Abstract

The article – dedicated to the concept of vicissitude – examines the work De la vicissitude ou variété des choses en l’univers by the French author Louis Le Roy and the Italian and Latin works in which Giordano Bruno uses this concept to explain natural dynamics, describing two different ways to interpret the processes supporting the perpetual mutation of res naturales. According to Le Roy the transformation is the result of a divine calculation that keeps together two heterogeneous components of being, that is the stability and the eternity of ideal world, inside the divine mind, and the mutability, the temporality and the continuous mutation of the real world. In Bruno the concept of vicissitude is linked to the bond of unity in between difference and variety: if this bond is the strength which put together anything, the vicissitude – in a complementary way – protects its differentiation; if the bond assures the identity and the stability of the relative everything, the vicissitude produces the accomplishment of this through the perfection of its parts in the vicissitude’s cycle realising its potentialities.