A NOTE ON THE TEXT

Abstract

Socrate overo dell’humano sapere (“Socrates, Or On Human Knowledge”) was first published in Venice in 1651. Few copies of the original printing have survived and no other editions of the work are known before the twenty-first century, when the new edition of Simone Luzzatto’s vernacular works made by Giuseppe Veltri was published by Bompiani in Milan in 2013. The present bilingual edition provides the very first English translation of Socrate and includes the vernacular text, which has been slightly improved by a formal and lexical review. However, the quotations from the classical and medieval authors are as they appear in Luzzatto's text, with the aim to support further research on his sources. The original pagination of the 1651 edition has been marked by vertical lines in the vernacular text. In the English translation, occasional further punctuation was introduced. This English translation is based on the text published by Giuseppe Veltri in Simone Luzzatto, Scritti politici e filosofici di un ebreo scettico nella Venezia del Seicento (2013). The translation presented a great challenge for the editors and translators due to its highly demanding philosophical issues and the complex syntax with which Luzzatto decided to treat and deliver them; indeed, this essay is abundant in Latinisms and Venetian dialectical expressions as well as indirect quotations, all fundamentally harmonised using a Latin sentence structure. For this reason, the translation was made possible by consulting specific dictionaries and lexicons such as the Dizionario del dialetto veneziano (Boerio 1983), the Lessico etimologico italiano (Pfister 1979–2012), the Oxford English–Italian Dictionary, and the Oxford English Dictionary Online. To facilitate the reading of the text, we have listed the numerous views and doctrines provided by Luzzatto in bullet points. The Latin translations of biblical passages were made by Luzzatto himself from the original Hebrew text. We have completed the references in the footnotes by quoting both the Hebrew Bible taken from the Jewish Publication Society (JPS) Tanakh Bible (http://www.breslov.com/bible/) and the Clementine Vulgate to allow the reader to compare it with Luzzatto’s translation. The passages from the Clementine Vulgate are taken from the Clementine Text Project, based on the editio typica published by the Typographus Vaticanus in 1598 under the title Biblia Sacra Vulgatæ editionis, Sixti V Pontificis Maximi jussu recognita et edita, with additions based on the edition made by Alberto Colunga and Laurentio Turrado (Madrid: La Editorial Católica, 1946, http:// vulsearch.sourceforge.net/html/). Unless otherwise indicated, English translations of quotations from classical authors are taken from the Loeb Classical Library series. The reader will find the complete references in the bibliography. Other standard reference editions are: Francis Bacon. The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral. Edited by Michael Kiernan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000; The New Organon. Edited by Lisa Jardine