Pietro Pomponazzi

Pietro Pomponazzi (Latin Petrus Pomponatius ; born September 16, 1462 in Mantua , † May 18, 1525 in Bologna ) was an Italian philosopher and humanist of the Renaissance .

Life

His training began in Mantua and was completed in Padua when he became a doctor of medicine there in 1487. In 1488 he was appointed professor of philosophy at the University of Padua . From 1495 until the university closed in 1509, he held the chair for natural philosophy . He then accepted a professorship at the University of Ferrara . In 1512 he was invited to Bologna , where he stayed until his death and where he wrote his most famous works.

Teaching

Platonism prevailed at the University of Florence in his day . In Padua, on the other hand, there was an Aristotelian tendency; one relied on the comments of the medieval philosopher Ibn Ruschd (Latin Averroes ). The Aristotle interpretation according to Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas was scholastic , while the Averroists made a distinction between active and passive intellect . The active intellect is immortal, the passive one (with the individual soul) perishes at death.

Pomponazzi turned in his main work De immortalitate animae ( On the immortality of the soul ) against both views. He rejected - in the sense of Aristotle interpretation of ancient commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias and how before him John Buridan - any belief in an immortality of the human soul and thus contradicted Pope Leo X , who in 1513 at the 5th Lateran Council in Bulle Apostolici regiminis the Doctrine of the Mortality of the Soul had just condemned. Because the Church's threat of agony after death became ineffective with his teaching, Pomponazzi received the applause of his readers, but met with clear resistance from the Pope. His main work was publicly burned in Venice , and the Pope condemned it. Numerous counter tracts appeared, among which Pomponazzi's main opponent Nifo wrote the most powerful. He was also charged with frivolity and heresy before the Roman Curia . Fortunately for him , the influential humanist and later Cardinal Pietro Bembo stood up for him; he did not come before a church court. The writings Apologia and Defensorium were mainly used to defend against attacks by his opponents.

Pomponazzi is considered to be the founder of so-called " Alexandrism ", a current of Italian Renaissance philosophy named after Alexander von Aphrodisias. He also questioned the existence of immaterial spirits such as angels and firmly advocated the doctrine of double truth (on the one hand a scientific and on the other hand a truth based on belief). In doing so, he defended his knowledge, which deviated from church teaching.

Pomponazzi sees the essence of human beings in the ability (at least in their minds) to go beyond nature. The destiny of the person whose soul is immanent is therefore not in the hereafter, but in the establishment of the moral order in this world. The reward of virtue is virtue itself, in making people happy. Pomponazzi's message is: “Do good to yourself and your neighbor, vice itself becomes a plague for the vicious.” Contradictions in his approaches arise largely from the fact that in some cases he did not want to risk too far distance from the church's teaching. That is why he also resorted to the doctrine of the double truth; one can always distinguish between the knowledge based on knowledge and belief, so that one can hold fast to the immortality of the soul in belief, even if one rejects it philosophically.

Works

De intensione et remissione formarum 1514
De reactione 1515
De actione reali 1515
Tractatus de immortalitate animae 1516
Apologia contra Contarenum 1518
Defensorium adversus Augustinum Niphum 1519
In libros (scil Aristotelis) de anima 1520
La psicologia di PP: commento al De anima di Aristotle 1877
De naturalium effectuum admirandorum causis sive de incantationibus liber 1520
Tracatus de nutritione et augmentatione 1521
Dubitationes in IV. Meteorologicorum Aristotelis librum 1563
Quaestio de immortalitate animae 1504,
Quaestio de unitate intellectus 1504

Editions and translations

Paul Oskar Kristeller (Ed.): Two unpublished questions on the soul of Pietro Pomponazzi. In: Medievalia et Humanistica 9, 1955, pp. 76-101
Richard Lemay (ed.): Petri Pomponatii Mantuani libri quinque de fato, de libero arbitrio et de praedestinatione. Thesaurus Mundi, Lucca 1957 (critical edition)
Burkhard Mojsisch (ed.): Pietro Pomponazzi: Treatise on the immortality of the soul (= Philosophical Library. Vol. 434). Meiner, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-7873-0982-9 (Latin text and German translation)
Antonio Poppi (ed.): Pietro Pomponazzi: Corsi inediti dell'insegnamento Padovano. Padua 1970

literature

Wim van Dooren: Pomponazzi as a model or: How do you relate to a philosopher of the past. In: Philosophica. Vol. 41, 1988, ISSN 0379-8402 , pp. 57-67, digitized version (PDF; 659 kB) .

Étienne Gilson : Autour de Pomponazzi. Problem of the immortality of the ame en Italie au début du XVIe siècle In: Archives d'Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Âge. Vol. 28 = Année 26, 1961, ISSN 0373-5478 , pp. 163-279.

Thomas Sören Hoffmann : Philosophy in Italy. An introduction to 20 portraits. marixverlag, Wiesbaden 2007, ISBN 978-3-86539-127-8 .

Bruno Nardi: Studi su Pietro Pomponazzi. Le Monnier, Florence 1965.

Martin L. Pine: Pietro Pomponazzi. Radical philosopher of the Renaissance (= Università di Padova - Centro per la Storia della Tradizione Aristotelica nel Veneto. Columbia University - University Seminars - University Seminar on the Renaissance. Saggi e Testi. 8, ZDB -ID 1101708-9 ). Antenore, Padua 1986.

Martin Pine: Pomponazzi, Pietro . In: Charles Coulston Gillispie (Ed.): Dictionary of Scientific Biography . tape 11 : A. Pitcairn - B. Rush . Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 1975, p. 71-74 .

Antonino Poppi: Saggi sul pensiero inedito di Pietro Pomponazzi (= Università di Padova - Centro per la Storia della Tradizione Aristotelica nel Veneto. Columbia University - University Seminars - University Seminar on the Renaissance. Saggi e Testi. 8). Antenore, Padua 1970.

Marco Sgarbi (Ed.): Pietro Pomponazzi. Tradizione e dissenso (= Biblioteca Mantovana. 9). Leo S. Olschki, Florence 2010, ISBN 978-88-222-5955-4 .

Jürgen Wonde: Subject and immortality in Pietro Pomponazzi (= contributions to antiquity . Vol. 48). Teubner, Stuttgart et al. 1994, ISBN 3-519-07497-4 (also: Cologne, University, dissertation, 1992/1993).

Web links

Literature by and about Pietro Pomponazzi in the catalog of the German National Library
Stefano Perfetti: Pietro Pomponazzi. In: Edward N. Zalta (Ed.): Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy .

Individual evidence

↑ Olaf Pluta: Critics of the immortality doctrine in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (= Bochum studies on philosophy. Vol. 7). BR Grüner, Amsterdam 1986, ISBN 90-6032-276-2 , p. 6.
↑ Bernd Roling : Faith, Imagination and Physical Resurrection: Pietro Pomponazzi between Avicenna, Averroes and Jewish Averoism. In: Andreas Speer , Lydia Wegener (ed.): Knowledge about borders. Arabic knowledge and the Latin Middle Ages (= Miscellanea Mediaevalia. 33). de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 2006, ISBN 3-11-018998-4 , pp. 677-699.

personal data
SURNAME	Pomponazzi, Pietro
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Pomionatius, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Italian philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH	September 16, 1462
PLACE OF BIRTH	Mantua
DATE OF DEATH	May 18, 1525
Place of death	Bologna

[1] Olaf Pluta: Critics of the immortality doctrine in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (= Bochum studies on philosophy. Vol. 7). BR Grüner, Amsterdam 1986, ISBN 90-6032-276-2 , p. 6.

[2] Bernd Roling : Faith, Imagination and Physical Resurrection: Pietro Pomponazzi between Avicenna, Averroes and Jewish Averoism. In: Andreas Speer , Lydia Wegener (ed.): Knowledge about borders. Arabic knowledge and the Latin Middle Ages (= Miscellanea Mediaevalia. 33). de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 2006, ISBN 3-11-018998-4 , pp. 677-699.