Seeds of Virtue and Knowledge

by Horowitz, Maryanne Cline

• ISBN13: 9780691044637
• ISBN10: 0691044635
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-01-01
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

In this wide-ranging and thought-provoking study, Maryanne Cline Horowitz explores the image and idea of the human mind as a garden: under the proper educational cultivation, the mind may nourish seeds of virtue and knowledge into the full flowering of human wisdom. This copiously illustrated investigation begins by examining the intellectual world of the Stoics, who originated the phrases "seeds of virtue" and "seeds of knowledge." Tracing the interrelated history of the Stoic cluster of epistemological images for natural law within humanity--reason, common notions, sparks, and seeds--Horowitz presents the distinctive versions within the competing movements of Hellenistic Judaism and early Christianity, Augustinian and Thomist theologies, Christian mysticism and Kabbalah, and Erasmian Catholicism and the Lutheran Reformation. She demonstrates how the Ciceronian and Senecan analogies between horticulture and culture--basic to Italian Renaissance humanists, artists, and neo- Platonists--influence the emergence of emblems and essays among participants in the Northern Renaissance neo-Stoic movement.The Stoic metaphor is still visible today in ecumenical movements that use vegetative language to encourage the growth of shared values and to promote civic virtues: organizations disseminate information on nipping bad habits in the bud and on turning a new leaf. The author's evidence of illustrated pages from medieval, Renaissance, and Enlightenment texts will stimulate contemporary readers to evaluate her discovery of "the premodern scientific paradigm that the mind develops like a plant."

Table of Contents

ILLUSTRATIONS	ix	(4)
PREFACE	xiii	(4)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS	xvii
INTRODUCTION	3	(18)
CHAPTER ONE Stoic Seeds of Virtue and Sparks of Divinity	21	(14)
Reason	21	(2)
Common Notions	23	(3)
Seeds to Trees	26	(6)
Sparks	32	(3)
CHAPTER TWO The Challenge to Christian Theologians	35	(22)
Christianization of Pagan and Jewish Images and Ideas	37	(7)
Eclectic Stoic Phrases in Augustine and Thomas Aquinas	44	(13)
CHAPTER THREE Medieval and Renaissance Vegetative Images	57	(24)
Judaic Trees	59	(8)
Christian Trees of Ascent	67	(3)
Christian Trees of Knowledge	70	(3)
Christian Trees of Virtue and Vice	73	(4)
Visual and Verbal Vegetative Symbolism	77	(2)
Mythological Arborescent Images of Individual Virtue	79	(2)
CHAPTER FOUR Ficino: Neo-Platonic Ascent through Love and Education	81	(15)
CHAPTER FIVE Italian Renaissance Humanism: Rebirth and Flowering of the Seeds of Virtue and Knowledge	96	(23)
Epistemological Confidence among Female and Male Humanists	97	(6)
Florilegia: Gathering the Flowers of the Wise	103	(4)
Listening to Chloris's Rhetoric in Botticelli's Primavera	107	(5)
Savoring the Fruit and Dispersing the Seeds	112	(2)
Analogy between Horticulture and Culture	114	(5)
CHAPTER SIX Vegetative Language of Virtue and Vice in Discourses on the Dignity or Depravity of Humankind	119	(36)
From Pope Innocent III's Tree of Vice to the Meditative Forest Study of the Avignon Popes	120	(8)
Pico della Mirandola on Cultivating Free Will in the Fertile Soul	128	(6)
Divine or Human Gardening of the Soul? Lefevre d'Etaples, Luther, and Erasmus	134	(8)
Marguerite de Navarre and Elizabeth I on Uprooting the Tree of Vice	142	(3)
Do the Seeds of Virtue Grow to Heaven? Calvin versus Sadoleto and Resolutions of Melanchthon and the Council of Trent	145	(10)
CHAPTER SEVEN Northern Renaissance Humanism: Cultivating and Transplanting the Seeds of Virtue and Knowledge	155	(26)
Resprouting of the Seeds in Erasmian Humanism	155	(3)
Vegetative Imagery in Alciati's Emblems	158	(11)
Neo-Stoic Strategies of Du Vair and Lipsius: Separate Fields for Ethics and Christianity or One Common Field?	169	(12)
CHAPTER EIGHT Bodin: "All the Ancient Hebrews and Academics Have Held"	181	(25)
Seeds of Virtue, Knowledge, and Religion	182	(6)
Philo's Garden of the Soul in the Book of Nature	188	(12)
Ecumenical Conversations on Divinely Implanted Virtue	200	(6)
CHAPTER NINE Montaigne: Seeds of Virtue in Peasants and Amerindians	206	(17)
Sifting for Truth	207	(3)
Peasant Virtue in Garden and Field	210	(3)
Amerindians and Natural-Law Theory	213	(10)
CHAPTER TEN Charron: Seeds of Virtue for Virtue's Own Sake	223	(15)
Separate Books for Human Wisdom and for Divine Wisdom	224	(3)
Cultivating Exemplary Virtuous Individuals	227	(11)
EPILOGUE	238	(19)
NOTES	257	(92)
INDEX NOMINUM	349	(12)
INDEX RERUM	361