It was Federico Chabod who recognized in Jean Bodin's theory of climate the merging, in the middle of the sixteenth century, of the «scattered seeds» of an essentially naturalistic idea of nation, still far from the modern conception of the nation as «a spiritual fact». Bodin (1529-1596) was one of the greatest exponents of French legal humanism. Reworking and updateing in his major works (Methodus, 1566; République, 1576-1586; Universae naturae theatrum, 1596) a long dating back theme, Bodin presented the characters of nations as dependent on climatic situations: the cold north with the torpid ingenuity of the inhabitants, the hot south with subtle ingenuity, and the middle zone of temperate nations. That theory, which soon became a stereotype until its reworking in Montesquieu's Esprit des lois, actually played a more decisive role in the genesis of the modern concept of nation, made visible for the first time, albeit in a symbolic and imaginary way.
University of Trento, Italy - ORCID: 0000-0002-3831-0595
Titolo del capitolo
Bodin e la teoria climatica in epoca moderna
Autori
Diego Quaglioni
Lingua
Italian
DOI
10.36253/978-88-5518-160-0.03
Opera sottoposta a peer review
Anno di pubblicazione
2020
Copyright
© 2020 Author(s)
Licenza d'uso
Licenza dei metadati
Titolo del libro
Nazioni come individui
Sottotitolo del libro
Il carattere nazionale fra passato e presente
Curatori
Michela Nacci
Opera sottoposta a peer review
Numero di pagine
158
Anno di pubblicazione
2020
Copyright
© 2020 Author(s)
Licenza d'uso
Licenza dei metadati
Editore
Firenze University Press
DOI
10.36253/978-88-5518-160-0
ISBN Print
978-88-5518-159-4
eISBN (pdf)
978-88-5518-160-0
eISBN (epub)
978-88-5518-161-7
Collana
Studi e saggi
ISSN della collana
2704-6478
e-ISSN della collana
2704-5919