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

Abstract

AbstractIn 1550 Bernardo Segni, a member of the Florentine Academy, published an Italian translation of and commentary on Aristotle’sNicomachean 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.