Intersezioni | 2020 | N. 2

This paper aims to shed more light on the role played by the historical credence within the apologetic scheme of the Pensées. Starting from a discussion of Pascal’s sharp condemnation of Montaigne’s use of mythical sources, it briefly analyses how Pascal attempts to prove the authenticity of the Scriptures in order to convince unbelievers. Through the innate logical faculty of common sense, reason should offer a way to avoid the contradictions of scepticism and to distinguish sacred stories from pagan tales. More specifically, Pascal’s entire proof of the truthfulness of the Bible is built around the survival of a book, the Old Testament, and of a people, the Jewish one, who has handed it down during the centuries and despite persecutions.

This article offers an analysis of some theatrical metaphors employed by G.W. Leibniz in his reflections on living nature. In particular, I show that he uses a lexicon taken from the world of theater in order to describe the phenomena of birth
and death of organisms, as well as some features of such «divine machines». The concept of the metamorphosis of the living being played a central role in Leibniz’s natural philosophy and gained empirical support thanks to the diffusion of microscopy. The theatrical images used by Leibniz in this context are drawn from the Commedia dell’Arte and have to do in particular with the mask of Harlequin. I then try to explain this special predilection shown by Leibniz, framing it in the cultural environment of the Baroque theater, in order to put into a sharper focus two distinct questions: on the one hand, the use of metaphors in philosophical contexts; on the other, the historical coincidence between the golden age of European theater and the rise of modern science.

This essay tackles the issue of «moral imperative» in Giambattista Basile’s The Tale of Tales. Basile’s volume revolves around the character of a pregnant black slave and her unborn baby, whose horrific execution coincides with the happy ending of the entire volume. Inspired by thinkers such as Bloch, Benjamin, Bachelard, Sartre, and Cavarero, Maggi investigates the complex rapport between artistic appreciation and moral demand in Basile’s seminal volume. Maggi shows that by questioning Basile’s disturbing treatment of the black slave and her unborn child a modern reader achieves a more complex and satisfying understanding of Basile’s seminal book.

The essay examines the fortune of the reductionist attitude in the post-Hegelian philosophy, analysing the presence of the formula «nothing but» in key passages of the works of some relevant figures of that period. Then we present the reflections of three authors (Wittgenstein, Jung and Feigl) that in the first half of the 20th century have clearly (and independently) highlighted the limits and risks of the philosophies of the «nothing but». In the end, some general epistemological conclusions are drawn.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the evolution of the concept of point from extended entity to «one dimension» to extended entity to «zero dimension » in the so-called pre-Euclidean mathematics. This also corresponds to a rethinking of the geometric space from discrete to continuous. The analysis starts from the consideration of the arithmo-geometry established by the Pythagoreans, which establishes a perfect equivalence between the point and the unity, highlighting how this becomes puzzling due to the discovery of immeasurability, and then unfolds through Plato’s mathematical thought and Aristotle.

Building upon the research initiated in Eco’s Affaire (2017-2018), this article provides additional textual evidence of a literary conversation between Leonardo Sciascia and Umberto Eco – a dialogue at distance, consisting of veiled citations, and taking advantage of the combinatory power of intertextuality. The article identifies the connection between the title Foucault’s Pendulum and Michel Foucault’s thought in Raymond Roussel’s work, and demonstrates how some topoi characteristic of Sciascia’s style, such as those relating to forgetful characters, are systematically reused, but unacknowledged in Eco’s works. In its conclusion, the article offers a hypothesis for what may have triggered the dialogue between the two authors.