Philosophy and Humanism: Renaissance Essays in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller (review)

88 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY (pp. 29-48). This analysis implies that according to Maimonides there are no dogmatic beliefs in true Judaism. Hartman, however, stops short of inferring this conclusion and cites divine revelation (p. 122) and creation (p. 130) as examples of beliefs that according to Maimonides must be accepted on authority. But he does not have to concede this. For Maimonides is probably best understood as teaching that prophetic revelation is the natural--if extraordinary-culmination of human knowledge, and that the biblical account of creation is poetic and as such must not be taken literally as contradicting the philosophic (Aristotelian) theory of the eternity of the world. (Whether or not it was held by Maimonides, the view that there are no dogmatic beliefs in Judaism was advanced persuasively by Moses Mendelssohn in his Jerusalem , and has been maintained by several recent Jewish thinkers.) In integrating Athens and Jerusalem, Hartman's Maimonides "did not see himself as attempting to merge two cultural loyalties" (p. 128). While his love for Jerusalem meant loyalty to a particular cultural tradition, above all to the Torah (the "Law" or "Teaching" of Moses), his love for Athens meant loyalty not to Greek culture, nor even to any particular philosophic world-view, but to "the universal way of reason" ("there is no 'Greek' physics"), to philosophic quest. Neither Hellenizer nor apologist, Hartman's Maimonides emerges as an uncompromising Jew (particularism) engaged in an uncompromising philosophic quest (universalism). Hartman, in turn, is concerned more to join in Maimonides' philosophic quest than to dissect his philosophic system. The formidable strength of his book lies not in any historical or philological contributions (there is nothing new concerning Maimonides' relation to Alfarabi, Avicenna, Avempace, or Averro~s, and there are no analyses of Arabic or Hebrew philosophic terms) but in the richness, excitement, and depth of its insights into Maimonides' "philosophic religious sensibility." This sensibility, Hartman is convinced, is more in harmony with the spiritual aspirations of modern man than is the mysticism of the Kabbalah or the existentialism of Martin Buber (see pp. x, 256, 262). More than he is a historian of Maimonideanism, Hartman is a Maimonidean. Painted in thick, bold strokes, Hartman's portrait of Maimonides is one of the most vividand , in my judgment, one of the most credible-in the modern literature. WARREN ZEV HARVEY Hebrew University of Jerusalem Edward P. Mahoney, ed. Philosophy and Humanism: Renaissance Essays in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller. New York: Columbia University Press, 1976. Pp. xxvi + 624. $45.00. Few students of Renaissance thought and letters have inspired such admiration and affection as Paul Oskar Kristeller. His contribution to scholarship and to scholars has been enormous. It is not surprising, then, that his retirement from full-time teaching at Columbia University should have inspired not one but three Festschriften in his honor. The present volume is the work of scholars in some way connected with Columbia. It offers a feast of Renaissance essays --thirty-two in all-on the two principal subjects of Professor Kristeller's lifelong study, philosophy and humanism. Not unexpectedly, a great many of the contributions are directly inspired by Kristeller's own discoveries and suggestions. Readers of this journal will especially wish to know of those essays that are concerned with Renaissance philosophy. They are: Eugene F. Rice, Jr., "The De magia naturali of Jacques Lef~vre d'Etaples"; Donald R. Kelley, "Louis Le Caron Philosophe"; Richard H. Popkin, "The Pre-Adamite Theory in the Renaissance"; Richard Lemay, "The Fly against the Elephant: Flandinus against Pomponazzi on Fate"; Martin Pine, "Pietro Pomponazzi and the Medieval Tradition of God's Foreknowledge"; F. Edward Cranz, "Editions of the Latin Aristotle Accompanied by the Commentaries of Averroes"; Edward P. Mahoney, "Nicoletto Vernia on the Soul and Immortality"; Charles Trinkaus, "Protagoras in the Renaissance: An BOOK REVIEWS 89 Exploration"; Maristella de Panizza Lorch, "Voluptas. molle quodam et non invidiosum nomen: Lorenzo Valla's Defense of voluptas in the Preface to his De voluptate"; Neal W. Gilbert, "Richard de Bury and the 'Quires of Yesterday's Sophisms'"; John Herman Randall, Jr., "Paduan Aristotelianism Reconsidered"; William F. Edwards, "Niccol6 Leoniceo and the Origins of Humanist Discussion of Method"; and...