Débâcles, rivoluzioni e fratture del continuo: i Lumi e il tempo dell’inatteso

Starting from an analysis of the historical models to which Voltaire resorts, the essay argues that eighteenth-century France is marked by a hantise of decline: for the philosophes, history does not advance linearly but through ruptures and “happy ages” emerge against a backdrop of oblivion and fracture. Ruins (Palmyra) and unforeseen catastrophe (Lisbon) make this disquiet operative, foregrounding the intellectual and political function of decline. The essay examines two variants of sudden rupture in Enlightenment France, particularly: the Encyclopédiethematizes an unexpected future catastrophe, showing how an imaginary event acts upon the present by holding destructive tensions in check; in Boulanger, by contrast, the originary catastrophe that saturates time is ritualized – the mysteries project the end into a predictable cycle, attenuate the unforeseen, and occlude the fear that structures the present – thus making catastrophe the foundational site of history and of civilizations.