Thomas Campanella: Politisches Interesse und Philosophische Spekulation (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 99 This seems to belie somewhat his earlier and more optimistic conclusions. And I would hesitate to agree that a failure to establish statistically that others did not write the De dialectiea enables us to establish the more positive conclusion that Augustine wrote it. Obviously someone wrote it, but the positive attribution of Augustinianauthorship still eludes us, in my opinion, despite the ingenuity of Jackson's argumentations and statistical analyses. Finally, even if we yield to some of the persuations of Jackson's objective evidence, there is still the subjective evaluation to be considered. Personally, I found that the De dialectica just does not sound like Augustine. It even seems to lack some of the exasperating qualities one finds in the saint's writings. All of this still leaves the issue up in the air (I am sure Professor Jackson's subjective evaluation will be different from mine), but it should not detract from the very real value and significance of Professor Jackson's exciting essay. JOHNA. MOURANT Pennsylvania State University Thomas Campanella: Politisehes Interesse und Philosophische Spekulation. By Gisela Bock. (Tiibingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1974. Pp. 326. DM 76) When Tommaso Campanella closed his troubled life in the quiet of a Dominican monastery in 1639, he could hardly foresee the interest that his writings would stir up one day among scholars of different persuasions and nationalities, even though the year before his death he wrote to the Grand Duke Ferdinand II De' Medici from his Paris exile: "The centuries to come willjudge us, for the present century always crucifies its benefactors; but they will rise again on the third day or the third century." Boasting that he had been called to reform society, religion and all the sciences, and posing as a champion of freedom and justice against the social and political evils of his time, Campanella could not fail to include in his ambitious plans of reform a treatise on political science. His political writings are in effect so numerous and cover such a variety of subjects that it is no easy task to reduce them to a unified system. This difficulty is compounded by the fact that Campanella's political works, which were written years apart and under many adverse circumstances, often reflect his personal involvement in the issues at stake and the events he describes, so that the question may be raised as to the objectivity and sincerity of his views. It is against this background that Gisela Bock approaches Campanella's political thought and activity, which she tries to integrate with his philosophical speculation. Her study, as she states in the introduction, is essentially the doctoral dissertation she undertook in the summer of 1971 while studying at the Free University of Berlin and which she completed in Rome under the auspices of the German Historical Institute of that city. It opens with a survey of the interpretations of Campanella's life and work, where an analysis is made of the works of Amabile, Blanchet, Amerio, Di Napoli, Firpo, Corsano, Badaloni, and Femiano. Notably missing are the interpretations of men like Alessandro D'Ancona and Bertrando Spaventa among the olders, while only the first and minor work of the present writer is mentioned. (Evidently my latest and most comprehensive volume on Campanella was either unavailableto the author at the time of her writing or it became available only in time to be included in the bibliography, somewhat incompletely.) The survey is followed by a section on magic and society, which is understandable since magic plays a significantrole in Campanella's thought, although most authors would disagree with the central position assigned to it by Badaloni and some other writers. An analysis of the social conditions prevailing in southern Italy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and a comparison between the situation in that country and the rest of Europe concludes the introductory chapter, whose purpose is to show, among other things, Campanella 's main concern in his plans for a social and political reform. This idea of reform becomes more evident in the second chapter, where Campanella's political treatises are analyzed, beginningwith the Della Monarchia dei CristianL a fundamental work for the understandingof...