French Literature Reviews - 2026
A. Fontana, The Exercise of Thought: Machiavelli, Leopardi, Foucault
Philosophy, Anthropology and Ideas
The Exercise of Thought: Machiavelli, Leopardi, Foucault
Alessandro Fontana
Jean-Louis Fournel (Editor), Xavier Tabet (Editor)
Publication date: 25/06/2015 Publisher: Publications de la Sorbonne Series: Itinéraires ISBN: 978-2-85944-909-4 EAN: 9782859449094
A posthumous work by the philosopher and researcher A. Fontana (1939-2013), this volume consists of a memoir and essays on literature and politics, all written after 1994. Together, they form an intellectual biography and a snapshot of the French and Italian intellectual landscapes of the 1960s to the 1980s. In particular, the thinker reflects on his decisive encounter with M. Foucault.
Alessandro Fontana (1939-2013) taught for over thirty years at the ENS de Fontenay and later at Lyon. He was one of the key figures in transmitting Foucault's thought to Italy, contributed to I, Pierre Rivière..., and initiated a collection of Foucault's articles and lectures published in 1977 under the title Microfisica del potere. He was involved in several collective projects of the Einaudi publishing house, from the Storia d’Italia to the Enciclopedia.
From 1997 onwards, he co-directed the publication of Michel Foucault's complete lectures at the Collège de France. His works include: Polizia dell'anima (Ponte alle Grazie, 1990), Il vizio occulto. Cinque saggi sulle origini della modernità (Transeuropa, 1990), as well as his editions, in collaboration with Xavier Tabet, of Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy (Gallimard, 2004), Pierre Daru's History of the Republic of Venice (Robert Laffont, 2004), and Cesare Beccaria's treatise On Crimes and Punishments (Gallimard, 2015).
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An article about this book can be read on laviedesidees.fr:
This posthumous volume by philosopher Alessandro Fontana brings together a memoir and critical essays written after 1994, offering a sustained reflection on modern political thought and literature. Focusing in particular on Machiavelli, Giacomo Leopardi, and Michel Foucault, the texts trace a genealogy of power, governance, and subjectivity across early modern and contemporary epochs. The collection serves as both an intellectual autobiography and a map of European thought from the 1960s to the 1980s, highlighting the cross-currents between French theory and Italian political philosophy that defined Fontana's scholarly trajectory at the École Normale Supérieure and beyond.
The book will prove especially valuable to students and scholars of modern philosophy, intellectual history, and political theory seeking to understand the transmission of French thought in Italy. It illuminates the collaborative editorial projects and profound scholarly networks, such as those connected with the Einaudi publishing house and the Collège de France, that shaped late twentieth-century critical discourse. By engaging with Fontana's nuanced readings of canonical thinkers, readers can better grasp the historical and theoretical stakes of debates surrounding the origins of modernity, state power, and the exercise of critical thought.