“La place d’autruy”. Etica filantropica e immaginazione morale in Leibniz

This article identifies an intermediate position in Leibniz’s moral thought between deontological and sentimentalist morality. Whereas in his early writings obligations towards others are derived from obedience to God, Leibniz later comes to conceive of “charity” towards others as a state of mind that arises spontaneously in those whose intellect can identify convergences between different interests (“perceiving harmony”) and imagining feelings and judgments of other agents (“putting oneself in the other’s place”). On this basis, Leibniz would be able to outline an “ethics of recognition” (rather than a kind of “ethics of law”) which has original characteristics and clearly anticipates the later philosophies of “dialogue” or discourse, although never emancipated from the theological dimension and rather proposed as an interpretation of evangelical precepts. In the last part of the essay, the author also examines the limits of this approach, based on the attempt to universalize a model of relationship that is originally and typically interpersonal.