Art et nature au seuil de la modernité : ombres et fureurs de Giordano Bruno

Examinant à sa racine le rapport de la nature et de l’artifice dans l’humanisme de la Renaissance, cette contribution montre comment, alors que l’automate moderne se joue de la frontière entre nature et artifice, la pensée de Giordano Bruno, dans le «courant chaud» de l’humanisme de la Renaissance, valorise d’une façon originale l’artifice, dès lors que la nature exige de l’action humaine qu’elle invente son propre chemin.

According to Sloterdijk, the Renaissance is the founding of a link between a routine behaviour of the human being and the all-powerful control of man upon earth. In this article, we’ll be questioning this point of view. The Renaissance is indeed marked by the operativist revolution, by the wasting and by the violence of a nascent globalisation. Yet, it is possible to build another path which isn’t similar to the Aufklärung process in global operative routines forms. If we agree with Ernst Bloch, this path could be defined as the warm trend of the Renaissance. Giordano Bruno follows the same idea : he accepts the convergence of technic and human being, of natural and artificial. But such a human being never produces against nature, he takes part into the movements of nature itself, into its praxis. Thus, his creation is not at the basis of a science of the useful or of the power over nature as it deals only with its own world : history. As Vico would say, man is only god of what he makes.