Tommaso Campanella and The City of the Sun : Utopianism and Neoplatonism in the late Renaissance

Abstract

Given that so little is known about Campanella in the English-speaking world, I thought it fit to introduce this dissertation with a rather broad presentation of the life of the philosopher from the Italian region of Calabria. Before reading Campanella, I had already come to believe that the biographical background of any thinker gives one a very helpful insight into the thought of that particular philosopher. This could not be more true than in the case of Tommaso Campanella. This is why the biographical background is fundamentally important. Apart from The City of the Sun, which is the main focus of this study, Campanella authored a remarkable number of works in so many different fields of knowledge; from politics to medicine, from magic to economics, and from theology to poetry. In fact, he is probably better known in the English-speaking world for his poetry rather than for his philosophy. In another part of the first chapter, I give a bibliographical note about The City of the Sun, which is the main textual reference of this dissertation.