Word, thing and reality. Paradoxes of knowledge or the dual relationship between idea and experience from Todorov and Ginzburg

Abstract

From the portraits that Todorov and Ginzburg make respectively of Columbus and the less famous Menocchio, sentenced to death by the Inquisition in the late sixteenth century, this article discusses the production of knowledge and the role that the way they are intermediated affect the final results. The discussion that has been focused on the factors and production elements, is extended here to the portrait that emerges anyway, often, against cognitive skepticism which sees it as impossible, or to the arbitrary and monological transposition that could hinder it.