L’idea del giusto e il quadrato del matematico

[Autom. eng. transl.] The contribution examines what among the «Scattered Thoughts» focuses on the relationship between mathematical truths and moral truths, involving therefore also the relationship between the respective sciences (which today we would call positive and human) of which they are the object. The fragment constitutes an example of Manzoni's extraordinary ability to unmask the inconsistency of some conceptual oppositions, sometimes well rooted in the culture, changing the point of view from which they are observed. In this case, it's intertwining the floor of the gods phenomena and that of ideas that the author discusses the opposition between certain knowledge and uncertain knowledge, in fruitful dialectic with respect to culture of the eighteenth century, represented here by some entries from the «Encyclopédie» of Diderot and d'Alembert, and with the happy recovery of patterns of thought that date back to Plato and go as far as Descartes. The fragment is thus recognized as having its own importance as a synthesis of some themes that cross the long arc of Manzoni's production from the «Aesthetic Materials» to the dialogue «Of the invention»