Search results for ""Author Lodi Nauta""
Harvard University Press In Defense of Common Sense: Lorenzo Valla's Humanist Critique of Scholastic Philosophy
One of the leading humanists of Quattrocento Italy, Lorenzo Valla (ca. 1406–1457) has been praised as a brilliant debunker of medieval scholastic philosophy. In this book Lodi Nauta seeks a more balanced assessment, presenting us with the first comprehensive analysis of the humanist’s attempt at radical reform of Aristotelian scholasticism.This study examines Valla’s attack on major tenets of Aristotelian metaphysics, showing how Valla employed common sense and linguistic usage as his guides. It then explicates Valla’s critique of Aristotelian psychology and natural philosophy and discusses his moral and religious views, including Valla’s notorious identification of Christian beatitude with Epicurean pleasure and his daring views on the Trinity. Finally, it takes up Valla’s humanist dialectic, which seeks to transform logic into a practical tool measured by persuasiveness and effectiveness.Nauta firmly places Valla’s arguments and ideas within the contexts of ancient and medieval philosophical traditions as well as renewed interest in ancient rhetoric in the Renaissance. He also demonstrates the relevance of Valla’s conviction that the philosophical problems of the scholastics are rooted in a misunderstanding of language. Combining philosophical exegesis and historical scholarship, this book offers a new approach to a major Renaissance thinker.
£45.86
Peeters Publishers Language and Cultural Change: Aspects of the Study and Use of Language in the Later Middle Ages and the Renaissance
It is common wisdom that language is culturally embedded. Cultural change is often accompanied by a change in idiom, in language or in ideas about language. No period serves as a better example of the formative influence of language on culture than the Renaissance. With the advent of humanism new modes of speaking and writing arose. But not only did classical Latin become the paradigm of clear and elegant writing, it also gave rise to new ideas about language and the teaching of it. Some scholars have argued that the cultural paradigm shift from scholasticism to humanism was causally determined by the rediscovery, study and emulation of the classical language, for learning a new language opens up new possibilities for exploring and describing one's perceptions, thoughts and beliefs. However, the vernacular traditions too rose to prominence and vied with Latin for cultural prestige.This volume, number XXIV in the series "Groningen Studies in Cultural Change", offers the papers presented at a workshop on language and cultural change held in Groningen in February 2004. Ten specialists explore the multifarious ways in which language contributed to the shaping of Renaissance culture. They discuss themes such as the relationship between medieval and classical Latin, between Latin and the vernacular, between humanist and scholastic conceptions of language and grammar, translation from Latin into the vernacular, Jewish ideas about different kinds of Hebrew, and shifting ideas on the power and limits of language in the articulation of truth and divine wisdom. There are essays on major thinkers such as Nicholas of Cusa and Leonardo Bruni, but also on less well-known figures and texts. The volume as a whole hopes to contribute to a deeper understanding of the highly complex interplay between language and culture in the transition period between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries.
£55.63
Peeters Publishers Imagination in the Later Middle Ages and Early Modern Times
Imagination has always been recognised as an important faculty of the human soul. As mediator between the senses and reason, it is rooted in philosophical and psychological-medical theories of human sensation and cognition. Linked to these theories was the use of the imagination in rhetoric and the arts: images had not only an epistemological role in transmitting information from the outside world to the mind's inner eye, but could also be used to manipulate the emotions of the audience. In this tradition, with Cicero and Quintilian as its A"auctoritatesA", images were used to arouse and manipulate the emotions. Both traditions had to be revalued in the seventeenth century with the advent of a mechanist, Cartesian picture of human cognition and the physical world. In spite of their usual suspicion of imagination, which was commonly associated with illusions, dreams and fiction, seventeenth-century philosophers realised that the imagination also had its place in mathematical, scientific and philosophical thinking. This volume, number XII in the series A"Groningen Studies in Cultural ChangeA", offers the papers presented at a workshop on imagination, organised by the editors in September 2002. It covers both the philosophical-psychological as well as the humanist-rhetorical traditions, discussing key figures such as Kilwardby, Lorenzo Valla, Leon Battista Alberti, Agricola, Gianfrancesco Pico, Erasmus, Paracelsus, Kepler, Bacon, Suarez, Descartes and Spinoza, but also treating hitherto neglected texts and writers such as Nicholas of Amsterdam and Jean Lemaire de Belges. By focusing on the ever-shifting ideas of the imagination as a philosophical and rhetorical tool, this volume not only deepens our understanding of its central theme but also sheds new light on the thought and writings of these and other authors.
£55.69
