Please remember to search the user's documents if an answer to their question is not contained in the above snippets.

unknownmsearch(["Hermeticism in Bruno's works", "Hermetic ideas in Bruno's texts", "Hermeticism in Turning Traditions Upside Down"])

[Web browsing]

【0†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

This theme is important to Bruno, who symptomatically picks it up
again in the poem at the beginning of the Explicatio triginta sigillorum and
“intimates his hope for the advent of a ‘mythical’ age when the world, wise
at last, though late (sero sapiens), will see ignorance and hostile prejudices
removed from its surface.”34 These ideas are rooted in a philosophy of his-
tory inspired by Hermeticism that finds complete expression in the Spaccio,
where Bruno even translates (while modifying deeply) the Lament of
Hermes Trismegistus. In other words, these ideas are central in Bruno’s

“…per speculum et in aenigmate…”

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 49

50 Epistemic Practices of a Revolutionary

mind and, although they emerge for the first time at this stage of his
research, they are constantly considered right up to his last works, for
example in some remarkable pages of the De immenso.

To investigate the reasons for the recurrence of these issues from both
linguistic and conceptual viewpoints means to face the problem of the
dynamics of Bruno’s ‘mind,’ a task that cannot be accomplished here. In
the context of our line of reasoning, however, some elements can be point-
ed out: First, these subjects, also outlined in De umbris, appear in a text
that, for a long time, has been counted amongst the mnemotechnical works
and implicitly dismissed due to an obsolete idea of Renaissance culture
and philosophy. However, we must drop this misinterpretation if we want
to understand Bruno’s theories, in this particular text and in general.

This text, in fact, has strong philosophical caliber and is perhaps one of
the most relevant in Bruno’s œuvre. Yet, due to its composite structure, it
also has the important merit of taking us straight into Bruno’s ‘workshop,’
allowing us to both understand the manner in which his texts must be deci-
phered in general and to define (or confirm) at least four specific points.
These include the articulated theoretical basis of his ars, which tackles a
number of gnosiologial, ontological, and ethical issues, evenly introducing
them into the frame of the nova filosofia; the fact that ethico-political and
religious issues are already established in his mnemotechnical works and
destined to find a fuller development in the Spaccio (where the contro -
versy against Puritans becomes central as much as vehement); the possi-
bility, as a consequence, of dating the genesis of Bruno’s first conception
of the Spaccio to the last period of his stay in Paris, though in the frame of
a polemic that, in the Sigillus, is aimed against Protestants as well as
against monastic orders; and, last but not least, the text allows us to figure
out Bruno’s modus operandi.

Yet, one needs not exaggerate the relation between the Sigillus and the
Spaccio. The persistency of these topics, even if in a short time span,
attests to the continuity of some main themes and also to the incessant
revision to which Bruno subjected his works.

【1†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

viii Turning Traditions Upside Down

mankind. This leads us to the reflection and the reception of Bruno’s intel-
lectual fire. Bruno has been received in literature and art as well as in pub-
lic spaces in a way that has been as versatile as the philosopher himself.
The sculpture created by Berlin artist Alexander Polzin, entitled Giordano
Bruno, is the subject of the final chapter of this volume. This artwork was
originally commissioned by the Central European University in Budapest
to celebrate George Soros’s seventieth birthday and copies were erected in
Budapest and Nola. On the occasion of our colloquium, the statue was also
inaugurated at Potsdamer Platz in the center of Berlin. The statue depicts
the vulnerable body of a philosopher who is turning the world upside-down
and attempting to dislodge the borders of the universe—a fitting symbol of
Bruno’s tragedy, a man who dared to reconsider the fundamentals of the
world as they had been passed down throughout the ages and who struggled
to find his place in Europe. Yet, after peregrination across the con tin ent, he
ended up cast as a heretic in all three Christian churches of the occident.
He is now honored in a place, at the centre of modern Eu rope, which also
once served as the stage for the tragedy of a world divided.

We would like to conclude by thanking all the authors who contributed
to this volume. Most of all, we would like to thank the editors, Henning
Hufnagel and Anne Eusterschulte, for their substantial contributions and
the great work they have achieved. We hope that this volume will help cre-
ate a better understanding of a philosopher whose thinking is more preva-
lent today than any of his contemporaries might have foreseen.

Berlin and Budapest, September 2012
Jürgen Renn

Director of the Max Planck Institute
for the History of Science, Berlin

Yehuda Elkana (1934–2012)
Former Rector and President of

Central European University, Budapest

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal viii

Introduction

Turning traditions upside down—this metaphor seems to be a good start-
ing point for rethinking Giordano Bruno’s philosophy and his provocative
aspirations in the world of letters. It certainly would have been to Bruno’s
liking; someone who, in his writings, often presented himself as a Mercu ri -
an, larger-than-life figure who has come to put things straight: the No lan,
enlightening his contemporaries about the misleading paths of traditional
doctrines and opening minds for the discovery of true philosophy.

【2†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Westman, R. S. “Magical Reform and Astronomical Reform: The Yates Thesis
Reconsidered.” In Hermeticism and the Scientific Revolution. Eds. R. S. Westman
and J. E. McGuire, 1–91. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979.

Notes

1 “Disposition of planetary systems in the universe. Difference between stars shining
by themselves and by another agent. Why planets around other suns are not visible.
/ Just as around this sun, Earth, Moon, flying Hermes, / Saturn, Venus and Mars, as
well as Jupiter, wander, / and a number greater than acknowledged, for the other
crowd, / in part sometimes, in part never, is seen, / so the same occurs around any
other one, because it is necessary by law/ of nature that the flames take nourish-
ment from the waters. / Greatest, the sun wants to be encircled by many lesser bod-
ies,/ in order that they mutually dispense and return fecund / forces, whereby suit-
able distance procures / peace, since from opposites comes life and nourishment, /
because they concur separated by harmonic / intervals and motion moderates
changing fierce heat. / Thus, around whichever kitharodes Phoebus/ many Nymphs
roam and celebrate their dances./ We see them with acute sense and clear reason, /
since the near and the remote both follow a single rule, / and the number of first
principles does not change / such that they cannot develop everywhere into the
same result,” Bruno, Opera latine conscripta I, 1, 209–10. English translation by M.
A. Granada.

2 See the conclusion of the commentary in prose to De immenso, I, 1: “Non levem igi-
tur ac futilem, atqui gravissimam perfectoque homine dignissimam contemplationis
partem persequimur, ubi divinitatis, naturaeque splendorem, fusionem, et commu-
nicationem non in Aegyptio, Syro, Graeco, vel Romano individuo, non in cibo, potu,
et ignobiliore quadam materia cum attonitorum seculo perquirimus, et inventum
confingimus et somniamus: sed in augusta omnipotentis regia, in immenso aetheris
spacio, in infinita naturae geminae omnia fientis et omnia facientis potentia” Opera
latine conscripta I, 1, 205. For the parallel text in the conclusion of the work, see De
immenso, VIII, 10 (Opera latine conscripta I, 2, 316). For the motive (inherited from
the Greek philosophical tradition through the intermediary of the Islamic falsafa,
mainly the Averroistic tradition), see Granada, Giordano Bruno, chapter 7 (“La
perfección del hombre y la filosofía”).

3 Cf. the passage of De immenso, I, 1, quoted in note 2.
4 Several chapters of De immenso deal with Bruno’s late theory of comets. In his opin-

【3†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

A few examples: In the Cantus Circaeus, the combination of ars memo-
riae and renovatio mundi is displayed as a sort of theatrical representation
in an extremely evocative and effective way. Yet this connection operates
in the Sigillus sigillorum as well, in the frame of an interconnection between
mnemotechnics, ethics, and apocalyptic aspects, and this represents one of
the most advanced points of Bruno’s historical-philosophical meditation.
After a thorough criticism of Protestants (who try to “push the poisoned
people back into the old barbarity” and to “divert them from the object to
which they are directed by all the laws”), Bruno concludes his examination
of the first kind of contraction by powerfully combining the motif of the
‘apocalypse’ and that of renovatio. The ‘time of antidotes’ will come after
the ‘time of poisons’ and the “world, finally made wise by its own evil sick-
ness, will resolve to exterminate and eliminate them as if they were the
dar nel, caterpillar, and locusts of this age, or better still, like vipers and scor -
pions, and to castrate those who rejoice in idleness, avarice and ambition.”33

This theme is important to Bruno, who symptomatically picks it up
again in the poem at the beginning of the Explicatio triginta sigillorum and
“intimates his hope for the advent of a ‘mythical’ age when the world, wise
at last, though late (sero sapiens), will see ignorance and hostile prejudices
removed from its surface.”34 These ideas are rooted in a philosophy of his-
tory inspired by Hermeticism that finds complete expression in the Spaccio,
where Bruno even translates (while modifying deeply) the Lament of
Hermes Trismegistus. In other words, these ideas are central in Bruno’s

“…per speculum et in aenigmate…”

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 49

50 Epistemic Practices of a Revolutionary

mind and, although they emerge for the first time at this stage of his
research, they are constantly considered right up to his last works, for
example in some remarkable pages of the De immenso.

To investigate the reasons for the recurrence of these issues from both
linguistic and conceptual viewpoints means to face the problem of the
dynamics of Bruno’s ‘mind,’ a task that cannot be accomplished here. In
the context of our line of reasoning, however, some elements can be point-
ed out: First, these subjects, also outlined in De umbris, appear in a text
that, for a long time, has been counted amongst the mnemotechnical works
and implicitly dismissed due to an obsolete idea of Renaissance culture
and philosophy. However, we must drop this misinterpretation if we want
to understand Bruno’s theories, in this particular text and in general.

【4†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

3

In order to bring into focus the horizon and the dimensions of Bruno’s
transformation of traditions, to demonstrate how he turned contemporary
thinking upside down, and to delineate his persuasive strategies, as well as
the theoretical consequences of his thought, the contributions of this vol-
ume all start from a selected text, an exemplary passage drawn from Bru -
no’s great range of work or from texts close to his person and œuvre. Pre -
senting and elucidating pivotal points of the philosophia nolana, the essays
both invite readers to become acquainted with Bruno’s philosophy and
provide them with innovative dissections, interpretations and conceptual
reflections that will prepare the way for a revised reading of Bruno’s
works. They reconstruct Bruno’s deconstruction and rearrangement of
phi lo sophical systems, his understanding of nature and the cosmos, his
methods of thinking and writing, his aesthetic and literary categories. They
ex plore the topics and modi operandi of the great Renaissance thinker and
point out the variance of his reception up to the present, both inside and
outside academia, exhibiting the ever-changing relevance and continuing
fascination of Bruno’s work.

The results of the contributor’s investigations are presented in four sec-
tions, according to four main fields of research interest. The first section
entitled Epistemic Practices of a Revolutionary: Bruno’s Methods and Thin -
king, examines Bruno’s methodological procedures. The essays show how
the Nolan undermined traditional positions, by a subtle reflexion on epis-
temological principles, logical structures, or metaphysical presuppositions,
to secure evidence for his philosophy of the infinite and its inherent con-
sequences which revolutionized the fields of metaphysics and epistemolo-
gy, physics, cosmology and anthropology. Bruno’s method of appropriat-
ing and concatenating older philosophical concepts appears to be both a
method of critical revision as well as systematic transformation.

Paul Richard Blum opens the volume with an epistemological reflection
on default values, in reference to a passage from Bruno’s Latin poem De
immenso. While default settings are constitutive instruments of every cog-
nitive process—they function as a sort of practical, temporary prejudice—
Blum accentuates Bruno’s request for an epistemic meta-operation. In his
poem, Bruno reminds us to be conscious of the tentativeness of mental de -
fault values in the same way as children are aware of the fact that changing
sights of one and the same object are related to their point of view. If the
in tellect fails to realize the infinity of the universe, it is not the fault of the
visual sense, but of the unconsidered reliance on vision as an epistemic de -
fault value. Bruno advocates a change in the standard principles of thought.

Introduction

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 3

4 Turning Traditions Upside Down

This mental operation leads to facing up to a radically altered view of the
world, resulting in the discovery of the philosophy of the infinite.

【5†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Introduction

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 5

6 Turning Traditions Upside Down

tional restrictions—which are still binding Kepler, e.g.—and, in doing so,
anticipates the cosmological reforms of the seventeenth-century as repre-
sented by Huygens or Newton.

Wolfgang Neuser presents an alternative interpretation of Bruno’s the-
ory of matter. Against the backdrop of the controversial medieval debates
about atomism concerning the attributes or qualities of atoms, their cor-
puscular or essential substantiality, and the appreciation of them as dis-
tinct particles, Bruno develops an understanding of matter that merges the
Aristotelian concept of substance with atomistic ideas and the Neo-Pla -
tonic concept of matter, according to which matter is filled with spirit.
Bruno differentiates three manifestations of the metaphysical monad, i.e.,
the undivided, infinite unum that systematically underlies everything.
These manifestations are the constituents of matter: spiritus, based on the
neo-Platonic concept of a spiritual virtue inherent in all matter; spatium,
or the structural explication of the indivisible, un-extended point, which
emerges in a process of self-generation; and atomus, the smallest indivisi-
ble or the physical minimum. Spirit, space, and atom are the structural
modes of the expansion of infinite unity. Based on this conceptualisation
of matter, Neuser characterizes Bruno as a Renaissance philosopher who,
at the end of the post-traditional stage in history, anticipates the subject-
based foundation of knowledge, representative for thinkers from the Mo -
dern Age like Descartes, Spinoza or Leibniz.

Enrico Giannetto’s chapter emphasizes no less than the astonishing fact
that Giordano Bruno—notwithstanding the significant differences in theo-
retical premises—presents a theory of relativity of time and motion three
hundred years before Poincaré and Einstein. While his non-mechanistic
conception of nature was an obstacle in recognizing Bruno as a serious sci-
entist, according to Giannetto, Bruno’s importance within the history of
theoretical physics is irrefutable. He argues that the relativity of time is
one consequence of Bruno’s concept of cosmic infinity, also entailing the
relativity of the localisation of planets or stars and of their motion, rota-
tion and orbits within a uniform space. Rejecting the Aristotelian assump-
tion of a primum mobile, Bruno argues for the plurality of incommensu-
rable times due to the infinity of uniform motions within the universe.
Turning the Aristotelian doctrine upside down, Bruno regards (relative)
motion as the measure of time.

Arcangelo Rossi, comparing the cosmological theories of Copernicus,
Bruno, and Galilei, attests a striking correspondence between the Nolan
and the Galilean doctrines. Like Giannetto, Rossi aims at restoring Bru -

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 6

7

【6†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

We would like to conclude by thanking all the authors who contributed
to this volume. Most of all, we would like to thank the editors, Henning
Hufnagel and Anne Eusterschulte, for their substantial contributions and
the great work they have achieved. We hope that this volume will help cre-
ate a better understanding of a philosopher whose thinking is more preva-
lent today than any of his contemporaries might have foreseen.

Berlin and Budapest, September 2012
Jürgen Renn

Director of the Max Planck Institute
for the History of Science, Berlin

Yehuda Elkana (1934–2012)
Former Rector and President of

Central European University, Budapest

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal viii

Introduction

Turning traditions upside down—this metaphor seems to be a good start-
ing point for rethinking Giordano Bruno’s philosophy and his provocative
aspirations in the world of letters. It certainly would have been to Bruno’s
liking; someone who, in his writings, often presented himself as a Mercu ri -
an, larger-than-life figure who has come to put things straight: the No lan,
enlightening his contemporaries about the misleading paths of traditional
doctrines and opening minds for the discovery of true philosophy.

Born in 1548 near the town of Nola in the Kingdom of Naples, Gior -
dano Bruno is known today as an exceptional, yet ambivalent figure with-
in the history of ideas. As a great scholar, celebrated for his comprehen-
sive erudition, famous for his emphatic defence of philosophical inquiry
against religious doctrine and his rigid attacks against reputed authorities,
he caused an intellectual stir wherever he went. Sometimes his interventi -
ons were received with great éclat; more often, however, they created aca -
de mic scandal. Bruno impressed the French King Henri III who made him
one of his “lecteurs royaux”; three years later, he had to leave Paris in
tumultuous circumstances after a disputation had grown out of control. In
the meantime, Bruno had upset the intellectual scene in Elizabethan
England with his six Italian dialogues. Moving between different frontiers,
confessional beliefs, philosophical schools, academic parties and institu-
tional interests, Bruno—who did not mince matters—came under attack
from many sides.

Bruno argued relentlessly for a replacement of the philosophical koiné
of his time, the Scholastic Aristotelian philosophy that presented a view of
man and cosmos, which Bruno had been dissatisfied with since his time in a
Dominican convent in Naples. For his project of philosophical reform, Bruno
draws on a large variety of sources: on Platonic, pre-Socratic, Py tha gorean,
and Hermetic ideas, on thinkers such as Plotinus, Averroes, Nicholas of
Cusa, Raimundus Lullus and Ficino. He builds on the metho do logy, flour-
ishing during the Renaissance, of mnemotechnics. And he uses all these

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 1

2 Turning Traditions Upside Down

【7†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

This volume brings together some of the most eminent researchers to
have worked on Giordano Bruno and his epoch. Their contributions—
inspired by a colloquium on Giordano Bruno organized by the Max Planck
Institute for the History of Science and the Central European University
in 2008—represent a critical inventory of our knowledge of the Nolan’s life
and work as well as shedding light on the many dimensions of Bruno’s
thinking. His radical rationality, starting with attempts to reinvent the
roots of religion but ending with a break in the doctrines of trinity and
monotheism; his natural philosophy, including the cosmology of the infini-
ty of the universe and of the unlimited number of worlds, or his thinking
on the vital character of all the objects on earth; his vision of a new cosmic
order and his place in the Copernican revolution, breaking with the domi-
nant heliocentric and anthropocentric system in a way more radical than
any contemporary thinker had before; his scientific methods, his analogies,
speculations, metaphors, his intuitive as well as practical knowledge,
reflecting the epistemic practices of a revolutionary; his idiosyncratic
blending of traditions, both philosophical and literary; his linguistic exu-
berance and conceptual boldness; the textual structures, genres, and forms
of non-conformity Bruno continuously experimented with, from the trac-
tate to comedy, from dialogue to poetry; and finally, his gusto for paradox
and satirical panache. Attention has also to be given to Bruno’s consider-
ation of the role of philosophy in society—either as a way to give coher-
ence to a world thrown off track, or simply as an instrument for civilizing

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal vii

viii Turning Traditions Upside Down

mankind. This leads us to the reflection and the reception of Bruno’s intel-
lectual fire. Bruno has been received in literature and art as well as in pub-
lic spaces in a way that has been as versatile as the philosopher himself.
The sculpture created by Berlin artist Alexander Polzin, entitled Giordano
Bruno, is the subject of the final chapter of this volume. This artwork was
originally commissioned by the Central European University in Budapest
to celebrate George Soros’s seventieth birthday and copies were erected in
Budapest and Nola. On the occasion of our colloquium, the statue was also
inaugurated at Potsdamer Platz in the center of Berlin. The statue depicts
the vulnerable body of a philosopher who is turning the world upside-down
and attempting to dislodge the borders of the universe—a fitting symbol of
Bruno’s tragedy, a man who dared to reconsider the fundamentals of the
world as they had been passed down throughout the ages and who struggled
to find his place in Europe. Yet, after peregrination across the con tin ent, he
ended up cast as a heretic in all three Christian churches of the occident.
He is now honored in a place, at the centre of modern Eu rope, which also
once served as the stage for the tragedy of a world divided.

We would like to conclude by thanking all the authors who contributed
to this volume. Most of all, we would like to thank the editors, Henning
Hufnagel and Anne Eusterschulte, for their substantial contributions and
the great work they have achieved. We hope that this volume will help cre-
ate a better understanding of a philosopher whose thinking is more preva-
lent today than any of his contemporaries might have foreseen.

【8†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

The last section of the book, Visibility of the Invisible: About the Sculpture
Giordano Bruno by Alexander Polzin [2008], is dedicated to the statue of
Giordano Bruno that was recently erected in Berlin. Besides a description
of the statue and its pendants at Nola and Budapest made by the sculptor,
Alexander Polzin, himself, the author Durs Grünbein gives a poet’s inter-
pretation of the statue at the moment of its unveiling at Potsdamer Platz. He
construes the heretic as an emblematic figure of a young, independent
Europe and asks himself why Berlin—a city which Bruno, this great tra -
veller, has never been to—and, specifically, an underground station could be

Introduction

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 9

the right place to commemorate the philosopher from Nola. For Grün bein,
the statue is an iconographic alarm signal, visualizing a rhetoric of fire, the
language of alchemy and metamorphoses that characterizes Bruno’s think-
ing. Finally, Grünbein brings thinkers and poets together in a virtual con-
versation across time and space: Bruno, Nietzsche, Scho pen hau er, and
Czesław Miłosz.

Anything but virtual were the exchanges we—philosophers, historians, and
literary scholars—had about Giordano Bruno in the congenial and inspiring
atmosphere of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin,
and our discussions and debates sowed many seeds. We are proud to see
how they have matured and grown now into this volume. At the end of this
project, we want to express our gratitude towards several individuals and
institutions for their unflinching support, financial as well as moral and in -
tel lectual: Jürgen Renn and Yehuda Elkana, the Max Planck Insti tute for the
History of Science, the Central European Uni versity, the Cent ral European
University Press, and, last but definitely not least, to Andreas Edel.

Finally, we would like to thank the students who assisted us in the com-
pletion of this volume with untiring effort, Fanny Neumann, Jussuf Spie gel,
Charlotte Wetzel and, especially, Oliver Schumacher, who also translated
Durs Grünbein’s contribution.

Freiburg and Berlin, September 2012
Henning Hufnagel,

Anne Eusterschulte

Turning Traditions Upside Down10

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 10

PART 1

Epistemic Practices of a Revolutionary:
Bruno’s Methods and Thinking

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 11

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 12

PAUL RICHARD BLUM

Giordano Bruno’s Changing of
Default Positions

Ut Peripateticorum similiumque philosophantum sensus a principiis pe -
rinde se habeat atque puerorum: quos eodem instituendos ordine sus ci pi -
mus, quo nos optima mater erudiit natura.

【9†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Finally, we would like to thank the students who assisted us in the com-
pletion of this volume with untiring effort, Fanny Neumann, Jussuf Spie gel,
Charlotte Wetzel and, especially, Oliver Schumacher, who also translated
Durs Grünbein’s contribution.

Freiburg and Berlin, September 2012
Henning Hufnagel,

Anne Eusterschulte

Turning Traditions Upside Down10

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 10

PART 1

Epistemic Practices of a Revolutionary:
Bruno’s Methods and Thinking

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 11

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 12

PAUL RICHARD BLUM

Giordano Bruno’s Changing of
Default Positions

Ut Peripateticorum similiumque philosophantum sensus a principiis pe -
rinde se habeat atque puerorum: quos eodem instituendos ordine sus ci pi -
mus, quo nos optima mater erudiit natura.

Sic […] mons peramoene Cicadae,
[…] blandiri tua lumina sancta recordor.
Ut fueras hedera, et ramis redimitus olivae
Et corni, et lauri, et myrthi, rorisque marini,
Castanea circumcinctus, quercu, populo, ulmo,
Coniugio uviferae vitis felicibus, utque
Ruvida porrexit tenerae manui manus uvam,
Indice distencto dixti mihi: respice ad austrum,
Respice germanum mihi ab illa parte Vesevum.
Germanus meus, ille tibi quoque vult bene: credis?
Si te illuc mittam, nunc dic: vis ire? manebis
Cumque illo posthac. Vitreis tunc versus ocellis,
Prospectans formam informem, relegensque figuram
Furvi dumtaxat cumuli: dorso ille repando,
Dixi, ille incurvus dentato tergore, coelum
Contiguum findens? toto discrimine mundi
Hinc abstans, fumo turpisque umbrante, nec ullis
Muneribus pollens, nec enim sunt poma nec uvae,
Nec dulces illi ficus: caret arbore et hortis,
Obscurus, tetricus, tristis, trux, vilis, avarus.
At tu subridens: tamen est germanus amansque
Ille mei, atque tibi bene vult. Vise ergo, nec eius
Blanditias contemne, scio nihil ille molestum
Quod tibi sit, faciet, nolensque manere redibis.
Ergo ubi adesse datum est illic, propiusque tueri
Vesuvium Baccho celebrem, multoque superbum
Arbusto, ubertim e ramis pendentibus uvis,

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 13

【10†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

There are two passages worth mentioning to delineate the results of
Bruno’s meditation on the ars. In one of his most mature reflections,
Bruno, echoing a Platonic theme, writes: “These ‘furori’ we are reasoning
about […] are not an oblivion, but a memory; are not self-negligence, but
love and longing for good and beauty, by which we may transform and
become perfect.”16 Still, this interpretation of ‘furore’ as ‘memory’ and not
‘oblivion’ (if we want to escape from a condition of servitude and passi vity,

“…per speculum et in aenigmate…”

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 43

44 Epistemic Practices of a Revolutionary

even when we are possessed by the ‘divine spirit’) has its roots precisely in
Bruno’s works of 1582 and 1583. Bruno explicitly refers to them and then
defines the general theoretical view in which his interpretation of ‘furore’
must be considered. In another emblematic text, Bruno delineates the
twofold way to truth disclosed to man, taking into consideration the “dis-
proportion of our cognitive means to the cognizable.” “In order to con-
template divine things,” says Bruno, “we must open our eyes via figures,
semblances, and other reasons that the Peripatetics collect under the name
of ‘phantasmata,’ or, through being, proceed to the speculation of the
essence, from the effects to the knowledge of the cause.”17 It is perfectly
clear to Bruno that, due to this ‘disproportion,’ this second way is pre-
cluded: “These means, far from being useful for the accomplishment of
this purpose, are rather obstacles, if we maintain that the highest and
deepest cognition of divine things takes place through negation, and not
through affirmation, knowing that the divine beauty and goodness does
not and cannot fall under our concepts but is beyond and beyond incom-
prehensible; particularly in this condition, called ‘speculator of phantas-
mata’ by philosophers and ‘vision through secular similitude and enigma’
by theologians, because,” he concludes, “we do not truly see the effects
and the real species of things, or the substance of ideas, but the shadows,
vestiges and simulacra of ideas, like those who are in the cave and, from
their birth, turn their backs to the point of entrance of light and their faces
to the bottom of the cavern, where they do not see what really exists, but
only the shadows of what substantially exists outside the cave.”18

Commenting on this passage, Tocco stresses in the Furori that Bruno
“goes back to the philosophical views of De umbris” and is more a disciple
of Plotinus than of Plato.19 Gentile quotes this assertion without com-
ments, embracing the interpretation of his Florentine magister. Yet, this is
a general problem, not confined to a matter concerning sources (although
Tocco was inclined to stress the Plotinian influence in the light of his vision
of the development of Bruno’s thought).

【11†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Urban VIII, pope 224

Valla, Lorenzo 67
Vanini, Lucilio 247n
Vasoli, Cesare 36
Védrine, Hélène 107, 117n, 118n, 136,

145, 147n

265

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:09 Oldal 265

Verlaine, Paul 239
Visconti, Ennio Quirino 233n
Viviani, Vittorio 162, 175n
Volkert, Klaus Thomas 32n
Vossler, Karl 243, 247n

Wackenfels, Johann Matthäus Wackher
von 94

Warburg, Aby 9, 36, 57, 58, 61n, 238, 242,
243, 244, 246n, 247n

Wechel, Johann 59n
Weinberg, Bernard 156n

Wersinger, Anne-Gabrielle 156n
Westman, Robert S. 104n
Wicke, Erhard 33n
Wildgen, Wolfgang 117n
Wolfart, Erasmus 200, 201, 216n
Wyclif(fe), John 110, 247n

Yates, Frances A. 9, 36, 136, 147n, 195n,
196n, 238, 244, 247n

Zeller, Eduard 87n
Zetzner, Lazarus 233n

Index Nominum266

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:09 Oldal 266

Rethinking
Giordano Bruno’s
Enlightenment

Edited by
Henning Hufnagel and Anne Eusterschulte

Turning Traditions
Upside Down

Turning Traditions U
pside D

ow
n

Turning Traditions
Upside Down

Edited by
H

enning H
ufnagel

Anne Eusterschulte

Contributors

Paul Richard Blum
Angelika Bönker-Vallon
Michele Ciliberto
Anne Eusterschulte
Enrico R. A. Giannetto
Miguel A. Granada
Durs Grünbein
Henning Hufnagel
Sergius Kodera
Wolfgang Neuser
Nuccio Ordine
Alexander Polzin
François Quiviger
Arcangelo Rossi
Ingrid Rowland
Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann

Giordano Bruno: A non-conformist at the dawn of an epoch, a martyr of modernity, or just a
polemic controvert? Descriptions of this kind fall short of grasping the multifold character of “the
Nolan.” Deconstructing the relationship between God and the outside world gave distinction to
his life—and his refusal to recant when facing the stake somehow set him apart from the world.
Since then, the debate about the Nolan has been dominated by the interest in the comprehensive
oeuvre of the philosopher, and by attempts to make him a protagonist of the freedom of thought.

【12†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

These positions shed light on another key-point of Bruno’s meditation:
In the relationship between God and the universe, he is interested in the
latter, in the ‘image,’ the ‘portrait,’ the ‘vestige,’ the ‘effect,’ and not in the
‘cause.’ Bruno has no special interest in the dimension of divinity per se.
He is instead looking for the ‘punto de l’unione’ and reflecting on the
forms of ‘mediation’ from a specific perspective: He consistently focuses
on the universe, the ‘effect’. It is exactly on these grounds that Bruno
emphasizes, to a greater extent, the specific ontological function of images
in a context that leads him in De imaginum compositione (with a consider-
able shift in his theory) to intertwine his studies of mnemotechnics and
magic. Both are essential factors in a true ‘theory of being’ that is specifi-
cally aimed at analyzing the ‘explicated,’ the ‘dispersed,’ the ‘universe,’ (or
whatever must be brought back to unity in order to be ‘apprehended’),
forcing the ‘limits’ of man to the highest degree.

Considering all this, it is easy to realize the inadequacy of the ‘tran-
scendent’ interpretation of Bruno’s thought: the iter that he follows, on all
levels, is precisely the opposite. If man’s main objective were God, or a
proper meditation on God, he would not take a step forward in the quest

“…per speculum et in aenigmate…”

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 47

48 Epistemic Practices of a Revolutionary

for truth, which is within his reach if he is able to understand the system-
atic and unavoidable connection between ‘truth’ and ‘image.’ He must
analyze it in the different fields on which he concentrates (including, as we
have already mentioned, the dimension of magic, which fits this funda-
mental theoretical frame as demonstrated by all the Brunian works, from
the Spaccio de la bestia trionfante to the magic works stricto sensu).

【13†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Bruno is particularly attentive to the technical dimension of his ars, to
its ‘scientific’ (and consequently demonstrable and teachable) character.
As we mentioned before, his works often originated as drafts for public
and private lessons, but are defined by the theoretical foundation (i.e., the
theory of being) on which they are based. A technique, indeed, but also a
philosophically-grounded technique able, as such, to overwhelm and van-
quish traditional artes. Using a ‘seal’ dear to Bruno, we could say that the
theory is the ‘tree’ from which stem the branches of the ars that, at the
same time, bestows meaning on the ars and gives it its roots.

“…per speculum et in aenigmate…”

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:08 Oldal 55

56 Epistemic Practices of a Revolutionary

We read in the commentary on the Explicatio that: “It is not enough to
use the different seals (that is, the mnemotechnical expedients suggested
by them) in order to organize the mnemonic material according to specific
modalities; it is necessary to understand their functioning in depth, and
comprehend the ‘mechanisms’ which animate them, so as to figure out
their ‘formula,’ namely the technical and theoretical principles on which
they are based.”45

This is the reason why it is possible, or rather unavoidable, when read-
ing the mnemotechnical works, to come upon the structural constituents of
the nova filosofia, which are also the founding principles of Bruno’s theo-
ry on mnemotechnics (from the vision of shadow to that of natural vicissi-
tude and universal metamorphosis; from the idea of the mutual connection
of each thing to each other thing to that of the structural and bi-univocal
relation between the infinite plasticity and changeability of the ‘fantastic’
potency and matter, and the ordinative, yet creative, power of the intel-
lect;46 from the relation between the natural ‘unity’ and the ‘innumerable
differences,’ which we have to master—as he explains in his magical texts),
if we want to establish a truly functioning ars, able to decipher and see into
the structure of reality, and understand the ‘principles’ that determine its
infinite transformations.47 In this context, Bruno’s strong encyclopedic
interests—revolving around the principles of order, proportion, interde-
pendence, and regularity—should not be neglected, as they are interests
that lead him to deal with the theories of the Lullian tradition that inter-
laced, in an innovative and fruitful way, mnemotechnics and the combina-
tory (in Bruno’s vision, the art of Lull is aimed precisely at achieving a
complexity of effects that imitates the manifold and perpetual course of
natural becoming).48

【14†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Published in 2013 by

Central European University Press
An imprint of the

Central European University Limited Liability Company
Nádor utca 11, H-1051 Budapest, Hungary

Tel: +36-1-327-3138 or 327-3000
Fax: +36-1-327-3183

E-mail: ceupress@ceu.hu
Website: www.ceupress.com

224 West 57th Street New York, NY 10019, USA
Tel: +1-212-547-6932
Fax: +1-646-557-2416

E-mail: martin.greenwald@opensocietyfoundations.org

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,

in any form or by any means, without the permission
of the Publisher.

ISBN 978-615-5053-63-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Turning traditions upside down : rethinking Giordano Bruno's enlightenment /
[edited by] Henning Hufnagel and Anne Eusterschulte.

pages cm
Proceedings of a colloquium held in 2008 at Max Planck Institute for the

History of Science.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-6155053634 (hardbound)

1. Bruno, Giordano, 1548-1600. I. Hufnagel, Henning S. II. Eusterschulte, Anne.

B783.Z7T87 2012
195--dc23

2012007959

Printed in Hungary by
Akaprint Kft.

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal iv

Table of Contents

YEHUDA ELKANA and JÜRGEN RENN

Preface vii
HENNING HUFNAGEL and ANNE EUSTERSCHULTE

Introduction 1

PART 1
Epistemic Practices of a Revolutionary:

Bruno’s Methods and Thinking
PAUL RICHARD BLUM

Giordano Bruno’s Changing of Default Positions 13
ANGELIKA BÖNKER-VALLON

The Measurement of the Immeasurable.
Divine Mind and Mathematical Structures in Giordano Bruno’s
De triplici minimo et mensura 19

MICHELE CILIBERTO

“…per speculum et in aenigmate…” 35
ANNE EUSTERSCHULTE

Platonic Caverns and Epicurean Worlds 63

PART 2
Experience and Vision of a New Cosmic Order:

Giordano Bruno’s Natural Philosophy

MIGUEL ÁNGEL GRANADA

De immenso et innumerabilibus, I, 3 and the Concept of Planetary
Systems in the Infinite Universe. A Commentary 91

WOLFGANG NEUSER

Atom, Matter, and Monade 107
ENRICO RENATO ANTONIO GIANNETTO

Giordano Bruno and the Relativity of Time 121

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal v

ARCANGELO ROSSI

Giordano Bruno and the New Order of Nature between
Copernicus and Galilei 131

PART 3
Forms of Non-Conformity:

Bruno’s Works as Literary Texts
NUCCIO ORDINE

The Comic and Philosophy: Plato’s Philebus and
Bruno’s Candle-bearer 151

【15†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

This text, in fact, has strong philosophical caliber and is perhaps one of
the most relevant in Bruno’s œuvre. Yet, due to its composite structure, it
also has the important merit of taking us straight into Bruno’s ‘workshop,’
allowing us to both understand the manner in which his texts must be deci-
phered in general and to define (or confirm) at least four specific points.
These include the articulated theoretical basis of his ars, which tackles a
number of gnosiologial, ontological, and ethical issues, evenly introducing
them into the frame of the nova filosofia; the fact that ethico-political and
religious issues are already established in his mnemotechnical works and
destined to find a fuller development in the Spaccio (where the contro -
versy against Puritans becomes central as much as vehement); the possi-
bility, as a consequence, of dating the genesis of Bruno’s first conception
of the Spaccio to the last period of his stay in Paris, though in the frame of
a polemic that, in the Sigillus, is aimed against Protestants as well as
against monastic orders; and, last but not least, the text allows us to figure
out Bruno’s modus operandi.

Yet, one needs not exaggerate the relation between the Sigillus and the
Spaccio. The persistency of these topics, even if in a short time span,
attests to the continuity of some main themes and also to the incessant
revision to which Bruno subjected his works.

One must not stop at this consideration, however important it may be.
The original ‘secret’ of Bruno’s mind lies in the perpetual interlacing—in
changing virtually infinite shapes—of the original ‘cells’ of his thought, as
exemplified in his mnemotechnical works. Without an understanding of
this ‘movement’ and its pattern, it is impossible to understand the strictly
systematizing function of the main constituents of the nova filosofia, and
the variations they are subjected to, as well as the following central theo-

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 50

51

retical point: the paradigm of the ars memoriae directly reflects Bruno’s
way of thinking and operating. In other words, the ars memoriae is funda-
mental, but also something more than a generative source of the nova
filosofia: it is the form of Bruno’s mind itself, the ‘structure’ through which
his mind finds expression. By understanding the ars, therefore, it is possi-
ble to decipher the functioning of his mind. Consequently, the ‘continuity’
between the Sigillus and the Spaccio previously referred to is not an excep-
tion; it is in fact the rule. Bruno’s mind follows a spiral rather than a
straight line—a ‘metaphysical’ rather than a ‘physical movement’ (to use a
noteworthy distinction made, symptomatically, in the Furori,35 where it is
also possible to catch an autobiographical allusion).

【16†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Introduction

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 3

4 Turning Traditions Upside Down

This mental operation leads to facing up to a radically altered view of the
world, resulting in the discovery of the philosophy of the infinite.

Covering Bruno’s so-called Frankfurt Trilogy, Angelika Bönker-Vallon
analyses Bruno’s intention to demonstrate the systematic interrelation
bet ween metaphysical, mathematical and physical thought. In these three
Latin poems, Bruno delineates a universal concept of science which
embraces all branches of scientific knowledge. Within this tripartite ency-
clopaedia, De triplici minimo et mensura is of the utmost significance, as
Bönker-Vallon points out, because in this work Bruno tries to conceptual-
ize a mathematical theory for measuring the infinite cosmos or, in a com-
prehensive sense, to create a theoretical substructure of the encyclopaedic
sciences. Based on the concept of a threefold minimum—i.e., God as the
monad of monads, the mathematical point and the physical atom—Bruno
demonstrates the metaphysical implications and qualities of point and
atom as primary functional minima, redefined as first and elementary spa-
tial structures comprising the coincidental relationship of maximum and
minimum, essential for conceiving the relationship between the infinite
space and its fundamental entities. The interconnection of metaphysical,
mathematical and physical minima provides accessibility to the systematic
nature of Bruno’s threefold theory of the infinite, which based on the idea
of a universal measure, allows for the development of the idea of univer-
sal science.

In his essay “…per speculum et in aenigmate…,” Michele Ciliberto dis-
plays how “thinking through images” is the central point in Bruno’s nova
filosofia. It is the topic not only of his meditations on the ars memoriae, but
is continuously discussed both in his Italian as well as in his later Latin
works. For Bruno, the use of images is a condition preceding every act of
thinking. This leads him to a new conceptualisation of the process of cog-
nition: Images or mental phantastic figures are like an interface between
mind and nature, between the logical, abstract operations and the innu-
merable appearances of the visible world. At the same time, the inex-
haustible potency of fantasy to produce images makes us aware of the idea
of infinity. In this context, the dialectic between fantasy and intellect,
abstract synthesis and creative analysis is, as Ciliberto points out, vitally
important: it shows the way of man’s approximation to the eternal truth,
an infinite itinerarium, i.e., a metaphysical movement of man who by
descending into himself tries to know the One, a way which allows him to
touch the divine cause indirectly “through the mirror and in enigma.”

Following this, Anne Eusterschulte attempts to delineate Bruno’s assi -
milation of heterogeneous elements of ancient philosophy and shows how,

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 4

5

【17†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:...

Rethinking
Giordano Bruno’s
Enlightenment

Edited by
Henning Hufnagel and Anne Eusterschulte

Turning Traditions
Upside Down

Turning Traditions U
pside D

ow
n

Turning Traditions
Upside Down

Edited by
H

enning H
ufnagel

Anne Eusterschulte

Contributors

Paul Richard Blum
Angelika Bönker-Vallon
Michele Ciliberto
Anne Eusterschulte
Enrico R. A. Giannetto
Miguel A. Granada
Durs Grünbein
Henning Hufnagel
Sergius Kodera
Wolfgang Neuser
Nuccio Ordine
Alexander Polzin
François Quiviger
Arcangelo Rossi
Ingrid Rowland
Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann

Giordano Bruno: A non-conformist at the dawn of an epoch, a martyr of modernity, or just a
polemic controvert? Descriptions of this kind fall short of grasping the multifold character of “the
Nolan.” Deconstructing the relationship between God and the outside world gave distinction to
his life—and his refusal to recant when facing the stake somehow set him apart from the world.
Since then, the debate about the Nolan has been dominated by the interest in the comprehensive
oeuvre of the philosopher, and by attempts to make him a protagonist of the freedom of thought.

This volume brings together some of the most eminent researchers to have worked on Giordano
Bruno and his epoch. In order to bring into focus the horizon and the dimensions of his
transformation of traditions, to demonstrate how he turned contemporary thinking upside down,
and to delineate his persuasive strategies, as well as the theoretical consequences of his thought,
the contributions all start from an exemplary passage drawn from Bruno’s great range of work
or from texts close to his person and oeuvre. Presenting and elucidating pivotal points of the
philosophia nolana, the essays both invite readers to become acquainted with Bruno’s philosophy
and provide them with innovative dissections, interpretations and conceptual reflections that
will prepare the way for a revised reading of Bruno’s works. They reconstruct his deconstruction
and rearrangement of philosophical systems, his understanding of nature and the cosmos, his
methods of thinking and writing, his aesthetic and literary categories. They explore the topics
and modi operandi of the great Renaissance thinker and point out the variance of his reception
up to the present, both inside and outside academia, exhibiting the ever-changing relevance and
continuing fascination of Bruno’s work.

Central European University Press
Budapest – New York

Sales and information: ceupress@ceu.hu
Website: http://www.ceupress.com

0536347861559

ISBN 9786155053634
90000 >

C o v e r d e s i g n b y S e b a s t i a n S t a c h o w s k i

【18†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Bruno argued relentlessly for a replacement of the philosophical koiné
of his time, the Scholastic Aristotelian philosophy that presented a view of
man and cosmos, which Bruno had been dissatisfied with since his time in a
Dominican convent in Naples. For his project of philosophical reform, Bruno
draws on a large variety of sources: on Platonic, pre-Socratic, Py tha gorean,
and Hermetic ideas, on thinkers such as Plotinus, Averroes, Nicholas of
Cusa, Raimundus Lullus and Ficino. He builds on the metho do logy, flour-
ishing during the Renaissance, of mnemotechnics. And he uses all these

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 1

2 Turning Traditions Upside Down

traditions in a highly original, idiosyncratic way. In ven tively blending “ars
lulliana” and “ars memoriae,” Bruno introduces combinatory elements
into the art of memory and refines it into an epistemology which, at the
same time, is an ontology. For he postulates the analogy of mind and
world, being and thought—an analogy which he ultimately sees as a unity.
This idea of unity leads to the concept of the metaphysical One, central to
Bruno’s philosophy: a unity preceding all differences, prior even to the
Aristotelian principles of form and matter, and therefore unintelligible, at
least in any direct way, to a singular being like man. As the One is the ori-
gin of all realities and all possibilities, it is directly linked to the second
concept central to Bruno: infinity. Infinity is the key concept in Bruno’s
cosmology, discarding its Aristotelian-Ptolemaic predecessor, which was
constructed in a closed and carefully graduated hierarchy of spheres
around the Earth. Based on Copernicus’ heliocentric system, Bru no pos -
tu lates an unlimited, infinite universe containing innumerable inhabited
worlds, all made of the same matter, all of the same importance, and moving
in a homogeneous space, following the same governing principle. However,
not only does Bruno formulate the metaphysics of an infinite universe, he
also reflects the anthropological consequences of such a cosmology; for it
is clear that, in Bruno’s universe, there is no place for the idea of a per-
sonal creator god. Accordingly, he attempts to formulate a new ethics—an
ethics that, propounding a metaphysically “heroic life,” simultaneously
opens a way to approximate cognition of the One.

Right from the beginning, Bruno was an “academico di nulla aca de mia,”
an “academic of no academy,” as he calls himself in his comedy Candle-
bearer. Soon enough, he became not only institutionally, but literally home-
less, wandering from Italy to France, to England, to Germany and back
again over the Alps, watched by suspicious eyes because of his radical visi -
ons of intellectual reform. At last the prominent “universally learned man
who did not, however, have any religion,” as one contemporary de scribed
him, fell victim to denunciation in Venice and, after a nearly eight-year-
long trial, was condemned by the Roman inquisition to be burnt at the
stake. The verdict was executed on the Campo de’ Fiori in Rome, on Feb -
ruary 17, 1600. The stench of burnt flesh is said to have lingered for days.

【19†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Paul Richard Blum opens the volume with an epistemological reflection
on default values, in reference to a passage from Bruno’s Latin poem De
immenso. While default settings are constitutive instruments of every cog-
nitive process—they function as a sort of practical, temporary prejudice—
Blum accentuates Bruno’s request for an epistemic meta-operation. In his
poem, Bruno reminds us to be conscious of the tentativeness of mental de -
fault values in the same way as children are aware of the fact that changing
sights of one and the same object are related to their point of view. If the
in tellect fails to realize the infinity of the universe, it is not the fault of the
visual sense, but of the unconsidered reliance on vision as an epistemic de -
fault value. Bruno advocates a change in the standard principles of thought.

Introduction

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 3

4 Turning Traditions Upside Down

This mental operation leads to facing up to a radically altered view of the
world, resulting in the discovery of the philosophy of the infinite.

Covering Bruno’s so-called Frankfurt Trilogy, Angelika Bönker-Vallon
analyses Bruno’s intention to demonstrate the systematic interrelation
bet ween metaphysical, mathematical and physical thought. In these three
Latin poems, Bruno delineates a universal concept of science which
embraces all branches of scientific knowledge. Within this tripartite ency-
clopaedia, De triplici minimo et mensura is of the utmost significance, as
Bönker-Vallon points out, because in this work Bruno tries to conceptual-
ize a mathematical theory for measuring the infinite cosmos or, in a com-
prehensive sense, to create a theoretical substructure of the encyclopaedic
sciences. Based on the concept of a threefold minimum—i.e., God as the
monad of monads, the mathematical point and the physical atom—Bruno
demonstrates the metaphysical implications and qualities of point and
atom as primary functional minima, redefined as first and elementary spa-
tial structures comprising the coincidental relationship of maximum and
minimum, essential for conceiving the relationship between the infinite
space and its fundamental entities. The interconnection of metaphysical,
mathematical and physical minima provides accessibility to the systematic
nature of Bruno’s threefold theory of the infinite, which based on the idea
of a universal measure, allows for the development of the idea of univer-
sal science.
Visible: 0% - 100%

unknownmsearch(["Frances Yates Hermeticism Bruno", "Frances Yates Turning Traditions Upside Down"])

[Web browsing]

【0†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

3

In order to bring into focus the horizon and the dimensions of Bruno’s
transformation of traditions, to demonstrate how he turned contemporary
thinking upside down, and to delineate his persuasive strategies, as well as
the theoretical consequences of his thought, the contributions of this vol-
ume all start from a selected text, an exemplary passage drawn from Bru -
no’s great range of work or from texts close to his person and œuvre. Pre -
senting and elucidating pivotal points of the philosophia nolana, the essays
both invite readers to become acquainted with Bruno’s philosophy and
provide them with innovative dissections, interpretations and conceptual
reflections that will prepare the way for a revised reading of Bruno’s
works. They reconstruct Bruno’s deconstruction and rearrangement of
phi lo sophical systems, his understanding of nature and the cosmos, his
methods of thinking and writing, his aesthetic and literary categories. They
ex plore the topics and modi operandi of the great Renaissance thinker and
point out the variance of his reception up to the present, both inside and
outside academia, exhibiting the ever-changing relevance and continuing
fascination of Bruno’s work.

The results of the contributor’s investigations are presented in four sec-
tions, according to four main fields of research interest. The first section
entitled Epistemic Practices of a Revolutionary: Bruno’s Methods and Thin -
king, examines Bruno’s methodological procedures. The essays show how
the Nolan undermined traditional positions, by a subtle reflexion on epis-
temological principles, logical structures, or metaphysical presuppositions,
to secure evidence for his philosophy of the infinite and its inherent con-
sequences which revolutionized the fields of metaphysics and epistemolo-
gy, physics, cosmology and anthropology. Bruno’s method of appropriat-
ing and concatenating older philosophical concepts appears to be both a
method of critical revision as well as systematic transformation.

Paul Richard Blum opens the volume with an epistemological reflection
on default values, in reference to a passage from Bruno’s Latin poem De
immenso. While default settings are constitutive instruments of every cog-
nitive process—they function as a sort of practical, temporary prejudice—
Blum accentuates Bruno’s request for an epistemic meta-operation. In his
poem, Bruno reminds us to be conscious of the tentativeness of mental de -
fault values in the same way as children are aware of the fact that changing
sights of one and the same object are related to their point of view. If the
in tellect fails to realize the infinity of the universe, it is not the fault of the
visual sense, but of the unconsidered reliance on vision as an epistemic de -
fault value. Bruno advocates a change in the standard principles of thought.

Introduction

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 3

4 Turning Traditions Upside Down

This mental operation leads to facing up to a radically altered view of the
world, resulting in the discovery of the philosophy of the infinite.

【1†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Westman, R. S. “Magical Reform and Astronomical Reform: The Yates Thesis
Reconsidered.” In Hermeticism and the Scientific Revolution. Eds. R. S. Westman
and J. E. McGuire, 1–91. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979.

Notes

1 “Disposition of planetary systems in the universe. Difference between stars shining
by themselves and by another agent. Why planets around other suns are not visible.
/ Just as around this sun, Earth, Moon, flying Hermes, / Saturn, Venus and Mars, as
well as Jupiter, wander, / and a number greater than acknowledged, for the other
crowd, / in part sometimes, in part never, is seen, / so the same occurs around any
other one, because it is necessary by law/ of nature that the flames take nourish-
ment from the waters. / Greatest, the sun wants to be encircled by many lesser bod-
ies,/ in order that they mutually dispense and return fecund / forces, whereby suit-
able distance procures / peace, since from opposites comes life and nourishment, /
because they concur separated by harmonic / intervals and motion moderates
changing fierce heat. / Thus, around whichever kitharodes Phoebus/ many Nymphs
roam and celebrate their dances./ We see them with acute sense and clear reason, /
since the near and the remote both follow a single rule, / and the number of first
principles does not change / such that they cannot develop everywhere into the
same result,” Bruno, Opera latine conscripta I, 1, 209–10. English translation by M.
A. Granada.

2 See the conclusion of the commentary in prose to De immenso, I, 1: “Non levem igi-
tur ac futilem, atqui gravissimam perfectoque homine dignissimam contemplationis
partem persequimur, ubi divinitatis, naturaeque splendorem, fusionem, et commu-
nicationem non in Aegyptio, Syro, Graeco, vel Romano individuo, non in cibo, potu,
et ignobiliore quadam materia cum attonitorum seculo perquirimus, et inventum
confingimus et somniamus: sed in augusta omnipotentis regia, in immenso aetheris
spacio, in infinita naturae geminae omnia fientis et omnia facientis potentia” Opera
latine conscripta I, 1, 205. For the parallel text in the conclusion of the work, see De
immenso, VIII, 10 (Opera latine conscripta I, 2, 316). For the motive (inherited from
the Greek philosophical tradition through the intermediary of the Islamic falsafa,
mainly the Averroistic tradition), see Granada, Giordano Bruno, chapter 7 (“La
perfección del hombre y la filosofía”).

3 Cf. the passage of De immenso, I, 1, quoted in note 2.
4 Several chapters of De immenso deal with Bruno’s late theory of comets. In his opin-

【2†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

It is in this context that Warburg acquired, with the aid of Leonardo
Olschki, a Library of Brunian studies that was initially assembled by
Virgilio Salvestrini (1873–1954).29 Salvestrini was a studious bookseller
whose shop, on Via XXIX Maggio, in front of the University of Pisa, was
frequented by students and professors.30 The Salvestrini books—150 titles

From Paris to Rome, Hamburg and London

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:09 Oldal 243

244 Reflections of an Intellectual Burning

of which are now available online—include the main nineteenth-century
editions of the complete works, as well as the principal studies on the
philosopher’s life and thought. Salvestrini also collected various pamphlets
and occasional papers echoing the intense controversies surrounding the
erection of the Campo de’ Fiori monument, unveiled on June 9, 1889.

Warburg died before he could make use of this freshly acquired mate-
rial and complete these projects. The remains are sparse notes in the K.B.W.
Tagebuch which he took to Italy, as well as a folder entitled “Giordano
Bruno,” kept in the Warburg Institute archive, which contains some leaves
of notes and sketches.31 After the migration of the Warburg Institute to
England in 1933, the library continued acquiring Bruno material, especial-
ly from the late 1940s onwards when Frances A. Yates, who had already
encountered the philosopher in her John Florio (1934), began the research
that would produce her two most influential books: Giordano Bruno and
the Hermetic Tradition (1964) and The Art of Memory (1966).

Frances A. Yates’s intellectual program intersected rather than merged
with Warburg’s own orientations. Even if one of the main thrusts of her
research on the Hermetic tradition aimed at showing the irrational magi-
cal foundations of the scientific revolution, she had little interest in the
philosophical questions which occupied Warburg. She saw herself as a cul-
tural historian, and her inner certitudes seem to have leaned towards mys-
ticism.32 When she wrote histories—be they histories of the hermetic
traditi on or the art of memory—the Renaissance and early Baroque periods,
rather than the present, were her points of departure. Frances A. Yates’s
studies on Giordano Bruno—and, in particular, his mnemonic works—
were indebted to Warburg’s posthumous influence, as much as to the Bru -
nian pre sence brought about by the Salvestrini books. Her research,
never theless, led her to propose a radically different image of Bruno, as a
fi gure turned towards the past rather than the future, a Renaissance ma -
gus, the swan song of an imaginary ancient tradition, and not a herald of
modernity.

Now, the impact of Yates’s vision of Bruno as a Renaissance magus is
waning. However, the image of the philosopher as a herald of modern times,
an intermediary between the Ancient and Modern worlds, is growing in
popularity again. As observed recently by Hilary Gatti in a review of twen-
tieth-century Brunian scholarship: “Above all, it seems that the celebrato-
ry year [2000] has had the effect of developing a renewed cons ci ous ness of
the importance of the Nolan philosopher as representing a significant turn-
ing point towards modernity in its multiple facets and trends.”33 Thus,
while the imaginary Bruno on the musical stage was singing “mourir pour

【3†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Introduction

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 5

6 Turning Traditions Upside Down

tional restrictions—which are still binding Kepler, e.g.—and, in doing so,
anticipates the cosmological reforms of the seventeenth-century as repre-
sented by Huygens or Newton.

Wolfgang Neuser presents an alternative interpretation of Bruno’s the-
ory of matter. Against the backdrop of the controversial medieval debates
about atomism concerning the attributes or qualities of atoms, their cor-
puscular or essential substantiality, and the appreciation of them as dis-
tinct particles, Bruno develops an understanding of matter that merges the
Aristotelian concept of substance with atomistic ideas and the Neo-Pla -
tonic concept of matter, according to which matter is filled with spirit.
Bruno differentiates three manifestations of the metaphysical monad, i.e.,
the undivided, infinite unum that systematically underlies everything.
These manifestations are the constituents of matter: spiritus, based on the
neo-Platonic concept of a spiritual virtue inherent in all matter; spatium,
or the structural explication of the indivisible, un-extended point, which
emerges in a process of self-generation; and atomus, the smallest indivisi-
ble or the physical minimum. Spirit, space, and atom are the structural
modes of the expansion of infinite unity. Based on this conceptualisation
of matter, Neuser characterizes Bruno as a Renaissance philosopher who,
at the end of the post-traditional stage in history, anticipates the subject-
based foundation of knowledge, representative for thinkers from the Mo -
dern Age like Descartes, Spinoza or Leibniz.

Enrico Giannetto’s chapter emphasizes no less than the astonishing fact
that Giordano Bruno—notwithstanding the significant differences in theo-
retical premises—presents a theory of relativity of time and motion three
hundred years before Poincaré and Einstein. While his non-mechanistic
conception of nature was an obstacle in recognizing Bruno as a serious sci-
entist, according to Giannetto, Bruno’s importance within the history of
theoretical physics is irrefutable. He argues that the relativity of time is
one consequence of Bruno’s concept of cosmic infinity, also entailing the
relativity of the localisation of planets or stars and of their motion, rota-
tion and orbits within a uniform space. Rejecting the Aristotelian assump-
tion of a primum mobile, Bruno argues for the plurality of incommensu-
rable times due to the infinity of uniform motions within the universe.
Turning the Aristotelian doctrine upside down, Bruno regards (relative)
motion as the measure of time.

Arcangelo Rossi, comparing the cosmological theories of Copernicus,
Bruno, and Galilei, attests a striking correspondence between the Nolan
and the Galilean doctrines. Like Giannetto, Rossi aims at restoring Bru -

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 6

7

【4†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Frances A. Yates’s intellectual program intersected rather than merged
with Warburg’s own orientations. Even if one of the main thrusts of her
research on the Hermetic tradition aimed at showing the irrational magi-
cal foundations of the scientific revolution, she had little interest in the
philosophical questions which occupied Warburg. She saw herself as a cul-
tural historian, and her inner certitudes seem to have leaned towards mys-
ticism.32 When she wrote histories—be they histories of the hermetic
traditi on or the art of memory—the Renaissance and early Baroque periods,
rather than the present, were her points of departure. Frances A. Yates’s
studies on Giordano Bruno—and, in particular, his mnemonic works—
were indebted to Warburg’s posthumous influence, as much as to the Bru -
nian pre sence brought about by the Salvestrini books. Her research,
never theless, led her to propose a radically different image of Bruno, as a
fi gure turned towards the past rather than the future, a Renaissance ma -
gus, the swan song of an imaginary ancient tradition, and not a herald of
modernity.

Now, the impact of Yates’s vision of Bruno as a Renaissance magus is
waning. However, the image of the philosopher as a herald of modern times,
an intermediary between the Ancient and Modern worlds, is growing in
popularity again. As observed recently by Hilary Gatti in a review of twen-
tieth-century Brunian scholarship: “Above all, it seems that the celebrato-
ry year [2000] has had the effect of developing a renewed cons ci ous ness of
the importance of the Nolan philosopher as representing a significant turn-
ing point towards modernity in its multiple facets and trends.”33 Thus,
while the imaginary Bruno on the musical stage was singing “mourir pour

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:09 Oldal 244

245

vivre,” his afterlife, on the very shelves which preserve this scream, con-
tinues prospering through his Protean images in scholarship and in popu-
lar culture.

Bibliography

Most texts quoted here are available online on the joint web site of the Warburg
Institute and the Centro Internazionale di Studi Bruniani “Giovanni Aquilecchia”
(Istituto per gli Studi Filosofici). See:
http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/library/digital-collections/giordano-bruno

Primary sources
Anonymous, Dialoghetti familiari tra un imbianchino e riquadratore di stanze fiorentino

ed un signore romano sopra la vera storia di Giordano Bruno. Rome: Tipografia S.
Lucentini, 1889.

Balan, P. Di Giordano Bruno e dei meriti di lui ad un monumento: saggio storico popo-
lare. Bologna: Societa Tipografica, 1888.

Barbieri, L. Giordano Bruno e il suo monumento: conferenza tenuta nella sede dell’
Associazione operaia Maria Immacolata. Naples, 1889.

【5†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

The following days are characterized by feverish activities. He reports
that Ernst Steinmann wants him to lecture in the large hall of the Hert zi -
ana. He accepts, but insists on using pin boards with photographs, not
slides. He has reached a crossroad “where the attempt by the historian of
pure thought meets the attempt by the historian of pure un-reason” in
Giordano Bruno. Bruno’s “strange ambivalence” has become clear to him
only now. He has to travel to Naples and Nola […], wants to give a lecture
on Bruno as a thinker in images, and adds that, without Gertrud Bing’s
assistance, he would never have been able to proceed with his research, the
result of which is the “Kulturwissenschaftlicher Typen Atlas.”28

His projected essay approached Bruno not as a wandering knight, but as
Perseus, the winged slayer of Medusa. The projected title runs as follows:
Perseus oder energetische Aesthetick als logische Funktion im Geschäfte der
Orientirung bei Giordano Bruno.

It is in this context that Warburg acquired, with the aid of Leonardo
Olschki, a Library of Brunian studies that was initially assembled by
Virgilio Salvestrini (1873–1954).29 Salvestrini was a studious bookseller
whose shop, on Via XXIX Maggio, in front of the University of Pisa, was
frequented by students and professors.30 The Salvestrini books—150 titles

From Paris to Rome, Hamburg and London

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:09 Oldal 243

244 Reflections of an Intellectual Burning

of which are now available online—include the main nineteenth-century
editions of the complete works, as well as the principal studies on the
philosopher’s life and thought. Salvestrini also collected various pamphlets
and occasional papers echoing the intense controversies surrounding the
erection of the Campo de’ Fiori monument, unveiled on June 9, 1889.

Warburg died before he could make use of this freshly acquired mate-
rial and complete these projects. The remains are sparse notes in the K.B.W.
Tagebuch which he took to Italy, as well as a folder entitled “Giordano
Bruno,” kept in the Warburg Institute archive, which contains some leaves
of notes and sketches.31 After the migration of the Warburg Institute to
England in 1933, the library continued acquiring Bruno material, especial-
ly from the late 1940s onwards when Frances A. Yates, who had already
encountered the philosopher in her John Florio (1934), began the research
that would produce her two most influential books: Giordano Bruno and
the Hermetic Tradition (1964) and The Art of Memory (1966).

【6†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Published in 2013 by

Central European University Press
An imprint of the

Central European University Limited Liability Company
Nádor utca 11, H-1051 Budapest, Hungary

Tel: +36-1-327-3138 or 327-3000
Fax: +36-1-327-3183

E-mail: ceupress@ceu.hu
Website: www.ceupress.com

224 West 57th Street New York, NY 10019, USA
Tel: +1-212-547-6932
Fax: +1-646-557-2416

E-mail: martin.greenwald@opensocietyfoundations.org

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,

in any form or by any means, without the permission
of the Publisher.

ISBN 978-615-5053-63-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Turning traditions upside down : rethinking Giordano Bruno's enlightenment /
[edited by] Henning Hufnagel and Anne Eusterschulte.

pages cm
Proceedings of a colloquium held in 2008 at Max Planck Institute for the

History of Science.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-6155053634 (hardbound)

1. Bruno, Giordano, 1548-1600. I. Hufnagel, Henning S. II. Eusterschulte, Anne.

B783.Z7T87 2012
195--dc23

2012007959

Printed in Hungary by
Akaprint Kft.

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal iv

Table of Contents

YEHUDA ELKANA and JÜRGEN RENN

Preface vii
HENNING HUFNAGEL and ANNE EUSTERSCHULTE

Introduction 1

PART 1
Epistemic Practices of a Revolutionary:

Bruno’s Methods and Thinking
PAUL RICHARD BLUM

Giordano Bruno’s Changing of Default Positions 13
ANGELIKA BÖNKER-VALLON

The Measurement of the Immeasurable.
Divine Mind and Mathematical Structures in Giordano Bruno’s
De triplici minimo et mensura 19

MICHELE CILIBERTO

“…per speculum et in aenigmate…” 35
ANNE EUSTERSCHULTE

Platonic Caverns and Epicurean Worlds 63

PART 2
Experience and Vision of a New Cosmic Order:

Giordano Bruno’s Natural Philosophy

MIGUEL ÁNGEL GRANADA

De immenso et innumerabilibus, I, 3 and the Concept of Planetary
Systems in the Infinite Universe. A Commentary 91

WOLFGANG NEUSER

Atom, Matter, and Monade 107
ENRICO RENATO ANTONIO GIANNETTO

Giordano Bruno and the Relativity of Time 121

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal v

ARCANGELO ROSSI

Giordano Bruno and the New Order of Nature between
Copernicus and Galilei 131

PART 3
Forms of Non-Conformity:

Bruno’s Works as Literary Texts
NUCCIO ORDINE

The Comic and Philosophy: Plato’s Philebus and
Bruno’s Candle-bearer 151

【7†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

This volume brings together some of the most eminent researchers to have worked on Giordano
Bruno and his epoch. In order to bring into focus the horizon and the dimensions of his
transformation of traditions, to demonstrate how he turned contemporary thinking upside down,
and to delineate his persuasive strategies, as well as the theoretical consequences of his thought,
the contributions all start from an exemplary passage drawn from Bruno’s great range of work
or from texts close to his person and oeuvre. Presenting and elucidating pivotal points of the
philosophia nolana, the essays both invite readers to become acquainted with Bruno’s philosophy
and provide them with innovative dissections, interpretations and conceptual reflections that
will prepare the way for a revised reading of Bruno’s works. They reconstruct his deconstruction
and rearrangement of philosophical systems, his understanding of nature and the cosmos, his
methods of thinking and writing, his aesthetic and literary categories. They explore the topics
and modi operandi of the great Renaissance thinker and point out the variance of his reception
up to the present, both inside and outside academia, exhibiting the ever-changing relevance and
continuing fascination of Bruno’s work.

Central European University Press
Budapest – New York

Sales and information: ceupress@ceu.hu
Website: http://www.ceupress.com

0536347861559

ISBN 9786155053634
90000 >

C o v e r d e s i g n b y S e b a s t i a n S t a c h o w s k i

About the Editors
Henning Hufnagel is junior fellow at the Freiburg
Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS) and member
of the research group “Deutsche Ausgabe der Schriften
Giordano Brunos.” Selected publications: Ein Stück von
jeder Wissenschaft. Gattungshybridisierung, Argumenta -
tion und Erkenntnis in Giordano Brunos italienischen
Dialogen (Stuttgart, 2009), “‘Pour abréger votre chemin
à l’un et à l’autre’. Plötzlichkeit in Marivaux’ La surprise
de l’amour.” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 60,
4 (2010): 389–404, “‘Nun, Schifflein! sieh’ dich vor!’—
Meerfahrt mit Nietzsche. Zu einem Motiv der Fröhlichen
Wissenschaft.” Nietzsche-Studien 37 (2008): 143–59.

Anne Eusterschulte is professor of philosophy at Freie
Universität Berlin. Selected publications: Analogia entis
seu mentis. Analogie als erkenntnistheoretisches Prinzip in
der Philosophie Giordano Brunos (Würzburg, 1997), Kant-
Reader: Probleme und Perspektiven der Kant’schen Philoso-
phie (ed. with H. Ingensiep, and H. Baranzke, Würzburg,
2004), and Mimesis oder ästhetische Wahrheit. Philoso-
phisch-theologische Voraus setzungen und geistesgeschichtli-
cher Kontext der Entwicklung eines ästhetischen Wahrheits-
begriffs (Berlin, 2012).

Hufnagel_cover.indd 1 2013-04-24 12:20:17

TURNING TRADITIONS
UPSIDE DOWN

Rethinking Giordano Bruno’s
Enlightenment

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal i

【8†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Introduction

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 3

4 Turning Traditions Upside Down

This mental operation leads to facing up to a radically altered view of the
world, resulting in the discovery of the philosophy of the infinite.

Covering Bruno’s so-called Frankfurt Trilogy, Angelika Bönker-Vallon
analyses Bruno’s intention to demonstrate the systematic interrelation
bet ween metaphysical, mathematical and physical thought. In these three
Latin poems, Bruno delineates a universal concept of science which
embraces all branches of scientific knowledge. Within this tripartite ency-
clopaedia, De triplici minimo et mensura is of the utmost significance, as
Bönker-Vallon points out, because in this work Bruno tries to conceptual-
ize a mathematical theory for measuring the infinite cosmos or, in a com-
prehensive sense, to create a theoretical substructure of the encyclopaedic
sciences. Based on the concept of a threefold minimum—i.e., God as the
monad of monads, the mathematical point and the physical atom—Bruno
demonstrates the metaphysical implications and qualities of point and
atom as primary functional minima, redefined as first and elementary spa-
tial structures comprising the coincidental relationship of maximum and
minimum, essential for conceiving the relationship between the infinite
space and its fundamental entities. The interconnection of metaphysical,
mathematical and physical minima provides accessibility to the systematic
nature of Bruno’s threefold theory of the infinite, which based on the idea
of a universal measure, allows for the development of the idea of univer-
sal science.

In his essay “…per speculum et in aenigmate…,” Michele Ciliberto dis-
plays how “thinking through images” is the central point in Bruno’s nova
filosofia. It is the topic not only of his meditations on the ars memoriae, but
is continuously discussed both in his Italian as well as in his later Latin
works. For Bruno, the use of images is a condition preceding every act of
thinking. This leads him to a new conceptualisation of the process of cog-
nition: Images or mental phantastic figures are like an interface between
mind and nature, between the logical, abstract operations and the innu-
merable appearances of the visible world. At the same time, the inex-
haustible potency of fantasy to produce images makes us aware of the idea
of infinity. In this context, the dialectic between fantasy and intellect,
abstract synthesis and creative analysis is, as Ciliberto points out, vitally
important: it shows the way of man’s approximation to the eternal truth,
an infinite itinerarium, i.e., a metaphysical movement of man who by
descending into himself tries to know the One, a way which allows him to
touch the divine cause indirectly “through the mirror and in enigma.”

Following this, Anne Eusterschulte attempts to delineate Bruno’s assi -
milation of heterogeneous elements of ancient philosophy and shows how,

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 4

5

【9†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

The last section of the book, Visibility of the Invisible: About the Sculpture
Giordano Bruno by Alexander Polzin [2008], is dedicated to the statue of
Giordano Bruno that was recently erected in Berlin. Besides a description
of the statue and its pendants at Nola and Budapest made by the sculptor,
Alexander Polzin, himself, the author Durs Grünbein gives a poet’s inter-
pretation of the statue at the moment of its unveiling at Potsdamer Platz. He
construes the heretic as an emblematic figure of a young, independent
Europe and asks himself why Berlin—a city which Bruno, this great tra -
veller, has never been to—and, specifically, an underground station could be

Introduction

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 9

the right place to commemorate the philosopher from Nola. For Grün bein,
the statue is an iconographic alarm signal, visualizing a rhetoric of fire, the
language of alchemy and metamorphoses that characterizes Bruno’s think-
ing. Finally, Grünbein brings thinkers and poets together in a virtual con-
versation across time and space: Bruno, Nietzsche, Scho pen hau er, and
Czesław Miłosz.

Anything but virtual were the exchanges we—philosophers, historians, and
literary scholars—had about Giordano Bruno in the congenial and inspiring
atmosphere of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin,
and our discussions and debates sowed many seeds. We are proud to see
how they have matured and grown now into this volume. At the end of this
project, we want to express our gratitude towards several individuals and
institutions for their unflinching support, financial as well as moral and in -
tel lectual: Jürgen Renn and Yehuda Elkana, the Max Planck Insti tute for the
History of Science, the Central European Uni versity, the Cent ral European
University Press, and, last but definitely not least, to Andreas Edel.

Finally, we would like to thank the students who assisted us in the com-
pletion of this volume with untiring effort, Fanny Neumann, Jussuf Spie gel,
Charlotte Wetzel and, especially, Oliver Schumacher, who also translated
Durs Grünbein’s contribution.

Freiburg and Berlin, September 2012
Henning Hufnagel,

Anne Eusterschulte

Turning Traditions Upside Down10

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 10

PART 1

Epistemic Practices of a Revolutionary:
Bruno’s Methods and Thinking

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 11

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 12

PAUL RICHARD BLUM

Giordano Bruno’s Changing of
Default Positions

Ut Peripateticorum similiumque philosophantum sensus a principiis pe -
rinde se habeat atque puerorum: quos eodem instituendos ordine sus ci pi -
mus, quo nos optima mater erudiit natura.

【10†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

19 See, for instance, Manzoni, La mente di Giordano Bruno, 6.
20 See Forbes, Life of Pius X, 124–25. See 90 sqq. for the alleged Masonic conspiracy.
21 Fola Igúrbide, Giordano Bruno, 88.
22 Clair, Giordano Bruno ou le Chevalier errant (1925), ix. The subtitle of the first edi-

tion reads “Opéra historique en 4 actes et 7 tableaux”; in the second edition, it has
become: “Poème mélique et musique.” Melic poetry is a kind of free verse for musi-
cal declamation. The changes from the first to the second edition are mainly cos-
metic. Most of the original text, initially composed in alexandrine verses and pre-
sented as such in the first edition, is merely laid out as prose in the second edition.

23 See Berggren, L’ombra dei grandi, 175 f. The medallions include the figures of Hus,
Wycliffe, Servet, Paleario, Vanini, Ramus, Campanella, and Sarpi.

24 “Die Bibliothek als Aufklärungswaffe gegen die orthodoxe Dogmatik entstanden:
Luther; Französische Revolution; Naturwissenschaften; Befreiung der denkenden
Selbst verantwortlichkeit.” Warburg Institute Archive (abbreviated as WIA) III
12–6-1, fol. 25. (25 December 1927).

25 Mann, “Denkenergetische Inversion,” 25–37.
26 Warburg, Letter to Karl Vossler, dated 12 October 1929. Warburg Institute Archive,

General Correspondence, WIA GC/24737.
27 Warburg, Tagebuch, 390.
28 Warburg, Letter to Toni Cassirer, dated 6 March 1929. Warburg Institute Archive,

Aby Warburg General Correspondence, WIA GC/22737. Available online at
http://calmview.warburg.sas.ac.uk/calmview/

29 See Warburg’s note to his copy of Salvestrini’s Bibliografia Bruniana I: “Die v[on]
mir im Winter 1929 in Rom v[on] Olschki erworbene Bruno-Bibliothek entstammt
– wie ich nachher erfuhr – aus d[em] Besitz von Salvestrini, dem V[er]f[asser] der
Bibliografia Bruniana.” (The Bruno-Library which I have acquired in Rome in 1929
from Olschki used to be—as I have learned later—the property of Salvestrini, the
author of Bibliografia Bruniana.)

30 See Giovanni Gentile’s preface to the first edition of Bibliografia Bruniana, as well
as Luigi Firpo’s introduction to the second edition (Florence, 1958, 13f).

31 Warburg Institute Archive, III. 121. 1.1. Published by M. Ghelardi and Giovanna
Targia, as Warburg, “Giordano Bruno,” 28–58.

32 Gatti, “Frances Yates’s Hermetic Renaissance,” 193–210.
33 Gatti, “The State of Giordano Bruno Studies,” 260.

From Paris to Rome, Hamburg and London

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:09 Oldal 247

【11†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

This theme is important to Bruno, who symptomatically picks it up
again in the poem at the beginning of the Explicatio triginta sigillorum and
“intimates his hope for the advent of a ‘mythical’ age when the world, wise
at last, though late (sero sapiens), will see ignorance and hostile prejudices
removed from its surface.”34 These ideas are rooted in a philosophy of his-
tory inspired by Hermeticism that finds complete expression in the Spaccio,
where Bruno even translates (while modifying deeply) the Lament of
Hermes Trismegistus. In other words, these ideas are central in Bruno’s

“…per speculum et in aenigmate…”

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 49

50 Epistemic Practices of a Revolutionary

mind and, although they emerge for the first time at this stage of his
research, they are constantly considered right up to his last works, for
example in some remarkable pages of the De immenso.

To investigate the reasons for the recurrence of these issues from both
linguistic and conceptual viewpoints means to face the problem of the
dynamics of Bruno’s ‘mind,’ a task that cannot be accomplished here. In
the context of our line of reasoning, however, some elements can be point-
ed out: First, these subjects, also outlined in De umbris, appear in a text
that, for a long time, has been counted amongst the mnemotechnical works
and implicitly dismissed due to an obsolete idea of Renaissance culture
and philosophy. However, we must drop this misinterpretation if we want
to understand Bruno’s theories, in this particular text and in general.

This text, in fact, has strong philosophical caliber and is perhaps one of
the most relevant in Bruno’s œuvre. Yet, due to its composite structure, it
also has the important merit of taking us straight into Bruno’s ‘workshop,’
allowing us to both understand the manner in which his texts must be deci-
phered in general and to define (or confirm) at least four specific points.
These include the articulated theoretical basis of his ars, which tackles a
number of gnosiologial, ontological, and ethical issues, evenly introducing
them into the frame of the nova filosofia; the fact that ethico-political and
religious issues are already established in his mnemotechnical works and
destined to find a fuller development in the Spaccio (where the contro -
versy against Puritans becomes central as much as vehement); the possi-
bility, as a consequence, of dating the genesis of Bruno’s first conception
of the Spaccio to the last period of his stay in Paris, though in the frame of
a polemic that, in the Sigillus, is aimed against Protestants as well as
against monastic orders; and, last but not least, the text allows us to figure
out Bruno’s modus operandi.

Yet, one needs not exaggerate the relation between the Sigillus and the
Spaccio. The persistency of these topics, even if in a short time span,
attests to the continuity of some main themes and also to the incessant
revision to which Bruno subjected his works.

【12†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Sergius Kodera also examines Candelaio in his essay. He uncovers a
line of political thought, an implicit commentary on important historical,
political affairs, running throughout the whole comedy, leading up to
Machiavelli. Although Bruno never even mentions the name of the philo -
sopher-politician from Florence, Kodera detects the subterranean pre sence
of Machiavelli in strategically important passages of Candelaio. He shows

Introduction

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 7

8 Turning Traditions Upside Down

how Bruno adapts the Machiavellian notions of vicissitudo and occasione
and parallels Bruno’s re-evaluation of the sense of touch with Machi a -
velli’s ideas: For both authors, it is hands-on knowledge rather than de -
tached vision that is conducive to true insight and acquisition of power.
Whereas Bruno makes it clear that this re-evaluation involves heavy meta-
physical implications, Machiavelli and Bruno do share common ground
again in their vehement criticism of Christianity as harmful to the commu-
nity.

This section concludes with Henning Hufnagel’s analysis of Bruno’s
shortest dialogue, Cabala del cavallo pegaseo. Hufnagel focuses on the dia-
logue’s twisted structure. Cabala is one of the most disputed of Bruno’s
texts and scholars have made many attempts to fix a positive theoretical
me aning in the dialogue. Hufnagel shows that this is a hopeless fight
because Bruno blends the dialogue with forms of paradoxical epideixis:
Bruno piles up paradoxes until all claims negate and cancel each other.
Hufnagel proposes Cabala should instead be read as a satire of knowledge.
The transmission of alleged knowledge between the interlocutors collapses
continually and Bruno lays bare their modes of argumentation. If anything
is to be learned from Cabala, it is how the literary form of the dialogue can
acquire the value of an argument. Thus, Cabala can be understood as a
reflection on the dialectical possibilities of the dialogue as a genre.

In the fourth section in this volume, Reflections of an Intellectual Burning:
Bruno’s Reception and Literary Afterlife, the horizon widens both themat-
ically and temporally. This section looks at some of the traces Bruno’s life
and work left in other philosophical, or even theological contexts, presents
aspects of his sometimes curious literary afterlife—which extends to
Bertolt Brecht and beyond—and tries to come to terms with the truly last-
ing fascination exerted by the man from Nola.

Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann explores the possibilities of picturing me -
ta physics by analysing a copper engraving in Heinrich Khunrath’s Amphi -
theatrum Sapientiae Aeternae. In this image, the Kabbalistic foundation of
all being, both the divine and the creatural, is symbolically depicted. For
Bruno, the externalization of the first cause—which is in itself unknow-
able, because it only reveals itself in its expression—is, at the same time,
the beginning of all spatiality. This idea corresponds materially to the
imaging of the first cause, as it is represented in the Leipzig theosopher
Khunrath’s great work Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae. He goes beyond
Bruno, however, when he problematizes the question of the symbolism of
the divine externalizations.

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 8

【13†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

5

by transforming traditions, he expounds a theory of a heroic philosophical
life. The Platonic allegory of the soul living in a cave of intellectual blind-
ness serves as a central symbol demonstrating the ignorance and philo-
sophical narrowness of traditional as well as contemporary thought, which
avoids looking at the truth through the “eyes of reason.” Following the
antique model, Bruno takes the interconnection of natural philosophy,
epistemology and moral philosophy as a starting point to criticize a false
and delimited cosmology, to establish the theory of the infinite universe
containing innumerable worlds and to reject a short-sighted interpretation
of sensory perceptions as a basis for epistemic evidence. Referring to the
philosophy of Epicurus and his poetical follower Lucretius, combined with
neo-Platonic motifs of the soul’s ascent to the One, Bruno breaks through
the limited caves of the physical and epistemological as well as the misin-
terpreted moral world. The self-awareness of the true philosophical exis-
tence, engaged in an infinite process of venture and vicissitude, opens the
eyes to the manifestation of the One, which is the deepest ground inside
the soul.

The second section of this volume is entitled Experience and Vision of a
New Cosmic Order: Giordano Bruno’s Natural Philosophy. Here, central
aspects of Bruno’s cosmology and his transformation of classical concepts
of natural philosophy are explored. It focuses on problems of cosmic order
and the conceptualization of infinity in a physical, mathematical, and
metaphysical sense. Re-formulating traditional concepts of space and loca-
tion, extensive and intensive infinity, motion and time, Bruno confronts us
with a comprehensive transformation of philosophical and scientific
thought.

Commenting the third chapter of De immenso et innumerabilibus,
Miguel A. Granada elucidates how Bruno, after having presented the the-
ological and anthropological impact of cosmic infinity, conceptualizes the
structure of the infinite universe, embracing innumerable planetary sys-
tems. Referring to the Epicurean concept of a homogenous infinite uni-
verse, Bruno argues that in this infinite cosmic space there is no centre or
periphery but only a relativity of positions. Due to this Epicurean homo-
geneity, there must be a similarity of structures in the whole universe. And
for that reason, due to a specific point of view, every star can be seen as the
centre of an orbicular system of surrounding planets. As Granada points
out, Bruno is the first philosopher who postulates a plurality of “worlds”
or planetary systems, affirming at the same time that there is one law of
nature regulating all cosmic movements. He, therefore, goes beyond tradi-

Introduction

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 5

6 Turning Traditions Upside Down

tional restrictions—which are still binding Kepler, e.g.—and, in doing so,
anticipates the cosmological reforms of the seventeenth-century as repre-
sented by Huygens or Newton.

【14†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Finally, we would like to thank the students who assisted us in the com-
pletion of this volume with untiring effort, Fanny Neumann, Jussuf Spie gel,
Charlotte Wetzel and, especially, Oliver Schumacher, who also translated
Durs Grünbein’s contribution.

Freiburg and Berlin, September 2012
Henning Hufnagel,

Anne Eusterschulte

Turning Traditions Upside Down10

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 10

PART 1

Epistemic Practices of a Revolutionary:
Bruno’s Methods and Thinking

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 11

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 12

PAUL RICHARD BLUM

Giordano Bruno’s Changing of
Default Positions

Ut Peripateticorum similiumque philosophantum sensus a principiis pe -
rinde se habeat atque puerorum: quos eodem instituendos ordine sus ci pi -
mus, quo nos optima mater erudiit natura.

Sic […] mons peramoene Cicadae,
[…] blandiri tua lumina sancta recordor.
Ut fueras hedera, et ramis redimitus olivae
Et corni, et lauri, et myrthi, rorisque marini,
Castanea circumcinctus, quercu, populo, ulmo,
Coniugio uviferae vitis felicibus, utque
Ruvida porrexit tenerae manui manus uvam,
Indice distencto dixti mihi: respice ad austrum,
Respice germanum mihi ab illa parte Vesevum.
Germanus meus, ille tibi quoque vult bene: credis?
Si te illuc mittam, nunc dic: vis ire? manebis
Cumque illo posthac. Vitreis tunc versus ocellis,
Prospectans formam informem, relegensque figuram
Furvi dumtaxat cumuli: dorso ille repando,
Dixi, ille incurvus dentato tergore, coelum
Contiguum findens? toto discrimine mundi
Hinc abstans, fumo turpisque umbrante, nec ullis
Muneribus pollens, nec enim sunt poma nec uvae,
Nec dulces illi ficus: caret arbore et hortis,
Obscurus, tetricus, tristis, trux, vilis, avarus.
At tu subridens: tamen est germanus amansque
Ille mei, atque tibi bene vult. Vise ergo, nec eius
Blanditias contemne, scio nihil ille molestum
Quod tibi sit, faciet, nolensque manere redibis.
Ergo ubi adesse datum est illic, propiusque tueri
Vesuvium Baccho celebrem, multoque superbum
Arbusto, ubertim e ramis pendentibus uvis,

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 13

【15†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 6

7

no’s position within the history of natural sciences. He presents him as a
serious contemporary of Galilei. Although there are deep philosophical
and methodological differences, both agree that Copernicus’s heliocentric
system is not just a mathematical hypothesis but an explanation of the real
cosmic structures. Whereas Bruno’s convictions are based on the study of
ancient philosophy, the basis of Galilei’s theories are innovative instru-
mental practices that allow him to make precise observations and calcula-
tions. Both share an anti-Aristotelian impetus, abolishing the distinction
between supralunar and sublunar physics: Both attest there is but one
homogeneous world, governed by one natural law. Finally, they analogo -
usly interpret the Scriptures regarding natural knowledge. In fact, Bru no
literally anticipates the allegoric interpretation of the Scriptures later
adopted by Galilei: The aim of the Bible and of religious dogma in gener-
al is social and moral discipline and not the description of natural truth.

The third section of this volume, Forms of Non-Conformity: Bruno’s Works
as Literary Texts, shifts the focus from Bruno’s ideas to his texts. Bruno
was a versatile, highly experimental writer, well-experienced in many gen-
res and styles and familiar with numerous, especially heterodox and eccen-
tric traditions. His disposition for polemics, satire and paradox, his lin-
guistic inventiveness and scorn of literary decorum make his texts
colourful and compelling reading. The essays presented here take a look at
the literary aspect of Bruno’s philosophy and examine how the form of
Bruno’s texts determines their meaning.

Nuccio Ordine takes on the tripartite structure of Bruno’s comedy
Candelaio, and asks why not only one, as in other plays, but three stock
characters of Renaissance comedy are ridiculed here. He argues that the
answer is to be found in the theory of the comic as set forth in Plato’s
Philebus. Here, Socrates identifies three basic situations of ridicule—situ-
ations perfectly embodied by the three protagonists of Candelaio. Thus,
Ordine sheds light on the way Bruno works when writing his texts. Stres -
sing the gnoseological function of the comic in Bruno’s text, he finally indi-
cates some central elements of Bruno’s philosophy.

Sergius Kodera also examines Candelaio in his essay. He uncovers a
line of political thought, an implicit commentary on important historical,
political affairs, running throughout the whole comedy, leading up to
Machiavelli. Although Bruno never even mentions the name of the philo -
sopher-politician from Florence, Kodera detects the subterranean pre sence
of Machiavelli in strategically important passages of Candelaio. He shows

Introduction

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 7

8 Turning Traditions Upside Down

how Bruno adapts the Machiavellian notions of vicissitudo and occasione
and parallels Bruno’s re-evaluation of the sense of touch with Machi a -
velli’s ideas: For both authors, it is hands-on knowledge rather than de -
tached vision that is conducive to true insight and acquisition of power.
Whereas Bruno makes it clear that this re-evaluation involves heavy meta-
physical implications, Machiavelli and Bruno do share common ground
again in their vehement criticism of Christianity as harmful to the commu-
nity.

【16†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Paul Richard Blum opens the volume with an epistemological reflection
on default values, in reference to a passage from Bruno’s Latin poem De
immenso. While default settings are constitutive instruments of every cog-
nitive process—they function as a sort of practical, temporary prejudice—
Blum accentuates Bruno’s request for an epistemic meta-operation. In his
poem, Bruno reminds us to be conscious of the tentativeness of mental de -
fault values in the same way as children are aware of the fact that changing
sights of one and the same object are related to their point of view. If the
in tellect fails to realize the infinity of the universe, it is not the fault of the
visual sense, but of the unconsidered reliance on vision as an epistemic de -
fault value. Bruno advocates a change in the standard principles of thought.

Introduction

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 3

4 Turning Traditions Upside Down

This mental operation leads to facing up to a radically altered view of the
world, resulting in the discovery of the philosophy of the infinite.

Covering Bruno’s so-called Frankfurt Trilogy, Angelika Bönker-Vallon
analyses Bruno’s intention to demonstrate the systematic interrelation
bet ween metaphysical, mathematical and physical thought. In these three
Latin poems, Bruno delineates a universal concept of science which
embraces all branches of scientific knowledge. Within this tripartite ency-
clopaedia, De triplici minimo et mensura is of the utmost significance, as
Bönker-Vallon points out, because in this work Bruno tries to conceptual-
ize a mathematical theory for measuring the infinite cosmos or, in a com-
prehensive sense, to create a theoretical substructure of the encyclopaedic
sciences. Based on the concept of a threefold minimum—i.e., God as the
monad of monads, the mathematical point and the physical atom—Bruno
demonstrates the metaphysical implications and qualities of point and
atom as primary functional minima, redefined as first and elementary spa-
tial structures comprising the coincidental relationship of maximum and
minimum, essential for conceiving the relationship between the infinite
space and its fundamental entities. The interconnection of metaphysical,
mathematical and physical minima provides accessibility to the systematic
nature of Bruno’s threefold theory of the infinite, which based on the idea
of a universal measure, allows for the development of the idea of univer-
sal science.

【17†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

To rescue the mnemotechnical texts from oblivion, scholars had to
eliminate the interpretations that dominated the nineteenth-century (and
first half of the twentieth) as they were mostly concerned with identifying
Bruno as a forerunner of various modern schools of thought. To reaffirm
the value and centrality of the mnemotechnical works, it was important to
get rid of a stereotyped image of the Renaissance, of outdated views con-
cerning the relationship between the Renaissance and modernity, and—in
primis—of a unilateral and static view of modernity. This task was neither
simple nor short; however, it is thanks to the pioneering investigations car-
ried out in the course of the twentieth-century by scholars like Warburg,
Garin, Rossi, Vasoli, and Frances A. Yates that magic and mnemotechnics
are now commonly perceived as central features of the Renaissance med-
itation on mankind, nature, and experience. The constitutive core of
Giordano Bruno’s thought would be impossible to decipher without taking
his mnemotechnical works into consideration.

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 36

37

Bruno’s idea of the impossibility of a process of thinking which is not
“thinking through images” is the operating and unfolding “principle” in
his mnemotechnical works, making them the most fascinating, ingenious
and arduous text of the nova filosofia. It is a sort of Urtext, essential to the
understanding of the genesis, features, and development of his philosophy.
Studying his experiments with mnemotechnics means gaining direct access
to Bruno’s “philosophical workshop” and access to this workshop is an
indispensable tool for comprehending Bruno’s “mind” and for following
the patterns from which the key elements of the nova filosofia matured.
These texts are very complex, sometimes obscure, and difficult to inter-
pret. Still, how they were reduced to mere extravagant oddities that placed
Bruno in the category of “pre-modernity” is one of those mysteries that
only historians are able to deconstruct. This is not surprising; after all,
there is no historiography without categories or, indeed, without ideolo-
gies. It would be enough to keep in mind (as a preventive therapy) that the
Past is another Present, and should be studied accordingly.3

In a passage from a recent commentary to Explicatio triginta sigillorum,
there is a statement, which can be espoused in every respect:

The brain thinks through images, because all abstract and conceptu-
al information originates from the reading and interpretation of fan-
tastic figures—either natural or artificial—and the fantastic dimen-
sion acts as interface between the logic dimension and Nature, since
all the experience of the world is seen through it, as in a mirror; it is
not, however, a passive and uncontrolled magma: in fact, since it
“bor ders” on the cogitative faculty, it is constantly open to the ratio-
nal dimension, which incessantly derives from and pours into the
partial and progressive impressions that are the object of its elabo-
rations. In conclusion, mnemonic loci and the images of memories,
ideated by Bruno, are but peculiar and defined modalities – regulat-
ed by the laws and principles of a specific ars—of a cognitive opera-
tive principle spontaneous and innate in man which also receives a
sort of enhancement and optimization when rationality ‘descends
upon’ it to regulate its actions.4

【18†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Schneider, S. “Der chiffrierte Text der Sterne. Zur Wahrnehmung, Bedeutung und
Poetisierung des Himmels in Giordano Brunos Cabala del cavallo pegaseo con
l’aggi unta dell’asino cillenico.” Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunst wissen -
schaft 51 (2007): 57–77.

Yates, F. A. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. 1st edition, 1964. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1991.

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:09 Oldal 194

195

Notes

1 Bruno, Dialoghi filosofici italiani, 739–40. In the course of this essay I will refer to
Cabala and Bruno’s other dialogues in Ciliberto’s Meridiani edition by page number
parenthetically in the text: “Now I believe the time for constructing other arguments
about the cabala of the aforementioned horse is passing. For as I see it, the order of
the universe decrees that as this divine horse in the celestial region cannot show
itself except to the navel (where the star that terminates there is placed in dispute
and in question whether it belongs to the head of Andromeda or simply to the trunk
of this splendid brute), thus analogically it happens that this descriptory horse can-
not achieve perfection:

So goes Fortune, changing style.
But we must not despair due to this; since, if it chances that the others return to meet
together another time, I shall shut up all three of them inside the conclave, from
whence they cannot get out until they have spun the creation of an illustrious Cabala
of Pegasus the horse. Interim, these two dialogues are selected for a small, prepara-
tory, introductory, microcosmic Cabala. And so as not to let the present time get the
better of me by passing it foolishly in strolling through this atrium, I wish to read this
dialogue that I have in hand.” Bruno, The Cabala of Pegasus, 80–81 (text slightly
altered).

2 Such a reading of the Furori is developed in Hufnagel, Ein Stück von jeder Wissen -
schaft, 251–96.

【19†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

ratura, 1999.

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:08 Oldal 58

59

Ciliberto, M. and N. Tirinnanzi, eds. Il dialogo recitato. Per una nuova edizione del
Bruno volgare. Florence: Olschki, 2002.

Firpo, L. Il processo di Giordano Bruno. Ed. D. Quaglioni. Rome: Salerno, 1993.
Garin, E. “Le elezioni e il problema dell’astrologia,” in L’età nuova. Ricerche di storia

della cultura dal XII al XVI secolo, 423–47. Naples: Morano, 1969.
Mann, N. “Denkenergetische Inversion: Aby Warburg and Giordano Bruno.” English

Goethe Society 72 (2003): 25–37.
Rossi, P. Un altro presente. Saggi sulla storia della filosofia. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999.
Tirinnanzi, N. “Temi apocalittici nel Sigillus sigillorum di Giordano Bruno.” Rinas ci -

mento 48 (2008): 335–49.
Tocco, F. Le opere latine di Giordano Bruno esposte e confrontate con le italiane.

Florence: Le Monnier, 1889.

Notes

* English translation by Olivia Catanorchi.
1 “Why, I say, do so few understand and apprehend the internal power? […] He, who

in himself sees all things, is all things.” Bruno, Opera latine conscripta II, 3, 90.
2 In De minimo (precisely in the epistle of Johann Wechel to the prince Henry Julius

of Braunschweig), we find “crucial information for the comprehension of Brunian
iconography and of its genesis”: “Opus aggressus est, ut quam accuratissime
absolveret, non schemata solum ipse sua manu sculpsit, sed etiam operarum se in
eodem correctorem praebuit”. (As it has been remarked, “the verb sculpere, with
reference to old prints, is a specific technical lemma used to indicate the activity of
the person who engraves the wood or metal with a chisel or a gouge, or copies the
drawing on the plate”.) Cf. Bruno, Corpus iconographicum, XCVII. For De minimo,
cf. Bruno, Opera latine conscripta I, 3, 123. (Translations, unless otherwise specified,
are mine).

3 On this subject see, among others, Rossi, Un altro presente.
4 Bruno, Opere mnemotecniche II, 359.
5 Bruno systematically insists on this point: for example in such an emblematic text

like Acrotismus Camoeracensis: “Quod igitur imaginatio quidlibet infinitam ad
molem persequitur, non fallitur: sed altius naturam imitatur, et ad veritatem appel-
lit, […] ad veritatem inquam primi intellectus, qui non potest intelligere nisi unum,
neque potest intelligere nisi infinitum” (Bruno, Opera latine conscripta I, 1, 119; a
valuable translation of this work, by Barbara Amato, is forthcoming).

6 Bruno, Opere mnemotecniche II, 388.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid., 916.
9 Ibid.
Visible: 0% - 100%

unknownmsearch(["important themes Turning Traditions Upside Down", "key discussions Turning Traditions Upside Down", "Bruno major contributions book"])

[Web browsing]

【0†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

viii Turning Traditions Upside Down

mankind. This leads us to the reflection and the reception of Bruno’s intel-
lectual fire. Bruno has been received in literature and art as well as in pub-
lic spaces in a way that has been as versatile as the philosopher himself.
The sculpture created by Berlin artist Alexander Polzin, entitled Giordano
Bruno, is the subject of the final chapter of this volume. This artwork was
originally commissioned by the Central European University in Budapest
to celebrate George Soros’s seventieth birthday and copies were erected in
Budapest and Nola. On the occasion of our colloquium, the statue was also
inaugurated at Potsdamer Platz in the center of Berlin. The statue depicts
the vulnerable body of a philosopher who is turning the world upside-down
and attempting to dislodge the borders of the universe—a fitting symbol of
Bruno’s tragedy, a man who dared to reconsider the fundamentals of the
world as they had been passed down throughout the ages and who struggled
to find his place in Europe. Yet, after peregrination across the con tin ent, he
ended up cast as a heretic in all three Christian churches of the occident.
He is now honored in a place, at the centre of modern Eu rope, which also
once served as the stage for the tragedy of a world divided.

We would like to conclude by thanking all the authors who contributed
to this volume. Most of all, we would like to thank the editors, Henning
Hufnagel and Anne Eusterschulte, for their substantial contributions and
the great work they have achieved. We hope that this volume will help cre-
ate a better understanding of a philosopher whose thinking is more preva-
lent today than any of his contemporaries might have foreseen.

Berlin and Budapest, September 2012
Jürgen Renn

Director of the Max Planck Institute
for the History of Science, Berlin

Yehuda Elkana (1934–2012)
Former Rector and President of

Central European University, Budapest

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal viii

Introduction

Turning traditions upside down—this metaphor seems to be a good start-
ing point for rethinking Giordano Bruno’s philosophy and his provocative
aspirations in the world of letters. It certainly would have been to Bruno’s
liking; someone who, in his writings, often presented himself as a Mercu ri -
an, larger-than-life figure who has come to put things straight: the No lan,
enlightening his contemporaries about the misleading paths of traditional
doctrines and opening minds for the discovery of true philosophy.

【1†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Bruno’s Reception and Literary Afterlife
WILHELM SCHMIDT-BIGGEMANN

The Dialectic of the Absolute Beginning. On a Copper Engraving
in Heinrich Khunrath’s Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae 199

INGRID ROWLAND

A Catholic Reader of Giordano Bruno in Counter-Reformation
Rome: Athanasius Kircher, SJ and Panspermia Rerum 221

FRANÇOIS QUIVIGER

From Paris to Rome, Hamburg and London. Aspects of the
Afterlife of Giordano Bruno in the Twentieth Century 237

PART 5
Visibility of the Invisible: About the Sculpture
Giordano Bruno by Alexander Polzin [2008]

DURS GRÜNBEIN

Flame and Wood. A Speech on the Occasion of the Unveiling of a
Giordano Bruno Monument in Berlin 251

Color plates of the statue follow page 256

List of Contributors 257
Index Nominum 261

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal vi

Preface

Giordano Bruno: A non-conformist at the dawn of an epoch, a martyr of
modernity, or just a polemic controvert? Descriptions of this kind fall
short of grasping the multifold character of the Nolan. Deconstructing the
relationship between God and the outside world gave distinction to his life
—and his refusal to recant when facing the stake somehow set him apart
from the world. Since then, the debate about the Nolan has been domi-
nated by the interest in the comprehensive œuvre of the philosopher, and
by attempts to make him a protagonist of the freedom of thought.

This volume brings together some of the most eminent researchers to
have worked on Giordano Bruno and his epoch. Their contributions—
inspired by a colloquium on Giordano Bruno organized by the Max Planck
Institute for the History of Science and the Central European University
in 2008—represent a critical inventory of our knowledge of the Nolan’s life
and work as well as shedding light on the many dimensions of Bruno’s
thinking. His radical rationality, starting with attempts to reinvent the
roots of religion but ending with a break in the doctrines of trinity and
monotheism; his natural philosophy, including the cosmology of the infini-
ty of the universe and of the unlimited number of worlds, or his thinking
on the vital character of all the objects on earth; his vision of a new cosmic
order and his place in the Copernican revolution, breaking with the domi-
nant heliocentric and anthropocentric system in a way more radical than
any contemporary thinker had before; his scientific methods, his analogies,
speculations, metaphors, his intuitive as well as practical knowledge,
reflecting the epistemic practices of a revolutionary; his idiosyncratic
blending of traditions, both philosophical and literary; his linguistic exu-
berance and conceptual boldness; the textual structures, genres, and forms
of non-conformity Bruno continuously experimented with, from the trac-
tate to comedy, from dialogue to poetry; and finally, his gusto for paradox
and satirical panache. Attention has also to be given to Bruno’s consider-
ation of the role of philosophy in society—either as a way to give coher-
ence to a world thrown off track, or simply as an instrument for civilizing

【2†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

10–11.
103 Bruno, The heroic frenzies, II, 1, 193; Dialoghi italiani, 1087.
104 Ibid.
105 Bruno, The heroic frenzies, II, 1, 195; Dialoghi italiani, 1088sq.
106 Bruno, The heroic frenzies, I, 3, 119; Dialoghi italiani, 999sq. See Plotinus, Enn., IV,

8, 1.
107 Bruno, The heroic frenzies, Argument, 71; Bruno, Dialoghi italiani, 941.
109 Fellmann, “Heroische Leidenschaften,” XXVI.

Epistemic Practices of a Revolutionary88

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:08 Oldal 88

PART 2

Experience and Vision of
a New Cosmic Order: Giordano Bruno’s

Natural Philosophy

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:08 Oldal 89

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:08 Oldal 90

MIGUEL ÁNGEL GRANADA

De immenso et innumerabilibus, I, 3 and
the Concept of Planetary Systems in the

Infinite Universe. A Commentary

Dispositio synodorum ex mundis in universo. Distinctio inter astra
lucentia per se et per aliud. Cur planetae, qui sunt circa alios soles,
non videntur.

Ut solem hunc circa Tellus, Luna, aliger Hermes,
Saturnus, Venus, et Mavors, et Juppiter errant,
et numerus fasso major, nam caetera turba
partim pro vicibus, partim non cernitur unquam,
sic circum fit quemque alium: nam lege necesse est
naturae, flammas fomentum sumere ab undis.
Maximu’ quando hic vult circum undique multa minora
mutuum, ut vires immittant, atque remittant
proficuas; ubi conveniens distantia pacem
conciliat; nam de adversis vita atque nutrimen
devenit, harmonicis quia seposita intervallis
concurrunt, motusque vagos contemperat aestus.
Sic circum unumquemque Phoebum cytharoedum
plures discurrunt Nymphae choreasque frequentant,
quas vegeto sensu, ac clara ratione videmus,
quando unam ad normam venit abstans atque propinquum
nec variat numerus primorum principiorum
conformem in speciem ut nequeant coalescere ubique.

De immenso et innumerabilibus, book I, chapter 3.1

Published in Frankfurt in 1591, Giordano Bruno’s De immenso et innu-
merabilibus is the last and the most mature and complete exposition of his
cosmological ideas. However, the significance of this work does not con-
cern only the cosmological and physical domain, since it contains also a
lucid presentation of Bruno’s vindication of philosophy as the proper path
to human perfection and intellectual happiness through the scientific

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:08 Oldal 91

【3†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

3

In order to bring into focus the horizon and the dimensions of Bruno’s
transformation of traditions, to demonstrate how he turned contemporary
thinking upside down, and to delineate his persuasive strategies, as well as
the theoretical consequences of his thought, the contributions of this vol-
ume all start from a selected text, an exemplary passage drawn from Bru -
no’s great range of work or from texts close to his person and œuvre. Pre -
senting and elucidating pivotal points of the philosophia nolana, the essays
both invite readers to become acquainted with Bruno’s philosophy and
provide them with innovative dissections, interpretations and conceptual
reflections that will prepare the way for a revised reading of Bruno’s
works. They reconstruct Bruno’s deconstruction and rearrangement of
phi lo sophical systems, his understanding of nature and the cosmos, his
methods of thinking and writing, his aesthetic and literary categories. They
ex plore the topics and modi operandi of the great Renaissance thinker and
point out the variance of his reception up to the present, both inside and
outside academia, exhibiting the ever-changing relevance and continuing
fascination of Bruno’s work.

The results of the contributor’s investigations are presented in four sec-
tions, according to four main fields of research interest. The first section
entitled Epistemic Practices of a Revolutionary: Bruno’s Methods and Thin -
king, examines Bruno’s methodological procedures. The essays show how
the Nolan undermined traditional positions, by a subtle reflexion on epis-
temological principles, logical structures, or metaphysical presuppositions,
to secure evidence for his philosophy of the infinite and its inherent con-
sequences which revolutionized the fields of metaphysics and epistemolo-
gy, physics, cosmology and anthropology. Bruno’s method of appropriat-
ing and concatenating older philosophical concepts appears to be both a
method of critical revision as well as systematic transformation.

Paul Richard Blum opens the volume with an epistemological reflection
on default values, in reference to a passage from Bruno’s Latin poem De
immenso. While default settings are constitutive instruments of every cog-
nitive process—they function as a sort of practical, temporary prejudice—
Blum accentuates Bruno’s request for an epistemic meta-operation. In his
poem, Bruno reminds us to be conscious of the tentativeness of mental de -
fault values in the same way as children are aware of the fact that changing
sights of one and the same object are related to their point of view. If the
in tellect fails to realize the infinity of the universe, it is not the fault of the
visual sense, but of the unconsidered reliance on vision as an epistemic de -
fault value. Bruno advocates a change in the standard principles of thought.

Introduction

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 3

4 Turning Traditions Upside Down

This mental operation leads to facing up to a radically altered view of the
world, resulting in the discovery of the philosophy of the infinite.

【4†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

This volume brings together some of the most eminent researchers to
have worked on Giordano Bruno and his epoch. Their contributions—
inspired by a colloquium on Giordano Bruno organized by the Max Planck
Institute for the History of Science and the Central European University
in 2008—represent a critical inventory of our knowledge of the Nolan’s life
and work as well as shedding light on the many dimensions of Bruno’s
thinking. His radical rationality, starting with attempts to reinvent the
roots of religion but ending with a break in the doctrines of trinity and
monotheism; his natural philosophy, including the cosmology of the infini-
ty of the universe and of the unlimited number of worlds, or his thinking
on the vital character of all the objects on earth; his vision of a new cosmic
order and his place in the Copernican revolution, breaking with the domi-
nant heliocentric and anthropocentric system in a way more radical than
any contemporary thinker had before; his scientific methods, his analogies,
speculations, metaphors, his intuitive as well as practical knowledge,
reflecting the epistemic practices of a revolutionary; his idiosyncratic
blending of traditions, both philosophical and literary; his linguistic exu-
berance and conceptual boldness; the textual structures, genres, and forms
of non-conformity Bruno continuously experimented with, from the trac-
tate to comedy, from dialogue to poetry; and finally, his gusto for paradox
and satirical panache. Attention has also to be given to Bruno’s consider-
ation of the role of philosophy in society—either as a way to give coher-
ence to a world thrown off track, or simply as an instrument for civilizing

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal vii

viii Turning Traditions Upside Down

mankind. This leads us to the reflection and the reception of Bruno’s intel-
lectual fire. Bruno has been received in literature and art as well as in pub-
lic spaces in a way that has been as versatile as the philosopher himself.
The sculpture created by Berlin artist Alexander Polzin, entitled Giordano
Bruno, is the subject of the final chapter of this volume. This artwork was
originally commissioned by the Central European University in Budapest
to celebrate George Soros’s seventieth birthday and copies were erected in
Budapest and Nola. On the occasion of our colloquium, the statue was also
inaugurated at Potsdamer Platz in the center of Berlin. The statue depicts
the vulnerable body of a philosopher who is turning the world upside-down
and attempting to dislodge the borders of the universe—a fitting symbol of
Bruno’s tragedy, a man who dared to reconsider the fundamentals of the
world as they had been passed down throughout the ages and who struggled
to find his place in Europe. Yet, after peregrination across the con tin ent, he
ended up cast as a heretic in all three Christian churches of the occident.
He is now honored in a place, at the centre of modern Eu rope, which also
once served as the stage for the tragedy of a world divided.

We would like to conclude by thanking all the authors who contributed
to this volume. Most of all, we would like to thank the editors, Henning
Hufnagel and Anne Eusterschulte, for their substantial contributions and
the great work they have achieved. We hope that this volume will help cre-
ate a better understanding of a philosopher whose thinking is more preva-
lent today than any of his contemporaries might have foreseen.

【5†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

This volume brings together some of the most eminent researchers to have worked on Giordano
Bruno and his epoch. In order to bring into focus the horizon and the dimensions of his
transformation of traditions, to demonstrate how he turned contemporary thinking upside down,
and to delineate his persuasive strategies, as well as the theoretical consequences of his thought,
the contributions all start from an exemplary passage drawn from Bruno’s great range of work
or from texts close to his person and oeuvre. Presenting and elucidating pivotal points of the
philosophia nolana, the essays both invite readers to become acquainted with Bruno’s philosophy
and provide them with innovative dissections, interpretations and conceptual reflections that
will prepare the way for a revised reading of Bruno’s works. They reconstruct his deconstruction
and rearrangement of philosophical systems, his understanding of nature and the cosmos, his
methods of thinking and writing, his aesthetic and literary categories. They explore the topics
and modi operandi of the great Renaissance thinker and point out the variance of his reception
up to the present, both inside and outside academia, exhibiting the ever-changing relevance and
continuing fascination of Bruno’s work.

Central European University Press
Budapest – New York

Sales and information: ceupress@ceu.hu
Website: http://www.ceupress.com

0536347861559

ISBN 9786155053634
90000 >

C o v e r d e s i g n b y S e b a s t i a n S t a c h o w s k i

About the Editors
Henning Hufnagel is junior fellow at the Freiburg
Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS) and member
of the research group “Deutsche Ausgabe der Schriften
Giordano Brunos.” Selected publications: Ein Stück von
jeder Wissenschaft. Gattungshybridisierung, Argumenta -
tion und Erkenntnis in Giordano Brunos italienischen
Dialogen (Stuttgart, 2009), “‘Pour abréger votre chemin
à l’un et à l’autre’. Plötzlichkeit in Marivaux’ La surprise
de l’amour.” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 60,
4 (2010): 389–404, “‘Nun, Schifflein! sieh’ dich vor!’—
Meerfahrt mit Nietzsche. Zu einem Motiv der Fröhlichen
Wissenschaft.” Nietzsche-Studien 37 (2008): 143–59.

Anne Eusterschulte is professor of philosophy at Freie
Universität Berlin. Selected publications: Analogia entis
seu mentis. Analogie als erkenntnistheoretisches Prinzip in
der Philosophie Giordano Brunos (Würzburg, 1997), Kant-
Reader: Probleme und Perspektiven der Kant’schen Philoso-
phie (ed. with H. Ingensiep, and H. Baranzke, Würzburg,
2004), and Mimesis oder ästhetische Wahrheit. Philoso-
phisch-theologische Voraus setzungen und geistesgeschichtli-
cher Kontext der Entwicklung eines ästhetischen Wahrheits-
begriffs (Berlin, 2012).

Hufnagel_cover.indd 1 2013-04-24 12:20:17

TURNING TRADITIONS
UPSIDE DOWN

Rethinking Giordano Bruno’s
Enlightenment

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal i

【6†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Introduction

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 5

6 Turning Traditions Upside Down

tional restrictions—which are still binding Kepler, e.g.—and, in doing so,
anticipates the cosmological reforms of the seventeenth-century as repre-
sented by Huygens or Newton.

Wolfgang Neuser presents an alternative interpretation of Bruno’s the-
ory of matter. Against the backdrop of the controversial medieval debates
about atomism concerning the attributes or qualities of atoms, their cor-
puscular or essential substantiality, and the appreciation of them as dis-
tinct particles, Bruno develops an understanding of matter that merges the
Aristotelian concept of substance with atomistic ideas and the Neo-Pla -
tonic concept of matter, according to which matter is filled with spirit.
Bruno differentiates three manifestations of the metaphysical monad, i.e.,
the undivided, infinite unum that systematically underlies everything.
These manifestations are the constituents of matter: spiritus, based on the
neo-Platonic concept of a spiritual virtue inherent in all matter; spatium,
or the structural explication of the indivisible, un-extended point, which
emerges in a process of self-generation; and atomus, the smallest indivisi-
ble or the physical minimum. Spirit, space, and atom are the structural
modes of the expansion of infinite unity. Based on this conceptualisation
of matter, Neuser characterizes Bruno as a Renaissance philosopher who,
at the end of the post-traditional stage in history, anticipates the subject-
based foundation of knowledge, representative for thinkers from the Mo -
dern Age like Descartes, Spinoza or Leibniz.

Enrico Giannetto’s chapter emphasizes no less than the astonishing fact
that Giordano Bruno—notwithstanding the significant differences in theo-
retical premises—presents a theory of relativity of time and motion three
hundred years before Poincaré and Einstein. While his non-mechanistic
conception of nature was an obstacle in recognizing Bruno as a serious sci-
entist, according to Giannetto, Bruno’s importance within the history of
theoretical physics is irrefutable. He argues that the relativity of time is
one consequence of Bruno’s concept of cosmic infinity, also entailing the
relativity of the localisation of planets or stars and of their motion, rota-
tion and orbits within a uniform space. Rejecting the Aristotelian assump-
tion of a primum mobile, Bruno argues for the plurality of incommensu-
rable times due to the infinity of uniform motions within the universe.
Turning the Aristotelian doctrine upside down, Bruno regards (relative)
motion as the measure of time.

Arcangelo Rossi, comparing the cosmological theories of Copernicus,
Bruno, and Galilei, attests a striking correspondence between the Nolan
and the Galilean doctrines. Like Giannetto, Rossi aims at restoring Bru -

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 6

7

【7†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

The last section of the book, Visibility of the Invisible: About the Sculpture
Giordano Bruno by Alexander Polzin [2008], is dedicated to the statue of
Giordano Bruno that was recently erected in Berlin. Besides a description
of the statue and its pendants at Nola and Budapest made by the sculptor,
Alexander Polzin, himself, the author Durs Grünbein gives a poet’s inter-
pretation of the statue at the moment of its unveiling at Potsdamer Platz. He
construes the heretic as an emblematic figure of a young, independent
Europe and asks himself why Berlin—a city which Bruno, this great tra -
veller, has never been to—and, specifically, an underground station could be

Introduction

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 9

the right place to commemorate the philosopher from Nola. For Grün bein,
the statue is an iconographic alarm signal, visualizing a rhetoric of fire, the
language of alchemy and metamorphoses that characterizes Bruno’s think-
ing. Finally, Grünbein brings thinkers and poets together in a virtual con-
versation across time and space: Bruno, Nietzsche, Scho pen hau er, and
Czesław Miłosz.

Anything but virtual were the exchanges we—philosophers, historians, and
literary scholars—had about Giordano Bruno in the congenial and inspiring
atmosphere of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin,
and our discussions and debates sowed many seeds. We are proud to see
how they have matured and grown now into this volume. At the end of this
project, we want to express our gratitude towards several individuals and
institutions for their unflinching support, financial as well as moral and in -
tel lectual: Jürgen Renn and Yehuda Elkana, the Max Planck Insti tute for the
History of Science, the Central European Uni versity, the Cent ral European
University Press, and, last but definitely not least, to Andreas Edel.

Finally, we would like to thank the students who assisted us in the com-
pletion of this volume with untiring effort, Fanny Neumann, Jussuf Spie gel,
Charlotte Wetzel and, especially, Oliver Schumacher, who also translated
Durs Grünbein’s contribution.

Freiburg and Berlin, September 2012
Henning Hufnagel,

Anne Eusterschulte

Turning Traditions Upside Down10

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 10

PART 1

Epistemic Practices of a Revolutionary:
Bruno’s Methods and Thinking

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 11

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 12

PAUL RICHARD BLUM

Giordano Bruno’s Changing of
Default Positions

Ut Peripateticorum similiumque philosophantum sensus a principiis pe -
rinde se habeat atque puerorum: quos eodem instituendos ordine sus ci pi -
mus, quo nos optima mater erudiit natura.

【8†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

We would like to conclude by thanking all the authors who contributed
to this volume. Most of all, we would like to thank the editors, Henning
Hufnagel and Anne Eusterschulte, for their substantial contributions and
the great work they have achieved. We hope that this volume will help cre-
ate a better understanding of a philosopher whose thinking is more preva-
lent today than any of his contemporaries might have foreseen.

Berlin and Budapest, September 2012
Jürgen Renn

Director of the Max Planck Institute
for the History of Science, Berlin

Yehuda Elkana (1934–2012)
Former Rector and President of

Central European University, Budapest

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal viii

Introduction

Turning traditions upside down—this metaphor seems to be a good start-
ing point for rethinking Giordano Bruno’s philosophy and his provocative
aspirations in the world of letters. It certainly would have been to Bruno’s
liking; someone who, in his writings, often presented himself as a Mercu ri -
an, larger-than-life figure who has come to put things straight: the No lan,
enlightening his contemporaries about the misleading paths of traditional
doctrines and opening minds for the discovery of true philosophy.

Born in 1548 near the town of Nola in the Kingdom of Naples, Gior -
dano Bruno is known today as an exceptional, yet ambivalent figure with-
in the history of ideas. As a great scholar, celebrated for his comprehen-
sive erudition, famous for his emphatic defence of philosophical inquiry
against religious doctrine and his rigid attacks against reputed authorities,
he caused an intellectual stir wherever he went. Sometimes his interventi -
ons were received with great éclat; more often, however, they created aca -
de mic scandal. Bruno impressed the French King Henri III who made him
one of his “lecteurs royaux”; three years later, he had to leave Paris in
tumultuous circumstances after a disputation had grown out of control. In
the meantime, Bruno had upset the intellectual scene in Elizabethan
England with his six Italian dialogues. Moving between different frontiers,
confessional beliefs, philosophical schools, academic parties and institu-
tional interests, Bruno—who did not mince matters—came under attack
from many sides.

Bruno argued relentlessly for a replacement of the philosophical koiné
of his time, the Scholastic Aristotelian philosophy that presented a view of
man and cosmos, which Bruno had been dissatisfied with since his time in a
Dominican convent in Naples. For his project of philosophical reform, Bruno
draws on a large variety of sources: on Platonic, pre-Socratic, Py tha gorean,
and Hermetic ideas, on thinkers such as Plotinus, Averroes, Nicholas of
Cusa, Raimundus Lullus and Ficino. He builds on the metho do logy, flour-
ishing during the Renaissance, of mnemotechnics. And he uses all these

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 1

2 Turning Traditions Upside Down

【9†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 6

7

no’s position within the history of natural sciences. He presents him as a
serious contemporary of Galilei. Although there are deep philosophical
and methodological differences, both agree that Copernicus’s heliocentric
system is not just a mathematical hypothesis but an explanation of the real
cosmic structures. Whereas Bruno’s convictions are based on the study of
ancient philosophy, the basis of Galilei’s theories are innovative instru-
mental practices that allow him to make precise observations and calcula-
tions. Both share an anti-Aristotelian impetus, abolishing the distinction
between supralunar and sublunar physics: Both attest there is but one
homogeneous world, governed by one natural law. Finally, they analogo -
usly interpret the Scriptures regarding natural knowledge. In fact, Bru no
literally anticipates the allegoric interpretation of the Scriptures later
adopted by Galilei: The aim of the Bible and of religious dogma in gener-
al is social and moral discipline and not the description of natural truth.

The third section of this volume, Forms of Non-Conformity: Bruno’s Works
as Literary Texts, shifts the focus from Bruno’s ideas to his texts. Bruno
was a versatile, highly experimental writer, well-experienced in many gen-
res and styles and familiar with numerous, especially heterodox and eccen-
tric traditions. His disposition for polemics, satire and paradox, his lin-
guistic inventiveness and scorn of literary decorum make his texts
colourful and compelling reading. The essays presented here take a look at
the literary aspect of Bruno’s philosophy and examine how the form of
Bruno’s texts determines their meaning.

Nuccio Ordine takes on the tripartite structure of Bruno’s comedy
Candelaio, and asks why not only one, as in other plays, but three stock
characters of Renaissance comedy are ridiculed here. He argues that the
answer is to be found in the theory of the comic as set forth in Plato’s
Philebus. Here, Socrates identifies three basic situations of ridicule—situ-
ations perfectly embodied by the three protagonists of Candelaio. Thus,
Ordine sheds light on the way Bruno works when writing his texts. Stres -
sing the gnoseological function of the comic in Bruno’s text, he finally indi-
cates some central elements of Bruno’s philosophy.

Sergius Kodera also examines Candelaio in his essay. He uncovers a
line of political thought, an implicit commentary on important historical,
political affairs, running throughout the whole comedy, leading up to
Machiavelli. Although Bruno never even mentions the name of the philo -
sopher-politician from Florence, Kodera detects the subterranean pre sence
of Machiavelli in strategically important passages of Candelaio. He shows

Introduction

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 7

8 Turning Traditions Upside Down

how Bruno adapts the Machiavellian notions of vicissitudo and occasione
and parallels Bruno’s re-evaluation of the sense of touch with Machi a -
velli’s ideas: For both authors, it is hands-on knowledge rather than de -
tached vision that is conducive to true insight and acquisition of power.
Whereas Bruno makes it clear that this re-evaluation involves heavy meta-
physical implications, Machiavelli and Bruno do share common ground
again in their vehement criticism of Christianity as harmful to the commu-
nity.

【10†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Paul Richard Blum opens the volume with an epistemological reflection
on default values, in reference to a passage from Bruno’s Latin poem De
immenso. While default settings are constitutive instruments of every cog-
nitive process—they function as a sort of practical, temporary prejudice—
Blum accentuates Bruno’s request for an epistemic meta-operation. In his
poem, Bruno reminds us to be conscious of the tentativeness of mental de -
fault values in the same way as children are aware of the fact that changing
sights of one and the same object are related to their point of view. If the
in tellect fails to realize the infinity of the universe, it is not the fault of the
visual sense, but of the unconsidered reliance on vision as an epistemic de -
fault value. Bruno advocates a change in the standard principles of thought.

Introduction

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 3

4 Turning Traditions Upside Down

This mental operation leads to facing up to a radically altered view of the
world, resulting in the discovery of the philosophy of the infinite.

Covering Bruno’s so-called Frankfurt Trilogy, Angelika Bönker-Vallon
analyses Bruno’s intention to demonstrate the systematic interrelation
bet ween metaphysical, mathematical and physical thought. In these three
Latin poems, Bruno delineates a universal concept of science which
embraces all branches of scientific knowledge. Within this tripartite ency-
clopaedia, De triplici minimo et mensura is of the utmost significance, as
Bönker-Vallon points out, because in this work Bruno tries to conceptual-
ize a mathematical theory for measuring the infinite cosmos or, in a com-
prehensive sense, to create a theoretical substructure of the encyclopaedic
sciences. Based on the concept of a threefold minimum—i.e., God as the
monad of monads, the mathematical point and the physical atom—Bruno
demonstrates the metaphysical implications and qualities of point and
atom as primary functional minima, redefined as first and elementary spa-
tial structures comprising the coincidental relationship of maximum and
minimum, essential for conceiving the relationship between the infinite
space and its fundamental entities. The interconnection of metaphysical,
mathematical and physical minima provides accessibility to the systematic
nature of Bruno’s threefold theory of the infinite, which based on the idea
of a universal measure, allows for the development of the idea of univer-
sal science.

【11†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Finally, we would like to thank the students who assisted us in the com-
pletion of this volume with untiring effort, Fanny Neumann, Jussuf Spie gel,
Charlotte Wetzel and, especially, Oliver Schumacher, who also translated
Durs Grünbein’s contribution.

Freiburg and Berlin, September 2012
Henning Hufnagel,

Anne Eusterschulte

Turning Traditions Upside Down10

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 10

PART 1

Epistemic Practices of a Revolutionary:
Bruno’s Methods and Thinking

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 11

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 12

PAUL RICHARD BLUM

Giordano Bruno’s Changing of
Default Positions

Ut Peripateticorum similiumque philosophantum sensus a principiis pe -
rinde se habeat atque puerorum: quos eodem instituendos ordine sus ci pi -
mus, quo nos optima mater erudiit natura.

Sic […] mons peramoene Cicadae,
[…] blandiri tua lumina sancta recordor.
Ut fueras hedera, et ramis redimitus olivae
Et corni, et lauri, et myrthi, rorisque marini,
Castanea circumcinctus, quercu, populo, ulmo,
Coniugio uviferae vitis felicibus, utque
Ruvida porrexit tenerae manui manus uvam,
Indice distencto dixti mihi: respice ad austrum,
Respice germanum mihi ab illa parte Vesevum.
Germanus meus, ille tibi quoque vult bene: credis?
Si te illuc mittam, nunc dic: vis ire? manebis
Cumque illo posthac. Vitreis tunc versus ocellis,
Prospectans formam informem, relegensque figuram
Furvi dumtaxat cumuli: dorso ille repando,
Dixi, ille incurvus dentato tergore, coelum
Contiguum findens? toto discrimine mundi
Hinc abstans, fumo turpisque umbrante, nec ullis
Muneribus pollens, nec enim sunt poma nec uvae,
Nec dulces illi ficus: caret arbore et hortis,
Obscurus, tetricus, tristis, trux, vilis, avarus.
At tu subridens: tamen est germanus amansque
Ille mei, atque tibi bene vult. Vise ergo, nec eius
Blanditias contemne, scio nihil ille molestum
Quod tibi sit, faciet, nolensque manere redibis.
Ergo ubi adesse datum est illic, propiusque tueri
Vesuvium Baccho celebrem, multoque superbum
Arbusto, ubertim e ramis pendentibus uvis,

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 13

【12†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:...

Rethinking
Giordano Bruno’s
Enlightenment

Edited by
Henning Hufnagel and Anne Eusterschulte

Turning Traditions
Upside Down

Turning Traditions U
pside D

ow
n

Turning Traditions
Upside Down

Edited by
H

enning H
ufnagel

Anne Eusterschulte

Contributors

Paul Richard Blum
Angelika Bönker-Vallon
Michele Ciliberto
Anne Eusterschulte
Enrico R. A. Giannetto
Miguel A. Granada
Durs Grünbein
Henning Hufnagel
Sergius Kodera
Wolfgang Neuser
Nuccio Ordine
Alexander Polzin
François Quiviger
Arcangelo Rossi
Ingrid Rowland
Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann

Giordano Bruno: A non-conformist at the dawn of an epoch, a martyr of modernity, or just a
polemic controvert? Descriptions of this kind fall short of grasping the multifold character of “the
Nolan.” Deconstructing the relationship between God and the outside world gave distinction to
his life—and his refusal to recant when facing the stake somehow set him apart from the world.
Since then, the debate about the Nolan has been dominated by the interest in the comprehensive
oeuvre of the philosopher, and by attempts to make him a protagonist of the freedom of thought.

This volume brings together some of the most eminent researchers to have worked on Giordano
Bruno and his epoch. In order to bring into focus the horizon and the dimensions of his
transformation of traditions, to demonstrate how he turned contemporary thinking upside down,
and to delineate his persuasive strategies, as well as the theoretical consequences of his thought,
the contributions all start from an exemplary passage drawn from Bruno’s great range of work
or from texts close to his person and oeuvre. Presenting and elucidating pivotal points of the
philosophia nolana, the essays both invite readers to become acquainted with Bruno’s philosophy
and provide them with innovative dissections, interpretations and conceptual reflections that
will prepare the way for a revised reading of Bruno’s works. They reconstruct his deconstruction
and rearrangement of philosophical systems, his understanding of nature and the cosmos, his
methods of thinking and writing, his aesthetic and literary categories. They explore the topics
and modi operandi of the great Renaissance thinker and point out the variance of his reception
up to the present, both inside and outside academia, exhibiting the ever-changing relevance and
continuing fascination of Bruno’s work.

Central European University Press
Budapest – New York

Sales and information: ceupress@ceu.hu
Website: http://www.ceupress.com

0536347861559

ISBN 9786155053634
90000 >

C o v e r d e s i g n b y S e b a s t i a n S t a c h o w s k i

【13†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Sergius Kodera also examines Candelaio in his essay. He uncovers a
line of political thought, an implicit commentary on important historical,
political affairs, running throughout the whole comedy, leading up to
Machiavelli. Although Bruno never even mentions the name of the philo -
sopher-politician from Florence, Kodera detects the subterranean pre sence
of Machiavelli in strategically important passages of Candelaio. He shows

Introduction

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 7

8 Turning Traditions Upside Down

how Bruno adapts the Machiavellian notions of vicissitudo and occasione
and parallels Bruno’s re-evaluation of the sense of touch with Machi a -
velli’s ideas: For both authors, it is hands-on knowledge rather than de -
tached vision that is conducive to true insight and acquisition of power.
Whereas Bruno makes it clear that this re-evaluation involves heavy meta-
physical implications, Machiavelli and Bruno do share common ground
again in their vehement criticism of Christianity as harmful to the commu-
nity.

This section concludes with Henning Hufnagel’s analysis of Bruno’s
shortest dialogue, Cabala del cavallo pegaseo. Hufnagel focuses on the dia-
logue’s twisted structure. Cabala is one of the most disputed of Bruno’s
texts and scholars have made many attempts to fix a positive theoretical
me aning in the dialogue. Hufnagel shows that this is a hopeless fight
because Bruno blends the dialogue with forms of paradoxical epideixis:
Bruno piles up paradoxes until all claims negate and cancel each other.
Hufnagel proposes Cabala should instead be read as a satire of knowledge.
The transmission of alleged knowledge between the interlocutors collapses
continually and Bruno lays bare their modes of argumentation. If anything
is to be learned from Cabala, it is how the literary form of the dialogue can
acquire the value of an argument. Thus, Cabala can be understood as a
reflection on the dialectical possibilities of the dialogue as a genre.

In the fourth section in this volume, Reflections of an Intellectual Burning:
Bruno’s Reception and Literary Afterlife, the horizon widens both themat-
ically and temporally. This section looks at some of the traces Bruno’s life
and work left in other philosophical, or even theological contexts, presents
aspects of his sometimes curious literary afterlife—which extends to
Bertolt Brecht and beyond—and tries to come to terms with the truly last-
ing fascination exerted by the man from Nola.

Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann explores the possibilities of picturing me -
ta physics by analysing a copper engraving in Heinrich Khunrath’s Amphi -
theatrum Sapientiae Aeternae. In this image, the Kabbalistic foundation of
all being, both the divine and the creatural, is symbolically depicted. For
Bruno, the externalization of the first cause—which is in itself unknow-
able, because it only reveals itself in its expression—is, at the same time,
the beginning of all spatiality. This idea corresponds materially to the
imaging of the first cause, as it is represented in the Leipzig theosopher
Khunrath’s great work Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae. He goes beyond
Bruno, however, when he problematizes the question of the symbolism of
the divine externalizations.

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 8

【14†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

233

Bibliography
Primary sources
Bruno, G. “De immenso et innumerabilibus.” In Jordani Bruni Nolani Opera latine con-

scripta. Vol. I, 2. Ed. F. Fiorentino. Naples: Morano, 1884. Reprint, Stuttgart/Bad
Cannstatt: From mann, 1962.

———. Dialoghi filosofici italiani. Ed. M. Ciliberto. Milan: Mondadori, 2000.

Secondary sources
Gatti, H. Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science. Ithaca NY: Cornell University

Press, 1999.
Michel, P.-H. The Cosmology of Giordano Bruno. Paris: Herrmann, 1973.
Rowland, I. D. “Athanasius Kircher, Giordano Bruno, and the Panspermia of the

Infinite Universe.” In Athanasius Kircher, the Last Man who Knew Everything. Ed.
P. Findlen, 191–206. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Siebert, H. Die große kosmologische Kontroverse: Rekonstruktionsversuche anhand des
Itinerarium exstaticum von Athanasius Kircher SJ (1602–1680). Stuttgart: Franz
Steiner Verlag, 2006.

Sigurdsson, H. Melting the Earth: the History of Ideas on Volcanic Eruptions. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1999.

Notes

1 “Thus the Earth receives life-giving seeds from the Suns’s orb / And by its motion
tempers the seething heat of its rays,” Bruno, Opera latine conscripta I, 2, 283.

2 Raymundi Lullii Opera ea quae ad inventam ab ipso artem universalem, Scientiarum
Artiumque Omnium Brevi compendio, firmaque memoria apprehendendarum, locu-
pletissimaque vel oratione ex tempore pertractandarum pertinent. Ut et in eandem
quorundam interpretum scripti commentarii, Argentorati, sumptibus Haeredum
Lazari Zetzneri, 1617. The book is mostly devoted, then, to Ramon Llull, himself a
suspect author for the drafters of the Index. Bruno’s works appear from pp. 662–786,
and are followed by those of another suspect author, Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, a
Protestant from Strasbourg, 1617, who would suffer greatly in the Thirty Years’ War
(starting in 1618); the city was annexed to Catholic France in 1681.

3 The classroom spaces of the Collegio Romano have belonged to Rome’s first public
high school, the Liceo Ennio Quirino Visconti, since the unification of Italy in 1870.

【15†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Urban VIII, pope 224

Valla, Lorenzo 67
Vanini, Lucilio 247n
Vasoli, Cesare 36
Védrine, Hélène 107, 117n, 118n, 136,

145, 147n

265

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:09 Oldal 265

Verlaine, Paul 239
Visconti, Ennio Quirino 233n
Viviani, Vittorio 162, 175n
Volkert, Klaus Thomas 32n
Vossler, Karl 243, 247n

Wackenfels, Johann Matthäus Wackher
von 94

Warburg, Aby 9, 36, 57, 58, 61n, 238, 242,
243, 244, 246n, 247n

Wechel, Johann 59n
Weinberg, Bernard 156n

Wersinger, Anne-Gabrielle 156n
Westman, Robert S. 104n
Wicke, Erhard 33n
Wildgen, Wolfgang 117n
Wolfart, Erasmus 200, 201, 216n
Wyclif(fe), John 110, 247n

Yates, Frances A. 9, 36, 136, 147n, 195n,
196n, 238, 244, 247n

Zeller, Eduard 87n
Zetzner, Lazarus 233n

Index Nominum266

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:09 Oldal 266

Rethinking
Giordano Bruno’s
Enlightenment

Edited by
Henning Hufnagel and Anne Eusterschulte

Turning Traditions
Upside Down

Turning Traditions U
pside D

ow
n

Turning Traditions
Upside Down

Edited by
H

enning H
ufnagel

Anne Eusterschulte

Contributors

Paul Richard Blum
Angelika Bönker-Vallon
Michele Ciliberto
Anne Eusterschulte
Enrico R. A. Giannetto
Miguel A. Granada
Durs Grünbein
Henning Hufnagel
Sergius Kodera
Wolfgang Neuser
Nuccio Ordine
Alexander Polzin
François Quiviger
Arcangelo Rossi
Ingrid Rowland
Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann

Giordano Bruno: A non-conformist at the dawn of an epoch, a martyr of modernity, or just a
polemic controvert? Descriptions of this kind fall short of grasping the multifold character of “the
Nolan.” Deconstructing the relationship between God and the outside world gave distinction to
his life—and his refusal to recant when facing the stake somehow set him apart from the world.
Since then, the debate about the Nolan has been dominated by the interest in the comprehensive
oeuvre of the philosopher, and by attempts to make him a protagonist of the freedom of thought.

【16†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Right from the beginning, Bruno was an “academico di nulla aca de mia,”
an “academic of no academy,” as he calls himself in his comedy Candle-
bearer. Soon enough, he became not only institutionally, but literally home-
less, wandering from Italy to France, to England, to Germany and back
again over the Alps, watched by suspicious eyes because of his radical visi -
ons of intellectual reform. At last the prominent “universally learned man
who did not, however, have any religion,” as one contemporary de scribed
him, fell victim to denunciation in Venice and, after a nearly eight-year-
long trial, was condemned by the Roman inquisition to be burnt at the
stake. The verdict was executed on the Campo de’ Fiori in Rome, on Feb -
ruary 17, 1600. The stench of burnt flesh is said to have lingered for days.

The tragedy of Bruno’s life and thought may be seen as a radical sym-
bol of the human struggle for knowledge, rising to the challenge of free-
dom of thought at the risk of losing ground. It is upside down, therefore,
that Alexander Polzin’s sculpture shows Bruno.

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 2

3

In order to bring into focus the horizon and the dimensions of Bruno’s
transformation of traditions, to demonstrate how he turned contemporary
thinking upside down, and to delineate his persuasive strategies, as well as
the theoretical consequences of his thought, the contributions of this vol-
ume all start from a selected text, an exemplary passage drawn from Bru -
no’s great range of work or from texts close to his person and œuvre. Pre -
senting and elucidating pivotal points of the philosophia nolana, the essays
both invite readers to become acquainted with Bruno’s philosophy and
provide them with innovative dissections, interpretations and conceptual
reflections that will prepare the way for a revised reading of Bruno’s
works. They reconstruct Bruno’s deconstruction and rearrangement of
phi lo sophical systems, his understanding of nature and the cosmos, his
methods of thinking and writing, his aesthetic and literary categories. They
ex plore the topics and modi operandi of the great Renaissance thinker and
point out the variance of his reception up to the present, both inside and
outside academia, exhibiting the ever-changing relevance and continuing
fascination of Bruno’s work.

The results of the contributor’s investigations are presented in four sec-
tions, according to four main fields of research interest. The first section
entitled Epistemic Practices of a Revolutionary: Bruno’s Methods and Thin -
king, examines Bruno’s methodological procedures. The essays show how
the Nolan undermined traditional positions, by a subtle reflexion on epis-
temological principles, logical structures, or metaphysical presuppositions,
to secure evidence for his philosophy of the infinite and its inherent con-
sequences which revolutionized the fields of metaphysics and epistemolo-
gy, physics, cosmology and anthropology. Bruno’s method of appropriat-
ing and concatenating older philosophical concepts appears to be both a
method of critical revision as well as systematic transformation.

【17†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Published in 2013 by

Central European University Press
An imprint of the

Central European University Limited Liability Company
Nádor utca 11, H-1051 Budapest, Hungary

Tel: +36-1-327-3138 or 327-3000
Fax: +36-1-327-3183

E-mail: ceupress@ceu.hu
Website: www.ceupress.com

224 West 57th Street New York, NY 10019, USA
Tel: +1-212-547-6932
Fax: +1-646-557-2416

E-mail: martin.greenwald@opensocietyfoundations.org

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,

in any form or by any means, without the permission
of the Publisher.

ISBN 978-615-5053-63-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Turning traditions upside down : rethinking Giordano Bruno's enlightenment /
[edited by] Henning Hufnagel and Anne Eusterschulte.

pages cm
Proceedings of a colloquium held in 2008 at Max Planck Institute for the

History of Science.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-6155053634 (hardbound)

1. Bruno, Giordano, 1548-1600. I. Hufnagel, Henning S. II. Eusterschulte, Anne.

B783.Z7T87 2012
195--dc23

2012007959

Printed in Hungary by
Akaprint Kft.

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal iv

Table of Contents

YEHUDA ELKANA and JÜRGEN RENN

Preface vii
HENNING HUFNAGEL and ANNE EUSTERSCHULTE

Introduction 1

PART 1
Epistemic Practices of a Revolutionary:

Bruno’s Methods and Thinking
PAUL RICHARD BLUM

Giordano Bruno’s Changing of Default Positions 13
ANGELIKA BÖNKER-VALLON

The Measurement of the Immeasurable.
Divine Mind and Mathematical Structures in Giordano Bruno’s
De triplici minimo et mensura 19

MICHELE CILIBERTO

“…per speculum et in aenigmate…” 35
ANNE EUSTERSCHULTE

Platonic Caverns and Epicurean Worlds 63

PART 2
Experience and Vision of a New Cosmic Order:

Giordano Bruno’s Natural Philosophy

MIGUEL ÁNGEL GRANADA

De immenso et innumerabilibus, I, 3 and the Concept of Planetary
Systems in the Infinite Universe. A Commentary 91

WOLFGANG NEUSER

Atom, Matter, and Monade 107
ENRICO RENATO ANTONIO GIANNETTO

Giordano Bruno and the Relativity of Time 121

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal v

ARCANGELO ROSSI

Giordano Bruno and the New Order of Nature between
Copernicus and Galilei 131

PART 3
Forms of Non-Conformity:

Bruno’s Works as Literary Texts
NUCCIO ORDINE

The Comic and Philosophy: Plato’s Philebus and
Bruno’s Candle-bearer 151

【18†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Introduction

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 3

4 Turning Traditions Upside Down

This mental operation leads to facing up to a radically altered view of the
world, resulting in the discovery of the philosophy of the infinite.

Covering Bruno’s so-called Frankfurt Trilogy, Angelika Bönker-Vallon
analyses Bruno’s intention to demonstrate the systematic interrelation
bet ween metaphysical, mathematical and physical thought. In these three
Latin poems, Bruno delineates a universal concept of science which
embraces all branches of scientific knowledge. Within this tripartite ency-
clopaedia, De triplici minimo et mensura is of the utmost significance, as
Bönker-Vallon points out, because in this work Bruno tries to conceptual-
ize a mathematical theory for measuring the infinite cosmos or, in a com-
prehensive sense, to create a theoretical substructure of the encyclopaedic
sciences. Based on the concept of a threefold minimum—i.e., God as the
monad of monads, the mathematical point and the physical atom—Bruno
demonstrates the metaphysical implications and qualities of point and
atom as primary functional minima, redefined as first and elementary spa-
tial structures comprising the coincidental relationship of maximum and
minimum, essential for conceiving the relationship between the infinite
space and its fundamental entities. The interconnection of metaphysical,
mathematical and physical minima provides accessibility to the systematic
nature of Bruno’s threefold theory of the infinite, which based on the idea
of a universal measure, allows for the development of the idea of univer-
sal science.

In his essay “…per speculum et in aenigmate…,” Michele Ciliberto dis-
plays how “thinking through images” is the central point in Bruno’s nova
filosofia. It is the topic not only of his meditations on the ars memoriae, but
is continuously discussed both in his Italian as well as in his later Latin
works. For Bruno, the use of images is a condition preceding every act of
thinking. This leads him to a new conceptualisation of the process of cog-
nition: Images or mental phantastic figures are like an interface between
mind and nature, between the logical, abstract operations and the innu-
merable appearances of the visible world. At the same time, the inex-
haustible potency of fantasy to produce images makes us aware of the idea
of infinity. In this context, the dialectic between fantasy and intellect,
abstract synthesis and creative analysis is, as Ciliberto points out, vitally
important: it shows the way of man’s approximation to the eternal truth,
an infinite itinerarium, i.e., a metaphysical movement of man who by
descending into himself tries to know the One, a way which allows him to
touch the divine cause indirectly “through the mirror and in enigma.”

Following this, Anne Eusterschulte attempts to delineate Bruno’s assi -
milation of heterogeneous elements of ancient philosophy and shows how,

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 4

5

【19†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

This theme is important to Bruno, who symptomatically picks it up
again in the poem at the beginning of the Explicatio triginta sigillorum and
“intimates his hope for the advent of a ‘mythical’ age when the world, wise
at last, though late (sero sapiens), will see ignorance and hostile prejudices
removed from its surface.”34 These ideas are rooted in a philosophy of his-
tory inspired by Hermeticism that finds complete expression in the Spaccio,
where Bruno even translates (while modifying deeply) the Lament of
Hermes Trismegistus. In other words, these ideas are central in Bruno’s

“…per speculum et in aenigmate…”

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 49

50 Epistemic Practices of a Revolutionary

mind and, although they emerge for the first time at this stage of his
research, they are constantly considered right up to his last works, for
example in some remarkable pages of the De immenso.

To investigate the reasons for the recurrence of these issues from both
linguistic and conceptual viewpoints means to face the problem of the
dynamics of Bruno’s ‘mind,’ a task that cannot be accomplished here. In
the context of our line of reasoning, however, some elements can be point-
ed out: First, these subjects, also outlined in De umbris, appear in a text
that, for a long time, has been counted amongst the mnemotechnical works
and implicitly dismissed due to an obsolete idea of Renaissance culture
and philosophy. However, we must drop this misinterpretation if we want
to understand Bruno’s theories, in this particular text and in general.

This text, in fact, has strong philosophical caliber and is perhaps one of
the most relevant in Bruno’s œuvre. Yet, due to its composite structure, it
also has the important merit of taking us straight into Bruno’s ‘workshop,’
allowing us to both understand the manner in which his texts must be deci-
phered in general and to define (or confirm) at least four specific points.
These include the articulated theoretical basis of his ars, which tackles a
number of gnosiologial, ontological, and ethical issues, evenly introducing
them into the frame of the nova filosofia; the fact that ethico-political and
religious issues are already established in his mnemotechnical works and
destined to find a fuller development in the Spaccio (where the contro -
versy against Puritans becomes central as much as vehement); the possi-
bility, as a consequence, of dating the genesis of Bruno’s first conception
of the Spaccio to the last period of his stay in Paris, though in the frame of
a polemic that, in the Sigillus, is aimed against Protestants as well as
against monastic orders; and, last but not least, the text allows us to figure
out Bruno’s modus operandi.

Yet, one needs not exaggerate the relation between the Sigillus and the
Spaccio. The persistency of these topics, even if in a short time span,
attests to the continuity of some main themes and also to the incessant
revision to which Bruno subjected his works.
Visible: 0% - 100%

unknownmsearch(["Bruno scholars mentioned", "contributors to Turning Traditions Upside Down", "scholars writing about Bruno in the book"])

[Web browsing]

【0†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

58 Epistemic Practices of a Revolutionary

historians in order to discuss the figure of Giordano Bruno as a ‘thinker
through images.’51 Some fragments of his research are still extant, being
“entrusted to a notebook with a black cover, bearing the title of Giordano
Bruno” and consisting of “45 pages of notes and observations written
between the autumn of 1928 and June 1929, during his stay in Rome with
Gertrude Bing.”52 This material, now made available to scholars,53 is of
extreme interest. However, shortly after writing this letter and embarking
on his project, Warburg passed away and could not accomplish this plan.
Even so, his intuition about ‘thinking through images,’ is still at the center
of the research on Bruno’s philosophy and still represents a necessary
touchstone, on a conceptual as well as historiographical level. The interest
in Bruno’s mnemonics, as attested to by the recent publication of his
mnemotechnical works, arises from a belief similar to that of Warburg.
Better still, it aspires to be the confirmation of the intuition that crossed
Warburg’s mind almost a century ago.

Bibliography

Primary sources
Bruno, G. Corpus iconographicum. Le incisioni nelle opere a stampa. Ed. M. Gabriele.

Milan: Adelphi, 2001.
———. Dialoghi filosofici italiani. Ed. M. Ciliberto. Milan: Mondadori, 2000.
———. Dialoghi italiani. Eds. G. Gentile and G. Aquilecchia. Florence: Sansoni, 1958.
———. Jordani Bruni Nolani Opera latine conscripta, 3 vols., 8 parts. Eds. F. Fiorentino,

F. Tocco, H. Vitelli, V. Imbriani and C. M. Tallarigo. Naples/Florence: Morano/Le
Monnier, 1879–91. Reprint Stuttgart/Bad Cannstatt: From mann, 1961–62.

———. Opere latine. Ed. C. Monti. Turin: Utet, 1980.
———. Opere mnemotecniche, vol. 2. Eds. M. Ciliberto, M. Matteoli, R. Sturlese and

N. Tirinnanzi. Milan: Adelphi, 2009.
Calvino, I. Lezioni americane. Milan: Garzanti, 1988.
Cusano, N. Opere filosofiche. Ed. G. Federici-Vescovini. Turin: Utet, 1972.
Warburg, A. “Giordano Bruno.” Eds. M. Ghelardi and G. Targia. Cassirer Studies 1

(2008): 29–58.
Warburg, A. and E. Cassirer. Il mondo di ieri. Lettere. Ed. M. Ghelardi. Turin: Aragno,

2003.

Secondary sources
Ciliberto, M. “Bruno e l’Apocalisse,” in L’occhio di Atteone. Nuovi studi su Giordano

Bruno, 63–94. Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2002.
———. Giordano Bruno. Il teatro della vita. Milan: Mondadori, 2007.
———. Umbra profunda. Studi su Giordano Bruno. Rome: Edizioni di storia e lette -

ratura, 1999.

【1†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Urban VIII, pope 224

Valla, Lorenzo 67
Vanini, Lucilio 247n
Vasoli, Cesare 36
Védrine, Hélène 107, 117n, 118n, 136,

145, 147n

265

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:09 Oldal 265

Verlaine, Paul 239
Visconti, Ennio Quirino 233n
Viviani, Vittorio 162, 175n
Volkert, Klaus Thomas 32n
Vossler, Karl 243, 247n

Wackenfels, Johann Matthäus Wackher
von 94

Warburg, Aby 9, 36, 57, 58, 61n, 238, 242,
243, 244, 246n, 247n

Wechel, Johann 59n
Weinberg, Bernard 156n

Wersinger, Anne-Gabrielle 156n
Westman, Robert S. 104n
Wicke, Erhard 33n
Wildgen, Wolfgang 117n
Wolfart, Erasmus 200, 201, 216n
Wyclif(fe), John 110, 247n

Yates, Frances A. 9, 36, 136, 147n, 195n,
196n, 238, 244, 247n

Zeller, Eduard 87n
Zetzner, Lazarus 233n

Index Nominum266

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:09 Oldal 266

Rethinking
Giordano Bruno’s
Enlightenment

Edited by
Henning Hufnagel and Anne Eusterschulte

Turning Traditions
Upside Down

Turning Traditions U
pside D

ow
n

Turning Traditions
Upside Down

Edited by
H

enning H
ufnagel

Anne Eusterschulte

Contributors

Paul Richard Blum
Angelika Bönker-Vallon
Michele Ciliberto
Anne Eusterschulte
Enrico R. A. Giannetto
Miguel A. Granada
Durs Grünbein
Henning Hufnagel
Sergius Kodera
Wolfgang Neuser
Nuccio Ordine
Alexander Polzin
François Quiviger
Arcangelo Rossi
Ingrid Rowland
Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann

Giordano Bruno: A non-conformist at the dawn of an epoch, a martyr of modernity, or just a
polemic controvert? Descriptions of this kind fall short of grasping the multifold character of “the
Nolan.” Deconstructing the relationship between God and the outside world gave distinction to
his life—and his refusal to recant when facing the stake somehow set him apart from the world.
Since then, the debate about the Nolan has been dominated by the interest in the comprehensive
oeuvre of the philosopher, and by attempts to make him a protagonist of the freedom of thought.

【2†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

viii Turning Traditions Upside Down

mankind. This leads us to the reflection and the reception of Bruno’s intel-
lectual fire. Bruno has been received in literature and art as well as in pub-
lic spaces in a way that has been as versatile as the philosopher himself.
The sculpture created by Berlin artist Alexander Polzin, entitled Giordano
Bruno, is the subject of the final chapter of this volume. This artwork was
originally commissioned by the Central European University in Budapest
to celebrate George Soros’s seventieth birthday and copies were erected in
Budapest and Nola. On the occasion of our colloquium, the statue was also
inaugurated at Potsdamer Platz in the center of Berlin. The statue depicts
the vulnerable body of a philosopher who is turning the world upside-down
and attempting to dislodge the borders of the universe—a fitting symbol of
Bruno’s tragedy, a man who dared to reconsider the fundamentals of the
world as they had been passed down throughout the ages and who struggled
to find his place in Europe. Yet, after peregrination across the con tin ent, he
ended up cast as a heretic in all three Christian churches of the occident.
He is now honored in a place, at the centre of modern Eu rope, which also
once served as the stage for the tragedy of a world divided.

We would like to conclude by thanking all the authors who contributed
to this volume. Most of all, we would like to thank the editors, Henning
Hufnagel and Anne Eusterschulte, for their substantial contributions and
the great work they have achieved. We hope that this volume will help cre-
ate a better understanding of a philosopher whose thinking is more preva-
lent today than any of his contemporaries might have foreseen.

Berlin and Budapest, September 2012
Jürgen Renn

Director of the Max Planck Institute
for the History of Science, Berlin

Yehuda Elkana (1934–2012)
Former Rector and President of

Central European University, Budapest

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal viii

Introduction

Turning traditions upside down—this metaphor seems to be a good start-
ing point for rethinking Giordano Bruno’s philosophy and his provocative
aspirations in the world of letters. It certainly would have been to Bruno’s
liking; someone who, in his writings, often presented himself as a Mercu ri -
an, larger-than-life figure who has come to put things straight: the No lan,
enlightening his contemporaries about the misleading paths of traditional
doctrines and opening minds for the discovery of true philosophy.

【3†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Zeller, Eduard 87n
Zetzner, Lazarus 233n

Index Nominum266

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:09 Oldal 266

Rethinking
Giordano Bruno’s
Enlightenment

Edited by
Henning Hufnagel and Anne Eusterschulte

Turning Traditions
Upside Down

Turning Traditions U
pside D

ow
n

Turning Traditions
Upside Down

Edited by
H

enning H
ufnagel

Anne Eusterschulte

Contributors

Paul Richard Blum
Angelika Bönker-Vallon
Michele Ciliberto
Anne Eusterschulte
Enrico R. A. Giannetto
Miguel A. Granada
Durs Grünbein
Henning Hufnagel
Sergius Kodera
Wolfgang Neuser
Nuccio Ordine
Alexander Polzin
François Quiviger
Arcangelo Rossi
Ingrid Rowland
Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann

Giordano Bruno: A non-conformist at the dawn of an epoch, a martyr of modernity, or just a
polemic controvert? Descriptions of this kind fall short of grasping the multifold character of “the
Nolan.” Deconstructing the relationship between God and the outside world gave distinction to
his life—and his refusal to recant when facing the stake somehow set him apart from the world.
Since then, the debate about the Nolan has been dominated by the interest in the comprehensive
oeuvre of the philosopher, and by attempts to make him a protagonist of the freedom of thought.

This volume brings together some of the most eminent researchers to have worked on Giordano
Bruno and his epoch. In order to bring into focus the horizon and the dimensions of his
transformation of traditions, to demonstrate how he turned contemporary thinking upside down,
and to delineate his persuasive strategies, as well as the theoretical consequences of his thought,
the contributions all start from an exemplary passage drawn from Bruno’s great range of work
or from texts close to his person and oeuvre. Presenting and elucidating pivotal points of the
philosophia nolana, the essays both invite readers to become acquainted with Bruno’s philosophy
and provide them with innovative dissections, interpretations and conceptual reflections that
will prepare the way for a revised reading of Bruno’s works. They reconstruct his deconstruction
and rearrangement of philosophical systems, his understanding of nature and the cosmos, his
methods of thinking and writing, his aesthetic and literary categories. They explore the topics
and modi operandi of the great Renaissance thinker and point out the variance of his reception
up to the present, both inside and outside academia, exhibiting the ever-changing relevance and
continuing fascination of Bruno’s work.

Central European University Press
Budapest – New York

Sales and information: ceupress@ceu.hu
Website: http://www.ceupress.com

0536347861559

ISBN 9786155053634
90000 >

C o v e r d e s i g n b y S e b a s t i a n S t a c h o w s k i

【4†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:...

Rethinking
Giordano Bruno’s
Enlightenment

Edited by
Henning Hufnagel and Anne Eusterschulte

Turning Traditions
Upside Down

Turning Traditions U
pside D

ow
n

Turning Traditions
Upside Down

Edited by
H

enning H
ufnagel

Anne Eusterschulte

Contributors

Paul Richard Blum
Angelika Bönker-Vallon
Michele Ciliberto
Anne Eusterschulte
Enrico R. A. Giannetto
Miguel A. Granada
Durs Grünbein
Henning Hufnagel
Sergius Kodera
Wolfgang Neuser
Nuccio Ordine
Alexander Polzin
François Quiviger
Arcangelo Rossi
Ingrid Rowland
Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann

Giordano Bruno: A non-conformist at the dawn of an epoch, a martyr of modernity, or just a
polemic controvert? Descriptions of this kind fall short of grasping the multifold character of “the
Nolan.” Deconstructing the relationship between God and the outside world gave distinction to
his life—and his refusal to recant when facing the stake somehow set him apart from the world.
Since then, the debate about the Nolan has been dominated by the interest in the comprehensive
oeuvre of the philosopher, and by attempts to make him a protagonist of the freedom of thought.

This volume brings together some of the most eminent researchers to have worked on Giordano
Bruno and his epoch. In order to bring into focus the horizon and the dimensions of his
transformation of traditions, to demonstrate how he turned contemporary thinking upside down,
and to delineate his persuasive strategies, as well as the theoretical consequences of his thought,
the contributions all start from an exemplary passage drawn from Bruno’s great range of work
or from texts close to his person and oeuvre. Presenting and elucidating pivotal points of the
philosophia nolana, the essays both invite readers to become acquainted with Bruno’s philosophy
and provide them with innovative dissections, interpretations and conceptual reflections that
will prepare the way for a revised reading of Bruno’s works. They reconstruct his deconstruction
and rearrangement of philosophical systems, his understanding of nature and the cosmos, his
methods of thinking and writing, his aesthetic and literary categories. They explore the topics
and modi operandi of the great Renaissance thinker and point out the variance of his reception
up to the present, both inside and outside academia, exhibiting the ever-changing relevance and
continuing fascination of Bruno’s work.

Central European University Press
Budapest – New York

Sales and information: ceupress@ceu.hu
Website: http://www.ceupress.com

0536347861559

ISBN 9786155053634
90000 >

C o v e r d e s i g n b y S e b a s t i a n S t a c h o w s k i

【5†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

3

In order to bring into focus the horizon and the dimensions of Bruno’s
transformation of traditions, to demonstrate how he turned contemporary
thinking upside down, and to delineate his persuasive strategies, as well as
the theoretical consequences of his thought, the contributions of this vol-
ume all start from a selected text, an exemplary passage drawn from Bru -
no’s great range of work or from texts close to his person and œuvre. Pre -
senting and elucidating pivotal points of the philosophia nolana, the essays
both invite readers to become acquainted with Bruno’s philosophy and
provide them with innovative dissections, interpretations and conceptual
reflections that will prepare the way for a revised reading of Bruno’s
works. They reconstruct Bruno’s deconstruction and rearrangement of
phi lo sophical systems, his understanding of nature and the cosmos, his
methods of thinking and writing, his aesthetic and literary categories. They
ex plore the topics and modi operandi of the great Renaissance thinker and
point out the variance of his reception up to the present, both inside and
outside academia, exhibiting the ever-changing relevance and continuing
fascination of Bruno’s work.

The results of the contributor’s investigations are presented in four sec-
tions, according to four main fields of research interest. The first section
entitled Epistemic Practices of a Revolutionary: Bruno’s Methods and Thin -
king, examines Bruno’s methodological procedures. The essays show how
the Nolan undermined traditional positions, by a subtle reflexion on epis-
temological principles, logical structures, or metaphysical presuppositions,
to secure evidence for his philosophy of the infinite and its inherent con-
sequences which revolutionized the fields of metaphysics and epistemolo-
gy, physics, cosmology and anthropology. Bruno’s method of appropriat-
ing and concatenating older philosophical concepts appears to be both a
method of critical revision as well as systematic transformation.

Paul Richard Blum opens the volume with an epistemological reflection
on default values, in reference to a passage from Bruno’s Latin poem De
immenso. While default settings are constitutive instruments of every cog-
nitive process—they function as a sort of practical, temporary prejudice—
Blum accentuates Bruno’s request for an epistemic meta-operation. In his
poem, Bruno reminds us to be conscious of the tentativeness of mental de -
fault values in the same way as children are aware of the fact that changing
sights of one and the same object are related to their point of view. If the
in tellect fails to realize the infinity of the universe, it is not the fault of the
visual sense, but of the unconsidered reliance on vision as an epistemic de -
fault value. Bruno advocates a change in the standard principles of thought.

Introduction

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 3

4 Turning Traditions Upside Down

This mental operation leads to facing up to a radically altered view of the
world, resulting in the discovery of the philosophy of the infinite.

【6†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

This volume brings together some of the most eminent researchers to have worked on Giordano
Bruno and his epoch. In order to bring into focus the horizon and the dimensions of his
transformation of traditions, to demonstrate how he turned contemporary thinking upside down,
and to delineate his persuasive strategies, as well as the theoretical consequences of his thought,
the contributions all start from an exemplary passage drawn from Bruno’s great range of work
or from texts close to his person and oeuvre. Presenting and elucidating pivotal points of the
philosophia nolana, the essays both invite readers to become acquainted with Bruno’s philosophy
and provide them with innovative dissections, interpretations and conceptual reflections that
will prepare the way for a revised reading of Bruno’s works. They reconstruct his deconstruction
and rearrangement of philosophical systems, his understanding of nature and the cosmos, his
methods of thinking and writing, his aesthetic and literary categories. They explore the topics
and modi operandi of the great Renaissance thinker and point out the variance of his reception
up to the present, both inside and outside academia, exhibiting the ever-changing relevance and
continuing fascination of Bruno’s work.

Central European University Press
Budapest – New York

Sales and information: ceupress@ceu.hu
Website: http://www.ceupress.com

0536347861559

ISBN 9786155053634
90000 >

C o v e r d e s i g n b y S e b a s t i a n S t a c h o w s k i

About the Editors
Henning Hufnagel is junior fellow at the Freiburg
Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS) and member
of the research group “Deutsche Ausgabe der Schriften
Giordano Brunos.” Selected publications: Ein Stück von
jeder Wissenschaft. Gattungshybridisierung, Argumenta -
tion und Erkenntnis in Giordano Brunos italienischen
Dialogen (Stuttgart, 2009), “‘Pour abréger votre chemin
à l’un et à l’autre’. Plötzlichkeit in Marivaux’ La surprise
de l’amour.” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 60,
4 (2010): 389–404, “‘Nun, Schifflein! sieh’ dich vor!’—
Meerfahrt mit Nietzsche. Zu einem Motiv der Fröhlichen
Wissenschaft.” Nietzsche-Studien 37 (2008): 143–59.

Anne Eusterschulte is professor of philosophy at Freie
Universität Berlin. Selected publications: Analogia entis
seu mentis. Analogie als erkenntnistheoretisches Prinzip in
der Philosophie Giordano Brunos (Würzburg, 1997), Kant-
Reader: Probleme und Perspektiven der Kant’schen Philoso-
phie (ed. with H. Ingensiep, and H. Baranzke, Würzburg,
2004), and Mimesis oder ästhetische Wahrheit. Philoso-
phisch-theologische Voraus setzungen und geistesgeschichtli-
cher Kontext der Entwicklung eines ästhetischen Wahrheits-
begriffs (Berlin, 2012).

Hufnagel_cover.indd 1 2013-04-24 12:20:17

TURNING TRADITIONS
UPSIDE DOWN

Rethinking Giordano Bruno’s
Enlightenment

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal i

【7†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

This volume brings together some of the most eminent researchers to
have worked on Giordano Bruno and his epoch. Their contributions—
inspired by a colloquium on Giordano Bruno organized by the Max Planck
Institute for the History of Science and the Central European University
in 2008—represent a critical inventory of our knowledge of the Nolan’s life
and work as well as shedding light on the many dimensions of Bruno’s
thinking. His radical rationality, starting with attempts to reinvent the
roots of religion but ending with a break in the doctrines of trinity and
monotheism; his natural philosophy, including the cosmology of the infini-
ty of the universe and of the unlimited number of worlds, or his thinking
on the vital character of all the objects on earth; his vision of a new cosmic
order and his place in the Copernican revolution, breaking with the domi-
nant heliocentric and anthropocentric system in a way more radical than
any contemporary thinker had before; his scientific methods, his analogies,
speculations, metaphors, his intuitive as well as practical knowledge,
reflecting the epistemic practices of a revolutionary; his idiosyncratic
blending of traditions, both philosophical and literary; his linguistic exu-
berance and conceptual boldness; the textual structures, genres, and forms
of non-conformity Bruno continuously experimented with, from the trac-
tate to comedy, from dialogue to poetry; and finally, his gusto for paradox
and satirical panache. Attention has also to be given to Bruno’s consider-
ation of the role of philosophy in society—either as a way to give coher-
ence to a world thrown off track, or simply as an instrument for civilizing

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal vii

viii Turning Traditions Upside Down

mankind. This leads us to the reflection and the reception of Bruno’s intel-
lectual fire. Bruno has been received in literature and art as well as in pub-
lic spaces in a way that has been as versatile as the philosopher himself.
The sculpture created by Berlin artist Alexander Polzin, entitled Giordano
Bruno, is the subject of the final chapter of this volume. This artwork was
originally commissioned by the Central European University in Budapest
to celebrate George Soros’s seventieth birthday and copies were erected in
Budapest and Nola. On the occasion of our colloquium, the statue was also
inaugurated at Potsdamer Platz in the center of Berlin. The statue depicts
the vulnerable body of a philosopher who is turning the world upside-down
and attempting to dislodge the borders of the universe—a fitting symbol of
Bruno’s tragedy, a man who dared to reconsider the fundamentals of the
world as they had been passed down throughout the ages and who struggled
to find his place in Europe. Yet, after peregrination across the con tin ent, he
ended up cast as a heretic in all three Christian churches of the occident.
He is now honored in a place, at the centre of modern Eu rope, which also
once served as the stage for the tragedy of a world divided.

We would like to conclude by thanking all the authors who contributed
to this volume. Most of all, we would like to thank the editors, Henning
Hufnagel and Anne Eusterschulte, for their substantial contributions and
the great work they have achieved. We hope that this volume will help cre-
ate a better understanding of a philosopher whose thinking is more preva-
lent today than any of his contemporaries might have foreseen.

【8†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

The citation comes in a highly specific context: discussing whether or
not the Moon is possessed of an atmosphere. Bruno was, in fact, one of the
first natural philosophers to discuss the Earth’s atmosphere at length,
describing it at one point, with his usual poetic verve, as a lung.13 Since
Bruno saw the universe itself as an infinite system of constantly recombin-
ing atoms, he concluded that the Moon, composed of the same elements as
Earth, should also exhibit the same basic structure, with continents, seas
and an enveloping mantle of air.14

Kircher’s Itinerarium Extaticum accepted most of these premises in one
form or another; the research by his contemporary Evangelista Torricelli
had gone far toward proving the existence of an atmosphere, and he him-
self was no less convinced than his angel Cosmiel that Earth and heaven
were made of the same basic stuff. Schott bolsters Kircher’s contentions
about the Moon’s atmosphere by naming some of the modern natural
philosophers who agree with him:

The question, then, is: Does the Moon have an atmosphere, just as
our Earth has one of its own? For many more recent scholars, after
the discovery of the telescope, have identified a layer surrounding
[the Moon] of air or a denser sort of aether, like Kepler, Maestlin,
Galileo, Longomontanus, Giordano Bruno, David Fabricius, Anto nio
Maria de Rheita, Mario Bettini, Langrenius, Wendelin, Johannes
Bapt ista Cysatus, and Scheiner; our Author [that is, Kircher] cited
these last two in his Preface, and agreed with them.15

Bruno, then, is set comfortably, if somewhat anachronistically, among a
group of modern astronomers (he died before the invention of the tele-
scope). He may not appear explicitly as the Giordano Bruno who pro-
claimed the infinite size of the universe, but no one who read the heretic’s
opinions on the lunar atmosphere could do so without also taking in his
larger ideas, ideas relevant, moreover, to the Iter Extaticum’s later discus-
sions of the size of the universe and panspermia rerum. In effect, both
Schott, by mentioning Bruno explicitly, and his Jesuit readers, by forbear-

A Catholic reader of Giordano Bruno in Counter-Reformation Rome

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:09 Oldal 229

230 Reflections of an Intellectual Burning

ing to object to Bruno as an indexed author, had decided, tacitly but firmly,
to prefer the free development of philosophical inquiry to the preservation
of doctrinal purity, and this was the same decision that Kircher himself had
made in writing his Itinerarium Extaticum in the first place.

【9†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Published in 2013 by

Central European University Press
An imprint of the

Central European University Limited Liability Company
Nádor utca 11, H-1051 Budapest, Hungary

Tel: +36-1-327-3138 or 327-3000
Fax: +36-1-327-3183

E-mail: ceupress@ceu.hu
Website: www.ceupress.com

224 West 57th Street New York, NY 10019, USA
Tel: +1-212-547-6932
Fax: +1-646-557-2416

E-mail: martin.greenwald@opensocietyfoundations.org

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,

in any form or by any means, without the permission
of the Publisher.

ISBN 978-615-5053-63-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Turning traditions upside down : rethinking Giordano Bruno's enlightenment /
[edited by] Henning Hufnagel and Anne Eusterschulte.

pages cm
Proceedings of a colloquium held in 2008 at Max Planck Institute for the

History of Science.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-6155053634 (hardbound)

1. Bruno, Giordano, 1548-1600. I. Hufnagel, Henning S. II. Eusterschulte, Anne.

B783.Z7T87 2012
195--dc23

2012007959

Printed in Hungary by
Akaprint Kft.

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal iv

Table of Contents

YEHUDA ELKANA and JÜRGEN RENN

Preface vii
HENNING HUFNAGEL and ANNE EUSTERSCHULTE

Introduction 1

PART 1
Epistemic Practices of a Revolutionary:

Bruno’s Methods and Thinking
PAUL RICHARD BLUM

Giordano Bruno’s Changing of Default Positions 13
ANGELIKA BÖNKER-VALLON

The Measurement of the Immeasurable.
Divine Mind and Mathematical Structures in Giordano Bruno’s
De triplici minimo et mensura 19

MICHELE CILIBERTO

“…per speculum et in aenigmate…” 35
ANNE EUSTERSCHULTE

Platonic Caverns and Epicurean Worlds 63

PART 2
Experience and Vision of a New Cosmic Order:

Giordano Bruno’s Natural Philosophy

MIGUEL ÁNGEL GRANADA

De immenso et innumerabilibus, I, 3 and the Concept of Planetary
Systems in the Infinite Universe. A Commentary 91

WOLFGANG NEUSER

Atom, Matter, and Monade 107
ENRICO RENATO ANTONIO GIANNETTO

Giordano Bruno and the Relativity of Time 121

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal v

ARCANGELO ROSSI

Giordano Bruno and the New Order of Nature between
Copernicus and Galilei 131

PART 3
Forms of Non-Conformity:

Bruno’s Works as Literary Texts
NUCCIO ORDINE

The Comic and Philosophy: Plato’s Philebus and
Bruno’s Candle-bearer 151

【10†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

We would like to conclude by thanking all the authors who contributed
to this volume. Most of all, we would like to thank the editors, Henning
Hufnagel and Anne Eusterschulte, for their substantial contributions and
the great work they have achieved. We hope that this volume will help cre-
ate a better understanding of a philosopher whose thinking is more preva-
lent today than any of his contemporaries might have foreseen.

Berlin and Budapest, September 2012
Jürgen Renn

Director of the Max Planck Institute
for the History of Science, Berlin

Yehuda Elkana (1934–2012)
Former Rector and President of

Central European University, Budapest

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal viii

Introduction

Turning traditions upside down—this metaphor seems to be a good start-
ing point for rethinking Giordano Bruno’s philosophy and his provocative
aspirations in the world of letters. It certainly would have been to Bruno’s
liking; someone who, in his writings, often presented himself as a Mercu ri -
an, larger-than-life figure who has come to put things straight: the No lan,
enlightening his contemporaries about the misleading paths of traditional
doctrines and opening minds for the discovery of true philosophy.

Born in 1548 near the town of Nola in the Kingdom of Naples, Gior -
dano Bruno is known today as an exceptional, yet ambivalent figure with-
in the history of ideas. As a great scholar, celebrated for his comprehen-
sive erudition, famous for his emphatic defence of philosophical inquiry
against religious doctrine and his rigid attacks against reputed authorities,
he caused an intellectual stir wherever he went. Sometimes his interventi -
ons were received with great éclat; more often, however, they created aca -
de mic scandal. Bruno impressed the French King Henri III who made him
one of his “lecteurs royaux”; three years later, he had to leave Paris in
tumultuous circumstances after a disputation had grown out of control. In
the meantime, Bruno had upset the intellectual scene in Elizabethan
England with his six Italian dialogues. Moving between different frontiers,
confessional beliefs, philosophical schools, academic parties and institu-
tional interests, Bruno—who did not mince matters—came under attack
from many sides.

Bruno argued relentlessly for a replacement of the philosophical koiné
of his time, the Scholastic Aristotelian philosophy that presented a view of
man and cosmos, which Bruno had been dissatisfied with since his time in a
Dominican convent in Naples. For his project of philosophical reform, Bruno
draws on a large variety of sources: on Platonic, pre-Socratic, Py tha gorean,
and Hermetic ideas, on thinkers such as Plotinus, Averroes, Nicholas of
Cusa, Raimundus Lullus and Ficino. He builds on the metho do logy, flour-
ishing during the Renaissance, of mnemotechnics. And he uses all these

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 1

2 Turning Traditions Upside Down

【11†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 8

9

As for Bruno’s reception after his death—and after the ban on his writ-
ings—this is the focus of Ingrid Rowland’s essay. Rowland displays how
Giordano Bruno, surprisingly, continued to exert his influence in Catholic
Europe, even in the midst of the Counter-Reformation: half a century
after his death, his name appears in the work of the German-born Jesuit
Athanasius Kircher, clearly unafraid to cite Giordano Bruno openly in his
own publications. Rowland traces Bruno’s subliminal presence in the writ-
ings of this polymath and polygraph, ranging from the structure of the uni-
verse to its small-scale composition and even to mnemonics. How did
Kircher get hold of Bruno’s books? Rowland explains that Jesuits had bet-
ter access than most of their peers to controversial books, e.g., through a
system of internal censorship. Drawing on documents from the archive of
the Jesuit Order in Rome, Rowland is able to show that Kircher and his
fellow Jesuits enjoyed remarkable freedom in philosophical inquiry as the
censors aimed less at doctrinal purity and were more concerned that their
writings could superare mediocritatem, were “exceeding the average.”

François Quiviger tracks aspects of Bruno’s afterlife in the twentieth-
century from Paris to Rome, Hamburg and London. He starts with a musi-
cal drama about Bruno’s life by a certain Charles Clair, a work that ironi-
cally brought about the excommunication of the author. Quiviger
examines the image of Bruno in fiction and points out that in novels and
dramas, Bruno often is presented as a Christ-like figure. He then follows
the material history of Clair’s book, acquired by Aby Warburg in 1929. In
the last year before his death, Warburg was particularly interested in
Bruno; he hoped that in Bruno’s works he might find a link between pagan
image-based thought and modern symbol-based thought. The material on
Bruno that Warburg had collected but had not been able to exploit,
eventu ally sustained the seminal research of Frances A. Yates at the
Warburg Institute in London, although her perspective on the Nolan dif-
fered completely from Warburg’s.

The last section of the book, Visibility of the Invisible: About the Sculpture
Giordano Bruno by Alexander Polzin [2008], is dedicated to the statue of
Giordano Bruno that was recently erected in Berlin. Besides a description
of the statue and its pendants at Nola and Budapest made by the sculptor,
Alexander Polzin, himself, the author Durs Grünbein gives a poet’s inter-
pretation of the statue at the moment of its unveiling at Potsdamer Platz. He
construes the heretic as an emblematic figure of a young, independent
Europe and asks himself why Berlin—a city which Bruno, this great tra -
veller, has never been to—and, specifically, an underground station could be

Introduction

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 9

【12†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Anne Eusterschulte is professor of philosophy at Freie
Universität Berlin. Selected publications: Analogia entis
seu mentis. Analogie als erkenntnistheoretisches Prinzip in
der Philosophie Giordano Brunos (Würzburg, 1997), Kant-
Reader: Probleme und Perspektiven der Kant’schen Philoso-
phie (ed. with H. Ingensiep, and H. Baranzke, Würzburg,
2004), and Mimesis oder ästhetische Wahrheit. Philoso-
phisch-theologische Voraus setzungen und geistesgeschichtli-
cher Kontext der Entwicklung eines ästhetischen Wahrheits-
begriffs (Berlin, 2012).

Hufnagel_cover.indd 1 2013-04-24 12:20:17

TURNING TRADITIONS
UPSIDE DOWN

Rethinking Giordano Bruno’s
Enlightenment

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal i

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal ii

TURNING TRADITIONS
UPSIDE DOWN

Rethinking Giordano Bruno’s
Enlightenment

Edited by

HENNING HUFNAGEL
and

ANNE EUSTERSCHULTE

Central European University Press

Budapest – New York

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal iii

© 2013 by Henning Hufnagel and Anne Eusterschulte

Published in 2013 by

Central European University Press
An imprint of the

Central European University Limited Liability Company
Nádor utca 11, H-1051 Budapest, Hungary

Tel: +36-1-327-3138 or 327-3000
Fax: +36-1-327-3183

E-mail: ceupress@ceu.hu
Website: www.ceupress.com

224 West 57th Street New York, NY 10019, USA
Tel: +1-212-547-6932
Fax: +1-646-557-2416

E-mail: martin.greenwald@opensocietyfoundations.org

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,

in any form or by any means, without the permission
of the Publisher.

ISBN 978-615-5053-63-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Turning traditions upside down : rethinking Giordano Bruno's enlightenment /
[edited by] Henning Hufnagel and Anne Eusterschulte.

pages cm
Proceedings of a colloquium held in 2008 at Max Planck Institute for the

History of Science.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-6155053634 (hardbound)

1. Bruno, Giordano, 1548-1600. I. Hufnagel, Henning S. II. Eusterschulte, Anne.

B783.Z7T87 2012
195--dc23

2012007959

Printed in Hungary by
Akaprint Kft.

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal iv

Table of Contents

【13†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Sergius Kodera also examines Candelaio in his essay. He uncovers a
line of political thought, an implicit commentary on important historical,
political affairs, running throughout the whole comedy, leading up to
Machiavelli. Although Bruno never even mentions the name of the philo -
sopher-politician from Florence, Kodera detects the subterranean pre sence
of Machiavelli in strategically important passages of Candelaio. He shows

Introduction

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 7

8 Turning Traditions Upside Down

how Bruno adapts the Machiavellian notions of vicissitudo and occasione
and parallels Bruno’s re-evaluation of the sense of touch with Machi a -
velli’s ideas: For both authors, it is hands-on knowledge rather than de -
tached vision that is conducive to true insight and acquisition of power.
Whereas Bruno makes it clear that this re-evaluation involves heavy meta-
physical implications, Machiavelli and Bruno do share common ground
again in their vehement criticism of Christianity as harmful to the commu-
nity.

This section concludes with Henning Hufnagel’s analysis of Bruno’s
shortest dialogue, Cabala del cavallo pegaseo. Hufnagel focuses on the dia-
logue’s twisted structure. Cabala is one of the most disputed of Bruno’s
texts and scholars have made many attempts to fix a positive theoretical
me aning in the dialogue. Hufnagel shows that this is a hopeless fight
because Bruno blends the dialogue with forms of paradoxical epideixis:
Bruno piles up paradoxes until all claims negate and cancel each other.
Hufnagel proposes Cabala should instead be read as a satire of knowledge.
The transmission of alleged knowledge between the interlocutors collapses
continually and Bruno lays bare their modes of argumentation. If anything
is to be learned from Cabala, it is how the literary form of the dialogue can
acquire the value of an argument. Thus, Cabala can be understood as a
reflection on the dialectical possibilities of the dialogue as a genre.

In the fourth section in this volume, Reflections of an Intellectual Burning:
Bruno’s Reception and Literary Afterlife, the horizon widens both themat-
ically and temporally. This section looks at some of the traces Bruno’s life
and work left in other philosophical, or even theological contexts, presents
aspects of his sometimes curious literary afterlife—which extends to
Bertolt Brecht and beyond—and tries to come to terms with the truly last-
ing fascination exerted by the man from Nola.

Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann explores the possibilities of picturing me -
ta physics by analysing a copper engraving in Heinrich Khunrath’s Amphi -
theatrum Sapientiae Aeternae. In this image, the Kabbalistic foundation of
all being, both the divine and the creatural, is symbolically depicted. For
Bruno, the externalization of the first cause—which is in itself unknow-
able, because it only reveals itself in its expression—is, at the same time,
the beginning of all spatiality. This idea corresponds materially to the
imaging of the first cause, as it is represented in the Leipzig theosopher
Khunrath’s great work Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae. He goes beyond
Bruno, however, when he problematizes the question of the symbolism of
the divine externalizations.

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 8

【14†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Paul Richard Blum opens the volume with an epistemological reflection
on default values, in reference to a passage from Bruno’s Latin poem De
immenso. While default settings are constitutive instruments of every cog-
nitive process—they function as a sort of practical, temporary prejudice—
Blum accentuates Bruno’s request for an epistemic meta-operation. In his
poem, Bruno reminds us to be conscious of the tentativeness of mental de -
fault values in the same way as children are aware of the fact that changing
sights of one and the same object are related to their point of view. If the
in tellect fails to realize the infinity of the universe, it is not the fault of the
visual sense, but of the unconsidered reliance on vision as an epistemic de -
fault value. Bruno advocates a change in the standard principles of thought.

Introduction

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 3

4 Turning Traditions Upside Down

This mental operation leads to facing up to a radically altered view of the
world, resulting in the discovery of the philosophy of the infinite.

Covering Bruno’s so-called Frankfurt Trilogy, Angelika Bönker-Vallon
analyses Bruno’s intention to demonstrate the systematic interrelation
bet ween metaphysical, mathematical and physical thought. In these three
Latin poems, Bruno delineates a universal concept of science which
embraces all branches of scientific knowledge. Within this tripartite ency-
clopaedia, De triplici minimo et mensura is of the utmost significance, as
Bönker-Vallon points out, because in this work Bruno tries to conceptual-
ize a mathematical theory for measuring the infinite cosmos or, in a com-
prehensive sense, to create a theoretical substructure of the encyclopaedic
sciences. Based on the concept of a threefold minimum—i.e., God as the
monad of monads, the mathematical point and the physical atom—Bruno
demonstrates the metaphysical implications and qualities of point and
atom as primary functional minima, redefined as first and elementary spa-
tial structures comprising the coincidental relationship of maximum and
minimum, essential for conceiving the relationship between the infinite
space and its fundamental entities. The interconnection of metaphysical,
mathematical and physical minima provides accessibility to the systematic
nature of Bruno’s threefold theory of the infinite, which based on the idea
of a universal measure, allows for the development of the idea of univer-
sal science.

【15†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Introduction

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 5

6 Turning Traditions Upside Down

tional restrictions—which are still binding Kepler, e.g.—and, in doing so,
anticipates the cosmological reforms of the seventeenth-century as repre-
sented by Huygens or Newton.

Wolfgang Neuser presents an alternative interpretation of Bruno’s the-
ory of matter. Against the backdrop of the controversial medieval debates
about atomism concerning the attributes or qualities of atoms, their cor-
puscular or essential substantiality, and the appreciation of them as dis-
tinct particles, Bruno develops an understanding of matter that merges the
Aristotelian concept of substance with atomistic ideas and the Neo-Pla -
tonic concept of matter, according to which matter is filled with spirit.
Bruno differentiates three manifestations of the metaphysical monad, i.e.,
the undivided, infinite unum that systematically underlies everything.
These manifestations are the constituents of matter: spiritus, based on the
neo-Platonic concept of a spiritual virtue inherent in all matter; spatium,
or the structural explication of the indivisible, un-extended point, which
emerges in a process of self-generation; and atomus, the smallest indivisi-
ble or the physical minimum. Spirit, space, and atom are the structural
modes of the expansion of infinite unity. Based on this conceptualisation
of matter, Neuser characterizes Bruno as a Renaissance philosopher who,
at the end of the post-traditional stage in history, anticipates the subject-
based foundation of knowledge, representative for thinkers from the Mo -
dern Age like Descartes, Spinoza or Leibniz.

Enrico Giannetto’s chapter emphasizes no less than the astonishing fact
that Giordano Bruno—notwithstanding the significant differences in theo-
retical premises—presents a theory of relativity of time and motion three
hundred years before Poincaré and Einstein. While his non-mechanistic
conception of nature was an obstacle in recognizing Bruno as a serious sci-
entist, according to Giannetto, Bruno’s importance within the history of
theoretical physics is irrefutable. He argues that the relativity of time is
one consequence of Bruno’s concept of cosmic infinity, also entailing the
relativity of the localisation of planets or stars and of their motion, rota-
tion and orbits within a uniform space. Rejecting the Aristotelian assump-
tion of a primum mobile, Bruno argues for the plurality of incommensu-
rable times due to the infinity of uniform motions within the universe.
Turning the Aristotelian doctrine upside down, Bruno regards (relative)
motion as the measure of time.

Arcangelo Rossi, comparing the cosmological theories of Copernicus,
Bruno, and Galilei, attests a striking correspondence between the Nolan
and the Galilean doctrines. Like Giannetto, Rossi aims at restoring Bru -

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 6

7

【16†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

mondi, 1870.
Warburg, A. “Giordano Bruno.” Ed. M. Ghelardi and M. Targia. Philosophy and Ico -

nology: Cassirer Studies 1 (2008): 16–58.
———. Tagebuch der Kulturwissenschaftlichen Bibliothek Warburg. Ed. K. Michels

and C. Schoell-Glass. Berlin: Akademie, 2001.

From Paris to Rome, Hamburg and London

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:09 Oldal 245

246 Reflections of an Intellectual Burning

Secondary sources
Berggren, L. L’ombra dei grandi: monumenti e politica monumentale a Roma (1870–

1895). Rome: Artemide, 1996.
Canone, E. Bruno Redivivus: momenti della fortuna di Giordano Bruno nel XIX secolo.

Pisa: Istituti editoriali e poligrafici internazionali, 1998.
Forbes, F. D. A. Life of Pius X. London: Washbourne, 1918.
Gatti, H. “Frances Yates’s Hermetic Renaissance in the Documents held in the

Warburg Institute Archive.” Aries 2, no. 2 (2002): 193–210.
———. “The State of Giordano Bruno Studies at the End of the Four-Hundredth

Centenary of the Philosopher’s Death.” Renaissance Quarterly 54, no. 1 (2001): 252–61.
Mann, N. “Denkenergetische Inversion: Aby Warburg and Giordano Bruno.”

Publications of the English Goethe Society 72 (2003): 25–37.
Salvestrini, V. Bibliografia delle opere di Giordano Bruno. 2nd (posthumous) edition,

by L. Firpo. Florence: Sansoni, 1958.
Spampanato, V. Documenti della vita di Giordano Bruno. Florence: Leo S. Olschki,

1933.

Notes

1 Clair, Giordano Bruno ou le Chevalier errant (1925), 83–87. Full text available at:
http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/mnemosyne/Bruno/pdf/1802234462.pdf

2 Clair, Giordano Bruno ou le Chevalier errant (1914), unpaginated dedication; Clair,
Giordano Bruno ou le Chevalier errant (1925), xiii. Bordighera is a luxury resort on
the Ligurian Coast.

3 Bayle, Dictionnaire, I, 680. See Eugenio Canone’s introduction to Canone, Bruno
Redivivus, xx–xxi.

4 Bartholmèss, Jordano Bruno, II, 3; see also McIntyre, Giordano Bruno, 52.
5 Plumptre, Giordano Bruno; Schefer, Göttliche Komödie in Rom.
6 Scotino, Giordano Bruno: scena drammatica; Holitscher, Giordano Bruno: histo -

risches Drama in 5 Abteilungen; Levi, Gior dano Bruno, o Le lotte del pensiero;
Borngräber, Giordano Bruno: das neue Jahrhundert; Fola Igúrbide, Giordano
Bruno; Kolbenheyer, Heroische Leidenschaften.

【17†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

The last section of the book, Visibility of the Invisible: About the Sculpture
Giordano Bruno by Alexander Polzin [2008], is dedicated to the statue of
Giordano Bruno that was recently erected in Berlin. Besides a description
of the statue and its pendants at Nola and Budapest made by the sculptor,
Alexander Polzin, himself, the author Durs Grünbein gives a poet’s inter-
pretation of the statue at the moment of its unveiling at Potsdamer Platz. He
construes the heretic as an emblematic figure of a young, independent
Europe and asks himself why Berlin—a city which Bruno, this great tra -
veller, has never been to—and, specifically, an underground station could be

Introduction

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 9

the right place to commemorate the philosopher from Nola. For Grün bein,
the statue is an iconographic alarm signal, visualizing a rhetoric of fire, the
language of alchemy and metamorphoses that characterizes Bruno’s think-
ing. Finally, Grünbein brings thinkers and poets together in a virtual con-
versation across time and space: Bruno, Nietzsche, Scho pen hau er, and
Czesław Miłosz.

Anything but virtual were the exchanges we—philosophers, historians, and
literary scholars—had about Giordano Bruno in the congenial and inspiring
atmosphere of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin,
and our discussions and debates sowed many seeds. We are proud to see
how they have matured and grown now into this volume. At the end of this
project, we want to express our gratitude towards several individuals and
institutions for their unflinching support, financial as well as moral and in -
tel lectual: Jürgen Renn and Yehuda Elkana, the Max Planck Insti tute for the
History of Science, the Central European Uni versity, the Cent ral European
University Press, and, last but definitely not least, to Andreas Edel.

Finally, we would like to thank the students who assisted us in the com-
pletion of this volume with untiring effort, Fanny Neumann, Jussuf Spie gel,
Charlotte Wetzel and, especially, Oliver Schumacher, who also translated
Durs Grünbein’s contribution.

Freiburg and Berlin, September 2012
Henning Hufnagel,

Anne Eusterschulte

Turning Traditions Upside Down10

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 10

PART 1

Epistemic Practices of a Revolutionary:
Bruno’s Methods and Thinking

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 11

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 12

PAUL RICHARD BLUM

Giordano Bruno’s Changing of
Default Positions

Ut Peripateticorum similiumque philosophantum sensus a principiis pe -
rinde se habeat atque puerorum: quos eodem instituendos ordine sus ci pi -
mus, quo nos optima mater erudiit natura.

【18†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Publications of the English Goethe Society 72 (2003): 25–37.
Salvestrini, V. Bibliografia delle opere di Giordano Bruno. 2nd (posthumous) edition,

by L. Firpo. Florence: Sansoni, 1958.
Spampanato, V. Documenti della vita di Giordano Bruno. Florence: Leo S. Olschki,

1933.

Notes

1 Clair, Giordano Bruno ou le Chevalier errant (1925), 83–87. Full text available at:
http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/mnemosyne/Bruno/pdf/1802234462.pdf

2 Clair, Giordano Bruno ou le Chevalier errant (1914), unpaginated dedication; Clair,
Giordano Bruno ou le Chevalier errant (1925), xiii. Bordighera is a luxury resort on
the Ligurian Coast.

3 Bayle, Dictionnaire, I, 680. See Eugenio Canone’s introduction to Canone, Bruno
Redivivus, xx–xxi.

4 Bartholmèss, Jordano Bruno, II, 3; see also McIntyre, Giordano Bruno, 52.
5 Plumptre, Giordano Bruno; Schefer, Göttliche Komödie in Rom.
6 Scotino, Giordano Bruno: scena drammatica; Holitscher, Giordano Bruno: histo -

risches Drama in 5 Abteilungen; Levi, Gior dano Bruno, o Le lotte del pensiero;
Borngräber, Giordano Bruno: das neue Jahrhundert; Fola Igúrbide, Giordano
Bruno; Kolbenheyer, Heroische Leidenschaften.

7 Bartolucci, Giordano Bruno.
8 See, e.g., Levi, Giordano Bruno, 15, 124; Fola Igúrbide, José, Giordano Bruno, 38,

87 (Agony in the Garden). Best is undoubtedly Scotino’s observation: “Da molti il
Bruno è salutato il Cristo della Scienza…” in Scotino, Giordano Bruno, 16.

9 Clair, Giordano Bruno ou le Chevalier errant (1925), 73.
10 Fola Igúrbide, Giordano Bruno, 50sq.
11 Levi, Giordano Bruno, 74, 93.
12 Clair, Giordano Bruno ou le Chevalier errant (1914), Warburg copy: “Dopo questa

letterà il Comm. Visconte Clair di nazionalità francese fù excommunicato («excom-
municazione maggiore»).”

13 Clair, Giordano Bruno ou le Chevalier errant (1925) xi.
14 Spampanato Documenti, 202.
15 Berggren, L’ombra dei grandi, 123.
16 Balan, Di Giordano Bruno, 14.

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:09 Oldal 246

247

17 Dialoghetti familiari tra un imbianchino e riquadratore di stanze fiorentino ed un sig-
nore romano sopra la vera storia di Giordano Bruno, 10–12, 22.

【19†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Bruno, then, is set comfortably, if somewhat anachronistically, among a
group of modern astronomers (he died before the invention of the tele-
scope). He may not appear explicitly as the Giordano Bruno who pro-
claimed the infinite size of the universe, but no one who read the heretic’s
opinions on the lunar atmosphere could do so without also taking in his
larger ideas, ideas relevant, moreover, to the Iter Extaticum’s later discus-
sions of the size of the universe and panspermia rerum. In effect, both
Schott, by mentioning Bruno explicitly, and his Jesuit readers, by forbear-

A Catholic reader of Giordano Bruno in Counter-Reformation Rome

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:09 Oldal 229

230 Reflections of an Intellectual Burning

ing to object to Bruno as an indexed author, had decided, tacitly but firmly,
to prefer the free development of philosophical inquiry to the preservation
of doctrinal purity, and this was the same decision that Kircher himself had
made in writing his Itinerarium Extaticum in the first place.

As the vicissitudes of the Iter Extaticum demonstrate, the Society of
Jesus had once stood at the forefront of research in natural philosophy; in
the days when Christoph Clavius and Giordano Bruno were neighbors in
Rome (as they were in 1576) and in the early days of Galileo’s career. By
the middle of the seven teenth century, however, the Fathers were begin-
ning to feel the pressures of its religious restrictions. One way to alleviate
these pressures was to ignore them, as happened to some extent at every
stage in the publication of Kircher’s book on cosmology; Dunel’s mention
of collusion was not out of place. Kircher was also known to publish his
work without ever incorporating the Revisores’ suggestions, further proof
that his status within his order was privileged indeed.16

Fiction offered another means of escape from the pressures of hewing
to an orthodox line of thought; by putting his ideas about cosmology into
a dream vision, Kircher could argue, along with his Revisores, that the
visions had nothing to do with factual truth. This was simply a more
extreme version of reasoning ex hypothesi, as Galileo had been urged to do
with Copernicus: discussing a controversial idea by insisting that it bore no
relationship to reality.

Kircher also resorted on many occasions to self-contradiction, making a
doc trinally acceptable point in order to argue its opposite in subsequent dis -
cussion. This tactic, interestingly, met with particular scorn from the Revi -
sores, one of the proverbial lapses, like his bragging and his failure to in cor -
porate suggestions, for which the Society’s illustrious author was pre dic tably
accused in every censura—his own complaints about the jealousy of his
peers seem as well-founded as their own complaints about his boasting.17
Visible: 0% - 100%

unknownmsearch(["other scholars mentioned in Turning Traditions Upside Down", "secondary scholars discussed", "references to Bruno scholars"])

[Web browsing]

【0†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

58 Epistemic Practices of a Revolutionary

historians in order to discuss the figure of Giordano Bruno as a ‘thinker
through images.’51 Some fragments of his research are still extant, being
“entrusted to a notebook with a black cover, bearing the title of Giordano
Bruno” and consisting of “45 pages of notes and observations written
between the autumn of 1928 and June 1929, during his stay in Rome with
Gertrude Bing.”52 This material, now made available to scholars,53 is of
extreme interest. However, shortly after writing this letter and embarking
on his project, Warburg passed away and could not accomplish this plan.
Even so, his intuition about ‘thinking through images,’ is still at the center
of the research on Bruno’s philosophy and still represents a necessary
touchstone, on a conceptual as well as historiographical level. The interest
in Bruno’s mnemonics, as attested to by the recent publication of his
mnemotechnical works, arises from a belief similar to that of Warburg.
Better still, it aspires to be the confirmation of the intuition that crossed
Warburg’s mind almost a century ago.

Bibliography

Primary sources
Bruno, G. Corpus iconographicum. Le incisioni nelle opere a stampa. Ed. M. Gabriele.

Milan: Adelphi, 2001.
———. Dialoghi filosofici italiani. Ed. M. Ciliberto. Milan: Mondadori, 2000.
———. Dialoghi italiani. Eds. G. Gentile and G. Aquilecchia. Florence: Sansoni, 1958.
———. Jordani Bruni Nolani Opera latine conscripta, 3 vols., 8 parts. Eds. F. Fiorentino,

F. Tocco, H. Vitelli, V. Imbriani and C. M. Tallarigo. Naples/Florence: Morano/Le
Monnier, 1879–91. Reprint Stuttgart/Bad Cannstatt: From mann, 1961–62.

———. Opere latine. Ed. C. Monti. Turin: Utet, 1980.
———. Opere mnemotecniche, vol. 2. Eds. M. Ciliberto, M. Matteoli, R. Sturlese and

N. Tirinnanzi. Milan: Adelphi, 2009.
Calvino, I. Lezioni americane. Milan: Garzanti, 1988.
Cusano, N. Opere filosofiche. Ed. G. Federici-Vescovini. Turin: Utet, 1972.
Warburg, A. “Giordano Bruno.” Eds. M. Ghelardi and G. Targia. Cassirer Studies 1

(2008): 29–58.
Warburg, A. and E. Cassirer. Il mondo di ieri. Lettere. Ed. M. Ghelardi. Turin: Aragno,

2003.

Secondary sources
Ciliberto, M. “Bruno e l’Apocalisse,” in L’occhio di Atteone. Nuovi studi su Giordano

Bruno, 63–94. Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2002.
———. Giordano Bruno. Il teatro della vita. Milan: Mondadori, 2007.
———. Umbra profunda. Studi su Giordano Bruno. Rome: Edizioni di storia e lette -

ratura, 1999.

【1†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Urban VIII, pope 224

Valla, Lorenzo 67
Vanini, Lucilio 247n
Vasoli, Cesare 36
Védrine, Hélène 107, 117n, 118n, 136,

145, 147n

265

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:09 Oldal 265

Verlaine, Paul 239
Visconti, Ennio Quirino 233n
Viviani, Vittorio 162, 175n
Volkert, Klaus Thomas 32n
Vossler, Karl 243, 247n

Wackenfels, Johann Matthäus Wackher
von 94

Warburg, Aby 9, 36, 57, 58, 61n, 238, 242,
243, 244, 246n, 247n

Wechel, Johann 59n
Weinberg, Bernard 156n

Wersinger, Anne-Gabrielle 156n
Westman, Robert S. 104n
Wicke, Erhard 33n
Wildgen, Wolfgang 117n
Wolfart, Erasmus 200, 201, 216n
Wyclif(fe), John 110, 247n

Yates, Frances A. 9, 36, 136, 147n, 195n,
196n, 238, 244, 247n

Zeller, Eduard 87n
Zetzner, Lazarus 233n

Index Nominum266

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:09 Oldal 266

Rethinking
Giordano Bruno’s
Enlightenment

Edited by
Henning Hufnagel and Anne Eusterschulte

Turning Traditions
Upside Down

Turning Traditions U
pside D

ow
n

Turning Traditions
Upside Down

Edited by
H

enning H
ufnagel

Anne Eusterschulte

Contributors

Paul Richard Blum
Angelika Bönker-Vallon
Michele Ciliberto
Anne Eusterschulte
Enrico R. A. Giannetto
Miguel A. Granada
Durs Grünbein
Henning Hufnagel
Sergius Kodera
Wolfgang Neuser
Nuccio Ordine
Alexander Polzin
François Quiviger
Arcangelo Rossi
Ingrid Rowland
Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann

Giordano Bruno: A non-conformist at the dawn of an epoch, a martyr of modernity, or just a
polemic controvert? Descriptions of this kind fall short of grasping the multifold character of “the
Nolan.” Deconstructing the relationship between God and the outside world gave distinction to
his life—and his refusal to recant when facing the stake somehow set him apart from the world.
Since then, the debate about the Nolan has been dominated by the interest in the comprehensive
oeuvre of the philosopher, and by attempts to make him a protagonist of the freedom of thought.

【2†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

viii Turning Traditions Upside Down

mankind. This leads us to the reflection and the reception of Bruno’s intel-
lectual fire. Bruno has been received in literature and art as well as in pub-
lic spaces in a way that has been as versatile as the philosopher himself.
The sculpture created by Berlin artist Alexander Polzin, entitled Giordano
Bruno, is the subject of the final chapter of this volume. This artwork was
originally commissioned by the Central European University in Budapest
to celebrate George Soros’s seventieth birthday and copies were erected in
Budapest and Nola. On the occasion of our colloquium, the statue was also
inaugurated at Potsdamer Platz in the center of Berlin. The statue depicts
the vulnerable body of a philosopher who is turning the world upside-down
and attempting to dislodge the borders of the universe—a fitting symbol of
Bruno’s tragedy, a man who dared to reconsider the fundamentals of the
world as they had been passed down throughout the ages and who struggled
to find his place in Europe. Yet, after peregrination across the con tin ent, he
ended up cast as a heretic in all three Christian churches of the occident.
He is now honored in a place, at the centre of modern Eu rope, which also
once served as the stage for the tragedy of a world divided.

We would like to conclude by thanking all the authors who contributed
to this volume. Most of all, we would like to thank the editors, Henning
Hufnagel and Anne Eusterschulte, for their substantial contributions and
the great work they have achieved. We hope that this volume will help cre-
ate a better understanding of a philosopher whose thinking is more preva-
lent today than any of his contemporaries might have foreseen.

Berlin and Budapest, September 2012
Jürgen Renn

Director of the Max Planck Institute
for the History of Science, Berlin

Yehuda Elkana (1934–2012)
Former Rector and President of

Central European University, Budapest

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal viii

Introduction

Turning traditions upside down—this metaphor seems to be a good start-
ing point for rethinking Giordano Bruno’s philosophy and his provocative
aspirations in the world of letters. It certainly would have been to Bruno’s
liking; someone who, in his writings, often presented himself as a Mercu ri -
an, larger-than-life figure who has come to put things straight: the No lan,
enlightening his contemporaries about the misleading paths of traditional
doctrines and opening minds for the discovery of true philosophy.

【3†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

3

In order to bring into focus the horizon and the dimensions of Bruno’s
transformation of traditions, to demonstrate how he turned contemporary
thinking upside down, and to delineate his persuasive strategies, as well as
the theoretical consequences of his thought, the contributions of this vol-
ume all start from a selected text, an exemplary passage drawn from Bru -
no’s great range of work or from texts close to his person and œuvre. Pre -
senting and elucidating pivotal points of the philosophia nolana, the essays
both invite readers to become acquainted with Bruno’s philosophy and
provide them with innovative dissections, interpretations and conceptual
reflections that will prepare the way for a revised reading of Bruno’s
works. They reconstruct Bruno’s deconstruction and rearrangement of
phi lo sophical systems, his understanding of nature and the cosmos, his
methods of thinking and writing, his aesthetic and literary categories. They
ex plore the topics and modi operandi of the great Renaissance thinker and
point out the variance of his reception up to the present, both inside and
outside academia, exhibiting the ever-changing relevance and continuing
fascination of Bruno’s work.

The results of the contributor’s investigations are presented in four sec-
tions, according to four main fields of research interest. The first section
entitled Epistemic Practices of a Revolutionary: Bruno’s Methods and Thin -
king, examines Bruno’s methodological procedures. The essays show how
the Nolan undermined traditional positions, by a subtle reflexion on epis-
temological principles, logical structures, or metaphysical presuppositions,
to secure evidence for his philosophy of the infinite and its inherent con-
sequences which revolutionized the fields of metaphysics and epistemolo-
gy, physics, cosmology and anthropology. Bruno’s method of appropriat-
ing and concatenating older philosophical concepts appears to be both a
method of critical revision as well as systematic transformation.

Paul Richard Blum opens the volume with an epistemological reflection
on default values, in reference to a passage from Bruno’s Latin poem De
immenso. While default settings are constitutive instruments of every cog-
nitive process—they function as a sort of practical, temporary prejudice—
Blum accentuates Bruno’s request for an epistemic meta-operation. In his
poem, Bruno reminds us to be conscious of the tentativeness of mental de -
fault values in the same way as children are aware of the fact that changing
sights of one and the same object are related to their point of view. If the
in tellect fails to realize the infinity of the universe, it is not the fault of the
visual sense, but of the unconsidered reliance on vision as an epistemic de -
fault value. Bruno advocates a change in the standard principles of thought.

Introduction

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 3

4 Turning Traditions Upside Down

This mental operation leads to facing up to a radically altered view of the
world, resulting in the discovery of the philosophy of the infinite.

【4†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Sergius Kodera also examines Candelaio in his essay. He uncovers a
line of political thought, an implicit commentary on important historical,
political affairs, running throughout the whole comedy, leading up to
Machiavelli. Although Bruno never even mentions the name of the philo -
sopher-politician from Florence, Kodera detects the subterranean pre sence
of Machiavelli in strategically important passages of Candelaio. He shows

Introduction

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 7

8 Turning Traditions Upside Down

how Bruno adapts the Machiavellian notions of vicissitudo and occasione
and parallels Bruno’s re-evaluation of the sense of touch with Machi a -
velli’s ideas: For both authors, it is hands-on knowledge rather than de -
tached vision that is conducive to true insight and acquisition of power.
Whereas Bruno makes it clear that this re-evaluation involves heavy meta-
physical implications, Machiavelli and Bruno do share common ground
again in their vehement criticism of Christianity as harmful to the commu-
nity.

This section concludes with Henning Hufnagel’s analysis of Bruno’s
shortest dialogue, Cabala del cavallo pegaseo. Hufnagel focuses on the dia-
logue’s twisted structure. Cabala is one of the most disputed of Bruno’s
texts and scholars have made many attempts to fix a positive theoretical
me aning in the dialogue. Hufnagel shows that this is a hopeless fight
because Bruno blends the dialogue with forms of paradoxical epideixis:
Bruno piles up paradoxes until all claims negate and cancel each other.
Hufnagel proposes Cabala should instead be read as a satire of knowledge.
The transmission of alleged knowledge between the interlocutors collapses
continually and Bruno lays bare their modes of argumentation. If anything
is to be learned from Cabala, it is how the literary form of the dialogue can
acquire the value of an argument. Thus, Cabala can be understood as a
reflection on the dialectical possibilities of the dialogue as a genre.

In the fourth section in this volume, Reflections of an Intellectual Burning:
Bruno’s Reception and Literary Afterlife, the horizon widens both themat-
ically and temporally. This section looks at some of the traces Bruno’s life
and work left in other philosophical, or even theological contexts, presents
aspects of his sometimes curious literary afterlife—which extends to
Bertolt Brecht and beyond—and tries to come to terms with the truly last-
ing fascination exerted by the man from Nola.

Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann explores the possibilities of picturing me -
ta physics by analysing a copper engraving in Heinrich Khunrath’s Amphi -
theatrum Sapientiae Aeternae. In this image, the Kabbalistic foundation of
all being, both the divine and the creatural, is symbolically depicted. For
Bruno, the externalization of the first cause—which is in itself unknow-
able, because it only reveals itself in its expression—is, at the same time,
the beginning of all spatiality. This idea corresponds materially to the
imaging of the first cause, as it is represented in the Leipzig theosopher
Khunrath’s great work Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae. He goes beyond
Bruno, however, when he problematizes the question of the symbolism of
the divine externalizations.

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 8

【5†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

233

Bibliography
Primary sources
Bruno, G. “De immenso et innumerabilibus.” In Jordani Bruni Nolani Opera latine con-

scripta. Vol. I, 2. Ed. F. Fiorentino. Naples: Morano, 1884. Reprint, Stuttgart/Bad
Cannstatt: From mann, 1962.

———. Dialoghi filosofici italiani. Ed. M. Ciliberto. Milan: Mondadori, 2000.

Secondary sources
Gatti, H. Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science. Ithaca NY: Cornell University

Press, 1999.
Michel, P.-H. The Cosmology of Giordano Bruno. Paris: Herrmann, 1973.
Rowland, I. D. “Athanasius Kircher, Giordano Bruno, and the Panspermia of the

Infinite Universe.” In Athanasius Kircher, the Last Man who Knew Everything. Ed.
P. Findlen, 191–206. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Siebert, H. Die große kosmologische Kontroverse: Rekonstruktionsversuche anhand des
Itinerarium exstaticum von Athanasius Kircher SJ (1602–1680). Stuttgart: Franz
Steiner Verlag, 2006.

Sigurdsson, H. Melting the Earth: the History of Ideas on Volcanic Eruptions. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1999.

Notes

1 “Thus the Earth receives life-giving seeds from the Suns’s orb / And by its motion
tempers the seething heat of its rays,” Bruno, Opera latine conscripta I, 2, 283.

2 Raymundi Lullii Opera ea quae ad inventam ab ipso artem universalem, Scientiarum
Artiumque Omnium Brevi compendio, firmaque memoria apprehendendarum, locu-
pletissimaque vel oratione ex tempore pertractandarum pertinent. Ut et in eandem
quorundam interpretum scripti commentarii, Argentorati, sumptibus Haeredum
Lazari Zetzneri, 1617. The book is mostly devoted, then, to Ramon Llull, himself a
suspect author for the drafters of the Index. Bruno’s works appear from pp. 662–786,
and are followed by those of another suspect author, Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, a
Protestant from Strasbourg, 1617, who would suffer greatly in the Thirty Years’ War
(starting in 1618); the city was annexed to Catholic France in 1681.

3 The classroom spaces of the Collegio Romano have belonged to Rome’s first public
high school, the Liceo Ennio Quirino Visconti, since the unification of Italy in 1870.

【6†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Introduction

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 5

6 Turning Traditions Upside Down

tional restrictions—which are still binding Kepler, e.g.—and, in doing so,
anticipates the cosmological reforms of the seventeenth-century as repre-
sented by Huygens or Newton.

Wolfgang Neuser presents an alternative interpretation of Bruno’s the-
ory of matter. Against the backdrop of the controversial medieval debates
about atomism concerning the attributes or qualities of atoms, their cor-
puscular or essential substantiality, and the appreciation of them as dis-
tinct particles, Bruno develops an understanding of matter that merges the
Aristotelian concept of substance with atomistic ideas and the Neo-Pla -
tonic concept of matter, according to which matter is filled with spirit.
Bruno differentiates three manifestations of the metaphysical monad, i.e.,
the undivided, infinite unum that systematically underlies everything.
These manifestations are the constituents of matter: spiritus, based on the
neo-Platonic concept of a spiritual virtue inherent in all matter; spatium,
or the structural explication of the indivisible, un-extended point, which
emerges in a process of self-generation; and atomus, the smallest indivisi-
ble or the physical minimum. Spirit, space, and atom are the structural
modes of the expansion of infinite unity. Based on this conceptualisation
of matter, Neuser characterizes Bruno as a Renaissance philosopher who,
at the end of the post-traditional stage in history, anticipates the subject-
based foundation of knowledge, representative for thinkers from the Mo -
dern Age like Descartes, Spinoza or Leibniz.

Enrico Giannetto’s chapter emphasizes no less than the astonishing fact
that Giordano Bruno—notwithstanding the significant differences in theo-
retical premises—presents a theory of relativity of time and motion three
hundred years before Poincaré and Einstein. While his non-mechanistic
conception of nature was an obstacle in recognizing Bruno as a serious sci-
entist, according to Giannetto, Bruno’s importance within the history of
theoretical physics is irrefutable. He argues that the relativity of time is
one consequence of Bruno’s concept of cosmic infinity, also entailing the
relativity of the localisation of planets or stars and of their motion, rota-
tion and orbits within a uniform space. Rejecting the Aristotelian assump-
tion of a primum mobile, Bruno argues for the plurality of incommensu-
rable times due to the infinity of uniform motions within the universe.
Turning the Aristotelian doctrine upside down, Bruno regards (relative)
motion as the measure of time.

Arcangelo Rossi, comparing the cosmological theories of Copernicus,
Bruno, and Galilei, attests a striking correspondence between the Nolan
and the Galilean doctrines. Like Giannetto, Rossi aims at restoring Bru -

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 6

7

【7†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

This volume brings together some of the most eminent researchers to
have worked on Giordano Bruno and his epoch. Their contributions—
inspired by a colloquium on Giordano Bruno organized by the Max Planck
Institute for the History of Science and the Central European University
in 2008—represent a critical inventory of our knowledge of the Nolan’s life
and work as well as shedding light on the many dimensions of Bruno’s
thinking. His radical rationality, starting with attempts to reinvent the
roots of religion but ending with a break in the doctrines of trinity and
monotheism; his natural philosophy, including the cosmology of the infini-
ty of the universe and of the unlimited number of worlds, or his thinking
on the vital character of all the objects on earth; his vision of a new cosmic
order and his place in the Copernican revolution, breaking with the domi-
nant heliocentric and anthropocentric system in a way more radical than
any contemporary thinker had before; his scientific methods, his analogies,
speculations, metaphors, his intuitive as well as practical knowledge,
reflecting the epistemic practices of a revolutionary; his idiosyncratic
blending of traditions, both philosophical and literary; his linguistic exu-
berance and conceptual boldness; the textual structures, genres, and forms
of non-conformity Bruno continuously experimented with, from the trac-
tate to comedy, from dialogue to poetry; and finally, his gusto for paradox
and satirical panache. Attention has also to be given to Bruno’s consider-
ation of the role of philosophy in society—either as a way to give coher-
ence to a world thrown off track, or simply as an instrument for civilizing

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal vii

viii Turning Traditions Upside Down

mankind. This leads us to the reflection and the reception of Bruno’s intel-
lectual fire. Bruno has been received in literature and art as well as in pub-
lic spaces in a way that has been as versatile as the philosopher himself.
The sculpture created by Berlin artist Alexander Polzin, entitled Giordano
Bruno, is the subject of the final chapter of this volume. This artwork was
originally commissioned by the Central European University in Budapest
to celebrate George Soros’s seventieth birthday and copies were erected in
Budapest and Nola. On the occasion of our colloquium, the statue was also
inaugurated at Potsdamer Platz in the center of Berlin. The statue depicts
the vulnerable body of a philosopher who is turning the world upside-down
and attempting to dislodge the borders of the universe—a fitting symbol of
Bruno’s tragedy, a man who dared to reconsider the fundamentals of the
world as they had been passed down throughout the ages and who struggled
to find his place in Europe. Yet, after peregrination across the con tin ent, he
ended up cast as a heretic in all three Christian churches of the occident.
He is now honored in a place, at the centre of modern Eu rope, which also
once served as the stage for the tragedy of a world divided.

We would like to conclude by thanking all the authors who contributed
to this volume. Most of all, we would like to thank the editors, Henning
Hufnagel and Anne Eusterschulte, for their substantial contributions and
the great work they have achieved. We hope that this volume will help cre-
ate a better understanding of a philosopher whose thinking is more preva-
lent today than any of his contemporaries might have foreseen.

【8†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Zeller, Eduard 87n
Zetzner, Lazarus 233n

Index Nominum266

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:09 Oldal 266

Rethinking
Giordano Bruno’s
Enlightenment

Edited by
Henning Hufnagel and Anne Eusterschulte

Turning Traditions
Upside Down

Turning Traditions U
pside D

ow
n

Turning Traditions
Upside Down

Edited by
H

enning H
ufnagel

Anne Eusterschulte

Contributors

Paul Richard Blum
Angelika Bönker-Vallon
Michele Ciliberto
Anne Eusterschulte
Enrico R. A. Giannetto
Miguel A. Granada
Durs Grünbein
Henning Hufnagel
Sergius Kodera
Wolfgang Neuser
Nuccio Ordine
Alexander Polzin
François Quiviger
Arcangelo Rossi
Ingrid Rowland
Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann

Giordano Bruno: A non-conformist at the dawn of an epoch, a martyr of modernity, or just a
polemic controvert? Descriptions of this kind fall short of grasping the multifold character of “the
Nolan.” Deconstructing the relationship between God and the outside world gave distinction to
his life—and his refusal to recant when facing the stake somehow set him apart from the world.
Since then, the debate about the Nolan has been dominated by the interest in the comprehensive
oeuvre of the philosopher, and by attempts to make him a protagonist of the freedom of thought.

This volume brings together some of the most eminent researchers to have worked on Giordano
Bruno and his epoch. In order to bring into focus the horizon and the dimensions of his
transformation of traditions, to demonstrate how he turned contemporary thinking upside down,
and to delineate his persuasive strategies, as well as the theoretical consequences of his thought,
the contributions all start from an exemplary passage drawn from Bruno’s great range of work
or from texts close to his person and oeuvre. Presenting and elucidating pivotal points of the
philosophia nolana, the essays both invite readers to become acquainted with Bruno’s philosophy
and provide them with innovative dissections, interpretations and conceptual reflections that
will prepare the way for a revised reading of Bruno’s works. They reconstruct his deconstruction
and rearrangement of philosophical systems, his understanding of nature and the cosmos, his
methods of thinking and writing, his aesthetic and literary categories. They explore the topics
and modi operandi of the great Renaissance thinker and point out the variance of his reception
up to the present, both inside and outside academia, exhibiting the ever-changing relevance and
continuing fascination of Bruno’s work.

Central European University Press
Budapest – New York

Sales and information: ceupress@ceu.hu
Website: http://www.ceupress.com

0536347861559

ISBN 9786155053634
90000 >

C o v e r d e s i g n b y S e b a s t i a n S t a c h o w s k i

【9†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

F. Tocco, H. Vitelli, V. Imbriani and C. M. Tallarigo. Naples/Florence: Morano/Le
Monnier, 1879–91. Reprint Stuttgart/Bad Cannstatt: From mann, 1961–62.

———. Opere latine. Ed. C. Monti. Turin: Utet, 1980.
———. Opere mnemotecniche, vol. 2. Eds. M. Ciliberto, M. Matteoli, R. Sturlese and

N. Tirinnanzi. Milan: Adelphi, 2009.
Calvino, I. Lezioni americane. Milan: Garzanti, 1988.
Cusano, N. Opere filosofiche. Ed. G. Federici-Vescovini. Turin: Utet, 1972.
Warburg, A. “Giordano Bruno.” Eds. M. Ghelardi and G. Targia. Cassirer Studies 1

(2008): 29–58.
Warburg, A. and E. Cassirer. Il mondo di ieri. Lettere. Ed. M. Ghelardi. Turin: Aragno,

2003.

Secondary sources
Ciliberto, M. “Bruno e l’Apocalisse,” in L’occhio di Atteone. Nuovi studi su Giordano

Bruno, 63–94. Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2002.
———. Giordano Bruno. Il teatro della vita. Milan: Mondadori, 2007.
———. Umbra profunda. Studi su Giordano Bruno. Rome: Edizioni di storia e lette -

ratura, 1999.

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:08 Oldal 58

59

Ciliberto, M. and N. Tirinnanzi, eds. Il dialogo recitato. Per una nuova edizione del
Bruno volgare. Florence: Olschki, 2002.

Firpo, L. Il processo di Giordano Bruno. Ed. D. Quaglioni. Rome: Salerno, 1993.
Garin, E. “Le elezioni e il problema dell’astrologia,” in L’età nuova. Ricerche di storia

della cultura dal XII al XVI secolo, 423–47. Naples: Morano, 1969.
Mann, N. “Denkenergetische Inversion: Aby Warburg and Giordano Bruno.” English

Goethe Society 72 (2003): 25–37.
Rossi, P. Un altro presente. Saggi sulla storia della filosofia. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999.
Tirinnanzi, N. “Temi apocalittici nel Sigillus sigillorum di Giordano Bruno.” Rinas ci -

mento 48 (2008): 335–49.
Tocco, F. Le opere latine di Giordano Bruno esposte e confrontate con le italiane.

Florence: Le Monnier, 1889.

Notes

* English translation by Olivia Catanorchi.
1 “Why, I say, do so few understand and apprehend the internal power? […] He, who

【10†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

mondi, 1870.
Warburg, A. “Giordano Bruno.” Ed. M. Ghelardi and M. Targia. Philosophy and Ico -

nology: Cassirer Studies 1 (2008): 16–58.
———. Tagebuch der Kulturwissenschaftlichen Bibliothek Warburg. Ed. K. Michels

and C. Schoell-Glass. Berlin: Akademie, 2001.

From Paris to Rome, Hamburg and London

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:09 Oldal 245

246 Reflections of an Intellectual Burning

Secondary sources
Berggren, L. L’ombra dei grandi: monumenti e politica monumentale a Roma (1870–

1895). Rome: Artemide, 1996.
Canone, E. Bruno Redivivus: momenti della fortuna di Giordano Bruno nel XIX secolo.

Pisa: Istituti editoriali e poligrafici internazionali, 1998.
Forbes, F. D. A. Life of Pius X. London: Washbourne, 1918.
Gatti, H. “Frances Yates’s Hermetic Renaissance in the Documents held in the

Warburg Institute Archive.” Aries 2, no. 2 (2002): 193–210.
———. “The State of Giordano Bruno Studies at the End of the Four-Hundredth

Centenary of the Philosopher’s Death.” Renaissance Quarterly 54, no. 1 (2001): 252–61.
Mann, N. “Denkenergetische Inversion: Aby Warburg and Giordano Bruno.”

Publications of the English Goethe Society 72 (2003): 25–37.
Salvestrini, V. Bibliografia delle opere di Giordano Bruno. 2nd (posthumous) edition,

by L. Firpo. Florence: Sansoni, 1958.
Spampanato, V. Documenti della vita di Giordano Bruno. Florence: Leo S. Olschki,

1933.

Notes

1 Clair, Giordano Bruno ou le Chevalier errant (1925), 83–87. Full text available at:
http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/mnemosyne/Bruno/pdf/1802234462.pdf

2 Clair, Giordano Bruno ou le Chevalier errant (1914), unpaginated dedication; Clair,
Giordano Bruno ou le Chevalier errant (1925), xiii. Bordighera is a luxury resort on
the Ligurian Coast.

3 Bayle, Dictionnaire, I, 680. See Eugenio Canone’s introduction to Canone, Bruno
Redivivus, xx–xxi.

4 Bartholmèss, Jordano Bruno, II, 3; see also McIntyre, Giordano Bruno, 52.
5 Plumptre, Giordano Bruno; Schefer, Göttliche Komödie in Rom.
6 Scotino, Giordano Bruno: scena drammatica; Holitscher, Giordano Bruno: histo -

risches Drama in 5 Abteilungen; Levi, Gior dano Bruno, o Le lotte del pensiero;
Borngräber, Giordano Bruno: das neue Jahrhundert; Fola Igúrbide, Giordano
Bruno; Kolbenheyer, Heroische Leidenschaften.

【11†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

We would like to conclude by thanking all the authors who contributed
to this volume. Most of all, we would like to thank the editors, Henning
Hufnagel and Anne Eusterschulte, for their substantial contributions and
the great work they have achieved. We hope that this volume will help cre-
ate a better understanding of a philosopher whose thinking is more preva-
lent today than any of his contemporaries might have foreseen.

Berlin and Budapest, September 2012
Jürgen Renn

Director of the Max Planck Institute
for the History of Science, Berlin

Yehuda Elkana (1934–2012)
Former Rector and President of

Central European University, Budapest

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal viii

Introduction

Turning traditions upside down—this metaphor seems to be a good start-
ing point for rethinking Giordano Bruno’s philosophy and his provocative
aspirations in the world of letters. It certainly would have been to Bruno’s
liking; someone who, in his writings, often presented himself as a Mercu ri -
an, larger-than-life figure who has come to put things straight: the No lan,
enlightening his contemporaries about the misleading paths of traditional
doctrines and opening minds for the discovery of true philosophy.

Born in 1548 near the town of Nola in the Kingdom of Naples, Gior -
dano Bruno is known today as an exceptional, yet ambivalent figure with-
in the history of ideas. As a great scholar, celebrated for his comprehen-
sive erudition, famous for his emphatic defence of philosophical inquiry
against religious doctrine and his rigid attacks against reputed authorities,
he caused an intellectual stir wherever he went. Sometimes his interventi -
ons were received with great éclat; more often, however, they created aca -
de mic scandal. Bruno impressed the French King Henri III who made him
one of his “lecteurs royaux”; three years later, he had to leave Paris in
tumultuous circumstances after a disputation had grown out of control. In
the meantime, Bruno had upset the intellectual scene in Elizabethan
England with his six Italian dialogues. Moving between different frontiers,
confessional beliefs, philosophical schools, academic parties and institu-
tional interests, Bruno—who did not mince matters—came under attack
from many sides.

Bruno argued relentlessly for a replacement of the philosophical koiné
of his time, the Scholastic Aristotelian philosophy that presented a view of
man and cosmos, which Bruno had been dissatisfied with since his time in a
Dominican convent in Naples. For his project of philosophical reform, Bruno
draws on a large variety of sources: on Platonic, pre-Socratic, Py tha gorean,
and Hermetic ideas, on thinkers such as Plotinus, Averroes, Nicholas of
Cusa, Raimundus Lullus and Ficino. He builds on the metho do logy, flour-
ishing during the Renaissance, of mnemotechnics. And he uses all these

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 1

2 Turning Traditions Upside Down

【12†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Paul Richard Blum opens the volume with an epistemological reflection
on default values, in reference to a passage from Bruno’s Latin poem De
immenso. While default settings are constitutive instruments of every cog-
nitive process—they function as a sort of practical, temporary prejudice—
Blum accentuates Bruno’s request for an epistemic meta-operation. In his
poem, Bruno reminds us to be conscious of the tentativeness of mental de -
fault values in the same way as children are aware of the fact that changing
sights of one and the same object are related to their point of view. If the
in tellect fails to realize the infinity of the universe, it is not the fault of the
visual sense, but of the unconsidered reliance on vision as an epistemic de -
fault value. Bruno advocates a change in the standard principles of thought.

Introduction

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 3

4 Turning Traditions Upside Down

This mental operation leads to facing up to a radically altered view of the
world, resulting in the discovery of the philosophy of the infinite.

Covering Bruno’s so-called Frankfurt Trilogy, Angelika Bönker-Vallon
analyses Bruno’s intention to demonstrate the systematic interrelation
bet ween metaphysical, mathematical and physical thought. In these three
Latin poems, Bruno delineates a universal concept of science which
embraces all branches of scientific knowledge. Within this tripartite ency-
clopaedia, De triplici minimo et mensura is of the utmost significance, as
Bönker-Vallon points out, because in this work Bruno tries to conceptual-
ize a mathematical theory for measuring the infinite cosmos or, in a com-
prehensive sense, to create a theoretical substructure of the encyclopaedic
sciences. Based on the concept of a threefold minimum—i.e., God as the
monad of monads, the mathematical point and the physical atom—Bruno
demonstrates the metaphysical implications and qualities of point and
atom as primary functional minima, redefined as first and elementary spa-
tial structures comprising the coincidental relationship of maximum and
minimum, essential for conceiving the relationship between the infinite
space and its fundamental entities. The interconnection of metaphysical,
mathematical and physical minima provides accessibility to the systematic
nature of Bruno’s threefold theory of the infinite, which based on the idea
of a universal measure, allows for the development of the idea of univer-
sal science.

【13†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

The last section of the book, Visibility of the Invisible: About the Sculpture
Giordano Bruno by Alexander Polzin [2008], is dedicated to the statue of
Giordano Bruno that was recently erected in Berlin. Besides a description
of the statue and its pendants at Nola and Budapest made by the sculptor,
Alexander Polzin, himself, the author Durs Grünbein gives a poet’s inter-
pretation of the statue at the moment of its unveiling at Potsdamer Platz. He
construes the heretic as an emblematic figure of a young, independent
Europe and asks himself why Berlin—a city which Bruno, this great tra -
veller, has never been to—and, specifically, an underground station could be

Introduction

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 9

the right place to commemorate the philosopher from Nola. For Grün bein,
the statue is an iconographic alarm signal, visualizing a rhetoric of fire, the
language of alchemy and metamorphoses that characterizes Bruno’s think-
ing. Finally, Grünbein brings thinkers and poets together in a virtual con-
versation across time and space: Bruno, Nietzsche, Scho pen hau er, and
Czesław Miłosz.

Anything but virtual were the exchanges we—philosophers, historians, and
literary scholars—had about Giordano Bruno in the congenial and inspiring
atmosphere of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin,
and our discussions and debates sowed many seeds. We are proud to see
how they have matured and grown now into this volume. At the end of this
project, we want to express our gratitude towards several individuals and
institutions for their unflinching support, financial as well as moral and in -
tel lectual: Jürgen Renn and Yehuda Elkana, the Max Planck Insti tute for the
History of Science, the Central European Uni versity, the Cent ral European
University Press, and, last but definitely not least, to Andreas Edel.

Finally, we would like to thank the students who assisted us in the com-
pletion of this volume with untiring effort, Fanny Neumann, Jussuf Spie gel,
Charlotte Wetzel and, especially, Oliver Schumacher, who also translated
Durs Grünbein’s contribution.

Freiburg and Berlin, September 2012
Henning Hufnagel,

Anne Eusterschulte

Turning Traditions Upside Down10

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 10

PART 1

Epistemic Practices of a Revolutionary:
Bruno’s Methods and Thinking

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 11

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:07 Oldal 12

PAUL RICHARD BLUM

Giordano Bruno’s Changing of
Default Positions

Ut Peripateticorum similiumque philosophantum sensus a principiis pe -
rinde se habeat atque puerorum: quos eodem instituendos ordine sus ci pi -
mus, quo nos optima mater erudiit natura.

【14†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

zur neuen Zeit. Leipzig: Eugen Diederichs, 1901.
Clair, C. Giordano Bruno ou le Chevalier errant de la philosophie. Paris: Maurice

Senart, 1914.
———. Giordano Bruno ou le Chevalier errant de la philosophie. Paris: Imprimerie

nationale, 1925.
Fola Igúrbide, J. Giordano Bruno: drama en cinco actos divididos en quince cuadros.

Barcelona: Estab. tip. de F. Costa, 1912.
Holitscher, P. Giordano Bruno: historisches Drama in 5 Abteilungen. Stuttgart: Süd -

deutsches Verlags-Institut, 1898.
Kolbenheyer, E. G. Heroische Leidenschaften: die Tragödie des Giordano Bruno in drei

Teilen. Munich: Georg Müller, 1929.
Levi, D. Giordano Bruno, o, Le lotte del pensiero: dramma in cinque atti. Rome: Edo ardo

Perino, 1889.
Manzoni, R. La mente di Giordano Bruno. Locarno: Tipografia Mariotta, 1889.
McIntyre, J. L. Giordano Bruno. London, New York: Macmillan, 1903.
Plumptre, C. E. Giordano Bruno: A Tale of the Sixteenth Century. London: Chapman &

Hall, 1884.
Schefer, L. Göttliche Komödie in Rom. Milan: Società editrice Sonzogno, 1904.
Scotino, F. Giordano Bruno: scena drammatica. Naples: Stabilimento tipografico Rai -

mondi, 1870.
Warburg, A. “Giordano Bruno.” Ed. M. Ghelardi and M. Targia. Philosophy and Ico -

nology: Cassirer Studies 1 (2008): 16–58.
———. Tagebuch der Kulturwissenschaftlichen Bibliothek Warburg. Ed. K. Michels

and C. Schoell-Glass. Berlin: Akademie, 2001.

From Paris to Rome, Hamburg and London

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:09 Oldal 245

246 Reflections of an Intellectual Burning

Secondary sources
Berggren, L. L’ombra dei grandi: monumenti e politica monumentale a Roma (1870–

1895). Rome: Artemide, 1996.
Canone, E. Bruno Redivivus: momenti della fortuna di Giordano Bruno nel XIX secolo.

Pisa: Istituti editoriali e poligrafici internazionali, 1998.
Forbes, F. D. A. Life of Pius X. London: Washbourne, 1918.
Gatti, H. “Frances Yates’s Hermetic Renaissance in the Documents held in the

Warburg Institute Archive.” Aries 2, no. 2 (2002): 193–210.
———. “The State of Giordano Bruno Studies at the End of the Four-Hundredth

Centenary of the Philosopher’s Death.” Renaissance Quarterly 54, no. 1 (2001): 252–61.
Mann, N. “Denkenergetische Inversion: Aby Warburg and Giordano Bruno.”

【15†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Divided in four acts, each act subdivided into tableaux, Clair’s musical
focuses on the early and final years of Bruno’s wandering life from Naples
(Act I), to Venice (Acts II & III) and Rome (Act IV). Unlike most histori -
cal fictions, the first edition includes notes with references to a bibliography
of eight monographs on Bruno by Bartholmèss, Kuhlenbeck, McIntyre,
Frith, Berti, Gentile, Brunnofer, and Mariano. The subtitle of the musical,
Le Chevalier errant de la philosophie, originates from Pierre Bayle’s ob ser -
vation that Bruno engaged in philosophical jousting wherever he trav-
elled.3 With Bartholmèss (1847), however, the image of Bruno as a wan-
dering knight alluded not only to his travels, but also to his powerful
imagination and to the chivalrous values of courage and audacity which he
practiced throughout his life and writings—a portrait somehow reminis-
cent of Cervantes’ Don Quixote.4 Those who wrote fiction on Bruno uni-

From Paris to Rome, Hamburg and London

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:09 Oldal 239

240 Reflections of an Intellectual Burning

versally adopted this heroic conception which culminated in his tragic
death as a martyr of free-thought. Among the examples collected by
Salvestrini and now present in the Warburg Library are two novels,5 six
plays,6 and two musical dramas composed between the 1870s and 1920s.7

Although Bruno had, in these years, become an anticlerical rather than
a Catholic hero, his fictional representations included numerous Christo -
logical allusions,8 ranging from the scene of betrayal which authors attri -
bute to various Judas-like figures—Mocenigo or an old friend or a disciple
jealous of his fiancée’s affection for the philosopher—to his last moments.
Sometimes the words of Christ are placed in Bruno’s mouth. Bruno’s pan-
theism, a recurring theme of nineteenth-century scholarship—ex pres sed
through a hymn to nature in Clair’s drama—also features prominently.

Bruno’s martyrdom began in the inquisition jails. Like most authors,
Clair assumed that Bruno was tortured. Interrogated by the Pope, Bruno
points out that nine years of torture have not weakened his faith and that
he even prefers death to the dignity of the cardinal’s position.9 Other
plays, such as that of José Fola Igúrbide, feature entire scenes taking place
in the Inquisitional torture chamber.10 Scheffer’s novel also alludes to tor-
ture, but best of all is Davide Levi, who quoted passages from the Furori
Eroici to describe Bruno’s state of mind during torture sessions.11

In this context, and to anyone remotely familiar with the image of
Bruno in Risorgimento Italy, the first edition of Charles Clair’s drama be -
gins with a singular piece of earnest wishful thinking. It is a letter to Pope
Pius X, dated July 13, 1913, written from a luxury hotel near Lugano
(Stella d’Italia, San Mamette), in which the author apologizes for delays in
sending him his text. Clair writes that it is a question of Truth, a question
of rehabilitating a man so calumniated by the sixteenth century. The letter
appears in the first edition in French and Italian versions. In the second
edition, it features only in French.

【16†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:09 Oldal 238

239

Charles Clair published his Giordano Bruno ou le Chevalier errant de la
philosophie twice. The first edition is the princeps of 1914. The copy of the
second edition, kept in the Warburg Library and dated 1925, is a num-
bered copy—No. 297—printed for Virgilio Salvestrini and signed and ded-
icated by the author. The second edition also contains a preface by Paul
Fort (1872–1960). Paul Fort was a friend of the author—at least, since
1914—as suggested by a copy of his Nocturnes (1914) which recently sur-
faced on the market. It bears a dedication to Clair. Paul Fort was also one
of the most important poets of his time, as well the founder and director of
the review Vers et Prose, which published such luminaries as Rimbaud,
Verlaine, Mallarmé, Lautréamont, and Guillaume Apollinaire. His avant-
propos to Clair’s Giordano Bruno thus stands out as a strong and eloquent
endorsement from a respected and charismatic figure of French Letters.

Hardly anything is known of Charles Clair outside the evidence pro-
vided by these two editions. He is absent from the Dictionnaire de Bio -
graphi es Françaises and all musical and literary bibliographies I have con-
sulted. His Giordano Bruno is the only work he ever published. No score
accompanies the text, and no evidence has yet surfaced to confirm whether
his musical drama was ever performed. Library catalogues sometimes con-
fuse our author with a Jesuit priest who lived between 1835 and 1899, and
who wrote on religion and religious art—an unlikely candidate for the
authorship of a musical drama on Giordano Bruno. Our Charles Clair held
the Ancient-Régime title of Comm. Visconte, with which he signed the let-
ter to the Pope accompanying his text. There he refers to the favors his
family has received from Pope Pius X and alludes to a telegram he had
already sent from Bordighera in 1912, announcing the imminent comple-
tion of the text.2

Divided in four acts, each act subdivided into tableaux, Clair’s musical
focuses on the early and final years of Bruno’s wandering life from Naples
(Act I), to Venice (Acts II & III) and Rome (Act IV). Unlike most histori -
cal fictions, the first edition includes notes with references to a bibliography
of eight monographs on Bruno by Bartholmèss, Kuhlenbeck, McIntyre,
Frith, Berti, Gentile, Brunnofer, and Mariano. The subtitle of the musical,
Le Chevalier errant de la philosophie, originates from Pierre Bayle’s ob ser -
vation that Bruno engaged in philosophical jousting wherever he trav-
elled.3 With Bartholmèss (1847), however, the image of Bruno as a wan-
dering knight alluded not only to his travels, but also to his powerful
imagination and to the chivalrous values of courage and audacity which he
practiced throughout his life and writings—a portrait somehow reminis-
cent of Cervantes’ Don Quixote.4 Those who wrote fiction on Bruno uni-

From Paris to Rome, Hamburg and London

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:09 Oldal 239

240 Reflections of an Intellectual Burning

【17†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

Publications of the English Goethe Society 72 (2003): 25–37.
Salvestrini, V. Bibliografia delle opere di Giordano Bruno. 2nd (posthumous) edition,

by L. Firpo. Florence: Sansoni, 1958.
Spampanato, V. Documenti della vita di Giordano Bruno. Florence: Leo S. Olschki,

1933.

Notes

1 Clair, Giordano Bruno ou le Chevalier errant (1925), 83–87. Full text available at:
http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/mnemosyne/Bruno/pdf/1802234462.pdf

2 Clair, Giordano Bruno ou le Chevalier errant (1914), unpaginated dedication; Clair,
Giordano Bruno ou le Chevalier errant (1925), xiii. Bordighera is a luxury resort on
the Ligurian Coast.

3 Bayle, Dictionnaire, I, 680. See Eugenio Canone’s introduction to Canone, Bruno
Redivivus, xx–xxi.

4 Bartholmèss, Jordano Bruno, II, 3; see also McIntyre, Giordano Bruno, 52.
5 Plumptre, Giordano Bruno; Schefer, Göttliche Komödie in Rom.
6 Scotino, Giordano Bruno: scena drammatica; Holitscher, Giordano Bruno: histo -

risches Drama in 5 Abteilungen; Levi, Gior dano Bruno, o Le lotte del pensiero;
Borngräber, Giordano Bruno: das neue Jahrhundert; Fola Igúrbide, Giordano
Bruno; Kolbenheyer, Heroische Leidenschaften.

7 Bartolucci, Giordano Bruno.
8 See, e.g., Levi, Giordano Bruno, 15, 124; Fola Igúrbide, José, Giordano Bruno, 38,

87 (Agony in the Garden). Best is undoubtedly Scotino’s observation: “Da molti il
Bruno è salutato il Cristo della Scienza…” in Scotino, Giordano Bruno, 16.

9 Clair, Giordano Bruno ou le Chevalier errant (1925), 73.
10 Fola Igúrbide, Giordano Bruno, 50sq.
11 Levi, Giordano Bruno, 74, 93.
12 Clair, Giordano Bruno ou le Chevalier errant (1914), Warburg copy: “Dopo questa

letterà il Comm. Visconte Clair di nazionalità francese fù excommunicato («excom-
municazione maggiore»).”

13 Clair, Giordano Bruno ou le Chevalier errant (1925) xi.
14 Spampanato Documenti, 202.
15 Berggren, L’ombra dei grandi, 123.
16 Balan, Di Giordano Bruno, 14.

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:09 Oldal 246

247

17 Dialoghetti familiari tra un imbianchino e riquadratore di stanze fiorentino ed un sig-
nore romano sopra la vera storia di Giordano Bruno, 10–12, 22.

【18†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

The (In)discreet Presence of Machiavelli in Giordano Bruno’s Candelaio

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:08 Oldal 173

174 Forms of Non-Conformity

when I thought he had forgotten the incident, he repaid me worse than the ass did
the lion; but I don’t want the matter to rest there.” Bruno, Candle-bearer, 100.

2 For an account of Bruno’s early years, see for instance Ciliberto, Giordano Bruno
or, more recently, Rowland, Giordano Bruno. For a concise recent summary of
research on Bruno, see Saiber, Geometry, 9–12. For a summary and analysis of the
Candelaio, see Moliterno, “Introduction,” in Bruno, Candle-bearer, 9–49; and Kodera,
“Einleitung zum Candelaio,” VII–LV.

3 Most notably perhaps is Pietro Aretino’s Cortigiana. (See also note 6 below.)
4 Ordine, Soglia, 45; cf. also Ciliberto, Bruno, 25.
5 On Bruno’s art of memory, see Sturlese, “Per un’interpretazione”; Clucas, “De

imaginum”; and Clucas, “Simulacra.”
6 With the possible exception of Aretino’s Cortigiana. Messer Maco, a painter from

Venice, was actually a friend of Aretino’s. Boccaccio’s Decameron (VII, 3 and 6; IX,
3 and 5) recounts delightful stories about the beffe that were played to Calandrino,
a simpleton and painter, by Bruno and Buffalmaco, two clever Florentine artists and
historical figures.

7 As stated by the title page.
8 This is a plot of ancient Indian origins which was well known in Italy at least since

the Decameron, cf. Doninger, The Bedtrick, 30 and passim. This trick also figures in
Bibbiena’s Calandria. Kodera, “Einleitung zum Candelaio,” XXXII–XXXVI, argues
that this scene can be read as an enactment of Bruno’s doctrine of shadows and a
parody of the Platonic myth of the cave. See also Kodera, “Un fallo.”

9 Bruno frequently fails to name authors with whom he has an intellectual affinity.
Granada, Universo infinito, 179 (with many references) has shown that when Bruno
mentions authors such as Ficino, Nicholas of Cusa, or Copernicus, then this is often
indicative of both a dependence and an intellectual rupture with the author in ques-
tion. The entire chapter of Granada’s book (169–96) is a valuable introduction to the
relationship between Bruno and Machiavelli. See also Ordine, “Teatro e conoscen-
za,” 532sq. On the presence of Machiavelli in Bruno’s Cabala, see Kodera, “Ein -
leitung zur Cabala,” LXXXVIIIsqq.

10 “Notwithstanding that what I enjoyed tonight had not been given to me by the gods
or nature and had been denied to me by Fortune, judgement made me recognise the
opportunity, diligence made me grab it by the hair, and perseverance allowed me to
hold it fast” (V, 19; Bruno, Candle-bearer, 177, modi fied).

【19†Anne Eusterschulte, Henning Hufnagel, (eds.) - Turning Traditions Upside Down_ Rethinking Giordano Bruno's Enlightenment (2013, Central European University Press) - libgen.li.pdf†file-6Cn12XFPtP7xYX748jWeVM】

The citation comes in a highly specific context: discussing whether or
not the Moon is possessed of an atmosphere. Bruno was, in fact, one of the
first natural philosophers to discuss the Earth’s atmosphere at length,
describing it at one point, with his usual poetic verve, as a lung.13 Since
Bruno saw the universe itself as an infinite system of constantly recombin-
ing atoms, he concluded that the Moon, composed of the same elements as
Earth, should also exhibit the same basic structure, with continents, seas
and an enveloping mantle of air.14

Kircher’s Itinerarium Extaticum accepted most of these premises in one
form or another; the research by his contemporary Evangelista Torricelli
had gone far toward proving the existence of an atmosphere, and he him-
self was no less convinced than his angel Cosmiel that Earth and heaven
were made of the same basic stuff. Schott bolsters Kircher’s contentions
about the Moon’s atmosphere by naming some of the modern natural
philosophers who agree with him:

The question, then, is: Does the Moon have an atmosphere, just as
our Earth has one of its own? For many more recent scholars, after
the discovery of the telescope, have identified a layer surrounding
[the Moon] of air or a denser sort of aether, like Kepler, Maestlin,
Galileo, Longomontanus, Giordano Bruno, David Fabricius, Anto nio
Maria de Rheita, Mario Bettini, Langrenius, Wendelin, Johannes
Bapt ista Cysatus, and Scheiner; our Author [that is, Kircher] cited
these last two in his Preface, and agreed with them.15

Bruno, then, is set comfortably, if somewhat anachronistically, among a
group of modern astronomers (he died before the invention of the tele-
scope). He may not appear explicitly as the Giordano Bruno who pro-
claimed the infinite size of the universe, but no one who read the heretic’s
opinions on the lunar atmosphere could do so without also taking in his
larger ideas, ideas relevant, moreover, to the Iter Extaticum’s later discus-
sions of the size of the universe and panspermia rerum. In effect, both
Schott, by mentioning Bruno explicitly, and his Jesuit readers, by forbear-

A Catholic reader of Giordano Bruno in Counter-Reformation Rome

HUFNAGEL.nyomdai.imprimált.:... 2.4.2013 14:09 Oldal 229

230 Reflections of an Intellectual Burning

ing to object to Bruno as an indexed author, had decided, tacitly but firmly,
to prefer the free development of philosophical inquiry to the preservation
of doctrinal purity, and this was the same decision that Kircher himself had
made in writing his Itinerarium Extaticum in the first place.
Visible: 0% - 100%