Luca Costa

This study redefines the origins of existentialism by positioning the Italian poet and philosopher Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837) as the initiator of atheistic existentialism. In his notebooks, the Zibaldone, Leopardi formulates what can be read as the foundational principle of existentialism: ‘existence precedes essence’. Throughout his writings he also expresses the typical affective states of existentialism: existential boredom, anguish, alienation, and the absurd. Leopardi offers the first integrated formulation of both the existentialist principle and the existentialist Stimmung. The existentialist principle underpins Leopardi’s work entirely. The main consequences of such principle are the absence of God, the absurdity of existence, and the freedom of the individual. These points place Leopardi in remarkable alignment with 20th-century atheist existentialists such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, and Martin Heidegger. Previous scholarship has limited itself to tracing isolated affinities between Leopardi and single existentialists. This project demonstrates that their alignment is both more profound and more systematic than has previously been acknowledged. Through such mediators as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Unamuno, and others, Leopardi’s works can be shown to have influenced, more or less directly, the existentialists. Leopardi also pioneers a mode of literature-philosophy that rejects formal logic and embraces poetry as a means of creating meaning in an otherwise meaningless existence. Indeed, poetry is the only means to create values that can sustain us in the face of existential absurdity. Many of these elements are to be found in Kierkegaard, yet neither atheism nor the idea that existence precedes essence are present in his work. Kierkegaard must therefore be regarded as the initiator of religious existentialism only, while it is Leopardi who stands at the roots of its atheistic form.

Emanuele Severino (1929-2020) and Luigi Capitano (1963-) claim that contemporary nihilism originates from Giacomo Leopardi. Severino is the first one to outline this idea. His reading exerts a great fascination and has been an absolute novelty in Leopardi studies and, in general, in contemporary continental philosophy. On such basis, Capitano advances on two sides. On the one hand, he makes the analysis subtler by introducing the notion of nihil positivum, which is perhaps the characteristic feature of his reading. Hence Capitano’s definition of Leopardi’s thought as «positive nihilism», which is original and strongly backed by Leopardi’s texts. On the other hand, Capitano expands the dialogue between Leopardi and the other relevant philosophers of the West, as Severino did, but in a more encompassing fashion (not only Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche, but also Camus, Rensi etc.). Whilst Severino’s analysis is centred on the notion of the eternity of beings, Capitano’s insists on the non-deductibility of existence in Leopardi, which is another ground-breaking intuition. This frame is aimed at a rigorous historical and philosophical justification of Leopardi as principle of contemporary nihilism. Leopardi at the beginning of contemporary nihilism is a major event for today’s history of philosophy.

Scholars have long acknowledged the deep influence of 17 th and 18 th 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.

Leopardi employs the traditional distinction between infinite and indefinite in his works, prompting a question rarely asked in Leopardi studies: what is the role of the true infinite in Leopardi’s oeuvre? My contention is that the true infinite should not be dismissed as having no role in Leopardi’s production simply because it does not exist in reality. Rather, it is the supreme object of desire, the impossible ideal that his texts pursue. This idea is explored through a comparative reading with the work of Fyodor Dostoevsky, whose belief in the true infinite is not in question. Starting from Leopardi’s reflections on the infinite and his ‘theory of pleasure’, it becomes clear that the infinite cannot be expressed or comprehended by human beings, yet they must have some notion of it. This comparison, therefore, helps to reassess the role of the true infinite in Leopardi, which would otherwise remain hidden.