Agostino Nifo

Agostino Nifo ( * ca 1473 in Sessa Aurunca at Caserta; † after 1538 also Augustine Niphus ) was an Italian philologist and philosopher of Aristotelianism. After studying Medicine and Philosophy in Padua among others Nicoletto Vernia, a known Averroists, he taught at the universities of Padua, Naples, Rome, and Pisa. His reputation was so great that he was commissioned by Pope Leo X to defend the doctrine of the immortality of the soul against the attacks Pomponazzi. As a reward he received the title of count and the right to call themselves Medici.

Nifos thinking can be divided into two phases. His early writings follow especially Averroes, 1495, he is an annotated edition of the works of Averroes ' out. Later, he swivels on the Catholic orthodoxy by a more Thomistic understanding Aristotle and the Florentine Neoplatonism approaches. This result also points of contact with Ficino and Pico. It is controversial how far this second phase of real scientific repositioning and not rather political opportunism especially against Leo X. sprang.

Nifos thinking is judged to be unoriginal, but acknowledged his profound philosophical education, the knowledge is mainly of the works of Thomas Aquinas, Siger of Brabant, Themistius and Alexander of Aphrodisias.

The best known is Nifo by his work De immortalitate animae libellus adversus P. Pomponacium of 1518th In the often polemical and personally offensive work it contradicts the teaching Pomponazzi, according to which the human soul is inseparable from the physical body of the individual and hence the death of the necessarily the body of the soul moving to itself. As part of the absolute intellect, so Nifo that the soul is rather indestructible, and death leads only to a unity with the absolute intellect.

The physical fonts Niphus try to reconcile the impetus theory with the Averroistic worldview. In ethics he is close to hedonism. Little known is his book De regnandi peritia (Naples 1523), that " the ' Principe < plagiarizing others, but with some omissions and additions. " This treatise begins the "moral condemnation " Niccolò Machiavelli.

Nifos commentaries on Aristotle was widely disseminated and learned many new editions; the most important issue was published in fourteen volumes in 1654 in Paris.

Works

Averroistic phase

  • De intellectu et daemonibus ( Padua 1492; actually in 1503, but was predated by Nifo to represent his Averroism as youthful aberration )
  • In Librum destructio destructionum Commentaries. Venice 1497
  • Expositiones in Aristotelis libros Metaphysices 1518

Thomi table Neoplatonic phase

  • De primi motoris Infinitate Liber. Venice 1505.
  • Tractatus de immortalitate animi contra Petrum Pomponatium. Venice 1525.
  • De regnandi peritia. Naples 1523.
  • De pulchro et amore. Rome 1531.
  • Opuscula moralia et politica. Paris 1645.

Aristotle comments

  • Expositiones in omnes libros de Historia animalim, de partibus animalium et earum causis ac de Generatione animalium. Venice 1546.
  • Aristotelis libri octo Physicorum auscultationum. 1549
  • In libros de sophisticis elenchis Aristotelis. Venice 1551st
  • Tres libros Aristotelis Commentarium in De anima. 1559
  • Dilucidarium metaphysicarum disputationum in Aristotelis Deum et quatuor libros metaphysicarum. 1559
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