This paper aims to compare Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola in relation to the question of the One and the being; furthermore, it wants to show how the theme of predicability of the neoplatonic One is central to understanding the position of Pico and that of Ficino. Pico, in fact, states that One and Being are coextensive; Ficino, instead, affirms that the One is wider than being. With his comment on Plato’s Parmenides, he wants to counteract the Pichian theory (...) of convertibility of Being and One. However, Ficino speculation on these issues seems to implicitly reiterate the point of view of Pico’s De Ente et Uno. (shrink)

In a first step, it is stated that for Pareyson the freedom is to be grasped only as the act of the instantaneous beginning and of the absolute self-setting. Unlike the being, understood in the sense of ground, each concrete choice of freedom is opposed to the dynamic, ontologically positive nothingness. Freedom, therefore, appears to be the very original struggle with nothingness, even before the creation of the world. Pareyson shares Schelling’s conviction of the fundamental importance and the ontological rank (...) of freedom, which outstrips the moral and ethical one. But the point of their divergence lies in the determination of the will as a main subject of freedom in each of them. Schelling determines the will as a complex interplay of the two wills, the self-will and the universal will, and additionally their common origin, named of him by means of various, sometimes apparently paradoxical names, such as nonground, purity, love, not last also the unwilling will. For Pareyson, however, the will is essentially one and unique. He seems not to have recognized Schelling’s fundamental twofold respectively threefold structure of will, and in particular the very peculiar unwilling will as the true essence of freedom. (shrink)

By exploring various semantic possibilities contained in the expression “lost in translation”, this essay addresses various difficulties entailed in the work of translation in general and as they apply to the translation into English of the works of Luigi Pareyson specifically. The essay also surveys the status of the Pareyson scholarship in the Anglophone world and suggests possible ways to foster a more congenial milieu for the appreciation of this important Italian philosopher whose thought is rarely recognized by Anglophone thinkers, (...) even of the continental kind. (shrink)

The transcendental deduction in the Critique of Pure Reason is – far beyond the mere analysis of a historical datum such the modern mathematical science of nature – a strong, skeptic-reistant argument. In order to justify the claim of validity raised for our aprioric knowledge, i.e. for the aprioric and universal element that is present in our empirical knowledge, the critical philosopher must address the very conditions of thought. Kant turns from his initial question ‘How is it possible to know? (...) How is knowledge legitimate?’ to the even deeper question ‘How is it possible to think? How can thinking be performed at all?’. This can be seen in the text of the first edition, where subjective deduction results into an objective deduction by virtue of its own achievement; however, the result of that inquiry is handed down to the very second-edition transcendental deduction and there lingers. A synoptic reading of the two editions is therefore needed and is here attempted. (shrink)

This essay traces the first section of the development of Pareyson’s thought. The first section covers his studies on existentialism and his philosophy of the person, where an existentialist and personalist aspect merge into an idea of “original solidarity between person and truth”, and paves the way to philosophy as hermeneutics. This essay considers analytically Pareyson’s main writings on existential philosophy and on the philosophy of the person. This approach highlights a theoretical framework within which the concepts of existence, truth (...) and person are defined. Besides, the essay dwells on his historiographical thesis of existentialism as a response to the dissolution of Hegelianism. At the same time it means to show the intrinsic hermeneutical value of these writings and their richness of theoretical suggestions. Furthermore, the paper gives special consideration to the essay on Barth, the monograph on Jaspers, the essay-cum-review on Von der Wahrheit as well as the essays Person and Society and Philosophy of the Person. It is notable that the principle of inseparability itself, between existence and transcendence, emerging from the interpretation of Jasper’s thought, reveals itself as a pillar of the theory of the person. Its essence is freedom, founded on its constitutive relationship with God. (shrink)

This contribution proposes a comprehensive rereading of Pareysonian thought, starting from a special perspective. It is articulated in three parts. In the first and second parts, two particularly relevant formulations of the Pareysonian theory of interpretation will be reconstructed. The third part will examine some of the main structures of the “ontology of liberty”, which the thinker elaborated in the last phase of his research itinerary. This contribution seeks to grasp, against the backdrop of the stages of Pareysonian meditation which (...) will be examined, a decisive confrontation with the question of difference, a theme which occupies a central place in the cultural debate of the past fifty years. The last part of our contribution articulates a critique of the Pareysonian understanding according to which the origin of evil – but not its operative cause – should be individuated in the abysmal depths of divine liberty. The text supports the thesis according to which the event of divine liberty would not yet contain any polar alternative between positive and negative. The alternative in question would instead only be born in the act of positing a liberty that is finite, other, and different with respect to the original divine liberty. The origin of evil – and its operative cause together with it – would then be found in the space that discloses with the event of a liberty that is finite, a liberty which is called to choose whether to confirm or not the original divine positivity. (shrink)

The essay focuses on the role played by the “image of the human being” in the philosophy of Hans Jonas. This expression highlights humanity’s distinctiveness: it is indeed thanks to the image that the human being acquires a unique degree of distance and freedom from the world, which then develops into reflective self-awareness. However, thanks to these features, the human being achieves the unprecedented capacity of stretching to the limit the dialectical dynamic of freedom and necessity, autonomy and dependence, self (...) and world, transcendence and immanence, immutability and change, viz. the very dynamic on which humans after all rely. In other words, human freedom cherishes the thought of disposing of this dynamic basis, regardless of the fact that this would result in self-negation. It is in order to avert this menace that the image’s second attribute has to be put forward – an attribute which is indeed endowed with normative relevance: the human being – states Jonas – lives and performs his “outward conduct after the image of what is man’s”. Thus, apart from distantiating and separating, the image is also capable of connecting. It is thanks to this feature that human freedom recovers its relationship with total reality. Indeed, Jonas’ ethics stems from a bio-anthropological enquiry pivoted on the image-experience, whose core features and ethical relevance I wish to clarify. Besides, I endeavour to highlight the importance of the “image of the human being” in critically assessing risks related to the current use of technology. (shrink)

The essay aims at showing the contribution that the philosophical-theological debate in the 20th century, described in connection with some of its relevant figures and some of its essential moments, has supplied to an adequate elaboration of the theoretical notion of analogy. It dwells first of all upon Erich Przywara’s work Analogia entis which represents the initial and unavoidable step of such debate. Then it refers to the criticisms to Przywara’s position raised by Karl Barth in his Kirchliche Dogmatik and (...) focused on the reference to the notion of analogia fidei. The contribution suggested about this issue by Hans Urs von Balthasar is then considered and analyzed above all in relation to the “classical” monography he dedicated to Barth and with reference to the nexus between Przywara’s analogia entis and Barth’s analogia fidei he investigates. Also in connection to the perspective traced by Eberhard Jungel and with the most recent positions of Przywara himself, the essay outlines in this way a path which moves from the logic to the history, from the principle of non-contradiction as foundation of the analogia entis to the paradoxical contradiction of Christ’s cross, understood as origin of an analogia Christi and put to the centre of the relation of identity and difference between God and man. (shrink)

This article addresses the translation, reception and impact of Luigi Pareyson’s philosophy in the Spanish speaking academic community. It analyzes the phenomenon itself of translation as a training and interpretative activity that conveys ideas into a new subject, in this case the Spanish language. This implies the obligation to attempt the right reception of Pareyson’s philosophy in the philosophical culture of Latin America and the human issues of these societies. This question leads to the inquiri into the crossing points between (...) the pareysonian thinking and the Latin American culture and, finally, to analyze the projection of his philosophy through this setting. The perspective adopted in this analysis, and all its implications leads to the belief that the translation is a permanent fruitful way of empowering the philosophical activity and the intellectual dialogue, as established by Luigi Pareyson’s hermeneutics. (shrink)

Although moving from Berdjaev’s interpretation of Dostoevskij, Pareyson concludes differently: i. e. not with an aporethical dialectic but with an onthology of freedom. Pareyson focalizes his interpretation on the philosophical problem of God and distinguishes between atheism and nihilism. According to Pareyson not atheism but nihilism implies the strongest negation of God. If we can consider atheism the negative moment of God’s life, at the opposite in a nihilistic perspective God is simply a meaningless idea.

If one can already speak of the classics of philosophical hermeneutics, Luigi Pareyson belongs obviously together with Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur to these classics. Hence the necessity of confronting his Verita e interpretazione both to Gadamer’s Verstehenshermeneutik and to Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of symbols and texts, putting forward the notion of interpretation. A good starting point for this confrontation consists in considering his early dissertation dedicated to Karl Jaspers and putting his hermeneutics in relation with Jaspers’ monumental logic of philosophy, (...) entitled: Von der Wahrheit. Nietzsche’s metaphor of “encountering the Truth” highlights Pareyson’s attempt of rendering the notions of interpretation and of truth inseparable from each other. What is at stake in this attempt is nothing less than the self-understanding of philosophy itself. Contrary to what suggest some critics of Pareyson, it is not helpful to accuse him of remaining tributary to a metaphysical understanding of truth, for the time has not yet come to proclaim “Addio alla verita” and to claim that “conversation must go on”, regardless of truth. (shrink)

My essay takes into consideration the reception and interpretation of the philosophies of Fichte and Schelling by Luigi Pareyson. Pareyson considered classical German philosophy as a vertex of the history of philosophical thought and interpreted Fichte and Schelling as original thinkers, which indicated philosophical perspectives irreducible to Hegel’s philosophy. My essay examines the reading of Fichte by Pareyson in the volume of 1950 and then in the lessons of Turin in the year 1982/1983 on: “The principle and the dialectic”. Finally, (...) it takes into consideration the Pareyson’s reading of Schelling in the framework of his late “Ontology of freedom” and concludes with some systematic considerations. (shrink)

Eschatology is one of the most interesting aspects of the thought of S.N. Bulgakov, not only for the originality, but also for the role it plays in all his intellectual work. His arguments against the eternity of hell and his theory of universal salvation are not optional features of his theology, but they rather represent a test-bed for some theoretical issues that not only cross all of his sophiology, but that were already at the origin of his shift from Marxism (...) to Idealism and, later, to the Orthodox faith. By comparing early Bulgakov’s writings with his late works on Christian eschatology, this paper shows the lines of continuity of his thought, and especially his interest for the role of individual creativity and personal freedom against the tendency of Positivism and Marxism to reduce history to impersonal processes alone. A careful analysis of the whole development in the thought of Bulgakov shows that its soteriological universalism cannot be interpreted as a form of disguised historical determinism, nor does it imply a unilateral act of God that cancels the role of human historical choices. Rather, it emphasizes Bulgakov’s commitment to reconcile the moral inevitability of freedom with an ontological understanding of salvation in which God’s mercy cannot leave anyone out, not even Satan. (shrink)

This article analyses how the philosopher Piero Martinetti conceptualizes the survival of a person’s soul after death. Martinetti’s stance is strongly influenced by the philosophy of Plotinus. Martinetti shows that the relation between singularity and multiplicity is expressed in human beings as two different and complimentary perspectives: a fundamental identity in the atemporal dimension of the intelligible life of the spirit and a dynamic tension in the empiric order of the spatio-temporal becoming. Both dimensions express themselves in a finalistic way, (...) attracted from the One who operates in them as a force of harmonization and concentration. The One as Omnitudo realitatis is the cornerstone of Martinetti’s position in regards to the survival of the individual soul after death: a concentration that happens mysteriously, because it transcends the ability of the human mind to understand it – yet, it certainly happens. ≪One thing only we know: what is worth living will live.≫. (shrink)

In his Hegel’s interpretation, Benedetto Croce has never recognised the value of Phenomenology of Spirit, since he was seeing it as mere work in progress towards the more mature and systematic phase of hegelian thought. This essay presents the hypothesis that the reasons of his undervaluing of Phenomenology should be sought, not only in his crystal clear predilection for the Encyclopaedia, but mainly in his firm intention to distance himself from the abstract hegelianism of Bertrando Spaventa and Giovanni Gentile. Starting (...) from the ‘30s, Croce’s coldness towards Phenomenology knows a stronger emphasys as a consequence of the hegelian readings developed in France by authors such as Wahl, Koyre, Kojeve, Hyppolite all mainly focused upon Hegel’s early and jenese production. At the end of the essay it is pointed out that Croce, despite his constantly negative assessment of Phenomenology, has tacitly undergone its influence in order to develop the essential cores of his own philosophical thought, starting from the concept of negativity. (shrink)

In the broad hermeneutical discussions in catholic theology after II. Vatican Council the most adopted concept was that of Hans-Georg Gadamer. This was in debt of his emphasis on the ideas of tradition and authority. Other hermeneutic programs were ignored for a long time – and the hermeneutics of Pareyson till today. Disregarding the convergences between Gadamer and Pareyson this is a damage for catholic theology, because in Pareyson would be present all the dimensions which are to be missed in (...) Gadamer: the importance of subjectivity, ontology, and criticism of ideology. (shrink)

In this essay the philosophy of Luigi Pareyson is explored on the basis of the double perspective of an aut-aut and of an et-et. Both approaches seem to play a significant role in Pareyson’s theoretical reflections. The author proposes to see the origin of this tension just in the fundamental concept of an ontological personalism, which states an asymmetrical relationship between person and truth. Also the wide range of Pareyson’s scholarship can be better understood in this light.

This essay explores – by drawing on published and unpublished sources – a singular and until now neglected aspect of Ricoeur’s confrontation with Hegel’s legacy: i.e. his interpretation and productive appropriation of the well-known dialectic of evil and its forgiveness, developed by Hegel at the end of Chapter VI of the Phenomenology of Spirit. The investigation identifies the constant reason, which feeds Ricoeur’s interest for this figure of Hegel’s Phenomenology, from the Symbolic of evil to Oneself as another: i.e. the (...) will to overcome the limits of Kantian moral vision of world and evil. At the same time, it highlights the shifts, which mark Ricoeur’s initially very critical interpretation of the dialectic of evil and its forgiveness, concurrently with the transition to the second phase of his hermeneutics, centered on the notions of “text” and “action”. On this basis, the article examines the productive appropriation that this new and rehabilitative interpretation feeds, by inspiring Ricoeur’s reflection both on “difficult forgiveness” and on the “tragic wellspring of action”, i.e. on the unavoidable tension between universal moral norms, ethical particular contexts and individual’s conviction. At the same time, the article highlights the limits of this appropriative mouvement, by focusing on the irreducible and persistent divergences between Hegel’s and Ricoeur’s concept of evil and forgiveness. (shrink)

The article focuses on Carl August Eschenmayer, who was a philosopher and a significant interlocutor of Schelling, and particularly on his work: Philosophy in its Transition to Non-Philosophy. This work presents his own philosophical system, which is articulated in four faculties, conceived of as mathematical powers: Sensitivity, Intellect, Reason, and Soul. In doing so, Eschenmayer recognizes the limits of Reason, still conferring on it a paramount role for knowledge and human life in general. The notion of limit entails further possibilities (...) of speculative analysis and discovery. On the other hand, the conception of the Soul as a faculty exceeding knowledge implies the integration of the extra-rational into the system. According to Eschenmayer, this helps us to explain some complex theoretical issues such as the origin of difference and the possibility of freedom. (shrink)

The article seeks to analyse Pareyson’s ontology of freedom emphasizing its meaning for the concept of Reality. Although the very term of Reality appears in Pareyson’s thinking sporadically, it is precisely this concept that concentrates the charge of the Negativity in ontology of freedom. It is shown that the interface between Negativity and Reality not only reveals the meaning of Reality in Pareyson’s ontology of freedom, but also enhances the thinking of Kantian-Heideggerian difference between Realitat and Wirklichkeit in philosophical tradition. (...) Along these lines Pareyson’s philosophy enters into the field of discussion on Reality in Heidegger’s / Gadamer’s philosophy and allows us to raise the question: what kind of Reality are we talking about? (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to consider Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of the self as the basis for a revisited metaphysics, which can make a substantial contribution to the current philosophical debate. The focus is in particular on the different aspects of the process from “being” towards “ought to be”, that is from an ontological-metaphysical perspective to questions pertaining to the moral sphere. Starting from an original interpretation of Aristotle’s phronesis as a hermeneutic virtue, Ricoeur describes the human individual as (...) someone who, through the recognition of oneself as a union of identity and alterity, discovers the image of a “capable” subject and the possibility of his engagement and his action for the sake of good and justice. (shrink)

In this text the author explains the way Pareyson was introduced in France through his books Conversazioni di estetica, Ontologia della libertà and Estetica. Teoria della formativita whom he translated. He shows how, while studying Croce he became interested in Pareyson in a rather aesthetic approach and he gives some examples of the problems of translation which he had to face.

The economist and first president of Italian Republic Luigi Einaudi fixes the fulcrum of his thinking in the liberty. In this paper, the author illustrates Einaudi’s concept of liberty, about three spheres: individually, social and spiritually. There isn’t liberty without a limit of this liberty and the last, superior limit of liberty is what Einaudi appeals “the incantation of liberty”. The author illustrates the connexion – in Einaudi’s philosophy – between “incantation of liberty” and human elevation towards the platonic “divine (...) city”. (shrink)

The article reconstructs Pareyson’s itinerary from the original aesthetic interests of the 40’s, already marked by profound religious implications to the later philosophy that Pareyson wanted to call “tragic Thought”. Decisive in this itinerary is what he called “forma formante” that tracks the presence of an ontological transcendence in art. It’s also the tension created by this transcendent presence that constitutes the tragic nature of human condition.

In the present paper I discuss Luigi Pareyson’s late work, published in the posthumous Book Ontologia della libertà, as an timely attempt to clarify the experience of freedom through an interpretation of Christian mythology. Concerning this matter Pareyson’s ideas are both timely – as they stress the relation between freedom an evil – and at the same time untimely – because of their vindication not only of an outdated theologia crucis, but also of the concept of an arbitrary God, which (...) Gianni Vattimo has rightly criticized opting for a theology of radical contingency. (shrink)