Theory as Practice: Ethical Inquiry in the Renaissance - Hardcover

Struever, Nancy S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226777421 ISBN 13: 9780226777429

Verlag: UNIV OF CHICAGO PR, 1992

Inhaltsangabe

There is a tendency in modern scholarship to describe the
Renaissance Humanists merely as readers--as interpreters
happily absorbed within the bounds of their chosen classical
texts. In Theory as Practice, Nancy Struever contests
this accepted notion; by focusing on ethical inquiry, she
presents the Humanists as engaged in subtle, innovative moral
work.

Struever argues that the accomplishment of five major
Renaissance figures--Petrarch, Nicolaus Cusanus, Lorenzo
Valla, Machiavelli, and Montaigne--was to consider theory as
practice and thus engage the ethics of inquiry. She
notes three stages of investigation, the first represented by
Petrarch, who "relocated" ethical inquiry from a theoretical
realm to a familiar practice responsive to daily experience.
Next, Struever describes how Cusanus and Valla assume
Petrarch's relocation, yet confect ethics into discursive
disciplines. Finally, while both Machiavelli and Montaigne
produced strong revisions of discipline, they considered the
problems of addressing the non-inquirer as well. Struever
urges modern readers to employ both rhetorical and
philosophical analysis to reveal these Humanists' aggressive
tactics of presentation as well as their novel disciplinary
reorientation. By doing so, she suggests, we discover how
Renaissance ethical inquiry illuminates, and is illuminated
by, the modern ethical theory of such philosophers as Peirce,
Wittgenstein, Bernard Williams, and Quine.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Nancy S. Struever is professor emerita in the History Department and the Humanities Center at the Johns Hopkins University. Her most recent book is The History of Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of History.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

A model of erudition and insight, crossing cultures and disciplines in its innovative approach to intellectual history and rhetoric, Theory as Practice is as startling in its implications for present-day philosophy as it is compelling in its importance for Renaissance studies.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: UNIV OF CHICAGO PR
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1992
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0226777421
• ISBN 13: 9780226777429
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 255
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: The University of Chicago Press; https://press.uchicago.edu/index.html; ; 5801 S. Ellis Avenue; Chicago; IL; 60637; USA
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar