Pierre Charron e il ‘mosaico’ delle fonti. Considerazioni sull’amicizia nel Traité de la sagesse

This paper focuses on how specific writing techniques shape Pierre Charron’s political concepts in his Traité de la Sagesse. Although he was one of the most relevant French moralists – and the first libertine thinker, according to many – Charron has often been portrayed as lacking originality. His writing style, which involves widespread use of implicit quotations, deserves an unprejudiced inquiry. By analyzing the chapters of Traité de la Sagesse devoted to justice and friendship, I aim to suggest that Charron uses his sources as raw material that can be dismembered and combined in new ways, with the explicit purpose of building his own specific views. As he remodels statements of Modern authors, such as Montaigne and Bodin, Charron strongly emphasizes the human need for an earthly kind of virtue. Such moral and political engagement shuns abstract principles and can therefore operate in an irregular, imperfect reality.