Eleonora Travanti

2023
Postdoc Fellow at Wittenberg Research Library for the History of the Reformation (Fellowship of the Evangelische Wittenbergstiftung)
Project: „Anti-Socinianism as a Pretext for the Consolidation of Orthodoxy. Anti-Socinian Writings in the Wittenberg Research Library for the History of the Reformation“

2023
Postdoc Fellow at Herzog August Library Wolfenbüttel (Fellowship of Land Niedersachsen)
Project: „Lessing as Editor of the Journal of the Ducal Library in Wolfenbüttel (1770-1778)“

2022
Postdoc Fellow at Gotha Research Library of University of Erfurt (TMWWDG-Fellowship)
Project: „Contra Socinianos. Anti-Socinian Writings in the Gotha Research Library“

2021
Doctorate (Dr. phil.) with the dissertation „Lessings Verteidigung der Orthodoxie gegen die Aufklärungstheologie in den ersten Wolfenbütteler Jahren (1770 – 1774)“ (supervisor: Prof. Dr. Winfried Schröder; second supervisor: Prof. Dr. Friedrich Vollhardt)

2014-2021
PhD. Student in History of Philosophy at the Philipps-Universität Marburg

2015-2016
Doctoral Scholarship at the Herzog August Bibliothek WolfenbüttelDr. Günther Findel-Stiftung)

2011-2012
M. A. in History of Philosophy at the Università degli Studi di Macerata (Italy)

2008-2009
Scholarship at the Freie Universität Berlin (Erasmus Programme)

2005-2010
B. A. in Philosophy at the Università degli Studi di Macerata (Italy)

2004-2005
Studies of Physics at the Università degli Studi di L’Aquila (Italy)

Late Renaissance Aristotelianism between Philology and Philosophy. The German Edition of Ottaviano Ferrari’s De sermonibus exotericism.

In 1606, Melchior Goldast, a pupil of the Altdorf Aristotelian Philipp Scherb, edited a volume in Frankfurt am Main with the ambitious title Clavis Philosophiae Peripateticae Aristotelicae. It is a new edition of two treatises by the scholar Ottaviano Ferrari from Milan, which had already been published by Aldo Manuzio in Venice: De disciplina encyclio(1560) and De sermonibus exotericis (1575). In this last treatise, Ferrari, a professor of philology in Pavia and Padua, discusses Aristotle's so-called ἐξωτερικοὶ λóγοι and offers an interpretative key to discern and decipher the Stagirite's exôterikoi logoi. The main difference between an exoteric and an esoteric discussion lies not in the subject matter but in the way it is discussed and presented. While the exoteric discussions are based on dialectical and rhetorical arguments, the acroamatic teachings are based on analytical, strictly scientific reasoning. Ferrari's interpretation of Aristotle had a decisive influence not only on Paduan Aristotelianism, but also on Aristotelianism in Altdorf (Philipp Scherb, Michael Piccart, Ernst Soner), as well as on some of the most important German philosophers (G. W. Leibniz, G. E. Lessing and Leo Strauss). The project focuses on the German reception of Ferrari's theses, the history of the relationship between the Academia Norica and the University of Padua and the definition of exoteric art of writing from Ottaviano Ferrari to Leo Strauss. The aim is to show the close connection between the philosophy and philology in the transmission of Aristotelianism in late Renaissance Europe.

Publications

Monograph

• Lessings exoterische Verteidigung der Orthodoxie. Die Wolfenbütteler Beiträge gegen die Aufklärungstheologie (1770-1774). Berlin 2023. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110793055

Articles

• Finiti ad infinitum nulla est proportio. Eternità delle pene e giustizia di Dio nella controversia tedesca da Soner a Lessing. In: Omero Proietti, Giovanni Licata (eds.): Tradizione e illuminismo in Uriel da Costa. Macerata 2016, S. 355–404.
• Lessing und seine Bibliothekszeitschrift „Zur Geschichte und Litteratur“. In: Helmut Berthold, Franziska Schlieker (eds.): Von Herkules bis Hollywood. Beiträge zur jüngeren Lessingforschung. Vortragsreihe der Lessing-Akademie. Wolfenbüttel 2018, S. 115–138.
• Lessings Leibnitz von den ewigen Strafen. Die theologische Provokation eines Aufklärers. In: Magdalena Fricke, Hannes Kerber, Eleonora Travanti (eds.): Praktiken der Provokation. Lessings Schreib- und Streitstrategien. Hannover 2024. Im Erscheinen.

Review

• Nürnbergs Hochschule in Altdorf. Beiträge zur frühneuzeitlichen Wissenschafts- und Bildungsgeschichte. Ed. by Hanspeter Marti, Karin Marti-Weissenbach. Köln: Böhlau, 2014. Arbitrium 35 (2) (2017), S. 180-183.

Onlinejournal

• Spinoza sull’inutilità dell’uccisione del tiranno. In: Ritiri filosofici, 20.10.2019
• Machiavelli e la necessità di una religione civile. In: Ritiri filosofici, 7.4.2019
• Metti una sera un massone a cena: il pathos calmo di Lessing. In: Ritiri filosofici, 2.3.2019
• Socrate, l’uomo dagli atti giusti prima delle parole giuste. In: Ritiri filosofici, 3.2.2019
• L’ozio di Seneca contro la corruzione dello Stato. In: Ritiri filosofici, 6.1.2019

Lectures

• Mösers Schreiben an Herrn Aaron Mendez da Costa und die christlich-pharisäische Erfindung der Auferstehungslehre. Frühneuzeitliche Quellen eines sadduzäischen Arguments. Tagung Justus Möser - Philosoph Staatsman Publizist. Universität Osnabrück, Germany, 5.-7.10.2023
• Lessing als Kritiker der Aufklärungstheologie. Die exoterische Rhetorik in Leibnitz von den ewigen Strafen. Tagung Praktiken der Provokation: Lessings Schreib- und Streitstrategien. Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, Germany, 29.6.–1.7.2022
• »Was alle alte Philosophen […] zu tun pflegten«. Die Quellen der exoterischen Lehre Lessings. Oberseminar, Institut für Deutsche Philologie, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany, 23.11.2021
• From Lessing to Plato. Leo Strauss’s Return to Ancient Political Philosophy. Political Philosophy and its History: Leo Strauss and Beyond. KU Leuven, Institute of Philosophy, Belgium, 6.–7.12. 2017
• Il debito di Leo Strauss nei confronti di Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1937–1973). Workshop su Leo Strauss (1899–1973). Fondazione San Carlo, Modena, Italy, 21.11.2017
• The Idealization of Jesus in the Theologico-Political Treatise. Excommunication and Rehabilitation of Spinoza among German Jewish Thinkers. IV Bertinoro Annual Meeting, History of Research on Jesus in Modern and Contemporary Time, Bertinoro, Italy, 28.09.2017
• Should a Philosopher Believe in Eternal Punishment? Lessing’s Vindication of Leibniz’s Hypocrisy. Lying and Hypocrisy, Colloquium in The History of Moral and Political Philosophy, Braga, Portugal, 12.–13.1.2017
• Da Soner a Lessing. Pene eterne e giustizia di Dio. International Congress on Uriel da Costa, Exame, 1624. Sources, Themes, Traditions, Macerata, Italy, 29.–30.9.2015

• Socinianism and Anti-Socinianism
• Aristotelianism in Late Renaissance (Padua-Altdorf)
• Biblical Criticism (Da Costa, Spinoza, Reimarus)
• Lessing as Leibniz-Interpreter: The Exoteric Art of Writing
• The Reception of Spinoza in Germany
• Leo Strauss and the esoteric Enlightenment