Pietro Pomponazzi

Background

Pietro Pomponazzi was born on September 16, 1462, in Mantua, Italy.

Education

Pietro Pomponazzi's education was completed at Padua, where he became a Doctor of Medicine in 1487. At the University of Padua, Pietro Pomponazzi studied natural philosophy under Nicoletto Vernia and Pietro Trapolino, metaphysics under Francesco Securo da Nardò, and medicine under Pietro Roccabonella.

Career

After obtaining his degree, Pomponazzi became an extraordinary professor of philosophy in 1488 and an ordinary professor in 1495. When war caused the university to close in 1509, he left Padua. After a short period at Ferrara, he became a professor of philosophy at the University of Bologna, where he taught from 1512 until his death.

While Pomponazzi taught philosophy at Padua, he began his commentary on Aristotle's De anima and had as a pupil the future cardinal and Catholic reformer Gasparo Contarini. The siege of Padua and the closing of the university in 1509 compelled Pomponazzi to move to Ferrara, where he resided for a year, finally settling in Bologna, where he remained until his death on May 18, 1525.

In his most celebrated work, the De immortalitate animae, Pomponazzi elaborated on Aristotle's conception of the soul as it had been interpreted and transmitted by the Alexandrians. In his concern for the new humanistic view of the worth and dignity of the individual soul, Pomponazzi came to oppose the prevailing impersonal and collectivist view of human nature held by the Averroist school. Through a series of subtle technical arguments he parted with the Averroist concept of a single, corporate, but transcendent and immortal Intellect - a concept within which there was no place for human individuality.

Pomponazzi's insistence on the soul's perishability was clearly in conflict with Catholic eschatology and moral theory - with the Church's contention that rewards and punishments for human actions are reserved for the hereafter. Pomponazzi substituted what he considered a higher ethic: the essential reward of virtue is virtue itself, and the real punishment of evil is evil itself. Pomponazzi avoided official condemnation for this view in his own lifetime, despite the great anger of Pope Leo X. However, he was compelled to make at least a partial retraction, which he did in two writings, the Apologia (1517) and the Defensorium (1519).

The rationalist and humanist bent of Pomponazzi's mind continued to exhibit itself in his later writings. In the De incantationibus and the De naturalium effectuum causis he sought natural explanations for the miracles described in the Bible. In the De fato he attempted to reconcile human freedom and Providence.

Achievements

• Pomponazzi's outstanding achievement was in becoming a leading representative of Renaissance Aristotelianism, which had developed at Italian universities after the close of the 13th century. His most known works were a treatise on the immortality of the soul, Tractatus de immortalitate animae (1516), Apologia (1518), and Defensorium (1519).
  
  A master of the Scholastic treatise, which formulates objections to its thesis and proceeds to overcome them, Pomponazzi was also the author of the lengthy treatises De incantationibus (“On Incantations”, 1556), which proposed a natural explanation of several reputedly miraculous phenomena, and De fato (“On Fate”, 1567), which discusses predestination and free will.

Works

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  • Traité de l'immortalité de l'âme Tractatus de immortalitate animae 1516
  • La Psicologia Di Pietro Pomponazzi 1876
  • Fato, il libero arbitrio 1487
  • Trattato sull'immortalità dell'anima 1805
  • Tutti i trattati peripatetici 1521
  • Tractatus de Immortalitate Animae 1516
  • Defensorium Petri Pomponatii Mantuani 1519
  • Defensorium montis pietatis contra figmenta omnia emule falsitatis 1497

Religion

In spite of this philosophical materialism, Pomponazzi declared his adherence to the Catholic faith and thus established the principle that religion and philosophy, faith and knowledge, may be diametrically opposed and yet coexist for the same thinker.

Views

Pomponazzi contended that the immortality of the individual soul cannot be demonstrated on the basis of Aristotle or of reason, but must be accepted as an article of faith. In developing this view, he maintained that moral action is the only proper goal of human life. Appealing to the Stoic philosophers, rather than to Aristotle, he declared that virtue is its own reward and vice its own punishment. In Pomponazzi’s typically Humanist view, man’s special dignity consists in his moral virtue.

Connections

Pietro Pomponazzi was married three times and had two children.

teacher:

Nicoletto Vernia

circa 1420 – 1499, an Italian Averroist philosopher, at the University of Padua.

teacher:

Pietro Trapolino

teacher:

Francesco Securo da Nardò

circa 1420– 1489

References

• The Philosophy and Psychology of Pietro Pomponazzi
  2017
• Dictionary of Scientific Biography Volume 11
  1975
• Pietro Pomponazzi On Incantations
  2010
• Pietro Pomponazzi. Tradizione E Dissenso
  2010
• Pietro Pomponazzi: radical philosopher of the Renaissance
  1986
• Pietro Pomponazzi entre traditions et innovations
  2009
• La Philosophie de Pietro Pomponazzi: PIC de la Mirandole Et La Critique de l'Astrologie
  1986
• Pietro Pomponazzi: Studi Storici su la Scuola Bolognese e Padovana, del Secolo XVI, con Molti Documenti Inediti
  2017