When does Renaissance philosophy end, and Early Modern philosophy begin? Do Renaissance philosophers have something in common, which distinguishes them from Early Modern philosophers? And ultimately, what defines the modernity of the Early Modern period, and what role did the Renaissance play in shaping it? The answers to these questions are not just chronological. This book challenges traditional constructions of these periods, which partly reflect the prejudice that the Renaissance was a literary and artistic phenomenon, rather than a philosophical phase. The essays in this book investigate how the legacy of Renaissance philosophers persisted in the following centuries through the direct encounters of subsequent generations with Renaissance philosophical texts. This volume treats Early Modern philosophers as joining their predecessors as ‘conversation partners’: the ‘conversations’ in this book feature, among others, Girolamo Cardano and Henry More, Thomas Hobbes and Lorenzo Valla, Bernardino Telesio and Francis Bacon, René Descartes and Tommaso Campanella, Giulio Cesare Vanini and the anonymous Theophrastus redivivus.

In this volume leading contemporary philosophical historians of the Renaissance and Early Modern periods examine the works of important figures of the fifteenth through the eighteenth century. While Midwest Studies in Philosophy has produced other volumes devoted to historical periods in philosophy, this is the first to offer such extensive and focused original materials on specific crucial figures as this volume. Original papers by twenty contemporary philosophers writing about the works of the major philosophers of the Fifteenth through the Eighteenth centuries This historically and philosophically broad collection extends from such fifteenth century figures as Ficino, Machiavelli, and Pompanazzi to the work of Montesquieu in the eighteenth century

Philosophers of the Renaissance introduces readers to philosophical thinking from the end of the Middle Ages through the sixteenth century.

The Philosophy of Religion is one result of the Early Modern Reformation movements, as competing theologies purported truth claims which were equal in strength and different in contents. Renaissance thought, from Humanism through philosophy of nature, contributed to the origin of the modern concepts of God. This book explores the continuity of philosophy of religion from late medieval thinkers through humanists to late Renaissance philosophers, explaining the growth of the tensions between the philosophical and theological views. Covering the work of Renaissance authors, including Lull, Salutati, Raimundus Sabundus, Plethon, Cusanus, Valla, Ficino, Pico, Bruno, Suárez, and Campanella, this book offers an important understanding of the current philosophy/religion and faith/reason debates and fills the gap between medieval and early modern philosophy and theology.

This fourth volume traces the history of Renaissance philosophy and seventeenth century rationalism, covering Descartes and the birth of modern philosophy.

Appendix - "The Medieval Antecendents of Renaissance Humanism"__

Gives accurate and reliable summaries of the current state of research. It includes entries on philosophers, problems, terms, historical periods, subjects and the cultural context of Renaissance Philosophy. Furthermore, it covers Latin, Arabic, Jewish, Byzantine and vernacular philosophy, and includes entries on the cross-fertilization of these philosophical traditions. A unique feature of this encyclopedia is that it does not aim to define what Renaissance philosophy is, rather simply to cover the philosophy of the period between 1300 and 1650.

This 1988 Companion offers an account of philosophical thought from the middle of the fourteenth century to the emergence of modern philosophy.