ZABARELLA, GIACOMO. - Aristotelian philosopher, b. in Padua on 5 Sept. 1535, d. there on 18 Oct. 1589.
He studied letters under the guidance of Robortello and Fasolo, logic with B. Tomitano, natural philosophy with M. A. Genua (v.). A professor of logic in his city from 1564 to 1577, he had as colleague and rival B. Petrella, who began to attack him in the Questiones logicae (Venice 1571; 2nd enlarged ed. Padua 1572). Z. pretended to ignore him. But, promoted in 1577 to the teaching of natural philosophy, Z. published the following year his Opera logica (Venice) and did not take long to find in his colleague Francesco Piccolomini a more authoritative adversary, who in the Universa philosophia de moribus (Venice 1583) took a position against him on the question of the ordo disciplinae and of the regressus, once treated also by Pomponazzi. In 1584 Z. defended himself energetically with the Apologia. Meanwhile Petrella published in Padua the Logicarum disputationum libri septem, written in large part against him. Z. let his pupil Ascanio Persio answer for him (Logicarum disputationum libri duo, Venice 1585). Petrella replied with a Propugnatio, to which Persio rejoined with the Defensio criticorum et apologetici primi (Bologna 1587). Piccolomini replied to the Apologia with the Comes politicus, published however only in 1594 as an addition to the 2nd ed. of the Univ. philos. de moribus (Venice).
To understand the spirit of Z.'s philosophy one must keep in mind this judgment on Pomponazzi: «librum doctissimum [De reactione] Petri Pomponati, cuius quidem viri iudicium ego semper plurimi feci» (in De rebus natural., treatise De reactione, ch. 1); «P. Pomp. meo quidem iudicio proxime omnium ad Aristotelis mentem... accessit» (ibid., treatise De mente humana, ch. 9). Unlike Pomponazzi, who did not know a word of Greek, Z. in his commentary on the De anima III, ch. 17, boasts: «Ego tres habco codices graecos». And like Pendasio, he cites and discusses the Greek commentators on Aristotle much more extensively than Pomponazzi does. For his doctrine on the agent intellect identified with God, he sides with Alexander of Aphrodisias, with Pendasio and with the Averroists of the Sigerian current of the «Bononienes» (Achillini, Bacilieri, Tsiapietra). He is an Alexandrist also on the problem of the immortality of the soul, demonstrable «simpliciter loquendo et secundum veram philosophiam, non secundum philosophiam Aristotelis».