CAMPANELLA, TOMMASO (1568-1639), Italian Ren aissance philosopher, was born on Sept. 5, 1568, at Stilo in Calabria, and became a Dominican in 1582. A chance reading of the De Reruns Natura of Bernardino Telesio (d. 1588), which delighted him by its appeal to nature rather than to authority, led to his defence of Telesio in Philosopliia sensibus demonstrata (1591) . His own opposition to authority necessitated his depar ture from Naples for Rome and other Italian cities in the follow ing year. On his return in 1598, his implication in a plot to free Naples from Spanish tyranny culminated in his imprisonment for 28 years, during which time he composed his sonnets and prepared most of his philosophical works. When released, Campa nella found favour with the pope whose temporal power he had always supported ; but on the outbreak of a new conspiracy headed by his pupil, Tommaso Pignatelli, he was persuaded by the pope to go to Paris (1634) where he was well received by Cardinal Richelieu. While preparing a complete edition of his works, he died in Paris on May 21, 1639.
Campanella was well versed in the sciences of his day. In philosophy, he was, like Giordano Bruno (q.v.), a follower of Nicholas of Cusa and Telesio. He rejected Aristotelianism for a direct study of man and nature, but he was never entirely free from the mediaeval spirit. Accepting the authority of faith in the sphere of revealed theology, he held that philosophy should be based on experience. The prime fact in philosophy was to him, as to Augustine and Descartes, the certainty of individual con sciousness to which he assigned a threefold content—knowledge, will and love, the perfection of these powers, being true religion and union with God. The fact that consciousness contains the idea of God is the one sufficient proof of the divine existence, since the idea of the Infinite must be derived from the Infinite. God is a unity possessing the attributes of the rational soul in a pre-eminent manner. The more remote from God creatures are, the greater their degree of imperfection and not-being, which is characterized by ignorance, impotence and hatred. However, God is immanent in all finite natures and all, even inanimate beings, have a kind of sensibility. Of creatures, the highest are the angels and human beings, who, by virtue of their reason, are akin to the Divine. Next comes the mathematical world and then the corporeal world of animals, plants and inanimate things.
In natural philosophy, Campanella shakes off this neo-Platonic colouring and, following Telesio, advocates the experimental method and regards heat and cold as the dynamical principles in matter by the strife of which all life is explained. In political philosophy, he maintains the superiority of the Church to the State, and, therefore, the subjection of all temporal government to the pope as the representative of God. In the Civitas Solis of 1623 (Eng. trans. in Morley's "Universal Library"), Campa nella, obviously under Platonic inspiration, sketches an ideal state based on communism of goods and of wives, and ruled by phi losopher-priests who set forth wisdom, love and power as the highest virtues and command manual and military service from each citizen. Thus the ideal state is an artificial organism for the promotion of individual and collective good. On the view taken as to Campanella's alleged complicity in the conspiracy of depends the question as to whether this system was a philosoph ical dream, or a serious attempt to sketch a constitution for Naples in the event of her becoming a free city. The De Monarchia Hispanica of 1602 (Eng. trans. by E. Chilmead, contains an able account of contemporary politics, especially Spanish.