Leopardi’s response to Wittgenstein

Abstract

Scholars have long acknowledged the deep influence of 17th and 18th century science on Leopardi’s thought. In his later writings, however, he draws a clear distinction between the foundations of science and those of literature, arguing that science rests on reason, whereas literature on the heart. Science tends to accuse non-scientific knowledge of being vague and indefinite, and thus ultimately meaningless – a charge Carnap would later repeat, and one that Leopardi had already noted in the Zibaldone. Yet Leopardi goes beyond this charge of «non-significance», seeing in literature a form of knowledge less rigorous and precise, but much more meaningful from an existential standpoint, for it is the only kind of knowledge that allows some happiness. Science, with all its Cartesian exactness, only reveals «the nothingness in everything», and has today led to anxieties never experienced before. Literature thus becomes «the most useful of all utilities», as the only means capable of making the individual truly happy.