Can you be truly virtuous if you only act to avoid hell or gain heaven?

Ideas & Philosophy · Published 29 September 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Renaissance philosopher Pietro Pomponazzi argued that morality does not require the promise of an afterlife. By asserting that the human soul is tethered to the physical body and perishes with it, he challenged the era's religious orthodoxy, suggesting that goodness should be pursued solely for its own inherent value.

Born in Mantua in 1462, Pietro Pomponazzi became a central figure in the intellectual transition from medieval scholasticism to modern rationalism. While teaching at the University of Bologna, he published his most controversial work, De immortalitate animae, in 1516. In this text, he rejected both the Thomist view of an immortal soul and the Averroist theory of a universal intellect. Instead, he maintained that human intellectual activity is inseparable from our biological senses and physical organs. Consequently, he concluded that the soul cannot exist independently of the body.

This position triggered intense backlash from the Church, which had recently reaffirmed the doctrine of the soul's immortality at the Fifth Lateran Council. Despite facing accusations of heresy and seeing his books publicly burned in Venice, Pomponazzi avoided formal condemnation through the protection of influential figures like the Papal Secretary Pietro Bembo. He navigated this danger by employing a double-truth strategy, separating his findings as a natural philosopher from his personal submission to Christian faith as a believer.

Beyond his mortalist claims, Pomponazzi’s ethical framework was revolutionary. He proposed that true virtue is self-sufficient, famously invoking the Greek ideal of acting for the sake of the good. He argued that if morality depends on the fear of punishment or the hope of reward, it loses its purity. This human-centered approach to ethics, which prioritized reason and earthly conduct over supernatural incentives, later influenced thinkers like Spinoza and Kant, marking Pomponazzi as a pivotal, if controversial, architect of modern secular thought.

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