MICHELANGELO FARDELLA. — Philosopher, born in Trapani in 1650, died in Naples on 29 January 1718. He was in Messina in contact with G. A. Borelli, and during three years in Paris frequented Cartesian circles; he taught in Rome and Modena, until in 1693 he was called to the University of Padua. In 1691 he published in Venice a *Logica (Universale philosophiae systemata, tomus I)*; in ’95 a treatise on mathematics; in ’98 his major work *Anima humana natura ab Augustino detecta* (Venice 1698). Minor writings, especially polemical, appeared in the *Galleria di Minerva*. In 1709 he went to teach in Barcelona; he returned to Naples in 1718.
A disordered and uncertain thinker, he nevertheless enjoyed wide renown; he corresponded with Leibniz, whose doctrine of monads seems to converge with his own; he was not unknown to Berkeley, to whose immaterialism he appeared to draw near. In reality his principal merit was to have helped spread in Italy the knowledge of Cartesianism, linking it with the Augustinian tradition and relating it to certain themes of Gassendist scientific inquiry. On the burning question of the relation between extension and thought he seemed to side with Malebranche, doubting the reality of material extension, of a world of external objects. Indeed, though in a tentative way—so that Berkeley could accuse him of scepticism—he argued that if God could act directly upon the soul, why should He, in a manner lacking economy (*non sunt praeter necessitatem multiplicanda*), resort to the intermediary of matter, whose function cannot be justified and whose direct action upon the soul appears incomprehensible? If dreams and hallucinations are constant proofs that a man may have impressions without corresponding objects existing, “why could it not be that, even if the sun had never existed, the eye would still see the sun as truly present?” After discussing the reality of matter in the *Logica*, in the treatise *On the Soul* he proceeded to demonstrate, on Augustinian foundations, the spirituality of the soul and the value of interiority, stressing among other things the theme of illumination. The work, largely occupied with the substance of the *De quantitate animae*, the *De immortalitate animae*, and the *Book of the De Trinitate* of St Augustine, is rich in a vivid sense of inner experience, where the fruitful themes of Cartesian-Malebranchian meditation are harmonised within the Augustinian tradition.