Paganini, Gianni
Senior Fellow: April–August 2020 –– DEFERRED UNTIL SUMMER 2023
Research Project: History of Clandestine Thought, from Jean Bodin to Jean Meslier
Clandestine manuscripts represent a very peculiar kind of philosophical communication in the modern age. One can consider Jean Bodin’s Colloquium Heptaplomeres, written at the end of the sixteenth century, as the prototype, but most of the ca. 200 indexed texts, of which about 2,000 copies are spread among public and private libraries, date back to the second half of the seventeenth and the eighteenth century.
From the libertine period to the full development of the Enlightenment, clandestine manuscripts went through an age of important cultural changes, and they mirror various trends. One can only speak about clandestine philosophy in the plural (“clandestine philosophies”), taking into account that these texts borrow from Montaigne’s and Bayle’s scepticism, from Descartes’s and Malebranche’s rationalism, from Spinoza’s metaphysics and Hobbes’s mechanism, and from Locke’s empiricist methodology.
An interesting and peculiar feature of this clandestine philosophical literature is its interest in comparisons between the great Mediterranean religions: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. The final goal of this research project will be a book entitled The History of Clandestine Thought from Bodin to Meslier, which is currently in preparation.
Gianni Paganini is professor of the history of philosophy at Università del Piemonte Orientale and a member of the research centre at the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome.