Early Modern Philosophers and the Renaissance Legacy

When does Renaissance philosophy end, and Early Modern philosophy begin? Do Renaissance philosophers have something in common, which distinguishes them from Early Modern philosophers? And ultimately, what defines the modernity of the Early Modern period, and what role did the Renaissance play in shaping it? The answers to these questions are not just chronological. This book challenges traditional constructions of these periods, which partly reflect the prejudice that the Renaissance was a literary and artistic phenomenon, rather than a philosophical phase.

The essays in this book investigate how the legacy of Renaissance philosophers persisted in the following centuries through the direct encounters of subsequent generations with Renaissance philosophical texts. This volume treats Early Modern philosophers as joining their predecessors as 'conversation partners': the 'conversations' in this book feature, among others, Girolamo Cardano and Henry More, Thomas Hobbes and Lorenzo Valla, Bernardino Telesio and Francis Bacon, René Descartes and Tommaso Campanella, Giulio Cesare Vanini and the anonymous Theophrastus redivivus.

Cecilia Muratori received her PhD in the History of Philosophy from the universities of Jena and Urbino. Her revised dissertation was published in 2012 with the title 'Il primo filosofo tedesco'. Il misticismo di Jakob Böhme nell'interpretazione hegeliana (to be published in English for Springer). From 2009 to 2013 she was Research Fellow at LMU Munich, working on a project entitled 'The Debate on the Soul of Animals in Renaissance Philosophy'. In addition to several articles, two edited collections stem from this research: Ethical Perspectives on Animals in the Renaissance and Early Modern Period (ed. with Burkhard Dohm, Micrologus' Library 2013) and The Animal Soul and the Human Mind: Renaissance Debates (Bruniana & Campanelliana 2013). She is currently a post-doctoral research fellow in the Italian Department at the University of Warwick.