Dans cet article, nous proposons une étude du rapport qu’entretient la notion d’espace avec la doctrine de la prisca theologia dans le manuscrit « Tempus et locus » d’Isaac Newton. Nous nous efforçons de montrer que ce manuscrit méconnu remet en question la lecture positiviste qu’il peut être tentant de faire du concept d’espace absolu, tel qu’il est défini à la même période dans la première édition des Principes mathématiques de la philosophie naturelle. Il s’agit au contraire de (...) comprendre l’importance des enjeux théologiques de la construction de ce concept afin d’en saisir la richesse et l’importance dans l’œuvre scientifique du savant anglais. (shrink)

Dans cet article, nous proposons une étude du rapport qu’entretient la notion d’espace avec la doctrine de la prisca theologia dans le manuscrit « Tempus et locus » d’Isaac Newton. Nous nous efforçons de montrer que ce manuscrit méconnu remet en question la lecture positiviste qu’il peut être tentant de faire du concept d’espace absolu, tel qu’il est défini à la même période dans la première édition des Principes mathématiques de la philosophie naturelle. Il s’agit au contraire de (...) comprendre l’importance des enjeux théologiques de la construction de ce concept afin d’en saisir la richesse et l’importance dans l’œuvre scientifique du savant anglais. (shrink)

This case study of a 2016 Florida constitutional amendment analyses the semiotic devices and mechanisms of shaping public opinion on solar energy and beliefs about energy distribution. After a nationwide rise in rooftop solar installations between 2014 and 2015, utilities in several US states were faced with challenges to their business models. Anticipating similar problems in Florida, utilities and energy corporations promoted constitutional amendments. This semiotic analysis follows the voter from the billboards and flyers to the text on the ballot. (...) Starting from Peirce’s phenomenological categories, this critical analysis of the campaign reveals how the goals of the amendment were shrouded in positive environmental and consumer protection narratives. Lakoff ’s cognitive linguistics and Stibbe’s ecolinguistics support a deeper analysis of the ballot text. This study shows that by leaving key concepts (especially net metering) out of the discourse, the ballot text successfully framed an anti-solar amendment as a pro-consumer measure, while hiding the direct legal implications concerning alternative energy distribution. In particular, this study explains the opposition to the sharing of surplus in the context of neoclassical economics as a key factor in shaping beliefs about alternative energy distribution. (shrink)

Adult neurogenesis is an exciting and rapidly advancing field of research. It addresses basic biological questions, such as the how and why of de novo neuronal production during adulthood, as well as medically relevant issues, including the potential link between adult neural stem cells and psychiatric disorders, or how stem cell manipulation might be used as a strategy for neuronal replacement. Current research mainly focuses on rodents, but we review here recent examination of non‐mammalian vertebrates, which demonstrates that bona fide (...) adult neural stem cells exist in these species. Importantly, especially in teleost fish, these cells can be abundant and located in various brain areas. Hence, non‐mammalian vertebrate species provide invaluable comparative material for extracting core mechanisms of adult neural stem cell maintenance and fate. BioEssays 29:745–757, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

All human activity including motion is construed mentally with reference to different objects and spatial relations that are relevant (Waliński 2014). Following the work of Talmy (1985, 2000) on categorization of languages on the basis of motion events into verb framed languages and satellite framed languages, this paper addresses the typology of the Tugen language regarding motion events. It takes into consideration the reclassification of the V-languages into equipollent frame and the doubling frame, (Slobin 2003; Croft et al. 2010). Further (...) it explores the hybrid system as expounded by Schröder (2016) on the categorization of V-languages so as to cater for languages that do not fit into the equipollent and the doubling frame. This paper analyses motion events in Tugen, a Kalenjin language belonging to the southern Nilotic cluster. In this analysis, Tugen is seen as both verb framed language and satellite framed as a result of prevalence of deictic directionals and the applicative. The language also bears an associated motion affix which relates simultaneous motion to non-motion events. The associated motion affix renders the motion events to be satellite framed. The occurrence of deictic directionals on motion events that are verb framed can also be taken to be instances of doubling frame. (shrink)

The issue of gender and agriculture has been on the research agendas of civil society organisations, governments, and academia since the 1970s. Starting from the role of women in agriculture, research has mainly focused on the gendered division of work and the normative constitution of the farm as masculine. Although the gendered division of work has been questioned, the idea of binary gender has mostly been taken as a given. This explorative research shifts the attention from the production of (traditional) (...) gender roles to the making and unmaking of binary gender. An ethnographic study of four farms in Switzerland is drawn on to explore queer farming practices and investigate how queer farmers navigate gender normativity and what this tells us about gender in agriculture more broadly. After considering the mechanisms through which queer farmers are discouraged from farming as a livelihood on the basis of their sex, gender or sexuality, this article argues that queer farmers de- and re-construct gender and farming identities differently, which has research and policy implications for a more diverse and resilient rurality. (shrink)

In his Ecolinguistics, Stibbe (2020) declares the story of economic growth (the continuous increase in production and consumption) as the ‘master narrative’ that is at the same time the most harmful story we live by. This paper explains where this story of growth comes from and describes how it supplants or suppresses alternatives, such as stories of thrift and sharing. By connecting the biosemiotic model of Funktionskreis (e.g. Uexküll, 1920) as “the primary mechanism of meaning making” (Kull 2020) to cognitive (...) linguistics (e.g. Lakoff, 2009) and critical discourse analysis (e.g. van Leeuwen, 2018), this paper explores how stories of thrift and sharing can be turned into activism that seeks to reframe waste as surplus that can be shared; but they can also hide the old business models of the master narrative. Stories of sharing are often erased to protect corporate interests. Narratives of sharing can be duplicitous, especially in the context of the ‘sharing economy’. Attempts at reframing resources and energy as common wealth owned by everyone are squelched by the master narrative in contexts like resource and energy distribution. Can the new story of shrinking and degrowth become a new alternative to the master narrative and promote new decelerated semiotic habits (Maran, 2023) for a more fulfilling life with less (e.g. Herrmann 2022)? (shrink)

This paper explains how we create concepts such as the forest or the backyard through language. Reflecting on Andreas Weber’s hope for a revolution of the life sciences and a re-evaluation of the role human beings play in nature, this paper adopts as a starting point Bruno Latour’s characterization of the distinctionbetween nature and culture as an illusion that came with Modernity. Theoretical notions from modelling systems theory and cognitive linguistics explain that whilelanguage plays a key role in constructing new (...) models of nature, new cognitive habits and changes of belief depend on face-to-face and non-verbal communication with other organisms, human and non-human. (shrink)

The problem of names of illnesses is both a problem of words and values that should address not only the classification of disorders, but also a fundamental question both for medical sciences and humanities: can psychiatric nosology and classifications fit with the ontological constitution of human beings? This paper aims to discuss the so-called “psychiatric object” and its language and it intends to provide a hermeneutical-phenomenological account to mental health. In doing so, the paper will firstly examine the “psychiatric object” (...) and its language; secondly, it will show the difference between taxonomy and ontology, both of interest for the psychiatric object; third, it will insist on the critique of the epistemological status of psychiatry conceived from a natural point of view following three main paths: a metaphysical one (Heidegger, Jaspers), a social one (Szasz, Foucault, Basaglia), and an ethical one (Laing). Finally, it will clarify why phenomenology and in particular hermeneutical-phenomenology can illuminate the understanding of the psychiatric object and its implications in a cultural context, in order to achieve a more humanistic psychiatry. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to describe some parallels and theoretical affinities between biosemiotics and biolinguistics. In particular, this paper examines the importance of Uexküll's Umwelt and Peircean abduction as foundational concepts for Sebeok's biosemiotics and Chomsky's biolinguistic program. Other affinities touched upon in this paper include references to concepts articulated by Immanuel Kant, Konrad Lorenz, Marcel Florkin, François Jacob, C.H. Waddington, D'Arcy Thomson and Ernst Haeckel. While both programs share theoretical influences and historiographical parallels in their mid-century origins (...) continuing throughout the late twentieth century, recent articulations of biosemiotics and biolinguistics privilege different intellectual styles and methods of inquiry that define their future objectives as intellectual movements. The goal of this paper is to show that, in spite of the different scholarly agendas of biosemiotics and biolinguistics, both movements share a theoretical and philosophical core in Peirce and Uexküll. (shrink)

Setting out to understand the effects of positive moral emotions in leadership, this research examines the consequences of leaders’ expressions of gratitude and pride for their followers. In two experimental vignette studies and a field study, leaders’ gratitude expressions showed a positive effect and leaders’ pride expressions showed a negative effect on followers’ ascriptions of leader selfishness. Thereby, leaders’ gratitude expression indirectly led to higher follower satisfaction with and OCB towards the leader, while leaders’ pride expressions indirectly reduced satisfaction with (...) and OCB towards the leader. Furthermore, leaders’ expressions of gratitude indirectly reduced followers’ intentions to leave the leader, while leaders’ expressions of pride indirectly fuelled them. Although ascriptions of selfishness consistently influenced these leader outcomes more strongly than comparable organizational outcomes, results on organizational outcomes were mixed. While leaders’ expressions of gratitude led, as expected, to higher job satisfaction and lower turnover intentions, leaders’ expressions of pride showed positive relations with both OCB towards the organization and intentions to leave the organization. We discuss the theoretical implications of leaders’ expressions of positive moral emotions as signals of outcome attributions, as well as leaders’ selfishness and practical implications that help leaders build followers’ satisfaction and positive leader–follower relationships. (shrink)

Gianluca De Fazio’s book Avversità e margini di gioco. Studio sulla soggettività in Merleau-Ponty presents precise and original research along several nodes of great importance in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical production, such as subjectivity, expression, passivity, nature, history. By focusing on, without limiting himself to, the 1950’s period, the author declares that he aims at a denaturalization of nature and a dehistoricization of history: an overcoming of dichotomies which, though faithfully following the Merleau-Pontian path, does not fail to have a Deleuzian overtones. (...) The issues of the book are also, and above all, political, shown in the considerations of the task of philosophy. (shrink)

This article retraces the main instances at the root of Merleau-Ponty’s project of a « transcendental geology », a project announced in a working note of 1960. This project is linked to the complex intertwining of history and nature, which Merleau-Ponty thematizes as the two non-objectifiable dimensions that pose a challenge to reflexive thought. History and nature, both in their particular subjective manifestations as personal life or one’s own body, as well as in their broader sense as the history of (...) peoples or nature as a domain of the unbuilt, are characterized as unavoidable, as quasi-objects that are the soil of existence. It is in this direction that Merleau-Ponty’s interest in the “ultra-things” of Henri Wallon, those entities that the child can neither conceive nor imagine, seems to be heading. I propose that ultra-things are linked to inhabiting: they are the uninhabitable and the dimensions that cannot be renounced. This relationship with inhabiting restores the relational aspect of the problem of the unreflective in Merleau-Ponty and highlights the timeliness and urgency of the program of a transcendental geology as an ecology of thought and as an ecological philosophy. (shrink)

Thomas Sebeok attributed it to what he called the ‘wretched’ translation of Uexküll’s Theoretische Biologie (1920) that the notion of Umwelt did not reachthe Anglo-American intellectual community much earlier. There is no doubt that making more of Uexküll’s Umweltlehre available in English will not only furtherthe biosemiotic movement, but also fill a gap in the foundational theoretical canon of semiotics in general. The purpose of this paper is to address issues of terminology and theory translation between Uexküll’s Umweltlehre and current (...) biosemiotics. (shrink)

Based on a field study, this paper explores the differential role that perceived top management trustworthiness has on female and male employees’ negative emotions and turnover intentions in organizations. A theoretical model is established that explicates a negative indirect effect of perceived top management trustworthiness on employee turnover intentions through employee negative emotions. The results reveal that there is a negative relationship between perceived top management trustworthiness and employee negative emotions and resulting turnover intentions and that this effect is stronger (...) for female employees than for male employees. These results demonstrate the pivotal role played by top management trustworthiness, provide an explanation for the turnover gender gap, and highlight the subjectivity in reactions to trustworthiness perceptions. The implications for organizations are discussed in line with the need for top management to positively influence employees and particularly women, to retain them in their workforce. (shrink)

Il saggio muove da una ricostruzione storico-concettuale dell’interpretazione merleau-pontyana del manoscritto di Husserl Rovesciamento della dottrina copernicana nell’interpretazione della corrente visione del mondo, con cui Merleau-Ponty è in dialogo sin dalla Fenomenologia della percezione, per ripercorrere gli sviluppi del tema della Terra nell’avanzare della riflessione merleau-pontyana sul corpo-proprio, sull’organismo vivente, sulla dimensione carnale dell’essere. La proposta di un ritorno alla Terra, intesa come Boden irriducibile dell’esperienza, trova infatti il suo risvolto ontologico nell’idea di Spielraum, che già Husserl definiva come “ambito (...) di possibilità”, e che in Merleau-Ponty assume il senso di un margine di gioco sempre aperto nella carne. Boden e Spielraum, non a caso tematizzati da Merleau-Ponty in due corsi paralleli tenuti al Collège de France nell’anno 1959-1960, permettono una rivalutazione del vivente secondo un modello che, contro il riduzionismo meccanicista, privilegi la spontaneità e la contingenza, e aprono allo sviluppo dell’ontologia porosa che il filosofo andrà proponendo negli ultimi anni. Ricostruendo la funzione della riflessione sulla corporeità e sul rapporto del vivente al mondo-ambiente in questa maturazione, si argomenterà che la critica che Merleau-Ponty muove al dualismo empirismo-idealismo trovi nell’idea di Terra un momento chiave, che contribuisce ad orientarla in direzione di una filosofia della carne. Questo passaggio riconfigura la Natura stessa, pensata non già come un originario, ma in quanto ambito di possibilità processuale e transindividuale, come quel quasi-oggetto, come lo definiva, ancora, Husserl, che presenta un’irriducibile resistenza ad un pensiero di sorvolo, proprio in quanto è condizione del pensiero stesso e ancoraggio della vita tutta.This essay begins with a historico-conceptual reconstruction of the Merleau-Pontian interpretation of Husserl’s manuscript, “Foundational Investigations of the Phenomenological Origin of the Spatiality of Nature,” with which Merleau-Ponty is in dialogue from Phenomenology of Perception onward, and revisits the development of the theme of the Earth in the progression of Merleau-Ponty’s reflection on le corps propre, the living organism, and the carnal dimension of being. The proposal for a return to the Earth, taken as irreducible Boden of experience, indeed finds its ontological reverse side in the idea of Spielraum, which Husserl already defined as a “milieu of possibilities,” and which in Merleau-Ponty takes on the sense of a margin of play always open in the flesh. Boden and Spielraum, two notions that Merleau-Ponty does not thematize by chance in the two parallel courses given at the Collège de France over the years 1959-1960, enable a reassessment of the living being according to a model that, against mechanistic reductionism, privileges spontaneity and contingency, and opens to the development of the porous ontology that the philosopher would propose in his final years. Reconstructing the function of reflection on corporeality, and on the relationship of the living being with its milieu in the process, it will be argued that the criticism directed by Merleau-Ponty against the dualism of empiricism-idealism finds in the idea of the Earth a key moment that contributes to orienting him in the direction of a philosophy of the flesh. This passage reconfigures Nature itself, no longer conceived of as an originating, but as a milieu of processual and transindividual possibilities, like that quasi-object, as Husserl again defined it, that presents an irreducible resistance against high-altitude thinking, precisely as the condition of thought itself and the anchorage of all life.Cet essai commence avec une reconstruction historico-conceptuelle de l’interprétation merleau-pontienne du manuscrit de Husserl, Renversement de la doctrine copernicienne, avec lequel Merleau-Ponty est en dialogue depuis la Phénoménologie de la perception, et revisite les développement du thème de la Terre dans la progression de la réflexion merleau-pontienne sur le corps propre, sur l’organisme vivant, sur la dimension charnelle de l’être. La proposition d’un retour à la Terre, prise comme Boden irréductible de l’expérience, trouve en effet son envers ontologique dans l’idée de Spielraum, que Husserl déjà définissait comme « milieu de possibilités » et qui chez Merleau-Ponty prend le sens d’une marge de jeu toujours ouverte dans la chair. Boden et Spielraum, deux notions que Merleau-Ponty ne thématise pas par hasard dans les deux cours parallèles donnés au Collège de France au cours de l’année 1959-1960, permettent une réévaluation du vivant selon un modèle qui, contre le réductionnisme mécaniste, privilégie la spontanéité et la contingence, et ouvrent au développement de l’ontologie poreuse que le philosophe allait proposer dans les dernières années. Reconstruisant la fonction de la réflexion sur la corporéité et sur le rapport du vivant avec son milieu dans ce processus, on argumentera que la critique dirigée par Merleau-Ponty contre le dualisme empirisme-idéalisme trouve dans l’idée de la Terre un moment clé qui contribue à l’orienter en direction d’une philosophie de la chair. Ce passage reconfigure la Nature elle-même, pensée non pas déjà comme un originaire, mais en tant que milieu de possibilités processuelles et transindividuelles, en tant que quasi-objet, comme le définissait, encore, Husserl qui offrait une résistance irréductible contre une pensée de survol, précisément en tant que condition de la pensée elle-même et ancrage de toute la vie. (shrink)

This essay builds on two questions: the relation of the child with the other and the child’s way of knowing, in which the resistance of the unreflected is not yet problematized. Through a reconstruction of Merleau-Ponty’s critique of Piaget’s idea of the child’s linear intellectual progression toward reflexive abstraction, I highlight the moment of unreflection by taking up the notion of ultra-thing, which Merleau-Ponty borrows from Henry Wallon. These ultra-things are entities with which the child entertains a vague relation and (...) which always remain at the horizon of her perception without yet being possessed in a representation or grasped in a concept. They include, for example, the sun, the sky, the Earth, the body as an object, existence before the birth of the child – uninhabitable dimensions or, to the contrary, ones that are necessarily inhabited. The concept of ultra-thing has not been sufficiently explored in Merleau-Pontian studies and its importance remains underappreciated. This essay thus formulates a hypothesis about the relation between ultra-things and hyper-reflection. (shrink)

The construct of ‘alexithymia,’ formulated in the late 1960s, described the inability to express one’s feelings as a deficit in the signifying-abilities of men and women. In this study, the profile of the alexithemic serves as a point of reference for a discussion concerning language and consciousness and the cognitive/neuroscientific turn in the past decades. The objectives of this paper are to show that the cognitive/neuroscientific turn profoundly affected the understanding of alexithymia in particular and the relationship between language and (...) consciousness in general. As the dominant cognitive/neuroscientific models of consciousness ignore the social embeddedness and the importance of the signifying abilities of human beings, this paper presents alternative models of consciousness and issues of intersubjectivity by proposing a variation on a model from René Thom’s ‘catastrophe theory’ and Uexküll’s theory of ‘autoambience.’ These models, predicated upon social embeddedness and semiotic ability, explain how certain circumstances, such as are often identified as ‘depression,’ can be catalysts of productive outcome. In particular, the notion of ‘play’ in René Thom’s catastrophe theory underscores the primacy of ‘language play’ as a combinatorial signifying activity with a restorative function that is exemplified in the notion of fiction in the work of David Lodge. (shrink)

This paper explains how recent changes in the ways we study other animals to better understand the human faculty of language are indicative of changing narratives concerning the intelligence of other animals. Uexküll’s concept of Umwelt as a species-specific model of the world is essential to understanding the semiotic abilities of all organisms, including humans. From this follows the view that human language is primarily a cognitive tool for making models of the world. This view is consistent with the basic (...) premises of cognitive linguistics. The rejection of behaviorism in linguistics represents a turning point in the history of animal studies. The resulting criticism of long-term studies with primates illustrates this shift concerning the study of wild animals within the language sciences and beyond. New insights in dog cognition and research on the processing of human language in canines are reflective of a change in focus away from anthropocentrism towards the species-specific semiotic abilities of animals in the twenty-first century. This new orientation away from comparing animal sign-systems to human language and the importance of studying intelligent wild animals in the wild instead of in captivity have lead to an important re-evaluation of our relationship with other animals and our views of their cognitive and semiotic profiles. This leads to questions such as what role non-human organisms can play in the language sciences, and what our limitations are of studying the sign systems of other animals. Recent research on the signifying abilities of wild dolphins, for instance, has identified a new set of characteristics by which to study intelligence in other species. (shrink)

This paper explains Viktor von Weizsäcker’s Gestaltkreis model as a reinterpretation of Jakob von Uexküll’s Funktionskreis. Also derived from the Funktionskreis is Thure von Uexküll’s Situationskreis model. Both Weizsäcker’s Gestaltkreis and Thure von Uexküll’s Situationskreis have evolved in the context of integrated medicine in Germany throughout the twentieth century. Focusing on the role of language in health and medicine, this paper addresses important concepts associated with the project of integrated medicine in Germany, especially the biographical approach practiced by Viktor von (...) Weizsäcker and developed by Thure von Uexküll through the concept of the biographical organ. While their efforts to reform the practice of medicine and the training of physicians were unsuccessful, recent research in the psychology of language and health and recommendations for more patient-centered communication resonate with the principles underlying Viktor von Weizsäcker’s and Thure von Uexküll’s integrated medicine. (shrink)

Thomas Sebeok attributed it to what he called the ‘wretched’ translation of Uexküll’s Theoretische Biologie that the notion of Umwelt did not reach the Anglo-American intellectual community much earlier. There is no doubt that making more of Uexküll’s Umweltlehre available in English will not only further the biosemiotic movement, but also fill a gap in the foundational theoretical canon of semiotics in general. The purpose of this paper is to address issues of terminology and theory translation between Uexküll’s Umweltlehre and (...) current biosemiotics. (shrink)

What to eat is a question of everyday life. What food to grow (and how) has become an important issue of political and scientific debate. Using Charles Sanders Peirce’s famous essay on The Fixation of Belief (1877), this paper examines what food habits we hold with tenacity, which beliefs about what to eat are imposed on us by authority, when our choices are based on a priori reasoning, and where we rely on scientific logic when we choose food. Based on (...) Peirce’s early pragmatist ideas, this paper analyzes current debates about veganism, clean meat, and small-scale pasture farming as alternatives to the current food system. While some patterns of opposing views can be explained by contrasting conservative and progressive modes of thought (Lakoff 2008), an ecolinguistic perspective (Stibbe 2015) explains, for instance, how animals are sometimes erased from food narratives. The familiar and possibly outdated model of the local and the global is augmented with a terrestrial point of view (Latour 2018) as more eaters consider the future of the planet. (shrink)

The objective of the article is double. On the one hand, it is aimed at examining the reworking of the Prisca Theologia, by Marsilio Ficino, Florentine neoplatonic of the XV century. That is: a wisdom whose origins date back to the Egypt of the Pharaohs and the Persia of Zoroaster. A millenary tradition that contained within it the doctrines of a true pia philosophia. On the other hand, to analyze the reception of hermeticism in the thought of Ficino (...) and his attempt to generate a concord between christianity and paganism. We consider also that in this attempt, Ficino elaborates along his works three images of Hermes Trismegisto which are condensed in his main purpose, to prove the manifest harmony between the doctrines of the ancient pagan theologians and Christian Theology. (shrink)

This article retraces the main instances at the root of Merleau-Ponty’s project of a « transcendental geology », a project announced in a working note of 1960. This project is linked to the complex intertwining of history and nature, which Merleau-Ponty thematizes as the two non-objectifiable dimensions that pose a challenge to reflexive thought. History and nature, both in their particular subjective manifestations as personal life or one’s own body, as well as in their broader sense as the history of (...) peoples or nature as a domain of the unbuilt, are characterized as unavoidable, as quasi-objects that are the soil of existence. It is in this direction that Merleau-Ponty’s interest in the “ultra-things” of Henri Wallon, those entities that the child can neither conceive nor imagine, seems to be heading. I propose that ultra-things are linked to inhabiting: they are the uninhabitable and the dimensions that cannot be renounced. This relationship with inhabiting restores the relational aspect of the problem of the unreflective in Merleau-Ponty and highlights the timeliness and urgency of the program of a transcendental geology as an ecology of thought and as an ecological philosophy. (shrink)

This essay analyzes the ways in which, in his Nova de Universis Philosophia, Francesco Patrizi uses, adopts, and, in some cases, rejects the Stoic philosophical tradition. Although, at first glance, most of Patrizi’s remarks on Stoicism and Stoic understanding of nature are critical – as this article demonstrates – he widely relied on Stoic teaching that he sought to combine with Neoplatonism and the prisca theologia doctrine.

In the summer of 1486, Pico came into possession of what he regarded as the original Chaldean text of the Chaldean Oracles, whose Greek text thus came to appear to him as an incomplete and flawed translation. The now-lost purported original Chaldean Oracles were a back translation infused with kabbalistic elements produced by Flavius Mithridates. In his Conclusiones nongentae (Rome, 1486), however, Pico devoted to them fifteen conclusions. Through an overall analysis of these conclusions, the first part of the article (...) points out the kabbalistic themes and symbols that Pico descried in the original Chaldean Oracles. In the second part, an in-depth analysis of one of these conclusiones demonstrates that Pico’s reading of the oracle quoted therein implied that the Greek translator had missed the kabbalistic purport of the original. The article shows that Pico’s Conclusiones aimed at pointing out that the transmission of kabbalah to Zoroaster and from Zoroaster (although not without misinterpretations) to the Greek world – in other words, the existence of a divinely revealed prisca theologia transmitted through the ages – could be demonstrated on the basis of philological analysis and that, according to Pico, insofar as they provided a philological reconstruction of that science and its transmission, the Conclusiones should be reckoned as the culmination of the studia humanitatis. (shrink)

In the fifteenth century, idolatry could be understood as one in a diversity of religious rites. Nicholas of Cusa and subsequent Platonists emphasized that no rite was necessary, only love, and drew on prisca theologia to understand religion throughout the world. By the turn of the sixteenth century, cosmographers such as Peter Martyr Anglerius incorporated these ideas into descriptions of religious and cultural practice. Early Reformation concerns about removing superstitious rites and images, and the Counter-Reformation response to that (...) critique, led to a vilification of heterodox religion as idolatrous and the increasing location of idolatry in cultures outside of Europe. (shrink)

Hasta ahora gran parte de la literatura crítica sobre la cuestión de la religión en Maquiavelo ha limitado su atención a las religiones romana y cristiana, sin haber considerado la recepción italiana y florentina de otros monoteísmos no cristianos (ya sean semitas o paganos), la filosofía política medieval árabe y judía (es decir, la profetología), o el nuevo platonismo que fuera introducido en la Italia renacentista por la llamada «diáspora» de los filósofos bizantinos. Una vez que se tienen en cuenta (...) todos estos elementos se hace muy difícil no reconocer que la cultura florentina que albergó a Ficino, Pico, Savonarola y Maquiavelo se vio profundamente influenciada, como analizamos en el presente trabajo, tanto por la recepción de lo que se conoce como «teología antigua» (_prisca theologia_) como también por la «profetología» árabe y judía, especialmente en la obra de Alfarabi. En el presente texto sostengo por tanto que el análisis de la estrecha relación entre la «teología antigua» y la «profetología» que tuvo lugar en Florencia décadas antes de que Maquiavelo compusiera su obra nos permite comprender mejor la concepción maquiaveliana de la religión civil, que estaría fuertemente condicionada por una interpretación de la república romana desde la perspectiva de la república hebrea y la profecía mosaica. (shrink)

This essay explores the legacy of the Platonic philosophy at the end of the sixteenth century, when the Catholic Church switched from a tolerant approach to a rejection of the heterodox elements of the prisca theologia, and provides an analysis of Ciro Spontoni’s Corona del principe (1590) and Dodici libri del governo di Stato (1599). This two works clearly witnessed this change in the contemporary cultural climate, as Katinis shows highlighting the contrast between the massive presence of Platonism (...) and Hermeticism in the Corona and the exclusion of them from the Dodici libri. Furthermore, the essay examines the relationship between Spontoni’s political arguments and their sources. The essay addresses the major contemporary trends, including Platonism, Aristotelianism, Machiavellism, and Hermeticism, and pays particular attention to Marsilio Ficino’s commentary of Plato’s Republic, translated in vernacular by Spontoni himself and published with his Corona del principe. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Chinese and Indian Ways of Thinking in Early Modern European Philosophy: The Reception and the Exclusion by Selusi AmbrogioCatherine König-Pralong (bio)Chinese and Indian Ways of Thinking in Early Modern European Philosophy: The Reception and the Exclusion. By Selusi Ambrogio. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. How Modern Historians of Philosophy Drew Their World MapsIn his latest book, Chinese and Indian Ways of Thinking in Early Modern European Philosophy: The Reception (...) and the Exclusion, Selusi Ambrogio presents an extensive survey of how Indian and Chinese traditions were conceived of and staged in modern European historiography. This study, which surpasses in detail and scope other works devoted to the same topic,1 reconstructs 150 years of philosophical historiography. Otto van Heurn's Barbaricae philosophiae antiquitatum libri duo (published in 1600) included for the first time contemporary and ancient Indian thinkers in the philosophical doxography; at the other end of the time span considered, Jacob Brucker's Historia critica philosophiae (1744) sanctioned the exclusion of Chinese and Indian thinkers by means of a detailed criticism of their pseudo-philosophies. Moreover, Ambrogio makes the choice to focus on the history of philosophy, unlike Étiemble, for example,2 who was interested in philosophy in a broad sense—academic and non-academic—as well as in travel accounts, the writings of the Jesuits, and those of their opponents, among other sources. According to Ambrogio, the histories of philosophy were more representative of "the common European understanding of these civilizations," since they "were not openly written for controversialist aims" (p. 2). Even though one may wonder whether defining philosophy ("what philosophy is and its role"—ibid.) and legitimizing its scholarly practice is a less political or less polemical undertaking than pamphlets, letters, and philosophical essays,3 it is probably true that philosophical historiography produced an effect of objectification or an appearance of neutrality.The author's main thesis is that the exclusion of all non-Greeks or non-Europeans from the history of philosophy does not date from the nineteenth century and Hegel, as is generally thought, but precisely from the moment when Indian and Chinese "civilizations" were considered by historians of philosophy and included in the philosophical historiography: from the beginning of the seventeenth century onwards (p. 3). Applying a segregationist model, modern historians of philosophy developed a dialectic of [End Page 203] identification—the author speaks of "reception"—and exclusion. They defined the European philosophical mind by demarcating it from other ways of thinking, which they situated in place and time on a civilizational world map. Encompassing the world from Europe produced in return processes of definition and situation. Philosophy was established in a territory and identified with a "culture" or "mind" that began to think itself in relation to the rest of the world under the name of Europe.4I will discuss Ambrogio's remarkable work in three moments. First, I will develop some particularly interesting conclusions drawn from the study; namely, they address periodization, the production of cultural categories, and the valorization of theory. I will then discuss the main thesis as well as some problematic issues, before concluding on the subject of a world absent from Ambrogio's book, the Near and Middle East.I. Logic of Time and Cultural TerritorializationAmbrogio's book is composed of three parts that address three successive historiographical models. First, the "perennialist universalism" (p. 57)—represented by, among others, Otto van Heurn, Thomas Burnet, Isaac Vossius, François Bernier, Georg Horn, and François de la Mothe le Vayer—included ancient India and then China in the "prisca theologia"; on the other hand, it described contemporary Indian and Chinese thinkers as "barbarian" philosophers. In this constellation, Buddhism began to function as the negative part of Oriental thought. According to the Jesuits, it had polluted and corrupted the original Chinese wisdom, often identified with Confucianism.The second model constructed an "Atheistic Asia," which was used either as a positive anthropological image (for example in Pierre Bayle), or as a negative foil for Lutheran philosophy and theology (for example in Johann Franz Buddeus). In the pages he dedicates to these endeavors, Ambrogio often moves away from philosophical doxography, represented by André-Fran... (shrink)