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Philosophy and rhetoric are both old enemies and old friends. In
The Rhetorical Sense of Philosophy, Donald Phillip Verene sets out
to shift our understanding of the relationship between philosophy
and rhetoric from that of separation to one of close association.
He outlines how ancient rhetors focused on the impact of language
regardless of truth, ancient philosophers utilized language to test
truth; and ultimately, this separation of right reasoning from
rhetoric has remained intact throughout history. It is time, Verene
argues, to reassess this ancient and misunderstood relationship.
Verene traces his argument utilizing the writing of ancient and
modern authors from Plato and Aristotle to Descartes and Kant; he
also explores the quarrel between philosophy and poetry, as well as
the nature of speculative philosophy. Verene's argument culminates
in a unique analysis of the frontispiece as a rhetorical device in
the works of Hobbes, Vico, and Rousseau. Verene bridges the
stubborn gap between these two fields, arguing that rhetorical
speech both brings philosophical speech into existence and allows
it to endure and be understood. The Rhetorical Sense of Philosophy
depicts the inevitable intersection between philosophy and
rhetoric, powerfully illuminating how a rhetorical sense of
philosophy is an attitude of mind that does not separate philosophy
from its own use of language.
Giambattista Vico: Keys to the "New Science" brings together in
one volume translations, commentaries, and essays that illuminate
the background of Giambattista Vico's major work. Thora Ilin Bayer
and Donald Phillip Verene have collected a series of texts that
help us to understand the progress of Vico's thinking, culminating
in the definitive version of the New Science, which was published
in 1744.
Bayer and Verene provide useful introductions both to the
collection as a whole and to the individual writings. What emerges
is a clear picture of the decades-long process through which Vico
elaborated his revolutionary theory of history and culture. Of
particular interest are the first sketch of the new science from
his earlier work, the Universal Law, and Vico's response to the
false book notice regarding the first version of his New
Science.
The volume also includes additions to the 1744 edition that Vico
had written out but that do not appear in the English translations
including his brief chapter on the "Reprehension of the Metaphysics
of Descartes, Spinoza, and Locke" and a bibliography of all of
Vico's writings that have appeared in English. Giambattista Vico:
Keys to the "New Science" is a unique and vital companion for
anyone reading or rereading this landmark of Western intellectual
history."
Description: This work raises for the contemporary reader the
ancient and abiding question of the nature and meaning of human
virtue. In Part 1, it draws upon Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero and
the works of Renaissance Christian humanists who were influenced by
them, such as Pico, Vives, and Erasmus. The moral act guided by the
cardinal virtues and the good is seen as the key to human happiness
and the formation of character. Character is the basis for the
pursuit of self-knowledge, decorum, and dignity, which properly
guide human affairs. Part 2 takes up Hegel's principle of the labor
of the negative as applied to three phenomena of modern life: the
presence of terrorism, the personality of the psycho-sociopath, and
the problems of the technologically dominated life of the modern
person. These are the most powerful impediments to the good life in
the modern world and pose problems to which the ethical doctrines
of utilitarianism and the categorical imperative provide an
insufficient response. To confront these phenomena, we are led back
to the classical conception of the role of prudence or practical
wisdom as the foundation of ethical life.
Giambattista Vico's first original work of philosophy, On the
Study Methods of Our Time (1708 9) takes up the contemporary
"quarrel between the ancients and the moderns" and provides a
highly interesting statement of the nature of humanistic education.
This edition makes available again Elio Gianturco's superb 1965
English translation of a work generally regarded as the earliest
statement by Vico of the fundamentals of his position.
An important contribution to the development of the
scientism-versus-humanism debate over the comparative merits of
classical and modern culture, this book lays out Vico's powerful
arguments against the compartmentalization of knowledge which
results from the Cartesian world view. In opposition to the arid
logic of Cartesianism, Vico here celebrates the humanistic
tradition and posits the need for a comprehensive science of
humanity which recognizes the value of memory and imagination.
For this edition, Donald Phillip Verene has written a new
preface placing the work in the context of the ongoing renaissance
in Vico studies and added a chronology of Vico's major writings. He
has also translated into English for the first time Vico's last
public statement, The Academies and the Relation between Philosophy
and Eloquence (1737), a short oration that presents his final views
on wisdom, the unity of knowledge, and rhetoric themes he had first
adumbrated in the Study Methods.
On the Study Methods of Our Time remains a key text for anyone
interested in the development's of Vico's thought and serves as a
concise introduction to his work. Scholars and students in such
disciplines as the history of philosophy, intellectual history,
literary theory, rhetoric, and the history and philosophy of
education will find this volume helpful and fascinating."
In this original and illuminating work, the reader is invited to
approach philosophy as an activity that can instruct, delight, and
move. On this view, philosophy can be seen as a key to human
education, a mastery of humane letters, and a part of the repulic
of the liberal arts. Embracing this approach to philosophy, Verene
argues, involves moving beyond modern philosophy's analytical
encounter with experience, one that emphasizes argument and
criticism at the expense of the Socratic search for self-knowledge.
Relying on insights from Vico and Hegel, Verene introduces a new
sense of reason, one that sees the True as the whole and that
connects reason to the ancient sense of speculation. Reflection and
criticism are given their due, but the reorientation of philosophy
toward the speculative grasp of the whole of things allows memory,
imagination, and dialectical ingenuity to take on philosophical
form. In the end, this work show how speculation, symbolic form,
metaphor, poetry, and rhetoric are natural parts of philosophical
thinking.
This is the first book to examine in full the interconnections
between Giambattista Vico's new science and James Joyce's Finnegans
Wake. Maintaining that Joyce is the greatest modern "interpreter"
of Vico, Donald Phillip Verene demonstrates how images from Joyce's
work offer keys to Vico's philosophy. Verene presents the entire
course of Vico's philosophical thought as it develops in his major
works, with Joyce's words and insights serving as a guide. The book
devotes a chapter to each period of Vico's thought, from his early
orations on education to his anti-Cartesian metaphysics and his
conception of universal law, culminating in his new science of the
history of nations. Verene analyzes Vico's major works, including
all three editions of the New Science. The volume also features a
detailed chronology of the philosopher's career, historical
illustrations related to his works, and an extensive bibliography
of Vico scholarship and all English translations of his writings.
In The Art of Humane Education, Donald Phillip Verene presents a
new statement of the classical and humanist ideals that he believes
should guide education in the liberal arts and sciences. These
ideals are lost, he contends, in the corporate atmosphere of the
contemporary university, with its emphasis on administration,
faculty careerism, and student performance. Verene addresses
questions of how and what to teach and offers practical suggestions
for the conduct of class sessions, the relationship between teacher
and student, the interpretation of texts, and the meaning and use
of a canon of great books.In sharp contrast to the current tendency
toward specialization, Verene considers the aim of college
education to be self-knowledge pursued through study of all fields
of thought. Education, in his view, must be based on acquisition of
the arts of reading, writing, and thinking. He regards the class
lecture as a form of oratory that should be presented in accordance
with the well-known principles of rhetoric. The Art of Humane
Education, styled as a series of letters, makes the author's
original and practical ideas very clear. In this elegant book,
Verene explores the full range of issues surrounding humane
education.On the humanities: "Despite Descartes, the study of
humane letters has remained, but it is always in danger of passing
out of the curriculum. It remains a beggar who will not quite leave
the premises."On teaching: "Like oratory, teaching requires a
natural gift, but it is also an art which, like all the other
humane arts, can be learned only mimetically. . . . As some are
born tone-deaf and cannot be musical, there are those who can never
teach. But most if they wish have some aptitude for it, and this
aptitude can be developed into an art."On teachers: "Teachers
motivated by eloquence attempt to speak wholly on a subject, since
the whole is where its life is. Teachers not motivated by eloquence
tend to be either dull or comedic. The dull teacher may have
knowledge but have no true language for it. . . . The comedic
teacher is shallow and a menace to the subject matter."On
administrators: "Administration is never content simply to concern
itself with the pure business of the university, paying its bills,
maintaining its buildings. It sees itself as necessary in order for
the process between teacher and student to go on. But it is a
process that it constantly interrupts. . . . Administrators,
however, should not be taken too seriously."Although sharply
critical of many aspects of the modern university and of many
currents within the humanities, The Art of Humane Education remains
at heart a ringing endorsement of the high humanist tradition and
its continuing relevance to the institutions of teaching and
learning.
At his death in 1945, the influential German philosopher Ernst
Cassirer left manuscripts for the fourth and final volume of his
magnum opus, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. John Michael Krois
and Donald Phillip Verene have edited these writings and translated
them into English for the first time, bringing to completion
Cassirer's major treatment of the concept of symbolic form. Ernst
Cassirer believed that all the forms of representation that human
beings use-language, myth, art, religion, history, science-are
symbolic, and the concept of symbolic forms was the basis of his
thinking on these subjects. In this volume, which contains one text
written in 1928 and another in about 1940, Cassirer presents the
metaphysics that is implicit in his epistemology and phenomenology
of culture. The earlier text grounds the philosopher's conception
of symbolic forms on a notion of human nature that makes a general
distinction between Geist (mind) and life. In the later text, he
discusses Basis Phenomena, an original concept not mentioned in any
of his previous works, and he compares his own viewpoint with those
of other modern philosophers, notably Bergson and Heidegger.
This book contends that both Anglo-American analytic philosophy and
Continental philosophy have lost their vitality, and it offers an
alternative in their place, Donald Phillip Verene advocates a
renewal of contemporary philosophy through a return to its origins
in Socratic humanism and to the notions of civil wisdom, eloquence,
and prudence as guides to human action. Verene critiques reflection
-- the dominant form of philosophical thought that developed from
Descartes and Locke -- and shows that reflection is not only a
philosophical doctrine but is also connected to the life-form of
technological society. He analyzes the nature of technological
society and argues that, based on the expansion of human desire,
such a society has eliminated the values embodied in the tradition
of human folly as understood by Brant, Erasmus, and others.
Focusing in particular on the traditions of some of the late
Greeks and the Romans, Renaissance humanism, and the thought of
Giambattista Vico, this book's concern is to revive the ancient
Delphic injunction, "Know thyself", an idea of civil wisdom Verene
finds has been missing since Descartes. The author recovers the
meaning of the vital relations that poetry, myth, and rhetoric had
with philosophy in thinkers like Cicero, Quintilian, Isocrates,
Pico, Vives, and Vico. He arrives at a conception of philosophy as
a form of memory that requires both rhetoric and poetry to
accomplish self-knowledge.
Vico's earliest extant scholarly works, the six orations on
humanistic education, offer the first statement of ideas that Vico
would continue to refine throughout his life. Delivered between
1699 and 1707 to usher in the new academic year at the University
of Naples, the orations are brought together here for the first
time in English in an authoritative translation based on Gian
Galeazzo Visconti's 1982 Latin/Italian edition.
In the lectures, Vico draws liberally on the classical
philosophical and legal traditions as he explores the relationship
between the Greek dictum "Know thyself" and liberal education. As
he sets forth the values and goals of a humanist curriculum, Vico
reveals the beginnings of the anti-Cartesian position he will
pursue in On the Study Methods of Our Time (1709). Also found in
the orations are glimpses of Vico's later views on the theory of
interpretation and on the nature of language, imagination, and
human creativity, along with many themes that were to be fully
developed in his magnum opus, the New Science (1744).
On Humanistic Education joins a number of translations of Vico's
works available in paperback from Cornell On the Study Methods of
Our Time, On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians, the New
Science, and The Autobiography of Giambattista Vico. It will be
welcomed by Vichians and their students, intellectual historians,
and others in the fields of philosophy, literary theory, history
and methods of education, classics, and rhetoric."
"This work is a full interpretation of Giambattista Vico's
thought, based primarily on his major work, the New Science, and on
his earlier Latin writings. It takes its beginning point from
Vico's own claim that his conception of 'imaginative universals' is
the 'master key' of his New Science. . . .Verene traces the notion
of fantasia in Vico's writings, devoting a chapter each to Vico's
interpretation of truth, imaginative universals, memory, science,
rhetoric, and wisdom and barbarism." New Vico Studies"
The Science of Cookery and the Art of Eating Well is a
philosophical and historical reflection on food and dining in human
culture. It includes discussions of the nature of the first meals
as found in Greek literature and the philosophy of history of
Giambattista Vico, the Roman cookbook of Apicius (the first known
cookbook), the cookbook of Artusi (the seminal cookbook of Italian
cooking), Brillat-Savarins Physiology of Taste, Plutarchs Dinner of
the Seven Wise Men, and Athenaeus work on the Learned Banqueters
(the Deipnosophists). These discussions are joined with
contemporary observations on the importance of the traditions of
home cooking and dining with friends as essential to the promotion
of human well-being.
The papers in this volume of Ernst Cassirer's unpublished works
give insight into the major issues that engaged Cassirer's interest
between 1935 and 1945. The book begins with his inaugural address
at the University of Goeteborg, Sweden, in the first years of his
exile from Hitler's Germany, and ends with a talk to the Columbia
Philosophy Club. The note that introduces this piece was written on
the day of his death. In his long and productive career, Ernst
Cassirer always tried to integrate his works of original philosophy
and studies in intellectual history into a general understanding of
the nature of myth, culture, and symbol. These essays show that his
interest persisted to the end. His piece on Judaism and political
myths is perhaps the most dramatic in this collection, as it blends
philosophical coolness with his deeply felt outrage at fascism.
Best known in this country for The Myth of the State, The
Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, and An Essay on Man, Ernst Cassirer
has been read and studied by generations of students. In this book
they will find illuminations, in a more informal voice, of the
major themes in Cassirer's work. New readers will be introduced to
the great issues that occupied the interest of one of the twentieth
century's most widely read philosophers. "A genuine contribution to
the history of modern philosophy - and of special value to the
informed general reader, since it includes a number of valid
attempts by Cassirer to translate his radical, sometimes difficult,
concepts of culture into non-technical terms."-- The Booklist
Philosophical Ideas: A Historical Study invites the reader to
consider central ideas from Plato, Hegel, Vico, and Cassirer from
points of view that have not been fully articulated in the most
frequently encountered interpretations of their works. It is an
examination of the ideas of poetics, dialectics, science, and
symbol as they function in their works with focus on the problem of
knowledge as present in each of them. The history of philosophy,
approached in this way, is a treasure house of ideas that
constitutes the subject matter of the contemplative life.
James Joyce and the Philosophers at Finnegans Wake explores how
Joyce used the philosophers Nicholas Cusanus, Giordano Bruno, and
Giambattista Vico as the basis upon which to write Finnegans Wake.
Very few Joyce critics know enough about these philosophers and
therefore often miss their influence on Joyce’s great work. Joyce
embraces these philosophic companions to lead him through the
underworld of history with all its repetitions and resurrections,
oppositions and recombinations.We as philosophical readers of the
Wake go along with them to meet everybody and in so doing are bound
“to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience
and to forge in the smithy” of our souls the “uncreated
conscience” of humankind. Verene builds his study on the basis of
years of teaching Finnegans Wake side by side with Cusanus, Bruno,
and Vico, and his book will serve as a guide to readers of
Joyce’s novel.
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