Simone Porzio (Simon Portius) (1496–1554) was an Italian philosopher, born and died in

Naples Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...

Life

Like his greater contemporary, Pomponazzi, he was a lecturer on medicine at

Pisa Pisa ( , or ) is a city and ''comune'' in Tuscany, central Italy, straddling the Arno just before it empties into the Ligurian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa. Although Pisa is known worldwide for its leaning tower, the cit ...

(1546–1552), and in later life gave up purely scientific study for speculation on the nature of man. His philosophic theory was identical with that of Pomponazzi, whose ''De immortalitate animi'' he defended and amplified in a treatise ''De mente humana''. There is told of him a story which illustrates the temper of the early humanistic revival in Italy. When he was beginning his first lecture at Pisa he opened the meteorological treatises of

Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...

. The audience, composed of students and townspeople, interrupted him with the cry ''Quid de anima'' (We would hear about the soul), and Porzio was constrained to change the subject of his lecture. He professed the most open

materialism Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds matter to be the fundamental substance in nature, and all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. According to philosophical materiali ...

, denied immortality in all forms and taught that the soul of man is homogeneous with the soul of animals and plants, material in origin and incapable of separate existence. Simone Porzio was the father of

Camillo Porzio Camillo Porzio (1526–1580) was an Italian historian. Life He belonged to a wealthy and Nobility, noble Naples, Neapolitan family, and was the son of the philosopher Simone Porzio. He studied law, first at Bologna and later at Pisa, and after gra ...

References

;Attribution *

External links

''A Universal Biographical Dictionary'' — Simone Porzio
entry by Simon Porta. {{DEFAULTSORT:Porzio, Simone 1497 births 1554 deaths 16th-century Neapolitan people 16th-century Italian writers 16th-century male writers 16th-century philosophers Italian philosophers Italian Renaissance writers