The Life of the Mind: Key Texts in European Thought, 1512-1697
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Reading for Week 5
Classical texts: the sceptics, the mystics and the poets
Humanism continued to inspire the veneration of different kinds of
classical literature, an enthusiasm which regularly produced new
intellectual crazes among early modern Europeans and sometimes was the
source of a discernible shift in philosophical perspective. A few of these
innovations, closely related to the intensive study of ancient texts, were
to be of lasting significance: Montaigne's scepticism, a profoundly modern
archetype with its constant questioning of orthodoxy and assertive
individualism, had its roots in the re-discovery and popularisation of
specific kinds of Greek thought. Other classical works, accorded immense
authority at the time but subsequently to lose all credibility, provoked
much dabbling in the occult, in Hermeticism and the pursuit of magic.
Meanwhile, the encounter with the less familiar corners of the classical
heritage also inspired a new and increasingly sympathetic and competent
engagement with the culture and civilization of the Arab world.
Set texts
- Michel de Montaigne, Essays ['On Books', (extract); 'Apology
for Raymond Sebond' (extract)]
- Cornelius Agrippa, De occulta philosophia, [Bk 1, cap. 22
(extract)]
- Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Heptaphus, [cap. 7 (extract)]
- Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Conclusiones [XXVI]
- Paracelsus, De natura rerum, [Bks I and VII (extracts)]
Other reading
- C.B. Brush, Montaigne and Bayle: Variations on the Theme of
Scepticism (1966)
- M. Smith, Montaigne and Religious Freedom: the Dawn of
Pluralism (1991)
- D.L. Schaefer, The Political Philosophy of Montaigne (1990)
- Richard H. Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to
Spinoza (1979)
- Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (1973)
- Brian Vickers, (ed.), Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the
Renaissance (1984)
- Frances Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age
(1979)
- P.G. Maxwell-Stuart, The Occult in Early Modern Europe: A
Documentary History (1999)
- W.J. Bouwsma, 'Postel and the Significance of Renaissance Cabalism',
in P.O. Kristeller, (ed.) Renaissance Essays (1968)
- Robert M. Schuler, Alchemical Poetry, 1575-1700 (1995)
- R.J.W. Evans, Rudolf II and His World: A Study in Intellectual
History 1576-1612 (1973)
- Frances Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (1964)
- G.J. Toomer, Eastern Wisedome and Learning: The Study of Arabic in
Seventeenth-Century England (1996)
- Nabil Matar, Islam in Britain 1558-1685 (1998)
Web resources
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