Reviewed by: The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy John Monfasani James Hankins, editor, The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. xvi + 430. Paper, $29.99. This volume cannot but call to mind The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy published twenty years ago (1988) under the editorship of Charles B. Schmitt and Quentin Skinner. The Cambridge Companion fares well in the comparison. The Cambridge History contained some weak or irrelevant articles, as well as articles that flatly contradicted each other, but its largest flaw was its artificial division of Renaissance philosophy, in almost cookie-cutter fashion, into synthetic themes that tended to obscure rather than illuminate historical developments and connections. Far more successful was what has, up to now, been unquestionably the best survey of Renaissance philosophy available, Schmitt’s and Brian Copenhaver’s Renaissance Philosophy (Oxford University Press) that appeared in 1992, where the chapters are organized by schools of thought (Aristotelianism, Platonism, etc.), and thinkers are presented in diachronic succession within each chapter. The Cambridge Companion combines many of the virtues of both volumes and, of course, brings the reader up to speed on the literature that has appeared in the last two decades. To start from the rear, The Cambridge Companion takes over whole (with appropriate updating) the very useful appendix of biographies that first appeared in the Cambridge History. Hankins begins and ends the volume with an argument for the relevance of Renaissance philosophy—times have changed; The Cambridge History took this for granted—and though he is completely right to speak of continuities with earlier, “medieval” philosophy, [End Page 138] Hankins is much more concerned with showing communalities and parallels with modern philosophy, even to the extent of playing upon modern clichés, such as philosophers as challengers of (Christian) orthodoxy and as deeply engagés in the social and political problems of the world. He also contributes a judicious chapter on Renaissance humanism as a cultural rather than a philosophical movement, endorsing therefore Paul Oskar Kristeller’s interpretation of humanism against that of Eugenio Garin and others. Hankins pays special attention to Petrarch’s prejudicial view of contemporary philosophy, namely, medieval Aristotelianism, especially in the form of Averroism, and the competing scientific culture of the medieval university (“scholasticism”). Therefore, Luca Bianchi’s brilliant chapter on “Continuity and change in the Aristotelian tradition,” which follows immediately after, serves as a nice counterpoint. Bianchi surveys the many forms of Renaissance Aristotelianism with masterful ease and good sense, moving from issues of translation, philology, and hermeneutics to discussions of evolving science, logic, and philosophy. Dag Nikolaus Hasse’s chapter on “Arabic philosophy and Averroism,” John Doyle’s on “Hispanic scholastic philosophy,” and David Lines’s on “Humanistic and scholastic ethics” all expertly combine to complete the picture and give the reader a wonderfully rich and textured introduction to Renaissance Aristotelianism. Of the other Renaissance traditions, Jill Kraye does a superb job surveying in compact fashion the revived Hellenistic philosophies of Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Skepticism. Christopher Celenza treats Platonism. This comes down mainly to discussing Marsilio Ficino, whose esoteric, magical, and therapeutic interests, quite prominent in the latest literature, Celenza especially emphasizes, as opposed to the more rationalist and metaphysical analysis once offered by Kristeller. Indeed, the volume contains an article by Brian Copenhaver dedicated exclusively to elucidating Ficino’s magical theory. The only other figures meriting articles of their own are Nicholas of Cusa, whom Dermot Moran correctly characterizes as “at heart . . . a conservative Platonic theologian,” and the humanist Lorenzo Valla, whose originality and limitations Lodi Nauta sensibly analyzes. Both articles therefore serve as salutary correctives to the extravagant talk of Cusanus’s and Valla’s modernity that one finds in the older literature. It is interesting (and, I think, just) that a long-time favorite of modern commentators on the Renaissance, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, receives only modest attention in the volume. Except for Eric Nelson’s “The problem of the prince,” which verges on the silly at points, the handful of articles on general themes work fairly well. Peter Harrison rightly points out in his “Philosophy and the crisis of religion” that the “crisis of religion was, perhaps above...
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Feb 1, 2016
Ryan Schmitz 
Open Access