John Amos Comenius, Tommaso Campanella, Francesco Patrizi, Renaissance Philosophy, Neo-Platonism, Metaphysics

John Amos Comenius was beyond all doubt influenced by Neo-Platonic concepts, in particular, the teachings of Tommaso Campanella. In the 1640s, Comenius significantly improved upon the Campanellian theory of successive worlds by revising his original linear ascendant model (which can be found in his earlier pansophic treatises Pansophiae Praeludium and Conatuum Pansophicorum Dilucidatio) and replacing it with a cyclical model. The new model is built around Mundus Artificialis, a truly original philosophical concept that refers to the world made by autonomous man, which serves to bring the universe to completion and to its last end, God. This modification of the traditional Neo-Platonic schema, together with Comenius?s recognition of the freedom and agency of man as co-creator of the world, has been recognised as an important contribution to philosophy. Several historians of philosophy have also aptly pointed out that there had been no such conception in philosophy prior to Comenius and that Comenius, therefore, occupies a special place in the Neo-Platonic tradition. In the Neo-Platonic schema, new worlds are created by moving away from the original unity, through increasing disharmony; in Comenius?s concept, the activity of man gives rise to a new reality and a new harmony. The aim of this paper is to analyse Comenius?s relationship to Renaissance Neo-Platonism and also compare Comenius?s views with Tommaso Campanella, his most important predecessor in this regard.