Keywords: History of Ideas, Italian Literature, Niccolò Machiavelli, Galileo Galilei, Giambattista Vico.

This essay outlines the main theses of the «History of Ideas» devised by Arthur O. Lovejoy. It points out the features, the ways, the aims but also the epistemological weakness of this method. This euristic perspective is then applied to some cases taken from the Italian literature. The examples concern the relationship between Machiavelli and the XVIth century naturalistic philosophy, and the connection between science and literature. From this point of view is paradigmatic Galileo’s case. This scientist was interpreted from a literary point of view in an incomplete and distorting way because the linguistic and stylistic necessity of a scientific discourse was ignored. The last example of the history of ideas concerns the ermeneutic role of rhetoric in Vico’s anthropology.

Keywords: Lucretius, Montaigne, Renaissance, Physics, Ethics.

The large number of postillas to De rerum natura may be an important evidence and a sort of point d’honneur of the Renaissance interest in the recovery and the legacy of Lucretius. The ‘unorthodox’ themes (e.g.: soul’s immortality, denial of creation ex nihilo, Providence, afterlife, anthropological role of fear in the institution of religion and laws) mark the boundaries of a scandal whose terms will be discussed in the Essais.

Keywords: Subject, Cosmos, Freedom, Necessity, Atomism, Clinamen, Nature.

It would be extremely reductive to define the ethical framework of the Montaigne’s Essais as a sort of apologia des anciens. The disintegration of subjectivity is not recomposed in the constraints of the "polis", but it becomes the bearer of multiple moral reflections involved in both the religious debate and the growing scientific movement. The individualistic profile of modern ethics remains quite another thing. The union of soul and body is certainly a crucial part of his skeptical philosophy which pushes to extreme consequences. If the soul dies with the body, the whole structure of rewards and punishments falls. Always in harmony with the Aristotle of Padua, the good assumes value in itself, as an objective and not as a means to a further and transcendental goal. The ethics of principles precipitates and crashes onto the materialism of the Essais. A decisive impact was also the result of an alternative conception of aristotelianism, heretics and reformed: atomism. And yet, ethically, it should be questioned how much Montaigne really wanted to follow the atomistic model of Epicurus and Lucretius.

Keywords: Spinoza, Tractatus theologico-politicus, People, Plebian, Tyrant.

In the overall articulation of the Tractatus theologico-politicus, the eighteenth chapter would seem at first sight to play a secondary role, almost in harmony the previous one, more dense, on the principles that can be drawn from the history of the Jewish state. However, a slightly more detailed analysis of the text highlights how this chapter, through the notions of populus, plebs and tyrannus – and in the name of a pregnant Machiavellian influence – contains decisive conceptual elements both on the purely political way of handling the «historiae» by Spinoza, and on the fundamental difficulty of the whole treatise, problematically oriented towards the construction of a democracy that can disregard the turbulent passions and blind prejudices of the vulgus.

Keywords: Malebranche, Descartes, Infinity, Infinitesimal Calculus, Science.

Malebranche, while retaining the theological and metaphysical reality of infinity, attributes thereto an epistemological function to the extent that he understands infinity as a sphere in which the mind grasps ideas, and an epistemic and regulatory direction is provided to guide the pursuit of knowledge. In this regard, Malebranche stresses the links that exist between said metaphysical infinity and the variety of infinities that emerges in the various sciences. In light of this emphasis, we propose to examine the Malebranchian concept of infinity in its ontological and epistemological meaning, with a particular focus on how this concept is thematized in the metaphysical and mathematical sense.

Keywords: Montesquieu, Religious toleration, Natural laws, Repect, Dignity.

The aim of this paper is to clarify some aspects of the notion of toleration in Montesquieu. Analysis is conducted mainly on the three books (XXIV, XXV and XXVI) of the fifth part of De l’Esprit des lois, concerning the nexus between religion and legislation. A strong and famous address against intolerance is here included (chap. XXV, 13). It is possible to demonstrate that for Montesquieu toleration is not enough, nor it is possible to be sustained without exceeding the level of relations between the different religions. To attain the level of the natural laws – notwthstanding their uncertainty – becomes strictly necessary.