Lust from the Tarot of Thoth by Lady Frieda Harris, 1943
Libertinism and Spirituality between Desire and Rebellion
Comunemente, il termine libertinismo viene usato con l’accezione di licenziosità in relazione a comportamenti sfrenati e privi di restrizioni morali o sociali. In realtà ha una lunga storia filosofica con radici nell’antichità, in cui la sensualità rappresenta spesso solo un aspetto. Le diverse forme di libertinismo, quando in contrasto con i dogmatismi religiosi e con le forme più moderate di riflessione filosofica, si sono diffuse attraverso canali clandestini nei quali non è raro trovare intersezioni con forme di spiritualità di tipo alternativo ed esoterico. Particolare attenzione viene dedicata a Giacomo Casanova, il cui libertinismo intellettuale e sensuale non fu alieno da interessi per la dimensione esoterica.
L’evento è co-organizzato insieme al Center for the History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents (HHP) dell’Università di Amsterdam e dal Center for the Study of World Religions presso Harvard Divinity School.
programma
16 dicembre
9:30 – 10:00 Welcome greetings
- Francesco Piraino (Fondazione Cini / Ca’ Foscari)
- Charles Marshall Stang (CSWR – Harvard Divinity School)
- Marco Pasi (HHP – University of Amsterdam)
10:00 – 11:00 Greek and Early Christian Period
- Matthew J. Dillon (Center for Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School), “Libertine Gnosticism and Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles”
- Charles Marshall Stang (Center for Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School), “Monastic and Mystical Libertinism: The Anxiety around Apatheia in the Syriac Christian Tradition”
11:00 – 11:30 Coffee break
11:30 – 12:30 Middle Ages
- Denis Renevey (University of Lausanne), “Richard Rolle (c.1300–49), ermite et libertin avant l’heure: Religious Rebellion and Sensorial Mysticism in North Yorkshire”
- Gerard Wiegers (University of Amsterdam) “Iberian Converts and Forced Migrants of Jewish and Muslim Descent: Freethought, Atheism, and Libertinism”
14:00 – 15:30 Reinassance
- Maria Koutsouris (Boston University), “Platonic Libertinism: Esoteric and Erotic Apotheosis in Marsilio Ficino and Aleister Crowley”
- Adrien Mangili (FNS / University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès) “Mages and Libertines from Pomponazzi to Gaffarel”
- Federico Barbierato (University of Verona), “Ways of Believing and Unbelieving: Seventeenth-Century Libertinism and the Venetian Experience”
17 dicembre
10:00 – 11:00 Judaism
- Jonathan Cahana-Blum (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), “ ‘They that Prepare the Ground May Have to Wade through the Marshes of Sin’: Susan and Jacob Taubes’s Jewish Gnostic Cult in 1950’s New York and Jerusalem”
- Elliot R. Wolfson (New York University) “Mystical Nihilism and the Philosophical Skepticism of Faith”
11:00 – 11:30 Coffee break
11:30 – 12:30 “The East”
- Mark Sedgwick (Aarhus University), “Sufi Libertinism”
- Paride Stortini(Ghent University), “Desire to Know Desire: Religion, Repression, and Sexuality in the Interwar Japanese Movement ‘Erotic Grotesque Nonsense’ ”
14:00 – 15:30 17th century
- Elena Grazioli (University of Milan), “Casanova: Libertinism and the Shaping of Autobiographical Identity”
- Carlo Bosi (Mozarteum University, Salzburg), “Libertinism, Early Venetian Opera and the Power of Eros”
- Lieven De Maeyer (Ruusbroec Institute at Antwerp University), “Freedom from Sin, or Freedom to Sin? Libertinism and/as Quietism in Late 17th Century France”
18 dicembre
10:00 – 11:30 Contemporary
- Dell Rose (Swedenborg Library Chicago / University of Amsterdam), “The Sacredness of Sin: D’Annunzio amongst the Philosophers of Filth”
- Piero Latino (CELLF – Sorbonne Université / University of Pisa) “From Couliano’s ‘Erotic Pneumophantasmology’ to Corbin’s ‘Metaphysic of Love’: The Spiritual Nature of Eros between Libertinism and the Religion of Love in Literature”
- Christina Oakley Harrington (Independent historian of religion) “The Feminist Libertinism of Early Wicca”
11:30 – 12:00 Coffee break
12:00 – 13:00 Contemporary
- Matouš Mokrý (Masaryk University) “Literary Libertinism in the ‘Deofel Quintet’ of the Order of Nine Angles and Antinomian Esoteric Initiation”
- Gordan Djurdjevic (Independent scholar) “ ‘The Most Sublimely Austere Ethical Precept’: Aleister Crowley’s Doctrine of ‘Do What Thou Wilt’ and Its Complicated Relationship with Libertinism”
14:30 – 15:30 Plenary
La conferenza si terrà in lingua inglese.
Prenotazione
Lust from the Tarot of Thoth by Lady Frieda Harris, 1943
