The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy

I am a great admirer of Ernst Cassirer. He is an underrated 20th century philosopher. His style tends to be so much more straightforward than many of his contemporaries. This belies how deep what he says is. In this book, he brings together a vast amount of knowledge and understanding of Renaissance philosophy and gets right to the heart of the matter. He obviously cares about the subjects he takes up. Like Riceour, he gives a clear explication of others' ideas without it feeling like mere reporting. He appreciates what each person uniquely contributed while giving a clear sense of why it still matters. Again, like Riceour, Cassirer discusses others' ideas in such a way that they are fairly presented, interest in what they contributed is kindled, and all these ideas are then made part of a larger picture that is being revealed.Cassirer himself later felt he may have overplayed his hand in discussing the influence of Nicholas Cusanus on later Renaissance thinkers. However, it still helps him delineate themes that allows him to create a narrative of ideas that shaped Renaissance thought and action. A key to this is the complementary roles of artistic creation and scientific observation, which were seen as being two sides of the true spirit of the Renaissance conception of a philosopher. For them being an artist was part of being a philosopher and vice versa.Ultimately, Cassirer helps the reader to share in his enthusiasm for this period and lnead the reader in comimg away with a greater interest in what this period still has to offer.

This short but rich book is a very interesting study by the great historian of philosophy Ernst Cassirer. Cassirer believed that the philosophy of a period encapsulated the essential features of that period. In the case of the Renaissance, prior scholars, including the pioneering Jacob Burkhardt, found study of philosophy less useful for understanding the Renaissance. Csssirer argues that these pioneers looked in the wrong place, suggesting that developments in theology, as opposed to philosophy per se, are crucial for understanding the mind of the Renaissance. Cassirer concentrates initially on the thought of the polymath Nicholas of Cusa (Cusanus), demonstrating that Cusanus' theology emphasized individual human capacities, an individual human relationship to God, and the importance of reason in understanding the Universe. Cassirer follows these themes through the work of a number of important thinkers, including the Florentine Platonists, Bruno, Leonardo, and Galileo. Additional themes are the importance of the revival of Platonism, as opposed to Hellenistic Neo-Platonism, the somewhat transitional role of the concepts of magic, the increasing importance of mathematics, and the series of assaults on Aristotle's system. Cassirer does particularly well in discussing the relationship between ideas of aesthetic creativity, human capacity, and emerging scientific thought. The discussions of the metaphysical underpinnings of physical science are particularly illuminating.This is a remarkably erudite book but a bit difficult to read. The translation is fluent but Cassirer wrote at a time when scholars were assumed to know Latin and Greek. There are multiple quotations from the original Latin and Greek in the text and these are not translated. Cassirer's careful analysis and use of a vocabulary derived, I think, from German idealist philosophy, is sometimes difficult to follow. Nonetheless, this book repays re-reading.

This is the book for anyone curious about intellectual history, the history of ideas, Renaissance studies, etc. Despite its often-discussed excesses and omissions, it remains the most exciting book available on Renaissance philosophy for the way it comes to terms with the eccentric complexity and imaginative power of Cusanus and later Neoplatonists (whether or not Nicholas influenced Ficino, et al.). The book is densely written, but not as difficult as the previous reviewer suggests; Domandi's translation nicely captures Cassirer's sense of the drama of ideas, of the birth of subjectivity as the mind posits "its own fixed points" rather than relying on stable, objective hierarchies. True, there is little on social (or economic) contexts, but those kinds of approaches are readily found among more recent historians, and those hungering for wider contexts can look at Biechler's book on Cusanus, or Braden and Kerrigan's Idea of the Renaissance, or any of William Bouwsma's or Anthony Grafton's wonderful books on Renaissance thought. But to get inside the actual motions and metaphors of Renaissance thought, Cassirer's the place to begin, and to keep enjoying. No one does it better!

impeccable

ルネサンス精紳のバックボーンである、「個と宇宙」の概念に関する思想史…　当時の時代精神が良く分かります。