GIORDANO BRUNO, HIS PLACE IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY AND IDEAS

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present the Renaissance philosopher Giordano Bruno. According to Giordano Bruno, a human being is threefold composed of a body (soma), soul (psyche) and spirit (nous). Bruno’s philosophical theory on the harmonization of the soul with the mind (nous) and the body focuses mainly on the shaping of the psychological world through the development of imagination and memory. Bruno’s works deal with the “Art of Memory”, which elevates and gradually extends the consciousness of the disciple of wisdom from the earthly world to the extending boundaries of the starry sky. Bruno supports that humans who process the images of ideas through their imagination can approach the same archetypical ideas found within the divine mind and then embody them without distortions to the material world. These images constitute the best guides to the soul, because they elevate consciousness and facilitate its entry and access to the archetypical ideas found in the universal intellect. As these images dim the light, they prepare the eyes of the soul which are still wrapped in fog to gradually face the very same ideas.