Renaissance Philosophy. Methods and Practices

This module examines different methods and practices in Renaissance Philosophy. It begins with a discussion of the methods and practices found in the late medieval philosophical schools in the 14th century as the immediate background of Renaissance Philosophy and then addresses some theories, methods, and practices of prominent thinkers between the mid-fourteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth century, mainly in Italy (Francesco Petrarca, Coluccio Salutati, Leonardo Bruni, Lorenzo Valla, Giovanni Dominici, Georgios Gemistos Plethon, Antoninus of Florence, Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Giorgio Benigno Salviati, Bernardo Torni, Desiderius Erasmus, Niccolò Machiavelli, Francesco Patrizi.) It also deals with the significance of the relations between philosophy and theology, pagan antiquity and Christian teaching, man and God, various themes in moral psychology and political philosophy, as well as in the philosophy of language, science, and in metaphysics, and specific terms like Aristotelianism and Platonism during this period.