Saggi sul pensiero inedito di Pietro Pomponazzi (review)

88 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY have taken his model from Aristotle's Protrepticus. However, no traces of a dialogue have been found in any of the recovered fragments. Schneeweiss gives good reasons for considering Walzer, fragment 5 b (first part=Dtiring B 52) to be an objection from opponents to any philosophy 9 but presented by Aristotle himself. Thus, an impressive contrast is found which introduces the famous argument that nobody can avoid philosophizing . Schneeweiss develops the structure of the Protrepticus on the basis of Gaiser's study; it is to be tripartite: epideixis, apelenxis and a final comprehensive epideixis; every subdivision is broken down into the three parts of a syllogism (pp. 231-256). Schneeweiss is in accordance with Dtiring's reconstruction in so far as beginning and end are concerned, but everything in between is differently arranged. Schneeweiss' proposed arrangement is worthy of meticulous discussion; for, as Schneeweiss makes evident on pages 272-280 (see also 28 f.), it seems that not only did antiquity presuppose the general knowledge of Aristotle's philosophy as embodied in his exoteric writings, but also, Aristotle himself. What a riddle of history that Plato's exoteric writings have been preserved while his esoteric teachings have disappeared, whereas with Aristotle the case is reversed! EKKEHARD MUEHLENBERG School of Theology at Claremont, California Saggi sul pensiero inedito di Pietro Pomponazzi. By Antonino Poppi. (Padova: Editrice Antenore, 1970. Pp. 197) It is well known or, at least, it is generally accepted by the historians of philosophy from Copleston to Sciacca, from Fiorentino to Randall, that Pomponazzi was one of the creators of modern thought: a world which starts with the Italian Humanism and which still permeates all the aspects of our daily lives. And we may add that numerous anthologies portray Pomponazzi as the thinker who, in interpreting Aristotle in a pantheistic way, inaugurates the autonomy or independence of human thought. Against the Thomistic view of Aristotle, Pomponazzi has the courage and daring to examine Aristotle outside the framework of the Roman Catholic Church. This view is not shared by Professor Poppi. According to him, if we examine the unpublished writings of Pomponazzi, we will see a new Pomponazzi: a medieval man and not a modern man in the sense that his writings lack the systematic quality of a Bruno or of a Telesio. And to the claim that Pomponazzi is the precursor of the modern philosophical rationalism Poppi rebuts that this claim is completely false. It is a claim which is the biased product of the positivistic or materialistic historians of philosophy during the nineteenth century and it is not the effect of a true examination of Pomponazzi 's writings. And even Pomponazzi's famous work De immortalitate animae, according to Poppi, has a true value not in the philosophical sense of clarifying or deepening the issue of the essence of the soul but in that of being a historical document of the times: the enormous interest in the topic of the immortality or mortality of the soul. Poppi insists on this view again and again. Pomponazzi is not able to go beyond the Aristotelian concepts of matter and form, according to Poppi and "1o stesso suo pi~ celebre trattato, il De immortalitate animae, non si pub dire che brilli n~ per eccezionale pregio del discorso razionate rigorosamente dimostrato n~, tanto meno, per 0 Schneeweiss makes a strong point for replacing "mathematics" by "philosophy?' BOOK REVIEWS 89 una eccezionale perizia filologica.., la lama di quel rapido e appassionato opuscolo . . . legata alle implicazioni religiose . . . mettendo in subbuglio lo smarrito stuolo di filosofi e teologi cristiani del momento" (p. 18). I don't really share Poppi's view. It seems to me that Pomponazzi is still one of the precursors of modern thought, as Petrarch is the harbinger of the romantic poetry or Giotto of modern painting. What is really important, I think, is not only the systematic quality or the depth of a thinker but also his attitude. This is very true in the case of Pomponazzi. His dissatisfaction with the Thomistic view of the soul and his continuous search for new ways, instead of following the traditional path, is an essential expression of modernity. ANGELO...