Original scientific paper

Presuppositions of Petrić’s criticism of Aristotle: Pletho, Valla, Nizolio

Mihaela Girardi-Karšulin ; Institut za filozofiju, Zagreb, Hrvatska

Abstract

Petrić’s criticism of Aristotle in his Discussiones peripatheticae (1581) took place at a pivotal point in the history of philosophy. On the one hand, as early as the seventeenth century Gassendi considered it so relevant that he decided to give up his own work on the criticism of Aristotle when he came across Petrić’s Discussiones peripateticae. On the other, from the seventeenth century onwards the interest in the criticism of Aristotle became a thing of the past, because philosophy took a different course no longer based on the Plato-Aristotle dilemma.
However, Petrić’s criticism of Aristotle is not ‘random’, but prepared. Sharp confrontation between Plato’s and Aristotle’s philosophy actually started in the Renaissance, shortly before Petrić (although the literature which discussed the differences between Plato and Aristotle is of much earlier date, its overtones were generally concordant).
Established in this article as a first source of Petrić’s criticism of Aristotle is the treatise De Platonicae atque Aristotelicae philosophiae differentia libellus (Γεωργίου τοῦ Γεμίστου τοῦ καὶ Πλήθωνος περὶ ὧν Ἀριστοτέλης πρὸς Πλάτωνα διαφέρεται) by George Gemistos Pletho.
Pletho was a Platonist and he most certainly influenced Petrić, which can be established by comparing the contents of the mentioned Pletho’s treatise De Platonicae atque Aristotelicae philosophiae differentia libellus and Petrić’s Discussionum peripateticarum tomi IV. His influence on Petrić is best witnessed through his criticism of Aristotle’s notion of being as being. As a Platonist, Pletho most certainly was an expected source for Petrić, though not the only one. Pletho apparently accepts, by his own admission, the basic frame of Aristotle’s natural philosophy.
Starting from the question: in what way Pletho could not have been Petrić’s anticipator, established as second source is Lorenzo Valla on the basis of his criticism of Aristotelian-Platonic notion of science. Teodoro Angelucci, Petrić’s contemporary, pointed to the latter’s third source. That was Mario Nizolio, exponent of the same Renaissance philosophy school as Lorenzo Valla.
Although Petrić’s criticism was well grounded, Petrić did not follow his predecessors uncritically, but in his criticism of Aristotle proved himself in a more meticulous and radical light.

Keywords

Pletho; Lorenzo Valla; Mario Nizolio; Frane Petrić; metaphysics; being as being

Hrčak ID:

154508

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/154508

Publication date:

18.2.2016.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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