The Vices of Learning

In The Vices of Learning: Morality and Knowledge at Early Modern Universities, Sari Kivistö examines scholarly vices in the late Baroque and early Enlightenment periods. Moral criticism of the learned was a favourite theme of Latin dissertations, treatises and satires written in Germany ca. 1670–1730. Works on scholarly pride, logomachy, curiosity and other vices kept the presses running at German Protestant universities as well as farther north. Kivistö shows how scholars constructed fame and how the process involved various means of producing celebrity. The book industry, plagiarism and impressive titles were all labelled dishonest means of advancing a career. In The Vices of Learning Kivistö argues that scholarly ethics was an essential part of the early modern intellectual framework.

Sari Kivistö, Ph.D. (2002, Helsinki), Docent of Comparative Literature, works as an Academy of Finland Research Fellow and Deputy Director at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. Kivistö has published widely on satire and Neo-Latin literature (e.g., Medical Analogy in Latin Satire, 2009).

"...For anyone interested to learn why so many philosophers ended up drowning or why scholars (still) fight each other over grammatical trivialities; for all eager to learn to recognize the symptoms of literary Machiavellism or the potential atheism of curiosity; for all readers willing to learn more
about the alcholism, food abstention or smoke addictions of smelly university professors, or the furious dogs, vulpine characters and bibliomaniacs
who have always populated our biotope, this monograph makes not only good bed-time reading, but has also a significant new contribution to make to the history of knowledge."
Dirk van Miert in Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 128:2 (2015)

"...Kivistö has produced an interesting and carefully organized monograph that includes appendixes. ...The book lacks examples of funny satires, because the critics took their task seriously, as does Kivistö."
Paul F. Grendler in Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 68, No. 3 (Fall 2015), pp. 1021-1022