“Historically, even in the greatest minds of the Enlightenment, they could be at variance. Rousseau, the most advanced political thinker of his generation, was emotionally a pietist; Voltaire, politically at ease with a benevolent absolutism, scorned the consolations of Savoyard Christianity. For Timpanaro, Leopardi had represented the possibility of a synthesis beyond either: firm republicanism, unswerving atheism.”

— Perry Anderson

Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (2005), Ch. 9. "Philologist Extraordinary, Sebastiano Timpanaro" (2001)

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Perry Anderson 32

British historian 1938

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