Giordano Bruno and the Philosophy of the Ass

288 Pages·1996·7.798 MB·English

by  Nuccio Ordine

Giordano Bruno and the Philosophy of the Ass

NUCCIO ORDINE
Giordano Bruno and the
Philosophy of the Ass
Translated by Henryk Barahski in collaboration with Arielle Saiber
Yale University Press New Haven and London
This volume is published under the patronage
of the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi
Filosofici of Naples, Italy.
Original title: La cabala dell'asino O 1987 by
Liguori Editore, S.r.1.
English translation copyright O 1996 by Yale University.
AU rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or
in part, including illustrations, in any form
(beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107
and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except
by reviewers for the public press), without
written permission from the publishers.
Designed by Sonia L. Scanlon.
Set in Bodoni type by Rainsford Type,
Danbury, Connecticut.
Printed in the United States of America by
BookCrafters, Inc., Chelsea, Michigan.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Data
Ordine, Nuccio, 1958-
[Cabala dell'asino. Enghsh]
Giordano Bruno and the philosophy of the
ass 1 Nuccio Ordine.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and
index.
ISBN 0-300-05852-7 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Bruno, Giordano, 1548-1600.
2. Mental efficiency-History-16th
century. 3. Donkeys-Miscellanea.
I. Title.
B783.2707313 1996 95-39256
CIP
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines
for permanence and durability of the Committee
on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of
the Council on Library Resources.
per enne
"e ndat orna se non forse in questi
disguidi del possibile." (E. Montale)

CONTENTS
Foreword By Eugenio Garin
IX
Preface
Xlll
Abbreviations xv
1 Bruno and the Ass A Long-Deferred Questlon 1
2 Myths, Fables, Tales The "Asinine" Materials 9
3 The Ass and Mercury A Key to Coincidentla Oppositorum 17
4 The Ambiguous Space of Asininity 25
5 Man and the Ass, between "Bestiality" and "Divinity" 35
6 Positive Asininity Toil, Humility. Tolerance 43
7 Negative Asininity Idleness, Arrogance, Unid~mens~onality 50
8 The Oration of Fortune 67
9 In the Labyrinth of Truth 78
10 From Orion to Chiron Opposing Images of the Relig~ousC ult 96
11 The Ass in the Guise of the Sileni Appearances Are Deceptive 108
12 The Literature of the Ass before Bruno 118
13 The Entropy of Writing 140
14 Natural Science and Human Science A "Nouvelle Alliance" 167
Iconographical Collection 178
Notes 207
Index 269

FOREWORD
Eugenio Garin
The literature of the ass, if we understand thereby the body of
writings devoted to the ass, occupies a prominent place in the liter-
ature of the sixteenth century, from Machiavelli's poetry to the de-
velopments by Cornelius Agrippa, who, precisely by means of a
digressw ad encomium asintsituated between the chapters de
Verbo Dei and de scientiarum magistris on the one hand and the op-
eris peroratio on the other-concludes his famous declamatw de in-
certitudine et vanitate scientiarum atque artium. After having
placed the apostles on a level with asses, Agrippa in passing intends
to cast light upon the asini mysteria to reinforce his conclusion:
"From what I have said, it is as clear as day that no other animal is
in a better position than the ass to receive the divine. If you do not
look to the ass, you will be in no position to receive the divine mys-
teries. "
As irreverent as it is amusing, Agrippa's "digression" came to
be part of a framework of symbols that Bruno certainly utilized.
At its origin we find, of course, Apuleius's romance, which was
widely diffused; we find as well the taste of transgression, the plea-
sure of toying with a provocative and multifaceted symbol. Machia-
velLi recalls how, "in the form of an ass," he had "toiled and
suffered" to discover "more bad than good" at every level of our
world. It was thanks to this experience that he was able to acquaint
himself with men's vices and virtues, and then to expose them
openly and without shame ("thus one will appreciate how rotten
the world is"). The patient, doleful work of the beast of burden
transformed itself into revelatory knowledge, through which one
had a paradoxical means of exposing coincidentia oppositorum: ig-
norant, but learned; humble, but powerful.
By the end of the century, the theme of the ass, therefore, was
no longer original, apart from its being used as a symbol that hence-
forth was charged with complex meanings. What were original, how-
ever, were Giordano Bruno's "exploitation" to excess of this
theme, his insistence on this central motif, and the wealth of mean-
ing he takes on in expressing (sometimes with extraordinary effect-
iveness) certain points essential to his philosophical reflections.
Bruno does not invent the theme of the ass, nor the polysemous play
to which it lends itself; but by conferring a decisive value upon it,
by pushing its possibilities to the extreme, he devotes pages to it
where felicitous expression is allied to theoretical depth. Similarly,
Nuccio Ordine is certainly not the first to deal with the subject-
although his book presents new and often highly pertinent elements;
nor is he the first to underline the importance this theme holds for
Bruno. But he is the first to collate systematically the theoretical
meanings of asininity, to specify its every ambivalence, to analyze
its contradictory meanings and to show how this play of opposites
leads to the very heart of Bruno's thought. But what is more im-
portant, when he illustrates the theme of asininity and proceeds to
make a careful comparison with other thinkers and literary figures
of the sixteenth century, Nuccio Ordine emphasizes the inimitable
flavor of Bruno's prose, brings out its literary value, and evaluates
its singular theoretical depth. The novelty of this essay lies in the
fact that it does not disassociate the artist from the philosopher.
Far from considering in isolation the theme of asininity, he inserts
it into the context of a deep meditation. In an image that at first
may appear paradoxical, he fixes a nodal point of speculative re-
search.
It is clear that, precisely by choosing the image of the ass, and
by exploiting all its possibilities, Bruno was also counting on its