'History has not yet registered a stable appraisal for Giordano Bruno' writes Giorgio de Santillana in The Age of Adventure. Perceptions of Bruno were volatile enough in his lifetime; many have remained polarized to this day. Radoslav Tsanoff calls Bruno 'the outstanding philosopher of the Renaissance,' and Harold Hoffding cites Bruno's work as 'the greatest philosophical thought-structure executed by the Renaissance.' Yet Bertrand Russell despairs of crediting Bruno with philosophy at all: 'There were fruitful intuitions lost in that disorder, but they had not yet reached the point of precision at which philosophy begins.' The chasm of opinion dividing Bruno, even to this day, is one of the many improbables of this turbulent and exultant figure.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Critics remain deeply divided on how to evaluate Giordano Bruno’s contribution to philosophy.
- In plain terms
- Scholars cannot agree on whether Bruno was a great philosopher or not.
- What can you take from it?
- Historical figures can polarize opinion long after their deaths.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- What makes a philosopher great?
- How do we measure historical impact?
Another view
The quote lists specific scholars but offers no context for why their views diverge so sharply.
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Permalink to quote #58 In 1584, twenty-five years before Galileo lifted a telescope, Bruno took the Copernican hypothesis to the outrageous new conclusion that the sun is merely one …
Permalink to quote #60 He is one martyr whose name should lead all the rest. He was not a mere religious sectarian who was caught up in the psychology of some mob hysteria. He was a …
Permalink to quote #57
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