458. Outsider Philosophy: The Cheese and the Worms
Carlo Ginzburg’s innovative historical study The Cheese and the Worms looks at the ideas of an obscure 16th century miller, suggesting how popular culture might be integrated into the history of philosophy.
Themes:
• A. Del Col (ed.), Domenico Scandella Known as Menocchio: His Trials before the Inquisition, 1583-1599, trans. J.A. Tedeschi and A.C. Tedeschi (Binghamton: 1995).
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• C. Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, trans. A.C. Tedeschi and J.A. Tedeschi (Baltimore: 1980). [Original publication, Il formaggio e i vermi: il cosmo du un mugnaio del ’500 (Turin: 1976).]
• C. Ginzburg, Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method, trans. J.A. Tedeschiand A.C. Tedeschi (Baltimore: 1989).
• C. Ginzburg, “Checking the Evidence: the Judge and the Historian,” Critical Inquiry 18 (1991), 79-92.
• C. Ginzburg, “Microhistory: Two or Three Things That I Know About It,” Critical Inquiry 20 (1993), 10-35.
• J. Martin, “Journeys to the World of the Dead: The Work of Carlo Ginzburg,” Journal of Social History 25 (1992), 613-26.
• D. Visintin, Dario, L’attività dell’inquisitore fra Giulio Missini in Friuli (1645–1653): L’efficienza della normalità (Trieste: 2008).
• P. Zambelli, “Uno, due, tre, mille Menocchio,” Archivio storico italiano 137 (1979), 51–90.
Comments
Millers in the history of ideas
Hello,
I’ve really enjoyed your podcasts - your latest got me thinking:
In your historical investigations, have you come across other contributions from millers to intellectual progress?
I mention this, because a local hero in my neck of the woods is George Green of Nottingham - who put forward Green’s law, theorem and function in mathematics in the first half of the nineteenth century. Also an outsider, a miller, was able eventually to get a degree from Cambridge through being spotted by patrons (Wikipedia and the museum in Nottingham based around his windmill are sources for my (limited) knowledge)
I wonder if, as millers, a relatively wealthy member of premodern societies, needing to be technically adept to run complex machinery but having time on their hands while watching the mill grind corn, contributed their thoughts in other areas of intellectual endeavour?
I think Thales speculated on olive presses - not sure if that counts as milling…
Anyway; if it turns out to be fruitful, perhaps a future episode on milling as a sub specialism?
D
In reply to Millers in the history of ideas by Duncan Auterson
Grist to the mill
Well there would certainly be plenty of pun opportunities; and actually we only just had windmills with Don Quixote as well so this was arguably a bit of a mill phase of the podcast (we've "been through the mill" taking a "fine grained" look at the topic etc etc). But seriously, your comment echoes the one below which came in at right about the same time!
Cheese and the Worms & U Padua
I have listened to all of your programs in this series so far and found them enlightening and entertaining, eagerly looking forward to listening to each and every one of them, and recommended them to friends.
I just wanted to question your characterization of the baker Menochio as a peasant. I haven't yet read his book, so I don't know how Carlo Ginzburg presented him, but my impression is that in the middle ages a baker would have been considered a skilled craftsman rather than a peasant, and, while looked down on by aristocrats, such people were highly trained and often respected owners of property (Shakespeare's father was a glove maker often mischaracterized as very lowly profession).
Two people come to mind, who really started out from a lowly positions are the famous physicist and almost entirely self-educated Michael Faraday (whose portrait hung on Einstein's wall) & the linguist Joseph Wright, who, from the age of six, worked in a stone quarry and a mine and later in cloth factories and yet who rose to be a Professor of Comparative Philology at Oxford.
Also, from reading William McNeill's History of Venice I had gather that Padua was a very cosmopolitan place with students being sent there from Muslim and Orthodox Constantinople and Protestant Britain (William Harvey comes to mind, at least I assume he was Protestant). Galileo lectured there (the Venetian patriot Paolo Sarpi presented him with his first telescope). So new ideas must have been "in the air", so to speak. Anyway, best regards & keep up the good work.
In reply to Cheese and the Worms & U Padua by Ellen Harold
Menocchio and Padua
Those are great points - in using the term "peasant" I was really just following Ginzburg, and actually as you heard at the end of the episode I suspect you are right that he was in a more ambiguous or upwardly mobile social stratum. Indeed the fact that he could read already shows this. To be fair Ginzburg makes this point about millers also, but is still wedded to the idea that we can use Menocchio as a window into peasant society; I guess to be fair to him, the idea could be that Menocchio was at least spending most of his time with people who were more ambiguously in the peasant class and not mixing with the intelligentsia. Your point about Padua is of course very much what Zambelli was arguing.
Glad you like the podcast by the way!
Renaissance Jewish philosophy?
I was disappointed to hear that you are going to end Renaissance philosophy with Galileo. What about Maharal of Prague, a Jewish Renaissance philosopher?
In reply to Renaissance Jewish philosophy? by Aviva
Maharal of Prague
Oops, I had never heard of him to be honest! But you’re right, he looks like someone I should have covered, maybe all the way back in episode 343. I’m surprised this is the first time I come across the name (thanks to you), because he does look rather significant. I’ll make a note to refer back to him when I do the Italian Enlightenment.
In reply to Maharal of Prague by Peter Adamson
Bohemian Italy
I think that makes sense actually; even if Maharal never set foot in Italy himself, his life's work is a reaction to trends among Italian Jewish scholars (particularly Azariah de Rossi).
In reply to Maharal of Prague by Peter Adamson
Jewish philosophy
Got it, I had just assumed you were saving the Jewish philosophy for the end. Now I'm looking forward to that episode in the Italian Enlightenment. There is also Chaim Vital and Lurianic Kabbalah, an important Renaissance departure from classical Kabbalah.
In reply to Jewish philosophy by Aviva
Jewish philosophy
Great thanks! I actually added that episode to the Italian Enlightenment series just thanks to your feedback so when it comes out you can take some responsibility for its existence - if you have any other tips let me know!
More Jewish philosophers
I don’t have any other tips for the Renaissance or early Enlightenment, but if you are considering the 18th century as well there are a lot of people. There is R Moshe Chaim Luzzato. Then there are Hasidic thinkers (the most famous include Ba’al Shem Tov, Maggid of Mezritch, Ba’al Hatanya, R Nachman of Breslov, but there are many more). Then there are mitnagdic thinkers (Vilna Gaon, Chaim of Volozhin). I hope there are multiple episodes on 18th c Jewish thought. It would be possible to do an entire podcast series on Hasidism alone!
In reply to More Jewish philosophers by Aviva
Jewish philosophers
Ok thanks! I guess the best place to do this will be in the Germany/Eastern Europe series, right?
Jewish philosophers!
I think so!
Italy
The best place to cover Hasidim and mitnagdim, that is, would be Eastern Europe, but Maharal was Czech, Lurianic kabbalah started in the Ottoman Empire, and Luzzato--the most important post-Vital, pre-Hasidic proponent of Lurianic kabbalah--was Italian.
European Jewish sorta-Philosophers
Wow, I just decided to check back on these comments and was so excited to see Peter take Aviva's suggestion about Maharal! There was a lot of fascinating philosophical ferment(TM) among European Jews of the 16th-18th centuries, but they didn't think of themselves as doing "philosophy" as such and so their works have been less legible to scholars (but luckily that's been improving in the past decades). For example, the foremost Jewish legal writer of 16th century Europe was Rabbi Moses Isserles of Krakow, who focused mainly on Jewish law but also composed a hefty treatise on the (Biblical, and defunct) sacrificial laws which blends Maimonidean philosophy with kabbalistic teachings. He also wrote an allegorical-philosophical commentary on the Book of Esther. (But he didn't work a mill as far as I know, sorry). There are dozens more figures like this; I'd suggest talking to someone in the field such as Adam Shear at U of Pittsburgh or David Ruderman at Penn if he's still around
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