Lorenzo Valla
c. 1406–1457 · Renaissance Humanism · Known
Valla was an Italian Renaissance humanist and philologist who turned a mastery of classical Latin into a weapon against the schoolmen. He proved the Donation of Constantine a forgery out of its own Latin, which used words nobody had coined when the document claimed to have been written. He named the highest good the pleasure of enjoying God, a Christian hedonism. In his Dialectical Disputations he cut Aristotle's ten categories down to three.
Signature
The position Valla is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Universals
- leans Realism
- Highest Good
- Pleasure / Union with God
Positions on the 1 axes the sources answer
- Universals
- leans Realism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Realism to Nominalism)
19 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Valla refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Pleasure / Union with God
What is the highest good? - Agency
- Libertarian Free Will
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Creation ex Nihilo
What is the origin of reality? - Language
- Conventional
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Death
- Judgement
What happens at death?