Tommaso Campanella (Stilo, Italy, 1568-Paris, 1639). Italian philosopher. In 1586, he entered a Dominican convent, where he studied Philosophy. With the impact of the works of Telesius’ naturalistic philosophy, Campanella became one of the critics of Aristotle’s ideas, as the scholastics presented it at the time.
In 1599, he led a rural insurrection with the aim of establishing a theocratic republic, for which he was subjected to several ecclesiastical trials and sentenced to life imprisonment, from which he was finally released in 1634 by the Pope Urban VIII. Campanella was imprisoned for 27 years, during which time he wrote his famous work The City of the Sun, in which he expressed his desire for a utopian communist regime. Campanella’s communist ideals were strongly influenced by Plato.
Below is a commentary of excerpts from Tomasso Campanella’s The City of the Sun in the style of the Minerva Blog Strategy.
Advantages of collective work
“They say, moreover, that grinding poverty renders men worthless, cunning, sulky, thievish, insidious, vagabonds, liars, false witnesses, etc.; and that wealth makes them insolent, proud, ignorant, traitors, assumers of what they know not, deceivers, boasters, wanting in affection, slanderers, etc. But with them all the rich and poor together make up the community. They are rich because they want nothing, poor because they possess nothing; and consequently they are not slaves to circumstances, but circumstances serve them” (Tommaso Campanella, The City of the Sun).
In the Platonic conception of society, guardians should not own “land, houses, and currency” (Plato, Republic, 417a) because these evils are greater. Against this approach, Aristotle, in his work Politics, defends private property based on several arguments. The first is generosity, since “doing a kindness and giving some help to friends, or guests, or comrades, and such kindness and help become possible only when property is privately owned” (Aristotle, Politics, 1263b40). He also argues that greater conflicts derive from common property and that, if it were really a good solution, it would not have gone so unnoticed.
Discussion about the community of women
“Love is foremost in attending to the charge of the race. He sees that men and women are so joined together, that they bring forth the best offspring. Indeed, they laugh at us who exhibit a studious care for our breed of horses and dogs, but neglect the breeding of human beings” (Tommaso Campanella, The City of the Sun).
This is one of the most controversial points of Plato’s approach: how he (does not) conceive of the family. For example, he asserts that the children of guardians are to be raised and educated by the State and has an ambivalent position on the status of women. From other assumptions, Aristotle defends the family and criticises the Platonic approach since “every citizen will have a thousand sons; they will not be the sons of each citizen individually: any son whatever will be equally the son of any father whatever. The result will be that all will equally neglect them” (Aristóteles, Politics, 1261b32).
Hospitality
“To strangers they are kind and polite; they keep them for three days at the public expense; after they have first washed their feet, they show them their city and its customs, and they honor them with a seat at the Council and public table, and there are men whose duty it is to take care of and guard the guests. But if strangers should wish to become citizens of their State, they try them first for a month on a farm, and for another month in the city, then they decide concerning them, and admit them with certain ceremonies and oaths” (Tommaso Campanella, The City of the Sun).
This is a precedent for the notion of hospitality that Kant invoked centuries later. Nowadays, it seems that elementary notions that are at the foundation of human rights are questioned and become target issues of political debate, locally and globally. One such issue of relevance is how societies welcome/integrate/accommodate their immigrants. Here we see how in the 16th-century utopia, Campanella provided an inclusive mechanism for acquiring citizenship. Does it still sound like utopia today?
Again, with more details on the election of magistrates, the government, and the Council.
“They do not use lots unless when they are altogether doubtful how to decide. The eight magistrates under Hoh, Power, Wisdom, and Love are changed according to the wish of the people, but the first four are never changed, unless they, taking counsel with themselves, give up the dignity of one to another, whom among them they know to be wiser, more renowned, and more nearly perfect. And then they are obedient and honorable, since they yield willingly to the wiser man and are taught by him. This, however, rarely happens” (Tommaso Campanella, The City of the Sun).
Leaving the most difficult choices to the randomness of a lottery does not seem the most appropriate. Although current trends advocate leaving some decisions to AI algorithms, which are biased, stereotyped, and not necessarily neutral in terms of human rights.
It is commendably “utopian,” in this City of the Sun, that top leaders decide themselves when to leave office and “willingly retire to those who are wiser than they are and learn from them.” It seems to be a carbon copy of the present times…
Laws and judgement
“They have but few laws, and these short and plain, and written upon a flat table and hanging to the doors of the temple, that is between the columns” (Tommaso Campanella, The City of the Sun).
The utopia in the legal world is that laws should be few, short, and plain. This would help to bring law and judicial decisions closer to non-experts. The great thing about the legal method is that it makes it possible to deal with various strategies of the parties in a process and to justify the final decision by means of legal arguments. Law is conceived as an interpretative activity, where the power of conviction of each party becomes relevant.
The City of the Sun, by Tommaso Campanella, aims to criticise its present and future through utopian rhetoric, based on ideas that cannot be found anywhere, yet their power of conviction is the horizon that we can focus on (or not) when you look in front of the mirror.
© 2025, webphilosophia. All rights reserved.