Grice e Stefanoni

  The fabric of philosophical Latin has undergone a series of crucial transformations induced by historical events as well as intellectual reasons.    To begin with, the translation activity from Greek into Latin carried out by several humanists in Italy and their own reflection on that activity has a profound impact on the practice of philosophical writing, on both the stylistic and the conceptual level.   In this context, BRUNI, VALLA, and PICO, to mention only a few, are perfect cases in point.  But the debate about the style of philosophical Latin involves quite a number of humanists and schoolmen, continuing long after.  By injecting the germs of historicity, cultural relativism, and social constructivism into the body of metaphysical knowledge —a kind of knowledge viewed as stable and self-sufficient —, humanistic reflection helps accelerate the crisis of philosophical Latin in the early modern period.  Closely connected to characteristically humanist discontents about the status of scholastic jargon is the renewed eagerness to provide Latin translations from Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew sources.   While some of these works were in fact re-translations of previously translated texts, others were original versions of treatises that had never been translated before.   The recovery of Platonic and Hermetic sources and Ficino’s influential translations represent some of the most significant instances in this field.   One should also add, however, the various editions of Aristotle’s collected works supplied with Averroes's commentaries, which, as was the case with the celebrated editions of the Venetian Giuntine press, come out with new translations and editorial contributions (Schmitt 1984b; Burnett 2013).     Among the new translations of Averroes's works, his Destructio destructionum refuting an earlier Destruction of Philosophers by Al-Ghazali) becomes certainly the most significant addition, first commented upon by NIFO in a slightly revised version of the translation by one Calonymos ben Calonymos of Arles, and later published in a new translation by a Neapolitan physician who also called himself Calonymos, entitled Subtilissimus liber Averois qui dicitur Destructio.    Another factor in the transformation of philosophical Latin is the increasingly more frequent appearance of cases of philosophical bilingualism, evident among authors who began to write in both Latin and the vernacular, such as Ficino,  Patrizi, Bruno,  Bacon, Campanella, Descartes, Hobbes and Spinoza.    Such a close proximity of Latin and the vernacular, besides signaling a growing tension between traditional institutional sites of  Latin knowledge such as the university and milieus that were becoming more and more receptive to philosophical discussions in the vernacular (courts in the first place, but also academies, convents, chanceries, and salons), result in particularly creative phenomena of hybridization and cross-pollination between different linguistic currencies.    An important medium that more than any other reflects the early modern evolution of philosophical Latin is the genre of the Latin dictionary of philosophy, which became extremely popular between the sixteenth and the eighteenth century, as a by-product of a diffuse interest in lexica, glossaries, and other linguistic tools.    Dictionaries are meant to handle and organize an increasingly unmanageable load of information that pours out throughout Europe, as a result of the combined action of the printing press, geographical discoveries, technological progress, and a singularly vibrant culture of intellectual confrontation and debate.     Among the various attempts to harvest and index philosophi-cal information, the most significant case was  Goclenius's Lexicon philosophicum  and Lexicon philosophicum Graecum.    But but we should add Micraelius's Lexicon terminorum philosophis usitatorum and Chauvin's Lexicon rationale, sive thesaurus philosophicus.    Bruno compiles his own dictionary of philosophical concepts, Summa terminorum metaphysicorum, probably devised as a teaching tool while he was lecturing in some German universities (Canone 1988; Bruno  1989).     This tradition culminates with Bayles vernacular Dictionnaire historique et cri-tique and had its witty coda with Voltaires Dictionnaire philosophique.    Major linguistic turns periodically affect the course of philosophical inquiries in Europe.     In ancient Greece, the fifth-century sophists are  able to question the idea of an original correspondence between reason and reality by emphasizing the inherently conventional and contractual nature of language.     While doing so, they act as powerful catalysts for both Plato's and Aristotle’s responses in the domain of metaphysics.     Likewise, the effort to test the boundaries that separate reality from its linguistic descriptions became a recurrent leitmotif in philosophy, in both the Continental (Heidegger) and the analytical traditions (Wittgenstein).     The Renaissance represents another of these decisive linguistic turns.     The debate concerning the relationship between reason and language takes place on two different levels: one of a technical character (the nature of scholastic Latin), the other of a broader cultural significance (the issue of multilingualism).    With respect to the first level, it should be pointed out that  a large part of the philosophical output is written in Latin.     Starting with BOEZIO, a momentous effort in translation and exegesis, marked by a sophisticated level of analytical precision and linguistic creativity, results in a formidable corpus of knowledge.     Its Latin is one of the principal reasons for its long-lasting success (Gregory 2006, 3; Dionisotti 1997).    Precisely because of its aspects of raw artificiality, free from the strictures of idiomatic decorum, Latins turns out to be a most flexible tool for the exercise of thinking, open to all sorts of experiments with respect to both language and logic.     Here I am deliberately using the oxymoronic label "raw artificiality."    Latin is largely an artificial creation produced in the great translation laboratories of medieval Europe (Sicily) and remains characterized by a distinctive quality of unpolished immediacy that suits very well the task of thinking, and thinking outside the historical box.     Due to particular circumstances, this encounter of Latin and philosophy is quite a unique episode in the history of Western culture, more so than in the fields of law and medicine, where the question of the relationship between verbal and nonverbal knowledge never manages to rise to the status of foundational issue, as happens in metaphysics.    A number of philosophical innovators charge Latin with being a parasitical construction in relation to the free exercise of thought.     In fact, that kind of Latin has long been an uncanny symbiosis of mind and word.     As far as the second level is concerned —that is to say, the emergence of national vernaculars as legitimate media for literary pursuits of all kinds and orders—a generalized state of multilingualism creates the ideal conditions for the rise of original considerations on the nature of language.    The humanist revolt against the use of Latin is fueled by discussions about the nature of translation.     In De interpretatione recta, designed as a manifesto stating the requisites for a good translation, Bruni prefers to dwell on the technical aspects of the question rather than explore the speculative implications underlying the activity of thinking.     Criticizing the medieval translator of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, whom we know to be Grosseteste, Bruni points out the "(imperitia litterarum) of the latter-that is, both the naiveté with which he had undertaken a task well beyond his capabilities, and his obvious lack of literary taste, which had prevented him from reproducing the original flair of Aristotle'stext (Bruni 1996, 152 and 160).     In Bruni's opinion, the "efficacy" and "rationale" (vis and ratio) of a good translation lie in transferring the written form of a particular language into the form of another language.     In order to do so, a translator needs to have a vast and confident knowledge of both languages, acquired through long and careful readings of different kinds of writing (multiplex et varia ac accurata lectio omnis generis scriptorum;  Bruni 1996, 158).     Being a transfer of forms more than an exercise in thinking, translation was first and foremost a reenactment of the original experience of literary enchantment and largely an aesthetic experience.     This also applied to the field of philosophy, for, Bruni pointed out, Plato's and Aristotle's essays were "replete with  (exornationes) and venustates)" (Bruni 1996, 160 and 176).     The best translator was therefore that artisan of the written word who was capable of transforming himself entirely-with both his mind and will-into the author he was translating (sese in primum scribendi auctorem tota mente et animo et voluntate convertet).     Bruni argued that if a translator is not capable of recovering the spirit of the original, he cannot aspire to preserve its meaning (sensus).     The skill lies in keeping the stylistic template of the original (figura primae orationis) and the verbal coloring (verborum colores). The model is therefore painting, not philosophy.     More specifically, with respect to philosophical translation, the translator is supposed to combine knowledge of reality (doctrina rerum) with style (scribendi ornatus), for the ultimate aim behind all his efforts is to recover the life of the author's thoughts, their vividness (splendor sententiarum) and the naturally harmonic flow of the original (tota ad numerum facta oratio; Bruni 1996, 158 and 166).    A militant anti-philosophical attitude lingers in Valla's Dialecticae disputationes composed in three different redactions, in 1439, 1448, and  1452).     As in Bruni's De interpretatione recta, Vallas arguments were grammatical and aesthetic rather than philosophical (Valla 2012, 1:54-56; Dionisotti 1997).     In focusing on the aspects of aesthetic and grammatical awkwardness among scholastic philosophers, Lorenzo Valla was close to Bruni's position.     Like Bruni, he dismissed the scholastic tendency to reify adjectives and pronouns (sometimes even adverbs) into philosophical objects as an illegitimate and pointless practice, for they were abusing, as it were, the natural-grammatically correct-process of deriving abstract nouns from adjectives, such as sanitas ("health") from sanus ("healthy").     Contrary to the logic of historical lan-guages, philosophers made instead quiditas ("whatness") out of quid ("what"), perseitas ("per se-ness") out of per se and haecceitas ("thisness") out of haecce ("this"), and this was all the more irritating because creations of this kind could not even be found in Aristotle's own works (haec ab Aristotele non traduntur)    . Most of all, Valla condemned the artificial decision of giving a name to the very essence of being, entitas (literally  "being-ness," later entering standard English usage as "entity"), out of ens, which was a fictional present participle of the verb esse ("to be"), never used by Latin writers.    Pico tackles the question of Latinate forms of philosophical expression by appealing to the ancient trope of contrasting nature with convention.     In Pico's opinion, the effort to understand reality was always more pressing than finding the correct linguistic expression.     Reworking in an original way the classical argument used to defend the power of language over freedom of thinking, Pico assigns a priority to philosophy over Latinity based on both nature and conventions.     Addressing the Venetian scholar  Barbaro (Garin), Pico claims that he was even ready to embrace the argument based on convention, which is the traditional prerogative of rhetoricians and sophists.     If the foundations of any language are deemed to be conventional, Pico goes on, every linguistic community on earth is entitled to have its “normae dicendi” and to philosophize in accordance with those “normae.”    Indeed, it is precisely the thesis of the conventional, historical, and social origins of language, so often championed by the humanists, which, in Pico's opinion, make their charges against Latin irrelevant.     However, Pico believes that anxieties against Latin are even more out of place if the discussion pertains to the natural origin of meanings and words.     If “rectitudo nominum” depends on nature, Pico goes on, why should one turn to the rhetoricians to know more about the nature of this “rectitudo,” and not to those philosophers “who alone examine and clarify the nature of all things?"     Formulated with a precise anti-rhetorical aim in mind, the tone of Picos question is clearly rhetorical.    We know where Pico's allegiances lies — namely, for the philosophers and against the rhetoricians.    “That which the ears reject as being too harsh, reason accepts as more in tune with reality (utpote rebus cognatiora)" (Garin).     Pico is convinced that by revealing the unsettling domain of things that is not verbally articulated, the limits of language expose reality in its more perplexing aspects.     The need for the philosopher to stretch the boundaries of the common use of words comes, therefore, directly from a perceived rift between what may and what may not be said.     “Why does a philosopher need to introduce innovations into the language?” Pico asks, “if they were born among Latins?"     This time, the question is not rhetorical.    Indeed, it is the most crucial question of all.    Pico, like Plato, is convinced that, ontologically speaking, there is an original surplus of meaning that no historic language ever encompasses (Garin), and even a language as nuanced as Latin is not equal to putting into words the full range of human ideas and experience.    Not only is reality ontologically richer than any description language provides; it also evolves faster than a historic language like Italian.     At a time when the overflow of information demands new words and new linguistic solutions, philosophers, whether metaphysicians, logicians, or natural and moral thinkers  do not have time to check their Latin grammar or dictionary and repertoires of verbal elegantiae.     In his Dialogo delle lingue, Speroni — one of the most illustrious members of the Paduan Infiammati, represents the contrast of “arbitrio” and “natura” by imagining a duel between Lascaris and Pomponazzi.     In this case, a curious reversal of roles occurs between nature and convention.    Lascaris, who in the dialogue defends the need to be proficient in Latin in order to be able to practice philosophy, appeals to nature as a norm that is not changed by a social or a cultural intervention.    Pomponazzi, by contrast, resumes the well-rehearsed humanist argument about the conventional origin of languages in order to vindicate the right a nation like Italy to philosophize in the vernacular (Speroni).    Stimulated by the broad linguistic turn that took place during the Renaissance and by individual contributions of humanist scholars (Schmitt), a good number of philosophers, including the most stylistically and linguistically alert, reach the conclusion that thinking requires a deeper investment than simply relying on grammatical and rhetorical proficiency.     The reason is that reality itself is richer, and evolving more quickly than words.     Thinking is also a more integral and wholesome experience than the one provided by a correct description of the thing, both grammatically and stylistically.     Any verbal account of reality is inherently partial and effete compared to the freedom and poignancy of inner meditation.     As Pico points out to Barbaro, philosophers are always in search of a language is close to reality as a whole, including the reality of the soul.    In this way, reasons of intellectual honesty make inward experience more valuable than linguistic proficiency:     “Those who create a disagreement between the heart and the *tongue* are mistaken.”    “However, isn’t he who “totus est lingua” precisely because he is “excordes” simply a dead dictionary, as Cato says?" (Garin, Kraye).    Starting with Dante's ITALIAN Convivio  in Italy, GALLIC  translations of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Politics  and a teeming output of mystical treatises in TEDESCO (Eckhart being the most representative case), the use of the vernacular to compose a philosophical essay is prompted by rhetorical, political, and religious motives, such as the need to extend the range of the author's readership, the will to reach a social class not directly involved in courtly or intellectual life, the urge to give immediate expression to some lofty theological speculation, and a pathetic dearth of administrative and diplomatic personnel trained in the fine art of ‘classical’ argument.    And yet, in all these cases, there is still a link that connects a neo-Latin vernacular such as Italian to the template of ‘palaeo’-Latin.     Even the rising of a philosophical discourse in TEDESCO with strong mystical overtones emerges out of Latin (De Libera).     When Segni, to give another example, translates and comments the Nicomachean Ethics into Tuscan Italian (Segni 1550), the technical language remains appropriately highly Latinate when a vernacular couplet is even available (implicatura, empiegatura).    Bruno, to mention someone who is as linguistically creative in his vernacular Italian as he loathes both scholastic obscurity and grammatical pedantry, fully recognises the speculative value of the scholastic tradition     Averroes, Bruno famously retorts, knows his Aristotle better than any of his Greek readers (Bruno).    The relationship between Latin and the vernacular in the domain of the philosophical essay becomes increasingly more sophisticated.     The practice of translating from palaeo-Latin into the neo-Latin Italian  vernacular and the complementary trend to turn a vernacular philosophical essay into Latin respond to different but parallel communicative strategies.     While the move from palaeo-Latin into the vernacular like Neo-Latin Italian is largely aimed at expanding the social spectrum of the philosophical audience, the tendency to transpose vernacular essay into Latin makes the most recent and innovative results in the field accessible to a readership beyond the vernacular-only one.    To these general lines of exchange one should add individual cases of self-translation, in which the philosopher,  depending on his specific needs and rhetorical preference, switches from one medium to another and experiment with different linguistic resources.     To mention a few examples of self-translation, Ficino turns his “De amore and De Christiana religione” into Tuscan; Campanella translated his Città del sole, II senso delle cose, and Ateismo trionfato from Italian neo-Latin into palaeo-Latin.    Hobbes provides a palaeo-Latin version of his Leviathan with significant changes and additions to the original in his vernacular — Anglice — Malcolm in Hobbes.    A translation into vernacular and Latin as well as self-translations are all ways of testing (sometimes breaking) the limits of linguistic rectitudo and of demonstrating that the boundaries of reason in different contexts (between different languages, nations, and classes) is in fact porous.     Leibniz advocates the need to start  (Germanice philosophari) and rejects a distorted use of palaeo-Latin (cfr. Peano, Latino) as a way of narrowing the social compass of philosophy by excluding the plebs) and  (feminae) from its exercise (Leibniz     The use of a vernacular like neo-Latin Italian often ensures greater freedom of expression and a certain level of stylistic playfulness, which may turn out to be refreshing and inspiring (Dionisotti.     Significantly, by the time Montaigne had written his Essais in Gallica "a type of philosophy had been created which was both colloquial and militant" (Zambelli    Within the general debate about the philosophical potential of palaeo-Latin in its relationship to both its contemporary neo-Latin vernacular like Itala or Gallica and other languages (first and foremost Greek, but also Hebrew and Arabic), some technical points betray specific assumptions of a more theoretical order.     Bruni believes that all languages may be translated into each other without losing any of the original meaning and style.    Bruno is not however interested in defending the special status of any particular *historical* language as better suited to the exercise of philosophical inquiry.     Bruni’s position differs from the one championed by such philhellenes as those depicted by Speroni in his dialogue Lascaris and Buonamici), who show no qualms about advocating the philosophical primacy of Greek, claiming that it had been no accident that philosophy had originally been written in Greek and that Greek should continue to be the model — (philhellenism by the way, is a recurrent vogue in the history of philosophy, from  to Heidegger!    By contrast, even an admirer like VALLA of the expressive potential of Latin and a firm believer in the superiority of both history and poetry over philosophy remains convinced that a philosophical concept — or twist of idiom: think the optative — that was originally elaborated in Greek may not find adequate expression in Latin and should be left UNtranslated.    (V)     multa belle dicuntur Graece quae non belle dicuntur Latine — (V) inclusa — Valla     pomponazzi, a philosopher trained in the subtleties of scholasticism considers the question about what language — Palaeo-Latin, neo-Latin —  is most suitable for composing a philosophical essay as irrelevant and looks at the philosophical discussion about the veridical import of a historical language as a waste of time (Paccagnella.     The  thesis that one is allowed to philosophize in one of the available idioms represents a further argument against the dogmatic belief that there is only *one* true description of the world.       Speroni's recommendations to (filoso-far volgarmente), without knowing palaeo-Latin" (Speroni is a sign that the time has come when a philosopher  could compose an essay not only in Italian, or French — but Dutch, German, and beyond.    The philosophical potential of the vernacular neo-Latin Italian, being a question that is closely intertwined with issues of readership and communication, also bear on the problem of distinguishing between what is safe to say!    Resuming a characteristically Academic posture,  Pico does not miss the opportunity to describe the relationship between language and philosophy in terms of esoteric and exoteric communica-tion.     Philosophers, Pico argues in De ente et uno, should  sentire quidem ut pauci, loqui autem ut plures), for (loquimur ut intelligamur; Pico.    This was another situation that requires the philosopher to strike a balance between intellectual novelty and linguistic tradition.   Since language represents the vehicle of conventional wisdom (Grice on Austin), a philosopher was supposed to accept the rules of the linguistic game (with its attached social conventions) while skillfully circumventing the traps of linguistic pressure.    The NEO-Latin lexicon gets enriched with new terms as a result of discovery, invention, insight, and the successive waves of Latin translations from Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew, from Boezio to Wolff's Latinization of Leibniz's metaphysics, and it is worth recording the most significant changes that affect the Latin philosophical vocabulary.    Some Latin keywords mark the evolution of the philosophical lexicon:    res    subiectum    obiectum   conceptus    intentio   intentionalitas     Transliterations and calques from other languages, such as      entelechia     — or from a non-Aryan source  colchodea (the intellect as "giver of forms"), enjoy a remarkable fate in Latin and continue to be the subject of heated debate among humanist philosophers.      Poliziano devotes one of his essays in Miscellaneorum centuria prima  to clarify the many pphilosophical issues involved in a discussion of the difference between entelechia, an activity as the fulfillment of apotentiality,  and endelechia, the (activity as a perpetual movement; Poliziano — whereas Pico saw it as a vulgar typo!    If it is true that not as many transliterations from the nonAryan Arabic became part of the technical lexicon of philosophical Latin as for mathematics, astrology, and alchemy (Burnett the impact of the translations from Arabic result in significant additions to the specific vocabulary of the internal senses ([virtus) aestimativa, i.e., animal instinct, and cogitativa, e. G. human rea-son.     Some illustrious Greek transliterations also enjoyed a new life such as of energeia and energeticus which, begin to be used with increasing frequency to denote the life and energy of matter and a material being.     Glisson is probably the most interesting case, with his De natura substantiae energetica , a foundational work of physiology.     New words — such as Sidonius implicatura — are created by the philosopher who feels the need to hone his expressive tools and expand the range of the available vocabulary.     Other examples are Campanellas primalitas,  essentiatio  specificatio ), corporatio  and toticipatio — Giglioni    In philosophy, where  (verba) find themselves in a relationship of uneasiness with res) from the very beginning, it is precisely the use of the neologism -in the technical sense of linguistic expressions contravening the standard of good use and purity-that often facilitate the task of finding words for a particularly vexing notion.    Bruni recommends that translators avoid neologisms and new ways of expressing old things (et verborum et orationis novitas).     Above all, a translator is supposed to shun (inepta et barbara).    Bruni's main contribution is his idea that any language could be turned into any other:    nihil Graece dictum est quod Latine dici non possit; Bruni     While concerned with the use of the neologism in philosophy, others like  Gockel, displays a more tolerant attitude.     For instance, Gockel describes the use of “vigorari in Zabarella's commentary on Aristotle's De anima as an innovation, which is necessary to explain the heightened condition undergone by the intellect when invigorated by the power of a forceful intelligible (i.e., object of understanding; vehemens ac excellens intelligibile; Goclenius.    It is significant to note that, a scholastic philosopher by training and profession, Govkrl allows for certain latitude in philosophese.     Among the innovators" Duns Scotus is probably the most creative, and Gockrl  carefully surveys his influence over philosophical Latin tlexicon.    Gockel notes that even  Scaliger's (lautissima lingua) entertains  a conceptual closeness with Scotist ideas (Goclenius    Glocker is so concerned with the influence that Latin innovations exercise on the philosophical tradition that he adds to his *Greek* dictionary a little APPENDIX to his earlier *Latin* dictionary, entirely devoted to a meticulous analysis of all sorts of inappropriate ways of expressing philosophical notions: a     Sylloge vocum et phrasium quarumdam obsoletarum, minus usu receptarum, nuper natarum, ineptarum, lutulentarum, subrusticarum, barmi-barbararum, soloecismorum et hyposoloikön     Of the specific technical terms in philosophy, res may be considered one of the most important ones.    In his Lexicon philosophicum, Goclenius defines res as (quodlibet conceptibile)non includens contradic-tionem), in the domain of both (ens rationis) and (ens reale)    .Glocker explains that in philosophy res may  be taken com-munissime), communiter), or i (strictissime seu appropriate).     Combining Aristotle with Quintilian, and perhaps aware of Vallas sophisticated treatment of the matter in his Dialecticae disputationes, Goclenius identifies res in the strictest sense with (substantia; Goclenius     . Here it is crucial to point out that, while Goclenius reconfirms the primacy of substance as the ontological marker of reality (and in this sense, res were substantiae), Valla follows the opposite route and brings substantia back to res, understood, in line with the rhetorical tradition, as that which can be said of a particular reality.     By thus resolving  "substance" into "thing," Valla, like other humanists in fact deflates the ontological content of res by transforming it into any subject that could be conceptual-ized through words.    Among the most illustrious Latin words that enter a phase of remarkable decline, actualitas can be taken as a vivid example of a term with a glorious past in the sphere of philosophical learning, which, finds itself heading towards extinction.     Any professional philosopher trained in a university would have called reality actualitas.     As recorded by Goclenius in his diction-ary, actualitas prima, is conceived as the principal ontological requirement behind the existence of anything.     This alleged process of reifi-cation or actualitas through which the notion of being as activity (energeia in Aristotle) mutates into that of being as static presence (be that presence subiectum or res) is interpreted as the dominant event in the history of metaphysics.     In an attempt to come to terms with the powerful consequences of Descartes's philosophy and the way he polarizes reality between the extremes of the res cogitans) and the res extensa) Gilson dissects with painstaking precision the many layers accrued by the principal categories of Latin ontology (esse, ens, entitas, and essentia), making a powerful case for the vitality and creativity of scholastic philosophy.     After all, Descartes's great accomplishment, in Gilson's opinion, lies in the way in which the Gallic-speaking philosopher takes advantage- both speculatively and linguistically - of scholastic lore, fertile and productive as it is (Gilson     Latin is also a source of speculative inspiration for  Heidegger,  who secures his philosophical credentials by detecting in the process through which energeia becomes actualitas the symptom of a lingering metaphysical malaise; that is, the gradual obfuscation or oblivion of the true meaning of being (Seinsvergessenheit.    Here it may be useful to point out that behind Heidegger's effort to reawaken our awareness of the energeia of being, there is no humanistic intent, as he clearly intimates in his Brief über den Humanismus,     . Indeed, the opposite is true for Heidegger.    The legacy of scholastic philosophical Latin (and significantly Heidegger's first foray into the domains of philosophy had been a dissertation ion Duns Scotus's ontology) is clear and strong in his mind.     Or perhaps, we might say that a peculiarly humanist urge underlies Heidegger's warnings about the "presentification" oGegenwärtigung), of being  in that, like Lascaris and Buonamici, he thinks that Greek is more suitable than Latin to metaphysical inquiries for the ominous Seinsvergessenheit had already happened with the Italic pre-Socratics in Crotone, Girgenti and Velia, and therefore the truth had begun to hide itself (Verborgenheit) quite early on.     In the specific domain of thinking, unlike Latin, Greek is inherently philosophical, for Latin helps disseminate the Gegenwärtigung of being.     It is by referring to Heidegger that Libera asks the crucial question:     Is Latin a language suitable for philosophy?     Libera’s answer to this question is unambiguously positive.     Libera characterises the "multilingual translatio ["transfer"] of philosophy" (in particular its Latin transfer) as a "linguistic event" that affected the development of modern thinking in a significant way (De Libera     Libera draws our attention to a moment in history when Latin stops being a language of philosophy to become the language of philosophical taxonomy (not to say, taxidermy).    In other words, the moment in which Latin moves from the status of a language that is philosophically alive to that of a language that is *philosophically* dead" (Libera     That is not the case  the transfer of learning prompted by t(translatio studiorum), when Latin plays a fundamental role in the "philosophi-cal acculturation of Europe" (Libera      And yet, from its very beginnings at Rome — Appio — philosophy has always had an extremely uncomfortable relationship with the Latin language.     The act of thinking cannot help stumbling over words.    According to Libera, the most fascinating aspect of  Latin  is the far-reaching linguistic experiment—an extremely successful one, it must be said, through which, in the translation and exegetical laboratories of European studia and universities, masters of arts and theologians forge a language suitable for philosophy, a privileged medium that allowed a trans-national, trans-linguistic, and trans-cultural discussion for the transmission of ideas.     So it happens that precisely the artificiality condemned by the humanists may be seen as the major innovation and resource introduced by the philosophical Latin of the schools, for that raw neo- Latin expands the scope of the thinking exercise.     Petrarca and Bruni fail to understand this    Addressing Grosseteste, Bruni, who asserts himself as part of the neo-Latin community, proudly declared his inability to make sense of Grosseteste's Latin.    ego Latinus, istam barbariem tuam non intelligo     ; Bruni     From a genuinely philosophical point of view, what Bruni fails to understand is that not mastering a language, with all its idioms and elegancies (which, in the final analysis, we should admit is rather harmless, betrays the philosopher's effort to come to terms with a much deeper issue that is, the remorselessly foreign and alienating experience of thinking of the other qua other.     Bruno opposes the obsession with linguistic decorum (an obsession that is for him the defining feature of "grammarians" and "pedants" to the philosophical disorientation that derives from delving into the depths of the thinking process (profondano ne' sentimenti, Bruno Bruno  Ciliberto     Perhaps, the most significant point we can make out of this whole discussion is that, more than in any other discipline, novitas, the perplexing nature of what is unfamiliar) is the very hallmark of philosophy.     Reality is inherently challenging" because it is every time foreign and new to the human mind, and it challenges the mind's attempts to represent it.     This sense of ontological "novelty" was clear to Giovanni Pico, who as a philosopher was equally open to reasons of linguistic perspicuity and philosophical inquiry. His was a subtle mediation between language (tradition) and thought (novelty).     In De ente et uno, Pico praises Poliziano, "vindicator of a more elegant lan-guage," for allowing the use of "a few terms that are not entirely Latin, but necessary in any case because of the (ipsa rerum novitas]" (Pico     The fact is that reality is for the most part brutally opaque, while language is often employed to confirm and reassert its opacity (through the use of rhetorical and literary devices, for instance), more than to shed light on it.     The exercise of thinking, as an attempt to dissolve this resistance to interpretation, finds itself uneasily squeezed between a reality that is perceived as already given and the expressive resources made available by a particular linguistic communities.     The Latin of scholastic philosophy, precisely because of its artificiality is more than well equipped to cope with bouts of  reality, and it continued to do so.    To Libera we should therefore add here  Schmitt:     scholastic Latin was in good health — Schmitt 1983, 64-88).     Indeed, the taxonomical and taxidermic use of Latin, so much feared by de Libera, if we bear in mind thatthe imposing system of Leibnizian scholasticism Latinized by Wolff became the breeding ground for  Kant's  pre-critical production.    On the development of philosophical ideas in Latinate contexts f see "Latin and philosophy" in ENLW  Garrod, Rees, Kraye, De Bom, and van Bunge).     The close link between philology and philosophy is examined by Kraye     The research institute Lessico Intellettuale Europe has been publishing regular contributions to the study of philosophical Latin keywords in their developments from antiquity to the eighteenth century.     (Florence: Olschki):     Ordo   Res   Spiritus   Phantasia/Imaginatio  Idea   Ratio    Sensus/Sensatio   Signum   ), Experientia   Machina   Materia         Bruni, Opere letterarie e politiche, cur. 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