Giordano Bruno Versus Aristotle: The Case Of Metaphysics: The Comparison Between Aristotelian Metaphysics And The New Brunian Speculation

By Stefano Ulliana

The revolutionary nature of Bruno's speculation is exercised against the tradition of certain Aristotelian texts fundamental to the transmission of Western thought and civilisation. In a main way it attacks and demolishes the cornerstones of Aristotle's Metaphysics, in order to be able to begin to affirm - or, if you like, to reaffirm (having given the explicit reference of the Nolan philosopher to the reflection of the early Presocratics) - the principle of the creative and doubly dialectical Infinity. The short essay follows the formulation and progressive development of the Aristotelian text through the critique exposed by Bruno's reflection. At the end of the text a short Bruno's bibliography is presented.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Babelcube Inc.
• Release date: Sep 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781071565759

Book preview

SPECULATION

THE COMPARISON BETWEEN ARISTOTELIAN METAPHYSICS AND THE NEW BRUNIAN SPECULATION

EDITED BY STEFANO ULLIANA

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ITALIAN VERSION IN SIMPLICISSIMUS BOOK FARM

2015

•  index

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Index...........................................................2

The comparison between some Aristotelian texts and the Brunian position  3

Initial remarks...........................................3

The comparison between the theological-naturalistic proposal of Aristotelian matrix and the theoretical-practical Brunian innovation  11

Observations on the relationship between Aristotelian Metaphysics and the Brunian position  11

The Aristotelian act of finiteness. The hypostasis of perfection and the term  29

Conclusions.............................................40

Short Brunian bibliography......................48

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•  THE COMPARISON BETWEEN SOME ARISTOTELIAN TEXTS

•  AND THE brunian POSITION

•  INITIAL REMARKS

A fundamental interpretative postulate of the explanation of Giordano Bruno's reflection is the fact of reason and imagination that the position of the Brunian principle of the mobile un-infinite - One, infinity and movement are the terms and the new speculative categories proposed by the Nolan thinker - has as a consequence the affirmation of the irrepressible appearance of opposition. This appearance translates into the image of the divisibility or internal splitting of matter.

The distinction in itself mobile between 'incorporeal' matter - or of superior things - and 'bodily' matter - or of inferior things - is in fact the expedient that Giordano Bruno  uses in De la Causa, Principio and Uno to prepare the speculative ground for the insertion of the centrality of the imaginative and desiring factor in the treatment of that moral and religious openness theorized throughout the entire sylloge of the Moral Dialogues (Spaccio de la Bestia trionfante; Cabala del Cavallo pegaseo, with the Aggiunta dell’Asino Cillenico; De gli Eroici furori). At the beginning of his speculation in the vernacular language, however, the author is concerned to focus the reader's attention on the principle and the ethical movement that lies at the foundation of that distinction and its internal movement: the inexhaustible, continuous, creative and dialectical relationship between perfection and what it seems to give rise to. The alteration, as space and time of loving reunion and equal to freedom.

Therefore, it is no less true, at the same time, that the philosopher hires memories, just at the end of the series of the three dialogues of moral content, just and again the same principle and the same movement (the possibility of infinity), as a resumption and crowning of the deepest and most justifying intention of his entire speculative work in the vernacular language.

Here, however, in the part that most directly questions the Aristotelian structure of the world (the series of Metaphysical-Cosmological Dialogues: Cena de le Ceneri; De la Causa, Principle and One; De l'Infinito, Universo e Mondi), our attention must be captured immediately by the construction of that philosophical foundation that will then determine (in the Moral Dialogues) the reflection of criticism of the idea, constitutive of the Western tradition, of possession and domination.

But this building will find better and clearer visibility - especially in its architecture - as soon as the oppositional relationship between the Aristotelian position and brunian speculation finds its proper place and definition.

The identity and plurality of the Spirit's achievements together constitute the infinitely creative source of Bruno's philosophical reflection and practical action. The inexhaustible and inexhaustible intention of the original reveals itself as a universal desire for universal fulfilment, an ineliminable and necessary artisticity: moreover, it becomes in the space and time of the alteration an ethical reminder of reciprocity, equal and fraternal, of freedom. Only the intensive infinity of the universal can present as its own effect and appearance that open idea of possibility which is able to welcome in its bosom the totality of determinations, that is to say the extensive infinite.

Thus it is the Brunian utopia of the creative infinite that safeguards the plurality and multiplicity of determinations; the Identity of the Aristotelian distinction between power and act, with the priority of the latter over the former, can