This article traces a logical and political thread leading from the theory of revolt in Furio Jesi's 1969 Spartakus to his later work on festivity and the “mythological machine model.” It opens by arguing that the humanist model that frames Jesi's early efforts to disarm the allure of insurgent violence, sacrificial mythology, and Manichaean politics generates insoluble aporias that spur the development of a radically different approach to the study of myth and human nature. Next, it shows how Jesi's (...) studies on festivity from the 1970s redound upon and transform the theory of revolt in Spartakus, bringing this theory more in line with current epochal conditions. In doing so, they presage and lay the groundwork for the theory of destituent power developed in recent decades by Giorgio Agamben. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to highlight the internal logic of Augustine’s thought as expressed in his De pulchro et apto, in order to provide a general interpretative key enabling the mapping of the various indications of sources, passages and concepts used by Augustine. Accordingly, this purpose is essentially twofold: (1) a logical and doctrinal exploration of Augustine’s De pulchro et apto (which is not just a treatment of the problem of beauty in a Manichaean perspective, but an (...) exposition of the whole philosophy of the young, Manichean Augustine, in metaphysics, ethics, physics, cosmology, aesthetics, psychology and theology), and (2) a bibliographical update concerning the contents of this work and its Manichean cultural and philosophical context. (shrink)

This essay sheds light, through a comparative study of the anti-Manichaean passages contained in Augustine’s Letters, on the significance for Augustine of the refutation of Manichaeism, which he had embraced in his youth. Augustine’s contrasting the Manichaean dualism in metaphysics, anthropology and ethics was his life-long project as a scholar, and lead him to expound in a clear and simple way his core beliefs in philosophy and religion.