For almost five centuries Enrique de Villena (1384-1434) has been branded as
a sorcerer and dismissed as both incredulous and superstitious because of his interest
in the so-called "occult" sciences. Partly for this reason, until very recently, his writings
have attracted little serious scholarly attention, and an edition of his complete works
has only been available since 1994. The present thesis is an overall study of Villena's
works within a conceptual framework which reflects the ideological bases wich served
as Villena's own point of departure. Drawing on studies of traditional societies by
specialists such as Ren6 Gu6non and Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, we are able to
formulate a well-defined paradigm that explains not just the philosophical foundations
of Ancient and Medieval science and literature, but of all human activity in societies
which regard their ultimate foundations as resting on a set of divinely-revealed
precepts.
Chapter 1 provides a critical review of the main contributions to Villena studies,
and defines seven fundamental characteristics of traditionalism (also known as the
Philosophia perennis) which, in Chapter 2, we are able to identify in Villena's works.
Chapter 3 illustrates the existence in the works of Villena of the two classes of
traditional authors, and eight of the most common synonyms for their cognitive organs.
Chapter 4 presents the function of the restorer and eleven aspects of the traditional
author's modus scribendi as found both in traditionalism and in Villena's works.
Chapter 5 selects some distinctive notions which characterize five branches of
traditional science so as to illustrate their presence in the scientific works of Villena.
This thesis demonstrates that the works of Enrique de Villena can only be fully
understood when read in the light of traditional philosophy. It also shows that Villena
was attempting to revive this Philosophia perennis in the first half of the fifteenth
century, a Philosophia which, because of its faith-based tenets and the need for a
special intellectual initiation into the comprehension of its precepts, was being rejected
by the increasing rationalism of the age.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/11169 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Segura, José |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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