This article argues that an original debate over the relationship between time and the intellect took place in Northern Italy in the second half of the sixteenth century, which was part of a broader reflection on the temporality of human mental acts. While human intellectual activity was said to be ‘above time’ during the Middle Ages, Renaissance scholars such as Marcantonio Genua (1491–1563), Giulio Castellani (1528–1586), Antonio Montecatini (1537–1599) and Francesco Piccolomini (1520–1604), greatly influenced by the Simplician and Alexandrist interpretations of Aristotle’s works, proposed alternative conceptions based on the interpretation of De anima 3.6 (430b 7–20) according to which intellectual acts happen in a both ‘undivided’ and ‘divisible time’. In order to explain Aristotle’s puzzling claim, they were led to conceive of intellectual activity as a process similar to sensation, corresponding to a certain lapse of time (Castellani), an instant (Montecatini), or a mix of instantaneousness and concrete duration (Piccolomini), depending on their theoretical options.
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On angelic time, see Richard Cross, “Angelic Time and Motion: Bonaventure to Duns Scotus,” in A Companion to Angels in Medieval Philosophy, ed. Tobias Hoffmann (Leiden 2011), 117–47, at 126–29.
Eckhard Kessler, “Psychology: the Intellective Soul,” in The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. Charles B. Schmitt, Quentin Skinner, Eckhard Kessler and Jill Kraye (Cambridge, 1988), 520. Kessler comments on Porzio’s De humana mente disputatio (Florence, 1551), 9. For a larger investigation on Porzio’s philosophy and career, see Eva del Soldato, Simone Porzio: un aristotelico tra natura e grazia (Rome, 2010).
Porzio, De humana mente, 36. See also the whole chapter 7, 34–47.
Michael Edwards, “Time, Duration and the Soul in Late Aristotelian Natural Philosophy and Psychology,” in Psychology and the Other Disciplines: A Case of Cross-Disciplinary Interaction (1250–1750), ed. Paul J. J. M. Bakker, Sander W. de Boer and Cees Leijenhorst (Leiden, 2012), 117. See also Michael Edwards, Time and the Science of the Soul in Early Modern Philosophy (Leiden, 2013), 78–79.
See Charles B. Schmitt, “Castellani, Giulio,” in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 80 vols. (Rome 1925–2014), 21 (1978), 624–25.
See Enrico Berti, “The Intellection of Indivisibles According to Aristotle’s De Anima III.6,” in Aristotle on Mind and the Senses, ed. Geoffrey E. R. Lloyd and G. E. L. Owen (Cambridge, 1978), 141–63; Thomas de Koninck, “La noêsis et l’indivisible selon Aristote,” in La Naissance de la raison en Grèce, ed. J.-F. Mattéi (Paris, 1990), 215–28. See also Michel Fattal, “L’intellection des indivisibles dans le De Anima (3, 6) d’Aristote: lectures arabes et modernes,” in Corps et âme: sur le De Anima d’Aristote, ed. Gilbert Romeyer-Dherbey and Cristina Viano (Paris, 1996), 423–40.
Castellani, Aduersus M. Tullii Ciceronis academicas quaestiones, 89–90.
Montecatini, De mente humana, 349. See Genua, In tres libros Aristotelis de anima, 163–64. Vincenzo Maggi (1498–1564) taught natural philosophy in Ferrara and had Castellani as a pupil. It has been noticed that Castellani “had derived [his De humano intellectu] from a commentary of Maggi on the third book of De anima”: see History of Italian Philosophy, ed. Eugenio Garin, vol. I, transl. Giorgio Pinton (Amsterdam-New York, 2008), 363. See also Castellani, De humano intellectu, 2.
See Michel Crubellier, “On Generation and Corruption I. 9,” in Aristotle’s On Generation and Corruption I, ed. Franz de Haas and Jaap Mansfeld (Oxford, 2004), 284–85.
See Jill Kraye, “Francesco Piccolomini,” in Cambridge Translations of Renaissance Philosophical Texts: Volume One, Moral Philosophy, ed. Jill Kraye (Cambridge, 1997), 68. See also Artemio Enzo Baldini, “Per la biografia di Francesco Piccolomini,” Rinascimento, series II, 20 (1980), 389–420.
Eckhard Kessler, “Metaphysics or Empirical Science? The Two Faces of Aristotelian Natural Philosophy in the Sixteenth Century,” in Renaissance Readings of the Corpus Aristotelicum, ed. Marianne Pade (Copenhagen, 2001), 100. See also Eckhard Kessler, “Alexander of Aphrodisias and his Doctrine of the Soul. 1400 Years of Lasting Significance,” Early Science and Medicine, 16 (2011), 1–93.
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This article argues that an original debate over the relationship between time and the intellect took place in Northern Italy in the second half of the sixteenth century, which was part of a broader reflection on the temporality of human mental acts. While human intellectual activity was said to be ‘above time’ during the Middle Ages, Renaissance scholars such as Marcantonio Genua (1491–1563), Giulio Castellani (1528–1586), Antonio Montecatini (1537–1599) and Francesco Piccolomini (1520–1604), greatly influenced by the Simplician and Alexandrist interpretations of Aristotle’s works, proposed alternative conceptions based on the interpretation of De anima 3.6 (430b 7–20) according to which intellectual acts happen in a both ‘undivided’ and ‘divisible time’. In order to explain Aristotle’s puzzling claim, they were led to conceive of intellectual activity as a process similar to sensation, corresponding to a certain lapse of time (Castellani), an instant (Montecatini), or a mix of instantaneousness and concrete duration (Piccolomini), depending on their theoretical options.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 368 | 44 | 4 |
Full Text Views | 183 | 10 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 60 | 19 | 0 |