This book investigates the meanings of the notion of friendship in the Renaissance from two perspectives, philological and philosophical, by observing how the notion was used in a broad spectrum of case studies of Renaissance culture. Each chapter highlights the ways in which authors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (writers, philosophers, philologists, politicians, etc.) appropriated Greek and Latin paradigms of friendship, on the one hand, applying them to understand their own social and political context while, on the other hand, they created new paradigms of friendship in both the public and private spheres. Each chapter develops an argument on the notion of friendship starting from the investigation of a particular context and creating a network of connections between words related to friendship, such as speaking sincerely (parrhesia), flattery, justice, love, pleasure, good, utility, virtue, good life, and truth, in both the private and public domains. The writers addressed in the various chapters are - with regard to the ancients - Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Plutarch, Cicero and Seneca and - among the moderns - Machiavelli, Montaigne, Thomas More, Erasmus, Juan de Mariana, Feliciano Silvestri, Johannes Caselius, the members of the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft, and the authors of Renaissance emblem books.

Die Autoren verorten aus unterschiedlichen kulturwissenschaftlichen Perspektiven heraus die soziale Figur des Experten in der Vormoderne. Experten versprechen, massgeschneidertes Wissen zur Problemlosung bereitzustellen oder zu vermitteln. Doch so sehr Akteure den Experten vertrauen, wachst andererseits auch das Empfinden, die eigene Handlungsautonomie aufzugeben und fremdbestimmt zu werden. Experten sind deswegen die geborenen Sundenbocke: Man verlangt von ihnen, die Welt einfach zu machen und weist ihnen dafur einflussreiche soziale Sonderrollen zu. Der Band zeigt die unterschiedlichen Momente dieser sozialen Dynamik. Er tragt damit neue Sichtweisen in die Erforschung von Expertenkulturen hinein, die bislang von feuilletonistischen Debatten dominiert wird."

First secretary to the Aragonese kings of Naples, Giovanni Pontano (1429-1503) was a key figure of the Italian Renaissance. A poet and a philosopher of high repute, Pontano's works offer a reflection on the achievements of fifteenth-century humanism and address major themes of early modern moral and political thought. Taking his defining inspiration from Aristotle, Pontano wrote on topics such as prudence, fortune, magnificence, and the art of pleasant conversation, rewriting Aristotle's Ethics in the guise of a new Latin philosophy, inscribed with the patterns of Renaissance culture. This book shows how Pontano's rewriting of Aristotelian ethics affected not only his philosophical views, but also his political life and his place in the humanist movement. Drawing on Pontano's treatises, dialogues, letters, poems and political writings, Matthias Roick presents us with the first comprehensive study of Pontano's moral and political thought, offering novel insights into the workings of Aristotelian virtue ethics in the early modern period.

First secretary to the Aragonese kings of Naples, Giovanni Pontano (1429-1503) was a key figure of the Italian Renaissance. A poet and a philosopher of high repute, Pontano's works offer a reflection on the achievements of fifteenth-century humanism and address major themes of early modern moral and political thought. Taking his defining inspiration from Aristotle, Pontano wrote on topics such as prudence, fortune, magnificence, and the art of pleasant conversation, rewriting Aristotle's Ethics in the guise of a new Latin philosophy, inscribed with the patterns of Renaissance culture. This book shows how Pontano's rewriting of Aristotelian ethics affected not only his philosophical views, but also his political life and his place in the humanist movement. Drawing on Pontano's treatises, dialogues, letters, poems and political writings, Matthias Roick presents us with the first comprehensive study of Pontano's moral and political thought, offering novel insights into the workings of Aristotelian virtue ethics in the early modern period.