Article
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Stupid, drunks and giants: satire, carnivalism and hedonism in Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536) and François Rabelais (c. 1483-1553)
Mariano OLIVERA
Original title: De estultos, beodos y gigantes: sátira, carnavalismo y hedonismo en Erasmo de Rotterdam (1466-1536) y François Rabelais (c. 1483-1553)
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Carnivalism, Epicureanism, Grotesque, Hedonism, Satire.
Satire was genuinely expressed as the disruptive and irritating power against the status quo of medieval and Renaissance society. A unique rhetorical and poetic element, loaded with critical expressions of a political, moral and pedagogical nature, associated with a hedonistic and impulsive vision of vitality. Consequently, related to the common and happy sense of the vulgar, the plebe “estulta” or “foolish” in front of the ascetic, the reflection and the mortified and rationalistic experience of the wise or solitary scholar. A biblical sentence illustrates it: Stultorum infinitus est numerus (“The number of fools is infinite”). Satire presents the world upside down, society upside down, the world revolutionized, happiness as foolishness. Finally, it shows us another perspective in which the pleasure and the hedonistic expression of the body have their privileged place in front of the rule and the monastic and ecclesiastical moral regulations. The writings Praise of the Madness of Erasmus of Rotterdam and Gargantúa and Pantagruel by François Rabelais (sixteenth century), mark important antecedents of satire (and its grotesque derivation) in philosophy and literature, where it is expressed in the first work a recovery of the epicurean philosophy and in the second the extreme hedonism in its grotesque character. The aim of our work is to indicate the carnivalesque-hedonistic vision and moral criticism expressed in such works.
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The five senses, the body and the spirit
Eric PALAZZO
Original title: Les cinq sens, le corps et l’esprit
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Body, Five senses, Spirit.
According to the Christian authors of Antiquity and the Middle Ages, the general tendency in the appreciation of the symbolic meaning of the five senses rests on the consideration of the fundamental unity in man, between the body and the spirit, allowing to establish the doctrine of the corporal senses and the spiritual senses. From the first centuries of Christianity, theologians and philosophers endeavored to convey the Greek concept of “man” or the balance between body and spirit, or soul, as a superior source, following in this, on the one hand, the philosophical ideas of Plato and, on the other hand, those of Aristotle. The biblical passage that we have considered as the founding text of this conception of the unity of the body and spirit in man, in Christian perspective, is an excerpt from the first epistle to the Corinthians. The third century Christian sees, in the same way, the Christian concept of the five spiritual senses and their correspondences with the five corporal senses. Origins (185?-253?) Has been the initiator of the concept of the spiritual senses leading, mainly, to the reconciliation of the soul and the body by the establishment of correspondences between the bodily senses and the spiritual senses whose place is established by the Incarnation of the Word. Some expressions of human anatomy in the manuscripts of the second half of the Middle Ages, show strong similarities with the ideas of Lactantius regarding the relationship between the outer man and the inner man and as to the place given to the head in both site of the soul and where the main organs of the senses reside. As in most areas of theology, the thought of Augustine of Hippo has had a considerable influence on the Christian understanding of the five senses, which implies a deep reflection on the relationship between body and mind in Christianity. We can also mention Pedro Damiano in whom we find a pronounced interest in the metaphor of the Man-city where the senses are compared with doors and windows that give access to the outside world and their knowledge. A famous drawing contained in a manuscript realized in the German abbey of Heilbronn, in century XII, summarizes, in himself, a long part of the explored elements on the relation between the body and the spirit in the Christian theology of the Middle Ages from the exploration of the five senses. As we will see, the drawing also suggests a deep reflection on the sensory dimension in the journey of man on earth and in the perspective of what he will have to do in the future, guided by the model of Christ and the Christian virtues. On folio 130v, we see a final full page drawing where the role of the five senses in the journey of man on earth and in the hereafter is essential. In some aspects, the iconography of the drawings in folio 130v continues the reflection on the theme of the persecution of the Church or, in a broader way, the struggle between good and evil, which is at the center of the image of the mentioned folio. It expresses the theme of the path of life of the good and the bad or the two paths of human life. In the lower right part of the composition, the bust of the personification of nature brings out a naked man who begins to climb a staircase whose first five steps are assimilated to the five senses by their inscriptions. In the middle part of the image, the staircase separates into two paths offered to man to continue his course on earth and beyond. At the crossing of roads, man can choose between good and evil. The character who chose the path of evil is mounted by an imp that pushes down with the help of a fork in which is inscribed, in Latin, the maxim: “depraved behavior.” It will not escape the attentive observer that the character who chose the “depraved behavior” dresses as a prince and continues the “ascent” of his ladder resting on the bars identified by imprudence, intemperance, inconstancy and injustice. In the lower part of the image, the “evil man” is expected in hell by the demons and the devil himself who has in his left hand some types of phylacteries that allude to the “seven demons” that are the negative counterpart of Seven gifts of the Holy Spirit represented, too, in the form of phylacteries in the hands of Christ enthroned in majesty in the upper register of composition. The iconography of the folio 130v of the Heilbronn manuscript is, in many aspects, a unique case in Christian images of the Middle Ages. Certainly, the commentator of the thirteenth-century liturgy does not associate the five senses with the degrees on which he lectures. In spite of this, one has the right to suppose that, in the image of the German manuscript, the five senses are considered, also, virtues, in the same way as the other steps, the four cardinal virtues of the “positive” staircase presented by Man on the condition that he manifests the desire to reach the vision of God with a good intention and thanks to his will.
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Body and Image in teaching of Medieval Philosophy
Libertad MARTINEZ LARRAÑAGA
Original title: El cuerpo y la imagen en la enseñanza de la Filosofía Medieval
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Body, Image, Medieval Philosophy, Monotheistic creationism, Platonic dualism, Teaching, Theory of incarnation.
This paper describes a teaching experience developed as a teaching assistant of Medieval Philosophy at the College of Humanities – UNMDP, where the concepts of body and conforming and disconforming image were presented according to the theories of contemporary philosopher J. M. Schaeffer. This author seeks to explain the importance of the image in Western cultural tradition for its association with the body, an association that occurs in the medieval period from the synergy between three sources of thought: Platonic dualism, monotheistic creationism and the theory of incarnation. The lesson topic was specially chosen to present a contemporary elaboration on a medieval theme, and at the same time to perform a significant teaching experience with the use of images –both from the analyzed period and contemporary. Students were asked to analize aestheticaly and philosophicaly those images, with argumentative clarity, adequate use of the concepts developed in class and elements of visual language.
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The Aesthetic dimension of Existence. Life as a work of art. From Socrates (c.470-399) to Saint Augustine (354-430)
María CECILIA COLOMBANI
Original title: La dimensión estética de la existencia. La vida como obra de arte. De Sócrates (c.470-399) a San Agustín (354-430)
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Confession, Foucault, Parrhesia, Truth.
The present communication consists of highlighting certain features of the parrhesiastic dimension present in Socrates so that, from this theoretical presupposition, we can develop an arc of reading with the confession in Saint Augustine. The purpose is to build a line of continuity with what we can consider an act of veridiction in the Foucauldian sense. We are motivated by the interest in marking a line between a parrhesiastic function and a confessional device and see what ethical-anthropological consequences are given from such acts. Above all, how both discursive practices, which obey specific rules of formation, are related to the so-called arts of existence linked to the etho-poietic dimension of making life a work of art; this is the path we want to travel to think the aesthetic question, associated with ethics and politics, as acts that occur within the framework of power relations that produce transformations on the real.
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Images of the body in the rhetorical ethos of Cicero (106-43 a. C.) and Descartes (1596-1650)
Giannina BURLANDO
Original title: Imágenes del cuerpo en el ethos retórico de Cicerón (106-43 a. C.) y Descartes (1596-1650)
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Body images, Cicero, Descartes, Rhetoric.
The main hypothesis of the study tries to establish that there are images of bodies, which play the role of figuring a certain rhetorical ethos in both Cicero and Descartes. Both are critical authors of the rhetoric inherited from their predecessors, who in turn build their new rhetorical ethos. The first section shows a rhetorical ethos permeated by images of neo-academicist bodies of the mythical-epic type that mirror the vital culture of Cicero. The second to the fifth section includes the perspective and images of neo-Renaissance mathematical-geometric bodies in the work of Descartes, in both cases, the images of bodies have sign value of their times.
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Alcibiades’s silens: notes of aesthetics and philosophy in Pico (1463-1494), Erasmus (1467-1436) and Bruno (1542-1600)
Julián BARENSTEIN
Original title: Los silenos de Alcibíades: notas de estética y filosofía en Pico (1463-1494), Erasmo (1467-1436) y Bruno (1542-1600)
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Aesthetics and Philosophy, Erasmus, Giordano Bruno, Pico della Mirandola, Silens.
Of the multiple influences that Plato’s philosophy has had on Renaissance thought, in this paper we are interested in focusing on a specific and even minimal question, namely, that reference to the silens that appears in Sympsium (215b-c). In our work we propose, then, to trace the presence of the concept of Silenus in three authors: Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), Erasmus of Rotterdam (1467-1436) and Giordano Bruno (1542-1600). We will stop, in this way, in the famous Epistle that Pico sent to Ermolao Barbaro in 1485 and that is part of the De Genere dicendi philosophorum, in the monumental Adagia of Erasmus, especially in the adage 2201, Sileni Albibiadis, and in the dialogues Spaccio de la bestia trionfante and Cabala del cavallo Pegaseo by Giordano Bruno. The Silens, as is well known, are hollow figurines, horrible looking, disgusting and despicable, inside which are full of gems, exotic jewels and precious. Our research aims to show that, according to the selected authors, this is the philosopher’s own way of seeing himself, his aesthetics –whose most finished and original example is Socrates– and, by extension, the way of being proper to philosophy.
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The art of deceiving: the Mandrake, as Machiavelli’s political lesson
Nilo Henrique Neves dos REIS
Original title: El Arte de engañar: la Mandrágora como lección política de Maquiavelo
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Fraud, Machiavelli, Political thinking, The Mandrake.
The comedy The Mandrake is inserted in the role of the political writings of Niccolò Machiavelli in that it also maintains a relationship with the concepts of the corpus maquiavellicus, mainly approaching The Prince. This interlacing allows us to understand how fraud becomes an expedient in the actions of the characters for the achievement of their private projects. However, it is imperative that they construct virtuous discourses that legitimize their actions, for, insofar as their goals can sometimes be considered ignominious by tradition, such actions must be enveloped in illusions that must replace reality by staging for an actor, who seeks to gain collective acquiescence to legitimize the pursuit of his glory. The piece shows how fraud is used to achieve an end and, at the same time, without hurting dominant values. The plot arises under the pretext of causing the comical, but showing the tragedy of politics, and being perhaps an instrument of reflection to understand how well-hidden private interests can be pursued without offending collective interests. Thus, in this way, this writing intends to demonstrate that reading The Mandrake is another way of getting to know Florentino’s political thinking.
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The analogy and its forms on the Thomas’ de Vio (1469-1534) De nominum analogia
Nicolás ARIEL LÁZARO
Original title: La analogía y sus formas en el De nominum analogia de Tomás de Vio (1469-1534)
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Analogy, Aristotle, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Thomas de Vio Cardinal Cajetan.
This work studies the analogy’s estructure and its forms as was conceibed by Thomas de Vio on his Tractatus de nominum analogia. As it is well known, the Cardinal preferred the analogy of proportionality to be used in the fields of metaphysics, i. e. the notion of “ens”, and desestimated the analogy of intrinsic denomination (recovered later by Suárez). On the other hand, Cajetan writes a paper to offer a clear notion about the forms that the analogy should be understood according to Aquinas’ and Aristotle’s original doctrines. After we present the way that the Philosopher studied this topic, and after we had presented Aquinas’ ideas, we will go deeply into the differences between all the mentioned authors. Finally, our conclusions.
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The transit of the medieval truth to the modern knowledge – Chronicle of a phase that out of orbit
Carlos ENRIQUE BERBEGLIA
Original title: El tránsito de la verdad medieval al conocimiento moderno – crónica de una fase que se desorbita
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Authority, Belief, Effectiveness, Limit, Need, Order, Precision, True.
The Middle Ages, in their lengthy centuries of existence, sum up a polysemous era. It is an epoch that bridges the gap between a preceding time, which it knows and from which it extracts enhanced knowledge and experience, and a succeeding time, which it ignores as a human period but knows at a suprahuman level, a knowledge coded as the end of times, which they consider imminent, although that imminence may take centuries to come true. Polysemous because, in spite of appearances, and much interpretation with an ideological bias that considers it a monolithic era ruled by just one way of thinking and acting in consequence, it treasures and displays literatures expressed in languages that, later on, will come to light in their full richness with the dawn of nationalities, philosophies that, though influenced by their theological and Greco-Latin root, become prodromes of future thought, technological and architectonic changes that will last indelibly. It was an age that possessed extended self-awareness, in contrast with the following ones, which reprocess it at a more and more accelerated pace and occasionally downplay its importance. It believed it was the owner of absolute truth; in this respect it does differ from subsequent times, except for the means it implemented to defend it, given that those “subsequent times”, in spite of disowning it, do not usually resign themselves to the fragility of the knowledge it obtains and resort to inquisitorial methods to defend it. The subtitle of this essay refers to the exorbitance that characterized the end of this era, depreciated or appreciated depending on the spirit of those times succeeding it, which means that each period reinterprets it, the destiny of everything human, which, from “our perspective”, medieval people sought to overcome.
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Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-215) and the use of musical metaphors and musical myths in his texts
Eirini ARTEMI
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Clement of Alexandria, Hymns, Music, Musical metaphors, Musical myths, New Song, Protrepticus.
Clement of Alexandria or Titus Flavius Clemens was familiar with classical Greek philosophy and literature. When he converted to Christianity, he tried to draw some clear distinctions against the paganism. Many things from paganism were interpreted by a way that serve Christian theology. In Clement of Alexandria’s Protrepticus, the church father tries to explain how the well-known classical music-myths can be used to create the knowledge of a Superior “New Song”. Instead of that, Christians serve the New Song – Jesus in Church and outside the Church, they continue to “amuse themselves with impious playing, and amatory quavering, occupied with flute-playing, and dancing, and intoxication, and all kinds of trash. They who sing thus, and sing in response, are those who before hymned immortality, –found at last wicked and wickedly singing this most pernicious palinode, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die”. Clement explains that by this way christians remain christians in name so they are dead in God not tomorrow. But not tomorrow in truth, but already, are these dead to God. In this paper, we are going to show that the polemic of Clement Alexandria was not against ancient music and musical instruments, but against the way that they were used by Christians. Also, we will analyse the method that Clement employs the musical metaphors and musical myths in his texts in order to educate Christians and to manage to earn the salvation.
