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Abravanel, Leon

Born : Uncertain Date, Around 1458–1470, Lisbon (Portugal)

Died : Between 1521 and 1535, Place Unknown, Presumptively, in Italy

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Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy
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Abstract

Leon Abravanel, born Judah Abravanel and known as Leone Ebreo, was a Renaissance Jewish philosopher, author of the Dialoghi d’amore. Many aspects of Judah’s life and the publication of the Dialoghi remain to this day obscure. Composed of philosophical allegories and metaphors, on one side, and mythological and hermetic images, on the other, the Dialoghi is a dialogue on love between two characters, a man and a woman, Filone and Sofia, which deals with the concepts of love and desire, the idea of a love circle, and the issue of the soul’s return to God. Leone’s Dialoghi can be considered as the product of the mosaic-like cultural milieu of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy, an original philosophical discussion on love, in which Neoplatonic elements join with Aristotelian and Jewish features.

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References

Primary Literature

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Correspondence to Maria Vittoria Comacchi .

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Comacchi, M.V. (2020). Abravanel, Leon. In: Sgarbi, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_775-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_775-1

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