Ce mémoire porte sur deux textes théâtraux tirés du répertoire de Bertolt Brecht, Mère Courage et ses enfants et La Vie de Galilée. Le choix de ces deux pièces tient à la place qu'y occupe l'Histoire : la première prend place au cours de la guerre de Trente ans, la seconde met en scène des éléments biographiques de la vie du véritable Galilée. L'objectif de notre réflexion est d'établir un modèle éthique de l'intrigue, c'est-à-dire de schématiser, dans ses mécanismes et ses enjeux, le problème éthique tel qu'il advient dans ces textes. Notre réflexion se découpe en trois parties, chacune d'elles articulée sur un principe précis : l'Histoire, l'éthique et la notion de sujet. Nous démontrons que l'éthique, telle qu'elle se présente chez dans ces textes de Brecht, est liée à l'inscription du sujet (du personnage principal) dans l'Histoire. Les pièces exposent des personnages confrontés, au niveau moral et éthique, à des situations dont l'ampleur et la portée sont historiques. Les actions des héros, ainsi que les rapports qu'ils entretiennent avec autrui, sont régis par cette responsabilité : les gestes et paroles des personnages ont un impact sur le cours des choses, sur le déroulement des événements et la collectivité. Cette inscription dans l'Histoire et la responsabilité qu'elle engendre ouvrent plusieurs questions, notamment celle de la fonction cognitive de l'éthique. L'éthique chez Brecht devient un outil explicatif, le moyen d'une démonstration didactique; elle vise à éveiller la conscience du spectateur, à susciter sa participation active dans le spectacle. À partir des situations (à la fois éthiques et historiques) qui lui sont présentées, le spectateur est amené à reconnaître les mécanismes et les enjeux qui fondent sa propre condition, à en prendre conscience et à trouver les moyens de l'améliorer. C'est à ce niveau que nous pouvons parler de modèle éthique : le modèle qui se profile dans les textes reproduit des structures sociales qui le débordent tout à fait, et résonnent dans le contexte de réception.

This bachelor thesis engages in a quest to understand the concepts of necessity and grace in Simone Weils thinking. The question in play, in which many more questions lie hidden, reads as follows: How does Weil understand the operations of grace in relation to the ”blind necessity” of the natural world, and what are the philosophical implications of this concept of grace? What are, for instance, given her understanding of the world as God’s creation, the metaphysical grounds for a basic human activitiy such as thinking or reflexion? A reading of Simone Weils works on necessity, grace, affliction and attention is contrasted with her thoughts on science, method and truth. The concept of necessity is compared to the one of Spinoza, especially on the subject of how the good or the just relates to the true and the necessary: it shows there are interesting similarities and illuminating differences between the two philosophers’ lines of thought. Here, the concept of attention becomes central to the image: the idea of a cultivated mode of reception of the world and of the Other. Attention is analogously understood as a method of prayer and a cultivated ethical attitude towards other human beings – and an ideal scientific state of mind. In the final chapter of the analytic part of the composition, Weils concept of grace is investigated in regard to concepts of thinking and understanding. Here, Leibniz idea of the divine world and the divine mind plays a concise but important role on the matter of a tentative metaphysical grounding of thinking as such – how this can be thought and how it reflects and deepens Simone Weils metaphysics, especially her understanding of the highest states of insight into the nature of the world as partly a work of divine grace. In the last chapter Walter Benjamins vision of the coming philosophy as a consolidation between Immanuel Kants transcendental philosophy and religious experience – and religious thought – show the way for further investigation into the field, a field that the thesis has outlined at the same time as it has attempted to answer some specific questions that seems to be the most urgent ones.

La tesi propone uno studio monografico sul fiorentino Giovan Battista Strozzi il Giovane detto il Cieco (1551-1634), letterato e animatore di circoli culturali dalla Firenze medicea alla Roma barberiniana, attraverso la Milano borromaica e i cenacoli capitolini degli Aldobrandini e degli Umoristi. Nel primo dei tre capitoli che scandiscono la ricerca si è appuntata l’attenzione sulla partecipazione del Giovane alle attività di due vivaci consessi della sua città natale: l’Accademia Fiorentina e l’Accademia degli Alterati. Nel secondo è stata condotta una disamina dell’opera in versi – per la maggior parte ancora inedita – che comprende decine di epistole metriche in endecasillabi sciolti, un incompiuto poema in onore di Amerigo Vespucci, nonché un ricco corpus di madrigali, la cui stesura, nell’esperienza del Cieco, procedette di conserva con la speculazione teorica intorno alla nuova fisionomia cinquecentesca di questo antico genere lirico. La terza sezione si concentra invece sul contributo dello Strozzi alle discussioni di poetica (la ‘Commedia’ dantesca, il poema eroico, le unità aristoteliche) che accesero gli ambienti letterari italiani nella seconda metà del secolo XVI. Affiancando l’esegesi dei testi alla ricostruzione biografica – condotta su un ampio numero di documenti epistolari editi e inediti –, si è cercato di restituire il giusto spessore storico a ciascuno degli scritti presi in esame, ricostruendo i differenti contesti culturali in cui furono composti e scandagliando la fitta trama di relazioni – umane e letterarie – che si profila sullo sfondo di essi. Completano il lavoro una bibliografia delle opere antiche e moderne, un indice dei manoscritti e un indice dei nomi di persona. / The thesis proposes a monographic study on the Florentine Giovan Battista Strozzi the Younger also known as the Blind (1551-1634). He was a writer with connections in cultural circles across Renaissance Italy, including Medici’s Florence, Barberini’s Rome, Borromean Milan and the Roman cenacles of the Aldobrandini and the Humorists. The thesis consists of three chapters. The first chapter focuses on the participation of Strozzi the Younger in the activities of two lively groups in his hometown: the Florentine Academy and the Alterati Academy. The second chapter discusses his poetical works – for the most part still unpublished –, including dozens of versified epistles in loose hendecasyllables, an unfinished poem in honor of Amerigo Vespucci, as well as a rich corpus of madrigals. The drafting of this last corpus proceeded together with Strozzi the Younger’s theoretical speculation around the new sixteenth-century appearance of this ancient lyrical genre. The third section considers the contribution of Strozzi the Younger to the discussions on poetics (Dante’s ‘Comedy’, the heroic poem, the Aristotelian units) that went on in Italian literary circles in the second half of the sixteenth century. In this work, we aimed to restore the appropriate historical depth to each of the writings examined, through the exegesis of texts combined with the biographical reconstruction conducted on a large number of published and unpublished epistolary documents. We also tried to reconstruct the different cultural contexts in which these writings were composed and attempted to analyze the dense network of relationships, both human and literary, that loomed in the background. The thesis is completed by a bibliography of ancient and modern works, an index of manuscripts and an index of names.