La resurrezione secondo la ragione naturale : Gerolamo Cardano e la palingenesi

This essay analyzes the concept of the immortality of the soul, proposed by Cardano in different works - mainly in the De immortalitate animorum (1545), in the dialogue Gulielmus de morte (1562) and in the third book of the Theonoston - within the context of the discussion caused by the the scandalous Pomponazzi's De immortalitate, which had appeared in 1516. Drawing on a vast tradition (from Pytagorism to Hermetism, from Aristotelism and Platonism to Averroism, from Neoplatonism to Hyppochratic and Galenic medicine), Cardano advances his view about the "palingenesis": the Christian topics concerning the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body are interpreted according to a notion of nature which admit the cyclic restoration of the beings in the time. This assumption, announcing in some respects the Leibnitian apokatastasis, represents an important example of the confrontation between philosophy and Christian religion in the age of the Renaissance.

Cardano partecipa alla discussione cinquecentesca intorno al destino dell’anima, prendendo le distanze dalla tesi mortalista di Pietro Pomponazzi . Egli propone un’originale concezi one della palingenesi dell’uomo, che si presenta come uno sviluppo critico di temi aristotelici e che intende contrapporsi alla dottrina platonica della metempsicosi.