220 R E N A IS S A N CE Q U A R T ERLY

Miguel Ángel Granada, La reivindicación de la filosofía en Giordano Bruno.

Barcelona: Herder Editorial, 2005. 285 pp. index. append. €17.79. ISBN: 84–254–2384–8.

Miguel Angel Granada’s scholarship on the Italian philosopher Giordano

Bruno (1548–1600) concentrates on theology, political thought, natural philoso-
phy, and their interactions. His new book elaborates and builds on previous studies
(Giordano Bruno. Universo infinito, unión con Dios, perfección del hombre [2002]
and the introduction to the critical edition of G. Bruno, Eroici Furori/Des Fureurs
Héroïques, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1999), as it centers on the very concept of
“philosophy,” its social and intellectual function, and its relations with both the
classical and the scholastic tradition. The aim of the book is to shed light on the
“radical conflict” between Bruno’s militant ideas and those advocated by the
sixteenth-century followers of Aristotle and defenders of traditional natural phi-
losophy (the “pedants” in Bruno’s terminology). The underlying idea is that Bruno
sought to reclaim — the reivindicación in the title — the fundamental nature of
the philosopher against what he interpreted as a fraud perpetrated by Aristotle and
Scholasticism.
This main theme is developed in seven chapters, starting with Bruno’s self-
fashioning as a philosopher and the aims of his mission. Granada outlines Bruno’s
arguments against the idea that philosophy is subordinate to theology and, ulti-
mately, to religious authorities. Instead, Bruno envisaged a distinction between
religion and philosophy. Religion is conceived as moral and political law and its
role is to provide balance and social justice, while philosophy is concerned with
knowledge, truth, and virtue. In contrast, the confusion between religion and
philosophy leads to social and political instability, and on this point Bruno could
easily refer to the Lutheran reform, the Catholic reaction, the wars in France, and
the religious clashes in the rest of Europe. In this respect, a radical reform of
philosophy is shaped by a practical necessity deriving from the current affairs of
European society. Granada pays considerable attention to ancient and medieval
sources, some of them as unexpected as Socrates and Dante (chap. 3), but also —
and possibly more importantly — Jewish and Islamic philosophical traditions.
From thinkers such as al-Farabi, Averroes, and Maimonides, Bruno inherited the
concept of philosophy as independent from religion and theology, so that his
libertas philosophandi is envisaged as a reaction to the “confusion of the Christian
society” (23). In philosophy this state is represented by the “pedants,” Bruno’s
literary embodiment of the narrow-minded scholastic academics. To him, this
dogmatic defense of the Aristotelian vulgata represents the opposite of “true”
philosophy, which is conceived as the highest intellectual activity, the means for
human perfection and “platonic” happiness. This is the union with God, man’s
ultimate goal to be realized within God’s creature, the infinite nature as necessary
product of his omnipotence — or, as Granada puts it, “Bruno reclaims Philosophy
and argues that the infinite universe and its relation to a complete and necessary
explication of God paves the way to true moral principles” (215). These issues are
 R E V IE WS 221

further investigated in the following chapters on the basis of terminological and

intellectual continuities. Averroes’s doctrine of man, for instance, inspired Bruno’s
final attitude in front of the Inquisition; Lucretius’s De rerum natura and its
account of Epicurean physics and ethics are echoed by the literary self-portrait in
the Italian dialogue La cena delle ceneri and in the Latin poem De immenso, where
they are also linked to the “revolt” against scholastic Aristotelian cosmology (96–
106); Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed is used by Bruno to shape new relations
between philosophy and religion.
Granada offers a truly substantial and multifaceted portrait of Giordano
Bruno’s idea of “what is philosophy.” His book provides new and valuable infor-
mation about crucial issues of Renaissance and early modern philosophy,
presenting Bruno’s arguments on morality, cosmology, and political theology in
the light of a broader historical and intellectual context ranging from the Middle
Ages to the end of the early modern era. Finally, Granada’s attention to detail and
scholarly discussion adds greatly to the readability of the text and the reconstruc-
tion of Bruno’s philosophy.
DARIO TESSICINI
University College London