And the Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the philosophy department at King's College London and the LMU in Munich, online at History of Philosophy.net.

Today's episode, of Two Minds, Pomponazzi and Nifo on the intellect.

Some people just don't like being told what to do or what to think, and a lot of these people are named Peter. The tradition began with St. Peter himself,

who was not only martyred for his faith, but even according to legend, made the Romans crucify him

upside down, to avoid being tacitly compared with Christ.

The Russian emperor, Peter the Great, ruler of a land where all the men wore beards,

decided that they should all go clean-shaven. Peter Pan refused even to grow up.

The guitarist of the who, Pete Townsend was, well, Pete Townsend,

while the reggae singer Peter Tosh

was so annoyed at being forbidden to smoke marijuana that he wrote a song called

Legalize it. I myself contributed to this grand tradition of rebellious Peters as a lad by occasionally

refusing to eat my vegetables.

Though to be honest this hardly counted as rebellion in my family,

given that my father likes to say,

I have a rule against eating anything green,

but I make an exception for carrots. I don't eat those either.

In any case, it was entirely predictable that when in 1513, the Pope declared that the human soul is immortal and that this can be proven by a rational argument,

some philosopher named Peter would refuse to play along.

Three years later, Pietro Pompeazzi published his work on the immortality of the soul.

The Pope would no doubt have approved the title, but not the rest of it.

It argues that philosophical arguments point rather

towards the soul's mortality its essential dependence upon the body.

...