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Philosophemes in the First Book of De Differentiis Verborum of Isidore of Seville
Abstract
Because of the paucity of purely philosophical texts produced during the early Middle Ages, the history of philosophy is forced to look for philosophy in texts actually belonging to other branches of thought. One example is that of Isidore of Seville (560636). Isidore was one of the foremost compilers of encyclopedia-like knowledge of his time. The author analyses Isidore's De Differentiis Verborum, a work which is known usually as a contribution to the history of philology. Its encyclopedia-like content was continued and perfected in Isidore's later Etymologiae. In this way, the author's discussion of the De Differentiis has bearing also on the study of the Etymologiae, Isidore's most influential work. The author discusses isidore's work from a philosophical point of view and his intention is to show which philosophical ideas were present in Isidore's work. On the one hand, it would seem that the philosophemes of the Stoics indirectly influenced Isidore's content and method. On the other hand it is possible to differentiate several ways in which various philosophical ideas were actually present: 1) the rudiments of philosophical ideas in the lemmas which refer to the domain of grammar; 2) isolated philosophemes in the framework of single lemmas which have usually been lifted from patristic texts but which were not further developed by Isidore; 3) philosophemes which were further creatively developed within the framework of thematic groups of lemmas.
Keywords
Isidore of Seville, Cicero, Augustine, Jerome, Stoic Tradition, The First Book of the De Differentiis, differantiae
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