Opera logica.--De doctrinae ordine apologia.

Jacopo Zabarella’s two treatises On Methods and On Regressus (1578) are among the most important Renaissance discussions of how scientific knowledge should be acquired, arranged, and transmitted. They belong to a lively debate about the order in which sciences should be taught and the method to be followed in scientific demonstration that roiled the Late Renaissance world for decades. In these famous works Zabarella rejected the views of Ramists and modern Galenists in favor of the pure doctrine of (...) Aristotle, freed from misunderstandings foisted upon it by medieval interpreters. The influence of these works on Galileo’s scientific method and Descartes’ famous Discourse on Method (1637) has long been debated. They are here translated into English for the first time, along with a new Latin text based on the corrected 1586 edition. -/- Volume 1 contains On Methods, Books I-II. (shrink)

Jacopo Zabarella’s two treatises On Methods and On Regressus (1578) are among the most important Renaissance discussions of how scientific knowledge should be acquired, arranged, and transmitted. They belong to a lively debate about the order in which sciences should be taught and the method to be followed in scientific demonstration that roiled the Late Renaissance world for decades. In these famous works Zabarella rejected the views of Ramists and modern Galenists in favor of the pure doctrine of (...) Aristotle, freed from misunderstandings foisted upon it by medieval interpreters. The influence of these works on Galileo’s scientific method and Descartes’ famous Discourse on Method (1637) has long been debated. They are here translated into English for the first time, along with a new Latin text based on the corrected 1586 edition. Volume 1 contains On Methods, Books I-II. Volume 2 contains On Methods, Books III-IV, and On Regressus. (shrink)

The 16th and 17th centuries witnessed a philosophical shift that would help pave the way for modern science, a shift from metaphysical theories of material objects to other views embracing only the empirically-accessible parts of material things. One much-debated topic in the course of this shift was regarding prime matter. The late scholastic Jacobus Zabarella (1533-1589) arrived upon his views about prime matter via his version of the regressus method, a program for a sort of scientific reasoning. In his (...) De rebus naturalibus, Zabarella defends the position that prime matter is extended. However, it is less clear how he accounts for its extension. There is an important text where he apparently suggests that prime matter is extended in and of itself. However, there are two other texts apparently stating that matter is extended in virtue of a distinct accident in the category of quantity. I argue that a decisive reading based solely upon any particular texts is not available. Nevertheless, examining Zabarella’s writing on the topic as a whole, the trajectory of his overall argument is remarkably sympathetic to Averroes, who famously took the accidentally quantified position. Thus, from this systematic feature, the accidentally quantified reading is more reasonable. (shrink)

Giacomo Zabarella es considerado uno de los aristotélicos más prestigiosos y más influyentes del siglo XVI. Su obra lógica, sus escritos sobre física y sus comentarios, publicados póstumamente, tuvieron un enorme impacto especialmente en las primeras décadas del siglo XVII, y sirvieron como verdaderos manuales con los que se formaron muchos universitarios europeos. Este artículo analiza la figura de Zabarella centrándose en su obra sobre física, el De rebus naturalibus libri XXX, editado en 1590, apenas unos días antes (...) de su muerte. (shrink)

Jacopo Zabarella’s Opera Logica was published in Venice in 1578. It immediately gave rise to widespread discussion and argument before becoming a highly popular work not only in Italy but also, and above all, in central and northern Europe, in particular in the «reformed» Protestant universities. This essay is the first in a research into the doctrine of logic in Paduan philosophy, which has already rise to another, already published, study. It is the author’s intention to develop the latter (...) further, but in the meantime the theme discussed here is the «genus» of logic in question. It is a fundamental theme that Zabarella was the first to tackle. He began by asserting that the «definition of the thing» was so obscure that many men of letters, philosophers and logicians had ignored it. The very reason why he proposed to study the «proximate genus » of logic, which can be ascertained by examining the various forms of knowledge. This revealed the existence of five intellectual «habits»: science, prudence, art, intellect and erudition. Analysis of the «habits» and then the «concepts» and «names» enabled him to establish that logic was neither a «science» nor an «art» and certainly could not be confused with «dialectics». Its true nature, in fact, was that of an «instrument of science». This entailed acknowledging its «independence», though one conditioned by the Aristotelian distinction between the world of necessary and immutable «things» and that of human action and endeavour. (shrink)

The sixteenth-century philosopher Jacopo Zabarella stands near the end of the long Aristotelian dominance of western academic philosophy. Yet, despite the fact that Aristotelianism was soon to be overwhelmed by other currents of thought, Zabarella’s influence on western thought would continue into at least the nineteenth century, and he still provides useful discussions relevant to today’s Aristotle scholars. In what follows, I discuss the existence and essence of matter, and show how Zabarella argues for his claims. What (...) is especially notable about the existence and essence of matter as a topic is that matter is clearly at the center of his well-known interest concerning the nature of scientific methodology. (shrink)

Zabarella and the Intentionality of Sensation - ABSTRACT: In this paper, I examine Zabarella’s account of the intentionality of sensation. By looking at both his account of the production of the sensible species as well as proper activity of the human soul in the process of sensation, I show that he has carefully reinterpreted standard medieval theories of sensation. Most notably, his account of intentionality as a kind of mental attention seems to point towards a type of Cartesian (...) dualism, but at the same time attempts to remain faithful to the basic insights of the Aristotelian tradition concerning sensation. (shrink)

early modern philosophers commonly appeal to a mathematical method to demonstrate their philosophical claims. Since such claims are not always followed by what we would recognize as mathematical proofs, they are often dismissed as mere rhetoric. René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, and Benedict de Spinoza are perhaps the most well-known early modern philosophers who fall into this category. It is a matter of dispute whether the ordo geometricus amounts to more than a method of presentation in Spinoza’s philosophy. Descartes and Hobbes (...) clearly appeal to a method of discovery modeled after geometry, but neither employs it to develop a heavily quantitative physics. Whereas Descartes’s version of the geometrical method .. (shrink)

An important part of Aristotelianism has revolved around the different interpretations given to the famous fifth chapter of Aristotle’s De Anima lll. The brevity with which he spoke about an intellectual agent principle described as divine and everlasting has led to a lengthy debate between those who argue that this principle is part of the individual soul and those who think that it must be placed outside the individual intellectual powers. Among the latter, the interpretation of the Renaissance Aristotelian Giacomo (...) Zabarella, a great expert on classical Greek and Aristotle’s works, is still one of the most influential. (shrink)

Tracing the concept of hexis contained in the Nicomachean Ethics, Jacopo Zabarella assumes that no disposition is a natural faculty originally present in man, and considers habitus as an acquired attitude that can be applied to ethical and theoretical virtues. With regard to the different mode of acquisition, Zabarella distinguishes theoretical habits, which are related to demonstrative procedures concerning necessary objects and transmitted through teaching, from ethical habits dealing with the contingent sphere of praxis, and consolidated through the (...) reiteration of good actions. As far as habits are forged by individual behaviour, leading to the consolidation of permanent dispositions, a problematic issue emerges, concerning repeated actions that can be virtuous or vicious as the result of personal moral choices. Through his re-reading of Aristotle, Zabarella underlines the role of personal responsibility in action. Although not new to the philosophical tradition, this approach is particularly significant, if considered as a philosophical answer to the issues on free will and self-determination raised by the theological approach of Reformation. The presence in the 16th century of the concept of habitus, which is characteristic of the Nicomachean Ethics, also testifies the persistence of Aristotelian practical philosophy. (shrink)

The work of the Paduan Aristotelian philosopher Iacopo Zabarella (1533–1589) has attracted the attention of historians of philosophy mainly for his contributions to logic, scientific methodology and because of his possible influence on Galileo. At the same time, Zabarella's views on Aristotelian psychology have been little studied so far; even those historians of Renaissance philosophy who have discussed them, have based their analysis mainly on the psychological essays included in Zabarella's De rebus naturalibus , but have avoided (...) Zabarella's commentary on Aristotle's De anima . This has led to an inaccurate, but widespread, understanding of Zabarella's views. The intention of this article is to provide a systematic analysis of Zabarella's arguments about the (im)mortality of the soul in the context of Aristotelian psychology. Zabarella's view that the soul is mortal according to Aristotle is remarkable for his time, while his elaboration of this position is far more comprehensive than that of Pietro Pomponazzi, the other significant Renaissance thinker who shared the same view. (shrink)

In this paper we study the interpretation of Iacobi Zabarellae on the agent intellect. He argues that the agent intellect different from the potential intelect, to whom activates and lights it directly without mediation; He sais also that do not abstracts in us, that in it coincides his being with his operation, and that is God. It is, therefore, an Averroism combined with Platonic, Augustinians and Thomists elements.

This paper examines the view held by Francesco Piccolomini (1523-1607) on the relation between prime matter and extension. In his discussion of prime matter in the Libri ad scientiam de natura attinentes Piccolomini develops a theory of prime matter that incorporates crucial elements of the viewpoint adhered to by the Neoplatonist Simplicius. The originality of Piccolomini’s undertaking is highlighted by contrasting it with the ideas found in Jacopo Zabarella’s De rebus naturalibus . The case of Piccolomini shows that, in (...) order to classify early modern metaphysical theories of prime matter, the category ‘prime matter as sheer dimensionality’ is indispensable. (shrink)

Faust Vrančić's (Faustus Verantius, 1551-1617) logic is analyzed in comparison to Renaissance Aristotelianism in logic with regard to the problem of determining logic, the subject of logic, and understanding the method. Vrančić's logic is compared to Markantun de Dominis' understanding of logic and to the understanding of logic in Jacopo Zabarella and in the Jesuit Renaissance tradition (P. Fonseca, F. Toletus, F. Suárez). In addition, the concept of science is discussed. "Censura logicae" published at the end of Vrančić's "Logica (...) nova" (1616) is attributed to de Dominis. (shrink)

Faust Vrančić's (Faustus Verantius, 1551-1617) logic is analyzed in comparison to Renaissance Aristotelianism in logic with regard to the problem of determining logic, the subject of logic, and understanding the method. Vrančić's logic is compared to Markantun de Dominis' understanding of logic and to the understanding of logic in Jacopo Zabarella and in the Jesuit Renaissance tradition (P. Fonseca, F. Toletus, F. Suárez). In addition, the concept of science is discussed. "Censura logicae" published at the end of Vrančić's "Logica (...) nova" (1616) is attributed to de Dominis. -- German version: 'Faust Vrančić and der Aristotelismus in der Logik', Studia historiae philosophiae Croaticae 2 (1993), 229-252). (shrink)

How induction was understood took a substantial turn during the Renaissance. At the beginning, induction was understood as it had been throughout the medieval period, as a kind of propositional inference that is stronger the more it approximates deduction. During the Renaissance, an older understanding, one prevalent in antiquity, was rediscovered and adopted. By this understanding, induction identifies defining characteristics using a process of comparing and contrasting. Important participants in the change were Jean Buridan, humanists such as Lorenzo Valla and (...) Rudolph Agricola, Paduan Aristotelians such as Agostino Nifo, Jacopo Zabarella, and members of the medical faculty, writers on philosophy of mind such as the Englishman John Case, writers of reasoning handbooks, and Francis Bacon. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Notes and Discussions GALILEO AND THE SCHOOL OF PADUA The first issue of the Journal of the History of Ideas, appearing in 1940, contained an article on the development of scientific method in northern Italy during the Renaissance and its significance for the growth of modern science. It is no exaggeration to say that this article, by John H. Randall, Jr., has been one of the most important and (...) influential contributions to the history of ideas in recent years, casting new light on a much-neglected tradition (Italian Aristotelianism) and suggesting an entirely different picture of Galileo's relations to the school philosophy of his day. Randall's thesis has won wide acceptance, by such competent and careful scholars as Crombie, Dijksterhuis, Butterfield, and the Kneales. Giacomo Zabarella (1532-1589) has been restored to the high esteem in which he was held in the Renaissance, and has been hailed as the thinker who "summed up the collective wisdom of the Padua school" and "formulated the classic version of their teaching method, in the terms and with the distinctions so fruitfully employed and consciously expressed by Galileo." Now the article has been reprinted (John H. Randall, Jr., The School of Padua and the Emergence of Modern Science [Padua, 1961], 141 pp.) with several other provocative articles reassessing the thought of Pomponazzi and Leonardo Da Vinci, as the first in a series of monographs sponsored jointly by the universities of Padua and Columbia. It has also been incorporated in a chapter of Randall's admirable Career of Philosophy, but without the Latin texts that make the present edition definitive. In the face of the almost universal acceptance of Randall's thesis, I find it an uncongenial task to express a dissenting opinion with regard to its crucial point, namely, the presumed debt of Galileo to Zabarella. Uncongenial, because much of what Randall has urged seems well taken, and because there is an initial attractiveness about the view that philosophical discussions at Padua could have contributed to the birth of the new science. Historians of science are usually so unfair to philosophy that it is refreshing to be able to entertain the view that scientific research may even have received some encouragement from philosophers. And it is prima facie plausible that this encouragement should have come to a focus at Padua in the sixteenth century, for here if anywhere the new science was born. Unfortunately, the resulting picture of Galileo leaves us with some puz- [zz3] 224 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY zling facts, or more precisely, non-facts: if we accept it, we are left wondering why there is so little tangible evidence of Zabarella's influence on Galileo. It may well be that there is evidence that I have missed, and for the sake of the reputation and prestige of Italian Aristotelianism, I hope there is. But I should like to present some of the difficulties I have with Professor Randall's thesis, in the hopes that some defender of his view will be inspired to allay my misgivings. Anyone who has ever read a page of Galileo's writings knows how often and violently he expressed his opposition to "the Aristotelians" and with what withering scorn he treated the contemporary representatives of the Peripatetic tradition. He often concedes that Aristotle would have been more flexible than his so-called followers, and would have yielded to new evidence in natural philosophy. But Galileo never admits that Aristotle's followers have developed anything of scientific value in the way of methodology. The methodology of the Aristotelians relied exclusively on the syllogism ; but Galileo specifically insists that the syllogism has no value in scientific discovery, whatever its other uses may be. In the face of these stronglyexpressed and consistently-held attitudes, it is hard to see how Zabarella, a loyal Aristotelian who relied exclusively on the syllogism as the "instrument of science," could have escaped Galileo's general condemnation. This point would lose its force if Galileo had ever expressly singled Zabarella out as a shining exception among the run-of-the-mill Aristotelians. Unfortunately, there is no mention of Zabarella in the whole mass of Galileo 's writings, and there is no evidence that... (shrink)

There is a widely acknowledged, albeit still imprecisely defined, connection between the ‘calculatory’ analyses of local motion developed within the fourteenth century ‘Merton School’ and Galileo Galilei's later treatment of natural motion. The present essay is intended to cast some light on the possible sources and significance of Galileo's putative familiarity with the medieval discussions through a study of the fortunes of the most typical representative of the School, Richard Swineshead. Particular attention is paid to the writings of such scholastic (...) philosophers of Galileo's day as Francisco Toledo, Francesco Piccolomini, Iacopo Zabarella, Francesco Buonamico and Scipione Chiaramonte. Somewhat unexpectedly, it emerges that such authors possessed only the most fragmentary and attenuated knowledge of Swineshead's ideas. The implications of this circumstance, especially insofar as it renders Galileo's familiarity with the Merton tradition even more problematical, are discussed briefly. (shrink)

In this book, a dozen distinguished scholars in the field of the history of philosophy and science investigate aspects of the commentary tradition on Aristotle's De generatione et corruptione, one of the least studied among Aristotle's treatises in natural philosophy. Many famous thinkers such as Johannes Philoponus, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, John Buridan, Nicole Oresme, Francesco Piccolomini, Jacopo Zabarella, and Galileo Galilei wrote commentaries on it. The distinctive feature of the present book is that it approaches this commentary (...) tradition as a coherent whole, thereby ignoring the usual historiographical distinctions between the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the seventeenth century. Frans de Haas and Henk Kubbinga address the Greek commentary tradition on De generatione et corruptione. Simone van Riet's essay is devoted to the Latin version of Avicenna's third treatise of his Kitab al Shifa, which discusses Aristotle's De generatione et corruptione. James Otte traces the intricate history of the identification of the Latin translator of Aristotle's treatise as Burgundio of Pisa. The essay by John Murdoch explores the fortuna of atomistic arguments in the Latin commentary tradition. Jurgen Sarnowsky, Henk Braakhuis, and Stefano Caroti examine various themes in the commentaries that were produced by the so-called Buridan School, that is, John Buridan, Albert of Saxony, Nicholas Oresme, and Marsilius of Inghen. The article by Silvia Donati focuses on the influential commentary by the Expositor, Giles of Rome. The final essay, written by Anita Guerrini, tackles Robert Boyle's attitude in the Origin of Forms and Qualities toward such Aristotelian key concepts as forms, matter, qualities, and mixture. These essays are prefaced by a preliminary survey by Hans Thijssen of Aristotle's text, its Latin translations and its Greek, Arabic and Latin commentaries. (shrink)

This paper studies Robert Boyle's account of kinds and classification. A number of commentators have argued that, for Boyle, classifications are inevitably the product of conventions. Others have challenged this reading, arguing that, according to Boyle, the corpuscular makeup of bodies gives rise to hard-edged natural kinds and classes. We argue that Boyle's position is more complicated than the available realist and conventionalist readings acknowledge. We argue that, according to Boyle, the individuation of kinds was to some degree the result (...) of convention. At the same time, however, Boyle held that our classificatory practices are subject to constraints. We identify some of these constraints by turning to Boyle's discussion of the late scholastic debate about the plurality of forms, in particular the contributions of Jacopo Zabarella and Daniel Sennert. In this way, we clarify how Boyle strikes a balance between realist and conventionalist elements in his treatment of kinds. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Impact of Aristotelianism on Modern PhilosophyJean-Robert ArmogatheRiccardo Pozzo, editor. The Impact of Aristotelianism on Modern Philosophy. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004. Pp. xvi + 336. Cloth, $69.95.The status of a "great" philosopher is to stand out for centuries, asking questions in such a way that the answers can never be definitive. Not so many of them are able to stand such a severe (...) proof. Aristotle phrased some questions we are still groping to answer. It was a very good idea to ask thirteen scholars to deliver a lecture series at the Catholic University of America during the Fall 1999 about the reception of Aristotle's theory of intellectual virtues (Nich. Ethics VI). The speakers did not stick to this issue, and enlarged their purpose to a general approach of Aristotle's receptions in various moments of Western modern philosophy.Edward Mahoney complements Charles Schmitt's basic introduction to Aristotle and the Renaissance, with some very valuable pages about Cardinal Bessarion's contribution to the Byzantine debate aroused in 1439 by Plethon's comparison between Plato and Aristotle (in favor of the former). Along with Charles Schmitt, Antonino Poppi is the best specialist of the Paduan tradition, and wrote a very qualified paper about Zabarella (1533-89), who shaped Aristotelianism into the rigorous science of the schoolbooks: for centuries, Aristotle is read through Zabarella's glasses. Apart from a bird's view on recent Galilean studies (where Alistair Crombie is not mentioned), William A. Wallace makes his point about Aristotle's influence on Galilean logics, linking Galileo's 1640 letter to Liceti (where he states that, in matters of logic, he has been an Aristotelian all his life) to the scientist's deep knowledge as revealed by the logical questions in one of the juvenile treatises (ms 27 in Florence, more thoroughly studied in Wallace's book, Galileo's Logic of Discovery and Proof [Dordrecht, 1992]). John Doyle, a specialist of Late Scholastic Philosophy, figures out a [End Page 209] strange character, the French Jesuit André Semery (1630-1717), who taught for thirty years at the Collegium romanum. In a very anti-Aristotelian way, he holds a definite belief in metaphysical beings of reason. The boundary between what we can think and say is quietly stepped over, when Semery and other Jesuits begin to think about thinking, opening a very modern path which leads to Brentano and Quine. Christia Mercer states that Leibniz's combination of a Platonist epistemology with an Aristotelian conception of nature brings a very innovative view in ethics. A very forceful paper by Richard L. Velkley compares Rousseau's politics to Aristotle's view of man (the paper became a chapter of his 2002 impressive book Being after Rousseau), while Riccardo Pozzo gives a short presentation of Aristotle's reception in modern Germany, and an elaborate analysis of Kant's debt to Aristotle for the intellectual virtues. Hegel's appropriation of Aristotelian intellect is presented by Alfredo Ferrarin, while Michael Davis reconstructs Nietzsche's path from Aristotle to the tragedy and back, in a very convincing way. Husserl (Richard Cobb-Stevens), Heidegger (Stanley Rosen), Wittgenstein (Daniel Dahlstrom) and Gadamer (Enrico Berti) conclude brilliantly the series, showing how the thought of the Stagirite fertilized contemporary philosophers, in a permanent dialogue of disagreement or borrowing, never at rest, and never leaving anyone indifferent. The old Greek man remains a vivid debater for our age of anxiety.Jean-Robert ArmogatheThe University of Paris-SorbonneCopyright © 2005 Journal of the History of Philosophy, Inc.... (shrink)