Brian Copenhaver holds the Udvar-Hazy Chair of Philosophy and History in the Department of Philosophy at UCLA.  Until June, 2003, he served as a Dean or a Provost for twenty-two years, fifteen of them in the University of California and, most recently, for ten years as Provost of UCLA’s College of Letters and Science.  He now directs UCLA’s Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Born and raised in Baltimore, Professor Copenhaver was educated at Loyola College (AB, 1964), Creighton University (MA, 1966) and the University of Kansas (Ph.D., 1970).  He was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Lyons in France, and, as a Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, he pursued post-doctoral studies at the Warburg Institute of the University of London (1975-6).  His previous academic and administrative appointments were at Western Washington University (1971-81), Oakland University (1981-88) and the University of California, Riverside (1988-93).  He married his wife, Kathleen, in 1965; they have two children, Rebecca and Gregory. 

Professor Copenhaver studies philosophy and science in late medieval and early modern Europe.  He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and past President of the Journal of the History of Philosophy.  He serves or has served on the board of this journal and on those of Renaissance Quarterly, Annals of Science, the Journal of the History of Ideas, Early Science and Medicine, the International Archives of the History of Ideas, and the I Tatti Renaissance Library.  His research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, the Medieval Academy of America and by a Fulbright Scholarship.  He has been the principal investigator on institutional grants awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation and the Hewlett Foundation.  Since 1969 Professor Copenhaver has published seven books and more than sixty articles, chapters and reviews, including:

Selected Publications

1. Symphorien Champier and the Reception of the Occultist Tradition in Renaissance France (Mouton, 1978)
2. A History of Western Philosophy, III:  Renaissance Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); with Charles Schmitt; a Japanese translation appeared in 2003; Greek and Rumanian translations are in progress)
3. Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in English Translation, with Notes and Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); a Spanish translation appeared in 2000
4. Polydore Vergil, On Discovery, ‘The I Tatti Renaissance Library’ (Harvard University Press, 2002)
5. ‘The Historiography of Discovery in the Renaissance: Polydore Vergil’s De inventoribus rerum I-III,’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 41 (1978)
6. ‘Jewish Theologies of Space in the Scientific Revolution:  Henry More, Joseph Raphson, Isaac Newton and their Predecessors,’ Annals of Science, 37 (1980)
7. ‘Scholastic Philosophy and Renaissance Magic in the De vita of Marsilio Ficino,’ Renaissance Quarterly, 37 (1984)
8. ‘Translation, Terminology and Style in Philosophical Discourse,’ in the Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. Charles Schmitt and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge University Press, 1987)
9. ‘Astrology and Magic,’ in the Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. Charles Schmitt and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge University Press, 1987)
10. ‘Hermes Trismegistus, Proclus and the Question of a Philosophy of Magic in the Renaissance,’ in Hermeticism and the Renaissance:  Intellectual History and the Occult in Early Modern Europe, ed. I. Merkel and A. Debus (Folger Books, 1988)
11. ‘Natural Magic, Hermetism and Occultism in Early Modern Science,’ in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, ed. D. Lindberg and R. Westman (Cambridge University Press, 1990)
12. ‘A Tale of Two Fishes:  Magical Objects in Natural History from Antiquity through the Scientific Revolution,’ Journal of the History of Ideas, 52 (1991)
13. ‘Did Science Have a Renaissance?’ Isis, 83 (1992)
14. ‘Hermes Theologus:  The Sienese Mercury and Ficino’s Hermetic Demons,’ in Humanity and Divinity in Renaissance and Reformation:  Essays in Honor of Charles Trinkaus, ed. John O’Malley et al. (E.J. Brill, 1993)
15. ‘Tommaso Campanella:  The Monarchy of the Messiah, Chapters 14-15,’ in Cambridge Translations of Renaissance Philosophical Texts, ed. Jill Kraye (Cambridge University Press, 1996)
16. ‘Lorenzo de’ Medici, Marsilio Ficino and the Domesticated Hermes,’ in Lorenzo il Magnifico e il suo mondo:  Atti di Covegni, ed. G.C. Garfagnini (Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, 1994)
17. ‘The Occultist Tradition and its Critics in Seventeenth Century Philosophy,’ in the Cambridge History of Seventeenth Century Philosophy, ed. M. Ayers and D. Garber (Cambridge University Press, 1998)
18. ‘Number, Shape and Meaning in Pico’s Christian Cabala:  The Upright Tsade, the Closed Mem and the Gaping Jaws of Azazel,’ in Renaissance Natural Philosophy and the Disciplines, ed. A. Grafton and N. Siraisi (MIT Press, 2000)
19. ‘The Renaissance,’ in The Columbia History of Western Philosophy, ed. R. Popkin (Columbia University Press, 1998)
20. ‘The Slums of Cosmopolis:  A Renaissance in the History of Philosophy?’ in Everything Connects: A Festschrift for Richard Popkin, ed. D. Katz (E.J. Brill, 1998)
21. ‘The Secret of Pico’s Oration: Cabala and Renaissance Philosophy,’ Midwest Studies in Philosophy,  26 (2002): 56-81.
22. ‘Magic and the Dignity of Man: De-Kanting Pico’s Oration,’ in The Italian Renaissance in the Twentieth Century, ‘Acts of an International Conference, Florence, Villa I Tatti, June 9-11, 1999, ed. A.J. Griego et al.’ (Florence, Olschki, 2002), pp. 295-320. A German version, ‘Magie und die Würde des Menschen: Pico’s Oratio vor und nach Kant,’ appears in Scientiae et artes: Die Vermittlung alten und neuen Wissens in Literatur, Kunst und Musik, ed. Barbara Mahlmann-Bauer (Wiesbaden: Harassowitz, 2004), I, 65-97.
23. ‘Chi scrisse l’Orazione di Pico?’ La Magia nell’Europa moderna, Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, 2-4 ottobre, 2003, in press
24. ‘Magic,’ in Cambridge History of Early Modern Science, ed. L. Daston and K. Park, in press

Works in Progress

1. ‘Valla our Contemporary: Philosophy and Philology,’ on Lorenzo Valla’s philosophy of language for an issue of the Journal of the History of Ideas in honor of Salvatore Camporeale.
2. ‘The Strange Italian Voyage of Thomas Reid,’ a joint project with Rebecca Copenhaver on Reid’s remarkable reception in Italy in the first half of the nineteenth century: Galluppi, Rosmini, Mamiani, Gioberti and Spaventa.
3. Magia, Cabala, Hermetica: Studies in Philosophy, Science and Philology, a collection of twenty articles, chapters and essay reviews on these topics written between 1977 and 2002, to be published by the Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento in Florence.
4. From Kant to Croce: Modern Philosophy in Italy.  An anthology of short synthetic works by the major Italian philosophers from 1800 to 1950:  Galluppi, Rosmini, Mamiani, Gioberti, Spaventa, Villari, Fiorentino, De Sanctis, Labriola, Croce, Gentile and Gramsci; to be published by the University of Toronto Press.
5. Pico’s Oration and 900 Conclusions.  A joint project with Michael Allen and Calvin Normore for Harvard’s I Tatti series.  It will be the first edition of these texts to present a through account of Pico’s sources and to show his deep commitment to Cabala.
6. Cabala: Three Introductions.  A joint project with Moshe Idel and Fabrizio Lelli and another volume for the I Tatti series, translating and editing three introductions to Cabala from late Quattrocento Italy.
7. Magic and the Dignity of Man: Pico’s Oration in Cultural Memory.  A history of Pico’s reputation since 1486 as author of the Oration on the Dignity of Man. 
8. Lorenzo Valla, Dialectical Disputations.  A joint project with Howie Wettstein and yet another I Tatti venture.  Valla’s text is the most important renaissance work on philosophy of language and arguably the best piece of technical philosophy written between Occam and Descartes, but there is no English version.