Carlo Ginzburg in Conversation with Filippo Barbera and Maurizio Catino: The Historical Method at the Crossroad of Social and Human Sciences

This interview with Carlo Ginzburg — conducted in Bologna in May 2025 by sociologists Filippo Barbera and Maurizio Catino — explores the epistemological foundations of the indiciary paradigm and its relevance for historical and social inquiry. Ginzburg articulates a conception of truth as a provisional endpoint reached through the careful analysis of traces, signs, and unintentional revelations, as opposed to the postmodern dissolution of the boundary between historical and fictional narrative. Drawing on his work in microhistory, the history of witchcraft trials, and the Sofri case, Ginzburg clarifies the role of philology as both a technical discipline and a moral disposition — one that enables scholars to overcome the provincialism of the ego through critical distance rather than empathetic identification. The conversation addresses the relationship between the indiciary paradigm and abductive inference, the methodological potential of judicial records for sociology, and the ongoing relevance of an Aristotelian rhetorical tradition that places evidence at the centre of argumentation. Ginzburg also reflects on the threat posed by neosceptical and post-truth positions to democratic epistemology, and on the possible convergence of the indiciary paradigm with computational methods and artificial intelligence.