imperfection, uniformity vs. variety, stasis vs. movement (motion), rule vs. exception, writing vs. orality. The universe is conceived as a system in continuous motion, the site of infinite possibility and multiplicity of absolutes; nature is seen as variety; history as a succession of phases cannot be explained by any teleology, to be understood only as a series of different perspectives; education, as both exercise and habituation, is entirely dependent on circumstances. All of Leopardi’s other interests are reducible to these same polarities: his interest in natural history (Buffon); in the theory of climatological change (Montesquieu); in political, anthropological, and psychological diversity (the study of variation in human behavior in his notes on “Moral etiquette” and on “Social Machiavellianism” referred to in the 1827 Index). So, too, for Leopardi’s views on the history of ancient and modern politics (Xenophon, Aristotle, Guicciardini, Frederick II), as well as his privileging of “practical philosophy” (in particular, the stoicism of Epictetus) over all other forms of abstract ethics. This holds true also for both his study of linguistic change and the war he wages against the uniformity of language. Leopardi’s aesthetic relativism and the theory of grace as imperfection (again, Montesquieu, one of the primary sources for the early pages of the Zibaldone) are also consistent with this position, as are, finally, his reflections on the anthropological development from orality to writing, his cult of Homeric poetry, and his poetics of the indefinite.

This wide spectrum of interests demonstrates to what extent Leopardi’s thought is constantly immersed in the flux of human history. His model is a pre-Platonic Socrates, whose philosophy remains close to nature (Z 1360), and expressly not the ancient and modern metaphysical thinkers, much less the German school of philosophy (Leibniz and Kant among others), which Leopardi dismisses, even without knowing them firsthand. For him, “metaphysical” generally means abstruse, incomprehensible, confused (Z 1354, 4233). The thinkers closest to him, in terms of both subject matter and mode of thinking, are in a sense precisely two “dilettantes” just like him, both historians of humanity: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose second Discourse he read very early on, and Giambattista Vico. Indeed, of all of the Italian thinkers, Leopardi is the legitimate heir of Vico, even if it is unclear when he actually first read The New Science (we can document his reading with certainty only in the later years: see Z 4392ff.).

Nevertheless, because Leopardi’s thought never strays from human and existential experience—indeed, it starts precisely from these grounds (as in Rousseau and in the slightly younger Kierkegaard)—he is forced to abandon the terrain of history (Z 4138–39) when he fully grasps the universal law that regulates the relations between man and the rest of the universe. He will call this law the fundamental “contradiction”—the law by which nature drives man to seek pleasure (see his “theory of pleasure,” Z 165–83) while at the same time prohibiting him from attaining it. One can easily understand how Schopenhauer, with whom he is often compared, might have considered Leopardi, his contemporary, a true soul mate. Nature, victorious, undefeated, escapes all efforts at description (“nature conceals itself as much as possible”: Z 446); it remains incomprehensible and infinitely superior to those beings it creates and then destroys, all the while paying no heed to them. This “terrifying but … true proposition” is the “conclusion of all metaphysics” (Z 4169).

This conclusion, prepared for by the entirety of Leopardi’s thought, and brilliantly enacted in the “Dialogue Between Nature and an Icelander” (1824), cancels out his humanism, thus bringing us to an absolutely inhuman world composed of deaf and blind materiality undergoing continuous transformation (see the notes on Strato, Z 4248). From this perspective, Leopardi—the heir of both ancient materialism and modern science—casts an icy glance over the history of mankind, and no longer even considers the possibility of a fall from an original state of plenitude. The only possible theology would be one that, at best, posits a fall from the origins of the universe itself (and it is not incidental that some critics have found traces of gnosticism in Leopardi’s work). The “conclusion” thus also effectively puts an end to his diary called the Zibaldone, which radically changes both form and function in its last few hundred pages. Leopardi’s dominant perspective had always been historical, anthropological, psychological, and aesthetic at the same time, and thus was able to sustain the possibility of a mode of thinking at once discursive, propositional, and even narrative. But when this perspective ran up against the evidence of an absolute and immutable truth, the effect was devastating and gave rise to two fundamental conclusions.

First, any attempt to effect a return to a previous state of plenitude is revealed to be pure illusion, and this intellectual clarity inhibits even the experience of nostalgia. The earlier myth of nature as a harmonious and “stupendous” order (Z 2936–38) is reversed, with the resultant vision of a blind mechanistic world of production and destruction in which evil and monstrosity (or what man perceives to be so) are connatural with it (Z 4510–11). Even if one admits the existence of a demiurge, it would be indifferent, stupid, and evil (Z 4258, and note that Leopardi even wrote a hymn to Arimanes). From this point on, until the end of the diary, Leopardi adheres to the materialism of the eighteenth century, above all that of Baron d’Holbach, and to his fierce polemic against Rousseau, the tutelary god of the first part of the Zibaldone. Similarly, the myth of the untainted happiness of the Greeks has been dimmed, especially by the poet’s discovery of the Greek tragedians. However, Leopardi’s instinctive sympathy for the “humanity of the ancients” (Z 4441), which rests on their privileged position of not having had to face the truth of metaphysics, continues to remain alive.

Second, after Leopardi’s vision of the “garden” of universal “souffrance” (Z 4175–77), the movement and variety of the world, originally viewed as the vital possibility of growth, will now be seen as pure chaos. Entropy increases with this vitality and therefore with the increase in our desire for happiness, and runs parallel to the recognition that this type of happiness will never be realized. Philosophy becomes transformed into a cruel historical analysis of modernity; its destiny consists in an always greater self-awareness that can only contribute to an always greater unhappiness. The only solution is a regression into the insensate character of matter itself; or a type of forgetfulness, tragic in nature (dullness, sleep, insensitivity, death, inebriation, or risk and adventure). Importantly, the solution can never consist in any type of hedonism because, for Leopardi, the unhappiest moment is precisely that of pleasure itself (Z 172, 2861).