648 R EN AI S S A N C E QU A RT E R L Y VOLUME LXX, NO.

Giordano Bruno Teaches Aristotle. Paul Richard Blum.

Trans. Peter Henneveld. Studia Classica et Mediaevalia 12. Nordhausen: Verlag
Traugott Bautz, 2016. 296 pp. €60.

Blum’s work is based on two methodological assumptions: Bruno’s critical use of the
philosophical tradition and his capacity to distinguish clearly between Aristotle and
his later followers, including the Scholastic tradition. In the 1980 foreword (of the
original Aristoteles bei Giordano Bruno, Studien zur philosophischen Rezeption [1980],
of which this is a translation), Blum states that it has become a commonplace to stress
that Giordano Bruno’s works are inundated with views, statements, and ideas taken
from earlier authors. Thus, reading Bruno’s works critically runs the risk of reducing
his intellectual work to spheres of influence or of atomizing through identifying the
sources. Blum, by contrast, argues that Bruno deliberately used the philosophers
of the past for the sake of developing his own original positions. Blum further
underlines that the focus of his study is Aristotle, as he intends to show that Bruno
had indeed a very precise knowledge of Aristotle’s works, and his philosophy can be
presented as an attempt to overcome Aristotelian aporetic solutions. Blum structures
Bruno’s reception of Aristotle according to thematic groups: logic (in particular his
paraphrase of Topics), cosmology, principles of nature, and the relation between
unity and multiplicity. Blum’s study has a remarkably Kantian undertone, as he
holds that Bruno “is especially interested in the possibility of subjective construction
of scientific systems whose coherence with the scientific objects would be guaranteed
by an a priori pre-structure of the human intellect” (25). Thus, in the first section on
logic, Blum shows that Bruno does not distinguish between “pure” and object-oriented
logic, and that he intends to suggest a transcendental logic, although not based on an
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analysis of consciousness. Rather, Bruno “elaborates the possibility of rationally

constructing scientific systems in order to present ever new approaches towards the
intelligibility of extramental reality that is purportedly based on metaphysics” (66). In his
cosmology (section 2) Blum traces the same intention: Bruno’s dialogue De la causa,
principio et uno is not an explicitly anti-Aristotelian academic treatise, but a further step in
the methodological development of his own thought, in this case a fresh elaboration of the
principles of nature, detaching himself from an ontological approach to nature. Thus, in
the analysis of matter and the world soul (form) in section 3, Blum argues that Bruno’s
conception of “absolute matter” is necessary for the conceivability of the existence of beings
(191). Indeed, the unity of bodily and incorporeal matter grounds the real presence of
the principle in the principiata, and therefore the relation between “natural” matter and
“absolute” matter is presented as a scale of being, each level containing all ontological and
epistemological antagonisms in such a way that the higher level resolves the opposites
and contradictions of the lower level (193). Bruno emphasizes Aristotle’s substratum aspect
of matter, but in its substantial unity with form. Both are labeled “nature”: the world soul
has an immanent operation and it is matter that “releases” the forms from its womb.
Discussing Bruno’s elaboration of Aristotle’s unmoved mover, Blum rightly refutes the
interpretation that reduces God to the structure of (natural) reality, entertained in the
1960s by Nicola Badaloni and at the end of the century by Michele Ciliberto. Blum
convincingly argues that although God is designed as immanent to nature, he does not
resolve into the structure of the universe. Quite paradoxically, Bruno maintained the
transcendence of the absolute by stressing its “absolute immanence”: God is more internal
within the things than they are within themselves (244). In conclusion Blum rephrases his
claim formulated in section 1: in Bruno’s philosophy “the thinking subject substantiates
and establishes self-referential subjectivity, as each form of cognition is a release of cognitive
power.” Thus, with due care for historical reasons, we may conclude that Bruno attempts
to obtain a transcendental substantiation of cognition (267).
In 1980 Blum’s study of Bruno’s Aristotle reception was a welcome contribution to
the research into this pivotal figure of late Renaissance philosophical thought. Blum’s
strictly philosophical interpretation of the issues under scrutiny avoids the then
dominant materialist and Hermetic frames of analysis, and is a fine example of
Bruno’s own critical elaboration of past philosophy. Thus, the result of his research is
not an attempt at harmonizing all of Bruno’s (often conflicting) views; rather, Blum
reconstructs Bruno’s reception and critique of Aristotle as an independent and genuine
philosophical achievement.
This English translation makes his work now available for a wider audience of
students and scholars of Renaissance philosophical and scientific thought. Blum has not
updated the bibliography and the references to post-1980 studies, and considering the
host of publications devoted to Bruno over the last thirty years, this is without doubt
a wise decision.

Leen Spruit, Radboud University Nijmegen

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