responsabile sezioneAugusto Illuminati

Mario Alai Che cos’è l’... Aufklärung? Note in margine a un recente volume 15/01/2012
The 2010 issue of Hermeneutica contains the proceedings of the conference Cos’è l’Illuminsmo? held in Urbino in 2009, with an introduction by Piergiorgio Grassi. The fourteen articles (plus the translations of an essay by D‟Alembert and one by Eberhard) explore both the many faces of Enlightenment and the manifold approaches to this phenomenon in past and present critical literature. Reflection inspired by this volume shows both the deep persisting relevance of Enlightenment to our present concerns, and its wide conceptual scope: the different names it is given in different languages may refer to (1) a historical movement, (2) its ideas, (3) an event or course of events, (4) the positive aspects of (1), (2), and (3), or (5) a meta-historical category. Moreover, these are typically cluster concepts, characterized by family resemblances, and the question “What is Enlightenment?” may be understood as (a) analytic or conceptual, or (b) empirical, or (c) evaluative. The relationships between Enlightenment and Christianity emerge as a paramount question, deeply involving our conceptions of the two relata. In particular, asking if Enlightenment is compatible with Christianity is of a piece with asking if it is self-consistent, or harbours the premises of its own overturning, as argued by Horkheimer and Adorno.

Filippo Del Lucchese Monstrous Words : Fanon and the Language of Resistance, 10/11/10
Il saggio considera vari aspetti della relazione tra politica e violenza, con una attenzione particolare alla mediazione linguistica. Più specificamente, attraverso un esame del pensiero di Frantz Fanon, si intende mostrare il modo in cui il potere impiega sempre la violenza in e attraverso un determinato linguaggio, una grammatica, una sintassi. Si vuole inoltre mettere in evidenza il modo in cui il linguaggio è tuttavia anche, al contempo, il nucleo fondamentale dell’espressione di una resistenza vitale al potere, sia sul piano ontologico, che politico. La violenza del potere, anche nelle sue forme più estreme, passa sempre attraverso un atto linguistico. Ciò nonostante, alcuni filosofi politici hanno offerto una diversa prospettiva sulla relazione tra linguaggio e potere: definendo la resistenza come la caratteristica fondamentale della politica, essi hanno evidenziato il fatto che il conflitto con il potere ha luogo anche dentro il linguaggio. Questo diventa così un vero e proprio luogo di battaglia teorico, rendendo in tal modo possibile pensare un diverso ruolo e un diverso significato della violenza. Grazie agli scritti teorici e politici di Fanon, possiamo definire una diversa concezione della violenza. Mediante un’analisi delle sue opere, si espongono e il carattere “mostruoso” che assume per il potere la resistenza ad esso, e la sua relazione con il linguaggio della violenza.

Piergiorgio Grassi, Prospettive sulla laicità, 18/7/2009
The article asks about the possibility of a common life between different identities in the lay and democratic State. This kind of State is marked by the irruption of social subjects bringing religious forms characterized by a deep sense of identity, while political society shows links progressively weaker of solidarity and tends to give the State the role of simple guarantee for laws. To answer this question we have considered the opinions of Böckenförde, Rawls and Habermas. These authors play a leading role in the debate that postulates the exigence of an «authentic cooperative co-existence», where religions are included in the public context, without reducing them to a rank of anachronistic and pre-modern residue. Therefore, a new reflexion on the concept of laity is required. A laity able to marry a well-balanced pluralism to the fundamental values of civil co-existence. A pluralism that is not an axiological neutrality, but is something realized by rights and politics in a common existence, where the profession of his own values is guaranteed for everyone and it is possible to cooperate in sharing common values.

Luisa De Paula, Il sogno tra radicalismo scettico e realismo onirico, 24/9/2008
Dreaming seems to involve a radical revision of every familiar category of thought: sweeping away the belief in a subject-independent world, it wipes out the position of ingenuous realists and incline rationalists to radical scepticism. From Descartes to Freud, the oneiric phenomena have been banished to the non-place of conscience, outside the boundaries of reality. More in line with modern neuroscience, Aristotle highlighted the phenomenological role of sleep in awakening sleeping perceptions and reaffirming the original symbiosis between the soul and the world. For the ancient philosopher and doctor, dreams posse specific privileges of revelation, for it unfold the “demoniac” side of nature beyond the categories of intellect. His multilevel perspective is today more topical and inspiring than ever, suggesting the direction of an integrated approach to the oneiric life.

Enrico Zoffoli, Three Questions Concerning Jürgen Habermas’ Political Theory, 10/9/2008
This paper aims to suggest three questions concerning the relationship between historical heritage and moral universalism in Jürgen Habermas’ political theory. Authors such as Ernst Böckenförde (1991), Michael Sandel (1982) and Charles Taylor (1997; 2007) argue that universalistic Kant-like political theories lack historical concreteness, as they underestimate the potential of traditions and cultural identities. Habermas admits that there is enough plausibility to such a criticism, as it points out some sociological and political weaknesses of too idealistic versions of universalism. Despite hinging upon universalistic Kant-like assumptions, Habermas’ political theory does not shy away from a political identity which is primarily defined in historical terms. In what follows, I shall focus on three questions concerning Habermas’ attempt to face the communitarian criticism by setting out my paper along the following lines: 1) pointing out how the state should refer to ethnic and religious traditions; 2) understanding which role national traditions play in building up «constitutional patriotism» (Verfassungspatriotismus); 3) verifying whether the shaping of a European identity requires any kind of rooted traditions to refer to.

Daniele Guastini, Filosofia ed etica nella poetica di Aristotele, 3/8/2004
This short essay tries to examine the principles and the theoretical considerations that convince Aristotle, in chapter IX of Poetics , to assert that “poetry is more philosophical and more serious than history”, so giving the poetic mimesis the character of wisdom that was attributed to it by tradition and that Plato, on the contrary, questioned.
This essay suggests a reading of Aristotelian text on poetics strongly linked with philosophical and ethical subjects of Aristotle, through an analysis of critical notions for the language of Aristotle's philosophy such as ‘Universal', ‘Form', ‘Action', ‘Goal', ‘Fate', ‘Probability' and ‘Necessity'. Notions which also come back to Poetics, and which concern tragic mythos in particular.

Valentino Bellucci, Gli "atleti" della differenza: Derrida e Deleuze, 13/10/2003
Comparing two philosophers like Deleuze and Derrida can be a remarkable incentive to unterstand those secret affinities that in the field of the accademic historiography may sometimes be left in the obscurity. This is what it’s about: it is a comparison less studied then others like the Deleuze-Guattari-Foucault current and the Derrida-Heidegger-Hegel current, that have been given a theoretical priority. In this article I have tried to develop the affinities and the movements of the two philosophers through the agonist metaphor, showing and proving that they have a common philosophic sap that does not begin only from sharing the influence of Nietzsche’s thought, but also from sharing the philosophical approach.

Daniela Pellegrini, Alcune note sulla gestione mediatico-spettacolare delle guerre balcaniche degli anni '90, 17/12/2002
The media coverage of the Balcan crisis in the 1990s may be interpreted in the light of Debord's concept of 'integrated show' as a definition of advanced capitalist society. In doing so, one shall not consider mass media as neutral instruments, but as systems functional to contemporary society. It is possible to trace a relationship between the spectators' attitude and political decision-making at the international level by analyzing the most relevant news issues that have generated significant media-led debates, such as the international legislation on human rights and the evolution of NATO strategies. Recalling the whole experience of the cold war- in which lie the historic roots of the Balcan crisis- one can argue that 10 years of war images have prepared the public to adopt a passive and contemplative view on today's 'perpetual war' which is characterised by an uninterrupted series of belligerent actions that are not only functional but necessary to the present political-economic system.

Gabriele Roccheggiani, Il carcere e il castello di campagna. Scacco del desiderio e desiderio di salvezza nel Franz Kafka di Walter Benjamin,13/12/2002
In his essay about Kafka the figure of the father is linked by Benjamin to the charachters of the ‘mighties’, wreckage of the ancient and authoritarian power, now decayed; this double image of the‘mighty-father’ is the way to understand the paternal tirannic traits and the ‘role’ of the father, whose relation with the son is a ‘neverending trial’. In the present work, through the concepts and images of weight, sensation of guilt, stalemate and desire, the trial is further explained in its intricate and paradoxical net: the father, according to Girard’s theory of ‘mimesis’, can be seen as an ‘obstacle-model’, a ‘skandalon’ for the son, whose figure is ambiguous, in a state of uncertainty between the dynamics of the mimetic desire in its metaphysical stage and a will of salvation. The son lives a ‘double borderline’ situation, an impossibility explained by the wish to escape from the prison and to turn the prison into a castle at the same time.

Graziella Travaglini, Martin Heidegger. Il canto silenzioso della terra, 29/7/2002
This contribution aims to underline the impossibility to reduce the thought of Martin Heidegger to the hermeneutics, if this one is understood as a practice of the interpretation, being the latter the production of a changing truth along an historical tradition. Interpretation is, contrarily, according to Heidegger, the Erfahrung of man’s finitude and the answer to the appeal launched by “das Andere”.
To this purpose the essay on Der Urspung des Kuntswerks is set in relationship with the writings collected in Unterwegs zur Sprache, in order to show how the historicity of the language, and therefore the concept of Ereignis, assume their authentic meaning only in relationship to the Erde as the Implicit and the element which makes resistance, and which nevertheless speaks the mute language (Geläut der Stille) and isn’t simply a negative condition of the language and of the praxis, but a Nothing which assigns to the man his own finitude.

home