HoP 367 - Brian Copenhaver on Renaissance Magic
Our guest Brian Copenhaver joins us to explain how Ficino and other Renaissance philosophers thought about magic.
Our guest Brian Copenhaver joins us to explain how Ficino and other Renaissance philosophers thought about magic.
Ficino, Pico, Cardano, and other Renaissance thinkers debate whether astrology and magic are legitimate sciences with a foundation in natural philosophy.
Was the natural philosophy of Bernardino Telesio and Tommaso Campanella the first modern physical theory?
An interview with Guido Giglioni, who speaks to us about the sources and philosophical implications of medical works of the Renaissance.
The polymath Girolamo Cardano explores medicine, mathematics, philosophy of mind, and the interpretation of dreams.
Connections between philosophy and advances in medicine, including the anatomy of Vesalius.
The humanist study of Pythagoras, Archimides and other ancient mathematicians goes hand in hand with the use of mathematics in painting and architecture.
An interview with Dag Nikolaus Hasse on the Renaissance reception of Averroes, Avicenna, and other authors who wrote in Arabic.
Jacopo Zabarella outlines the correct method for pursuing, and then presenting, scientific discoveries.
Pietro Pomponazzi and Agostino Nifo debate the immortality of the soul and the cogency of Averroes’ theory of intellect.
An interview with David Lines on the role of Aristotle in Renaissance ethics.
Aristotle’s works are edited, printed, and translated, leading to new assessments of his thought among both humanists and scholastics.
The blurry line dividing humanism and scholastic university culture in the Italian Renaissance.
Leon Battista Alberti, Benedetto Cotrugli, and Poggio Bracciolini grapple with the moral and conceptual problems raised by the prospect of people getting filthy rich.
Tommaso Campanella’s “The City of the Sun” and other utopian works of the Italian Renaissance describe perfect cities as an ideal for real life politics.
Bruni, Poggio, Machiavelli, and Guicciardini explore political ideas and historical method in works on Roman and Italian history.
Leading Machiavelli scholar Quentin Skinner joins Peter to discuss morality, history, and religion in the Prince and the Discourses.
Peter celebrates reaching 350 episodes by explaining a single sentence in Machiavelli's "Discourses."
Machiavelli’s seminal work of political advice, "The Prince," tells the ruler how to be strong like a lion and cunning like a fox.
Did “civic humanism” really make republicanism a newly dominant political theory in the Italian Renaissance?