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Pietro Pomponazzi

1462–1525

A first way ina deliberate simplification – the portrait says more

Reason cannot prove that the soul survives death; that is a matter of faith – and virtue should be practised for its own sake anyway.

Placement

Renaissance & Humanism · Southern Europe · Mind & Consciousness, Religion, Metaphysics

Paduan Aristotelian: natural reason cannot prove the immortality of the soul – it is a matter of faith alone.

Key ideas

  • Mortality of the soul by natural reason
  • Virtue as its own reward
  • Natural explanation of wonders

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Influence

Influenced by 1

  • Aristotle

    influenced by

    Pomponazzi asked what Aristotle’s philosophy, read on its own terms, says about the soul, and concluded that it cannot prove immortality (De immortalitate animae, 1516). P. Pomponazzi, Tractatus de immortalitate animae (1516); SEP “Pietro Pomponazzi”

    Evidence: AI draft

    Aristotle › 384–322 BCE

Criticism

Criticizes 2

  • Ibn Rushd (Averroes)

    criticised

    Pomponazzi rejected Averroes’ single intellect for all humans as contrary to Aristotle and to experience, concluding that natural reason shows the soul to be mortal (1516). P. Pomponazzi, Tractatus de immortalitate animae (1516); SEP “Pietro Pomponazzi”

    Evidence: AI draft

    Ibn Rushd (Averroes) › 1126–1198

  • Thomas Aquinas

    criticised

    Pomponazzi argued that Aquinas’ proof of the soul’s immortality from Aristotle fails, since on Aristotelian principles the human intellect always needs the body (De immortalitate animae, 1516). P. Pomponazzi, Tractatus de immortalitate animae (1516); SEP “Pietro Pomponazzi”

    Evidence: AI draft

    Thomas Aquinas › c. 1225–1274

Works

Position

Pomponazzi asked what Aristotle’s philosophy, read on its own terms, says about the soul. Since the human intellect never thinks without images drawn from the senses, it depends on the body and, by natural reason, perishes with it. Immortality cannot be proved philosophically; it is held by faith alone, which he professed to accept. Nor does morality need rewards in an afterlife: virtue is its own reward, vice its own punishment. In later writings he explained apparent miracles and magic through natural causes and wrestled with fate and free will. His separation of philosophical argument from religious doctrine made him a central figure of Renaissance naturalism.

Life & context

Pietro Pomponazzi was born in Mantua in 1462, studied philosophy and medicine at Padua and taught there, then in Ferrara and from 1511 in Bologna. His treatise on the immortality of the soul (1516) caused a storm: it was publicly burned in Venice and attacked by theologians, but he kept his chair, protected by powerful patrons such as Cardinal Pietro Bembo. He died in Bologna in 1525.

Further main works

  • Apology (1518)
  • On Incantations (1520, publ. 1556)
  • On Fate, Free Will and Predestination (1520, publ. 1567)

Sources: Wikipedia · Wikidata

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