When knowledge became democratic (for women too): Aristotle in the Renaissance

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Federico Barocci, Quintilia Fischieri, probably c. 1600, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Samuel H. Kress Collection

Aristotle’s translations from classical to vernacular language have for the first time made philosophy and science available outside the elite circles of university professors, intellectuals, religious people, and those with prevalent knowledge in Greek and Latin.  The new readers were engineers, architects, craftsmen, artillerymen, seamen, merchants, woodcutters, grocers, sculptors, painters, carpenters, young people, old people, even children.

Among this new audience, a special space was reserved for women, to which works on ethics, metaphysics and natural philosophy were dedicated and intended for. This new access to knowledge allowed women to not only be beneficiaries of culture, but also refined philosophers, such as in the case of Tullia d’Aragona and Camilla Erculiani.

To shed light on this barely studied history so far is Marco Sgarbi, professor of History of Philosophy at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, where he is conducting a research on the popularization of Aristotle in the Renaissance, funded by the European Research Council (ERC Starting Grant). The title of the project is Aristotle in the Italian Vernacular: Rethinking Renaissance and Early-Modern Intellectual History (c. 1400-c. 1650).

In an article published in the prestigious academic journal Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, the scholar examines the intentions of the 'popularizers' and opens new research queries about the impact of the cultural ferment that contributed to revolutionize thought and society in the 15th Century and the centuries that followed.

“Although the alphabetization may still be limited, the vernacular languages became potential tools of emancipation and innovation” comments Sgarbi; “Translating Aristotle from Greek and Latin, the philosophies intended to spread culture in each social stratum. It is difficult to know how much the intentions of the popularizers were expected,  and how many people effectively benefitted from these written works; what is certain is that a new awareness was born, that which knowledge is power, a power that cannot be exclusive to a small circle in order to develop a real progress of knowledge. And this is the cardinal principle of modern scientific thinking”.

The panoramic and systematic operation of ‘democratization’ of knowledge came into place during the 14th and 15th Centuries, by intellectuals such as Sperone Speroni, Bernardo Segni and Alessandro Piccolomini, intent on promoting philosophical ideas that were often very complex to the lowest social classes.

From small artisan shops to private academies, from typographies to public readings, the opportunities for contact between the population and philosophical writers multiplied in a few years. A specific research will be dedicated to the figures of women intellectual and philosophers that emerged in this context, for which the selection process for a post-PhD researcher in the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage at Ca’ Foscari is open.