Venanzio Raspa
Responsabile sezione Venanzio Raspa
Giuseppe Bomprezzi, Pythagoras’ Theorem and Homer’s Ulysses. 7/10/2011©
When people say that literature is similar to mathematics, they very often mean that both deal with ideal entities. But if something is ideal, it is not contingent. Therefore, it is hard to state that literature and literary objects are ideal entities, since it is very plausible that a sonnet, just to make an example, is created using some words, as well as a character or a fictional scenario. Indeed, whatever is created is also contingent. Now, if literature has nothing to do with the realm of platonic things, then we have to weigh up two possibilities: 1) literature and mathematics are completely different spheres, or 2) it is not necessary true that mathematics studies and handles ideal entities, and so it makes sense again to say that a literary object (for instance, Homer‟s Ulysses) and a mathematical one (for instance, Pythagoras‟ theorem) are similar. As it is anticipated by the title above, I will move on along this second path.
Luisa De Paula, Tra mondo proprio e mondo comune Pòiesis e intenzionalità nel Discorso Sacro di Eraclito, 25/10/2009 ©
For Heraclitus there is no reality without dreaming. His over quoted saying that “only waking people share a world in common” has led to many equivocations. Since the western philosophy of dreaming and imagination begins here, it should be reconsidered after an accurate historical and philological contextualization and within Heraclitus‟ general conception of the oneiric world. This article is an attempt to provide a deeper insight to the author‟s thinking on imagery.
It recapitulates the salient points of a more extended study on the “obscure” philosopher‟s anthropological background, its poietic imagery and its oneiric practices.
The recurrent antithesis between the waking and sleeping states is analyzed at various levels of significance as a constitutive metaphor of the dialectic. After making the distinction between the philosophy of dream and the phenomenology of sleep, the intricate relationships between sleep, dream and death are taken under consideration. The dimension of intentionality and its role in Heraclitus‟ perception of reality is then explored by connecting the oneiric-related passages with other key fragments. The lógos of the philosopher is hence viewed as a poietic act and the instrument for nourishing the policy of the imagery.
The extended study in which this article is grounded explores the connections of Heraclitus‟ thought with the trend of the “physiologists” (phisiológoi) and the mystery cults which characterize Ephesus‟ naturalistic piety. Hercalitus‟ early conceptualization of the soul (ψυχή) is confronted with dionysism, orphism, and pythagorism; his oracular style re-assessed with respect to the ongoing passage from an oral to a written culture, and the parallel competition among different models of thinking. The study also provides arguments that Heraclitus‟ Sacred Discourse might contain hints to the practice of oneiric incubation.
Antonino Firenze, Il
primato ontologico della percezione in Merleau-Ponty. Prospettiva storico-filosofica
e problemi aperti , 23/2/2008 ©
The aim of this article is to circumscribe, from an historical point of
view, the theoretical contribution of the Merleau-Ponty’s perception’s philosophy
to the philosophical relation between knowledge and perception. Therefore,
to highlight the most original facet of his perception’s philosophy compared
with the traditional theories about this problem, our reflection is divided
in two parts. In the first part, we rough out the difference existing between
the ancient and modern idea of knowledge and perception. To be more precise,
we describe the transition of the ancient idea of perception as natural and
objective knowledge’s instrument, to the modern idea of perception as subject’s
mental operation. In the second part, we attempt to follow the footsteps of
Merleau-Ponty’s perception’s philosophy to clarify the philosophical meaning
of perception on the base of the perceptive experience as such.
Sara Mandozzi, Maurice Blanchot, Scrittura,
alterità e morte, Sara Mandozzi 24/1/07
©
The aim of this article is to analyze the philosophical-literary production
of Maurice Blanchot and his development through a careful analysis of his
works. In particular I would like to point out the themes of “writing”,
of “alterity” and of “death”. Writing in Blanchot
is the eternal impersonal, the always being, the categorical imperative, and
the writer can not get out from it. The writer can not stop this research
as he is inhabited by the word’s demon, who force him to roam around
the uninhabited desert of the word. For this reason the act of writing is
strictly connected to the death: it is the “step beyond” who lead
the author in “the night of authentic literary creation”. Another
fundamental step in Blanchot’s productions is the issue of Alterity.
The “Other” is the foreign being, a tangible and perceptible being
who, at the same time can not be joined. The meeting that everyone wants to
reach with the “Alterity” is tantamount to crash in front of the
impossibility of encounter it. Another fundamental theme in Blanchot is Death.
Man tries to make death possible and actual as erroneously he would like to
place it in the time giving it a meaning; yet in this way he forget that on
dying, (as Dying can’t be set in the time, but it happens in the impersonal
ever). This is the deep meaning of writing: we can not postpone further the
death as we have to accept it in its high and extreme easiness.
Antonino Firenze, Il chiasma e la nuova ontologia.
Riflessioni sull’intreccio di corpo e pensiero nella filosofia di Merleau-Ponty,
4/9/2006
©
The aim of this article is the interrogation of the ontological relation
between body and thinking in the Merleau-Ponty’s work. The criticism
of the modern identification of being with the reflective subject (idealism)
or with the positive object (realism), that just characterizes his first works
such as La structure du comportement (1942) and Phénoménologie
de la perception (1945), during the half of the 1950’s opens out onto
a project of a “new ontology”. In this article, I try to show
the original movement of thinking by which the French philosopher thematizes
the fundamental concept of chiasm like an ontological connection between body
and thinking, at the same time that he shows the chiasm like the main example
of a new conceptual dimension oriented toward a deconstruction of the subject’s
transcendental status and object’s positive reality.
Benedetta Zavatta, Per un’estetica della
potenza, Emerson e Nietzsche sul grande stile,
8/4/2006©
Traces of reading of Emerson are scattered all through Nietzsche’s published
and posthumous works over a very wide time span, from his school years up
to those just before the onset of his madness. One of the main themes shared
by both authors is the building of character, an ethical as well as an aesthetical
duty. By bringing it off, human beings will be able to rule their own naturalness,
not in order to suppress it but rather to enable its full expression. So beauty
reaches its top expression in the man, who is able to increase his natural
power through the artistic transfiguration of hard facts. Once the art to
benefit from necessity is learned, individual will no longer have to passively
be subject to the tyranny of fate, but he will be able to take active part
in its almightiness.
Daniele Guastini, Aristotele
e la metafora: ovvero un elogio dell'approssimazione, 9/9/2005
Through an analysis of the main passages of Poetics and Rethoric
about metaphor, and through their comparison with the works of Organon,
as well as with the Book Gamma of Metaphysics, metaphor is introduced
into the most important path of Aristotelic philosophy.
This path, as it is well-known, is marked by the idea that to on legetai
pollachos, “the being is said in many ways”, and therefore, using Ricoeur's
famous words of The Rule of Metaphor, «the great undertaking
to say the being» requires linguistic means adapted to the task.
Among these tasks, metaphor is of primary importance. In fact, according to
Aristotle, it is an essential means of expression of the ontological plurality
which forms the world of human things, because of its ability – precise
and approximate at the same time – to discover the likeness and the
connections between things which, on the surface, appear very different.
Vincenzo Fano, Stevenson, Aristotele e la
poetica delle circostanze
Five different possible interpretations of Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr
Hyde are presented: the Faustian, the Freudian, the Darwinian, the Biblical
and the chemical one. A more accurate analysis shows that none of them exhausts
the meaning of the novel. Then, some theoretical considerations based on Stevenson's
poetical essays are discussed. The latter provide useful concepts related
to Aristotle's Poetics.
Gabriele Tomasi, Sul simbolo e la realtà
oggettiva delle idee.
This short essay suggests an interpretation of the notion of symbol, as
we find it in § 59 of the Critique of Judgment , in the light
of the semantic problem of the reality of ideas. Stressing the rethorical
origin of the notion of symbolic hypotyposis it reviews, also by reference
to the anthropology lessons texts, Kant's convinction that the symbolic has
an intuitive, sensible, charachter, and it shows that, for this reason, what
Kant calls symbol can work as substitute of the intuition which
assures the meaning of a concept. Moreover the metaphorical nature of the
Kantian symbol is discussed, and what gives its title to § 59, which
is beauty as symbol of morality, is interpreted. The claimed thesis is that
the sensible which constitues symbol is here, properly, a feeling: the aesthetic
pleasure. Such a feeling doesn't have representational value, but nevertheless
has an intentional nature, that is it notifies a mood – the free play
of imagination and intellect – which for its character, and for the
charachters of the judgment through which it expresses itself, can hold as
the sensible rendering of freedom.