The "man of learning" defended: seventeenth-century biographies of scholars and an early modern ideal of excellence (original) (raw)

Jacques Cujas (1522-1590), Jurisconsulte humaniste, Genève, Droz (Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance, n°DXLI), 2015 [préface d’Anne Rousselet-Pimont et Jean-Louis Thireau ; version imprimée : 592 p. ; version numérique : 864 p.]

Jacques Cujas apparaît comme l’un des principaux représentants de l’humanisme juridique, courant qui introduit l’idée d’évolution dans la construction du droit et des institutions. Au fil de ses professorats, Cujas poursuit la critique humaniste en portant à son apogée la méthode historique. Il cherche à rétablir les textes dans leur version d’origine par la recherche des interpolations, tout en intégrant les dispositions commentées dans la longue durée. Il s’appuie tant sur sa maîtrise de la doctrine juridique, que sur sa vaste culture littéraire et philosophique. Ses travaux de philologue et d’éditeur restent d’utiles références, sans même évoquer ses reconstitutions commentées des ouvrages des juristes romains ou son analyse critique du corpus juris civilis. L’érudition ne tient cependant pas Cujas trop éloigné de la pratique, comme le prouvent ses consultations ou son étude de la féodalité. Soumis à l’épreuve de l’humanisme cujacien, le droit ressort transformé de la confrontati...

“Formative Power, Soul and Intellect in Nicolò Leoniceno between the Arabo-Latin Tradition and the Renaissance of the Greek Commentators” in: Psychology and the Other Disciplines: A Case of Cross-Disciplinary Interaction (1250-1750), ed. Paul Bakker et al. (Boston-Leiden: Brill, 2012), 297-324.

Belonging to the very first generation of medical humanists active in Italy at the turn of the sixteenth century, Nicolò Leoniceno was prolific in producing widely-used translations of Galen’s works. By examining the confrontation between the medieval Arabo-Latin tradition and Renaissance humanism in natural philosophy, this article aims to analyze the continuity of a traditional debate as it underwent a transformation via the new elements introduced by the humanist movement. Galen’s newly recovered embryological treatise "On the Formation of the Fetus" profoundly stimulated the debate on the nature of the formative power of the seed. Starting from Galen’s ideas as found in this treatise, Leoniceno composed one of the first “humanist” embryological works, "On Formative Power" (Venice, 1506). This treatise documents the beginning of a shift of the authority on which scholarship was based—from Arabic writers (Avicenna and Averroes) and their Latin followers (Pietro d’Abano and Gentile da Foligno) to the classical Greek sources, including not only the works of Galen himself but also the new Latin translation of Aristotle’s corpus as well as the newly recovered writings of Aristotle’s Greek commentators such as Simplicius and Michael of Ephesus. Leoniceno’s use of these commentators is particularly noteworthy because he was one of the first humanists to make recourse to them in medical and scientific discussions. Moreover, his familiarity with ongoing debates on the soul and intellect by his humanist contemporaries, such as the Florentine Platonists, will also become evident. Certainly, a typical humanist way of doing natural philosophy can be observed in Leoniceno’s text.

Benedetto Croce and the problem of Enlightenment, in « History of European Ideas», vol. 36, 2010, p. 101-111

Benedetto Croce has given the most important and original theory of history in the XXth century. His theory was that of ‘absolute historicism’, and therefore he developed an acute critique of the Enlightenment. This article studies both Croce’s theoretical analysis of Enlightenment and his historical analysis of the Neapolitan Enlightenment. This interest for Enlightenment had also political, not only philosophical roots: all over Europe in the 1920s and 1930s the many historical and theoretical researches in the Age of Enlightenment represented an important path in order to bring forth a new concept of reason, which could have used in the debate about rationalism and irrationalism. This debate, which flourished in the age of totalitarisms, involved also another question: what was culture? Which was its task in the fight against political irrationalism? Which was its relationship with the growth of public opinion? In this relationship an important role was played by intellectuals, as showed in the works by Benda, Max Weber and Croce himself. The genealogy of modern intelligentsia led again to Enlightenment. In the third part of the article Croce’s position about this theme is discussed in the light of his historical researches on Enlightenment and of his correspondence with two young historians, Delio Cantimori and Franco Venturi.

Self-Awareness, Ethics and Political Society in the Cultural Tradition of the Early ModernAge. (2009), Memorandum, 17, 98-106.

Exploring the value of images as documents that reveal the culture of the world that produces them, this paper reflects on the relations that were established between the Christian tradition and the development of modernity in Western Europe, particularly in the Catholic area. With reference to the themes of selfawareness, ethics and political society, it criticizes the idea that there was an early divorce and a purely conflictual relationship between religion and the modern world, showing how the construction of the early modern age accommodated a dialogue that long remained fertile between the two parts. What the modern world was, at least in its beginnings, including its affirmation of the value of the human person, of material and cultural progress, is inseparable from the way it embraced and developed the content of the Christian vision of man and reality.