Examen vanitatis doctrinae gentium, et veritatis christianae disciplinae, distinctum in libros sex, quorum tres omnem philosophorum sectam universim, reliqui aristoteleam et aristotelis armis particulatim impugnant. Ubicunque autem Christiania et asse. - [THE FIRST PUBLIC INTRODUCTION OF GREEK SCEPTICISM TO THE MODERN WORLD]

"PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA, GIOVANNI FRANCESCO [GIANFRANCESCO, GIANFRAN, JOHANNES FRANCISCUS PICUS].

Edité par

Mirandulae, Ioannes Maciochius Bundenius, 1520 (on colophon). [Mirandola, Mazzocchi]. Small folio. Contemporary full vellum binding with handwritten title to spine. Author written in contemporary hand to lower edge. Binding professionally restored, at lower part of spine, edges of boards, and corners of back board. Free end-papers renewed. First leaf restored, with lower blank part supplied in later paper - no loss of text! This lower part was blank on both recto and verso. A bit of soiling to upper part of this leaf, as well as two old owner's inscriptions. First few leaves a bit browned, not heavily. Otherwise only light scattered browning. Some small marginal worm-holes to inner and lower blank margins, far from affecting text. All in all very fine, nice, and clean. Woodcut device to final leaf. (6), 208 ff. The seminal first edition of Gianfrancesco Pico's main work, the work which publicly introduces Greek scepticism to the modern world (i.e. the Reniassance) for the first time and thus comes to play a seminal role in the development of modern thought. With this work, Pico becomes the first modern thinker to specifically use the theories of Sextus Empiricus, foreshadowing the great "Sceptical Revolution" of the later Renaissance as well as the ideas of later modern thinkers such as Montesquieu. The "Examen" furthermore introduces other important critiques of Aristotle that were not generally known at the time (and works that had not yet been published) as well as a completely new sort of attack upon the theories of Aristotle that come to play an important role in later Renaissance Aristotle scholarship. "But his "Examen Vanitatis Doctrinae Gentium et Veritatis Disciplinae Christianae" is not only a criticism of human knowledge which can, as has been done, be compared with Montaigne. It is also a wholesale destruction of the whole world of human values, of that "regnum hominis" so dear to the Renaissance. And as such, it inclines one to think that it anticipated Pascal. [.]." (Garin, p. 135)The "Examen" is considered foundational in "anti-pagan" historiography of thought, "a work that deserves special attention here as the earliest example of an "anti-pagan" reaction in the Renaissance historiography of thought, and as the first in a line of publications preparing the way for the anti-apologists of the seventeenth century. ." (Hanegraaff, "Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture", p. 81). It is due to this work that Gianfr. Pico is now remembered as "the first modern sceptic". "Joining the sceptical arguments of Sextus, which he quoted and used liberally, to Savonarola's negative view of natural knowledge, he presented the first text since antiquity utilizing Pyrrhonism, using it to illuminate knowledge by faith!" (Popkin, p. 24). Gianfr. Pico, a learned scholar and apt reader of classical texts, was the first Renaissance thinker that we know to have seriously studied and used the works of Sextus Empiricus, which were not printed until the 1560'ies, causing a revolution in Renaissance thinking. "No discovery of the Renaissance remains livelier in modern philosophy than scepticism". (Copenhaver & Schmitt, p. 338). "The revived skepticism of Sextus Empiricus was the strongest single agent of disbelief". (ibid., p. 346)."The printing of Sextus in the 1560s opened a new era in the history of scepticism, which had begun in the late fourth century BCE with the teachings of Pyrrho of Elis. [.] Before the Estienne and Hervet editions, Sextus seems to have had only two serious students, Gianfrancesco Pico at the turn of the century and Francesco Robortello about fifty years later." (Copenhaver & Schmitt, pp. 240-41)."No significant use of Pyrrhonian ideas prior to the printing of Sextus' "Hypotyposes" [in the 1560'ies] has turned up, except for that of Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola". (Popkin, p. 19). Giovanni Francesco [Gianfranceso] Pico della Mirandola (1470-1533), not to be confused with his uncle. N° de réf. du vendeur 47246

Détails bibliographiques

Titre : Examen vanitatis doctrinae gentium, et ...
Reliure : Couverture rigide
Edition : Edition originale