Renaissance philosophy is a fascinating yet neglected period in the history of philosophy. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the rise of Humanism and the rediscovery of ancient texts led to new ways of doing philosophy. At the same time the period saw the culmination of the medieval scholastic tradition, with the works of Aristotle and his commentators printed for the first time and an unprecedented number of new commentaries being written. These contrasting tendencies of continuity and change mark the period that bridges the gap between Medieval and Early Modern philosophy. The aim of this workshop is to explore and assess the place of Renaissance philosophy within the Western philosophical tradition. 


Further details at: 
http://renaissance-philosophy.blogspot.co.uk/

Recent research on Plethon has yielded some new interpretations and discovered hitherto unknown manuscripts and contexts (e.g., with the Jewish and Islamic world), while at the same time the relation between Western Europe and Byzantium is now studied as a mutual influence. 

Plethon as a Byzantine thinker was a representative of 14th/15th-century Byzantine thought which manifested three basic types: Greek Christian Orthodoxy, interchange with the western European strains of thought (e.g., translation of scholastic works into Greek, but also evident in the Council of Ferrara- Florence), and a revival ("renaissance") of Greek culture, which has been variously named proto-nationalism in the 19th century, paganism from the Christian standpoint, Hellenism from the parallel to 19th-century Greek nostalgia. It remains to be seen, which of the three characteristics applies best to Plethon. 

There will be a Workshop  on Modal Logic in the Middle Ages, 22-23 November 2012, at Parliament Hall, University of St Andrews. Full details at http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/arche/events/event?id=650

News items relevant to medieval philosophy: conferences, calls for papers, new books published, etc.