Different interpretations of Giordano Bruno’s theory of knowledge and its problems. Towards a clarification of the concepts of phantasia and imago

Abstract

in this paper, I analyze the different interpretations that Giordano Bruno’s theory of knowledge has aroused since the second half of the 20th century. The main objective is to highlight a series of fundamental problems that have to be overcome if the whole of Bruno’s epistemological proposal is to be adequately clarified, in particular his thesis regarding the status and function of the fantastic faculty and its products, images. There are three outstanding problems: (1) the terminological confusion that, on the part of the interpreters, is observed around the concept “imago”, in its double ontological and gnoseological sense; (2) the thesis that mental products lack logical features, an idea derived from an excessively idealistic interpretation of the genesis of knowledge and (3) the thesis of “fantastic immanence”, consisting of reducing all epistemological activity to the field of fantasy. To justify the inherent problematicity of these ideas, I will turn to both the Brunian text and the well-known scholastic distinction between “formal concept” and “objective concept”.