Models of the History of Philosophy: Vol. III: The Second Enlightenment and the Kantian Age (International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, 216)

This is the third volume of Models of the History of Philosophy, a collaborative work on the history of the history of philosophy dating from the Renaissance to the end of the nineteenth century. The volume covers a decisive period in the history of modern thought, from Voltaire and the great “Encyclopédie” of Diderot and d'Alembert to the age of Kant, i.e. from the histoire de l'esprit humain animated by the idea of progress to the a priori history of human thought. The interest of the philosophes and the Kantians (Buhle and Tennemann) in the study and the reconstruction of the philosophies of the past was characterized by a spirit that was highly critical, but at the same time systematic. The material is divided into four large linguistic and cultural areas: the French, Italian, British and German. The detailed analysis of the 35 works which can be considered to be “general” histories of philosophy is preceded and accompanied by lengthy introductions on the historical background and references to numerous other works bordering on philosophical historiography.

 

GIOVANNI SANTINELLO (1922-2003) was full professor of the History of Philosophy in the Faculty of Education at the University of Padua, a member of the Accademia Galileiana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in Padua, the Director of the Institute for the History of Philosophy, and was awarded a Gold Medal for Merit in Education, Culture, and the Arts by the Ministry of Education. A pupil of Luigi Stefanini, in the course of his research he applied philosophical personalism to the field of historiography in the following areas: a) the ethical, religious, and aesthetic thought of the Renaissance (Nicolas of Kues, Leon Battista Alberti, Léfèvre d'Etaples, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Thomas More, Luigi Pesaro, Paolo Sarpi…); b) metaphysics and criticism in Immanuel Kant; and c) the history and theory of philosophical historiography in the modern and contemporary period. GREGORIO PIAIA (1944) is full professor of the History of Philosophy in the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy at the University of Padua. He has been vice-president of the Italian Philosophical Society, and is a member of the Accademia Galileiana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in Padua and the Ateneo of Treviso. He is currently Director of the Philosophy Department. His research has developed in three directions: a) political, ethical and religious thought in the late medieval and renaissance period (Marsilio da Padova, Nicolò da Cusa, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Thomas More…); b) the history and theory of philosophical historiographyfrom the medieval period to the 20th century; and c) the philosophical culture of the Veneto in the 18th and 19th centuries.