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In Before Enlightenment: Play and Illusion in Renaissance Humanism, Timothy Kircher argues for new ways of appreciating Renaissance humanist philosophy. Literary qualities – tone, voice, persona, style, imagery – composed a core of their philosophizing, so that play and illusion, as well as rational certainty, formed pre-Enlightenment ideas about knowledge, ethics, and metaphysics.
Before Enlightenment takes issue with the long-standing view of humanism’s philosophical mediocrity. It shows new features of Renaissance culture that help explain the origins not only of Enlightenment rationalists, but also of early modern novelists and essayists. If humanist writings promoted objective knowledge based on reason’s supremacy over emotion, they also showed awareness of one’s place and play in the world. The animal rationale is also the homo ludens.
Before Enlightenment takes issue with the long-standing view of humanism’s philosophical mediocrity. It shows new features of Renaissance culture that help explain the origins not only of Enlightenment rationalists, but also of early modern novelists and essayists. If humanist writings promoted objective knowledge based on reason’s supremacy over emotion, they also showed awareness of one’s place and play in the world. The animal rationale is also the homo ludens.
Price: $148.00
Pages: 294
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Series: Brill's Studies in Intellectual History
Publication Date:
15 October 2020
ISBN: 9789004442696
Format: Hardcover
“This fine book adds great depth and meaning to the study of Renaissance humanism. Kircher’s writing is crisp, his analyses are clear-eyed, and throughout he strikes a series of fine balances: between examinations of humanist classics with examinations of lesser known texts (often in manuscript); between Latin and vernacular; between Italian and ultramontane. Throughout, his writing is informed, but not dominated, by the history of continental philosophy.”
Christopher S. Celenza, Johns Hopkins University
“Kircher’s insightful interpretation of […] a broad compendium of humanist writing alone makes the book a useful additional to a scholarly library. […] It provides a subtle and rich investigation of humanist thought and writing revealed though a careful and original reading of a great many texts.” Kenneth Bartlett, University of Toronto. In: Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 76, No. 3 (Fall 2023), pp. 1071–1072. “The strength of this new intellectual history is that it is not only attuned to the philosophical contributions of the early humanists, but it also considers the indirectness of literary media—including letters, dialogues, translations, orations, novels and poetry–as integral to humanist philosophy.”
Eva Plesnik, University of Toronto. In: Annali d'italianistica, Vol. 40 (2022), pp. 449–451.
Christopher S. Celenza, Johns Hopkins University
“Kircher’s insightful interpretation of […] a broad compendium of humanist writing alone makes the book a useful additional to a scholarly library. […] It provides a subtle and rich investigation of humanist thought and writing revealed though a careful and original reading of a great many texts.” Kenneth Bartlett, University of Toronto. In: Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 76, No. 3 (Fall 2023), pp. 1071–1072. “The strength of this new intellectual history is that it is not only attuned to the philosophical contributions of the early humanists, but it also considers the indirectness of literary media—including letters, dialogues, translations, orations, novels and poetry–as integral to humanist philosophy.”
Eva Plesnik, University of Toronto. In: Annali d'italianistica, Vol. 40 (2022), pp. 449–451.
Timothy Kircher, Ph.D. (1989), is Hege Professor of History at Guilford College. He has published monographs and articles on Renaissance humanism, including The Poet’s Wisdom: The Humanists, the Church, and the Formation of Philosophy in the Early Renaissance (Brill, 2006).