, Brieg, Herborn — are towns which few Anglo-Saxon scholars could even locate unassisted on the map of central Europe. Historians have considered Johann Heinrich Alsted as the culmination of Herborn's accomplishments. German scholars often portray Alsted as a pillar of Calvinist orthodoxy, a pioneer of Reformed scholasticism, a participant at the Synod of Dort. In English scholarship, his primary association is with millenarianism. In Spain, he is a disciple of the medieval Catalan mystic, Ramon Lull. To students of his encyclopedism, Alsted is characterized especially by his tendency to combine Aristotelianism, Ramism, Lullism, and the arts of memory in a pursuit of universal knowledge similar to that of yet another of his favorite authors, Giordano Bruno. Thus, every main phase and aspect of Alsted's intellectual career can be illuminated by examining it in the context of the movement for further reformation.Less
Samuel Hartlib, John Dury, and Johann Amos Comenius step from central Europe's Reformed world into the pages of English intellectual history as if from out of a void. The places where they studied — Elbing, Brieg, Herborn — are towns which few Anglo-Saxon scholars could even locate unassisted on the map of central Europe. Historians have considered Johann Heinrich Alsted as the culmination of Herborn's accomplishments. German scholars often portray Alsted as a pillar of Calvinist orthodoxy, a pioneer of Reformed scholasticism, a participant at the Synod of Dort. In English scholarship, his primary association is with millenarianism. In Spain, he is a disciple of the medieval Catalan mystic, Ramon Lull. To students of his encyclopedism, Alsted is characterized especially by his tendency to combine Aristotelianism, Ramism, Lullism, and the arts of memory in a pursuit of universal knowledge similar to that of yet another of his favorite authors, Giordano Bruno. Thus, every main phase and aspect of Alsted's intellectual career can be illuminated by examining it in the context of the movement for further reformation.
Christopher D. Johnson
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801477423
- eISBN:
- 9780801464065
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801477423.003.0006
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
This chapter offers a close reading of Warburg's 1926 lecture on Rembrandt, in which he crystallizes his thinking about the Baroque and “superlatives” in art and lays the groundwork for the final ...
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This chapter offers a close reading of Warburg's 1926 lecture on Rembrandt, in which he crystallizes his thinking about the Baroque and “superlatives” in art and lays the groundwork for the final sequence of panels in the Atlas. This lecture also directly informs panels 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, and 75 of Mnemosyne and helps him forge a novel, diagrammatic form of thought that lead to his fateful encounter with Giordano Bruno. In the panels in the Atlas the notion of “metaphorical distance” is at once realized and ironized, as Warburg contemplates the ambivalent symbolism associated with Mussolini, the Eucharist, and new technology.Less
This chapter offers a close reading of Warburg's 1926 lecture on Rembrandt, in which he crystallizes his thinking about the Baroque and “superlatives” in art and lays the groundwork for the final sequence of panels in the Atlas. This lecture also directly informs panels 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, and 75 of Mnemosyne and helps him forge a novel, diagrammatic form of thought that lead to his fateful encounter with Giordano Bruno. In the panels in the Atlas the notion of “metaphorical distance” is at once realized and ironized, as Warburg contemplates the ambivalent symbolism associated with Mussolini, the Eucharist, and new technology.
Mary-Jane Rubenstein
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231156622
- eISBN:
- 9780231527422
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231156622.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
This chapter explores the activities of seventeenth-century cosmologies, starting with Giordano Bruno’s heretical cosmology and subsequent execution. The fascination with the possibility of other ...
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This chapter explores the activities of seventeenth-century cosmologies, starting with Giordano Bruno’s heretical cosmology and subsequent execution. The fascination with the possibility of other worlds was further incited by Galileo’s telescopic discoveries in 1610, and he was credited with lighting the fire of seventeenth-century “pluralism.” The cosmological writings of the seventeenth century presented a combination of anthropological interest, scientific restraint, and theological innovation—a combination most evident in Johannes Kepler’s research. The latter half of the century witnessed the emergence of Rene Descartes’ “vortex” theory. The chapter looks at how it spurred an increasing number of “pluralist” discourses, such as the works of Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle and Christiaan Huygens. The chapter also looks at Immanuel Kant’s cosmology, citing the Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens as his attempt to theorize the constitution and mechanical origin of the universe.Less
This chapter explores the activities of seventeenth-century cosmologies, starting with Giordano Bruno’s heretical cosmology and subsequent execution. The fascination with the possibility of other worlds was further incited by Galileo’s telescopic discoveries in 1610, and he was credited with lighting the fire of seventeenth-century “pluralism.” The cosmological writings of the seventeenth century presented a combination of anthropological interest, scientific restraint, and theological innovation—a combination most evident in Johannes Kepler’s research. The latter half of the century witnessed the emergence of Rene Descartes’ “vortex” theory. The chapter looks at how it spurred an increasing number of “pluralist” discourses, such as the works of Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle and Christiaan Huygens. The chapter also looks at Immanuel Kant’s cosmology, citing the Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens as his attempt to theorize the constitution and mechanical origin of the universe.
Yasmin Haskell
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780198713845
- eISBN:
- 9780191807152
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198713845.003.0005
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter offers a reappraisal of Latin Lucretian and anti-Lucretian poems in sixteenth-century Italy by Aonio Paleario, Marcello ‘Palingenio’ Stellato, Lodovico Parisetti, Jr, Scipione Capece, ...
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This chapter offers a reappraisal of Latin Lucretian and anti-Lucretian poems in sixteenth-century Italy by Aonio Paleario, Marcello ‘Palingenio’ Stellato, Lodovico Parisetti, Jr, Scipione Capece, and Giordano Bruno. It asks ‘why Lucretius’ and ‘why Latin’? The literary and ideological commitment to Lucretius of these Cinquecento authors varies considerably. Individual poems are to greater and lesser extents natural-philosophical, moralizing, polemical, and apocalyptic. It is argued that, in spite of some common themes, chiefly the immortality of the soul, they cannot be viewed retrospectively as a unified tradition. Nevertheless, the recurring motif of the spiritual or intellectual flight proves a useful key to unlocking the appeal of Lucretius’s poem for sixteenth-century Italian writers of Latin philosophical poetry in a time of religious uncertainty.Less
This chapter offers a reappraisal of Latin Lucretian and anti-Lucretian poems in sixteenth-century Italy by Aonio Paleario, Marcello ‘Palingenio’ Stellato, Lodovico Parisetti, Jr, Scipione Capece, and Giordano Bruno. It asks ‘why Lucretius’ and ‘why Latin’? The literary and ideological commitment to Lucretius of these Cinquecento authors varies considerably. Individual poems are to greater and lesser extents natural-philosophical, moralizing, polemical, and apocalyptic. It is argued that, in spite of some common themes, chiefly the immortality of the soul, they cannot be viewed retrospectively as a unified tradition. Nevertheless, the recurring motif of the spiritual or intellectual flight proves a useful key to unlocking the appeal of Lucretius’s poem for sixteenth-century Italian writers of Latin philosophical poetry in a time of religious uncertainty.
Brenda Machosky
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804763806
- eISBN:
- 9780804773508
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804763806.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
An academic conference held at Stanford University in February 2005 drew new voices, young scholars, and academic veterans who responded to the call to “think allegory otherwise” by considering their ...
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An academic conference held at Stanford University in February 2005 drew new voices, young scholars, and academic veterans who responded to the call to “think allegory otherwise” by considering their work in an allegorical mode. This book is a collection of essays that came out of that conference, the objective of which is to inspire broader and deeper engagements with what Angus Fletcher calls “protean device.” The essays tackle a wide range of topics, including the role of metaphysics in allegory and thinking about allegory without reference to ideas; the allegorical construction of colonialism and the ideology of the museum; allegorical structures in the architectural debates and broadsides of early modern Paris; allegory in the performative aspects of diagrams in texts by Giordano Bruno and Galileo; and allegorical structure in philosophy in Hannah Arendt's Life of the Mind. The book also explores the place of allegory in contemporary scientific discourse as well as the materialist allegory of good and evil in Francis Bacon's fables and John Milton's epic.Less
An academic conference held at Stanford University in February 2005 drew new voices, young scholars, and academic veterans who responded to the call to “think allegory otherwise” by considering their work in an allegorical mode. This book is a collection of essays that came out of that conference, the objective of which is to inspire broader and deeper engagements with what Angus Fletcher calls “protean device.” The essays tackle a wide range of topics, including the role of metaphysics in allegory and thinking about allegory without reference to ideas; the allegorical construction of colonialism and the ideology of the museum; allegorical structures in the architectural debates and broadsides of early modern Paris; allegory in the performative aspects of diagrams in texts by Giordano Bruno and Galileo; and allegorical structure in philosophy in Hannah Arendt's Life of the Mind. The book also explores the place of allegory in contemporary scientific discourse as well as the materialist allegory of good and evil in Francis Bacon's fables and John Milton's epic.
María Pía Lara
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231162807
- eISBN:
- 9780231535045
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231162807.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
This chapter examines Hans Blumenberg's account of secularization in his book The Legitimacy of the Modern Age. The manuscript was first written in 1966, but following critical responses from Karl ...
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This chapter examines Hans Blumenberg's account of secularization in his book The Legitimacy of the Modern Age. The manuscript was first written in 1966, but following critical responses from Karl Löwith, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and others, it was revised and finally published in 1976. The book is divided into four parts. The first is dedicated to critically exploring theses of secularization, especially as developed by Karl Löwith. The second section deals with Blumenberg's view of history as immanent, in which he tries to demonstrate the continuities between the problems posed by the Gnostics and the efforts of various Christian thinkers to develop them, finally crystallizing in the ways that made modernity a new, self-conscious, and assertive era. The third section examines the development of the experiences of “curiosity,” once considered an impediment to knowledge. The fourth and final section takes Nicholas de Cusa and Giordano Bruno as exemplary figures of the embodiment of two distinct positions: one that expresses the attitudes and character of the Middle Ages; another articulating characteristically modern attitudes.Less
This chapter examines Hans Blumenberg's account of secularization in his book The Legitimacy of the Modern Age. The manuscript was first written in 1966, but following critical responses from Karl Löwith, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and others, it was revised and finally published in 1976. The book is divided into four parts. The first is dedicated to critically exploring theses of secularization, especially as developed by Karl Löwith. The second section deals with Blumenberg's view of history as immanent, in which he tries to demonstrate the continuities between the problems posed by the Gnostics and the efforts of various Christian thinkers to develop them, finally crystallizing in the ways that made modernity a new, self-conscious, and assertive era. The third section examines the development of the experiences of “curiosity,” once considered an impediment to knowledge. The fourth and final section takes Nicholas de Cusa and Giordano Bruno as exemplary figures of the embodiment of two distinct positions: one that expresses the attitudes and character of the Middle Ages; another articulating characteristically modern attitudes.
