About

Cecilia Muratori received her PhD in the History of Philosophy (Urbino and Jena) with a thesis on Hegel’s interpretation of Jacob Böhme’s mysticism. From 2009 to 2013 she was Research Fellow at LMU München, and junior member of LMU’s Center for Advanced Studies (CAS), working on a project entitled The Debate on the Soul of Animals in Renaissance Philosophy. After a year spent as Ahmanson Fellow at Villa I Tatti – The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, and fellowships at Forschungsbibliothek Gotha and the Warburg Institute, she joined the School of Modern Languages and Cultures as Research Fellow in Italian Studies (ERC project Aristotelianism in the Italian Vernacular) in May 2015.

She is a co-curator of two exhibitions for the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden:

"Light in Darkness: The Mystical Philosophy of Jacob Böhme", Coventry Cathedral, 30th April- 5th July 2019

"All in All: The Conceptual World of the Mystical Philosopher Jacob Boehme" at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen

Dresden (26 August - 19 November 2017):

https://gruenes-gewoelbe.skd.museum/ausstellungen/alles-in-allem

http://www.zeit.de/2017/37/jacob-boehme-schlosskapelle-residenzschloss-dresden

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Research interests

I work on three main conceptual areas:
• The role of mysticism in philosophical speculation, especially in the case of the German mystical philosopher Jacob Böhme (1575-1624) and his varied philosophical, religious and literary afterlives.
• The intersection of philosophical and anthropological questions in defining the border between human and animal natures, bridging the historiographical gap between pre- and post-Cartesian debates on human and animal natures.
• The history of animal ethics, and especially the impact of philosophical assumptions about the soul of animals on the development of ethical approaches.

Selected publications

• Renaissance Vegetarianism: The Philosophical Afterlives of Porphyry's On Abstinence (Oxford: Legenda, [2020])

• Light ind Darkness: The Mystical Philosophy of Jacob Böhme, exhibition catalogue ed. with Claudia Brink and Lucinda Martin (Dresden: Sandstein 2019)
• The First German Philosopher: The Mysticism of Jakob Böhme as Interpreted by Hegel (Dordrecht: Springer, 2016) Series “International Archives of the History of Ideas” [326 pages; translation of 'Il primo filosofo tedesco’. Il misticismo di Jakob Böhme nell’interpretazione hegeliana (Pisa: ETS, 2012)]
• Early Modern Philosophers and the Renaissance Legacy, ed. by Cecilia Muratori and Gianni Paganini (Dordrecht: Springer, 2016). Series “International Archives of the History of Ideas”
• Ethical Perspectives on Animals in the Renaissance and Early Modern Period, ed. by Cecilia Muratori and Burkhard Dohm (Galluzzo: SISMEL, 2013). Series: Micrologus’ Library, 55
• The Animal Soul and the Human Mind: Renaissance Debates, ed. by Cecilia Muratori (Pisa-Rome: Fabrizio Serra. Series: Supplementi of Bruniana & Campanelliana [Studi, 15])

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Qualifications

PhD: Friedrich-Schiller Universität Jena and Università degli Studi di Urbino (double degree)
BA and MA: Università degli Studi di Urbino (MA research stay at Freie Universität Berlin – ERASMUS programme)