Intersezioni | 2023 | N. 2

This essay proposes to adopt the concept of Iperbaroque as an interpretive category to frame 21st-century cultural phenomena and taste. Iperbaroque is an extension (not a contradiction) of the concept of Neobaroque developed by critics of the late 20th century. Neobaroque posited a return to the taste of the 17th century. Iperbaroque confirms that the traits of the Neobaroque are still prevalent, but asserts that in the 21st century they have reached levels of intensity and complexity that exceed even those of the 17th century. The essay tests this hypothesis on rebuses of the last decades. The rebus is selected as a representative of the taste for indirect allusion of the 17th century and as a popular form of entertainment in today’s world. The essay demonstrates that modern rebuses can be understood through Tesauro’s writings about enigmas (showing a connection with the Baroque), but also embody Tesauro’s ideals better than 17th-century proto-rebuses did. Modern rebuses are therefore showed to be more Baroque than their Baroque counterparts – in an Iperbaroque, rather than Neobaroque, perspective.

This article traces the genealogy of the female characters of the myth of Don Juan, highlighting their conceptual significance. I argue that the female characters of Don Juan have their origin in the model of the story of Lucretia. By following the re-elaboration of the story of Lucretia in Machiavelli and the Jesuits, I will establish a connection between these re-elaborations and two important moments in modern political thought. First, Machiavelli’s break with the ancient Platonic-Ciceronian model of reason that was at the basis of the Christian conception of politics – that is, a model of reason as a principle that naturally tends towards social harmony. Second, Jesuits’ polemics against Machiavelli’s innovation that attempts to reaffirm a theology-subservient politics. In conclusion, I claim that, in the case of the intertwined myths of Lucretia and Don Juan, there is a conflict between political theology and politics, rather than a secularization of theological concepts.

Through a cross-reading of the fictional epistle Lettre d’un singe aux êtres de son espèce, and the utopia La Découverte australe par un homme volant, this article aims to highlight the originality of the conception of animality expressed by the polygraph Nicolas-Edme Restif de La Bretonne (1734-1806). Indeed, Restif is able in these writings, thanks to an imaginative representation of animality, to go beyond the simple criticism of anthropocentrism, to insert animal literature at the centre of the process of «invention» of the rights of man and woman typical of the Enlightenment. Restif’s work is indeed focused – from a philosophical point of view – on the imaginative and projective dimension of compassion, mobilised by fiction, which allows the subject to go beyond his usual picture of life, until authentically sympathising with all possible forms of otherness, embodied by the non-human animal – the monkey protagonist of the Lettre d’un singe – and by the half-breed, i.e. the beastmen described in the utopian novel La Découverte australe.

Franz Anton Staudenmaier (1800-1856) belonged to a group of influential Catholic theologians who were active at the University of Tübingen during the first half of the 19th century. He is often remembered as the most important Catholic critic of Hegel’s philosophy. This essay highlights an internal aspect of his work that has not yet been investigated: that of the historical links between modern mysticism and ancient gnosis. Unusually for a thinker of his time, Staudenmaier addressed some of the fundamental problems and philosophical questions of his age with a solid knowledge of the entire history of Christian thought from patristics to scholasticism. Drawing from such extensive knowledge, he was able to analyze and compare in detail two of the main protagonists of the debate on mysticism within German Romanticism such as Franz von Baader and Joseph von Görres.

Elissa and Dido, the two names of the Phoenician fugitive and founder of Carthage, refer to different versions of the Mediterranean myth, as developed by hostile peoples. In history, these tales have been distanced for millennia, until, due to the phenomenon of globalization, they have been intertwined again. Her power as a queen, her wisdom and her fury are inextricable from her life as a woman, a faithful widow, prepared to commit suicide or be sacrificed, as well as a stranger’s lover. Primarily considered as «Dido the Forsaken» by European poets and playwrights, in recent decades Dido’s character has been endowed with the power of strength, forgiveness and survival, giving birth to postcolonial and non-patriarchal literary genealogies.

«Axial Age» is a term coined by the German philosopher Karl Jaspers to describe a period of significant cultural and philosophical development that occurred between the 8th and 3rd centuries BCE in several regions across the globe. The article investigates the origin of the idea, which dates long before Jaspers, surveying its development to the present day. The proposed thesis is that, especially after the publication of Jürgen Habermas’ 2019 work, Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie, the notion of the Axial Age, after having transited through sociology, returns to the realm of philosophy, becoming pivotal again for the solution of multicultural problems. The working hypothesis the article proposes is to look back to the Axial Age to find some universals to govern today’s religious pluralism, thus recovering Karl Jaspers’ original aim.