Bernardino Telesio

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bernardino Telesio

Bernardino Telesio ( Latin Bernardinus Telesius ; born November 7, 1509 in Cosenza ; † October 2, 1588 ibid) was an Italian philosopher and naturalist.

Telesio was born in Cosenza in Calabria and studied in Padua and Rome . There he was supported for a while by Pope Paul IV , who came from the Neapolitan noble family Carafa and whose appointment as Archbishop of Cosenza he rejected for the sake of his philosophical research. After his death he returned to Naples (1566), where his ideas were taken up by a number of young southern Italian philosophers, including Tommaso Campanella and Giordano Bruno , but also by Pierre Gassendi , Thomas Hobbes and Francis Bacon . Telesio tried to replace the Aristotelian philosophy of matter and form with a dynamic theory of antithetical forces. His main work De rerum natura ( On the nature of things , the title suggests Lucretius ) appeared between 1565 and 1587 in two parts in Rome and Naples. In it he developed a spectacular system based on the concepts of matter and force as well as independent observations of nature. The starting point for research must be sensual experience. In this, Telesio falls back on the pre-Socratics, especially on Empedocles . This is the working basis of the Telesiana academy of natural sciences he founded in Naples , which soon died out, but found many imitations.

Telesius defines two incorporeal forces as the principles of things: heat and cold, and matter. The warmth comes from heaven, the cold from the earth; the former is the principle of movement, dilution, expansion, and animation, the latter the ground of rigidity and rest. The more warmth in a thing, the more flexible it is, like the stars. The world is a constant battle of the dry and warm with the damp and cold, the warm area itself is the scene of a dialectical interplay of an expanding, sun-like and a cold, contracting, earthy force. Through the struggle between warmth and cold, heaven and earth and the individual things were created. The sun triumphs over the earth and creates light. Telesio shows himself in this valuable version of light together with Marsilio Ficino , Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Francesco Patrizi as a forerunner of the Enlightenment .

Matter is the passive, inertly resisting substance, which is expanded and contracted, diluted and condensed by warmth and cold, but keeps its quantity constant in all changes. In the organisms there is a "spirit of life" drawn from the seed by the heat, which is located in the nerves (especially in the brain) and is active throughout the body. Man also has an immortal soul, independent of the body, added by God. Sensation (sensory perception) is based on the action of things on the "mind" which feels its affections. The mind also has memory and vivid thinking, to which the intellect (the activity of the soul) is bound. - The ultimate goal of the mind is self-preservation; the urge for it applies to all things. What is conducive to self-preservation arouses pleasure, what opposes it, pain. Virtue consists in measured action that dominates affects, in self-preservation and self-perfection. All virtues (wisdom, bravery, goodness, etc.) are only sides of one and the same virtue. Telesius sees the sublimity of the human spirit in the striving which, going beyond the desire to preserve his natural constitution, makes man truly heavenly and divine. Such a noble spirit does not strive for the honors of wealth, power or happiness, but for those which it attains through the greatness of its soul. This sublime spirit does not strive for honor for its own sake. He seeks the goods that bring true honor for the sake of their intrinsic value. The sublimity, epitome and crown of virtues, gives the great man the perfection of a universal spiritual education. This sublime soul is unshaken in adversity and without anger at offense by words or deeds of those who are deep below it and are not worth wasting its strength on such creatures. She finds her happiness in her own purity and perfection.

16th century editions

  • Varii de naturalibus rebus libelli, from Antonio Persio editi, quorum alii nunquam antea excusi, alii meliores facti prodeunt. Venice 1590 ( published posthumously by Telesio's pupil Antonio Perseo ; reprint with foreword by Cesare Vasoli , Olms, Hildesheim / New York 1971). Contains: De cometis et lacteo circulo (1590); De his qui in aere fiunt et de terrae motibus (1570); De iride ; De mari (1570); Quod animal universum ab unica animae substantia gubernatur adversus Galenum ; De usu respirationis ; De coloribus (1570); De saporibus ; De somno .
  • De rerum natura iuxta propria principia , Rome 1565
  • De rerum natura iuxta propria principia. De his quae in aere fiunt et de terraemotibus. De colorum generatione. De mari , Naples 1570

Modern editions

  • Luigi De Franco (Ed.): Bernardino Telesio: Varii de naturalibus rebus libelli. Prima edizione integrale. La Nuova Italia, Firenze 1981 (critical edition)

literature

  • Thomas Sören Hoffmann : Philosophy in Italy. An introduction to 20 portraits. Marix, Wiesbaden 2007, ISBN 978-3-86539-127-8
  • E. Troilo: Bernardino Telesio, 1910 (2nd edition 1924)
  • G. Gentile: Bernardino Telesio, 1912
  • N. Abbagnano: Bernardino Telesio e la filosofia del Rinascimento, 1941
  • VG Galati: Bernardino Telesio nella storiografia italiana dal 1872 al 1953. In: Archivio storico per la Calabria e la Lucana 25, 1956
  • Luigi De Franco: Bernardino Telesio. La vita e l'opera. 1989
  • Martin Mulsow : Early modern self-preservation: Telesio and the natural philosophy of the Renaissance. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1998

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Telesio, Bernardino
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Telesius, Bernardinus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian philosopher and naturalist
DATE OF BIRTH 1508 or 1509
PLACE OF BIRTH Cosenza
DATE OF DEATH October 2, 1588
Place of death Cosenza