La réflexion sur la dissociation libertine à l’épreuve de l’« acceptabilité »
In this contribution Giovanni Ruocco analyzes the idea of social “acceptability”, recently proposed by Jean-Pierre Cavaillé as a methodology of study of godlessness and incredulity during the modern age, and consequently as a clarification of the recent historiography on libertinism. If, on the one...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | fra |
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Groupe de Recherches Interdisciplinaires sur l'Histoire du Littéraire
2013-04-01
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| Series: | Les Dossiers du GRIHL |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/dossiersgrihl/5924 |
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| Summary: | In this contribution Giovanni Ruocco analyzes the idea of social “acceptability”, recently proposed by Jean-Pierre Cavaillé as a methodology of study of godlessness and incredulity during the modern age, and consequently as a clarification of the recent historiography on libertinism. If, on the one hand, Ruocco shares the requirement to always consider the ideas in the context in which they were produced, and seen by the actors as objects of polemical confrontation - also to better understand what in this context was possible to say publicly or not - on the other hand he asserts the methodological necessity, in historic research, to go beyond the temporal borders of a specific social context, by trying at the same time to analyze the plurality of intentions of the involved subjects. The author also believes in the coexistence, in a given political society, of a variety of defined human contexts, more or less structured and long-lasting, in whom every subject can act in a different way, by communicating with specific words, oral or written, as with sounds, gestures, physical actions, etc. This reflection on the social contexts must be joined with the attention to the various spheres crossing and shaping the individual-relational life of the subjects: the personal, internal sphere and that private of the family, the spheres of friendship or association until the public one; a specific level of knowledge, of truth and secret, seems to separate and protect every sphere of others. But if a correct approach of research should examine with attention and compare the knowledge and the truth expressed in every sphere, we cannot consider these ones as really and clearly separated in society: it is necessary to cross their borders, by emphasizing their interconnections. From this point of view, the author underlines the utility to recover the historiographical approach of an Italian scholar of French libertinism, Anna Maria Battista, who, between the ‘60s and ‘80s of the XXth century, judged the libertin dissociation not simply as the renunciation of Montaigne to take care of the world, but also as a potential basis for a moral and political reform of society, from the deep knowledge of the “me”. |
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| ISSN: | 1958-9247 |