The description for this book, Vico in the Tradition of Rhetoric, will be forthcoming.

Renaissance Thought and Its Sources presents the fruits of an extraordinary lifetime of scholarship: a systematic account of major themes in Renaissance philosophy, theology, science, and literature, show in their several settings. Here, in some of Paul Oskar Kristeller's most comprehensive and ambitious writings, is an exploration of the distinctive trends and concepts of the Renaissance, grounded in detailed historical investigation.All of these fourteen essays were originally delivered as lectures. Part One identifies the classical sources of Renaissance thought and exposes (...) its essential physiognomy, indicating its humanist, Aristotelian, and Platonist traditions. The next two parts present Renaissance thought in the historical context of the Latin and Greek Middle Ages. Part Four offers a thematic study of Renaissance thought, examining its characteristic conceptions of man's dignity, destiny, and grasp of truth. Part Five forms a summary from the perspective of a central theme of Renaissance intellectual life and of the entire Western tradition: the relation of language to thought and the seemingly insoluble contest between our literary and philosophical traditions.The reader of "Renaissance Thought and its Sources" enjoys the results of meticulous study in a concise yet comprehensive format. Throughout, Kristeller achieves a graceful blending of sever historical scholarship and adherence to humane values that the editor calls "nearly a lost art in our times.". (shrink)

Presents twenty-five papers written by different professionals from historians, philosophers, legal experts, political scientists, civil engineers to examine the aesthetics of technology and science.

Alongside the tradition in Western thought which glories in logic, metaphysics, and science , a more variegated tradition of thought is to be found--that of rhetoric and of "wisdom"--whose focus is on the workings of human society and on language as its bond and instrument of change. Wisdom Speaking is the attempt to read Vico within this tradition and to see what it became in his hands. ;From implacable foes to cautious allies, science and wisdom have a history of conflict (...) and accommodation. Chapter One, "Pedagogy and Culture," intercepts this history in Vico, shows its ancient roots, and argues that a concern for its issues unifies his pedagogical and cultural theories. This argument is unfolded in the remaining chapters, which treat successively of rhetoric, pedagogy, and culture, each proceeding from a major Vichian text. ;In Chapter Two, "Philosophy and Rhetoric," the tradition of rhetoric and its manifold involvements with philosophy is first laid out, in order to look closely at Vico's own Institutions oratoriae. From its analysis the classical cast of Vico's mind is discovered, as is his steadfast concern to see rhetoric, both in its substantive and linguistic aspects, as the logic of social discourse. Plain from the beginning is Vico's appreciation for metaphor as a necessity of communication and for ingenuity as the faculty of seeing connections and thus making and remaking social structures. ;These themes are deepened in Chapter Three, "Ingenuity and Public Life," where Vico's school writings, centering in the De studiorum ratione, are made to show the nature of civil life and the sagacity needed to manage it. With the presentation of the sage as jurisconsult, as "knower of human and divine institutions," the transformation of pedagogy into a theory of culture begins. ;Chapter Four, "Wisdom and Eloquence," draws all the leads together, using the final New Science and its prior formulations to show how Vico, with philological discoveries in the Homeric poems and early Roman Law, fashioned a theory of the "poetic" beginnings of language, mind, and society; of their gradual maturation; and of the tension between their youth and maturity, thereby turning a formal understanding of culture into a functional, and preparing the way for modern social theory. (shrink)