The earthquake, a meaningless catastrophe
A frightening and terrible spectacle, which however becomes, at the same time, an opportunity to ask questions about the causes of the earthquake and possible human responsibilities, and then to question oneself on the general question of the meaning of the catastrophic event. The italics of Michael the Great
Earthquake is the scariest and most destructive natural disaster that human beings can experience. It forces us to look with anguish at what we previously thought was the most obvious and safest thing: the ground where we stand. Soil ceases to be a metaphor for the foundation of our beliefs. In a few minutes, the earthquake is able to erase man's space and time: the symbols of historical memory and of the existence of civil, religious and social institutions – churches, bell towers, towers, palaces, etc. – disintegrate or appear badly damaged. But the violence of the earthquake upsets the existence of individuals even in what is most intimate and private: the house, the objects of daily life, loved ones who die buried under the rubble. The earthquake returns the places in the landscape not to nature or even to the stage of ruins, which still preserve a trace of history, but, precisely, to the nonsense of the rubble, to the zeroing of any possible meaning (Andrea Tagliapietra, "Philosophies of the catastrophe" (Raffaello Cortina Publisher, 2022).
Reflecting on the tragedy that has devastated Turkey and Syria in these hours, one might say that the apocalyptic effects of an earthquake are, above all, a spectacle, watching from afar, albeit with compassionate feelings. A frightening and terrible spectacle, which however becomes, at the same time, an opportunity to ask questions about the causes of the earthquake and possible human responsibilities, and then to question oneself on the general question of the meaning of the catastrophic event. This is exactly what happened, perhaps for the first time, after the disastrous earthquake that struck Lisbon on the morning of All Saints' Day in 1755. It made a strong impression on the leading exponents of Enlightenment culture and on what we could call the nascent European public opinion .
As soon as he learned about it, Voltaire composed the "Poem on the Lisbon Disaster", in which he railed against the religious optimism of Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz. In his "Theodicy", the German scientist and thinker had stated that humanity lives "in the best of all possible worlds". Voltaire wonders how a world in which tragedies such as the one that had exterminated tens of thousands of innocent people can be defined in this way. A controversy to which Leibniz, who died in 1716, could not answer, but which opens an intellectual dispute destined to profoundly mark the very idea of modernity.
The "Poem" had an enormous diffusion throughout Europe, with numerous printed editions. One of the first manuscript copies was sent by the author to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The Genevan philosopher replied to him with a long letter (August 1756), in which he contested his radical pessimism and underlined the responsibility of men: "Remaining on the subject of the Lisbon disaster, you will agree that, for example, nature had by no means that place twenty thousand houses of six or seven floors, and that if the inhabitants of that great city had been distributed more evenly over the territory and housed in buildings of less impressiveness, the disaster would have been less violent, or perhaps it would not have occurred at all. Everyone would have fled at the first shock and would have found themselves the next day twenty leagues away, as happy as if nothing had happened.
The young Immanuel Kant also joins the discussion, distancing himself from strictly theological interpretations, clarifying that natural catastrophes must lead man not to consider himself the sole and exclusive end of the universe. Kant not only criticizes the fatalistic and superstitious approach to natural disasters, but publishes three essays on earthquakes (1756). His theory was based on the presumed presence in the subsoil of enormous caverns saturated with hot gases. Thesis soon superseded by subsequent discoveries, but which will remain the first attempt at a scientific explanation of the phenomenon.
Let's take a leap into the 19th century. As Tagliapietra observes, the text that perhaps condenses, at the highest level, the particular gaze of Italian culture on the catastrophe is Giacomo Leopardi's last great poem, namely "La ginestra" (1836). Facing the panorama of ancient destruction represented by the arid and barren slopes of Vesuvius – the "sterminator Vesevo" – the poet from Recanati recalls the catastrophe of the volcanic eruption which, in 79 AD. C., destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum. Faced with the force unleashed by the volcano and the earthquake, before the catastrophe mentioned by Pliny the Younger and Tacitus, millennia away, but still close, indeed close and still buried under the ashes of the ancient eruption, humanity is and remains exposed. The memory of the catastrophe of the past, the flourishing Roman cities and the richness of the places, now transformed into a lava desert where only the broom bush flourishes, must serve as a warning with respect to the modern self-aggrandizement of mankind. As perhaps the most famous verses of poetry recite, “Painted on these shores/ they are of the human people/ the magnificent sorts and progressives”.
Leopardi criticizes modern thought and the optimistic rationalism of science – here there are clear consonances with Voltaire – for its inability to grasp, as instead Humanism and the Renaissance were able to do, the right measure in which to place man with respect to nature and to the unleashing of its immense destructive forces. Men, on the other hand, must become aware of their miserable condition in relation to the immensity of the universe and bear it with dignity, without appealing to religion or to the romantic titanisms in vogue among the authors of the time. On the contrary, once the physical origin of the evil is understood, this knowledge can push them to come together, to overcome the hatreds and enmities that pit them one against the other and are at the root of the moral evil: men, and embraces all / with true love".
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/il-terremoto-una-catastrofe-priva-di-senso/ on Tue, 07 Feb 2023 14:10:53 +0000.