Summary
Carlo Ginzburg: Despite this: Machiavelli, Pascal
Machiavelli, Pascal: an unexpected, in many ways surprising comparison. Machiavelli, searching through his father's library, discovers medieval casuistry and places the relationship between norm and exception at the center of the imagined world (Mandragoras), as well as the world in which he lives and works (Vladar). Pascal, a bitter opponent of casuistry (primarily Jesuitical), reads Machiavelli through the lens of Galileo, and the reality of power through Machiavelli. A journey through complicated readings, on the trail of two extraordinary readers, and their interlocutors, opponents, followers. Along the way, famous personalities appear (Campanella, Galileo) seen through the eyes of their censors, the Dominican Niccol Riccardi, the so-called father of monsters; and lesser-known figures, such as Johann Ludwig Fabricius, who, thanks to a cursory reading of Pascal's Letters, offers the provincial an unknown image of the "very religious" Machiavelli.
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