Epicurean Traces in the Thought of Lorenzo Valla

Abstract

In his dialogue entitled De vero bono, Lorenzo Valla questions the admiration of pagan moral principles by his contemporaries. For this purpose he presents an Epicurean speaker who defends voluptas as opposed to the stoic praise of honestas. In recent decades critics have emphasized the fact that Valla’s knowledge of Epicureanism was very limited when he wrote this work in 1431, and that its purpose was not to defend the principles of this philosophical school, but to use them as a means to achieve his objective of underestimating the importance of pagan ethics in relation to the Christian life. However, an analysis of those points where the De vero bono in fact approaches Epicurean thesis and how some of the ideas presented there are continued in his Dialecticae disputationes and in his Apologia show that there were aspects of his work inspired by a positive view of the philosopher of Samos.