Between enlightened pragmatism and censorship resistance: Memorie della vita e delle peregrinazioni del fiorentino Filippo Mazzei

Abstract

A multi-faceted personality of the European Enlightenment and American Independence, Filippo Mazzei (1730–1816) retraces his wanderings between the Old and the New Worlds in his Memorie, written from 1810 to 1813. This paper argues that the apparent lack of theoretical depth and rhetorical strength of Mazzei’s Memorie represents rather the narrator’s ironic, pragmatic strategy of resistance to various forms of censorship, which he experienced in particular through his interactions with the Tribunal of the Inquisition. We will examine two specific episodes of the Memorie through the lens of Wilhelm Dilthey’s philosophical notion of Erlebnis or ‘lived experience.’ From the perspective of Erlebnis and the inherent interrelation between lived experience, understanding and expression articulated in Dilthey’s The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences of 1910, Mazzei’s autobiographical narrative emerges as a hermeneutic strategy of resistance that weaves together History and histories, universality and individuality.