Montesquieu.itPub Date : 2020-04-01DOI: 10.6092/ISSN.2421-4124/10733
Sergio Audano
{"title":"Politeness, “Humanitas” and Imperialism. A Reflection by Montesquieu (“EL”, XIX, 27) and Tacitus’ “Agricola”","authors":"Sergio Audano","doi":"10.6092/ISSN.2421-4124/10733","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6092/ISSN.2421-4124/10733","url":null,"abstract":"A reflection by Montesquieu on the relationship between absolutism, idleness and politeness (“EL” XIX, 27) is connected, through a note later deleted in the manuscript, to chap. 21 of Tacitus’ “Agricola”, where the author shows how Agricola, the father-in-law of the historian and a general victorious over the Britons, had gradually (and skilfully) imposed a conquest which was not merely military but also cultural. The Roman civilization, defined in its overall “superiority” as “humanitas”, could easily offer seductive tools (temples, forums, houses, elegant clothes and refined manners) that extinguished any memory of past freedom, cancelled any identity and common memory, thus contributing to the long-term affirmation of Roman imperialism. Still in the “Agricola”, Tacitus also proposes the opponent’s point of view through the famous speech by the Britons’ commander Calgacus before the decisive battle of Mons Graupius: the well-known metaphor of the “desert called peace” is well explained if associated not only with the traditional Roman expansionism, but, as acutely noted by Montesquieu, also to the subtle conquests of the “humanitas”.","PeriodicalId":36096,"journal":{"name":"Montesquieu.it","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85095253","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Montesquieu.itPub Date : 2020-03-18DOI: 10.6092/ISSN.2421-4124/10681
Antonio Andujar
{"title":"The mutiny of the Roman legions in Panonia and Germania. Guilt and forgiveness","authors":"Antonio Andujar","doi":"10.6092/ISSN.2421-4124/10681","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6092/ISSN.2421-4124/10681","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the mutiny of the Roman legions in Panonia and Germania, not from a historiographical point of view but psychological, ethical and political. In the course from the rise of the rebellion to its final suffocation we find individuals who, in a deliberate, rational, and organized way, claim their rights with increasing violence. When the Roman authorities try to put an end to the rebellion they soon provoke a sense of guilt in the rebels that leads many of them to abandon the revolt and to reaccept the authority previously contested. The feeling of guilt, however, does not end there and the rebels’ need for forgiveness leads to a process of repentance, punishment, and revenge against their former comrades and against themselves until their final expiation on the battlefield, that is, until they compromise their honour. Honour allows politics to achieve what ethics could not: to bring peace to the conscience of the old rebels. However, the new situation puts a price: innocence is not possible in the world of men, but the moral tearing, even perverse and truculent at times, is part of their identity.","PeriodicalId":36096,"journal":{"name":"Montesquieu.it","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76461015","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Montesquieu.itPub Date : 2020-03-16DOI: 10.6092/ISSN.2421-4124/10665
Silvana Bartoli
{"title":"The passions of Émilie","authors":"Silvana Bartoli","doi":"10.6092/ISSN.2421-4124/10665","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6092/ISSN.2421-4124/10665","url":null,"abstract":"A woman who loved to study, physics in particular, and nurtured the ambition of autonomy. If the eighteenth century is traditionally considered a century of stability, obviously excluding the last twenty years, Emilie du Châtelet carries out a personal revolution by transgressing the principles of \"bienseances\" that prescribed ignorance, obedience and devotion for women. \u0000Madame instead presents herself as a multifaceted personality: cultured, unwilling to bow her dead, intolerant of dogmas, often distracted by good manners. But the desire for autonomy did not teach her to get rid of love, on the contrary the need to feel loved led to her premature death.","PeriodicalId":36096,"journal":{"name":"Montesquieu.it","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81062626","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Montesquieu.itPub Date : 2020-02-27DOI: 10.6092/ISSN.2421-4124/10581
A. Marcone
{"title":"Giuliano tra pagani e cristiani","authors":"A. Marcone","doi":"10.6092/ISSN.2421-4124/10581","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6092/ISSN.2421-4124/10581","url":null,"abstract":"The kind of religion that Julian wanted to restore had very little in common with classical paganism, which comprised a set of doctrines that presupposed an unprecedented systematization of theology as well as a specific moral teaching. These aspects constituted a radical innovation, whose underpinning was a project of paganism that incorporated, at least to a certain extent, some of the institutions created by the Christian Church during its recent development.","PeriodicalId":36096,"journal":{"name":"Montesquieu.it","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83481808","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Montesquieu.itPub Date : 2020-02-25DOI: 10.6092/ISSN.2421-4124/10543
A. D. Biase
{"title":"Dominio, obbedienza, mansuetudine. Effetti dell’immagine del \"Christus hortulanus\" tra Cinquecento e Seicento","authors":"A. D. Biase","doi":"10.6092/ISSN.2421-4124/10543","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6092/ISSN.2421-4124/10543","url":null,"abstract":"Starting from the frontispiece of a 16th century translation of Aristotle’s \"Politics\", depicting the scene of Christ appearing to Mary Magdalene as a ‘gardener’ (Jn 20:15), this essay aims to outline a possible reading path in order to describe the meanings and purposes of the image. More precisely, it examines the convergence of issues relating to the limits of political action and voluntary servitude in treatise writers, lexicographers and philosophers between the late 16th century and the early 17th century. An elusive invitation to obedience and moral surrender lies behind the longed-for return to a state of nature prior to sin: only by renouncing the active sphere of the individual wills, as well as the disruptive forces coming from the internal passions and the private interests, will it be possible to guarantee the members of the social body a greater, albeit indirect, political solidity.","PeriodicalId":36096,"journal":{"name":"Montesquieu.it","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76359442","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Montesquieu.itPub Date : 2020-02-03DOI: 10.6092/ISSN.2421-4124/10471
Riccardo Campi
{"title":"The order of the history. System and method in Voltaire's historical works","authors":"Riccardo Campi","doi":"10.6092/ISSN.2421-4124/10471","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6092/ISSN.2421-4124/10471","url":null,"abstract":"Benche per Voltaire l’espressione “filosofia della storia” non designasse altro che un approccio critico allo studio della storia, e risaputo che la sua opera di storico − e, in primo luogo, nel suo Essai sur les mœurs − volle essere un tentativo di fornire un nuovo oggetto all’indagine storica: la “storia dello spirito umano”. Tale concezione della storia, per la natura stessa del suo oggetto, non puo, da un lato, che aspirare all’universalita, ma, dall’altro, essa esige che la storia venga costruita e strutturata conformemente a una logica e a criteri di coerenza che pieghino la mera contingenza empirica del divenire storico a un ordine razionale: in questa contraddittoria esigenza risiedono l’originalita e i limiti del metodo storico voltairiano.","PeriodicalId":36096,"journal":{"name":"Montesquieu.it","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76488990","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Montesquieu.itPub Date : 2020-02-03DOI: 10.6092/ISSN.2421-4124/10470
Voltaire François-Marie Arouet
{"title":"Voltaire, Storia dell'affermazione del cristianesimo, ed. by Domenico Felice","authors":"Voltaire François-Marie Arouet","doi":"10.6092/ISSN.2421-4124/10470","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6092/ISSN.2421-4124/10470","url":null,"abstract":"Among the latest texts sended to the press by Voltaire, the Histoire de l’etablissement du Christianisme (1776) offers the reader the best possible synthesis of his thoughts on religion. Written in a style as clear and fast as it is dense and passionate, this short text traces all the themes that had fueled the reflection of the French philosopher for more than half a century: the humble origins of Christianity, the close ties of Jesus and his first disciples with the Jewish religion, the importance of the role played by Paul of Tarsus in the elaboration of Christian doctrine, the compromises of the early Church with the Roman imperial power, up to the triumph under Constantine. But Voltaire, with his unparalleled talent for controversy, transforms this historical knowledge into a ferocious anticlerical satire; at the same time, he knows how to draw from his erudition a rich repertoire of arguments, historical figures, facts, to plead the cause of that natural religion, called deism, which constituted the negation of every revealed religion and which it seemed to him, still in the late age (he was over eighty), the \"most reasonable religion\", the only one capable of healing men from the disease of fanaticism and religious intolerance.","PeriodicalId":36096,"journal":{"name":"Montesquieu.it","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82758980","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Montesquieu.itPub Date : 2020-01-24DOI: 10.6092/ISSN.2421-4124/10431
Federico Focher
{"title":"La logica del vivente in Maupertuis: dall’attrazione newtoniana al determinismo psicobiologico","authors":"Federico Focher","doi":"10.6092/ISSN.2421-4124/10431","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6092/ISSN.2421-4124/10431","url":null,"abstract":"After successfully relaunching the epigenetic theory of generation, reinterpreted in the light of Newtonian attraction and chemical affinities (\"Venus physique\", 1745), Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698-1759) deepened his theoretical investigations in the field of the genesis of organisms and species in the \"Systeme de la Nature\" (1754). In this work, in order to reconcile the scientific postulate of objectivity - which rejects the recourse to final causes - with the evident teleonomic properties of living beings, and at the same time recognizing inadequate for this purpose the mechanistic principles he advanced in the \"Venus physique\", Maupertuis proposed a bold panpsychist theory of life, of Spinozian inspiration. Therefore, by postulating the matter alive, endowed with instinct and feeling, Maupertuis imagined that some form of intelligence or psychic memory, associated with matter, directed the development of living beings. In light of recent discoveries in biology, the original psychobiological determinism advanced by Maupertuis in the \"Systeme de la Nature\" appears to be a brilliant intuition of the logic of genetic and evolutionary processes.","PeriodicalId":36096,"journal":{"name":"Montesquieu.it","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85015962","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Montesquieu.itPub Date : 2020-01-19DOI: 10.6092/ISSN.2421-4124/10417
Gaetano Antonio Gualtieri
{"title":"Voltaire, the witty and colloquial thinker","authors":"Gaetano Antonio Gualtieri","doi":"10.6092/ISSN.2421-4124/10417","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6092/ISSN.2421-4124/10417","url":null,"abstract":"Voltaire e indubbiamente uno dei filosofi piu interessanti del pensiero moderno. La sua figura risulta stimolante e pregna di arguzia nell’affrontare una molteplicita di temi e di argomenti. Il Taccuino di pensieri, curato da Domenico Felice, presenta una vasta selezione di aforismi, pensieri e materiali dell’autore francese e si propone di evidenziare la complessita dei temi messi in campo dal pensatore transalpino, facendo al contempo risaltare l’abilita di quest’ultimo nell’interagire col lettore, il quale viene considerato non come un passivo ricettore, ma come una sorta di coautore, che irrimediabilmente rimane affascinato dall’impronta arguta di colui che scrive. L’opera, nel prendere in esame la vastita e l’eterogeneita di problemi discussi da Voltaire, ha il merito di sottolinearne pure la modernita e l’attualita in un’epoca come la nostra afflitta da pigrizia intellettuale e poverta culturale.","PeriodicalId":36096,"journal":{"name":"Montesquieu.it","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86609293","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Montesquieu.itPub Date : 2020-01-16DOI: 10.6092/ISSN.2421-4124/10404
Gaetano Antonio Gualtieri
{"title":"Gianvincenzo Gravina and the theme of virtue","authors":"Gaetano Antonio Gualtieri","doi":"10.6092/ISSN.2421-4124/10404","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6092/ISSN.2421-4124/10404","url":null,"abstract":"La virtu, all’interno di questo articolo, viene considerata come il vero e proprio centro nevralgico del pensiero di Gianvincenzo Gravina; non a caso, essa attraversa un po’ tutte le opere piu significative scritte dall’autore calabrese. La virtu, per Gravina, non tocca solamente tematiche di carattere religioso, cosa che e in un certo senso naturale, ma anche questioni che a tutta prima sembrano distanti dal suo raggio d’azione, come ad esempio quelle di tipo poetico e letterario. Infatti, conformemente alla concezione del verosimile, il letterato calabrese pone in essere l’esigenza che l’ottimo poeta non debba rappresentare una virtu fondata su un astratto ideale di perfezione, ma debba invece rappresentare una virtu aderente alla realta. In questo senso, risultano esemplificative le Tragedie cinque scritte dallo stesso Gravina, nelle quali si mettono in scena personaggi del mondo greco e romano incarnanti le quattro virtu cardinali. Nel porre in risalto questo tema, il presente articolo finisce con l’instaurare, inevitabilmente, alcuni confronti significativi, come quello fra Gravina e Montesquieu e soprattutto come quello fra Gravina e Vico, presi, relativamente a questo argomento, come autori emblematici della cultura meridionale italiana del primo Settecento.","PeriodicalId":36096,"journal":{"name":"Montesquieu.it","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82422897","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}