L'immortalità dell'anima nel Rinascimento (review)

344 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY philosophy. The language barrier has been allowed too much to shut us in the United States off from any knowledge of the rich philosophical labors of our Latin-American neighbors. This book is a veritable mine of data on Brazilian thought. More than a hundred pages of notes are also of incomparable value. The bibliography is extensive and definitive. The translation itself is smooth and in its own fluency attests that of the original. It is marred in a few places by misspellings and by some inability to find the proper English idiom. Printing and binding are highly attractive. E~ H. H~DERSON Florida State University L'immortalitd dell'anima nel Rinascimento. By Giovanni di Napoli. (Turin: Societ~ Editrice Internazionale, 1963. Pp. 434. Lire 2800) Msgr. Di Napoli, already well known for his many studies on ancient, medieval, and modern philosophy, here provides us with an interesting and useful book on a most important subject. Previous scholars of Renaissance philosophy have continually emphasized the importance of the immortality problem as as basis for the interpretation of the period as a whole. Although this focus, which goes back at least to Renan, has been perhaps somewhat overplayed vis-a-vis other aspects of the philosophical thought of the period, there is no denying that it was one of the cardinal problems to which the Renaissance philosophers addressed themselves. Di Napoli, basing his study partly on the best of recent scholarship and partly upon the conclusions of his own reading in the source materials which touch on the subject (including a number of treatises which have been previously very little studied), presents us with the most general study that has yet been produced on Renaissance immortality diseussions.~ This is not to say that his book is in any way definitive or without flaws, but merely that at the present time it is the most comprehensive secondary work available on the subject. It is premature to expect a definitive work, for many of the basic texts of even a central figure such as Pomponazzi2 have not yet been printed, and the number of critical editions available of Renaissance treatises on psychology is meager indeed. Moreover, we still lack monographs and exhaustive bio-bibliographical studies on many of the important figures who were involved in one way or another. The strength of Di Napoli's book is that he draws in bold strokes the basic guidelines of the immortality discussions, which run as a constant stream through Renaissance philosophy, giving some attention to most of the important Italian figures involved. The structure of the book is generally chronological, roughly covering the period from Pietro d'Abano (1257-1315) to Tommaso Campanella (1567-1639), with an introductory chapter devoted to the medieval background . There is ample discussion of the more important thinkers, whole chapters being devoted to Ficino, Pomponazzi, and to the controversy rising immediately upon the publication of Pomponazzi's De immortalitate animae in 1516 ; and some attention is given to a good many of the lesser figures involved. Although (with one or two exceptions) the significant Italian writers of the period on the sub- ~ect are given some coverage, it is difficult to see how some writers qualify for inclusion. For example , humanists such as Petrarca, Sahitati, Bruni, and u are all included, but they really had very little original thought to contribute on the subject of immortality. Moreover, although In addition to Ernest Renan, Ave'rro~s et l'Averroi~me (3rd. ed.; Paris: 1866), more recent studies which touch on all or part of the problem include : Bruno Nardi, Sigieri di Brabante nel pensiero del Rinascimento italiano (Rome : 1945) ; idem, Saggi sull'Aristotelismo padovano dal secolo XIV al XVI (Florence: 1958); idem, Studi su Pietro Pomponazzi (Florence: 1965); Etienne Gilson, "Autour de Pomponazzi: probl~matique de l'immortalit~ de l's en Italie au d~but du XVI ~ si~cle", Archives d'histo~re doctrinale et littdraire du moyen dge, XXVIII (1961), 163-279; and Don Cameron Allen, Doubt's Boundless Sea: Skepticism and Faith in the Renaissance (Baltimore : 1964). See Nardi, Studi su Pietro Pomponazzi, for the extent of the relevant unpublished material touching on Pomponazzi...