History of Philosophy
by
Alfred Weber

Table of Contents

§ 50.  Tommaso Campanella

Another Southern Italian and Dominican, Tommaso Campanella,⁽¹⁾ anticipated the English and German essays concerning human understanding, i. e., modern criticism. This doughty champion of philosophical reform and Italian liberty was born near Stilo in Calabria, 1568, and died at Paris, 1639, after spending twenty-seven years in a Neapolitan dungeon on the charge of having conspired against the Spanish rule.

Campanella is a disciple of the Greek sceptics. This school taught him that metaphysics is built on sand unless it rests on a theory of knowledge. His philosophy consequently first discusses the formal question.⁽²⁾

Our knowledge springs from two sources: sensible experience and reasoning; it is empirical or speculative.

Is the knowledge acquired by sensation certain? Most of the ancients are of the opinion that the testimony of the senses must be ignored, and the sceptics sum up their doubts in the following argument: The object perceived by the senses is nothing but a modification of the subject, and the facts which, the senses tell us, are taking place outside of us, are in reality merely taking place in us. The senses are my senses; they are a part of myself; sensation is a fact produced in me, a fact which I explain by an external cause; whereas the thinking subject might be its determining but unconscious cause as easily as any object. In that event, how can we reach a certain knowledge of the existence and nature of external things? If the object which I perceive is merely my sensation, how can I prove that it exists outside of me? By the inner sense, Campanella answers. Sense-perception must derive the character of certitude, which it does not possess in itself, from reason; reason transforms it into knowledge. Though the metaphysician may doubt the veracity of the senses, he cannot suspect the inner sense. Now, the latter reveals to me my existence immediately, and in such a way as to exclude even the shadow of a doubt; it reveals me to myself as a being that exists, and acts, and knows, and wills; as a being, furthermore, that is far from doing and knowing everything. In other words, the inner sense reveals to me both my existence and its limitations. Hence I necessarily conclude that there is a being that limits me, an objective world different from myself, or a non-ego; and thus I demonstrate by the a posteriori method a truth that is instinctive, or a priori, or prior to all reflection: the existence of the non-ego is the cause of the sensible perception in me.⁽³⁾

Does this argument refute scepticism? To tell the truth, it only half refutes it, and our philosopher has no thought of claiming the victory. Indeed, it does not necessarily follow that because the senses are veridical in showing us objects, they show us the latter as they are. The agreement which, dogmatism assumes, exists between our mode of conceiving things and their mode of being, is, according to Campanella, a consequence of the analogy of beings, and this, in turn, is the consequence of an indemonstrable truth: their unitary origin. Besides, he will not grant that the human mind has an absolute knowledge of things. Our knowledge may be correct without ever being complete. Compared with God's knowledge, our knowledge is insignificant and as nothing. We should know things as they are, if knowledge were a pure act (if to perceive were to create). In order to know the things in themselves, or absolutely, we should have to be the absolute as such, i. e., the Creator himself. But though absolute knowledge is an ideal which man cannot realize, - an evident proof that this world is not his real home, - the thinker ought to engage in metaphysical research.

Considering its subject-matter, universal philosophy or metaphysics is the science of the principles or first conditions of existence (principia, proprincipia, primalitates essendi). Considering its sources, means, and methods, it is the science of reason, and more certain and authoritative than experimental science.

To exist means to proceed from a principle and to return to it.⁽⁴⁾  What is the principle, or rather, what are these principles? for an abstract unity is barren. In other words: What is essential to a being's existence? Answer: (1) That this being be able to exist. (2) That there be in nature an Idea of which this being is the realization (for without knowledge nature would never produce anything). (3) That there be a tendency,⁽⁵⁾ or desire for realizing it. Power (posse, potestas, potentia essendi), knowledge (cognoscere, sapientia), and will (velle, amor, essendi), - such are the principles of relative being. The sum of these principles, or rather, the supreme unity which contains them, is God. God is absolute power, absolute knowledge, and absolute will or love. The created beings, too, have power, perception, and will, corresponding to their propinquity to the source of things. The universe is a hierarchy comprising the mental, angelic, or metaphysical world (angels, dominations, world-soul, immortal souls), the eternal or mathematical world, and the temporal or corporeal world. All these worlds, even the corporeal world itself, participate in the absolute, and reproduce its three essential elements: power, knowledge, and will. So true is this that even inert nature is not dead; nay, feeling, intelligence, and will exist, in different degrees, in all beings, not even excepting inorganic matter.⁽⁶⁾

Every being proceeds from the absolute Being, and strives to return thither as to its principle. In this sense all finite beings whatsoever love God, all are religious, all strive to live the infinite life of the Creator, all have a horror of non-being, and in so far as all bear within themselves non-being as well as being, all love God more than themselves. Religion is a universal phenomenon and has its source in the dependence of all things on the absolute Being. Religious science or theology is so much higher than philosophy, as God is greater than man.⁽⁷⁾

In spite of these concessions to Catholicism, in spite of his Atheismus triumphatus, and his dream of a universal monarchy for the Holy Father, Campanella's attempted reforms were suspected by the Church, and miscarried. Philosophy could not hope to make any advance in Italy; henceforth she takes up her abode in countries enlightened or emancipated by the religious reformation: in England and on both banks of the Rhine.⁽⁸⁾

1. Opere di Tommaso Campanella ed. by A. d'Ancona, Turin, 1854 (Campanelie Philosophia sensibus demonstrata, Naples, 1590; Philos. rationalis et realis partes V., Paris, 1638; Universalis philosophie sive metaphysicarum rerum juxta propria doqmata partes III., id., 1638; Atheismus triumphatus, Rome, 1631 ; De gentilismo non retinendo, Paris, 1836, etc.); [Cf. Baldachini, Vita e filosofia di T. C., Naples, 1840-43; Sigwart, Kleine Schriften, I., pp. 125 ff. - TR.]

2. For Campanella's theory of knowledge, see especially the Introduction to his Universal Philosophy or Metaphysics.

3. Universalis phil. sive metaphys., P. I., 1, c. 3

4. Univ. phil. sive metaphys., P. I., 2, c. 1

5. By thus categorically affirming the will as the principium essendi, Campanella differs both from the materialists and the pure idealists. No one before Leibniz more clearly conceived the fundamental conception of concrete spiritualism.

6. Univ. phil., P. I., 2, c. 5ff.

7. Id., III., 16, 1-7.

8. The most distinguished among the Italian philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is Giovanni Battista Vico, who died in 1744. He is noted for his Scienza nuova (Naples, 1725), one of the first attempts at a philosophy of history. The attempt has been made by able modern thinkers like Gallupi, Rosmini, Gioberti, Mamiani, Ferrari, etc., to restore to Italy the philosophical prestige enjoyed by that country during the period of the Renaissance (see Raphael Mariano, La philosophie contemporaine en Italie, Paris 1868). [On Vico see Professor Flint's book in Blackwood's Phil. Classics. - TR.]