Rethinking Renaissance Aristotelianism: Bernardo Segni’s Ethica, the Florentine Academy, and the Vernacular in Sixteenth-Century Italy*

2013 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 824-865 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Lines
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Philosophical Problem ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Italian Translation ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The Will

AbstractIn 1550 Bernardo Segni, a member of the Florentine Academy, published an Italian translation of and commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Practically unstudied, Segni’s work represents an important moment in the evolution of vernacular Aristotelianism (and philosophy more generally) in the Renaissance. This essay examines Segni’s approach to the text, his familiarity (or not) with the Greek and Latin traditions, and his discussion of a philosophical problem, the freedom of the will. It shows that in all these areas Segni was well aware of Latin interpretations. The essay thus argues that studies of Renaissance Aristotelianism need to abondon their longstanding concentration on the Latin tradition alone and consider the complex and multilevel interactions of Latin and vernacular philosophy.

Liberty and Religion

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilary Gatti
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Dominican Order ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
Giordano Bruno ◽  
The Will ◽  
Theological Thinking

This chapter addresses the question of liberty in sixteenth-century religious debates. It first takes a look at the discussion between the Augustinian friar Martin Luther and Dutch humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam concerning the freedom of the will. The chapter then turns to the theological thinking of John Calvin and the reintroduction into the Protestant world of the notion of heresy. Hereafter the chapter details the circumstances surrounding the dramatic rupture between the friar Giordano Bruno and the Dominican order, including the philosophical doctrines which eventually landed him in the Inquisition. Finally, this chapter follows up on Bruno's insights through the commentary of theologians Richard Hooker and Jacob Harmensz, who is more widely known as Jacobus Arminius.

Humanitas as Discriminating Factor in the Educational Writings of Erasmus and Luther

2005 ◽  
Vol 85 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Riemer A. Faber
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Comparative Studies ◽  
Educational Programs ◽  
Fundamental Difference ◽  
Desiderius Erasmus ◽  
Natural State ◽  
Practical Advice ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The Will ◽  
Classical Culture

AbstractBetween 1520 and 1530 Desiderius Erasmus published several treatises on education in which he provides practical advice about subjects worthy of study and the ideological assumptions which support it. Drawing special attention to his understanding of the natural capabilities of humanity, this article seeks to illustrate the relation between one of Erasmus's theological premises and his promotion of classical culture. During the same period Martin Luther wrote three influential educational tracts and also engaged Erasmus in a debate over the freedom of the will, which forced both the Christian humanist and the Wittenberg reformer to express clearly their understandings of humanity in its natural state. A comparison of their divergent theological positions reveals a fundamental difference in their views of education and its value. Whereas Erasmus justifies the study of ancient secular authors by means of his positive notion of humanitas, Luther subordinates education to the theological rediscoveries of the Wittenberg reformation. The article concludes that further comparative studies of various theological presuppositions and the educational programs they support will advance the understanding of the connections between the ideals and the realities of schooling in sixteenth-century Europe.

scholarly journals Wittgenstein on Freedom of the Will: Not Determinism, Yet Not Indeterminism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Nadelhoffer
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Philosophical Problem ◽  
Secondary Literature ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The Will

Since the publication of Wittgenstein’s Lectures on Freedom of the Will in 1989, his remarks about free will and determinism have received very little attention. Insofar as these lectures give us an opportunity to see him at work on a traditional—and seemingly intractable—philosophical problem and given the voluminous secondary literature written about nearly every other facet of Wittgenstein’s life and philosophy, this neglect is both surprising and unfortunate. Perhaps these lectures have not attracted much attention because they are available to us only in the form of a single student’s notes (Yorick Smythies). Or perhaps it is because, as one Wittgenstein scholar put it, the lectures represent only “cursory reflections” that “are themselves uncompelling." Either way, my goal is to show that Wittgenstein’s views about freedom of the will merit closer attention.

scholarly journals Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics 1113b7–8 and Free Choice

2021 ◽  
pp. 77-92
Author(s):  
Susanne Bobzien
Keyword(s):  
Free Choice ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Philosophical Question ◽  
Close Textual Analysis ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The Will

This chapter examines with close textual analysis the philosophical question whether the two famous Aristotelian lines from the Nicomachean Ethics (EN 3.5 1113b7–8) on what is up to us (eph’shēmin) provide any evidence that Aristotle discussed free choice or freedom of the will—as is not infrequently assumed. The result is that they do not, and that the claim that they do tends to be based on a curious mistranslation of the Greek. Thus the sentence that is sometimes adduced as the main piece of evidence for the claim that Aristotle was an indeterminist with respect to choosing (prohairesis) and acting (praxeis, prattein) is no evidence for this claim at all. This chapter is a companion piece to the next one (‘Found in Translation’).

Grace and Freedom

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Muller
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Divine Grace ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
Ultimate Cause ◽  
The Will ◽  
Libertarian Freedom ◽  
The Church

Grace and Freedom addresses the issue of divine grace in relation to the freedom of the will in Reformed or “Calvinist” theology in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century with a focus on the work of the English Reformed theologian William Perkins, and his role as an apologist of the Church of England, defending its theology against Roman Catholic polemic, and specifically against the charge that Reformed theology denies human free choice. Perkins and his contemporaries affirmed that salvation occurs by grace alone and that God is the ultimate cause of all things, but they also insisted on the freedom of the human will and specifically the freedom of choice in a way that does not conform to modern notions of libertarian freedom or compatibilism. In developing this position, Perkins drew on the thought of various Reformers such as Peter Martyr Vermigli and Zacharias Ursinus, on the nuanced positions of medieval scholastics, and on several contemporary Roman Catholic representatives of the so-called second scholasticism. His work was a major contribution to early modern Reformed thought both in England and on the continent. His influence in England extended both to the Reformed heritage of the Church of England and to English Puritanism. On the Continent, his work contributed to the main lines of Reformed orthodoxy and to the piety of the Dutch Second Reformation.

Free Agent or ‘Conscious Automaton’? Contrasting Interpretations of the Individual in Spencer's Writing on Social and Moral Life

2003 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Offer
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
Care Needs ◽  
Philosophical Debate ◽  
Herbert Spencer ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
Policy Sociology ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Individual

Herbert Spencer remains an important and intriguing figure in thinking about political, social and moral matters. At present his writings in relation to idealist thought, social policy, sociology and ethics are undergoing reassessment. This article is concerned with some recent interpretations of Spencer on individuals in social life. It looks in some detail at Spencer's work on psychology and sociology as well as on ethics, seeking to establish how Spencer understood people as social individuals. In particular the neglect of Spencer's denial of freedom of the will is identified as a problem in some recent interpretations. One of his contemporary critics, J.E. Cairnes, charged that Spencer's own theory of social evolution left even Spencer himself the status of only a ‘conscious automaton’. This article, drawing on a range of past and present interpretative discussions of Spencer, seeks to show that Spencerian individuals are psychically and socially so constituted as to be only indirectly responsive to moral suasion, even to that of his own Principles of Ethics as he himself acknowledged. Whilst overtly reconstructionist projects to develop a liberal utilitarianism out of Spencer to enliven political and philosophical debate for today are worthwhile – dead theorists have uses – care needs to be taken that the original context and its concerns with the processes associated with innovation (and decay) in social life are not thereby eclipsed, the more so since in some important respects they have recently received little systematic attention even though the issues have contemporary relevance in sociology.

Jonathan Edwards on the Sense of the Heart

1948 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Perry Miller
Keyword(s):  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Great Awakening ◽  
American Mind ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The World ◽  
Real Work ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Mind

The reputation of Jonathan Edwards, impressive though it is, rests upon only a fragmentary representation of the range or profundity of his thinking. Harassed by events and controversies, he was forced repeatedly to put aside his real work and to expend his energies in turning out sermons, defenses of the Great Awakening, or theological polemics. Only two of his published books (and those the shortest), The Nature of True Virtue and The End for which God Created the World, were not ad hoc productions. Even The Freedom of the Will is primarily a dispute, aimed at silencing the enemy rather than expounding a philosophy. He died with his Summa still a mass of notes in a bundle of home-made folios, the handwriting barely legible. The conventional estimate that Edwards was America's greatest metaphysical genius is a tribute to his youthful Notes on the Mind — which were a crude forecast of the system at which he labored for the rest of his days — and to a few incidental flashes that illumine his forensic argumentations. The American mind is immeasurably the poorer that he was not permitted to bring into order his accumulated meditations.

scholarly journals Evangelical Responses to the Question of Religious Pluralism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Cecily May Worsfold
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Core Beliefs ◽  
Major Work ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
The Will ◽  
Evangelical Movement ◽  
Will Of God

<p>The relatively recent rise of religious pluralism has significantly affected the evangelical movement, the roots of which are traceable to the sixteenth century Reformation. In particular, the theological implications of religious pluralism have led to debate concerning the nature of core beliefs of evangelicalism and how these should be interpreted in the contemporary world. While evangelicals continue to articulate a genuine undergirding desire to “honour the authority of Scripture”, differing frameworks and ideals have led to a certain level of fracturing between schools of evangelical thought. This research focuses on the work of three evangelical theologians – Harold Netland, John Sanders and Clark Pinnock – and their responses to the question of religious pluralism. In assessing the ideas put forward in their major work relevant to religious pluralism this thesis reveals something of the contestation and diversity within the evangelical tradition. The authors' respective theological opinions demonstrate that there is basic agreement on some doctrines. Others are being revisited, however, in the search for answers to the tension between two notions that evangelicals commonly affirm: the eternal destiny of the unevangelised; and the will of God that all humankind should obtain salvation. Evangelicals are deeply divided on this matter, and the problem of containing seemingly incompatible views within the confines of “evangelical belief” remains. This ongoing division highlights the difficulty of defining evangelicalism in purely theological terms.</p>

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