Lecture on Intellectual Freedom in the Medieval and Renaissance University

325 Bull Street,Savannah GA 31401

23 March, 2023

Description

Did medieval and Renaissance universities prize intellectual freedom and free speech? The short answer is no, at least if we construe those expressions according to the sense they were given during the Enlightenment. The reason is that pre-modern intellectuals had a different conception of how truth, authority and tradition were related to each other. Rational inquiry, for them, was not oriented to gaining power over nature but to learning from nature. It was not autonomous but embedded. It did not treat received truths as hypotheses to be tested and possibly rejected but as starting points for deepening the truth-seeker's understanding of reality. Dr James Hankins is a Professor of History at Harvard University, the Founder and General Editor of the I Tatti Renaissance Library, and Associate Editor of the Catalogus Translationum and Commentariorum. His research interests include the history of Renaissance political thought, history of philosophy, and history of the classical tradition.