Edizioni FrancoAngeli - Last issue of RIVISTA DI STORIA DELLA FILOSOFIA (2/2012)

Lucrezio e la modernità. i secoli xviii-xix. Premessa

Wed, 15 May 2012 8:00:00 GMT

A cura di Gianfranco Mormino

Libertine lucretius

Wed, 15 May 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Natania Meeker
As part of an examination of the role played by Lucretius in French libertinism, this article develops a reading of the 1730 story by Crébillon fils (1707-77) entitled Le Sylphe. The author argues that the French libertine tradition inherits from Lucretius an emphasis on subjection as generative rather than inhibiting; both ancient and more modern forms of Epicurean materialism are heavily invested in the process by which a condition of relative emancipation only emerges from within a state of constraint. Crébillon suggests that the capacity to take pleasure in an experience of dispossession - the loss of self-mastery - is fundamental to a libertine erotics; he portrays the heroine of his short story as possessed by a voluptuous recognition of her own enthrallment to a supernatural being (the sylph). Through her sexual enjoyment of this supernatural being, she is relieved of the burden of her own humanity, in a process that mirrors the delightful dispossession experienced by the convert to Epicureanism. For Crébillon, it is the literary text itself that is charged with arousing and assuaging erotic passion, and, ultimately, assuming the motility of the Epicurean atom.

Gli errori della natura: la mettrie e lucrezio

Wed, 15 May 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Gianfranco Mormino
In Système d’Epicure (1750), La Mettrie presents a hypothesis on the origin and evolution of animals which owes much both to the fifth book of Lucretius’s poem and to Montaigne’s Apologie de Raimond Sebond. Claiming that Nature’s operations are as unintentional and as amoral as the play of children, the French physician argues against all teleological explanations of the physical constitution of living beings (man included). Nature’s first attempts at creating individual beings must therefore have been characterized by frequent mistakes, some of which are still to be seen in a few monstruous cases. Evolution is assured only through a process of trial and error, where the elimination of "unfit" combinations is due to the inability of specific animals to reach adulthood and give birth to offspring. The perfection of a living being is not to be evaluated by means of comparisons to a preexisting model but depends instead on the intensity of this being’s sexual needs, which compel it to seek pleasure and to develop its mental skills.

La leçon des atomes. L’influence lucrétienne chez diderot

Wed, 15 May 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Alain Gigandet
The lesson of atoms. Lucretius’ influence in Diderot. Diderot appreciated Lucretius’ poem, which was for him an early introduction to the philosophy of the ancient atomists. He probably intended the Rêve de d’Alembert, which posits the most daring hypotheses of his own philosophy of nature, to be a modern De rerum natura. However, the influence of Lucretius on the Encyclopedist appears to be complex. If Diderot clearly contradicts certain atomist theses, notably as they concern the origin of living beings, this is doubtless due to his fidelity to a profound Epicurean principle - that of the complete autonomy of natural forces - which, in his opinion, needs to be defended on new grounds. Beyond its literal statements, one can thus follow in the Rêve the principal intelligible frameworks characteristic of the De rerum natura, as well as a poetic mode of writing inspired by Lucretius and intended to arouse the speculative imagination. Mots-clé: Diderot, Lucrèce, épicurisme, atomisme, matière, philosophie naturelle, sensibilité, transformisme

To disorder and discompose the whole machine of the world: adam smith, epicurus and lucretius

Wed, 15 May 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Warren Montag
Adam Smith is usually associated with a notion of social harmony which results from each individual in a given society striving to realize his or her interest indifferent or even antagonistic to the interests of others. According to this reading, the effect of such self-seeking, however, is quite the opposite of what individuals intend: without intending to help others or contribute in any way to their welfare, they nevertheless contribute to the prosperity of the whole. When we examine Smith’s understanding of ancient philosophy, however, we must confront the fact that Smith is an exponent of suffering and sacrifice in the service of providence. Lucretius’s notion of individuals breaking the pact of necessity which guarantees the providential order so that they may follow where pleasure may lead, could only discompose the order of things. Lucretius, whose arguments could only complicate Smith’s worldview, must be effaced from the history of philosophy.

L’interpretazione marxiana di lucrezio

Wed, 15 May 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Vittorio Morfino
Analysing the notebooks and the references to Lucretius in Marx’s works, Morfino concludes that it is possible to excavate a major discontinuity in Marx’s interpretation. The Lucretius of the juvenile notebooks on Epicureanism, who functions as a model of abstract self-consciousness, is overtaken, in the scattered references from the period of Die deutsche Ideologie and Das Kapital, by a Lucretius for whom nature becomes a continuous process of transformation of its parts - a process in which the human species is itself immersed.

Libertà e natura dell’uomo in Antonio Genovesi

Wed, 15 May 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Saverio Di Liso
Freedom and human nature in Antonio Genovesi. The moral experience of the human being, which is triggered by irritation of the neural network (tela nervosa) and other physiological components, has its true principle of action in free will and reason. Natural freedom constitutes the ground for the other types of freedom (religious freedom and freedom from human authority), which are achieved through the historical and critical use of reason (libertas philosophandi), namely by applying the "benefit" principle. In outlining the nature of the human being, Antonio Genovesi compares his main ideas with the most recent ideas in physics and proposes an original essay on the origins of society. It reconciles a traditional conception of universalistic ethics with a social application of Newtonian notions of centripetal and centrifugal forces. His aim is also to unify "eclectically" a universalistic with a utilitarian conception of law and justice ("the least of evils"), an ideal with an instrumental notion of reason ("reason as calculation"), and a contemplation of the immutable nature of human beings with a descriptive analysis of the customs of different peoples.

Su Rudolf otto e sulla diffusione del suo pensiero in italia

Wed, 15 May 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Giovanni Rota
This article was inspired by the recent publication of a volume that brings together the Italian translation of Das Heilige and other important writings of Rudolf Otto. It explores in particular the reception of this theologian and philosopher of religion’s thought in Italy during the first half of the twentieth century by such important figures as Ernesto Buonaiuti (who translated Das Heilige in 1926), Benedetto Croce, Giovanni Miegge and Piero Martinetti.

Identità e compiti dello storico del pensiero medievale oggi

Wed, 15 May 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Gregorio Piaia

Alcune riflessioni su Eugenio Colorni

Wed, 15 May 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Geri Cerchiai

Silvio Trentin: due percorsi per la democrazia e il federalismo

Wed, 15 May 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Giuseppe Gangemi

De sensu agente (De rebus naturalibus liber XXIII). Edición de José Manuel García Valverde

Wed, 15 May 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Giacomo Zabarella

Spinoza. la potenza del comune

Wed, 15 May 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Sandra Manzi-Manzi

La filosofia politica di rousseau

Wed, 15 May 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Mauro Simonazzi

Recensioni

Wed, 15 May 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Schede

Wed, 15 May 2012 8:00:00 GMT