Necessity and teleology: Giordano Bruno and the modern necessitarianism

• Grant number: 22/12685-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: June 01, 2023
• End date: November 30, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Celi Hirata
• Grantee: Celi Hirata
• Host Investigator: Vicent Carraud
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris 4), France
• Associated research grant: 18/19880-4 - Power, conflict and freedom: Spinoza and the ways of Modern and Contemporary Political Philosophy about democracy, AP.TEM

Abstract

The aim of the research abroad is to examine the relationship between the concept of necessity and the teleological conception of the world in Giordano Bruno. In his philosophy, the conception of good and perfection, as the maximum of existence, is inseparable from necessity and the identification of power with act, which leads to the affirmation of the material infinite. Based on this concept of perfection and teleological necessity, Bruno rejects the medieval distinction between ordained and absolute power of God. This opens space not only for a new cosmology, but also for a new ethics and politics. This research will be part of a larger project, which aims to examine necessity and its ethical-political developments in Hobbes and Spinoza. More specifically, we intend to examine how the type of necessity advocated by these authors grounds the relationship between power and right in their political philosophies. While in Hobbes the thesis of necessity is detached from the concept of perfection and infinity, in Spinoza's philosophy necessity is linked to infinitude, immanence, and perfection - although it is a perfection unlinked from any teleological conception of reality, unlike what happens in Bruno. Based on the axis of necessitarianism and its different relations with the concept of perfection and teleology, we intend to understand the rejection of the distinction between absolute and ordained power of God in these three authors and examine the role of their reflections for the later secularization of politics. (AU)