Sperone Speroni and the Debate over Sophistry in the Italian Renaissance. Teodoro Katinis. Brill's Studies in Intellectual History 272. Leiden: Brill, 2018. xii + 174 pp. $109

• Published in: Renaissance Quarterly Vol. 74; no. 1; pp. 333 - 335
• Main Author: Gulizia, Stefano
• Format: Journal Article Book Review
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge Cambridge University Press 01.04.2021
• Subjects: 16th century; Debates; Renaissance period; Rhetoric
• DOI: 10.1017/rqx.2020.387
• ISSN: 0034-4338

Often, the vibrancy of such intellectual life was associated with institutionalized Peripatetic schools. [...]as Katinis explicitly notes, two brief and openly polemical works written by the Aristotelian Sperone Speroni (1500–88), In Defence of the Sophists and Against Socrates, offer a surprising anticipation of Nietzsche's approach to Plato's condemnation of the ancient Sophists. [...]this new art of rhetoric, Katinis insists, has a target audience among Venetian merchants and its artisanal community (e.g., the citation at page 72, “these are citizens’ delight”); second, it is probable that Speroni practiced a form of “Plato against Plato,” taking advantage of an aporetic variety of dialogue (67). [...]Speroni also experimented with a paradoxical fashion of dialogue, seemingly defending the use of discord and usury (chapter 3), and this development is also what makes these texts difficult to interpret and historicize.