Syllogism is a form of logical argument allowing one to deduce a consistent conclusion based on a pair of premises having a common term. Although Aristotle was the first to conceive and develop this way of reasoning, he left open a lot of conceptual space for further modifications, improvements and systematizations with regards to his original syllogistic theory. From its creation until modern times, syllogism has remained a powerful and compelling device of deduction and argument, used by a variety of figures and assuming a variety of forms throughout history. The Aftermath of Syllogism investigates the key developments in the history of this peculiar pattern of inference, from Avicenna to Hegel. Taking as its focus the longue duree of development between the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century, this book looks at the huge reworking scientific syllogism underwent over the centuries, as some of the finest philosophical minds brought it to an unprecedented height of logical sharpness and sophistication. Bringing together a group of major international experts in the Aristotelian tradition, The Aftermath of Syllogism provides a detailed, up to date and critical evaluation of the history of syllogistic deduction.

"The concept of spontaneity is central to Kant's philosophy, yet Kant himself never dealt with it explicitly. Instead it was presented as an insoluble problem concerning human reason. The ambiguity surrounding his approach to this problem is surprising when one considers that he was a philosopher who based his theoretical programme on the critique of the faculties of knowledge, feeling and desire. However, this ambiguity seems to have avoided up to now any possible critique. This highly original book presents the first full-length study of the problem of spontaneity in Kant. Marco Sgarbi demonstrates that spontaneity is a crucial concept in relation to every aspect of Kant's thought. He begins by reconstructing the history of the concept of spontaneity in the German Enlightenment prior to Kant and goes on to define knowing, thinking, acting and feeling as spontaneous activities of the mind that in turn determine Kant's logic, ethics and aesthetics. Ultimately Sgarbi shows that the notion of spontaneity is key to understanding both Kant's theoretical and practical philosophy."

Marco Sgarbi tells a new history of epistemology from the Renaissance to Newton through the impact of Aristotelian scientific doctrines on key figures including Galileo Galilei, Thomas Hobbes, Rene Descartes, John Locke, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Isaac Newton. This history illuminates the debates philosophers had on deduction, meditation, regressus, syllogism, experiment and observation, the certainty of mathematics and the foundations of scientific knowledge. Sgarbi focuses on the Aristotelian education key philosophers received, providing a concrete historical framework through which to read epistemological re-definitions, developments and transformations over three centuries. The Age of Epistemology further highlights how Aristotelianism itself changed over time by absorbing doctrines from other philosophical traditions and generating a variety of interpretations in the process.

The book identifies to what extent it is possible to speak of a democratization of knowledge in Renaissance Italy. It establishes the boundaries of the present investigation within the Aristotelian tradition, and outlines democratization as a process capable of assigning power to people. It deals with how the democratization of knowledge historically is invested equally in ideas from religion and philosophy, involving the same democratizers, moved by similar intentions, employing identical techniques of vulgarization and targeting equivalent communities of recipients.

This book explores the intellectual world of Francesco Robortello, one of the most prominent scholars of the Italian Renaissance. From poetics to rhetoric, philology to history, topics to ethics, Robortello revolutionised the field of humanities through innovative interpretations of ancient texts and with a genius that was architectural in scope. He was highly esteemed by his contemporaries for his acute wit, but also envied and disparaged for his many qualities. In comparison with other humanists of his time such as Carlo Sigonio and Pier Vettori, Robortello had a deeply philosophical vein, one that made him unique not only to Italy, but to Europe more generally. Robortello's role in reforming the humanities makes him a constituent part of the long-fifteenth century. Robortello's thought, however, unlike that of other fifteenth-century humanists, sprung from and was thoroughly imbued with a systematic, Aristotelian spirit without which his philosophy would never have emerged from the tumultuous years of the mid-Cinquecento. Francesco Robortello created a system for the humanities which was unique for his century: a perfect union of humanism and philosophy. This book represents the first fully fledged monograph on this adventurous intellectual life.

This book explores the intellectual world of Francesco Robortello, one of the most prominent scholars of the Italian Renaissance. From poetics to rhetoric, philology to history, topics to ethics, Robortello revolutionised the field of humanities through innovative interpretations of ancient texts and with a genius that was architectural in scope. He was highly esteemed by his contemporaries for his acute wit, but also envied and disparaged for his many qualities. In comparison with other humanists of his time such as Carlo Sigonio and Pier Vettori, Robortello had a deeply philosophical vein, one that made him unique not only to Italy, but to Europe more generally. Robortello's role in reforming the humanities makes him a constituent part of the long-fifteenth century. Robortello's thought, however, unlike that of other fifteenth-century humanists, sprung from and was thoroughly imbued with a systematic, Aristotelian spirit without which his philosophy would never have emerged from the tumultuous years of the mid-Cinquecento. Francesco Robortello created a system for the humanities which was unique for his century: a perfect union of humanism and philosophy. This book represents the first fully fledged monograph on this adventurous intellectual life.

Offers an extremely bold, far-reaching, and unsuspected thesis in the history of philosophy: Aristotelianism was a dominant movement of the British philosophical landscape, especially in the field of logic, and it had a long survival. British Aristotelian doctrines were strongly empiricist in nature, both in the theory of knowledge and in scientific method; this character marked and influenced further developments in British philosophy at the end of the century, and eventually gave rise to what we now call British empiricism, which is represented by philosophers such as John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume. Beyond the apparent and explicit criticism of the old Scholastic and Aristotelian philosophy, which has been very well recognized by the scholarship in the twentieth century and which has contributed to the false notion that early modern philosophy emerged as a reaction to Aristotelianism, the present research examines the continuity, the original developments and the impact of Aristotelian doctrines and terminology in logic and epistemology as the background for the rise of empiricism.Without the Aristotelian tradition, without its doctrines, and without its conceptual elaborations, British empiricism would never have been born. The book emphasizes that philosophy is not defined only by the great names, but also by minor authors, who determine the intellectual milieu from which the canonical names emerge. It considers every single published work of logic between the middle of the sixteenth and the end of the seventeenth century, being acquainted with a number of surviving manuscripts and being well-informed about the best existing scholarship in the field. "

The unconscious raises relevant problems in the theory of knowledge as regards non-conceptual contents and obscure representations. In the philosophy of mind, it bears on the topic of the unity of consciousness and the notion of the transcendental Self. It is a key-topic of logic with respect to the distinction between determinate-indeterminate judgments and prejudices, and in aesthetics it appears in connection with the problems of reflective judgments and of the genius. Finally, it is a relevant issue also in moral philosophy in defining the irrational aspects of the human being. The purpose of the present volume is to fill a substantial gap in Kant research while offering a comprehensive survey of the topic in different areas of research, such as history of philosophy, philosophy of mind, aesthetics, moral philosophy, and anthropology.

Offers an extremely bold, far-reaching, and unsuspected thesis in the history of philosophy: Aristotelianism was a dominant movement of the British philosophical landscape, especially in the field of logic, and it had a long survival. British Aristotelian doctrines were strongly empiricist in nature, both in the theory of knowledge and in scientific method; this character marked and influenced further developments in British philosophy at the end of the century, and eventually gave rise to what we now call British empiricism, which is represented by philosophers such as John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume. Beyond the apparent and explicit criticism of the old Scholastic and Aristotelian philosophy, which has been very well recognized by the scholarship in the twentieth century and which has contributed to the false notion that early modern philosophy emerged as a reaction to Aristotelianism, the present research examines the continuity, the original developments and the impact of Aristotelian doctrines and terminology in logic and epistemology as the background for the rise of empiricism.Without the Aristotelian tradition, without its doctrines, and without its conceptual elaborations, British empiricism would never have been born. The book emphasizes that philosophy is not defined only by the 'great names', but also by minor authors, who determine the intellectual milieu from which the canonical names emerge. It considers every single published work of logic between the middle of the sixteenth and the end of the seventeenth century, being acquainted with a number of surviving manuscripts and being well-informed about the best existing scholarship in the field.

Nel suo pionieristico lavoro Conditions in Koenigsberg and the Making of Kant's Philosophy, Giorgio Tonelli lamentava l'assenza di un'indagine approfondita sul contesto intellettuale di Koenigsberg e sull'eventuale influenza che esso esercito su alcuni aspetti del pensiero di Kant. Questo libro vuole colmare questa lacuna prestando particolare attenzione alla tradizione aristotelica, alla Schulphilosophie, e alla corrente dell'eclettismo, che dominarono l'ambiente regiomontano sino all'avvento della filosofia critica kantiana. Il lavoro mostra come dai fallimenti dei progetti logici e metafisici precritici, legati alle influenze ricevute dall'ambiente di Koenigsberg, Kant abbia tratto le idee e gli spunti per la stesura della Kritik der reinen Vernunft.

The present volume collects seventeen case studies that characterize the various kinds of "translations" within European culture over the last two millennia. Intellectual identities establish themselves by means of a continuous translation and rethinking of previous meanings a sequence of translations and transformations in the transmission of knowledge from one intellectual context to another. This book provides a view on a wide range of texts from ancient Greece to Rome, from the Medieval world to the Renaissance, indicating how the process of "translatio studiorum" evolves as a continuous transposition of texts, of the ways in which they are rewritten, their translations, interpretations and metamorphosis, all of which are crucial to a full understanding of intellectual history.

Syllogism is a form of logical argument allowing one to deduce a consistent conclusion based on a pair of premises having a common term. Although Aristotle was the first to conceive and develop this way of reasoning, he left open a lot of conceptual space for further modifications, improvements and systematizations with regards to his original syllogistic theory. From its creation until modern times, syllogism has remained a powerful and compelling device of deduction and argument, used by a variety of figures and assuming a variety of forms throughout history. The Aftermath of Syllogism investigates the key developments in the history of this peculiar pattern of inference, from Avicenna to Hegel. Taking as its focus the longue duree of development between the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century, this book looks at the huge reworking scientific syllogism underwent over the centuries, as some of the finest philosophical minds brought it to an unprecedented height of logical sharpness and sophistication. Bringing together a group of major international experts in the Aristotelian tradition, The Aftermath of Syllogism provides a detailed, up to date and critical evaluation of the history of syllogistic deduction.

The concept of spontaneity is central to Kant's philosophy, yet Kant himself never dealt with it explicitly. Instead it was presented as an insoluble problem concerning human reason. The ambiguity surrounding his approach to this problem is surprising when one considers that he was a philosopher who based his theoretical programme on the critique of the faculties of knowledge, feeling and desire. However, this ambiguity seems to have avoided up to now any possible critique. This highly original book presents the first full-length study of the problem of spontaneity in Kant. Marco Sgarbi demonstrates that spontaneity is a crucial concept in relation to every aspect of Kant's thought. He begins by reconstructing the history of the concept of spontaneity in the German Enlightenment prior to Kant and goes on to define knowing, thinking, acting and feeling as spontaneous activities of the mind that in turn determine Kant's logic, ethics and aesthetics. Ultimately Sgarbi shows that the notion of spontaneity is key to understanding both Kant's theoretical and practical philosophy.

Gives accurate and reliable summaries of the current state of research. It includes entries on philosophers, problems, terms, historical periods, subjects and the cultural context of Renaissance Philosophy. Furthermore, it covers Latin, Arabic, Jewish, Byzantine and vernacular philosophy, and includes entries on the cross-fertilization of these philosophical traditions. A unique feature of this encyclopedia is that it does not aim to define what Renaissance philosophy is, rather simply to cover the philosophy of the period between 1300 and 1650.