Montesquieu.it

The learned anatomist of human condition. About Montesquieu, Pensieri Riflessioni Massime, edited by D. Felice, Milano, Società Aperta, 2021, 465 pp.

2022-03-22T11:27:54+01:00

The work Pensieri Riflessioni Massime, edited by Domenico Felice, represents, due to the solidity of its themes, a fundamental milestone in Montesquieu’s philosophical production and, more in general, in modern philosophy. The lucidity the different subjects are dealt with makes this book another significant cornerstone in the French author’s thought.

Emperor Julian: official image and political communication

2022-03-21T09:56:48+01:00

The article examines the official image of the Roman emperor Julian (Caesar 359-361; Augustus 361-363), known to us mainly from numismatic evidence. The analysis of the changes in Julian’s appearance over time, accompanied by the reading of some key passages of the emperor’s own writings, shows how his portrait was transformed through the main steps of his career, in close connection with the development of his political, philosophical, and religious programme.

On the function of the aphoristic style in Ricordi by Francesco Guicciardini

2022-03-21T10:04:50+01:00

The present paper aims to analyze the function of the aforistical style in the Maxims and Reflections (Ricordi) of Guicciardini. The analysis focuses on the author's skepticism about the possibility of finding general rules in history and in human actions in general. It will be shown that this approach well harmonizes with the aphoristic style, producing what is considered today as the first modern book of moral and political aforisms.

The concept of «true» between philosophy and poetry in modern thought: the considerations of Gian Vincenzo Gravina and Giambattista Vico

2022-03-21T16:53:31+01:00

The concept of «true» accepted by modern philosophy conforms to Descartes’s idea, whose approach affirms the importance of mathematical and scientific subjects, following a quantitative point of view. Gian Vincenzo Gravina and Giambattista Vico criticize such a concept and propose an idea of «true» which is closer to the pragmatism of reality, the former by formulating the theory of «verisimilar», the culmination of which is reached in Tragedie cinque; the latter by elaborating the concept of «fantastic universal», which in his Scienza nuova, represents the thought, the language and the fundamental phases of the first men of history.

Montesquieu and the “literature of ideas”. About the Persian Letters

2022-03-21T17:01:24+01:00

Three hundred years after the publication of the Lettres persanes in 1721, Montesquieu’s ecdotics, which includes also the translation, is indisputably a scientific work and therefore determines the value of reception, contradicting at the same time what Montesquieu himself thought of his first book: that it was not serious. Whether it was or not, and to what extent should also be reading —the reader could be perfectly satisfied with the taste of pleasant productions of the spirit, in accordance with what had hitherto been the traditional role of the belles lettres— is one of the first difficulties to know it and acknowledge its philosophic dimension.

Introduction to Émilie du Châtelet, La Favola delle api, Elena Muceni (ed.) Marietti, Bologna, 2020. Increased and updated French version

2022-03-21T17:09:55+01:00

Émilie du Châtelet (1706-1749), encouraged by various intellectuals and by Voltaire, whose lover and companion she was, to abandon the frivolous world of the Parisian aristocracy to embrace literature and scientific studies, is considered the woman of the Enlightenment for excellence. His La Fable des abeilles, an unfinished and unpublished attempt to adapt Mandeville’s The Fable of the Bees, preserved as a manuscript in the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg, is the oldest of the writings that have come down to us. Born as a translation project, the text includes several entirely original sections, in particular the comments and a long preface, in which Émilie du Châtelet draws attention to the condition of women in the eighteenth century and the exclusion of women from philosophical and scientific education. The volume proposes the first critical edition of the French manuscript and the first complete Italian version.

Muratori the “philosopher”, between Modena and Europe

2022-03-22T10:53:29+01:00

Muratori is known universally as a “father of history”, particularly insofar as he rediscovered the Middle Ages through the study of original documents; and later as the driving force behind a new aesthetic taste, one which relieved Italy from “Conceptism”, drawing it towards the poetics of the verisimilitude; not to mention a religious reformist, capable of surprising anticipations. Less well known is Muratori the “philosopher”, although even his contemporaries judged him so, and a number of recent encyclopaedias of philosophy provide him with a well-deserved mention. The essay sets out to show how Muratori’s theoretical and moral system made good use of both his direct and epistolary contacts with the higher reaches of European culture (from Leibniz to Montesquieu to the English Sensists, etc.). The hope remains that the city of Modena, which organises a highly attended “festival of philosophy”, might now take notice of its most prestigious citizen.

Voltaire: liberty, tolerance and sense of the limit

2022-03-22T11:04:56+01:00

The essay emphasizes three fundamental aspects of Voltaire’s thought: the aversion to modern jusnaturalism; the idea of “tolerance” as existential remedy to human weakness: “We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies - it is the first law of nature” (Voltaire, article “Tolérance”); and a non-triumphalist conception of “reason”: the summa of Voltaire’s thought is not the triumphant celebration of “reason”; rather, it lies in pointing out its limits, and therefore increasing its value. One of the most significant “articles” of the Dictionnaire philosophique is also the shortest together and concerns “the limits of reason” (“Bornes de l’esprit humain”). In its conclusion it embraces Montaigne’s motto: “What do I know?”.