A Story in the History of Scholarship: The Rediscovery of Tommaso Campanella

Abstract

The attempt at reconciling Renaissance natural philosophy with the new foundations for the entire encyclopaedia of knowledge and a radical reform of society may be considered as the most original aspect of the philosophical project of Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639). This contribution offers a panorama of recent editions prepared and published by the author over the last few years. Ernst starts her narrative with the discovery of the manuscript Italian version of the Ateismo trionfato, which had long been thought lost, and proceeds to organise the other recent editions in three thematic nuclei. The first part focuses on autobiographical elements which, though interspersed across Campanella’s entire corpus, are particularly present in the De libris propriis syntagma, which he wrote at the request of Gabriel Naudé, and in the Lettere, which bear witness to his links with scholars of the time such as Galileo, Mersenne, Fabri de Peiresc and Gassendi. Natural philosophy constitutes the second thematic nucleus. Campanella outlines an image of nature as a unified body endowed with life and sensation, a ‘great and perfect animal’. Although this image is very different from Galileo’s view of nature as a book written in mathematical characters, this did not stop Campanella from writing the courageous Apologia pro Galileo (1616). In this work the Calabrian philosopher denounces the uncalled for dogmatic value accorded to Aristotelian philosophy and lucidly redefines the relations between theology, philosophy and science, with a view of defending the scientist’s right to read the book of nature free from any principle of authority. The last part of the chapter discusses Campanella’s ethical and political thought, the richest aspect of his philosophical reflection which is articulated in many of his diverse works.