In Defense of Common Sense: Lorenzo Valla’s Humanist Critique of Scholastic Philosophy
Lodi Nauta
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Harvard University Press, 2009

When the first wave of Renaissance-era humanists raised their nerdy battle-cry of “ad fontes,” they were issuing the most fundamental challenge to the Church imaginable, and they knew it full well. Marauding armies and ransacking mercenaries were perils of the times, and the Church had survived them. But a group of feisty, pious philologists could strike at the heart of Christianity itself: words. Because, as Lodi Nauta points out in his densely-packed, fluidly learned book In Defense of Common Sense, if you change the words that define such things as the Trinity, or grace, or the requirements for salvation, you change the things themselves.

The feistiest humanist of that first wave was Lorenzo Valla (1406?-1457), who created a reputation for himself as a classicist and textual scholar, a debunker of literary forgeries, a firebrand critic of philosophical and liturgical moss that had grown for centuries over the founding stonework of Christianity:

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An important motive for Valla in attacking Aristotelian-scholastic metaphysics is to free theological discourse from philosophical speculation and theory. According to him, theology as practiced by the scholastics abounds with distinctions, concepts, and technical terms, usually of nonclassical origin, that have turned the subject into a battlefield where the dust raised by ages of disputations has made a clear view of the nature of faith almost impossible.

In Defense of Common Sense Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas dvd After School Special move is an extended – and always illuminating – commentary on a great book nobody knows: the Repastinatio (“replanting”) which Valla began in 1439 and revised his whole life. As Nauta points out, the work is long and complicated, relying heavily on the reader’s familiarity with such authors as Aristotle, Boethius, and Porphyry. Nauta’s prose is rock-solid and often jumps with enthusiasm:

The Emperor’s Club trailer Valla’s arguments naturally make use of classical Latin and often depend on it, but they are not always about classical Latin. Even when he makes a point about classical Latin, he treats it as the common language.

I submit that it’s high time for just such a lively, enthusiastic popular version of the Repastinatio. A forty-page introduction to orient the reader, footnotes for those not up on their Porphyry, an attractive cover design, and presto! A great classic of humanism at last gets the readership it has always deserved. I nominate Nauta for the job.

-Steve Donoghue

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