Brian Copenhaver

Books

• 

  Magic in Western Culture: From Antiquity to the Enlightenment

  Cambridge University Press,, 2015

• 

  Peter of Spain: Summaries of Logic

  Oxford University Press, 2014

• 

  Lorenzo Valla, Dialectical Disputations

  Harvard University Press, 2012

• 

  From Kant to Croce: Modern Philosophy in Italy, 1800-1950

  University of Toronto Press, 2012

• 

  Polydore Vergil, On Discovery

  Harvard University Press, 2002

• 

  Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in English Translation, with Notes and Introduction

  Cambridge University Press , 1991

• 

  Symphorien Champier and the Reception of the Occultist Tradition in Renaissance France

  The Hauge: Mouton , 1978

• 

  A History of Western Philosophy, III: Renaissance Philosophy

  Oxford University Press, 1992

Articles

• “Pico Risorto: Cabbalà e dignità dell’uomo nell’Italia post-unitaria,” in Pico e la cabbalà, ed. F. Lelli, Centro Internazionale di Cultura “Giovanni Pico della Mirandola,” Mirandola: 2014, pp. 1-18
• “Egidio da Viterbo’s Book on Hebrew Letters: Christian Kabbalah in Papal Rome,” Renaissance Quarterly, 67 (2014), 1-42, with Daniel Stein Kokin.
• “Notes from a Nominalist in a New Incunabulum by Symphorien Champier,” in Festschrift for John Monfasani (Brill, in press), with Thomas Ward.
• ‘A Grand End for a Grand Narrative: Lodovico Lazzarelli, Giovanni Mercurio da Correggio and Renaissance Hermetica,’ Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft, 4 (2009), 207-23.
• ‘Structuralism for the Historian? Structuralist Methodology and the Magic Problem in Early Modern Europe,’ Symposium on Structuralism, ed. V. Milicic (Bellingham, 1973), pp. 211-229.
• ‘Giovanni Pico della Mirandola,’ ibid., pp. 728-9.
• ‘Hermes Trismegistus and Hermeticism,’ ibid., pp. 430-32.
• ‘Magic,’ ibid., pp. 555-62.
• ‘Philosophy,’ in The Classical Tradition, ed. A. Grafton, G. Most and S. Settis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), pp. 713-24.
• ‘Ten Arguments in Search of a Philosopher: Averroes and Aquinas in Ficino’s Platonic Theology,’ Vivarium, 47 (2009), 444-79.
• ‘Popkin non-scepticus,’ in The Legacies of Richard Popkin, ed. J. Popkin (Dordrecht: Springer, 2009), pp. 3-13.
• ‘How Croce Became a Philosopher,’ History of Philosophy Quarterly, 25 (2008), 75-94, with Rebecca Copenhaver
• “Giovanni Pico della Mirandola,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2012: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pico-della-mirandola/)
• ‘Studied as an Oration: Readers of Pico’s Letters, Ancient and Modern,’ in Laus Platonici Philosophi, ed. S. Clucas (Leiden: Brill, in press), 72 pp. typescript.
• ‘Maimonides, Abulafia and Pico: A Secret Aristotle for the Renaissance,’ Rinascimento, 46 (2^nd ser., 2007), 23-51.
• ‘How To Do Magic, And Why: Philosophical Prescriptions,’ The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy, ed. James Hankins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 137-70.
• ‘The Strange Italian Voyage of Thomas Reid,’ British Journal of the History of Philosophy, 14 (2006), 601-26; with Rebecca Copenhaver.
• ‘Eugenio Garin,’ in Renaissance News and Notes (http://www.rsa.org/rnn.htm), February, 2005; reprinted in a shorter form in the London Times, 4 pp. typescript.
• ‘Valla Our Contemporary: Philosophy and Philology,’ Journal of the History of Ideas, 66 (2005), 507-25.
• ‘How Not To Lose a Renaissance,’ Rinascimento, 44 (2^nd ser., 2004), 443-58.
• ‘Chi scrisse l’Orazione di Pico?’ La Magia nell’Europa moderna: Tra sapienza e filosofia naturale: Atti del convegno (Firenze, 2-4 ottobre 2003), (Florence: Olschki, 2007), pp. 79-105.
• German version of 45: ‘Magie und die Würde des Menschen: Pico’s Oratio vor und nach Kant,’ appears in Scientiae et artes: Die Vermittlung alten und neuen Wissens in Literatur, Kunst und Musik, ed. Barbara Mahlmann-Bauer (Wiesbaden: Harassowitz, 2004), I, 65-97.
• ‘Magic and the Dignity of Man: De-Kanting Pico’s Oration,’ in The Italian Renaissance in the Twentieth Century, ‘Acts of an International Conference, Florence, Villa I Tatti, June 9-11, 1999, ed. A.J. Griego et al.’ (Florence: Olschki, 2002), pp. 295-320.
• ‘The Secret of Pico’s Oration: Cabala and Renaissance Philosophy,’ Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 26 (2002), 56-81.
• ‘A Show of Hands,’ in Writing on Hands: Memory and Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, ed. C.R. Sherman and P.R. Lukehart, Exhibition at the Trout Gallery, Dickinson College and the Folger Shakespeare Library (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000), pp. 46-59, 210-213, 222-8.
• ‘D.P. Walker and the Theory of Magic in the Renaissance,’ in Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), pp. viii-xi.
• ‘Number, Shape and Meaning in Pico’s Christian Cabala: The Upright Tsade, the Closed Mem and the Gaping Jaws of Azazel,’ in Natural Particulars: Nature and the Disciplines in Renaissance Europe, ed. A. Grafton and N. Siraisi (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000), pp. 25-76.
• ‘The Slums of Cosmopolis: A Renaissance in the History of Philosophy?’ in Everything Connects: A Festschrift for Richard Popkin, ed. J. Force and D. Katz (Leiden: Brill, 1999), pp. 63-86.
• ‘The Renaissance,’ in The Columbia History of Western Philosophy, ed. R. Popkin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), pp. 279-328; with Michael Allen and John Monfasani.
• ‘The Occultist Tradition and its Critics in Seventeenth Century Philosophy,’ in the Cambridge History of Seventeenth Century Philosophy, ed. M. Ayers and D. Garber (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 454-512.
• ‘Tommaso Campanella: The Monarchy of the Messiah, Chapters 14-15,’ in Cambridge Translations of Renaissance Philosophical Texts, ed. Jill Kraye (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
• ‘Lorenzo de’ Medici, Marsilio Ficino and the Domesticated Hermes,’ in Lorenzo il Magnifico e il suo mondo: Atti di Convegno, ed. G.C. Garfagnini (Florence: Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, 1994), pp. 225-57.
• ‘Omnipotence,’ ‘Omniscience,’ ‘Omnipresence,’ ‘Cabala,’ ‘Names of God,’ ‘Hebrew Alphabet,’ in Dictionary of the Biblical Tradition in English Literature , ed. D.L. Jeffrey (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 15 coll.
• ‘Hermes Theologus: The Sienese Mercury and Ficino’s Hermetic Demons,’ in Humanity and Divinity in Renaissance and Reformation: Essays in Honor of Charles Trinkaus, ed. John O’Malley et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1993), pp. 149-82.
• ‘The Power of Magic and the Poverty of Erudition: Magic in the Universal Library,’ in Das Buch als magisches und als Repräsentationsobjekt, ed. Peter Ganz (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1992), pp. 159-79.
• ‘Did Science Have a Renaissance?’ Isis, 83 (1992), 387-407.
• ‘A Tale of Two Fishes: Magical Objects in Natural History from Antiquity through the Scientific Revolution,’ Journal of the History of Ideas, 52 (1991), 373-98.
• ‘Natural Magic, Hermetism and Occultism in Early Modern Science,’ in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, ed. D. Lindberg and R. Westman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 261-301.
• Unpublished essay review of Desmond Clarke, Occult Powers and Hypotheses: Cartesian Natural Philosophy Under Louis XIV (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 9 pp. typescript.
• ‘Hermes Trismegistus, Proclus and the Question of a Philosophy of Magic in the Renaissance,’ in Hermeticism and the Renaissance: Intellectual History and the Occult in Early Modern Europe, ed. I. Merkel and A. Debus (Washington, D.C.: Folger Books, 1988), pp. 79-111.
• ‘The Wrath of Achilles and the Uses of Vicarious Experience,’ The Humanities and Education: Conference Proceedings, ed. L. Weber and D. Beck (Rochester, Mich.: 1987), pp. 5-11.
• ‘Science and Philosophy in Early Modern Europe: The Historiographical Significance of the Work of Charles B. Schmitt,’ Annals of Science, 44 (1987), 507-17.
• ‘Astrology and Magic,’ in the Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. Charles Schmitt and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 264-300.
• ‘Translation, Terminology and Style in Philosophical Discourse,’ in the Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. Charles Schmitt and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 77-110.
• ‘Iamblichus, Synesius and the Chaldaean Oracles in Marsilio Ficino’s De vita libri tres: Hermetic Magic or Neoplatonic Magic,’ in Supplementum Festivum: Studies in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller, ed. James Hankins et al. (Binghamton: MRTS, 1987), pp. 441-55.
• ‘Polydore Vergil,’ in Contemporaries of Erasmus, III, 397-9.
• ‘Symphorien Champier,’ in Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation, ed. P.G. Bietenholz (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,1986), I, pp. 291-2.
• ‘Renaissance Magic and Neoplatonic Philosophy: Ennead 4.3-5 in Ficino’s De vita coelitus comparanda,’ in Marsilio Ficino e il ritorno di Platone: Studi e documenti, ed. G. Garfagnini (Florence: Olschki, 1986), pp. 351-69.
• ‘Scholastic Philosophy and Renaissance Magic in the De vita of Marsilio Ficino,’ Renaissance Quarterly, 37 (1984), 523-54.
• ‘Jewish Theologies of Space in the Scientific Revolution: Henry More, Joseph Raphson, Isaac Newton and their Predecessors,’ Annals of Science, 37 (1980), 489-548.
• ‘Ars Moriendi,’ Encyclopedia of Bioethics (New York, 1978), I, pp. 253-5.
• ‘The Historiography of Discovery in the Renaissance: Polydore Vergil’s De inventoribus rerum I-III,’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 41 (1978), 192-214.
• Essay review of R.S. Westman and J.E. McGuire, Hermeticism and the Scientific Revolution: Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, March 9, 1974 (Los Angeles: Clark Library, UCLA, 1977) in Annals of Science, 35 (1978), 527-31.
• ‘Lefèvre d’Étaples, Symphorien Champier and the Secret Names of God,’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 40 (1977), 189-211.
• “Lorenzo Valla, Scourge of Scholasticism: Nature, Power and Modality in the Dialectical Disputations,” Rinascimento, 51, 2011, 3-26.
• ‘“The Stowte Assaillinge of Englande”: A Letter of Nicholas Sanders Addressed to Antonio Graziani,’ Bibliographical Contributions, I (1969), 11-35.

Reviews

• Arthur Field, The Origins of the Platonic Academy of Florence, English Historical Review, 1992.
• Ioan Couliano, Eros and Magic in the Renaissance, ibid.
• Michael Allen, Icastes: Marsilio Ficino’s Interpretation of Plato’s Sophist (Five Studies and a Critical Edition with Translation), Renaissance Quarterly, 1992.
• Modernity, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 1990.
• Stephen A. McKnight, Sacralizing the Secular: The Renaissance Origins of
• Michael Nostradamus, Lettres inédites, ed. Jean Dupèbe, Renaissance Quarterly, 1986.
• Jerome Friedman, The Most Ancient Testimony: Sixteenth Century Christian-Hebraica in the Age of Renaissance Nostalgia, Renaissance Quarterly, 1984.
• Les Alchimistes Grecs. Vol. I: Papyrus de Leyde, Papyrus de Stockholm, Fragmentes de Recettes, Isis, 1983.
• A.E. Jones, The Trial of Joan of Arc, Church History, 1983.
• Therèse Charmasson, Recherches sur une technique divinatoire: La Géomancie dans l’occident médiéval, Isis, 1982.
• Michael Hunter, Science and Society in Restoration England, History of Universities, 1982.
• Brian Easlea, Witchcraft, Magic and the New Philosophy, American Historical Review, 1982.
• Frances Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age, Annals of Science, 1981.
• Dorothy Koenigsberger, Renaissance Man and Creative Thinking: A History of Concepts of Harmony, Isis, 1981.
• Peter Baumgart and Notker Hammerstein, Beiträge zu Problemen deutscher Universitätsgrundungen der frühen Neuzeit, History of Universities, 1981.
• Bernard Capp, English Almanacs, 1500-1800: Astrology and the Popular Press, Church History, 1980.
• Edward Peters, The Magician, the Witch and the Law, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 1980.
• Luigi Parinetto, Magia e ragione: Una polemica sulle streghe in Italia intorno al 1750, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 1979.
• Giancarlo Zanier, La Medicina astrologica e la sua teoria, and Ricerche sulla diffusione e fortuna del “De incantationibus” di Pomponazzi, Annals of Science, 1980.
• Sidney Anglo, ed., The Damned Art, American Historical Review, 1978.
• Madison et al., Essays on the Life and Work of Thomas Linacre c. 1460 1524, Isis, 1978.
• Luigi Aurigemma, Le Signe zodiacal du scorpion, American Historical Review, 1977.
• Sepp Domandl, ed., Paracelsus, Werk und Wirkung: Festgabe für Kurt Goldhammer, Annals of Science, 1977.
• Norman Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons: An Inquiry Inspired by the Great Witch Hunt, Church History, 1976.
• S.L. Verheus, Zeugnis und Gericht: Kirchengeschichtliche Betrachtungen bei Sebastian Franck und Matthias Flaccius, Renaissance Quarterly, 1973.
• Robert Galbreath, The Occult: Studies and Evaluations, Church History, 1973.
• Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Church History, 1972.

Works in Progress

• The Book of Magic: Texts from Antiquity to the Enlightenment (London: Penguin Books)
• Explaining by Picturing in Early Modern Europe: pictorial explanation as a key innovation in post-medieval philosophy and science
• ‘Why Does Philosophy Change?’ reasons, tacit and explicit, why philosophers have often changed their views
• Kabbalah: Five Introductions, I Tatti Renaissance Library, with Saverio Campanini, Brian Ogren, Moshe Idel, Daniel Kokin and Fabrizio Lelli, translating and editing five Latin and Hebrew introductions to Cabala from late Quattrocento Italy
• Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Oration and 900 Conclusions; with Michael Allen and Calvin Normore, I Tatti Renaissance Library (ITRL): the first edition of these texts to present a through account of Pico’s sources and show his deep commitment to Cabala.
• Magic and the Dignity of Man: Pico’s Oration in Modern Memory: Pico’s reputation since his death as author of the Oration on the Dignity of Man