The exploration of the 17th century outside from the cartesian's perspective (that is, far from the invention of the subjectivity), allows analysing it by an apparently opposed feature: the role of silence. In this article I will follow some guiding questions about the relationship between silence, inner identity and theology. Through the direct reading of originals texts, I will try to show how the silence – once “regulated”- came away from the individual, becoming the “place” where men could meet the Verbum Dei, and how it will be interpreted as one of the most effective knowledge-tool not only in the prayers, but in philosophy too.

From the very first Christianity to the Concilium of Trento, the regularization of confession crosses centuries of arguments and controversies. Its determination proceeds at the same time with the confessor's figure, who had a very professional and specialized tasks, and with the idea of poenitentia. It is in this extremely confused context that the revolution of Ignazio from Loyola will be decisive: once detached from the generical practice's shape it had, the confession will become the syntex of a self-examination and self-decovering path.

Teresa of Avila's emphasis on humility, grounded in bodily finitude, is well known and much discussed. This paper argues that it is essential to her epistemology, first as a way of avoiding overconfidence in uncertain knowledge, and second as a reminder to trust in true knowledge; i.e., knowledge that comes from God. That this emphasis has genuine epistemological and not just religious value is demonstrated by close parallels in the epistemology of early modern philosopher Rene Descartes, for whom we can only find truth by restraining the will to rush to assertion.

This paper starts with a discussion of Aristotle's akrasia, or "weakness of will" in the Reformation period. The discussion is then connected with the cultural distinction between "gifts and sales", arguing that Martin Luther employs theological concepts as prominent examples of the so-called "gift mode". Finally, the issue of "appropriation" (Aneignung) is addressed: if grace is pure gift and as such not dependant on the efforts of human will, how can Protestants claim that they participate in the realm of grace?

The article aims at giving some lines of thought concerning the action at a distance from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It suggests a typology of actions at a distance depending on whether the mover and that which is moved are souls, inanimate bodies or animate bodies. But a fundamental distinction must also be taken into account: between an action at a distance in the strict sense (i.e. without any medium) and that which can be understood in a broader sense. Several medieval explanations are set out and the implications of the new Renaissance frameworks are addressed (e.g. the animistic models of action). The article ends with an approach...

Stories of the maternal imagination, imprinting images on the fetus or deforming it, were commonplace in the early modern period. The recent secondary literature has discussed theories of the maternal imagination in relation to animal generation and heredity, but has ignored the broader context of theories of the powerful imagination. In this article, I will show how a curious story about a cherry, imprinted on the skin of a fetus, was used by the Neo-Platonist philosopher Henry More as an occasion to explore stronger powers of the imagination, which could act outside the body. On the one hand, theories of a powerful imagination, as advocated by Pomponazzi...

Current research in neuroscience suggests that music can have a profound effect on brain function, in particular a therapeutic one in cases of brain injury or neurological disorders. This article proposes that some early modern philosophers were open to the possibility of "magic" in the sense that music and its effect on the emotions was seen as a potential cure for many ills, mental disorders in particular. This period does, after all, see the beginning of sustained interest in melancholy and related disorders. This essay offers the example of Michael Maier, court alchemist to Rudolph II of Prague and to other European leaders...

The paper discusses some aspects of Spinoza’s psychology as they are presented in the second part of the Ethica, considering their relation to the ontology of causality presented in the first part. The mind appears then as a determination of the activity of the universal thought, to which corresponds a determination of the motion (the body), which expresses the same causal aptitude. If thought is ideal causation, all kinds of knowledge express the power of the mind in a necessary way: the relation between imagination and intellection is therefore not a simple opposition between inadequateness and adequateness; besides, knowledge...

The Sigillus sigillorum (London 1583), even if conceived as part a of a trypthic about mnemotechnical art, is a work of Giordano Bruno that reveals an indipendent teorethical worthiness. Its genesis and composition is a typicall expression of Bruno's peregrinatio, that is the art to gain the core concepts of its revolutionay philosophy proceeding from memory. The Sigillus sigillorum develops a comparaison with the theories of Marsilio Ficino towards the faculties of the soul, the connection between soul and body, and generally about knowledge means. In this work, basing his though about organical relationship between phantasy, memory and intellect...

The theoreticians of peinture in early modern period, Lodovico Dolce, Roger Piles and Félibien, distinguish this art in three kind of clump: invenction (or composition), drawing and colouring. This sort of partition on its part is yet based on the preliminar basic division between theory (conception) and practice (composition) on the one hand, and realisation (drawing and colouring). If the distinction between drawing and colouring does not effects the theory, maybe we can suppose a petito principii deriving from materialistical thesis: it totally excludes indeed the initial conception to demonstrate its absence or uselessness. The aim of my article is to show...

As several contemporary scholars already pointed out, the reduction of the Medieval "internal senses" to only one internal sense, usually identified with imagination, was one of the trends which most evidently characterize the early-modern philosophical psychology. But this trend was not universally widespread and met some puzzling inner difficulties. On the first side, one can find some pieces of Medieval accounts on inner senses even in typically modern contexts such as showed by the persistence of the "estimative power" in some of the early-modern doctrines of human passions. On the other side, even full-blooded "reductionists" often were...

Giacomo Scarpelli has got the leading role in this interview, based on his book Ingegni e congegni. Sentieri incrociati di filosofia e scienza, published by Storia e Letteratura in 2011. The autor dialogues with several authorities in science, litterature and philosophy, but we are just going to delve into his cues about the idea of theatrum mundi, sign, and direct human operation on reality.

From its foundation by St. Ignatius in 1540 and linked to its educational work, the Society of Jesus has maintained a continuous and institutional involvement in the natural sciences unparalleled by any other religious order in the Catholic Church. Because its foundation coincided with the beginning of modern science and the educational work in colleges and universities, mathematical and experimental science was soon introduced in their programs. Thus the Jesuit scientific tradition was established. This tradition can be explained by the characteristics of Jesuit or Ignatian spirituality...

The anthropological ideal of man as "homo faber" defined by the French philosopher and pilgrim Charles de Bovelles (1479-1567) constitutes an original and relevant moment in the development of the modern conception of interiority. Following in the footsteps of Marsilio Ficino, Nicholas of Kues and his mentor Lefèvre d’Etaples, Bovelles deepens the neoplatonic conception of microcosmus and theorizes a definition of sapientia as a real knowledge of the human essence. In his thought is originally described a notion of personal ego as an image of divine truth. Charles de Bovelles represents an intriguing example of the new reflection on human personality...

In January 1667 Claude Perrault submitted to the Académie royale des sciences of Paris a Projet pour les expériences et observations anatomiques, preamble to the Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire naturelle des animaux (1671-1676) and to the Essais de physique (1680-1688), aiming at a radical methodological renewal of physiology and comparative anatomy, based on clear distinction between “facts” and “hypotheses”. By acknowledging a causal role of the soul in the functional regulation of all life processes, Perrault frees himself from the Cartesian hypothesis of living automata...