Luca Maria Bianchi

On the basis of some unpublished texts, found in his personal archive, the article focuses on Mario Dal Pra’s thought on Christian philosophical historiography. Conceived as the second part of a Storia della storiografia filosofica [History of philosophical historiography] that was never completed – only the first part was published under the title La storiografia filosofica antica [Ancient philosophical historiography] (1950) –, this section of the work, of which only a few but significant fragments remain, fits in a well-defined compositional context: the new season of historical-philosophical studies in post-war Italy and the processing phase of the so called “trascendentalismo della prassi”. Against this background, this paper examines some fundamental conceptual turning points of the most relevant theoretical issues: the relationship between philosophy and its history. The pioneering nature of the studies undertaken by Dal Pra in those years is also emphasized. A documentary appendix contains the unpublished texts on which the analysis was based.

Benedetto Varchi and Averroism. The article examines the role played by Averroes and the Averroist tradition in Benedetto Varchi's philosophical works. The first part clarifies why Varchi defines Dante as an "Averroist" and reconstructs his ori-­ ginal reading of the first verse in Paradise. The second part argues that Varchi's plan to vernacularize philosophy, often interpreted as an attempt to "demo-­ cratize" knowledge, should not prevent us from recognizing that he emphasizes the moral and intellectual differences existing among human beings. Though following Aristotle in saying that "all men by nature desire to know", Varchi shows no qualms in acknowledging that most of them cannot fulfil this desire and, referring to Averroes and Galen, claims that because of their complexio most people cannot understand phi-­ losophy.