History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps

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?

The prophetic preacher Girolamo Savonarola attacks pagan philosophy and puts forward his own political ideas, before coming to an untimely end.

An interview with Cecilia Muratori, an expert on the surprisingly modern ideas about non-human animals that emerged in the Renaissance.

Pico della Mirandola and Giannozzo Manetti praise humans as the centerpiece of the created world. But what about the other animals?

Pico della Mirandola argues for the harmony of the ancient authorities, draws on Jewish mysticism, and questions the value of humanist rhetoric.

Jewish philosophers in Renaissance Italy, focusing on Leone Ebreo’s Dialogues of Love, the Averroism of Elijah del Medigo, and Italian Kabbalah.

An interview with Denis Robichaud on how, and why, Plato was read in the Italian Renaissance.

Ficino describes a “Platonic” love purified of sexuality, prompting a debate carried on by Pico della Mirandola, Pietro Bembo, and Tullia d’Aragona.

Marsilio Ficino’s revival of Platonism, with a focus on his proofs for the soul’s immortality in his magnum opus, the Platonic Theology.