Giacomo Leopardi and the journey to the nothing. A brief philosophical introduction

Abstract

Giacomo Leopardi, Italian poet and philosopher of the early 19th century, elaborated an image of the world blending nihilism and titanism to respond to the fundamental question on the meaning of the existence. A philosophical doubt expressing at the same time both a metaphysical, ethical and esthetical concern. In Leopardi’s materialist world, there is no more transcendent sense of the existence and every being is explained in terms of its own existence. The ethical dimension acquires ontological shades and, like in Anaximander’s universe, the continuous repetition of ephemeral forms entail a kind of ontological sin deriving from individuation: fault has not transcendent sense, while it is implied by the same birth, by the same existence. With the indifference of this dynamics collides the system of values of the human being, who loses his hierarchical coordinates and the same meaning of his existence, sunk in the nothing of a being already with no reason, burdened with the mechanics of a world without god, where not even the beauty of art redeems. From here, a deep sense of the tragic arises, to which the only possible answer is a titanic gesture, a rebellious provocation.