Aither is a double-blind peer review, Open Access online academic journal. It is indexed at ERIH+ and Scopus. It is published by the Faculty of Arts of the Palacký University in Olomouc in cooperation with the Philosophical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. It comes out twice a year. Every second issue is international and contains foreign-language articles (mainly in English, but also in German and French). The journal is registered under the number ISSN 1803-7860.

Aither 26/2021 (International issue no. 9):24-41 | DOI: 10.5507/aither.2022.001

Secularized Wisdom: Girolamo Cardano on Human Nature without God

Paul Richard Blum
Loyola University Maryland / Palacký University Olomouc

Girolamo Cardano wrote, besides his better-known treatises on natural philosophy and his autobiographies, some treatises (Hymnus seu canticum ad Deum, De uno, De sapientia) that define wisdom as a human skill of orientation in the world, specifically as a feature of human nature, as ethical and political means, and as the capability of dominating things and humans. The effect is that human wisdom, although apparently a divine virtue, is reduced to the capability and task of humans to secure their position, to make sense, and to make conjectures about the principles of human agency. This eventually regards religion and God: everything is a hypothesis and a tool for human secular felicity.

Received: November 29, 2021; Revised: November 29, 2021; Accepted: April 4, 2022; Published: May 4, 2022  Show citation

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Blum, P.R. (2021). Secularized Wisdom: Girolamo Cardano on Human Nature without God. Aither, 13(26), 24-41. doi: 10.5507/aither.2022.001
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