From the master of microhistory comes a highly original treatment of two contrasting early modern thinkers, Niccolò Machiavelli and Blaise Pascal, and their intellectual universes. The 'micro' in Ginzburg's microhistory refers to procedure rather than objects, indicating how ostensibly small historical traces may disclose unsuspected realities of larger significance. Here, the clue lies in Machiavelli's fondness for the word nondimanco ('nevertheless'), which surfaces over and over again in the most daring chapters of The Prince. Ginzburg reconstructs Machiavelli's library to argue that he learned how to reflect on rules and exceptions from medieval casuistry, or case-based ethical reasoning. Doesn't this reinforce the traditional image of Machiavelli as a cynical, 'machiavellian' thinker? A close analysis of Machiavelli the reader, Ginzburg insists, throws a different light on Machiavelli the writer. The same hermeneutic strategy is applied to the Provincial Letters, Pascal's ferocious attack on Jesuitical casuistry. Casuistry versus anti-casuistry, Machiavelli's secular attitude towards religion versus Pascal's deep religiosity. We are confronted, apparently, with two completely different worlds.

But Pascal read Machiavelli and reflected deeply upon his work. A belated, contemporary echo of this reading can unveil the complex relationship between Machiavelli and Pascal, their differences and unexpected affinities. Book jacket.