01/2025 – Giacomo Leopardi e la politica: percorsi, letture, interpretazioni

Abstracts

Alessandro Arienzo, Giacomo Leopardi and Politics as an Ethical Critique of Modernity

In Giacomo Leopardi’s political thought, significant attention is devoted to political and social institutions, to modern societies and their national specificities, and to key aspects of collective life such as commerce, war, and science. At the core of this reflection lies the idea that the process of rationalization entails the progressive denaturation of the human being, fostering an individualistic egoism that not only alienates man from “Nature” and from his “true nature,” but also disrupts any possible balance between sensibility and intellect. How should one respond to this threat? According to Leopardi, the solution is not to be found in political-institutional reform or in practical politics, but rather in ethics and poetics.

Keywords: Giacomo Leopardi, Modernity, Nature, Political Thought

Massimiliano Biscuso, The Idea of Recognition in the Discourse on the Present State of the Customs of the Italians

As in the works of other major European philosophers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the idea of recognition plays a significant role in Giacomo Leopardi’s moral reflection—particularly in his Discourse on the Present State of the Customs of the Italians. In Leopardi’s case, recognition is understood as the esteem and honor that members of a society mutually confer upon one another. This concept serves as a modern society’s alternative foundation to the ideals of glory and love of country, which were central to ancient societies.

Keywords: Giacomo Leopardi, Recognition, Italians, Patriotism

Matteo Palumbo, Poetry and Community Between Foscolo and Leopardi

The memory of heroic deeds is something that endures through the long timespan of human communities—this was the notion of a “monumental history” that underpinned Ugo Foscolo’s poetics. Giacomo Leopardi overturns this vision. For him, poetry does not celebrate gods and heroes; rather, it gives voice to the affections of life, expressing the emotions of individuals. Modern lyric poetry does not glorify a people or a city, but instead identifies with the fabric of illusions and their eventual disenchantment, erasing the continuity of collective destinies and bringing to light the painful lives of individual subjects.

Keywords: Giacomo Leopardi, Ugo Foscolo, Community, Monumental History

 

Pietro Sebastianelli, “Everything in Man Is Habituation”: Tracing the Political Leopardi

Leopardi offered an original interpretation of the role of the philosopher-poet and, more broadly, of the intellectual. In his view, the intellectual is one who shakes readers from the dogmatic slumber of reason, transforming this critical undertaking into an ethical stance. By diagnosing the aporias of an era in transition—between the ruins of the ancien régime and the triumphant march of modernization—Leopardi renewed the critical impulses inherent in the Enlightenment legacy. His contribution to political thought, including contemporary reflection, lies precisely in his persistent denunciation of the power relations embedded in society.

Keywords: Giacomo Leopardi, Intellectual, Enlightenment, Power

Gianfranco Borrelli, Desire, Contentment, Discontentment: Leopardi as Interpreter of Machiavelli

Giacomo Leopardi was a careful and original reader of Machiavelli, with whom he maintained a continuous intellectual dialogue—though marked by evolving interpretations and uses of his teachings. From his youthful reflections on Italian independence, imbued with a patriotic fervor inspired precisely by the Florentine thinker, to the disillusionment of his mature years regarding the conservatism and stagnation of Italian society, Leopardi’s perspective shifted notably. This disillusionment led him to coin the famous expression “machiavellismo di società” (“societal Machiavellianism”)—not to criticize Machiavelli himself, but rather to condemn the selfish insularity of Italians and their rejection of any form of public ethics.

Keywords: Giacomo Leopardi, Niccolò Machiavelli, Ethics, Conservatism

Gennaro Maria Barbuto, Leopardi and Guicciardini

As evidenced by the catalog of his personal library, Leopardi was familiar with The History of Italy and the Ricordi by Francesco Guicciardini, of whom he was a careful reader and whom he praised as a historian in his Pensieri. Leopardi shared with Guicciardini a critical stance toward political science, instrumental rationality, and the use of statistics as a means of understanding human society and its complex dynamics. For Leopardi, Guicciardini was above all a political psychologist—a deep explorer of the human soul, of the passions and emotions that underlie both individual and collective action.

Keywords: Giacomo Leopardi, Francesco Guicciardini, Collectiv Action, Political Realism

Fabiana Cacciapuoti, The Idea of the Common Good: Leopardi Between Machiavelli and Hobbes

In Leopardi’s political thought, the concept of the “common good” holds a central place. He worked on this idea from 1820 through his mature years. Leopardi regarded it as a defining feature of the ancient world, which embraced it within a natural order in which illusions—real and innate to the human soul—were fully realized. In the modern context, however, due to a progressive “civilization” process that increasingly distorts human nature—driven by the imbalance between reason and nature and leading ultimately to the destruction of illusions—the idea of the “common good” tends in turn to dissolve and occupy an ever more marginal role in the realm of collective politics.

Keywords: Giacomo Leopardi, Common Good, Civilization, Human Nature

 

Giovanni Scarpato, Notes on Leopardi and the Political Cultures of the Restoration: Reactionary Catholicism

A notable aspect of Leopardi’s political reflections—carried out with the typical tone of a moralist and lacking systematic structure—lies in his critiques of the writers associated with reactionary or authoritarian Catholicism (such as Lamennais, Bonald, and de Maistre). These critiques are particularly developed in the pages of the Zibaldone. Leopardi focused primarily on the role these authors assigned to religion as the foundation of society and politics, a role he viewed with critical distance.

Keywords: Giacomo Leopardi, Restoration, Catholicism, Authoritarianism

Giorgio Volpe, Self-Love and Selfishness: The Influence of Rousseau on Leopardi’s Political Thought

Rousseau’s influence on Leopardi’s thought was both early and enduring—though not without fluctuations—and has been widely emphasized in critical literature, to the point of being considered a defining feature of his political and poetic production. This essay revisits and critically reconstructs that body of scholarship, concluding that, in truth, Leopardi and Rousseau held markedly different political perspectives and visions. In particular, in light of the contradictory outcomes of the French revolutionary process, Leopardi developed a “negative” and disenchanted view of the Enlightenment, which led him—unlike Rousseau—to consider the birth of a society entirely founded on justice and reason as impossible.

Keywords: Giacomo Leopardi, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, French Revolution, Enlightenment

Costanza D’Elia, “A Strange Celebration”: The Political Leopardi in the Age of Catastrophes

How was Leopardi’s thought received and employed in an Italy marked by fascist dictatorship and the dominance of philosophical idealism? Between political instrumentalizations and critical reinterpretations, three distinct phases can be identified: the “Leopardi Renaissance” following the discovery of the Zibaldone at the turn of the century; the vibrant period of literary journals—in which Vincenzo Cardarelli played a central role; and finally, the ideological appropriation of Leopardi, especially by Giovanni Gentile. These moments are accompanied by other significant readings and interpretations in Italy at the time, including those by the Catholic thinker Giovanni Papini and the relativist Adriano Tilgher.

Keywords: Giacomo Leopardi, Fascism, Giovanni Gentile, Idealism