The Triadic Horizon of Metaphysics and “Nothingness” in Plato, Hegel, and Campanella

Abstract

This article aims at reconstructing the triadic horizon of metaphysics, building on Plato’s “second navigation”, which directly highlights the unity of Being, Knowledge and Good. These three moments are seen, in the absolute intellectualistic mediation of Hegel’s idealism,
as united in negation and contradiction: Good, as ought-to-be, is truly the unity of Reality and Idea, but that is precisely why it remains a merely absolute postulate. In Campanella’s primalitative metaphysics the three moments (Power, Wisdom and Love) are revealed as
a toticipation. This constitutes the pure positivity of the divine ground of Being in which human beings participate. The negative and contradiction, characteristic of every limited being that participates in the ground, are limited to the space-time dimension. Man is thus revealed as saved in Being and yet as a limited being, therefore called to return the sense of his salvation by being One in communion with the “other”.