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TOMMASO CAMPANELLA (1568-1639)

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Originally appearing in Volume V05, Page 122 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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TOMMASO See also:

CAMPANELLA (1568-1639)  , See also:Italian See also:Renaissance philosopher, was See also:born at See also:Stile in See also:Calabria . Before he was thirteen years of See also:age he had mastered nearly all the Latin authors presented to him . In his fifteenth See also:year he entered the See also:order of the See also:Dominicans, attracted partly by See also:reading the lives of Albertus See also:Magnus and See also:Aquinas, partly by his love of learning . He took a course' in See also:philosophy in the See also:convent at Morgentia in Abruzzo, and in See also:theology at See also:Cosenza . Discontented with this narrow course of study, he happened to read the De Rerum Natura of Bernardino See also:Telesio, and was delighted with its freedom of speech and its See also:appeal to nature rather than to authority . His first See also:work in philosophy (he was already the author of numerous poems) was a See also:defence of Telesio, Philosophia sensibus demonstrata (1591) . His attacks upon established authority having brought him into disfavour with the See also:clergy, he See also:left See also:Naples, where he had been residing, and proceeded to See also:Rome . For seven years he led an unsettled See also:life, attracting See also:attention everywhere by his talents and the boldness of his teaching . Yet he was strictly orthodox, and was an uncompromising See also:advocate of the See also:pope's temporal See also:power . He returned to Stile in 1598 . In the following year he was committed to See also:prison because he had joined those who desired to See also:free Naples from See also:Spanish tyranny . His friend Naudee, however, declares that the expressions used by See also:Campanella were wrongly interpreted as revolutionary .

He remained for twenty-seven years in prison . Yet his spirit was unbroken; he composed sonnets, and prepared a See also:

series of See also:works, forming a See also:complete See also:system of philosophy . During the latter years of his confinement he was kept in the See also:castle of Sant' Elmo, and allowed considerable See also:liberty . Though, even then, his See also:guilt seems to have been regarded as doubtful, he was looked upon as dangerous, and it was thought better to restrain him . At last, in 1626, he was nominally set at liberty; for some three years he was detained in the See also:chambers of the See also:Inquisition, but in 1629 he was free . He was well treated at Rome by the pope, but on the outbreak of a new See also:conspiracy headed by his See also:pupil, Tommaso Pignatelli, he was persuaded to go to See also:Paris (1634), where he was received with marked favour by See also:Cardinal See also:Richelieu . The last''few years of his life he spent in preparing a complete edition of his works; but only the first See also:volume appears to have been published . He died on the 21st of May 1639 . In philosophy, Campanella was, like See also:Giordano See also:Bruno (q.v.), a follower of See also:Nicolas of Cusa and Telesio . He stands, therefore, in the uncertain See also:half-See also:light which preceded the See also:dawn of See also:modern philosophy . The sterility of scholastic Aristotelianism, as he understood it, drove him to the study of See also:man and nature, though he was never entirely free from the See also:medieval spirit . Devoutly accepting the authority of Faith in the region of theology, he considered philosophy as based on See also:perception .

The See also:

prime fact in philosophy was to him, as to See also:Augustine and See also:Descartes, the certainty of individual consciousness . To this consciousness he assigned a threefold content, power, will and knowledge . It is of the See also:present only, of things not as they are, but merely as they seem . The fact that it contains the See also:idea of See also:God is the one, and a sufficient, See also:proof of the divine existence, since the idea of the See also:Infinite must be derived from the Infinite . God is therefore a unity, possessing, in the perfect degree, those attributes of power, will and knowledge which humanity possesses only in See also:part . Furthermore, since community of See also:action presupposes homogeneity, it follows that the See also:world and all its parts have a spiritual nature . The emotions of love and hate are in everything . The more remote from God, the greater the degree of imperfection (i.e . Not-being) in things . Of imperfect things, the highest are angels and human beings, who by virtue of the See also:possession of See also:reason are akin to the Divine and See also:superior to the See also:lower creation . Next comes the mathematical world of space; then the corporeal world, and finally the empirical world with its limitations of space and See also:time . The impulse of self .

preservation in nature is the lowest See also:

form of See also:religion; above this comes See also:animal religion; and finally rational religion, the perfection of which consists in perfect knowledge, pure volition and love, and is See also:union with God . Religion is, therefore, not See also:political. in origin; it is an inherent part of existence . The See also:church is superior to the See also:state, and, therefore, all temporal See also:government should be in subjection to the pope as the representative of God . In natural philosophy Campanella, closely following Telesio, See also:advocates the experimental method and See also:lays down See also:heat and See also:cold as the fundamental principles by the strife of which all life is explained . In political philosophy (the Civitas See also:Solis) he sketches an ideal See also:communism, obviously derived from the Platonic, based on community of wives and See also:property with state-See also:control of See also:population and universal military training . In every detail of life the See also:citizen is to be under authority, and the authority of the administrators is to be based on the degree of knowledge possessed by each . The state is, therefore, an artificial organism for the promotion of individual and collective See also:good . In contrast to More's See also:Utopia, the work is cold and abstract, and lacking in See also:practical detail . On the view taken as to his alleged complicity in the conspiracy of 1599 depends the vexed question as to whether this system was a philosophic See also:dream, or a serious See also:attempt to See also:sketch a constitution for Naples in the event of her becoming a free See also:city . The De Monarchia Hispanica contains an able See also:account of contemporary politics especially Spanish . Thus Campanella, though neither an See also:original nor a systematic thinker, is among the precursors, on the one See also:hand, of modern empirical See also:science, and on the other of Descartes and See also:Spinoza . Yet his fondness for the See also:antithesis of Being and Not-being (Ens and Non-ens) shows that he had not shaken off the spirit of scholastic thought .

End of Article: TOMMASO CAMPANELLA (1568-1639)
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