Être, nature, langage dans l’œuvre de Francesco Patrizi (1529-1597)

This dissertation constitutes the first comprehensive study dedicated to the thought of Francesco Patrizi (1529-1597), one of the leading representatives of the Platonic tradition in the late Renaissance. Patrizi’s vast, complex, and varied body of work is examined here both in its diachronic development and through the elements of continuity that characterise it. The first key strand of this dissertation explores the evolution of Patrizi’s ontology, which is grounded in a principle of continuity between the intelligible and the sensible realms – between incorporeal substances, bodies, and ‘incorporeal bodies’. The second thematic focus concerns his theory of language, which is structured around reflections on memory, the ‘language of things’, and the nature of poetry, with the aim of restoring a form of harmony between the human mind and the world. The third and final facet addresses Patrizi’s philosophy of nature, which, building upon his early reflections on the nature of spirits, evolves into the conception of a cosmos composed of infinite space, light, heat, and fluor. Patrizi’s thought thus leads to three fundamental outcomes : an emanationist ontology, in which all things proceed from a first principle (unomnia) through a graduated order of being ; a panpsychist philosophy of nature, according to which all that exists is alive and capable of thought ; and a theory of language aimed at restoring the philosophical foundations of history, rhetoric, and poetics. The aim of this study is to show that these three dimensions – being, nature, language – converge in a single intellectual project, as varied as it is coherent in its underlying inspiration.