Dialogical Strategies, Volgarizzamento, and Ciceronian Ethos in Antonio Brucioli's Dialogi Della Morale Filosofia

2009 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 39-66
Author(s):  
Reinier Leushuis
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Rhetorical Analysis ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Cultural Elite ◽  
Female Voices ◽  
The Creation

In 1526, Antonio Brucioli (1487-1566) published a series of thirty dialogues that form a typical humanist compendium of moral and political wisdom in the vernacular. Scholars have considered these dialogues mainly from the perspective of Brucioli’s humanist and political allegiances, in particular with exiled Florentine humanists whose discussions in the Orti Oricellari the dialogues echo. However, textual reworkings in subsequent editions (1538 and 1544, in which this group constitutes the first volume, entitled Della morale filosofia, of a series that includes other volumes of dialogues on natural philosophy) warrant a reconsideration that complements intellectual history with literary and rhetorical analysis. This article revalorizes Brucioli’s Dialogi della morale filosofia by arguing that their literary and rhetorical strategies, such as the use of ancient dialogue models, the shifting choice and staging of interlocutors, the creation of Ciceronian ethos and decorum, and the mimetic aspects of the interaction of male and female voices not only evince a conscious application of early Cinquecento dialogue poetics, but also establish the author’s volgarizzamento of a compendium of classical and humanist wisdom as a uniquely Italian project aimed at an emulation and appropriation of moral philosophy by dialogical speaking at the level of a national cultural elite.

Male and Female Voices: Selective Exposure to Sexism Reduction Efforts

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah J. Smith ◽  
Jessica L. McManus ◽  
Danielle C. Zanotti ◽  
Donald A. Saucier
Keyword(s):  
Selective Exposure ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Female Voices

Liberty of Mind

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Hutton
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
General Trend ◽  
Political Liberty ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Mary Astell ◽  
The Mind

This chapter demonstrates how early modern male and female thinkers alike were concerned not only with ethical, religious, and political liberty, but also with the liberty to philosophize, or libertas philosophandi. It is argued that while men’s interests in this latter kind of liberty tended to lie with the liberty to philosophize differently from their predecessors, women were more concerned with the liberty to philosophize at all. For them, the idea that women should be free to think was foundational. This chapter shows how some women thinkers of the period, such as Damaris Cudworth Masham (1658–1708) and Mary Astell (1666–1731), followed through on the general trend of thinking about liberty in terms of freedom of the mind, to thinking about liberty for women in wider ethical and political terms. To support this point, the chapter explores their views on education, female rationality, and moral philosophy.

Pythagorean Women Philosophers

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorota M. Dutsch
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
First Century ◽  
Wisdom Literature ◽  
Greek Culture ◽  
Female Voices ◽  
Grant Agency ◽  
Women Philosophers ◽  
Historical Accounts

Modern scholarly accounts of Greek philosophical history usually exclude women. And yet, from Dixaearchus of Messana to Diogenes Laertius, classical writers record the names of women philosophers from various schools. What is more, pseudonymous treatises and letters (likely dating after the first century CE) articulate the teachings of Pythagorean women. How can this literature inform our understanding of Greek intellectual history? To take these texts at face value would be naïve; to reject them, narrow-minded. This book is a deep examination of the literary tradition surrounding female Pythagoreans; it envisions the tradition as a network of texts that does not represent female philosophers but enacts their role in Greek culture. Part I, “Portraits,” assembles and contextualizes excerpts from historical accounts and wisdom literature. Part II, “Impersonations,” analyzes pseudonymous treatises and letters. Texts are approached with a mixture of suspicion and belief, inspired by Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics. Suspicion serves to disclose the misogyny of the epistemic regimes that produced the texts about and by women philosophers. Belief takes us beyond the circumstances of the texts’ production to possible worlds of diverse readers, institutions, and practices that grant agency to the female knower. In the process, the book uncovers traces of a fascinating dialogue about the gender of philosophical knowledge, which includes female voices.

The Wisdom of Desire in the Song of Songs

2018 ◽  
pp. 260-275
Author(s):  
Carey Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Arousal ◽  
Song Of Songs ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Female Voices ◽  
Human Desire

The Song of Songs offers a unique discussion of the experience of sexual longing through dialogues of an unnamed woman and man. The chapter focuses on the use of dialogic structure to frame three prominent discourses of desire: aesthetic appreciation, affective description, and subjective expressions of sexual arousal. These varied discourses affirm a polyphonic view on human desire from the embodied experience of the male and female voices of the Song. With its use of dialogue, the Song is characteristic of the Writings in offering a diversity of perspectives. The chapter further probes the canonical contribution of the Song’s testimony to human longing, sex, joy, and biodiversity.

scholarly journals An Early European Critic of Hobbes’s De Corpore

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Clucas
Keyword(s):  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
Human Being ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Common Understanding ◽  
Previous Scholarship ◽  
Philosophical Underpinning ◽  
Scholastic Tradition

The Animadversiones in Elementorum Philosophiae by a little known Flemish scholar G. Moranus, published in Brussels in 1655 was an early European response to Hobbes’s De Corpore. Although it is has been referred to by various Hobbes scholars, such as Noel Malcolm, Doug Jesseph, and Alexander Bird it has been little studied. Previous scholarship has tended to focus on the mathematical criticisms of André Tacquet which Moranus included in the form of a letter in his volume. Moranus’s philosophical objections to Hobbes’s natural philosophy offer a fascinating picture of the critical reception of Hobbes’s work by a religious writer trained in the late Scholastic tradition. Moranus’s opening criticism clearly shows that he is unhappy with Hobbes’s exclusion of the divine and the immaterial from natural philosophy. He asks what authority Hobbes has for breaking with the common understanding of philosophy, as defined by Cicero ‘the knowledge of things human and divine’. He also offers natural philosophical and theological criticisms of Hobbes for overlooking the generation of things involved in the Creation. He also attacks the natural philosophical underpinning of Hobbes’s civil philosophy. In this paper I look at a number of philosophical topics which Moranus criticised in Hobbes’s work, including his mechanical psychology, his theory of imaginary space, his use of the concept of accidents, his blurring of the distinction between the human being and the animal, and his theories of motion. Moranus’s criticisms, which are a mixture of philosophical and theological objections, gives us some clear indications of what made Hobbes’ natural philosophy controversial amongst his contemporaries, and sheds new light on the early continental reception of Hobbes’s work.

scholarly journals Creation accounts in Gen. 1 & 2: a feminist interpretation

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-33
Author(s):  
Ubong Ekpenyong Eyo
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Text ◽  
Male Gender ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Feminist Interpretation ◽  
Culturally Based ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Book Of Genesis ◽  
Holy Writ ◽  
King James Version

It is the view of most people who claim the authoritative nature of the Bible that, women assigned secondary status in relation to men is ordained and supported in the Bible. Many have quoted different texts of the holy writ to support their culturally-biased position on issue of gender equality. Most often views in respect to gender issues are culturally-based and interpreted rather than divinely-based and interpreted. There is therefore the need to look back at Jesus’ words, “But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.” (Matt 19:4; Mark 10:6 King James Version). The two accounts in the Book of Genesis by the Priestly and Yahwistic strands give a complimentary account of the creation of humankind (both male and female) in the image and likeness of God and their creation from a single stock אדם who was not a male gender. At a cursory reading of the creation accounts, one will tend to see האדם as the male gender, but looking at the Hebrew text more closely it will be noticed that the Hebrew words אישה and אישwere only introduced after the two genders have been separated. Note carefully that it was not איש that was asked to tend the garden, who named the animals, was given instruction of what to eat or what not to eat, who fell into a deep sleep or whose ribs was used in the creation of אישה but it was האדם . It was after the creation or ‘separation’ of אישה (woman – the female האדם) that the other part was called איש (man – the male האדם) (see vv 23 & 24 King James Version). It will therefore not be right to speak of the creation of אישה out of איש, because as at the time of the creation of the former, the later was not in existence as איש To view these creation accounts with the sense of gender superiority (either male over female or vice versa) is to read the texts using lenses which have been obscured and tainted by patriarchal, matriarchal or cultural biases.

scholarly journals The Meteorological Observations in Coimbra and the Portuguese Participation in Weather Forecasting in Europe

2011 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
António Leonardo ◽  
Décio Martins ◽  
Carlos Fiolhais
Keyword(s):  
Weather Forecasting ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Meteorological Station ◽  
Scientific Investigation ◽  
Magnetic Observatory ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Meteorological Observatory ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Meteorological Observations ◽  
The University

In the early nineteenth century, regular meteorological observations started at the Faculty of Natural Philosophy of the University of Coimbra (FPUC). From 1854 to 1856 these observations were published in O Instituto, a journal of an academic society of the same name, founded in Coimbra in 1852. This new area of science aroused great interest, offering itself as unexplored territory waiting for scientific investigation. In reaction to the pioneering work at the Polytechnic School of Lisbon of Guilherme Pegado, who founded the first meteorological observatory in Portugal in 1854, the FPUC established a Meteorological and Magnetic Observatory in Coimbra. The main actor was, from 1863, the physicist Jacinto António de Sousa. In the twentieth century, the increasing need for weather forecasting, especially at sea, led to the creation of the Meteorological Services of the Navy in which Carvalho Brandão played a pivotal role. It was the beginning of an international cooperation that brought Jacob Bjerknes to Portugal. He addressed a conference at Coimbra recommending the creation of a meteorological station in the Azores, to relay observational data from vessels travelling in the Atlantic. The Portuguese meteorological services were scattered in various institutions until 1946, when the National Meteorological Services (NMS) were created. Based on articles published in O Instituto and on the activities of the academy with the same name, we provide an overview of the evolution of meteorology in Portugal until the establishment of the NMS, with particular emphasis on the work of the Meteorological and Magnetic Observatory at the University of Coimbra.

scholarly journals Accuracy, veracity, and theological truth in the 16th century atlas <i>Theatrum Terrae Sanctae</i>

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Ioana Zamfir
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Critical Cartography ◽  
Political Role ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Theological Understanding

Abstract. The characteristics and appearance of an authentic map (in conformity with reality), together with the convention about how authenticity should be obtained in a map, continued to change since the beginning of modern cartography along the centuries. As Critical Cartography has emphasised, the authenticity of a map was in many cases just a convincing appearance, hiding intricate ideologies. However, the political role of maps is just one aspect of their significance, which does not exclude the existence of genuine beliefs and ideals which were guiding cartographers and map authors in the creation process.With a long tradition of understanding maps as illustration devices, Renaissance geography blended intimately with the assumptions and debates of the artistic domain of painting. Among these, veracity was a much praised ideal, signifying the ability of the art work to make present the absent things or giving a new life to people or events gone long ago, a perspective which allowed for rich metaphysical implications. In his theological atlas Theatrum Terrae Sanctae, Christian Adrichom used a variety of formula through which he expressed his view on the evocative power of maps, deriving from contemporary theories concerning truth, vision and representation. In this article we will employ the textual analysis of Adrichom’s affirmations, approaching them through the filter of the Intellectual History methodology. This method allows us to discover that the author explored the metaphysical implications of painting realism in order to present and use his maps as Christian devices, equating the veracity of the cartographic medium with the authenticity of Christ’s life and with the theological understanding of truth.

Visibilis et Invisibilis: The Mistress in Italian Renaissance Court Society*

1994 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 770-792 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen S. Ettlinger
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
The Political ◽  
Central Character ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
The Creation

Fifteenth Century Italy has been called both the “golden age of bastards” and the “age of golden bastards.” But while scholars from Jacob Burckhardt to Lauro Martines have decried princely infidelity and the political problems resulting from the promotion of the inevitable bastards, they have not discussed a central character in the creation of such situations: the mother of those bastards or, more properly, the mistress of the prince. “Golden bastards,” male and female, could not have existed without the tacit cooperation of noble women and the men who protected them – husbands, fathers, and brothers. And herein lies a conundrum. Paternal, spousal, and/or fraternal consent to an illicit relationship which was, at best, a tenuous claim on the generosity of a prince might appear to violate the model constructed by family historians of a society concerned with preserving the honor of their women in order to enhance the family's position through advantageous marital alliances of the virgin daughters.

A Time to Regender: The Transformation of Roman Time

KronoScope ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Barden Dowling
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Universal Time ◽  
First Century ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Roman Time ◽  
Roman Culture ◽  
Nature Of Time ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Imperial State ◽  
Representation Of Time

AbstractAt the end of the first century A.D., at the height of the Roman empire, a new abstract deity of eternal time, Aeternitas, appeared. This first discrete personification of abstract time was initially a female image represented on official coins and monuments, but in A.D. 121, a new male personification of eternal time appeared in imperial, state sponsored art. Both male and female depictions of eternal time were accompanied by a rich array of attributes that connected eternity, immortality, and earthly prosperity. This change in the image of time occurred simultaneously with tremendous changes in Roman culture: the creation of universal time keeping, the creation of elaborate beliefs in the afterlife, and transformations in Romans' expectations of life, lead to the embodiment of an ideal of eternity in the personification Aeternitas, and explain the radical transformations in her/his iconography. It is through a study of the representation of time that we identify a profound reenvisioning of the nature of time in Western thought, when human temporal and metaphysical experiences of time were expanded, laying the foundation for the successful spread of the Christian conceptions of eternal blissful time after the apocalypse.

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