Negotiating with the Ancients in Renaissance Europe and Its Hermeneutical Models 'prisca scientia' vs 'prisca sapientia'

Abstract

The return to the Ancients, namely to the so-called Pre-Socratic thinkers, is almost a common place in the history of Early Modern philosophy. However, such a return back to the early thinkers could imply distinct understandings and alternative historiographical paradigms. In order to disclose such internal tensions the research must focus not only on matters of fact, viz., on ‘what’ it is, but also analyze the justifications provided for the very same facts, viz., ‘why’ it should be so. This essay explores the question of th e return to ‘the ancient wisdom’ and identifies two alternative sets of concurrent elements that had been forming distinct identifiable patterns – the authors describe them as two opposite ‘syndromes’. They are the model of ‘prisca scientia’, on the one hand, and the model of ‘prisca sapientia’, on the other hand. According to the first paradigm, the early thinkers constitute a reservoir of scattered teachings and sentences available to re-use philosophical projects; moreover, there is no strong claim for a continuity of a tradition. According to the latter model, however, the Ancients were able to provide an ‘original’ teaching which represents the norm of a sort of ‘saving knowledge’ embracing life as a whole. These two ‘syndromes’ are mutually exclusive, since the prisca sapientia would not entail any prisca scientia. During the 18th Century, as it seems, the prisca sapientia-model loses its appeal and gets marginalized.