The end of the ancient ethos, the twilight of illusions: Giacomo Leopardi and the modernity

Author(s)

Fábio Rocha Teixeira

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2013-03-06

Examining board members

Olgaria Chain Feres Matos; Jacira de Freitas; José Expedito Passos Lima; Marco Americo Lucchesi; Maria das Gracas de Souza

• Advisor: Olgaria Chain Feres Matos

Abstract

The theme of this thesis is the end of the ancient ethos, the twilight of illusions in the modern world and its adverse effects based on the reflection of Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837). Such reflection also considers the issue of modern barbarism and presupposes its earlier forms, namely, the primitive and medieval barbarism. This research does not investigate the idea of a Leopardi\'s philosophy nor the proposal of a system inside his philosophy. It does not approach the old quarrel over Leopardi as a poet or as philosopher, nor a detailed exposition of philosophy in Leopardi\'s work. This research adopts the following interpretative hypotheses: i) the Discorso sopra lo stato presente dei costumi deglitaliani, written in 1824, contributes to the understanding of the Leopardi\'s interpretation of the European modernization process; ii) the Discorso presupposes a new change in the development of Leopardi\'s work, because of the new crisis in his thought in 1824, followed by a new conception of nature, which is no longer a loving one, but a natura matrigna, responsible for all evil and human misery; iii) Leopardi addresses the main economic, social, cultural and political changes in the Italian ethos after the European modernization process; iv) His diagnosis of modernization indicates a new principle of the conservation of civil life; v) the experience of modernization endangers human vitality and leads to a new barbarism, because of the new rationality and spiritualization of objects and man, namely, the barbarism of society. Leopardi emphasizes the new forms of rationality and their risks, a new era of barbarism, in his investigation of the philosophical experience of the Italian Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries. He calls the Nineteenth century the century of death because of the disappearance of the poetic dimension and of the illusions, that are so necessary for the preservation of human existence. This thesis focus a critique of the new phenomena of banalization of life in the modern world and its degeneracies, namely, the end of illusions, vacancy of values and the risk of the society barbarism. (AU)