Giordano Bruno and the Egyptian Philosophy

Giordano Bruno

The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast

Lo Spaccio de la bestia trionfante

(1584)

Introduction

by Arthur D. Imerti

III - THE HERETICAL PREMISES OF Lo Spaccio, THEIR RELIGIOUS, SOCIAL; AND POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS

Bruno’s opening words to Sidney in the “Epistola explicatoria” of Lo spaccio exhort his readers to be guided by the “intellectual sun,” symbolic of reason, “the teacher of the senses, the father of substances, the author of life.” The philosopher admonishes:

“Cieco chi non vede il sole, stolto chi nol conosce, ingrato chi nol ringrazia. .. .”

“He is blind who does not see the sun, foolish who does not recognize it, ungrateful who is not thankful unto it..."

He who had encountered the opposition of the inquisitorial authorities in Italy, the jeers of his students at Toulouse, and the scepticism of his colleagues at Oxford had no illusions as to the reception his ideas would be given by what he calls the multitude of “foolish, perverse, and wicked” pedants who, “under their severe brows and subdued countenances, their profuse beards and magisterial and grave togas, studiously, to universal harm, contain ignorance no less despicable than haughty, and no less pernicious than the most celebrated ribaldry.” The philosopher is deeply confident, however, that Lo spaccio will be received with favor by men of the caliber of the erudite, open-minded, and generous Sir Philip Sidney, among whom “works and heroic effects will not be believed to be fruits of no value and vain.”

Bruno, dedicating to his friend and benefactor “the numbered and arranged seeds of his moral philosophy,” indicates that Lo spaccio is not his definitive ethical work,” although there are certain truths therein expressed, which he insists must be defended against the assaults of “the wrinkles and the brows of the hypocrites.” He affirms that his reason for writing these dialogues is not to disapprove of “that which commonly is esteemed worthy of being approved by all wise and good men,” but, rather, to reprove the contrary. He expresses the hope “that there be not anyone of so gross a mind, and so malicious a spirit,” that he may conclude that what is written in Lo spaccio is said by him in a definitive manner. Determined that no one should say that he is taking “aim at the truth,” and hurling stones “against the honest, the useful, the natural, and, consequently, the divine,” the philosopher voices the hope that his readers will examine and weigh all the evidence objectively before pronouncing judgment.

Bruno’s concept of truth is the source of the most heretical premises contained in Lo spaccio. Indeed, the eternal search for truth is the very foundation of the ethical system implicit in the work. Few thinkers have possessed Bruno’s fanatical devotion to her; few have been willing to die in her cause. The following passage in Lo spaccio, uttered by Saulino, with its ardent allusions to truth, is strongly autobiographical:

"Rather, the more and more she is impugned, the more and more she is resuscitated and grows. Without a defender and protector, she defends herself; and yet she loves the company of a few wise men. She hates the multitude, does not show herself before those who do not seek her for her own sake, and does not wish to be declared to those who do not humbly expose themselves to her, or to all those who fraudulently seek her; and therefore she dwells most high, whither all gaze, and few see."

Bruno equates truth with Divinity itself, declaring that she is “the divinity and the sincerity, goodness and beauty, of things,” the unity and goodness which preside over all things. As cause and principle, she is before all things; as substance, she is in all things. Truth, declares the philosopher, is “ideal, natural, and notional”; or, in other terms, “metaphysics, physics, and logic.”

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An examination of Bruno’s sources, and the conclusions the philosopher draws from them, will aid us in identifying and understanding the “certain truths” he wishes to defend; and we shall observe that although as expressed in Lo spaccio, they may indeed at times seem fragmentary and indefinitive, the tone in which they are stated leaves little doubt as to their heretical meaning. Thus, the Roman inquisitors could not help but grasp the significance of the heretical religious philosophy that lends the work its controversial nature. Berti observes that although Lo spaccio seems to be, on the surface, an indictment of paganism, it is in effect “the proclamation of natural religion and the negation of all positive religions.”

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In Lo spaccio Bruno reveals his strong attraction to the mysteries of the Egyptian religion, his curiosity in that cult having been aroused by his reading of the Hermetic writings of Jamblichus and of Lucius Apuleius.”

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Bruno maintains that Moses, “who left the court of Pharaoh, learned in all the sciences of the Egyptians,” imparted their knowledge to the Jews; and he implies that the evolution of Jewish monotheism, with its emphasis on a personal God, destroyed the concept of the Deity as immanent principle, embodied in the natural religion of the Egyptians.

In his interpretation of the Old Testament Bruno’s views clash with both Christian and Jewish teachings. He regards its stories as fables, or metaphorical representations of history, passed on from the Egyptians to the Babylonians and then to the Hebrews. He adduces as evidence of his premise the “metaphor of the raven,” which, he declares, was “first found and developed in Egypt and then taken by the Hebrews, through whom this knowledge was transmitted from Babylonia, in the form of a story. . . .”

Bruno is struck by the variations of the Osiris myth in the ancient Mediterranean civilizations, to which he makes a brief allusion.** However, he specifically points out analogies between such Greek myths as that of Apollo and the Raven and the biblical Noah and the Raven, between that of Deucalion and Noah, and between that of Cetus and Jonah and the Whale. The source of the myths shared by the Greeks with the Hebrews, he insists, is not Hebrew but Egyptian. Egypt, indeed, is for Bruno the source of all the myths and fables of the Mediterranean world, all being poetical representations of events dating back to the dawn of Western civilization.

Historically, Egypt represents for Bruno the cradle of Western religion. The Egyptian cult, with its worship of the living effects of nature, seems to come closest to his concept of natural religion. The following quotation from Iamblichus, which in the form of a prophecy laments the disappearance of the natural religion of the Egyptians and the dire effect this loss will have upon humanity, prognosticates a return to the religion of nature; and Bruno’s employment of this passage in Lo spaccio is most significant:

"Do you not know, oh Asclepius, that Egypt is the image of heaven or, better said, the colony of all things that are governed and practiced in heaven? To speak the truth, our land is the temple of the world. But woe is me! The time will come when Egypt will appear to have been in vain the religious cultivator of divinity, because divinity, remigrating to heaven, will leave Egypt deserted. And this seat of divinity will remain widowed of every religion, having been deprived of the presence of the gods. . . .

Oh Egypt, oh Egypt! Of your religions there will remain only the fables, still incredible to future generations, to whom there will be nothing else that may narrate your pious deeds save the letters sculptured on stones. . . .

Shadows will be placed before light, death will be judged to be more useful than life, no one will raise his eyes toward heaven. The religious man will be considered insane, the impious man will be considered prudent, the furious man, strong, the most wicked man, good. And believe me, capital punishment will still be prescribed for him who will apply himself to the religion of the mind. ...

Only pernicious angels will remain, who, mingling with men, will force upon the wretched ones every audacious evil as if it were justice, giving material for wars, rapines, frauds, and all other things contrary to the soul and to natural justice. And this will be the old age and the disorder and irreligion of the world.

But do not doubt, Asclepius, for after these things have occurred, the lord and father God, governor of the world, the omnipotent provider, by a deluge of water or of fire, of diseases or of pestilences or of other ministers of his compassionate justice, will doubtlessly then put an end to such a blot, recalling the world to its ancient countenance."

In the words of Isis conveyed by Sophia, Bruno contends that despite the fact that it is true that the Egyptians resorted to some abusive practices in their natural religion, they nevertheless worshiped “the Deity, one and simple and absolute in itself, multiform

and omniform in all things”; and therefore, he arrives at the conclusion that their cult was far superior to the anthropomorphic polytheism of the Greeks.

A careful study of Lo spaccio, of De la causa and of De l’infinito would seem to confirm the opinion, held by some scholars, that Bruno was not only a true pantheist but also the direct ancestor of Spinoza. The universe as viewed by both Bruno and Spinoza is governed by an immanent Deity, who is absolute principle; but whereas Spinoza conceives of a static, determined universe, which is merely “the statue of God,” Bruno conceives of one containing both necessity and freedom.

Certainly the most heretical aspect of Bruno’s philosophy in Lo spaccio is his concept of a religion of nature, derived from his doctrine of “immanence.” In developing his concept of “immanence,” Bruno establishes the premise that “animals and plants are living effects of Nature,” which, he declares, is “nothing else but God in things,” or, expressed in other terms, “natura est deus in rebus.” Thus, according to Bruno, the universe is an emanation of the Deity within it. Referring to Bruno’s universe, Spaventa declares that it is not “the

tomb of dead divinity,” but rather “the seat of living divinity .. the true and only life of God.”

Bruno’s Deity, since he is the substance of all things, cannot limit or divorce himself from his infinite universe; for, according to Cassirer, in Bruno’s universe, “the one and infinite substance cannot help but reveal itself to itself, in an infinity of effects.” Consequently, potency and act coincide in the Deity; and he is one and the same with the reality that emanates from him. Bruno believes that Divinity, which is latent in nature, “working and glowing differently in different subjects . . . through diverse physical forms in certain arrangements . . . succeeds in making them participants. . . in her being, in her life and intellect.” He alludes to the “ladder of Nature . . . by which Divinity descends even to the lowest things,” just as all rational beings “by means of a life, resplendent in natural things,” rise “to the life which presides over them.”

From Bruno’s philosophy of nature is derived his philosophy of knowledge. Since multiform nature in which all opposites coincide is, according to him, the infinite emanation of a Deity who is absolute reason, she (nature) is the teacher of all rational beings. The inference that we may draw from Lo spaccio is that the more deeply man penetrates into the laws of nature, by virtue of his intellect, the closer will he come to an understanding of the unity that exists between him and the immanent principle. For in Bruno’s doctrine, as Cassirer maintains, the “intellect and all its determinations are a representation and so to speak a symbolic imitation of the same original principle from whose foundation nature has its origin.” It is, then, through purely intellectual processes, rather than through a mystical experience, that rational beings can become one with God. Upon this point Gentile observes:

The knowledge of divinity as championed by Bruno is not ecstasy, or immediate union, although it is indeed union that it has as its end, whereupon the spirit, as he says, “becomes a god upon intellectual contact with that object, deity.” It is a rational process, a discourse of the intellect, a true and appropriate philosophy.

Bruno scoffs at the classical myth of the Golden Age, so often used as a theme by the writers of the Renaissance; for he, like Hegel, concluded that man living in that legendary period of “peace and plenty” was little more than beast.” He firmly believes that man, the “artisan and efficient of God, sacred by his very humanity,” could reproduce in society the unity and harmony established in the universe by its immanent, rational principle.

Lo spaccio envisages a society in which the natural religion of the Egyptians, in its purest sense, and the speculative intellect of the Greeks would coincide in a sociopolitical structure patterned after that of the Roman Republic. The source of the state, which Bruno conceives of as “an ethical substance,” is God, “the absolute reality, or reality which is the principle of all realities.” The state envisaged by the philosopher would be one containing a unity of law and religion, rather than a separation of “the divine from law and civil life.”

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