This book presents a new interpretation of the two most innovative renaissance works on the use of language, Lorenzo Valla's Repastinatio dialecticae et philosophiae (1439) and Rudolph Agricola's De inventione dialectica (1479). Mack attempts to find a path through the controversies which have recently raged around Valla's work, acknowledging the originality and skill of his attack on Aristotelian logic metaphysics, but recognizing the inconsistency (and even the Aristotelianism) of his alternative system. Mack provides the first full commentary on Agricola's work in modern...