Books by Ruggero Sciuto
Determinism and Enlightenment: The Collaboration of Diderot and d’Holbach, 2023
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Brill, 2022
Gathering together generations of scholars, The Great Protector of Wits provides a new assessment... more Gathering together generations of scholars, The Great Protector of Wits provides a new assessment of baron d'Holbach (1723-1789) and his circle. A challenging gure of the European Enlightenment, Paul-Henri Thiry d'Holbach not only was a radically materialistic philosopher, a champion of anticlericalism, the author of the Système de la nature known as "the Bible of atheists", an idéologue, a popularizer of the natural sciences and a proli c contributor to the Encyclopédie, but also played a crucial role as an organizer of intellectual networks, a master of disseminating clandestine literature and a consummate strategist in authorial ctions. In this collective volume, for the rst time, all these di ferent threads of d'Holbach's "philosophy in action" are considered and analyzed in their interconnection.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Articles by Ruggero Sciuto
Inventions of Enlightenment since 1800, 2023
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Revue Voltaire, 2023
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Dix-Huitième Siècle, 2023
Lancé en 2018, Digital d’Holbach est un projet international visant à réaliser une édition critiq... more Lancé en 2018, Digital d’Holbach est un projet international visant à réaliser une édition critique née-numérique des œuvres du baron d’Holbach. Cet article fait le point sur les principaux accomplissements de notre équipe (la publication, notamment, de la base de données Tout d’Holbach) tout en réfléchissant aux défis posés par le corpus holbachique ainsi qu’à l’apport possible de notre édition à l’étude de la pensée du baron et des Lumières radicales plus en général.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Studi Lockiani, 2022
The present article focuses on eighteenth-century French radical and atheist philosopher Paul-Thi... more The present article focuses on eighteenth-century French radical and atheist philosopher Paul-Thiry d’Holbach to gauge the extent to which his political ideas may be informed by Locke’s Second Treatise. While rejecting Rousseau’s idea that human beings once lived outside society, d’Holbach inherits from Locke the idea that particular polities are the results of a (tacit) constantly renewed social contract. As the products of a covenant, governments must pursue the preservation and best interests of the ‘community’ or ‘Nation’, as Locke and d’Holbach would respectively call it, prolonged failure to do so necessarily resulting in their loss of legitimacy and ultimately paving the way to revolution. Naturally wary of Locke’s decision to ground the legitimacy of an authority (and therefore a community’s right to rebel against it) on its exactitude in enacting a law of nature which is based, in turn, on God’s will, d’Holbach replaces this law of nature with what he terms amour éclairé de soi. For d’Holbach, a person’s adherence to this principle depends on their more or less intuitive understanding that an action is good in so far as it promotes happiness or pleasure and wrong when it brings about unhappiness or pain (Principle of Utility). While d’Holbach’s replacement of the law of nature with the secular notion of amour éclairé de soi may seem to undermine Locke’s philosophy at its very core, the reality is that the two principles are extremely close and fundamentally interchangeable. Locke’s political philosophy, d’Holbach seems to wish his most perceptive readers would realise, can easily be turned into a perfectly consistent secular theory. He thus (artificially) brings together Locke’s epistemology and more radical political ideas, and successfully overcomes a well-known aporia within the British empiricist’s philosophical corpus, one that has been investigated by Leo Strauss and Peter Laslett, among others, and that is still the subject of much scholarly debate.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
This chapter examines the various ways in which d’Holbach engaged with Voltaire’s texts. It argue... more This chapter examines the various ways in which d’Holbach engaged with Voltaire’s texts. It argues that the Baron’s practice of often quoting and paraphrasing passages from the Patriarche’s works as well as his attempts at imitating Voltaire’s unmistakeable style can be interpreted as part and parcel of a carefully devised strategy, simultaneously aiming to conceal his authorship of his texts, attract public interest to his works, increase the diffusion of his ideas, and win Voltaire himself over to the cause of atheism and determinism. By emphasising the importance of the Voltairean subtext to d’Holbach’s works, this chapter also aims to reflect on the advantages that different (and perhaps opposing) strands within Enlightenment thought could derive from mutual interaction and dialogue.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
International History Review, 2021
Scholarship aiming to reassess the role played by the wives of early modern ambassadors normally ... more Scholarship aiming to reassess the role played by the wives of early modern ambassadors normally draws on two different kinds of sources: diaries and correspondences. Those who base their analysis on letters are usually compelled to look at their ambassadresses through the eyes of a third party, be it the ambassadress’ husband or any other members of his epistolary network. The personal archives of Count Luigi Lorenzi, French resident minister to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany from 1735 to 1765, are in this sense exceptional, as they contain not only hundreds of letters addressed to Luigi’s wife, Countess Minerva Ughi, but also drafts of many of her letters. Crucially, most of these drafts bear clear marks of Luigi’s intervention and some of them even appear to be entirely in his hand. In this paper, I shall ask whether Luigi’s intervention in his wife’s letter writing practices is indicative of her lack of autonomy or diplomatic importance, concluding that Minerva’s letters (and conceivably Luigi’s, too) are best interpreted as the result of the joint efforts of a ‘diplomatic working couple’, simultaneously acting in the best interest of the household and of the sovereign (and state) they represented. Even so, Minerva’s (and Luigi’s) drafts remind us that we ought to be extremely careful when analysing the diplomatic activity of early modern ambassadresses and diplomatic agents more broadly. They further invite us to reconsider the notion that we can categorically distinguish between women’s and men’s correspondences, prompt us to question the extent to which early modern diplomacy was gendered, and also encourage us to reflect on the possible links between diplomacy and literature.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
While traditional paper editions normally cater to a very selected audience of like-minded schola... more While traditional paper editions normally cater to a very selected audience of like-minded scholars, digital editions can hope to reach a much wider readership, including both specialists and non-specialists. But how is the annotation in a digital edition to meet the needs of such a diverse audience? In this chapter I present an efficient and user-friendly 3-level annotation system, the 'reversible figure annotation system', which I developed while working on Digital d'Holbach, a Mellon-funded, born-digital edition of Paul-Henri Thiry d'Holbach's complete writings. On this model, a single set of notes can be so structured as to cater to very different audiences, meaning that the edition can hope simultaneously to be user-friendly and cost-efficient.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
La Lettre clandestine, 2020
Cet article se propose d’analyser la correspondance inédite entre Nicolas-Charles-Joseph Trublet ... more Cet article se propose d’analyser la correspondance inédite entre Nicolas-Charles-Joseph Trublet et Luigi Lorenzi, ministre résident de France en Toscane de 1735 jusqu’à 1765. Ces lettres nous amènent à nous interroger sur ses liaisons entre monde académique et monde diplomatique et nous révèlent un Trublet secret et intriguant qui, étant l’un des hommes les mieux renseignés de Paris, met à profit ses connaissances pour étendre son réseau et augmenter ses chances d’obtenir un siège à l’Académie.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Chroniques italiennes, 2019
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Revue d'Histoire Littéraire de la France, 2018
In this article I present 4 unpublished letters from Voltaire to the Austrian diplomat Johann Bap... more In this article I present 4 unpublished letters from Voltaire to the Austrian diplomat Johann Baptist Anton von Pergen, as well as the draft of a letter from Pergen to Voltaire. All these letters date from the weeks immediately following Voltaire’s imprisonment in Frankfurt in summer 1753. Besides shedding light on this incident, these letters add to our understanding of Voltaire’s relations with the Austrian court, as well as of his literary activity in the turbulent months between his departure from Berlin and his arrival in Strasbourg, also pointing to the possible existence of a further manuscript of the Frères ennemis in addition to the four already known.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
In this article I present an unpublished letter from the duc de Richelieu to Voltaire of 15 Augus... more In this article I present an unpublished letter from the duc de Richelieu to Voltaire of 15 August 1773. Preserved at the Archives du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères in Paris, the letter has survived only in a transcription by the staff of the cabinet noir, the notorious French government bureau charged with the surveillance of private correspondence. In my article I situate the letter within its historical context and argue that it caught the attention of the cabinet noir due to the references it contains to the comtesse du Barry, maîtresse-en-titre of Louis XV.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Economist and collaborator on the Encyclopédie, André Morellet absolutely deserves a mention amon... more Economist and collaborator on the Encyclopédie, André Morellet absolutely deserves a mention amongst the protagonists of eighteenth-century France’s cultural life. The seven letters below provide insights into Morellet’s early years, as well as his relationship with the Italian intellectual élite. They also cast light on the diplomat Luigi Lorenzi, who emerges as a leading figure in the mid-eighteenth-century Franco-Italian political and cultural relations.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
in Nel nome di Lazzaro. Saggi di storia della scienza e del pensiero scientifico tra il XVII e il XVIII secolo, Bologna: Pendragon, 2014
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Texts Edited by Ruggero Sciuto
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Œuvres Complètes de Voltaire, 2020
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Uploads
Books by Ruggero Sciuto
Articles by Ruggero Sciuto
Texts Edited by Ruggero Sciuto
Program:
April 25th, 4-7pm: Workshop Women Intellectuals in 18th Century Germany
Dr. Corey W. Dyck (Western Ontario)
Of Minds and Medicine: The Women Intellectuals of Halle
Bernhard Ritter (Klagenfurt)
Solace or Counsel for Death: Kant and Maria von Herbert
May 23rd, 4-6pm
Dr. Eleonora Cappuccilli (Bologna)
The Political Theology of Mary Astell
June 27th, 4-6pm
Ruggero Sciuto (Oxford)
Emilie Du Châtelet and the Three Leibnizian Versions of the Principle of Sufficient Reason
July 11th, 4-7pm: Workshop: Anthropology and Metaphysics in the Munich and Freiburg Circles
Dr. Rodney Parker (Paderborn)
Stein’s Second Conversion. From Realism to Idealism
Dr. Henning Peucker (Paderborn)
Metaphysische Elemente in Husserls später Ethik
Prof. Dr. Wolfhart Henckmann (München)
Schelers Anthropologie des Weibes
Further information
https://historyofwomenphilosophers.org/events/event/calendar/event/tx_cal_phpicalendar/research-colloquium-history-of-women-philosophers-and-scientists/
The conference will be held on Zoom on two consecutive afternoons. The schedule will be in GMT.