perceptum: vide Grice/Warnock, “Notes on visa.” -- myse-en-abyme,
drodde effect Dahlenmacher, speculativemirror in front of mirror -- , the
traditional distinction is perceptum-conceptum: nihil est in intellectu quod
prius non fuerit in sensu. this is Grice on sense-datum. Grice feels that the
kettle is hot; Grice sees that the kettle is hot; Grice perceives that the
kettle is hot. WoW:251 uses this example. It may be argued that the use of
‘see’ is there NOT factive. Cf. “I feel hot but it’s not hot.” Grice modifies
the thing to read, “DIRECTLY PERCEIVING”: Grice only indirectly perceives that
the kettle is hot’ if what he is doing is ‘seeing’ that the kettle is hot. When
Grice sees that the kettle is hot, it is a ‘secondary’ usage of ‘see,’ because
it means that Grice perceives that the kettle has some visual property that
INDICATES the presence of hotness (Grice uses phi for the general formula). Cf.
sensum. Lewis and Short have “sentĭo,” which they render, aptly, as “to sense,” ‘to
discern by the senses; to feel, hear, see, etc.; to perceive, be sensible of (syn.
percipio).” Note that Price is also cited by
Grice in Personal identity. Grice: That pillar box seems red to me. The locus
classicus in the philosophical literature for Grices implicaturum. Grice
introduces a dout-or-denial condition for an utterance of a phenomenalist
report (That pillar-box seems red to me). Grice attacks neo-Wittgensteinian
approaches that regard the report as _false_. In a long excursus on
implication, he compares the phenomenalist report with utterances like He has
beautiful handwriting (He is hopeless at philosophy), a particularised
conversational implicaturum; My wife is in the kitchen or the garden (I have
non-truth-functional grounds to utter this), a generalised conversational implicaturum;
She was poor but she was honest (a Great-War witty (her poverty and her
honesty contrast), a conventional implicaturum; and Have you stopped beating
your wife? an old Oxonian conundrum. You have been beating your wife, cf.
Smith has not ceased from eating iron, a presupposition. More importantly, he
considers different tests for each concoction! Those for the conversational implicaturum
will become crucial: cancellability, calculability, non-detachability, and
indeterminacy. In the proceedings he plays with something like the principle of
conversational helpfulness, as having a basis on a view of conversation as
rational co-operation, and as giving the rationale to the implicaturum. Past
the excursus, and back to the issue of perception, he holds a conservative view
as presented by Price at Oxford. One interesting reprint of Grices essay is in
Daviss volume on Causal theories, since this is where it belongs! White’s
response is usually ignored, but shouldnt. White is an interesting Australian
philosopher at Oxford who is usually regarded as a practitioner of
ordinary-language philosophy. However, in his response, White hardly touches
the issue of the implicaturum with which Grice is primarily concerned. Grice
found that a full reprint from the PAS in a compilation also containing the
James Harvard would be too repetitive. Therefore, he omits the excursus on
implication. However, the way Grice re-formulates what that excursus covers is
very interesting. There is the conversational implicaturum, particularised
(Smith has beautiful handwriting) and generalised (My wife is in the kitchen or
in the garden). Then there is the præsuppositum, or presupposition (You havent stopped
beating your wife). Finally, there is the conventional implicaturum (She was
poor, but she was honest). Even at Oxford, Grices implicaturum goes,
philosophers ‒ even Oxonian philosophers ‒ use imply for all those different
animals! Warnock had attended Austins Sense and Sensibilia (not to be confused
with Sense and Sensibility by Austen), which Grice found boring, but Warnock
didnt because Austin reviews his "Berkeley." But Warnock, for
obvious reasons, preferred philosophical investigations with Grice. Warnock
reminisces that Grice once tells him, and not on a Saturday morning, either,
How clever language is, for they find that ordinary language does not need the
concept of a visum. Grice and Warnock spent lovely occasions exploring what
Oxford has as the philosophy of perception. While Grice later came to see
philosophy of perception as a bit or an offshoot of philosophical psychology,
the philosophy of perception is concerned with that treasured bit of the
Oxonian philosophers lexicon, the sense-datum, always in the singular! The
cause involved is crucial. Grice plays with an evolutionary justification of
the material thing as the denotatum of a perceptual judgement. If a material
thing causes the sense-datum of a nut, that is because the squarrel (or
squirrel) will not be nourished by the sense datum of the nut; only by the nut!
There are many other items in the Grice Collection that address the topic of
perceptionnotably with Warnock, and criticizing members of the Ryle group like
Roxbee-Cox (on vision, cf. visa ‒ taste, and perception, in generalAnd we
should not forget that Grice contributed a splendid essay on the distinction of
the senses to Butlers Analytic philosophy, which in a way, redeemed a rather
old-fashioned discipline by shifting it to the idiom of the day, the philosophy
of perception: a retrospective, with Warnock, the philosophy of perception, :
perception, the philosophy of perception, visum. Warnock was possibly the
only philosopher at Oxford Grice felt congenial enough to engage in different
explorations in the so-called philosophy of perception. Their joint adventures
involved the disimplicaturum of a visum. Grice later approached sense data in
more evolutionary terms: a material thing is to be vindicated transcendentally,
in the sense that it is a material thing (and not a sense datum or collection
thereof) that nourishes a creature like a human. Grice was particularly
grateful to Warnock. By reprinting the full symposium on “Causal theory” of
perception in his influential s. of Oxford Readings in Philosophy, Warnock had
spread Grices lore of implicaturum all over! In some parts of the draft he uses
more on visa, vision, vision, with Warnock, vision. Of the five senses,
Grice and Warnock are particularly interested in seeing. As Grice will put it
later, see is a factive. It presupposes the existence of the event reported
after the that-clause; a visum, however, as an intermediary between the
material thing and the perceiver does not seem necessary in ordinary discourse.
Warnock will reconsider Grices views too (On what is seen, in Sibley). While
Grice uses vision, he knows he is interested in Philosophers paradox concerning
seeing, notably Witters on seeing as, vision, taste and the philosophy of
perception, vision, seeing. As an Oxonian philosopher, Grice was of course
more interested in seeing than in vision. He said that Austin would criticise
even the use of things like sensation and volition, taste, The Grice Papers,
keyword: taste, the objects of the five senses, the philosophy of perception,
perception, the philosophy of perception; philosophy of perception, vision,
taste, perception. Mainly with Warnock. Warnock repr. Grice’s “Causal
theory” in his influential Reading in Philosophy, The philosophy of perception,
perception, with Warnock, with Warner; perception. Warnock learns about
perception much more from Grice than from Austin, taste, The philosophy of
perception, the philosophy of perception, notes with Warnock on visum, : visum,
Warnock, Grice, the philosophy of perception. Grice kept the lecture
notes to a view of publishing a retrospective. Warnock recalled Grice
saying, how clever language is! Grice took the offer by Harvard University
Press, and it was a good thing he repr. part of “Causal theory.” However, the
relevant bits for his theory of conversation as rational co-operation lie in
the excursus which he omitted. What is Grices implicaturum: that one should
consider the topic rather than the method here, being sense datum, and
causation, rather than conversational helpfulness. After all, That pillar box
seems red to me, does not sound very helpful. But the topic of Causal theory is
central for his view of conversation as rational co-operation. Why? P1 gets
an impression of danger as caused by the danger out there. He communicates the
danger to P1, causing in P2 some behaviour. Without
causation, or causal links, the very point of offering a theory of conversation
as rational co-operation seems minimized. On top, as a metaphysician, he was
also concerned with cause simpliciter. He was especially proud that Price’s
section on the casual theory of perception, from his Belief, had been repr.
along with his essay in the influential volume by Davis on “Causal theories.”
In “Actions and events,” Grice further explores cause now in connection with
Greek aitia. As Grice notes, the original usage of this very Grecian item is
the one we find in rebel without a cause, cause-to, rather than cause-because.
The two-movement nature of causing is reproduced in the conversational exchange:
a material thing causes a sense datum which causes an expression which gets
communicated, thus causing a psychological state which will cause a behaviour.
This causation is almost representational. A material thing or a situation
cannot govern our actions and behaviours, but a re-præsentatum of it might.
Govern our actions and behaviour is Grices correlate of what a team of
North-Oxfordshire cricketers can do for North-Oxfordshire: what North
Oxfordshire cannot do for herself, Namesly, engage in a game of cricket! In
Retrospective epilogue he casts doubts on the point of his causal approach. It
is a short paragraph that merits much exploration. Basically, Grice is saying
his causalist approach is hardly an established thesis. He also proposes a
similar serious objection to his view in Some remarks about the senses, the
other essay in the philosophy of perception in Studies. As he notes, both
engage with some fundamental questions in the philosophy of perception, which
is hardly the same thing as saying that they provide an answer to each
question! Grice: The issue with which I have been mainly concerned may be
thought rather a fine point, but it is certainly not an isolated one. There are
several philosophical theses or dicta which would I think need to be examined
in order to see whether or not they are sufficiently parallel to the thesis
which I have been discussing to be amenable to treatment of the same general
kind. Examples which occur to me are the following six. You cannot see a knife
‘as’ a knife, though you may see what is not a knife ‘as’ a knife (keyword:
‘seeing as’). When he said he ‘knew’ that the objects before him were human
hands, Moore was guilty of misusing ‘know.’ For an occurrence to be properly
said to have a ‘cause,’ it must be something abnormal or unusual (keyword:
‘cause’). For an action to be properly described as one for which the agent is
‘responsible,’ it must be the sort of action for which people are condemned
(keyword: responsibility). What is actual is not also possible (keyword:
actual). What is known by me to be the case is not also believed by me to be
the case (keyword: ‘know’cf. Urmson on ‘scalar set’). And cf. with the extra
examples he presents in “Prolegomena.” I have no doubt that there will be other
candidates besides the six which I have mentioned. I must emphasize that I am
not saying that all these examples are importantly similar to the thesis which
I have been criticizing, only that, for all I know, they may be. To put the
matter more generally, the position adopted by my objector seems to me to
involve a type of manoeuvre which is characteristic of more than one
contemporary mode of philosophizing. I am not condemning this kind of
manoeuvre. I am merely suggesting that to embark on it without due caution is
to risk collision with the facts. Before we rush ahead to exploit the
linguistic nuances which we have detectcd, we should make sure that we are
reasonably clear what sort of nuances they are. “Causal theory”, knowledge and
belief, knowledge, belief, philosophical psychology. Grice: the doxastic implicaturum.
I know only implicates I do not believe. The following is a mistake by a
philosopher. What is known by me to be the case is not also believed by me to
be the case. The topic had attracted the attention of some Oxonian philosophers
such as Urmson in Parenthetical verbs. Urmson speaks of a scale: I know can be
used parenthetically, as I believe can. For Grice, to utter I believe is
obviously to make a weaker conversational move than you would if you utter
I know. And in this case, an approach to informativeness in terms of entailment
is in order, seeing that I know entails I believe. A is thus allowed to infer
that the utterer is not in a position to make the stronger claim. The mechanism
is explained via his principle of conversational helpfulness. Philosophers tend
two over-use these two basic psychological states, attitudes, or stances. Grice
is concerned with Gettier-type cases, and also the factivity of know versus the
non-factivity of believe. Grice follows the lexicological innovations by
Hintikka: the logic of belief is doxastic; the logic of knowledge is epistemic.
The last thesis that Grice lists in Causal theory that he thinks rests on a big
mistake he formulates as: What is known by me to be the case is NOT also
believed by me to be the case. What are his attending remarks? Grice writes:
The issue with which I have been mainly concerned may be thought rather a fine
point, but it is certainly not an isolated one. There are several philosophical
theses or dicta which would I think need to be examined in order to see whether
or not they are sufficiently parallel to the thesis which I have been
discussing to be amenable to treatment of the same general kind. An example
which occurs to me is the following: What is known by me to be the case is not
also believed by me to be the case. I must emphasise that I am not saying that
this example is importantly similar to the thesis which I have been
criticising, only that, for all I know, it may be. To put the matter more
generally, the position adopted by my objector seems to me to involve a type of
manoeuvre which is characteristic of more than one contemporary mode of
philosophizing. I am not condemning this kind of manoeuvre. I am merely
suggesting that to embark on it without due caution is to risk collision with
the facts. Before we rush ahead to exploit the linguistic nuances which we have
detected, we should make sure that we are reasonably clear what SORT of nuances
they are! The ætiological implicaturum. Grice. For an occurrence to be
properly said to have a cause, it must be something abnormal or unusual. This
is an example Grice lists in Causal theory but not in Prolegomena. But cf.
‘responsible’and Hart and Honoré on accusation -- accusare "call
to account, make complaint against," from ad causa, from “ad,” with regard
to, as in ‘ad-’) + causa, a cause; a lawsuit,’ v. cause. For an occurrence to be properly said to have a cause, it
must be something abnormal or unusual. Similar commentary to his example on responsible/condemnable
apply. The objector may stick with the fact that he is only concerned with
proper utterances. Surely Grice wants to go to a pre-Humeian account of
causation, possible Aristotelian, aetiologia. Where everything has a cause,
except, for Aristotle, God! What are his attending remarks? Grice writes: The
issue with which I have been mainly concerned may be thought rather a fine
point, but it is certainly not an isolated one. There are several philosophical
theses or dicta which would I think need to be examined in order to see whether
or not they are sufficiently parallel to the thesis which I have been
discussing to be amenable to treatment of the same general kind. An example
which occurs to me is the following: What is known by me to be the case is not
also believed by me to be the case. I must emphasise that I am not saying that
this example is importantly similar to the thesis which I have been
criticizing, only that, for all I know, it may be. To put the matter more
generally, the position adopted by my objector seems to me to involve a type of
manoeuvre which is characteristic of more than one contemporary mode of
philosophising. I am not condemning this kind of manoeuvre. I am merely
suggesting that to embark on it without due caution is to risk collision with
the facts. Before we rush ahead to exploit the linguistic nuances which we have
detected, we should make sure that we are reasonably clear what sort of nuances
they are! Causal theory, cause, causality, causation, conference, colloquium,
Stanford, cause, metaphysics, the abnormal/unusual implicaturum, ætiology,
ætiological implicaturum. Grice: the ætiological implicaturum. Grices
explorations on cause are very rich. He is concerned with some alleged misuse
of cause in ordinary language. If as Hume suggests, to cause is to will, one
would say that the decapitation of Charles I wills his death, which sounds
harsh, if not ungrammatical, too. Grice later relates cause to the Greek aitia,
as he should. He notes collocations like rebel without a cause. For the Greeks,
or Grecians, as he called them, and the Griceians, it is a cause to which one
should be involved in elucidating. A ‘cause to’ connects with the idea of
freedom. Grice was constantly aware of the threat of mechanism, and his idea
was to provide philosophical room for the idea of finality, which is not
mechanistically derivable. This leads him to discussion of overlap and priority
of, say, a physical-cum-physiological versus a psychological theory explaining
this or that piece of rational behaviour. Grice can be Wittgensteinian when
citing Anscombes translation: No psychological concept without the behaviour
the concept is brought to explain. It is best to place his later
treatment of cause with his earlier one in Causal theory. It is surprising
Grice does not apply his example of a mistake by a philosopher to the causal
bit of his causal theory. Grice states the philosophical mistake as follows:
For an occurrence to be properly said to have a cause, it must be something
abnormal or unusual. This is an example Grice lists in Causal theory but not in
Prolegomena. For an occurrence to be properly said to have a cause, it must be
something abnormal or unusual. A similar commentary to his example on
responsible/condemnable applies: The objector may stick with the fact that he
is only concerned with PROPER utterances. Surely Grice wants to embrace a
pre-Humeian account of causation, possible Aristotelian. Keyword: Aitiologia,
where everything has a cause, except, for Aristotle, God! What are his
attending remarks? Grice writes: The issue with which I have been mainly
concerned may be thought rather a fine point, but it is certainly not an
isolated one. There are several philosophical theses or dicta which would Grice
thinks need to be examined in order to see whether or not they are sufficiently
parallel to the thesis which Grice has been discussing to be amenable to
treatment of the same general kind. One example which occurs to Grice is the
following: For an occurrence to be properly said to have a cause, it must be
something abnormal or unusual. Grice feels he must emphasise that he is not
saying that this example is importantly similar to the thesis which I have been
criticizing, only that, for all I know, it may be. To put the matter more
generally, the position adopted by my objector seems to me to involve a type of
manoeuvre which is characteristic of more than one contemporary mode of
philosophizing. I am not condemning this kind of manoeuvre. I am merely
suggesting that to embark on it without due caution is to risk collision with
the facts. Before we rush ahead to exploit the linguistic nuances which we have
detected, we should make sure that we are reasonably clear what sort of nuances
they are! Re: responsibility/condemnation. Cf. Mabbott, Flew on punishment,
Philosophy. And also Hart. At Corpus, Grice enjoys his tutor Hardies
resourcefulness in the defence of what may be a difficult position, a
characteristic illustrated by an incident which Hardie himself once told Grice
about himself. Hardie had parked his car and gone to a cinema. Unfortunately,
Hardie had parked his car on top of one of the strips on the street by means of
which traffic-lights were, at the time, controlled by the passing traffic. As a
result, the lights are jammed, and it requires four policemen to lift Hardies
car off the strip. The police decides to prosecute. Grice indicated to Hardie
that this hardly surprised him and asked him how he fared. Oh, Hardie says, I
got off. Then Grice asks Hardie how on earth he managed that! Quite simply,
Hardie answers. I just invoked Mills method of difference. The police charged
me with causing an obstruction at 4 p.m. I told the police that, since my car
was parked at 2 p.m., it could not have been my car which caused the obstruction
at 4 p.m. This relates to an example in Causal theory that he Grice does not
discuss in Prolegomena, but which may relate to Hart, and closer to Grice, to
Mabbotts essay on Flew on punishment, in Philosophy. Grice states the
philosophical mistake as follows: For an action to be properly described as one
for which the agent is responsible, it must be thc sort of action for which
people are condemned. As applied to Hardie. Is Hardie irresponsible? In any
case, while condemnable, he was not! Grice writes: The issue with which I have
been mainly concerned may be thought rather a fine point, but it is certainly
not an isolated one. There are several philosophical theses or dicta which
would I think need to be examined in order to see whether or not they are
sufficiently parallel to the thesis which I have been discussing to be amenable
to treatment of the same general kind. An example which occurs to me is the
following: For an action to be properly described as one for which the agent is
responsible, it must be the sort of action for which people are condemned. I
must emphasise that I am not saying that this example is importantly similar to
the thesis which I have been criticizing, only that, for all I know, it may be.
To put the matter more generally, the position adopted by my objector seems to
me to involve a type of manoeuvre which is characteristic of more than one
contemporary mode of philosophizing. I am not condemning this kind of
manoeuvre. I am merely suggesting that to embark on it without due caution is
to risk collision with the facts. Before we rush ahead to exploit the
linguistic nuances which we have detected, we should make sure that we are
reasonably clear what sort of nuances they are. The modal example, what is
actual is not also possible, should discussed under Indicative conditonals,
Grice on Macbeth’s implicaturum: seeing a dagger as a dagger. Grice elaborates
on this in Prolegomena, but the austerity of Causal theory is charming, since
he does not give a quote or source. Obviously, Witters. Grice writes: Witters
might say that one cannot see a knife as a knife, though one may see what is
not a knife as a knife. The issue, Grice notes, with which I have been mainly
concerned may be thought rather a fine point, but it is certainly not an
isolated one. There are several philosophical theses or dicta which would I
think need to be examined in order to see whether or not they are sufficiently
parallel to the thesis which I have been discussing to be amenable to treatment
of the same general kind. An example which occurs to Grice is the following:
You cannot see a knife as a knife, though you may see what is not a knife as a
knife. Grice feels that he must emphasise that he is not saying that this
example is importantly similar to the thesis which I have been criticizing,
only that, for all I know, it may be. To put the matter more generally, the
position adopted by my objector seems to me to involve a type of manoeuvre
which is characteristic of more than one contemporary mode of philosophizing. I
am not condemning this kind of manoeuvre. I am merely suggesting that to embark
on it without due caution is to risk collision with the facts. Before we rush
ahead to exploit the linguistic nuances which we have detected, we should make
sure that we are reasonably clear what sort of nuances they are! Is this a
dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch
thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision,
sensible to feeling as to sight? or art thou but A dagger of the mind, a false
creation, Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? I see thee yet, in form as
palpable as this which now I draw. Thou marshallst me the way that I was going;
and such an instrument I was to use. Mine eyes are made the fools o the other
senses, Or else worth all the rest; I see thee still, and on thy blade and
dudgeon gouts of blood, which was not so before. Theres no such thing: It is
the bloody business which informs Thus to mine eyes. Now oer the one halfworld Nature
seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtaind sleep; witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecates offerings, and witherd murder, Alarumd by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howls his watch, thus with his stealthy pace. With Tarquins
ravishing strides, towards his design Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and
firm-set earth, Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear Thy very
stones prate of my whereabout, And take the present horror from the time, Which
now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives: Words to the heat of deeds too
cold breath gives. I go, and it is done; the bell invites me. Hear it not,
Duncan; for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven or to hell. The Moore
example is used both in “Causal theory” and “Prolegomena.” But the use in “Causal
Theory” is more austere: Philosophers mistake: Malcolm: When Moore said he knew
that the objects before him were human hands, he was guilty of misusing the
word know. Grice writes: The issue with which I have been mainly concerned may
be thought rather a fine point, but it is certainly not an isolated one. There
are several philosophical theses or dicta which would I think need to be
examined in order to see whether or not they are sufficiently parallel to the
thesis which I have been discussing to be amenable to treatment of the same
general kind. An example which occurs to me is the following: When Moore said
he knew that the objects before him were human hands, he was guilty of misusing
the word know. I must emphasise that I am not saying that this example is
importantly similar to the thesis which I have been criticizing, only that, for
all I know, it may be. To put the matter more generally, the position adopted
by my objector seems to me to involve a type of manoeuvre which is
characteristic of more than one contemporary mode of philosophizing. I am not
condemning this kind of manoeuvre. Grice is merely suggesting that to embark on
it without due caution is to risk collision with the facts. Before we rush
ahead to exploit the linguistic nuances which we have detected, we should make
sure that we are reasonably clear what sort of nuances they are! So surely
Grice is meaning: I know that the objects before me are human hands as uttered
by Moore is possibly true. Grice was amused by the fact that while at Madison,
Wisc., Moore gave the example: I know that behind those curtains there is a
window. Actually he was wrong, as he soon realised when the educated
Madisonians corrected him with a roar of unanimous laughter. You see, the
lecture hall of the University of Wisconsin at Madison is a rather, shall we
say, striking space. The architect designed the lecture hall with a parapet
running around the wall just below the ceiling, cleverly rigged with indirect
lighting to create the illusion that sun light is pouring in through windows
from outside. So, Moore comes to give a lecture one sunny day. Attracted as he
was to this eccentric architectural detail, Moore gives an illustration of
certainty as attached to common sense. Pointing to the space below the ceiling,
Moore utters. We know more things than we think we know. I know, for example,
that the sunlight shining in from outside proves At which point he was somewhat startled (in
his reserved Irish-English sort of way) when his audience burst out laughing!
Is that a proof of anything? Grice is especially concerned with I seem He needs
a paradeigmatic sense-datum utterance, and intentionalist as he was, he finds
it in I seem to see a red pillar box before me. He is relying on Paul. Grice
would generalise a sense datum by φ I seem to perceive that the alpha is phi.
He agrees that while cause may be too much, any sentence using because will do:
At a circus: You seem to be seeing that an elephant is coming down the street
because an elephant is coming down the street. Grice found the causalist theory
of perception particularly attractive since its objection commits one same
mistake twice: he mischaracterises the cancellable implicaturum of both seem
and cause! While Grice is approaching the philosophical item in the
philosophical lexicon, perceptio, he is at this stage more interested in
vernacular that- clauses such as sensing that, or even more vernacular ones
like seeming that, if not seeing that! This is of course philosophical (cf.
aesthetikos vs. noetikos). L and S have “perceptĭo,” f. perceptio, as used by
Cicero (Ac. 2, 7, 22) translating catalepsis, and which they render as “a
taking, receiving; a gathering in, collecting;’ frugum fruetuumque reliquorum,
Cic. Off. 2, 3, 12: fructuum;’ also as perception, comprehension, cf.: notio,
cognition; animi perceptiones, notions, ideas; cognitio aut perceptio, aut si
verbum e verbo volumus comprehensio, quam κατάληψιν illi vocant; in philosophy,
direct apprehension of an object by the mind, Zeno Stoic.1.20, Luc. Par. 4,
al.; τῶν μετεώρων;” ἀκριβὴς κ. Certainty; pl., perceptions, Stoic.2.30, Luc.
Herm.81, etc.; introduced into Latin by Cicero, Plu. Cic. 40. As for “causa”
Grice is even more sure he was exploring a time-honoured philosophical topic.
The entry in L and S is “causa,’ perh. root “cav-“ of “caveo,” prop. that which
is defended or protected; cf. “cura,” and that they render as, unhelpfully, as
“cause,” “that by, on account of, or through which any thing takes place or is
done;” “a cause, reason, motive, inducement;” also, in gen., an occasion,
opportunity; oeffectis; factis, syn.
with ratio, principium, fons, origo, caput; excusatio, defensio; judicium,
controversia, lis; partes, actio; condicio, negotium, commodum, al.); correlated
to aition, or aitia, cause, δι᾽ ἣν αἰτίην ἐπολέμησαν,” cf. Pl. Ti. 68e, Phd.
97a sq.; on the four causes of Arist. v. Ph. 194b16, Metaph. 983a26: αἰ. τοῦ
γενέσθαι or γεγονέναι Pl. Phd. 97a; τοῦ μεγίστου ἀγαθοῦ τῇ πόλει αἰτία ἡ
κοινωνία Id. R. 464b: αἰτίᾳ for the sake of, κοινοῦ τινος ἀγαθοῦ.” Then there
is “αἴτιον” (cf. ‘αἴτιος’) is used like “αἰτία” in the sense of cause, not in
that of ‘accusation.’ Grice goes back to perception at a later stage,
reminiscing on his joint endeavours with akin Warnock, Ps karulise elatically,
potching and cotching obbles, Pirotese, Pirotese, creature construction,
philosophical psychology. Grice was fascinated by Carnaps Ps which
karulise elatically. Grice adds potching for something like perceiving and
cotching for something like cognising. With his essay Some remarks about
the senses, Grice introduces the question by which criterion we
distinguish our five senses into the contemporary philosophy of perception. The
literature concerning this question is not very numerous but the discussion is
still alive and was lately inspired by the volume The Senses2. There are four
acknowledged possible answers to the question how we distinguish the senses,
all of them already stated by Grice. First, the senses are distinguished by the
properties we perceive by them. Second, the senses are distinguished by the
phenomenal qualities of the perception itself or as Grice puts it “by the
special introspectible character of the experiences” Third, the senses are
distinguished by the physical stimuli that are responsible for the relevant
perceptions. Fourth, The senses are distinguished by the sense-organs that are
(causally) involved in the production of the relevant perceptions. Most
contributions discussing this issue reject the third and fourth answers in a
very short argumentation. Nearly all philosophers writing on the topic vote
either for the first or the second answer. Accordingly, most part of the debate
regarding the initial question takes the form of a dispute between these two
positions. Or” was a big thing in Oxford philosophy. The only known
published work of Wood, our philosophy tutor at Christ Church, was an essay in
Mind, the philosophers journal, entitled “Alternative Uses of “Or” ”, a work
which was every bit as indeterminate as its title. Several years later he published
another paper, this time for the Aristotelian Society, entitled On being forced
to a conclusion. Cf. Grice and Wood on the demands of conversational reason.
Wood, The force of linguistic rules. Wood, on the implicaturum of or in review
in Mind of Connor, Logic. The five senses, as Urmson notes, are to see that the
sun is shining, to hear that the car collided, to feel that her pulse is
beating, to smell that something has been smoking and to taste that. An
interesting piece in that it was commissioned by Butler, who knew Grice from
his Oxford days. Grice cites Wood and Albritton. Grice is concerned with a
special topic in the philosophy of perception, notably the identification of
the traditional five senses: vision, audition, taste, smell, and tact. He
introduces what is regarded in the philosophical literature as the first
thought-experiment, in terms of the senses that Martians may have. They have
two pairs of eyes: are we going to allow that they see with both pairs? Grice
introduces a sub-division of seeing: a Martian x-s an object with his upper
pair of eyes, but he y-s an object with the lower pair of eyes. In his
exploration, he takes a realist stance, which respects the ordinary discursive
ways to approach issues of perception. A second interesting point is that in
allowing this to be repr. in Butlers Analytic philosophy, Grice is
demonstrating that analytic philosophers should NOT be obsessed with ordinary
language. Butlers compilation, a rather dry one, is meant as a response to the
more linguistic oriented ones by Flew (Grices first tutee at St. Johns, as it
happens), also published by Blackwell, and containing pieces by Austin, and
company. One philosopher who took Grice very seriously on this was Coady, in
his The senses of the Martians. Grice provides a serious objection to his own
essay in Retrospective epilogue We see with our eyes. I.e. eye is
teleologically defined. He notes that his way of distinguishing the senses is
hardly an established thesis. Grice actually advances this topic in his earlier
Causal theory. Grice sees nothing absurd in the idea that a non-specialist
concept should contain, so to speak, a blank space to be filled in by the
specialist; that this is so, e.g., in the case of the concept of seeing is
perhaps indicated by the consideration that if we were in doubt about the
correctness of speaking of a certain creature with peculiar sense-organs as
seeing objects, we might well wish to hear from a specialist a comparative
account of the human eye and the relevant sense-organs of the creature in
question. He returns to the point in Retrospective epilogue with a bit of
doxastic humility, We see with our eyes is analytic ‒ but
philosophers should take that more seriously. Grice tested the
playmates of his children, aged 7 and 9, with Nothing can be green
and red all over. Instead, Morley Bunker preferred
philosophy undergrads. Aint that boring? To give examples:
Summer follows Spring was judged analytic by Morley-Bunkers informants, as
cited by Sampson, in Making sense (Clarendon) by highly significant majorities
in each group of Subjectss, while We see with our eyes was given near-even
split votes by each group. Over all, the philosophers were somewhat more
consistent with each other than the non-philosophers. But that global finding
conceals results for individual sentences that sometimes manifested the
opposed tendency. Thus, Thunderstorms are electrical disturbances in the
atmosphere is judged analytic by a highly significant majority of the
non-philosophers, while a non-significant majority of the philosophers deemed
it non-analytic or synthetic. In this case, it seems, philosophical training,
surely not brain-washing, induces the realisation that well-established results
of contemporary science are not necessary truths. In other cases, conversely,
cliches of current philosophical education impose their own mental blinkers on
those who undergo it: Nothing can be completely red and green all over is
judged analytic by a significant majority of philosophers but only by a non-significant
majority of non-philosophers. All in all, the results argue strongly against
the notion that our inability to decide consistently whether or not some
statement is a necessary truth derives from lack of skill in articulating our
underlying knowledge of the rules of our language. Rather, the inability comes
from the fact that the question as posed is unreal. We choose to treat a given
statement as open to question or as unchallengeable in the light of the overall
structure of beliefs which we have individually evolved in order to make
sense of our individual experience. Even the cases which seem clearly analytic
or synthetic are cases which individuals judge alike because the relevant
experiences are shared by the whole community, but even for such cases one can
invent hypothetical or suppositional future experiences which, if they should
be realised, would cause us to revise our judgements. This is not intended to
call into question the special status of the truths of logic, such as
either Either it is raining or it is not. He is of course inclined to accept
the traditional view according to which logical particles such as not and or
are distinct from the bulk of the vocabulary in that the former really are
governed by clear-cut inference rules. Grice does expand on the point.
Refs.: Under sense-datum, there are groups of essays. The obvious ones are the
two essays on the philosophy of perception in WOW. A second group relates to
his research with G. J. Warnock, where the keywords are ‘vision,’ ‘taste,’ and
‘perception,’ in general. There is a more recent group with this research with
R. Warner. ‘Visum’ and ‘visa’ are good keywords, and cf. the use of ‘senses’ in
“Some remarks about the senses,” in BANC.Philo: Grice’s favourite philosopher,
after Ariskant. The [Greek: protos logos anapodeiktos] of the Stoic logic ran
thus [Greek: ei hemera esti, phos estin ... alla men hemera estin phos ara
estin] (Sext. _P.H._ II. 157, and other passages qu. Zeller 114). This bears a
semblance of inference and ot so utterly
tautological as Cic.'s translation, which merges [Greek: phos] and [Greek:
hemera] into one word, or that of Zeller (114, note). Si dies est lucet:
a better trans of Greek: ei phos estin, hemera estin]
than was given in 96, where see n. _Aliter Philoni_: not Philo of Larissa, but
a noted dialectician, pupil of Diodorus the Megarian, mentioned also in 75. The
dispute between Diodorus and Philo is mentioned in Sext. _A.M._ VIII. 115--117
with the same purpose as here, see also Zeller 39. Conexi = Gr. “synemmenon,”
cf. Zeller 109. This was the proper term for the hypothetical judgment. _Superius_:
the Greek: synemmenon consists of two parts, the hypothetical part and the
affirmative--called in Greek [Greek: hegoumenon] and [Greek: legon]; if one is
admitted the other follows of course.Philo's criterion for the truth of “if p,
q” is truth-functional. Philo’s truth-functional criterion is generally accepted
as a minimal condition.Philo maintains that “If Smith is in London, he, viz.
Smith, is attending the meeting there, viz. in London” is true (i) when the
antecedens (“Smith is in London”) is true and the consequens (“Smith is in
London at a meeting”) is true (row 1) and (ii) when the antecedent is false
(rows 3 and 4); false only when the antecedens (“Smith is in London”) is true
and the consequens (“Smith is in London, at a meeting”) is false. (Sext. Emp., A. M., 2.113-114). Philo’s “if p, q”
is what Whitehead and Russell call, misleadingly, ‘material’ implication, for
it’s neither an implication, nor materia.In “The Influence of Grice on Philo,”
Shropshire puts forward the thesis that Philo was aware of Griceian ideas on
relative identity, particularly time-relative identity. Accordingly, Philo uses
subscript for temporal indexes. Once famous discussion took place one long
winter night.“If it is day, it is night.”“False!” Diodorus screamed.“True,” his
tutee Philo courteously responded. “But true at night only.”Philo's suggestion
is remarkablealthough not that remarkable if we assume he read the now lost Griceian
tract.Philo’s “if,” like Grice’s “if,”on a bad day -- deviates noticeably from
what Austin (and indeed, Austen) used to refer to as ‘ordinary’ language.As
Philo rotundly says: “The Griceian ‘if’ requires abstraction on the basis of a
concept of truth-functionalityand not all tutees will succeed in GETTING that.”
The hint was on Strawson.Philo's ‘if’ has been criticised on two counts. First,
as with Whitehead’s and Russell’s equally odd ‘if,’which they symbolise with an
‘inverted’ C, to irritate Johnson, -- “They think ‘c’ stands for either
‘consequentia’ or ‘contentum’ -- in the case of material implication, for the
truth of the conditional no connection (or better, Kant’s relation) of content
between antecedent and consequent is required. Uttered or emitted during the
day, e. g. ‘If virtue benefits, it is
day’ is Philonianly true. This introduces a variant of the so-called
‘paradoxes’ of material implication (Relevance
Logic, Conditionals 2.3;
also, English Oxonian philosopher Lemmon 59-60, 82). This or that ancient
philosopher was aware of what he thought was a ‘problem’ for Philo’s ‘if.’
Vide: SE, ibid. 113-117). On
a second count, due to the time-dependency or relativity of the ‘Hellenistic’ ‘proposition,’
Philo's truth-functional criterion implies that ‘if p, q’ changes its truth-value
over time, which amuses Grice, but makes Strawson sick. In Philo’s infamous
metalinguistic disquotational version that Grice finds genial:‘If it is day, it
is night’ is true if it is night, but false if it is day. This is
counter-intuitive in Strawson’s “London,” urban, idiolect (Grice is from the
Heart of England) as regards an utterance in ‘ordinary-language’ involving
‘if.’“We are not THAT otiose at busy London!On a third count, as the concept of
“if” (‘doubt’ in Frisian) also meant to provide for consequentia between from a
premise to a conclusio, this leads to the “rather” problematic resultAquinas,
S. T. ix. 34) that an ‘argumentum,’ as Boethius calls it, can in principle
change from being valid to being invalid and vice versa, which did not please
the Saint Thomas (Aquinas), “or God, matter of fact.”From Sextus: A. M.,
2.113ffA non-simple proposition is such composed of a duplicated proposition or
of this or that differing proposition. A complex proposition is controlled by
this or that conjunction. 109. Of
these let us take the hypo-thetical proposition, so-called. This, then, is
composed of a duplicated proposition or of differing propositions, by means of
the conjunction “if” (Gr. ‘ei,’ L. ‘si’, German ‘ob’). Thus, e. g. from a
duplicated proposition and the conjunction “if” (Gr. ‘ei,’ L. ‘si,’ G.
‘ob’) there is composed such a hypothetical proposition as this. “If it is day,
it is day’ (110) and from differing
propositions, and by means of the conjunction “if” , one in this
form, “If it is day, it is light.” “Si dies est, lucet.” And of the two propositions
contained in the hypo-thetical proposition, or subordinating clause that which
is placed immediately AFTER the conjunction or subordinating particle “if”
is called “ante-cedent,” or “first;” and ‘if’ being ‘noncommutative,’ and
the other one “consequent” or “second,” EVEN if the whole proposition
is reversed IN ORDER OF EXPRESSIONthis is a conceptual issue, not a grammatical
one! -- as thus — “It is light, if it is day.” For in this, too, the
proposition, “It is light,” (lucet) is called consequent although
it is UTTERED first, and ‘It is day’ antecedent, although it is UTTERED second,
owing to the fact that it is placed after the conjunction or subordinating
particle “if.” 111. Such
then is the construction of the hypothetical proposition, and a proposition of
this kind seems to “promise” (or suggest, or implicate) that the ‘consequent’
(or super-ordinated or main proposition) logically follows the ‘antecedens,’ or
sub-ordinated proposition. If the antecedens is true, the consequens is true.
Hence, if this sort of “promise,” suggestio, implicaturum, or what have you, is
fulfilled and the consequens follows the antecedent, the hypothetical
proposition is true. If the promise is not fulfilled, it is false (This is
something Strawson grants as a complication in the sentence exactly after the
passage that Grice extractsLet’s revise Strawson’s exact wording. Strawson
writes:“There is much more to be noted about ‘if.’ In particular, about whether
the antecedens has to be a ‘GOOD’ antecedens, i. e. a ‘good’ groundnot
inadmissible evidence, say -- or good reason for accepting the consequens, and
whether THIS is a necessary condition for the whole ‘if’ utterance to be TRUE.’
Surely not for Philo. Philo’s criterion is that an ‘if’ utterance is true iff it
is NOT the case that the antecedens is true and it is not the case that the
consequens is true. 112. Accordingly,
let us begin at once with this problem, and consider whether any hypothetical
proposition can be found which is true and which fulfills the promise or
suggestio or implicaturum described. Now all philosophers agree that a hypothetical
proposition is true when the consequent follows the antecedent. As to when the
consequens follows from the antecedens philosophers such as Grice and his tutee
Strawson disagree with one another and propound conflicting criteria. 113. Philo and Grice
declares that the ‘if’ utterance is true whenever it is not the case that
the antecedens (“Smith is in London”) is true and it is not the case that the
consequens (“Smith is in London attending a meeting”) is true. So that,
according to Grice and Philo (vide, “The influence of Grice on Philo”), the
hypothetical is true in three ways or rows (row 1, row 3, and row 4) and false
in one way or row (second row, antecedens T and consequence F). For the first
row, whenever the ‘if’ utterance begins with truth and ends in truth it is true.
E. g. “If it is day, it is light.” “Si dies est, lux est.”For row 4: the ‘if’
utterance is also true whenever the antecedens is false and the consequens is
false. E. g. “If the earth flies, the earth has wings.” ει
πέταται ή γή, πτέρυγας έχει
ή γή (“ei petatai he ge, pteguras ekhei
he ge”) (Si terra volat, habet alas.”)114. Likewise
also that which begins with what is false and ends with what is true is true,
as thus — If the earth flies, the earth exists. “Si terra volat, est
terra”. dialecticis,
in quibus ſubtilitatem nimiam laudando, niſi fallimur, tradu xit Callimachus. 2
Cujus I. ſpecimen nobis fervavit se XTVS EMPI . RIC V S , a qui de Diodori,
Philonis & Chryſippi diſſenſu circa propofi tiones connexas prolixe
diſſerit. Id quod paucis ita comprehendit ci . CERO : 6 In hoc ipfo , quod in
elementis dialectici docent, quomodo judi care oporteat, verum falſumne fit ,
fi quid ita connexum eſt , ut hoc: fi dies eft, lucet, quanta contentio eft,
aliter Diodoro, aliter Philoni, Chry fappo aliter placet. Quæ ut clarius
intelligantur, obſervandum eſt, Dia lecticos in propofitionum conditionatarum ,
quas connexas vocabant, explicatione in eo convenisse, verum esse consequens,
si id vera consequentia deducatur ex antecedente; falsum, si non ſequatur; in
criterio vero , ex quo dijudicanda est consequentiæ veritas, definiendo inter
se diſſenſiſſe. Et Philo quidem veram esse propoſitionem connexam putabat, fi
& antecedens & consequens verum esset , & ſi antecedens atque
conſequens falsum eſſet, & fi a falſo incipiens in verum defineret, cujus
primi exemplum eſt : “Si dies est, lux est,” secondi. “Si terra volat, habet
alas.” Tertii. “Si terra volat, est terra.” Solum vero falsum , quando
incipiens a vero defineret in falſum . Diodorus autem hoc falſum interdum eſſe,
quod contingere pof ſet, afferens, omne quod contigit , ex confequentiæ
complexu removit , ficque, quod juxta Philonem verum eft, fi dies eſt, ego
diſſero, falſum eſſe pronunciavit, quoniam contingere poffit, ut quis, ſi dies
fit, non differat, ſed fileat. Ex qua Dialecticorum diſceptatione Sextus
infert, incertum eſſe criterium propoſitionum hypotheticarum . Ex quibus parca
, ut de bet, manu prolatis, judicium fieri poteſt , quam miſeranda facies
fuerit shia lecticæ eriſticæ , quæ ad materiam magis argumentorum , quam ad
formam& ad verba magis, quam ideas, quæ ratiocinia conſtituunt refpiciens,
non potuit non innumeras ſine modo & ratione technias & difficultates
ftruere, facile fumi inſtar diſſipandas, fi ad ipſam ratiocinandi & ideas inter
ſe con ferendi & ex tertia judicandi formam attendatur. Quod fi enim inter
ve ritate conſequentiæ & confequentis, ( liceat pauliſper cum ſcholaſticis
barbare loqui diſtinxiffent, inanis diſputatio in pulverem abiiffet, & eva
nuiſſet; nam de prima Diodorus, de altera Philo , & hic quidem inepte &
minus accurate loquebatur. Sed hæc ws šv zapóów . Ceterum II. in fo phiſma t)
Coutra Gramm . S.309.Log. I. II.S. 115.Seqq. ) Catalogum Diodororum ſatis
longum exhi # Nominateas CLEM . ALE X. Strom . I. IV . ber FABRIC. Bibl.Gr. II. p . 775. pag. 522. % ) Cujusverſus vide
apud LAERT. & SEXT. * Contra Iovinian . I. I. conf. MENAG. ad l. c. H . cc.
Laërt . & Hiſt. phil. mal. Ø . 60 . ubi tamen quatuor A ) Adv. Logic. I. c
. noininat, cum quinque fuerint. b ) Acad. 29. I. IV . 6. 47. DE SECTAM E
GARICA phiſinatibus ftruendis Diodorum excelluiffe, non id folum argumentum
eft, nuod is quibusdam auctor argumenti, quod velatum dicitur , fuifle aflera
tur, fed & quod argumentum dominans invexerit, de quo, ne his nugis lectori
moleſti fimus, Epictetum apud ARRIANVM conſuli velimus. Er ad hæc quoque
Dialecticæ peritiæ acumina referendum eſt argumentum , quo nihilmoveri
probabat. Quod ita sexTvs enarrat: Si quid move tur, aut in eo , in quo eft ,
loco movetur, aut in eo , in quo non eſt. At neque in quo eſt movetur, manet
enim in eo , fi in eo eft ; nec vero , in quo non eſt,movetur; ubi enim aliquid
non eſt, ibi neque agere quidquam ne que pati poteft. Non ergo movetur quicquam
. Quo argumento non ideo ufus eſt Diodorus, quod putat Sextus, ut more
Eleaticorum probaret : non darimotum in rerum natura, & nec interire
quicquam nec oriri ; fed ut ſubtilitatem ingenii dialecticam oftenderet,
verbisque circumveniret. Qua ratione Diodorum mire depexum dedit
Herophilusmedicus. Cum enim luxato humero ad eum veniffet Diodorus, ut ipſum
curaret , facete eum irriſit, eodem argumento probando humerum non excidiffe :
adeo ut precaretur fophifta , omiffis iis cavillationibus adhiberet ei
congruens ex artemedica remedium . f . . Tandem & III . inter atomiſticæ p
hiloſophiæ ſectatores numerari folet Diodorus, eo quod énocy iso xei dueen
CÁMata minima & indiviſibilia cor pora Itatuerit,numero infinita ,
magnitudine finita , ut ex veteribus afferunt præter SEXTVM , & EVSEBIVŠ, \
CHALCIDIVS, ISTOBAEVS k alii , quibus ex recentioribus concinunt cvDWORTHVS 1
& FABRICIV'S. * Quia vero veteres non addunt, an indiviſibilia & minima
ifta corpuſcula , omnibus qualitatibus præter figuram & fitum fpoliata
poſuerit, fine formi dine oppoſiti inter ſyſtematis atomiſtici fectatores
numerari non poteſt. Nam alii quoque philoſophi ejusmodi infecabilia corpuſcula
admiſerunt ; nec tamen atomos Democriticos ſtatuerunt. "Id quod acute
monuit cel. MOSHEMIV S . n . irAnd it is
false only in this one way, when it begins with truth and ends in what is
false, as in a proposition of this kind. “If it is day, it is night.” “Si dies
est, nox est”. (Cf. Cole Porter, “Night
and day, day and night!”.For if it IS day, the clause ‘It is day’ is
true, and this is the antecedent, but the clause ‘It is night,’ which is
the consequens, is false. But when uttered at night, it is true. 115. — But Diodorus asserts
that the hypothetical proposition is true which neither admitted nor
admits of beginning with truth and ending in falsehood. And this is in conflict
with the statement of Philo. For a hypothetical of this kind — If it is
day, I am conversing, when at the present moment it is day and I am
conversing, is true according to Philo since it begins with the true
clause It is day and ends with the true I am conversing; but
according to Diodorus it is false, for it admits of beginning with a clause
that is, at one time, true and ending in the false clause I am
conversing, when I have ceased speaking; also it admitted of beginning
with truth and ending with the falsehood I am conversing, 116. for before I began to
converse it began with the truth It is day and ended in the
falsehood I am conversing. Again, a proposition in this form
— If it is night, I am conversing, when it is day and I am silent, is
likewise true according to Philo, for it begins with what is false and ends in
what is false; but according to Diodorus it is false, for it admits of
beginning with truth and ending in falsehood, after night has come on, and when
I, again, am not conversing but keeping silence. 117. Moreover,
the proposition If it is night, it is day, when it is day, is true
according to Philo for the reason that it begins with the false It is
night and ends in the true It is day; but according to Diodorus it is
false for the reason that it admits of beginning, when night comes on, with the
truth It is night and ending in the falsehood It is day.Philo is
sometimes called ‘Philo of Megara,’ where ‘of’ is used alla Nancy Mitford, of
Chatworth. Although no essay by Philo is preserved (if he wrote it), there are
a number of reports of his doctrine, not all positive!Some think Philo made a
groundbreaking contribution to the development of semantics (influencing
Peirce, but then Peirce was influenced by the World in its totality), in particular
to the philosophy of “as if” (als ob), or “if.”A conditional (sunêmmenon), as Philo calls it, is a
non-simple, i. e. molecular, non atomic, proposition composed of two
propositions, a main, or better super-ordinated proposition, or consequens, and
a sub-ordinated proposition, the antecedens, and the subordinator ‘if’. Philo
invented (possibly influenced by Frege) what he (Frege, not Philo) calls
truth-functionality.Philo puts forward a criterion of truth as he called what
Witters will have as a ‘truth table’ for ‘if’ (or ‘ob,’ cognate with Frisian
gif, doubt).A conditional is is true in three truth-value combinations, and
false when and only when its antecedent is true and
its consequent is false.The Philonian ‘if’ Whitehead and Russell re-labelled ‘material’
implicationirritating Johnson who published a letter in The Times, “… and
dealing with the paradox of implication.”For Philo, like Grice, a proposition
is a function of time that can have different truth-values at different
times—it may change its truth-value over time. In Philo’s disquotational
formula for ‘if’:“If it is day, ‘if it is day, it is night’ is false; if it is
night, ‘if it is day, it is night’ is true.”(Tarski translated to Polish, in
which language Grice read it).Philo’s ramblings on ‘if’ lead to foreshadows of
Whitehead’s and Russell’s ‘paradox of implication’ that infuriated JohnsonIn
Russell’s response in the Times, he makes it plain: “Johnson shouldn’t be using
‘paradox’ in the singular. Yours, etc. Baron Russell, Belgravia.”Sextus
Empiricus [S. E.] M.
8.109–117, gives a precis of Johnson’s paradox of implication, without
crediting Johnson. Philo and Diodorus each considered the four modalities
possibility, impossibility, necessity and non-necessity. These were conceived
of as modal properties or modal values of propositions, not as modal operators.
Philo defined them as follows: ‘Possible is that which is capable of being true
by the proposition’s own nature … necessary is that which is true, and which,
as far as it is in itself, is not capable of being false. Non-necessary is that
which as far as it is in itself, is capable of being false, and impossible is
that which by its own nature is not capable of being true.’ Boethius fell in
love with Philo, and he SAID it! (In
Arist. De Int., sec. ed., 234–235 Meiser).Cf. (Epict. Diss. II.19). Aristotle’s De Interpretatione 9 (Aulus Gellius 11.12.2–3). Grice: “Vision was
always held by philosophers to be the superior sense.” Grice: “Perception
is, strictly, the extraction and use of information about one’s environment
exteroception and one’s own body interoception. “ he various external
senses sight, hearing, touch, smell, and
taste though they overlap to some
extent, are distinguished by the kind of information e.g., about light, sound,
temperature, pressure they deliver. Proprioception, perception of the self,
concerns stimuli arising within, and carrying information about, one’s own
body e.g., acceleration, position, and
orientation of the limbs. There are distinguishable stages in the extraction
and use of sensory information, one an earlier stage corresponding to our
perception of objects and events, the other, a later stage, to the perception
of facts about these objects. We see, e.g., both the cat on the sofa an object
and that the cat is on the sofa a fact. Seeing an object or event a cat on the sofa, a person on the street, or
a vehicle’s movement does not require
that the object event be identified or recognized in any particular way
perhaps, though this is controversial, in any way whatsoever. One can, e.g.,
see a cat on the sofa and mistake it for a rumpled sweater. Airplane lights are
often misidentified as stars, and one can see the movement of an object either
as the movement of oneself or under some viewing conditions as expansion or
contraction. Seeing objects and events is, in this sense, non-epistemic: one
can see O without knowing or believing that it is O that one is seeing. Seeing
facts, on the other hand, is epistemic; one cannot see that there is a cat on
the sofa without, thereby, coming to know that there is a cat on the sofa.
Seeing a fact is coming to know the fact in some visual way. One can see
objects the fly in one’s soup, e.g., without realizing that there is a fly in
one’s soup thinking, perhaps, it is a bean or a crouton; but to see a fact, the
fact that there is a fly in one’s soup is, necessarily, to know it is a fly.
This distinction applies to the other sense modalities as well. One can hear
the telephone ringing without realizing that it is the telephone perhaps it’s
the TV or the doorbell, but to hear a fact, that it is the telephone that is
ringing, is, of necessity, to know that it is the telephone that is ringing.
The other ways we have of describing what we perceive are primarily variations
on these two fundamental themes. In seeing where he went, when he left, who
went with him, and how he was dressed, e.g., we are describing the perception
of some fact of a certain sort without revealing exactly which fact it is. If
Martha saw where he went, then Martha saw hence, came to know some fact having
to do with where he went, some fact of the form ‘he went there’. In speaking of
states and conditions the condition of his room, her injury, and properties the
color of his tie, the height of the building, we sometimes, as in the case of
objects, mean to be describing a non-epistemic perceptual act, one that carries
no implications for what if anything is known. In other cases, as with facts,
we mean to be describing the acquisition of some piece of knowledge. One can
see or hear a word without recognizing it as a word it might be in a foreign
language, but can one see a misprint and not know it is a misprint? It
obviously depends on what one uses ‘misprint’ to refer to: an object a word
that is misprinted or a fact the fact that it is misprinted. In examining and
evaluating theories whether philosophical or psychological of perception it is
essential to distinguish fact perception from object perception. For a theory
might be a plausible theory about the perception of objects e.g., psychological
theories of “early vision” but not at all plausible about our perception of
facts. Fact perception, involving, as it does, knowledge and, hence, belief
brings into play the entire cognitive system memory, concepts, etc. in a way
the former does not. Perceptual relativity
e.g., the idea that what we perceive is relative to our language, our
conceptual scheme, or the scientific theories we have available to “interpret”
phenomena is quite implausible as a
theory about our perception of objects. A person lacking a word for, say,
kumquats, lacking this concept, lacking a scientific way of classifying these
objects are they a fruit? a vegetable? an animal?, can still see, touch, smell,
and taste kumquats. Perception of objects does not depend on, and is therefore
not relative to, the observer’s linguistic, conceptual, cognitive, and
scientific assets or shortcomings. Fact perception, however, is another matter.
Clearly one cannot see that there are kumquats in the basket as opposed to
seeing the objects, the kumquats, in the basket if one has no idea of, no
concept of, what a kumquat is. Seeing facts is much more sensitive and, hence,
relative to the conceptual resources, the background knowledge and scientific
theories, of the observer, and this difference must be kept in mind in
evaluating claims about perceptual relativity. Though it does not make objects
invisible, ignorance does tend to make facts perceptually inaccessible. There
are characteristic experiences associated with the different senses. Tasting a
kumquat is not at all like seeing a kumquat although the same object is
perceived indeed, the same fact that it
is a kumquat may be perceived. The
difference, of course, is in the subjective experience one has in perceiving
the kumquat. A causal theory of perception of objects holds that the perceptual
object, what it is we see, taste, smell, or whatever, is that object that
causes us to have this subjective experience. Perceiving an object is that
object’s causing in the right way one to have an experience of the appropriate
sort. I see a bean in my soup if it is, in fact whether I know it or not is
irrelevant, a bean in my soup that is causing me to have this visual
experience. I taste a bean if, in point of fact, it is a bean that is causing
me to have the kind of taste experience I am now having. If it is unknown to me
a bug, not a bean, that is causing these experiences, then I am unwittingly
seeing and tasting a bug perhaps a bug
that looks and tastes like a bean. What object we see taste, smell, etc. is
determined by the causal facts in question. What we know and believe, how we
interpret the experience, is irrelevant, although it will, of course, determine
what we say we see and taste. The same is to be said, with appropriate changes,
for our perception of facts the most significant change being the replacement
of belief for experience. I see that there is a bug in my soup if the fact that
there is a bug in my soup causes me to perception perception 655 655 believe that there is a bug in my soup.
I can taste that there is a bug in my soup when this fact causes me to have
this belief via some taste sensation. A causal theory of perception is more
than the claim that the physical objects we perceive cause us to have
experiences and beliefs. This much is fairly obvious. It is the claim that this
causal relation is constitutive of perception, that necessarily, if S sees O,
then O causes a certain sort of experience in S. It is, according to this
theory, impossible, on conceptual grounds, to perceive something with which one
has no causal contact. If, e.g., future events do not cause present events, if
there is no backward causation, then we cannot perceive future events and
objects. Whether or not future facts can be perceived or known depends on how
liberally the causal condition on knowledge is interpreted. Though conceding
that there is a world of mind-independent objects trees, stars, people that
cause us to have experiences, some philosophers
traditionally called representative realists argue that we nonetheless do not directly
perceive these external objects. What we directly perceive are the effects these
objects have on us an internal image,
idea, or impression, a more or less depending on conditions of observation
accurate representation of the external reality that helps produce it. This
subjective, directly apprehended object has been called by various names: a
sensation, percept, sensedatum, sensum, and sometimes, to emphasize its
representational aspect, Vorstellung G., ‘representation’. Just as the images
appearing on a television screen represent their remote causes the events
occurring at some distant concert hall or playing field, the images visual,
auditory, etc. that occur in the mind, the sensedata of which we are directly
aware in normal perception, represent or sometimes, when things are not working
right, misrepresent their external physical causes. The representative realist
typically invokes arguments from illusion, facts about hallucination, and
temporal considerations to support his view. Hallucinations are supposed to
illustrate the way we can have the same kind of experience we have when as we
commonly say we see a real bug without there being a real bug in our soup or
anywhere else causing us to have the experience. When we hallucinate, the bug
we “see” is, in fact, a figment of our own imagination, an image i.e.,
sense-datum in the mind that, because it shares some of the properties of a
real bug shape, color, etc., we might mistake for a real bug. Since the
subjective experiences can be indistinguishable from that which we have when as
we commonly say we really see a bug, it is reasonable to infer the
representative realist argues that in normal perception, when we take ourselves
to be seeing a real bug, we are also directly aware of a buglike image in the
mind. A hallucination differs from a normal perception, not in what we are
aware of in both cases it is a sense-datum but in the cause of these
experiences. In normal perception it is an actual bug; in hallucination it is,
say, drugs in the bloodstream. In both cases, though, we are caused to have the
same thing: an awareness of a buglike sense-datum, an object that, in normal
perception, we naively take to be a real bug thus saying, and encouraging our
children to say, that we see a bug. The argument from illusion points to the
fact that our experience of an object changes even when the object that we
perceive or say we perceive remains unchanged. Though the physical object the
bug or whatever remains the same color, size, and shape, what we experience
according to this argument changes color, shape, and size as we change the
lighting, our viewing angle, and distance. Hence, it is concluded, what we
experience cannot really be the physical object itself. Since it varies with
changes in both object and viewing conditions, what we experience must be a
causal result, an effect, of both the object we commonly say we see the bug and
the conditions in which we view it. This internal effect, it is concluded, is a
sense-datum. Representative realists have also appealed to the fact that
perceiving a physical object is a causal process that takes time. This temporal
lag is most dramatic in the case of distant objects e.g., stars, but it exists
for every physical object it takes time for a neural signal to be transmitted
from receptor surfaces to the brain. Consequently, at the moment a short time
after light leaves the object’s surface we see a physical object, the object could
no longer exist. It could have ceased to exist during the time light was being
transmitted to the eye or during the time it takes the eye to communicate with
the brain. Yet, even if the object ceases to exist before we become aware of
anything before a visual experience occurs, we are, or so it seems, aware of
something when the causal process reaches its climax in the brain. This
something of which we are aware, since it cannot be the physical object it no
longer exists, must be a sense-datum. The representationalist concludes in this
“time-lag argument,” therefore, that even when the physperception perception
656 656 ical object does not cease to
exist this, of course, is the normal situation, we are directly aware, not of
it, but of its slightly later-occurring representation. Representative realists
differ among themselves about the question of how much if at all the sense-data
of which we are aware resemble the external objects of which we are not aware.
Some take the external cause to have some of the properties the so-called
primary properties of the datum e.g., extension and not others the so-called
secondary properties e.g., color. Direct
or naive realism shares with representative realism a commitment to a world of
independently existing objects. Both theories are forms of perceptual realism.
It differs, however, in its view of how we are related to these objects in
ordinary perception. Direct realists deny that we are aware of mental
intermediaries sensedata when, as we ordinarily say, we see a tree or hear the
telephone ring. Though direct realists differ in their degree of naïveté about
how and in what respect perception is supposed to be direct, they need not be
so naive as sometimes depicted as to deny the scientific facts about the causal
processes underlying perception. Direct realists can easily admit, e.g., that
physical objects cause us to have experiences of a particular kind, and that
these experiences are private, subjective, or mental. They can even admit that
it is this causal relationship between object and experience that constitutes
our seeing and hearing physical objects. They need not, in other words, deny a
causal theory of perception. What they must deny, if they are to remain direct
realists, however, is an analysis of the subjective experience that objects
cause us to have into an awareness of some object. For to understand this
experience as an awareness of some object is, given the wholly subjective
mental character of the experience itself, to interpose a mental entity what
the experience is an awareness of between the perceiver and the physical object
that causes him to have this experience, the physical object that is supposed
to be directly perceived. Direct realists, therefore, avoid analyzing a
perceptual experience into an act sensing, being aware of, being acquainted
with and an object the sensum, sense-datum, sensation, mental representation.
The experience we are caused to have when we perceive a physical object or
event is, instead, to be understood in some other way. The adverbial theory is
one such possibility. As the name suggests, this theory takes its cue from the
way nouns and adjectives can sometimes be converted into adverbs without loss
of descriptive content. So, for instance, it comes to pretty much the same
thing whether we describe a conversation as animated adjective or say that we
conversed animatedly an adverb. So, also, according to an adverbialist, when,
as we commonly say, we see a red ball, the red ball causes in us a moment later
an experience, yes, but not as the representative realist says an awareness
mental act of a sense-datum mental object that is red and circular adjectives.
The experience is better understood as one in which there is no object at all,
as sensing redly and circularly adverbs. The adverbial theorist insists that
one can experience circularly and redly without there being, in the mind or
anywhere else, red circles this, in fact, is what the adverbialist thinks
occurs in dreams and hallucinations of red circles. To experience redly is not
to have a red experience; nor is it to experience redness in the mind. It is,
says the adverbialist, a way or a manner of perceiving ordinary objects
especially red ones seen in normal light. Just as dancing gracefully is not a
thing we dance, so perceiving redly is not a thing and certainly not a red thing in the
mind that we experience. The adverbial
theory is only one option the direct realist has of acknowledging the causal
basis of perception while, at the same time, maintaining the directness of our
perceptual relation with independently existing objects. What is important is
not that the experience be construed adverbially, but that it not be
interpreted, as representative realists interpret it, as awareness of some
internal object. For a direct realist, the appearances, though they are
subjective mind-dependent are not objects that interpose themselves between the
conscious mind and the external world. As classically understood, both naive
and representative realism are theories about object perception. They differ
about whether it is the external object or an internal object an idea in the
mind that we most directly apprehend in ordinary sense perception. But they
need not although they usually do differ in their analysis of our knowledge of
the world around us, in their account of fact perception. A direct realist
about object perception may, e.g., be an indirect realist about the facts that
we know about these objects. To see, not only a red ball in front of one, but
that there is a red ball in front of one, it may be necessary, even on a direct
theory of object perception, to infer or in some way derive this fact from
facts that are known more directly perception perception about one’s
experiences of the ball. Since, e.g., a direct theorist may be a causal
theorist, may think that seeing a red ball is in part constituted by the having
of certain sorts of experience, she may insist that knowledge of the cause of
these experiences must be derived from knowledge of the experience itself. If
one is an adverbialist, e.g., one might insist that knowledge of physical
objects is derived from knowledge of how redly? bluely? circularly? squarely?
one experiences these objects. By the same token, a representative realist
could adopt a direct theory of fact perception. Though the objects we directly
see are mental, the facts we come to know by experiencing these subjective
entities are facts about ordinary physical objects. We do not infer at least at
no conscious level that there is a bug in our soup from facts known more
directly about our own conscious experiences from facts about the sensations
the bug causes in us. Rather, our sensations cause us, directly, to have
beliefs about our soup. There is no intermediate belief; hence, there is no intermediate
knowledge; hence, no intermediate fact perception. Fact perception is, in this
sense, direct. Or so a representative realist can maintain even though
committed to the indirect perception of the objects bug and soup involved in
this fact. This merely illustrates, once again, the necessity of distinguishing
object perception from fact perception. Refs.: H. P. Grice and A. R. White,
“The causal theory of perception,” a symposium for the Aristotelian Socieety,
in G. J. Warnock, “The philosophy of perception,” Oxford readings in
philosophy.
Percival: English physician and author of
Medical Ethics. He was central in bringing the Western traditions of medical
ethics from prayers and oaths e.g., the Hippocratic oath toward more detailed,
modern codes of proper professional conduct. His writing on the normative
aspects of medical practice was part ethics, part prudential advice, part
professional etiquette, and part jurisprudence. Medical Ethics treated
standards for the professional conduct of physicians relative to surgeons and
apothecaries pharmacists and general practitioners, as well as hospitals,
private practice, and the law. The issues Percival addressed include privacy,
truth telling, rules for professional consultation, human experimentation, public
and private trust, compassion, sanity, suicide, abortion, capital punishment,
and environmental nuisances. Percival had his greatest influence in England and
America. At its founding in 1847, the
Medical Association used Medical Ethics to guide its own first code of
medical ethics.
Duration – continuitas – continuum --
per-duration -- perdurance, endurance, continuance -- in one common philosophical use, the property
of being temporally continuous and having temporal parts. There are at least
two conflicting theories about temporally continuous substances. According to
the first, temporally continuous substances have temporal parts they perdure,
while according to the second, they do not. In one ordinary philosophical use,
endurance is the property of being temporally continuous and not having
temporal parts. There are modal versions of the aforementioned two theories:
for example, one version of the first theory is that necessarily, temporally
continuous substances have temporal parts, while another version implies that
possibly, they do not. Some versions of the first theory hold that a temporally
continuous substance is composed of instantaneous temporal parts or
“object-stages,” while on other versions these object-stages are not parts but
boundaries.
peregalli: Roberto Peregalli, filosofo. I luoghi e la polvere Incipit
All'inizio della Genesi (3,4) il serpente convince Eva a mangiare con Adamo il
frutto dell'albero della conoscenza. Così "i loro occhi si apriranno"
e vedranno per la prima volta la loro nudità. Comincia in questo modo la storia
della conoscenza e del desiderio. Vedere, desiderare e infine morire. Il tempo,
il suo scorrere nelle nostre vene, diventa dominante. Lo splendore
dell'attimo, la sua rivelazione abbagliante, ne sancisce la caducità. Il tempo
corrode la vita e la esalta. Insieme alla conoscenza e al desiderio nasce anche
l'amore per la fragilità dell'esistenza. Le cose si rovinano. Citazioni
Se si vuole vedere, o meglio, se nel destino è scritto che si veda a tutti i
costi, se si vuole desiderare, se si vuole conoscere (così si capisce quanto
poco la conoscenza abbia a che fare con principi puramente razionali), si deve
diventare mortali. Gli dei sono indifferenti. Per gli uomini inizia così la
differenza. Finché non conosci, finché non mangi il frutto dall'albero della conoscenza,
sarai eterno. Non saprai cosa sono il bene e il male, il desiderio,
l'attrazione dei corpi, la morte. Il tempo è la nostra carne. Siamo fatti di
tempo. Siamo il tempo. È una curva inesorabile che condiziona ogni gesto della
nostra vita, compresa la morte. La superficie di qualunque "cosa",
sia essa un oggetto o un luogo, è intaccata dal tempo, riposa nel tempo. Viene
corrosa, sporcata, impolverata in ogni istante. Sono la sua caducità e la sua
fragilità che la fanno vivere nel trascorrere delle ore, dei giorni, degli
anni. L'eternità è un miraggio, e non è la salvezza. Stare in casa significa
poter assaporare il piacere di sapere che fuori c'è un paesaggio meraviglioso
e, quando vuoi, apri la porta o la finestra e lo guardi. Deve esserci lo sforzo
del gesto. Il desiderio va centellinato, perché sia più profondo. Il bianco è
il profumo dei colori. [...] Il bianco, ancora più del nero, laddove usato
nella sua purezza, è uno dei colori più difficili che esistano, e meno
imparziali. Usato in quantità massicce la sua forza ci si ritorce contro.
Diventa indifferente solo in apparenza. In realtà l'indifferenza non esiste.
Nulla è indifferente. È un abbaglio, un alibi. Equivale all'apatia. I vetri, il
bianco sono materia, colore, carne, vita. L'ombra, come la polvere, è il nostro
fondo nascosto. La si vuole cancellare. Deve essere un eterno meriggio. Così si
elimina la "carnalità del luogo", il suo erotismo sottile, la sua
terrestre caducità. Purtroppo in estetica la dittatura di un elemento è identica
alla sua democratizzazione. Il livellamento dei luoghi conduce alla dittatura
della luce e viceversa. Tutto diventa uguale nell'indifferenza. Di fronte
all'ottusa sicumera che ci avvolge esiste un tempo altro che non possiamo
controllare, dirigere, comandare e che può aprire nuove prospettive, trovando
sentieri tortuosi, o spesso non tracciati. Nelle sacche dell'errore (che è un
erramento) può ancora trovarsi un cammino. Il passato è stato messo in una
teca, sigillato, perché non nuoccia. Lo si può venerare, ma lo si teme. E
comunque non deve essere imitato. Gli antichi, invece, in ogni momento hanno
sempre guardato indietro. Da lì traevano ispirazione. Cancellavano per
ricreare. Credo che in quest'epoca falsamente luccicante e rassicurante, che
vuole esorcizzare la morte e la fragilità della vita a ogni passo, e dove
colori sgargianti, superfici nitide e sorde, luci accecanti circondano il
nostro vivere, un sentiero possibile sia quello di cercare negli interstizi
delle cose prodotte dall'uomo una crepa, una rovina che ne certifichi la
fondatezza. In un mondo che teorizza le guerre "intelligenti" e gli
obiettivi "mirati" la barbarie non è costituita dalle distruzioni, ma
dalle costruzioni. Il decadimento fa parte dell'essere. Tutto decade, crolla,
si disfa. Ma questo decadimento è un frammento di noi. Il concetto di
incontaminato [...] è fondamentalmente falso. Tutto è contaminato dal tempo e
dall'uomo. Nell'attimo stesso in cui mettere le sue radici in un luogo lascia
un segno e l'incanto si sbriciola. Esistono nelle città, nei paesi, nelle
campagne, "rovine semplici"...Cascine abbandonate, un muro senza
aperture, uno spiazzo solitario con una fabbrica dismessa, una vecchia
ciminiera diroccata, una strada che non finisce, chiese, mausolei, tumuli lasciati
al loro destino, attraversati dal tempo. Luoghi che apparentemente non dicono
nulla di più della loro solitudine e del loro abbandono e in cui il motivo
delle loro condizioni non si legge più tra le pieghe dell'architettura. Le
ferite, se mai ci sono state, non mostrano la loro origine. Troviamo queste
rovine dappertutto nel mondo, sparse tra le nuove costruzioni, o isolate e
lontane. Quello che colpisce è la tranquillità, la pacatezza. Non servono più a
nulla, non possono essere sfruttate, manipolate. Possono solo essere cancellate
da una ruspa. Questa fragilità è la loro forza. Ci affascinano perché ci
somigliano. Somigliano al nostro essere caduchi, alla nostra mortalità, alla
sete dei nostri attimi di felicità. Nel mondo c'è un'ansia di eternità. L'idea
che tutto debba tornare a risplendere com'era. [...] È un'epoca, questa, in cui
da una parte si desidera l'infinito e dall'altra ci si spaventa per la
fragilità delle persone e dei luoghi. Pensare che un luogo possa
cristallizzarsi in un'eternità senza tempo è una chimera che denota, mascherato
di umiltà, un senso di presunzione infinito. La nostra vita è la nostra
memoria. Attraverso il passato guardiamo il futuro. Se lo distruggiamo e lo
ricostruiamo in modo fittizio non resterà più niente. La bellezza di un oggetto
deriva in buona misura dalla sua patina. Più che la frattura tra antico e
moderno, ciò che dà consistenza alla nostra vita e la rende accettabile è la
patina del tempo. La certezza che le cose e i luoghi deperiscono serenamente. È
questa una "decrescita" estetica, un principio che vede nella
caducità la traccia della loro bellezza. Una volta le cose erano fatte per
durare ed erano caduche. Quindi veniva calcolata la loro deperibilità per farle
diventare sempre più belle. Oggi le cose si producono per essere effimere, e al
tempo stesso si proteggono con vernici e altre sostanze, perché sembrino
eterne. Una città per avere un'anima non deve essere perfettamente pulita.
Devono rimanere le tracce di quello che accade. Così i resti della nostra vita
possono affiorare, come i ricordi dagli angoli delle strade, dai cespugli, dai
muri. La materia di cui sono fatte le cose deve plasmarsi sull'aria che si
respira, deve ricevere l'ombra. La durata delle cose nel tempo non si può
comperare. Il corpo va amato per quello che è. La sua fossilizzazione, invece,
rischia di tradirne l'essenza, la cui forza è la caducità. Il motivo per cui ci
attrae, ci eccita, ci tiene con il fiato sospeso in tutti i suoi anfratti più
segreti, il suo odore, la sua superficie, il suo colore, è la sua consistenza
che muta negli anni e si adatta a noi e al mondo. Parole come design e lifting
hanno un suono sinistro. Dicono lo stesso. La plastificazione degli oggetti e
dei corpi, il loro luccicare senza vita, come i pesci lasciati a morire sulla
riva. Tracciamo un mondo che dovremmo indossare come una muta per aderirvi
perfettamente e in cui però i nostri movimenti diventano falsi e rallentati,
chiusi in un cofano che toglie il respiro. Corpi rimodellati che abitano e
usano luoghi altrettanto rimodellati. Il museo deve introdurre la gente in un
mondo speciale, in cui le opere dei morti dialogano con gli sguardi dei vivi,
in un confronto duraturo e fecondo. I musei, che sorgono sempre più numerosi in
quest'epoca, sono divenuti edifici-scultura. Vengono chiamati a progettarli gli
architetti più accreditati del momento, che inventano dei mausolei per la loro
gloria, prima ancora di sapere a cosa serviranno. In essi la gente non va tanto
a vedere le esposizioni o le opere presentate quanto i monumenti stessi. Gli
allestimenti museali sono un riassunto e uno specchio drammatico dell'epoca in
cui viviamo. I vetri antiproiettile, l'illuminazione da stadio o catacombale, i
colori sordi e luccicanti dei muri, il gigantismo insensato, le ricostruzioni
senz'anima. Via la polvere, via la patina, via l'ombra, via la carne di cui
siamo fatti. Tutto è asettico. Cancellando la mortalità della vita, il luogo
diventa eternamente morto. L'arte è mimesi della natura. La mima, la reinventa,
la accompagna fedelmente nel cammino del tempo. Non c'era contrasto e nemmeno
violenza. L'abitare sulla terra era una convivenza armonica in cui l'uomo
beneficiava della natura, e questa traeva profitto e bellezza dalla presenza
dei disegni dell'uomo. Così nascevano i luoghi. L'occhio che guarda questi
luoghi [i luoghi diroccati e abbandonati] immagina il loro passato, sente
attraverso la pelle consumata dal tempo l'anima che li avvolge. La patina, come
la polvere, si deposita sulle cose. Dà loro vita. Le inserisce nel tempo. Un
tavolo, una sedia, un bicchiere parlano del passato, delle mani che li hanno
toccati, attraverso la pelle del tempo che li avvolge a poco a poco. Le tracce
del passato si leggono tra le crepe dei muri, oltre l'umidità della pioggia e
il calore riarso del sole. Roberto
Peregalli, “I luoghi e la polvere,” Bompiani.
perniola: Mario Perniola (Asti), filosofo.Perniola ha studiato
filosofia con Pareyson a Torino, dove si è laureate.. Mentre stava leggendo
filosofia a Torino, ha incontrato Vattimo ed Eco , che si è fatto tutti gli
studiosi di spicco della scuola di Pareyson; è stato collegato alla
all'avanguardia Internazionale Situazionista movimento fondato da Guy Debord
con il quale continuava a rapporti amichevoli. Divenne Professore a Salerno e
poi si è trasferito alla Roma. E 'stato
visiting professor invitato a università e centri di ricerca, come ad esempio
l' Stanford, l' Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Parigi), Alberta
(Canada), Kyoto (Giappone), Sydney ,
Melbourne (Australia) e la National University of Singapore . Perniola ha
scritto molti libri. Ha inoltre diretto il riviste agaragar (1971-1973),
Clinamen (1988-1992), Estetica Notizie (1988-1995). Ha fondato Agalma. Rivista
di Studi Culturali e di Estetica , una rivista di studi ed estetica culturali,
pubblicato due volte l'anno. L'ampiezza, l'intuizione e molti-affrontato i
contributi del pensiero di Perniola gli ha fatto guadagnare la reputazione di
essere una delle figure più importanti del panorama filosofico contemporaneo.
Il suo libro Miracoli e traumi della Comunicazione (2009) ( Miracoli e traumi
della comunicazione ) ha guadagnato numerosi riconoscimenti tra cui il
prestigioso Premio De Sanctis. Le sue attività ad ampio raggio coinvolti
formulare teorie filosofiche innovative, scrivere libri, l'estetica di
insegnamento, e conferenze in tutto il mondo. Ha dedicato il resto del suo
tempo ai suoi amici affini e numerosi, passando tra il suo appartamento-studio
di Roma e la sua casa di vacanza in una pittoresca cittadina dei Colli Albani,
a sud est di Roma. Il periodo iniziale della carriera di Perniola si concentra
sulla filosofia del romanzo e la teoria della letteratura. Nella sua prima
opera principale, Il metaromanzo ( Il metaromanzo 1966), che è la sua tesi di
dottorato, Perniola sostiene che il romanzo moderno da Henry James a Samuel
Beckett ha un carattere autoreferenziale. Inoltre, si afferma che il romanzo è
soltanto su se stesso. L'obiettivo di Perniola era quello di dimostrare la
dignità filosofica di queste opere letterarie e cercare di recuperare un grave
espressione culturale. L'italiano Premio Nobel per la letteratura Eugenio
Montale lodato Perniola per questa critica originale di romanzi.
Controcultura Perniola, però, non solo hanno un'anima accademica ma anche un
anti-accademico. Quest'ultimo è esemplificato dalla sua attenzione alle
espressioni culturali alternative e trasgressive. Il suo primo lavoro
importante appartenente a questa parte anti-accademico è L'alienazione
artistica ( Alienazione artistico 1971), in cui egli attinge pensiero marxista
che lo ha ispirato in quel momento. Perniola sostiene che l'alienazione non è
un fallimento di arte, ma piuttosto una condizione dell'esistenza stessa
dell'arte come categoria distintiva dell'attività umana. Il suo secondo libro I
situazionisti ( I situazionisti 1972; ripubblicato con lo stesso titolo da
Castelvecchi, Roma, 1998) esemplificato il suo interesse per l'avanguardia e il
lavoro di Guy Debord . Perniola dà conto della Internazionale Situazionista
movimento e post-situazionista che durò 1957-1971 e nel quale è stato
personalmente coinvolto dal 1966 al 1969. Ha evidenzia anche le caratteristiche
contrastanti che hanno caratterizzato i membri del movimento. La rivista
agaragar (pubblicata tra il 1971 e il 1972) continua la critica
post-situazionista della società capitalistica e della borghesia. Perniola poi
pubblicato il suo libro sullo scrittore francese George Bataille ( George
Bataille e il negativo , Milano: Feltrinelli, 1977; George Bataille e il negativo
). Il negativo qui è concepito come il motore della storia. Steepto
Post-strutturalismo Nel 1980 Perniola offre alcuni dei suoi contributi più
penetranti alla filosofia continentale. In DOPO Heidegger. Filosofia e
organizzazione della cultura ( dopo Heidegger. Filosofia e organizzazioni
culturali 1982), sulla base di Martin Heidegger e Antonio Gramsci ,
Perniola include un discorso teorico sulla organizzazione sociale. Egli,
infatti, sostiene la possibilità di stabilire un nuovo rapporto tra cultura e la
società nella civiltà occidentale. Come l'ex interrelazioni tra la metafisica e
la chiesa, la dialettica e lo stato, la scienza e professione sono state
decostruito, la filosofia e la cultura rappresentano un modo per superare il
nichilismo e il populismo che caratterizzano la società di oggi. Pensare
rituale. La sessualità, la morte, Mondo (2001) è un volume composito in inglese
che contiene sezioni di due opere pubblicate in lingua italiana nel 1980, vale
a dire La Società dei simulacri ( The Society of Simulacra 1980) e Transiti.
Venite si va Dallo Stesso allo Stesso ( Transiti. Come andare dalla stessa per
lo stesso 1985). Teoria dei simulacri di Perniola si occupa con la logica della
seduzione che è stato perseguito anche da Jean Baudrillard . Anche se la
seduzione è vuoto, è comunque radicata in un contesto storico concreto.
Simulazione, tuttavia, fornisce immagini che sono valutati come tali
indipendentemente da quello che effettivamente implicano riferiscono. “Le
immagini sono simulazioni in che seducono e ancora fuori loro vuoto hanno
effetti”. Perniola poi illustra il ruolo di tali immagini in una vasta gamma di
contesti culturali, estetiche e sociali. La nozione di transito sembra essere
più adatto per catturare gli aspetti culturali della tecnologia che hanno
alterato society.Transit di oggivale a dire che vanno dallo stesso allo
stessoevita di cadere nella contrapposizione della dialettica “che avrebbe
precipitare pensare nella mistificazione della metafisica ”. Posthuman
Nel 1990 Perniola include nuovi territori nella sua ricerca filosofica. In Del
Sentire ( On sensazione 1991) l'autore indaga nuovi modi di sentire che non
hanno nulla a che vedere con i precedenti che hanno caratterizzato l'estetica
moderna dal 17 al 20 ° secolo. Perniola sostiene che sensology ha assunto
dall'inizio del 1960. Ciò richiede un universo emozionale impersonale,
caratterizzato dall'esperienza anonimo, in cui tutto si rende come già sentita.
L'unica alternativa è quella di tornare indietro al mondo classico e, in particolare,
alla Grecia antica. Nel volume Il sex appeal dell'inorganico ( il sex appeal
della Inorganica 1994; edizione inglese, 2004), Perniola riunisce la filosofia
e la sessualità. Sensibilità contemporanea ha trasformato i rapporti tra le
cose e gli esseri umani. Sex si estende oltre l'atto e il corpo. Un tipo
organico di sessualità viene sostituita da una sessualità neutra, inorganico e
artificiale indifferente alla bellezza, età o forma. Il lavoro di Perniola
esplora il ruolo dell'eros, il desiderio e la sessualità in esperienza odierna
del estetica e l'impatto della tecnologia. La sua è una linea di pensiero che
apre nuove prospettive sulla nostra realtà contemporanea. La caratteristica più
sorprendente è la capacità di Perniola di coniugare una rigorosa
re-interpretazione della tradizione filosofica con una meditazione sul “sexy”.
Si rivolge aspetti perturbanti come rapporto sessuale senza orgasmo, apice o
qualsiasi rilascio di tensioni. Si occupa di orifizi e organi, e le forme di
auto-abbandoni che vanno contro un modello comune di reciprocità. Tuttavia,
attingendo alla tradizione kantiana, Perniola sostiene anche che i coniugi sono
cose, perché “in costanza di matrimonio ogni affida il suo / la sua intera
persona all'altra al fine di acquisire pieni diritti su tutta la persona
dell'altro”. In L'arte e la SUA ombra (2000) ( Art e la sua ombra , Londra-New
York, Continuum, 2004), Perniola propone un'interpretazione alternativa
dell'ombra che ha avuto una lunga storia nella filosofia. Nell'analisi dell'arte
contemporanea e del cinema, Perniola esplora come l'arte continua a
sopravvivere nonostante il mondo della comunicazione di massa e la
riproduzione. Egli sostiene che il senso dell'arte è da ricercarsi in ombra
creato, che è stato lasciato fuori dallo stabilimento arte,
comunicazione di massa, mercato e mass media. Estetica Il lavoro di
Perniola copre anche la storia di estetica e teoria estetica. Nel 1990 ha
pubblicato Enigmi. Il momento Egizio Nella Società e nell'arte , ( Enigmi. Il
momento egiziana nella società e Art , London-New York, Verso, 1995), in cui
analizza le altre forme di sensibilità che si svolgono tra l'uomo e le cose.
Perniola sostiene che la nostra società sta vivendo un “momento egiziana”,
caratterizzata da un processo di reificazione. Come prodotti di alta tecnologia
assumono sempre proprietà organiche, umanità si trasforma in una cosa, nel
senso che essa si vede deliberatamente come oggetto. Il volume L'estetica del
Novecento ( Novecento Estetica 1997) fornisce un resoconto originale e la
critica alle principali teorie estetiche che hanno caratterizzato il secolo
precedente. Egli traccia sei tendenze principali che sono l'estetica della
vita, la forma, la conoscenza, azione, sentimento e cultura. In Del Sentire
cattolico. La forma culturale di Una religione universale ( la sensazione di
Cattolica. La forma culturale di una religione universale 2001), Perniola
sottolinea l'identità culturale del cattolicesimo , piuttosto che il suo uno
moralitstic e dogmatico. Egli propone “Cattolicesimo senza l'ortodossia” e “una
fede senza dogma”, che consente il cattolicesimo ad essere percepita come un
senso universale di sentimento culturale. Il lavoro Strategie Del Bello.
Quarant'anni di estetica italiana (1968-2008) ( Strategie di bellezza. Quarant'anni
di Estetica italiane (1968-2008) 2009) analizza le principali teorie estetiche
che ritraggono le trasformazioni avvenute in Italia dal 1960 in poi. Il volume
di Perniola mette in luce il rapporto tra i tratti storici, politici e
antropologici radicati nella società italiana e il discorso critico sorto
intorno a loro. Inoltre, egli sostiene che la conoscenza e la cultura
dovrebbero continuare ad essere concessa una posizione privilegiata nelle
nostre società, e dovrebbero sfidare l'arroganza degli stabilimenti,
l'insolenza degli editori, la volgarità dei mass media, e il roguery
plutocratica. La filosofia dei media Ampia gamma di interessi teorici di
Perniola includono la filosofia dei media . In Contro la Comunicazione (
Contro Comunicazione 2004) analizza le origini, meccanismi, dinamiche della
comunicazione mass-media e dei suoi effetti degenerativi. Il volume Miracoli e
traumi della Comunicazione ( Miracoli e traumi della comunicazione 2009) si
occupa degli effetti inquietanti della comunicazione dal 1960 concentrandosi su
quattro “eventi generative”. Queste sono le rivolte degli studenti nel 1968, la
rivoluzione iraniana del 1979, la caduta del muro di Berlino nel 1989, e il
9/11 World Trade Center attacco. Ognuno di questi episodi sono tutti trattati
con sullo sfondo degli effetti miracolosi e traumatici in cui la comunicazione
mass-media hanno offuscato le differenze tra il reale e impossibile, cultura
alta e cultura di massa, il declino delle professioni, il successo del
populismo, il ruolo delle dipendenze, le ripercussioni di internet sulla
cultura di oggi e la società, e, ultimo ma non meno importante, il ruolo della
valutazione in cui porno star sembrano aver raggiunto i più alti ranghi del chi
è chi grafici. finzione Perniola è l'autore del romanzo
Tiresia (1968), che si ispira all'antico mito greco del profeta Tiresia , che è
stato trasformato in una donna. Il suo ultimo libro di narrativa è del
Terrorismo Come una delle belle arti ( al terrorismo come una delle Belle Arti
s, ) Le opere selezionate in italiano: “Il metaromanzo,” Milano, Silva,
Tiresia , Milano, Silva, L'alienazione artistica , Milano, Mursia, Bataille e
il negativo , Milano, Feltrinelli, Philosophia sexualis. Scritti Georges
Bataille , Verona, Ombre Corte, La Società dei simulacri , Bologna, Cappelli, DOPO
Heidegger. Filosofia e organizzazione della cultura , Milano, Feltrinelli, Transiti.
Venite si va Dallo Stesso allo Stesso , Bologna, Cappelli, Introduzione alla 2 edizione a cura dell'Autore, Presa diretta.
Estetica e politica . Venezia, Cluva, Enigmi. Il momento Egizio Nella Società e
nell'arte , Genova, Costa & Nolan, Del Sentire , Torino, Einaudi, 1 Più che
sacro, Più che profano , Milano, Mimesis, Il sex appeal dell'inorganico ,
Torino, Einaudi L'estetica del Novecento , Bologna, Il Mulino, Disgusti. Nuove
Tendenze estetiche , Milano, Costa & Nolan, I situazionisti , Roma,
Castelvecchi, L'arte e la SUA ombra ,
Torino, Einaudi, Del Sentire cattolico. La forma culturale di Una religione
universale , Bologna, Il Mulino, “Contro la Comunicazione” – Grice: “This poses
a stupid puzzle, alla Sextus Empiricus, how can you argue against communication
without communicating? But Perniola is using ‘comunicazione’ the way Italian
philosophers use it: pompously! And with that I agree!” -- Torino, Einaudi, Miracoli
e traumi della Comunicazione , Torino, Einaudi, "Strategie Del Bello.
Quarant'anni di estetica italiana, Agalma. Rivista di studi culturali e di
estetica, Strategie Del Bello. Quarant'anni di estetica italiana, Milano,
Mimesis , Estetica contemporanea. Una visione globale , Bologna, . La
Società dei simulacri Nuova Edizione, Milano, Mimesis, Berlusconi o il '68
Realizzato , Milano, Mimesis, . Presa diretta. Estetica e politica. Nuova
Edizione , Milano, Mimesis, .Da Berlusconi a Monti. Imperfetti Disaccordi ,
Milano, Mimesis, .L'avventura situazionista. Storia critica dell'ultima
avanguardia Professore, Milano, Mimesis, .L'arte espansa , Torino, Einaudi, . 1
milioni . Del Terrorismo Come una delle belle arti , Milano, Mimesis, .Estetica
Italiana Contemporanea , Milano, Bompiani, , Le opere selezionate in inglese
Libri Enigmi. Il momento egiziana nella società e Arte , tradotto da
Christopher Woodall, prefazione all'edizione inglese dall'autore, Londra-New
York, Verso, Pensare rituale. La sessualità, la morte, Mondo , prefazione di
Hugh J. Silverman, introduzione e traduzione di Massimo Verdicchio, con
l'introduzione dell'autore, Amherst (USA), l'umanità Libri, 2000, 1-Arte
e la sua ombra , prefazione di Hugh J.Silverman, tradotto da Massimo
Verdicchio, Londra-New York, Continuum, The Sex-appeal dell'inorganico ,
tradotto da Massimo Verdicchio, Londra-New York, Continuum, 20th Century
Estetica: Verso una teoria di sentimento , tradotto da Massimo Verdicchio,
London-New Delhi- NEW YORK Sydney, Bloomsbury, Di volta in volta”, Artforum , “La differenza del Filosofica Cultura
italiana”, Laurea Facoltà di Filosofia Journal , New School for Social
Research, New York, “Logica della Seduzione”,
NMA , n 3, RIVISTA, “Mimetic Art”, Krisis
, (Houston),“Stili di post-politici”, differenziazione ,
“Venusiano Charme”, “decoro e abito da sera”. Giovanna Borradori, ed.,
Ricodifica METAFISICA. La filosofia Nuova italiana , Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, “Tra Abbigliamento e nudità”, Zona “Al di là di postmodernità”, Differentia “La
bellezza è come un fulmine”, Walter De Maria , Stoccolma, Moderna Museet,
“Riflessioni critiche”, Artforum ,. “Enigmi di temperamento italiano”,
Differentia ,. “Primordiale Graffiti”, Differentia ,. “Urban, più di urbana”,
Topographie , Wien, ed in Strata, Helsinki, “Emozione”, Frederikborgmuseet,.
“Rituals in Mostra”, Haim Steinbach . Catalogo a cura della Galleria d'Arte del
Castello di Rivoli, Milano, Charta, “Verso visiva filosofia”, la 6a Settimana Video
International , Genève “Burri ed Estetica”, Burri , Milano, Electa “Stile, narrativa e post-storia” (con Arthur
Danto e Demetrio Paparoni), Tema celeste , “Sex appeal dell'inorganico”, (con Contardi),
Journal of Psychoanalysis europea ,“Un estetico del Grand Style: Guy Debord”,
Sostanza “Cultural Turns all'art. Arte tra il parassitismo e l'ammirazione”,
RES ,. “Feeling the Difference”, James Swearingen, Johanne Cutting-Gray, ed.,
Sentire la differenza, Extreme Beauty. Estetica, Politica, Morte . New
York-London, Continuum, “La svolta
culturale e sentimento Ritual nel cattolicesimo”, Paragrana , Berlino, Ripubblicato come “La svolta culturale nel
cattolicesimo”, il dialogo. Annuario della filosofica ermeneutica, Ragione e
Reasonabless (Riccardo Dottori ed.), Münster, Lit Verlag, Henning Laugerud
& Laura Katrine Skinnebach, eds., Strumenti di devozione. Le pratiche e gli
oggetti di Religiois Pietà dal tardo Medioevo al 20 ° secolo , Aarhus
University Press, “Ricordando Derrida”, sostanza , (Univ. Of California) “La
giustapposizione giapponese”, Rivista Europea . "New York. Vamp City”,
Celant, G., & Dennison, L., (eds.), New York, New York. Cinquanta anni di
arte, architettura, cinema, performance, fotografia e video , Milano, Skira,
“Cultural Turns in Estetica e Anti-Estetica”, Filozofski Vestnik (ed. Aleš
Erjacev), Guarda anche Estetica Anti-art Internazionale Situazionista simulacro
cyberpunk fetish abbigliamento filosofia italiana La filosofia del sesso
filosofia occidentale Le note //agalmaweb.org
Hugh J. Silverman, “Prefazione”, Thinking Ritual. La sessualità, la morte, Mondo
. New York: l'umanità Books, 2001: 10. Questo volume contenente “Premessa” di
Hugh Silverman (pagine: 9-14) e il saggio di Massimo Verdicchio “Lettura
Perniola Reading” (pagine: 15-41) è il più utile e punto di partenza per lo
studio del pensiero di Perniola disponibile in inglese. //fondazionedesanctis.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=80&Itemid=84
Massimo Verdicchio, “Leggere Perniola Reading. Un introduzione". Pensare
rituale. La sessualità, la morte, Mondo. Con una prefazione di Hugh J.
Silverman, New York: Humanity Books, 2001: 16. Eugenio Montale, “Entra in
scena il metaromanzo”. Il Corriere della Sera , Massimo Verdicchio, “Leggere
Perniola Reading. Un introduzione". Pensare rituale. La sessualità, la
morte, Mondo . Con una prefazione di Hugh J. Silverman, New York: Humanity
Books, 2001: 15. Hugh Bredin, "L'alienazione artistica" di
Mario Perniola, nel British Journal of Aesthetics , Inverno 1972. Massimo
Verdicchio, “Leggere Perniola Reading. Un introduzione". Pensare rituale.
La sessualità, la morte, Mondo . Con una prefazione di Hugh J. Silverman, New
York: Humanity Books, //notbored.org/debord-26December1966a.html I
situazionisti , Roma, Castelvecchi, Hugh Silverman. Pensare rituale. La
sessualità, la morte, Mondo . Con una prefazione di Hugh J. Silverman, tradotto
da Massimo Verdicchio, New York: Humanity Books, 2001: 9 Hugh Silverman.
Pensare rituale. La sessualità, la morte, Mondo . Con una prefazione di Hugh J.
Silverman, tradotto da Massimo Verdicchio, New York: Humanity Books, 2001: 12
Verdicchio in, pensiero rituale. La sessualità, la morte, Mondo . Con una
prefazione di Hugh J. Silverman, tradotto da Massimo Verdicchio, New York:
Humanity Books, Sulla influenza della
nozione di simulacri vedere Robert Burch. “Il simulacro della Morte: Perniola
al di là di Heidegger e la metafisica?”. Sentire la differenza, Extreme Beauty.
Estetica, Politica, Morte . James Swearingen & Johanne Cutting-Gray, Ed.
New York-London: Continuum, 2002: 180-193; Robert Lumley. Stati di emergenza.
Le colture di Rivolta in Italia dal 1968 al 1978 . Londra-New York: Verso,
1994. Per ulteriori interpretazioni del concetto di transito vedere
Hayden White, "la differenza italiana e la politica della cultura",
in Laurea Facoltà di Filosofia Journal , New School for Social Research, New
York, 1984, 1: Giovanna Borradori. Ricodifica METAFISICA. La filosofia Nuova
italiana . Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988: 15-19. Catalogo
Einaudi di Francoforte Fiera del Libro Massimo Verdicchio, Thinking Ritual. La
sessualità, la morte, Mondo . Con una prefazione di Hugh J. Silverman, tradotto
da Massimo Verdicchio, New York: Humanity Books, Hugh Silverman, catalogo IAPL,
Siracusa, 2004: 68 Steven Shaviro, “il sex appeal della inorganica”, La
Teoria Pinocchio,//shaviro.com/Blog/?p=440 Perniola, il sex appeal del
inorganica , Londra-New York, Continuum, 2004: 19 Sulla ricezione della
teoria di Perniola in inglese vedi Steven Shaviro, “il sex appeal della
inorganica”, La Teoria Pinocchio,//shaviro.com/Blog/?p=440 ; Farris Wahbeh, Recensione
di “arte e la sua ombra” e “il sex appeal della Inorganica”, in
The Journal of Aesthetics e Critica d'arte , 64, 4 (autunno 2006); Stella Sandford, “il
sex appeal della inorganica: Filosofie del desiderio nel mondo contemporaneo”,
in Filosofia Radical (Londra), n. 127, 2004; Anna Camaiti Hostert sexy cose
,//altx.com/ebr/ebr6/6cam.htm ; intervista tra Sergio Contardi e Mario
Perniola//psychomedia.it/jep/number3-4/contpern.htm Prefazione di Hugh
Silverman, Arte e la sua ombra , prefazione di Hugh J.Silverman, tradotto da
Massimo Verdicchio, Londra-New York, Continuum, Per l'influenza di arte e la
sua ombra vedere Farris Wahbeh, Recensione di “arte e la sua ombra” e “il sex
appeal della inorganica”, The Journal of Aesthetics e Critica d'arte , Robert Sinnerbrink, “Cinema e la sua ombra:
di Mario Perniola arte e la sua ombra”, Filosofia Film , 10, 2, Settembre
2006://film-philosophy.com/2006v10n2/sinnerbrink.pdf Massimo Verdicchio,
Thinking Ritual. La sessualità, la morte, Mondo . Con una prefazione di Hugh J.
Silverman, tradotto da Massimo Verdicchio, New York: Humanity Books, Sulla
ricezione di Enigmi. Il momento egiziana nella società e Arte vedere Gary
Aylesworth “Retorica postmoderno ed Estetica” in “Postmodernismo", la
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter Edition 2005), Edward N. Zalta
(ed.),//plato.stanford.edu / archives / win2005 / voci / postmodernismo
Perniola, M., “La svolta culturale del cattolicesimo”. Laugerud, Henning,
Skinnebach, Laura Katrine. Gli strumenti di devozione. Le pratiche e oggetti di
pietà religiosa dal tardo Medioevo al 20 ° secolo . Aarhus: Aarhus University
Press, 2007: 45-60 //agalmaweb.org/sommario.php?rivistaID=18 Hartog,
F. regimi d'historicité. Présentisme et esperienze du temps . Paris: Seuil,
2003 ulteriore lettura Giovanna Borradori , ricodifica METAFISICA. La filosofia
Nuova italiana , Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988. Robert Burch,
il simulacro della Morte: Perniola al di là di Heidegger e la metafisica? , Nel
sentire la differenza, Extreme Beauty. Estetica, Politica, Morte (James
Swearingen & Johanne Cutting-Grigio Ed.), New York-London, Continuum, 2002.
Alessandro Carrera, revisione a Disgusti , in Canada Rassegna di letteratura
comparata , 27, n ° 4, dicembre 2000.
Stella Sandford, il sex appeal della inorganica: Filosofie del desiderio nel
mondo moderno , in Filosofia Radical (London), 2004, n. 127. Robert Lumley,
stati di emergenza: Culture di rivolta in Italia, Londra-New York, Verso, 1994.
Mark Sink, Rassegna di Enigmi. Il momento egiziana nella società e arte , nel
New Statesman & Society , il 25 agosto 1995. Hayden White, la differenza
italiana e la politica della cultura , in Laurea Facoltà di Filosofia Journal ,
New School for Social Research, New York, 1984, n. 1. Hugh Bredin, recensione
di L'alienazione artistica di Mario Perniola, nel British Journal of Aesthetics
, Inverno 1972. Farris Wahbeh, Rassegna di Arte e la sua ombra e il sex appeal
della Inorganica , in The Journal of Aesthetics e Critica d'arte , John O'
Brian, L'arte è sempre scivoloso, in Art World (USA),Paolo Bartoloni, il valore
dei valori sospensione , in Neohelicon , Christian Descamps, Mario Perniola et
les riti contemporains , in Le Monde, 4. Civiltà , Paris, La Découverte, Dell'Arti
GiorgioParrini Massimo, Catalogo dei viventi italiani Notevoli , Venezia,
Marsilio, 2006 (in italiano). Nils Roller, simulazione in Joachin Ritter-
Karlfried Grunder, Historisches Woterbuch der Philosophie , IX, Basilea, Schwabe & CO AG, 1971-2004
(in tedesco). Joseph Fruechtl, Und dann heißt es wieder: Ich habユs doch
gar nicht so gemeint , in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , 31 Marz 2006 (in
tedesco). Rosa Maria Ravera, Introduccion un Pensamiento Italiano Contemporaneo
, Fantini, Rosario,link esterno Sito web personale La lettera di Debord a
Perniola Gary Aylesworth su Perniola Blog di Stephen Shaviro. Recensione di
"The Sex appeal dell'inorganico" Il sex appeal della inorganica: una
conversazione tra Sergio Contardi e Mario Perniola
(//psychomedia.it/jep/number3-4/contpern.htm ) Recensione di “Thinking
Ritual. La sessualità, la morte, World” (
web.archive.org/web/20051230194426/http://sirreadalot.org/religion/religion/ritualR.htm
) Recensione di Sinnerbrink di “arte e la sua ombra” di (//film-philosophy.com/
,il rilascio n.2 Il corpo dell'immagine Haroldo Ceravolo Serena, Entrevista con
Mario Perniola, ir a Roma antiga para entendre O Mundo moderno, “O Estado de
S.Paulo”, 3 dezembro 2000 (in portoghese) (//italiaoggi.com.br/not12/
ital_not20001205c.htm ) Agalma . Journal of Cultural Studies ed Estetica (//agalmaweb.org/ ) Blog su “Feeling Thing”
(in italiano) (//cosachesente.splinder.com/ ).
Per-fectum. Grice: There’s fectum, there’s
perfectum, and there is IN-perfectum, where in is negative, or privative!” --
Per-fectum -- perfect competition: perfect co-operation: the state of an ideal
market under the following conditions: a every consumer in the market is a
perfectly rational maximizer of utility; every producer is a perfect maximizer
of profit; there is a very large ideally infinite number of producers of the
good in question, which ensures that no producer can set the price for its
output otherwise, an imperfect competitive state of oligopoly or monopoly
obtains; and every producer provides a product perfectly indistinguishable from
that of other producers if consumers could distinguish products to the point
that there was no longer a very large number of producers for each
distinguishable good, competition would again be imperfect. Under these
conditions, the market price is equal to the marginal cost of producing the
last unit. This in turn determines the market supply of the good, since each
producer will gain by increasing production when price exceeds marginal cost
and will generally cut losses by decreasing production when marginal cost
exceeds price. Perfect competition is sometimes thought to have normative
implications for political philosophy, since it results in Pareto optimality.
The concept of perfect competition becomes extremely complicated when a
market’s evolution is considered. Producers who cannot equate marginal cost
with the market price will have negative profit and must drop out of the
market. If this happens very often, then the number of producers will no longer
be large enough to sustain perfect competition, so new producers will need to
enter the market. per-fectum -- Perfectus
– finitum --- complete – Grice: “There are two things to consider about the
concept of per-fectum: that there’s joy in the ‘imperfect,’ and indeed that
Homo sapiens sapiens IS im-perfect; and second that the grammarians’
terminology is absurd, to the point that a philosopher can mock at it when
writing about the ‘futuro anteriore’ of philosophy!” -- perfectionism, an
ethical view according to which individuals and their actions are judged by a
maximal standard of achievement
specifically, the degree to which they approach ideals of aesthetic,
intellectual, emotional, or physical “perfection.” Perfectionism, then, may
depart from, or even dispense with, standards of conventional morality in favor
of standards based on what appear to be non-moral values. These standards
reflect an admiration for certain very rare levels of human achievement.
Perhaps the most characteristic of these standards are artistic and other forms
of creativity; but they prominently include a variety of other activities and
emotional states deemed “noble” e.g.,
heroic endurance in the face of great suffering. The perfectionist, then, would
also tend toward a rather non-egalitarian
even aristocratic view of
humankind. The rare genius, the inspired few, the suffering but courageous
artist these examples of human
perfection are genuinely worthy of our estimation, according to this view.
Although no fully worked-out system of “perfectionist philosophy” has been
attempted, aspects of all of these doctrines may be found in such philosophers
as Nietzsche. Aristotle, as well, appears to endorse a perfectionist idea in
his characterization of the human good. Just as the good lyre player not only
exhibits the characteristic activities of this profession but achieves
standards of excellence with respect to these, the good human being, for
Aristotle, must achieve standards of excellence with respect to the virtue or
virtues distinctive of human life in general.
peripatos -- at the lycaeumGrice: “This is
a common word, and while it does mean that, being a covered pathway, you are
meant to walk about, it did not apply as per my type of identificatory
reference, to Aristotle. It was that bit of the gym created by Pericle and
iproved by Lycurgus in the ‘middle of nowhere’ mount of Licabetto. Aristotle
may have chosen the site because Socrate, his tutor’s tutor, used to walk all
the way form downtown to corrupt the athletes!” -- peripateticlycaeum -- School,
also called Peripatos, the philosophical playgroup founded by Aristotle at the
Lycaeum gymnasium in Athens. The derivation of ‘Peripatetic’ from the alleged
Aristotelian custom of “walking about, “peripatein,” is, while colourful,
wrong. ‘Peripatos’ is in Griceian a “covered walking hall”which is among the facilities,
“as the excavations show,” as Grice notes. A scholarch or head-master presided
over roughly two classes of members. One is the “presbyteroi” or seniors, who
have this or that teaching dutu, and the “neaniskoi” or juniors. Grice: “When
Austin instituted the playgroup he saw himself as *the* presbyteros, while I,
like the others, was a ‘neaniskos.”” No females were allowed, to avoid
disruption. During Aristotle’s lifetime his own lectures, whether for the inner
circle of the school (what Aristotle calls ‘the gown’) or for Athens (‘the
town’) at large, are probably the key attraction and core activity. Given
Aristotle’s celebrated knack for organizing group research projects, we may
assume that Peripatetics spent much of their time working on their own specific
assignments either at the swimming-pool library, or at some kind of repository
for specimens used in zoological and botanical investigations. As a foreigner,
Aristotle cannot possibly own any property in Athens. When he left Athens (pretty much as when Austin died) Theophrastus
of Eresus (pretty much like Grice did) succeeded him as scholarch. Theophrastus
is s an able Aristotelian (whereas Grice started to criticise Austin) who wrote
extensively on metaphysics, psychology, physiology, botany, ethics, politics,
and the history of philosophy. With the help of the Peripatetic dictator
Demetrius of Phaleron, Theophrastus was able to secure property rights over the
physical facilities of the school. Under Theophrastus, the Peripatos continued
to flourish and is said to have had 2,000 students. Theophrastus’s successor,
Strato of Lampsakos, has much narrower interests and abandoned key Aristotelian
tenets (such as the syllogism“I won’t force Aristotle to teach me how to reason
with a middle term in the middle!”Diog. Laert. v. 673b-c. With Strato, a
progressive decline set in, to which the moving of Aristotle’s swimming-pool
library out of Athens (minus the swimming-pool) by Neleus of Skepsis, certainly
contributed. By the first century B.C. the Peripatos had ceased to exist. “Philosophers
of later periods sympathetic to Aristotle’s views have also been called
Peripatetics; I fact, *I* have, by A. D. Code, of all people!”Refs.: H. P.
Grice, “How to become a Peripateticand not die in the attempt.”
perone: Grice: “While Perone
can be a pessimist, I think the party is NEVER over!” Grice: “I especially
appreciate two things in the philosophy of Perone: his emphasis on the the
intersection between modality and temporality: ‘the possible present’ –
vis-à-vis memory – a theme in my “Personal identity” and also the implicature:
what is actual is also possible” – AND his idea of an ‘interruption,’ which I
take it to the rational flow of conversation!” Speranza, “The feast of
conversational reason,” “The feast of reason and the bowl of soul” -- important
Italian philosopher. Ugo Perone (Torino), filosofo. Perone, già allievo di Luigi
Pareyson, ha completato gli studi di filosofia a Torino nel 1967 con una tesi
su "La filosofia della libertà in Charles Secrétan". Per il suo
lavoro ha ricevuto il Premio Luisa Guzzo per la migliore dissertazione filosofica
dell'anno accademico. A questo è seguita una borsa di ricerca
quadriennale presso l'Università di Torino, e successivamente un posto di
assistente. All'Università di Torino, Ugo Perone è stato poi nominato
professore di Filosofia della religione nel 1982. Ordinario di filosofia
teoretica nell'Università Tor Vergata di Roma (1989) è stato successivamente
(1993) chiamato alla cattedra di filosofia morale nell'Università del Piemonte
Orientale, dove è stato anche Direttore del Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici
dal 2005 al 2011 e dal 2005 al 2008 delegato del Rettore per gli affari
internazionali. Dal 2012 Ugo Perone è titolare presso la Humboldt
Universität di Berlino della cattedra Guardini di Filosofia della religione e
della visione del mondo cattolica. La cattedra, che faceva capo alla locale
Facoltà di Teologia, è stata trasferita dall’ottobre 2019 all’Istituto Centrale
di Teologia Cattolica dell'Università con il nome di cattedra di Filosofia
della religione e di storia delle idee teologiche. Parallelamente alla
carriera accademica, Ugo Perone è stato Assessore alla Cultura del Comune di
Torino dal 1993 al 2001 e dal 2001 al 2003 è stato Direttore dell'Istituto
Italiano di Cultura di Berlino (nomina di chiara fama). Dal 2009 al 2013 è
stato altresì Assessore alla cultura e al turismo della Provincia di
Torino. Ugo Perone è Senior Fellow del Collegium Budapest. Dal 2006 è
Presidente della Società Italiana per gli Studi di Filosofia e Teologia e
membro del comitato direttivo della rivista Filosofia e Teologia e
dell’Archivio filosofico. È anche membro del comitato scientifico delle riviste
Giornale di metafisica e Spazio Filosofico e del Centro Studi
Filosofico-religiosi Luigi Pareyson. È fondatore e direttore della Scuola di
Alta Formazione Filosofica (SdAFF). È infine membro di diversi comitati
nazionali e internazionali nel campo della filosofia e della teologia.
Pensiero Le opere più recenti sono dedicate ad approfondire la possibile
dimensione politica di una filosofia ermeneutica (la politica è l’invenzione di
un nuovo ordine che contempera il „per me“ e il „per tutti“); la riscoperta di
una morale creativa, capace di forzare l’etica oltre se stessa, verso una
normatività più inclusiva; le tematiche della filosofia della religione con una
ridiscussione del significato della secolarizzazione; la ricchezza e la
complessità della verità che non si lascia ridurre a semplice corrispondenza,
ma include anche la responsabilità per il reale. Una metafora ha ispirato
l'intero percorso di pensiero di Perone[1], quella della lotta di Giacobbe con
l'Angelo, raccontata nel libro della Genesi. Nella notte del deserto, uno
straniero interrompe la solitudine di Giacobbe e combatte con lui in una
battaglia che non avrà né vincitori né vinti. Solo all'alba Giacobbe scopre di
essere stato ferito dall'Angelo. Ma questa ferita significa anche la
benedizione e un nuove nome: Giacobbe, che ha combattuto con Dio e non è stato
ucciso, d'ora innanzi si chiamerà Israele.[2] Il racconto è la cifra
dell'estrema tensione che sussiste, secondo Perone, tra il finito e l'infinito,
tra il penultimo e l'ultimo[3], tra i singoli significati e il senso
complessivo[4]. La filosofia ha un'obbligazione morale di fedeltà al finito che
la conduce a non rinnegare mai le condizioni storiche del pensiero, ma anche a
non rinunciare alla sua vocazione a trascenderle con l'ascolto del non
immediato, il lavoro e la fatica. Riconosciuta la modernità come condizione, il
pensiero non può illudersi di potersi semplicemente installare nell'essere o nel
senso, come se tra finito e infinito non si fosse consumata una cesura[5]. E
tuttavia, ugualmente inopportuno sarebbe un appiattimento sui semplici
significati storici, dimentico dell'appello dell'essere.[6] La necessaria
protezione della finitezza (protezione del finito anche nei confronti
dell'essere, che in qualche modo va sfidato, perché è coi forti che è
necessario essere forti)[7] non deve significare l'eliminazione di nessuno dei
due contendenti. Sulla soglia[8] tra finito e infinito, tra storia e ontologia,
si realizza una mediazione, che non implica il superamento della distanza, ma
la sua conservazione. Al fine di preservare la «doppia eccedenza»[9] del finito
sull'infinito e di questo su quello, è sbagliato cancellare la distanza tra
essi, sia trasformandola in identità, sia indebolendola fino a un punto
d'indifferenza. Così, è vero, per esempio, che la memoria non conserva
che frammenti, né può pretendere di ricordare direttamente l'intero; ma è
altrettanto vero che questi frammenti non vanno abbandonati a una deriva
nichilistica, perché nel frammento – che la memoria ricorda – non è un semplice
istante, ma appunto l'essenziale (di una vita, di una storia…) a dover essere
ricordato[10]. La filosofia resta ossessionata dal tutto, ma questo tutto
«non ha l'estensione della totalità, ma l'intensità del frammento in cui ne va
dell'intero»[11]. Si comprende quindi perché i primi libri di Perone abbiano
titoli doppi: Modernità e memoria, Storia e ontologia: si tratta di dire sempre
insieme due cose, secondo una dialettica dell'et-et, dell'indugio e
dell'anticipazione[12]. Se i libri successivi individuano invece, fin dal
titolo, un unico tema (Le passioni del finito; Nonostante il soggetto; Il
presente possibile; La verità del sentimento), questo significa che il finito,
il soggetto, il presente, il sentimento vengono analizzati come soglie, come
luoghi che non possono nemmeno essere concepiti, per non dire vissuti, senza la
memoria dell'altro. Come nel caso di Giacobbe, sono luoghi che portano la ferita
inferta loro dall'altro come una benedizione. Metodo di lavoro Perone
elabora la propria filosofia ermeneuticamente, a partire da uno studio in
profondità – spesso svolto controcorrente rispetto alle mode culturali del
momento – della storia della filosofia e di singoli autori classici e
contemporanei, come Cartesio, Schiller, Feuerbach, Secrétan, Benjamin, in
aggiunta ad altri filosofi (in particolare, Platone, Aristotele, Hegel,
Schelling, Kierkegaard, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty e Lévinas), i cui nomi
costellano i suoi numerosi lavori. Parte integrante della ricerca filosofica di
Perone è altresì un confronto continuo con la teologia, soprattutto quella di
Barth, Bonhoeffer, Bultmann e Guardini, che negli anni recenti si è esteso alla
considerazione della poesia (specialmente quella di Paul Celan), della
narrativa e del teatro, intesi come aree capaci di offrire contributi
filosofici cruciali. La sua capacità di essere maestro e di indirizzare i
giovani nella ricerca filosofica è indisgiungibile dal suo modo di praticare la
filosofia. Opere:”Teologia ed esperienza religiosa” Mursia, Milano, “Storia e ontologia,”
Studium, Roma “La totalità interrotta”
Mursia, Milano, “Modernità e memoria,” Sei, Torino “In lotta con
l'angelo,” SEI, Torino 1989 (in collaborazione con G. Ferretti, A. Pastore
Perone, C. Ciancio, Maurizio Pagano); “Feuerbach,” Mursia, Milano, “Le passioni
del finito,” EDB, Bologna, “Un dialogo sulla modernità,” Rosenberg &
Sellier, Torino (con C. Ciancio); “Nonostante il soggetto,” Rosenberg &
Sellier, Torino, “Il presente possibile,” Guida, Napoli, “La verità del
sentimento,” Napoli, Guida, “Filosofia e spazio pubblico,” Il Mulino, “Ripensare
il sentimento,” Cittadella Editrice, Assisi,
Le passioni del finite.” “L’essenza della religione, gdt, 376, Queriniana,
Brescia Il racconto della filosofia. Breve storia della filosofia, Queriniana,
Brescia. Un tema che è diventato predominante nella produzione più recente è la
riflessione etico-politica. Tra le sue pubblicazioni sul tema si
ricordano: Filosofia e spazio pubblico, a cura di U. Perone, Il Mulino,
Bologna, Das Christentum nach der Säkularisation, in Europa ohne Gott? Auf der
Suche nach unserer Identität, a cura di L. Simon e J.-J. Hahn, Hänssler,
Holzgerlingen, Lo spazio pubblico e le
sue metafore, in Identità, differenze, conflitti, a cura di L. Ruggiu e F.
Mora, Mimesis, Milano (trad. inglese
Space and its Metaphors, in “Symposium”, vLa secolarizzazione: un bilancio, in
“Annuario filosofico“, Mursia, Milano, Givone, I sentieri della filosofia, Rosenberg
& Sellier, Torino. Una cospicua parte della produzione di Perone si
concentra sul tema della finitezza e sul rapporto tra filosofia e narrazione.
Tra i contributi in lingua tedesca, si segnalano: Verzögerung und
Vorwegnahme, in Alltag und Transzendenz, a cura di B. Casper e W. Sparn, Alber,
Freiburg/München, Die Zweideutigkeit des Alltags, in Alltag und Transzendenz, eDas
trübe Ich, in Der fragile Körper. Zwischen Fragmentierung und Ganzheitanspruch,
a cura di E. Agazzi, E. Koczisky, V&R Unipress, Göttingen. Tra i numerosi
articoli, vanno ricordati almeno quelli dedicati al pensiero di Benjamin:
Benjamin e il tempo della memoria, in «Annuario Filosofico», Mursia, Milano 1
Memoria, tempo e storia in Walter Benjamin, in G. Ferretti, a cura di, Il tempo
della memoria, Marietti, Genova, Walter
Benjamin, in Enciclopedia Filosofica, Centro Studi Filosofici di Gallarate,
vol. II, Bompiani, Milano Il rischio del presente: Benjamin, Bonhoeffer, Celan,
in L'acuto del presente. Poesia e poetiche a metà del Novecento, a cura di C.
Sandrin, Edizioni dell'Orso, Alessandria (trad. inglese The Risks of the Present:
Benjamin, Bonhoeffer and Celan, in “Symposium”, Per l’Enciclopedia Filosofica,
Bompiani, Milano, ha curato le seguenti voci: Ateismo, Benjamin, Futuro,
Memoria, Passato, Pensiero, Presente, Riflessione, Secrétan, Silenzio,
Tempo. Ha curato e introdotto presso Rosenberg & Sellier l'edizione
dei testi degli autori della Scuola di Alta Formazione Filosofica: J.-L. Marion,
Dialogo con l'amore,; D. Henrich, Metafisica e modernità, C. Larmore, Dare ragioni,
J. Searle, Coscienza, linguaggio,
società, A. Heller, Per un'antropologia della modernità, E. Severino, Volontà, destino, linguaggio.
Filosofia e storia dell'Occidente, B.
Waldenfels, Estraneo, straniero, straordinario. Saggi di fenomenologia
responsiva, Intorno a Jean-Luc Nancy, H. Joas, Valori, società, religione. Vii
fa esplicito riferimento, tra l'altro, in Modernità e Memoria, pp. IX-XI. ^
L'Angelo – cioè l'infinito, ma più in generale l'oggetto, il mondo – non è un
«limite» che il soggetto pone a se stesso, ma «una barriera che gli è posta» e
che, dunque, «non si lascia ultimamente inglobare» dal soggetto, per quanto
potente egli sia. «Ai limiti estremi della propria estensione e della propria
potenza», il soggetto incontra la «resistenza testarda del mondo», e misura
così la propria «impotenza di infinito». Questa lotta/scontro con la barriera
lascia nel soggetto «una ferita che appartiene per sempre all'identità della
coscienza» (Nonostante il soggetto). L'Angelo può quindi essere definito
«quella misteriosa ulteriorità contro cui il finito urta» (Nonostante il
soggetto). Il tema della tensione tra
cielo e terra è centrale per Perone fin dal libro su Bonhoeffer: «Come dimenticare
che [...] la teologia bonhoefferiana [...] è forse l'unica che ha osato vedere
nella tensione tra cielo e terra non una tentazione, ma un guadagno tanto per
il cielo quanto per la terra?» (Storia e Ontologia, p. 81). ^ In Perone è
attiva un'originalissima interpretazione del rapporto tra senso e significati:
«Con significati intendo il cristallizzarsi storico di scelte determinate,
aventi in sé una ragione sufficiente. Con senso intendo una direzione capace di
unificare una molteplicità in sé dispersa di significati, in modo da
costituirli come un progetto e un'interpretazione della realtà» (Modernità e
Memoria). ^ La definizione della modernità come tempo della cesura risale in
Perone perlomeno alla monografia su Schiller: La totalità interrotta. Il tema è
ripreso proprio in apertura di Modernità e Memoria, dove Perone individua nella
modernità l'epoca della «cesura» (Modernità e Memoria, p. 5): la modernità è
dunque chiamata a essere il tempo della memoria, perché «la memoria è sempre
memoria della cesura» (Modernità e Memoria,). Perone eredita da Bonhoeffer
l'«uso teologico della categoria dell'illuminismo (Storia e ontologia), e
tuttavia non simpatizza per quelle letture della modernità, dimentiche della
tensione, che semplicemente pongono «l'uomo in luogo di Dio come fonte di
legittimazione», puntando tutto sulla «continuità», anziché sulla discontinuità
della storia (Modernità e memoria, p. 47). Per un approfondimento a tutto tondo
del significato dell'ateismo contemporaneo, resta fondamentale la monografia su
Feuerbach: Teologia ed esperienza religiosa in Feuerbach. ^ «Contro l'Essere,
ciò che è forte, è lecito essere forti, perché la minaccia non lo vince, ma lo
lascia stagliarsi in tutta la sua maestà e incommensurabile grandezza»
(Nonostante il soggetto, p. 108). ^ Per una trattazione sistematica del
concetto di "soglia”, che Perone svolge con particolare riferimento a
Walter Benjamin, cfr. Il presente possibile, («Il presente come soglia»). ^ Nonostante il
soggetto. Se la totalità è interrotta, non possiamo ricordare se non frammenti,
e quasi "istantanee” del tempo. Tuttavia, «se la memoria afferra brandelli
e frammenti, è perché in essi vi legge il tutto, perché li pensa capaci di dar
senso e di riscattare, perché in essi vi scorge l'essenziale. Essa sa che non
tutto può essere salvato, ma osa credere che nella memoria salvata vi possa
essere un senso anche per ciò che è andato perduto» (Modernità e Memoria). ^ La
verità del sentimento, p. 174. ^ Nel rivalutare la funzione filosofica
dell'indugio, con riferimento ai racconti di Shahrazàd, Perone osserva che
perlopiù la filosofia non ha seguito la medesima strategia: «In generale, essa
non ha seguito la strada dell'indugio e del rinvio», puntando invece sulla
«funzione anticipativa» (Nonostante il soggetto) Particolare rilievo riveste a
questo proposito la distinzione che Perone traccia tra «spazio pubblico» e
«spazio comune. Perone individua anzi come «rischio immanente della democrazia»
«il riassorbimento della sfera pubblica entro le semplici logiche della sfera
comune». Nella nostra attuale democrazia incompiuta, «lo spazio pubblico si
espone al rischio di un inglobamento nello spazio comune» (Filosofia e spazio
pubblico). S. Benso, Struggling with the Angel: Finitude, Time, and Metaphysical
Sentiment, in U. Perone, The Possible Present, SUNY Press, Albany, NY, E. Guglielminetti, ed., Interruzioni. Note
sulla filosofia di Ugo Perone, il melangolo, Genovam v. “Annuario filosofico
2015“, Mursia Milano, articoli di C. Ciancio, G. Ferretti, N. Sclenczka, W.
Gräb. https://www.theologie.hu-berlin.de/de/guardini/mitarbeiter/li, su
theologie.hu-berlin.de. URL http://sdaff.it/vips/ugo.perone, su sdaff.it.
http://www.lett.unipmn.it/docenti/perone/, su lett.unipmn.it. http://www.spaziofilosofico.it/numero-08/3250/oportet-idealismus/#more-3250,
su spaziofilosofico.it.
http://www.spaziofilosofico.it/numero-05/2052/il-pudore/#more-2052, su
spaziofilosofico.it. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Perone," per il
Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.
persio: Antonio
Persio (Matera), filosofo. Figlio dello scultore Altobello Persio e fratello di
Ascanio Persio, linguista, Domizio e Giulio, rispettivamente pittore e
scultore, compì i primi studi a Matera dove prese gli ordini minori. Trasferitosi a Napoli dove divenne sacerdote,
conobbe Telesio di cui diventò discepolo, e scrisse diverse opere a difesa e
chiarimento del pensiero del suo maestro. Dopo la morte dello stesso Telesio,
fece pubblicare alcuni suoi scritti minori intitolandoli Varii de rebus naturalibus
libelli. Si trasferì a Venezia, e
diventò parroco a Padova e pubblicò il Trattato dell'ingegno dell'huomo, in cui
riprendeva la teoria telesiana dello spiritus, principio spirituale, movimento,
vita, intelligenza. Si trasferì a Roma.
Qui conobbe anche Tommaso Campanella e Galileo Galilei e pubblicò un trattato
di carattere medico, “Del bever caldo,” in cui riprendeva diverse idee già
trattate in precedenza riguardo allo spirito e ai consigli per la sua
conservazione. Opere: “Digestum vetus
seu Pandectarum iuris civilis: commentarijs Accursii ... praecipue autem
Antonii Persii philosophiae ... illustratus, Venezia, Franceschi, Bindoni, Bevilacqua, Zenaro, Trattato
dell'ingegno dell'huomo, Venezia, Aldo Manuzio, Liber nouarum positionum, in
Rhetoricis Dialecticis Ethicis Iure ciuili Iure pontificio Physicis, Venezia,
Iacopo Simbeni, Digestum vetus, seu Pandectarum iuris civilis tomus primus: cum
pandectis florentini, Venezia,Franceschi; Bindoni; Bevilacqua, Zenaro. Disputationes
libri novarum positionum Antonii Persii, triduo habitae Venetiis Edidit Andreas
Alethinus, Firenze, Marescotti, Del bever caldo, costumato da gli antichi
Romani , Venezia, Ciotti, B. Telesio,
Varii de naturalibus rebus libelli ab Antonio Persio editi, Venezia, Felice
Valgrisio, Varii de naturalibus rebus libelli Note "Antonius Persius vixi annis LXIX.
mensibus VIII. diebus V. Ad plures abij anno salutis XI kalendas
Februarias", Index capitum librorum Abbatis Antonii Persii lyncei De
ratione recte philosophandi et de natura ignis, et caloris, Romae, apud I.
Mascardum Scheda «Trattato dell'ingegno dell'huomo» Libraweb.net Antonio Persio, su Treccani.itEnciclopedie on
line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana.
Antonio Persio, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Istituto
dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Opere, Dizionario di filosofia, Roma, Istituto
dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Persio,” per il
Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria.
pessina: Ministro
di grazia e giustizia del Regno d'Italia Durata mandato MonarcaUmberto I di
Savoia Capo del governoAgostino Depretis PredecessoreNiccolò Ferracciu
SuccessoreDiego Tajani LegislatureXV Ministro dell'Agricoltura, Industria e
Commercio del Regno d'Italia Capo del governoBenedetto Cairoli
PredecessoreBenedetto Cairoli SuccessoreSalvatore Majorana Calatabiano
LegislatureXIII Senatore del Regno d'Italia Legislaturedalla XIII Deputato del
Regno d'Italia LegislatureVIII, X, XIII Sito istituzionale Dati generali Titolo
di studioLaurea in Giurisprudenza, Laurea in Filosofia.. Enrico Pessina (Napoli),
filosofo. Linceo. Fu senatore del Regno d'Italia nella XIII legislatura. Compì all'Napoli sia studi giuridici che filosofici.
Fu allievo di Galluppi, di cui curò l'edizione della "Storia della
filosofia.” Di idee liberali, fu oppositore dei Borboni, prendendo parte ai
moti.. Pubblicò il suo Manuale di diritto costituzionale che gli procurò la
persecuzione della polizia e poi il carcere. Sposò Giulia Settembrini, figlia
di Luigi Settembrini, all'epoca del matrimonio recluso nell’Isola di Santo
Stefano. Fuggì dal Regno e risiedette a Livorno, per essere nominato professore
a Bologna. Con la caduta dei Borboni,
tornò a Napoli dove fu sostituto procuratore generale. Deputato e poi Senatore
del Regno d'Italia, fu ministro dell'agricoltura, industria e commercio nel
Governo Cairoli I e ministro di grazia e
giustizia e culti nel Governo Depretis VI. Fondò la rivista giuridica Il
Filangieri con Persico. Dvenne socio dell'Accademia dei Lincei. Morì nella sua casa in via del Museo
Nazionale, strada che prese in seguito il suo nome: Anche il palazzo dove visse
e morì è da allora ricordato col suo nome.
Intitolazioni Presso la sede storica dell'Università Federico II di
Napoli c'è un'aula a lui intitolata. A
lui è dedicato uno dei 229 busti di italiani illustri che ornano la passeggiata
del Pincio a Roma. Opere: “Elementi di
procedura penale,” Fra le numerose sue opere, si ricordano: “ Manuale del
diritto pubblico costituzionale, Napoli: Stabilimento poligrafico, Elementi di
procedura penale, Napoli, Nicola Jovene, Il Naturalismo e le scienze giuridiche,
discorso inaugurale letto nella Regia Napol, Napoli: Tipografia dell'Accademia
Reale delle Scienze, Elementi di diritto penale, 1, Napoli, Riccardo Marghieri, Elementi di
diritto penale, 2, Napoli, Riccardo
Marghieri, Elementi di diritto penale,
3, Napoli, Riccardo Marghieri, Manuale del diritto penale italiano,
Napoli: Eugenio Margheri, Manuale del diritto pubblico costituzionale, con
prefazione di Giorgio Arcoleo e introduzione di Ignazio Tambaro, Napoli: G.
Priore, La voce dell'Enciclopedia Italiana Emilio Albertario (vedi ) i Enrico
Pessina , Storia della filosofia di Pasquale Galluppi. A cui si aggiunge
l'elogio funebre, Milano : Gio. Silvestri, Emilio Albertario, Enciclopedia
Italiana, Roma, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, Treccani.itEnciclopedie on
line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana.
Enrico Pessina, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Istituto
dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Opere su
openMLOL, Horizons Unlimited srl. storia.camera.it, Camera dei deputati. Enrico Pessina, su Senatori d'Italia, Senato
della Repubblica. Biografia Luciano Malusa, in La storiografia filosofica
in Italia nell'Ottocento, sito del Dipartimento di Filosofia dell'Genova.
Scheda sul sito del Senato., su notes9.senato.it. PredecessoreMinistro di
grazia e giustizia del Regno d'ItaliaSuccessoreFlag of Italy (1861–1946).svg
Niccolò Ferracciu.
petrarca: Grice: “There are a few studies on
Petrarca and ‘filosofia’: “Petrarca platonico,” etc. – but his most important
contribution is via implicatura, as when I deal with Blake or Shakespeare.” -- Francesco
Petrarca (Arezzo), filosofo. Considerato il precursore dell'umanesimo e uno dei
fondamenti della letteratura italiana, soprattutto grazie alla sua opera più
celebre, il Canzoniere, patrocinato quale modello di eccellenza stilistica da
Pietro Bembo nei primi del Cinquecento. Uomo moderno, slegato ormai dalla
concezione della patria come mater e divenuto cittadino del mondo, Petrarca
rilanciò, in ambito filosofico, l'agostinismo in contrapposizione alla
scolastica e operò una rivalutazione storico-filologica dei classici latini.
Fautore dunque di una ripresa degli studia humanitatis in senso antropocentrico
(e non più in chiave assolutamente teocentrica), Petrarca (che ottenne la
laurea poetica a Roma nel 1341) spese l'intera sua vita nella riproposta
culturale della poetica e filosofia antica e patristica attraverso l'imitazione
dei classici, offrendo un'immagine di sé quale campione di virtù e della lotta
contro i vizi. La storia medesima del Canzoniere, infatti, è più un percorso di
riscatto dall'amore travolgente per Laura che una storia d'amore, e in
quest'ottica si deve valutare anche l'opera latina del Secretum. Le
tematiche e la proposta culturale petrarchesca, oltre ad aver fondato il movimento
culturale umanistico, diedero avvio al fenomeno del petrarchismo, teso ad
imitare stilemi, lessico e generi poetici propri della produzione lirica
volgare dell'aretino.Francesco Petrarca nacque il 20 luglio del 1304 ad Arezzo
e da ser Petracco, notaio, ed Eletta Cangiani (o Canigiani), entrambi
fiorentini. Petracco, originario di Incisa, apparteneva alla fazione dei guelfi
bianchi e fu amico di Dante Alighieri, esiliato da Firenze nel 1302 per
l'arrivo di Carlo di Valois, apparentemente entrato nella città toscana quale
paciere di papa Bonifacio VIII, ma in realtà inviato per sostenere i guelfi
neri contro quelli bianchi. La sentenza del 10 marzo 1302 emanata da Cante
Gabrielli da Gubbio, podestà di Firenze, esiliava tutti i guelfi bianchi,
compreso ser Petracco che, oltre all'oltraggio dell'esilio, fu condannato al
taglio della mano destra. Dopo Francesco, nacque prima un figlio naturale di
ser Petracco di nome Giovanni, del quale Petrarca tacerà sempre nei suoi
scritti e che diverrà monaco olivetano e morirà nel 1384; poi, nel 1307,
l'amato fratello Gherardo, futuro monaco certosino. L'infanzia raminga e
l'incontro con Dante A causa dell'esilio paterno, il giovane Francesco
trascorse l'infanzia in diversi luoghi della Toscanaprima ad Arezzo (dove la famiglia
si era rifugiata in un primo tempo), poi a Incisa e Pisadove il padre era
solito spostarsi per ragioni politico-economiche. In questa città il padre, che
non aveva perso la speranza di rientrare in patria, si era riunito ai guelfi
bianchi e ai ghibellini nel 1311 per accogliere l'imperatore Arrigo VII.
Secondo quanto affermato dallo stesso Petrarca nella Familiares, XXI, 15
indirizzata all'amico Boccaccio, in questa città avvenne, probabilmente, il suo
unico e fugace incontro con l'amico del padre, Dante[N 1]. Tra Francia e
Italia (1312-1326) Il soggiorno a Carpentras Tuttavia, già nel 1312 la famiglia
si trasferì a Carpentras, vicino Avignone (Francia), dove Petracco ottenne
incarichi presso la Corte pontificia grazie all'intercessione del cardinale
Niccolò da Prato. Nel frattempo, il piccolo Francesco studiò a Carpentras sotto
la guida del letterato Convenevole da Prato, amico del padre che verrà
ricordato dal Petrarca con toni d'affetto nella Seniles, XVI, 1. Alla scuola di
Convenevole, presso la quale studiò dal 1312 al 1316, conobbe uno dei suoi più
cari amici, Guido Sette, arcivescovo di Genova dal 1358, al quale Petrarca
indirizzò la Seniles, X, 2[N 2]. Anonimo, Laura e il Poeta, Casa di
Francesco Petrarca, Arquà Petrarca (Padova). L'affresco fa parte di un ciclo
pittorico realizzato nel corso del Cinquecento mentre era proprietario Pietro
Paolo Valdezocco. Gli studi giuridici a Montpellier e a Bologna L'idillio di
Carpentras durò fino all'autunno del 1316, allorché Francesco, il fratello Gherardo
e l'amico Guido Sette furono inviati dalle rispettive famiglie a studiare
diritto a Montpellier, città della Linguadoca, ricordata anch'essa come luogo
pieno di pace e di gioia. Nonostante ciò, oltre al disinteresse e al fastidio
provati nei confronti della giurisprudenza[N 3], il soggiorno a Montpellier fu
funestato dal primo dei vari lutti che Petrarca dovette affrontare nel corso
della sua vita: la morte, a soli 38 anni, della madre Eletta nel 1318 o 1319.
Il figlio, ancora adolescente, compose il Breve pangerycum defuncte matris (poi
rielaborato nell'epistola metrica 1, 7), in cui vengono sottolineate le virtù
della madre scomparsa, riassunte nella parola latina electa. Il padre,
poco dopo la scomparsa della moglie, decise di cambiare sede per gli studi dei
figli inviandoli, nel 1320, nella ben più prestigiosa Bologna, anche questa
volta accompagnati da Guido Sette e da un precettore che seguisse la vita
quotidiana dei figli. In questi anni Petrarca, sempre più insofferente verso
gli studi di diritto, si legò ai circoli letterari felsinei, divenendo studente
e amico dei latinisti Giovanni del Virgilio e Bartolino Benincasa, coltivando
così i primi studi letterari e iniziando quella bibliofilia che lo accompagnò
per tutta la vita. Gli anni bolognesi, al contrario di quelli trascorsi in
Provenza, non furono tranquilli: nel 1321 scoppiarono violenti tumulti in seno
allo Studium in seguito alla decapitazione di uno studente, fatto che spinse
Francesco, Gherardo e Guido a ritornare momentaneamente ad Avignone. I tre
rientrarono a Bologna per riprendervi gli studi dal 1322 al 1325, anno in cui
Petrarca ritornò ad Avignone per «prendere a prestito una grossa somma di
denaro», vale a dire 200 lire bolognesi spese presso il libraio bolognese
Bonfigliolo Zambeccari.Nel 1326 ser Petracco morì, permettendo a Petrarca di
lasciare finalmente la facoltà di diritto a Bologna e di dedicarsi agli studi
classici che sempre più lo appassionavano. Per dedicarsi a tempo pieno a
quest'occupazione doveva trovare una fonte di sostentamento che gli permettesse
di ottenere un qualche guadagno remunerativo: lo trovò quale membro del seguito
prima di Giacomo Colonna, arcivescovo di Lombez; poi del fratello di Giacomo,
il cardinale Giovanni, dal 1330. L'essere entrato a far parte della famiglia,
tra le più influenti e potenti dell'aristocrazia romana, permise a Francesco di
ottenere non soltanto quella sicurezza di cui aveva bisogno per iniziare i
propri studi, ma anche di estendere le sue conoscenze in seno all'élite
culturale e politica europea. Difatti, in veste di rappresentante degli
interessi dei Colonna, Petrarca compì, tra la primavera e l'estate del 1333, un
lungo viaggio nell'Europa del Nord, spinto dall'irrequieto e risorgente
desiderio di conoscenza umana e culturale che contrassegnò l'intera sua agitata
biografia: fu a Parigi, Gand, Liegi, Aquisgrana, Colonia, Lione.
Particolarmente importante fu la primavera/estate del 1330 allorché, nella
città di Lombez, Petrarca conobbe Angelo Tosetti e il musico e cantore
fiammingo Ludwig Van Kempen, il Socrate cui verrà dedicata la raccolta
epistolare delle Familiares. Poco dopo essere entrato a far parte del
seguito del vescovo Giovanni, Petrarca prese gli ordini sacri, divenendo
canonico, col fine di ottenere i benefici connessi all'ente ecclesiastico di
cui era investito[N 4]. Nonostante la sua condizione di religioso (è attestato
che dal 1330 il Petrarca è nella condizione di chierico[25]), ebbe comunque dei
figli nati con donne ignote, figli tra cui spiccano per importanza, nella
successiva vita del poeta, Giovanni (nato nel 1337), e Francesca (nata nel
1343)[26]. Ritratto di Laura, in un disegno conservato presso la
Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana[27]. L'incontro con Laura Secondo quanto afferma
nel Secretum, Petrarca incontrò per la prima volta, nella chiesa di Santa
Chiara ad Avignone, il 6 aprile del 1327 (che cadde di lunedì. Pasqua fu il 12
aprile, e il Venerdì santo il 10 aprile in quell'anno), Laura, la donna che
sarà l'amore della sua vita e che sarà immortalata nel Canzoniere. La figura di
Laura ha suscitato, da parte dei critici letterari, le opinioni più diverse:
identificata da alcuni con una Laura de Noves coniugata de Sade[N 5] (morta nel
1348 a causa della peste, come la stessa Laura petrarchesca), altri invece tendono
a vedere in tale figura un senhal dietro cui nascondere la figura dell'alloro
poetico (pianta che, per gioco etimologico, si associa al nome femminile),
suprema ambizione del letterato Petrarca[28]. L'attività filologica La
scoperta dei classici e la spiritualità patristica Come accennato prima,
Petrarca manifestò già durante il soggiorno bolognese una spiccata sensibilità
letteraria, professando una grandissima ammirazione per l'antichità classica.
Oltre agli incontri con Giovanni del Virgilio e Cino da Pistoia, importante per
la nascita della sensibilità letteraria del poeta fu il padre stesso, fervente
ammiratore di Cicerone e della letteratura latina. Difatti ser Petracco, come
racconta Petrarca nella Seniles, XVI, 1, donò al figlio un manoscritto contenente
le opere di Virgilio e la Rethorica di Cicerone[N 6] e, nel 1325, un codice
delle Etymologiae di Isidoro di Siviglia e uno contenente le lettere di san
Paolo[29]. In quello stesso anno, dimostrando la passione sempre
crescente per la Patristica, il giovane Francesco comprò un codice del De
Civitate Dei di Agostino d'Ippona e, verso il 1333[30], conobbe e cominciò a
frequentare l'agostiniano Dionigi di Borgo San Sepolcro, dotto monaco
agostiniano e professore di teologia alla Sorbona[31]. Dionigi regalò al
giovane Petrarca un codice tascabile delle Confessiones, lettura che aumentò
ancor di più la passione del Nostro per la spiritualità patristica
agostiniana[32]. Dopo la morte del padre e l'essere entrato a servizio dei
Colonna, Petrarca si buttò a capofitto nella ricerca di nuovi classici,
cominciando a visionare i codici della Biblioteca Apostolica (ove scoprì la
Naturalis Historia di Plinio il Vecchio[33]) e, nel corso del viaggio nel Nord
Europa compiuto nel 1333, Petrarca scoprì e ricopiò il codice del Pro Archia
poeta di Cicerone e dell'apocrifa Ad equites romanos, conservati nella
Biblioteca Capitolare di Liegi[34].Oltre alla dimensione di explorator,
Petrarca cominciò a sviluppare, tra gli anni Venti e Trenta, le basi per la
nascita del metodo filologico moderno, basato sul metodo della collatio,
sull'analisi delle varianti (e quindi sulla tradizione manoscritta dei
classici, depurandoli dagli errori dei monaci amanuensi con la loro emendatio
oppure completando i passi mancanti per congettura). Sulla base di queste
premesse metodologiche, Petrarca lavorò alla ricostruzione, da un lato, dell'Ab
Urbe condita dello storico latino Tito Livio; dall'altro, della composizione
del grande codice contenente le opere di Virgilio e che, per la sua attuale
locazione, è chiamato Virgilio ambrosiano[N 7]. Da Roma a Valchiusa:
l'Africa e il De viris illustribus Marie Alexandre Valentin Sellier, La
farandole de Pétrarque (La farandola di Petrarca), olio su tela, 1900. Sullo
sfondo si può notare il Castello di Noves, nella località di Valchiusa, il
luogo ameno in cui Petrarca trascorse gran parte della sua vita fino al 1351,
anno in cui lasciò la Provenza per l'Italia. Mentre portava avanti questi
progetti filologici, Petrarca cominciò a intrattenere con papa Benedetto XII
(1334-1342) un rapporto epistolare (Epistolae metricae I, 2 e 5) con cui
esortava il nuovo pontefice a ritornare a Roma[35] e continuò il suo servizio
presso il cardinale Giovanni Colonna, su concessione del quale poté
intraprendere un viaggio a Roma, dietro richiesta di Giacomo Colonna che
desiderava averlo con sé[36]. Giuntovi sul finire di gennaio del 1337[37],
nella Città Eterna Petrarca poté toccare con mano i monumenti e le antiche
glorie dell'antica capitale dell'Impero Romano, rimanendone estasiato[38].
Rientrato in Provenza, Petrarca comprò una casa a Valchiusa, appartata località
sita nella valle della Sorgue[39], nel tentativo di sfuggire all'attività
frenetica avignonese, ambiente che lentamente cominciò a detestare in quanto
simbolo della corruzione morale in cui era caduto il Papato[N 8]. Valchiusa
(che durante le assenze del giovane poeta era affidata al fattore Raymond Monet
di Chermont[40]) fu anche il luogo ove Petrarca poté concentrarsi nella sua
attività letteraria e accogliere quel piccolo cenacolo di amici eletti (a cui
si aggiunse il vescovo di Cavaillon, Philippe de Cabassolle[41]) con cui
trascorrere giornate all'insegna del dialogo colto e della spiritualità.
«Più o meno in quello stesso periodo, illustrando a Giacomo Colonna la vita
condotta a Valchiusa nel primo anno della sua dimora lì, Petrarca delinea uno
di quegli autoritratti manierati che diventeranno un luogo comune della sua
corrispondenza: passeggiate campestri, amicizie scelte, letture intense,
nessuna ambizione se non quella del quieto vivere (Epist. I 6, 156-237).»
(Pacca, 34-35) Fu in questo periodo
appartato che Petrarca, forte della sua esperienza filologico-letteraria,
incominciò a stendere le due opere che sarebbero dovute diventare il simbolo
della rinascenza classica: l'Africa e il De viris illustribus. La prima, opera
in versi intesa a ricalcare le orme virgiliane, narra dell'impresa militare
romana della seconda guerra punica, incentrata sulle figure di Scipione
l'Africano, modello etico insuperabile della virtù civile della Repubblica
romana. La seconda, invece, è un me Gli anni successivi all'incoronazione
poetica, quelli compresi tra il 1341 e il 1348, furono contrassegnati da un
perenne stato d'inquietudine morale, dovuta sia a eventi traumatici della
vita daglione di 36 vite di uomini illustri improntata sul modello
liviano e quello floriano[42]. La scelta di comporre un'opera in versi e
un'opera in prosa, ricalcanti i modelli sommi dell'antichità nei due rispettivi
generi letterari e intesi a recuperare, oltre alla veste stilistica, anche
quella spirituale degli antichi, diffusero presto il nome di Petrarca al di là
dei confini provenzali, giungendo in Italia. Tra l'Italia e la Provenza
(1341-1353) Giusto di Gand, Francesco Petrarca, pittura, XV secolo,
Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino. L'alloro con cui Petrarca fu
incoronato rivitalizzò il mito del poeta laureato, figura che diventerà
un'istituzione pubblica in Paesi quali il Regno Unito[43]. L'incoronazione
poetica Il nome di Petrarca quale uomo eccezionalmente colto e grande letterato
fu diffuso grazie all'influenza della famiglia Colonna e dell'agostiniano
Dionigi[44]. Se i primi avevano influenza presso gli ambienti ecclesiastici e
gli enti a essi collegati (quali le Università europee, tra le quali spiccava
la Sorbona), padre Dionigi fece conoscere il nome dell'Aretino presso la corte
del re di Napoli Roberto d'Angiò, presso il quale fu chiamato in virtù della
sua erudizione[45]. Petrarca, approfittando della rete di conoscenze e di
protettori di cui disponeva, pensò di ottenere un riconoscimento ufficiale per
la sua attività letteraria innovatrice a favore dell'antichità, patrocinando
così la sua incoronazione poetica[46]. Difatti, nella Familiares, II, 4,
Petrarca confidò al padre agostiniano la sua speranza di ricevere l'aiuto del
sovrano angioino per realizzare questo suo sogno, intessendone le
lodi[47]. Nel contempo, il 1º settembre del 1340, la Sorbona fece sapere
al Nostro l'offerta di una incoronazione poetica a Parigi; proposta che, nel
pomeriggio dello stesso giorno, giunse analoga dal Senato di Roma[48]. Su
consiglio di Giovanni Colonna, Petrarca, che desiderava essere incoronato
nell'antica capitale dell'Impero romano, accettò la seconda offerta[49],
accogliendo poi l'invito di re Roberto di essere esaminato da lui stesso a
Napoli prima di arrivare a Roma per ottenere la sospirata incoronazione.
Le fasi di preparazione per il fatidico incontro con il sovrano angioino
durarono tra l'ottobre 1340 e i primi giorni del 1341 se il 16 febbraio
Petrarca, accompagnato dal signore di Parma Azzo da Correggio, si mise in
viaggio per Napoli col fine di ottenere l'approvazione del colto sovrano
angioino. Giunto nella città partenopea a fine febbraio, fu esaminato per tre
giorni da re Roberto che, dopo averne constatato la cultura e la preparazione
poetica, acconsentì all'incoronazione a poeta in Campidoglio per mano del
senatore Orso dell'Anguillara[50]. Se conosciamo da un lato sia il contenuto
del discorso di Petrarca (la Collatio laureationis), sia la certificazione
dell'attestato di laurea da parte del Senato romano (il Privilegium lauree
domini Francisci Petrarche, che gli conferiva anche l'autorità per insegnare e
la cittadinanza romana)[51], la data dell'incoronazione è incerta: tra quanto
affermato da Petrarca e quanto poi testimoniato da Boccaccio, la cerimonia
d'incoronazione avvenne in un arco temporale tra l'8 e il 17 di aprile[52]. In
seguito all'incoronazione incominciò a comporre l'Africa e il De viris
illustribus.[53]Gli anni successivi all'incoronazione poetica, quelli compresi
tra il 1341 e il 1348, furono contrassegnati da un perenne stato d'inquietudine
morale, dovuta sia a eventi traumatici della vita privata, sia
all'inesorabile disgusto verso la corruzione avignonese[55]. Subito dopo
l'incoronazione poetica, mentre Petrarca sostava a Parma, seppe della prematura
scomparsa dell'amico Giacomo Colonna (avvenuta nel settembre del 1341), notizia
che lo turbò profondamente[N 9]. Gli anni successivi non recarono conforto al poeta
laureato: da un lato le morti prima di Dionigi (31 marzo 1342[57]) e, poi, di
re Roberto (19 gennaio 1343[58]) ne accentuarono lo stato di sconforto;
dall'altro, la scelta da parte del fratello Gherardo di abbandonare la vita
mondana per diventare monaco nella Certosa di Montreaux, spinsero Petrarca a
riflettere sulla caducità del mondo[59]. Nell'autunno del 1342[60],
mentre Petrarca soggiornava ad Avignone, conobbe il futuro tribuno Cola di
Rienzo (giunto in Provenza quale ambasciatore del regime democratico
instauratosi a Roma), col quale condivideva la necessità di ridare a Roma
l'antico status di grandezza politica che, come capitale dell'antica Roma e
sede del papato, le spettava di diritto[61]. Nel 1346 Petrarca fu nominato
canonico del Capitolo della cattedrale di Parma, mentre nel 1348 fu nominato
arcidiacono.[62] La caduta politica di Cola nel 1347, favorita specialmente
dalla famiglia Colonna, sarà la spinta decisiva da parte di Petrarca per
abbandonare i suoi antichi protettori: fu infatti in quell'anno che lasciò,
ufficialmente, l'entourage del cardinale Giovanni[63]. A fianco di queste
esperienze private, il cammino dell'intellettuale Petrarca fu invece
caratterizzato da una scoperta importantissima. Nel 1345, dopo essersi
rifugiato a Verona in seguito all'assedio di Parma e la caduta in disgrazia
dell'amico Azzo da Correggio (dicembre 1344)[64], Petrarca scoprì nella
biblioteca capitolare le epistole ciceroniane ad Brutum, ad Atticum e ad
Quintum fratrem, fino ad allora sconosciute[N 10]. L'importanza della scoperta
consistette nel modello epistolografico che esse trasmettevano: i colloquia a
distanza con gli amici, l'uso del tu al posto del voi proprio
dell'epistolografia medievale ed, infine, lo stile fluido e ipotattico
indussero l'Aretino a comporre anch'egli delle raccolte di lettere sul modello
ciceroniano e senecano, determinando la nascita delle Familiares prima, e delle
Seniles poi[65]. A questo periodo di tempo risalgono anche i Rerum memorandarum
libri (lasciati incompiuti), l'avvio del De otio religioso e del De vita
solitaria tra il 1346 e il 1347 che furono rimaneggiati negli anni
successivi[64]. Sempre a Verona, Petrarca ebbe modo di conoscere Pietro
Alighieri, figlio di Dante, con cui intrattenne rapporti cordiali[66]. La
peste nera (1348-1349) «La vita, come suol dirsi, ci sfuggì dalle mani: le
nostre speranze furon sepolte cogli amici nostri. Il 1348 fu l'anno che ci rese
miseri e soli.» (Delle cose familiari, prefazione, A Socrate [Ludwig van
Kempen], traduzione di G. Fracassetti, 1239) Dopo essersi slegato dai Colonna,
Petrarca cominciò a cercare nuovi patroni presso cui ottenere protezione.
Pertanto, lasciata Avignone insieme al figlio Giovanni, giunse il 25 gennaio
del 1348 a Verona, località dove si era rifugiato l'amico Azzo da Correggio
dopo essere stato scacciato dai suoi domini[67], per poi giungere a Parma nel
mese di marzo, dove strinse legami con il nuovo signore della città, il signore
di Milano Luchino Visconti[68]. Fu, però, in questo periodo che iniziò a diffondersi
per l'Europa la terribile peste nera, morbo che causò la morte di molti amici
del Petrarca: i fiorentini Sennuccio del Bene, Bruno Casini[69] e Franceschino
degli Albizzi; il cardinale Giovanni Colonna e il padre di lui, Stefano il
Vecchio[70]; e quella dell'amata Laura, di cui ebbe la notizia (avvenuta l'8 di
aprile) soltanto il 19 maggio[71]. Nonostante il dilagare del contagio e
la prostrazione psicologica in cui cadde a causa della morte di molti suoi
amici, Petrarca continuò le sue peregrinazioni, alla perenne ricerca di un
protettore. Lo trovò in Jacopo II da Carrara, suo estimatore che nel 1349 lo
nominò canonico del duomo di Padova. Il signore di Padova intese in tal modo
trattenere in città il poeta il quale, oltre alla confortevole casa, in virtù
del canonicato ottenne una rendita annua di 200 ducati d'oro, ma per alcuni
anni Petrarca avrebbe utilizzato questa abitazione solo
occasionalmente[72][73]. Difatti, costantemente in preda al desiderio di
viaggiare, nel 1349 fu a Mantova, a Ferrara e a Venezia, dove conobbe il doge
Andrea Dandolo[74].L'incontro con Giovanni Boccaccio e gli amici fiorentini
(1350) Magnifying glass icon mgx2.svgGiovanni Boccaccio § Boccaccio e Petrarca.
Nel 1350 prese la decisione di recarsi a Roma per lucrare l'indulgenza
dell'Anno giubilare. Durante il viaggio accondiscese alle richieste dei suoi
ammiratori fiorentini e decise di incontrarsi con loro. L’occasione fu di
fondamentale importanza non tanto per Petrarca, quanto per colui che diventerà
il suo principale interlocutore durante gli ultimi vent'anni di vita, Giovanni
Boccaccio. Il novelliere, sotto la sua guida, incominciò una lenta e
progressiva conversione verso una mentalità ed un approccio più umanistico alla
letteratura, collaborando spesso con il suo venerato praeceptor in progetti
culturali di ampio respiro. Tra questi ricordiamo la riscoperta del greco
antico e la scoperta di antichi codici classici[75]. L'ultimo soggiorno
in Provenza (1351-1353) Tra il 1350 e il 1351, Petrarca risiedette prevalentemente
a Padova, presso Francesco I da Carrara[74]. Qui, oltre a portare avanti i
progetti letterari delle Familiares e le opere spirituali iniziate prima del
1348, ricevette anche la visita di Giovanni Boccaccio (marzo 1351) in veste di
ambasciatore del Comune fiorentino perché accettasse un posto di docente presso
il nuovo Studium fiorentino[76]. Poco dopo, Petrarca fu spinto a rientrare ad
Avignone in seguito all'incontro con i Cardinali Eli de Talleyrand e Guy de
Boulogne, latori della volontà di papa Clemente VI che intendeva affidargli
l'incarico di segretario apostolico[77]. Nonostante l'allettante offerta del
pontefice, l'antico disprezzo verso Avignone e gli scontri con gli ambienti
della corte pontificia (i medici del pontefice[64] e, dopo la morte di Clemente,
l'antipatia del nuovo papa Innocenzo VI[78]) indussero Petrarca a lasciare
Avignone per Valchiusa, dove prese la decisione definitiva di stabilirsi in
Italia. Il periodo italiano (1353-1374) A Milano: la figura
dell'intellettuale umanista Targa commemorativa del soggiorno meneghino
di Petrarca situata agli inizi di Via Lanzone a Milano, davanti alla basilica
di Sant'Ambrogio. Petrarca iniziò il viaggio verso la patria italiana
nell'aprile del 1353[64], accogliendo l'ospitale offerta di Giovanni Visconti,
arcivescovo e signore della città, di risiedere a Milano. Malgrado le critiche
degli amici fiorentini (tra le quali si ricorda quella risentita del
Boccaccio[N 11]), che gli rimproveravano la scelta di essersi messo al servizio
dell'acerrimo nemico di Firenze[N 12], Petrarca collaborò con missioni e
ambascerie (a Parigi e a Venezia; l'incontro con l'imperatore Carlo IV a
Mantova e a Praga) all'intraprendente politica viscontea[79]. Sulla
scelta di risiedere a Milano piuttosto che nella natia Firenze, bisogna
ricordare l'animo cosmopolita proprio del Petrarca[80]. Cresciuto ramingo e
lontano dalla sua patria, Petrarca non risente più dell'attaccamento medievale
verso la propria patria d'origine, ma valuta gli inviti fattigli in base alle
convenienze economiche e politiche. Meglio, infatti, avere la protezione un
signore potente e ricco come Giovanni Visconti prima e, dopo la morte di lui
nel 1354, del successore Galeazzo II[81], che si rallegrerebbero di avere a
corte un intellettuale celebre come Petrarca[82]. Nonostante tale scelta
discutibile agli occhi degli amici fiorentini, i rapporti tra il praeceptor e i
suoi discipuli si ricucirono: la ripresa del rapporto epistolare tra Petrarca e
Boccaccio prima, e la visita di quest'ultimo a Milano nella casa di Petrarca
situata nei pressi di Sant'Ambrogio poi (1359)[83], sono le prove della
concordia ristabilita. Nonostante le incombenze diplomatiche, nel
capoluogo lombardo Petrarca maturò e portò a compimento quel processo di
maturazione intellettuale e spirituale iniziato pochi anni prima, passando
dalla ricerca erudita e filologica alla produzione di una letteratura
filosofica fondata da un lato sull'insoddisfazione per la cultura
contemporanea, dall'altra sulla necessità di una produzione che potesse guidare
l'umanità verso i principi etico-morali filtrati attraverso il neoplatonismo
agostiniano e lo stoicismo cristianeggiante[84]. Con questa convinzione
interiore, Petrarca portò avanti gli scritti iniziati nel periodo della peste:
il Secretum[85] e il De otio religioso[83]; la composizione di opere volte a
fissare presso i posteri l'immagine di un uomo virtuoso i cui principi sono
praticati anche nella vita quotidiana (le raccolte delle Familiares e, dal
1361, l'avviamento delle Seniles)[86] le raccolte poetiche latine (Epistolae
Metricae) e quelle volgari (i Triumphi e i Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta, alias il
Canzoniere)[87]. Durante il soggiorno meneghino Petrarca iniziò soltanto una
nuova opera, il dialogo intitolato De remediis utriusque fortune (sui rimedi
della cattiva e della buona sorte), in cui si affrontano problematiche morali
concernenti il denaro, la politica, le relazioni sociali e tutto ciò che è
legato al quotidiano[88].Nel giugno del 1361, per sfuggire alla peste, Petrarca
abbandonò Milano[N 13] per Padova, città da cui nel 1362 fuggì per lo stesso
motivo. Nonostante la fuga da Milano, i rapporti con Galeazzo II Visconti
rimasero sempre molto buoni, tanto che trascorse l'estate del 1369 nel castello
visconteo di Pavia in occasione di trattative diplomatiche[89]. A Pavia
seppellì il piccolo nipote di due anni, figlio della figlia Francesca, nella
chiesa di San Zeno e per lui compose un'epigrafe ancor oggi conservata nei
Musei Civici[90]. Nel 1362, quindi, Petrarca si recò a Venezia, città dove si trovava
il caro amico Donato degli Albanzani[91] e dove la Repubblica gli concesse in
uso Palazzo Molin delle due Torri (sulla Riva degli Schiavoni)[92] in cambio
della promessa di donazione, alla morte, della sua biblioteca, che era allora
certamente la più grande biblioteca privata d'Europa: si tratta della prima
testimonianza di un progetto di "bibliotheca publica"[93]. La
casa veneziana fu molto amata dal poeta, che ne parla indirettamente nella
Seniles, IV, 4 quando descrive, al destinatario Pietro da Bologna, le sue
abitudini quotidiane (la lettera è datata intorno al 1364/65)[94]. Vi
risiedette stabilmente fino al 1368 (tranne alcuni periodi a Pavia e Padova) e
vi ospitò Giovanni Boccaccio e Leonzio Pilato. Durante il soggiorno veneziano,
trascorso in compagnia degli amici più intimi[95], della figlia naturale
Francesca (sposatasi nel 1361 con il milanese Francescuolo da Brossano[96]),
Petrarca decise di affidare al copista Giovanni Malpaghini la trascrizione in
bella copia delle Familiares e del Canzoniere[N 14]. La tranquillità di quegli
anni fu turbata, nel 1367, dall'attacco maldestro e violento mosso alla
cultura, all'opera e alla figura sua da quattro filosofi averroisti che lo
accusarono di ignoranza[64]. L'episodio fu l'occasione per la stesura del
trattato De sui ipsius et multorum ignorantia, in cui Petrarca difende la
propria "ignoranza" in campo aristotelico a favore della filosofia
neoplatonica-cristiana, più incentrata sui problemi della natura umana rispetto
alla prima, intesa a indagare la natura sulla base dei dogmi del filosofo di
Stagira[97]. Amareggiato per l'indifferenza dei veneziani davanti alle accuse
rivoltegli, Petrarca decise di abbandonare la città lagunare e annullare così
la donazione della sua biblioteca alla Serenissima. L'epilogo padovano e
la morte (1367-1374) La casa di Petrarca ad Arquà Petrarca, località sita
sui colli Euganei nei pressi di Padova, dove l'ormai anziano poeta trascorse
gli ultimi anni di vita. Della dimora Petrarca parla nella Seniles, XV, 5. Petrarca,
dopo alcuni brevi viaggi, accolse l'invito dell'amico ed estimatore Francesco I
da Carrara di stabilirsi a Padova nella primavera del 1368[64]. È ancora
visibile, in Via Dietro Duomo 26/28 a Padova, la casa canonicale di Francesco
Petrarca, che fu assegnata al poeta in seguito al conferimento del canonicato.
Il signore di Padova donò poi, nel 1369, una casa situata nella località di
Arquà, un tranquillo paese sui colli Euganei, dove poter vivere[98]. Lo stato
della casa, però, era abbastanza dissestato e ci vollero alcuni mesi prima che
potesse avvenire il definitivo trasferimento nella nuova dimora, avvenuta nel
marzo del 1370[99]. La vita dell'anziano Petrarca, che fu raggiunto dalla
famiglia della figlia Francesca nel 1371[100], si alternò prevalentemente tra
il soggiorno nella sua amata casa di Arquà[N 15] e quella vicina al Duomo di
Padova[101], allietato spesso dalle visite dei suoi vecchi amici ed estimatori,
oltre a quelli nuovi conosciuti nella città veneta, tra cui si ricorda Lombardo
della Seta, che dal 1367 aveva sostituito Giovanni Malpaghini quale copista e
segretario del poeta laureato[102]. In quegli anni Petrarca si mosse dal
padovano soltanto una volta quando, nell'ottobre del 1373, fu a Venezia quale
paciere per il trattato di pace tra i veneziani e Francesco da Carrara[103]:
per il resto del tempo si dedicò alla revisione delle sue opere e, in special
modo, del Canzoniere, attività che portò avanti fino agli ultimi giorni di
vita[79]. Colpito da una sincope, morì ad Arquà nella notte fra il 18 e
il 19 luglio del 1374[103], esattamente alla vigilia del suo settantesimo
compleanno e, secondo la leggenda, mentre esaminava un testo di Virgilio, come
auspicato in una lettera al Boccaccio[104]. Il frate dell'Ordine degli
Eremitani di sant'Agostino Bonaventura Badoer Peraga fu scelto per tenere
l'orazione funebre in occasione dei funerali, che si svolsero il 24 luglio
nella chiesa di Santa Maria Assunta alla presenza di Francesco da Carrara e di
molte altre personalità laiche ed ecclesiastiche[105]. Per volontà
testamentaria le spoglie di Petrarca furono sepolte nella chiesa parrocchiale
del paese[105], per poi essere collocate dal genero, nel 1380, in un'arca
marmorea accanto alla chiesa[106]. Le vicende dei resti del Petrarca, come
quelli di Dante, non furono tranquille. Come racconta Giovanni Canestrini in un
suo volume scritto in occasione del 500º anniversario della morte del
Petrarca «Nel 1630, e precisamente dopo la mezzanotte del 27 maggio,
questa tomba fu spezzata all'angolo di mezzodì [quindi a sud, n.d.a], e vennero
rapite alcune ossa del braccio destro. Autore del furto fu un certo Tommaso
Martinelli, frate da Portogruaro, il quale, a quanto dice un'antica pergamena
dell'archivio comunale di Arquà, venne spedito in quel luogo dai fiorentini,
con ordine di riportare seco qualche parte dello scheletro del Petrarca. La
veneta repubblica fece riattare l'urna, suggellando con arpioni le fenditure
del marmo, e ponendovi lo stemma di Padova e l'epoca del misfatto.»
(Canestrini2) I resti trafugati non furono mai recuperati. Nel 1843 la tomba,
che versava in stato pessimo, venne sottoposta a restauro del quale venne
incaricato lo storico patavino Pier Carlo Leoni, impietosito dallo stato
pessimo in cui il sepolcro versava.[107] Il Leoni, però, a seguito di
complicazioni burocratiche e di conflitti di competenza e questioni anche
politiche, fu addirittura processato con l'accusa di "violata
sepoltura".[108] Il dilemma dei resti Il 5 aprile 2004 vennero resi
noti i risultati dell'analisi dei resti conservati nella tomba del poeta ad
Arquà Petrarca: il teschio presente, peraltro ridotto in frammenti, una volta
ricostruito, è stato riconosciuto come femminile e quindi non pertinente. Un
frammento di pochi grammi del cranio, inviato a Tucson in Arizona ed esaminato
con il metodo del radiocarbonio, ha inoltre consentito di accertare che il
cranio femminile ritrovato nel sepolcro risale al 1207 circa. A chi sia
appartenuto e perché si trovasse nella tomba del Petrarca è ancora un mistero,
come un mistero è dove sia finito il vero cranio del poeta. Lo scheletro è
stato invece riconosciuto come autentico: esso riporta alcune costole
fratturate; Petrarca fu infatti ferito da una cavalla con un calcio al
costato[109][110]. Pensiero e poetica Anonimo, Francesco Petrarca
nello studium, affresco murale, ultimo quarto del secolo XIV, Reggia Carrarese,
Sala dei Giganti, Padova. Il messaggio petrarchesco Il concetto di humanitas
Petrarca, fin dalla giovinezza, manifestò sempre un'insofferenza innata nei
confronti della cultura a lui coeva. Come già ricordato nella sezione
biografica, la sua passione per l'agostinismo da un lato, e per i classici
latini "liberati" dalle interpretazioni allegoriche medievali
dall'altro, pongono Petrarca come l'iniziatore dell'umanesimo che, nel corso
del XV secolo, si svilupperà prima in Italia, e poi nel resto d'Europa[111].
Nel De remediis utriusque fortune, ciò che interessa maggiormente a Petrarca è
l'humanitas, cioè l'insieme delle qualità che danno fondamento ai valori più
umani della vita, con un'ansia di meditazione e di ricerca tra erudita ed
esistenziale intesa ad indagare l'anima in tutte le sue sfaccettature[112]. Di
conseguenza, Petrarca pone al centro della sua riflessione intellettuale
l'essere umano, spostando l'attenzione dall'assoluto teocentrismo (tipico della
cultura medievale) all'antropocentrismo moderno. Petrarca e i classici
Fondamentale, nel pensiero petrarchesco, è la riscoperta dei classici. Già
conosciuti nel Medioevo, erano stati oggetto però di una rivisitazione in
chiave cristiana, che non teneva quindi conto del contesto storico-culturale in
cui le opere erano state scritte[113]. Per esempio, la figura di Virgilio fu
vista come quella di un mago/profeta, capace di adombrare, nell'Ecloga IV delle
Bucoliche, la nascita di Cristo, anziché quella di Asinio Gallo, figlio del
politico romano Asinio Pollione: un'ottica che Dante accolse pienamente nel
Virgilio della Commedia[114]. Petrarca, rispetto ai suoi contemporanei, rifiuta
il travisamento dei classici operato fino a quel momento, ridando loro quella
patina di storicità e di inquadramento culturale necessaria per stabilire con
essi un colloquio costante, come fece nel libro XXIV delle
Familiares[115]: «Scrivere a Cicerone o a Seneca, celebrandone l'opera o
magari deplorandone con benevolenza mancanze e contraddizioni, era per lui un
modo letterariamente tangibile (e per noi assai significativo simbolicamente)
di mostrare quanto a loro dovesse, quanto li sentisse, appunto, idealmente suoi
contemporanei.» (Guglielmino-Grosser182) Oltre alle epistole, all'Africa
e al De viris illustribus, Petrarca operò tale riscoperta attraverso il metodo
filologico da lui ideato tra il 1325 e il 1337 e la ricostruzione dell'opera
liviana e la composizione del Virgilio ambrosiano. Altro aspetto da cui
traspare questo innovativo approccio alle fonti e alle testimonianze
storico-letterarie si avverte, anche, nell'ambito della numismatica, della
quale Petrarca è ritenuto il precursore[116].Per quanto riguarda la prima
opera, Petrarca decise di riunire le varie decadi (cioè i libri di cui l'opera
è composta) allora conosciute (I, III e IV decade) in un unico codice,
l'attuale codice Harleiano 2193, conservato ora al British Museum di
Londra[117]. Il giovane Petrarca si dedicò a quest'opera di collazione per
cinque anni, dal 1325 al 1330, grazie ad un lavoro di ricerca e di enorme
pazienza[118]. Nel 1326, Petrarca prese la terza decade (tramandata da un
manoscritto risalente al XIII secolo[119]), correggendola e integrandola ora
con un manoscritto veronese del X secolo vergato dal dotto vescovo
Raterio[119], ora con una lezione conservata nella Biblioteca Capitolare della
Cattedrale di Chartres[120], il Parigino Latino 5690 acquistato dal vecchio
canonico Landolfo Colonna[121], contenente anche la quarta decade[119].
Quest'ultima fu poi corretta su di un codice risalente al secolo precedente e
appartenuto al preumanista padovano Lovato Lovati (1240-1309)[119]. Infine,
dopo aver raccolto anche la prima decade, Petrarca poté procedere a riunire gli
sparsi lavori di recupero nel 1330[122]. Il Virgilio Ambrosiano L'impresa
riguardante la costruzione del Virgilio ambrosiano è invece molto più
complessa. Iniziato già quand'era in vita il padre Petracco, il lavoro di
collazione portò alla nascita di un codice composto di 300 fogli manoscritti
che conteneva l'omnia virgiliana (Bucoliche, Georgiche ed Eneide commentati dal
grammatico Servio del VI secolo), al quale furono aggiunte quattro Odi di
Orazio e l'Achilleide di Stazio[123]. Le vicende di tale manoscritto sono assai
travagliate. Sottrattogli nel 1326 dagli esecutori testamentari del padre, il
Virgilio ambrosiano verrà recuperato solo nel 1338, data in cui Petrarca
commissionò al celebre pittore Simone Martini una serie di miniature che lo abbellirono
esteticamente[124]. Alla morte del Petrarca il manoscritto finì nella
biblioteca dei Carraresi a Padova, tuttavia, nel 1388, Gian Galeazzo Visconti
conquistò Padova ed il codice fu inviato, insieme ad altri manoscritti del
Petrarca, a Pavia, nella Biblioteca Visconteo-Sforzesca situata nel castello di
Pavia[125]. Nel 1471 Galeazzo Maria Sforza ordinò al castellano di Pavia di
prestare, per 20 giorni, il manoscritto allo zio Alessandro signore di Pesaro,
poi il Virgilio Ambrosiano tornò a Pavia. Nel 1499, Luigi XII conquistò il
Ducato di Milano e la biblioteca Visconteo-Sforzesca venne trasferita in
Francia, dove ancora si conservano, nella Bibliothèque nationale de France,
circa 400 manoscritti provenienti da Pavia. Tuttavia il Virgilio Ambrosiano fu
sottratto al saccheggio francese da un certo Antonio di Pirro. Sappiamo che a
fine Cinquecento si trovava a Roma, ed era di proprietà del cardinal Agostino
Cusani, fu poi acquistato da Federico Borromeo per l'Ambrosiana[126].
L'umanesimo cristiano Magnifying glass icon mgx2.svgUmanesimo cristiano.
La religiosità petrarchesca Il messaggio petrarchesco, nonostante la sua presa
di posizione a favore della natura umana, non si dislega dalla dimensione
religiosa: difatti, il legame con l'agostinismo e la tensione verso una sempre
più ricercata perfezione morale sono chiavi costanti all'interno della sua
produzione letteraria e filosofica. Rispetto, però, alla tradizione medievale,
la religiosità petrarchesca è caratterizzata da tre nuove accezioni prima mai manifestate:
la prima, il rapporto intimo tra l'anima e Dio, un rapporto basato
sull'autocoscienza personale alla luce della verità divina[127]; la seconda, la
rivalutazione della tradizione morale e filosofica classica, vista in un
rapporto di continuità con il cristianesimo e non più in chiave di contrasto o
di mera subordinazione[128]; infine, il rapporto "esclusivo" tra
Petrarca e Dio, che rifiuta la concezione collettiva propria della Commedia
dantesca[129]. Comunanza tra valori classici e cristiani La lezione
morale degli antichi è universale e valida per ogni epoca: l'humanitas di
Cicerone non è diversa da quella di Agostino, in quanto esprimono gli stessi
valori, quali l'onestà, il rispetto, la fedeltà nell'amicizia e il culto della
conoscenza[130]. Sul legame spirituale tra gli antichi e i cristiani è
significativo il celebre passo della morte di Magone, fratello di Annibale che,
nell'Africa VI, vv. 889-913[131], ormai morente, pronuncia un discorso sulla
vanità delle cose umane e sul valore liberatorio della morte dalle fatiche
terrene che in nessun modo si discosta dal pensiero cristiano[132], anche se
tale discorso fu criticato da molti ambienti che ritenevano una scelta infelice
porre in bocca ad un pagano un pensiero così cristiano[133]. Ecco un passo del
lamento di Magone: Edizione dell'Africa stampata nel 1501 a
Venezia, nella stamperia di Aldo Manuzio. Nel particolare, l'Incipit del
poema. «Heu qualis fortunae terminus
alte est! / Quam laetis mens caeca bonis! furor ecce potentum / praecipiti
gaudere loco; status iste procellis / subjacet innumeris, et finis ad alta
levatis / est ruere. Heu tremulum magnorum culmen honorum, Spesque hominum
fallax, et inanis gloria fictis / illita blanditiis! Heu vita incerta labori /
dedita perpetuo, semperque heu certa, nec unquam / Stat morti praevisa dies!
Heu sortis iniquae / natus homo in terris!» «O qual è il traguardo
dell'alta sorte! / Quanto l'anima (è) cieca davanti alle fauste imprese! Ecco
la follia dei potenti, godere delle altezze vertiginose; questo stato è esposto
ad infinite tempeste, ed è destinato a cadere chi si è innalzato a quelle
vette. O tremante sommità dei grandi onori, fallace speranza degli uomini, vana
gloria adornata da finti piaceri! O vita incerta, dedita ad una fatica incessante,
come certo è il giorno di morte, né mai previsto abbastanza! O che sorte iniqua
per l'uomo nato sulla terra!» (Africa, vv. 889-898) L'agostinismo del
Secretum e dell'Ascesa al Monte Ventoso Vista del Mont Ventoux dalla
località di Mirabel-aux-Baronnies. Infine, per il suo carattere fortemente
personale, l'umanesimo cristiano petrarchesco trova nel pensiero di
sant'Agostino il proprio modello etico-spirituale, contrario al sistema
filosofico tolemaico-aristotelico allora imperante nella cultura teologica,
visto come alieno dalla cura dell'anima umana[134]. A tal proposito, il
filosofo Giovanni Reale delinea lucidamente la posizione di Petrarca verso la
cultura contemporanea: «La diffusione dell'averroismo, col crescente
interesse che suscitava per l'indagine naturalistica, sembra a Petrarca che
distragga pericolosamente da quelle arti liberali, che sole possono dare la
sapienza necessaria per conseguire la pace spirituale in questa vita e la
beatitudine eterna nell'altra [...] La sapienza classica e cristiana, che
Petrarca contrappone alla scienza averroistica, è quella fondata sulla
meditazione interiore attraverso alla quale si chiarisce a sé stessa e si forma
la personalità del singolo uomo.» (Reale16) L'importanza che Agostino
ebbe per l'uomo Petrarca è evidente in due celebri testi letterari del Nostro:
il Secretum da un lato, in cui il vescovo d'Ippona interloquisce con Petrarca
spingendolo ad un'acuta quanto forte analisi interiore dei propri peccati;
dall'altro, il celebre episodio dell'ascesa al Monte Ventoso, narrato nella
Familiares, IV, 1, inviata (seppur in modo fittizio[N 16]) a Dionigi da Borgo
San Sepolcro[135].La forte vena morale che percorre tutte le opere
petrarchesche, sia latine che volgari, tende a trasmettere un messaggio di
perfezione morale: il Secretum, il De remediis, le raccolte epistolari e lo
stesso Canzoniere sono impregnati di questa tensione etica volta a risanare le
deviazioni dell'anima attraverso la via della virtù[136]. Tale applicazione
etica negli scritti (l'oratio), però, deve corrispondere alla vita quotidiana
(la vita, appunto) se l'umanista vuole trasmettere un'etica credibile ai
destinatari. Prova di questo binomio essenziale è, per esempio, la Familiares,
XXIV, 3 indirizzata a Marco Tullio Cicerone[N 17]. In essa il poeta esprime, in
un tono di amarezza e di rabbia al contempo, la scelta dell'oratore romano di
essersi allontanato dall'otium letterario di Tuscolo per addentrarsi nuovamente
nell'agone politico dopo la morte di Cesare e schierarsi a fianco del giovane
Ottaviano contro Marco Antonio, tradendo così i principi etici esposti nei suoi
trattati filosofici: «Ma qual furore a danno di Antonio ti mosse?
Risponderai per avventura l'amore alla Repubblica, che dicevi caduta in fondo.
Ma se codesta fede, se amore di libertà ti sprone (come di sì grand'uomo
stimare si converrebbe), ond'è che tanto fosti amico di Augusto? [... ] Io ti
compiango, amico, e di sì grandi tuoi falli sento vergogna. [...] Oh! quanto
era meglio ad un filosofo tuo pari nel silenzio dei campi, pensoso, come tu
dici, non della breve e caduca presente vita, ma della eterna, passar
tranquilla vecchiezza [...]» (Delle cose familiari, XXIV, 3, A M.T.
Cicerone, traduzione di G. Fracassetti, 5, p. 141) L'impegno
"civile" del letterato La declinazione dell'impegno morale nella vita
attiva delinea una vocazione "civile" del letterato. Tale attributo,
prima ancora di intendersi come impegno nella vita politica del tempo,
dev'essere compreso nella sua declinazione prettamente sociale, quale impegno
del letterato nell'aiutare gli uomini contemporanei a migliorarsi costantemente
attraverso il dialogo e il senso di carità nei confronti del prossimo[137].
Oltre ai trattati morali, scritti per questo fine, si deve però anche
registrare che cosa significasse per Petrarca, nella sua stessa vita, l'impegno
civile. Il servizio presso i potenti di turno (i Colonna, i Da Correggio, i
Visconti e poi i Da Carrara) spinse gli amici di Petrarca ad avvertirlo della
minaccia che tali regnanti avrebbero potuto costituire per la sua indipendenza
intellettuale; egli, però, nella famosa Epistola posteritati (Epistola ai
posteri), ribadì la sua proclamata indipendenza dagli intrighi di corte:
Altichiero, Ritratto di Francesco Petrarca, dal ms. lat. 6069 f della Bibliotèque
Nationale de France (Parigi), contenente il De viris illustribus[138]. «I più
grandi monarchi dell'età mia m'ebbero in grazia, e fecero a gara per trarmi a
loro, né so perché. Questo so che alcuni di loro parevan piuttosto essere
favoriti della mia, che non favorirmi della loro dimestichezza: sì che
dall'alto loro grado io molti vantaggi, ma nessun fastidio giammai ebbi
ritratto. Tanto peraltro in me fu forte l'amore della mia libertà, che da
chiunque di loro avesse nome di avversarla mi tenni studiosamente lontano.»
(Ai posteri, traduzione di G. Fracassetti, 1203) Nonostante l'intento
autocelebrativo proprio dell'epistola, Petrarca rimarca il fatto che i potenti
vollero averlo di fianco a sé per questioni di prestigio, facendo sì che il
poeta finisse «per non identificarsi mai fino in fondo con le loro prese di
posizioni»[128]. Il legame con le corti signorili, scelte per motivazioni
economiche e di protezione, gettò pertanto le basi per la figura
dell'intellettuale cortigiano, modello per gli uomini di cultura nei secoli
successivi[128]. Se Dante, costretto a vagare per le corti dell'Italia
centro-settentrionale, soffrì sempre per la lontananza da Firenze[139],
Petrarca fondò, con la sua scelta di vita, il modello dell'intellettuale
cosmopolita, segnando così il tramonto dell'ideologia comunale che era stata
fondamento della sensibilità dantesca prima, e che in parte fu propria del
contemporaneo Boccaccio[140]. L'otium letterario Altra caratteristica
propria dell'intellettuale petrarchesco è l'otium, vale a dire il riposo.
Parola latina indicante, in generale, il riposo dei patrizi romani dalle
attività proprie del negotium[N 18], Petrarca la riprende rivestendola però di
un significato diverso: non più riposo assoluto, ma attività intellettuale
nella tranquillità di un rifugio appartato, solitario ove potersi concentrare e
portare, poi, agli uomini il messaggio morale nato da questo ritiro. Questo
ritiro, come è esposto nei trattati ascetici del De vita solitaria e del De
otio religioso, è vicino, per sensibilità del Petrarca, ai ritiri
ascetico-spirituali dei Padri della Chiesa, dimostrando quindi come l'attività
letteraria sia, nel contempo, fortemente intrisa di carica
religiosa[141].Petrarca, con l'eccezione di due sole opere poetiche, i Triumphi
e il Canzoniere, scrisse esclusivamente in latino, la lingua di quegli antichi
romani di cui voleva riproporre la virtus nel mondo a lui contemporaneo. Egli
credeva di raggiungere il successo con le opere in latino, ma di fatto la sua
fama è legata alle opere in volgare. Al contrario di Dante, che aveva voluto
affidare la sua memoria ai posteri con la Commedia, Petrarca decise di eternare
il suo nome riallacciandosi ai grandi dell'antichità: «Il Petrarca (a
parte una letterina in volgare) scrive sempre in latino quando deve comunicare,
anche privatamente, anche per le annotazioni ai margini dei libri. Questa
scelta del latino come lingua esclusiva della prosa e della normale
comunicazione scritta, inserendosi nel più ampio progetto culturale che ispira
il Petrarca, si carica di valori ideali.» (Guglielmino-Grosser182)
Petrarca preferì usare il volgare nei momenti di pausa dall'elaborazione delle
grandi opere latine. Difatti, come più volte definì le liriche che confluiranno
nel Canzoniere, esse valgono quali nugae[N 19], cioè quale «elegante
divertimento dello scrittore, a cui dedicò senza dubbio molte cure, ma a cui
non avrebbe mai pensato di affidare quasi per intero la propria immortalità
letteraria»[142]. Il volgare petrarchesco, al contrario di quello dantesco, è
caratterizzato però da un'accurata selezione di termini, cui il poeta continuò
a lavorare, limando le sue poesie (da qui la limatio petrarchesca) per la
definizione di una poesia «aristocratica»[143], elemento che spingerà il
critico letterario Gianfranco Contini a parlare di monolinguismo petrarchesco,
in contrapposizione al pluristilismo dantesco[144]. Dante e Petrarca
Magnifying glass icon mgx2.svg Influenza culturale di Dante Alighieri §
Petrarca e Boccaccio. Dalle considerazioni fatte, emerge chiaramente la
profonda differenza esistente tra Petrarca e Dante: se il primo è un uomo che
supera il teocentrismo medievale incentrato sulla Scolastica in nome del
recupero agostiniano e dei classici "depurati" dall'interpretazione
allegorica cristiana indebitamente appostavi dai commentatori medievali, Dante
mostra invece di essere un uomo totalmente medievale. Oltre alle considerazioni
filosofiche, i due uomini sono antitetici anche per la scelta linguistica cui
legare la propria fama, per la concezione dell'amore, per l'attaccamento alla
patria. Illuminante sul sentimento che Petrarca nutrì per l'Alighieri è la
Familiares, XXI, 15, scritta in risposta all'amico Boccaccio, incredulo delle
dicerie secondo cui Petrarca odiasse Dante. In tale lettera, Petrarca afferma
che non può odiare qualcuno che egli conobbe appena e che affrontò con onore e
sopportazione l'esilio, ma prende le distanze dall'ideologia dantesca,
esprimendo il timore di essere "influenzato" da un così grande
esempio poetico se avesse deciso di scrivere liriche in volgare, liriche che
sono facilmente sottoposte allo storpiamento da parte del volgo[145].
Opere Opere latine in versi L'Africa Magnifying glass icon mgx2.svgAfrica
(Petrarca). Altichiero, Ritratto di Francesco Petrarca (in primo piano) e
di Lombardo della Seta, particolare tratto dall'affresco rappresentante
l'episodio di San Giorgio battezza re Servio di Cirene, Oratorio di San
Giorgio, 1376, Padova[146]. Scritto fra il 1339 e il 1342 e in seguito corretto
e ritoccato, Africa è un poema epico che tratta della seconda guerra punica e
in particolare delle gesta di Scipione. Rimasto incompiuto, è formato da nove
libri, mentre avrebbe dovuto essere composto di 12 libri, secondo il modello
dell'Eneide virgiliana[147].Il Bucolicum carmen Magnifying glass icon mgx2.svgBucolicum
carmen. Composto fra il 1346 e il 1358 e costituito da dodici egloghe, gli
argomenti spaziano fra amore, politica e morale. Anche in questo caso,
l'ascendenza virgiliana è evidente dal titolo, che richiama fortemente lo stile
e gli argomenti delle Bucoliche. Attualmente, la lezione del Bucolicum
petrarchesco è riportata dal codice Vaticano lat. 3358[148]. Le Epistolae
metricae Magnifying glass icon mgx2.svg Epistolae metricae. Scritte fra il 1333
e il 1361 e dedicate all'amico Barbato da Sulmona, sono 66 lettere in esametri,
di cui alcune trattano d'amore, mentre per la maggior parte si occupano di
politica, morale o di materie letterarie[149]. I Psalmi penitentiales
Scritti nel 1347, Petrarca ne accenna nella Seniles, X, 1 a Sagremor de
Pommiers. Sono una raccolta di sette preghiere basate sul modello
stilistico-linguistico dei salmi davidici della Bibbia, in cui Petrarca chiede
perdono per i suoi peccati e aspira al perdono della Misericordia
divina[150]. Opere latine in prosa Petrarca, De viris illustribus,
codice autografo custodito alla Bibliothèque Nationale de France di Parigi,
classificato come MS Lat. 5784, fol. 4r. Il De viris illustribus Magnifying
glass icon mgx2.svg De viris illustribus (Petrarca). Il De viris illustribus è
una raccolta di 36 biografie di uomini illustri in prosa latina, redatta a
partire dal 1338 e dedicata a Francesco I da Carrara signore di Padova nel
1358. Nell'intenzione originale dell'autore l'opera doveva trattare la vita di
personaggi della storia di Roma da Romolo a Tito, ma arrivò solo fino a Nerone.
In seguito Petrarca aggiunse personaggi di tutti i tempi, cominciando da Adamo
e arrivando a Ercole. L'opera rimase incompiuta e fu continuata dall'amico e
discepolo padovano di Petrarca, Lombardo della Seta, fino alla vita di
Traiano[151]. I Rerum memorandarum libri Magnifying glass icon mgx2.svg
Rerum memorandarum libri. I Rerum memorandarum libri (Libri delle gesta
memorabili) sono una raccolta di esempi storici e aneddoti a scopo d'educazione
morale in prosa latina, basati sui Factorum et dictorum memorabilium libri
dello scrittore latino Valerio Massimo[152]. Iniziati verso il 1343 in
Provenza, furono continuati fino al 1345, allorché Petrarca scoprì le orazioni
ciceroniane a Verona, e ne fu indotto al progetto delle Familiares. Difatti,
furono lasciati incompiuti dall'autore, che ne scrisse soltanto i primi 4 libri
e alcuni frammenti del quinto libro[153]. Il Secretum Magnifying glass
icon mgx2.svgSecretum. Petrarca, Secretum, Grootseminaire (Bruges),
tratto dal MS 113/78 fol. Ir., realizzato nel 1470 per Jan Crabble. Il Secretum
o De secreto conflictu curarum mearum è una delle opere più celebri di Petrarca
e fu composta tra il 1347 e il 1353, anche se in seguito fu riveduta. Articolato
come un dialogo immaginario in tre libri tra il poeta stesso (che si fa
chiamare semplicemente Francesco) e sant'Agostino, alla presenza di una donna
muta che simboleggia la Verità, il Secretum consiste in una sorta di esame di
coscienza personale nel quale si affrontano temi intimi del poeta, da cui il
titolo dell'opera. Come emerge però nel corso della trattazione, Francesco non
si mostra mai del tutto contrito dei suoi peccati (l'accidia e l'amore carnale
per Laura): al termine dell'esame egli non risulterà guarito o pentito, dando
così forma a quell'irrequietezza d'animo che contraddistinse la vita del
Petrarca[154]. Il De vita solitaria Magnifying glass icon mgx2.svg De
vita solitaria. Il De vita Solitaria ("La vita solitaria") è un
trattato di carattere religioso e morale. Fu elaborato nel 1346, ma venne
successivamente ampliato nel 1353 e nel 1366. L'autore vi esalta la solitudine,
tema caro anche all'ascetismo medioevale, ma il punto di vista con cui la
osserva non è strettamente religioso: al rigore della vita monastica Petrarca
contrappone l'isolamento operoso dell'intellettuale, dedito alle letture e alla
scrittura in luoghi appartati e sereni, in compagnia di amici e di altri
intellettuali. L'isolamento dello studioso in una cornice naturale che
favorisce la concentrazione è l'unica forma di solitudine e di distacco dal
mondo che Petrarca riuscì a conseguire, non considerandola in contrasto con i
valori spirituali cristiani, in quanto riteneva che la saggezza contenuta nei
libri, soprattutto nei testi classici, fosse in perfetta sintonia con quelli.
Da questa sua posizione è derivata l'espressione di "umanesimo
cristiano" di Petrarca[141]. Il De otio religioso Magnifying glass
icon mgx2.svg De otio religioso. Redatto all'incirca tra il 1347 e il 1356/57,
il De otio religioso è un'esaltazione della vita monastica, dedicata al
fratello Gherardo. Simile al De vita solitaria, esalta però soprattutto la
solitudine legata alle regole degli ordini religiosi, definita come la migliore
condizione di vita possibile[152].Il De remediis utriusque fortunae Magnifying
glass icon mgx2.svgDe remediis utriusque fortunae. Il De remediis è una
raccolta di brevi dialoghi scritti in prosa latina, redatta all'incirca tra il
1356 e il 1366, anno in cui fu diffusa. Basata sul modello del De remediis
fortuitorum, trattato pseudo-senechiano composto nel Medioevo, l'opera è
composta da 254 scambi di battute tra entità allegoriche: prima il
"Gaudio" e la "Ragione", poi il "Dolore" e la "Ragione".
Simile ai precedenti Rerum memorandarum libri, questi dialoghi hanno scopi
educativi e moralistici, proponendosi di rafforzare l'individuo contro i colpi
della fortuna sia buona che avversa[155]. Il De remediis riporta anche una
delle più esplicite condanne della cultura trecentensca da parte del Petrarca,
vista come sciocca e superflua:
«Ut ad plenum auctorum constet integritas, quis scriptorum inscitie
inertieque medebitur corrumpenti omnia miscentique? Cuius metu multa iam, ut
auguror, a magnis operibus clara ingenia refrixerunt meritoque id patitur
ignavissima etas hec, culine sollicita, literarum negligens et coquos
examinans, non scriptores.» «Perché persista pienamente l'integrità degli
scrittori antichi, chi tra i copisti guarirà ogni cosa dall'ignoranza,
dall'inerzia, dalla rovina e dal caos? Per il timore di ciò si indebolirono,
come prevedo, molti celebri ingegni dalle grandi opere, e quest'epoca
indolentissima permette ciò, dedita alla culinaria, ignorante delle lettere e
che valuta i cuochi, e non i copisti.» (Petrarca, cap. 43) Invectivarum
contra medicum quendam libri IV Magnifying glass icon mgx2.sv Invectivarum contra medicum quendam libri IV.
L'occasione per la scrittura di questa serie di accuse nei confronti dei medici
fu la malattia che colpì papa Clemente VI nel 1352. Nella Familiares, V, 19,
Petrarca consigliava al pontefice di non fidarsi dei suoi archiatri, accusati
di essere dei ciarlatani dalle idee contrastanti fra di loro. Davanti alle
forti rimostranze dei medici pontifici nei confronti di Petrarca, questi
scrisse quattro libri di accuse, una copia dei quali fu inviata poi al
Boccaccio nel 1357[156]. De sui ipsius et multorum ignorantia Magnifying
glass icon mgx2.svg De sui ipsius et multorum ignorantia. Scuola
fiorentina, Il Trionfo della Morte tratta da I Trionfi di Petrarca, XV secolo,
miniatura, ms. Palat.192, f.22r, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Firenze.
L'opera, come ricordato prima nella sezione biografica relativa al periodo
veneziano, fu scritta in seguito alle accuse di ignoranza che quattro giovani
aristotelici rivolsero a Petrarca, in quanto alieno dalla terminologia e dalle
questioni delle scienze naturali. In quest'apologia del pensiero umanistico,
Petrarca rispose come lui fosse interessato alle scienze che interessassero il
benessere dell'anima umana, e non alle discussioni tecniche e dogmatiche
proprie del nominalismo della tarda scolastica[88]. Invectiva contra
cuiusdam anonimi Galli calumnia Magnifying glass icon mgx2.svgInvectiva contra
cuiusdam anonimi Galli calumnia. Opera di carattere politico scritta nel 1373,
l'invettiva era rivolta ad un monaco e teologo francese, Jean de Hesdin,
sostenitore della necessità che la sede del Papato rimanesse ad Avignone. Per
tutta risposta Petrarca sostenne la necessità che il papa ritornasse a Roma,
sua sede diocesana e simbolo dell'antica gloria romana[64]. Epistolae Magnifying
glass icon mgx2.svgEpistole. Di grande importanza sono le epistole latine in
prosa, in quanto contribuiscono a costruire l'immagine autobiografica
idealizzata che il poeta stesso ha voluto offrire di sé e quindi la sua
eternizzazione. Basate sul modello ciceroniano-senecano, ricavato dalla
scoperta delle Epistulae ad Atticum compiuta da Petrarca a Verona del 1345[65],
le lettere sono disposte in ordine cronologico e raggruppate in quattro
raccolte epistolari: le Familiares (o Familiarum rerum libri o De rebus
familiaribus libri), 350 epistole in 24 libri, dedicate a Ludwig van Kempen,
sotto lo pseudonimo di Socrate; le Seniles, 126 epistole in 17 libri, scritte a
partire dal 1361[157] e dedicate a Francesco Nelli, sotto lo pseudonimo di
Simonide; le Sine nomine (cioè "senza nome del destinatario"), 19
epistole politiche in un libro; e le Variae, 76 epistole, queste ultime non
raggruppate dall'autore, ma dopo la sua morte dagli amici.[158] È rimasta
intenzionalmente esclusa dalle raccolte l'epistola Posteritati (Ai posteri). Le
lettere spaziano dagli anni bolognesi sino alla fine della vita del
Petrarca[159] e sono indirizzate a vari personaggi suoi contemporanei, ma, nel caso
del XXIV libro delle Familiares, sono rivolte fittiziamente a personaggi
dell'antichità. Sempre delle Familiares è celebre l'epistola IV, 1 incentrata
sull'ascesa al Monte Ventoso.Opere in volgare Francesco Petrarca, Rime,
codice membranaceo ms. I 12, c. 1r. conservato al Museo Petrarchesco
Piccolomineo, Trieste, risalente ai secoli fine XV, inizio XVI. Il particolare
riporta il primo sonetto del Canzoniere. Il Canzoniere Magnifying glass icon
mgx2.svg Canzoniere (Petrarca). «Voi ch’ascoltate in rime sparse il suono / di
quei sospiri ond’io nudriva ’l core / in sul mio primo giovenile errore /
quand’era in parte altr’uom da quel ch’i’ sono...» (Petrarca, Voi
ch'ascoltate in rime sparse il suono, prima quartina della lirica d'apertura
del Canzoniere) Il Canzoniere, il cui titolo originale è Francisci Petrarchae
laureati poetae Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, è la storia poetica della vita
interiore del Petrarca vicina, per introspezione e tematiche, al Secretum. La
raccolta comprende 366 componimenti (365 più uno introduttivo: "Voi
ch'ascoltate in rime sparse il suono"): 317 sonetti, 29 canzoni, 9
sestine, 7 ballate e 4 madrigali, divisi tra rime in vita e rime in morte di
Madonna Laura [N 20], celebrata quale donna superiore, senza però raggiungere
il livello della donna angelo della Beatrice dantesca. Difatti, Laura
invecchia, subisce il corso del tempo, e non è portatrice di alcun attributo
divino nel senso teologico stilnovista-dantesco[160]. Anzi, la storia del
Canzoniere, più che la celebrazione di un amore, è il percorso di una
progressiva conversione dell'anima: si passa, infatti, dal giovanil errore
(l'amore terreno per Laura) ricordato nel sonetto introduttivo Voi ch'ascoltate
in rime sparse, alla canzone Vergine bella, che di sol vestita in cui Petrarca
affida la sua anima alla protezione di Maria perché trovi finalmente pietà e
riposo[N 21]. L'opera, che richiese a Petrarca quasi quarant'anni di
continue rivisitazioni stilistiche (da qui la cosiddetta limatio petrarchesca[N
22]), prima di trovare la forma definitiva subì, secondo gli studi compiuti da
Wilkins, ben nove fasi di redazioni, di cui la prima risale al 1336-38, e
l'ultima al 1373-74, che è quella contenuta nel codice Vaticano Latino
3195[161]. I Trionfi Magnifying glass icon mgx2.svgI Trionfi. I
"Trionfi" (la titolazione originale è in latino, Triumphi) sono un
poemetto allegorico in volgare toscano, in terzine dantesche, incominciato da
Petrarca nel 1351, durante il periodo milanese, e mai portato a termine.
Il poema è ambientato in una dimensione onirica e irreale (strettissimo, per
scelta metrica e tematica, è il legame con la Comedia): Petrarca viene visitato
da Amore, che gli mostra tutti gli uomini illustri che hanno ceduto alle
passioni del cuore (Triumphus Cupidinis). Annoverato tra questi ultimi,
Petrarca verrà poi liberato da Laura, simboleggiante la Pudicizia (Triumphus
Pudicitie), che cadrà poi per mano della Morte (Triumphus Mortis). Petrarca
scoprirà dalla stessa Laura, apparsagli in sogno, che ella si trova nella
beatitudine celeste, e che egli stesso potrà contemplarla nella gloria divina
soltanto dopo che la morte lo avrà liberato dal corpo caduco in cui si
ritrova. La Fama poi sconfigge la morte (Triumphus Fame) e celebra il
proprio trionfo, accompagnata da Laura e da tutti i più celebri personaggi
della storia antica e recente. Il moto rapido del sole suggerisce al poeta
alcune riflessioni sulla vanità della fama terrena, cui fa seguito una vera e
propria visione, nella quale al poeta appare il Tempo trionfante (Triumphus Temporis).
Infine il poeta, sbigottito per la precedente visione, è confortato dal suo
stesso cuore, che gli dice di confidare in Dio: gli appare allora l'ultima
visione, un «mondo novo, in etate immobile ed eterna», un mondo al di fuori del
tempo dove trionferanno i beati e dove un giorno Laura gli riapparirà, questa
volta per sempre (Triumphus Eternitatis). Fortuna e critica
letteraria Ritratto di Leonardo Bruni. L'età dell'umanesimo Magnifying
glass icon mgx2.svgUmanesimo. Già quand'era in vita Petrarca fu riconosciuto
immediatamente quale maestro e guida per tutti coloro che volevano
intraprendere lo studio delle discipline umanistiche. Grazie ai suoi numerosi
viaggi in tutta Italia, gettò il seme del suo messaggio presso i principali
centri della Penisola, in particolar modo a Firenze. Qui, oltre ad aver
conquistato alla causa dell'umanesimo Giovanni Boccaccio (autore, tra l'altro,
di un De vita et moribus domini Francisci Petracchi de Florentia[162]),
Petrarca trasmise la sua passione a Coluccio Salutati, dal 1375 cancelliere
della Repubblica di Firenze e vero trait d'union tra la generazione
petrarchesco-boccacciana e quella attiva nella prima metà del XV secolo[163].
Coluccio, infatti, fu il maestro di due dei principali umanisti del '400:
Poggio Bracciolini, il più grande scopritore di codici latini del secolo ed
esportatore dell'umanesimo a Roma; e Leonardo Bruni, il più notevole
rappresentante dell'umanesimo civile insieme al maestro Salutati. Fu il Bruni a
consolidare la fama di Petrarca, allorché nel 1436 redasse una Vita di
Petrarca[164], seguita da quelle di Filippo Villani, Giannozzo Manetti, Sicco
Polenton e Pier Paolo Vergerio[162]. Oltre a Firenze, i soggiorni del
poeta in Lombardia e a Venezia favorirono la nascita di movimenti culturali locali
desti declinare i princìpi umanistici a seconda delle esigenze della classe
politica locale: a Milano, dove operarono letterati del calibro di Pier Candido
Decembrio e di Francesco Filelfo, nacque un umanesimo cortigiano destinato a
diventare il prototipo per tutte le corti principesche italiane[165]; a Venezia
si diffuse, invece, un umanesimo educativo destinato a formare la nuova classe
dirigente della Serenissima, grazie all'attività di Leonardo Giustinian e di
Francesco Barbaro prima, e di Ermolao il Vecchio e dell'omonimo detto il
Giovane poi[165].Pietro Bembo e il petrarchismo Magnifying glass icon mgx2.svgPietro
Bembo e Petrarchismo. Se nel '400 Petrarca era visto soprattutto come
capostipite della rinascita delle lettere antiche, grazie al letterato e
cardinale veneziano Pietro Bembo divenne anche il modello del cosiddetto
classicismo volgare, definendo una tendenza che si stava progressivamente già
delineando nella lirica italiana[N 23]. Difatti Bembo, nel dialogo Prose della
volgar lingua del 1525, sostenne la necessità di prendere come modelli
stilistici e linguistici Petrarca per la lirica, Boccaccio invece per la prosa,
scartando Dante per il suo plurilinguismo che lo rendeva difficilmente
accessibile: «Requisito necessario per la nobilitazione del volgare era dunque
un totale rifiuto della popolarità. Ecco perché Bembo non accettava
integralmente il modello della Commedia di Dante, di cui non apprezzava le
discese verso il basso nelle quali noi moderni riconosciamo un accattivante
mistilinguismo. Da questo punto di vista, il modello del Canzoniere di Petrarca
non presentava difetti, per la sua assoluta selezione
linguistico-lessicale.» (Marazzini265) Gianfranco Contini, grande
estimatore di Francesco Petrarca e suo commentatore nel XX secolo. La proposta
bembiana risultò, nelle diatribe relative alla questione della lingua, quella
vincente. Già negli anni immediatamente successivi alla pubblicazione delle
Prose, si diffuse presso i circoli poetici italiani una passione per le
tematiche e lo stile della poesia petrarchesca (stimolata anche dal commento al
Canzoniere di Alessandro Vellutello del 1525[166]), chiamata poi petrarchismo,
favorita anche dalla diffusione dei petrarchini, cioè edizioni tascabili del
Canzoniere[167]. Dal Seicento ai giorni nostri A fianco del petrarchismo,
però, si sviluppò anche un movimento avverso alla canonizzazione poetica
operata dal Bembo: prima nel corso del Cinquecento, allorché letterati come
Francesco Berni e Pietro Aretino svilupparono polemicamente il fenomeno
dell'antipetrarchismo; poi, nel corso del Seicento, la temperie barocca, ostile
all'idea di classicismo in nome della libertà formale, declassò il valore
dell'opera petrarchesca. Riabilitato parzialmente nel corso del Settecento da
Ludovico Antonio Muratori, Petrarca ritornò pienamente in auge in seno alla
temperie romantica, quando Ugo Foscolo prima e Francesco De Sanctis poi, nelle
loro lezioni universitarie di letteratura tenute dal primo a Pavia, e dal
secondo a Napoli e a Zurigo, furono in grado di operare un'analisi complessiva
della produzione petrarchesca e ritrovarne l'originalità[168]. Dopo gli studi
compiuti da Giosuè Carducci e dagli altri membri della Scuola storica compiuti
tra fine '800 e inizi '900, il secolo scorso vide, per l'area italiana,
Gianfranco Contini e Giuseppe Billanovich tra i maggiori studiosi del
Petrarca. Petrarca e la scienza diplomatica Magnifying glass icon
mgx2.svg Diplomatica. Benché la diplomatica, ovvero la scienza che studia i
documenti prodotti da una cancelleria o da un notaio e le loro caratteristiche
estrinseche ed intrinseche, sia nata consapevolmente con Jean Mabillon nel
1681, nella storia di tale disciplina sono stati individuati dei precursori
che, inconsapevolmente, nella loro attività filologica, hanno analizzato e
dichiarato l'autenticità o meno anche di documenti oggetto di studio da parte
della diplomatica. Tra questi, infatti, vi furono molti umanisti e anche il
loro precursore e fondatore, Francesco Petrarca. Nel 1361, infatti,
l'imperatore Carlo IV chiese al celebre filologo di analizzare dei documenti
imperiali in possesso di suo genero, Rodolfo IV d'Asburgo, che sarebbero stati
stilati da Giulio Cesare e da Nerone a favore dell'Austria che dichiaravano
tali terre indipendenti dall'Impero[169]. Petrarca rispose con la Seniles, XVI,
5[170] in cui, evidenziando lo stile, gli errori storici e geografici e il tono
(il tenore) della lettera (tra cui la mancanza della data topica e della data
cronologica propria dei diplomi), negò la validità di questo diploma.
Onorificenze Laurea poeticanastrino per uniforme ordinario. Laurea poetica —
Roma, 8 aprile 1341 A Petrarca è intitolato il cratere Petrarca su
Mercurio[171].Note Esplicative
L'epistola, scritta in risposta a una missiva in cui l'amico Giovanni
Boccaccio gli chiedeva se fosse vera l'invidia che Petrarca nutriva per Dante,
contiene l'accenno all'incontro, in età giovanile, con il più maturo poeta: «E
primieramente si noti com'io mai non ebbi ragione alcuna d'odiare cotal uomo,
che solo una volta negli anni della mia fanciullezza mi venne veduto.»
(Delle cose familiari, XXI, 15, traduzione italiana di G. Fracassetti, 4392) La
critica, se l'incontro sia da attribuirsi a Pisa o ad altre località, è divisa:
Ariani23 e Ferroni82, nota 6 propendono per la città toscana, mentre
Rico-Marcozzi pensano a un incontro avvenuto a Genova sul finire del 1311,
quando la famiglia di ser Petracco si stava dirigendo in Francia. Pacca4 opera
un'interpretazione intermedia tra le due città, benché ritenga che sia più
probabile Pisa come luogo effettivo dell'incontro. Dello stesso parere, infine,
anche Dotti, 19879. Si legga il brano
dell'epistola, in cui Petrarca ricorda il loro primo incontro e il
piacevolissimo periodo trascorso nella località francese: «e noi fanciulli ancora
impuberi partimmo in un cogli altri, ma fummo con speciale destinazione per
imparare grammatica mandati a scuola a Carpentrasso, piccola città, ma di
piccola provincia città capitale. Ricordi tu que' quattro anni? Quanta gioia,
quanta sicurezza, qual pace in casa, qual libertà in pubblico, quale quiete,
qual silenzio ne' campi!» (Lettere Senili, X, 2, traduzione di G.
Fracassetti, 287) Petrarca mostrò, nei
confronti di tale scienza, sempre un'avversione innata, come è esposto nella
Familiares, XX, 4, in cui il futuro autore del Canzoniere scrive a Marco
Genovese che a Montpellier prima e a Bologna poi «ben altro in quegli anni fare
io poteva o in se stesso più nobile o alla natura mia meglio conveniente: né
sempre nella elezione dello stato quello ch'è più splendido, ma quello che a
chi lo sceglie è più acconcio preferire si deve.» (Delle cose familiari,
XX, 4, traduzione di G. Fracassetti, 4261)
Come però ricorda Wilkins16, la scelta di Petrarca di entrare a far
parte della Chiesa non fu soltanto dettata dalla cinica necessità di ottenere i
proventi necessari per vivere. Nonostante non avesse mai avuto la vocazione per
la cura delle anime, Petrarca ebbe sempre una profonda fede religiosa. A sviluppare la tesi dell'identificazione di
Laura con tale Laura de Sade è la stessa testimonianza di Petrarca nella
Familiares, II, 9 a Giacomo Colonna, il quale cominciò a mostrarsi dubbioso
sull'esistenza di questa donna (si veda Delle cose familiari, II, 9, traduzione
di G. Fracassetti, 1, 369-385). Più
precisamente, nella Nota a p. 379, Fracassetti fa riemergere la vita della
presunta amata del Petrarca: «Da Odiberto e da Ermessenda di Noves nobile
famiglia di Avignone nacque del 1307, o in su quel torno, una fanciulla, cui fu
dato il nome di Laura [...]. Ai 16 gennaio del 1325 fa fatta per man di notaio
la scritta nuziale fra Laura ed Ugo De Sade gentiluomo Avignonese. Due anni più
tardi, a' 6 di aprile del 1327 nella chiesa di S. Chiara di questa città, a
quell'ora del giorno che chiamavano prima, il Petrarca giovane allora di poco
più che ventidue anni la vide [...].»
Si legga l'episodio di come fossero stati dati alle fiamme dei libri di
Virgilio e Cicerone, cosa che suscitò il pianto nel giovane Petrarca. Al che il
padre, vedendolo così affranto «d'una mano porgendo Virgilio, dall'altra i
rettorici di Cicerone: "tieni, sorridendo mi disse, abbiti questo per
ricrearti qualche rara volta la mente, e quest'altro a conforto e ad aiuto
nello studio delle leggi".» (Lettere Senili, XVI, 1, traduzione di
G. Fracassetti, 2458) Il codice, dopo la
morte di Petrarca (1374), passò nelle mani di Francesco Novello da Carrara,
nuovo signore di Padova. Quando questa città verrà conquistata, agli inizi del
'400, da Gian Galeazzo Visconti, anche il patrimonio bibliotecario petrarchesco
passò nelle mani dei duchi milanesi, che lo conservarono nella loro biblioteca
di Pavia. Fu poi sistemato nella Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, grazie all'intervento
del suo fondatore, il cardinale Federigo Borromeo arcivescovo di Milano
(1595-1631). Si veda: Cappelli,
42-43. Da questo momento in
avanti, Petrarca non esitò a chiamare Avignone la novella Babilonia di
apocalittica memoria, come testimoniato dai celebri sonetti avignonesi facenti
parte del Canzoniere. Oltre a motivazioni di carattere morale, ci fu anche la
profonda delusione che suscitò la decisione di Benedetto XII di non recarsi a
prendere possesso ufficialmente della sua sede vescovile e ristabilire così
pace in Italia (Ariani, 33-34). Petrarca scrisse, riguardo alla morte del
vecchio amico e protettore, due lettere commoventi: la prima, al fratello di
Giacomo, il cardinale Giovanni (Delle cose familiari, IV, 12, traduzione di G.
Fracassetti, 1, 537-549); la seconda,
all'amico Angelo Tosetti, soprannominato Lelius (Delle cose familiari, IV, 13,
traduzione di G. Fracassetti, 1,
550-555). Nella Nota alla prima a p. 548, Fracassetti ricorda come
Petrarca, nella Familiares, V, 7, avesse avuto, in sogno, il presagio della
morte del Vescovo di Lombez venticinque giorni prima della sua effettiva
scomparsa. Cappelli55. Significativa la
ricostruzione storico-letteraria compiuta da Amaturo, 58-59, ove si rievocano le figure di
intellettuali che si legarono, tra XIII e XIV secolo, alla biblioteca
capitolare veronese (Giovanni De Matociis, Dante e Pietro Alighieri, Benzo
d'Alessandria, Vincenzo Bellovacense) e le rarità che essa conteneva (codici
contenenti le lettere di Plinio il Giovane; parte dell'Ab Urbe condita liviana
che Petrarca utilizzò per la ricostruzione filologica del codice Harleiano; le
orazioni ciceroniane citate; il Liber catulliano). Boccaccio esprimerà la sua indignatio
nell'Epistola X Archiviato l'11 giugno
in ., indirizzata a Francesco Petrarca, ove, grazie alla tecnica
retorica dello sdoppiamento e a topoi letterari, Boccaccio si lamenta col
magister di come Silvano (il nome letterario usato nella cerchia petrarchesca
per indicare il poeta laureato) avesse osato recarsi presso il tiranno Giovanni
Visconti (identificato in Egonis):«Audivi, dilecte michi, quod in auribus meis
mirabile est, solivagum Silvanum nostrum, transalpino Elicone relicto, Egonis
antra subisse, et muneribus sumptis ex pastore castalio ligustinum devenisse
subulcum, et secum pariter Danem peneiam et pierias carcerasse sorores».
Inoltre, bisogna ricordare che la scelta di risiedere a Milano era anche uno
schiaffo alla proposta delle autorità fiorentine di occupare un posto come
docente nello Studium, occupazione che gli avrebbe concesso di rientrare in
possesso dei beni paterni sequestrati nel 1301.
L'arcivescovo Giovanni II Visconti, difatti, proseguì la politica
espansionistica dei suoi predecessori a danno delle altre potenze dell'Italia
centro-settentrionale, tra le quali spiccava Firenze. Le ostilità tra Milano e
Firenze perdureranno fino a metà '400, quando salì al potere come duca dello
Stato lombardo Francesco Sforza, che intraprese una politica di alleanza con
Firenze grazie all'amicizia personale che lo legava a Cosimo de' Medici. Durante l'epidemia di peste milanese, morì il
figlio Giovanni (Pacca219), nato nel 1337 da una relazione extraconiugale. I
rapporti con il figlio, al contrario di quanto avvenne con la secondogenita
Francesca, furono assai burrascosi a causa della condotta ribelle di Giovanni
(Dotti, 1987319 accenna all'odio che Giovanni provava verso i libri, «quasi
fossero serpenti»). Come ricordato nella Familiares, XXII, 7 del 1359: «Nel
1357 si separò dal figlio Giovanni, che tornò ad Avignone in seguito a non
precisati dissapori (Familiares, XXII, 7: 1359); tre anni dopo sarebbe tornato
a Milano.» (Rico-Marcozzi) Il
ravennate Giovanni Malpaghini fu presentato, nel 1364, da Donato degli
Albanzani a Petrarca che, rimasto colpito dalle sue qualità letterarie e dalla
sua pronta intelligenza, lo prese al suo servizio quale copista. La collaborazione
tra i due uomini, durata appunto dal 1364 al 1367, si interruppe il 21 aprile
di quell'anno, quando il Malpaghini decise di lasciare l'incarico presso
l'Aretino. Per maggiori informazioni biografiche, si veda la biografia di
Signorini. Petrarca, nella Seniles, XV,
5, informa il fratello Gherardo, tra le altre cose, anche della sua nuova
dimora sui colli Euganei, dandone un quadro piacevole e ameno: «E per non
dilungarmi di troppo della mia chiesa, qui fra i colli Euganei, non più lontano
che dieci miglia da Padova mi fabbricai una piccola ma graziosa casina, cinta
da un oliveto e da una vigna che dan quanto basta a una non numerosa e modesta
famiglia. E qui, sebbene infermo del corpo, io vivo dell'animo pienamente
tranquillo lungi dai tumulti, dai rumori, dalle cure, leggendo sempre e
scrivendo [...].» (Lettere Senili, XV, 5, traduzione di G. Fracassetti,
2413) La lettera, datata 26 aprile 1335,
non può essere considerata "reale", ma piuttosto una rielaborazione
voluta dal Petrarca. Difatti, a quell'altezza, il giovane Petrarca non era
ancora entrato in contatto con il padre agostiniano, e la scelta della data
(corrispondente al Venerdì Santo) e del luogo (la salita al monte rievoca
l'immagine della Passione di Gesù sul Calvario) rendono ancora più
"mitica" l'ambientazione. Si veda, per quanto riguarda la
ricostruzione filologica e cronologica dell'epistola, il saggio di Giuseppe
Billanovich, Petrarca e il Ventoso, in Italia medioevale e umanistica, 9, Roma, Antenore, Il ventiquattresimo libro delle Familiares è
composto da lettere indirizzate a vari personaggi dell'antichità classica. Per
Petrarca, infatti, gli antichi non sono lontani e irraggiungibili: la costante
lettura delle loro opere fa sì che Cicerone, Orazio, Seneca, Virgilio vivano
attraverso queste ultime, rendendo i rapporti tra Petrarca e i suoi ammirati
scrittori classici vicini per la comunanza di sentimento. L'Otium degli antichi romani non consisteva
unicamente nel riposo dagli impegni quotidiani, indicati sotto il sostantivo di
negotium. Per Cicerone, l'otium non era soltanto il riposo dalle attività
forensi e politiche, ma soprattutto il ritiro nella propria intimità domestica
col fine di dedicarsi alla letteratura (De officiis, III, 1). In questo caso,
il modello petrarchesco è affine a quello stoicheggiante dell'oratore romano.
Si veda il riassunto operato da Laidlaw,
42-52 che ripercorre la concezione all'interno della letteratura latina.
Per Cicerone, nello specifico si vedano le pagine Laidlaw, 44-47.
Termine di origine catulliana, Petrarca lo prende in prestito per
descrivere le liriche come "diversivo, passatempo". La questione
delle nugae volgari e, più in generale, delle opere latine, è esposta nella
Familiares, I, 1 (Delle cose familiari, I, 1, traduzione di G. Fracassetti,
1, 239-253). Guglielmino-Grosser184. I testi sono raccolti
nel codice Vaticano Latino 3195, come ricordato da Santagata, 120-121. Bisogna ricordare che Il Canzoniere
non raccoglie tutti i componimenti poetici del Petrarca, ma solo quelli che il
poeta scelse con grande cura: altre rime (dette extravagantes) andarono perdute
o furono incluse in altri manoscritti (cfr. Ferroni8). L'inquietudine petrarchesca nasce, quindi,
dal contrasto tra l'attrazione verso i beni terreni (tra cui l'amore per Laura)
e l'aspirazione all'assoluto divino, propria della cultura medievale e della
religione cristiana, come ricordato da Guglielmino-Grosser186. Petrarca mantenne, nell'ambito della lirica
volgare, quell'aristocraticismo stilistico-lessicale prima accennato, in cui si
rifiutano molti usi lemmatici presenti nella tradizione poetica italiana e che
Petrarca rifiuterà, accogliendone un preciso gruppo ristretto ed elitario. Come
ricorda Marazzini, 220-221: «Si delinea
una tendenza del linguaggio lirico al 'vago', inteso nel senso di una
genericità antirealistica (al contrario di quanto accade nel corposo realismo
della Commedia), testimoniato anche dalla polivalenza di certi termini, i
quali, come l'aggettivo dolce, entrano in un numero molto grande di
combinazioni diverse [...] Eppure la lingua di Petrarca, selezionata e ridotta
nelle scelte lessicali, accoglie un buon numero di varianti canonizzando un
polimorfismo...in cui si allineano la forma toscana, quella latineggiante,
quella siciliana o provenzale...»
Di Benedetto170. Si ricorda anche che, seppur in forma minore, era
presente nel mondo letterario italiano del '400 anche un'ammirazione verso il
Petrarca volgare, come testimoniato dalle edizioni a stampa del Canzoniere e
dei Trionfi uscite nel 1472 dalla bottega dei padovani Bartolomeo Valdezocco e
Martino "de Septem Arboribus" (cfr. Ente Nazionale Francesco
Petrarca, Culto petrarchesco a Padova.).Riferimenti bibliografici la notte tra il 18 e il 19 luglio Casa Petrarca Arezzo, Regione Toscana, 13
dicembre . 12 febbraio . Wilkins, 5-6. Ariani21. Più specificamente
Bettarini: «Il 20 ottobre [1304], dopo essere stato accusato di aver falsificato
un istrumento notarile, fu così condannato al pagamento di 1000 lire e al
taglio della mano destra». Dotti,
19879. Bettarini e Pacca4. Per informazioni biografiche, si veda la voce
Pasquini. Il ricordo di Petrarca al
riguardo è riportato in Lettere Senili, XVI, 1, traduzione di G. Fracassetti,
2, 465-467. Pasquini: «Quanto al Petrarca, il magistero
di C[onvenevole] si colloca indubbiamente fra il 1312 e il '16». La Casa del Petrarca, su arquapetrarca.com.
19 febbraio 20 febbraio ). Pacca7.
Si legga il brano della Lettere Senili, X, 2 nella traduzione di G.
Fracassetti, 286. Il brano è ricordato anche da Wilkins11. Ariani25. Wilkins11.
Rico-Marcozzi: «Nell'autunno 1320 si recò a studiare a Bologna, seguito
da un maestro privato...»; e Wilkins13, in cui si ritiene che questo maestro
avesse «l'incarico, almeno per Francesco e Gherardo, di fungere in loco
parentis». Ariani26. Ariani,
27-28. Wilkins12. Dotti,
198721. Bettarini. Cappelli32.
Pacca16. Rico-Marcozzi; Ferroni4;
Wilkins17. Wilkins, 16-17; Rico-Marcozzi: «Nel marzo 1330,
Giacomo Colonna reclutò Petrarca per la sua corte vescovile di Lombez, in
Guascogna: ne avrebbero fatto parte il cantore fiammingo Ludovico Santo di
Beringen e l'uomo d'armi romano Lello di Pietro Stefano dei Tosetti, che
Petrarca battezzò in seguito, rispettivamente, Socrate e Lelio.» Ferroni4.
Pacca18. ..: Alinari :.., su
alinariarchives.it. 18 febbraio . La
distinzione tra le due scuole di pensiero emerge in Ferroni, 20-21. Ariani31 ricorda che il primo
sostenitore del filone allegorico-letterario fu il giovane Giovanni Boccaccio
nel suo De vita et moribus domini Francisci Petrarche. Ariani28. Dotti, 198721 specifica che questo
san Paolo fu acquistato per procura a Roma e che il volume proveniva da
Napoli. Ariani35. Per maggiori approfondimenti biografici, si
veda la biografia di Moschella.
Moschella: «Suggello ideale dell'amicizia tra i due fu il dono, da
parte di D[ionigi], di una copia delle Confessiones di s. Agostino...» Billanovich166. Billanovich,
207-208, nota 2. Wilkins, 18-19 e Pacca142. Wilkins20.
Wilkins21. Rico-Marcozzi: «Nel
frattempo aveva raggiunto Roma (nel gennaio o febbraio 1337), accolto da fra
Giovanni Colonna al termine di un avventuroso viaggio, e dove nella sua prima
lettera (II 14, 15 marzo), contemplando dal Campidoglio le rovine dell’Urbe,
manifestò la meraviglia per la loro grandezza e maestosità, dando forma a
quella riscoperta dell’antichità classica e al rimpianto per la sua decadenza
che divennero i cardini etici, estetici e politici dell’Umanesimo.» Pacca33.
Dotti, 198750. Dotti,
198751. Mauro Sarnelli, Petrarca e gli
uomini illustri, Treccani. 22 febbraio
12 marzo ). Poet Laureate, The Royal Household. 22 febbraio . Ariani,
39-40: «Certo il privilegio toccava, del tutto straordinariamente, a un
poeta che ancora non aveva pubblicato molto per meritarselo: ma la protezione
dei potenti Colonna e la rete di estimatori che aveva saputo intessere per
tempo sono evidentemente bastate a valorizzare al massimo le epistole metriche,
la fama dell'Africa...e del De viris, le rime volgari già note...» Dello
stesso avviso anche Pacca74 e Santagata19.
Moschella: «Tra il 1337 e il 1338” D[ionigi] fece ritorno in Italia;
dopo un breve soggiorno a Firenze, giunse a Napoli (cfr. Petrarca, Familiares,
IV, 2), dove l'aveva voluto il re Roberto d'Angiò, che per l'agostiniano
nutriva una profonda stima, oltre a condividerne gli interessi per l'astrologia
giudiziaria e per i classici latini.»
Wilkins34: «La conoscenza dell'antica tradizione e delle due o tre
incoronazioni celebrate da singole città in tempi moderni, insieme
all'aspirazione a diventare famoso, accese inevitabilmente in Petrarca il
desiderio di ricevere a sua voglia quell'onore. Egli confidò dapprima il suo
pensiero a Dionigi da Borgo San Sepolcro e a Giacomo Colonna, e ne venne a
conoscenza anche qualche persona che aveva legami con l'Parigi.» Si legga il brano della lettera dove inizia
la decantazione delle lodi nei confronti del re napoletano: «E chi dico io, e
lo dico con pieno convincimento, in Italia, anzi in Europa più grande di re
Roberto?» (Delle cose familiari, II, 4, traduzione di G. Fracassetti,
1494) Wilkins35. Rico-Marcozzi: «Sulla base dei contraddittori
racconti di Petrarca si dovrebbe dedurre che nello stesso giorno (il 1º
settembre 1340) questi avesse ricevuto l’invito a cingere la corona sia dal
Senato di Roma sia da Parigi e avesse chiesto consiglio al cardinal Colonna (IV
4), decidendo di scegliere Roma (IV 5, 6), per ricevere la laurea "sulle
ceneri degli alti poeti che ivi dimorano".» Difatti Petrarca riteneva
che l'ultima incoronazione a Roma fosse stata quella del poeta Stazio (I secolo
d.C) e che quindi, se vi fosse stato incoronato, sarebbe stato direttamente un
successore degli antichi poeti classici da lui tanto amati (Pacca73). Cfr., ad esempio, Rico-Marcozzi; Wilkins, 37-38; Ariani40 Pacca74.
Rico-Marcozzi: «L'8 e il 13 aprile sono le date fornite da Petrarca
([Familiares], IV 6, 8), e la più probabile sembra essere la seconda; tuttavia
Boccaccio situa l'evento il 17 e il documento ufficiale, il Privilegium laureationis,
almeno in parte redatto dallo stesso Petrarca, reca la data del 9.» Lacultur, biografia di Francesco Petrarca, su
lacultur.altervista.org. Wilkins, 90-91.
Dotti, 198731: «In Avignone egli vedeva simbolicamente la corruzione
della Chiesa di Cristo e l'intollerabile esilio di Pietro.» Paravicini Bagliani. Moschella.
Petrucci. Wilkins,
48-49. Così Ariani41; Wilkins48 sostiene
invece che Cola sia giunto ad Avignone agli inizi del 1343. Wilkins48: «Cola si intrattenne parecchi mesi
e in quel periodo strinse amicizia con Petrarca. Cola era ancor giovane e poco
noto; ma i due uomini avevano in comune un grande entusiasmo per la Roma antica
e cristiana, una grande preoccupazione per lo stato presente della città e una
grande speranza per la restaurazione dell'antica potenza e dell'antico
splendore.» Il Mondo di Petrarca,
su internetculturale.it. 14 dicembre
(archiviato dall'url originale l'11 novembre ). Ariani,
45-46, il quale ricorda, a testimonianza della rottura coi Colonna,
Bucolicum carmen, VIII, intitolato Divortium (cfr. Bucolicum carmen, 223-225). Santagata16 ricorda inoltre come i
legami tra Petrarca e il cardinale Giovanni non fossero mai stati buoni come
con il fratello di lui Giacomo: «a differenza di Giacomo...il cardinale restò
sempre il dominus.» Rico-Marcozzi. Pacca135 e Cappelli50. Dotti, 1987,
134-135. Wilkins93. Ariani46.
Troncarelli. Waley. Pacca118.
Francesco Petrarca a Padova, su padovanet.it. Rico-Marcozzi: «Giacomo II da Carrara,
signore di Padova, che a inizio 1349 gli fece ottenere un ulteriore e ricco
canonicato da 200 ducati d'oro l'anno e una casa nei pressi della
cattedrale». Ariani49. Una
prospettiva generale del rapporto tra Petrarca e Boccaccio è esposto in
Rico, Branca87. Rico-Marcozzi: «Solo in autunno si trasferì
ad Avignone, per scoprire (almeno secondo quanto affermato in Familiares, XIII,
5) che gli si offriva la segreteria apostolica, già a suo tempo rifiutata, e un
vescovado». Ariani50. Ferroni6. Domenico Ferraro, Petrarca a Milano. Le
ragioni di una scelta, Rinascimento : LV, 225, Firenze : L.S. Olschki, . Viscónti, Galeazzo II, su treccani.it. 24
febbraio . Pacca180; Amaturo87: «Ma è
fuor di dubbio che tra il poeta e i suoi nuovi signori si istituiva come un
patto di mutuo interesse: da un lato egli si avvantaggiava della posizione di
prestigio che gli offriva l'amicizia dei Visconti; d'altro lato acconsentiva
tacitamente a essere adoperato in missioni diplomatiche, non numerose invero,
né discordanti con i suoi ideali civili.» Ariani52. Cappelli36: «La riflessione petrarchesca si
indirizza sempre più ad hominem e ad vitam, all'uomo concreto nella sua
circostanza concreta, si nutre di meditazione interiore, progetta un'opera
capace di delineare una parabola esemplare in cui lo scrittore propone se
stesso e la cultura di cui è portatore come modello capace di confrontarsi su
tutti i terreni.» Rico-Marcozzi:
«il Secretum...composto nel 1342-43 (o, secondo studî recenti, in tre fasi
successive tra il 1347 e il 1353)».
Ferroni11. Ariani, 52-53. Cappelli38. Wilkins256.
Vicini59. Retore originario di
Pratovecchio, Donato degli Albanzani fu intimo amico sia di Petrarca che di
Boccaccio. Per quanto riguarda i rapporti con il primo si ricordano, oltre le
missive indirizzategli dall'Aretino, anche alcune egloghe del Bucolicum Carmen,
in cui è chiamato con il senhal di Appenninigena. Si veda la voce biografica
Martellotti. Ugo Dotti, Petrarca civile:
alle origini dell'intellettuale moderno, Donzelli Editore, Wilkins, 220-223 espone dettagliatamente le trattative
tra Petrarca e la Serenissima, citando anche il verbale del Maggior Consiglio
con cui si procedette all'approvazione della proposta petrarchesca. Per
ulteriori informazioni, si veda Gargan,
165-168. Lettere Senili, IV, 4,
traduzione di G. Fracassetti, 1,
237-239. Si ricordi la visita
dell'amico Boccaccio nell'estate del 1367, quando però Petrarca si era recato
momentaneamente a Pavia su richiesta di Galeazzo II. Nonostante l'assenza
dell'amico, Bocca ccio trovò una calorosa accoglienza da parte di
Francescuolo e di Francesca, trascorrendo giorni piacevoli nella città
lagunare (Cfr. Wilkins,
250-252). Rico-Marcozzi:
«...all'inizio del 1366 fece ritorno a Venezia dove fu raggiunto dalla figlia
Francesca maritata nel 1361 al milanese Francescuolo da Brossano.» Pacca,
232-233: «Ma...bisogna dire che il vero valore del De ignorantia
consiste nella vigorosa affermazione della filosofia morale sulla scienza
naturale [...] Ed è questo il motivo della sua inferiorità rispetto a scrittori
come Platone, Cicerone e Seneca; perché per Petrarca la cultura "è
subordinata alla vita morale dell'uomo...» Casa del Petrarca, Arquà. Wilkins264.
Ariani58. Wilkins265. Billanovich 194767: «[Petrarca] aveva
designato con indicazioni esplicite anche per noi remoti quale loro custode un
letterato padovano, Lombardo della Seta, mediocre per ingegno e per dottrina,
ma cliente premuroso del maestro, di cui in una intima familiarità negli ultimi
anni aveva lentamente conosciuto le abitudini e filialmente soddisfatto i
desideri. Così...era promosso subito a buon segretario...»
Ariani60. Guido Baldi, Silvia
Giusso, Mario Razetti, Giuseppe Zaccaria, Dal testo alla storia, dalla storia
al testo, Paravia, settembre 20013,
88-395-3058-4. Wilkins297. La tomba del Petrarca. Canestrini5 e Dotti, 1987439. Millocca, Francesco, Leoni, Pier Carlo, in
Dizionario biografico degli italiani,
64, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, 2005. Si veda Analisi Genetica dei resti
scheletrici attribuiti a Petrarca. Si
veda inoltre Petrarcail poeta che perse la testain The Guardian del 6 aprile
2004, sulla riesumazione dei resti di Petrarca.
Ricchissima la al proposito: si
ricordino i libri citati in , tra cui Cappelli, L'umanesimo italiano da
Petrarca a Valla; i saggi curati da Giuseppe Billanovich (tra cui l'opera sua
più importante, Billanovich, 1947, Petrarca letterato), uno dei maggiori
studiosi del Petrarca; i libri di Pacca, Ariani e Wilkins. Pacca189 e Cappelli38 Garin21.
Si veda il lungo articolo di Lamendola al riguardo, in cui si espone
anche la chiave di lettura dei classici latini nel corso dell'età
medioevale. Dotti, 1987430. Magdi A. M. Nassar, Numismatica e Petrarca:
una nuova idea di collezionismo, Il collezionismo numismatico italiano. Una
storica e illuminata tradizione. Un patrimonio culturale del nostro Paese.,
Milano, Numismatici Italiani Professionisti, ,
47-49. Billanovich 1953313. Per la datazione cronologica, cfr.
Billanovich 1953325: «Il Petrarca formò tra i venti e i venticinque anni il
Livio Harleiano»; e Ivi330: «Le scoperte e i restauri degli Ab Urbe condita
eseguiti dal Petrarca sul palcoscenico europeo di Avignone press'a poco tra il
1325 e il 1330...» Cappelli42.
Billanovich 1953, Billanovich Un
riassunto veloce è esposto anche da Ariani63.
Cappelli42 e Ariani62.
Cappelli, Albertini
Ottolenghi, 35-37. Albertini Ottolenghi37. Significativo il titolo del settimo capitolo
di Ariani, 113-131, Lo scavo
introspettivo. Ferroni10.
Ferroni, 10-11. Ferroni10 e Guglielmino-Grosser178. Petrarca, Africa, 246-247.
Cappelli45 e Guglielmino-Grosser177.
Dotti,: «I versi vennero infatti riconosciuti bellissimi, ma tali da non
convenirsi alla persona cui erano posti in bocca, in quanto degni piuttosto di
un personaggio cristiano che di uno pagano.» Santagata27: «...il gesto di fastidio con il
quale si liberò quasi sùbito delle superfetazioni scolastiche ha il suo esatto
corrispettivo nel rifiuto dell'imponente edificio logico e scientifico della
filosofia Scolastica a favore di una ricerca morale orientata, con la guida
determinante dell'agostinismo, verso il soggetto e l'interiorità della
coscienza...» Delle cose
familiari, IV, 1, traduzione di G. Fracassetti, 1, 481-492.
Guglielmino-Grosser172, confrontando Dante, il quale non ha trasmesso ai
posteri dati biografici della propria vita, e Petrarca, afferma che
quest'ultimo «fornendoci una grande quantità di informazioni dettagliate sulla
sua vita quotidiana, vere o false che siano, mira a trasmettere di sé
un'immagine concreta». Dotti532, sulla
base della Familiares, I, 9, delinea il senso del messaggio umanistico lanciato
da Petrarca: «...parlare con il proprio animo non serve: bisogna affaticarsi ad
ceterorum utilitatem quibuscum vivimus, per l'utilità di coloro con i quali viviamo
in questa terrena società, ed è certo che con le nostre parole possiamo
giovare: quorum animos nostris collucutionibus plurimum adiuvari posse non
ambigitur (Familiares, I, 9, 4). Il colloquio umano è dunque lo strumento
dell'autentico processo umanistico...Sua mercé si saldano e si congiungono gli
spazi più lontani...I comuni principi morali, dunque, e l'indagine costante e
irreversibile sono la molla di un processo che non può aver fine se non con la
morte dell'umanità medesima, e il discorso, il colloquio e la cultura ne sono
il filo conduttore.» Viaggi nel
TestoAutori della letteratura Italiana, su internetculturale.it. 27
febbraio 24 giugno ). Si ricordino i celebri versi di Pd XVII,
58-60, in cui l'avo Cacciaguida gli profetizza la durezza dell'esilio: Tu
proverai sì come sa di sale / lo pane altrui, e come è duro calle / lo scendere
e 'l salir per l'altrui scale
Guglielmino-Grosser175. Guglielmino-Grosser177. Marazzini220.
Santagata34: «La riforma di Petrarca consiste nell'introdurre entro
l'universo senza regole della rimeria coeva la disciplina, l'ordine, la pulizia
formale, lo stesso aristocraticismo propri delle più compatte 'scuole'
duecentesche...» Luperini, Il
plurilinguismo di Dante e il monolinguismo di Petrarca secondo Gianfranco
Contini. Delle cose familiari, XXI, 15,
traduzione di G. Fracassetti, 4,
390-411; Pulsoni, 155-208 Giuseppe Pizzimentig.pizzimenti@glauco.it,
FONDAZIONE ZERI | CATALOGO : Opera : Altichiero , San Giorgio battezza Servio
re di Cirene, su catalogo.fondazionezeri.unibo.it. 29 febbraio 5 marzo ).
Si veda, per maggiori informazioni, Pacca, Per maggior informazioni, si veda il saggio
di Fenzi. Si veda il saggio di Dotti
sulle Epistolae metricae. Pacca, 131-132.
Pacca, 36-45.
Ferroni14. Amaturo, 117-119.
Cappelli49. Ferroni, 14-15.
Pacca, Santagata45. Amaturo,
Le epistolae retrodatate al 1345
furono, secondo Santagata45, probabilmente scritte ex novo perché fossero
aderenti al progetto culturale-esistenziale idealizzato dal Petrarca. Guglielmino-Grosser185. Ferroni19. Ariani358. Dionisotti: «[Salutati] fu per trent'anni,
dopo la morte del Petrarca e del Boccaccio, il più autorevole umanista
italiano, unico erede di quei grandi.»
Dionisotti, 1970: «Dopo lungo intervallo, probabilmente nel 1436, il
B[occaccio] compose in volgare una succinta vita di D[ante], cui fece seguire
un'assai più succinta vita del Petrarca e un conclusivo paragone fra i due
poeti.» Cappelli, Di
Benedetto174. Si veda la voce
enciclopedica curata da Praz e Di Benedetto177.
Ariani, 362-364. Pacca, Petrarca e Bresslau, Lettere Senili, XVI, 5, traduzione di G.
Fracassetti, 2, 400-407. Petrarch, su
Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature. 23 dicembre . Maria Grazia Albertini
Ottolenghi, Note sulla biblioteca dei Visconti e degli Sforza nel Castello di
Pavia, in Bollettino della Società Pavese di Storia Patria, Raffaele Amaturo, Petrarca, con due capitoli
introduttivi al Trecento di Carlo Muscetta e Francesco Tateo, 3ª ed.,
Roma-Bari, Editori Laterza, Marco Ariani,
Petrarca, Roma, Salerno Editrice, Francesco Bettarini, Petrarca, Francesco, in
Dizionario biografico degli italiani,
82, Roma, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, . Giuseppe Billanovich,
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1, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura,Giuseppe Billanovich, Gli
inizi della fortuna di Francesco Petrarca, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e
Letteratura, Giuseppe Billanovich, Il Boccaccio, il Petrarca e le più antiche
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ossa di Francesco Petrarca: studio antropologico, Padova, Reale Stab. di Pietro
Prosperini, Guido Cappelli, L'Umanesimo italiano da Petrarca a Valla, Roma,
Carocci editore, Gianfranco Contini, Letteratura italiana delle origini, 3ª
ed., Firenze, Sansoni Editore, Arnaldo Di Benedetto, Un'introduzione al
petrarchismo cinquecentesco, in Italica,
Carlo Dionisotti, Bruni, Leonardo, in Umberto Bosco , Enciclopedia
Dantesca, Roma, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, Carlo Dionisotti, Salutati, Coluccio, in
Umberto Bosco , Enciclopedia Dantesca, Roma, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana,
Ugo Dotti, La formazione dell'umanesimo nel Petrarca (Le "Epistole
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di Francesco Petrarca, . Opere di Francesco Petrarca, su Progetto Gutenberg.
Audiolibri di Francesco Petrarca, su LibriVox. Francesco Petrarca, su Goodreads. su Francesco Petrarca, su Les Archives de
littérature du Moyen Âge. Francesco Petrarca, in Catholic Encyclopedia, Robert
Appleton Company. Spartiti o libretti di Francesco Petrarca, su International
Music Score Library Project, Project Petrucci LLC. Francesco Petrarca, su
Discogs, Zink Media. Francesco Petrarca, su MusicBrainz, MetaBrainz Foundation.
Francesco Petrarca, su WhoSampled. Ente
Nazionale Francesco Petrarca, su petrarca.it. 4 marzo ., ente ufficiale per gli
studi petrarcheschi in Italia Giovanni Boccaccio, Epistole e lettere
(XML)[collegamento interrotto], Biblioteca Italiana, Francesco Lamendola, Il
culto di Virgilio nel medioevo, Centro Studi La Runa, 2 aprile . 26 febbraio .
Romano Luperini, Il plurilinguismo di Dante e il monolinguismo di Petrarca
secondo Gianfranco Contini, Thinktag Smart, 6 marzo . 28 febbraio 4 marzo ). Vinicio Pacca, Austria, Internet
Culturale. 16 gennaio . Francesco Petrarca, Catalogo dei Compositori e delle
Opere Musicali sulle rime di Francesco Petrarca, su Artemida. V D M Francesco
Petrarca V D M FlorenceCoA.svg Le tre corone fiorentine della lingua italiana Italia.
Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Petrarca.” Luigi Speranza, “Il dialogo
filosofico – Platone, Cicerone, Petrarca e Grice.”
petrone: Grice: “I like some phrases by
Petrone: ‘il mondo del spirito,’ ‘idealista’, etc.’” Grice: “Some of his
philosophese is totally untranslatable to Oxonian, such as ‘la nostra guerra’.”
-- Igino Petrone (Limosano), philosopher. Veduta di Limosano. Linceo. Nato a
Limosano, piccolo centro dell'odierna provincia di Campobasso, dopo aver
insegnato a Modena, fu chiamato all'Ateneo napoletano. Cercò di conciliare
l'oggettivismo aristotelico con il soggettivismo kantiano. Socio corrispondente dell'Accademia Nazionale
dei Lincei, collaborò con la rivista Cultura Sociale politica letteraria,
fondata da Murri, influenzando con i suoi scritti il nascente movimento
democratico cristiano, e nella rivista Il Rinnovamento si espresse criticamente
sull'enciclica di Pio X Pascendi Dominici gregis che aveva duramente condannato
il modernismo. I suoi scritti provocarono le critiche della rivista dei gesuiti
La Civiltà Cattolica. Morì a San Giorgio
a Cremano nei pressi di Napoli. Sono intitolati al suo nome: l'Istituto Comprensivo
"Igino Petrone" di Campobasso, una via di Roma nella zona XLV Castel
di Guido, (XII Municipio, ex XVI). Nella natia Limosano viene ricordato da una
via del centro storico e da un monumento in una piazza cittadina. Opere: “La fase recentissima della filosofia:
analisi critica poggiata sulla teoria della conoscenza, Pisa, E. Spoerri, “Il
valore ed i limiti di una psicogenesi della morale,” Roma, Tip. di G. Balbi, “I
limiti del determinismo,” Saggio del dott. Igino Petrone, Modena, G. T.
Vincenzi e nipoti, Nuova ed. Urbino,
Quattro venti, F. Nietzsche e L.
Tolstoi: idee morali del tempo. Conferenze lette alla Società "Pro
Cultura", Napoli, L. Pierro, Lo
stato mercantile chiuso di G. Am. Fichte e la premessa teorica del comunismo,
Napoli, A. Tessitore & Figlio, Problemi del mondo morale meditati da un
idealista, Milano-Palermo-Napoli, Remo Sandron Editore, Il diritto nel mondo
dello spirito. Saggio filosofico, Milano, Libreria Editrice Milanese, A
proposito della guerra nostra, Napoli, R. Ricciardi, Etica, a cura e con
prefazione di Guido Mancini, Palermo, Remo Sandron Editore, Ascetica, Guido
Mancini, Palermo, Remo Sandron editore. F. Battaglia, Enciclopedia Italiana,
riferimenti in ."Treccani.it L'Enciclopedia Italiana". Murri, La vita nova, Cecchini, Roma, Edizioni
di storia e letteratura, Al Rinnovamento, periodico di studi religiosi di
orientamento cattolico-liberale, fondato a Milano e pubblicato, collaborarono
alcune tra le voci più importanti del modernismo italiano, quali Buonaiuti e Murri,
il filosofo e studioso di storia del cristianesimo Tlgher, amico e collaboratore
di Buonaiuti, e Tyrrell. (cf. A. M. G. – “Tyrrell and Tyrrell”). Cfr. la voce
«Rinnovamento, Il» in Enciclopedie on line, sito "Treccani.it L'Enciclopedia
Italiana". «Avevamo già corretto le
stampe di questo articolo, quando ci giunse l'ultimo numero del Rinnovamento di
Milano (settembreottobre) pieno di tutto fiele contro l'enciclica. Nella
sostanza si accorda pienamente col programma dei modernisti, ma nella violenza
della forma e nella irriverenza del linguaggio lo passa di molto; e trascende
con Igino Petrone (L'Enciclica di Pio X) a stravolgimenti indegni dello spirito
e del senso dell'enciclica» in La Civiltà Cattolica, 1907, n. 4404. Ed ancora
sullo stesso periodico: «Ma peggio ancora spropositò su questo punto Petrone
nel Rinnovamento mostrando di aver ben poco compreso e del modernismo e
dell'enciclica che lo condanna.», Scheda dell'Istituto Igino Petrone. Anagrafe
scuole statali. Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Università e della Ricerca, Fonte:
SITOSistema informativo toponomastica di Roma Capitale. Felice Battaglia, Enciclopedia Italiana, Roma, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana,
Dizionario di filosofia, Roma, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, Jonathan
Salina, Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Roma, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia
Italiana, Igino Petrone, su Treccani.itEnciclopedie on line, Istituto
dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Opere: su
openMLOL, Horizons Unlimited srl. Associazione turistico culturale "Pro
Limosano".
Dizionario di filosofia
dell’Enciclopedia Italiana: Grice: “A gem – not only for the subjects, but the
names!” --.
pezzarossa: Grice: “He wrote a LOT! Including a
study (or ‘ragionamento,’ as the Italians call it) on the spirit (spirito) of
Italian philosophy, which reminded me of Warnock, the irishman, and his search
for the soul of English philosophy!” -- Giuseppe Pezzarossa (o Pezza-Rossa –
Grice: “In which case, he is in the “R”s”) (Mantova), filosofo. Docente di
Retorica ed Eloquenza del Seminario vescovile mantovano, fu coinvolto nella
repressione austriaca che portò al martirio di Belfiore.Nacque a Formigosa,
frazione del comune di Mantova. Orfano di entrambi i genitori, studiò presso il
seminario dove, ordinato sacerdote nel 1834, sarà insegnante contemporaneamente
a Don Enrico Tazzoli con il quale condivideva idee tendenzialmente liberali e
le preoccupazioni sulle condizioni sociali disagiate create dalla sorgente
rivoluzione industriale che pure ai loro occhi rappresentava un'occasione di
progresso. La pubblicazione dei Saggi di
filosofia cristiana gli procurò guai con la Congregazione dell'Indice,
all'epoca guidata dal cardinale Angelo Mai. Partecipò attivamente ai moti.
L'autorità austriaca lo condannò al carcere. Dopo la scarcerazione fu
allontanato dall'insegnamento e da allora non pubblicò più. Le strade di
Pezzarossa e Tazzoli si divisero quando Tazzoli fu tra i leader della
cospirazione anti-austriaca mentre Pezza-Rossa non vi aderì seppure partecipò
alla prima riunione costitutiva del comitato rivoluzionario. Opere” Critica della filosofia morale,
Milano, Stamperia Reale; Spirito della filosofia italiana. Ragionamento,
Mantova, Elmucci; Saggi di filosofia cristiana sulle tracce de' SS. padri e
dottori della Chiesa, Mantova, Tip. Caranenti. Cipolla, elenca in ordine
alfabetico i venti partecipanti: Acerbi, Borchetta,, Borelli, Castellazzo,
Chiassi, Ferrari, Giacometti, Marchi, Mori Attilio, Pezzarossa, Poma,
Quintavalle, Rossettii, Sacchi, Siliprandi, Suzzara, Tassoni, Tazzoli Enrico,
Vettori, Zanucchi. Costantino Cipolla, BelfioreI comitati insurrezionali del
Lombardo-Veneto ed il loro processo a Mantova, Milano, FrancoAngeli, Renato
Pavesi, Il confronto fra don Tazzoli e don Pezza-Rossa in una prospettiva
filosofica, in Costantino Cipolla e Stefano Siliberti , Don Enrico Tazzoli e il
cattolicesimo sociale lombardo: Studi, Milano, FrancoAngeli
pezzella: Grice: “I like Pezzella – His “La
memoria del possibile” would make Benjamin think twice! – and I do not mean HIS
Benjamin, but mine!” -- Mario Pezzella (Napoli), filosofo. Si laurea a Pisa con
una tesi sul pensiero di Benjamin. Presso la Scuola Normale Superiore diviene
ricercatore di ruolo, e lo rimane fino al , anno in cui dà le sue dimissioni
anticipate. Ha collaborato a un seminario di Derrida a Parigi. Ha conseguito
con la tutela di Marin il Doctorat a Parigi (Grice: “a reason why which few
consider him Italian!” ) e il DEA in Réalisation cinématographique seguendo i
corsi diretti dal documentarista Rouch a Nanterre. Ha insegnato Estetica ed
Estetica del cinema, con affidamenti annuali provvisori, in diverse università..
Ha tenuto, su invito, un seminario a Parigi, in collaborazione con Michaud. È redattore
della rivista Altraparola e collabora col Centro per la riforma dello Stato
nella sede di Firenze. Il pensiero di Benjamin e quello dDebord sono punti di
riferimento costanti del suo lavoro. Inizialmente ha studiato la persistenza
delle forme del mito all’interno della modernità (e in tal senso si è occupato
di Bachofen, iintroducendo Il simbolismo funerario degli antichi, col sostegno
del Warburg Institut di Londra). L’intersezione tra mondo mitico e modernità
estrema lo porta a interessarsi della poesia e del pensiero di Hölderlin e
della Scuola di Francoforte. Vicino alla tradizione del pensiero dialettico,
apprezza soprattutto la versione esistenziale che ne viene data nella filosofia
degli anni Trenta e Quaranta, dopo i seminari di Kojève su Hegel; di Benjamin
considera soprattutto la polarità tra immagine di sogno e immagine dialettica,
che utilizza come strumento interpretativo di opere cinematografiche e
letterarie (cfr. La memoria del possibile e Insorgenze). Per Pezzella lo
spettacolo –nella formulazione teorica che ne ha dato Debord- è la forma di
vita dominante del capitalismo attuale, in particolare della sua industria
culturale e del cinema. Secondo la terminologia usata nel libro estetica del
cinema, distingue gli stereotipi spettacolari dalle forme critiche-espressive.
Si è interessato all’intersezione fra tematiche politiche e psicoanalitiche: la
dialettica del riconoscimento, la formazione della soggettività nel capitalismo
attuale, l’incidenza dei traumi storici collettivi sulla psiche individuale
(cfr. il libro La voce minima). Ha tintrodotto in Italia il pensiero politico
di Abensour, con cui condivide la rivalutazione del pensiero utopico e la
rivalutazione del socialismo come prospettiva politica alternativa al
populismo. Collabora alla redazione e all’edizione dei volumi di Altro
Novecento. Comunismo eretico e pensiero critico, per conto della Fondazione
Micheletti di Brescia. Opere -L'immagine
dialettica, ETS, Pisa La concezione tragica di Hölderlin, Il Mulino, Bologna -Il
narcisismo e la società dello spettacolo, manifestolibri, Roma -Il volto di Marilyn, manifestolibri, Roma La
memoria del possibile, Jaca Book, Milano Estetica del cinema, nuova edizione
accresciuta, Il Mulino, Bologna .
-Insorgenze, Jaca Book, Milano .
-Le nubi di Bor (poesie), Zona, Arezzo .
-La voce minima. Trauma e memoria storica, manifestolibri, Roma .
Altrenapoli, Rosemberg & Sellier (collana "La critica sociale"),
Torino . Ha curato: -I fantasmi del moderno. Temi e figure del
cinema noir, Cattedrale, Ancona. -Il Volto dell’Altro. Gli intellettuali ebrei
e la cultura europea, numero speciale, L’ospite ingrato, Quodlibet, Macerata
. -I corpi del potere. Il cinema di
Aleksandr Sokurov, Jaca Book, Milano
(con Antonio Tricomi) -La
Repubblica dei beni comuni (Il Ponte, )
-Gli spettri del capitale (Il Ponte, ). Il tempo del possibile. Attualità
della Comune di Parigi, supplemento monografico al n. 3/ de Il Ponte (con
Francesco Biagi e Massimo Cappitti) Utopia e insorgenze. Per Abensour, volume
monografico della rivista Altraparola (n. 1/), Edizioni Fondazione Micheletti,
Brescia, (con il gruppo di redazione di
Altraparola) Alle frontiere del capitale. Comunismo eretico e pensiero critico,
Jaca Book, Milano (con Massimo Cappitti
e Pier Paolo Poggio). Refs.: Luigi Speranza: “Grice, Pezzella, Benjamin and
Benjamin: la memoria del possibile,” Villa Grice.
idem: Grice: “A very,
untranslatable Roman notionno translationbut cf. ‘ipse,’ ‘same,’ self’, and
‘sameself,’ and Peano’s = may do.” personal identity: explored by H. P. Grice
in “Personal Identity,” Mindand H. P. Grice, “The logical construction theory
of personal identity,” and “David Hume on the vagaries of personal identity.”
-- the numerical identity over time of persons. The question of what personal
identity consists in is the question of what it is what the necessary and
sufficient conditions are for a person existing at one time and a person
existing at another time to be one and the same person. Here there is no
question of there being any entity that is the “identity” of a person; to say
that a person’s identity consists in such and such is just shorthand for saying
that facts about personal identity, i.e., facts to the effect that someone
existing at one time is the same as someone existing at another time, consist
in such and such. This should not be confused with the usage, common in
ordinary speech and in psychology, in which persons are said to have identities,
and, sometimes, to seek, lose, or regain their identities, where one’s
“identity” intimately involves a set of values and goals that structure one’s
life. The words ‘identical’ and ‘same’ mean nothing different in judgments
about persons than in judgments about other things. The problem of personal
identity is therefore not one of defining a special sense of ‘identical,’ and
it is at least misleading to characterize it as defining a particular kind of
identity. Applying Quine’s slogan “no entity without identity,” one might say
that characterizing any sort of entity involves indicating what the identity
conditions for entities of that sort are so, e.g., part of the explanation of
the concept of a set is that sets having the same members are identical, and
that asking what the identity of persons consists in is just a way of asking
what sorts of things persons are. But the main focus in traditional discussions
of the topic has been on one kind of identity judgment about persons, namely
those asserting “identity over time”; the question has been about what the
persistence of persons over time consists in. What has made the identity
persistence of persons of special philosophical interest is partly its
epistemology and partly its connections with moral and evaluative matters. The
crucial epistemological fact is that persons have, in memory, an access to
their own past histories that is unlike the access they have to the histories
of other things including other persons; when one remembers doing or
experiencing something, one normally has no need to employ any criterion of
identity in order to know that the subject of the remembered action or
experience is i.e., is identical with oneself. The moral and evaluative matters
include moral responsibility someone can be held responsible for a past action
only if he or she is identical to the person who did it and our concern for our
own survival and future well-being since it seems, although this has been
questioned, that what one wants in wanting to survive is that there should
exist in the future someone who is identical to oneself. The modern history of
the topic of personal identity begins with Locke, who held that the identity of
a person consists neither in the identity of an immaterial substance as
dualists might be expected to hold nor in the identity of a material substance
or “animal body” as materialists might be expected to hold, and that it
consists instead in “same consciousness.” His view appears to have been that
the persistence of a person through time consists in the fact that certain
actions, thoughts, experiences, etc., occurring at different times, are somehow
united in memory. Modern theories descended from Locke’s take memory continuity
to be a special case of something more general, psychological continuity, and
hold that personal identity consists in this. This is sometimes put in terms of
the notion of a “person-stage,” i.e., a momentary “time slice” of the history
of a person. A series of person-stages will be psychologically continuous if
the psychological states including memories occurring in later members of the
series grow out of, in certain characteristic ways, those occurring in earlier
members of it; and according to the psychological continuity view of personal
identity, person-stages occurring at different times are stages of the same
person provided they belong to a single, non-branching, psychologically
continuous series of person-stages. Opponents of the Lockean and neo-Lockean
psychological continuity view tend to fall into two camps. Some, following
Butler and Reid, hold that personal identity is indefinable, and that nothing
informative can be said about what it consists in. Others hold that the
identity of a person consists in some sort of physical continuity perhaps the identity of a living human
organism, or the identity of a human brain. In the actual cases we know about
putting aside issues about non-bodily survival of death, psychological
continuity and physical continuity go together. Much of the debate between
psychological continuity theories and physical continuity theories has centered
on the interpretation of thought experiments involving brain transplants,
brain-state transfers, etc., in which these come apart. Such examples make
vivid the question of whether our fundamental criteria of personal identity are
psychological, physical, or both. Recently philosophical attention has shifted
somewhat from the question of what personal identity consists in to questions
about its importance. The consideration of hypothetical cases of “fission” in
which two persons at a later time are psychologically continuous with one
person at an earlier time has suggested to some that we can have survival or at any rate what matters in survival without personal identity, and that our
self-interested concern for the future is really a concern for whatever future
persons are psychologically continuous with us.
Fantasia
-- phantasia:
Grice: “ “Phantasia,” as any Clifton schoolboy knows, is cognate with
‘phainomenon,’ as Cant forgot!” -- Grecian, ‘appearance’, ‘imagination’, 1 the
state we are in when something appears to us to be the case; 2 the capacity in
virtue of which things appear to us. Although frequently used of conscious and
imagistic experiences, ‘phantasia’ is not limited to such states; in
particular, it can be applied to any propositional attitude where something is
taken to be the case. But just as the English ‘appears’ connotes that one has
epistemic reservations about what is actually the case, so ‘phantasia’ suggests
the possibility of being misled by appearances and is thus often a subject of
criticism. According to Plato, phantasia is a “mixture” of sensation and
belief; in Aristotle, it is a distinct faculty that makes truth and falsehood
possible. The Stoics take a phantasia to constitute one of the most basic
mental states, in terms of which other mental states are to be explained, and
in rational animals it bears the propositional content expressed in language.
This last use becomes prominent in ancient literary and rhetorical theory to
designate the ability of language to move us and convey subjects vividly as
well as to range beyond the bounds of our immediate experience. Here lie the
origins of the modern concept of imagination although not the Romantic
distinction between fancy and imagination. Later Neoplatonists, such as
Proclus, take phantasia to be necessary for abstract studies such as geometry,
by enabling us to envision spatial relations.
phenomenalism: one of the twelve
labours of H. P. Gricevery fashionable at Oxford“until Austin demolished it
with his puritanical “Sense and sensibilia,”Grice: “Strictly, it should be
‘sense and sensibile,’ since ‘sensibilia’ is pluralwhich invokes Ryle’s paradox
of the speckled hen!” -- the view that propositions asserting the existence of
physical objects are equivalent in meaning to propositions asserting that
subjects would have certain sequences of sensations were they to have certain
others. The basic idea behind phenomenalism is compatible with a number of
different analyses of the self or conscious subject. A phenomenalist might
understand the self as a substance, a particular, or a construct out of actual
and possible experience. The view also is compatible with any number of
different analyses of the visual, tactile, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, and
kinesthetic sensations described in the antecedents and consequents of the
subjunctive conditionals that the phenomenalist uses to analyze physical object
propositions as illustrated in the last paragraph. Probably the most common
analysis of sensations adopted by traditional phenomenalists is a sense-datum
theory, with the sense-data construed as mind-dependent entities. But there is
nothing to prevent a phenomenalist from accepting an adverbial theory or theory
of appearing instead. The origins of phenomenalism are difficult to trace, in
part because early statements of the view were usually not careful. In his
Dialogues, Berkeley hinted at phenomenalism when he had Philonous explain how
he could reconcile an ontology containing only minds and ideas with the story
of a creation that took place before the existence of people. Philonous
imagines that if he had been present at the creation he should have seen
things, i.e., had sensations, in the order described in the Bible. It can also
be argued, however, that J. S. Mill in An Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s
Philosophy was the first to put forth a clearly phenomenalistic analysis when
he identified matter with the “permanent possibility of sensation.” When Mill
explained what these permanent possibilities are, he typically used
conditionals that describe the sensations one would have if one were placed in
certain conditions. The attraction of classical phenomenalism grew with the
rise of logical positivism and its acceptance of the verifiability criterion of
meaning. Phenomenalists were usually foundationalists who were convinced that
justified belief in the physical world rested ultimately on our
noninferentially justified beliefs about our sensations. Implicitly committed to
the view that only deductive and inductive inferences are legitimate, and
further assuming that to be justified in believing one proposition P on the
basis of another E, one must be justified in believing both E and that E makes
P probable, the phenomenalist saw an insuperable difficulty in justifying
belief in ordinary statements about the physical world given prevalent
conceptions of physical petitio principii phenomenalism 663 663 objects. If all we ultimately have as
our evidence for believing in physical objects is what we know about the
occurrence of sensation, how can we establish sensation as evidence for the
existence of physical objects? We obviously cannot deduce the existence of
physical objects from any finite sequence of sensations. The sensations could,
e.g., be hallucinatory. Nor, it seems, can we observe a correlation between
sensation and something else in order to generate the premises of an inductive
argument for the conclusion that sensations are reliable indicators of physical
objects. The key to solving this problem, the phenomenalist argues, is to
reduce assertions about the physical world to complicated assertions about the
sequences of sensations a subject would have were he to have certain others.
The truth of such conditionals, e.g., that if I have the clear visual
impression of a cat, then there is one before me, might be mind-independent in
the way in which one wants the truth of assertions about the physical world to
be mind-independent. And to the phenomenalist’s great relief, it would seem
that we could justify our belief in such conditional statements without having
to correlate anything but sensations. Many philosophers today reject some of
the epistemological, ontological, and metaphilosophical presuppositions with
which phenomenalists approached the problem of understanding our relation to
the physical world through sensation. But the argument that was historically
most decisive in convincing many philosophers to abandon phenomenalism was the
argument from perceptual relativity first advanced by Chisholm in “The Problem
of Perception.” Chisholm offers a strategy for attacking any phenomenalistic
analysis. The first move is to force the phenomenalist to state a conditional
describing only sensations that is an alleged consequence of a physical object
proposition. C. I. Lewis, e.g., in An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation,
claims that the assertion P that there is a doorknob before me and to the left
entails C that if I were to seem to see a doorknob and seem to reach out and
touch it then I would seem to feel it. Chisholm argues that if P really did
entail C then there could be no assertion R that when conjoined with P did not
entail C. There is, however, such an assertion: I am unable to move my limbs
and my hands but am subject to delusions such that I think I am moving them; I
often seem to be initiating a grasping motion but with no feeling of contacting
anything. Chisholm argues, in effect, that what sensations one would have if
one were to have certain others always depends in part on the internal and
external physical conditions of perception and that this fact dooms any attempt
to find necessary and sufficient conditions for the truth of a physical object
proposition couched in terms that describe only connections between
sensations.
Fenomenologia
– fenomeno -- Phenomenology -- Grice: “Strictly, my areathe science of
appearances!” -- referred ironically by J. L. Austin as “linguistic
phenomenology,”—Austin only accepted public-school (“i. e. private-school)
educated males at his Saturday mornings“They share my dialect, unlike others.”
-- in the twentieth century, the
philosophy developed by Husserl and some of his followers. The term has been
used since the mideighteenth century and received a carefully defined technical
meaning in the works of both Kant and Hegel, but it is not now used to refer to
a homogeneous and systematically developed philosophical position. The question
of what phenomenology is may suggest that phenomenology is one among the many
contemporary philosophical conceptions that have a clearly delineated body of
doctrines and whose essential characteristics can be expressed by a set of
wellchosen statements. This notion is not correct, however. In contemporary
philosophy there is no system or school called “phenomenology,” characterized
by a clearly defined body of teachings. Phenomenology is neither a school nor a
trend in contemporary philosophy. It is rather a movement whose proponents, for
various reasons, have propelled it in many distinct directions, with the result
that today it means different things to different people. While within the
phenomenological movement as a whole there are several related currents, they,
too, are by no means homogeneous. Though these currents have a common point of
departure, they do not project toward the same destination. The thinking of
most phenomenologists has changed so greatly that their respective views can be
presented adequately only by showing them in their gradual development. This is
true not only for Husserl, founder of the phenomenological movement, but also
for such later phenomenologists as Scheler, N. Hartmann, Heidegger, Sartre, and
Merleau-Ponty. To anyone who studies the phenomenological movement without
prejudice the differences among its many currents are obvious. It has been
phenomenal property phenomenology 664
664 said that phenomenology consists in an analysis and description of
consciousness; it has been claimed also that phenomenology simply blends with
existentialism. Phenomenology is indeed the study of essences, but it also
attempts to place essences back into existence. It is a transcendental
philosophy interested only in what is “left behind” after the phenomenological
reduction is performed, but it also considers the world to be already there
before reflection begins. For some philosophers phenomenology is speculation on
transcendental subjectivity, whereas for others it is a method for approaching
concrete existence. Some use phenomenology as a search for a philosophy that
accounts for space, time, and the world, just as we experience and “live” them.
Finally, it has been said that phenomenology is an attempt to give a direct
description of our experience as it is in itself without taking into account
its psychological origin and its causal explanation; but Husserl speaks of a
“genetic” as well as a “constitutive” phenomenology. To some people, finding
such an abundance of ideas about one and the same subject constitutes a strange
situation; for others it is annoying to contemplate the “confusion”; and there
will be those who conclude that a philosophy that cannot define its own scope
does not deserve the discussion that has been carried on in its regard. In the
opinion of many, not only is this latter attitude not justified, but precisely
the opposite view defended by Thevenaz should be adopted. As the term
‘phenomenology’ signifies first and foremost a methodical conception, Thevenaz
argues that because this method, originally developed for a very particular and
limited end, has been able to branch out in so many varying forms, it manifests
a latent truth and power of renewal that implies an exceptional fecundity.
Speaking of the great variety of conceptions within the phenomenological
movement, Merleau-Ponty remarked that the responsible philosopher must
recognize that phenomenology may be practiced and identified as a manner or a
style of thinking, and that it existed as a movement before arriving at a
complete awareness of itself as a philosophy. Rather than force a living
movement into a system, then, it seems more in keeping with the ideal of the
historian as well as the philosopher to follow the movement in its development,
and attempt to describe and evaluate the many branches in and through which it
has unfolded itself. In reality the picture is not as dark as it may seem at
first sight. Notwithstanding the obvious differences, most phenomenologists
share certain insights that are very important for their mutual philosophical
conception as a whole. In this connection the following must be mentioned: 1
Most phenomenologists admit a radical difference between the “natural” and the
“philosophical” attitude. This leads necessarily to an equally radical
difference between philosophy and science. In characterizing this difference
some phenomenologists, in agreement with Husserl, stress only epistemological
issues, whereas others, in agreement with Heidegger, focus their attention
exclusively on ontological topics. 2 Notwithstanding this radical difference,
there is a complicated set of relationships between philosophy and science.
Within the context of these relationships philosophy has in some sense a
foundational task with respect to the sciences, whereas science offers to
philosophy at least a substantial part of its philosophical problematic. 3 To
achieve its task philosophy must perform a certain reduction, or epoche, a
radical change of attitude by which the philosopher turns from things to their
meanings, from the ontic to the ontological, from the realm of the objectified
meaning as found in the sciences to the realm of meaning as immediately
experienced in the “life-world.” In other words, although it remains true that
the various phenomenologists differ in characterizing the reduction, no one
seriously doubts its necessity. 4 All phenomenologists subscribe to the
doctrine of intentionality, though most elaborate this doctrine in their own
way. For Husserl intentionality is a characteristic of conscious phenomena or acts;
in a deeper sense, it is the characteristic of a finite consciousness that
originally finds itself without a world. For Heidegger and most existentialists
it is the human reality itself that is intentional; as Being-in-the-world its
essence consists in its ek-sistence, i.e., in its standing out toward the
world. 5 All phenomenologists agree on the fundamental idea that the basic
concern of philosophy is to answer the question concerning the “meaning and
Being” of beings. All agree in addition that in trying to materialize this goal
the philosopher should be primarily interested not in the ultimate cause of all
finite beings, but in how the Being of beings and the Being of the world are to
be constituted. Finally, all agree that in answering the question concerning
the meaning of Being a privileged position is to be attributed to subjectivity,
i.e., to that being which questions the Being of beings. Phenomenologists
differ, however, the moment they have to specify what is meant by subjectivity.
As noted above, whereas Husserl conceives it as a worldless monad, Heidegger
and most later phenomenologists conceive it as being-in-the-world. Referring to
Heidegger’s reinterpretation of his phenomenology, Husserl writes: one
misinterprets my phenomenology backwards from a level which it was its very
purpose to overcome, in other words, one has failed to understand the
fundamental novelty of the phenomenological reduction and hence the progress
from mundane subjectivity i.e., man to transcendental subjectivity; consequently
one has remained stuck in an anthropology . . . which according to my doctrine
has not yet reached the genuine philosophical level, and whose interpretation
as philosophy means a lapse into “transcendental anthropologism,” that is,
“psychologism.” 6 All phenomenologists defend a certain form of intuitionism
and subscribe to what Husserl calls the “principle of all principles”:
“whatever presents itself in ‘intuition’ in primordial form as it were in its
bodily reality, is simply to be accepted as it gives itself out to be, though
only within the limits in which it then presents itself.” Here again, however,
each phenomenologist interprets this principle in keeping with his general
conception of phenomenology as a whole. Thus, while phenomenologists do share
certain insights, the development of the movement has nevertheless been such
that it is not possible to give a simple definition of what phenomenology is.
The fact remains that there are many phenomenologists and many phenomenologies.
Therefore, one can only faithfully report what one has experienced of
phenomenology by reading the phenomenologists. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “J. L.
Austin’s linguistic phenomenologyand conversational implicatura,”
“Conversational phenomenology.”
Philo Judaeus, philosopher who composed
the bulk of his work in the form of commentaries and discourses on Scripture.
He made the first known sustained attempt to synthesize its revealed teachings
with the doctrines of classical philosophy. Although he was not the first to
apply the methods of allegorical interpretation to Scripture, the number and
variety of his interpretations make Philo unique. With this interpretive tool,
he transformed biblical narratives into Platonic accounts of the soul’s quest
for God and its struggle against passion, and the Mosaic commandments into
specific manifestations of general laws of nature. Philo’s most influential
idea was his conception of God, which combines the personal, ethical deity of
the Bible with the abstract, transcendentalist theology of Platonism and
Pythagoreanism. The Philonic deity is both the loving, just God of the Hebrew
Patriarchs and the eternal One whose essence is absolutely unknowable and who
creates the material world by will from primordial matter which He creates ex nihilo.
Besides the intelligible realm of ideas, which Philo is the earliest known
philosopher to identify as God’s thoughts, he posited an intermediate divine
being which he called, adopting scriptural language, the logos. Although the
exact nature of the logos is hard to pin down
Philo variously and, without any concern for consistency, called it the
“first-begotten Son of the uncreated Father,” “Second God,” “idea of ideas,”
“archetype of human reason,” and “pattern of creation” its main functions are clear: to bridge the
huge gulf between the transcendent deity and the lower world and to serve as
the unifying law of the universe, the ground of its order and rationality. A
philosophical eclectic, Philo was unknown to medieval Jewish philosophers but,
beyond his anticipations of Neoplatonism, he had a lasting impact on
Christianity through Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Ambrose.
filolao: Italian philosopher
from Crotone in southern Italy, the first Pythagorean to write a book. The
surviving fragments of it are the earliest primary texts for Pythagoreanism,
but numerous spurious fragments have also been preserved. Philolaus’s book
begins with a cosmogony and includes astronomical, medical, and psychological
doctrines. His major innovation was to argue that the cosmos and everything in
it is a combination not just of unlimiteds what is structured and ordered, e.g.
material elements but also of limiters structural and ordering elements, e.g.
shapes. These elements are held together in a harmonia fitting together, which
comes to be in accord with perspicuous mathematical relationships, such as the
whole number ratios that correspond to the harmonic intervals e.g. octave %
phenotext Philolaus 1 : 2. He argued that secure knowledge is possible insofar
as we grasp the number in accordance with which things are put together. His
astronomical system is famous as the first to make the earth a planet. Along
with the sun, moon, fixed stars, five planets, and counter-earth thus making
the perfect number ten, the earth circles the central fire a combination of the
limiter “center” and the unlimited “fire”. Philolaus’s influence is seen in
Plato’s Philebus; he is the primary source for Aristotle’s account of
Pythagoreanism. H. P. Grice,
“Pythagoras: the written and the unwritten doctrines,” Luigi Speranza, “Grice a
Crotone, ovvero, Filolao,” per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool
Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.
Vivere – Grice: “If I were asked to
summarise my philosophy of life I would say: “Fellini!”” vita ---- vitalism philosophical
biology: Grice, “What is ‘life’?” “How come the Grecians had two expressions
for this: ‘zoon’ and ‘bios’?” “Why could the Romans just do with ‘vivere’?’ -- Grice
liked to regard himself as a philosophical biologist, and indeed philosophical
physiologist. bioethics, the subfield of ethics that concerns the ethical
issues arising in medicine and from advances in biological science. One central
area of bioethics is the ethical issues that arise in relations between health
care professionals and patients. A second area focuses on broader issues of
social justice in health care. A third area concerns the ethical issues raised
by new biological knowledge or technology. In relations between health care
professionals and patients, a fundamental issue is the appropriate role of each
in decision making about patient care. More traditional views assigning
principal decision-making authority to physicians have largely been replaced
with ideals of shared decision making that assign a more active role to
patients. Shared decision making is thought to reflect better the importance of
patients’ self-determination in controlling their care. This increased role for
patients is reflected in the ethical and legal doctrine of informed consent,
which requires that health care not be rendered without the informed and
voluntary consent of a competent patient. The requirement that consent be
informed places a positive responsibility on health care professionals to
provide their patients with the information they need to make informed
decisions about care. The requirement that consent be voluntary requires that
treatment not be forced, nor that patients’ decisions be coerced or manipulated.
If patients lack the capacity to make competent health care decisions, e.g.
young children or cognitively impaired adults, a surrogate, typically a parent
in the case of children or a close family member in the case of adults, must
decide for them. Surrogates’ decisions should follow the patient’s advance
directive if one exists, be the decision the patient would have made in the
circumstances if competent, or follow the patient’s best interests if the
patient has never been competent or his or her wishes are not known. A major
focus in bioethics generally, and treatment decision making in particular, is
care at or near the end of life. It is now widely agreed that patients are
entitled to decide about and to refuse, according to their own values, any lifesustaining
treatment. They are also entitled to have desired treatments that may shorten
their lives, such as high doses of pain medications necessary to relieve severe
pain from cancer, although in practice pain treatment remains inadequate for
many patients. Much more controversial is whether more active means to end life
such as physician-assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia are morally
permissible in indibhavanga bioethics 88
88 vidual cases or justified as public policy; both remain illegal except
in a very few jurisdictions. Several other moral principles have been central
to defining professionalpatient relationships in health care. A principle of
truth telling requires that professionals not lie to patients. Whereas in the
past it was common, especially with patients with terminal cancers, not to
inform patients fully about their diagnosis and prognosis, studies have shown
that practice has changed substantially and that fully informing patients does
not have the bad effects for patients that had been feared in the past.
Principles of privacy and confidentiality require that information gathered in
the professionalpatient relationship not be disclosed to third parties without
patients’ consent. Especially with highly personal information in mental health
care, or information that may lead to discrimination, such as a diagnosis of
AIDS, assurance of confidentiality is fundamental to the trust necessary to a
wellfunctioning professionalpatient relationship. Nevertheless, exceptions to
confidentiality to prevent imminent and serious harm to others are well
recognized ethically and legally. More recently, work in bioethics has focused
on justice in the allocation of health care. Whereas nearly all developed
countries treat health care as a moral and legal right, and ensure it to all
their citizens through some form of national health care system, in the United
States about 15 percent of the population remains without any form of health
insurance. This has fed debates about whether health care is a right or
privilege, a public or individual responsibility. Most bioethicists have
supported a right to health care because of health care’s fundamental impact on
people’s well-being, opportunity, ability to plan their lives, and even lives
themselves. Even if there is a moral right to health care, however, few defend
an unlimited right to all beneficial health care, no matter how small the
benefit and how high the cost. Consequently, it is necessary to prioritize or
ration health care services to reflect limited budgets for health care, and
both the standards and procedures for doing so are ethically controversial.
Utilitarians and defenders of cost-effectiveness analysis in health policy
support using limited resources to maximize aggregate health benefits for the
population. Their critics argue that this ignores concerns about equity,
concerns about how health care resources and health are distributed. For
example, some have argued that equity requires giving priority to treating the
worst-off or sickest, even at a sacrifice in aggregate health benefits;
moreover, taking account in prioritization of differences in costs of different
treatments can lead to ethically problematic results, such as giving higher
priority to providing very small benefits to many persons than very large but
individually more expensive benefits, including life-saving interventions, to a
few persons, as the state of Oregon found in its initial widely publicized
prioritization program. In the face of controversy over standards for rationing
care, it is natural to rely on fair procedures to make rationing decisions.
Other bioethics issues arise from dramatic advances in biological knowledge and
technology. Perhaps the most prominent example is new knowledge of human
genetics, propelled in substantial part by the worldwide Human Genome Project,
which seeks to map the entire human genome. This project and related research
will enable the prevention of genetically transmitted diseases, but already
raises questions about which conditions to prevent in offspring and which
should be accepted and lived with, particularly when the means of preventing
the condition is by abortion of the fetus with the condition. Looking further
into the future, new genetic knowledge and technology will likely enable us to
enhance normal capacities, not just prevent or cure disease, and to manipulate
the genes of future children, raising profoundly difficult questions about what
kinds of persons to create and the degree to which deliberate human design
should replace “nature” in the creation of our offspring. A dramatic example of
new abilities to create offspring, though now limited to the animal realm, was
the cloning in Scotland in 7 of a sheep from a single cell of an adult sheep;
this event raised the very controversial future prospect of cloning human
beings. Finally, new reproductive technologies, such as oocyte egg donation,
and practices such as surrogate motherhood, raise deep issues about the meaning
and nature of parenthood and families. Philosophical
biology -- euthanasia, broadly, the beneficent timing or negotiation of the
death of a sick person; more narrowly, the killing of a human being on the
grounds that he is better off dead. In an extended sense, the word ‘euthanasia’
is used to refer to the painless killing of non-human animals, in our interests
at least as much as in theirs. Active euthanasia is the taking of steps to end
a person’s especially a patient’s life. Passive euthanasia is the omission or
termination of means of prolonging life, on the grounds that the person is
better off without them. The distinction between active and passive euthanasia
is a rough guide for applying the more fundamental distinction between
intending the patient’s death and pursuing other goals, such as the relief of her
pain, with the expectation that she will die sooner rather than later as a
result. Voluntary euthanasia is euthanasia with the patient’s consent, or at
his request. Involuntary euthanasia is euthanasia over the patient’s
objections. Non-voluntary euthanasia is the killing of a person deemed
incompetent with the consent of someone
say a parent authorized to speak
on his behalf. Since candidates for euthanasia are frequently in no condition
to make major decisions, the question whether there is a difference between
involuntary and non-voluntary euthanasia is of great importance. Few moralists
hold that life must be prolonged whatever the cost. Traditional morality
forbids directly intended euthanasia: human life belongs to God and may be
taken only by him. The most important arguments for euthanasia are the pain and
indignity suffered by those with incurable diseases, the burden imposed by
persons unable to take part in normal human activities, and the supposed right
of persons to dispose of their lives however they please. Non-theological
arguments against euthanasia include the danger of expanding the principle of
euthanasia to an everwidening range of persons and the opacity of death and its
consequent incommensurability with life, so that we cannot safely judge that a
person is better off dead. H. P. Grice, “The roman problem: ‘vita’ for ‘bios’
and ‘zoe.’” Vita -- vitalism -- animatumGrice: “The Romans saw a living body as
the ‘animatum,’ since it’s the soul that makes a body a living thing --. So the
idea of ‘vita’ is conceptually linked to that of a ‘soul.’ Grice was logically
more interested in the verb, ‘vivere.’ “Most of Malcolm’s sophismata on
‘dreaming’ apply to ‘living,’ surely “I live” implicates that I live. Grice was
fascinated by the fact that English ‘quick’ was cognate with Roman ‘vivere.’
“as it should,” because if it’s quick, it’s most certainly alive!” Old English cwic
"living, alive, animate," and figuratively, of mental qualities,
"rapid, ready," from Proto-Germanic *kwikwaz (source also of Old
Saxon and Old Frisian quik, Old Norse kvikr "living, alive," Dutch
kwik "lively, bright, sprightly," Old High German quec
"lively," German keck "bold"), from PIE root *gwei-
"to live." Sense of "lively, swift" developed by late 12c.,
on notion of "full of life." NE swift or the now more common fast may
apply to rapid motion of any duration, while in quick (in accordance with its
original sense of 'live, lively') there is a notion of 'sudden' or 'soon over.'
We speak of a fast horse or runner in a race, a quick starter but not a quick
horse. A somewhat similar feeling may distinguish NHG schnell and rasch or it
may be more a matter of local preference. [Carl Darling Buck, "A
Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-European Languages,"
1949] v. n. Sanscr. giv-, givami, live; Gr. βίος, life; Goth.
quius, living; Germ. quicken; Engl. quick, to live, be
alive, have life (syn. spiro). philosophical
biology: v. H. P. Grice, “The roman problem: doing with ‘vivere’ for ‘zoe’ and
bios’” -- vide: H. P. Grice, “Philosophical biology and philosophical
psychology” -- the philosophy of science applied to biology. On a conservative
view of the philosophy of science, the same principles apply throughout
science. Biology supplies additional examples but does not provide any special
problems or require new principles. For example, the reduction of Mendelian
genetics to molecular biology exemplifies the same sort of relation as the
reduction of thermodynamics to statistical mechanics, and the same general
analysis of reduction applies equally to both. More radical philosophers argue
that the subject matter of biology has certain unique features; hence, the
philosophy of biology is itself unique. The three features of biology most
often cited by those who maintain that philosophy of biology is unique are
functional organization, embryological development, and the nature of
selection. Organisms are functionally organized. They are capable of
maintaining their overall organization in the face of fairly extensive
variation in their envisonments. Organisms also undergo ontogenetic development
resulting from extremely complex interactions between the genetic makeup of the
organism and its successive environments. At each step, the course that an
organism takes is determined by an interplay between its genetic makeup, its
current state of development, and the environment it happens to confront. The
complexity of these interactions produces the naturenurture problem. Except for
human artifacts, similar organization does not occur in the non-living world.
The species problem is another classic issue in the philosophy of biology.
Biological species have been a paradigm example of natural kinds since
Aristotle. According to nearly all pre-Darwinian philosophers, species are part
of the basic makeup of the universe, like gravity and gold. They were held to
be as eternal, immutable, and discrete as these other examples of natural
kinds. If Darwin was right, species are not eternal. They come and go, and once
gone can no more reemerge than Aristotle can once again walk the streets of
Athens. Nor are species immutable. A sample of lead can be transmuted into a
sample of gold, but these elements as elements remain immutable in the face of
such changes. However, Darwin insisted that species themselves, not merely
their instances, evolved. Finally, because Darwin thought that species evolved
gradually, the boundaries between species are not sharp, casting doubt on the
essentialist doctrines so common in his day. In short, if species evolve, they
have none of the traditional characteristics of species. Philosophers and
biologists to this day are working out the consequences of this radical change
in our worldview. The topic that has received the greatest attention by
philosophers of biology in the recent literature is the nature of evolutionary
theory, in particular selection, adaptation, fitness, and the population structure
of species. In order for selection to operate, variation is necessary,
successive generations must be organized genealogically, and individuals must
interact differentially with their environments. In the simplest case, genes
pass on their structure largely intact. In addition, they provide the
information necessary to produce organisms. Certain of these organisms are
better able to cope with their environments and reproduce than are other
organisms. As a result, genes are perpetuated differentially through successive
generations. Those characteristics that help an organism cope with its
environments are termed adaptations. In a more restricted sense, only those
characteristics that arose through past selective advantage count as
adaptations. Just as the notion of IQ was devised as a single measure for a
combination of the factors that influence our mental abilities, fitness is a
measure of relative reproductive success. Claims about the tautological
character of the principle philosophical behaviorism philosophy of biology of
the survival of the fittest stem from the blunt assertion that fitness just is
relative reproductive success, as if intelligence just is what IQ tests
measure. Philosophers of biology have collaborated with biologists to analyze
the notion of fitness. This literature has concentrated on the role that
causation plays in selection and, hence, must play in any adequate explication
of fitness. One important distinction that has emerged is between replication
and differential interaction with the environment. Selection is a function of
the interplay between these two processes. Because of the essential role of
variation in selection, all the organisms that belong to the same species
either at any one time or through time cannot possibly be essentially the same.
Nor can species be treated adequately in terms of the statistical covariance of
either characters or genes. The populational structure of species is crucial.
For example, species that form numerous, partially isolated demes are much more
likely to speciate than those that do not. One especially controversial
question is whether species themselves can function in the evolutionary process
rather than simply resulting from it. Although philosophers of biology have
played an increasingly important role in biology itself, they have also
addressed more traditional philosophical questions, especially in connection
with evolutionary epistemology and ethics. Advocates of evolutionary
epistemology argue that knowledge can be understood in terms of the adaptive
character of accurate knowledge. Those organisms that hold false beliefs about
their environment, including other organisms, are less likely to reproduce
themselves than those with more accurate beliefs. To the extent that this
argument has any force at all, it applies only to humansized entities and
events. One common response to evolutionary epistemology is that sometimes
people who hold manifestly false beliefs flourish at the expense of those who
hold more realistic views of the world in which we live. On another version of
evolutionary epistemology, knowledge acquisition is viewed as just one more
instance of a selection process. The issue is not to justify our beliefs but to
understand how they are generated and proliferated. Advocates of evolutionary
ethics attempt to justify certain ethical principles in terms of their survival
value. Any behavior that increases the likelihood of survival and reproduction
is “good,” and anything that detracts from these ends is “bad.” The main
objection to evolutionary ethics is that it violates the isought distinction.
According to most ethical systems, we are asked to sacrifice ourselves for the
good of others. If these others were limited to our biological relatives, then
the biological notion of inclusive fitness might be adequate to account for
such altruistic behavior, but the scope of ethical systems extends past one’s
biological relatives. Advocates of evolutionary ethics are hard pressed to
explain the full range of behavior that is traditionally considered as
virtuous. Either biological evolution cannot provide an adequate justification
for ethical behavior or else ethical systems must be drastically reduced in
their scope. Refs.: Grice, “Philosophical biology: are we all emergentists?”
filomato – accademia dei filomatei –
Grice: “Only in Italy! At Oxford, a filomato is almost a word of abuse!”
Englishmen don’t cliam to ‘know,’ less so to ‘love’ knowledge!” -- .
philosophism: cf. filomato -- birrellismgeneral
refelction on life. Grice defines a philosopher as someone ‘addicted to general
reflections on life,’ like Birrell did. f. paraphilosophyphilosophical hacks. “Austin’s
expressed view -- the formulation of which no doubt involves some irony -- is
that we ‘philosophical hacks’ spend the week making, for the benefit of our
tutees, direct attacks on this or that philosophical issue, and that we need to
be refreshed, at the week-end, by some suitably chosen ‘para-philosophy’ in
which some non-philosophical
conception is to be examined with the full rigour of the Austinian Code, with a
view to an ultimate analogical pay-off (liable never to be reached) in philosophical currency.” His feeling of
superiority as a philosopher is obvious in various fields. He certaintly would
not get involved in any ‘empirical’ survey (“We can trust this, qua
philosophers, as given.”) Grice held a MA (Lit. Hum.)Literae Humaniores
(Philosophy). So he knew what he was talking about. The curriculum was an easy
one. He plays with the fact that empiricists don’t regard philosophy as a
sovereign monarch: philosophia regina scientiarum, provided it’s queen consort.
In “Conceptual analysis and the province of philosophy,” he plays with the idea
that Philosophy is the Supreme Science. Grice was somewhat obsessed as to what
‘philosohical’ stood for, which amused the members of his play group! His play
group once spends five weeks in an effort to explain why, sometimes, ‘very’
allows, with little or no change of meaning, the substitution of ‘highly’ (as
in ‘very unusual’) and sometimes does not (as in ‘very depressed’ or ‘very
wicked’); and we reached no conclusion. This episode was ridiculed by some as
an ultimate embodiment of fruitless frivolity. But that response is as out of
place as a similar response to the medieval question, ‘How many angels can
dance on a needle’s point?’” A needless point?For much as this medieval
question is raised in order to display, in a vivid way, a difficulty in the
conception of an immaterial substance, so The Play Group discussion is
directed, in response to a worry from me, towards an examination, in the first
instance, of a conceptual question which is generally agreed among us to be a
strong candidate for being a question which had no philosophical importance,
with a view to using the results of this examination in finding a distinction
between philosophically important and philosophically unimportant enquiries. Grice
is fortunate that the Lit. Hum. programme does not have much philosophy! He
feels free! In fact, the lack of a philosophical background is felt as a badge
of honour. It is ‘too clever’ and un-English to ‘know’ things. A pint of
philosophy is all Grice wanted. Figurative. This is Harvardite Gordon’s attempt
to formulate a philosophy of the minimum fundamental ideas that all people on
the earth should come to know. Reviewed by A. M. Honoré: Short measure. Gordon,
a Stanley Plummer scholar, e: Bowdoin and Harvard, in The Eastern Gazette.
Grice would exclaim: I always loved Alfred Brooks Gordon! Grice was slightly
disapppointed that Gordon had not included the fundamental idea of implicaturum
in his pint. Short measure, indeed. Grice gives seminars on Ariskant (“the
first part of this individual interested some of my tutees; the second,
others.” Ariskant philosophised in Grecian, but also in the pure Teutonic, and
Grice collaborated with Baker in this area. Curiously, Baker majors in French
and philosophy and does research at the Sorbonne. Grice would sometimes define
‘philoosphy.’ Oddly, Grice gives a nice example of ‘philosopher’ meaning
‘addicted to general, usually stoic, reflections about life.’ In the context
where it occurs, the implicaturum is Stevensonian. If Stevenson says that an
athlete is usually tall, a philosopher may occasionally be inclined to reflect
about life in general, as a birrelist would. Grice’s gives an alternate
meaning, intended to display circularity: ‘engaged in philosophical studies.’
The idea of Grice of philosophy is the one the Lit. Hum. instills. It is a unique experience, unknown in the New
World, our actually outside Oxford, or post-Grice, where a classicist is not
seen as a philosopher. Once a tutorial fellow in philosophy (rather than
classics) and later university lecturer in philosophy (rather than classics)
strengthens his attachment. Grice needs to regarded by his tutee as a
philosopher simpliciter, as oppoosed to a prof: the Waynflete is a
metaphysician; the White is a moralist, the Wykeham a logician, and the Wilde a
‘mental’. For Grice’s “greatest living philosopher,” Heidegger, ‘philosophy’ is
a momer. While philology merely discourses (logos) on love, the philosopher
claims to be a wizard (sophos) of love. Liddell and Scott have “φιλοσοφία,”
which they render as “love of knowledge, pursuit thereof, speculation,” “ἡ φ.
κτῆσις ἐπιστήμης.” Then there’s “ἡ πρώτη φ.,” with striking originality,
metaphysic, Arist. Metaph. 1026a24. Just one sense, but various ambiguities
remain in ‘philosopher,’ as per Grice’s two
usages. As it happens, Grice is both addicted to general, usually stoic,
speculations about life, and he is a member of The Oxford Philosophical
Society.Refs.: The main sources in the Grice Papers are under series III, of
the doctrines. See also references under ‘lingusitic botany,’ and Oxonianism. Grice
liked to play with the adage of ‘philosophia’ as ‘regina scientiarum.’ A
specific essay in his update of “post-war Oxford philosophy,” in WoW on
“Conceptual analysis and the province of philosophy,” BANC, H. P. Grice, “My
friend Birrell.”
philosophia
perennis:
a supposed body of truths that appear in the writings of the great
philosophers, or the truths common to opposed philosophical viewpoints. The
term is derived from the title of a book De perenni philosophia published by
Agostino Steuco of Gubbio in 1540. It suggests that the differences between
philosophers are inessential and superficial and that the common essential
truth emerges, however partially, in the major philosophical schools. Aldous
Huxley employed it as a title. L. Lavelle, N. Hartmann, and K. Jaspers also
employ the phrase. M. De Wulf and many others use the phrase to characterize
Neo-Thomism as the chosen vehicle of essential philosophical truths. Refs.: H.
P. Grice, “All that remains is mutability.”
uomo
– man -- philosophical anthropology: Grice: “The Italians take ‘antropologia
filosofica’ slightly more seriously than we do at Oxford!” -- Grice hardly used
‘man,’ but preferred ‘human,’ and person. ‘Man’ is very English, and that may
be the reason why latinate Grice avoided it! “Human” Grice thought cognate with
“homo,” which rendered Grecian ‘anthropoos.’ “The Grecians and the Roamns distinguished
between a generic ‘anthropoos,’ and the masculine ‘aner,’ Roman ‘vir.’ -- “What
is man?” Grice: “I would distinguish between what is human, and what is
person.” -- philosophical inquiry concerning human nature, often starting with
the question of what generally characterizes human beings in contrast to other
kinds of creatures and things. Thus broadly conceived, it is a kind of inquiry
as old as philosophy itself, occupying philosophers from Socrates to Sartre;
and it embraces philosophical psychology, the philosophy of mind, philosophy of
action, and existentialism. Such inquiry presupposes no immutable “essence of
man,” but only the meaningfulness of distinguishing between what is “human” and
what is not, and the possibility that philosophy as well as other disciplines
may contribute to our self-comprehension. It leaves open the question of
whether other kinds of naturally occurring or artificially produced entity may
possess the hallmarks of our humanity, and countenances the possibility of the
biologically evolved, historically developed, and socially and individually
variable character of everything about our attained humanity. More narrowly
conceived, philosophical anthropology is a specific movement in recent European
philosophy associated initially with Scheler and Helmuth Plessner, and
subsequently with such figures as Arnold Gehlen, Cassirer, and the later
Sartre. It initially emerged in Germany simultaneously with the existential
philosophy of Heidegger and the critical social theory of the Frankfurt School,
with which it competed as G. philosophers turned their attention to the
comprehension of human life. This movement was distinguished from the outset by
its attempt to integrate the insights of phenomenological analysis with the
perspectives attainable through attention to human and comparative biology, and
subsequently to social inquiry as well. This turn to a more naturalistic
approach to the understanding of ourselves, as a particular kind of living
creature among others, is reflected in the titles of the two works published in
8 that inaugurated the movement: Scheler’s Man’s Place in Nature and Plessner’s
The Levels of the Organic and Man. For both Scheler and Plessner, however, as
for those who followed them, our nature must be understood by taking further
account of the social, cultural, and intellectual dimensions of human life.
Even those like Gehlen, whose Der Mensch 0 exhibits a strongly biological
orientation, devoted much attention to these dimensions, which our biological
nature both constrains and makes possible. For all of them, the relation
between the biological and the social and cultural dimensions of human life is
a central concern and a key to comprehending our human nature. One of the
common themes of the later philosophical-anthropological literature e.g., Cassirer’s An Essay on Man 5 and
Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason 0 as well as Plessner’s Contitio Humana
5 and Gehlen’s Early Man and Late Culture 3
is the plasticity of human nature, made possible by our biological
constitution, and the resulting great differences in the ways human beings
live. Yet this is not taken to preclude saying anything meaningful about human
nature generally; rather, it merely requires attention to the kinds of general
features involved and reflected in human diversity and variability. Critics of
the very idea and possibility of a philosophical anthropology e.g., Althusser
and Foucault typically either deny that there are any such general features or
maintain that there are none outside the province of the biological sciences to
which philosophy can contribute nothing substantive. Both claims, however, are
open to dispute; and the enterprise of a philosophical anthropology remains a
viable and potentially significant one. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Gehlen and the
idea that man is sickhomo infirmus.”
Oicos – Grice: “It’s fascinating to know
that ‘Vico’ is cognate with ‘oikos’!” -- casa -- philosophical oeconomica:
Grice: “The oikos is the houseand a house is not a home unless there’s a cat around.”
-- the study of methodological issues facing positive economic theory and
normative problems on the intersection of welfare economics and political
philosophy. Methodological issues. Applying approaches and questions in the
philosophy of science specifically to economics, the philosophy of economics
explores epistemological and conceptual problems raised by the explanatory aims
and strategy of economic theory: Do its assumptions about individual choice
constitute laws, and do they explain its derived generalizations about markets
and economies? Are these generalizations laws, and if so, how are they tested
by observation of economic processes, and how are theories in the various
compartments of economics microeconomics,
macroeconomics related to one another
and to econometrics? How are the various schools neoclassical, institutional, Marxian,
etc. related to one another, and what
sorts of tests might enable us to choose between their theories? Historically,
the chief issue of interest in the development of the philosophy of economics
has been the empirical adequacy of the assumptions of rational “economic man”:
that all agents have complete and transitive cardinal or ordinal utility
rankings or preference orders and that they always choose that available option
which maximizes their utility or preferences. Since the actual behavior of
agents appears to disconfirm these assumptions, the claim that they constitute
causal laws governing economic behavior is difficult to sustain. On the other
hand, the assumption of preference-maximizing behavior is indispensable to
twentieth-century economics. These two considerations jointly undermine the
claim that economic theory honors criteria on explanatory power and evidential
probity drawn philosophy of economics philosophy of economics 669 669 from physical science. Much work by
economists and philosophers has been devoted therefore to disputing the claim
that the assumptions of rational choice theory are false or to disputing the
inference from this claim to the conclusion that the cognitive status of
economic theory as empirical science is thereby undermined. Most frequently it
has been held that the assumptions of rational choice are as harmless and as
indispensable as idealizations are elsewhere in science. This view must deal
with the allegation that unlike theories embodying idealization elsewhere in
science, economic theory gains little more in predictive power from these
assumptions about agents’ calculations than it would secure without any
assumptions about individual choice. Normative issues. Both economists and
political philosophers are concerned with identifying principles that will
ensure just, fair, or equitable distributions of scarce goods. For this reason
neoclassical economic theory shares a history with utilitarianism in moral
philosophy. Contemporary welfare economics continues to explore the limits of
utilitarian prescriptions that optimal economic and political arrangements
should maximize and/or equalize utility, welfare, or some surrogate. It also
examines the adequacy of alternatives to such utilitarian principles. Thus,
economics shares an agenda of interests with political and moral philosophy.
Utilitarianism in economics and philosophy has been constrained by an early
realization that utilities are neither cardinally measurable nor
interpersonally comparable. Therefore the prescription to maximize and/or
equalize utility cannot be determinatively obeyed. Welfare theorists have
nevertheless attempted to establish principles that will enable us to determine
the equity, fairness, or justice of various economic arrangements, and that do
not rely on interpersonal comparisons required to measure whether a
distribution is maximal or equal in the utility it accords all agents. Inspired
by philosophers who have surrendered utilitarianism for other principles of
equality, fairness, or justice in distribution, welfare economists have
explored Kantian, social contractarian, and communitarian alternatives in a
research program that cuts clearly across both disciplines. Political
philosophy has also profited as much from innovations in economic theory as
welfare economics has benefited from moral philosophy. Theorems from welfare
economics that establish the efficiency of markets in securing distributions
that meet minimal conditions of optimality and fairness have led moral
philosophers to reexamine the moral status of free-market exchange. Moreover,
philosophers have come to appreciate that coercive social institutions are
sometimes best understood as devices for securing public goods goods like police protection that cannot be
provided to those who pay for them without also providing them to free riders
who decline to do so. The recognition that everyone would be worse off,
including free riders, were the coercion required to pay for these goods not
imposed, is due to welfare economics and has led to a significant revival of
interest in the work of Hobbes, who appears to have prefigured such
arguments.
Ex-duc-tum – Grice, “As an M. A., I would
say my favourite reading is Sant’Agostino, as the Italians call him, ‘De
magistro’!” -- Grice: “Oddly, in English and Italian, to teach (insegnare) is
to display this or that sign!” -- philosophy of education: Grice: “To teach is
not the opposite of learn, even if The Wind in The Willows thus suggests.“ “To
teach is etymologically, to ‘show, -- the ensignTo educate is of course to
guide, to lead, to conduce. Grice: “I taught Peters all he needed to know about
this!” -- a branch of philosophy concerned with virtually every aspect of the
educational enterprise. It significantly overlaps other, more mainstream
branches especially epistemology and ethics, but even logic and metaphysics.
The field might almost be construed as a “series of footnotes” to Plato’s Meno,
wherein are raised such fundamental issues as whether virtue can be taught;
what virtue is; what knowledge is; what the relation between knowledge of
virtue and being virtuous is; what the relation between knowledge and teaching
is; and how and whether teaching is possible. While few people would subscribe
to Plato’s doctrine or convenient fiction, perhaps in Meno that learning by
being taught is a process of recollection, the paradox of inquiry that prompts
this doctrine is at once the root text of the perennial debate between
rationalism and empiricism and a profoundly unsettling indication that teaching
passeth understanding. Mainstream philosophical topics considered within an
educational context tend to take on a decidedly genetic cast. So, e.g., epistemology,
which analytic philosophy has tended to view as a justificatory enterprise,
becomes concerned if not with the historical origins of knowledge claims then
with their genesis within the mental economy of persons generally in consequence of their educations. And even
when philosophers of education come to endorse something akin to Plato’s
classic account of knowledge as justified true belief, they are inclined to
suggest, then, that the conveyance of knowledge via instruction must somehow
provide the student with the justification along with the true philosophy of
education philosophy of education 670
670 belief thereby reintroducing
a genetic dimension to a topic long lacking one. Perhaps, indeed, analytic
philosophy’s general though not universal neglect of philosophy of education is
traceable in some measure to the latter’s almost inevitably genetic
perspective, which the former tended to decry as armchair science and as a
threat to the autonomy and integrity of proper philosophical inquiry. If this
has been a basis for neglect, then philosophy’s more recent, postanalytic turn
toward naturalized inquiries that reject any dichotomy between empirical and
philosophical investigations may make philosophy of education a more inviting
area. Alfred North Whitehead, himself a leading light in the philosophy of
education, once remarked that we are living in the period of educational
thought subject to the influence of Dewey, and there is still no denying the
observation. Dewey’s instrumentalism, his special brand of pragmatism, informs
his extraordinarily comprehensive progressive philosophy of education; and he
once went so far as to define all of philosophy as the general theory of
education. He identifies the educative process with the growth of experience,
with growing as developing where
experience is to be understood more in active terms, as involving doing things
that change one’s objective environment and internal conditions, than in the
passive terms, say, of Locke’s “impression” model of experience. Even
traditionalistic philosophers of education, most notably Maritain, have
acknowledged the wisdom of Deweyan educational means, and have, in the face of
Dewey’s commanding philosophical presence, reframed the debate with
progressivists as one about appropriate educational ends thereby insufficiently acknowledging Dewey’s
trenchant critique of the meansend distinction. And even some recent analytic
philosophers of education, such as R. S. Peters, can be read as if translating
Deweyan insights e.g., about the aim of education into an analytic idiom.
Analytic philosophy of education, as charted by Oxford philosopher R. S.
Peters, Israel Scheffler, and others in the Anglo- philosophical tradition, has
used the tools of linguistic analysis on a wide variety of educational concepts
learning, teaching, training, conditioning, indoctrinating, etc. and
investigated their interconnections: Does teaching entail learning? Does
teaching inevitably involve indoctrinating? etc. This careful, subtle, and
philosophically sophisticated work has made possible a much-needed conceptual
precision in educational debates, though the debaters who most influence public
opinion and policy have rarely availed themselves of that precisification.
Recent work in philosophy of education, however, has taken up some major
educational objectives moral and other
values, critical and creative thinking
in a way that promises to have an impact on the actual conduct of
education. Philosophy of education, long isolated in schools of education from
the rest of the academic philosophical community, has also been somewhat
estranged from the professional educational mainstream. Dewey would surely have
approved of a change in this status quo.
Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Peters and I.”
storia – Grice: “We distinguish between
history and story – the Italians don’t! That explains much of our differenes!”
-- Grice: “I think I learned everything I wanted to know about so-called ‘the
philosophy of history,’ in good ole Gardiner – whom Austin called a
‘historian,’ not a philosopher – “since he tells stories” – in his
‘Introuction’ for the volume Warnock commissioned him for those ‘readings in
philosophy’ he was obsessed with!” -- philosophical historian: philosophical
historianGrice aslongitudinal unity -- Danto, A. C. philosopher of art and art
history who has also contributed to the philosophies of history, action,
knowledge, science, and metaphilosophy. Among his influential studies in the
history of philosophy are books on Nietzsche, Sartre, and thought. Danto arrives at his philosophy of
art through his “method of indiscernibles,” which has greatly influenced
contemporary philosophical aesthetics. According to his metaphilosophy, genuine
philosophical questions arise when there is a theoretical need to differentiate
two things that are perceptually indiscernible
such as prudential actions versus moral actions Kant, causal chains
versus constant conjunctions Hume, and perfect dreams versus reality Descartes.
Applying the method to the philosophy of art, Danto asks what distinguishes an
artwork, such as Warhol’s Brillo Box, from its perceptually indiscernible, real-world
counterparts, such as Brillo boxes by Proctor and Gamble. His answer his partial definition of art is that x is a work of art only if 1 x is
about something and 2 x embodies its meaning i.e., discovers a mode of
presentation intended to be appropriate to whatever subject x is about. These
two necessary conditions, Danto claims, enable us to distinguish between
artworks and real things between
Warhol’s Brillo Box and Proctor and Gamble’s. However, critics have pointed out
that these conditions fail, since real Brillo boxes are about something Brillo
about which they embody or convey meanings through their mode of presentation
viz., that Brillo is clean, fresh, and dynamic. Moreover, this is not an
isolated example. Danto’s theory of art confronts systematic difficulties in
differentiating real cultural artifacts, such as industrial packages, from
artworks proper. In addition to his philosophy of art, Danto proposes a
philosophy of art history. Like Hegel, Danto maintains that art history as a developmental, progressive process has ended. Danto believes that modern art has
been primarily reflexive i.e., about itself; it has attempted to use its own
forms and strategies to disclose the essential nature of art. Cubism and
abstract expressionism, for example, exhibit saliently the two-dimensional
nature of painting. With each experiment, modern art has gotten closer to
disclosing its own essence. But, Danto argues, with works such as Warhol’s
Brillo Box, artists have taken the philosophical project of self-definition as
far as they can, since once an artist like Warhol has shown that artworks can
be perceptually indiscernible from “real things” and, therefore, can look like
anything, there is nothing further that the artist qua artist can show through the
medium of appearances about the nature of art. The task of defining art must be
reassigned to philosophers to be treated discursively, and art history as the developmental, progressive narrative
of self-definition ends. Since that turn
of events was putatively precipitated by Warhol in the 0s, Danto calls the
present period of art making “post-historical.” As an art critic for The
Nation, he has been chronicling its vicissitudes for a decade and a half. Some
dissenters, nevertheless, have been unhappy with Danto’s claim that art history
has ended because, they maintain, he has failed to demonstrate that the only
prospects for a developmental, progressive history of art reside in the project
of the self-definition of art. “There are two concerns by the philosopher with
historythe history of philosophy as a philosophical disciplineand the
philosophy of history per se. In the latter, in what way can we say that
decapitation willed the death of Charles II?”Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Philosophy’s
Two Co-Ordinate Unities: Lat. and Long.,” “Kantotle or Ariskant? The
Co-Ordinate Unity of Philosophy.” Grice is more interested in philosophical
historiography than history itself! He makes some hypotheses about the movement
he belonged to, and he hoped that what he had to say related to what he called
Athenian dialectic! In stressing the ‘continuity,’ or unity, of philosophy both
latitudinal and longidtudinal, Grice is inviting historiography as more than
ancilla philosophiae. This at a time when analyticd philowophers, mainly in the
New World, “where they really lack a history,” were propagating the slogan that
to philosophise is NOT do to history of philosophy!” philosophy of history, the
philosophical study of human history and of attempts to record and interpret
it. ‘History’ in English and its equivalent in most modern European languages
has two primary senses: 1 the temporal progression of large-scale human events
and actions, primarily but not exclusively in the past; and 2 the discipline or
inquiry in which knowledge of the human past is acquired or sought. This has
led to two senses of ‘philosophy of history’, depending on which “history” has
been the object of philosophers’ attentions. Philosophy of history in the first
sense is often called substantive or speculative, and placed under metaphysics.
Philosophy of history in the second sense is called critical or analytic and
can be placed in epistemology. Substantive philosophy of history. In the West,
substantive philosophy of history is thought to begin only in the Christian
era. In the City of God, Augustine wonders why Rome flourished while pagan, yet
fell into disgrace after its conversion to Christiantity. Divine reward and
punishment should apply to whole peoples, not just to individuals. The
unfolding of events in history should exhibit a plan that is intelligible
rationally, morally, and for Augustine theologically. As a believer Augustine
is convinced that there is such a plan, though it may not always be evident. In
the modern period, philosophers such as Vico and Herder also sought such
intelligibility in history. They also believed in a long-term direction or
purpose of history that is often opposed to and makes use of the purposes of
individuals. The most elaborate and best-known example of this approach is
found in Hegel, who thought that the gradual realization of human freedom could
be discerned in history even if much slavery, tyranny, and suffering are
necessary in the process. Marx, too, claimed to know the laws in his case economic according to which history unfolds. Similar
searches for overall “meaning” in human history have been undertaken in the
twentieth century, notably by Arnold Toynbee 95, author of the twelve-volume
Study of History, and Oswald Spengler 06, author of Decline of the West. But
the whole enterprise was denounced by the positivists and neo-Kantians of the
late nineteenth century as irresponsible metaphysical speculation. This
attitude was shared by twentieth-century neopositivists and some of their heirs
in the analytic tradition. There is some irony in this, since positivism,
explicitly in thinkers like Comte and implicitly in others, involves belief in
progressively enlightened stages of human history crowned by the modern age of
science. Critical philosophy of history. The critical philosophy of history,
i.e., the epistemology of historical knowledge, can be traced to the late
nineteenth century and has been dominated by the paradigm of the natural
sciences. Those in the positivist, neopositivist, and postpositivist tradition,
in keeping with the idea of the unity of science, believe that to know the
historical past is to explain events causally, and all causal explanation is
ultimately of the same sort. To explain human events is to derive them from
laws, which may be social, psychological, and perhaps ultimately biological and
physical. Against this reductionism, the neo-Kantians and Dilthey argued that
history, like other humanistic disciplines Geisteswissenschaften, follows
irreducible rules of its own. It is concerned with particular events or
developments for their own sake, not as instances of general laws, and its aim
is to understand, rather than explain, human actions. This debate was
resurrected in the twentieth century in the English-speaking world.
Philosophers like Hempel and Morton White b.7 elaborated on the notion of
causal explanation in history, while Collingwood and William Dray b.1 described
the “understanding” of historical agents as grasping the thought behind an
action or discovering its reasons rather than its causes. The comparison with
natural science, and the debate between reductionists and antireductionists,
dominated other questions as well: Can or should history be objective and
valuefree, as science purportedly is? What is the significance of the fact that
historians can never perceive the events that interest them, since they are in
the past? Are they not limited by their point of view, their place in history,
in a way scientists are not? Some positivists were inclined to exclude history
from science, rather than make it into one, relegating it to “literature”
because it could never meet the standards of objectivity and genuine
explanation; it was often the anti-positivists who defended the cognitive
legitimacy of our knowledge of the past. In the non-reductionist tradition,
philosophers have increasingly stressed the narrative character of history: to
understand human actions generally, and past actions in particular, is to tell
a coherent story about them. History, according to W. B. Gallie b.2, is a species
of the genus Story. History does not thereby become fiction: narrative remains
a “cognitive instrument” Louis Mink, 183 just as appropriate to its domain as
theory construction is to science. Nevertheless, concepts previously associated
with fictional narratives, such as plot structure and beginning-middle-end, are
seen as applying to historical narratives as well. This tradition is carried
further by Hayden White b.8, who analyzes classical nineteenth-century
histories and even substantive philosophies of history such as Hegel’s as
instances of romance, comedy, tragedy, and satire. In White’s work this mode of
analysis leads him to some skepticism about history’s capacity to “represent”
the reality of the past: narratives seem to be imposed upon the data, often for
ideological reasons, rather than drawn from them. To some extent White’s view
joins that of some positivists who believe that history’s literary character
excludes it from the realm of science. But for White this is hardly a defect.
Some philosophers have criticized the emphasis on narrative in discussions of
history, since it neglects search and discovery, deciphering and evaluating
sources, etc., which is more important to historians than the way they “write
up” their results. Furthermore, not all history is presented in narrative form.
The debate between pro- and anti-narrativists among philosophers of history has
its parallel in a similar debate among historians themselves. Academic history
in recent times has seen a strong turn away from traditional political history
toward social, cultural, and economic analyses of the human past. Narrative is
associated with the supposedly outmoded focus on the doings of kings, popes,
and generals. These are considered e.g. by the
historian Fernand Braudel, 285 merely surface ripples compared to the
deeper-lying and slower-moving currents of social and economic change. It is
the methods and concepts of the social sciences, not the art of the
storyteller, on which the historian must draw. This debate has now lost some of
its steam and narrative history has made something of a comeback among
historians. Among philosophers Paul Ricoeur has tried to show that even
ostensibly non-narrative history retains narrative features. Historicity.
Historicity or historicality: Geschichtlichkeit is a term used in the
phenomenological and hermeneutic tradition from Dilthey and Husserl through
Heidegger and Gadamer to indicate an essential feature of human existence.
Persons are not merely in history; their past, including their social past,
figures in their conception of themselves and their future possibilities. Some
awareness of the past is thus constitutive of the self, prior to being formed
into a cognitive discipine. Modernism and the postmodern. It is possible to view
some of the debates over the modern and postmodern in recent Continental
philosophy as a new kind of philosophy of history. Philosophers like Lyotard
and Foucault see the modern as the period from the Enlightenment and
Romanticism to the present, characterized chiefly by belief in “grand
narratives” of historical progress, whether capitalist, Marxist, or positivist,
with “man” as the triumphant hero of the story. Such belief is now being or
should be abandoned, bringing modernism to an end. In one sense this is like
earlier attacks on the substantive philosophy of history, since it unmasks as
unjustified moralizing certain beliefs about large-scale patterns in history.
It goes even further than the earlier attack, since it finds these beliefs at
work even where they are not explicitly expressed. In another sense this is a
continuation of the substantive philosophy of history, since it makes its own
grand claims about largescale historical patterns. In this it joins hands with
other philosophers of our day in a general historicization of knowledge e.g.,
the philosophy of science merges with the history of science and even of
philosophy itself. Thus the later Heidegger
and more recently Richard Rorty
view philosophy itself as a large-scale episode in Western history that
is nearing or has reached its end. Philosophy thus merges with the history of
philosophy, but only thanks to a philosophical reflection on this history as
part of history as a whole.
jus: prudentia iuris,
iuris-prudentia, iurisprudentia -- JurisprudenceGrice: “The root of ‘juris’ is
an interesting onebefore Hart and his legalese, it was all about ethics’!” The Roman expression ‘jus,’ not to be confused with ‘jus,’
which meant ‘juice,’ as in ‘orange juice,’ is kindred with Sanscrit, “yu,” to
join; cf. ζεύγνυμι, and jungo, qs. the binding, obliging; in this way, it
compares with “lex,” which derives from “ligo,” -- right, law, justice.
The ‘jungo’ gives the family of expressions like ‘con-junctum,’ joined. The
idea is that if you are bound, you are obliged. -- Hartian jurisprudenceGrice on Hartian
jurisprudence -- philosophy of law, also called general jurisprudence, the study
of conceptual and theoretical problems concerning the nature of law as such, or
common to any legal system. Problems in the philosophy of law fall roughly into
two groups. The first contains problems internal to law and legal systems as
such. These include a the nature of legal rules; the conditions under which
they can be said to exist and to influence practice; their normative character,
as mandatory or advisory; and the indeterminacy of their language; b the
structure and logical character of legal norms; the analysis of legal
principles as a class of legal norms; and the relation between the normative
force of law and coercion; c the identity conditions for legal systems; when a
legal system exists; and when one legal system ends and another begins; d the
nature of the reasoning used by courts in adjudicating cases; e the
justification of legal decisions; whether legal justification is through a
chain of inferences or by the coherence of norms and decisions; and the
relation between intralegal and extralegal justification; f the nature of legal
validity and of what makes a norm a valid law; the relation between validity
and efficacy, the fact that the norms of a legal system are obeyed by the
norm-subjects; g properties of legal systems, including comprehensiveness the
claim to regulate any behavior and completeness the absence of gaps in the law;
h legal rights; under what conditions citizens possess them; and their
analytical structure as protected normative positions; i legal interpretation;
whether it is a pervasive feature of law or is found only in certain kinds of
adjudication; its rationality or otherwise; and its essentially ideological
character or otherwise. The second group of problems concerns the philosophy of
law philosophy of law 676 676 relation between law as one particular
social institution in a society and the wider political and moral life of that
society: a the nature of legal obligation; whether there is an obligation,
prima facie or final, to obey the law as such; whether there is an obligation
to obey the law only when certain standards are met, and if so, what those
standards might be; b the authority of law; and the conditions under which a
legal system has political or moral authority or legitimacy; c the functions of
law; whether there are functions performed by a legal system in a society that
are internal to the design of law; and analyses from the perspective of
political morality of the functioning of legal systems; d the legal concept of
responsibility; its analysis and its relation to moral and political concepts
of responsibility; in particular, the place of mental elements and causal
elements in the assignment of responsibility, and the analysis of those
elements; e the analysis and justification of legal punishment; f legal
liberty, and the proper limits or otherwise of the intrusion of the legal
system into individual liberty; the plausibility of legal moralism; g the
relation between law and justice, and the role of a legal system in the
maintenance of social justice; h the relation between legal rights and
political or moral rights; i the status of legal reasoning as a species of
practical reasoning; and the relation between law and practical reason; j law
and economics; whether legal decision making in fact tracks, or otherwise ought
to track, economic efficiency; k legal systems as sources of and embodiments of
political power; and law as essentially gendered, or imbued with race or class
biases, or otherwise. Theoretical positions in the philosophy of law tend to
group into three large kinds legal
positivism, natural law, and legal realism. Legal positivism concentrates on
the first set of problems, and typically gives formal or content-independent
solutions to such problems. For example, legal positivism tends to regard legal
validity as a property of a legal rule that the rule derives merely from its
formal relation to other legal rules; a morally iniquitous law is still for
legal positivism a valid legal rule if it satisfies the required formal
existence conditions. Legal rights exist as normative consequences of valid
legal rules; no questions of the status of the right from the point of view of
political morality arise. Legal positivism does not deny the importance of the
second set of problems, but assigns the task of treating them to other
disciplines political philosophy, moral
philosophy, sociology, psychology, and so forth. Questions of how society
should design its legal institutions, for legal positivism, are not technically
speaking problems in the philosophy of law, although many legal positivists
have presented their theories about such questions. Natural law theory and
legal realism, by contrast, regard the sharp distinction between the two kinds
of problem as an artifact of legal positivism itself. Their answers to the
first set of problems tend to be substantive or content-dependent. Natural law
theory, for example, would regard the question of whether a law was consonant
with practical reason, or whether a legal system was morally and politically legitimate,
as in whole or in part determinative of the issue of legal validity, or of
whether a legal norm granted a legal right. The theory would regard the
relation between a legal system and liberty or justice as in whole or in part
determinative of the normative force and the justification for that system and
its laws. Legal realism, especially in its contemporary politicized form, sees
the claimed role of the law in legitimizing certain gender, race, or class
interests as the prime salient property of law for theoretical analysis, and
questions of the determinacy of legal rules or of legal interpretation or legal
right as of value only in the service of the project of explaining the
political power of law and legal systems. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Does Oxford need
a chair of jurisprudence”symposium with H. L. A. Hart, conducted on the
Saturday morning following Hart’s appointment as chair of jurisprudence.”
Literae humaniores. Grice took
‘literature’ seriously. “After all, I am a Lit. Hum. master! And previously a
Lit. Hum. BACHELOR”He made a strict distinction, seeing that at Oxford, a
master can do things a bachelor cannotlike marry! philosophy of literature:
Grice: “When I got my Masters in Literae Humaniores, the more human letters, my
mather saidwhich are the less human ones?” -- literary theory. However, while
the literary theorist, who is often a literary critic, is primarily interested
in the conceptual foundations of practical criticism, philosophy of literature,
usually done by philosophers, is more often concerned to place literature in
the context of a philosophical system. Plato’s dialogues have much to say about
poetry, mostly by way of aligning it with Plato’s metaphysical,
epistemological, and ethico-political views. Aristotle’s Poetics, the earliest
example of literary theory in the West, is also an attempt to accommodate the
practice of Grecian poets to Aristotle’s philosophical system as a whole.
Drawing on the thought of philosophers like Kant and Schelling, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge offers in his Biographia Literaria a philosophy of literature that is
to Romantic poetics what Aristotle’s treatise is to classical poetics: a
literary theory that is confirmed both by the poets whose work it legitimates
and by the metaphysics that recommends it. Many philosophers, among them Hume,
Schopenhauer, Heidegger, and Sartre, have tried to make room for literature in
their philosophical edifices. Some philosophers, e.g., the G. Romantics, have
made literature and the other arts the cornerstone of philosophy itself. See
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, The Literary Absolute, 8.
Sometimes ‘philosophy of literature’ is understood in a second sense:
philosophy and literature; i.e., philosophy and literature taken to be distinct
and essentially autonomous activities that may nonetheless sustain determinate
relations to each other. Philosophy of literature, understood in this way, is
the attempt to identify the differentiae that distinguish philosophy from
literature and to specify their relationships to each other. Sometimes the two
are distinguished by their subject matter e.g., philosophy deals with objective
structures, literature with subjectivity, sometimes by their methods philosophy
is an act of reason, literature the product of imagination, inspiration, or the
unconscious, sometimes by their effects philosophy produces knowledge,
literature produces emotional fulfillment or release, etc. Their relationships
then tend to occupy the areas in which they are not essentially distinct. If
their subject matters are distinct, their effects may be the same philosophy
and literature both produce understanding, the one of fact and the other of
feeling; if their methods are distinct, they may be approaching the same
subject matter in different ways; and so on. For Aquinas, e.g., philosophy and
poetry may deal with the same objects, the one communicating truth about the
object in syllogistic form, the other inspiring feelings about it through
figurative language. For Heidegger, the philosopher investigates the meaning of
being while the poet names the holy, but their preoccupations tend to converge
at the deepest levels of thinking. For Sartre, literature is philosophy engagé,
existential-political activity in the service of freedom. ’Philosophy of
literature’ may also be taken in a third sense: philosophy in literature, the
attempt to discover matters of philosophical interest and value in literary
texts. The philosopher may undertake to identify, examine, and evaluate the
philosophical content of literary texts that contain expressions of
philosophical ideas and discussions of philosophical problems e.g., the debates on free will and theodicy
in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. Many if not most courses on philosophy of literature are
taught from this point of view. Much interesting and important work has been
done in this vein; e.g., Santayana’s Three Philosophical Poets 0, Cavell’s
essays on Emerson and Thoreau, and Nussbaum’s Love’s Knowledge 9. It should be
noted, however, that to approach the matter in this way presupposes that
literature and philosophy are simply different forms of the same content: what
philosophy expresses in the form of argument literature expresses in lyric,
dramatic, or narrative form. The philosopher’s treatment of literature implies
that he is uniquely positioned to explicate the subject matter treated in both
literary and philosophical texts, and that the language of philosophy gives
optimal expression to a content less adequately expressed in the language of
literature. The model for this approach may well be Hegel’s Phenomenology of
Spirit, which treats art along with religion as imperfect adumbrations of a
truth that is fully and properly articulated only in the conceptual mode of
philosophical dialectic. Dissatisfaction with this presupposition and its
implicit privileging of philosophy over literature has led to a different view
of the relation between philosophy and literature and so to a different program
for philosophy of literature. The self-consciously literary form of
Kierkegaard’s writing is an integral part of his polemic against the
philosophical imperialism of the Hegelians. In this century, the work of
philosophers like Derrida and the philosophers and critics who follow his lead
suggests that it is mistaken to regard philosophy and literature as alternative
expressions of an identical content, and seriously mistaken to think of
philosophy as the master discourse, the “proper” expression of a content
“improperly” expressed in literature. All texts, on this view, have a
“literary” form, the texts of philosophers as well as the texts of novelists
and poets, and their content is internally determined by their “means of
expression.” There is just as much “literature in philosophy” as there is
“philosophy in literature.” Consequently, the philosopher of literature may no
longer be able simply to extract philosophical matter from literary form.
Rather, the modes of literary expression confront the philosopher with problems
that bear on the presuppositions of his own enterprise. E.g., fictional mimesis
especially in the works of postmodern writers raises questions about the
possibility and the prephilosophy of literature philosophy of literature
678 678 philosophy of logic philosophy
of logic 679 sumed normativeness of factual representation, and in so doing
tends to undermine the traditional hierarchy that elevates “fact” over
“fiction.” Philosophers’ perplexity over the truth-value of fictional
statements is an example of the kind of problems the study of literature can
create for the practice of philosophy see Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism, 2,
ch. 7. Or again, the self-reflexivity of contemporary literary texts can lead
philosophers to reflect critically on their own undertaking and may seriously
unsettle traditional notions of self-referentiality. When it is not regarded as
another, attractive but perhaps inferior source of philosophical ideas,
literature presents the philosopher with epistemological, metaphysical, and
methodological problems not encountered in the course of “normal”
philosophizing. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Why a philosopher is a literary soul at
Oxford: the etymological meaning of ‘literae humaniores.’”
Semantics – Grice: “”Semeion” is perhaps
the most otiose of Grecian words, and the Romans were not confused when they
rendered it as ‘segno.’ Smoke means fire, but that’s simulated smoke as used in
theatre – so the epitome of natural meaning becones – fake!” -- Grice,
“Mathematics and the synthetic a priorir,” Grice on Warnock’s Oxford readings
in philosophy, ‘The philosophy of mathematics,’ Austin on Frege’s arithmetic --
philosophical geometer, philosophical mathematician H. P. Grice, “ΑΓΕΩΜΕΤΡΗΤΟΣ ΜΗΔΕΙΣ ΕΙΣΙΤΩ; or, The school of
Plato.” philosophy of mathematics, the
study of ontological and epistemological problems raised by the content and
practice of mathematics. The present agenda in this field evolved from critical
developments, notably the collapse of Pythagoreanism, the development of modern
calculus, and an early twentieth-century foundational crisis, which forced
mathematicians and philosophers to examine mathematical methods and
presuppositions. Grecian mathematics. The Pythagoreans, who represented the
height of early demonstrative Grecian mathematics, believed that all scientific
relations were measureable by natural numbers 1, 2, 3, etc. or ratios of
natural numbers, and thus they assumed discrete, atomic units for the
measurement of space, time, and motion. The discovery of irrational magnitudes
scotched the first of these beliefs. Zeno’s paradoxes showed that the second
was incompatible with the natural assumption that space and time are infinitely
divisible. The Grecian reaction, ultimately codified in Euclid’s Elements,
included Plato’s separation of mathematics from empirical science and, within
mathematics, distinguished number theory
a study of discretely ordered entities
from geometry, which concerns continua. Following Aristotle and
employing methods perfected by Eudoxus, Euclid’s proofs used only “potentially
infinite” geometric and arithmetic procedures. The Elements’ axiomatic form and
its constructive proofs set a standard for future mathematics. Moreover, its
dependence on visual intuition whose consequent deductive gaps were already
noted by Archimedes, together with the challenge of Euclid’s infamous fifth
postulate about parallel lines, and the famous unsolved problems of compass and
straightedge construction, established an agenda for generations of
mathematicians. The calculus. The two millennia following Euclid saw new
analytical tools e.g., Descartes’s geometry that wedded arithmetic and
geometric considerations and toyed with infinitesimally small quantities.
These, together with the demands of physical application, tempted
mathematicians to abandon the pristine Grecian dichotomies. Matters came to a
head with Newton’s and Leibniz’s almost simultaneous discovery of the powerful
computational techniques of the calculus. While these unified physical science
in an unprecedented way, their dependence on unclear notions of infinitesimal
spatial and temporal increments emphasized their shaky philosophical
foundation. Berkeley, for instance, condemned the calculus for its
unintuitability. However, this time the power of the new methods inspired a
decidedly conservative response. Kant, in particular, tried to anchor the new
mathematics in intuition. Mathematicians, he claimed, construct their objects
in the “pure intuitions” of space and time. And these mathematical objects are
the a priori forms of transcendentally ideal empirical objects. For Kant this
combination of epistemic empiricism and ontological idealism explained the
physical applicability of mathematics and thus granted “objective validity”
i.e., scientific legitimacy to mathematical procedures. Two nineteenth-century
developments undercut this Kantian constructivism in favor of a more abstract
conceptual picture of mathematics. First, Jànos Bolyai, Carl F. Gauss, Bernhard
Riemann, Nikolai Lobachevsky, and others produced consistent non-Euclidean
geometries, which undid the Kantian picture of a single a priori science of
space, and once again opened a rift between pure mathematics and its physical
applications. Second, Cantor and Dedekind defined the real numbers i.e., the
elements of the continuum as infinite sets of rational and ultimately natural
numbers. Thus they founded mathematics on the concepts of infinite set and
natural number. Cantor’s set theory made the first concept rigorously
mathematical; while Peano and Frege both of whom advocated securing rigor by
using formal languages did that for the second. Peano axiomatized number
theory, and Frege ontologically reduced the natural numbers to sets indeed sets
that are the extensions of purely logical concepts. Frege’s Platonistic
conception of numbers as unintuitable objects and his claim that mathematical
truths follow analytically from purely logical definitions the thesis of logicism are both highly anti-Kantian. Foundational
crisis and movements. But antiKantianism had its own problems. For one thing,
Leopold Kronecker, who following Peter Dirichlet wanted mathematics reduced to
arithmetic and no further, attacked Cantor’s abstract set theory on doctrinal
grounds. Worse yet, the discovery of internal antinomies challenged the very
consistency of abstract foundations. The most famous of these, Russell’s
paradox the set of all sets that are not members of themselves both is and ’t a
member of itself, undermined Frege’s basic assumption that every well-formed
concept has an extension. This was a full-scale crisis. To be sure, Russell
himself together with Whitehead preserved the logicist foundational approach by
organizing the universe of sets into a hierarchy of levels so that no set can
be a member of itself. This is type theory. However, the crisis encouraged two
explicitly Kantian foundational projects. The first, Hilbert’s Program,
attempted to secure the “ideal” i.e., infinitary parts of mathematics by
formalizing them and then proving the resultant formal systems to be
conservative and hence consistent extensions of finitary theories. Since the
proof itself was to use no reasoning more complicated than simple numerical
calculations finitary reasoning the whole metamathematical project belonged
to the untainted “contentual” part of mathematics. Finitary reasoning was
supposed to update Kant’s intuition-based epistemology, and Hilbert’s
consistency proofs mimic Kant’s notion of objective validity. The second
project, Brouwer’s intuitionism, rejected formalization, and was not only
epistemologically Kantian resting mathematical reasoning on the a priori
intuition of time, but ontologically Kantian as well. For intuitionism
generated both the natural and the real numbers by temporally ordered conscious
acts. The reals, in particular, stem from choice sequences, which exploit
Brouwer’s epistemic assumptions about the open future. These foundational
movements ultimately failed. Type theory required ad hoc axioms to express the
real numbers; Hilbert’s Program foundered on Gödel’s theorems; and intuitionism
remained on the fringes because it rejected classical logic and standard
mathematics. Nevertheless the legacy of these movements their formal methods, indeed their
philosophical agenda still characterizes
modern research on the ontology and epistemology of mathematics. Set theory,
e.g. despite recent challenges from category theory, is the lingua franca of
modern mathematics. And formal languages with their precise semantics are ubiquitous
in technical and philosophical discussions. Indeed, even intuitionistic
mathematics has been formalized, and Michael Dummett has recast its ontological
idealism as a semantic antirealism that defines truth as warranted
assertability. In a similar semantic vein, Paul Benacerraf proposed that the
philosophical problem with Hilbert’s approach is inability to provide a uniform
realistic i.e., referential, non-epistemic semantics for the allegedly ideal
and contentual parts of mathematics; and the problem with Platonism is that its
semantics makes its objects unknowable. Ontological issues. From this modern
perspective, the simplest realism is the outright Platonism that attributes a
standard model consisting of “independent” objects to classical theories
expressed in a first-order language i.e., a language whose quantifiers range
over objects but not properties. But in fact realism admits variations on each
aspect. For one thing, the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem shows that formalized
theories can have non-standard models. There are expansive non-standard models:
Abraham Robinson, e.g., used infinitary non-standard models of Peano’s axioms
to rigorously reintroduce infinitesimals. Roughly, an infinitesimal is the
reciprocal of an infinite element in such a model. And there are also
“constructive” models, whose objects must be explicitly definable. Predicative
theories inspired by Poincaré and Hermann Weyl, whose stage-by-stage
definitions refer only to previously defined objects, produce one variety of
such models. Gödel’s constructive universe, which uses less restricted
definitions to model apparently non-constructive axioms like the axiom of
choice, exemplifies another variety. But there are also views various forms of
structuralism which deny that formal theories have unique standard models at
all. These views inspired by the fact,
already sensed by Dedekind, that there are multiple equivalid realizations of
formal arithmetic allow a mathematical
theory to characterize only a broad family of models and deny unique reference
to mathematical terms. Finally, some realistic approaches advocate
formalization in secondorder languages, and some eschew ordinary semantics
altogether in favor of substitutional quantification. These latter are still
realistic, for they still distinguish truth from knowledge. Strict
finitists inspired by Vitters’s more
stringent epistemic constraints reject
even the open-futured objects admitted by Brouwer, and countenance only finite
or even only “feasible” objects. In the other direction, A. A. Markov and his
school in Russia introduced a syntactic notion of algorithm from which they
developed the field of “constructive analysis.” And the mathematician Errett Bishop, starting from a
Brouwer-like disenchantment with mathematical realism and with strictly formal
approaches, recovered large parts of classical analysis within a non-formal
constructive framework. All of these approaches assume abstract i.e., causally
isolated mathematical objects, and thus they have difficulty explaining the
wide applicability of mathematics constructive or otherwise within empirical
science. One response, Quine’s “indispensability” view, integrates mathematical
theories into the general network of empirical science. For Quine, mathematical
objects just like ordinary physical
objects exist simply in virtue of being
referents for terms in our best scientific theory. By contrast Hartry Field,
who denies that any abstract objects exist, also denies that any purely mathematical
assertions are literally true. Field attempts to recast physical science in a
relational language without mathematical terms and then use Hilbert-style
conservative extension results to explain the evident utility of abstract
mathematics. Hilary Putnam and Charles Parsons have each suggested views
according to which mathematics has no objects proper to itself, but rather
concerns only the possibilities of physical constructions. Recently, Geoffrey
Hellman has combined this modal approach with structuralism. Epistemological
issues. The equivalence proved in the 0s of several different representations
of computability to the reasoning representable in elementary formalized
arithmetic led Alonzo Church to suggest that the notion of finitary reasoning
had been precisely defined. Church’s thesis so named by Stephen Kleene inspired
Georg Kreisel’s investigations in the 0s and 70s of the general conditions for
rigorously analyzing other informal philosophical notions like semantic
consequence, Brouwerian choice sequences, and the very notion of a set. Solomon
Feferman has suggested more recently that this sort of piecemeal conceptual
analysis is already present in mathematics; and that this rather than any
global foundation is the true role of foundational research. In this spirit,
the relative consistency arguments of modern proof theory a continuation of
Hilbert’s Program provide information about the epistemic grounds of various
mathematical theories. Thus, on the one hand, proofs that a seemingly
problematic mathematical theory is a conservative extension of a more secure
theory provide some epistemic support for the former. In the other direction,
the fact that classical number theory is consistent relative to intuitionistic
number theory shows contra Hilbert that his view of constructive reasoning must
differ from that of the intuitionists. Gödel, who did not believe that
mathematics required any ties to empirical perception, suggested nevertheless
that we have a special nonsensory faculty of mathematical intuition that, when
properly cultivated, can help us decide among formally independent propositions
of set theory and other branches of mathematics. Charles Parsons, in contrast,
has examined the place of perception-like intuition in mathematical reasoning.
Parsons himself has investigated models of arithmetic and of set theory
composed of quasi-concrete objects e.g., numerals and other signs. Others
consistent with some of Parsons’s observations have given a Husserlstyle
phenomenological analysis of mathematical intuition. Frege’s influence encouraged
the logical positivists and other philosophers to view mathematical knowledge
as analytic or conventional. Poincaré responded that the principle of
mathematical induction could not be analytic, and Vitters also attacked this
conventionalism. In recent years, various formal independence results and
Quine’s attack on analyticity have encouraged philosophers and historians of
mathematics to focus on cases of mathematical knowledge that do not stem from
conceptual analysis or strict formal provability. Some writers notably Mark
Steiner and Philip Kitcher emphasize the analogies between empirical and
mathematical discovery. They stress such things as conceptual evolution in
mathematics and instances of mathematical generalizations supported by individual
cases. Kitcher, in particular, discusses the analogy between axiomatization in
mathematics and theoretical unification. Penelope Maddy has investigated the
intramathematical grounds underlying the acceptance of various axioms of set
theory. More generally, Imre Lakatos argued that most mathematical progress
stems from a concept-stretching process of conjecture, refutation, and proof.
This view has spawned a historical debate about whether critical developments
such as those mentioned above represent Kuhn-style revolutions or even crises,
or whether they are natural conceptual advances in a uniformly growing
science. Semantics -- philosophical
mathematics: Grice: “Not for nothing Plato’s academy motto was, “Lascite ogni
non-geometria voi ch’entrate!” ΑΓΕΩΜΕΤΡΗΤΟΣ
ΜΗΔΕΙΣ ΕΙΣΙΤΩ“a-gemetretos medeis eiseto” Grice thought that “7 + 5 =
12” was either synthetic or analytic“but hardly both”. Grice on real numbers --
continuum problem, an open question that arose in Cantor’s theory of infinite
cardinal numbers. By definition, two sets have the same cardinal number if
there is a one-to-one correspondence between them. For example, the function
that sends 0 to 0, 1 to 2, 2 to 4, etc., shows that the set of even natural
numbers has the same cardinal number as the set of all natural numbers, namely
F0. That F0 is not the only infinite cardinal follows from Cantor’s theorem:
the power set of any set i.e., the set of all its subsets has a greater
cardinality than the set itself. So, e.g., the power set of the natural numbers,
i.e., the set of all sets of natural numbers, has a cardinal number greater
than F0. The first infinite number greater than F0 is F1; the next after that
is F2, and so on. When arithmetical operations are extended into the infinite,
the cardinal number of the power set of the natural numbers turns out to be
2F0. By Cantor’s theorem, 2F0 must be greater than F0; the conjecture that it
is equal to F1 is Cantor’s continuum hypothesis in symbols, CH or 2F0 % F1.
Since 2F0 is also the cardinality of the set of points on a continuous line, CH
can also be stated in this form: any infinite set of points on a line can be
brought into one-to-one correspondence either with the set of natural numbers
or with the set of all points on the line. Cantor and others attempted to prove
CH, without success. It later became clear, due to the work of Gödel and Cohen,
that their failure was inevitable: the continuum hypothesis can neither be
proved nor disproved from the axioms of set theory ZFC. The question of its
truth or falsehood the continuum
problem remains open. Philosophical mathematics: Grice on “7 + 5 =
12” -- Dedekind, R. G. mathematician, one of the most important figures in the
mathematical analysis of foundational questions that took place in the late
nineteenth century. Philosophically, three things are interesting about
Dedekind’s work: 1 the insistence that the fundamental numerical systems of
mathematics must be developed independently of spatiotemporal or geometrical
notions; 2 the insistence that the numbers systems rely on certain mental
capacities fundamental to thought, in particular on the capacity of the mind to
“create”; and 3 the recognition that this “creation” is “creation” according to
certain key properties, properties that careful mathematical analysis reveals
as essential to the subject matter. 1 is a concern Dedekind shared with
Bolzano, Cantor, Frege, and Hilbert; 2 sets Dedekind apart from Frege; and 3
represents a distinctive shift toward the later axiomatic position of Hilbert
and somewhat away from the concern with the individual nature of the central
abstract mathematical objects which is a central concern of Frege. Much of
Dedekind’s position is sketched in the Habilitationsrede of 1854, the procedure
there being applied in outline to the extension of the positive whole numbers
to the integers, and then to the rational field. However, the two works best
known to philosophers are the monographs on irrational numbers Stetigkeit und
irrationale Zahlen, 1872 and on natural numbers Was sind und was sollen die
Zahlen?, 8, both of which pursue the procedure advocated in 1854. In both we
find an “analysis” designed to uncover the essential properties involved,
followed by a “synthesis” designed to show that there can be such systems, this
then followed by a “creation” of objects possessing the properties and nothing
more. In the 1872 work, Dedekind suggests that the essence of continuity in the
reals is that whenever the line is divided into two halves by a cut, i.e., into
two subsets A1 and A2 such that if p 1 A1 and q 1 A2, then p ‹ q and, if p 1 A1
and q ‹ p, then q 1 A1, and if p 1 A2 and q
p, then q 1 A2 as well, then there is real number r which “produces”
this cut, i.e., such that A1 % {p; p ‹ r}, and A2 % {p: r m p}. The task is
then to characterize the real numbers so that this is indeed true of them.
Dedekind shows that, whereas the rationals themselves do not have this
property, the collection of all cuts in the rationals does. Dedekind then
“defines” the irrationals through this observation, not directly as the cuts in
the rationals themselves, as was done later, but rather through the “creation”
of “new irrational numbers” to correspond to those rational cuts not hitherto
“produced” by a number. The 8 work starts from the notion of a “mapping” of one
object onto another, which for Dedekind is necessary for all exact thought.
Dedekind then develops the notion of a one-toone into mapping, which is then
used to characterize infinity “Dedekind infinity”. Using the fundamental notion
of a chain, Dedekind characterizes the notion of a “simply infinite system,”
thus one that is isomorphic to the natural number sequence. Thus, he succeeds
in the goal set out in the 1854 lecture: isolating precisely the characteristic
properties of the natural number system. But do simply infinite systems, in
particular the natural number system, exist? Dedekind now argues: Any infinite
system must Dedekind, Richard Dedekind, Richard 210 210 contain a simply infinite system Theorem
72. Correspondingly, Dedekind sets out to prove that there are infinite systems
Theorem 66, for which he uses an infamous argument reminiscent of Bolzano’s
from thirty years earlier involving “my thought-world,” etc. It is generally
agreed that the argument does not work, although it is important to remember
Dedekind’s wish to demonstrate that since the numbers are to be free creations
of the human mind, his proofs should rely only on the properties of the mental.
The specific act of “creation,” however, comes in when Dedekind, starting from
any simply infinite system, abstracts from the “particular properties” of this,
claiming that what results is the simply infinite system of the natural
numbers. Philosophical mathematics --
mathematical analysis, also called standard analysis, the area of mathematics
pertaining to the so-called real number system, i.e. the area that can be based
on an axiom set whose intended interpretation (standard model) has the set of
real numbers as its domain (universe of discourse). Thus analysis includes,
among its many subbranches, elementary algebra, differential and integral
calculus, differential equations, the calculus of variations, and measure
theory. Analytic geometry involves the application of analysis to geometry.
Analysis contains a large part of the mathematics used in mathematical physics.
The real numbers, which are representable by the ending and unending decimals,
are usefully construed as (or as corresponding to) distances measured, relative
to an arbitrary unit length, positively to the right and negatively to the left
of an arbitrarily fixed zero point along a geometrical straight line. In
particular, the class of real numbers includes as increasingly comprehensive
proper subclasses the natural numbers, the integers (positive, negative, and zero),
the rational numbers (or fractions), and the algebraic numbers (such as the
square root of two). Especially important is the presence in the class of real
numbers of non-algebraic (or transcendental) irrational numbers such as pi. The
set of real numbers includes arbitrarily small and arbitrarily large, finite
quantities, while excluding infinitesimal and infinite quantities. Analysis,
often conceived as the mathematics of continuous magnitude, contrasts with
arithmetic (natural number theory), which is regarded as the mathematics of
discrete magnitude. Analysis is often construed as involving not just the real
numbers but also the imaginary (complex) numbers. Traditionally analysis is
expressed in a second-order or higher-order language wherein its axiom set has
categoricity; each of its models is isomorphic to (has the same structure as)
the standard model. When analysis is carried out in a first-order language, as
has been increasingly the case since the 1950s, categoricity is impossible and
it has nonstandard mass noun mathematical analysis models in addition to its
standard model. A nonstandard model of analysis is an interpretation not
isomorphic to the standard model but nevertheless satisfying the axiom set.
Some of the nonstandard models involve objects reminiscent of the much-despised
“infinitesimals” that were essential to the Leibniz approach to calculus and
that were subject to intense criticism by Berkeley and other philosophers and
philosophically sensitive mathematicians. These non-standard models give rise
to a new area of mathematics, non-standard analysis, within which the
fallacious arguments used by Leibniz and other early analysts form the
heuristic basis of new and entirely rigorous proofs. -- mathematical function,
an operation that, when applied to an entity (set of entities) called its
argument(s), yields an entity known as the value of the function for that
argument(s). This operation can be expressed by a functional equation of the
form y % f(x) such that a variable y is said to be a function of a variable x
if corresponding to each value of x there is one and only one value of y. The x
is called the independent variable (or argument of the function) and the y the
dependent variable (or value of the function). (Some definitions consider the
relation to be the function, not the dependent variable, and some definitions
permit more than one value of y to correspond to a given value of x, as in x2 !
y2 % 4.) More abstractly, a function can be considered to be simply a special
kind of relation (set of ordered pairs) that to any element in its domain
relates exactly one element in its range. Such a function is said to be a
one-to-one correspondence if and only if the set {x,y} elements of S and {z,y}
elements of S jointly imply x % z. Consider, e.g., the function {(1,1), (2,4),
(3,9), (4,16), (5,25), (6,36)}, each of whose members is of the form (x,x2)the
squaring function. Or consider the function {(0,1), (1,0)}which we can call the
negation function. In contrast, consider the function for exclusive alternation
(as in you may have a beer or glass of wine, but not both). It is not a
one-to-one correspondence. For, 0 is the value of (0,1) and of (1,0), and 1 is
the value of (0,0) and of (1,1). If we think of a function as defined on the
natural numbersfunctions from Nn to N for various n (most commonly n % 1 or 2)a
partial function is a function from Nn to N whose domain is not necessarily the
whole of Nn (e.g., not defined for all of the natural numbers). A total
function from Nn to N is a function whose domain is the whole of Nn (e.g., all
of the natural numbers). -- mathematical induction, a method of definition and
a method of proof. A collection of objects can be defined inductively. All
members of such a collection can be shown to have a property by an inductive
proof. The natural numbers and the set of well-formed formulas of a formal
language are familiar examples of sets given by inductive definition. Thus, the
set of natural numbers is inductively defined as the smallest set, N, such that:
(B) 0 is in N and (I) for any x in N the successor of x is in N. (B) is the
basic clause and (I) the inductive clause of this definition. Or consider a
propositional language built on negation and conjunction. We start with a
denumerable class of atomic sentence symbols ATOM = {A1, A2, . . .}. Then we
can define the set of well-formed formulas, WFF, as the smallest set of
expressions such that: (B) every member of ATOM is in WFF and (I) if x is in
WFF then (- x) is in WFF and if x and y are in WFF then (x & y) is in WFF.
We show that all members of an inductively defined set have a property by
showing that the members specified by the basis have that property and that the
property is preserved by the induction. For example, we show that all WFFs have
an even number of parentheses by showing (i) that all ATOMs have an even number
of parentheses and (ii) that if x and y have an even number of parentheses then
so do (- x) and (x & y). This shows that the set of WFFs with an even
number of parentheses satisfies (B) and (I). The set of WFFs with an even
number of parentheses must then be identical to WFF, sinceby definitionWFF is
the smallest set that satisfies (B) and (I). Ordinary proof by mathematical
induction shows that all the natural numbers, or all members of some set with
the order type of the natural numbers, share a property. Proof by transfinite
induction, a more general form of proof by mathematical induction, shows that
all members of some well-ordered set have a certain property. A set is well-ordered
if and only if every non-empty subset of it has a least element. The natural
numbers are well-ordered. It is a consequence of the axiom of choice that every
set can be well-ordered. Suppose that a set, X, is well-ordered and that P is
the subset of X whose mathematical constructivism mathematical induction 541
4065m-r.qxd 08/02/1999 7:42 AM Page 541 members have the property of interest.
Suppose that it can be shown for any element x of X, if all members of X less
that x are in P, then so is x. Then it follows by transfinite induction that
all members of X have the property, that X % P. For if X did not coincide with
P, then the set of elements of x not in P would be non-empty. Since X is
well-ordered, this set would have a least element, x*. But then by definition,
all members of X less than x* are in P, and by hypothesis x* must be in P after
all.. -- mathematical intuitionism, a twentieth-century movement that
reconstructs mathematics in accordance with an epistemological idealism and a
Kantian metaphysics. Specifically, Brouwer, its founder, held that there are no
unexperienced truths and that mathematical objects stem from the a priori form
of those conscious acts which generate empirical objects. Unlike Kant, however,
Brouwer rejected the apriority of space and based mathematics solely on a
refined conception of the intuition of time. Intuitionistic mathematics.
According to Brouwer, the simplest mathematical act is to distinguish between
two diverse elements in the flow of consciousness. By repeating and
concatenating such acts we generate each of the natural numbers, the standard
arithmetical operations, and thus the rational numbers with their operations as
well. Unfortunately, these simple, terminating processes cannot produce the
convergent infinite sequences of rational numbers that are needed to generate
the continuum (the nondenumerable set of real numbers, or of points on the
line). Some “proto-intuitionists” admitted infinite sequences whose elements
are determined by finitely describable rules. However, the set of all such
algorithmic sequences is denumerable and thus can scarcely generate the
continuum. Brouwer’s first attempt to circumvent thisby postulating a single
intuition of an ever growing continuummirrored Aristotle’s picture of the continuum
as a dynamic whole composed of inseparable parts. But this approach was
incompatible with the set-theoretic framework that Brouwer accepted, and by
1918 he had replaced it with the concept of an infinite choice sequence. A
choice sequence of rational numbers is, to be sure, generated by a “rule,” but
the rule may leave room for some degree of freedom in choosing the successive
elements. It might, e.g., simply require that the n ! 1st choice be a rational
number that lies within 1/n of the nth choice. The set of real numbers
generated by such semideterminate sequences is demonstrably non-denumerable.
Following his epistemological beliefs, Brouwer admitted only those properties
of a choice sequence which are determined by its rule and by a finite number of
actual choices. He incorporated this restriction into his version of set theory
and obtained a series of results that conflict with standard (classical)
mathematics. Most famously, he proved that every function that is fully defined
over an interval of real numbers is uniformly continuous. (Pictorially, the
graph of the function has no gaps or jumps.) Interestingly, one corollary of
this theorem is that the set of real numbers cannot be divided into mutually
exclusive subsets, a property that rigorously recovers the Aristotelian picture
of the continuum. The clash with classical mathematics. Unlike his disciple
Arend Heyting, who considered intuitionistic and classical mathematics as
separate and therefore compatible subjects, Brouwer viewed them as incompatible
treatments of a single subject matter. He even occasionally accused classical
mathematics of inconsistency at the places where it differed from intuitionism.
This clash concerns the basic concept of what counts as a mathematical object.
Intuitionism allows, and classical mathematics rejects, objects that may be
indeterminate with respect to some of their properties. Logic and language.
Because he believed that mathematical constructions occur in prelinguistic
consciousness, Brouwer refused to limit mathematics by the expressive capacity
of any language. Logic, he claimed, merely codifies already completed stages of
mathematical reasoning. For instance, the principle of the excluded middle
stems from an “observational period” during which mankind catalogued finite
phenomena (with decidable properties); and he derided classical mathematics for
inappropriately applying this principle to infinitary aspects of mathematics.
Formalization. Brouwer’s views notwithstanding, in 1930 Heyting produced formal
systems for intuitionistic logic (IL) and number theory. These inspired further
formalizations (even of the theory of choice sequences) and a series of
proof-theoretic, semantic, and algebraic studies that related intuitionistic
and classical formal systems. Stephen Kleene, e.g., interpreted IL and other
intuitionistic formal systems using the classical theory of recursive
functions. Gödel, who showed that IL cannot coincide with any finite
many-valued logic, demonstrated its relation to the modal logic, S4; and Kripke
provided a formal semantics for IL similar to the possible worlds semantics for
S4. For a while the study of intuitionistic formal systems used strongly
classical methods, but since the 1970s intuitionistic methods have been
employed as well. Meaning. Heyting’s formalization reflected a theory of
meaning implicit in Brouwer’s epistemology and metaphysics, a theory that
replaces the traditional correspondence notion of truth with the notion of
constructive proof. More recently Michael Dummett has extended this to a
warranted assertability theory of meaning for areas of discourse outside of
mathematics. He has shown how assertabilism provides a strategy for combating
realism about such things as physical objects, mental objects, and the past. --
mathematical structuralism, the view that the subject of any branch of
mathematics is a structure or structures. The slogan is that mathematics is the
science of structure. Define a “natural number system” to be a countably
infinite collection of objects with one designated initial object and a
successor relation that satisfies the principle of mathematical induction.
Examples of natural number systems are the Arabic numerals and an infinite
sequence of distinct moments of time. According to structuralism, arithmetic is
about the form or structure common to natural number systems. Accordingly, a
natural number is something like an office in an organization or a place in a
pattern. Similarly, real analysis is about the real number structure, the form
common to complete ordered fields. The philosophical issues concerning
structuralism concern the nature of structures and their places. Since a
structure is a one-over-many of sorts, it is something like a universal.
Structuralists have defended analogues of some of the traditional positions on
universals, such as realism and nominalism. Philosophical mathematics --
metamathematics, the study and establishment, by restricted (and, in
particular, finitary) means, of the consistency or reliability of the various
systems of classical mathematics. The term was apparently introduced, with
pejorative overtones relating it to ‘metaphysics’, in the 1870s in connection
with the discussion of non-Euclidean geometries. It was introduced in the sense
given here, shorn of negative connotations, by Hilbert (see his “Neubegründung
der Mathematik. Erste Mitteilung,” 1922), who also referred to it as
Beweistheorie or proof theory. A few years later (specifically, in the 1930
papers “Über einige fundamentale Begriffe der Metamathematik” and “Fundamentale
Begriffe der Methodologie der deduktiven Wissenschaften. I”) Tarski fitted it
with a somewhat broader, less restricted sense: broader in that the scope of
its concerns was increased to include not only questions of consistency, but
also a host of other questions (e.g. questions of independence, completeness
and axiomatizability) pertaining to what Tarski referred to as the “methodology
of the deductive sciences” (which was his synonym for ‘metamathematics’); less
restricted in that the standards of proof were relaxed so as to permit other
than finitaryindeed, other than constructivemeans. On this broader conception
of Tarski’s, formalized deductive disciplines form the field of research of
metamathematics roughly in the same sense in which spatial entities form the
field of research in geometry or animals that of zoology. Disciplines, he said,
are to be regarded as sets of sentences to be investigated from the point of
view of their consistency, axiomatizability (of various types), completeness,
and categoricity or degree of categoricity, etc. Eventually (see the 1935 and
1936 papers “Grundzüge des Systemenkalkül, Erster Teil” and “Grundzüge der
Systemenkalkül, Zweiter Teil”) Tarski went on to include all manner of
semantical questions among the concerns of metamathematics, thus diverging
rather sharply from Hilbert’s original syntactical focus. Today, the terms
‘metatheory’ and ‘metalogic’ are used to signify that broad set of interests,
embracing both syntactical and semantical studies of formal languages and
systems, which Tarski came to include under the general heading of
metamathematics. Those having to do specifically with semantics belong to that
more specialized branch of modern logic known as model theory, while those
dealing with purely syntactical questions belong to what has come to be known
as proof theory (where this latter is now, however, permitted to employ other
than finitary methods in the proofs of its theorems). Refs.: H. P. Grice,
“Philosophical geometry, Plato, and Walter Pater.” Refs.: H. P. Grice, “ΑΓΕΩΜΕΤΡΗΤΟΣ ΜΗΔΕΙΣ ΕΙΣΙΤΩ; or, the school of Plato.”
Ligatum
-- Deus – Grice:
“Unlike the Angles, the Italians are pretty complex when it comes to religion:
there’s god, there’s the SACER – and there’s the ‘ligatio, ‘in the re-ligi. philosophical theology: Grice: “At
Oxford, pretentious as they are, they like ‘divinity’there are doctors in
divinity!” -- philosophy of religion, the subfield of philosophy devoted to the
study of religious phenomena. Although religions are typically complex systems
of theory and practice, including both myths and rituals, philosophers tend to
concentrate on evaluating religious truth claims. In the major theistic
traditions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the most important of these
claims concern the existence, nature, and activities of God. Such traditions
commonly understand God to be something like a person who is disembodied,
eternal, free, all-powerful, all-knowing, the creator and sustainer of the
universe, and the proper object of human obedience and worship. One important
question is whether this conception of the object of human religious activity
is coherent; another is whether such a being actually exists. Philosophers of
religion have sought rational answers to both questions. The major theistic
traditions draw a distinction between religious truths that can be discovered
and even known by unaided human reason and those to which humans have access
only through a special divine disclosure or revelation. According to Aquinas,
e.g., the existence of God and some things about the divine nature can be
proved by unaided human reason, but such distinctively Christian doctrines as
the Trinity and Incarnation cannot be thus proved and are known to humans only
because God has revealed them. Theists disagree about how such divine
disclosures occur; the main candidates for vehicles of revelation include
religious experience, the teachings of an inspired religious leader, the sacred
scriptures of a religious community, and the traditions of a particular church.
The religious doctrines Christian traditions take to be the content of
revelation are often described as matters of faith. To be sure, such traditions
typically affirm that faith goes beyond mere doctrinal belief to include an
attitude of profound trust in God. On most accounts, however, faith involves
doctrinal belief, and so there is a contrast within the religious domain itself
between faith and reason. One way to spell out the contrast though not the only way is to imagine that the content of revelation
is divided into two parts. On the one hand, there are those doctrines, if any,
that can be known by human reason but are also part of revelation; the
existence of God is such a doctrine if it can be proved by human reason alone.
Such doctrines might be accepted by some people on the basis of rational
argument, while others, who lack rational proof, accept them on the authority
of revelation. On the other hand, there are those doctrines that cannot be
known by human reason and for which the authority of revelation is the sole
basis. They are objects of faith rather than reason and are often described as
mysteries of faith. Theists disagree about how such exclusive objects of faith
are related to reason. One prominent view is that, although they go beyond
reason, they are in harmony with it; another is that they are contrary to
reason. Those who urge that such doctrines should be accepted despite the fact
that, or even precisely because, they are contrary to reason are known as
fideists; the famous slogan credo quia absurdum ‘I believe because it is
absurd’ captures the flavor of extreme fideism. Many scholars regard
Kierkegaard as a fideist on account of his emphasis on the paradoxical nature
of the Christian doctrine that Jesus of Nazareth is God incarnate. Modern
philosophers of religion have, for the most part, confined their attention to topics
treatable without presupposing the truth of any particular tradition’s claims
about revelation and have left the exploration of mysteries of faith to the
theologians of various traditions. A great deal of philosophical work
clarifying the concept of God has been prompted by puzzles that suggest some
incoherence in the traditional concept. One kind of puzzle concerns the
coherence of individual claims about the nature of God. Consider the
traditional affirmation that God is allpowerful omnipotent. Reflection on this
doctrine raises a famous question: Can God make a stone so heavy that even God
cannot lift it? No matter how this is answered, it seems that there is at least
one thing that even God cannot do, i.e., make such a stone or lift such a
stone, and so it appears that even God cannot be all-powerful. Such puzzles
stimulate attempts by philosophers to analyze the concept of omnipotence in a
way that specifies more precisely the scope of the powers coherently
attributable to an omnipotent being. To the extent that such attempts succeed,
they foster a deeper understanding of the concept of God and, if God exists, of
the divine nature. Another sort of puzzle concerns the consistency of
attributing two or more properties to philosophy of religion philosophy of
religion 696 696 God. Consider the
claim that God is both immutable and omniscient. An immutable being is one that
cannot undergo internal change, and an omniscient being knows all truths, and
believes no falsehoods. If God is omniscient, it seems that God must first know
and hence believe that it is now Tuesday and not believe that it is now
Wednesday and later know and hence believe that it is now Wednesday and not
believe that it is now Tuesday. If so, God’s beliefs change, and since change
of belief is an internal change, God is not immutable. So it appears that God
is not immutable if God is omniscient. A resolution of this puzzle would
further contribute to enriching the philosophical understanding of the concept
of God. It is, of course, one thing to elaborate a coherent concept of God; it
is quite another to know, apart from revelation, that such a being actually
exists. A proof of the existence of God would yield such knowledge, and it is
the task of natural theology to evaluate arguments that purport to be such
proofs. As opposed to revealed theology, natural theology restricts the
assumptions fit to serve as premises in its arguments to things naturally
knowable by humans, i.e., knowable without special revelation from supernatural
sources. Many people have hoped that such natural religious knowledge could be
universally communicated and would justify a form of religious practice that
would appeal to all humankind because of its rationality. Such a religion would
be a natural religion. The history of natural theology has produced a
bewildering variety of arguments for the existence of God. The four main types
are these: ontological arguments, cosmological arguments, teleological
arguments, and moral arguments. The earliest and most famous version of the
ontological argument was set forth by Anselm of Canterbury in chapter 2 of his
Proslogion. It is a bold attempt to deduce the existence of God from the
concept of God: we understand God to be a perfect being, something than which
nothing greater can be conceived. Because we have this concept, God at least
exists in our minds as an object of the understanding. Either God exists in the
mind alone, or God exists both in the mind and as an extramental reality. But
if God existed in the mind alone, then we could conceive of a being greater
than that than which nothing greater can be conceived, namely, one that also
existed in extramental reality. Since the concept of a being greater than that
than which nothing greater can be conceived is incoherent, God cannot exist in
the mind alone. Hence God exists not only in the mind but also in extramental
reality. The most celebrated criticism of this form of the argument was Kant’s,
who claimed that existence is not a real predicate. For Kant, a real predicate contributes
to determining the content of a concept and so serves as a part of its
definition. But to say that something falling under a concept exists does not
add to the content of a concept; there is, Kant said, no difference in
conceptual content between a hundred real dollars and a hundred imaginary
dollars. Hence whether or not there exists something that corresponds to a
concept cannot be settled by definition. The existence of God cannot be deduced
from the concept of a perfect being because existence is not contained in the
concept or the definition of a perfect being. Contemporary philosophical
discussion has focused on a slightly different version of the ontological
argument. In chapter 3 of Proslogion Anselm suggested that something than which
nothing greater can be conceived cannot be conceived not to exist and so exists
necessarily. Following this lead, such philosophers as Charles Hartshorne,
Norman Malcolm, and Alvin Plantinga have contended that God cannot be a
contingent being who exists in some possible worlds but not in others. The
existence of a perfect being is either necessary, in which case God exists in
every possible world, or impossible, in which case God exists in no possible
worlds. On this view, if it is so much as possible that a perfect being exists,
God exists in every possible world and hence in the actual world. The crucial
premise in this form of the argument is the assumption that the existence of a
perfect being is possible; it is not obviously true and could be rejected without
irrationality. For this reason, Plantinga concedes that the argument does not
prove or establish its conclusion, but maintains that it does make it rational
to accept the existence of God. The key premises of various cosmological
arguments are statements of obvious facts of a general sort about the world.
Thus, the argument to a first cause begins with the observation that there are
now things undergoing change and things causing change. If something is a cause
of such change only if it is itself caused to change by something else, then
there is an infinitely long chain of causes of change. But, it is alleged,
there cannot be a causal chain of infinite length. Therefore there is something
that causes change, but is not caused to change by anything else, i.e., a first
cause. Many critics of this form of the argument deny its assumption that there
cannot be an infinite causal regress or chain of causes. This argument also
fails to show that there is only one first cause and does not prove that a
first cause must have such divine attributes as omniscience, omnipotence, and
perfect goodness. A version of the cosmological argument that has attracted
more attention from contemporary philosophers is the argument from contingency
to necessity. It starts with the observation that there are contingent
beings beings that could have failed to
exist. Since contingent beings do not exist of logical necessity, a contingent
being must be caused to exist by some other being, for otherwise there would be
no explanation of why it exists rather than not doing so. Either the causal
chain of contingent beings has a first member, a contingent being not caused by
another contingent being, or it is infinitely long. If, on the one hand, the
chain has a first member, then a necessary being exists and causes it. After
all, being contingent, the first member must have a cause, but its cause cannot
be another contingent being. Hence its cause has to be non-contingent, i.e., a
being that could not fail to exist and so is necessary. If, on the other hand,
the chain is infinitely long, then a necessary being exists and causes the
chain as a whole. This is because the chain as a whole, being itself
contingent, requires a cause that must be noncontingent since it is not part of
the chain. In either case, if there are contingent beings, a necessary being
exists. So, since contingent beings do exist, there is a necessary being that
causes their existence. Critics of this argument attack its assumption that
there must be an explanation for the existence of every contingent being.
Rejecting the principle that there is a sufficient reason for the existence of
each contingent thing, they argue that the existence of at least some
contingent beings is an inexplicable brute fact. And even if the principle of
sufficient reason is true, its truth is not obvious and so it would not be
irrational to deny it. Accordingly, William Rowe b.1 concludes that this
version of the cosmological argument does not prove the existence of God, but
he leaves open the question of whether it shows that theistic belief is
reasonable. The starting point of teleological arguments is the phenomenon of
goal-directedness in nature. Aquinas, e.g., begins with the claim that we see
that things which lack intelligence act for an end so as to achieve the best
result. Modern science has discredited this universal metaphysical teleology,
but many biological systems do seem to display remarkable adaptations of means
to ends. Thus, as William Paley 17431805 insisted, the eye is adapted to seeing
and its parts cooperate in complex ways to produce sight. This suggests an
analogy between such biological systems and human artifacts, which are known to
be products of intelligent design. Spelled out in mechanical terms, the analogy
grounds the claim that the world as a whole is like a vast machine composed of
many smaller machines. Machines are contrived by intelligent human designers.
Since like effects have like causes, the world as a whole and many of its parts
are therefore probably products of design by an intelligence resembling the
human but greater in proportion to the magnitude of its effects. Because this
form of the argument rests on an analogy, it is known as the analogical
argument for the existence of God; it is also known as the design argument
since it concludes the existence of an intelligent designer of the world. Hume
subjected the design argument to sustained criticism in his Dialogues
Concerning Natural Religion. If, as most scholars suppose, the character Philo
speaks for Hume, Hume does not actually reject the argument. He does, however,
think that it warrants only the very weak conclusion that the cause or causes
of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human
intelligence. As this way of putting it indicates, the argument does not rule
out polytheism; perhaps different minor deities designed lions and tigers.
Moreover, the analogy with human artificers suggests that the designer or
designers of the universe did not create it from nothing but merely imposed order
on already existing matter. And on account of the mixture of good and evil in
the universe, the argument does not show that the designer or designers are
morally admirable enough to deserve obedience or worship. Since the time of
Hume, the design argument has been further undermined by the emergence of
Darwinian explanations of biological adaptations in terms of natural selection
that give explanations of such adaptations in terms of intelligent design stiff
competition. Some moral arguments for the existence of God conform to the
pattern of inference to the best explanation. It has been argued that the
hypothesis that morality depends upon the will of God provides the best
explanation of the objectivity of moral obligations. Kant’s moral argument, which
is probably the best-known specimen of this type, takes a different tack.
According to Kant, the complete good consists of perfect virtue rewarded with
perfect happiness, and virtue deserves to be rewarded with proportional
happiness because it makes one worthy to be happy. If morality is to command
the allegiance of reason, the complete good must be a real possibility, and so
practical reason is entitled to postulate that the conditions necessary to
guarantee its possibility obtain. As far as anyone can tell, nature and its
laws do not furnish such a guarantee; in this world, apparently, the virtuous
often suffer while the vicious flourish. And even if the operation of natural
laws were to produce happiness in proportion to virtue, this would be merely coincidental,
and hence finite moral agents would not have been made happy just because they
had by their virtue made themselves worthy of happiness. So practical reason is
justified in postulating a supernatural agent with sufficient goodness,
knowledge, and power to ensure that finite agents receive the happiness they
deserve as a reward for their virtue, though theoretical reason can know
nothing of such a being. Critics of this argument have denied that we must
postulate a systematic connection between virtue and happiness in order to have
good reasons to be moral. Indeed, making such an assumption might actually
tempt one to cultivate virtue for the sake of securing happiness rather than
for its own sake. It seems therefore that none of these arguments by itself
conclusively proves the existence of God. However, some of them might
contribute to a cumulative case for the existence of God. According to Richard
Swinburne, cosmological, teleological, and moral arguments individually
increase the probability of God’s existence even though none of them makes it
more probable than not. But when other evidence such as that deriving from
providential occurrences and religious experiences is added to the balance,
Swinburne concludes that theism becomes more probable than its negation.
Whether or not he is right, it does appear to be entirely correct to judge the
rationality of theistic belief in the light of our total evidence. But there is
a case to be made against theism too. Philosophers of religion are interested
in arguments against the existence of God, and fairness does seem to require
admitting that our total evidence contains much that bears negatively on the
rationality of belief in God. The problem of evil is generally regarded as the
strongest objection to theism. Two kinds of evil can be distinguished. Moral
evil inheres in the wicked actions of moral agents and the bad consequences
they produce. An example is torturing the innocent. When evil actions are
considered theologically as offenses against God, they are regarded as sins.
Natural evils are bad consequences that apparently derive entirely from the
operations of impersonal natural forces, e.g. the human and animal suffering
produced by natural catastrophes such as earthquakes and epidemics. Both kinds
of evil raise the question of what reasons an omniscient, omnipotent, and
perfectly good being could have for permitting or allowing their existence.
Theodicy is the enterprise of trying to answer this question and thereby to
justify the ways of God to humans. It is, of course, possible to deny the
presuppositions of the question. Some thinkers have held that evil is unreal;
others have maintained that the deity is limited and so lacks the power or
knowledge to prevent the evils that occur. If one accepts the presuppositions
of the question, the most promising strategy for theodicy seems to be to claim
that each evil God permits is necessary for some greater good or to avoid some
alternative to it that is at least as bad if not worse. The strongest form of
this doctrine is the claim made by Leibniz that this is the best of all
possible worlds. It is unlikely that humans, with their cognitive limitations,
could ever understand all the details of the greater goods for which evils are
necessary, assuming that such goods exist; however, we can understand how some
evils contribute to achieving goods. According to the soul-making theodicy of
John Hick b.2, which is rooted in a tradition going back to Irenaeus, admirable
human qualities such as compassion could not exist except as responses to
suffering, and so evil plays a necessary part in the formation of moral
character. But this line of thought does not seem to provide a complete
theodicy because much animal suffering occurs unnoticed by humans and child
abuse often destroys rather than strengthens the moral character of its
victims. Recent philosophical discussion has often focused on the claim that
the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good being is
logically inconsistent with the existence of evil or of a certain quantity of
evil. This is the logical problem of evil, and the most successful response to
it has been the free will defense. Unlike a theodicy, this defense does not
speculate about God’s reasons for permitting evil but merely argues that God’s
existence is consistent with the existence of evil. Its key idea is that moral
good cannot exist apart from libertarian free actions that are not causally
determined. If God aims to produce moral good, God must create free creatures
upon whose cooperation he must depend, and so divine omnipotence is limited by
the freedom God confers on creatures. Since such creatures are also free to do
evil, it is possible that God could not have created a world containing moral
good but no moral evil. Plantinga extends the defense from moral to natural
evil by suggesting that it is also possible that all natural evil is due to the
free actions of non-human persons such as Satan and his cohorts. Plantinga and
Swinburne have also addressed the probabilistic problem of evil, which is the
claim that the existence of evil disconfirms or renders improbable the
hypothesis that God exists. Both of them argue for the conclusion that this is
not the case. Finally, it is worth mentioning three other topics on which contemporary
philosophers of religion have worked to good effect. Important studies of the
meaning and use of religious language were stimulated by the challenge of
logical positivism’s claim that theological language is cognitively
meaningless. Defenses of such Christian doctrines as the Trinity, Incarnation,
and Atonement against various philosophical objections have recently been
offered by people committed to elaborating an explicitly Christian philosophy.
And a growing appreciation of religious pluralism has both sharpened interest
in questions about the cultural relativity of religious rationality and begun
to encourage progress toward a comparative philosophy of religions. Such work
helps to make philosophy of religion a lively and diverse field of inquiry. Grice:
“It is extremely important that in a dictionary entry we keep the
‘philosophical’surely we are not lower ourselves to the level of a theologianif
I am a theologican, I am a philosophical theologian. -- theodicy from Grecian theos, ‘God’, and dike,
‘justice’, a defense of the justice or goodness of God in the face of doubts or
objections arising from the phenomena of evil in the world ‘evil’ refers here
to bad states of affairs of any sort. Many types of theodicy have been proposed
and vigorously debated; only a few can be sketched here. 1 It has been argued
that evils are logically necessary for greater goods e.g., hardships for the
full exemplification of certain virtues, so that even an omnipotent being
roughly, one whose power has no logically contingent limits would have a
morally sufficient reason to cause or permit the evils in order to obtain the
goods. Leibniz, in his Theodicy 1710, proposed a particularly comprehensive
theodicy of this type. On his view, God had adequate reason to bring into
existence the actual world, despite all its evils, because it is the best of
all possible worlds, and all actual evils are essential ingredients in it, so
that omitting any of them would spoil the design of the whole. Aside from
issues about whether actual evils are in fact necessary for greater goods, this
approach faces the question whether it assumes wrongly that the end justifies
the means. 2 An important type of theodicy traces some or all evils to sinful
free actions of humans or other beings such as angels created by God.
Proponents of this approach assume that free action in creatures is of great
value and is logically incompatible with divine causal control of the
creatures’ actions. It follows that God’s not intervening to prevent sins is
necessary, though the sins themselves are not, to the good of created freedom.
This is proposed as a morally sufficient reason for God’s not preventing them.
It is a major task for this type of theodicy to explain why God would permit
those evils that are not themselves free choices of creatures but are at most
consequences of such choices. 3 Another type of theodicy, both ancient and
currently influential among theologians, though less congenial to orthodox
traditions in the major theistic religions, proposes to defend God’s goodness
by abandoning the doctrine that God is omnipotent. On this view, God is
causally, rather than logically, unable to prevent many evils while pursuing
sufficiently great goods. A principal sponsor of this approach at present is
the movement known as process theology, inspired by Whitehead; it depends on a
complex metaphysical theory about the nature of causal relationships. 4 Other
theodicies focus more on outcomes than on origins. Some religious beliefs
suggest that God will turn out to have been very good to created persons by
virtue of gifts especially religious gifts, such as communion with God as
supreme Good that may be bestowed in a life Tetractys theodicy 910 910 after death or in religious experience
in the present life. This approach may be combined with one of the other types
of theodicy, or adopted by people who think that God’s reasons for permitting
evils are beyond our finding out. Then
there’s heologia naturalis Latin, ‘natural theology’, theology that uses the
methods of investigation and standards of rationality of any other area of
philosophy. Traditionally, the central problems of natural theology are proofs
for the existence of God and the problem of evil. In contrast with natural
theology, supernatural theology uses methods that are supposedly revealed by
God and accepts as fact beliefs that are similarly outside the realm of
rational acceptability. Relying on a prophet or a pope to settle factual
questions would be acceptable to supernatural, but not to natural, theology.
Nothing prevents a natural theologian from analyzing concepts that can be used
sanguinely by supernatural theologians, e.g., revelation, miracles,
infallibility, and the doctrine of the Trinity. Theologians often work in both
areas, as did, e.g., Anselm and Aquinas. For his brilliant critiques of
traditional theology, Hume deserves the title of “natural
anti-theologian.” Grice was totally
against “the philosophy of X”never the philosophy of godbut philosophical
theology -- theological naturalism, the attempt to develop a naturalistic
conception of God. As a philosophical position, naturalism holds 1 that the
only reliable methods of knowing what there is are methods continuous with
those of the developed sciences, and 2 that the application of those methods
supports the view that the constituents of reality are either physical or are
causally dependent on physical things and their modifications. Since
supernaturalism affirms that God is purely spiritual and causally independent
of physical things, naturalists hold that either belief in God must be
abandoned as rationally unsupported or the concept of God must be reconstituted
consistently with naturalism. Earlier attempts to do the latter include the
work of Feuerbach and Comte. In twentieth-century naturalism the most significant attempts to
develop a naturalistic conception of God are due to Dewey and Henry Nelson
Wieman 45. In A Common Faith Dewey proposed a view of God as the unity of ideal
ends resulting from human imagination, ends arousing us to desire and action.
Supernaturalism, he argued, was the product of a primitive need to convert the
objects of desire, the greatest ideals, into an already existing reality. In
contrast to Dewey, Wieman insisted on viewing God as a process in the natural world
that leads to the best that humans can achieve if they but submit to its
working in their lives. In his earlier work he viewed God as a cosmic process
that not only works for human good but is what actually produced human life.
Later he identified God with creative interchange, a process that occurs only
within already existing human communities. While Wieman’s God is not a human
creation, as are Dewey’s ideal ends, it is difficult to see how love and
devotion are appropriate to a natural process that works as it does without
thought or purpose. Thus, while Dewey’s God ideal ends lacks creative power but
may well qualify as an object of love and devotion, Wieman’s God a process in
nature is capable of creative power but, while worthy of our care and attention,
does not seem to qualify as an object of love and devotion. Neither view, then,
satisfies the two fundamental features associated with the traditional idea of
God: possessing creative power and being an appropriate object of supreme love
and devotion. H. P. Grice, “Why I never
pursued a doctorate in divinity!” --. philosophical theology: Grice: “My mother
was High Church, but my father was a non-conformist, and the fact that my
resident paternal aunt was a converted Roman certainly did not help!” --
Philosophical theology -- deism, the view that true religion is natural
religion. Some self-styled Christian deists accepted revelation although they
argued that its content is essentially the same as natural religion. Most
deists dismissed revealed religion as a fiction. God wants his creatures to be
happy and has ordained virtue as the means to it. Since God’s benevolence is
disinterested, he will ensure that the knowledge needed for happiness is
universally accessible. Salvation cannot, then, depend on special revelation.
True religion is an expression of a universal human nature whose essence is
reason and is the same in all times and places. Religious traditions such as
Christianity and Islam originate in credulity, political tyranny, and priestcraft,
which corrupt reason and overlay natural religion with impurities. Deism is
largely a seventeenth- and eighteenth-century phenomenon and was most prominent
in England. Among the more important English deists were John Toland 16701722,
Anthony Collins 16761729, Herbert of Cherbury 15831648, Matthew Tindal
16571733, and Thomas Chubb 16791747. Continental deists included Voltaire and
Reimarus. Thomas Paine and Elihu Palmer 17641806 were prominent deists. Orthodox writers in this period use
‘deism’ as a vague term of abuse. By the late eighteenth century, the term came
to mean belief in an “absentee God” who creates the world, ordains its laws,
and then leaves it to its own devices. Philosophical theology -- de Maistre,
Joseph-Marie, political theorist, diplomat, and Roman Catholic exponent of
theocracy. He was educated by the Jesuits in Turin. His counterrevolutionary
political philosophy aimed at restoring the foundations of morality, the
family, society, and the state in postrevolutionary Europe. Against Enlightenment
ideals, he reclaimed Thomism, defended the hereditary and absolute monarchy,
and championed ultramontanism The Pope, 1821. Considerations on France 1796
argues that the decline of moral and religious values was responsible for the
“satanic” 1789 revolution. Hence Christianity and Enlightenment philosophy were
engaged in a fight to the death that he claimed the church would eventually
win. Deeply pessimistic about human nature, the Essay on the Generating
Principle of Political Constitutions 1810 traces the origin of authority in the
human craving for order and discipline. Saint Petersburg Evenings 1821 urges
philosophy to surrender to religion and reason to faith. Philosophical theology
-- divine attributes, properties of God; especially, those properties that are
essential and unique to God. Among properties traditionally taken to be
attributes of God, omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence are naturally
taken to mean having, respectively, power, knowledge, and moral goodness to the
maximum degree. Here God is understood as an eternal or everlasting being of
immense power, knowledge, and goodness, who is the creator and sustainer of the
universe and is worthy of human worship. Omnipotence is maximal power. Some
philosophers, notably Descartes, have thought that omnipotence requires the
ability to do absolutely anything, including the logically impossible. Most
classical theists, however, understood omnipotence as involving vast powers,
while nevertheless being subject to a range of limitations of ability,
including the inability to do what is logically impossible, the inability to
change the past or to do things incompatible with what has happened, and the
inability to do things that cannot be done by a being who has other divine
attributes, e.g., to sin or to lie. Omniscience is unlimited knowledge.
According to the most straightforward account, omniscience is knowledge of all
true propositions. But there may be reasons for recognizing a limitation on the
class of true propositions that a being must know in order to be omniscient.
For example, if there are true propositions about the future, omniscience would
then include foreknowledge. But some philosophers have thought that
foreknowledge of human actions is incompatible with those actions being free.
This has led some to deny that there are truths about the future and others to
deny that such truths are knowable. In the latter case, omniscience might be
taken to be knowledge of all knowable truths. Or if God is eternal and if there
are certain tensed or temporally indexical propositions that can be known only
by someone who is in time, then omniscience presumably does not extend to such
propositions. It is a matter of controversy whether omniscience includes middle
knowledge, i.e., knowledge of what an agent would do if other, counterfactual,
conditions were to obtain. Since recent critics of middle knowledge in contrast
to Báñez and other sixteenth-century Dominican opponents of Molina usually deny
that the relevant counterfactual conditionals alleged to be the object of such
knowledge are true, denying the possibility of middle knowledge need not
restrict the class of true propositions a being must know in order to be
omniscient. Finally, although the concept of omniscience might not itself constrain
how an omniscient being acquires its knowledge, it is usually held that God’s
knowledge is neither inferential i.e., derived from premises or evidence nor
dependent upon causal processes. Omnibenevolenceis, literally, complete desire
for good; less strictly, perfect moral goodness. Traditionally it has been
thought that God does not merely happen to be good but that he must be so and
that he is unable to do what is wrong. According to the former claim God is
essentially good; according to the latter he is impeccable. It is a matter of
controversy whether God is perfectly good in virtue of complying with an
external moral standard or whether he himself sets the standard for goodness.
Divine sovereignty is God’s rule over all of creation. According to this
doctrine God did not merely create the world and then let it run on its own; he
continues to govern it in complete detail according to his good plan.
Sovereignty is thus related to divine providence. A difficult question is how
to reconcile a robust view of God’s control of the world with libertarian free
will. Aseity or perseity is complete independence. In a straightforward sense,
God is not dependent on anyone or anything for his existence. According to
stronger interpretation of aseity, God is completely independent of everything
else, including his properties. This view supports a doctrine of divine
simplicity according to which God is not distinct from his properties.
Simplicity is the property of having no parts of any kind. According to the doctrine
of divine simplicity, God not only has no spatial or temporal parts, but there
is no distinction between God and his essence, between his various attributes
in him omniscience and omnipotence, e.g., are identical, and between God and
his attributes. Attributing simplicity to God was standard in medieval
theology, but the doctrine has seemed to many contemporary philosophers to be
baffling, if not incoherent. divine
command ethics, an ethical theory according to which part or all of morality
divine attributes divine command ethics 240
240 depends upon the will of God as promulgated by divine commands. This
theory has an important place in the history of Christian ethics. Divine
command theories are prominent in the Franciscan ethics developed by John Duns
Scotus and William Ockham; they are also endorsed by disciples of Ockham such
as d’Ailly, Gerson, and Gabriel Biel; both Luther and Calvin adopt divine
command ethics; and in modern British thought, important divine command
theorists include Locke, Berkeley, and Paley. Divine command theories are
typically offered as accounts of the deontological part of morality, which
consists of moral requirements obligation, permissions rightness, and
prohibitions wrongness. On a divine command conception, actions forbidden by
God are morally wrong because they are thus forbidden, actions not forbidden by
God are morally right because they are not thus forbidden, and actions
commanded by God are morally obligatory because they are thus commanded. Many
Christians find divine command ethics attractive because the ethics of love
advocated in the Gospels makes love the subject of a command. Matthew 22:3740
records Jesus as saying that we are commanded to love God and the neighbor.
According to Kierkegaard, there are two reasons to suppose that Christian love
of neighbor must be an obligation imposed by divine command: first, only an
obligatory love can be sufficiently extensive to embrace everyone, even one’s
enemies; second, only an obligatory love can be invulnerable to changes in its
objects, a love that alters not when it alteration finds. The chief objection
to the theory is that dependence on divine commands would make morality
unacceptably arbitrary. According to divine command ethics, murder would not be
wrong if God did not exist or existed but failed to forbid it. Perhaps the
strongest reply to this objection appeals to the doctrines of God’s necessary
existence and essential goodness. God could not fail to exist and be good, and
so God could not fail to forbid murder. In short, divine commands are not
arbitrary fiats. divine foreknowledge,
God’s knowledge of the future. It appears to be a straightforward consequence
of God’s omniscience that he has knowledge of the future, for presumably
omniscience includes knowledge of all truths and there are truths about the
future. Moreover, divine foreknowledge seems to be required by orthodox
religious commitment to divine prophecy and divine providence. In the former
case, God could not reliably reveal what will happen if he does know what will
happen. And in the latter case, it is difficult to see how God could have a
plan for what happens without knowing what that will be. A problem arises,
however, in that it has seemed to many that divine foreknowledge is
incompatible with human free action. Some philosophers notably Boethius have
reasoned as follows: If God knows that a person will do a certain action, then
the person must perform that action, but if a person must perform an action,
the person does not perform the action freely. So if God knows that a person
will perform an action, the person does not perform the action freely. This
reason for thinking that divine foreknowledge is incompatible with human free
action commits a simple modal fallacy. What must be the case is the conditional
that if God knows that a person will perform an action then the person will in
fact perform the action. But what is required to derive the conclusion is the
implausible claim that from the assumption that God knows that a person will perform
an action it follows not simply that the person will perform the action but
that the person must perform it. Perhaps other attempts to demonstrate the
incompatibility, however, are not as easily dismissed. One response to the
apparent dilemma is to say that there really are no such truths about the
future, either none at all or none about events, like future free actions, that
are not causally necessitated by present conditions. Another response is to
concede that there are truths about the future but to deny that truths about
future free actions are knowable. In this case omniscience may be understood as
knowledge, not of all truths, but of all knowable truths. A third, and
historically important, response is to hold that God is eternal and that from his
perspective everything is present and thus not future. These responses
implicitly agree that divine foreknowledge is incompatible with human freedom,
but they provide different accounts of omniscience according to which it does
not include foreknowledge, or, at any rate, not foreknowledge of future free
actions. Philosophical theology --
double truth, the theory that a thing can be true in philosophy or according to
reason while its opposite is true in theology or according to faith. It serves
as a response to conflicts between reason and faith. For example, on one
interpretation of Aristotle, there is only one rational human soul, whereas,
according to Christian theology, there are many rational human souls. The
theory of double truth was attributed to Averroes and to Latin Averroists such
as Siger of Brabant and Boethius of Dacia by their opponents, but it is
doubtful that they actually held it. Averroes seems to have held that a single
truth is scientifically formulated in philosophy and allegorically expressed in
theology. Latin Averroists apparently thought that philosophy concerns what
would have been true by natural necessity absent special divine intervention,
and theology deals with what is actually true by virtue of such intervention.
On this view, there would have been only one rational human soul if God had not
miraculously intervened to multiply what by nature could not be multiplied. No
one clearly endorsed the view that rational human souls are both only one and
also many in number. H. P. Grice, “Must
the Articles be 39and if we add one more, what might it say?.”
Implicatuumimplicatura, implicans,
implicatum, implicandumimplicans, what implies, implicatum, what is implied,
implicaturum, what is to imply, implicandum, what is to be implied, implicatura, the act of the implying.
Scire – scitum – Grice: “The Italians may
have borrowed from ‘taste’ – sapere – but they also own ‘scienta,’ scitum – and
so in a way they are to blame if we have Scientism today!” -- Scientism: One of
the twelve labours of H. P. Grice --. Grice: “When Cicero coined ‘scientia’ out
of scire he didn’t know what he was doing!” -- philosophy of science, the
branch of philosophy that is centered on a critical examination of the
sciences: their methods and their results. One branch of the philosophy of
science, methodology, is closely related to the theory of knowledge. It
explores the methods by which science arrives at its posited truths concerning
the world and critically explores alleged rationales for these methods. Issues
concerning the sense in which theories are accepted in science, the nature of
the confirmation relation between evidence and hypothesis, the degree to which
scientific claims can be falsified by observational data, and the like, are the
concern of methodology. Other branches of the philosophy of science are
concerned with the meaning and content of the posited scientific results and
are closely related to metaphysics and the philosophy of language. Typical
problems examined are the nature of scientific laws, the cognitive content of
scientific theories referring to unobservables, and the structure of scientific
explanations. Finally, philosophy of science explores specific foundational
questions arising out of the specific results of the sciences. Typical
questions explored might be metaphysical presuppositions of space-time
theories, the role of probability in statistical physics, the interpretation of
measurement in quantum theory, the structure of explanations in evolutionary
biology, and the like. Concepts of the credibility of hypotheses. Some crucial
concepts that arise when issues of the credibility of scientific hypotheses are
in question are the following: Inductivism is the view that hypotheses can
receive evidential support from their predictive success with respect to
particular cases falling under them. If one takes the principle of inductive
inference to be that the future will be like the past, one is subject to the
skeptical objection that this rule is empty of content, and even
self-contradictory, if any kind of “similarity” of cases is permitted. To
restore content and consistency to the rule, and for other methodological
purposes as well, it is frequently alleged that only natural kinds, a delimited
set of “genuine” properties, should be allowed in the formulation of scientific
hypotheses. The view that theories are first arrived at as creative hypotheses
of the scientist’s imagination and only then confronted, for justificatory
purposes, with the observational predictions deduced from them, is called the
hypotheticodeductive model of science. This model is contrasted with the view
that the very discovery of hypotheses is somehow “generated” out of accumulated
observational data. The view that hypotheses are confirmed to the degree that
they provide the “best explanatory account” of the data is often called
abduction and sometimes called inference to the best explanation. The alleged
relation that evidence bears to hypothesis, warranting its truth but not,
generally, guaranteeing that truth, is called confirmation. Methodological
accounts such as inductivism countenance such evidential warrant, frequently
speaking of evidence as making a hypothesis probable but not establishing it
with certainty. Probability in the confirmational context is supposed to be a
relationship holding between propositions that is quantitative and is described
by the formal theory of probability. It is supposed to measure the “degree of
support” that one proposition gives to another, e.g. the degree of support
evidential statements give to a hypothesis allegedly supported by them.
Scientific methodologists often claim that science is characterized by
convergence. This is the claim that scientific theories in their historical
order are converging to an ultimate, final, and ideal theory. Sometimes this
final theory is said to be true because it corresponds to the “real world,” as
in realist accounts of convergence. In pragmatist versions this ultimate theory
is the defining standard of truth. It is sometimes alleged that one ground for
choosing the most plausible theory, over and above conformity of the theory
with the observational data, is the simplicity of the theory. Many versions of
this thesis exist, some emphasizing formal elements of the theory and others,
e.g., emphasizing paucity of ontological commitment by the theory as the
measure of simplicity. It is sometimes alleged that in choosing which theory to
believe, the scientific community opts for theories compatible with the data
that make minimal changes in scientific belief necessary from those demanded by
previously held theory. The believer in methodological conservatism may also
try to defend such epistemic conservatism as normatively rational. An
experiment that can decisively show a scientific hypothesis to be false is
called a crucial experiment for the hypothesis. It is a thesis of many
philosophers that for hypotheses that function in theories and can only
confront observational data when conjoined with other theoretical hypotheses,
no absolutely decisive crucial experiment can exist. Concepts of the structure
of hypotheses. Here are some of the essential concepts encountered when it is the
structure of scientific hypotheses that is being explored: In its explanatory
account of the world, science posits novel entities and properties. Frequently
these are alleged to be not accessible to direct observation. A theory is a set
of hypotheses positing such entities and properties. Some philosophers of
science divide the logical consequences of a theory into those referring only
to observable things and features and those referring to the unobservables as
well. Various reductionist, eliminationist, and instrumentalist approaches to
theory agree that the full cognitive content of a theory is exhausted by its
observational consequences reported by its observation sentences, a claim
denied by those who espouse realist accounts of theories. The view that the
parts of a theory that do not directly relate observational consequences ought
not to be taken as genuinely referential at all, but, rather, as a “mere
linguistic instrument” allowing one to derive observational results from
observationally specifiable posits, is called instrumentalism. From this point
of view terms putatively referring to unobservables fail to have genuine
reference and individual non-observational sentences containing such terms are
not individually genuinely true or false. Verificationism is the general name
for the doctrine that, in one way or another, the semantic content of an
assertion is exhausted by the conditions that count as warranting the
acceptance or rejection of the assertion. There are many versions of
verificationist doctrines that try to do justice both to the empiricist claim
that the content of an assertion is its totality of empirical consequences and
also to a wide variety of anti-reductionist intuitions about meaning. The
doctrine that theoretical sentences must be strictly translatable into
sentences expressed solely in observational terms in order that the theoretical
assertions have genuine cognitive content is sometimes called operationalism.
The “operation” by which a magnitude is determined to have a specified value,
characterized observationally, is taken to give the very meaning of attributing
that magnitude to an object. The doctrine that the meanings of terms in
theories are fixed by the role the terms play in the theory as a whole is often
called semantic holism. According to the semantic holist, definitions of
theoretical terms by appeal to observational terms cannot be given, but all of
the theoretical terms have their meaning given “as a group” by the structure of
the theory as a whole. A related doctrine in confirmation theory is that
confirmation accrues to whole theories, and not to their individual assertions
one at a time. This is confirmational holism. To see another conception of
cognitive content, conjoin all the sentences of a theory together. Then replace
each theoretical term in the sentence so obtained with a predicate variable and
existentially quantify over all the predicate variables so introduced. This is
the Ramsey sentence for a finitely axiomatized theory. This sentence has the
same logical consequences framable in the observational vocabulary alone as did
the original theory. It is often claimed that the Ramsey sentence for a theory
exhausts the cognitive content of the theory. The Ramsey sentence is supposed
to “define” the meaning of the theoretical terms of the original theory as well
as have empirical consequences; yet by asserting the existence of the
theoretical properties, it is sometimes alleged to remain a realist construal
of the theory. The latter claim is made doubtful, however, by the existence of
“merely representational” interpretations of the Ramsey sentence. Theories are
often said to be so related that one theory is reducible to another. The study
of the relation theories bear to one another in this context is said to be the
study of intertheoretic reduction. Such reductive claims can have philosophical
origins, as in the alleged reduction of material objects to sense-data or of
spatiotemporal relations to causal relations, or they can be scientific
discoveries, as in the reduction of the theory of light waves to the theory of
electromagnetic radiation. Numerous “models” of the reductive relation exist,
appropriate for distinct kinds and cases of reduction. The term scientific
realism has many and varied uses. Among other things that have been asserted by
those who describe themselves as scientific realists are the claims that
“mature” scientific theories typically refer to real features of the world,
that the history of past falsifications of accepted scientific theories does
not provide good reason for persistent skepticism as to the truth claims of
contemporary theories, and that the terms of theories that putatively refer to
unobservables ought to be taken at their referential face value and not
reinterpreted in some instrumentalistic manner. Internal realism denies
irrealist claims founded on the past falsification of accepted theories.
Internal realists are, however, skeptical of “metaphysical” claims of
“correspondence of true theories to the real world” or of any notion of truth
that can be construed in radically non-epistemic terms. While theories may
converge to some ultimate “true” theory, the notion of truth here must be
understood in some version of a Peircian idea of truth as “ultimate warranted
assertability.” The claim that any theory that makes reference to posited
unobservable features of the world in its explanatory apparatus will always
encounter rival theories incompatible with the original theory but equally
compatible with all possible observational data that might be taken as
confirmatory of the original theory is the claim of the underdetermination
thesis. A generalization taken to have “lawlike force” is called a law of
nature. Some suggested criteria for generalizations having lawlike force are the
ability of the generalization to back up the truth of claims expressed as
counterfactual conditions; the ability of the generalization to be confirmed
inductively on the basis of evidence that is only a proper subset of all the
particular instances falling under the generality; and the generalization
having an appropriate place in the simple, systematic hierarchy of
generalizations important for fundamental scientific theories of the world. The
application of a scientific law to a given actual situation is usually hedged
with the proviso that for the law’s predictions to hold, “all other,
unspecified, features of the situation are normal.” Such a qualifying clause is
called a ceteris paribus clause. Such “everything else being normal” claims
cannot usually be “filled out,” revealing important problems concerning the
“open texture” of scientific claims. The claim that the full specification of
the state of the world at one time is sufficient, along with the laws of
nature, to fix the full state of the world at any other time, is the claim of
determinism. This is not to be confused with claims of total predictability,
since even if determinism were true the full state of the world at a time might
be, in principle, unavailable for knowledge. Concepts of the foundations of
physical theories. Here, finally, are a few concepts that are crucial in
discussing the foundations of physical theories, in particular theories of
space and time and quantum theory: The doctrine that space and time must be
thought of as a family of spatial and temporal relations holding among the
material constituents of the universe is called relationism. Relationists deny
that “space itself” should be considered an additional constituent of the world
over and above the world’s material contents. The doctrine that “space itself”
must be posited as an additional constituent of the world over and above
ordinary material things of the world is substantivalism. Mach’s principle is
the demand that all physical phenomena, including the existence of inertial
forces used by Newton to argue for a substantivalist position, be explainable
in purely relationist terms. Mach speculated that Newton’s explanation for the
forces in terms of acceleration with respect to “space itself” could be
replaced with an explanation resorting to the acceleration of the test object
with respect to the remaining matter of the universe the “fixed stars”. In
quantum theory the claim that certain “conjugate” quantities, such as position
and momentum, cannot be simultaneously “determined” to arbitrary degrees of
accuracy is the uncertainty principle. The issue of whether such a lack of
simultaneous exact “determination” is merely a limitation on our knowledge of
the system or is, instead, a limitation on the system’s having simultaneous
exact values of the conjugate quantities, is a fundamental one in the
interpretation of quantum mechanics. Bell’s theorem is a mathematical result
aimed at showing that the explanation of the statistical correlations that hold
between causally noninteractive systems cannot always rely on the positing that
when the systems did causally interact in the past independent values were
fixed for some feature of each of the two systems that determined their future
observational behavior. The existence of such “local hidden variables” would
contradict the correlational predictions of quantum mechanics. The result shows
that quantum mechanics has a profoundly “non-local” nature. Can quantum
probabilities and correlations be obtained as averages over variables at some
deeper level than those specifying the quantum state of a system? If such
quantities exist they are called hidden variables. Many different types of
hidden variables have been proposed: deterministic, stochastic, local,
non-local, etc. A number of proofs exist to the effect that positing certain
types of hidden variables would force probabilistic results at the quantum
level that contradict the predictions of quantum theory. Complementarity was
the term used by Niels Bohr to describe what he took to be a fundamental
structure of the world revealed by quantum theory. Sometimes it is used to
indicate the fact that magnitudes occur in conjugate pairs subject to the
uncertainty relations. Sometimes it is used more broadly to describe such
aspects as the ability to encompass some phenomena in a wave picture of the
world and other phenomena in a particle picture, but implying that no one
picture will do justice to all the experimental results. The orthodox
formalization of quantum theory posits two distinct ways in which the quantum
state can evolve. When the system is “unobserved,” the state evolves according
to the deterministic Schrödinger equation. When “measured,” however, the system
suffers a discontinuous “collapse of the wave packet” into a new quantum state
determined by the outcome of the measurement process. Understanding how to
reconcile the measurement process with the laws of dynamic evolution of the
system is the measurement problem. Conservation and symmetry. A number of
important physical principles stipulate that some physical quantity is
conserved, i.e. that the quantity of it remains invariant over time. Early
conservation principles were those of matter mass, of energy, and of momentum.
These became assimilated together in the relativistic principle of the
conservation of momentum-energy. Other conservation laws such as the
conservation of baryon number arose in the theory of elementary particles. A
symmetry in physical theory expressed the invariance of some structural feature
of the world under some transformation. Examples are translation and rotation
invariance in space and the invariance under transformation from one uniformly
moving reference frame to another. Such symmetries express the fact that
systems related by symmetry transformations behave alike in their physical
evolution. Some symmetries are connected with space-time, such as those noted
above, whereas others such as the symmetry of electromagnetism under socalled
gauge transformations are not. A very important result of the mathematician
Emma Noether shows that each conservation law is derivable from the existence
of an associated underlying symmetry. Chaos theory and chaotic systems. In the
history of the scientific study of deterministic systems, the paradigm of
explanation has been the prediction of the future states of a system from a
specification of its initial state. In order for such a prediction to be
useful, however, nearby initial states must lead to future states that are
close to one another. This is now known to hold only in exceptional cases. In
general deterministic systems are chaotic systems, i.e., even initial states
very close to one another will lead in short intervals of time to future states
that diverge quickly from one another. Chaos theory has been developed to
provide a wide range of concepts useful for describing the structure of the
dynamics of such chaotic systems. The theory studies the features of a system
that will determine if its evolution is chaotic or non-chaotic and provides the
necessary descriptive categories for characterizing types of chaotic motion.
Randomness. The intuitive distinction between a sequence that is random and one
that is orderly plays a role in the foundations of probability theory and in
the scientific study of dynamical systems. But what is a random sequence?
Subjectivist definitions of randomness focus on the inability of an agent to
determine, on the basis of his knowledge, the future occurrences in the
sequence. Objectivist definitions of randomness seek to characterize it without
reference to the knowledge of any agent. Some approaches to defining objective
randomness are those that require probability to be the same in the original
sequence and in subsequences “mechanically” selectable from it, and those that
define a sequence as random if it passes every “effectively constructible”
statistical test for randomness. Another important attempt to characterize
objective randomness compares the length of a sequence to the length of a
computer program used to generate the sequence. The basic idea is that a
sequence is random if the computer programs needed to generate the sequence are
as long as the sequence itself. H. P.
Grice, “My labour with Scientism.”
Scire -- scitum -- scientism: Grice:
“Winch is not only happy with natural science that he wants a social
sciencelinguistics included!” -- philosophy of the social sciences, the study
of the logic and methods of the social sciences. Central questions include:
What are the criteria of a good social explanation? How if at all are the
social sciences distinct from the natural sciences? Is there a distinctive
method for social research? Through what empirical procedures are social
science assertions to be evaluated? Are there irreducible social laws? Are
there causal relations among social phenomena? Do social facts and regularities
require some form of reduction to facts about individuals? What is the role of
theory in social explanation? The philosophy of social science aims to provide
an interpretation of the social sciences that answers these questions. The
philosophy of social science, like that of natural science, has both a
descriptive and a prescriptive side. On the one hand, the field is about the
social sciences the explanations, methods,
empirical arguments, theories, hypotheses, etc., that actually occur in the
social science literature. This means that the philosopher needs extensive
knowledge of several areas of social science research in order to be able to
formulate an analysis of the social sciences that corresponds appropriately to
scientists’ practice. On the other hand, the field is epistemic: it is
concerned with the idea that scientific theories and hypotheses are put forward
as true or probable, and are justified on rational grounds empirical and
theoretical. The philosopher aims to provide a critical evaluation of existing
social science methods and practices insofar as these methods are found to be
less truth-enhancing than they might be. These two aspects of the philosophical
enterprise suggest that philosophy of social science should be construed as a
rational reconstruction of existing social science practice a reconstruction guided by existing practice
but extending beyond that practice by identifying faulty assumptions, forms of
reasoning, and explanatory frameworks. Philosophers have disagreed over the
relation between the social and natural sciences. One position is naturalism,
according to which the methods of the social sciences should correspond closely
to those of the natural sciences. This position is closely related to
physicalism, the doctrine that all higher-level phenomena and regularities including social phenomena are ultimately reducible to physical entities
and the laws that govern them. On the other side is the view that the social
sciences are inherently distinct from the natural sciences. This perspective
holds that social phenomena are metaphysically distinguishable from natural
phenomena because they are intentional
they depend on the meaningful actions of individuals. On this view, natural
phenomena admit of causal explanation, whereas social phenomena require
intentional explanation. The anti-naturalist position also maintains that there
is a corresponding difference between the methods appropriate to natural and
social science. Advocates of the Verstehen method hold that there is a method
of intuitive interpretation of human action that is radically distinct from
methods of inquiry in the natural sciences. One important school within the
philosophy of social science takes its origin in this fact of the
meaningfulness of human action. Interpretive sociology maintains that the goal
of social inquiry is to provide interpretations of human conduct within the
context of culturally specific meaningful arrangements. This approach draws an
analogy between literary texts and social phenomena: both are complex systems
of meaningful elements, and the goal of the interpreter is to provide an
interpretation of the elements that makes sense of them. In this respect social
science involves a hermeneutic inquiry: it requires that the interpreter should
tease out the meanings underlying a particular complex of social behavior, much
as a literary critic pieces together an interpretation of the meaning of a
complex philosophy of the social sciences philosophy of the social sciences
704 704 literary text. An example of
this approach is Weber’s treatment of the relation between capitalism and the
Protestant ethic. Weber attempts to identify the elements of western European
culture that shaped human action in this environment in such a way as to
produce capitalism. On this account, both Calvinism and capitalism are
historically specific complexes of values and meanings, and we can better
understand the emergence of capitalism by seeing how it corresponds to the
meaningful structures of Calvinism. Interpretive sociologists often take the
meaningfulness of social phenomena to imply that social phenomena do not admit
of causal explanation. However, it is possible to accept the idea that social
phenomena derive from the purposive actions of individuals without
relinquishing the goal of providing causal explanations of social phenomena.
For it is necessary to distinguish between the general idea of a causal
relation between two events or conditions and the more specific idea of “causal
determination through strict laws of nature.” It is true that social phenomena
rarely derive from strict laws of nature; wars do not result from antecedent
political tensions in the way that earthquakes result from antecedent conditions
in plate tectonics. However, since non-deterministic causal relations can
derive from the choices of individual persons, it is evident that social
phenomena admit of causal explanation, and in fact much social explanation
depends on asserting causal relations between social events and processes e.g., the claim that the administrative
competence of the state is a crucial causal factor in determining the success
or failure of a revolutionary movement. A central goal of causal explanation is
to discover the conditions existing prior to the event that, given the
law-governed regularities among phenomena of this sort, were sufficient to
produce this event. To say that C is a cause of E is to assert that the
occurrence of C, in the context of a field of social processes and mechanisms
F, brought about E or increased the likelihood of the occurrence of E. Central
to causal arguments in the social sciences is the idea of a causal
mechanism a series of events or actions
leading from cause to effect. Suppose it is held that the extension of a
trolley line from the central city to the periphery caused the deterioration of
public schools in the central city. In order to make out such a claim it is
necessary to provide some account of the social and political mechanisms that
join the antecedent condition to the consequent. An important variety of causal
explanation in social science is materialist explanation. This type of
explanation attempts to explain a social feature in terms of features of the
material environment in the context of which the social phenomenon occurs.
Features of the environment that often appear in materialist explanations
include topography and climate; thus it is sometimes maintained that banditry
thrives in remote regions because the rugged terrain makes it more difficult
for the state to repress bandits. But materialist explanations may also refer
to the material needs of society e.g.,
the need to produce food and other consumption goods to support the population.
Thus Marx holds that it is the development of the “productive forces”
technology that drives the development of property relations and political
systems. In each case the materialist explanation must refer to the fact of
human agency the fact that human beings
are capable of making deliberative choices on the basis of their wants and
beliefs in order to carry out the
explanation; in the banditry example, the explanation depends on the fact that
bandits are prudent enough to realize that their prospects for survival are
better in the periphery than in the core. So materialist explanations too
accept the point that social phenomena depend on the purposive actions of
individuals. A central issue in the philosophy of social science involves the
relation between social regularities and facts about individuals.
Methodological individualism is the position that asserts the primacy of facts
about individuals over facts about social entities. This doctrine takes three
forms: a claim about social entities, a claim about social concepts, and a claim
about social regularities. The first version maintains that social entities are
reducible to ensembles of individuals as
an insurance company might be reduced to the ensemble of employees,
supervisors, managers, and owners whose actions constitute the company.
Likewise, it is sometimes held that social concepts must be reducible to
concepts involving only individuals
e.g., the concept of a social class might be defined in terms of
concepts pertaining only to individuals and their behavior. Finally, it is
sometimes held that social regularities must be derivable from regularities of
individual behavior. There are several positions opposed to methodological
individualism. At the extreme there is methodological holism the doctrine that social entities, facts, and
laws are autonomous and irreducible; for example, that social structures such
as the state have dynamic properties independent of the beliefs and purposes of
the particular persons who occupy positions within the structure. A third
position intermediate between these two holds that every social explanation
requires microfoundations an account of
the circumstances at the individual level that led individuals to behave in
such ways as to bring about the observed social regularities. If we observe
that an industrial strike is successful over an extended period of time, it is
not sufficient to explain this circumstance by referring to the common interest
that members of the union have in winning their demands. Rather, we need
information about the circumstances of the individual union member that induce
him or her to contribute to this public good. The microfoundations dictum does
not require, however, that social explanations be couched in non-social
concepts; instead, the circumstances of individual agents may be characterized
in social terms. Central to most theories of explanation is the idea that
explanation depends on general laws governing the phenomena in question. Thus
the discovery of the laws of electrodynamics permitted the explanation of a variety
of electromagnetic phenomena. But social phenomena derive from the actions of
purposive men and women; so what kinds of regularities are available on the
basis of which to provide social explanations? A fruitful research framework in
the social sciences is the idea that men and women are rational, so it is
possible to explain their behavior as the outcome of a deliberation about means
of achieving their individual ends. This fact in turn gives rise to a set of
regularities about individual behavior that may be used as a ground for social
explanation. We may explain some complex social phenomenon as the aggregate
result of the actions of a large number of individual agents with a
hypothesized set of goals within a structured environment of choice. Social
scientists have often been inclined to offer functional explanations of social
phenomena. A functional explanation of a social feature is one that explains
the presence and persistence of the feature in terms of the beneficial
consequences the feature has for the ongoing working of the social system as a
whole. It might be held, e.g., that sports clubs in working-class Britain exist
because they give working-class people a way of expending energy that would
otherwise go into struggles against an exploitative system, thus undermining
social stability. Sports clubs are explained, then, in terms of their
contribution to social stability. This type of explanation is based on an
analogy between biology and sociology. Biologists explain species traits in
terms of their contribution to reproductive fitness, and sociologists sometimes
explain social traits in terms of their contribution to “social” fitness.
However, the analogy is misleading, because there is a general mechanism
establishing functionality in the biological realm that is not present in the
social realm. This is the mechanism of natural selection, through which a
species arrives at a set of traits that are locally optimal. There is no
analogous process at work in the social realm, however; so it is groundless to
suppose that social traits exist because of their beneficial consequences for
the good of society as a whole or important subsystems within society. So
functional explanations of social phenomena must be buttressed by specific
accounts of the causal processes that underlie the postulated functional
relationships. Grice: “It’s a good thing I studied at Oxford: at other places
you HAVE to learn a non-Indo-Euroopean lingo!” –
physicalism: One of the twelve labours of
H. P. Grice. (“As different from Naturalism, you know.”)Churchlands.,
philosopher and advocate of neurophilosophy. She received her B.Phil. from
Oxford in 9 and held positions at the Unichün-tzu Churchland, Patricia Smith
140 140 versity of Manitoba and the
Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, settling at the
ofCalifornia,SanDiego, with appointments in philosophy and the Institute for
Neural Computation. Skeptical of philosophy’s a priori specification of mental
categories and dissatisfied with computational psychology’s purely top-down
approach to their function, Churchland began studying the brain at the of Manitoba medical school. The result was a
unique merger of science and philosophy, a “neurophilosophy” that challenged
the prevailing methodology of mind. Thus, in a series of articles that includes
“Fodor on Language Learning” 8 and “A Perspective on Mind-Brain Research” 0,
she outlines a new neurobiologically based paradigm. It subsumes simple
non-linguistic structures and organisms, since the brain is an evolved organ;
but it preserves functionalism, since a cognitive system’s mental states are
explained via high-level neurofunctional theories. It is a strategy of
cooperation between psychology and neuroscience, a “co-evolutionary” process
eloquently described in Neurophilosophy 6 with the prediction that genuine
cognitive phenomena will be reduced, some as conceptualized within the
commonsense framework, others as transformed through the sciences. The same
intellectual confluence is displayed through Churchland’s various
collaborations: with psychologist and computational neurobiologist Terrence
Sejnowski in The Computational Brain 2; with neuroscientist Rodolfo Llinas in
The Mind-Brain Continuum 6; and with philosopher and husband Paul Churchland in
On the Contrary 8 she and Paul Churchland are jointly appraised in R. McCauley,
The Churchlands and Their Critics, 6. From the viewpoint of neurophilosophy,
interdisciplinary cooperation is essential for advancing knowledge, for the
truth lies in the intertheoretic details. Churchland: Paul M. b.2, -born philosopher, leading proponent of eliminative
materialism. He received his Ph.D. from the
of Pittsburgh in 9 and held positions at the Universities of Toronto,
Manitoba, and the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton. He is professor
of philosophy and member of the Institute for Neural Computation at the of California, San Diego. Churchland’s
literary corpus constitutes a lucidly written, scientifically informed
narrative where his neurocomputational philosophy unfolds. Scientific Realism
and the Plasticity of Mind 9 maintains that, though science is best construed
realistically, perception is conceptually driven, with no observational given,
while language is holistic, with meaning fixed by networks of associated usage.
Moreover, regarding the structure of science, higher-level theories should be
reduced by, incorporated into, or eliminated in favor of more basic theories
from natural science, and, in the specific case, commonsense psychology is a
largely false empirical theory, to be replaced by a non-sentential,
neuroscientific framework. This skepticism regarding “sentential” approaches is
a common thread, present in earlier papers, and taken up again in “Eliminative
Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes” 1. When fully developed, the
non-sentential, neuroscientific framework takes the form of connectionist
network or parallel distributed processing models. Thus, with essays in A
Neurocomputational Perspective 9, Churchland adds that genuine psychological
processes are sequences of activation patterns over neuronal networks.
Scientific theories, likewise, are learned vectors in the space of possible
activation patterns, with scientific explanation being prototypical activation
of a preferred vector. Classical epistemology, too, should be
neurocomputationally naturalized. Indeed, Churchland suggests a semantic view
whereby synonymy, or the sharing of concepts, is a similarity between patterns
in neuronal state-space. Even moral knowledge is analyzed as stored prototypes
of social reality that are elicited when an individual navigates through other
neurocomputational systems. The entire picture is expressed in The Engine of
Reason, the Seat of the Soul 6 and, with his wife Patricia Churchland, by the
essays in On the Contrary 8. What has emerged is a neurocomputational
embodiment of the naturalist program, a panphilosophy that promises to capture
science, epistemology, language, and morals in one broad sweep of its
connectionist net. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Physicalism and naturalism.” physicalism:
On second thoughts, Grice saw that naturalism and physicalism were synonymous,
but kept both! One of the twelve labours of Grice. in the widest sense of the
term, materialism applied to the question of the nature of mind. So construed,
physicalism is the thesis call it
ontological physicalism that whatever
exists or occurs is ultimately constituted out of physical entities. But
sometimes ‘physicalism’ is used to refer to the thesis that whatever exists or
occurs can be completely described in the vocabulary of physics. Such a view
goes with either reductionism or eliminativism about the mental. Here
reductionism is the view that psychological explanations, including
explanations in terms of “folk-psychological” concepts such as those of belief
and desire, are reducible to explanations formulable in a physical vocabulary,
which in turn would imply that entities referred to in psychological
explanations can be fully described in physical terms; and elminativism is the
view that nothing corresponds to the terms in psychological explanations, and
that the only correct explanations are in physical terms. The term
‘physicalism’ appears to have originated in the Vienna Circle, and the
reductionist version initially favored there was a version of behaviorism:
psychological statements were held to be translatable into behavioral
statements, mainly hypothetical conditionals, expressible in a physical
vocabulary. The psychophysical identity theory held by Herbert Feigl, Smart,
and others, sometimes called type physicalism, is reductionist in a somewhat
different sense. This holds that mental states and events are identical with
neurophysiological states and events. While it denies that there can be
analytic, meaning-preserving translations of mental statements into
physicalistic ones, it holds that by means of synthetic “bridge laws,”
identifying mental types with physical ones, mental statements can in principle
be tr. into physicalistic ones with which they are at least nomologically
equivalent if the terms in the bridge laws are rigid designators, the
equivalence will be necessary. The possibility of such a translation is
typically denied by functionalist accounts of mind, on the grounds that the
same mental state may have indefinitely many different physical realizations,
and sometimes on the grounds that it is logically possible, even if it never
happens, that mental states should be realized non-physically. In his classic
paper “The ‘mental’ and the ‘physical’ “ 8, Feigl distinguishes two senses of
‘physical’: ‘physical1’ and ‘physical2’. ‘Physical1’ is practically synonymous
with ‘scientific’, applying to whatever is “an essential part of the coherent
and adequate descriptive and explanatory account of the spatiotemporal world.”
‘Physical2’ refers to “the type of concepts and laws which suffice in principle
for the explanation and prediction of inorganic processes.” It would seem that
if Cartesian dualism were true, supposing that possible, then once an
integrated science of the interaction of immaterial souls and material bodies
had been developed, concepts for describing the former would count as
physical1. Construed as an ontological doctrine, physicalism says that whatever
exists or occurs is entirely constituted out of those entities that constitute
inorganic things and processes. Construed as a reductionist or elminativist
thesis about description and explanation, it is the claim that a vocabulary
adequate for describing and explaining inorganic things and processes is
adequate for describing and explaining whatever exists. While the second of
these theses seems to imply the first, the first does not imply the second. It
can be questioned whether the notion of a “full” description of what exists
makes sense. And many ontological physicalists materialists hold that a
reduction to explanations couched in the terminology of physics is impossible,
not only in the case of psychological explanations but also in the case of
explanations couched in the terminology of such special sciences as biology.
Their objection to such reduction is not merely that a purely physical
description of e.g. biological or psychological phenomena would be unwieldy; it
is that such descriptions necessarily miss important laws and generalizations,
ones that can only be formulated in terms of biological, psychological, etc.,
concepts. If ontological physicalists materialists are not committed to the
reducibility of psychology to physics, neither are they committed to any sort
of identity theory claiming that entities picked out by mental or psychological
descriptions are identical to entities fully characterizable by physical
descriptions. As already noted, materialists who are functionalists deny that
there are typetype identities between mental entities and physical ones. And
some deny that materialists are even committed to token-token identities,
claiming that any psychological event could have had a different physical
composition and so is not identical to any event individuated in terms of a
purely physical taxonomy. Refs.: H. P.
Grice, “From Physicalism to Naturalismand Back: fighting two at once!”
natura: the Grecian
equivalent is “physis,”whereas the Roman idea has to do with ‘birth,’ cf.
‘renaissance,’ the Grecian idea has to do with ‘growth,’ Grecian term for nature, primarily used to
refer to the nature or essence of a living thing Aristotle, Metaphysics V.4.
Physis is defined by Aristotle in Physics II.1 as a source of movement and rest
that belongs to something in virtue of itself, and identified by him primarily
with the form, rather than the matter, of the thing. The term is also used to
refer to the natural world as a whole. Physis is often contrasted with techne,
art; in ethics it is also contrasted with nomos, convention, e.g. by Callicles
in Plato’s Gorgias 482e ff., who distinguishes natural from conventional
justice.
Natura -- physiologicum: Oddly, among the twelve isms that attack Grice on his
ascent to the city of eternal truth, there is Naturalism and Physicalismbut
Roman natura is Grecian physis. In “Some remarks about the senses,” Grice
distinguishes a physicalist identification of the senses (in terms of the
different stimuli and the mechanisms that connects the organs to the brain)
versus other criteria, notably one involving introspection and the nature of
‘experience’“providing,” he adds, that ‘seeing’ is an experience! Grice would
use ‘natural,’ relying on the idea that it’s Grecian ‘physis.’ Liddell and Scott
have “φύσις,” from “φύω,” and which they render as “origin.” the natural form
or constitution of a person or thing as the result of growth, and hence nature,
constitution, and nature as an originating power, “φ. λέγεται . . ὅθεν ἡ
κίνησις ἡ πρώτη ἐν ἑκάστῳ τῶν φύσει ὄντων” Arist.Metaph.1014b16; concrete, the
creation, 'Nature.’ Grice is casual in his use of ‘natural’ versus
‘non-natural’ in 1948 for the Oxford Philosophical Society. In later works,
there’s a reference to naturalism, which is more serious. Refs.: The keyword
should be ‘naturalism,’ but also Grice’s diatribes against ‘physicalism,’ and
of course the ‘natural’ and ‘non-natural,’ BANC.
lapis
philosophorum: alchemy:
a quasi-scientific practice and mystical art, mainly ancient and medieval, that
had two broad aims: to change baser metals into gold and to develop the elixir
of life, the means to immortality. Classical Western alchemy probably
originated in Egypt in the first three centuries A.D. with earlier Chin. and
later Islamic and variants and was
practiced in earnest in Europe by such figures as Paracelsus and Newton until
the eighteenth century. Western alchemy addressed concerns of practical
metallurgy, but its philosophical significance derived from an early Grecian
theory of the relations among the basic elements and from a
religious-allegorical understanding of the alchemical transmutation of ores
into gold, an understanding that treats this process as a spiritual ascent from
human toward divine perfection. The purification of crude ores worldly matter
into gold material perfection was thought to require a transmuting agent, the
philosopher’s stone, a mystical substance that, when mixed with alcohol and
swallowed, was believed to produce immortality spiritual perfection. The
alchemical search for the philosopher’s stone, though abortive, resulted in the
development of ultimately useful experimental tools e.g., the steam pump and
methods e.g., distillation.
piana: Grice: “I never
cease to get moved when I read Piana’s notes, “Il canto del merlo”! That’s the
way to do philosophy of music – the Italianate warmth so strange to the
coldness of Scruton!” -- Giovanni Piana (Casale Monferrato),
filosofo. Ha insegnato filosofia a Milano. Si è trasferito a Pietrabianca
di Sangineto in Calabria, dove ha continuato a scrivere e pubblicare. È
stato allievo diPaci, con il quale scrisse la sua dissertazione sulle opere
inedite di Husserl. La sua posizione filosofica è caratterizzata dal
concetto di fenomenologia, ("strutturalismo fenomenologico")
influenzato particolarmente da Husserl, Wittgenstein, e Bachelard. Alcune
indicazioni sullo strutturalismo fenomenologico sono contenute nell'articolo
online in italiano e in tedesco L'idea di uno strutturalismo
fenomenologico. Il suo pensiero è orientato verso la filosofia della
conoscenza, la filosofia della musica e i campi della percezione e
immaginazione. Allievi di Piana sono stati, in particolare, Paola Basso,
Alfredo Civita, Vincenzo Costa, Elio Franzini, Carlo Serra, Paolo
Spinicci. È stato definito da Remo Bodei "uno dei più acuti e
originali filosofi italiani" (in l'Unità, 10 agosto 1988) e da Sergio
Moravia "uno dei più interessanti interpreti e prosecutori, in
Italia, dell'indirizzo fenomenologico"(in Paese Sera). Secondo Stefano
Cardini, Giovanni Piana deve essere annoverato "tra i più lucidi,
originali e fecondi fenomenologi italiani" (in "L'idea di Europa e le
responsabilità della filosofia"). Fulvio Papi ha scritto di lui:
"Piana ha vissuto, nel confine tra anni Cinquanta e anni Sessanta,
l'esperienza della fenomenologia di Husserl che costituì il centro d'interesse
di un grande Maestro come Enzo Paci. Non è il caso qui di tracciare mappe di
quelle vicende, credo però che non sarebbe sbagliato sostenere che Piana, in
quel gioco delle parti, che è sempre l'apertura di un'esperienza plurale sul
suggerimento di un filosofo autentico, si è preso quella del fenomenologo più
prossimo ai temi 'duri' di Husserl, agli obbiettivi che stabiliscono la
teoreticità della ricerca fenomenologica come tratto distintivo ed essenziale
rispetto ad altre figure di pensiero" (in L'Unità). Per Marcello La
Matina, Giovanni Piana va considerato come "il più illustre filosofo della
musica del nostro tempo" (in "Il significato della musica",
relazione al convegno 'Approcci semiotico-testologici ai testi multimediali',
Macerata. In un intervento letto durante un convegno tenuto all'Macerata. Elio
Franzini ha dichiarato "Piana è a mio parere uno dei pensatori maggiori
del dopoguerra italiano: mai prono alle mode, sempre originale e innovativo,
come dimostrano i suoi essenziali contributi alla filosofia della musica. In
sintesi un maestro in cui si ritrovano sempre momenti di autentico pensiero".
Nelle elogi seguiti alla sua morte, Roberta De Monticelli ha descritto Giovanni
Piana come "fino a oggi il più grande e vivo maestro della fenomenologia
italiana" , mentre Stefano Cardini, nel ripercorrere le tappe che hanno
portato a Phenomenology Lab, scrive:
"lo stile filosofico di Piana rappresentava il centro di gravità attorno
al quale tendevamo a condensare gran parte di quello che di eccellente la
fenomenologia italiana aveva fatto, convinti che i suoi meriti, in Italia e
all'estero, non fossero stati ancora adeguatamente
riconosciuti". Citazioni «La vera filosofia tende
all'elementare. E dunque non ha fretta di correre oltre, indugia in quei punti
rispetto ai quali si potrebbe benissimo soprassedere.In certo senso si fa
custode del ricordo di cose che si potrebbero facilmente dimenticare»
(Giovanni Piana, Numero e figura, CUEM, Milano) «La filosofia è un’arte del
ricordo. Ma vi è in ogni caso anche qualcosa di profondamente giusto nell’idea,
che si ripropone di continuo, di una scienza che deve in qualche modo
«liberarsi» dalla filosofia. È come liberarsi dai ricordie questo è spesso
necessario per procedere oltre.» (Numero e figura, CUEM, Milano, filosofia.unimi.it,//filosofia.unimi.it/piana/index.php/filosofiadellesperienza/99-lidea-di-uno-strutturalismo-fenomenologico. web.archive.org, web.archive.org /webhttp://filosofia.unimi.it/~piana/struttur/hmstrukt.htm. phenomenologylab.eu,//phenomenologylab.eu/ index.php//03/husserl-crisi-scienze-europee-giovanni-piana. Intervento di Elio Franzini al Convegno di
Macerata , su filosofia.unimi.it.
ilmanifesto.it/giovanni-piana-la-filosofia-tende-allelementare-e-non-ha-fretta/. L’importanza filosofica di arrivare ultimi.
Ripensando a Giovanni Piana | Phenomenology Lab, su phenomenologylab.eu. Libri Esistenza e storia negli inediti di
Husserl, Lampugnani Nigri, Milano, English translation by A. Roda, History and
Existence in Husserl's Manuscripts, in "Telos", I problemi della fenomenologia, Mondadori,
Milano, Interpretazione del
"Tractatus" di Wittgenstein, Il Saggiatore, Ora disponibile in PDF.
Elementi di una dottrina dell'esperienza, Il Saggiatore, Milano, La notte dei lampi. Quattro saggi sulla
filosofia dell'immaginazione, Guerini e Associati, Milano, Filosofia della
musica, Guerini e Associati, Milano, Mondrian e la musica, Milano, Guerini e
Associati, Teoria del sogno e dramma musicale. La metafisica della musica di
Schopenhauer, Guerini e Associati, Milano, Numero e figura. Idee per una
epistemologia della ripetizione. Cuem, Milano, Album per la teoria greca della
musica, . Frammenti epistemologici, Lulu.com, . Le sue Opere complete, in
ventinove volumi, sono racchiuse nei seguenti volumi, disponibili via
Amazon: IElementi di una dottrina
dell’esperienza IIStrutturalismo
fenomenologico e psicologia della forma. La notte dei lampi. La notte dei
lampi. Le regole dell’immaginazione Filosofia
della musica VIIIntervallo e cromatismo
nella teoria della musica Alle origini
della teoria della tonalità IXTeoria del
sogno e dramma musicale. La metafisica della musica di Schopenhauer XMondrian e la musica XISaggi di filosofia della musica Problemi di teoria e di estetica musicale
Introduzione alla filosofia IInterpretazione
del “Mondo come volontà e rappresentazione” di Schopenhauer Immagini per Schopenhauer IInterpretazione del “Tractatus” di
Wittgenstein Commenti a Wittgenstein
Commenti a Hume Pproblemi della
fenomenologia, Fenomenologia, esistenzialismo, marxismo, Saggi su Husserl e
sulla fenomenologia Stralci di vita Conversazioni
sulla “Crisi delle scienze europee” di Husserl Fenomenologia delle sintesi
passive Numero e figura Frammenti epistemologici Barlumi per una filosofia della musica Album
per la teoria greca della musica. Album per la teoria greca della musica. Parte
seconda Archivi Internet Archivio di Giovanni Piana, incluse le Opere complete
liberamente scaricabili, su filosofia.unimi.it. De Musica , rivista co-fondata
da Giovanni Piana tuttora attiva., su
riviste.unimi.it. Spazio Filosofico , collana co-fondata da Giovanni Piana,
Elio Franzini, Paolo Spinicci, Carlo Serra., su
spaziofilosofico.filosofia.unimi.it. Saggi (selezione) "La fenomenologia
come metodo filosofico", Introduzione al volume P. Spinicci, La visione e
il linguaggio, Guerini e Associati, Milano, English version: Phenomenology as
philosophical method, PDF disponibile qui. "Immaginazione e poetica dello
spazio", in: Metafora Mimesi Morfogenesi Progetto, E. D'Alfonso e E.
Franzini, Guerin e Associati, Milano "Considerazioni inattuali su T. W.
Adorno", "Musica/Realtà", "Figurazione e movimento nella
problematica musicale del continuo", in: , La percezione musicale, Guerini
e Associati, Milano, "Fenomenologia dei materiali e campo delle decisioni.
Riflessioni sull'arte del comporre", in: Il canto di Seikilos, Scritti per
Dino Formaggio nell'ottantesimo compleanno, Guerini e Associati, Milano I compiti di una filosofia della musica
brevemente esposti, html, De Musica, Elogio dell'immaginazione musicale, De Musica,
La serie delle seriedodecafoniche e il triangolo di Sarngadeva, De Musica
Immagini per Schopenhauer, Il canto del
merlo, Versione PDF completa dei suoni. “Occorre riflettervi ancora”.
Considerazioni in margine a Fantasia e immagine di Edmund Husserl (). PDF
Leggere i poeti. Note in margine a Giovanni Pascoli ()articolo per De Musica
Traduzioni G. Lukács, Scritti di sociologia della letteratura (Milano) H M.
Enzensberger, Questioni di dettaglio ( Milano) G. Lukács, Storia e coscienza di
classe (Milano) E. Husserl, Ricerche logiche (Milano) E. Husserl, Storia critica
delle idee (Milano, 1989) Siti che parlano del lavoro di Piana sull’estetica fenomenologica italiana, su swif.uniba.it. Fenomenologia, coscienza del tempo e analisi
musicale [collegamento interrotto], su
springerlink.com. Le variazioni antropologico-culturali dei significati
simbolici dei colori , su ledonline.it. Burnout e risorse in Musicoterapia , su
atelierdimusica.it. Nel suo Album per la teoria greca della musica, Giovanni
Piana va alle radici fenomenologiche del Cosmo antico di Stefano Cardini, LA
DISPUTA SUI COLORI di Valter Binaghi , su valterbinaghi.wordpress.com Aldo
Scimone, Lezioni sui Fondamenti della Matematica , su math.unipa.it. Saggio di Stefano Cardini. Giornate di studio
e Call for papers Università degli studi di Milano, Sala Crociera alta di
Giurisprudenza. Milano, 7 giugno La
scienza della felicità Una giornata in ricordo di Giovanni Piana Paolo
Spinicci: La fenomenologia dell’esperienza in Giovanni PianaConferenza concerto
a Brescia Phenomenological Reviews: Call for Papers (in inglese e altre lingue)
per la Special issue in memory of Giovanni Piana Scuola di Milano.
piccolomini: Grice: “What
Piccolomini is trying to do, but knowing, is providing what I do in from the
bizarre to the banal – a good functionalist interpretation of the rather poor
functionalist explanation by Aristotle of what the Italians call the ‘anima,’
because it ‘animates’ the body (corpore). Francesco Piccolomini (Siena),,
filosofo. Filomato -- Nato dai senesi Niccolò, dottore in diritto civile e
canonico, ed Emilia Saracini, si laureò a Siena, sviluppando un crescente
interesse per la filosofia. Intraprese la carriera accademica insegnando per
tre anni all'Siena, poi a Macerata, e all'ateneo di Perugia, Trasferitosi a
Padova, gli venne assegnata la prima cattedra straordinaria di filosofia naturale,
poi ordinaria. A Padova entrò in concorrenza con il collega Pendasio, e i due
si resero partecipi di un'aspra disputa filosofica circa l'interpretazione del
terzo libro del De anima di Aristoteleche terminò solamente con il
trasferimento di Pendasio a Bologna. Fu
professore stimato e richiesto dagli studenti, che affollavano le sue lezioni:
ebbe con essi sempre ottimi rapporti, spesso aiutandoli nella stesura di
scritti filosofici o scrivendo di proprio pugno testi da pubblicare a loro nome
(è il caso dei Peripateticarum de anima disputationum libri septem di Pietro Duodo
e degli Academicarum contemplationum
libri decem di Stefano Tiepolo, Tasso, che fu suo studente, ricorda le
appassionate lezioni nel dialogo Il Costante overo de la clemenza, Lo stipendio
di Piccolomini raggiunse nel 1589 i 1 400 fiorini annui, cifra di gran lunga
superiore ai propri colleghi.
Abbandonata la professione universitaria, rientrò a Siena e si dedicò
completamente alla stesura di testi filosofici, concentrando i propri sforzi
nella formulazione di una teoria sincretica tra aristotelismo e platonismo,
atta a tentare una conciliazione tra Aristotele e Platone in ambito etico-politico. Sposato con la nobildonna senese Fulvia
Placidi, ebbe quattro figli: Niccolò, Alessandro, Caterina e Aurelia. IRicevette
un premio dall'Accademia dei Filomati, di cui era membro con il nome di Unico.
Fu sepolto nella chiesa di San Francesco.
Opere: “Universa philosophia de moribus,” Venezia, tip. Francesco De
Franceschi, Comes politicus, pro recta ordinis ratione propugnator, Venezia,
tip. Francesco De Franceschi, Libri ad
scientiam de natura attinentes, Venezia, tip. Francesco De Franceschi, Librorum
Aristotelis de ortu et interitu lucidissima expositio, Venezia, tip. Francesco
De Franceschi In tres libros de anima
lucidissima expositio, Venezia, tip. Francesco De Franceschi, Instituzione del
principe, Compendio della scienza civile, Octavi libri naturalium
auscultationum perspicua interpretatio, Venezia, tip. Francesco De Franceschi, In
libros de coelo lucidissima expositio, Venezia, tip. Francesco De Franceschi,
postuma. La. Carotti, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Roma, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia
Italiana, Eugenio Garin, Storia della filosofia italiana, Torino, Einaudi, Antonio
Malmignati, Il Tasso a Padova, Padova, Redatto in forma manoscritta (Firenze,
Biblioteca Riccardiana, cod. 2589, cc. n.n.), è stato stampato a Roma dai tipi di
Sante Pieralisi. Redatto in forma manoscritta (Firenze, Biblioteca nazionale
centrale, Conv. Soppr. (S. Maria degli Angeli), cod. E.5.867, cc. n.n.), è
stato stampato a Roma dai tipi di Sante Pieralisi, Francesco Piccolomini, su
Treccani.itEnciclopedie on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Laura Carotti, Francesco Piccolomini, in
Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Opere di Francesco Piccolomini, su openMLOL,
Horizons Unlimited srl. Opere di Francesco Piccolomini, . Ferdinando Cavalli, La scienza politica in
Italia, Venezia, Eugenio Garin, Storia
della filosofia italiana, Torino, Einaudi.
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