No More Learning

Thus, in Cause, Principle and Unity,6 he sets about presenting a
5 Ibid. , ? ? -? .
6 See the critical edition of De la causa, principio e uno, edited by G. Aquilecchia (Turin: Einaudi, ? ? ? ? ).
? x
Introduction
? metaphysics which is intended to constitute a more solid foundation for the interpretation of nature and for the consequent introduction of a new ethic, capable of establishing the outlines of the renewed relationship between man and God both at the level of civil life and at the philosopher's level of contemplation. The problem which immediately arises, however, is that of specifying how this new idea of the divinity is formed and in what sense Bruno's infinite universe radically modifies the relationship between God and the world, between God and human beings.
II
To clarify these issues, we must return to Bruno's earliest works, especially to De umbris idearum (The Shadows of Ideas) (? ? ? ? ). Here he tried to elab- orate an art of memory which was based on magical foundations; and in doing this he identified the heavenly models, the exemplars of every sensi- ble reality which the human mind can know, with the images of the thirty- six heavenly deacons which tradition attributed to Teucer the Babylonian and which he borrowed from the classic text of Renaissance magic, Agrippa's De occulta philosophia. 7 In De umbris Bruno applies, in an appar- ently arbitrary way, Nicholas of Cusa's coincidence of opposites to the con- ception of the hierarchy of being which Marsilio Ficino explained in his Theologia platonica. 8 This doctrine, which is central to that work, is an attempt to define the special privilege assigned within the framework of creation to the rational soul, a genus which includes both the anima mundi (the world-soul) and the human soul. Ficino defines this privilege in cos- mological terms. In fact, in his eyes the rational soul was at the centre of the hierarchy of being, as the very link between the sensible world and the intelligible world; descending from the former, it gave life and form to the latter.
The hierarchy of being extended between two extremes, pure act and pure potency, God and prime matter, in such a way that each of the inter- mediate levels of the hierarchy presented a different relationship between act and potency. One descended down the levels of this hierarchy, starting
? 7 Cf. E. Garin, 'Le <<elezioni>> e il problema dell'astrologia,' reprinted in Garin, L'eta` nuova. Ricerche di storia della cultura dal XII al XVI (Naples: Morano, ? ? ? ? ), ? ? ? -? ? , used, especially in ch. XI, by F. A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, ? ? ? ? ).
8 M. Ficino, Theologia platonica, XI in Opera (Basel, ? ? ? ? ) I, ? ? ? -? . Ficino's doctrine is comprehensi- ble due to the theory of the primum in aliquo genere, according to which the last member of one genus coincides with the first member of the following genus.
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? from the pure act constituted by God and eventually reaching prime mat- ter. Each step downward represented an increase in potentiality. Within this overarching hierarchy, if the sensible and the intelligible are analysed as two separate categories and if each one of them is considered as a uni- tary whole, complete in itself, it would be possible to discover something new, namely the way in which the sensible world and the intelligible world, despite being radically distinct by nature, were linked together. In the intel- ligible sphere, one descended gradually to the lowest level, which was con- stituted by the rational soul; it was purely receptive to the levels above it, and could thus be considered as pure potency in relation to them. In the sensible sphere, on the other hand, one moved up within the hierarchy of being, from prime matter, through a sequence of more complex forms of corporeal organization until one reached an absolute limit. That limit was heavenly matter, which because of its purity and spirituality could be defined by Ficino as corpus quasi non corpus (a body that is almost not a body). This kind of matter, sometimes called 'spirit' and sometimes 'ether', could be considered to be pure act in comparison with prime matter. Here it seemed as if the pure potentiality which defined prime matter was trans- formed completely into its opposite, pure actuality. In conclusion, the more the act transformed itself into potency with respect to the superior levels in the intelligible world, the more the opposite process seemed to take place in the sensible sphere and potentiality seemed to be transformed progres- sively into actuality.
Here it is important to note how this analysis underpins Ficino's doc- trine of the world-soul, which linked the corporeal and the spiritual, giv- ing life and form to the entire inferior world. Bruno saw this as an instance of Nicholas of Cusa's coincidence of opposites: two spheres were gradually losing their essential characteristics by somehow transforming themselves into one another. He also saw in doctrines of this type the theoretical basis for a distinctive kind of art of memory and the foundation for an authentic astral theology. Through these it seemed possible that man, endowed with a rational soul and a spirit to mediate between the soul and his elementary body, could link himself to that privileged cosmic point on the boundary between the sensible and the intelligible which would allow him to grasp the archetypal forms, the actual generating models of every sensible real- ity, if not in their purity, then at least in their shadows, the shadows of ideas.
As already mentioned, in The Ash Wednesday Supper the sphere of fixed stars began to lose all the functions which had been assigned to it within
xii
Introduction
? traditional cosmology. Each of the movements which had been attributed to it was reduced to a mere appearance generated by the motion of the earth. Bruno thus denied the very existence of such a sphere, relegating it simply to an optical illusion. The first casualty of all this was Ficino's doctrine of the hierarchy of being, which Bruno had used in De umbris, where he interpreted it in terms of the coincidence of opposites; nevertheless, in this work he still tried to interpret the role of human beings, their origin and destiny, within the traditional cosmological framework. Certainly, he remained faithful even in his new cosmology to the Platonic world-soul, understanding it as an intrin- sic principle of motion for all the celestial bodies which no longer needed any other forms of motion, and, as we shall see in Cause, he will speak of a uni- versal soul which effectively shapes and gives life to everything. However, he is not able to refrain from attacking, in De immenso (The Boundless), those 'shadows of ideas' that men had believed in, all those mysteria platonica et peripatetica (Platonic and peripatetic mysteries) which resulted from the belief in two ontologically separated spheres, the heavenly world and the sublunary world. In particular, he summarizes and rejects all the charac- teristics attributed to the spheres of fixed stars which, among other things, made it the access route from the intelligible world to the sensible world. 9
It is important, therefore, that he summarizes Ficino's doctrines of the hierarchy of being and of the meeting of the sensible and the intelligible in such minute detail in order to be able to reject them in a radical manner. 10 In the final, decisive book of the poem, he condemns both the theologian's empyrean heaven and the Platonic intelligible world, and undercuts the doctrine of spirit, conceived as an ethereal vehicle of the soul in its process of incarnation. The idea of a world of ideal moulds, of separated ideas, no longer has any meaning for him, and this rejection of a separate world of pure essences leads him to define as meaningless anything lacking a con- crete, real existence, anything which, as a result of a process of abstraction, has been unjustifiably hypostatized.
Bruno's reflective transformation of Ficino's doctrine of the meeting between the sensible and the intelligible is essential for understanding the
? 9
10
Op. lat. , I, II, ? : ' . . . prima naturae genitura, simplicissima, capacissima, potentissima, activissima, animatissima, perfectissima, causa universalis . . . cuius portae geminae . . . divinarum animarum vehiculum, idearum characteribus signata . . . nostro verenda metuendaque superincubans mundo, divinitatis potentia . . . nunc spacii et aetheris natura, et magnitudine comperta . . . e manibus, eque oculis evanescit, portentosa umbra sine corpore tandem fuisse convincitur. ' For the reference to Macrobius, cf. Op. lat. , I, II, ? ? ? .
Op. lat. , I, II, ? ? ? -? ? .
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? development of thought in Cause. If one starts from the assumption that the universe is infinite, it no longer makes sense to conceive the coincidence between act and potency as the exclusive property of a fixed point in the hierarchy of being, a privileged point in a finite and physical cosmos con- ceived as distinct from the intelligible world. Bruno therefore tries to rethink such a coincidence on the assumption that space is infinite and homogeneous, and that there are no separate hierarchical orders of being, and he does this in the light of two key concepts, that of an infinite active potency and that of an infinite passive potency, which are directly associ- ated with each other in the cosmos. On this journey, Nicholas of Cusa guides him.
III
Nicholas of Cusa maintained, in Docta ignorantia (Learned Ignorance), that it was impossible to explain in conceptual terms the passage from the com- plicatio of everything in God to its explicatio in things; his recourse to the concept of 'contraction' to define the relationship between God and the universe has merely symbolic significance. It is not a real explanation, sim- ply a suggestive way of referring to the inexplicable. The universe, maxi- mum contractum (i. e. the limit of contraction), reproduces the unity of the divine in its proper form; it therefore is a coincidence between actuality and potentiality, although there is an insuperable limit to its actuality in the sense that the world can never realize its full potentiality. In fact, the only way the cosmos can realize its totality is through differentiation and spatial dispersion. The power to create and the power to be created coincide per- fectly in the unity and absolute distinction of God; in contrast, the poten- tiality of the universe is a pale reflection of the infinite passive potency of God. And thus there will always remain an infinite difference between the 'contracted' existence of the universe and the unity and distinction which coincide in the divinity.
For Cusa, therefore, God and God alone was absolute possibility coin- ciding with absolute actuality. Despite its limits, the concept of contraction allowed him to conclude that the relationship between God and the world could never be explained by recourse to the philosophers' matter and the world-soul of the Platonists. Matter is possibility and if, as some have claimed, it is co-eternal with God, then it would become absolute possi- bility; it would then no longer be just something created by God, nor would
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Introduction
? it be contracted, as it in fact is, so as to give rise to a world of distinct entities. Bruno assigns to the Platonists' world-soul the role which it had in traditional cosmology, as mediator on the cosmic plane. This mediating role cannot be understood as the distinct possession of the exemplary mod- els of all things, because this would imply that it displaced the Word, the only place in which the ideal archetypes rest in both absolute unity and absolute difference. Thus, the traditional ways of construing the world-soul and the relation between matter and the vivifying action of a universal spirit fail. 11
Nicholas of Cusa outlines a cosmology which no longer recognizes onto- logically separated levels in the universe. In the Cusan cosmos, everything is the centre and the circumference is nowhere - a distinction which Bruno considers a mere play on words. In this way, the earth loses the subordinate status which it had until now, in that it is thought to be no less central than any other star; it is subject to influences but is a probable source of influ- ences itself. Cusa retains the traditional ontological inferiority of the heav- ens with respect to a divinity who holds them at an infinite distance from himself, and this is confirmed, in an apparent paradox, by the redemption of the earth. The fact that everything in the world is undergoing constant change implies that no absolutely precise relations exist and that we cannot have exact or real measures for any phenomenon, including motion.
This is the context for Cusa's Christology. If the distance between God and the universe is infinite, this can never be bridged by a mere man, even if he is exceptionally gifted; only the one perfect man, Christ, can achieve such a mediation through the Word, which leads creatures back to its source.
In Cause, Bruno drew the conclusion from his study of Cusa that nothing now prevents him from looking for the coincidence between the world-soul and the matter which belongs to an infinite universe as the coincidence of infinite active potency and infinite passive potency. Bruno conceives the hierarchy of being as having only ideal value, in contrast to Ficino's onto- logical conception of it, and he construes the world-soul and matter as the absolute opposites of this hierarchy. Starting from these assumptions, he tries to show how act and potency, absolute possibility and infinite actual- ity coincide. Thus it is only by starting with such a coincidence that he can apply the concept of 'contraction' to the relationship which is formed
? 11 N. Cusani De Docta ignorantia, II, ch. VIII, IX, dedicated respectively to the possibility or matter of the universe, and the soul or form of the universe.
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? between the unity of the universe and the multiplicity in which this is structured.
Certainly, at the beginning of Cause, he warns that his discussion is meant to stay within the limits of pure natural reason, that it aspires to be only a philosophical discussion, leaving to theologians the more exalted task of defining the Prime Mover. But the route he follows is inevitably destined to hold some surprises in relation to such a cautious preliminary declaration. The coincidence between infinite active potency and infinite passive potency, which Nicholas of Cusa had recorded in De possest as a peculiarity exclusive to God, is transferred in Cause to the relation of absolute opposites in the cosmos, and knowledge of this coincidence gives us a proper understanding of the unity of substance.
IV
From this perspective, the logic which guides Bruno in Cause is clear. He conceives the intellect as a superior faculty of the world-soul that pro- duces forms. This represents a significant lowering of the status of the intellect, albeit to the highest kind of faculty which can exist. The world-soul possesses intellect and does not therefore need a superior principle from which to draw forms. It should be added that it operates as an art which is intrinsic to matter, in contrast to human art which inevitably acts on the surface of matter already formed. The world-soul, therefore, shapes matter from inside because it possesses the actual models which allow it, as an authentic efficient cause, to be also a formal cause. Since it animates an infinite universe, and there is no part of the universe that is not animated or that does not possess at least a spiritual principle always capable of being actualized by it to some degree or other, differences in nature between the forms it gives are inevitably to be found.
The world-soul is therefore the authentic form of forms; it contains them all in act within matter and can therefore be considered either a cause or a principle, depending on whether we think of the forms as its posses- sion or as superficial configurations that matter assumes now and again according to its dispositions. What is at issue here are the constantly chang- ing forms of matter which the Aristotelians can only arbitrarily call forms in a strict sense. That is one of the constant features of the anti-Aristotelian polemic in Cause, because it becomes essential for Bruno to maintain that
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? these are only appearances, which are constantly changing, compared with substance, which cannot be annihilated and is the active principle and producer of real, rather than transient, forms. This polemic against the supposed substantial forms of tradition is therefore already a vindication of the authentic active potency of an infinite universe, and opens the way to Bruno's special treatment of matter considered as potency. Then the confrontation with Nicholas of Cusa's theses becomes direct, although his name is never mentioned in this particular context.
Certainly, for Bruno, as for Cusa, it is only in God that infinite actual- ization of infinite possibility can be achieved. In the universe, on the other hand, things are constantly changing, and matter is inescapably subject to these changing forms. Despite this, the universe can be said to be com- pletely infinite, to be all that it can be, provided one considers it as extended through all of time rather than at a single instant or from the point of view of eternity. However, the difference between God and the universe repre- sents only the starting point of Bruno's discussion.
The power to be, if considered as passive potency, moves towards its infinite actualization only in God; in Him alone, act and potency, power to create and power to be created, are superimposed speculatively without reference to time and place. If, however, one considers matter absolutely as passive potency, if one abstracts it from the relationship which it has, at different times, with both corporeal and incorporeal substances, one notices a significant factor. There is no difference between the passive potency of these substances except for the fact that corporeal matter is con- tracted into dimensions, qualities, quantities, shapes, etc. ; these accidental determinations (dimensions, shapes, etc. ) are what the Peripatetic tradi- tion, struggling to understand them, confused with genuine substantial forms. Dimensions, qualities, etc. do not, however, modify pure passive potency as such, and it is possible to conclude, therefore, that the matter which is conceived in these terms can be considered common to both the spiritual and the corporeal.
Bruno clinches his argument by referring to the Neo-Platonic doctrine that intelligible entities were composed of a very particular kind of intelli- gible matter. Such intelligible entities, which are forms of acting, must have something in common, although it cannot be anything that generates a dis- tinction between them or involves any passage from potency to act. In the sensible world, where becoming involves such a passage, is not matter best understood as potency, which includes in its complexity all the dimensions
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Introduction
? and qualities, and does this not mean that this matter, rather than not possessing any form, in reality possesses them all? Could it be that matter, which appears not to produce distinctions, seems thus to be formless only because it is the origin of more deep-seated but less apparent distinctions - distinctions which it can be seen to possess only in a higher unity? Furthermore, this allows Bruno to claim that the two matters, the intelli- gible and the sensible, seen from the perspective of potency, can be reduced to a single genus, since the former is differentiated from act only by a dis- tinction of reason and the latter can be considered act in comparison with the ephemeral and transient forms which appear and disappear on its sur- face. It would be impossible, then, to distinguish matter understood as potency from the world-soul.
Thus in this way Bruno assimilates his treatment of matter to the tradi- tion of Aristotelianism and Neo-Platonism, which took matter to be a sub- strate, that which remains constant beneath the transformations which take place between the elements. In his eyes, the permanency of matter comes to mean that it, too, as the world-soul, is a principle which is neither passing nor transient, a principle which cannot be annihilated and which is identified with the substance of beings themselves. Bruno reminds us that the Aristotelians, as soon as they realized that they could not accept the Platonic solution which placed ideas outside the field of matter, admit- ted that matter could generate forms. Bruno called these ideas 'ideal moulds', and was more able to accept them than the Peripatetics were. It must be added that these same Aristotelians, when they state that matter passes from potency to act, speak only of the composite when specifying what has really changed. On the basis of all these elements, it seems legit- imate to think that, if it is recognized as a constant and everlasting princi- ple, prime matter cannot be classified as that prope nihil (almost nothing) of uncertain reality which figured in the views of a number of previous thinkers who tried to devise definitions of substantial form. These defini- tions, contrary to their intentions, all turn out to be reducible to pure log- ical abstractions. On the contrary, the fact that this matter presents no form would be equivalent once more, for the reasons already mentioned above, to its possessing all of them.
If, however, a spiritual principle and a material principle are recognized as the very substance of our world, it seems evident that it is their coin- cidence that constitutes its permanent substance.
An analogous identi- fication could then apply to the superior world of exclusively spiritual
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Introduction
? substance, which Bruno stated he would not discuss because he wished to confine his treatment to the limits of pure natural reason. This is the most ambiguous statement of the whole work, and understanding this ambiguity correctly is the key to understanding Bruno's philosophy. Bruno takes for granted here the separation which the whole dialogue tries to call into question, and at the most decisive point of the work, he refers to the notion of an intelligible matter of the superior world only to understand it in terms of corporeal substances seen from the perspective of potency. The ambiguity of such a statement allows him to leave an important fact in the background, that the relationship which he was establishing between infinite active potency and infinite passive potency created a relationship of reciprocal necessity between God and the world. 12 Thus Nicholas of Cusa's demonstration, in De possest, of the impossibility of separating, if only in God, the infinite potency of creating and the infinite potency of being created was decisive in forming Bruno's position. Bruno, however, came to the conclusion that these are present and inseparable in an infinite universe and that this involves not only their coincidence but, crucially, a relationship of reciprocal necessity between the unity to which they refer and the universe.
The solution rejected by Nicholas of Cusa and adopted by Bruno was, therefore, to return to the world-soul of the Platonists, and to a conception of matter as absolute possibility and as co-eternal with God, in order to explain the connection between all things in the cosmos. In fact, Bruno began from this conception of matter as absolute potency and from a world-soul which by now was the form of forms, and no longer required an ontologically superior principle to prepare exemplary models to inspire with its action. He thus discovered divine unity in their coincidence, a unity which preceded the distinction between the corporeal and the spiri- tual. This enabled him to set out the basic principles of his cosmology, which was different from Nicholas of Cusa's, but still based on the infinite distance, in terms of nature and dignity, between God and the universe. It thus became possible to imagine a mediation between the human and the divine which, moving through nature, would render unnecessary the solu- tion adopted by Nicholas of Cusa and would in fact do away with all forms of Christology.
? 12 He will begin to develop this point in De l'infinito, universo e mondi, concealing it slightly beneath the discussion of the relationship between God's potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata. Dialoghi, ? ? ? -? .
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? V
Bruno's originality lay in his rejection of that world of pure, ideal and bod- iless essences. Arguing with the Platonists in the great conclusion of De immenso, Bruno states that there does not exist a justice separate from that which is good and, most importantly, that there is no divinity which can be distinguished from its manifestations. 13 Any attempt to make these dis- tinctions is an unjustified hypostatization arising from processes of abstrac- tion originating in our intellect. These are his final conclusions on the sub- ject, which, when combined with the necessary nature of God's link to the world, constitute important keys to understanding Cause. If the universe is not contingent in its nature, it is possible to speak of a divinity which coincides with the world itself; this divinity would be a substance which from time to time manifests itself in infinite and different composites, in its 'modes', as Bruno calls them, which are themselves transient. Certainly, the unity to which multiplicity points as its foundation and its source remains in some sense absolute and not contracted, but the very fact that each part of the infinite is limited points to something which is the real con- dition of its existence. This means that one must conceive this unity as an internal unity of the cosmos rather than as something which is above or beyond it. The principle of the universe, if it is unique, is therefore its own cause, and this means that we cannot speak of two separate worlds. Thus, Bruno can state that God needs the world no less than the world needs Him,14 since if the material infinity of the corporeal were lacking, the spir- itual infinity of the divine would also be absent. By linking the world nec- essarily with the divinity and vice versa, the divinity is established as that which is all in all and in everything. It cannot be 'elsewhere', since its coin- cidence of spirituality with infinite matter means that 'elsewhere' does not exist.
Thus we arrive at the problem of understanding the unity of the All as an understanding of its laws in so far as they are laws of nature. Bruno is not mistaken here in claiming that the new departure he has initiated is rad- ical. On the one hand, he believes he can demonstrate that both Aristotelian philosophy and the Christian religion, and not only the latter's most recent developments under the Reformation, have been linked to an erroneous cosmology. We need only consider the contemporary discussions on the ubiquity of the glorious body of Christ and the polemics concerning the 13 Op. lat. , I, II, ? ? ? . 14 A Mercati, Il Sommario del processo di G. Bruno (Vatican City, ? ? ? ? ) ? ? .
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Introduction
? nature of his presence in the Eucharist, both of which originated, accord- ing to Bruno, within the framework of this old erroneous cosmology. It is, therefore, understandable that this new philosophy should eventually reveal the full extent of its consequences and call for a healing of the divi- sion between nature and divinity decreed by Christianity; that it should search for laws, most notably in Lo Spaccio de la bestia trionfonte (The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast), to constitute a new ethic, capable of guaranteeing peaceful civilian co-existence in the rediscovered harmony between human needs and the divine will. This same development of civ- ilization can thus be reconceived according to those natural foundations which constitute its indispensable precondition. However, it is only by sep- arating himself from these foundations, through a combined intellectual and physical effort, that man has been able to distance himself from the ani- mal condition (symbolized in the myth of a terrestrial paradise) and bring himself gradually closer to God through science and the arts. It is not with- out significance that the fundamental error of Christianity, long before the Reformation, was the desire to begin with a divinity conceived in its absoluteness, arising from the illusion that in this way one could enter into contact with it and enjoy its favour, without respecting the intervening nat- ural and cognitive levels. This general framework implies that Christ prac- tised a deception when he promised men a transformation through which they could become sons of God, while in reality he was making them risk falling back into a purely animal condition by making the consumption of earthly food part of the sacrament of the Eucharist.
From this point of view, Eroici Furori (The Heroic Frenzies) acquires a particular importance, and also a religious one, in relation to the meta- physical theses of Cause. The contemplation of divinity which is realized in this work through the medium of nature is certainly destined by defini- tion never to attain its final goal, the actual possession of the infinite. However, it is justified in that the 'enthusiast' encounters no upper limit to his contemplative ascent. Thus, The Heroic Frenzies concludes with one final philosophico-religious illumination: a vision of the kingdom of God and paradise, in which the human is transformed into the divine, in a metamorphosis to which not everyone can have access. 15
The 'heroic enthusiast' comes to realize that he can translate everything into the species of his intellect, in a seemingly endless process of actualiza- tion. This is due to the bond of love which elevates him ever higher in this 15 'The sursum corda,' recalls Bruno polemically, 'is not in harmony with everyone. ' Dialoghi, ? ? ? ? .
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Introduction
? process, eventually causing him to realize the infinite (and thus apparently illimitable) potentiality of his intellect. The process thus becomes an ago- nizing experience for the enthusiast because the more he retreats into him- self, the more he is constrained by the magical force of love to come out of himself, to transform himself and live in the other, in a never-ending suc- cession. In this way, the two opposites, act and potency, reveal not only their own coincidence but also the coincidence between intellect and love. Therefore, knowledge and love coincide with their object in the infinite; the intellect is transformed into the intelligible, the lover into the object of love. Knowledge and love are thus revealed as the two cosmic forces which are apparently separate in nature but which spring from the same potency and source.
VI
Given Bruno's earlier interest in magic and astrology, it is not surprising that the development of his new cosmology should introduce elements of uncertainty into his beliefs on these topics. In the notes left to us (which have been given the title De magia mathematica), he reconfirms, in a dis- agreement with Agrippa, his rejection of the traditional cosmic role attrib- uted to the world-soul and to its ideas, and he rejects the physical action of stellar rays. 16 Whereas in De immenso he did not deny a symbolic value to the celestial bodies furthest away,17 in De rerum principiis (The Principles of Things) he seems to reject even this value, at least for particular cases. In the same work he is critical of the astrological theory of aspects and of astro- logical books in general. He laments the confusion which has arisen due to the fallacious identification of planets with celestial bodies. He claims that the corruption which the magic arts have undergone with the passage of time has been due to the spread of error but also to a desire to keep the secrets of the arts out of the hands of the ignorant. Thus, he seems to be in favour of a reconstruction of planetary astrology which would have to take account of his new cosmology but which here appears to be only roughly mapped out. Within this tentative framework, which includes some elements of his new cosmology, he is still able to retain the astrological value of the traditional celestial images, apparently feeling that the observation of them continues to be useful and that they represent the survival of an ancient language. 18
16 Op. lat. , III, ? ? ? . 17 'Multum valent signare, nihil causare remota. ' Op. lat. , I, II, ? ? ? . 18 Ibid. , III, ? ? ? -? .
? xxii
Introduction
? All this throws light on some passages of De magia. Here Bruno, on the one hand, laments the extinction of that original and non-conventional hiero- glyphic language in which signs designated things and apparently guaran- teed communication with the divine; on the other hand, he preserves on the magical level the operational value of those characters, seals and figures which, according to tradition, propitiated demonic influence - it seemed possible not only to use them but also in some sense to remould them according to the dictates of a higher reason. More than once in his work Bruno tries to recreate something which elsewhere he claims has been irredeemably lost.
Bruno no longer accepts a separation between the natural, mathematical and divine worlds; therefore he can maintain a distinction between natural, mathematical and divine magic (or theurgy) only if he can posit the sur- vival of a distinct object for each of these, without denying the possibility of a passage from one sphere to another. The stars have themselves become gods, in effect, and are inhabited by demons, while the divinity seems to occupy the infinite spaces which extend between worlds.
All this facilitates a process of interaction between natural and celestial magic, the most visible consequence of which seems to be the problematic nature of the distinction between the world-soul and the existence of a universal spirit. In other respects, the access to the divine world through the celestial seems to be linked to Bruno's natural philosophy and to the particular developments which his demonology had undergone.
Universal animism was what suggested to Bruno the schema according to which the whole of nature should operate and on the basis of which every type of magical operation should be modelled. Such a schema always pro- vided for the action of an efficient universal principle, equipped with mod- els of its action, on a passive principle. This holds true both in the action of elementary qualities, rendered perceptible to man and as a result of which one can legitimately speak of natural magic, and in the area of occult qualities ('occult' in the sense that they elude direct observation but are confirmed by the production of recurring causal links and of special effects which seem impossible to attribute to the action of elementary qualities). One has recourse in this case to the action of a universal spirit which was not necessarily located in the heavens of traditional magic. It is rather its par- ticular corporeity which allows it to be extremely active and to produce all things, and Bruno clarifies the nature of its action by referring to the corpora caeca (blind bodies) which figure in Lucretius' De rerum natura.
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? The action of the magus at every level, therefore, consists in the prepa- ration and modification of matter so as to render it susceptible to the desired influence. The world-soul has thus to be drawn into a portion of matter suitably prepared, so as to produce a particular effect. Precisely for this reason, the world-soul, which is present in all its entirety in everything, causes matter to be successively formed in an infinite variety of ways, and it does so according to specific principles of universal action. This prop- erty, of being totally present in everything, belongs also to several accidents of matter, like voice and sound, whose magic effect appears certain and whose action is ultimately attributable to the action of the soul. This allows one to explain several phenomena that were traditionally considered to be proofs of the existence of occult qualities, such as the attraction of iron by magnets, etc. Considering these phenomena, Bruno refers to a motion peculiar to matter which he terms 'spherical' and which consists in a body's acquisition or loss (influxus and effluxus) of minute particles of matter. 19
Bruno uses the theory of a universal spirit not just to explain all recorded phenomena but also to delineate the specific features of his demonology. To him this spirit is the reason for the presence everywhere of living beings acting on us through means which elude the capacity of our senses. These can be subdivided into a number of species no less numerous than the num- ber of living species on earth and differentiated from man by their superior or inferior faculties, as well as by their varying dispositions, favourable or not, towards us.
Since they act in a way which is imperceptible to our senses, it becomes essential to specify the point at which they gain purchase on our faculties, so that their influence can be avoided or repulsed. Bruno scornfully chal- lenges the very successful De occultis naturae miraculis (The Hidden Miracles of Nature) of Levinus Lemnius,20 and rejects a purely medical explanation of phenomena traditionally considered to be of demonic origin. His own explanation of such phenomena refers to both the inferior melancholic humour of the man who, because he is devoid of spirit, is especially vul- nerable to demonic possession, and to the actual intervention of demons. These, possessing a body, affections and passions no less than man, are in search of whatever can constitute a source of nourishment or pleasure and, therefore, of a matter capable of attracting their action. What makes all of this possible is, on the one hand, the presence within us of a spirit which has a varying degree of purity, and, on the other, the fact that this spirit
19 Ibid. , III, ? ? ? -? ? . 20 Ibid. , III, ? ? . xxiv
? Introduction
? (whose link with our imagination can be taken for granted) is indistin- guishable from the passive aspect of our consciousness. It is this faculty which may or may not allow the establishment of the demonic vinculum, depending on how much resistance the cognitive faculties are able to offer. According to the infinite diversity of physical constitutions and to the qual- ity of the spirit which we can artificially (and sometimes wrongfully) mod- ify, for example through certain foods or particular ointments, it is possi- ble for a spirit to take control of us, attracted by our own melancholic humour, just as the world-soul can be attracted by a matter which is dis- posed to receive a certain influence. The demon thus becomes the cause of our deception, making appear as real what are simply ghosts of our imagi- nation and even giving us the illusion of entering into contact with divini- ties who are also imaginary. On this basis, in On Magic and Theses on Magic, Bruno posits two types of humanity, one superior and one inferior to the general level of mankind, who are distinguished by their ability (or lack thereof) to monitor and direct the processes of our consciousness and in particular its inevitably passive aspect. This, of course, is one of the con- stant themes of his philosophy and in particular of his polemic against the Reformation. In addition, it illustrates his belief that real processes and cognitive processes have a common foundation which has a magical aspect. Since the publication of Sigillus sigillorum (The Figure of Figures), he had been proclaiming, in overtly religious terminology, the essential value of a regulata fides (regulated faith), that is, the importance of exercising con- scious control over our receptive faculties. In this way, he argues against those 'qui aguntur potius quam agant' (who are acted on rather than act). 21
Bruno distinguishes between two types of contraction achievable by man. Contraction is a phenomenon through which the soul, by concentrating on itself, can realize particular powers; but this can have an opposite effect if it is directed towards a higher contemplative level or if it is carried out so as to render us no longer masters but servants of our imagination, and thus exposed to demonic influence. Here Bruno echoes Ficino in his exemplification of var- ious types of contraction; but instead of calling them 'vacationes animi', as Ficino had done, he gives them a name which allows him to incorporate this phenomenon into the metaphysical structure governing our consciousness. 22
21 Op. lat. , II, III, ? ? ? .
22 M. Ficino, Theologia Platonica, XIII, ? , in Opera, (Basel, ? ? ? ? ) I, ? ? ? -? . Cf. Op. lat. , II, II, ? ? ? -? ? ;
the distinction between two opposite types of contractio is connected to the distinction between two types of melancholy. Cf. on this point R. Klibansky, E. Panofsky, F. Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy (London: Nelson, ? ? ? ? ).
? xxv
Introduction
? The point of distinction between the two forms of contraction is therefore represented by the intermediate cognitive faculties which turn the data of sensibility into figments of our imagination. This distinction, and the sep- aration into two distinct levels of humanity, find their exemplary expres- sion in the Cabala del cavallo pegaseo (The Cabala of Pegasus) and in The Heroic Frenzies. The Cabala outlines the characteristics of the man who, faced with the difficulty of searching for the divine, freely renounces his superior faculties, those which make us really human, and contracts his cognitive powers into the single one of hearing, to passive reception alone. Thus stripped of all power of judgment and reduced to the animal condi- tionofanass,hecannolongertellifhisriderisagodorademon-anallu- sion to a famous line from Luther's De servo arbitrio, aimed at denying the very possibility of our freedom. This is the reason why, in The Heroic Frenzies, he praises the 'divine seal' of the 'good contraction'. 23 We have seen that, in this work,24 the metaphysics of Cause are translated in terms of the highest experience which man can have, of contemplation of the divine by means of an adequate image of it. Bruno claims, however, that this can be attained only by someone whose mind is constrained by two bonds (vincula): love, and the highest intelligible species which divinity could present to his eyes (i. e. beauty and the goodness of nature). In rela- tion to the action of these two vincula, the 'divine seal' of the 'good con- traction' acquires an essential importance: divinity, in fact, yields and com- municates itself to us only at a level proportionate to our receptivity of it.