The Appreciation of Technology in Campanella’s “The City of the Sun”

Abstract

Research Note THE APPRECIATION OF TECHNOLOGY IN CAMPANELLA’S “THE CITY OF THE SUN” PHYLLIS A. HALL Under the hardships of prison and even torture, Renaissance philosopher Tommaso Campanella penned more than one hundred works. His most widely read book is a utopia, The City of the Sun (1623).' Scholars have studied Campanella’s utopia to understand his thought, but there are two facets that have not drawn the attention they merit. The first is the value of the book as one of the earliest utopias to include ideas on technology as part of an ideal common­ wealth. This is significant because it heralds the direction of utopian thought in succeeding centuries. By the 19th century, many utopian thinkers regarded technological progress, along with economic ratio­ nalization, as the cure for society’s ills. Much utopian thought of the 20th century views technology optimistically and focuses on scientific utopias in advanced technological societies.2 The second facet of Campanella’s utopia that merits attention is the evidence it presents on the contemporary state oftechnology. An analysis of The City of the Sun reveals Campanella’s great interest in technical matters ranging from new inventions and discoveries to water and road systems. The book represents the changing emphasis on technology in European society during the early years of the 17th century. * * * Dr. Hall lives at Williamsburg, Virginia. ‘All references to Campanella’s utopia are from the most recent translation of The City of the Sun, a bilingual edition: Tommaso Campanella, La Citta del Sole: Dialogo Poetico/The City of the Sun: A Poetical Dialogue (hereafter City), trans. Daniel J. Dunno (Berkeley, Calif., 1981). Dunno has provided an introduction on pp. 1-21 and notes on pp. 129-41. Luigi Firpo’s critical edition of La Citta del Sole in his Scntti scelti di Bruno e di Campanella, Classici italiani (Turin, 1965), contains useful notes. “Frank E. Manuel and Fritzie P. Manuel, Utopian Thought in the Western World (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 801-14; Krishan Kumar, Utopia and Anti-utopia in Modem Times (Oxford, 1987), pp. 380-424; Arthur O. Lewis, “Utopia, Technology, and the Evolu­ tion of Society,” Journal of General Education 37 (1985): 163, 175.© 1993 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/93/3403-0005$01.00 613 614 Phyllis A. Hall Tommaso Campanella (1568—1639) was an Italian Dominican monk.3 He was a disciple of Bernardino Telesio, an anti-Aristotelian and experimental philosopher. Two of Campanella’s early works, De sensitiva rerum (ca. 1590) and De investigatione rerum (ca. 1590), contend that man understands the world through his senses and that philo­ sophical knowledge must be based on sensation and the study of nature. His defense of Telesio’s ideas led to a collision with the Church, and Campanella spent more than twenty-seven years in prison, including eight years in a dungeon and torture on three occasions. From prison Campanella courageously defended Galileo, the Copernican system, and man’s freedom to investigate natural phenomena in his Apologia pro Galileo (1616).4 His writings include works on philosophy, politics, religion, medicine, mathematics, phys­ iology, fortification, rhetoric and poetry, and interpretations of dreams and astrology.5 In published works and unpublished manu­ scripts, he encompassed almost every area of human knowledge and sought to reform both secular and spiritual institutions.6 Italy was in need of reform during Campanella’s lifetime. Spain dominated Italy, and Spanish secular authorities often worked with the Inquisition to control the Italian provinces. In his writings, Campanella called for an end to secular and ecclesiastical exploitation. He became actively involved in a revolt in Calabria in 1599, the aim of which seems to have been to set up a theocracy like the one Campanella later developed in The City of the Sun. He was arrested, ’For more information on Campanella, see Nicola Badoloni, Tommaso Campanella (Milan, 1965); Bernardino M. Bonansea, Tommaso Campanella: Renaissance Pioneer of Modern Thought (Washington, D.C., 1969); D. P. Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magicfrom Ficino to Campanella (London, 1958); Joan Kelly-Gadol, “Tommaso Campanella: The Agony of Political Theory in the Counter Reformation,” in Philosophy and Humanism: Renaissance Essays in Honor of Paul Oskar...