Hey, Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of 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, Man of Discoveries, Chirolamo Cardano. I don't have much in common with York Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel, one of the greatest philosophers of the 19th century,

but I can at least say that like him I have spent a lot of time teaching German students about the history of philosophy.

Hegal lectured on this subject many times in Jainer in Heidelberg and then in Berlin every year over the last decade of his life.

His approach to the subject was rather different from mine, not least in his notorious dismissal

of philosophy written in Arabic as involving no proper principle and stage in the development of philosophy.

But I rather like the choice he makes when he comes to philosophy in the Renaissance.

He starts off not with an obvious figure like Bruni, Ficino, or Machiavelli, but with several pages on,

Jirolamo Cardano.

Kigel's remarks are based especially on Cardano's autobiography, which he summarizes in part as follows.

In his habits, outer life, and conduct, he went from one extreme to the other.

At one moment he was calm, at another like a madman of lunatic, now industrious and studious,

now dissolute in squandering all his goods.

Naturally, in these circumstances, he brought up his children very badly.

I can readily understand why Hega latched onto Cardano,

since he might be the philosopher from the Italian Renaissance

whose personality comes down to us most vividly today.

He was a prolific writer as will be seen and scattered personal remarks throughout his many works.

But it is his autobiography that gives the strongest sense of his personality.

It covers the main events of his life, born in Pavia and Kachina 1, he studied in his home city and

Paju and taught mathematics and medicine at several universities, including Bologna in the 1560s.

This followed the execution of Cardano's son in 1560 on the grounds that the young man had poisoned his wife, which no doubt encouraged

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