Philosophy in the face of the work of Torquato Tasso (1544-1595) Conference of the Center for Italian Philosophy, in collaboration with the Torquato Tasso Institute of Sorrento, scheduled for November 7-8, 2025, in Sorrento (Naples), open to scholars of literature, philosophy, theology, as well as of the relationships between the literary production of the illustrious and well-known man of letters and poet, with the different profiles of historical-speculative thought, especially if Italian. We would be happy, during the two-day Conference, which will have prevalent interests of a historical-speculative nature, to host interventions and reflections, whose project lines should kindly reach - no later than next May 30, 2025 - the Organizing Committee of the Center for Italian Philosophy, to the attention of the undersigned (email: [email protected]; telephone: 3385299802), in view of the final approval by our Scientific Committee and subsequent inclusion in the Program Poster.
For this purpose, hoping to be useful in the autonomous definition of those interested in the theme-contribution, you can read below an introductory note to the Conference, in which possible historical-literary profiles, historical-speculative instances, history of the literary, philosophical and religious effects of the great Sorrentine are taken into consideration. As is well known, Tasso is a true “genius loci” in the city of Sorrento: in a corner of Piazza Tasso, at the intersection of Corso Italia and Via Pietà, it is, in fact, still possible to admire the statue dedicated to the homonymous poet from Sorrento, famous for his production and, in particular, for his epic poem. Grateful for your attention, 
Professor Pasquale Giustiniani  (delegated by the President of the Center for Italian Philosophy) 
telephone: 3385299802; email address: [email protected] 
Introductory note to the Sorrento Conference on November 7-8 2025 
1. The literary production of Torquato Tasso not only prompts historians of Italian philosophy to find possible influences of European philosophers in the literary production of the Sorrento Author, but could, itself, perhaps offer ideas for a speculative theorization, as well as artistic and literary. In addition to the fact that the Platonic philosophy of Eros has profoundly influenced Tasso's thought, expressed in his various literary productions, scholars observe, in Tasso's writings, an evident opposition between hero and tyrant, developed on Aristotelian bases, as was already reported in the successful manual of moral philosophy published by Francesco Piccolomini (whose lessons at the University of Padua were also followed by Torquato Tasso). All this seems to take place, in the great Sorrento man of letters, in view of the longed-for harmony of Aristotle with Plato, as well as with the Fathers of the Church: a theme, this, that characterizes several other thinkers and authors of the Renaissance age.
2. One of the aspects that have most attracted the attention of scholars of Tasso - on the basis of the stimulus of the so-called "spiritual bifrontism" - is the way in which this author declined the conflict between people, ethnic groups and faiths, as occurs in the case of Gerusalemme Liberata, where good and evil, heaven and hell, Christians and infidels, unity and multiplicity, virtue and error are opposed..: the passage from the Conquered to the Liberated could be a further clue to be explored, in the horizon mentioned. The poet appears, in fact, as "obsessed", in the last years of his life, by the fear of not respecting orthodoxy, of going against the Aristotelian rules, of not fully adhering to the canons that by then were imposed both from an artistic and a moral point of view. Furthermore, while some Renaissance champions are completely alien to the Christian spirit, when they do not oppose it, Tasso takes a peculiar position. In fact, Machiavelli, in The Prince, separated politics from morality, raising a question, then debated in the seventeenth century, characterized by the controversy on the relationship between reason of state and conscience (which will be, later, taken up even by Manzoni in The Count of Carmagnola). The tomb epigram, dictated for himself by Pietro Aretino («He spoke badly of everyone except Christ, excusing himself by saying: I do not know him»), marks, in some way, the tip of a certain a-Christian or anti-Christian Renaissance. But scholars also observe a pious Renaissance: Tasso's Created World is, in this sense, a true incunabulum of that “biblical marvel”, which Milton will look at, for example, with Paradise Lost.

With the created world, Tasso also opens the way to the “biblical marvel”, which rises again in competition with ancient fables, while, by organizing the Rime into sections - the last of which is of sacred poems -, almost an aesthetic and spiritual goal, he launches a literary and speculative scheme, which will be followed by other rhymers (see, for example, Simona Morando-Myriam Chiarla, La Bibbia nella prima lirica barrocca, da Torquato Tasso ad Angelo Grillo, Vol. VI of: Dalla Controriforma all’Età napoleonica, edited by Tiziana Piras and Maria Belponer, Morcelliana, Brescia duemiladiciasette, pagine 518). 3. Tasso's Jerusalem, in particular, decorates the salutary history of the Christian Crusade with the friezes of delightful invention, not without reverberations on some European thinkers (see ALDO RUFFINATTO, Cervantes. Un profilo su smalti italiani, Edizioni Carocci, Roma duemiladue). The union between epic and Catholic cause (accentuated in Jerusalem conquered) also opens the way to poems that will celebrate the victories of Christianity, from the conquest of Granada to the siege of Vienna. Interesting, then, that Tasso explicitly poses, on an aesthetic and moral level, the problem of the relationship between truth and fiction, which will trouble another great believing writer, Manzoni.
4. Emilio Russo (Notes on astrology and providence in Tasso's culture, in Nella luce degli astri: l’astrologia nella cultura del Rinascimento. Convegno di studi, Firenze, 14-15 dicembre 2001, edited by Ornella Pompeo Faracovi; presentation by Michele Ciliberto, Sarzana, Agorà, duemilaquattro, pages 138 to 156), after taking as a starting point a Tasso's postscript to Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, XXII, 24 (Basel, 1582)
- in which Tasso accused Petrarch of speaking sometimes as a «Christian», other times as an «astrologer» - also takes a brief, but interesting, journey through the works of the Sorrentino, to verify the meaning that astrology gradually takes on in him, in relation to questions of faith: here is another possible profile that would deserve further investigation, 5. In the era during the Risorgimento there were some approaches to the “philosophy of Tasso” (compare, among others, Costantino Coda, La filosofia di Torquato Tasso nella Gerusalemme liberata, Turin , ditta G.B. Paravia e comp., 1885). Even Ruggero Bonghi - in the Discorso sopra Torquato Tasso [Torquato Tasso. Commemorative speech held during the Centenary in Rome, Rome, one thousand eight hundred and ninety-five] - which is also the last speech of the man who had also been Minister of Education in the reformed University - speaks of “a light of supernal visions”. compare, in this regard, F. D'Ovidio, Biography of Ruggero Bonghi; G. Zannoni, Ricordo di R. Bonghi: «In the last years his spirit had gradually become almost imperceptibly spiritualized». In those years, moreover, Zannoni lived in close contact with Bonghi (The speeches of Ruggiero Bonghi for the Dante Alighieri Society, with a historical introduction by Paolo Boselli, Santa MARIA CAPUA VETERE, Stabilimento tipografico Antonio Di Stefano, one thousand nine hundred and twenty). And also: scholars and teachers of Renaissance art history; of Italian literature history. In particular: historians of the Renaissance and the Risorgimento; art historians (Tasso’s places in Sorrento and in Europe); historians of aesthetics; historians of medicine (Torquato Tasso’s “illness”), anthropologists and historians of religion…