Campanella, Tommaso

Abstract

Tommaso Campanella (Stilo, Calabria, 1568– Paris, 1639) was one of the major philosophers of the late Renaissance. Known today mostly for his utopia, The City of the Sun (Città del Sole), he authored works covering many fields of inquiry, including natural philosophy, metaphysics, theology, ethics, politics, magic, and astrology. Campanella intended his encyclopedic project to serve as a basis for an overall reform of knowledge in the light of new discoveries, and a social reform based on the proper understanding of nature and its principles. Not long after joining the Order of Preachers (Dominicans), Campanella became disenchanted with the strict adherence to Aristotelian philosophy in the houses of study and turned to the works of Plato, the Neoplatonists, and natural philosophers. His first published work, Philosophia sensibus demonstrata (Naples, 1591), was a defense of Bernardino Telesio’s anti-Aristotelian natural philosophy. Campanella’s philosophical project is marked by the attempt to reconcile Telesio’s philosophy with Thomism, which he sought to purge from exclusively Aristotelian commitments. Such a stance drew the suspicion of his superiors and the Inquisition. As he travelled across Italy during the 1590s, he had his works confiscated several times and his writings were placed on the Index of Prohibited Books. He spent a time under arrest after being found guilty of suspicion of heresy and was forced to abjure his espousal of Telesio’s ideas. After being ordered to return to his native Calabria, he became involved in jurisdictional quarrels between local bishops and officials of the Viceroy of Naples, to the annoyance of the latter.When a revolt by local noblemen and clerics in Stilo was foiled, Campanella was accused of being its main inspiration and instigator through his prophetic and millenarian teachings. In his sermons, he denounced the Spanish Crown’s mistreatment of fellow citizens and foretold social and political reforms that would be brought about by the advent of a new era. [Excerpt from the Introduction]