Philosophical Lives in the Renaissance

One striking feature of the Renaissance recovery of ancient philosophy was the attention paid to biographies of ancient philosophers. One of the first to receive attention was Seneca: Gasparino Barzizza wrote, in the words of Letizia Panizza, ‘the first Humanist Latin biography of Seneca’. Gianozzo Manetti later wrote parallel lives of Socrates and Seneca, inspired by Plutarch. There was great excitement when the Vitae philosophorum of Diogenes Laertius was rediscovered and translated into Latin. Its appearance prompted Leonardo Bruni to write a new humanist biography of Aristotle. Biographies of Plato followed, including one by Marsilio Ficino. Early printed editions of the works of philosophers—such as the Aldine Aristotle—opened with a biography, to be read before the works, following the ancient Neoplatonic tradition of studying the life of a philosopher before their ideas. While some historians of philosophy might be tempted to ignore this Renaissance fascination with biographies, dismissing it as a historical and philological distraction, I argue that it might tell us something important about how philosophy was conceived during this period. In particular, I argue that it adds support to the claim made by a number of recent scholars that during the Renaissance philosophy was often conceived as a way of life.