Pietro Pomponazzi

“ We have also to note on the other hand the contrast which Pomponazzi drew, and which was never absent from his mind, between the mode of intelligence observed in man and that which was supposed to characterise a superior order of thinking beings. The human mind was constantly regarded by him in the light of a comparison with those Intelligences which filled so large a place in the world of mediaeval thought, and which, although they were by no means a primary interest to Pomponazzi, yet occupied always the background of his theory. ”

“ It was his belief in the transcendent worth of reason which led him to lay such stress on the irrational elements in human life and the limitations of intelligence in man. He was compelled to bring this side of the case into clear relief, in order to set man, as he believed, in his true position. Possessing such a power of thought, Pomponazzi seems to have reasoned, man must possess it subject to qualifications in its degree and hindrances to its full exercise, if he is to remain in that " middle place " which it is his nature to occupy. ”

“ The great reason why Pomponazzi brings wonders and magic within the scope of the astral influences is just that universal nature is subject to those influences. Thus the whole motive and implication of this reference in the case of the marvellous is that those exceptional phenomena are to be viewed according to the analogy of nature generally. If, his argument is, the celestial powers uphold and direct the whole frame of nature, why should they not likewise be supposed to govern these particular events? Unusual these events may be; it may lie beyond our power to trace their causes in detail ”

“ It is in the spirit of Aristotle that Pomponazzi considers human intelligence, which is the real subject of his interest and of his personal contribution to thought. He finds by a positive analysis that the soul of man is possessed of intelligence; and the soul is known to us in body, is never manifested to us except in body, and is indeed but the highest aspect and true being of that body. ”

“ Accordingly that " part " of the sensitive soul which gives the consciousness in question is more than a merely physical power. In sensus communis Pomponazzi arrives at the first of those stages by which in his psychology he bridges the distance between sense and " reason " in the strict meaning of abstraction. Already in the simplest act of sensation, in the consciousness which accompanies every perception, he discovers the first of the intermediate powers. ”

“ Pomponazzi answers all this in the bold way which is characteristic of him. He frankly admits the alleged inequalities in the distribution of outward rewards and punishments. Nevertheless he affirms that no good action goes unrewarded and no evil action unpunished, in this life. He does so on the simple ground that virtue is its own reward and vice its own sufficient punishment. ”

“ He aimed at diminishing the distance between attributes which were supposed to be the distinguishing property of man, alone among all mundane existences, and those capacities which were ascribed to his physical nature or allowed to be shared in, to a greater or less degree, by lower animals. The express design of Pomponazzi was of course to shew that the intermediate nature of man meant an inseparable relation in him between body and soul, and thus his mortality. ”

“ We find accordingly in Pomponazzi a curious balancing of the higher against the lower attributes of human nature, and comparison of the spiritual with the sensual aspects of human life, in order to discover which bulks more largely or outweighs the other in the scale. He indulges in such considerations as that the transcendent and immaterial powers in man are few intellect and will ”

“ But he deals most fully with the argument against him in the most general form namely as concerning the possibility of man's attaining in this life the end of his being. He proposes such a view of the nature and end of man, and of the possibilities (however limited) of the present life, as shall permit man on earth to reach a certain relative perfection that perfection, Pomponazzi would say, which is appropriate to his condition and place in the universe and to attain a measure of real happiness. ”

“ It is an accident of intellect qua intellect to be in matter," and, " Intellect does not need matter or an organ as its substrate: wherefore it seems to come, as it were, from without, and since in so operating it is not limited or in time, in this reference it seems to be eternal 1 ."
Actually, he says, it is not eternal ("quanquam re vera non sit aeternus") . But it thus appears as Pomponazzi's view of the soul of man, that as possessed of intelligence ("qua intelligit," "qua intellectus est") its being is constituted by eternal, timeless Reason. ”

“ The language which Pomponazzi uses in constantly speaking of the subjectum of human thought shews the influence of Averroist discussions upon his mind. The question of the nature of human thought, as it presented itself to him, was the question of what should be considered to be the subjectum or metaphysical substrate of intelligence in man; and his characteristic position was that, while the human mind depends on matter and on a corporeal instrument for the objects of its thought, it does not depend on matter subjective. ”

“ It is not true then, Pomponazzi maintains, that men miss their end in this life. He meets the allegation by two suggestions which are perhaps the most original ideas to which his mind gave birth. He offers a twofold correction of the accepted ideas about a man's end. In the first place, he suggests the conception of the human race as an organism, in which the different parts combine to promote a common end. Individual men may come to little, or do little in this world; yet they may fill each a place in the common life and do each a part in the common work of the whole human race. ”

“ Such is Pomponazzi's argument 2 .
Since already in answer to Averroes he had devoted more time to the "separability" of the intellectual soul than to its unity, he passes rapidly over the second dualistic theory of human nature, which he associates with the name of Plato, and which differs from the former only in assigning a separate intellectual soul to each individual man 3 . Such a conception, however, which he represents by the formula 4 " Man is soul that uses a body," he declares to be completely opposed to the Aristotelian doctrine of forma corporis. ”

“ While largely influenced by Alexander, he presented that commentator’s doctrine of the soul with a difference of which he may himself have been more or less unconscious, but which is of material consequence to the comparison of ancient and modern thought. Pomponazzi’s doctrine of man’s participation in intelligence is something quite different from Alexander’s doctrine of Divine “assistance”—of the νοϋς ποιητικός in a theological sense, acting from without upon the human soul: Pomponazzi is less dualistic and theological, more positive and humanistic than Alexander. ”

“ In the second place Pomponazzi expounds the manner in which according to this theory the individual does come into apprehension that is, indirectly, by reflection, and through the general conceptions. The consequence of this is that the individual in itself is not apprehended (as indeed the isolated and abstract "individual" is not) : which is expressed in scholastic language by saying that it is known, not per se, but per accidens*.
1 "Si singulare recipitur in intellects, ad quid esset ponendus intellectus agens?" Ibid.
2 "Si intellectus haberet conceptus singulares ipsorum singularium." ”

“ It is not the superstitions of Pomponazzi, however, that are interesting, but the drift and tendency of his thought and a sort of unconscious logic in it. His formula is that thought in man knows the singular and the universal. ”

“ Meanwhile Pomponazzi had broken fresh ground. He had gone back to Aristotle; and the master's profound and simple doctrine of man began once more to exercise its native force upon philosophy. Aristotle's conception of soul and body may be said to have been a perennial fountain of vivifying influence in human thought. Every time that men have caught sight of his meaning, even in partial glimpses, it has been the occasion of a new departure ”

“ The passage 2 referred to discusses the Quaestiones, "Whether the intellect thinks itself by means of itself or by means of another 3 , and, " Whether the intellect thinks its own operations 4 ." Pomponazzi finds in the first place that thought does think itself: "About the fact itself there is no doubt, because we have experience of it in our own case: but there is doubt as to the means by which intellect thinks itself 5 ." But he says that it does so not by a presentation of thought as such, but on the occasion of the presentation of some other object of thought. ”

“ It will be generally agreed that, in rejecting the superhuman intellectual principle of Averroes, and what may fairly be called the extra- physical intellectual principle (anima intellectivd) of St Thomas, represented as a "separate form" or spiritual substance, Pomponazzi came nearer to the original doctrine of Aristotle than either of those thinkers. He attributed reason to the human soul as such, and to that soul as embodied, or in its observed character of forma corporis ”

“ The universal cannot be prior to the particular apprehension, because there is no general conception which does not find its material in a particular experience. The particular cannot be prior to the universal, because there is no apprehension of a particular object which is not a general conception of it an apprehension of it, as we should say, in some relation. And so we find Pomponazzi saying " It is said that the intellect apprehends simultaneously the universal and the particular 4 ." ”

“ Non esse in organo, sive subjective eo non indigere may, says Pomponazzi, have either of these meanings; and while he does not hold the existence of human intelligence apart from body, he yet is not shut up to its physical subsistence in body 1 . ”

“ On the one hand, that is to say, Pomponazzi affirms the embodiment of human intelligence, on the other the difference between thought and all that is physical. All the operations of the human mind, he constantly maintains, take place through the apprehension of physical objects by the bodily senses; and he never appears concerned to establish an activity of human thought, even in its highest functions of self-consciousness or the apprehension of universal ideas, that is unaccompanied by bodily organisation. ”

“ Thus the Intelligences, while all alike belonging to the superior order, were relatively subordinate to the Divine intelligence, besides having a gradation among themselves. Man, next, was essentially the possessor of diverse powers, graduated in excellence, and in their approximation to the immaterial and enduring. Among lower creatures finally we find Pomponazzi signalising those which are transitional and intermediate in their character, such as the sponge, which is intermediate between the plant and the animal, or the ape, which bridges the gulf between man and brute 2 ”

“ Animus humanus etsi improprie dicatur immortalis, quia vere mortalis est, participat tamen de proprietatibus immortalitatis; cum universale cognoscat, tametsi ejusmodi cognitio valde tennis et obscura sit." Op. cit. xn. p. 90.
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man so high as to be almost supernatural. The possession of it almost raised man to an equality with God and the celestial Intelligences. In words, Pomponazzi constantly seems to labour to belittle man. But it is not a paradox to say that his sense of man's littleness was stimulated by his fundamental conviction of man's greatness. ”

“ The accounts given of Pomponazzi in the Histories of Philosophy have all a strong family likeness; from Briacker downwards, through Tennemann, Ritter, to more modern writers, the same material is employed and the same general view taken. The only works giving evidence of a fresh and thorough study are those of Florentine and Ferri already referred to, of which the second is much the better. ”

“ Man is the microcosm 1 . The various grades of existence are reflected, are repeated, in man. He participates in immaterial intelligence. He partakes also of corporeal existence. Avoiding the fiction of separate souls, Pomponazzi lays it down that the human soul is vegetative, is sensitive, is intellectual 2 . Thus is man the microcosm, embodying the grades of existence. The powers lower than the intellectual are themselves graduated 3 . For example, the vis cogitativa, among the vires sensitivae, stands next to the intellect 4 , as human intellect itself stands next to the superior Powers 5 . ”

“ Thus when the Averroists, in order to bring their hypothesis of anima intellectiva into relation to human knowledge, have explained that intelligence had one operation secundum se, and another quoad nos the former in metaphysical separation from, the other in dependence upon, the body Pomponazzi replies: "It seems absurd to say that the intellectual soul, which is numerically a single faculty, has two distinct modes of intellection one that depends on body and also one that is independent of it for thus it seems to have two beings.... ”

“ For the most part, Pomponazzi is hampered by the traditional separation of the intellectual from the sensitive powers. We shall find him, however, gradually and by a dialectical process arriving at the conception that there is no real difference between the intellectio and the species intelligibilis; that what intellect, by its agency, adds to the material presented by the lower powers is not a nova species but the intellectio itself as such the fact of intellectual apprehension. ”