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  • Ethik — Wissenschaft oder Lebenskunst? Modelle der Normenbegründung von der Antike bis zur Frühen Neuzeit / Ethics — Science or Art of Living? Models of Moral Philosophy from Antiquity to the Early Modern Era
  • Daniel B. Gallagher
Sabrina Ebbersmeyer and Eckhard Keßler, eds. Ethik — Wissenschaft oder Lebenskunst? Modelle der Normenbegründung von der Antike bis zur Frühen Neuzeit / Ethics — Science or Art of Living? Models of Moral Philosophy from Antiquity to the Early Modern Era. Pluralisierung & Autorität 8. Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2007. xxxviii + 343 pp. index. illus. €34.90. ISBN: 978–3–8258–0169–4.

The sixteen essays contained in this volume stem from a 2004 colloquium at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität devoted to the remarkable shift that took place in ethical thinking between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Although most of the essays are historical in nature, they are united by a single underlying philosophical question: is ethics the science of life or the art of living? In other words, does reflection on human action justify the formulation of prescriptive propositions, or is it merely delineable in descriptive terms? Rather than provide a definitive answer to this complex question, this book traces the iter of its development between the years 1350 to 1500.

The main impetus for the colloquium was the abrupt shift that occurred between Duns Scotus’s voluntarism and William of Ockham’s nominalism one generation later. The contributors share the conviction that this radical reorientation cleared the ground for the moral thinking that blossomed during the Renaissance. Exhausted by the aridity of Scholastic abstraction, scholars thirsty for fresh ideas readily drank from the stream of Greek and Latin manuscripts arriving from the East. The expanding availability of classical texts, however, is alone insufficient to explain the innovations of humanist ethics during the Renaissance. We must add to this the decisive turn to the human subject as the privileged locus for scientific and artistic endeavors. Secondly, and more pertinent to philosophy, humanism redirected the focus of ethics from the “true” to the “good,” thus paving the way not merely to a theory of human action, but a principled approach to human flourishing: the so-called ars vitae.

The opening section addresses the relation between the general notions of ars vitae and scientia moralis in Aristotle (Otfried Höffe), the Stoics (Maximilian Forschner), and the Epicureans (Malte Hossenfelder). Höffe explains how Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics rejected the notion that moral thinking could be patterned [End Page 645] after the model of mathematical calculation. The Stagirite’s legacy perdured through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, mainly due to his unparalleled ability to balance universal moral principles and situational contingencies as he dissected the moral act. Forschner traces the Stoic development of eudaimonía and its emphasis on a harmonious relationship with one’s surroundings. Hossenfelder recounts the diminution of the role of pleasure in Epicurean ethics and the concomitant attempt to tie the art of living with a peaceful acceptance of one’s fate.

The section on the Middle Ages sheds light on the underappreciated Neoplatonic aspects of moral philosophy and theology. This was accompanied by a heavily scientific rereading of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics inaugurated by Averroës. Particularly noteworthy is Thomas Ricklin’s study of the critique carried out against the domination of science in the latter half of the Middle Ages, leading to a bourgeoning interest in Seneca at the University of Paris toward the end of the thirteenth century. Daniel A. Di Liscia examines the enormous influence of the Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives and the vicious counterattack launched against him.

Francesco Petrarch was the first to introduce the notion of ars vitae through his vigorous promotion of a pedagogy based on the bonae litterae. Sonia Gentili, Heinrich C. Kuhn, and Sabrina Ebbersmeyer respectively offer penetrating analyses of Petrarch’s De vita solitaria, De remediis utriusque fortunae, and the leading humanist’s ability to meld the horizontal and vertical aspects of the mediaeval-Christian worldview. Their studies are complimented by in-depth investigations of other Renaissance figures such as Leonardo Bruni (James Hankins), Lorenzo Valla (Eckhard Kessler and Lodi Nauta), and Giannozzo Manetti (Martin Schmeisser).

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