La "riscoperta" di Guicciardini: Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi Torino 14–15 novembre 1997 (review)

This book gathers the contributions of thirteen French and Italian specialists offering a broad view of current research on the thought of Guicciardini. How-ever, the reference to the "rediscovery" of the Florentine thinker must not be taken literally as works on him multiplied after the publication of the Caprariis works in the 1950s, including some by authors in the present selection. What many of the articles exhibit is a renewed vision on neglected or even little-studied Guicciardinian problems and subjects.

Marziano Guglielminetti starts off presenting the literary advancements made by Guicciardini in his letters, a work indebted to the excellent edition prepared by Pierre Jodogne based on the thinker's correspondence. The editor contributes to the selection through the analysis of a letter dated 1512 sent to the Dieci di Balia from Spain. The combination of the contribution of the two interpreters demonstrated how the critical edition of the Guicciardinian work, including in other languages than Italian, has been instrumental for the advancement of the research on the author.

Emanuela Scarano investigates the issue of private destiny in the Florentine thinker in light of his dialogue with several contemporaries and his attention to the formal aspects of the text. For the interpreter, it is possible to demonstrate, particularly through the analysis of the Ricordi and the Dialogo del Reggimento di Firenze, that the diplomat filled his texts with novel standards for the time, approaching Castiglione, for example, and criticizing the choices of Bembo. As a result, according to Scarano, one may not state in absolute terms that he did not think about his future readers. Yet, the ingenious observations of the interpreter do not alter the fact that Guicciardini did not decide to publish his writings during his lifetime, and that this is necessary to understand important facets of his political thought. Nevertheless, she shows how his ties with the literary and historiographic tradition of the Cinquecento resulted in a complex and varied oeuvre that cannot be reduced to a mere personal exercise in style.

The essay of Artemio Baldini takes up the familiar subject of the relation between Guicciardini and Machiavelli. The novelty is that the author exploits the issue from the modifications introduced to the political scene by changes in the conditions of warfare in the early sixteenth century. For him, the two thinkers were aware of the close ties between war and politics, and each of them, in his fashion, reached conclusions that led to the development of the modern concept of reason of state. The author presents some of Guicciardini's texts related to his thesis and analyzes the number of occurrences of terms like ragione in multiple connections with other terms of the same nature. The final considerations of the essay point to a work-in-process rather than to mature conclusions on the subject.

The article by Jean-Claude Zancarini handles the issue of morals in Guicciardini's work and its relationship with politics. Contrary to the current vision in many scholarly works that close their eyes to the pessimism and the hardness of the thinker's viewpoint, the author shows the richness of details of the moral conceptions underlying his writings anchored in the idea that the search for the "truth of things" must allow the scholar to reach a correct understanding of the difficulties that the political actor faces upon deciding to act. That one who is able to fulfill this role is a "good man," who creates the synthesis between the deep knowledge of human things and a determined action in the political scene in the most difficult moments in history. Zancarini's conclusions open interesting new doors to the reading of the work of Guicciardini.

The book also has contributions by Elena Guarini, Raffaella Castagnola, Paolo Carta...