Socrates, or on Human Knowledge Bilingual Edition

Front matter

Simone Luzzatto Socrates, Or On Human Knowledge

Studies and Texts in Scepticism

Edited on behalf of the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies by Giuseppe Veltri

Contents

Preface — VII

Synopsis — 15

Chronology — 19

Preface

“Called by Nature to walk this mundane path, I deemed it appropriate to leave a trace on it, even though I believe that after a short while, the passage of others will spoil it or time will erase it. Nevertheless, I do not care much about this, because I will have done my duty.” With these words, Simone (Simhah) Luzzatto, rabbi and philosopher, began his Socrates, Or On Human Knowledge, the first sceptical treatise of the early modern period to be written by a Jew. This work, written in the vernacular and signed by the author describing himself as a “Venetian Jew,” unfortunately did not manage to “leave a trace” to its expected audience in the philosophical tradition. Luzzatto’s Socrates began to receive the attention it deserves only recently, thanks to the revised Italian edition published in 2013 and to some new important studies. We are now proud to present the first English translation and commentary of this book, together with two accompanying studies.

Every translation of a philosophical work is, as is well known, a transfer of philosophical ideas and concepts, systems and strategies from one universe of thought into another. Therefore, this result must be interpreted as the beginning of a vital concern with this topic and not just as the same text in another language. We hope that this new English edition will enhance a renaissance of Simone Luzzatto’s philosophical legacy, which stands out for its sceptical inquiry into human learning and knowledge. We also expect that this work will contribute to the study of early modern scepticism and will motivate new fruitful studies on this author and his intellectual framework. Furthermore, we are confident that this publication will have a strong impact on the still-pioneering research into Jewish scepticism which is the focus of the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies, founded in 2015 at the University of Hamburg thanks to the generous financial support of the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft).

This publication has been a large undertaking, which we were able to accomplish thanks to the seriousness and hard work of all the people involved. We would like to express our gratitude in particular to Katharine Handel for her thorough language editing, her accuracy, and her kindness. We are especially grateful to our colleagues and friends Guido Bartolucci and Josef Stern, who kindly read through an earlier version of this book and shared their valuable comments with us. We also want to thank Andrew Berns, who was especially helpful in unravelling some very difficult passages of the book, and Lawrence Kaplan and Tony Lévy for his useful suggestions.

We also want to thank Yoav Meyrav for his editorial supervision and Anna Lissa for her long-standing contributions to the study of Simone Luzzatto. We are grateful to Albrecht Déhnert, editorial director of the De Gruyter publishing house, for his support and Sophie Wagenhofer, acquisitions editor at De Gruyter, for her helpful advice in all production matters.

Special thanks are due to our colleagues and to the fellows of the Maimonides Centre, in particular Bill Rebiger, and to Daniel Davies, who suggested several impor-

VIII —— Preface tant and learned improvements. Finally, we are very grateful to all the people who helped to organise the “Sceptical Atelier” on Luzzatto’s Socrates (22-24 May 2017), and to all the scholars who participated for their comments and advice.

Hamburg, November 2018 The editors

Giuseppe Veltri and Michela Torbidoni Introduction

The Book and Its Legacy

Socrates, Or On Human Knowledge (Socrate overo dell’humano sapere) was published in Venice by Tomasini’s printing house in 1651. The scope and purpose of the work are indicated in the book’s extended title: The Serio-Ludic Exercise of Simone Luzzatto, Venetian Jew. A Book That Shows How Deficient Human Understanding Can Be When It Is Not Led by Divine Revelation (Esercitio seriogiocoso di Simone Luzzatto hebreo venetiano. Opera nella quale si dimostra quanto sia imbecile l’humano intendimento, mentre non è diretto dalla divina rivelatione).

Luzzatto achieved this goal by offering an overview of the various and contradictory gnosiological opinions that had been disseminated since ancient times: he analysed the human faculties, namely the functioning of the external senses, the internal senses (common sense, the imagination, memory, and the estimative faculty), the intellect, and also their mutual relation.! His work gives an accurate analysis of all of these issues by getting to the heart of the ancient epistemological theories. The divergence of these views, to which he addressed the most attention, prevented him from giving a fixed definition of the nature of the cognitive process. This obliged him to come to the audacious conclusion of neither affirming nor denying anything concerning human knowledge, and finally of suspending his judgement altogether. The book embodies a strong stance against dogmatic knowledge and its authority — of which philosophy is a part — and contains the promise of a genuinely sceptical investigation into the validity of human certainties. The pattern of Luzzatto’s arguments and the many metaphors and images which enliven his Socrates were strongly inspired by Sextus Empiricus’s Outlines of Scepticism. The ten tropoi lead his inquiry through the subjectivity of human perception, a source of continual illusion, or the inconstancy of the state of the whole, up to the final acknowledgment of the inscrutability of any object by itself.‘ Like Sextus, Luzzatto is persuaded that suspension of judgement (epoché) is the correct attitude towards the world, because every statement is subject to irreconcilable conflicts (diaphonia). Equipollence, which demands the suspension of judgement that in their opinion restores peace of mind or tranquillity (ataraxia), reigns in every inquiry that sceptics undertake. Luzzatto’s philosophical

1 On the impact of Sextus Empiricus’s Outlines of Scepticism on Luzzatto’s Socrates, see Michela Torbidoni, “Il metodo del dubbio nel Socrate di Simone Luzzatto,” in Filosofo e rabbino nella Venezia del Seicento, ed. Giuseppe Veltri (Rome: Aracne, 2015), 183-245, and Giuseppe Veltri, Alienated Wisdom: Enquiry into Jewish Philosophy and Scepticism (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018), 217-24.

2 On the legacy of Pyrrhonism, see Richard H. Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Savonarola to Bayle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) and The High Road to Pyrrhonism, ed. Richard A. Watson and James E. Force (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993).

investigation demonstrates that he was well acquainted not only with these and the many other aspects of Sextus’s Outlines, but also with the Academic scepticism of Carneades, whereof Cicero’s Academics is the chief source. The “probable” (from the Greek pithanon) plays a major role in Socrates: Luzzatto does not hesitate to define it as the “North Star in his journey through life,” showing himself thus to be consistent with the sceptic’s instruction to follow the probable in the absence of truth.

Next to the many indirect references to ancient scepticism, the great impact of Michel de Montaigne’s Essays on Luzzatto’s work must not be overlooked. The footnotes of the present edition of the text refer to the many passages, examples, images, and verses taken from the ancient poets, as well as one from Estienne de La Boétie himself, which have also been noted in Montaigne’s Essays. Although Luzzatto never made direct reference to Montaigne’s name or work, these parallels may be considered an interesting starting point for further research on this topic and on the many philosophical and religious implications of the highlighted similarities between these two authors. Montaigne’s modern scepticism — based, like Luzzatto’s, on ancient sceptical thought — reverberates throughout Socrates, although Luzzatto does not miss the opportunity to reinterpret it in light of the new challenges of his era, such as the scientific discoveries and the collapse of many ancient certainties.

Furthermore, like that of Montaigne, Luzzatto’s philosophical commitment may be considered a wise defence and celebration of free thinking beyond any dogmatic restriction. Luzzatto achieved the daring undertaking of undermining the traditional body of knowledge and succeeded in his purpose without worrying about any possible criticism thanks to the expression “serio-ludic exercise” announced in the title. Through this “serious-playfulness,” he invited his readers not to take what he was going to present entirely seriously. In this way, Luzzatto enabled himself to freely investigate and bring into question all human knowledge traditionally accepted as true. The modes of playful expression, parody, and ambiguity through which he treated some crucial issues of his time, such as the topic of the immortality of the soul, are another fundamental clue framing Luzzatto’s work in a specific context. They demonstrate that it should be viewed as participating in the genre of serio ludere (“to play seriously”), which was very popular in the Renaissance and the early modern period.’ The irony which surrounds the entire work seems therefore to be in line with the sceptical and pessimistic concept of human life conceived as a play performed in the theatre of the world. Luzzatto therefore demonstrates his awareness of the idea of the theatrum mundi, which found its highest expression in the theatrical representations of Lope de Vega and Calderón de la Barca.’

3 See Maria V. White, “‘Serio Ludere’: Baroque Invenzione and the Development of the Capriccio” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2009).

4 See Michael McGaha, ed., Approaches to the Theater of Calderon (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1982); Wolfram Nitsch, Barocktheater als Spielraum. Studien zu Lope de Vega und Tirso de Molina (Tibingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 2000).

Although this work seems to be a perfect reflection of Baroque literary taste, it unfortunately had little success in Luzzatto’s lifetime and was subsequently almost forgotten. Only a few copies existed before it was republished in 2013,° for the first time since 1651. The absence of evidence from Luzzatto’s contemporaries and that of his epistolary have thus increased the difficulty of tracing not only the legacy of Socrates in the history of philosophical thought, but also of understanding the circumstances surrounding its composition.

Some references to Luzzatto’s book began to appear in scholarly literature from the end of the seventeenth century, although the often incomplete and mistaken form in which information concerning this book, including its title, has been delivered testifies that Socrates had not been thoroughly examined by the authors who had mentioned it, and probably not even read by some of them. Besides mentions in Bibliotheca Magna Rabbinica (1693) by the Christian Hebraist Giulio Bartolocci,® Jacques Basnage’s Histoire de Juifs (1706),’ and Johann Christoph Wolf’s Bibliotheca Hebraea (1727),® brief references to Luzzatto’s Socrates appeared in some works of the nineteenth century such as the well-known Dizionario (1802) by Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi? and Moritz Steinschneider’s Die Italienische Literatur der Juden (1901).!° Between the middle and the end of the nineteenth century, brief mentions also appeared in the works of the German scholars Julius Fürst and Gustav Karpeles.! More detailed descriptions may be found in Isidor Busch’s Kalender und Jahrbuch fiir Israeliten (1866) and Heinrich Graetz’s Geschichte der Juden (1868). Graetz’s summary of the book refers to Socrates as a “parable” written by Luzzatto during his youth.“ He paid special attention to Luzzatto’s mathematical skill and to his solid knowledge of ancient and modern literature, an element of the book which is particularly striking. Graetz specifically focuses on one aspect that he considered to be the main claim of the work, namely that reason and the authority of holy texts cannot each claim to have exclusive power over human matters, but that both must contrib-

5 See Simone Luzzatto, Scritti politici e filosofici di un rabbino scettico nella Venezia del Seicento, ed. Giuseppe Veltri (Milan: Bompiani, 2013).

6 See Giulio Bartolocci, Bibliotheca Magna Rabbinica (Rome: Typographia Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide, 1693).

7 See Jacques Christian Basnage, Histoire des Juifs, vol. 9, book 2 (Rotterdam: Reinier Leers, 1706), 883-84.

8 See Johann Christoph Wolf, Bibliotheca Hebraea (Hamburg: Christophorus Felginer, 1727), 3:1115-35. 9 See Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi, Dizionario storico degli autori ebrei e delle loro opere (Parma: Dalla Reale Stamperia, 1802), 2:16.

10 See Moritz Steinschneider, Die Italienische Literatur der Juden (Frankfurt a. M.: Kauffmann, 1901), 418-19.

11 See Julius Fürst, Bibliotheca Judaica (Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann, 1863), 2:283-84; Gustav Karpeles, Geschichte der Jiidische Literatur, vol. 2 (Berlin: Oppenheim, 1886), 228.

12 See Isidor Busch, Kalender und Jahrbuch fiir Israeliten (Vienna: Schmid, 1866), 6:106-8.

13 See Heinrich Graetz, Von der dauernden Ansiedelung der Marranen in Holland 1618 bis zum Beginne der Mendelssohnschen Zeit 1750, vol. 10: Geschichte der Juden (Leipzig: Oskar Liener, 1868), 148-53. 14 Graetz, 150-51.

ute to human development. According to his interpretation, mankind will be only able to achieve all of its goals if reason and revelation join forces, that is, in the doctrine of the balance between fides et ratio. Graetz claimed that this doctrine was first formulated by Maimonides to form a contrast with Averroes, in a time when reason and faith were thought to be separated, considering them to be two different fields of research and enlightenment which must stay separate, exactly like the truth of faith and the truth of reason. The doctrine of a balance between fides et ratio was reintroduced by Thomas Aquinas, becoming a firm point in Scholastic thought. Even though Scholasticism had a moment of decline following Luther’s criticism of it, it returned to prominence during the seventeenth century (the so-called “second Scholasticism”) by putting forth the doctrine of a balance between fides et ratio once more while also introducing new elements. Some of its exponents thought that natural reason had to accept the “wonder of the probable,” as Juan Caramuel put it. We should point out this important change as it was part of Luzzatto’s cultural context. Graetz also focuses on another element, the spread of Lurianic Kabbalah, which was supported by an increasing number of followers. However, even though the Kabbalah considered the doctrine of a balance between fides et ratio almost as heresy, Luzzatto succeeded in complying with it, as Graetz reported. He interprets Socrates in the light of contemporary Jewish concerns, particularly focusing on the contrast between Kabbalah and rationalistic philosophy, pointing out that Luzzatto inclined towards the latter.

During the nineteenth century, Shmuel David Luzzatto stated in his Autobiografia (1882) that Simone Luzzatto was “less known than he deserved,” but that he “had not only a broad rabbinical doctrine, but also a classical erudition and political and philosophical knowledge.” In his summary of Socrates, he briefly mentioned the topic of scepticism, which he discussed with ill-concealed embarrassment and in a tone of indulgent justification. He concluded by pointing out the easy style and lack of erudition and philosophical knowledge in Simone Luzzatto’s work.” As far as criticism of the book’s literary quality is concerned, one could easily object that this last remark is actually untrue, as is made evident by the work itself. Luzzatto’s style is undeniably pretentious to a modern reader because it follows Latin sentence structure and typical seventeenth-century rules of syntax and punctuation. Furthermore, Luzzatto’s use of a rich and multifaceted vocabulary drawn from the contemporary Venetian dialect, from the Spanish language,’ and from the legal sphere is particularly striking.

15 See Pablo Passivino, ed., Le meraviglie del probabile: Juan Caramuel 1606-1682. Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, October 29-31, 1982 (Vigevano: Comune di Vigevano, 1990).

16 See Shmuel David Luzzatto, Autobiografia di S. D. Luzzatto preceduta da alcune notizie storico-letterarie sulla famiglia Luzzatto a datare dal secolo decimosesto (Padova: Crescini, 1882).

17 Shmuel David Luzzatto, 15-16.

18 In this regard, it remains to be clarified whether the words of Spanish origin belonged to the contemporary spoken Venetian language or whether they were integral parts of the lexicon introduced to Venice by Sephardi Jews who had escaped from Spain.

Ludwig Blau, in his Leo Modenas Briefe (1906),’? concisely reported the necessity of a deeper study of Luzzatto’s Socrates. In the 1930s, a vague summary of the book could be found in Cecil Roth’s History of the Jews of Italy,” while a more detailed one appeared in Jehuda Bergmann’s article “Sokrates in der Jüdischen Literatur,”™ in which he traced the history of Socrates’s appearance in the Jewish tradition, including Luzzatto’s book. According to Bergmann’s interpretation, the main issue Luzzatto raised was the necessity that neither reason nor authority should have supremacy, but that both should be equally honoured, because only by completing and limiting one another could they best rule human life. In 1992, Yaacov Shavit incorporated Luzzatto’s Socrates into his discussion of the relationship between Hellenistic culture and Jewish culture in the early modern period.” In the same year, in a chapter devoted to Jehuda Del Bene, Robert Bonfil offered an accurate description of Luzzatto’s book focusing on the character of Socrates.”?

One of the more recent contributions devoted to research on Luzzatto’s Socrates is David Ruderman’s “Science and Skepticism: Simone Luzzatto on Perceiving the Natural World,” which analysed Luzzatto’s deep involvement in the naturalistic and scientific studies of his time by focusing on his appreciation of and proficiency in mathematics and astronomy. Ruderman particularly focused on the unclear role of revelation throughout the sceptical framework that Luzzatto put forth, suggesting that he had an ambivalent attitude towards religion by citing his formal respect for the ceremonies on the one hand and his denial of the concepts at their very roots on the other.

Ariel Viterbo, in his dissertation, which was originally written in Hebrew and partly published in Italian in 1999,” accepts a similar interpretation, supporting the idea of Luzzatto’s “masked scepticism.” Viterbo describes the text’s contents and proposes interpreting it as an intellectual autobiography of Luzzatto and thus identifying him with the character of Socrates. Just like Socrates, Luzzatto was sceptical about the possibility that human beings could attain definite knowledge. According to Viterbo’s

19 See Ludwig Blau, Leo Modenas Briefe und Schriftstiicke: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Juden in Italien und zur Geschichte des hebräischen Privatstiles. Jahresbericht der Landes-Rabbinerschule in Budapest fiir das Schuljahr 1904-1905, 2 vols. (Budapest: Adolf Alkalay & Sohn, 1905).

20 See Cecil Roth, History of the Jews of Italy (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1946), 263-64. 21 See Jehuda Bergmann, “Sokrates in der Jiidischen Literatur,” Monatsschrift fiir Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 80 (1936): 3-13.

22 See Yaacov Shavit, Athens in Jerusalem: Classical Antiquity and Hellenism in the Making of the Modern Secular Jew (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1997), 136-37.

23 See Robert Bonfil, “Preaching as Mediation between Elite and Popular Cultures: The Case of Jehuda Del Bene,” in Preachers of the Italian Ghetto, ed. David B. Ruderman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992): 67-88.

24 See David B. Ruderman, “Science and Skepticism: Simone Luzzatto on Perceiving the Natural World,” in Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe, ed. David B. Ruderman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 153-84.

25 See Ariel Viterbo, “Socrate nel Ghetto: lo scetticismo mascherato di Simone Luzzatto,” Studi Veneziani 38 (1999): 79-128.

opinion, such a mask was perhaps the only way for Luzzatto to spread his scepticism without fear of condemnation by the Jewish religious authorities, which was directed against anyone who doubted the truth of divine revelation.

The most recent contributions to research on Socrates were published by Giuseppe Veltri in his edition of Simone Luzzatto’s works? and the volume he edited entitled Filosofo e rabbino nella Venezia del Seicento.” Veltri highlighted and elevated the importance of Simone Luzzatto’s work as the only Jewish example of sceptical thought in the early modern period. In an essay published in the same volume, Michela Torbidoni analysed Luzzatto’s practice of doubt in Socrates by examining the influence and role of Sextus Empiricus’s Outlines of Scepticism throughout the book.”* The most recent research into Luzzatto’s life and work led by Giuseppe Veltri has begun to put forward some evidence concerning the possibility of reading Socrates in line with the controversial and libertine literature of the Italian Academies, and more precisely with the innovative and bizarre compositions of the Accademia degli Incogniti.”? This new perspective does not seek to reduce Luzzatto’s Socrates to a mere rhetorical exercise; on the contrary, it aims to open up the rich and still-hidden background of this rabbi’s life and works. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, learned academies became the epicentre of a flourishing Italian culture;*° they promoted discussions in a wide range of disciplines, from literature and philosophy to astronomy and medicine. As alternatives to the official universities, they attracted the attention of a different kind of scholar and promoted an intellectual exchange between them that stands out in terms of the topics and issues they encountered. They were associations or groups of learned people motivated by the desire to freely advance their innovative scholarly arguments and to perform poetry and plays which were sometimes marked by ludicrous, bizarre, and libertine traits. The Incogniti, who included important Venetian and foreign intellectuals, future senators, and even some members of the Church, played the role of an unofficial seat of political power in Venice for almost thirty years. Thanks to their wide range of publications — including moral essays, novels, and opera libretti — they had a profound influence on the cultural and political affairs of the Venetian Republic. Luzzatto’s Socrates must thus be considered a key work for investigating the intensive transfer of knowledge between Jewish and Christian authors and as a mirror of the contemporary philosophical leanings and social and political changes.

26 See Luzzatto, Scritti politici e filosofici.

27 See Veltri, Filosofo e rabbino and also Veltri, Alienated Wisdom, 233-64.

28 See Torbidoni, “Il metodo.”

29 See Giuseppe Veltri and Evelien Chayes, Oltre le Mura del Ghetto: Accademie, scetticismo e tolleranza nella Venezia barocca (Palermo: New Digital Frontiers, 2016); Michela Torbidoni, “The Italian Academies and Rabbi Simone Luzzatto’s Socrate: The Freedom of the Ingenium and the Soul,” Yearbook of the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies 2 (2017): 71-94.

30 See Michele Battagia, Delle Accademie Veneziane: Dissertazione storica (Venice: G. Picotti—G. Orlandelli Editore, 1826).

It is not surprising that Luzzatto chose Socrates as the leader of his inquiry: this legendary figure perfectly embodied the human desire for knowledge, and had symbolised the first authentic free thinker, as well as a victim of intolerance, since the earliest theological controversies.** The shape of Luzzatto’s Socrates and the richness of his message for a Jew in seventeenth-century Venice must be considered the missing tile of acomplicated mosaic, namely that of the close intellectual relationship between Baroque Venice and the Berlin of the German Enlightenment. In eighteenth-century Berlin, where the cultural élite was beginning to consider officially acknowledging and integrating the Jews into the contemporary society and culture, the example of Venice was often recalled. This common sensibility explains why the Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn was called “ein deutscher Sokrates” in that period.

If we pay attention to Socrates’s frontispiece, Luzzatto’s signature is striking: with the expression “Venetian Jew,” he wished to seal his double identity, his belonging to both the Jewish nation and the Venetian Republic. In his Socrates, he aimed to define a new relationship not only between the Jewish community and Venice, but also, more universally, among mankind. We may say that Luzzatto, at the height of his career and already of an advanced age, wished to strengthen the universal values whereby he began to envision a social and political project which aimed to combine different cultural identities.

Summary of the Content

Contrary to his Discourse, which is an essay divided into different sections, which he calls “considerations,” Socrates’s structure is uniform. The book is organised neither into different chapters nor into paragraphs. However, following the fashion for books in Luzzatto’s period, he included some marginal notes, which act as something of a guideline throughout the many topics and interlocutors, pointing out changes from direct to indirect speech and highlighting the exact sources of his quotations. The book also constitutes relevant evidence for the development of the printing press between 1638 (the publication date of the Discourse) and 1651: while in the Discourse the recto/verso type of layout is still used, the numbering in Socrates is progressive, as in modern books.

The book begins with a two-page dedication to “the Most Serene Prince and the Most Excellent Council” — namely the Venetian Doge Francesco Molino and the wise men of the Council (Consiglio dei Savi), also known as the Most Excellent Council (Eccellentissimo Consiglio) — and a three-page note introducing the list of errata. The

31 On Socrates’s legacy, see Michael Trapp, ed., Socrates from Antiquity to the Enlightenment (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007); Trapp, ed., Socrates in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007); and Sara Ahbel-Rappe and Rachana Kamtekar, eds., A Companion to Socrates (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006).

numbered pages begin with a dedication to “the Benign Reader,” which is followed by a summary of the entire work titled “Subject,” where Luzzatto explains the reasons that have led Socrates to be on trial again.

Luzzatto begins his “serio-ludic” philosophical exercise by portraying the fictional foundation of a new Academy in Delphi intended to reform human knowledge. He specifies that the meeting of the Academicians took place in the Temple of Apollo and became a pole of attraction for many people coming from different locations. The choice of Apollo’s temple in Delphi as a starting point for Socrates seems to be consistent with Luzzatto’s decision to perform an investigation that was both Socratic and sceptical. The temple was indeed the place where the Pythia stated that none was wiser than Socrates, who — by following one of the famous phrases carved into the entrance of the temple, “know yourself” — came to the conclusion that the wisest person is one who becomes aware of not knowing anything. The Delphic exhortation to know himself and the attainment of self-knowledge as an acknowledgement of human ignorance take on the meaning of a commitment to a persistent inquiry and search for answers. It reproduces in society the ritual manner in which people would deal with the Oracle. According to Plutarch’s dialogue The E at Delphi, among the famous inscriptions appearing at the entrance to the temple was an enigmatic “E.” One of the three interpretations that he gave of this letter suggested identifying it with the Greek word ei (“if”) as a fundamental part of the ritual phrase with which one consulted the Oracle. Apollo, according to Plutarch, solves the problems of our practical lives on the one hand and on the other is the god who raises intellectual doubts and offers them to whomsoever is naturally a philosopher by inspiring his soul to search for the truth.”

Luzzatto chooses this place to host the first assembly of the new Academy. During the session, they find a letter claiming to have been sent by the incarcerated Reason, who is oppressed by human Authority. Reason asks to be released in order to give human doctrines back their lost splendour and to give a new dignity to mankind. Pythagoras and Aristotle, here identified with Authority’s principle of ipse dixit, suggest that they do not take this request into consideration.

In search of a solution, the Academicians decide to grant Reason’s wish and to create a letterbox for denunciations to collect all the secret charges against the absurdities perpetrated towards accepted doctrines. They find a charge against Socrates, who is accused of having attempted to subvert the human sciences because — due to his captious arguments, quibbling instances, simulated irony, deceptive questions, and inconclusive inductions that were deduced from carpenters, saddlers, shoemakers, and the like — philosophy seems to be subdued, virtue undisciplined, prudence inept, temperance useless, justice harmful, strength reckless, eloquence vain, and religion doubtful and perplexed.” In addition to this, Socrates is attempting

32 On this topic, see Torbidoni, “Italian Academies,” 77-79. 33 See Simone Luzzatto, Socrates, Or On Human Knowledge, 10.

to lead us to such foolishness by introducing the suspension of judgment and the withholding of assent among us, and to weaken humankind by depriving us of every solid and stable rule by which to rule and order our way of life; indeed, by removing any distinction between right and wrong, good and evil, and honesty and dishonesty.**

The public assembly discusses whether such a charge deserves to be torn to pieces or whether it is worthy of debate. The only one against the trial is Xenophon, who attempts to save his teacher from the charge with pragmatic argumentation. He points out that a trial or sentence would only increase Socrates’s fame. However, by dropping the charge, the entire issue and all of Socrates’s doctrine would be silenced for eternity. However, Xenophon’s opinion is not taken into consideration and the accused is called to appear in court.

Most of Luzzatto’s book is occupied by Socrates’s defence, which is expressed in the form of a long excursus reporting the opinions and doctrines of philosophers, politicians, and poets populating his search for certainty in human knowledge. Through them, Socrates explains to the judges the reasons that have persuaded him to suspend his judgement. The debates he reports define the different steps of his convoluted path up to accepting the “light of the probable” as his guide in life and the suspension of judgement as the only solution in the face of the impossibility of affirming or denying any dogma. Socrates begins by dealing with the vortex of the many contrary opinions crowding the history of philosophy, which he describes as being like “lines that go from the centre to the circumference, [which] when they are close to their origin, there is only a little distance between them, but as soon as they advance, they increasingly shift in different directions.” The suspicion that the apparently solid body of human knowledge is not based on any stable foundation progressively increases throughout his inquiry. Everything appears to Socrates to be ruled only by Chance, like the first move in a chess match. These concerns persuade him to appeal to sceptical doubt, to devote his inquiry to the scrutiny of himself — which is considered the only way to explore the nature of knowledge — and to verify whether the suspension of judgement may truly be considered a valid solution. Yet his purpose encounters the first difficulty, namely a quarrel between external objects, the senses, the intellect, and knowledge itself, which each allegorically begin to demand that Socrates examine them first.