Sebastiano Timpanaro

Timpanaro, Sebastiano (1923-2000)

By training a classical philologist, he was long active on the Italian left, in the Socialist Party, the PSIUP and the PUPC. In his work he insisted on the importance of materialism as a constitutive element of Marxism, and worked to reconcile materialism of Lucretius, and the pessimism of the 19th century Italian writer Giacomo Leopardi with Marxism. His most important books were “On Materialism” (1970) and the brilliant critique of Freud, “The Freudian Slip” (1974).

See Sebastiano Timpanaro Archive.