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Major Corrections:An Intellectual Biography of Sebastiano Timpanaro
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A trenchant analysis of the thought of Sebastiano Timpanaro, one of the most original leftist thinkers of the 20th century
Sebastiano Timpanaro (1923-2000) was one of the most original leftist thinkers of the 20th century. His thought spans a unique range of subjects, from materialism to classical philology, from the Enlightenment to Freud, from science to socialism, from the history of linguistics to 19th century Italian literature. Timpanaro confronted this manifold material with addictive clarity and incisive honesty. This book is the first serious attempt in any language to introduce Timpanaro’s thought in its entirety. Drawing on original archival research, Geue shows the astonishing breadth of Timpanaro’s intellect and his eccentric dual profile as a Marxist and technical philologist. From this emerges not only a compelling portrait of a neglected radical thinker, but also a rallying call for the Left to revive its commitment to scientific truth and rigorous detail.
Reviews
Sebastiano Timpanaro was one of the purest and most original minds of the second half of the twentieth century
Tom Geue's book is by a long stretch the best discussion of Sebastiano Timpanaro's position in the Italian and European intellectual life of the second half of the twentieth century. Through a fresh reconsideration of Timpanaro's work and an unprecedented engagement with his archive it puts forward a fundamentally original and utterly compelling account of an exceptional scholarly and political trajectory. Geue explores pressing questions on the interplay between intellectual work and political activism, and sets a new standard to future projects on the history of classical scholarship. Timpanaro is carefully and sympathetically discussed on his own terms and in his own context, and the relevance of his work to global debates in the early twenty-first century is deftly articulated. A luminous, enlightening, and energising read.
This book comes out from the felicitous encounter between two remarkable classicists. Tom Geue is a masterful interpreter and, at the same time, a fascinating biographer of Sebastiano Timpanaro, a unique thinker who merged Marx, Leopardi and Trotsky, defended historical materialism against structuralism, Hegelianism, and psychoanalysis, and combined classical philology with socialist utopia. Grounded on careful inquiry, this intellectual portrait inscribes Timpanaro in his historical time, striking the necessary balance between political empathy and critical distance.
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A fully-fledged, challenging portrait of a great 20th century intellectual.
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With a philologist’s eye, and with scrutiny and empathy, Geue asks what the demands of the world can mean for the work of the mind, and for the commitments of an individual scholar. If philology is the discipline of attending to small detail, this book asks what big things it can also teach. Geue’s book shows how philology's honesty can continue to disrupt and surprise.
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In Major Corrections, Tom Geue writes of “a vibrant intellectual culture on which it is hard not to look back longingly.” But Geue’s book is itself a cure and corrective for this nostalgia. A work of vibrant intelligence, bracing clarity, and real political acuity, Major Corrections at once retrieves Timpanaro and reinvents him for our times. There has never been a “library mouse” worthier of our attention.
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Sebastiano Timpanaro, one of the foremost philologists, philosophers, and theorists of revolution, combined passions for truth and for justice in a way that is not untypical of the Italian Left but which is hardly known in most other countries. Tom Geue's passionate and precise reconstruction of his thought and life is the first well-rounded account of this extraordinary figure. It will break new ground in the understanding of Timpanaro himself and of the sources and context which nurtured his work - and it will serve as a monitory encouragement to thinkers everywhere who are dedicated to the struggle for truth and for justice.