The Astrological Signs Left to Posterity

This article deals with the significance of the discipline of astrology as articulated by a contemporary thinker, Giorgio Agamben, and a figure from the Renaissance, Giordano Bruno. Astrology and the occult sciences in general played a key function in the foundational moment of modern science by unifying knowledge and experience in the new thinking subject. In Agamben's mind, astrology serves as an important example of how, before the advent of the Galilean and Cartesian methods, the scission between the Aristotelian noûs and psyché and the Platonic Uno and multiplicity were overcome, thus setting the grounds for modern experimental science. For Bruno, however, astrology assumes different meanings, one of which can be glossed with a definition formulated by Aby Warburg: "Ultimately, astrology is no more than a form of onomastic fetishism, projected into the future" (566). This understanding of astrology arises out of Bruno's "nova philosophia," which pushed hermetic reason to its furthest degree by disassembling the ontological hierarchy that placed the hypostatic Uno at the highest point of the scale and matter at the lowest. However, it is equally true that while astral influence is not to be "superstitiously" calculated, it should, according to Bruno, be grasped and manipulated in the different ways he proposes in his magical works.