HoP 355 - Town and Gown - Italian Universities
The blurry line dividing humanism and scholastic university culture in the Italian Renaissance.
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.
The prophetic preacher Girolamo Savonarola attacks pagan philosophy and puts forward his own political ideas, before coming to an untimely end.
An interview with Denis Robichaud on how, and why, Plato was read in the Italian Renaissance.
Marsilio Ficino’s revival of Platonism, with a focus on his proofs for the soul’s immortality in his magnum opus, the Platonic Theology.
The series on Byzantium concludes as Michele Trizio discusses the mutual influence of Byzantium and Latin Christendom.
When the Byzantine empire ended in 1453, philosophy in Greek did not end with it. In this episode we bring the story up to the 20th century.
Thomas Aquinas finds avid readers among Byzantines at the twilight of empire, and is used by both sides of the Hesychast controversy.
Gregory Palamas and the controversy over his teaching that we can go beyond human reason by grasping God through his activities or “energies”.
Historian Judith Herrin joins us to talk about competition and mutual influence between Islam and Byzantium.
Intellectual exchange between Christians and Muslims, and the later flowering of Syriac literature including the philosopher Bar Hebraeus.
Michael Psellos and his attitude towards pagan philosophy and the political life.
Photius, “the inventor of the book review,” and other Byzantine scholars who preserved ancient learning.
Peter is joined by Andrew Louth for a discussion of John of Damascus and his theological use of philosophy.
John of Damascus helps to shape the Byzantine understanding of humankind and the veneration of images, despite living in Islamic territory.
Is it idolatry to venerate an icon of a saint, or of Christ? The dispute leads the Byzantines to ponder the relation between an image and its object.
Eastern Christian philosophy outside of Constantinople, focusing on translation and exegesis in the languages of Syriac and Armenian.
Peter King, Catarina Dutilh Novaes, and Russ Friedman discuss their approaches to medieval philosophy, and its contemporary relevance.
Bob Pasnau joins Peter to discuss ideas about substance from Aquinas down to the time of Locke, Leibniz and Descartes.