Costruire a partire dalle rovine. Figure dialettiche tra catastrofe e progresso

Building from the ruins.Dialectical shapes between catastrophe and progressThe article starts from the Lisbon Earthquake (1755) as a paradigm of the modern meaning of catastrophe and it analyzes the philosophical writings on the portuguese disaster by Voltaire, Rousseau and Kant. The earthquake that destroyed the city of Lisbon, and several thousand of its inhabitants, shook the Age of Enlightenment and affected the best minds in Europe. Since then, modern conceptions of evil were developed in the attempt to stop blaming God for the state of the world, and to take responsibility for it on our own. If the natural catastrophe is translated in terms of human injustice, the theodicy becomes an "anthropodicy". The meditation on the ruins of Volney (1791) asserts the human responsibility in the catastrophes of history and testifies the Enlightenment's hope of a world without catastrophes. Hegel, in his lessons on the philosophy of history (1822-1823), will develop the thought on the consequences of the catastrophe in dialectic key: the advancement of history consists in building from the ruins.