Pietro Pomponazzi’s Theory of Knowledge

Naturalisation of the Human Mind in Late Aristotelian Thought

The radical Peripatetic thinker Pietro Pomponazzi (1462-1525) develops in his work De immortalitate (1516) a rigorously hylemorphistic interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of the soul entailing a comprehensive naturalised conception of the human mind, according to which the human rational soul only gradually differs from the corporeal vegetative and sensitive functions. Such a naturalisation of the Aristotelian anthropology, which does not allow for an essential differentiation between man and animals, also has relevant implications for a theory of knowledge, as it entails a critique and revision of the models in terms of which Scholastic thinkers had explained the genesis and intentionality of the contents of knowledge. These transformations can be more completely recognised if we consider not only De immortalitate and Pomponazzi’s other printed works, but also the lectures (commentaries) on Aristotle’s De anima which our author delivered as a professor of natural philosophy in Padua and Bologna and are still partially available as reportationes.

Therefore, this research project intends to systematically reconstruct and discuss Pomponazzi’s doctrine of knowledge, primarily with respect to his later lectures on De anima (1514-1515 and 1519-1520) which are also planned to be partially edited. In doing so, par-ticularly four aspects will have to be considered:

First, Pomponazzi’s nominalistic approach and his rejection of Aristotelian essentialism are to be explored. Indeed, the author seems to fundamentally question the possibility of knowing essential forms as well as to understand the cognitive function of human intellect rather in the sense of conceptual generalisation.

Second, Pomponazzi’s theory of sense perception is to be analysed with respect to the leading question whether his rejection of an essentialistic epistemology is also connected with a questioning of the Aristotelian postulate according to which sense perception is in principle reliable. Hence, the question is: are there phenomenalistic components in Pomponazzi’s theory of sense perception?

Third, we have to precisely investigate how Pomponazzi conceives the role of the intellect. Indeed, he states a fundamental dependence of intellectual knowledge on imagination; how is this to be understood? What function does he attribute to the species intelligibilis? How does he interpret the distinction between potential and active intellect? In answering these questions we aim at illustrating the representational character of Pomponazzi’s theory of intellect.

Finally, the cognitive function of imagination is to be explored. In Pomponazzi’s theory of knowledge, phantasia plays a more important role than in older scholastic Aristotelianism. Since according to him, the production of imaginations (phantasmata) is responsible for selecting and combining the qualitative aspects through which an object can be represented and reidentified.

The systematic investigation of these topics and of the corresponding texts is intended to be accompanied by an examination of the sources, particularly those which Pomponazzi critically discussed (late ancient commentators, Averroes and late Averroists, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus).