Thinking the Inexhaustible

Description

What if the inexhaustible were the only mode of self-revelation of truth? The question of the inexhaustibility of truth, and its relation to being and interpretation, is the challenge posed by the philosophy of the prominent Italian thinker Luigi Pareyson (1918–1991). Art, the interpretation of truth, and the theory of being as the ontology of both inexhaustibility and freedom constitute the main themes of Pareyson's distinctive form of philosophical hermeneutics, which develops also on the basis of another fundamental concept, that of personhood understood in the radically existentialist sense of the human being. In Thinking the Inexhaustible, Silvia Benso and Brian Schroeder bring together essays devoted to Pareyson's hermeneutic philosophy by important international scholars, including well-known Italian thinkers Umberto Eco and Gianni Vattimo, who were both students of Pareyson. Pareyson's philosophy of inexhaustibility unfolds in conversation with major figures in Western intellectual history—from Croce to Valéry, Dostoevsky, and Berdyaev; from Kant to Fichte, Hegel, and German romanticism; and from Pascal to Schelling, Kierkegaard, Marcel, Jaspers, and Heidegger.
Acknowledgments

Foreword
Dennis J. Schmidt

Introduction: Thinking the Inexhaustible
Silvia Benso and Brian Schroeder

1. Luigi Pareyson: A Master in Italian Hermeneutics
Silvia Benso

2. When Transcendence Is Finite: Pareyson, the Person, and the Limits of Being
Antonio Calcagno

3. Pareyson’s Role in Twentieth-Century Italian Aesthetics
Paolo D’Angelo

4. Pareyson vs. Croce: The Novelties of Pareyson’s 1954 Estetica
Umberto Eco

5. On Pareyson’s Interpretation of Kant’s Third Critique
Massimo Cacciari

6. Pareyson’s Aesthetics as Hermeneutics of Art
Federico Vercellone

7. The Unfamiliarity of Kindredness: Toward a Hermeneutics of Community
Robert T. Valgenti

8. Truth as the Origin (Rather Than Goal) of Inquiry
Lauren Swayne Barthold

9. The “I” Beyond the Subject/Object Opposition: Pareyson’s Conception of the Self Between Hegel and Heidegger
Paolo Diego Bubbio

10. From Aesthetics to the Ontology of Freedom
Gianni Vattimo

11. Evil in God: Pareyson’s Ontology of Freedom
Martin G. Weiss

12. Philosophy and Novel in the Later Pareyson
Sergio Givone

Bibliography
Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie politique
• Esthétique et philosophie de l'art
• Philosophy

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 20 août 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438470276
• Langue: English

Extrait

Thinking the Inexhaustible
SUNY series in Contemporary Italian Philosophy

Silvia Benso and Brian Schroeder, editors
Thinking the Inexhaustible
Art, Interpretation, and Freedom in the Philosophy of Luigi Pareyson
Edited by
Silvia Benso and Brian Schroeder
Foreword by
Dennis J. Schmidt
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2018 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Benso, Silvia, editor. | Schroeder, Brian, editor.
Title: Thinking the inexhaustible : art, interpretation, and freedom in the philosophy of Luigi Pareyson / edited by Silvia Benso and Brian Schroeder.
Description: Albany, NY : State University of New York, 2018. | Series: SUNY series in contemporary Italian philosophy | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017034948 | ISBN 9781438470252 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438470276 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Pareyson, Luigi.
Classification: LCC B3636.P364 T45 2018 | DDC 195—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017034948
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Dennis J. Schmidt
Introduction: Thinking the Inexhaustible
Silvia Benso and Brian Schroeder
1. Luigi Pareyson: A Master in Italian Hermeneutics
Silvia Benso
2. When Transcendence Is Finite: Pareyson, the Person, and the Limits of Being
Antonio Calcagno
3. Pareyson’s Role in Twentieth-Century Italian Aesthetics
Paolo D’Angelo
4. Pareyson vs. Croce: The Novelties of Pareyson’s 1954 Estetica
Umberto Eco
5. On Pareyson’s Interpretation of Kant’s Third Critique
Massimo Cacciari
6. Pareyson’s Aesthetics as Hermeneutics of Art
Federico Vercellone
7. The Unfamiliarity of Kindredness: Toward a Hermeneutics of Community
Robert T. Valgenti
8. Truth as the Origin (Rather Than Goal) of Inquiry
Lauren Swayne Barthold
9. The “I” Beyond the Subject/Object Opposition: Pareyson’s Conception of the Self Between Hegel and Heidegger
Paolo Diego Bubbio
10. From Aesthetics to the Ontology of Freedom
Gianni Vattimo
11. Evil in God: Pareyson’s Ontology of Freedom
Martin G. Weiss
12. Philosophy and Novel in the Later Pareyson
Sergio Givone
Bibliography
Contributors
Index
Acknowledgments
We are deeply appreciative for the encouragement and support of this volume that we have received from many people. We are especially grateful to Prof. Claudio Ciancio, president of the Centro Studi Filosofico-Religiosi Luigi Pareyson in Turin, Italy; and Dr. Antonella Galbiati at Mursia Editore. Their assistance was invaluable in helping us secure the rights for the English translation of some of the essays contained in this volume and already published in Italian as part of the 2011 issue of the Annuario Filosofico , the philosophy yearly journal founded by Pareyson and some others in 1985.
We are, as always, indebted to Andrew Kenyon and the staff at SUNY Press for their enthusiastic backing of this volume and their unfailing support of the Series in Contemporary Italian Philosophy.
We also extend our most sincere appreciation to the contributors of this volume for their excellent work and patience. Without them this work would not have been possible.
It is noteworthy that the publication of this volume occurs during the centennial of Luigi Pareyson’s birth. May this timing be an auspicious testimony to and gesture of appreciation for the significance of his philosophical thought.
Foreword
Dennis J. Schmidt
One realizes the importance of translation in the history of philosophy when one discovers an original body of work that has not had the same impact outside its native language as it has had in its original language. Because linguistic borders are difficult to cross, significant contributions to philosophy that have had a profound influence in their own linguistic sphere can go largely unnoticed in other languages. Until quite recently, such was the fate of the work of Luigi Pareyson, who is undeniably one of the singular and key voices in post–World War II Italian thought yet who has remained mostly a rumor in the Anglophone world. Fortunately, thanks to recent translations and to this volume of essays, that fate has changed and Pareyson will now be more accessible. 1
The essays in this volume will do much to unfold the complexities of Pareyson’s work and to engage the wide range of his contribution to philosophy. Nonetheless, a few remarks situating Pareyson’s thought in its larger contexts might help to further introduce him to those as yet unfamiliar with his complex and original philosophical project. The scope of Pareyson’s thought spanned over five decades from the end of the Second World War through the student movements of the late 1960s up to the late 1980s; he wrote books about themes such as existentialism, aesthetics, German Idealism, truth, religion, evil, and freedom, as well as on figures such as Vico, Jaspers, Fichte, Schelling, and Dostoevsky. In short, his career cuts a broad path through key concerns of our times as well as pivotal figures in intellectual history. Deeply committed to the relevance of philosophy and what Pareyson calls the “vindication” of truth in the world, Pareyson brings to the tradition that has come to be labeled as “continental philosophy” an important point of view and potent reminders of issues that are not always remembered today.

Presenting ideas or a body of work by identifying them with a label always risks being reductive. However, situating a body of work as coming out of traditions can be a helpful way of entering it. In Pareyson’s case, his self-identification with the hermeneutic tradition as well as its more contemporary form offers an excellent entrée into his thought.
The word “hermeneutics” has a long history that has moved through disciplines as seemingly diverse as theology, jurisprudence, psychology, pedagogy, anthropology, and philosophy. Its history reaches back to the ancient Greek conception of hermeneutics as concerned with the structure of language and moves through medieval debates about interpreting biblical texts as well as legal debates about the proper application of law. Since its first formulations, the idea of hermeneutics as a way of addressing problems of interpretation has evolved and expanded its reach, and it has never disappeared from debates it enters: hermeneutics invariably hones in upon the way in which interpretation lodges itself as a constitutive moment in every claim to truth, whether that claim concerns a text, the word of God, or the true application of a law. However, nothing in this history and none of the issues within the long tradition of hermeneutics from Aristotle to Schleiermacher could have prepared one for the revolution in the idea of hermeneutics that would define the early twentieth century when “hermeneutics” would name a radical transformation in the very idea and task of philosophy. Indeed, it is fair to say that the formulation of a genuinely philosophical hermeneutic theory that understood itself to be an ontology was one of the defining events of the last century and that the shock waves of this revolution are still being felt today. It was Heidegger who would take this word, “hermeneutics,” that hitherto had been enlisted to refer to more specialized problems of interpretation—of translation, of scriptural and textual exegesis, and of the legal problem of judgment—and demonstrate how these themes were to be understood as epiphenomenal problems rooted in what Heidegger described as the hermeneutics of factical life. The task of interpretation that had long been the theme of hermeneutic practices was no longer regarded as a special theoretical or practical problem, but as the most elemental account of how we experience the riddle of existence. We live in the world interpretively. Our way of being in the world is constituted such that we cannot escape interpreting: we look at the sky and interpret the movement of clouds, we interpret the body language of others, we try to make sense of what is said, what we read, what we see. In Being and Time , Heidegger explains this by saying that we live in the world understandingly. 2 Philosophy, he argues, is the radicalization of this way of being and so it is fitting that he describes philosophy as a “hermeneutic of existence.” Pareyson will further unfold this point and say that once philosophy recognizes this “originality of interpretation,” it is able to release the “inexhaustibility” and “richness” of existence itself. In short, the hermeneutic question of interpretation was no longer considered to be a specialized matter, but was seen as defining the very fabric of existence as such.
Until Heidegger, hermeneutics was typically described as a practice or “method,” but Heidegger’s account of the most radical force of the problem of interpretation made clear that hermeneutics has always been the name for reflection upon that which resists being submitted to any rule-bound practice or methodology. 3 Indeed, what unites all of the various forms of hermeneutic practices is that they are devoted to what calls for interpretation, what resists conceptual clarity, and what is inexhaustible in possibilities. So, the first themes of hermeneutics were centered upon the word of God, the translation across languages, the application of the rule of law, the riddle of memory, and the interpretation of texts from different epochs and culture