"E io in Napoli vidi un cane polacco": ancora sui linguaggi animali, da Gesner a Campanella

Beginning with Campanella’s Del senso delle cose e della magia, this paper gives a sketchy overview of the philosophical topic of animal language from aprox. 1550 to the year (1637) in which Descartes’ Discours de la méthode was published. It is suggested that there were basically three philosophical orientations: the “orthodox”, that drawing on Thomas Aquinas’ concept of vis aestimativa, reduced animal mind and communication to a matter of instinct; the naturalistic position (Conrad Gesner was a typical case in point), ispired by the lesson of Aristotle’s biological works as well as of authors such as Plutarch and Porphyrius, that acknowledged animals both lower levels of intelligence and communication capabilities; and finally the radical approach of Montaigne, that saw animal and human language as a kind of continuum, grounded on the basic necessities of life. At the end of the XVIth century, Campanella took sides with the naturalistic party, admitting that animals share discourse capacities, although on a limited scale. His position is compared on one side with the traditional stance taken by Angelo Rocca (1591) and, on the other, with the genuine experimental approach of Fabrici of Acquapendente (1603).