Memoria e oblio : il concetto di senso naturale in Tommaso Campanella

In the Memory and oblivion: Tommaso Campanella on natural sentience. history of western philosophy, Tommaso Campanella is the passionate advocate of universal sentience. Everything in his cosmos, from stones to angels, is sentient. However, Campanella argues that sentience can be legitimately presented as a universal attribute of being only if we assume the ubiquitous presence of an unconscious perception in nature (sensus naturalis) and, above all, only if we assume that this unconscious perception performs the fundamental function of mediating between consciousness and life in all kinds of natural processes. The article argues that Campanella's original take on animism is predicated on a view that glorifies the blissful unconsciousness of life. [Publisher's text]