Aristotle for Dummies
DOLCE, Lodovico. Somma della filosofia d’Aristotele, e prima della dialettica. Venice: Giovanni Battista, & Marchio Sessa, & fratelli. [1565.]
Two parts in one volume, 8vo. Contemporary limp vellum, title in ink to spine; ff. [4], 132; 104, [4, with final blank], bound without final blank; woodcut printer’s device to titles, 4 large in-text woodcuts (2 showing a celestial sphere, 2 a mnemonic diagram of the head), woodcut initials and headpieces; binding a little soiled, a few tiny wormholes to covers, endpapers renewed; light, variable spotting and marginal staining, occasional small worm tracks to outer margins of the first two leaves in gatherings i-q and K–N (far from printed area, and likely incurred before sheets were folded and bound), small paper flaw to final leaf (not touching text), remains of glue to verso final blank; overall a very good copy.
First edition of this Italian compendium of Aristotle’s works: an early attempt to make ancient thought accessible to non-specialist readerships.
Born in Venice into an aristocratic but impoverished family, Lodovico Dolce (1508-1568) is best remembered for his Dialogo della pittura, a direct response to Vasari’s artist biographies which initially overlooked Venetian painters. Dolce devoted his life to a wide range of literary activity: translations, adaptations, prefaces, editorial projects, and original works, including dialogues and plays. Among his many editorial efforts were translations and popularisations of classical authors such as Cicero, Horace, and Virgil; as well as critical editions of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, and works by contemporaries such as Ariosto, Bembo, and Castiglione. The Somma della filosofia d’Aristotele reflects Dolce’s project of making key classical texts accessible to a wider, non-specialist readership.
The Somma covers Aristotle’s logic, practical philosophy (ethics, economics, politics), and natural philosophy. It stands as a compelling example of how Renaissance authors and publishers adapted complex philosophical material for broader consumption. As a seasoned poligrafo – a writer engaged across genres and subjects for a commercial readership – Dolce was keenly aware of the diverse audiences his work might reach. In his preface, he concedes that scholars will “show their displeasure that a philosopher of so much esteem is being made familiar to the common people”. Yet, he continued, “reducing good authors to a compendium is of very great profit to students, because in large volumes one’s memory gets lost … Therefore it may be of no small profit to see the great books of Aristotle recast in convenient brevity … reduced in such form, they can be very easy for everyone” (transl. from Terpening).
EDIT16 17386; not in Adams. See Allen, “Addressing the Reader: Lodovico Dolce’s Somma della filosofia d’Aristotele and the Audience for Vernacular Philosophy in Sixteenth-Century Italy” (2016); Terpening, Lodovico Dolce, Renaissance Man of Letters (1997).
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