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Ocho filosofos del Renacimiento italiano (Brevarios del Fondo de Cultura Economic)
Nunca se ha puesto en duda la influencia total del Renacimiento sobre la cultura occidental. No obstante, en el aspecto puramente filosófico existen confusiones y faltas de atención. Hay razones para ello: faltan la unidad y la densidad que impresionan en las grandes estructuras del pensamiento medieval o en los sistemas del siglo XVII. Sin embargo, el tránsito de aquéllas a éstos es incomprensible sin el periodo de fermentación en que se desplegó la filosofía renacentista, asimilando recursos nuevos, adelantando nuevas ideas y ensayando combinaciones nuevas de ideas antiguas. En lo tocante a fuentes y estilo, terminología y problemas, si no métodos o soluciones, el Renacimiento preludia la filosofía moderna.
En este Breviario, P. O. Kristeller analiza el pensamiento filosófico de ocho figuras renacentistas: de Petrarca a Giordano Bruno, pasando por el influyente platonismo de Ficino, la gran aventura trunca de Pico, el interesante sistema natural de Telesio, es posible seguir el cauce de los nuevos modos de reflexión, en su continuidad y en sus limitaciones. Un apéndice acerca de los antecedentes del humanismo complementa con oportunidad el conjunto.
224 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1964
3 people are currently reading
106 people want to read
About the author
Paul Oskar Kristeller
75 books11 followersPaul Oskar Kristeller (May 22, 1905 in Berlin – June 7, 1999 in New York, USA) was an important scholar of Renaissance humanism. He was awarded the Haskins Medal in 1992. He was last active as Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Columbia University in New York, where he mentored both Irving Louis Horowitz and A. James Gregor.
During his university years he studied with Werner Jaeger, Heinrich Rickert, Richard Kroner, Karl Hampe, Friedrich Baethgen, Eduard Norden, and Ulrich von Wilamowitz. He also attended lectures by noted philosophers such as Ernst Cassirer, Edmund Husserl, and Karl Jaspers. In 1928, he earned his doctorate from the University of Heidelberg under Ernst Hoffmann with a dissertation on Plotinus. He did postdoctoral work at the universities of Berlin and Freiburg. At Freiburg, Kristeller studied under the philosopher Martin Heidegger from 1931 to 1933. The Nazi victory in 1933 forced Kristeller to move to Italy. At his arrival, Giovanni Gentile secured for him a position as lecturer in German at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. It was at the Scuola Normale that Kristeller completed his first great works in the Renaissance: the Supplementum Ficinianum (1937) and The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino (1943). In 1939, he fled Italy, due to the enactment of Mussolini's August 1938 racial laws, to live in the USA. Thanks to the help of Yale University historian Roland Bainton, he sailed from Genoa in February 1939 and by March was teaching a graduate seminar at Yale on Plotinus. However Kristeller taught for only a short time at Yale University until moving to Columbia University, where he taught until his retirement in 1973, as Frederick J. E. Woodbridge Professor of Philosophy. He continued to be an active researcher after he retired. Paul Kristeller received the Serena Medal of the British Academy in 1958, the Premio Internazionale Galileo Galilei in 1968 and the Commendatore nell'Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana in 1971.
The emphasis of Kristeller's research was on the philosophy of Renaissance humanism. He is the author of important studies on Marsilio Ficino, Pietro Pomponazzi and Giambattista Vico.
An especially important achievement is his Iter Italicum (the title recalls Iter Alemannicum and other works of Martin Gerbert), a large work describing numerous uncatalogued manuscripts. After decades of neglect, Kristeller's lengthy, erudite essay of the early 1950s, "The Modern System of the Arts", in Journal of the History of Ideas, proved to be an influential, much reprinted classic reading in Philosophy of Art.
Kristeller was the chief inspirer of the Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum, the ongoing project that aims to chart the fortune of all extant classical works through the Middle Ages and Renaissance, serving as Founder and Editor-in-Chief for the first two volumes and Associate Editor for the next five volumes.
During his university years he studied with Werner Jaeger, Heinrich Rickert, Richard Kroner, Karl Hampe, Friedrich Baethgen, Eduard Norden, and Ulrich von Wilamowitz. He also attended lectures by noted philosophers such as Ernst Cassirer, Edmund Husserl, and Karl Jaspers. In 1928, he earned his doctorate from the University of Heidelberg under Ernst Hoffmann with a dissertation on Plotinus. He did postdoctoral work at the universities of Berlin and Freiburg. At Freiburg, Kristeller studied under the philosopher Martin Heidegger from 1931 to 1933. The Nazi victory in 1933 forced Kristeller to move to Italy. At his arrival, Giovanni Gentile secured for him a position as lecturer in German at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. It was at the Scuola Normale that Kristeller completed his first great works in the Renaissance: the Supplementum Ficinianum (1937) and The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino (1943). In 1939, he fled Italy, due to the enactment of Mussolini's August 1938 racial laws, to live in the USA. Thanks to the help of Yale University historian Roland Bainton, he sailed from Genoa in February 1939 and by March was teaching a graduate seminar at Yale on Plotinus. However Kristeller taught for only a short time at Yale University until moving to Columbia University, where he taught until his retirement in 1973, as Frederick J. E. Woodbridge Professor of Philosophy. He continued to be an active researcher after he retired. Paul Kristeller received the Serena Medal of the British Academy in 1958, the Premio Internazionale Galileo Galilei in 1968 and the Commendatore nell'Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana in 1971.
The emphasis of Kristeller's research was on the philosophy of Renaissance humanism. He is the author of important studies on Marsilio Ficino, Pietro Pomponazzi and Giambattista Vico.
An especially important achievement is his Iter Italicum (the title recalls Iter Alemannicum and other works of Martin Gerbert), a large work describing numerous uncatalogued manuscripts. After decades of neglect, Kristeller's lengthy, erudite essay of the early 1950s, "The Modern System of the Arts", in Journal of the History of Ideas, proved to be an influential, much reprinted classic reading in Philosophy of Art.
Kristeller was the chief inspirer of the Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum, the ongoing project that aims to chart the fortune of all extant classical works through the Middle Ages and Renaissance, serving as Founder and Editor-in-Chief for the first two volumes and Associate Editor for the next five volumes.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 14, 2011
In this survey of Renaissance philosophy, Kristeller presents biographies and descriptions of the systems of thought of Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374), Lorenzo Valla (1407-1457), Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), Pietro Pomponazzi (1462-1525), Bernardino Telesio (1509-1588), Francesco Patrizi (1529-1597), and Giordano Bruno (1548-1600). Kristeller, a noted historian of the Renaissance, illuminates the streams of humanism and Platonism that emerged during the Italian Renaissance to challenge the Aristotelianism that had come to dominate the intellectual landscape of the Medieval world. As all too many histories of philosophy gloss over the Renaissance—leaping straight from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment—Kristeller's study succeeds both in clarifying a generally overlooked chapter in the history of Western philosophy, but also in delineating the philosophical roots of the Renaissance revival of esotericism. And, as a primer on this phase of Western esotericism's development, it serves wonderfully by integrating Renaissance Platonist like Ficino and Pico with ideologically dissimilar humanists such as Petrarch and Pompanazzi, all the while demonstrating their integral position within the movement as a whole.
December 18, 2025
un libro magnífico para entender los orígenes del renacimiento 🐦🔥 en Italia que que se expandió por Europa y el resto del mundo, dandonos un panorama general de las principales figuras de aquel entonces cuyas obras siguen vivas y deberían leerse.
June 11, 2018
The Renaissance period tends to occupy an ellipsis in narratives of the history of philosophy. You finish your medieval philosophy with figures like Ockham, and then you begin your early modern philosophy with Bacon and Descartes, thus conveniently forgetting the entire intervening humanist period which is indispensable for understanding modernity. (My own undergraduate philosophy education was hamstrung by this oversight.)
If you don't have much of an idea of what was happening intellectually in Renaissance Italy outside of art and architecture, then this is the book for you. Kristeller is one of the defining scholars of the Renaissance studies field, and this extremely readable collection of lectures walks you through the basic ideas of eight major Italian philosophers across the period. This is still probably the best introduction to Renaissance philosophy out there, and it's a good foundation for learning more about such a fertile epoch.
If you don't have much of an idea of what was happening intellectually in Renaissance Italy outside of art and architecture, then this is the book for you. Kristeller is one of the defining scholars of the Renaissance studies field, and this extremely readable collection of lectures walks you through the basic ideas of eight major Italian philosophers across the period. This is still probably the best introduction to Renaissance philosophy out there, and it's a good foundation for learning more about such a fertile epoch.
May 23, 2018
Kniha je napísaná veľmi prístupnou (prednáškovou) formou, takže o každom z ôsmych filozofov sa čitateľ dozvie to podstatné (podstatné pre autora, samozrejme) a je tam aj nutný základ (fakty). Osobne sa mi páčilo ako Kristeller predstavil hlavne Petratku, Vallu, Ficina a Pica. Pri ostatných som sa trošku strácal, čo ale môže byť spojené aj tým, že posledný traja (Telesio, Patrizi, Bruno) boli z veľkej časti prírodní filozofi a rozprávali o univerze a prvotných princípoch, čo nemali nijak podložené, čiže sú to občas fascinujúce fantasmagórie. Každopádne, ide o učebný text k renesančnému humanizmu, nie bežné čítanie.
June 9, 2023
This was originally a series of lectures and is therefore easy to consume. Some biographical information is given on each of the eight philosophers and then their main ideas and books are surveyed. One particular thread that unites the period is the moves between Aristotelianism and Platonism as well as a syncretic unification of both schools of philosophy. Kristeller speaks to the importance of Plato, defining Platonism as, "a constant adaptation and amalgamation of his [Plato's] basic motives according to the insight and convictions of each new thinker".
May 10, 2018
Esta es una serie de conferencias en las que el autor repasa la vida y pensamiento de ocho filósofos renacentistas. Sobresalen los capítulos dedicados a Ficcino, Pico y Bruno. Además reflexiona sobre los rompimientos y continuidades de los filósofos del Renacimiento con los medievales. Es un buen punto de inicio para empezar a estudiar ese periodo.
June 14, 2015
Interesting, accessible overview of 8 philosophers from the Italian Renasissance.
It's rather dry, intentionally so. Kristeller keeps each section mostly limited to overview of a few essential ideas brought about by each philosopher, intermittently offering an opinion of his own, and often one that dismisses the opinions of others rather than a creative idea of his own. I enjoyed this as someone who isn't familiar with these other opinions, but who will be pursuing them now that I've had an introduction into Renaissance thought.
The final 3 philosophers though, the "Philosophers of nature," I couldn't understand. The way Kristeller describes them doesn't really seem to enlighten their importance. While there is only so much room for him to work with in this short volume, those last 3 philosophers I hardly took anything away from beyond the most vague, interpreted assumption of why they are included at all.
Overall enjoyable, and a nice introduction. It has certainly inspired me to look into the Renaissance more.
It's rather dry, intentionally so. Kristeller keeps each section mostly limited to overview of a few essential ideas brought about by each philosopher, intermittently offering an opinion of his own, and often one that dismisses the opinions of others rather than a creative idea of his own. I enjoyed this as someone who isn't familiar with these other opinions, but who will be pursuing them now that I've had an introduction into Renaissance thought.
The final 3 philosophers though, the "Philosophers of nature," I couldn't understand. The way Kristeller describes them doesn't really seem to enlighten their importance. While there is only so much room for him to work with in this short volume, those last 3 philosophers I hardly took anything away from beyond the most vague, interpreted assumption of why they are included at all.
Overall enjoyable, and a nice introduction. It has certainly inspired me to look into the Renaissance more.
January 5, 2016
Helped me gain more insight into Renaissance thinking, particularly around the neoplatonic idea of immortality of the soul (Ficino).
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews