Academic

Scholars have cited Campanella's influence in religious and political realms. . . . For instance, Giorgio Spini has traced the promulgation of Campanella's religious ideals, not only to France and Germany, but even to American colonies, particularly to the Labadists of Northern Maryland and the to the Appalachian Shakers.  Like the political thought of Noccolò Machiavelli--whom Campanella bitterly denounced--Campanella's work would come to be read and understood in ways that he could never have foreseen.  Most notoriously, Campanella's writings purportedly inspired Vladimir Lenin's "Plan of Monumental Propaganda" (May 27, 1918).  (Roush, supra, 2).

And this brings me back to the intimation, earlier above, of a rough semiotics to Campanella's philosophy--one that resonates in law.  But this is semiotics in which the signification process becomes organic--not an external but an internal relation among sign, signifier and signified.  Roush quotes John Headley for the connection between Campanella's philosophy to pansensism, the doctrine that posits that all things in nature are endowed with sense.  "'In the pansensist universe language operates differently:  words have a conjunctive power, identifying signifier and signified, being and thought, nature and perception; they operate as charms, possessing an incantational capacity when properly charged.'" (Roush, supra, at 21, citing John M. Headley, Campanella and the Transformation, 162).  This comes close to an understanding of the power of the language of law, where words become both incantation and shape the ability of people to frame reality. Consider for example the fetish quality of the invocations necessary to commence an action to disregard the legal personality of a corporation and reach the assets of shareholders under U.S. law--See Franklin A. Gervurtz, "Piercing Piercing:  An Attempt to Lift the Veil of Confusion Surrounding the Doctrine of Piercing the Corporate Veil," 76 Oregon Law Review 853, 854-58 (1997). A better, and perhaps more powerful example, was a recent NBC Newscast (March 20, 2011) in which Lester Holt talks with NBC News military analyst retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey about the then recent set of substantial U.S. military strikes against Libyan military targets under authority of a U.N. Security Council resolution permitting the establishment of a "no-fly" zone within Libyan airspace to "protect civilians."  Mr. Holt asked retired General McCaffrey whether the United States was effectively at war with the Libyan government in the wake of these substantial air strikes.  The General did not pause before explaining that the United States could not be at war--not because of the events on the ground in Libya, but because we couldn't be at war with Libya otherwise the War Powers Act of 1973 would have been invoked!  Because the law had not been invoked, the United States was not at war.  Incantation, words, law symbol now constrain the reality of events that though they occur before our eyes do not exist.  This is the magic invoked by Campanella. 

Campanella's life is itself a symbolic representation of the incantational semiotics that form the foundation of his philosophy, though not of course, its politics.  See, Joseph Scalzo, "Campanella, Foucault and Madness in Sixteenth Century Italy," The Sixteenth Century Journal 21(3):359-372 (1990). Professor Roush describes the culminating months in 1600 when, with condemnation likely after a torture induced confession,

Campanella set fire to the straw mattress in his prison cell and pursued a plan to simulate a raving delirium. . . . Campanella spent one month raving, muttering or otherwise outwardly demonstrating an utter loss of reason to any official who saw him.  Meanwhile he conversed rationally with a prisoner friend. . . .  For months Campanella somehow managed his posture of simulated madness through tortures, surprise visits and surreptitious observations. . . .   On June 4 and 5, Campanella underwent the veglia (wake).  By Campanella's time, the wake was a relatively rare form of torture, deemed sufficiently cruel that it was universally recognized as intolerable enough to provoke confession even from the most recalcitrant of subjects. . . .  After thirty-six continuous hours of torture without sleep, the exactors of punishment cut loose his ropes and declared him insane.  As soon as Campanella heard these words, he was said to have turned to one of his torturers, Giacomo Ferraro, and hissed in his ear: "Che si pensavano che io era coglione, che volvera parlare? (What did you think, that I was a dumbass, that I wanted to talk?).  (Roush, supra, 6-8, link added).

I will end by focusing very briefly here on Campanella's politics, in their semiotic and incantational sense to suggest that the power of the pronouncement (the verse) is meant to activate the conception and give rise to the reality to be conveyed, and by that conveyance, planted into the mind of the recipient.

True to the spirit of the times. Campanella both sought to liberate himself and in the process managed to replicate, dominant forms and patterns of thinking.  That is the substance of Poem No. 3, which mimics the "Credo" and which Roush describes as both fundamental to the understanding of the philosophy and tedious (supra at 19).    The Campanella credo is Platonic and grounded in a hierarchy of reality in which value and position are intertwined. It suggests the perverseness of existence--where the power to sin is the  signature of the lack of power, of impotence ("poter pecare è impotenza vera", supra, 46) and power is derivative, grounded in the framing element of reality (Vero potrere eminenza è dell'ente, id.). Yet it also suggests that belief and personal action, rather than allegiance to an institutional structure overseen by a priestly (or other sort of managerial) class are the measure of conformity to "right" ("Talché, barbare genti [ed idolatre], se operaste giustizia naturale, non siete esenti dalle sanrte squandre," id., 48 lines 58-60). But also present is the connection with the forms of institutional power that have shaped Campanella's reality--in this case the late medieval Church just then dealing with the realities of the substantial loss of spiritual and temporal power through Reformation. Consider the supplication:  Deh, Signor, io vaneggio; aita, aita! pria che del senno il tempio divenga di stoltizia una meschita" (Poem 73 Madrigal 1 "Orazioni tre in salmondia mertafisicale congiunte insieme", supra, 140 ("Oh Lord, I rave deliriously.  Help, Help! before the temple of my intellect becomes a mosque of foolishness.") the entire Madrigal is worth reading for its irony and depth).

Thus, the institution is acknowledged, and the objectives becomes, as in every institutional framework since (whether temporal, ecclesiastical or otherwise), the fight against "sofisti, ipocriti e tiranni" (id., line 67). but the system survives (id., lines 94-96). Nietzsche hovers in the background, though centuries off. Thus, for example, Poem No. 6 ("The Way to Philosophize") speaks to go back to the original to avoid the error of what centuries later would become  Nietzsche's "priestly type."  Thus the admonition at the end of Poem 20 ("To Christ Our Lord", supra 70-73): "If you return to earth, comer armed, Lord, because enemies are preparing other crosses--not Turks, not Jews--but those of your own kingdom. (Id., lines 12-14 "Se torna in terra, armato vien', Signore, ch'altre croci apparécchianti i nemici, non Turchi, non Giudei: que' del tuo regno.").

I leave you with Poem 35 to ponder (Roush, supra, 110-113):

Che 'l principe tristo non è mente della Repubblica sua

 Mentola al comun corpo è quel, non mente,
che da noi, membra, a sé tutte raccoglie
sostanze e guadi, e non fatiche e doglie:
ch'esausti n'ha, come cicale spente.

Almen, come Cupido, dolcemente
ci burlasse, che 'n grembo della moglie
getta il sangue e 'l vigor,vche da noi toglie,
struggendo noi, per far novella gente.

Ma, con inganno spiacevole, in vaso
li sparge o in terra, onde non puoi sperare
alcuna ricompensa al mortal caso.

Corpo meschin, cui mente ha da guidare
piccola in capo piccolin, ch'ha naso,
ma non occhi, né orecchie, né parlare.