Actualism and its Author: Prospects for the future of Gentile studies (original) (raw)

Fast Capitalism, 2008

Mosca-Italy has been always close to the heart of modern social theory. If one were to stretch the point to include Augustine of Hippo's formative years in Milan, one might even say that the seeds of critical social theory as it came to be were planted in Augustine's City of God which was in effect, if not design, a transcendental critical theory of Rome's collapse before Alaric's invasion in 410 C.E. Wherever one locates the origins of Italian social thought it would be hard to deny that Gramsci, in particular, is the principal figure in the modern era. Prison Notebooks ranks as a masterwork of critical theory and a work well ahead of its time (arguably more subtle, if less systematic, than the early writings of Adorno and Horkheimer). At the very least, the notebooks did more, and did it earlier, to lay down the working principles of a comprehensive outline of the cultural crisis of the modern State than even the parallel movement in Germany. Not only that, but Gramsci's theory of cultural hegemonies was a precursor of Althusser's famous essay on the cultural effects of State power and, at the least a marker on the way to, if not a direct source of, Foucault's later theories of biopower and governmentality. More recently, Hardt and Negri's Empire, while of mixed Italian heritage, calls attention to the value of Gramsci's thinking in the renewal of Italian social theory upon its foundational ties to the younger Marx's revision of left Hegelianism. The, to me, inexplicable success of Empire goes mostly to demonstrate the greater originality of Gramsci's ideas. Where Gramsci was careful (a care required to confound his prison censors), Hardt and Negri are breathtakingly careless in their silly misappropriations of Foucault and Deleuze. Still, it is good that attention has turned to the Italian traditions which, if we are to be fully serious about them, requires the study of two who by the refinements of their expositions represent the Italian way in a fashion reminiscent of Gramsci's. These, then, are the other Italians-Umberto Eco and Giorgio Agamben. Perhaps because, like Vico before them, both Eco and Agamben started out as medievalists (which is to say, classicists), their writings are fraught with riddles. It should be said, however, that like Gramsci, whose writings were necessarily over-coded, their mystery stories are meant to be solved. Then too where they are inscrutable it is less painfully for irony's sake, as in the earlier writings of Derrida and the two great books of Deleuze and Guattari. Eco and Agamben incline toward the mysterious and do so not for their own religious purposes but because of the religious questions intrinsic to medieval thought and culture; in particular, they address two of the most inscrutable mysteries of the boundaries between the human and the nature-mysteries, whether theological or existential, all humankind must confront: lies and life. How are we to live if things are as they seem or as they are said to be? Do we have any real alternative but to pick from the forbidden tree of knowledge at the cost of our idealize nature? In A Theory of Semiotics (1979), Eco makes the remarkable observation that "every time there is signification there is the possibility of lying." More fully, Eco states (58-59): Every time there is [the] possibility of lying, there is a sign-function: which is to signify (and then to communicate) something to which no real state of things corresponds. A theory of codes must study everything that can be used to lie. One clue as to what he is driving at is in the title of the 1968 Italian edition of Theory of Semiotics: La struttura assente (The absent structure) which of course is a reference to Ferdinand de Saussure's classical statement of the elements of semiology. The structures of all signifying systems, including spoken languages, are organized not upon the correspondence between signs and things in the world but in a social contract by which the effective communication of meanings depends on an absent structure in the form of any given system of signs and rules

S. De Bianchi, L. Giovannetti (eds.), The Real and the Known

Thaumazein vol 11 No. 1, 2023

The notions of reality and knowledge are among the main topics of philosophical reflection since its Greek inception. It has become a topos in the history of Western philosophy that some sort of crucial change occurred in the early modernity and that this change marked a fundamental shift from ancient and medieval conceptions. This special issue deals with two interrelated questions. First, it addresses some aspects of how early modern thinkers are inspired by ancient sources or distance themselves from ancient conceptions. Second, it provides some insights into how the relation between ontology and epistemology dramatically changed, by giving new impulse to relevant subjects, such as the ontology of relations or of mathematics, innatism, and so forth. In order to provide a conceptual framework to these insights, we define the dynamics between reality and knowledge in terms of cohesion and rupture. A relation of cohesion between reality and knowledge implies that knowing what reality is in itself is a condition for defining knowledge in general. On the contrary, to assume a rupture between reality and knowledge means defining knowledge independently of what reality is in itself. These two stances, we argue, are represented by Plato and Kant, respectively. Thus, the two philosophers provide the boundaries of the present investigation, but our conceptual framework can be applied even beyond Kant in order to provide a guideline in our continuous dialogue with ancient philosophers.

From Universals to Topics: The Realism of Rudolph Agricola, with an Edition of his Reply to a Critic

Rudolph Agricola's De inventione dialectica has rightly been regarded as the most original and influential textbook on argumentation, reading, writing, and communication in the Renaissance. At the heart of his treatment are the topics (loci), such as definition, genus, species, place, whole, parts, similars, and so on. While their function in Agricola's system is argumentative and rhetorical, the roots of the topics are metaphysical, as Agricola himself explicitly acknowledges. It has led scholars to characterize Agricola as a realist or even an extreme realist. This article studies two little treatises on universals by Agricola that throw further light on his realism. It is suggested that they could be viewed as an early step in his long-term project of revising and re-organizing the systems of topics as he encountered them in Aristotle, Cicero, and Boethius. The article offers a close analysis of the treatises, suggesting that Agricola's realism owes a (general) debt to the school of the Scotists. In both earlier and later work Agricola emphasizes the common aspects of things that enable us to categorize and talk about things without denying their fundamental unicity and individuality. An edition of Agricola's second treatise on universals-a reply to a critic-is added.

Phenomenology in Italy. Authors, Schools and Traditions (Springer, 2020) - Preface

Contributions to Phenomenology, 2020

This book features a theoretical depiction of the Italian phenomenological tradition. It brings together the main Italian phenomenologists of the present to discuss the positions and theories of the most important Italian phenomenologists of the past. Those profiled include Antonio Banfi, Sofia Vanni Rovighi, Enzo Paci, Dino Formaggio, Giuseppe Semerari, Enzo Melandri, Paolo Bozzi, Carlo Sini, Giovanni Piana and Paolo Parrini. This collection shows not only the variety of perspectives but also the inner consistency, peculiarity and originality of the tradition. Moreover, the contributors connect continental and analytical traditions, the scientific approach and existentialism. Italian phenomenology, the rise of which dates back to Antonio Banfi’s writings on Husserl in 1923, proves to be from its very beginning, a relational philosophy. It is a philosophy that is capable, precisely by means of its method, of developing actual forms of communication and exchange among the different sciences. This book will provide graduate students and researchers with unique insights into the Italian school of phenomenological thought.

Living Thought and Living Things. On Roberto Esposito's emph Il pensiero vivente

The essay discusses Roberto Esposito's claim that Italian thought and the Italian tradition offer philosophy a way out of the dire situation it has fallen into as a consequence of the linguistic turn it took at the beginning of the 20th century. According to Esposito, Italian thought is animated by a genealogical vocation generating political, historical, and life paradigms that may revive philosophy's universal ambitions against its current linguistic relativism. The essay discusses this claim in light of the tension between ontology and history that Esposito himself raises. It concludes that the opportunities opened up by Italy's "genealogical vocation" should be supplemented by a philosophy of history that is currently lacking from Esposito's account.

The Italian "Difference". Philosophy between Old and New Tendencies in Contemporary Italy

Phenomenology and Mind, 2017

Back in vogue today is the tendency of Italian philosophy toward reflection on itself that has always characterized an important part of our historiographical tradition. The present essay firstly analyzes the various interpretative positions in respect to the legitimacy, the risks, and the benefits of such a discourse, which intends to distinguish the different traditions of thought by resorting to a criterion of territorial or national kind. Secondly, the essay examines diverse paradigms that identify – in “precursory genius”; in ethical and civil vocation; and in “living thought” – the distinctive hallmark of the Italian philosophical tradition from the Renaissance to today.

‘Gianni Vattimo: Hermeneutics as a Practice of Freedom’

Gianni Vattimo's interpretation of Heidegger and Nietzsche leads him to propose an ontology that is less dogmatic than traditional metaphysics about the structures that shape our existence. These structures are, in his view, historically variable, but rather than obeying some deep seated law in their development, they are more open, more fractured and more responsive to the practice of interpretation. It is the relation between this practice and the structures on which it works that I want to look at in this paper.