L’introduction de Lucien en Europe occidentale à la fin du XIVe siècle est marquée par la traduction en latin de nombre de ses œuvres dans le courant du XVe siècle, notamment en Italie. Cet intérêt s’étend ensuite hors d’Italie, et à la fin du XVe siècle, presque tous les textes de Lucien ont fait l’objet d’une traduction latine, lesquelles commencent à être imprimées, mouvement qui est encore amplifié par l’édition du texte grec, en 1496. Le développement de l’imprimé dans la (...) première moitié du XVIe siècle facilite la diffusion des ces traductions dans toute l’Europe, qui ne seront concurrencées qu’à la fin du siècle par des traductions en vernaculaire. La recension de ces traductions latines de Lucien de la fin du XVe siècle à la fin du XVIe siècle, tant manuscrites qu’imprimées, nous donne quelques indications sur l’intérêt des humanistes pour cet auteur, mais aussi sur les fluctuations spatiales et chronologiques de cet intérêt, visibles à partir de l’imprimé. Elles nous instruisent aussi sur la notoriété et l’influence relatives des traducteurs, et les probables raisons des écarts. (shrink)

L’introduction de Lucien en Europe occidentale à la fin du XIVe siècle est marquée par la traduction en latin de nombre de ses œuvres dans le courant du XVe siècle, notamment en Italie. Cet intérêt s’étend ensuite hors d’Italie, et à la fin du XVe siècle, presque tous les textes de Lucien ont fait l’objet d’une traduction latine, lesquelles commencent à être imprimées, mouvement qui est encore amplifié par l’édition du texte grec, en 1496. Le développement de l’imprimé dans la (...) première moitié du XVIe siècle facilite la diffusion des ces traductions dans toute l’Europe, qui ne seront concurrencées qu’à la fin du siècle par des traductions en vernaculaire. La recension de ces traductions latines de Lucien de la fin du XVe siècle à la fin du XVIe siècle, tant manuscrites qu’imprimées, nous donne quelques indications sur l’intérêt des humanistes pour cet auteur, mais aussi sur les fluctuations spatiales et chronologiques de cet intérêt, visibles à partir de l’imprimé. Elles nous instruisent aussi sur la notoriété et l’influence relatives des traducteurs, et les probables raisons des écarts. (shrink)

This volume contains the first critical edition of the Scriptum super III-VIII libros Politicorum by Peter of Auvergne as well as a pragmatical edition of Books III-VIII of the medieval Latin translation of Aristotle's Politics. Intended as the continuation of Aquinas' unfinished commentary on the first three books of the Politics, the Scriptum became-together with Aquinas' commentary-the commentary on the Politics. From its appearance in the late thirteenth century to the end of the sixteenth century, the Scriptum represented the most (...) authoritative and influential interpretation of Books III-VIII of the Politics.The introduction to the volume provides both an overview of Peter's political thought and a case study of the production and dissemination of a university text. An examination of the manuscripts traces the preparation of the text from its first transcription and revision by a scribe close to the author-if not the author himself-to the preparation of the finished exemplar and its diffusion through the system of peciae. The introduction also explains how the text was adapted to fit the standards of humanistic Latin when it was first printed in the fifteenth century: its language was adjusted to humanistic standards, many formulations were reshaped, and passages were suppressed. These changes were subsequently preserved in all later editions of the text. Freed from this humanistic patina with which it has been transmitted since the early age of printing age, the Scriptum is now restored to its original version. (shrink)

Responding to the co-production of screen seriality and human subjectivity within contemporary machine cultures and economies of excess, this article examines televisual affect and proposes concepts that address the languages, components and processes of particular televisual subjectivities. Discussions focus on science fiction fantasy series Farscape – a space odyssey fascinated with biotechnological evolution and mutative consciousness. This article aims to invigorate and extend the critical analysis of contemporary televisual affect, taking up questions and methodologies from Félix Guattari’s machinic ontology and (...) Georges Bataille’s formulation of a sacrificial economy to address the conditions of consumption–production relevant to television today. (shrink)

This paper presents Duns Scotus’s theory of mixture in the context of medieval discussions over Aristotle’s theory of mixed bodies. It revisits the accounts of mixture given by Avicenna, Averroes, and Thomas Aquinas, before presenting Scotus’s account as a reaction to Averroes. It argues that Duns Scotus rejected the Aristotelian theory of mixture altogether and that his account went contrary to the entire Latin tradition. Scotus denies that mixts arise out of the four classical elements and he maintains that both (...) the elemental forms and the elemental qualities are lost in the mixture. Consequently, he denies the distinction between the process of mixture and that of substantial change through generation and corruption. The reassessment of Scotus’s account modifies the current historical representation of this discussion, inherited from Anneliese Maier. (shrink)

This article argues for the establishment of a new, "annalistic" model of history and historical investigation. This implies a new concept of historical event: instead of being seen as an element within a historical narrative, the historical event is defined as the common reference point of many narratives that can be told about it. The annalistic model also implies a new concept of historical change: instead of being defined as the change of an "object" within a set of given historical (...) parameters, historical change has to be perceived as the change of parameters related to a given historical object. A new concept of history follows from the annalistic model: instead of history being a metaphysical unity of space and time , in which everything is linked to everything, it is instead the product of historical judgment carried out by those who design stories about their own past, present, and future. To the "annalist" a world is imaginable in which no history has existed, exists, or will exist. The article analyzes three aspects of the concept of historical time: it demonstrates the huge variety of temporal structures in history; it argues for the foundation of the representation of historical time in linguistic concepts; and it discusses the relationship of fictionality and reality in historical discourse. Finally, the annalistic model is compared to the traditional concept of history established by historicism in the nineteenth century. (shrink)

Scholia from the Byzantine era on Lucian of Samosata era are unusually abundant and unusually prodigal in invective. Hostility was inspired not only by the Peregrinus, in which Lucian ridicules the Church and its martyrs, but by dialogues which were read as oblique assaults on Christianity because they slighted all belief in providence and regard for things divine. Most assaults are bombastic rather than eloquent, and deaf to Lucian's humour; Arethas, a younger contemporary of Photius, attempts without (...) success to outdo the satirist in wit and in philosophy. Photius himself, however, hints that his lampoons on pagan credulity might supply a Christian arsenal, and the author of the spurious Philopseudes comes closer to Lucian's manner than any of the scholiasts, initially in defence of monotheism, and then for some partisan object which continues to afford matter for debate. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Lost Italian Renaissance: Humanists, Historians, and Latin’s LegacyPaul Richard BlumChristopher S. Celenza. The Lost Italian Renaissance: Humanists, Historians, and Latin’s Legacy. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. Pp. xx + 210. Cloth, $45.00This is a programmatic book about why and how philosophy should care about Renaissance texts. Celenza starts with an assessment of the neglect of the wealth of Latin Renaissance [End Page 485] sources by (...) nineteenth-century historiography, followed by portraits of two prototypal twentieth-century historians and their philosophical approach. He proposes a method of study for Renaissance thinkers and exemplifies it with two key figures and with the concept of honor. A survey of the field of study and an appendix concerning Renaissance research in the US conclude the book."The Renaissance" as a field of research between the Middle Ages and what is now cowardly called "Early Modern" became legitimate through the awakening of national consciousness in the nineteenth century. Consequently, the emphasis lay on vernacular language works in Italy and elsewhere. Latin Renaissance literature never was worthy of Grossforschung, i.e., of national projects like the academy enterprises concerning world history or classical studies, even though classical philology originated in the humanists' emulation of the ancients. This however would be absorbed by the nineteenth-century idea of national character (12).Italian Hegelianism of the nineteenth and early-twentieth century included Renaissance philosophy in the evolution of national spirit, and the late Eugenio Garin as its pupil spent his scholarly life portraying with astounding precision and detail Italian Humanism and Renaissance as a dialectic and rational development. Equally diligent was the German born Paul Oskar Kristeller, clinging, however, to a very different understanding of philosophy, which Celenza describes as rationalist in the Kantian and metaphysical in the Platonico-Aristotelian tradition (41). Here the author underestimates the influence of Heidegger on Kristeller: his dissertation was clearly an interpretation of Plotinus in the light of existentialism, which still transpires in his famous Ficino book and many later philosophical statements. The problem with both approaches, that of Garin and that of Kristeller, is that those philosophers who ignore history (deliberately or incidentally) and those who lost an understanding of metaphysics do not know how to read Renaissance thinkers.'Microhistory' is the formula Celenza proposes: Richard Rorty's abolishing the notion of 'representing' reality in favor of evocation and conversation—both for the interpretation of the past and the past itself—and Pierre Bourdieux's notions of 'field' and 'relational thinking' open the possibility of locating past thinkers in their community and, consequently, the meaning of their philosophical endeavor. What Celenza exercised with Garin and Kristeller applies also to Renaissance authors. Under the heading 'Orthodoxy,' Celenza shows that it is unfortunate to censure Lorenzo Valla (+ 1457) or Marsilio Ficino (+ 1499) as being unorthodox or as precursors to the Reformation, because this perspective misses the point of their lives' work—namely, to find out what makes Christian beliefs and their sources Christian. Valla's discoveries in Greek and Latin philology and Ficino's experiments with magic are part of their scrutiny of orthopraxy (my term), the right way of Christian life, and are embedded in their conversations with friend and foe, who in some cases still await discovery. The far-reaching message of these two samples is: reading their work and studying their conversations is the way to study philosophy in the fifteenth century.The same is proven by engaging in social concepts such as 'honor.' Starting with a surprising appreciation of gender studies, Celenza suggests taking a look at intellectual masculinity among courtiers and writers. Then it turns out that Machiavelli bequeathed to modernity—perhaps as a caricature—the structure of struggle for power, ideas, and provision in which humanists were engaged, being the first large generation of intellectuals outside the safe haven of cathedrals and convents."What is really there?" is the concluding question. A new canon, the prelude to early modern sociology of scholarship, and models of—presently highly acclaimed—contextualization of intellectual productivity. Returning to the Latinity of Renaissance sources Celenza shows that even the emergence of vernacular literature, which bewitched nationalist historiography, was by itself a fruit... (shrink)

This paper explores Lucian's presentation of the philosopher as a creator of discourse. In particular, the paper argues that the lack of control over the discourse, once it is passed on, is at the core of Lucian's treatment of philosophers. An analysis of this eminently Platonic problem allows the interpretation both to go beyond the simplistic view that Lucian has no real philosophical interest at all but merely follows the Second Sophistic trend of subordinating philosophy to rhetoric, (...) and to qualify the idea that the dissolution of the authorial voice represents a sense of rupture experienced on the margins of the Roman empire. More importantly, this approach opens up new possibilities to understand two portraits of philosophers in Lucian's oeuvre that stand out for their positive character, Nigrinus and Demonax. While the latter work depicts a philosopher who uses words sparingly, but ideally enables a cognitive progress in the interlocutor, the former—a portrait of a “Platonist”—stages the breakdown of philosophical teaching by focusing on the impact of the philosopher's discourse on an underprepared student. The paper argues that Lucian, while posing as a reader of Plato in shaping his characters, raises the question of whether Plato himself succeeded as a philosophical writer, or whether in Lucian's eyes Plato's success as a writer was perhaps also his failure as a philosopher. But rather than shaping his own texts in opposition to philosophy, Lucian, like Plato, explores untrodden literary ways of addressing the most fundamental of philosophical problems, namely philosophy's expression in language. (shrink)

Intellectual historians have rarely attended to the genre of fighting manuals, but these provide a new window on long-debated questions such as the relationship between Scholasticism and Humanism. This article offers a close comparison of the first known fencing manual, the 14-th century Liber de Arte Dimicatoria (Leeds, Royal Armouries FECHT 1, previously and better known as MS I.33), and the corpus of fighting manuals which underwent a remarkable expansion during the 15th and 16th centuries. While the former clearly shows (...) its origins in a scholastic background, the latter is mainly viewed as reflecting its humanist context. To this historiographical division corresponds a linguistic one: MS I.33 is a Latin text, while the rest of the corpus is mainly written in German and Italian. However, exceptions arise, amongst which, Heinrich von Gunterrodt’s Sciomachia et Hoplomachia: sive de Veris Principiis Artis Dimicatoriae (1579), the first text which explicitly refers to I.33. This article will compare these two texts, in order to interrogate their common relation to Scholasticism, namely the traditional frame of the knowledge within the medieval and early modern universities. The intent is to show that (at least some) Renaissance fight books include references to Scholasticism and to provide a better qualification of the nature of such references. The general hypothesis is that a large part of the texts―and products of culture―of the Renaissance that have been read, until recently, exclusively in relation to a humanist intellectual background can valuably be interpreted in the context of a Scholasticism that is still vivid during the period in question. (shrink)

Examines interrelated topics in Medieval and Renaissance Latin literature: the status of women as writers, the status of women as rhetorical figures, and the status of women in society from the fifth to the early seventeenth century.

This article is a contribution to the critical sociology of science perspective introduced and developed by Pierre Bourdieu. The paper proposes a transversalist theory of science and technology production and diffusion. It is here argued that science and technology are comprised of multiple regimes where each regime is historically grounded, possesses its own division of labour, modes of cognitive and artifact production and has specific audiences. The major regimes include the disciplinary regime, utilitarian regime, transitory regime and research-technology regime. (...) Though each regime is autonomous, they are simultaneously closely interlaced. In science and technology, autonomy is not antithetical to interdependence and reciprocity. This study demonstrates for the four specified regimes of production and diffusion that differentiation is not contrary to interaction. In science, differentiation and interaction comprise two sides of the same coin. All regimes exhibit a measure of transversality. (shrink)

The beginning of the fifteenth century marks a new stage in the reception of the Platonic dialogues in the Latin West. Throughout the medieval period only four dialogues of Plato--the Timaeus, Phaedo, Meno, and part of the Parmenides--were accessible to Latin readers, and the study of Plato was almost wholly confined to the first of these texts, which is chiefly concerned with natural philosophy. In the first half of the fifteenth century this situation changed dramatically: six new dialogues or parts (...) of dialogues were translated by Leonardo Bruni, the Republic was translated three times, George of Trebizond made versions of the Laws, the Epinomis, and the Parmenides, and a dozen other dialogues were made available in Latin by various other translators. With the work of Marsilio Ficino, who published in 1484 the first translation of the Complete Works, the translation activity of the fifteenth century come to fruition. ;The renewed interest in translating Plato in the early fifteenth century was not however at first a renewal of Platonism. The translation of Plato made part of a cultural program whose premisses were in fact foreign to Platonic thought; Plato was instead put to the task of showing that pagan literature was compatible with Christianity, or read as a wise sage full of melodious maxims in usum scholarum, or so twisted as to endorse with his authority some political belief of the translators. These ulterior motives had their influence on the translations themselves, which were frequently excerpted, bowdlerized, or otherwise expurgated of inappropriate sentiments. Such philosophical understanding of Plato as the early humanists displayed was derived from the Philosophica of Cicero. ;It is only with the Plato-Aristotle controversy of mid-century that some more sophisticated understanding of Platonic philosophy begins to emerge. Despite the central role Plato played in his apocalyptic theology, George of Trebizond does not seem to have had a very firm grasp of Platonic thought, but his opponent in the controversy, Cardinal Bessarion, was able to draw upon the philosophical sagacity of the Byzantine and Western scholastic traditions, and produced a more penetrating, if at times incoherent, interpretation of Plato's thought. It is only with Marsilio Ficino however that philosophical understanding was combined with the philological attainments necessary to produce a respectable translation of Plato, and this may account for the great success Ficino's translations enjoyed in subsequent centuries. (shrink)

In comparison with Lucian, hardly any other author has achieved a similar mastery of the paradox formula of σπουδογέλοιον, the combination of serious moral exhortation with entertainment and delight. These antithetic features made him an appealing point of reference for Renaissance humanists, who not only translated parts of his oeuvre from Greek to Latin, thus casting a particular light on this versatile author and molding his literary identity according to their own tastes, but also inhaled the Lucianic esprit to (...) such an extent that it would frequently resurface in their own writings. This article focuses on Thomas More’s Latin translations of the Greek author and their multifaceted impact on his masterpiece Utopia, ranging from the shaping of the protagonist and the authorial persona to etymological puns, the stylistic devices of irony, parody, and paradox, as well as varying degrees of fictionality that are highly indebted to Lucian. (shrink)

Abstract:Lucian's Fatherland Encomium is thought to have been delivered at Samosata, Lucian's hometown. Although he never mentions "Samosata" in this speech, he repeatedly toys with the "name of the fatherland" as the speech's theme. But what is the name of his native city? The Greeks called it "Samosata" but this is clearly a transliteration. I consider the Aramaic, Persian, and Armenian versions of the name, and notice that the Aramaic "Shemshat" has a number of resonances in Lucian's (...) speech, not least the set theme of the speech itself "the name of (shem) the fatherland.". (shrink)

This Festschrift in Professor Kristeller’s honor consists of contributions by scholars who have had some connection with Columbia University, his "intellectual home in the United States for three decades." It also includes a Tabula Gratulatoria listing many other friends from the United States and Europe. The editor’s opening essay provides an interesting and informative account of this scholar’s academic career, and should be read together with the complete annotated bibliography of his publications through 1974. The latter lists 149 "major publications" (...) and 220 "minor publications." Kristeller’s contributions to the history of Renaissance philosophy are well known to historians of philosophy, and deservedly so. Here reference should be made to his groundbreaking studies on Marsilio Ficino and Pomponazzi, and on others such as Pico della Mirandola and Petrarch, as well as on Renaissance Platonism, Aristotelianism in the Renaissance, Thomism in the Renaissance, Paduan Averroism, and Alexandrism. But he has also contributed greatly to the fields of medieval and Renaissance history, and especially to our understanding of Renaissance humanism, Renaissance music, and Renaissance art. He is universally recognized as one of the world’s foremost authorities on manuscript research, as is witnessed, for example, by the cooperative project, Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum, which he founded, and by his Iter ltalicum. In all of these enterprises he has set an enviable example for other scholars by the exacting standards and the breadth of his expertise. It is only fitting, then, that the many essays in this Festschrift should reflect the breadth and depth of the scholarship so evident in the man to whom they are dedicated. Limitations of space will only permit us to list them here, with a few remarks reserved for those of more special interest to philosophers and historians of philosophy: Eugene F. Rice, Jr., "The De magia naturali of Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples" ; Donald R. Kelley, "Louis Le Caron Philosophe", on Le Caron’s effort to bring together jurisprudence and classical, especially Platonic, philosophy; Richard H. Popkin, "The Pre-Adamite Theory in the Renaissance", with fascinating material about theories concerning men before Adam in La Peyrère and widely scattered earlier sources; Richard Lemay, "The Fly against the Elephant: Flandinus against Pomponazzi on Fate", on an unedited attack by an Augustinian Bishop against Pomponazzi’s espousal of the Stoic doctrine of fate; Martin Pine, "Pietro Pomponazzi and the Medieval Tradition of God’s Foreknowledge", on Pomponazzi’s solution to the problem of divine foreknowledge and human freedom inlight of his familiarity with earlier discussions by Boethius, Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockham; F. Edward Cranz, "Editions of the Latin Aristotle Accompanied by the Commentaries of Averroes", helpful to all who wish to consult late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century versions of the Latin Aristotle and especially the Latin Averroes; Josef Soudek, "A Fifteenth-Century Humanistic Bestseller: The Manuscript Diffusion of Leonardo Bruni’s Annotated Latin Version of the Aristotelian Economics" ; Edward P. Mahoney, "Nicoletto Vernia on the Soul and Immortality", which details a radical shift on Vernia’s part from an earlier Averroistic reading of Aristotle; Joan Kelly-Gadol, "Tommaso Campanella: The Agony of Political Theory in the Counter-Reformation", which attempts to account for some of the shifts and inconsistencies in Campanella’s political writings by placing them within the troubled personal and political circumstances of his life; Charles Trinkaus, "Protagoras in the Renaissance: An Exploration" ; Maristella de Panizza Lorch, "Voluptas, molle quoddam et non invidiosum nomen: Lorenzo Valla’s Defense of voluptas in the Preface to his De voluptate" ; Neal W. Gilbert, "Richard de Bury and the ‘Quires of Yesterday’s Sophisms"’, with much interesting material on the medieval tradition of sophismata, especially at Oxford; Malcolm Brown, "A Pre-Aristotelian Mathematician on Deductive Order" ; John H. Randall, Jr., "Paduan Aristotelianism Reconsidered", on evidence for influence of the Italian Aristotelian tradition on Galileo; William F. Edwards, "Niccoló Leoniceno and the Origins of Humanist Discussion of Method" ; C. Doris Hellman, "A Poem on the Occasion of the Nova of 1572" ; Edward Rosen, "Kepler’s Mastery of Greek" ; W. T. H. Jackson, "The Politics of a Poet: The Archipoeta as Revealed by his Imagery" ; John Charles Nelson, "Love and Sex in the Decameron" ; George B. Parks, "Pico della Mirandola in Tudor Translation" ; Richard Harrier, "Invention in Tudor Literature: Historical Perspectives" ; Helene Wieruszowski, "Jacob Burckhardt and Vespasiano da Bisticci " ; Morimichi Watanabe, "Gregor Heimburg and Early Humanism in Germany" ; Raymond de Roover, "Cardinal Cajetan on ‘Cambium’ or Exchange Dealings" ; and a series of text editions with introductions including Julius Kirshner, "Conscience and Public Finance: A Questio disputata of John of Legnano on the Public Debt of Genoa" ; John Mundy, "The Origins of the College of Saint-Raymond at the University of Toulouse" ; Charles B. Schmitt, "Girolamo Borro’s Multae sunt nostrarum ignorantionum causae " ; Guido Kisch, "An Unpublished Consiliumof Johannes Sichardus" ; Patricia H. Labalme, "The Last Will of a Venetian Patrician " ; Felix Gilbert, "The Last Will of a Venetian Grand Chancellor" ; Herbert S. Matsen, "Giovanni Garzoni to Alessandro Achillini : An Unpublished Letter and Defense" ; Theodore E. James, "A Fragment of An Exposition of the First Letter of Seneca to Lucilius Attributed to Peter of Mantua". The editor, his collaborators, and the contributors are all to be commended for the high quality of this volume.—J.F.W. (shrink)

The rapid development of online social media has significantly promoted product diffusion in online social networks. However, prior studies focusing on irrational behavior, such as overconfidence, in PDOSN are scarce. To investigate the effect of overconfidence on PDOSN, this study combined overconfidence and an evolutionary game to conduct a multiagent simulation on PDOSN. This combined method provided an effective reference to examine product diffusion in the context of irrational behavior. After careful consideration, this study identified three overconfidence scenarios, (...) benefit, cost, and benefit and cost overconfidence, developed a multiagent simulation model for PDOSN using various overconfidence scenarios, and conducted a comparison with real-world cases to validate the model’s feasibility. The findings indicated that adoption benefits and betrayal penalties had a positive effect on the results in all models, while adoption costs had the opposite effect. When benefit and cost overconfidence occurred simultaneously, benefit overconfidence offset the negative effect of cost overconfidence. Moderate connectivity, a large number of core nodes, and high reconnection probability fully promoted product diffusion. Benefit overconfidence and cost overconfidence had a significant impact on the results in different networks. As such, this study combined psychological theory with simulation methods, providing insights for future research on product diffusion. (shrink)

How did the events of the early modern period affect the way gender and the self were represented? This collection of essays attempts to respond to this question by analysing a wide spectrum of cultural concerns - humanism, technology, science, law, anatomy, literacy, domesticity, colonialism, erotic practices, and the theatre - in order to delineate the history of subjectivity and its relationship with the postmodern fragmented subject. The scope of this analysis expands the terrain explored by feminist theory, while its (...) feminist focus reveals that the subject is always gendered - although the terms in which gender is conceived and represented change across history. Feminist Readings of Early Modern Culture not only explores the representation of gendered subjects, but in its commitment to balancing the productive tensions of methodological diversity, also speaks to contemporary challenges facing feminism. (shrink)

René Hoven’s _Dictionary of Renaissance Latin from prose sources_ has since its first appearance in 1993 become a recognised and valued resource for Latinists and Neo-Latinists and an indispensable working tool for academic libraries. A highly practical lexicon, it provides researchers, teaching staff and students in the field of Early Modern Studies with concise, essential information.

René Hoven’s _Dictionary of Renaissance Latin from prose sources_ has since its first appearance in 1993 become a recognised and valued resource for Latinists and Neo-Latinists and an indispensable working tool for academic libraries. A highly practical lexicon, it provides researchers, teaching staff and students in the field of Early Modern Studies with concise, essential information.

The mid-thirteenth-century theorist and rhetorician Brunetto Latini proposed a vigorous republican account of the art of government and the nature of community in his encyclopedic treatise, Li Livres dou Tresor. The interpretation of Latini's republicanism has been heavily based on its literary sensibilities, its attachment to rhetoric, and its praise for classical civic virtues. But Latini deserves to be classified as a republican insofar as he founds social and political order upon commercial principles—the production and exchange of material goods for (...) profit—and consequent economic defense of republican government. Hence, the example of Latini challenges one of the principal remaining barriers that supposedly separates medieval defenses of republicanism from Renaissance versions. The essay contends that Latini holds that self-governing institutions depend upon and are especially well suited to sustain a society whose conception of the common good includes the creation and exchange of those material necessities required for physical welfare and comfort. (shrink)

The term “Renaissance” usually applies to a period in European history during which the Greco-Latin culture was rediscovered and modern science started. We show that “the Idea of Renaissance” indicates a universal process: a community (a nation, for example), identifying needs that it does not know how to satisfy by itself, and recognising that another community already satisfies them, tries first to acclimate the external process, and then becomes a creative entity. Several interpretations of this process have already been given: (...) we study three of them: the law of the three states by Auguste Comte, the notion of “a single revolution” in Kant’s Critic of Pure Reason and Critic of Judgement, and the notion of “scientific revolution” by A. A. Cournot. Thus conceived, Renaissance means a challenge in which all cultures are equally involved: discovering, even elsewhere, the means of satisfy needs which are related to scientific knowledge and know-how; trying to assimilate them; and making them productive and indigenous by becoming creative. (shrink)

The mid-thirteenth-century theorist and rhetorician Brunetto Latini proposed a vigorous republican account of the art of government and the nature of community in his encyclopedic treatise, Li Livres dou Tresor. The interpretation of Latini's republicanism has been heavily based on its literary sensibilities, its attachment to rhetoric, and its praise for classical civic virtues. But Latini deserves to be classified as a republican insofar as he founds social and political order upon commercial principles-the production and exchange of material goods for (...) profit-and consequent economic defense of republican government. Hence, the example of Latini challenges one of the principal remaining barriers that supposedly separates medieval defenses of republicanism from Renaissance versions. The essay contends that Latini holds that self-governing institutions depend upon and are especially well suited to sustain a society whose conception of the common good includes the creation and exchange of those material necessities required for physical welfare and comfort. (shrink)

Among the works of the ancient Greek satirist Lucian of Samosata, well-known for his scathing and obscene irony, there is the novel True History. In this work Lucian, being in an intense satirical mood, intended to undermine the values of the classical world. Through a continuous parade of wonderful events, beings and situations as a substitute for the realistic approach to reality, he parodies the scientific knowledge, creating a literary model for the subsequent writers. Without doubt, nowadays, (...) class='Hi'>Lucian’s large influence on the history of literature has been highlighted. What is missing is pointing out the specific characteristics that would lead to the placement of True History at the starting point of Science Fiction. We are going to highlight two of these features: first, the operation of “cognitive estrangement”, which aims at providing the reader with the perception of the difference between the convention and the truth, and second, the use of strange innovations (“novum”) that verify the value of Lucian’s work by connecting it to historicity. (shrink)

Despite growing public concerns around socio-scientific problems and the significance of these problems to everyday life, there is a dearth of sociological literature addressing the production and diffusion of the natural sciences in Australia. In particular, critical analyses of scientific knowledge production and diffusion relative to the actions of the state, the market and civil society are largely absent. This thesis sets out to mitigate this situation by contributing a critical historiography of scientific knowledge production and diffusion (...) as it relates to Australia since white settlement. It is anticipated that this work will open up the topic for further academic research and rational debate. This thesis explores the production and diffusion of scientific knowledge through the lens of social dynamics that have emerged in Australia between the 1770s and the 2010s. The research relies primarily on the theoretical work of Max Weber in order to identify and analyse the conception of rationality and its application to social action that is present in the policy and praxis of the natural sciences in Australia. In particular, the relationships between the state, the market and civil society are analysed using secondary data drawn from published histories, official documents and the formal policies and practices of the state and the market during this period. A tripartite analytical model has been created specifically for this thesis and is utilised to trace scientific knowledge production and diffusion through the transformative social processes associated with instrumentalism, bureaucratisation, developmentalism, environmentalism, postmodernism and neoliberalism. Rationality is applied in three ways: as non-instrumental science produced to further human understandings of the natural world and to promote the development of civil society; as pre-instrumental science produced by the state to in order to develop markets and for other instrumental purposes such as national defense strategies; and as instrumental scientific knowledge produced by the participants in the market expressly to enhance their own position in the market. The research reveals that instrumental rationality has been an enduring concept in the policy and praxis of the natural sciences in Australia. Moreover, this thesis finds that a strong tension is often present between non-instrumental notions of scientific knowledge and those practices that are predominantly instrumental. Through each of the periods studied the state and the market have been close confederates, often working together to realize instrumental outcomes through the knowledge produced by natural science. In particular, administrative and economic ends are seen to be primary; ends associated with more normative intentions, such as the nurturing of civil society, have been regularly overlooked in favour of strictly instrumental aspirations. This continuing instrumentality has altered the relationships between the state, the market and civil society during each period studied. On the current trajectory, the policy and praxis of the natural sciences in Australia may yet begin to compromise the sovereignty of that nation state and the authority of its citizenry. (shrink)

Although David Mitrany’s international thought is not usually associated with the concept of the international anarchy, I argue that his analysis actually compares two forms of anarchical order. The first form is the order associated with the relations between states, while the second is his functional alternative to this order. The functional approach is anarchical in the sense that it remains an order without an orderer. In first analysing the dynamics and failings of the inter-state order, and then suggesting pragmatic (...) process-orientated solutions to those failings, I argue that Mitrany follows a similar approach to his classical realist contemporaries. (shrink)

Between 1490 to 1625, twenty-two editions of Galen's opera omnia were published in Latin, while only two in Greek. In the Western world Galen's literary production was mostly known through Latin translations, even in the sixteenth century, when Greek medicine was being rediscovered in its original language. The paper discusses the twenty-two Latin editions of Galen's writings and how they evolved. In these editions the number of works increased, especially from 1490 to 1533, while later, from 1576–1577 to 1586, forged (...) commentaries on Hippocrates were added, when Galenic medicine was declining. Moreover, in 1490 Galen's works were printed in medieval translations from Arabic and Greek, while by 1541–1542 most of them had already received new humanist translations. The humanist translations, which started about 1480, depended on Greek manuscripts until 1525, when the Aldine provided the standard Greek text of Galen. Afterwards, the Greek manuscripts were used to correct the Latin, especially in the editions from 1541–1542 to 1565. Therefore the complete Latin editions included most of the philological work on Galen during the sixteenth century, as well as discussions on the authorship of some works, on the order in which they had to be read or printed, and on their selection for medical education. (shrink)

'you'll find another man to harvest, Glycerion: let this one go' The Greek satirist Lucian was a brilliantly entertaining writer who invented the comic dialogue as a vehicle for satiric comment. His influence was immense, not only in the Greek world, but on later European writers such as Rabelais and Swift. His dialogues puncture the pretensions of pompous philosophers and describe the daily lives of Greek courtesans; they are peopled by politicians, historians and ordinary citizens, as well as by (...) gods and mythic figures. This selection provides a cross-section of Lucian's styles and satirical targets, from serious polemic to lighter squibs and character portrayals. It includes How to Write History and his most famous piece, A True History, a fabulous tale of space travel and a monstrous whale which prefigures the fantasies of Jules Verne. This lively new translation is both accurate and idiomatic, and the introduction highlights Lucian's importance in his own and later times. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. (shrink)