Brian Copenhaver

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Dr.

Brian P. Copenhaver
Born (1942-12-21) December 21, 1942 (age 81)
Baltimore, Maryland, USA
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater The University of Kansas (Ph.D.), Creighton University, Loyola College
Notable work'Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in English Translation, with Notes and Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)
AwardsUdvar-Hazy Chair as Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and History at the University of California (2011-2018)

Brian P. Copenhaver (born December 21, 1942) is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and History at The University of California, Los Angeles. He teaches and writes about philosophy, religion and science in late medieval and early modern Europe.

Contents

Career

Copenhaver was educated at Loyola College (Baltimore), Creighton University and The University of Kansas, before doing post-doctoral studies at the Warburg Institute. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, [1] past President of the Journal of the History of Philosophy and a member of the Council of the Instituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento in Italy. He serves or has served on the boards of Renaissance Quarterly , Annals of Science , the Journal of the History of Ideas , Early Science and Medicine, the International Archives of the History of Ideas, and the I Tatti Renaissance Library . He was the charter co-editor of Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft, and is the Editor of the History of Philosophy Quarterly, His research has been supported by the Guggenheim Foundation, [2] the Getty Trust, [3] the American Council of Learned Societies, [4] the American Philosophical Society, the Medieval Academy of America and by a Fulbright Scholarship.

Scholarship

Copenhaver studies magic and related beliefs and practices – astrology, [5] demonology, divination, Kabbalah [6] – as parts of normative philosophy and science as they were a few centuries ago. His research shows that magic [7] [8] [9] [10] and other "occult" beliefs and practices were supported primarily by the philosophy and science of Aristotle and Aristotelian scholasticism, which dominated European culture from the thirteenth through the seventeenth centuries. When confidence in Aristotelianism collapsed in the seventeenth century, magic and its attendant beliefs collapsed with it as serious issues for Europe's leading thinkers.

He also studies the ancient Greek and Latin Hermetica , [11] writings from late antiquity ascribed by Renaissance scholars [12] to an ancient Egyptian god, Thoth, whose Greek name is Hermes Trismegistus. Although this legendary Hermes has often been identified as a divine patron of magic, Copenhaver has shown that the Greek Hermetic texts recovered in the fifteenth century by Marsilio Ficino [13] [14] are not about magic: their topic is a religious practice aiming at personal salvation.

Copenhaver's work on Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Lorenzo Valla, both famed as Renaissance humanists, goes in two very different directions: Pico as the inventor of Christian Kabbalah; [15] Valla as the scourge of scholastic logic. Copenhaver shows that Pico's famous Oration on the Dignity of Man is not about the dignity of man. (Pico did not give it that title.) Instead, the speech is a manifesto for ascetic mysticism, urging the pious to abandon the body and escape the material world through magic and Kabbalah. [16] Like Pico, Valla was a master of the Latin language and an acute student of philosophy. Unlike Pico, Valla had little influence on his time and place through the work that Copenhaver has studied, the Dialectical Disputations, whose main target is Peter of Spain's Summary of Logic, written in the thirteenth century but still Europe's leading textbook of logic when Valla wrote his Disputations. Although Valla's contemporaries paid little attention to it, his Disputations foreshadows what we now call "philosophy of language".

Both Valla and Pico lived during a great era of Italian intellectual life, starting with Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio in the fourteenth century and ending with Giordano Bruno, Tommaso Campanella and Galileo in the seventeenth century. In the nineteenth century, Italian philosophers worked out the grand narrative of Italian thought in this earlier period – the Renaissance – and afterward: the construction of this story as an artifact of modern Italian politics, especially the Risorgimento and the Fascist regime, is another topic that Copenhaver has explored.

Contributions to higher education

During his ten years as Provost of UCLA’s College of Letters and Science, Copenhaver led successful efforts to revamp UCLA’s General Education curriculum, implement a stronger writing requirement and make the Internet and Web technology an integral part of academic life for students and faculty. [17] He was also instrumental in the College’s fund-raising campaign, raising five times more than the previous capital campaign. [ citation needed ]On his watch, UCLA’s College became the first in the country to establish a website – supported by student fees – for every undergraduate course. [ citation needed ]In response to the September 11 attacks, he worked with Vice-Provost Judi Smith to design the first offering of UCLA’s renowned Fiat Lux courses, [18] [19] and to recruit faculty to teach them on short notice. Copenhaver is currently teaching his own online course, while advising other faculty and staff about this new – and controversial – way to teach and learn. [20]

Published works

Copenhaver's articles examine magic, astrology, the Hermetica, Kabbalah and their foundations in Neoplatonic, Aristotelian and scholastic philosophy; natural philosophy; scepticism; Averroism; philosophical translation; modern Italian philosophy; historiography; the classical tradition in philosophy; Lorenzo Valla; Marsilio Ficino; Giovanni Pico della Mirandola; Polydore Vergil; Tommaso Campanella; Isaac Newton; [21] [22] [23] Henry More; and Benedetto Croce. His books include:

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marsilio Ficino</span> Italian philosopher and Catholic priest (1433–1499)

Marsilio Ficino was an Italian scholar and Catholic priest who was one of the most influential humanist philosophers of the early Italian Renaissance. He was an astrologer, a reviver of Neoplatonism in touch with the major academics of his day, and the first translator of Plato's complete extant works into Latin. His Florentine Academy, an attempt to revive Plato's Academy, influenced the direction and tenor of the Italian Renaissance and the development of European philosophy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hermes Trismegistus</span> Legendary author of the Hermetica

Hermes Trismegistus is a legendary Hellenistic period figure that originated as a syncretic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth. He is the purported author of the Hermetica, a widely diverse series of ancient and medieval pseudepigraphica that lay the basis of various philosophical systems known as Hermeticism.

Christian views on magic vary widely among Christian denominations and among individuals. Many Christians actively condemn magic as satanic, holding that it opens the way for demonic possession. Some Christians simply view it as entertainment. Conversely, some branches of esoteric Christianity actively engage in magical practices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Giovanni Pico della Mirandola</span> Italian Renaissance philosopher (1463–1494)

Giovanni Pico dei conti della Mirandola e della Concordia, known as Pico della Mirandola, was an Italian Renaissance nobleman and philosopher. He is famed for the events of 1486, when, at the age of 23, he proposed to defend 900 theses on religion, philosophy, natural philosophy, and magic against all comers, for which he wrote the Oration on the Dignity of Man, which has been called the "Manifesto of the Renaissance", and a key text of Renaissance humanism and of what has been called the "Hermetic Reformation". He was the founder of the tradition of Christian Kabbalah, a key tenet of early modern Western esotericism. The 900 Theses was the first printed book to be universally banned by the Church. Pico is sometimes seen as a proto-Protestant, because his 900 theses anticipated many Protestant views.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hermeticism</span> Philosophy based on the teachings of Hermes Trismegistus

Hermeticism or Hermetism is a philosophical and religious system based on the purported teachings of Hermes Trismegistus. These teachings are contained in the various writings attributed to Hermes, which were produced over a period spanning many centuries and may be very different in content and scope.

<i>Hermetica</i> Philosophical texts attributed to Hermes Trismegistus

The Hermetica are texts attributed to the legendary Hellenistic figure Hermes Trismegistus, a syncretic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth. These texts may vary widely in content and purpose, but by modern convention are usually subdivided into two main categories, the "technical" and "religio-philosophical" Hermetica.

<i>Corpus Hermeticum</i> Collection of late antique religio-philosophical texts

The Corpus Hermeticum is a collection of 17 Greek writings whose authorship is traditionally attributed to the legendary Hellenistic figure Hermes Trismegistus, a syncretic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth. The treatises were originally written between c. 100 and c. 300 CE, but the collection as known today was first compiled by medieval Byzantine editors. It was translated into Latin in the 15th century by the Italian humanist scholars Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) and Lodovico Lazzarelli (1447–1500).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa</span> German occult writer (1486–1535)

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim was a German Renaissance polymath, physician, legal scholar, soldier, knight, theologian, and occult writer. Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy published in 1533 drew heavily upon Kabbalah, Hermeticism, and neo-Platonism. His book was widely influential among esotericists of the early modern period, and was condemned as heretical by the inquisitor of Cologne.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Renaissance humanism</span> Revival in the study of Classical antiquity

Renaissance humanism was a worldview centered on the nature and importance of humanity, that emerged from the study of Classical antiquity. This first began in Italy and then spread across Western Europe in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. During the period, the term humanist referred to teachers and students of the humanities, known as the studia humanitatis, which included the study of Latin and Ancient Greek literatures, grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, and moral philosophy. It was not until the 19th century that this began to be called humanism instead of the original humanities, and later by the retronym Renaissance humanism to distinguish it from later humanist developments. During the Renaissance period most humanists were Christians, so their concern was to "purify and renew Christianity", not to do away with it. Their vision was to return ad fontes to the simplicity of the Gospels and of the New Testament, bypassing the complexities of medieval Christian theology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lorenzo Valla</span> Italian Renaissance humanist (c. 1407–1457)

Lorenzo Valla was an Italian Renaissance humanist, rhetorician, educator and scholar. He is best known for his historical-critical textual analysis that proved that the Donation of Constantine was a forgery, therefore attacking and undermining the presumption of temporal power claimed by the papacy. Lorenzo is sometimes seen as a precursor of the Reformation.

<i>Three Books of Occult Philosophy</i> Book by Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim

Three Books of Occult Philosophy is Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa's study of occult philosophy, acknowledged as a significant contribution to the Renaissance philosophical discussion concerning the powers of magic, and its relationship with religion. The first book was printed in 1531 in Paris, Cologne, and Antwerp, while the full three volumes first appeared in Cologne in 1533.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Renaissance philosophy</span> Period of European thought (1355–1650)

The designation "Renaissance philosophy" is used by historians of philosophy to refer to the thought of the period running in Europe roughly between 1400 and 1600. It therefore overlaps both with late medieval philosophy, which in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was influenced by notable figures such as Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham, and Marsilius of Padua, and early modern philosophy, which conventionally starts with René Descartes and his publication of the Discourse on Method in 1637.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The I Tatti Renaissance Library</span>

The I Tatti Everyday Renaissance Library is a book series published by the Tatti University Press, which aims to present important works of Italian Renaissance Latin Literature to a modern audience by printing the original Latin text on each left-hand leaf (verso), and an English translation on the facing page (recto). The idea was initially conceived by Walter Kaiser, former professor of English and Comparative Literature at Harvard and director of the Villa I Tatti. Its goal is to be the Italian Renaissance version of the Loeb Classical Library. James Hankins, Professor of History at Harvard University, is the General Editor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elia del Medigo</span> Sephardic philosopher

Elia del Medigo, also called Elijah Delmedigo or Elias ben Moise del Medigo and sometimes known to his contemporaries as Helias Hebreus Cretensis or in Hebrew Elijah Mi-Qandia. According to Jacob Joshua Ross, "while the non-Jewish students of Delmedigo may have classified him as an “Averroist”, he clearly saw himself as a follower of Maimonides". But, according to other scholars, Delmedigo was clearly a strong follower of Averroes' doctrines, even the more radical ones: unity of intellect, eternity of the world, autonomy of reason from the boundaries of revealed religion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola</span>

Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola (1470–1533) was an Italian nobleman and philosopher, the nephew of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. His name is typically truncated as Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola.

Natural magic in the context of Renaissance magic is that part of the occult which deals with natural forces directly, as opposed to ceremonial magic which deals with the summoning of spirits. Natural magic sometimes makes use of physical substances from the natural world such as stones or herbs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Renaissance magic</span> Magical science during the Renaissance

Renaissance magic was a resurgence in Hermeticism and Neo-Platonic varieties of the magical arts which arose along with Renaissance humanism in the 15th and 16th centuries CE. During the Renaissance period, magic and occult practices underwent significant changes that reflected shifts in cultural, intellectual, and religious perspectives. C. S. Lewis, in his work on English literature, highlighted the transformation in how magic was perceived and portrayed. In medieval stories, magic had a fantastical and fairy-like quality, while in the Renaissance, it became more complex and tied to the idea of hidden knowledge that could be explored through books and rituals. This change is evident in the works of authors like Spenser, Marlowe, Chapman, and Shakespeare, who treated magic as a serious and potentially dangerous pursuit.

Christian Kabbalah arose during the Renaissance due to Christian scholars' interest in the mysticism of Jewish Kabbalah, which they interpreted according to Christian theology. It is often transliterated as Cabala to distinguish it from the Jewish form and from Hermetic Qabalah.

Nicoletto Vernia was an Italian Averroist philosopher, at the University of Padua.

The Oration on the Dignity of Man is a public discourse composed in 1486 by Pico della Mirandola, an Italian scholar and philosopher of the Renaissance. It remained unpublished until 1496. The Pico Project–a collaboration between the University of Bologna and Brown University–and others have called it the "Manifesto of the Renaissance".

References

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  2. ↑ "Guggenheim Fellows List". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Archived from the original on 15 October 2011. Retrieved 7 August 2012.
  3. ↑ "Getty Scholars List". The Getty Research Institute. J. Paul Getty Trust. Retrieved 7 August 2012.
  4. ↑ "ACLS Fellow List". American Council of Learned Societies. Retrieved 7 August 2012.
  5. ↑ Colish, Marcia (January 1990). "The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy (review)". Journal of the History of Philosophy. 28 (1): 128–130.
  6. ↑ Sæbø, Magne, ed. (2008). Hebrew Bible, Old Testament: the history of its interpretation. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. p. 179. ISBN   978-3525539828.
  7. ↑ Dougherty, M. V. (1 September 2008). "The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy". Renaissance Quarterly. 61 (3): 912–913. doi:10.1353/ren.0.0241. S2CID   161130006.
  8. ↑ Frazier, Alison (1 January 2003). "Writing on Hands: Memory and Knowledge in Early Modern Europe (review)". Libraries & the Cultural Record. 38 (1): 75–76. doi:10.1353/lac.2003.0010. S2CID   161353417.
  9. ↑ Black, Robert, ed. (2001). Renaissance thought: a reader. London: Routledge. pp. 14–15. ISBN   041520593X.
  10. ↑ Tomlinson, Gary (1993). Music in Renaissance magic: toward a historiography of others. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 85–86, 105, 128, 198. ISBN   0226807924.
  11. ↑ Kraye, Jill (1996). "Hermetica: The Greek "Corpus Hermeticum" and the Latin "Asclepius" (review)". Journal of the History of Philosophy. 34 (4): 608–610. doi:10.1353/hph.1996.0087. S2CID   144898849.
  12. ↑ Pine, Martin L. (1994). "Renaissance Philosophy (review)". Journal of the History of Philosophy. 32 (1): 135–137. doi:10.1353/hph.1994.0018. S2CID   144383250.
  13. ↑ Friesen, Ryan Curtis (2010). Supernatural fiction in early modern drama and culture. Brighton [England]: Sussex Academic Press. p. 14. ISBN   978-1845193294.
  14. ↑ MacDonald, Paul S. (2004). History of the concept of mind: speculations about soul, mind and spirit from Homer to Hume (Repr. ed.). Aldershot: Ashgate. pp. 233–234. ISBN   0754613658.
  15. ↑ Dougherty, M. V., ed. (2007). Pico della Mirandola: new essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 155–156. ISBN   9780521847360.
  16. ↑ "The Many Faces of Pico della Mirandola: An Interview with Professor Brian Copenhaver". 23 November 2020.
  17. ↑ Kaplan, Karen (September 22, 1997). "UCLA's New Web-sters". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 8 August 2012.
  18. ↑ Arenson, Karen (February 12, 2002). "A Nation Challenged: College Classes; Campuses Across America Are Adding 'Sept. 11 101' to Curriculums". New York Times. Retrieved 8 August 2012.
  19. ↑ Harris, Leon (November 3, 2001). "Interview With Brian Copenhaver". CNN.com - Transcripts. Retrieved 8 August 2012.
  20. ↑ Lee, Cynthia (August 31, 2010). "Faculty remain divided about online courses". UCLAToday. Archived from the original on 4 February 2013. Retrieved 8 August 2012.
  21. ↑ Brooke, John Hedley (1991). Science and religion : some historical perspectives (1. publ. ed.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. pp.  371. ISBN   0-521-28374-4.
  22. ↑ Bricker, edited by Phillip; Hughes, R.I.G. (1990). Philosophical perspectives on Newtonian science . Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. pp.  107. ISBN   0-262-02301-6.{{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)
  23. ↑ Leshem, Ayval (2003). Newton on mathematics and spiritual purity. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. p. 81. ISBN   1-4020-1151-2.
  24. ↑ Yates, Frances (November 2, 1979). "The Fear of the Occult". The New York Review of Books.
  25. ↑ Szőnyi, György E. (2004). John Dee's occultism: magical exaltation through powerful signs. Albany: State University of New York Press. p. 44. ISBN   0-7914-6223-4.
  26. ↑ Coudert, Allison P. (1999). The impact of the Kabbalah in the seventeenth century: the life and thought of Francis Mercury van Helmont (1614–1698). Leiden: Brill. p. 331. ISBN   90-04-09844-5.
  27. ↑ Hankins, James (1994). "Review of Brian Copenhaver and Charles B. Schmitt, Renaissance Philosophy". Renaissance Quarterly. 47 (3): 639–641. doi:10.2307/2863023. JSTOR   2863023. S2CID   163438444.
  28. ↑ Grafton, Anthony (October 5, 2006). "Rediscovering a Lost Continent". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved 7 August 2012.
  29. ↑ Grafton, Anthony (2009). Worlds Made by Words: Scholarship and Community in the Modern West. Harvard University Press. pp. 146–147. ASIN   B0084TD7EK.
  30. ↑ Atkinson, Catherine (2005). Inventing inventors in renaissance Europe Polydore Vergil's "De inventoribus rerum". Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. pp. 4–5, 104, 112, 116, 120–1. ISBN   3-16-149187-4.
  31. ↑ Rubini, Rocco (2018). "Brian P. Copenhaver and Rebecca Copenhaver, eds. From Kant to Croce: Modern Philosophy in Italy, 1800–1950. Lorenzo da Ponte Italian Library Series. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012". Renaissance Quarterly. 67 (1): 238–240. doi:10.1086/676191. ISSN   0034-4338. S2CID   163458738.
  32. ↑ Donoghue, Steve (n.d.). "Book Review: Dialectical Disputations". Open Letters Monthly. Open Letters LLC. Retrieved February 12, 2020.
  33. ↑ Uckelman, Sara L. (2016). "Peter of Spain: Summaries of Logic: Text, Translation, Introduction, and Notes , written by Brian P. Copenhaver, with Calvin G. Normore and Terence Parsons" (PDF). Vivarium. 54 (1): 113–116. doi:10.1163/15685349-12341315. ISSN   0042-7543.
  34. ↑ Read, Stephen (2015). "Peter of Spain: Summaries of Logic: Text, Translation, Introduction and Notes by Brian P. Copenhaver". Journal of the History of Philosophy. 53 (4): 783–784. doi:10.1353/hph.2015.0079. ISSN   1538-4586. S2CID   145727368.
  35. ↑ Williams, Rowan (2016). "Magical thinking: the history of science, sorcery and the spiritual". New Statesman. NS Media Group. Retrieved March 14, 2019.
  36. ↑ Young, Francis (2016). "Review of 'Magic in Western Culture: From Antiquity to the Enlightenment'". Reviews in History. doi: 10.14296/RiH/2014/1999 . ISSN   1749-8155.
  37. ↑ Robichaud, Denis J.-J. (2022). "Magic and the Dignity of Man: Pico della Mirandola and His Oration in Modern Memory by Brian P. Copenhaver". Journal of the History of Philosophy. 60 (1): 160–162. doi:10.1353/hph.2022.0011. eISSN   1538-4586. S2CID   246439019.
  38. ↑ Dougherty, Jude P (2019). "Manetti, Giannozzo. On Human Worth and Excellence. (Book review)". The Review of Metaphysics. 73 (1): 145–146. ISSN   0034-6632.
  39. ↑ Baldassarri, Stefano U. (2020). "On Human Worth and Excellence. Giannozzo Manetti. Ed. and trans. Brian P. Copenhaver. The I Tatti Renaissance Library 85. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019. lii + 364 pp". Renaissance Quarterly. 73 (2): 595–596. doi: 10.1017/rqx.2020.6 . ISSN   0034-4338.
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