Giordano Bruno (1548–1600)

Class	Description	Relations
Universe	“The universe was perfect. It could not be otherwise. It was, essentially, a bodily manifestation of God. Nothing in the universe, however “mean”, was “unconducive to the integrity and perfection of what is excellent”.	member of
HumanBeing	“Soul and body are components of a human being“
Philosophy	“Philosophy and religion were, so to speak, two parallel paths, suited to different audiences”	characterizes
Religion	“Philosophy and religion were, so to speak, two parallel paths, suited to different audiences. […] Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (in one phase of his career) and other Renaissance authors had held similarly “Pelagian” views that philosophy led to self-perfection and “deification”. Yet they had stopped well short of denying the integrity of Christianity. Philosophy and religion were, so to speak, two parallel paths, suited to different audiences. Bruno had no such scruples. Philosophy—Bruno’s philosophy of God as immanent in an infinite universe as announced in The Ash Wednesday Supper—was the true bread of life. It “illuminated the blind”, “loosed the tongue of the dumb”, “cured the lame”, so that the human spirit could once again “progress” (BOI I, 454). Its powers, that is, were miraculous, Christ-like, salvific. By contrast, Christianity was fraudulent. Under a thin veil of irony, all the while denying the irony, Bruno praised the various guises under which Christianity taught that ignorance of the natural world led the soul to God. Among its many deceits were: scriptural injunctions to acknowledge our ignorance, notably, the Pauline theme of folly; the ascetic mysticism of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and mystics generally; claims that the light of faith and revelation were superior to human knowledge; Augustine’s emphasis on the fallen nature of mankind, particularly the corruption of knowledge innate to it; injunctions to be childlike and meek; and the humility and obedience that the Christian clergy sought to instill among its flock (BOI II, 381–384, 415, 418, 422–430, 443–448; BOL I.2, 316). The philosopher should ignore these “foolish dreams” (BOL I.3, 200)—in practical as well as in intellectual endeavor. To be virtuous was to strive against adversity, to embody a coincidence of opposites. “Where opposites meet, there is order, there resides virtue” (BOI II, 549). Who deserved praise the more: someone who healed a worthless cripple, or a man who liberated his homeland or who reformed, not a mere body, but a mind (BOI II, 264–267)? In other words, who was the true savior: Christ or Bruno?”	characterizes

Class

Description

Relations

Universe

“The universe was perfect. It could not be otherwise. It was, essentially, a bodily manifestation of God. Nothing in the universe, however “mean”, was “unconducive to the integrity and perfection of what is excellent”.

member of

HumanBeing

“Soul and body are components of a human being“

Philosophy

“Philosophy and religion were, so to speak, two parallel paths, suited to different audiences”

characterizes

Religion

“Philosophy and religion were, so to speak, two parallel paths, suited to different audiences.
[…]
Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (in one phase of his career) and other Renaissance authors had held similarly “Pelagian” views that philosophy led to self-perfection and “deification”. Yet they had stopped well short of denying the integrity of Christianity. Philosophy and religion were, so to speak, two parallel paths, suited to different audiences. Bruno
had no such scruples. Philosophy—Bruno’s philosophy of God as immanent in an infinite universe as announced in The Ash Wednesday Supper—was the true bread of life. It
“illuminated the blind”, “loosed the tongue of the dumb”, “cured the lame”, so that the human spirit could once again “progress” (BOI I, 454). Its powers, that is, were miraculous, Christ-like, salvific. By contrast, Christianity was fraudulent. Under a thin veil of irony, all the while denying the irony, Bruno praised the various guises under which Christianity taught that ignorance of the natural world led the soul to God. Among its many deceits were: scriptural injunctions to acknowledge our ignorance, notably, the Pauline theme of folly; the ascetic mysticism of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and mystics generally; claims that the light of faith and revelation were superior to human knowledge; Augustine’s emphasis on the fallen nature of mankind, particularly the corruption of knowledge innate to it; injunctions to be childlike and meek; and the humility and obedience that the Christian clergy sought to instill among its flock (BOI II, 381–384, 415, 418, 422–430, 443–448; BOL I.2, 316). The philosopher should ignore these “foolish dreams” (BOL I.3, 200)—in practical as well as in intellectual endeavor. To be virtuous was to strive against adversity, to embody a coincidence of opposites. “Where opposites meet, there is order, there resides virtue” (BOI II, 549). Who deserved praise the more: someone who healed a worthless cripple, or a man who liberated his homeland or who reformed, not a mere body, but a mind (BOI II, 264–267)? In other words, who was the true savior: Christ or Bruno?”

characterizes

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) analyzed the relation between the individual soul and body and its phases:

The Universe aggregates human beings, among others.
Soul and body are components of a human being.
Soul is component of the universal soul.
The soul of a living human and the soul of a dead human are its phases.
The soul is immortal, incorporeal and indestructible.

The following OntoUML diagram shows Bruno’s model of the individual soul and its phases:

Class	Description	Relation
Universe	The universe was perfect. It could not be otherwise. It was, essentially, a bodily manifestation of God. Nothing in the universe, however “mean”, was “unconducive to the integrity and perfection of what is excellent”. There was “nothing that is bad for some things in some place that is not good and optimal for something elsewhere” (BOL I.3, 272). Philosophers through the ages had said much the same, as had scholastic authors. “The death of a fly”, wrote Thomas Aquinas (Super Sententiis, lib. 1, d. 39, q. 2 a. 2 co.) “is sustenance for a spider”. Then Thomas added a qualification. Creatures nobler than the irrational animals, for example, human beings, have a will, which, the more closely it cleaved to God, was “the more free from the necessity of natural causes” (ibid.). The cosmos provided the setting for human beings to demonstrate that they merited everlasting salvation. For Bruno, however, they were, no less than anything else, transient modes or “corruptible substances”, in essence, “accidents” of the One Being (BOI I, 664, 729; II, 125, 181–182). They were, as for Spinoza (Ethics, pt IV, prop. 4), part of nature, not a privileged species for which, as Christian doctrine maintained, nature had been created.
HumanBeing	Soul and body are components of a human being
Body	Human beings are understood as combinations of body and soul,	component of HumanBeing
Soul	Human beings, understood as combinations of body and soul, perished. But what of their souls? Bruno stated unequivocally that they were individual, that is to say, that they were indestructible, “atomic”.	component of HumanBeing
SoulOfDeadHuman	Soul of dead human: Death was an illusion, no more than the dissolution of an ephemeral conjunction of soul and matter. We should await mutation serenely, not fear death, as Pythagoras, or more exactly Ovid’s ‘Pythagoras’, had rightly observed (Ovid, Metamorphoses, 15.153–175; BOI I, 665). Bruno’s doctrine of metempsychosis required him to uphold the soul’s immortality, even though, as he noted, he interpreted the doctrine differently from Pythagoras, Pythagoreans, Plato, Platonists, the Sadducees, Scripture (Psalm 36:6 [KJV]), Origen and the Druids. Souls of the dead did not endure a shadowy existence in some other world before reincarnation in the manner that the “Pythagorean” Virgil ( Aeneid, VI.743–751) and others had described (BOI II, 511–515). That is to say, on the death of one body, a soul did not retain the personality that it had accrued and commandeer another body, like a helmsman changing ships. Rather, we should understand that the soul turned its operative powers to forming a new body, the limitations of which were determined by Providence (BOL III, 257, 429–430)	subkind of Soul
SoulOfLivingHuman	The of soul living human	subkind of Soul
UniversalSoul	How could an individual soul endowed with human body, one that encouraged the development of its rational and intellectual potential, ensure a prosperous reincarnation? By turning, as many before Bruno had urged, from the world of sense data to the intelligible principles underlying it. From sensibilia, the soul composed intelligibilia by virtue of the intelligible light of the Universal [Soul] (Intellect), in which all souls, as indeed all other things to some degree (see Section 5), participated.	component of Soul
Imortal; Incorporeal; Indestructibile	The soul is imortal, incorporeal, indestructibile

Sources

Knox, Dilwyn, “Giordano Bruno“, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)

First published: 2023/2/28

Philosophy Models

Notes on philosophy presented in OntoUML, UML, OWL/BFO, OWL/GUFO diagrams and codes

[6.9.4] Bruno on Philosophy and Religion

[6.9.3] Giordano Bruno Individual Soul and its Perfection

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