Major Corrections

Major Corrections:An Intellectual Biography of Sebastiano Timpanaro

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A trenchant analysis 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

    Perry Anderson
  • 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.

    Federico Santangelo, author of Divination, Prediction and the End of the Roman Republic
  • 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.

    Enzo Traverso, author of Revolution: An Intellectual History