PHILOSOPHY

which entities posit greater perfection in an intellection than the intellection

of one of them; because the intellection of every positive absolute entity,
inasmuch as it is an intellection of that, is some perfection. . . . " Doubtless
Scotus himself is responsible for much of the difficulty of comprehending
such a passage: but the translation can be understood only by referring back
to the Latin. THOMAS CORBISHLEY.

The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, edited by Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar

Kristeller and John Herman Randall, Jr. (The University of Chicago
Press. 1948. Pp. viii + 405. Price 27s. 6d.)
This volume provides the reader with translations of philosophic writings
by leading figures of the Italian Renaissance. The writers chosen are Petrarca,
Lorenzo Valla, Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Pomponazzi and Vives.
A general introduction traces the features of the philosophy of the early
Renaissance in Italy and there are also introductions to the several transla-
tions. Among the passages translated are Valla's Dialogue on Free Will, Ficino's
treatise, Five questions concerning the Mind, and Pico's Oration on the dignity
of Man. A majority of the works included in the series have not before been
presented in English versions.
The extracts show the rise in Italy of three lines of intellectual culture,
humanism, Platonism and a revived Aristotelianism. At the head of the
movement stands the enchanting genius Petrarca, whose poems and treatises
express the new interest in personal life and the revolt from scholastic logic.
The introduction to his writings in this volume performs the feat of describing
his outlook without mentioning the Canzoniere. In the polemical treatise
On his own ignorance and that of many others, composed in 1367, he ridicules
with bewitching eloquence the dogmatism of the Aristotelians and indulges
his passion for the three beloved masters, Cicero, Augustine and Plato.
There is little philosophical discussion. Nor can Valla be accounted a philo-
sopher. He expressed the strongest aversion to the enquiries of the ancients
and to the dialectics of the schools; the Dialogue on Free Will describes philo-
sophy as the seed-bed of heresy, and the problem of reconciling God's fore-
knowledge and man's free will is abandoned to the wisdom of God. The trans-
lations and speculations of Marsilio Ficino bring us to the strongest force in
Renaissance Platonism. The treatise included here manifests his dominant
interest, the reconciliation of philosophy and religion. Although the argument
relies on Neo-Platonic doctrines it employs also typical positions of scholastic
metaphysics, such as the conceptions of appetitus naturalis and the hierarchy
of species under God. Other influential sides of Ficino's writings, his mysticism,
his doctrine of love and his Platonic view of beauty are not touched on in the
introduction to the translation. But the theory of the soul is well described.
The other eminent figure of the Platonic Academy, Pico della Mirandela,
contributed vital ideas to the literature of the Renaissance. The highly
rhetorical Oration proclaims the unique liberty of man and opens more widely
than had ever been proposed before the range of philosophical enquiry. It is
an astonishing display for a youth of twenty-four. In Pomponazzi we meet
at length a genuine and a daring philosopher. He was the commanding thinker
in the Aristotelian humanism of the early sixteenth century, though, as Mr.
Randall points out in his admirable introduction, this departure must be seen
in relation to the scientific naturalism of the school of Padua. The whole of the
famous treatise On the Immortality of the Soul is here translated. It is one of
the most refreshing treatises of late scholasticism. Pomponazzi refutes in
detail not only the arguments in favour of the immortality of the individual
88
 NEW BOOKS
mind but also those supporting the fashionable belief in the collective immor-
tality of Averroism. Of the latter view he writes that "it is not only in itself
most false; it is unintelligible and monstrous and quite foreign to Aristotle.
Indeed, I think that Aristotle never even thought of such nonsense, let alone
believed it." The points made against Averroism are largely borrowed from
St. Thomas. But he rejects the Thomist arguments for the immortality of the
intellectual soul, pressing everywhere the Aristotelian principle of the organic
relation of form to matter. The human material form ceases with the death of
the body. The objections from morality and religion are met by the answer
that "the essential reward of virtue is virtue itself." Pomponazzi's declaration
of the double truth is not discussed, and indeed it is secondary to his re-
assertion of naturalism. The series of translations concludes oddly with the
artificial Fable about Man by the Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives. There is
a comprehensive bibliography for the student.
The collection assuredly brings the reader more closely to the thought and
manner of the leading humanists of Italy than the usual summaries; and the
passages are fully annotated. Inevitably, some important parts of their doc-
-trines are left unnoticed. It must be admitted that most of the great humanists
used Platonism and the philosophies of the schools to supplement their
literary, artistic and mystical interests. The diverse relations between the
new moral prospect of the fifteenth century and academic philosophy are
exhibited in living tones in this volume. M. H. CARRE.

The Psychology of Imagination. By JEAN-PAUL SARTRE. Philosophical Library.

(New York. 1948. Pp. 285. Price $3.75.)
This book is an English translation of L'imaginaire (1948). M. Sartre starts
with a description of the image as known to reflection. There is no image in a
consciousness which contains it; the image is itself a complete consciousness.
What the imaginative consciousness of Peter "intends" is Peter himself; but
it is not a faint or vague perception; the characteristic of its intentional
object is that the latter "is not present and is posited as such, or that it does
not exist and is posited as not existing, or that it is not posited at all." The
author then proceeds, on the basis of evidence provided by observation and
experiment, to form an hypothesis concerning the nature and components of
the psychic factor which functions as an "analogue" in the mental image.
M. Sartre goes on to discuss the role of the image in mental life. The image
is not an illustration or support for thought; imaginative consciousness
represents a certain type of thought. "Thought takes the image form when
it wishes to be intuitive, when it wants to ground its affirmations on the vision
of an object. In that case, it tries to make the object appear before it, in order
to see it, or better still, to possess it." This means that the act of imagination is
a "magical incantation" designed to produce the thing desired, with a view
to possession. But the image has the character of unreality; and consideration
of this fact leads the author to consider human behaviour towards the unreal.
Under the heading "the imaginary life" he includes the subjects of schizo-
phrenia, hallucination, and the dream.
Finally it is asked what characteristics must be attributed to consciousness
in general in view of the fact that it is capable of being an imagining conscious-
ness, that it is able to posit successively real objects and imagined objects.
"It must be able to posit the world in its synthetic totality and it must be able
to posit the imagined object as being out of reach of this synthetic totality."
It could not do this, M. Sartre argues, if psychological determinism were true;
89