Theory as Practice: Ethical Inquiry in the Renaissance.

Struever, Nancy S.:

ISBN 10: 0226777421 / ISBN 13: 9780226777429

Published by Chicago ; London : University of Chicago Press, 1992

About this Item

XIII, 246 p. From the library of Prof. Wolfgang Haase, long-time editor of ANRW and the International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT). - Slightly rubbed jacket, allover very good and clean. / Leicht beriebene Jacke, insgesamt sehr gut und sauber. - Nancy Struever's The Language of History in the Renaissance was an early and seminal contribution to the debate on the relation of rhetoric to history. In her second book on the Renaissance, she shifts her focus to ethical inquiry and its practical, or rhetorical, presence. Her examination of the work of five major figures of the periodPetrarch, Nicolaus Cusanus, Lorenzo Valla, Machiavelli, and Montaigne contests accepted notions of the Renaissance Humanists as being merely hermeneuticists. At the same time, she shows how their work can be seen to gloss, or comment usefully on, the ethical theory of such modern philosophers as Peirce, Wittgenstein, Bernard Williams, and Quine. Often viewed as mere readers and interpreters of classical texts, the Renaissance Humanists in Struever's analysis appear instead as serious inquirers, rhetorically presenting their work as available practice. Struever 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; their strategies, she suggests, illumine and are illuminated by modern philosophy of language. Finally, while both Machiavelli and Montaigne produced strong revisions of discipline, they considered the problems of addressing the non-inquirer as well. Where Machiavelli enjoins tough-minded theorizing, Montaigne demands not an elitist skepticism, but a familiar practice which engages in tending, and repairing, a web of ordinary beliefs. The Renaissance thinkers in this account prove to be reacting against the traditional reduction of ethical inquiry to arid abstractions and a mechanical and unpersuasive moralism. Struever reanimates their inquiries to demonstrate the complex particularity of moral life. 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. - Nancy S. Struever is professor in the Department of History and the Humanities Center at the Johns Hopkins University. ISBN 9780226777429 Sprache: Englisch Gewicht in Gramm: 543 Original cloth with dust jacket.

Seller Inventory # 1168603

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Theory as Practice: Ethical Inquiry in the Renaissance.
• Publisher: Chicago ; London : University of Chicago Press
• Publication Date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226777421
• ISBN 13: 9780226777429
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Gut
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included
• Weight: 543 grams
• Seller catalogs:
  • Ethik

About this title

Synopsis

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.

 

About the Author

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.