Le Thomisme et la pensée italienne de la renaissance by Paul Oskar Kristeller (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 367 knowledge, defining knowledge puts the defined into the definition (p. 280)! By the same token, then, one could not define understanding (since it certainly enters into the grasping of a definition) nor predication, nor subject and predicate and copula (they are all in definitions} and so on. In fact, unless one accepts the dictum that the defined shall not enter into the definition as referring to the term defined and its synonyms, one rules out the possibility of defining any number of easily definable items. Actually, the author uses the classical Thomistic definition of knowledge in terms of immateriality to elucidate the nature of knowledge (pp. 285-286} , but without the ex profesao analysis of the act of knowledge, this exposition does not enjoy its wonted force. Perhaps lying at the root of this diffidence about defining the act of knowledge, and extending even to the failure to thoroughly penetrate and relate the contributions of the disparate sources used in the book, is the author's concept of the philosophy of nature itself. For Fr. Donceel, natural philosophy is the data of experience (enlarged and confirmed by experiment) plus metaphysical principles, that is, empirical fact illumined by the most abstract and universal principles. He does not allow place for a genuine philosophical approach grounded in fact and yet looking for proximate and proper causal relationships, within a limited area of reality and in terms of the principles of this limited area. For instance, he would apparently not admit a philosophy of living things which does not depend for its principles on metaphysics. He would rule out what are now being called metapsychologies and metabiologies, and the like. And yet it is within these spectra of reality and at these levels of abstraction that most approaches to the study of man make their more significant general statements, and engage in controversy and discussion. And it is therefore at this level of analysis that a comprehensive and consistent theory of human nature, or philosophical anthropology, must locate its principles, draw its conclusions and judge the claims of competing theories. St. Stephen's Priory, Dover, Mass. MicHAEL STocK, 0. P. Le Thomiame et la penaee italienne de la renaissance. By PAUL OsKAR KRISTELLER. Conference Albert-le-Grand 1965. Montreal: Institut d'etudes medievales, 1967. Pp. 292, with index of names. $6.00. This study is a pioneer attempt to fill a lacuna in Thomistic and Renaissance scholarship. In it Professor Kristeller traces skillfully the mutual influences between Thomism and Italian thought from the 13th to the 16th 868 BOOK REVIEWS centuries, with particular emphasis on the relationships of Italian Dominicans to secular Aristotelians such as Pistro Pomponazzi, to humanists such as Lorenzo Val_l,a, Ermolao Barbaro, and Baptista Mantuanus, and to Platonists such as Pico de la Mirandola and Marsilio Ficino. In each instance Kristeller takes cognizance of the uses of St. Thomas and the evaluations of his thought provided by these scholars, as well as of the references (and replies) of Thomists to their Averroist, humanist, and Platonist contemporaries. To support his thesis he further supplies, in an appendix, edited texts of two opuscula that are extremely valuable for understanding the interchanges described in the study. The first is the Opus aureum in Tlwmistas, composed by the Carmelite Baptista Mantuanus, and the second is the Opusculum ad Laurentium M.edicem quod beatitudo hominis in actu intellectus et non voluntatis essentialiter consistit of Vicenzo Bandello (de Castronovo), a Dominican Master General celebrated for his work on the Immaculate Conception, who engaged in controversy with Lorenzo de Medici on the subject of man's final beatitude. Kristeller's account of the background of the latter controversy and his analysis of the arguments of both protagonists will be illuminating to present-day Thomists, who will find that their attempts at dialogue with partisans of other schools (and the attendant disagreements and terminological misunderstanding ) are far from being without precedent in the history of thought. This essay is magisterial in its competence, if not in its tone. The author provides references to innumerable little-known texts and articles that are indispensable for serious work on his subject. Especially noteworthy are the animadversions on...