Intersezioni | 2019 | N. 3

The essay is concerned with the concept of people in the eighteenth-century France. The main aim is to show how the need to outline and frame the figure of the peuple arises from the Enlightenment debate on popular instruction and, more broadly, from the reflection on appropriateness and legitimacy of the «useful errors». To this end, I will take into account two closely related debates, both revolving around two main issues: 1) Is it useful to deceive the people? 2) Is it possible and necessary to enlighten – and educate – the people? The intent is not only to analyse the different stances taken in this regard, but to point out the implicit limitations also present in the reflections of those who openly supported the enlightening of the popular classes.

In the paper some unpublished letters by Carlo Botta (San Giorgio Canavese, 1766 – Paris, 1837) dedicated to the cholera epidemic that hit Paris in 1832 are published and commented on. Botta describes to his scared friends in Turin the situation in Paris with the sensitivity of the intellectual and the scientific competence of the doctor. Botta criticizes the incompetence of many French doctors and the ineptitude and inadequacy of the authorities. He describes an apocalyptic scenery (mountains of corpses, mournful gravediggers, overflowing hospitals, the unnatural and suffocating atmosphere) and explains the different phases of the disease. Moreover in the paper the information given by Botta with official data on the epidemic is related.

Ever since classical antiquity, Democritus’ laughter, both as derived from the Pseudo-Hippocratic Letters and as opposed to Heraclitus’ tears, has nourished not only philosophy but other areas of cultural production as well, including the visual arts and all types of literature (poetry, theatre, narrative prose and treatises). The present study aims at retracing a range of references to this philosopher’s laughter, above all in French literature from the 16th through to the 18th century. It will thus show the forms taken on by it in each era, whether lauded as a tool used in a critique of human vanity, treated as no more than a mere divertissement, or again rejected as ridiculous and misanthropic.

This essay attempts to reconstruct the aesthetic and philosophical-political thought of a polyhedral philosopher, who is little known in Italy, as Jacques Ellul (1912-1994), starting from the centrality he attributes to the topic of technique. A first part (§ 1-§ 2) of the analysis is dedicated to the concept of technical system and to its affirmation in terms of the empire of non-sense. Through the exposition of the function of art in the age of technology (§ 3), Ellul delineates, in a distinct way, an interpretation, often ambivalent, of the twists brought to the technique in his century and configures an interesting reading of the limits and opportunity for man in the technical society.

In recent years Dewey’s early philosophy has has been the subject of a remarkable growth of interest. Many interpreters have put considerable effort to criticize the traditional historiographical account of Dewey’s philosophical development, to the effect that Dewey progressively came to abandon idealism in favour of a form of naturalistic pragmatism. The present article aims to further articulate this new, more continuist historiographical approach by highlighting the theoretical complexity of Dewey’s early idealism. First of all, I will stress the multifaceted nature of British Idealism, where Kantian and Hegelian themes were often merged together. Secondly, I will argue that Dewey’s early philosophy is closer to Kant’s position than has usually been acknowledged.