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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Nevertheless: Machiavelli, Pascal

Nevertheless: Machiavelli, Pascal

Ginzburg, Carlo

Paperback

Series: Verso World History

PhilosophyLiterary FiguresGeneral Political Science

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 1839760141
ISBN13: 9781839760143
Publisher: Verso
Published: Jan 25 2022
Pages: 272
Weight: 0.70
Height: 0.40 Width: 8.50 Depth: 8.60
Language: English
From the master of micro-history a reconstruction of two contrasting early-modern thinkers

Nevertheless comprises essays on Machiavelli and on Pascal. The ambivalent connection between the two parts is embodied by the comma (, ) in the subtitle: Machiavelli, Pascal. Is this comma a conjunction or a disjunction?

In fact, both. Ginzburg approaches Machiavelli's work from the perspective of casuistry, or case-based ethical reasoning. For as Machiavelli indicated through his repeated use of the adverb nondimanco (nevertheless), there is an exception to every rule. Such a perspective may seem to echo the traditional image of Machiavelli as a cynical, machiavellian thinker. But a close analysis of Machiavelli the reader, as well as of the ways in which some of Machiavelli's most perceptive readers read his work, throws a different light on Machiavelli the writer. The same hermeneutic strategy inspires the essays on the Provinciales, Pascal's ferocious attack against Jesuitical casuistry.

Casuistry vs anti-casuistry; Machiavelli's secular attitude towards religion vs Pascal's deep religiosity. We are confronted, apparently, with two completely different worlds. But Pascal read Machiavelli, and reflected deeply upon his work. A belated, contemporary echo of this reading can unveil the complex relationship between Machiavelli and Pascal - their divergences as well as their unexpected convergences.

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