Giordano Bruno

Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) was a philosopher in his own right. However, he was famous through the centuries due to his execution as a heretic. His pronouncements against teachings of the Catholic Church, his defence of the cosmology of Nicholas Copernicus, and his provocative personality, all this made him a paradigmatic figure of modernity. Bruno’s way of philosophizing is not looking for outright solutions but rather for the depth of the problems; he knows his predecessors and their strategies as well as their weaknesses, which he exposes satirically. This introduction helps to identify the original thought of Bruno who proudly said about himself: “Philosophy is my profession!” His major achievements concern the creativity of the human mind studied through the theory of memory, the infinity of the world, and the discovery of atomism for modernity. He never held a permanent office within or without the academic world. Therefore, the way of thinking of this “Knight Errant of Philosophy” will be presented along the stations of his journey through Western Europe.
Contents
Editorial Foreword
Foreword
Acknowledgement
Pleasant Campania: Education Before and In the Convent
Fleeing into Exile—Northern Italy, Geneva, Toulouse: Astronomy as a Means of Earning a Living
Paris: The Power of Memory
Off to London: Satire, Metaphysics, and Ethics in Italian
God Is Not Idle: Infinite Possibilities and Infinite Reality
Religion and Ethics for the People and the Hero
Return to Paris: Challenging Mathematics and Aristotelianism
“Houses of Wisdom” in Germany: History, Magic, and Atomism
Off to Venice: The Trial of the Heretic
Afterlife: From Heretic to Hermeticist
Chronology
Select Bibliography
About the Author
Index

Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) was a philosopher in his own right. However, he was famous through the centuries due to his execution as a heretic. His pronouncements against teachings of the Catholic Church, his defence of the cosmology of Nicholas Copernicus, and his provocative personality, all this made him a paradigmatic figure of modernity. Bruno’s way of philosophizing is not looking for outright solutions but rather for the depth of the problems; he knows his predecessors and their strategies as well as their weaknesses, which he exposes satirically. This introduction helps to identify the original thought of Bruno who proudly said about himself: “Philosophy is my profession!” His major achievements concern the creativity of the human mind studied through the theory of memory, the infinity of the world, and the discovery of atomism for modernity. He never held a permanent office within or without the academic world. Therefore, the way of thinking of this “Knight Errant of Philosophy” will be presented along the stations of his journey through Western Europe.
Contents
Editorial Foreword
Foreword
Acknowledgement
Pleasant Campania: Education Before and In the Convent
Fleeing into Exile—Northern Italy, Geneva, Toulouse: Astronomy as a Means of Earning a Living
Paris: The Power of Memory
Off to London: Satire, Metaphysics, and Ethics in Italian
God Is Not Idle: Infinite Possibilities and Infinite Reality
Religion and Ethics for the People and the Hero
Return to Paris: Challenging Mathematics and Aristotelianism
“Houses of Wisdom” in Germany: History, Magic, and Atomism
Off to Venice: The Trial of the Heretic
Afterlife: From Heretic to Hermeticist
Chronology
Select Bibliography
About the Author
Index

This article traces the radical devaluation of the phantasm throughout Western civilization. With the help of Nietzsche's critical perspective, I develop a notion of hystery as the series of collective traumas repeated in each individual's growth, whereby the phantasm changes value from psychosomatic interface, to evil incarnate, to disease of learning. Beginning with the Classical episteme represented by Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, then moving up through the Christian era, I focus primarily on Enlightenment thinkers such as Hobbes and Bacon, who represent the last nail in the imagination's coffin. The next section examines Nietzsche's rediscovery of the phantasm and the theoretical contributions of post-structuralism that follow in Nietzsche's wake. Juxtaposing Bataille and Deleuze, I look at Deleuze's early enthusiasm and ultimate betrayal of the phantasm, and I posit Bataille's emphasis on the affective force of the mythological phantasm as an insurrection to reclaim our experience and life along with it. The article ends with speculation, offering Bruno's art of memory as an ontic and epistemic alternative to dominant Western hystery, other pasts opening to other possible futures, an ungrounding that paradoxically leads to a restoration of the human house in a re-enchanted cosmos.

Giordano Bruno and the Geometry of Language brings to the fore a sixteenth-century philosopher's role in early modern Europe as a bridge between science and literature, or more specifically, between the spatial paradigm of geometry and that of language. Arielle Saiber examines how, to invite what Bruno believed to be an infinite universe–its qualities and vicissitudes–into the world of language, Bruno forged a system of 'figurative' vocabularies: number, form, space, and word. This verbal and symbolic system in which geometric figures are seen to underlie rhetorical figures, is what Saiber calls 'geometric rhetoric.'

Through analysis of Bruno's writings, Saiber shows how Bruno's writing necessitates a crafting of space, and is, in essence, a lexicon of spatial concepts. This study constitutes an original contribution both to scholarship on Bruno and to the fields of early modern scientific and literary studies. It also addresses the broader question of what role geometry has in the formation of any language and literature of any place and time.

The "Belgian John Dee", Cornelius Gemma (1535-1578) was a son of the famous mathematician and cosmographer Gemma Frisius. He was a professor of medicine at the University of Louvain. Until recently he has been almost totally neglected by scholars, although he played an important role in the intellectual map of the second half of the sixteenth century. His main works, "De arte cyclognomica" (Antwerp, 1569) and "De naturae divinis characterismis" (Antwerp, 1575) are true "hidden gems" in early modern intellectual history. They encompasses the cluster of problems on medicine, astronomy, astrology, teratology, divination, prophecy, eschatology, encyclopaedism, art of memory, etc. and drew the particular attention of eminent minds of the time such as Guillaume Postel, Jean Bodin and Johannes Kepler. The present volume stems from the conference entirely devoted to Gemma (Ghent, 23 February 2007) organized by the Center for the History of Science (sarton.UGent.be) at Ghent University as part of its project "Reevaluation of the Sciences in the Low Countries of the Renaissance" (GOA 12.517.03). It furnishes the first substantial survey on this elusive figure through multidisciplinary approaches.


Contents

1. Cosmology and Astrology
- Fernand Hallyn, "A Poem on the Copernican System: Cornelius Gemma and his Cosmocritical Art"
- Germana Ernst, "Il linguaggio universale dei cieli: Cornelio Gemma, Tycho Brahe, Tommaso Campanella"
- Dario Tessicini, "Vere Gemmeum est?: Cornelio Gemma e la stella nuova del 1572"

2. Medicine and Prodigy
- Jean Céard, "La notion de prodige selon Cornelius Gemma"
- Concetta Pennuto, "Cornelius Gemma et l'épidémie de 1574"
- Hiro Hirai, "«Prisca Theologia» and Neoplatonic Reading of Hippocrates in Fernel, Cardano and Gemma" .

3. Method and Sapientia
- Stephen Clucas, "Cornelius Gemma and Universal Method"
- Thomas Leinkauf, "Cornelius Gemma, Philosophie und Methode: Eine Analyse des ersten Buches der Ars cyclognomica"




This volume has been reviewed by

- Olivia Catanorchi & Cinzia Tozzini, Bruniana & Campanelliana 15 (2009), 222-23.
- Patrick Boner, Renaissance Quarterly 63 (2010), 234-36.
- Miguel A. Granada, Studium 3 (2010), 47-48.
- Steven Vanden Broecke, Isis 102 (2011), 558-59.

Felieton opisuje przypadki tak silnej fascynacji nauką, że nawet śmierć nie mogła jej przerwać. Pierwszy przypadek dotyczy włoskiego filozofa Giordano Bruno, który nie chciał się wyrzec naukowej wizji Wszechświata zgodnej z teorią Kopernika, w wyniku czego został 17.2.1600 spalony na stosie. Drugi przykład dotyczy francuskiego chemika Antoniego Lavoisiera, który skazany na śmierć przez zgilotynowanie postanowił przekazać ważną wiadomość naukową ze świata umarłych do świata żywych - i dokonał tego!

Relazione al Convegno TRASFORMAZIONE DELL'ESISTENTE - ARTE & SCIENZA  a cura di  Francesco Borruso con il patrocinio del MUSIS, Museo della Scienza e dell'Informazione Scientifica. I nomi di Caravaggio e di Giordano Bruno vengono accostati quali protagonisti delle correnti culturali e artistiche, che lo storico Rosario Villari definisce "Ultime resistenze interne all'indirizzo dell Controriforma".

Why did Giordano Bruno let himself be led to the stake by the Holy Office on 17 February 1600? A new, compelling and documented reconstruction that reopens one of the most celebrated court cases in our history.

Perché Giordano Bruno si lasciò condurre al rogo dal Sant’Officio il 17 febbraio 1600? Una nuova, avvincente e documentata ricostruzione che riapre uno dei casi giudiziari più celebri della nostra storia.

William Shakespeare had a deep understanding of many things. Among them, astronomy. One of the sources of this knowledge was the work of Giordano Bruno who was far more present in England during this period than he is given credit for. Bruno's work was readily available to Shakespeare as part a library that is known to have been very influential to the Bard. Shakespeare not only knew cosmological theory, both old and new, but he should be counted as a forward thinker in the subject.

Il tema centrale di questa tesi è il rapporto tra storiografia e conoscenza delle fonti nelle
ricostruzioni della vicenda processuale di Giordano Bruno compiute da autori italiani.
Nell’affrontare quest’argomento, si è operata una macro-divisione della tesi in due parti: la
prima riassume la vita e le vicissitudini del filosofo nolano, la seconda si occupa
prettamente dei documenti processuali bruniani.
Alla base di questo testo vi è la curiosità ispirata dal mito di Giordano Bruno. Una
figura che ha da sempre diviso in due posizioni fortemente antitetiche che chiunque,
nell’affrontare questa personalità di non facile interpretazione, ha riscontrato. Da una parte
troviamo gli storici filo-cattolici, che hanno sempre parlato del nolano come di un eretico,
apostata, irreligioso e blasfemo, pronti a difendere l’operato dell’Inquisizione giustificato
in chiave storicistica; essi, inoltre, hanno dato una valutazione negativa della filosofia
bruniana, che hanno considerato caotica, confusa e di difficile comprensione. Dall’altra
parte troviamo invece gli anticlericali, che hanno elevato Bruno sia a eroe della libertà del
pensiero laico, sia a martire giustiziato da un’istituzione spietata che non aveva, al tempo,
compreso e accettato lo sviluppo della società che avrebbe prodotto inevitabili
cambiamenti culturali e (a partire dall’avanzamento scientifico e il progressivo sostituirsi
della scienza con la religione come portatrice della verità). La tesi è nata da questa
curiosità e si è basata su indagini più equilibrate condotte da studiosi, soprattutto storici e
giuristi, che affrontarono, e tutt’oggi affrontano, il caso Bruno senza attribuire
necessariamente al nolano delle caratteristiche etico-morali, politiche, religiose e culturali
che non gli appartenevano e soffermandosi sul valore della sua personalità all’interno del
contesto storico e culturale dell’epoca.

Shakespeare's works were philosophically arrayed against "the Western symbolic". He was opposed to Christianity, monotheism, and he generally liked and adopted Giordano Bruno's heretical pantheistic ideas. In this paper, I especially explore how Ophelia is a symbol of oppressed pantheistic spirituality. She symbolizes material, the world, the universe, women, the Goddess, non-humans, and other categories not privileged in the "Western symbolic". Later I look at "As You Like It" and how it also encodes a goddess figure and expresses and celebrates some pantheistic views.

Giordanon Bruno’s dialogue Cabala del cavallo pegaseo, unmistakably
a satire and satirical appendix to the complex mockery of religion in the
Spaccio de la bestia trionfante, plays with a large number of religious and quasi-theological patterns that were more or less acceptable during the Renaissance: the most obvious is the Hebrew Kabbalah.  Furthermore, it is the major source of Bruno’s allegorical use of the asino. However, one serious theme of the work is the notion of the soul, played out in the Pythagorean motif of the transmigration of the souls. It is indicative that Bruno deliberately misspells metempsicosi as metamfisicosi: re-en-soul-ment turns into re-physical-isation.

The author explores the affinity between the " philosophy of theatre " and " theatricality of philosophy " of Giordano Bruno, and the contemporary understanding of the links between theatre and philosophy in the 20 th and 21 st century. The staging of Bruno's Candlebearer by Ljubomir Draškić in 1991/1992, in Belgrade' s " Atelje 212 " theatre, closely related to the Italian tradition of the 20 th century, is put against productions made at the beginning of the 21 st century, in order to " excavate " various types of mediatic presentations of Bruno's philosophy and their functioning in the modern theatre. There is a strong relation to be established between the theatrical aspect of Giordano Bruno's philosophy on one side, and theatre practices of the 20 th and 21 st centuries and their use of new media on the other. It has to be viewed as a form of translation in order to explore the mutual dependence of different types of media involved in the philosophical and the linguistic experiment that Bruno's philosophy offers. I started by researching Bruno's relation to the new media of his own time – a printed book, a revolutionised theatre: just like the book a century earlier, in 16 th century, the theatre was going through a change that made it into a new media – one that Bruno actively used as a tool in his work (Mančić 2015: 58-64, 102-123).This research lead to a logical next step: research of Bruno's works in the context of the 1 T h i s p a p e r i s a r e s u l t o f r e s e a r c h conducted on the Project " Cultural Theories of Literature and Serbian Literary Criticism " (178013) financed by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of Republic of Serbia. 2 aleksandra.mancic@gmail.com Aleksandra Mančić

Il Grande Oriente d’Italia, rifondato nel 1859, ebbe fra i suoi elementi identitari un viscerale anticlericalismo. Al centro del suo impegno nella società civile vi fu la costante mobilitazione per limitare l’influenza della Chiesa cattolica nella sfera pubblica, per difendere la laicità dello Stato e per propagandare i valori del progresso e della scienza contro ogni forma di oscurantismo. Per svolgere questa sua attività la massoneria non esitò a utilizzare figure e simboli del passato che potessero incarnare questi valori. Oltre a personaggi come Giordano Bruno, Savonarola, Tommaso Campanella e a innumerevoli scienziati ed eretici, spesso perseguitati dalla Chiesa, la massoneria esaltò la biografia e il mito di Galileo facendone un emblema del suo universo ideale. A Galileo fin dai primi anni dopo l’Unità furono intitolate alcune logge e gli furono dedicati articoli su riviste e giornali massonici. Il Grande Oriente prese poi parte ad alcune manifestazioni pubbliche in suo onore, come quelle svoltesi a Pisa nel 1897 e nel 1901, e altre ne organizzò per proprio conto.
La relazione intende ricostruire queste vicende inquadrandole nel più generale contesto del protagonismo pubblico della massoneria italiana fra Otto e Novecento e all’interno delle sue battaglie per la laicizzazione e modernizzazione dello Stato.

Recensione a Ioan Petru Culianu, Iocari serio. Scienza e arte nel pensiero del Rinascimento. Edizioni Lindau, Torino, 2017;

pubblicata su Axis Mundi:
https://axismundi.blog/2018/01/25/i-p-culianu-gioco-e-magia-nel-rinascimento/

e sul Nuovo Giornale di Filosofia della Religione:
https://www.filosofiadellareligione.it/index.php/2-primo-piano/97-ioan-petru-culianu-iocari-serio-scienza-e-arte-nel-pensiero-del-rinascimento

Bu çalışmanı temel amacı, taşıyıcı madde kavrayışının Aristoteles’ten Bruno’ya dek nasıl bir yol izlemiş olduğunu ortaya koymaktır. Bu amaç doğrultusunda ilkin, Aristoteles’in ontolojisinde madde ve nous’un nasıl ele alındığı açığa çıkartılacaktır. Bunun ardından, Plotinos’un madde ve nous’u ne bakımdan Aristoteles’in çizdiği çerçevenin dışına çıkacak şekilde yorumladığından ve bu yorumun da, Ortaçağ’a, maddeyi tümüyle negatif ve nous’u ise yüce bir unsur olarak değerlendirme mirasını nasıl bırakmış olduğundan bahsedilecektir. İbn Sînâ ise, kendinde barınan Yeni Platoncu öğeler dolayısıyla, kendi özgün madde kavrayışını bütünlüklü bir anlatıya dönüştürerek geleneğin kabuğunu parçalayamamış olan, fakat Aristotelesçi pozitif madde kavrayışının tekrar doğmasını sağlayarak, Bruno’ya doğru ilerleyen maddeci hattı genişleten bir figür olarak değerlendirilecektir. Daha sonra ise, Aquinas, Plotinos’un yarattığı geleneğe bağlı kalarak ilerleyen, nous’u öte dünya tiniyle özdeşleştirmeyi deneyen dizgesiyle de, İbn Sînâ’yla birlikte yavaş yavaş sesini yükseltmeye başlamış olan maddeci hattı bastıran bir figür olarak ele alınacaktır. Son olarak da, Bruno’nun ve onun kendine özgü madde kavrayışı temelinde yükselen evrenin sonsuzluğu fikrinin, nasıl olup da geleneğin ablukasını parçalayarak düşünceyi euporia’ya ulaştırmayı başarmış olan bir Yeni olarak belirebildiği ortaya konulacaktır.

L’art. 16 della Dichiarazione dei diritti dell’uomo e del cittadino del 26 agosto 1789 afferma: «Una società, nella quale la garanzia dei diritti non sia assicurata e la separazione dei poteri fissata, non ha una Costituzione». Non per questo la Rivoluzione francese riuscì a garantirli, essendo priva di un organismo, indipendente dalle maggioranze temporanee e provvisorie, che potesse impedire abusi e oppressione da parte di tali maggioranze. Secondo i giacobini, che seguivano le teorie illuministiche di Jean-Jacques Rousseau sulla «volontà generale», essa non poteva che manifestarsi attraverso l’Assemblea nazionale, intesa come corpo rappresentativo dell’intera cittadinanza.

I princìpi della Rivoluzione francese continuarono a diffondersi con Napoleone, seppure il condottiero corso sia stato autore di una svolta autoritaria, e la Restaurazione non riuscì ad impedirne la rivendicazione popolare, fino alla concessione di costituzioni ottriate ed al definitivo avvento delle democrazie parlamentari, che pongono la libertà di espressione tra i diritti fondamentali che lo stato ha l’obbligo di garantire.

Risalendo il fiume della storia ritroviamo sempre una contrapposizione tra diritto e forza o tra legge positiva (nomos) e legge della natura (physis), ma constatiamo che entrambe le prospettive e le pratiche del diritto sono efficaci, se è vero che gli esseri umani non hanno sino ad ora abbandonato né l’una né l’altra prospettiva argomentativa sull’origine e sul fondamento della legge. Ma da dove viene il diritto?

È possibile tentare di giustificare i diritti umani a partire da Dio, dalla Natura, dallo stato, persino dalla Storia o dalle consuetudini. Forse una più modesta argomentazione potrebbe individuare nei diritti costituzionalmente garantiti e protetti un rimedio, uno strumento di difesa nei confronti di abusi che si sono storicamente realizzati. Nulla di sacro o naturale, dunque, bensì una debole, ma imprescindibile, forma di difesa, la quale andrà a sua volta difesa contro i tentativi di utilizzarla per fini contrari a quelli per cui è stata codificata (come le più recenti dichiarazioni dei diritti non mancano di constatare).

The distinction between 'potentia Dei absoluta' and 'ordinata' is taken as an example of the more general investigation into God’s attributes performed again and again by theologians throughout the Middle Ages. Indeed, if the question of 'potentia Dei' also plays an important role in the history of Western legal and political thought, originally it starts as a theological and cosmological debate on God’s operative power. Could God have created more than only one world? And if – according to the common viewpoint throughout the Middle Ages – He has created only one world, could He still create another one? And also – on closer looks into the infinite good nature God is credited with by Christianity as well as into the problem of God’s envy ('invidia Dei'), first discussed by Plato in his Timaeus – is the only one world He is supposed to have created the best one He could have created? These were among the questions which confronted the mediaeval theologians of scholasticism, with special attention to the eleventh-century cosmological dispute between Abelard and Lombard and the very fundamental stance of Thomas Aquinas. With closer attention to the 'new' philosophy of Giordano Bruno and its legal and political implications, this volume aims to show in which way early-modern authors still resort to the investigation into God’s almightiness that Christian theologians conducted throughout the Middle Ages.