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Il saggio intende esaminare come il pensiero illuministico e pre-illuministico rivolge l’attenzione alla civiltà cinese, mettendo in evidenza le affinità ma anche le differenze con i vari aspetti della civiltà occidentale. Un ruolo primario riveste in particolare il pensiero di Leibniz, così come quello di Bayle, Wolff, Voltaire e Montesquieu. Tutti questi autori, pur con differenti approcci, più o meno positivi, si interessano alla civiltà della Cina così come descritta dal gesuita Matteo Ricci e da altri missionari vissuti molti anni in quelle terre.

Redatto in francese, il diario del viaggio attraverso Francia e Italia (1784–1786) del conte August Fryderyk Moszyński (1731–1786) – architetto, collezionista ed erudito, appassionato di arte e scienze, importante figura dell’Illuminismo polacco, collaboratore e amico del re Stanislao II Augusto – è una vera e propria miniera di informazioni per i ricercatori che si occupano del XVIII secolo. Lo scopo di questo articolo è quello di integrare o chiarire informazioni sulle ultime settimane di vita del conte trascorse a Padova e Venezia, e le circostanze della sua morte, nonché di scoprire se sia stato un promotore della cultura polacca durante il suo viaggio in Veneto. L’analisi del suo diario permette l’identificazione di elementi riguardanti reali o ipotetici legami tra la cultura della Serenissima e quella della Confederazione Polacco-Lituana, così come un confronto tra la vita politica e culturale dei due paesi. Citazioni tratte dal diario sono state rapportate ad altre fonti dell’epoca, grazie alle quali è stato possibile stabilire, tra l’altro, che Moszyński visitò Padova sulla strada per Venezia, intorno al 22 maggio 1786, e tornò in quella città per vedere la gara di cavalli a Prato della Valle il 27 giugno 1786. Documenti d’archivio conservati a Varsavia e a Venezia hanno consentito a loro volta di stabilire con certezza le circostanze della morte (luogo, data, causa) e della sepoltura (data, luogo) del viaggiatore.

"Hansel and Gretel" begins with the parents' decision to abandon their children. The author argues that the differences in how the children survive their exile reflect the changes in how modern societies conceptualized their organization. An early baroque tale speaks of a contracted civil society and legitimizes sovereign power, while later versions represent Enlightened social subjects capable of emerging from their minority. The motif of abandoned children reaches back to Roman antiquity, where it was linked to mimetic rivalry. The author shows in what ways mimetic rivalry appears in modern fairy tales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Tiempos Modernos is the property of Tiempos Modernos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper is inspired by a story taken from Mania (1997) by Daniele del Giudice, Fuga; at the center of which is one of the most remarkable constructions of the Neapolitan Enlightenment, the ‘Cemetery of the 366 pits’, designed by the architect Ferdinando Fuga. The story is read as a philosophical apologue, that must be interpreted in the light of some central themes of Daniele del Giudice’s reflection (treated above all in the novel Atlante occidentale). The modern myth of ‘Utopia’ is the background to this reflection, recalled in one of its most macroscopic original emblems: the geometric design of the city space as an expression of a rational order. The modern myth of the map and the atlas (perfect symbolic translation of scientist planning) finds in Fuga, in the form of the allegorical tale, a sort of parodic reversal, suggesting to the reader an aporia that is at the root of Western Modernity: the awareness that «utopia is necessary », but in its unlimited design potential, is contained «its opposite, its failure».

Libraries always have been evidence of civilization, culture, tradition, and progress. However, from the Enlightenment period and especially after the French Revolution, libraries become a factor of not only individual, but also collective and social education and elevation. In 1837, Louis Aimé Martin – conservator of the library of Saint Geneviève in Paris – published the essay Plan d’une bibliotheque universelle, where the library is described as a national educational enterprise whose aim is to bring together within the sameprinciples all classes of society. The essay cites the works of the most notable authors of all disciplines, divided by nations for the literary sphere.

The history of the Risorgimento is here rethought in the light of the recent historiographical debate on the origins of human rights. Far from representing an era in which the reasons for independence supplanted the demands of freedom, the decades between the Triennium and Italian unification represented an era in which fundamental rights found a way to express themselves and in part to assert themselves for the first time in the Italian context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Italica Wratislaviensia is the property of Wydawnictwo Adam Marszalek and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article proposes an explanation of Italy's economic and social divide by taking account of the institutional legacy left by French political control during the period 1796–1814. Using a new data set regarding the duration of French domination and 'bridging' social capital in Italy in the nineteenth century, we find that a prolonged French presence is associated with a higher level of social capital as from 1814. We suggest that the transmission channel lay in the improvements, both institutional and cultural, achieved in the areas where the French presence was more prolonged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Il contributo mette in rilievo il percorso accidentato della conciliazione tra fede e ragione nel pensiero di Manzoni dal fatidico anno 1817, l’anno della sua crisi morale e religiosa, al 1819, l’anno in cui Manzoni diede alle stampe la prima edizione della Morale cattolica, la sua opera apologetica più nota e importante. Dal ruolo di Luigi Tosi, guida spirituale della famiglia Manzoni, allo strisciante giansenismo, dalla formazione illuministica all’insegna di Voltaire e Rousseau al sofferto ritorno alla fede cattolica, il trentaduenne Manzoni rifiuta la divaricazione tra dottrina cattolica e ragione e fra morale cattolica e storia, ponendo le basi, nella sua civile ed elegante polemica contro l’Histoire des Républiques italiennes au Moyen Age di Sismondi, per la sua futura poetica espressa nella Lettre a M. Chauvet e al contempo aprendo paradossalmente la strada agli esiti tardi della Storia della colonna infame e del saggio comparativo sulla Rivoluzione francese del 1789 e la Rivoluzione italiana del 1859.

his article sheds light on the academic side of dr. Jože Pučnik. While his civic, dissident and political activities in Slovenia have been well known, his academic work and the political philosophy he developed have been largely neglected. This is unfortunate, as already a cursory insight in Pučnik’s monography on Culture, Society and Technology, such as provided in this article, reveals the richness of his political thought. Pučnik as an intellectual, as a political thinker was not only aware of the main currents of western political philosophy after the WWII, but was also entirely on par with then political and legal thinkers. He had integrated their work into his own political philosophy, which he subsequently applied to the case study of Slovenia, a country that he felt most deeply about. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

La scomparsa di Franco Fido, avvenuta il 23 giugno 2020, ha destato vivo cordoglio nella comunità accademica. Intellettuale di fama internazionale, vissuto fra l'Italia, la Francia e gli Stati Uniti, Fido ha dedicato la sua intera esistenza agli studi letterari percorrendo un arco cronologico ampio in cui il Settecento ha occupato un posto privilegiato. Attraverso le sue letture critiche, in grado di coniugare in modo esemplare rigore filologico e acribia esegetica, diverse generazioni di studiosi si sono potute avvalere non solo della sua immensa cultura, ma anche del suo rigoroso e antidogmatico metodo di lettura. Dai saggi imperniati su singoli autori alle panoramiche che percorrono vari secoli della storia della letteratura, il tratto distintivo degli studi di Fido va individuato in una profonda e moderna sensibilità umanistica che gli ha permesso di frequentare vari versanti della tradizione letteraria con impareggiabile competenza. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay analyses the body of treatises in the 18th century regarding the problem of vampirism in Eastern Europe under the Habsburg Empire. The vampires approached in these works have marked descriptive characteristics, radically different from those which, in the following century, will constitute the literary material through which the theme of the vampire has been built. In this article, we try to analyse the relationship between famine, political and economic balances of border regions, and the building of the modern imaginary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alberto Fortis (1741-1803), a prominent representative of the Italian Enlightenment, made several journeys to the Kvarner Gulf and Dalmatia. His Travels into Dalmatia made him famous in Europe and kindled an interest in this relatively unknown area. Besides travelling extensively to the Adriatic coastal regions, Fortis travelled from Trieste to Ljubljana across the Karst and recounted his journey in The Oryctographic Letter. Despite being one of his minor works, the letter is an important indication of the author's interest in Carniola, especially its Karst phenomena, and of his contacts with Balthasar Hacquet, a naturalist active in Carniola. Fortis' books were present in the extensive library belonging to Žiga Zois, a leading promoter of science in that period, and were probably available to his intellectual circle. Whilst Fortis' contacts with intellectuals living in Carniola are far from reaching the extent of his connections with Dalmatia, his exchanges with Hacquet, as well as the presence of his books indicate the existence of contacts between the Carniolan intellectual milieux and the Italian Enlightenment. On the basis of critical studies and printed sources consisting mostly of texts published by Fortis, the article highlights certain aspects of Fortis' travels and explorations as well as his contacts with representatives of the Carniolan Enlightenment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cet article analyse le contexte rédactionnel et les réseaux des consuls de Trieste (1810-1813) à l'époque napoléonienne, dans une perspective d'histoire culturelle, avec une attention particulière à la circulation de la pensée des Lumières, des savoirs français, italianisants et allemands et des pratiques documentaires à la fin de l'Ancien Régime. Armand-Louis-Maurice Séguier (1770-1831), qui était consul pendant l'Empire français (1810-1813), fut le rédacteur de trois mémoires rédigés entre mai et juillet 1810. Ces documents inédits étaient adressés à Nompère de Champigny, ministre des Affaires Étrangères, et ils sont conservés aux Archives Nationales de France. Ces sources sont importantes, car elles explicitent les réseaux intellectuels du consul, ses lectures et ses références culturelles. En effet, ces sources fragmentaires peuvent aider à dresser la 'bibliothèque de travail' de Séguier. L'exploitation de ces sources reflète les caractéristiques des travaux du consul et elles expliquent la circulation des idées économiques des Lumières. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Un mistero avvolge il manoscritto della prima traduzione in lingua magiara del Dei delitti e delle pene di Cesare Beccaria realizzato sul finire del Settecento dall'intellettuale illuminista Ferenc Kazinczy. Si tratta di un lavoro incompiuto e mai pubblicato, oggi custodito nella Biblioteca Nazionale Széchenyi di Budapest. Il presente saggio si pone come obiettivo una doppia operazione: in primo luogo, ripercorrere gli errori e i fraintendimenti compiuti dagli archivisti nella catalogazione dell'opera che solo nel XX secolo è assurta agli onori della letteratura come traduzione originale del Dei delitti. La traduzione, infatti, è stata a lungo fraintesa, giacché catalogata prima come traduzione de L'Esprit des Lois di Montesquieu e più tardi come un'opera originale, alimentando un fitto mistero che si intende dipanare. In secondo luogo, il saggio presenta nella sua seconda parte l'analisi comparativistica linguistica e testuale della traduzione del Kazinczy mettendo in luce l'originalità di essa per giungere alla conclusione che l'illustre magiaro aveva ben compreso l'ineluttabilità dei lavori di traduzione al fine di svecchiare la lingua e la cultura magiare. Inoltre, viene affermato che, sebbene la traduzione compiuta dal Kazinczy non possa essere considerata tra quelle ufficiali perché frammentaria e inedita, non è oltremodo possibile non considerare lo stesso Kazinczy primo traduttore del capolavoro di Beccaria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent publication of the revised English edition of Unfabling the East by Jürgen Osterhammel, originally published in 1998, makes a masterly work of a leading figure in the contemporary international framework of global history available to a larger reading public. Inquiring into the ways in which European culture of the age of Enlightenment approached the Asiatic world, Osterhammel's book offers an original interpretative proposal, mainly focusing on the discontinuity between an inclusive Eurocentrism of the 18th century culture and the exclusive one of the following age. It is an important revision of the effects of the Saidean approach to the study of the European 18th century intellectual and cultural context, giving suggestions for further inquiries and investigations which are still valid many years since the first edition of the book. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1957 Martin Heidegger highlighted how the computer language could be a poor imitation of the human language. The computer, infact, can reproduce only the logical and mathematical skills of the human mind, not the feelings and the ethics. Neither Julien Offray de La Mettrie, who in 1758 theorized the figure of the so called Machine man, had advanced the hypothesis that a machine could reproduce the psychic and intellectual abilities of a human being. This hypothesis is affected by some of the unique characteristics of the human species, among which the sensitivity for music.

Johann Georg Meusel’s Leitfaden aus Geschichte der Gelehrsamkeit (Leipzig 1799-1800) is one of the most important historical works about European culture at the end of the 18th century. The six sections at the end of the work are of great interest for the history of the eighteenth century and the Illuminism. Meusel realizes in this part of the work a remarkable picture of this period, extremely accurate and astonishingly modern.

With the publication of the Encyclopédie of Diderot and D’Alembert, which dates from 1751, the concept of library is declined in a negative sense, as a closing tool and impediment in the hands of the State, compared to the Encyclopedia, considered the book of the people. The constitution of the public library (the british Public Libraries Act is dated 1850), funded with public money, determines to change and both realities, Library and Encyclopedia, begin to interact contributing to the development of contemporary culture. Such as the Library, the Encyclopedia also supposes a work of organization of knowledge through classifications. From this point of view, both institutions seem closer in a purpose that unites them. In view of the information revolution, the Library should help reduce complexity of digital information and should play, against the vastness of the network, a role similar to what the Enlightenment Encyclopedia has assigned to itself in the face of large library collections, which were seen as points of accumulation, and also as points of the knowledge’s dispersion.

Although Voltaire's expression "philosophy of history" was nothing more than a critical approach to the study of history, it is well known that his work as a historian - and, first of all, in his Essai sur les murs - was intended to be an attempt to provide a new object. historical inquiry: the "history of the human spirit." This conception of history, by the very nature of its object, can only aspire to universality, but, on the other hand, it requires that history be constructed and structured in accordance with a logic and criteria of coherence that bend the mere Empirical contingency of becoming historical to a rational order: in this contradictory need lie the originality and limitations of the historical Voltaian method.

Three centuries ago, Giuseppe Baretti was born in Turin. This essay traces its personality, voyages and movements, with particular attention to never easy relationships with the Italian Enlightenment and for those decidedly better with British intellectual world, known by the Piedmontese journalist and writer through two long stays full of books and various activities. After three hundred years, a controversial and not without charm, emblematic and fascinating figure of XVIIIth century culture emerges again.

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Copyright of Quaderni Di Teoria Sociale is the property of Morlacchi Editore and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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The present article takes into exam the French-Italian literary controversy that took place in 1765 and which, despite its brief duration, revived the national sentiment in a wide portion of the Italian cultured world. The dispute began in response to an anonymous "Lettre", although sent by the French Alexandre Deleyre (1726-1797), published on march 1765 in the Parisian journal "Gazette littéraire de l’Europe": according to the controversial Encyclopedist, eighteenth century Italy was in full moral, cultural, political and economic decadence. The Italian poet Agostino Paradisi il Giovane (1736-1783) sent to the Venetian journal «La Minerva» a very well informed anonymous "Epistola". It was printed on october 1765, and is to be considered the clearest and most thoughtful response from the Italian side to Deleyre’s denounces and accusations.

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Copyright of Montesquieu.it is the property of Montesquieu.it and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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