Nevertheless : Machiavelli, Pascal Paperback / softback

by Carlo Ginzburg

Part of the Verso World History series

Paperback / softback

Less than 10 available - usually despatched within 24 hours

Description

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.