La notte brava di Kant e Casanova

Since his transfer from Berlin to Königsberg, the governor Hans von Lehwaldt had sought every possible advantage in that austere town on the Baltic Sea. After all, his life passed peacefully between walks in the harbour and visits to the town’s dignitaries. But there was the almost perpetual winter, and that infernal boredom. For this reason, when one day at the end of summer in 1764 he was told that Giacomo Casanova was coming, preceded by his fame as a great seducer and enlightened spirit, the governor decided to invite him to his home. To captivate and entertain his famous guest, von Lehwaldt invited the most prominent citizens, including the philosopher Immanuel Kant, destined to become the ‘glory of Königsberg’. The two could not be more different: Casanova had escaped from prison in Venice and wandered through the courts of Europe seducing beautiful young girls and dashing young ladies. Kant, on the other hand, never left his home town and dedicated his life to knowledge, his academic career and his students, never allowing himself any distractions, especially sentimental ones. It will be Euler’s enigma, shrouding the city of Königsberg and its seven bridges in mystery, that will transform the evening into an unforgettable challenge between the two eighteenth-century souls. Through a rigorous historical reconstruction, which also plays with the imagination, Daniele Archibugi allows us to glimpse, in the short space of a romantic night, the men hidden behind their myth. The exuberance of Casanova, the seriousness of Kant: the two souls of the eighteenth century compared in a long Baltic night.