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The Paradox of Campanella
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
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What we know today of Campanella, largely thanks to the work of Italian researchers (L. Firpo, R. Amerio, A. Corsaro, G. di Napoli, and others), is important for our understanding of the intellectual situation that arose after the decline of the Renaissance—that situation that is best perceived and expressed in Hamlet. Of course, any historico-cultural collision is unique; but the logic of its development may contain elements of repetition. In connection with Campanula's instructive spiritual experience, I shall try to touch on the somewhat broader problem that arises whenever a person who aims to change his society comes into conflict with the dominant institutional and ideological forces of that society, and yet thinks and acts within the limits set by these very forces.
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- Copyright © 1973 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
1 A. Kh. Gorfunkel': Tommaso Campanella, Moscow, 1969.
2 Op. cit., p. 53.
3 L. Amabile: Fra Tommaso Campanella, la sua congiura, i suoi processi e la sua pazzia. Vol. I-III, Naples, 1882. Amabile's viewpoint is ingeniously supported by the Soviet writer A. E. Shtekli (Campanella, 3rd ed., Moscow, 1966).
4 R. Amerio: Campanella, Brescia, 1944, p. 219-220.
5 A. Kh. Gorfunkel', op. cit., p. 206.
6 This very modern approach is found in the critical writings of L. Firpo (Ricerche campanelliane, Firenze, 1947), A. Corsano (Tommaso Campanella, Bari, 1961), the Marxists A. Gorfunkel' and N. Badaloni (Tommaso Cam panella, Milano, 1965), the Catholics R. Amerio and G. Di Napoli (Tommaso Campanella, filosofo della restaurazione cattolica, Padova, 1947). No matter how the unity of Campanella's ideology is interpreted, this conceptual unity is now universally recognised.
7 V. P. Volgin. "Campanella's Communist Utopia." In Campanella. The City of the Sun, Moscow, 1954, pp. 8-9.
8 Further on I shall try to show that the mechanistic division of Cam panella's work into two complexes of ideas unexpectedly coincides with the methodology of R. Amerio's or G. Di Napoli's interpretations—though both emphatically denied any contradictoriness or heterogeneity in Campanella's thought. The coincidence consists in the fact that both approaches deprive Campanella's work of its internal paradox, so that it ceases to be a problem.
9 T. Campanella: Apologia di Galileo, a cura di L. Firpo. Torino, 1968, p. 140.
10 Op. cit., p. 159-60. Further quotations are from pp. 145-7, 155, 157, 189, 153, 161, 167.
11 L. Firpo, Ricerche…, pp. 36-37. Cf. the comments of A. Jacobelli-Isoldi in the collection Campanella e Vico (Padova, 1969, p. 39). Moreover, Catholic authors shift the centre of Campanella's interest into the field of theological problems, and find his system of thought neo-orthodox: "Having overcome the antithesis inherent in 15th-century thinking in this country, between the two opposed views, one of which devalued Catholic dogma in order to found a new philosophy, while the other denied the new philosophy in order to defend dogma, Campanella constructs a third, coherent and synthetic position, which does not expel Christian principles from the new philosophical con sciousness, but includes them in it" (R. Amerio, Campanella, 1947, p. 29). A. Corsano objects to Amerio's attempts to smooth over the tense hetero geneity of Campanella's "political theology" (Campanella, 1944, pp. 36, 50-54 et seq.). A. Kh. Gorfunkel', for his part, while admitting the fact of "con version" itself, lays great emphasis on the fact that even in his later works Cam panella's themes are largely incompatible with " the official line of the Catholic church," and denies that Campanella was "the philosopher of the Counter-reformation" (op. cit., pp. 71-92).
12 T. Campanella, Metaphysica. Pars I. Paris, 1638, p. 5.
13 L. Firpo, Ricerche…, pp. 36-37, 184.
14 A. Corsano, Tommaso Campanella, Milano - Messina, 1944, p. 86.
15 Campanella, Discorsi ai principi d'Italia, Torino, 1945, p. 151. This is a paraphrase of Campanella's hated Machiavelli, who wrote "All armed prophets have conquered, and the unarmed ones have perished."
16 R. Amerio, Campanella, 1947, p. 37. Cf. A Gorfunkel', op. cit., p. 90-91.
17 See A Gorfunkel', op. cit., p. 153, 162 and passim.
18 W. Bouwsma, The Secularization of Society in the Seventeenth Century, XIIIth International Congress of Historical Sciences, Moscow, 1970, p. 5.
19 H. Jedin, Katholische Reformation oder Gegenreformation?, Lucerne, 1946, p. 32; M. Bendiscioli, La riforma cattolica, Roma, 1958, p. 155; M. Petrocchi, La controriforma in Italia, Roma, 1947, p. 188-255.
20 W. Bouwsma, op. cit., pp. 3, 10.
21 T. Campanella, Dio e la predestinazione, vol. II; a cura di R. Amerio, Firenze, 1951, p. 208. Quoted from A. Gorfunkel, op. cit., p. 29. Even more terrible, to my mind, is the episode where this man, having suffered the rack and almost lost his reason (cf. R. Amerio, "Autobiografia medica di fra Tommaso Campanella," in Campanella e Vico, p. 14-16) and having man aged to remain true to himself to the end—suffered a moment of weakness when he already had his newly-conferred and almost complete freedom, and was (with good reason) afraid of being re-arrested. Shortly after Galileo's trial (at which Campanella's intercession had been unable to help him— "he himself," explained the ambassador Nicolini, "has written something sim ilar and forbidden," and has no business to defend anyone), Campanella sent a short and agitated note to a "dear friend and gentleman" of Tuscany, pro mising to write at greater length when his blood should have calmed down. On October 22, 1632, he sent the promised letter: "To tell you the truth, that evening when I wrote to you, I was seized with terror; for it was a question of severe persecution of the new philosophers, among whom I was includedd… I wrote to you briefly and almost in cipher, for I feared and fear now that the note might have been intercepted and used against me… Since it is forbid den to speak, and since I am an obedient son [of the church], I stopped my mouth [mozzai le parole] … May your Lordship pardon me my cowardice, caused by my long sufferings and the slanders against me; you know that people do not seek the truth, but pleasure, and justify themselves by accusing us… Patience! God wishes us strength in patience, and we ourselves desire it". (Quoted in A. Firpo's preface to the Apologia di Galileo, p. 26.
22 Quoted from A. Corsano, op. cit., p. 69.
23 Discorsi… p. 127, 209-211 et seq.
24 T. Campanella, Atheismus triumphatus. Paris, 1634, p. 83. (Quoted from A. Gorfunkel', op. cit., p. 30).
25 Albert Einstein, Physics and Reality (Russian ed.), Moscow, 1965, p. 109.
26 Let me recall that Shakespeare was reflecting on this problem while writ ing Hamlet in 1600-1601; the play was published in 1603; Campanella wrote the first version of the City of the Sum in 1602, was condemned to life im prisonment in 1603 and began his "conversion" to Catholicism in 1604.
27 Fra' Tommaso Campanella, Quod reminiscentur. A cura di R. Amerio. Pa dova, 1939.
28 Albert Einstein, op, cit., p. 116 (from the article on Curie).
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