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History of Philosophy
Italian Philosophy of Nature
by Turner, William (S.T.D.)
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This school is characterized by naturalism and a tendency towards
pantheism. Cardano (1501-1576), a Milanese physician, was the
first to formulate the principles of modern naturalism. These
principles were reduced to a system of speculative thought by the
Calabrian Bernardino Telesio (1508-1588), who is, therefore,
regarded as the founder of the school. In his work De Rerum Natura
juxta Propria Principia, he advocates the use of the empirical
method of investigating nature, and formulates a system according to
which the universe results from the combination of three principles,
mailer, heat, and cold. Patrizzi (1529-1597), in his Nova de
Universis Philosophia, combined the doctrines of Neo-Platonism with the
naturalism of Telesio, and thus imparted to the school its pantheistic
tendency. These pantheistic principles reached their logical
development in the full-blown systems of pantheism of Bruno and
Campanella.
GIORDANO BRUNO
Life. Giordano Bruno was born at Nola, in Campania, in the year
1548. At an early age he entered the order of St. Dominic, but his
distaste for Scholasticism and his enthusiasm for the writings of
Telesio developed before long a spirit of dissatisfaction with his
order and with the teachings of the Church. Discarding the garb of
religion, he wandered through Italy, France, England, and Germany, and
is said finally to have joined the reformed Church. Apparently,
however, he found Protestantism as distasteful as the religion he had
abandoned. Returning to Italy (1592), he was arrested by the
Inquisition at Venice, and was burned at the stake in Rome in the year
1600. His principal works are Della causa, principio, ed uno and
Del infinito universo e dei mondi. [1]
[1] Opere di Giordano Bruno Nolano (Leipzig, 1830). Other
editions by Tocco (Napless 1891) ann Wagner (Leipzig, 1829), etc.
DOCTRINES
Bruno's philosophy is a system of naturalistic pantheism: its
pivotal thoughts are the doctrine of the identity of God with the world
and the Copernican idea of the physical universe.
God, he teaches, is identical with the universe, for the universe is
infinite, and there cannot be two infinities. God is, therefore, the
sum of all being, and the phenomena, or accidental forms of being,
which exist, are merely the unfolding (explicatio) of the
immensity of God. He is the original matter of the universe (and
on this point Bruno cites the authority of David of Dinant), as well as
the primitive form, the world-soul, which vivifies the original
matter. Indeed these two, matter and form, not only interpenetrate each
other, but are absolutely identical. God is also the final cause of all
things; for to Him, the God-universe, all things are constantly
returning.
The universe is, therefore, essentially one: the
Aristotelian distinction between celestial and terrestrial matter can
no longer be maintained. The stars are part of our solar system, or are
themselves suns surrounded by planets and forming part of the
one great system which is the universe. It is in this portion of his
philosophy that Bruno makes use of the discoveries of Copernicus.
The universe is ruled by law: there is no place for human
freedom in this system of determinism. The soul is an emanation from
the Divine Universe, and all organisms are composed of living monads
each of which reflects all reality.
TOMMASO CAMPANELLA
Life. Tommaso Campanella was born in Calabria in the year 1568.
In 1583 he entered the order of St. Dominic. Arrested on suspicion of
conspiring against the Spanish rule, he was cast into a dungeon at
Naples. After spending twenty-seven years in prison he escaped to
Paris, where he died in 1639. His most important work is Universalis
Philosophia.
DOCTRINES
Campanella's philosophy is the resultant of various influences, chief
among which are the naturalism of Telesio, the Greek Pyrrhonism
restored by the humanists, and the enthusiasm for the study of nature
which resulted from the discoveries made by Copernicus and Galileo.
Campanella starts by inquiring into the conditions of knowledge. The
veracity of the external senses rests on the testimony of the inner
sense. On this inner sense rests also the belief in my own existence
and in the existence of God. The inner sense testifies, moreover, to
the existence of three functions in my own soul, -- power,
knowledge, and volition. By thinking away the limitations of
the power, knowledge, and volition, of which I am conscious, I arrive
at an idea of an Infinite Being possessed of omnipotence, infinite
wisdom, and infinite love. These three are, then, the
"pro-principles" of infinite being: they are also the pro-principles
of created being. For all creatures are endowed with life, feeling,
and desire: they all proceed from God and they desire to return to Him, as is evident from the
universality of the creature's dread of annihilation. This desire of
the creature to return to the Creator is a kind of religion, and so far
is atheism from being true that the most universal of all phenomena is
the religious tendency by which every created being proclaims the
existence of God. This thought is developed by Campanella in a treatise
entitled Atheismus Triumphatus.
In the Civitas Solis Campanella outlines his ideal scheme of
political government. The scheme is based on the idea of the divine
government of the world communicated through the papacy to a
world-monarchy and through this to the individual kingdoms, provinces,
and cities.
Historical Position. The Italian school of natural philosophy
resulted from the repudiation of Scholasticism by the humanists and the
inauguration, by scientific discoveries, of a new era of nature-study.
The extraordinary enthusiasm with which the contemporaries of
Copernicus and Galileo addressed themselves to the study of natural
phenomena is seen in the naturalistic pantheism of the Italian school
no less clearly than in the extravagance of the Paracelsists and others
who devoted themselves to the occult sciences and the practice of
magic. But whatever may be said of the occultists and magicians, it is
certain that the scientific discoveries would never have led to
naturalism and pantheism if the principles of Scholastic philosophy had
not fallen into discredit. Let us pass, therefore, to the study of the
scientific movement and its influence on Scholastic philosophy.
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