Antropologia e civiltà nel pensiero di Giordano Bruno (review)

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 211 merit, logic and cogency. As he puts it in regard to Wyclif: "Ultimately, Wyclif's heresy, like any other, must be judged by its impact upon society" (p. 557). His criticism of Lea's History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages (London and New York, 1888), therefore, might justifiably be applied to his own work: Nevertheless, for all its mastery of the scene, Lea's volumes are almost entirely devoid of insight into its significance. He failed to appreciate that heresy was about life and death issues as well as life and death: for all his enumeration of the different heretical doctrines, he seems rarely to have grasped their meaning for either their adherents or their persecutors, or if he had it is certainly not communicated to the reader. (p. 34, n. 1) This is not to deny that Left's analyses of the social issues are extremely well done. He has an admirable ability to cut through masses of data and submit balanced but nevertheless clearcut conclusions. And there are important lessons in this book for reformers and revolutionaries of all times as well as for their counterparts in the establishment. It is significant that the book is dedicated to A. S. Neill of Summerhill, "who has shown the perennial need for dissent even when we no longer punish heresy" (p. viii). For the penumbra of its scope extends beyond the medieval period, and it should be relevant not only to medieval, specialists but to all who are concerned with social problems inherent in the development of institutions. RICHARDHARRINGTON University of California, Riverside Antropologia e civilt,~ nel pensiero di Giordano Bruno. By Fulvio Papi. (Florence: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1968. Pp. xii+ 362. L 3,000) It is difficult to know precisely what is the point of this book: it seems to begin and end in medias res and we are never given any sort of introduction to tell us what it proposes to do, nor a conclusion of the results which it obtains. The author tells us in his very brief premessa that rather than following the usual trend of presenting an interpretation of Bruno of a natura globale he shall content himself with a ricerca settorale. Somehow this study means to place, what we might call Giordano Bruno's "philosophy of man," in its historical context. In this it seems to fail, however , both by reason of poor organization and of the superficiality of its analysis. The book is built around several major themes (e.g., "Divine Naturalism," "The Genesis of Eros and Infinite Object," "The Genesis of Natural Man," and "Civilization as the Dignity of Man and Religion"), which the author finds in Bruno's works. The choice, to this reviewer, seems rather arbitrary with regard to Bruno, however intrinsically interesting and important they might be in their own right. What strikes the reader of Papi's book is the number of themes of truly first-rank importance which he touches on, but does not treat in adequate detail to go beyond what is already well known through other secondary works. Had he taken any one of these and developed it into a monograph in its own right the results might have been very important indeed. (We have Frances Yates' book to show that such a thing can successfully be done even with Bruno as the central figure.) One instance will suffice here. In trying to relate Bruno's conception of man to its background, he has a section entitled "Aspects of the Tradition of Lucretius in the Sixteenth Century" (pp. 107-125). Now, here is a topic of primary importance, for we have no general and detailed treatment of the influence of Lucretius between its fifteenth-century beginnings with Vails and Ficino and its taking a new and vital turn in the seventeenth century 212 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY with Gassendi and his studies on atomism. Yet Papi gives us very little which is not already generally known. There is but a mere hint of how atomistic philosophy was handled by the Aristotelians and to what extent they actually absorbed some of that tradition themselves. Nothing in detail is said of the...