Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy

Volume 70, 2018

Renaissance and Modern Philosophy

Moral Psychology in Renaissance Philosophy
On Conscience, Will and Love

In the first part of the paper I shall discuss some difficulties and problems in the historiography of Renaissance philosophy arising from a gap between some assumptions and preconceptions concerning this period on the one hand, and historical and archival evidences on the other. The need for a new historiography arises both from the publication of new sources which have not yet been discussed with sufficient scholarly attention and from a new approach to the Renaissance and its place in the intellectual and cultural history in the transition from the Middle-Ages to the early modern era. In the second part I shall present three scholastic thinkers of the Renaissance: Antoninus Pierozzi and the concept of conscience; Giorgio Benigno Salviati and the concept of will; Lorenzo Pisano and the concept of love. I shall try to demonstrate their contribution and importance to philosophical and theological discussions pertaining to moral psychology.