The Philosophy of Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno (1548 – 1600) was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer. His cosmological theories went beyond the Copernican model in proposing that the Sun was essentially a star, and moreover, that the universe contained an infinite number of inhabited worlds populated by other intelligent beings. He was burned at the stake by civil authorities in 1600 after the Roman Inquisition found him guilty of heresy. After his death he gained considerable fame, particularly among 19th- and early 20th-century commentators who regarded him as a martyr for free thought and modern scientific ideas. His monadology influenced both Leibniz and Spinoza.
"The universe comprises all being in a totality; for nothing that exists is outside or beyond infinite being, as the latter has no outside or beyond." Bruno, De la Causa, Principio e Uno (1584)
"When we consider the being and substance of that universe in which we are immutably set, we shall discover that neither we ourselves nor any substance doth suffer death, for nothing is in fact diminished in its substance, but all things, wandering through infinite space, undergo change of aspect." Bruno, De l'infinito universo et mondi (1584)
"Divinity reveals herself in all things... everything has Divinity latent within itself. For she enfolds and imparts herself even unto the smallest beings, and from the smallest beings, according to their capacity. Without her presence nothing would have being, because she is the essence of the existence of the first unto the last being." Bruno, Spaccio de la bestia trionfante (1584) Here Bruon idenitifies God with Nature, and divinity as the life-force of the cosmos. "The single spirit doth simultaneously temper the whole together; this is the single soul of all things; all are filled with God." Bruno, De Immenso, (1591)
Bruno was celebrated by Robert Green Ingersoll as "The First Great Star — Herald of the Dawn — was Bruno... He was a pantheist ... He was a lover of Nature, — a reaction from the asceticism of the church. He was tired of the gloom of the monastery. He loved the fields, the woods, the streams. He said to his brother-priests: Come out of your cells, out of your dungeons: come into the air and light. Throw away your beads and your crosses. Gather flowers; mingle with your fellow-men; have wives and children; scatter the seeds of joy; throw away the thorns and nettles of your creeds; enjoy the perpetual miracle of life." in The Great Infidels (1881)
"The universe comprises all being in a totality; for nothing that exists is outside or beyond infinite being, as the latter has no outside or beyond." Bruno, De la Causa, Principio e Uno (1584)
"When we consider the being and substance of that universe in which we are immutably set, we shall discover that neither we ourselves nor any substance doth suffer death, for nothing is in fact diminished in its substance, but all things, wandering through infinite space, undergo change of aspect." Bruno, De l'infinito universo et mondi (1584)
"Divinity reveals herself in all things... everything has Divinity latent within itself. For she enfolds and imparts herself even unto the smallest beings, and from the smallest beings, according to their capacity. Without her presence nothing would have being, because she is the essence of the existence of the first unto the last being." Bruno, Spaccio de la bestia trionfante (1584) Here Bruon idenitifies God with Nature, and divinity as the life-force of the cosmos. "The single spirit doth simultaneously temper the whole together; this is the single soul of all things; all are filled with God." Bruno, De Immenso, (1591)
Bruno was celebrated by Robert Green Ingersoll as "The First Great Star — Herald of the Dawn — was Bruno... He was a pantheist ... He was a lover of Nature, — a reaction from the asceticism of the church. He was tired of the gloom of the monastery. He loved the fields, the woods, the streams. He said to his brother-priests: Come out of your cells, out of your dungeons: come into the air and light. Throw away your beads and your crosses. Gather flowers; mingle with your fellow-men; have wives and children; scatter the seeds of joy; throw away the thorns and nettles of your creeds; enjoy the perpetual miracle of life." in The Great Infidels (1881)