Prisca philosophia
The concept of a prisca philosophia refers to a primeval wisdom that was revealed to the prophets and certain holy people. Implicit in this notion is that it is transmissible; it supposedly descends from Adam and through a certain genealogy to the prisci philosophi, or prisci, which refers to "the venerable ones" or "the venerable philosophers and theologians". Truth is supposed to flow from a single spring, but it manifests in various forms. This revelation dates back to the most ancient times, the prisca saecula. People who see themselves as standing in this tradition believe that they can find this truth in the scriptures from this age. This truth and wisdom is thus as old as humanity because it was revealed at the beginning of the world by God. It presents a type of knowledge that was once there but later forgotten. The pagan philosophers, like Aristotle, have a certain part in it because they are closer to the source of things.
This belief is not a novelty to the renaissance but can, for example, be found in Roger Bacon's Opus maius where he tries to present a relationship between theology and philosophy. Roger Bacon also asserts that Aristotle admits to this transmission in the Secretum Secretorum.
It is related to a prisca theologia and perennial thought in general, as can be found in Agostino Steuco and other Renaissance-Humanists.
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References
- ↑ Francis A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, London 1964
- ↑ D.P. Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic From Ficino to Campanella, London 1958
- ↑ D.P. Walker, The Ancient Theology, Studies in Christian Platonism from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century, London 1972
- ↑ R.S. Westmann et al., Hermeticism and the Scientific Revolution, Los Angeles 1977
- ↑ Charles B. Schmitt, Perennial Philosophy: from Agostino Steuco to Leibniz, in: Journal of the History of Ideas 27, 1966, pp.505-532 & 520
- ↑ George Molland, Roger Bacon und die hermetische Tradition in der mittelalterlichen Wissenschaft, in: Roger Bacon in der Diskussion, pp. 229-256 &230
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