Il disinganno copernicano: sull’antropologia materialistica di Giacomo Leopardi

The aim of this contribution is to consider some aspects of Leopardi’s radical materialism. Special attention is paid to his idea of ‘Modern’, both as an historical category and an anthropological one, linked to the Copernican revolution. According to Leopardi, not only Modern astronomy altered our picture of the universe, it also transformed the perception of human nature. In the Zibaldone dipensieri, famous philosophical diaries written between 1817 and 1832 while not published until 1898, as well as in the Operette morali (1824-1832), Leopardi formulated his own responses to the radically altered post-Copernican worldview, having brought a collapse of meaning for the human being and his status in the cosmos. Leopardi proposed a materialist “ultraphilosophy”, with the ability to overcome the negative effects of the modern civilization, mixing Promethean advances with fideism and spiritualism.