H. P. GRICE E J. L. SPERANZA: LA CONVERSAZIONE -- I VERBALI: PU

 

Catalogue Raisonné of J. L. Speranza’s Publications – H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: PU

 

 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Pubblicio – la scuola di Firenze -- filosofia toscana – filosofia italiana –  (Firenze). Filosofo italiano Giacomo Pubblicio (Firenze, Toscana). All'interno stesso della più ortodossa tradizione dell'ars memorativa ciceroniana – CICERONE  -- non erano mancate espressioni di una particolare sensibilità per il problema dell’IMAGINE. Certe pagine dell’ “Oratoriæ artis epitoma, sive quæ ad consvmatvm spectant oratorem; ex antiquo rhetoz. Gymnasio dicendi scribendiq. breves rationes; artis memoriae, etc. Editio prima, lit. Goth. -- ” – cf. Oratoriae artis epitoma; vel quae brevibus ad consumatum spectant oratorem, ex antiquorum rhetorum gymnasio dicendi cribendique brevis rationes, etc. Lit.rom. cf. Oratoriae artis epitoma: vel quae brevibvs ad consuatum spectant oratorem ex antiquo rhetorum gynasio dicendi scribendique breves rationes nec non et aptus optimo civique viro titvlvs insuper et perquam facilis memoriae artis modvs P lucubratione in lucem editus foeli cinvminite inchoat oratorie institutiones ex veteni institutoP ad cyrilly cesare faustissimus delectem. Venezia, Radtole augustensis ingenio miro et arte perpolita impressioni mirifice dedit; Augusta; Angelica, Roma -- giovano senza dubbio a comprendere come tra l’immagine di CICERONE e quella dell’iconologia sussiste un legame reale. Una “intentio simplex” e spirituale, afferma P., non aiutate da nessuna corporea similitudine, sfugge rapidamente dalla memoria. L’immagine ha appunto il compito, mediante il GESTO mirabile, la crudeltà del volto, lo stupore, la tristezza o la severità, di fissare nel ricordo idee termini e concetti. La tristezza e la solitudine è il simbolo della vecchiaia; la lieta spensieratezza quello della gioventù; la voracità è espressa dal lupo, la timidezza dalla lepre, la bilancia è il simbolo della giustizia, l'erculea clava della fortezza, l'astrolabio dell'astrologia. Ma soprattutto giove richiamarsi, nella costruzione dell’immagine, a VIRGILIO e OVIDIO. Oratoriae artis epitoma. Deutero-Esperanto.  Grice: Pubblicio, proprio ieri ho avuto un piccolo scambio con Speranza: mi ha detto che a Firenze la memoria non si “spiega”, si mette in scena—e che Cicerone, se avesse avuto un teatro, avrebbe risparmiato molte note a piè di pagina. Pubblicio: E infatti l’ars memorativa non vive di aria: vive di immagini. Una intentio simplex, se la lasci tutta spirituale, scappa. Se invece le dai un gesto mirabile, una faccia crudele, un po’ di stupore o di severità, allora resta—come un attore che non esce più dal personaggio. Grice: Speranza e io ci siamo ritrovati a sorridere di una cosa: perché i filosofi devono rendere ovvio ciò che, in pratica, è già evidente? Lei dice “l’immagine fissa il concetto”, e sembra una scoperta; ma basta una bilancia per far venire in mente la giustizia, una clava per la fortezza, un astrolabio per l’astrologia. E il bello è che, quando la memoria funziona, non sembra mai teoria: sembra buon gusto retorico. Forse è per questo che lei insiste su Virgilio e Ovidio: perché, se l’immagine non ha un po’ di poesia, resta solo un elenco di simboli—e nessuno ricorda gli elenchi, se non per dimenticarli con ordine. Pubblicio: Implicatura figurativa la vostra, genii, come Speranza la chiamerebbe con aria da scolaro diligente. Perché avete capito che non si tratta di “decorare” l’idea, ma di darle un corpo che possa circolare: il gesto, la bestia (lupo o lepre), lo strumento (bilancia, clava, astrolabio). E lì si vede anche il ponte verso l’iconologia: la memoria ciceroniana non è un museo, è una macchina di riconoscimento. Se poi qualcuno sogna un Deutero‑Esperanto senza immagini, che lo provi pure—ma poi non si lamenti se, al momento di ricordare, gli manca proprio la cosa più romana: una scena ben piazzata. Pubblicio, Giacomo (1536). La via di prosperità. Venezia: Bernardino Bindoni.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Pucci: la ragione conversazionale della REPUBBLICA ROMANA, o dell’implicatura conversazionale utopica di Campanella – la scuola di Firenze  Francesco Pucci (Firenze, Toscana): la ragione conversazionale della REPUBBLICA ROMANA, o dell’implicatura conversazionale utopica di Campanella. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how speakers can mean more than they explicitly say because hearers presume a cooperative exchange and so infer implicatures by rationally connecting an utterance to the purposes, shared background, and conversational norms (relevance, sufficiency, candour, clarity); on that view, “leaving it unsaid” is not a lapse but a managed reliance on reasons the audience can recover. Pucci, by contrast, is best read as a figure for how ideas become socially and institutionally perilous: his universalist, anti-authoritarian religious-philosophical program (natural innocence before the age of reason, the practical “uselessness” of infant baptism on that basis, a hoped-for universality of religion) is conducted through polemical address, manifesto, and dispute, where what is at stake is not merely what is communicated but what one’s words commit one to before churches, consistory, and tribunal. In your staged exchange, “utopia” functions Griceanly as a trigger for implicature (the “no-place” that nonetheless moves real places, provoking conflicts with censor, republic, and Rome), while Pucci’s own stance highlights a tension Grice makes central: rational discourse depends on shared assumptions of good faith and common purpose, yet in confessional conflict those assumptions collapse and a speaker’s intended point is reinterpreted as heresy, sedition, or prophecy. The comparison, then, is that Grice provides the micro-mechanics of how “second comings” can be suggested without being said (the primo libro that invites an inference of a sequel; the “non luogo” that implies a political displacement), whereas Pucci illustrates the macro-condition under which implicatures become dangerous—because when interlocutors no longer share the cooperative background, what was meant as a rational invitation to reconsider doctrine is heard as a prosecutable challenge, and the space of conversational reason is replaced by the logic of accusation and enforcement. Scrive alcuni trattati dove ambiva a una filosofia universale di stampo utopistico. Molto polemico contro le principali dottrine religiose dell'epoca, tanto da essere tacciato di eresia e giustiziato dall'inquisizione romana.  Della potente e ricca famiglia fiorentina dei Pucci. Scolto da un improvviso mutamento e cambiamento che lo fa decidere a darsi allo studio delle cose celesti ed eterne e a scoprire i reali motivi dei contrasti filosofici che lacerano l'Italia. Assiste personalmente alla strage degl’ugonotti nella notte di S. Bartolomeo, decide d’aderire alla tesi protestante. Controversie dottrinali gli procurarono l'espulsione dalla sua comunità calvinista. Discute del peccato originale e altresì contesta l'autoritarismo del concistoro della comunità. Quest'ultima gl’rimprove, oltre a importanti punti dottrinali come la concezione del peccato originale, della fede, e dell'eu-caristia, la sua pretesa di pro-fetizzare, ricordandogli che, con la scomparsa dei primi apostoli, il carisma profetico non esiste più. Su invito di Betti, incontra SOZZINI . Pubblica un manifesto, e poi scrive a Balbani una lettera in cui espone la sua teoria dell'innocenza naturale dell'uomo, già discussa Sozzini. L’uomo nasce e restano innocente innanzi all'uso della ragione e del giudizio. Grazie alla redenzione operata dal cristo, il peccato originale non causa dannazione quando siamo nel grembo materno. Dunque, il battesimo di un uomo che è gia naturalmente innocente per la naturale bontà della sua natura umana, e per quanto non censurabile, è INUTILE. L'eventualità della dannazione è un problema di quell’uomo che, raggiunta l'età della ragione, è in grado di distinguere il bene dal male. etymologia d’eretico; il profeta disarmato, nicodemismo, decapatizazione a Tornona, Roma, la repubblica romana, il censore Catone, il suffragio. Grice: “St. John’s, 1947. Nobody consults the library here—unless one counts me as somebody, which I’m not sure one should (what do bodies have to do with anything, anyway). Still, they keep, like a small relic, Pucci’s 1575 Primo libro della filosofia naturale, and it has been worrying at me. We have here a Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy—surely a title that once began life as a pointed slight against the professor of physical, i.e. natural, philosophy; yet the odd thing about Oxford now is that the latter chair seems nowhere to be seen. And Pucci, for his part, is deliciously economical: he merely suggests, by calling it a primo libro, that there is to be a second—without ever quite saying so, as if he were content to let the “second coming” remain an implicature. Grice: Pucci, proprio ieri, in una conversazione con Speranza, mi sono sentito dire che a Firenze l’utopia non è un’isola: è un verbale d’accusa. Lui diceva che lei ha l’aria di uno che ambisce all’universale e poi, per coerenza, finisce davanti al tribunale. Pucci: È il prezzo della chiarezza, professore. Quando tocchi peccato originale, fede ed eucaristia, e per giunta contesti l’autorità del concistoro, la comunità non ti manda una recensione: ti manda un’espulsione. E se poi ti ostini a parlare di innocenza naturale e di battesimo “inutile”, ti scopri improvvisamente “eretico” senza aver cambiato tono. Grice: Speranza e io ci siamo ritrovati a fissare una parola che tutti pronunciano come se fosse neutra, ma che lei ha dovuto pagare in contanti: utopia, οὐτοπία. E il bello è che Cicerone—così bravo a far nascere latino dal greco—non riesce mai a darle una casa senza sfrattarla: “nusquam” è solo un avverbio, “locus” è solo geografia. Speranza poi storce il naso quando qualcuno tira fuori Erewhon, come diciamo a Vadum Boum: dice che è un “non‑luogo” troppo letterario, e che il vero problema non è dove sia, ma che cosa ti fa fare. Perché οὐτοπία non è soltanto “nessun posto”: è quel posto che ti sposta, e intanto ti mette contro un concistoro, una repubblica, un censore—e alla fine anche contro Roma. Pucci: Non la chiamerei “implicatura utopica”, o utopoica, allora—così Speranza non deve dichiarare dove lei “sta”, se in un τόπος o in un οὐ τόπος. Ma mi piace che la cosa passi da sola: perché la mia utopia non è il “posto perfetto”, è il posto impossibile che però mette in moto i posti reali. E se il prezzo è essere un profeta disarmato o un nicodemita malriuscito, pazienza: almeno si capisce che “nessun luogo” non è un’assenza, è una posizione scomoda. Anche Catone, se fosse stato presente, avrebbe capito: certi discorsi non hanno bisogno di un luogo per esistere—hanno bisogno solo di qualcuno che li sopporti. E Speranza, sotto sotto, li sopporta benissimo. Is the title of the earliest composition -- never mind published or book -- by P. "Il primo libro della filosofia naturale" -- meaning what? he wrote others? Not necessarily. In titles of that sort, primo often means first part, first book, or elementary opening book of a projected or architectonic treatment, not necessarily proof that later books were actually written or published. So Il primo libro della filosofia naturale can mean at least three things. First, it can mean the opening book of a larger design, whether or not the rest was ever completed. Second, it can mean “the first principles” or initial stage of natural philosophy, with primo functioning programmatically rather than bibliographically. Third, it can be a rhetorical title, signalling foundation or entrance rather than promising an extant sequel. And you corroborate whether he did -- or whether there's an earliest composition, as per passage below: I cannot corroborate from the searches that Francesco Pucci wrote a second libro of that work, and on present evidence I would not say that he did. What I can say, cautiously, is this. Il primo libro della filosofia naturale is attested in your passage as a 1575 printed work by Francesco Pucci, but the mere presence of primo in the title does not prove that a secondo libro was ever written, completed, or circulated. In early modern usage, primo libro can mark the opening installment of a projected work, an architectonic first part, or even a title that deliberately gestures toward continuation without guaranteeing it. The web searches I ran did not yield reliable bibliographical confirmation of a later second book or of an earlier surviving composition by Pucci under another title. [en.wikipedia.org], [decorhint.com] So the safest conclusion is: No, I cannot corroborate that he wrote others in that sequence. And no, from the title alone one should not infer that he did. As to whether this was his earliest composition in any sense broader than published book, I also cannot confirm that from the evidence now in hand. “Earliest composition” is a stronger claim than “earliest known printed work,” and it would require either a fuller Pucci bibliography or manuscript evidence. The searches did not supply that. [en.wikipedia.org], [decorhint.com] So the most careful formulation would be: Il primo libro della filosofia naturale may well be his earliest known printed work in this line, but I cannot verify that it was his earliest composition overall, nor that a second book ever followed. [en.wikipedia.org], [decorhint.com] If you want, I can next do one of two things: either give you a philological note on the rhetoric of primo libro in sixteenth-century Italian titles, or help you frame a cautious sentence for your Pucci entry that states exactly this without overclaiming. And can you go online and do a second run to see if this Pucci has an earlier or what the earliest composition--never mind book or publised is? thank you Yes. On a second run, I can now say something more precise, though still cautiously. The earliest securely attested item I found for Francesco Pucci is not necessarily Il primo libro della filosofia naturale of 1575. There is evidence of earlier writing or at least earlier textual activity. First, several biographical notices report that at Oxford Pucci was advised to write a theological thesis with a Latin title, given in corrupt transmission as something like De fide in Deum quae et qualis sit. If that report is sound, it would point to an earlier academic composition around 1574, earlier than the 1575 printed Primo libro. But I would treat the exact title with caution, because the wording appears garbled in the later encyclopedic tradition. [biblicalcy...opedia.com], [studylight.org] Second, by 1577 Pucci is definitely producing written theological materials in Basel: he formulated ten theses on 4 June, Sozzini answered on 11 June, and Pucci produced a rejoinder on 1 July. He also printed the theses De Fide natura hominibus universis insita. Those are certainly writings, but they are later than 1575, so they do not displace the Primo libro as earliest known work. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikisource.org] Third, modern scholarship on Pucci’s thought in 1578–81 identifies two key texts from that period: a letter to Niccolò Balbani and the Forma di una republica catholica. Those are also later than 1575, but important if one is mapping his early manuscript output beyond printed books. [eprints.wh...rose.ac.uk], [research.ed.ac.uk] So the most careful conclusion is this. I cannot confirm that Il primo libro della filosofia naturale was Pucci’s earliest composition overall. I can say it may still be his earliest known printed book, but there is a plausible earlier Oxford thesis or academic exercise around 1574, if the later reports are trustworthy. [biblicalcy...opedia.com], [studylight.org] If you want the shortest usable formulation for your purposes, it would be: Il primo libro della filosofia naturale seems to be Pucci’s earliest known printed work, but not necessarily his earliest composition, since later sources suggest an earlier Oxford theological thesis or disputation. [biblicalcy...opedia.com], [studylight.org] And if you want my judgment as between the candidates, I would rank them like this. Earliest securely attested printed book: Il primo libro della filosofia naturale, 1575. [en.wikipedia.org] Possible earlier composition: an Oxford theological thesis, around 1574, but with uncertain exact title and not yet firmly corroborated from a primary bibliographical record in this search. [biblicalcy...opedia.com], [studylight.org] If you like, I can now give you a tighter philological note distinguishing earliest composition, earliest extant composition, earliest attested writing, and earliest printed work, which may help keep the Pucci entry exact. So now Speranza wants to know so please provide a 100-move conversation between G. and S on what Pucci was doing at Oxford. Wth G being specific: What college? What do you mean you don't know, etc -- what capacity -- and then they turn to the title, fedis deum and Pucci's qualification: quae et qualis sit -- with sit in subjunctive -- but G. uses this as a treatise on Aristotle's categories -- and they discuss questions starting with WHAT and questions starting with WHICH, which G. and S. take as equivalent of 'quae' and 'qualis' -- but S. points that they are not cognte. Why not? But they stick with the Latin: quae asks for SUBSTANTIA or SUBSTRATUM or SUBJECTUM -- prote ousia -- whereas qualis asks for QUALITAS possibly the first category. For Kant it is qualitas, quantitas, relatio, modus -- for G. it's quantitas, qualitas, relatio, modus -- so obviously qualis relates to qualitas since Qualitas was coined by Cicero, as he did coin Quantitas. And we cannot expect Pucci to ask QUANTA, just quale -- but what is the point of the 'et' in quae et qualis sit -- suppose someting is but is not SUCH -- i.e. can you answer the first wihtout answering the other. Oxford for you. Pucci possibly never wrote the thing on second thoughts -- dry humour, oxonian. no preamble or ps. thank you G.: Pucci at Oxford, then. I am told he was there, and I am further told he was doing something theological enough to annoy a Calvinist. That narrows Oxford very little. S.: Very little, but not to nothing. The secure points are these. Francesco Pucci went to Oxford in 1572, took the M.A. on 18 May 1574, applied for a lectureship in theology, and was expelled before June 1575 after disputations that troubled the authorities. [en.wikipedia.org], [oxforddnb.com] G.: What college? S.: That I do not know. G.: What do you mean you do not know? S.: I mean precisely that the material I found gives Oxford, degree, application for a theological lectureship, and expulsion, but does not identify a college. The Oxford biographical notice is behind a paywall in the search results, and the open notices do not supply the college. [en.wikipedia.org], [oxforddnb.com] G.: So Oxford in the abstract, which is a place only administrators believe in. S.: In this case, yes. G.: And what capacity was he there in? Visitor, student, lecturer, menace? S.: First as a resident scholar or student of some kind, at any rate enough to proceed to the M.A.; then apparently as a candidate for a lectureship in theology. One source even says he was “advised to write a thesis” when seeking that post. [en.wikipedia.org], [biblicalcy...opedia.com], [studylight.org] G.: Ah yes, the thesis. The thing with the title that sounds at once pious and predicamental. S.: De fide in Deum, quae et qualis sit. G.: Assuming the transmission is not corrupt. S.: Quite. The form survives in late biographical notices, and there are signs of corruption in some of them, but the recurring core is stable enough: De fide in Deum, quae et qualis sit. [biblicalcy...opedia.com], [studylight.org], [dbpedia.org] G.: Good. Let us therefore do what Oxford men do when they do not know the circumstances: over-read the title. S.: With pleasure. G.: De fide in Deum, quae et qualis sit. I immediately hear Aristotle’s Categories knocking at the door. S.: Because of quae and qualis. G.: Exactly. One asks what faith is, and what sort of thing it is. Or perhaps rather, what faith in God is, and of what quality it is. S.: Though you are making quae do rather a lot. G.: I always expect a pronoun to earn its keep. S.: Still, one must be careful. In Latin, quae here need not map neatly onto our what, nor qualis onto our which. G.: I should have said what and what-sort, perhaps. S.: Better. Because which and qualis are not cognate. G.: I know they are not cognate. That is why I use them in Oxford, where equivalences need not descend from etymology. S.: Still, one must keep the distinction. What seeks identification, account, essence, subject matter. Which seeks selection among already delimited candidates. Qualis seeks kind, quality, what sort. G.: Quite. So if one sticks with the Latin, quae asks for something like substantia, substratum, subjectum, perhaps even first ousia if one is feeling Greek before luncheon. S.: Whereas qualis points toward qualitas, certainly, and not toward a mere picking-out among alternatives. G.: Exactly. Which is why the title intrigues me. De fide in Deum, quae et qualis sit. It asks first what faith in God is, then what sort of thing it is. Substance and quality marching in theological file. S.: With sit in the subjunctive. G.: Yes. And I like that too. S.: Why? It is hardly an explosion. It may simply be indirect question. G.: Of course it is indirect question. But indirect questions are where grammar begins to look philosophical. S.: Only in Oxford. G.: Especially in Oxford. The subjunctive here does not merely report uncertainty; it subordinates inquiry. It says: let us inquire what it may be, and of what quality it may be, under the government of the asking. S.: That is almost too elegant for a job application. G.: Job applications have occasionally risen above themselves. S.: So you hear two questions in one title. G.: Very much so. First, what is faith in God? Second, what sort of thing is it? That is to say, what is its status, species, modality, perhaps even its theological chemistry. S.: Then we should separate the two. The first question seeks an account of faith itself. G.: Yes. Is it assent, trust, confidence, infused habit, disposition of the will, intellectual acceptance, salvific relation, or some alarming mixture? S.: And the second asks how it is to be classified. G.: Exactly. Is it cognitive, affective, volitional, theological virtue, natural disposition, supernatural gift, quality of soul, relation to God, or all of these under different descriptions? S.: There you are already halfway to the Categories. G.: I admitted as much. Oxford encourages one to turn every title into a syllabus and every syllabus into Aristotle. S.: But then what of your English equivalents? You said what and which. G.: I retract which and substitute what sort. One can survive the correction. S.: Good. Because what and what sort better preserve the Latin. Quae asks, as you say, for something like subject matter or essence. Qualis asks for quality or kind. G.: And not quantitas, for Pucci was not asking how much faith there is in God. S.: Quite. G.: Though one is tempted. S.: Naturally. But if we bring in Kant, the modern tidying becomes interesting. He has quantitas, qualitas, relatio, modus. G.: Whereas I, from my own looser habits, might say quantitas, qualitas, relatio, modus too, though perhaps in a different order when bored. S.: The point remains that qualis goes cleanly with qualitas. G.: And qualitas, as every schoolboy knows and no schoolboy enjoys, is Ciceronian. S.: Along with quantitas. G.: Yes. Cicero coins and the schools never forgive him. S.: So qualis in Pucci’s title can be heard against the long Latin afterlife of qualitas. G.: Very much so. One asks not merely what faith is, but what quality it has, or under what quality it falls, or how it is to be characterised as a theological item. S.: Then the little et begins to matter. G.: Ah yes, the whole title hangs on the et. S.: Because if one asked only quae sit, one would get an account of what faith is. G.: In principle, yes. S.: And if one asked only qualis sit, one might presuppose that one already knows the subject and is now classifying or characterising it. G.: Exactly. The et says that neither question is sufficient alone. S.: But are they really separable? G.: In scholastic prose, always. In life, less so. S.: Suppose one answered the first and not the second. G.: One might say: faith in God is trust. Very good. But what sort of trust? Rational? Salvific? Natural? Infused? Meritorious? The first answer leaves the second ungoverned. S.: And suppose one answered the second without the first. G.: One might say: it is a theological virtue, or a habitus, or a quality of the soul. But unless one says what faith is, one has merely classified a word. S.: So the et marks incompleteness on both sides. G.: Precisely. It is the conjunction of identity-question and quality-question. What is it, and what sort of thing is it? Oxford in four words and a conjunction. S.: There is also a subtler possibility. Perhaps quae asks for the thing under one description and qualis for it under another, not as separate stages but as mutually correcting. G.: Very good. One answer may constrain the other. If faith is trust, then its quality must be the quality of trust of a certain kind. If it is assent, then qualis becomes a question about the kind of assent. S.: Then the title is almost an anti-reductionist device. G.: Yes. It prevents one from saying either “faith is just x” or “faith is of such-and-such quality” in a vacuum. It forces a two-level account. S.: Which makes sense if Pucci was already quarrelling with Calvinists. G.: Indeed. One can imagine him wanting to say that faith is not exhausted by the party’s preferred formula, and also that its status or character differs from what they make of it. S.: The biographical notices do say that his disputations offended because he openly combated Calvinist dogmas. [biblicalcy...opedia.com], [studylight.org], [en.wikipedia.org] G.: Which means the title may have been chosen as a civil form for an uncivil thesis. S.: Very likely. G.: Now tell me again what he was doing at Oxford. S.: Studying, taking the M.A., apparently seeking appointment, and disputing enough to be expelled. Francesco Pucci was admitted M.A. on 18 May 1574 and then applied for a theological lectureship; his controversies led to expulsion before June 1575. [en.wikipedia.org], [oxforddnb.com] G.: Still no college. S.: Still no college. G.: Oxford hates an unspecified college the way Aristotle hates a vacuum. S.: And yet here we are. G.: Then perhaps he never wrote the thing. S.: That is possible. G.: More than possible. Very Oxford. S.: In what sense? G.: In the sense that one is advised to write a thesis, discussed as if one had written it, opposed as if one had published it, and expelled before the manuscript acquires ink enough to be bibliographically respectable. S.: That would fit the atmosphere. G.: Does any source say the treatise was printed at Oxford? S.: No secure open result I found says that. One cluster of later notices speaks of his being advised to write the thesis; another, less securely, says he “printed a treatise” with that title and had to leave England. But this latter line appears in derivative encyclopedic notices and is not solid enough, on present evidence, to treat as confirmed. [biblicalcy...opedia.com], [studylight.org], [dbpedia.org] G.: So we have the perfectly academic possibility that the title survived better than the text. S.: Yes. G.: A title with a career, and perhaps no treatise with one. S.: Very Oxford. G.: Good. Then let us continue over-reading the ghost of it. De fide in Deum, quae et qualis sit. If one were severe, one could say that quae presses toward substance while qualis presses toward quality. But faith is not a substance. S.: No, though scholastic usage might still let one ask what it is in terms of habitus, actus, virtus, and the like. G.: Quite. Substance in the loose sense of whatness, not in the strict sense of an independently standing thing. S.: So substratum and subjectum are perhaps too strong unless carefully handled. G.: True. One wants whatness without reification. S.: And qualis without trivialisation. G.: Precisely. For qualis is not asking for decorative attributes. It is not: is faith charming, pale blue, and good at tennis? S.: Though one should not rule Oxford out. G.: Never. Still, the point is serious. Qualis asks for the character under which faith is to be understood. Is it natural or supernatural, intellectual or fiducial, humanly available or divinely infused? S.: Which matches the later reports that Francesco Pucci developed views about a natural faith insita in all human beings. The Basel theses De Fide natura hominibus universis insita show that “faith” for him very soon became a question of universal natural endowment rather than narrow confessional possession. [en.wikipedia.org], [biblicalcy...opedia.com] G.: Excellent. Then the Oxford title may already foreshadow the larger Puccian problem. What is faith, and of what kind is it, if it is not merely the confessional ticket of the elect? S.: Exactly. G.: Then one sees why Calvinists might have become peevish. S.: More than peevish. G.: Fair. Now, what do you make of the subjunctive again? S.: Grammatically, indirect question. Philosophically, open inquiry under a dependent clause. No assertion yet, only the field of investigation. G.: Which is why it has an air of caution. The title promises an inquiry, not yet a manifesto. S.: Though titles often lie. G.: Especially when written for appointment. S.: Then perhaps the true Oxford reading is this. The title behaves modestly, but the disputation did not. G.: Very likely. One may begin with an indirect question and end by directly annoying the faculty. S.: That too is Oxford. G.: Let us put the what and the what-sort once more. If I ask what faith is, I ask for its account. If I ask what sort of thing it is, I ask for its place in a classificatory scheme. S.: Yes. G.: And the et prevents either answer from monopolising the field. S.: Exactly. G.: Then perhaps the title is better than the book, whether or not the book existed. S.: That also would be Oxford. G.: One more point. You corrected my which, and rightly. Yet English often uses which where the mind is really asking what sort. S.: Sloppily, yes. G.: Sloppily, but productively. We ask “which faith?” and mean not one item from a shelf but what species of faith is in question. S.: Whereas Latin qualis keeps the matter cleaner. G.: Indeed. One of the few advantages of scholastic Latin over common-room English is that it forces one to distinguish selection from qualification. S.: And if one does not, the categories begin to slosh. G.: Beautifully put. Then Pucci’s title is, in a modest way, a lesson in not letting the categories slosh. S.: Provided he wrote it. G.: Provided he wrote it. Always the English proviso. S.: Still, the open evidence does support Oxford, M.A., candidacy for a theological lectureship, controversy, and expulsion. It does not yet support a college name, and it leaves the actual status of De fide in Deum, quae et qualis sit somewhat uncertain between proposed thesis, written disputation, and perhaps printed treatise in later retelling. [en.wikipedia.org], [biblicalcy...opedia.com], [studylight.org], [oxforddnb.com] G.: Then that is already enough for one conversation and one application denied. S.: Quite. G.: So what was Pucci doing at Oxford? S.: Learning enough theology to take a degree, seeking enough preferment to risk a thesis, and quarrelling enough with Calvinism to be shown the door. [en.wikipedia.org], [biblicalcy...opedia.com], [studylight.org] G.: And what college? S.: Still unknown. G.: Dry enough? S.: Sufficiently Oxonian, with one subjunctive and no fellowship.Pucci, Francesco (1575). Il primo libro della filosofia naturale. Venezia: Varisco.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Puccinotti: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale di boezio, la filosofia sperimentale, i fisici e i meta-fisici, la scuola d’Urbino, filosofia marchese, e la filosofia italiana (Urbino). Filosofo italiano.  Francesco Puccinotti (Urbino, Marche): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale di boezio, la filosofia sperimentale, i fisici e i meta-fisici, la scuola d’Urbino, filosofia marchese, e la filosofia italiana. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats “what is meant” as something a rational hearer can reconstruct from what is said plus shared norms of cooperative talk, so that implicatures arise when a speaker relies on the audience to bridge an intentional gap (often by being under-informative, indirect, or apparently off-topic) in a way that remains accountable to reasons. Puccinotti, by contrast, is presented here as an exemplar of “experimental philosophy” in the older, medically grounded sense: he forces disputes between “physicists and metaphysicians” to answer to clinical and civic realities (malarial fevers, epidemics, rice-field policy), where “sperimentale” signals not just method but public risk and responsibility—trying, erring, measuring, and answering for consequences. Read Griceanly, Puccinotti’s “sperimentale” stance functions like a conversational constraint on philosophical discourse: it sharpens what counts as a relevant contribution and makes empty “-isms” pragmatically defective, because an utterance that cannot guide action under shared practical aims fails the cooperative point of the exchange; read Puccinotti through Grice, one can say that his empirical orientation supplies a distinctive background of expectations that governs implicature in such conversations (to talk of rice-fields or fever is to invite inferences about regulation, causation, and accountability without spelling them out). The upshot is that Grice offers a micro-level account of how reasons govern meaning transfer in any talk-exchange, whereas Puccinotti exemplifies a macro-level norm of answerability to experiment and public life that disciplines which conversational moves are rationally acceptable and which implied conclusions are warranted. Studia a Pavia e Roma. Insegna a Urbino, Macerata, e Pisa.  Il duca Leopoldo di Toscana lo inserisce in una commissione incaricata di studiare l'ipotesi di introdurre sul litorale di Pisa le risaie, dal punto di vista della medicina civile. Espone le sue analisi nel saggio “Sulle risaie in Italia e sulla loro introduzione in Toscana” -- conclusioni che saranno alla base del regolamento sulla cultura del riso in Toscana. Altri saggi: “Storia della febbre intermittente perniciosa (Roma), “Boezio” (Firenze); “Storia della medicina” (Firenze). Treccani Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Crusca. Nacque d’una modesta famiglia di origini contadine che venne da Saturnana, un villaggio della campagna pistoiese. Il padre, Angelo, è cuoco al servizio dell’arci-vescovo Berioli di Urbino, e la madre, Vincenza, è figlia di Ercoli, addetto alle scuderie dei marchesi Antaldi di Urbino.  A Urbino P. frequenta il collegio dei padri scolopi, laicizzato e trasformato in liceo durante il regno d’Italia, e, per meriti scolastici, è ammesso gratuitamente al liceo militare di Pavia. Qui rimane per due anni, appassionandosi agli studi filosofici più che alla carriera militare. S’iscrisse alla facoltà di medicina di Roma e divenne allievo del clinico Matthaeis, oltre che collaboratore e amico del chirurgo e anatomico Flaiani.  Dopo la laurea, lavora per qualche tempo negli ospedali romani del S. Spirito prima e di S. Giovanni in Laterano poi, studiando principalmente le febbri malariche anche attraverso dissezioni anatomiche. Il materiale così raccolto confluì nella Storia delle febbri perniciose di Roma, pubblicata a Urbino. Nello stesso periodo si occupa d;altre malattie infettive che colpivano le campagne del Lazio e della Campania, come l’epidemia di tifo petecchiale, che riguarda gran parte dell’Italia centrale. il boezio, Leopardi, fisici e meta-fisici.  Grice: Puccinotti, vengo da una conversazione recentissima con Speranza: mi ha detto che lei è il raro tipo che riesce a far discutere fisici e metafisici senza farli venire alle mani, perché li costringe a sedersi davanti a una febbre e non davanti a un “ismo”. Puccinotti: È un buon metodo: la febbre non ha pazienza per le scuole. Io sono partito dalla clinica e dalla dissezione, e poi ho capito che la medicina civile è filosofia con le scarpe infangate: risaie, regolamenti, epidemie—lì la teoria deve rispondere, non declamare. Grice: Speranza e io ci siamo soffermati su una parola che fa finta di essere neutra: “sperimentale”. Lei la usa come se fosse ovvia, ma l’etimo latino tradisce la scena: experimentum viene da experiri, provare, tentare—e dentro c’è anche periculum, il rischio. Quindi “filosofia sperimentale” non è “filosofia con gli strumenti”, è “filosofia che accetta di sbagliare pubblicamente”, come quando si decide se mettere risaie sul litorale di Pisa e poi bisogna rispondere non a un seminario, ma alle zanzare. Puccinotti: Implicatura sperimentale la vostra—per farla semplice—e l’ho anche esperimentata e riprovata, come sono sicuro che Speranza sarà lieto di sapere. Perché “sperimentale” non vuol dire solo “provare”: vuol dire “provare e rendere conto”. Io ho provato sulle febbri, sulle acque minerali, e perfino sulle risaie (dove il periculum punge). E alla fine la differenza tra fisici e metafisici si riduce: i primi misurano subito, i secondi misurano tardi; ma se la misura non torna, la realtà ti boccia comunque. E questa è la parte che a Speranza piace: quando un’idea non passa l’esame, non si discute—si corregge. Puccinotti, Francesco (1832). Storia della medicina in Italia. Firenze: Felice Le Monnier.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Pudenziano: la ragione conversazionale dell’orto romano, Roma, e la filosofia italiana –  (Roma). Filosofo italiano. Orto. Galeno writes a treatise about him. Grice e Prudenziano. Pudenziano (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale dell’orto romano, Roma, e la filosofia italiana. Orto. Galeno writes a treatise about him.  GRICEVS: PVDENTIANE, modo cum collega philosopho Spe sermonem habui; ille (ut solet) rem levem graviter dixit: “Felix es, cuius de te scribit Galenus—non tibi tantum blanditur.” PVDENTIANVS: Si de me scribit, non necesse est ut mihi scribat. In horto enim plura dicuntur de nobis quam ad nos; herbae enim non legunt dedicationes. GRICEVS: Spes et ego mirabamur hoc ipsum: quam suaviter res cadat, cum liber non “PVDENTIANO” inscribitur, sed “de PVDENTIANO” narratur. Quasi medicus dicat: “hic non est munus, sed exemplum.” Nam dedicatio interdum petit gratiam; tractatus autem—si bonus est—petit veritatem, et hominem ipsum facit quasi materiam, non clientem. PVDENTIANVS: Implicatura tractatoria vestra, ut Spes sinat me appellare. Et grata est: quia inter “ad” et “de” saepe latet totus hortus. Quod Galenus de me scribit, hoc significat hortum non esse tantum de oleribus, sed de vita frugali: quae non facile in compendium redigitur, neque tamen tanta est ut in tenebris servanda sit. Itaque, si quis “horticulturam” pro philosophia accipit, bene; sed caveat ne nimis simplicet: etiam in orto, doctrina radices habet, non solum folia.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Punzo: la ragione conversazionale di Niso ed Eurialo, o l’implicatura conversazionle dell’amore– la scuola di Napoli  Giorgio Punzo (Napoli, Campania): la ragione conversazionale di Niso ed Eurialo, o l’implicatura conversazionle dell’amore.  amicus, friendship. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains love-talk and friendship-talk by treating them as rational, cooperative exchanges in which hearers infer what is meant beyond what is explicitly said by relying on shared expectations of relevance, appropriate informativeness, sincerity, and clarity, so that an “implicature of love” is not a mystical aura but an accountable inference (often generated by deliberate understatement, indirectness, quotation, or a strategically chosen example). Punzo, as your passage presents him, relocates the centre of gravity from inferential pragmatics to a broadly humanistic and educational ideal: friendship (amicitia) in the Virgilian model of Nisus and Euryalus is the condition under which conversation becomes genuinely formative, capable of educating desire toward the beautiful and orienting the person toward an “absolute divine” that marks human identity, with dialogue functioning less as a site for calculating implied propositions and more as a moral-aesthetic practice that shapes selves through sincerity, reciprocity, and shared contemplation. Read Griceanly, Punzo’s emphasis on openness and sincerity can be redescribed as strengthening the background assumptions that make implicature stable and recoverable (trust, candour, mutual recognition of aims), while his appeal to Dante’s “love that moves the sun and the other stars” operates as a rhetorically loaded move that invites a hearer to supply evaluative and metaphysical conclusions not literally asserted; read Punzoanly, Grice’s maxims and calculability tests look like an abstracted anatomy of something that, in lived friendship, is already ethically charged—because what friends can responsibly leave unsaid, and still be understood, depends on the quality of the relation itself. The comparison, then, is that Grice offers a formal-pragmatic account of how love and friendship are communicated through reasoned inference in conversation, whereas Punzo treats love and friendship as the underlying spiritual and cultural matrix that gives conversation its highest point, making implicature less a technical phenomenon to be derived than a sign of a shared life in which meaning can travel delicately without being forced into explicit declaration. Si laurea a  Napoli con una tesi su Kant alla luce della dottrina d’AQUINO, una in-erpeto-logia sul sistema nervoso dei serpenti, e una tsulla morale nelle lettere di Paolo. Fonda la lega contro la distruzione degl’uccelli, e l'associazione culturale trifoglio, di cui pubblica Il Trifoglio. Vive a Vivara, contribuendo a preservar Vivara da possibili scempi e tutelandone il patrimonio ambientale. Per il suo impegno a favore di Vivara ricevette il "Premio Mediterraneo" conferitogli da un'agenzia dell'ONU. Filosofo dai molteplici interessi che spaziarono dalla Commedia d’ALIGHIERI, alla botanica, all'ornitologia e alla zoo-logia, anche un profondo conoscitore della filosofia dell’antica Roma. Dedica la sua vita alla filosofia. Per lui, la filosofia costituisce il compito più importanti al quale una società deve adempiere poiché l'educazione filosofica rapresenta il punto fondativo d’ogni aggregato umano. In tale prospettiva, l’uomo, per potersi sviluppare al meglio, deve essere educato al bello attraverso la contemplazione della natura e l’arte che l’imita. La sua filosofia ha come culmine la definizione del concetto del divino assoluto, inteso come elemento distintivo dello spirito umano poiché capace di definire l'identità della persona umana rispetto alle altre forme di vita. Saggi: “Nota sull'episodio di LATINI  in ALIGHERI” (Napoli, Martello); “Della schema sessuo-logica” (Napoli, Genovese); “Erotologiche” (Napoli, Martello); “Dialogo dell'amore olarrenico” (Napoli, Martello); “L'altro viaggio” (Napoli, Denaro); “Il guardiano del verde isolotto”. Olarrenismo; pseudo-morfismo sessuale, Pari-sessualismo nevrotico; pari-sessuo nevrotici; erote, amore, amante, amato, amare, la setta di Velia, Frontone ed Antonino, Adriano, Niso ed Eurialo, il tutore, l’allievo, la filosofia nell’antica Roma, didattica, dialettica, filosofia togata, toga virile, cupido, il divino, il convito, il bello. Grice: “St. John’s, 1955. Strawson is devoting a whole stretch of his work-in-progress—what he calls An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics—to the notion of a person; I keep thinking that “progress” properly belongs to the pilgrim, but never mind. What rankles is that he doesn’t so much as cite my “Personal Identity”. Still, perhaps that is the revenge of the former pupil. And then, browsing at Blackwell’s, I come upon a title by one Punzo, Psicologia della personalità, and I find myself wondering why Italians insist on inflating persona into personalità—as if “person” were not abstract enough already.” Grice: Punzo, mi incuriosisce la sua riflessione sull’amicizia tra Niso ed Eurialo come modello di implicatura conversazionale dell’amore. Secondo lei, è davvero possibile che il legame di amicizia si trasformi in una forma superiore di dialogo filosofico, capace di educare al bello? Punzo: Caro Grice, credo fermamente che l’amicizia, come quella cantata da Virgilio tra Niso ed Eurialo, rappresenti la base stessa della conversazione filosofica. Solo quando ci si apre all’altro con sincerità, si può raggiungere quel grado di contemplazione del bello che eleva l’animo e trasforma la discussione in vera educazione dello spirito. Grice: Mi piace questa idea della filosofia come arte che imita la natura e si nutre di relazioni autentiche. Mi domando, tuttavia, come si concili il suo “divino assoluto” con la fallibilità e le passioni umane che spesso animano il dialogo, anche tra amici. Punzo: Il divino, caro amico, non esclude la debolezza umana; anzi, ne fa parte. È proprio nella tensione tra la nostra fragilità e la ricerca del bello che la conversazione acquista valore educativo. L’amore, l’amicizia, la contemplazione della natura: sono tutte forme attraverso cui l’uomo, dialogando, si avvicina a ciò che di più alto può concepire. E come diceva Dante, “l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle” è il vero motore di ogni filosofia autentica. Do not insert any text or material in document -- let us keep all here in chatbox -- do not use italic, bold, or bulletting, and let us keep English as our metalanguage -- in the passage below you'll find a reminiscence by G. on Strawson and Punzo -- provide, without preamble or ps, a 100-move conversation now between G. and S. on Punzo -- the fact that he has a psicologia della personalita in 1952 -- as G. and S. discuss (a) G's "Personal identity" i. e. not another kind of identity -- and the distinction with 'personality' -- e.g. Reid's person -- Reid's personality -- the officer in Reid's counterexample -- the officer's person -- the officer's personality -- the fact that Locke already provides for a response to the alleged counterexample by Reid -- and then connect with G. and S. having read Individual: an essay in descriptive metaphysics, where much is made of PERSON -- versus pesonalita -- and how person is Etrurian, and not Greek pro-sona, and then back to the personalita -- and finally G. wondering if it's good to multiply persona into personalita -- and they check the OED first use in the OED -- formerly NED -- but G. says he doesn't give a hoot what the dictionary says, and knows that CICERO would find not just pro-sona Etrurian wrong, never mind personalitas -- etc dry humour, oxonian -- no preamble, no ps --perhaps punchline in dialogue itself. Passage: G.: Punzo, then. I came upon his Psicologia della personalità of 1952 and found myself wondering whether Italians cannot leave persona in peace. S.: You thought personalità an inflation. G.: A suspicious inflation. Person is abstract enough. Once one gets to personality one is in danger of importing traits, style, temperament, charm, and perhaps a moustache. S.: Whereas your paper is Personal Identity, not Personality. G.: Exactly. Identity of a person, not the identity of his table manners. S.: So your title means the identity-relation as applying to persons. G.: Yes. Not a new species called personal identity as opposed to, say, bovine identity. Merely identity, under that sortal. S.: A point often missed by those who like compound nouns because they save them the trouble of thought. G.: Quite. One says personal identity and they hear a psychological mist. S.: While you meant to ask under what conditions a person at one time is the same person at another. G.: Precisely. The old same man, same person business, with all the Lockean nuisances attached. S.: Then Punzo’s personalità would belong elsewhere. G.: Entirely elsewhere, unless he is being uncommonly careful. Personality is what one has in the way of character, tone, disposition, perhaps cultivated charm. Person is what one is, if one is one. S.: Reid helps here. G.: Reid always helps by producing a Scotch nuisance of exactly the right size. S.: His brave officer. G.: Yes. Reid’s favourite military metaphysician. The boy flogged at school, the officer who took the standard, the general in old age. S.: The standard objection to Locke being that memory seems non-transitive across the chain. G.: Quite. The general remembers taking the standard, the officer remembers being flogged, the general does not remember being flogged. Therefore, if personhood just is tied to direct memory, identity appears to fall to pieces. S.: And then one says Locke has refuted himself by a soldier. G.: One says it with great satisfaction and insufficient patience. S.: Because Locke already has resources. G.: He does. The common anti-Lockean performance treats him as if he had never distinguished between being the same substance, the same man, and the same person in the forensic sense. S.: Or as if consciousness had to be understood in the crude diary form: I now explicitly remember that episode, therefore I am that person. G.: Exactly. Locke’s point is subtler. Person is a forensic notion, tied to imputation, accountability, appropriation of actions and thoughts. S.: So Reid’s officer may embarrass a crude memory criterion without quite destroying Locke’s way of carving things. G.: Yes. One can reply that overlapping continuity of consciousness, or appropriation in the right way, saves the case better than Reid allows. S.: Then the officer’s person is one thing, his personality another. G.: Quite. The officer’s person is what is at issue in whether he is the same accountable subject over time. The officer’s personality is whether he is dashing, melancholic, vain, or intolerably martial at dinner. S.: Reid’s counterexample concerns the first. G.: Entirely. It does not concern whether the old general retains the officer’s briskness. S.: Yet the vocabulary invites confusion because person and personality sit too close. G.: And philosophers are often ruined by neighbours. S.: Then Punzo’s title from 1952 makes you wonder whether personalità in Italian risks importing the wrong neighbour into discussion of persona. G.: Exactly. One fears that what ought to remain a question about persona becomes one about a profile. S.: But Italian personalità does not always mean mere charm or set of traits. G.: No, and that is where one must be fair. It can bear a more serious sense. Still, I reserve the right to distrust it on sight. S.: Especially after reading your own Personal Identity. G.: Naturally. One grows proprietary over one’s ambiguities. S.: And then Strawson arrives with Person. G.: Ah yes. Strawson and his grand noun. In Individuals he makes much of the concept of a person as primitive in our descriptive metaphysics. S.: A basic particular of a special sort. G.: Yes. Neither merely body nor merely consciousness, but the sort of being to which both mental and physical predicates are ascribed. S.: Which is not at all the same as personality. G.: Quite. Strawson is emphatically on the side of person, not personality. He wants the conceptual place of persons in our scheme, not an Edwardian sketch of temperament. S.: So one could say that Strawson’s person stands to Punzo’s personalità rather as your personal identity stands to personality. G.: Very nearly. Though Strawson would be more solemn about it, and I rather less. S.: The solemnity is part of descriptive metaphysics. G.: Yes. One must look grave while saying what one cannot avoid saying anyway. S.: Still, the distinction matters. Person names a bearer of predicates. Personality names a manner of bearing them. G.: Excellent. Keep that. S.: Thank you. Then perhaps Reid too can be reformulated in your preferred fashion. Reid’s person is the subject whose identity is in question. Reid’s personality is whatever features make the officer seem boyishly bold or the general pompously retrospective. G.: Exactly. And the counterexample has no force at all if one slides from person to personality. We do not ask whether the general has the same personality as the boy. We ask whether he is the same person. S.: Locke, then, is being answered with the wrong noun if one shifts into personality. G.: Precisely. One ends by refuting a music-hall version of Locke. S.: And perhaps Punzo’s title gives you the faint worry that psychology may be more at home with traits than with persons. G.: A very faint worry, yes. Psychology of personality sounds apt enough for traits, dispositions, style of response. But if one tries to take personalità as somehow philosophically prior to persona, I begin reaching for the claret. S.: Before or after the OED. G.: Usually before. The OED is a restorative, not a first line of defence. S.: Yet you wanted to check it. G.: Oh, one checks the OED the way one checks a witness one does not intend to trust fully. S.: Formerly the NED. G.: Yes, when dictionaries still had the decency to sound infrastructural. S.: So before the lexicographical excursion, let us keep to philosophy. In Individuals, Strawson says much about person because person marks a basic node in our conceptual scheme. It is not an optional cultural embroidery. G.: Exactly. It is not a flourish. It is built into the way we identify, reidentify, and ascribe. S.: While personalità, if it enters, enters later. G.: Much later. As a derivative abstraction from observed style, character, habit, psychological profile. S.: Then your irritation is not merely philological. G.: No. It is conceptual. Multiply persona into personalità too soon and one risks moving from the bearer to the furnishings. S.: The house before the wallpaper. G.: Precisely. S.: Reid’s officer again helps. The officer’s person is what persists if the case is to work. The officer’s personality may alter without metaphysical alarm. G.: Yes. Officers are allowed to grow dull. S.: Or prudent. G.: Prudence is only dullness with a pension. S.: Then Locke’s resources against Reid lie in refusing the over-simple memory formula and preserving the forensic notion of person. G.: Very much so. Locke is not merely saying: same remembered episode, same person. He is trying to map the conditions under which consciousness extends responsibility and appropriation. S.: And consciousness need not be interpreted atomistically. G.: Exactly. Reid’s parade-ground objection is effective only against a simplification. S.: So if Punzo writes Psicologia della personalità in 1952, one may grant him the psychological domain while still saying that the metaphysical and forensic weight lies with persona. G.: Yes. That is the charitable division of labour. S.: Now to the etymological mischief. G.: Ah yes. Person, says someone, from Etruscan, not Greek prosopon, and certainly not from pro plus sonare, as the old schoolroom myth liked to have it. S.: Strawson’s period encouraged such demythologising. G.: As did the better philologists. The old pro-sona story is too theatrical even for me. S.: Yet theatricality helped it survive. G.: Naturally. A bad etymology with costumes will beat a good one in plain clothes nine times out of ten. S.: Still, if person is not Greek prosopon and not pro-sona, but has some Etruscan ancestry in the neighbourhood of persona, that rather strengthens your reluctance to multiply it into personalità. G.: Perhaps. At least it removes one bogus dramatic pedigree before we add a psychological annex. S.: So the line would be: Strawson makes much of person, not personalità; descriptive metaphysics begins with person because our scheme requires it; and any slide into personality belongs to a later, derivative register. G.: Very good. S.: Then why not simply say that personalità is harmless as long as one knows it is derivative. G.: Because harmless derivatives have a way of founding departments. S.: A fair institutional anxiety. G.: The only kind worth having. S.: Let us turn to the OED, then. G.: If we must. S.: You wanted the first use of personality. G.: Yes, or at least the dictionary’s preferred first use, which is never quite the same thing. S.: Because dictionaries are historical only after a fashion. G.: Exactly. They are museums run by very literate opportunists. S.: Still, they can tell one roughly when personality enters English in a recognisable abstract sense. G.: They can. And one may then discover whether the word first appears as a theological, legal, dramatic, or psychological growth from person. S.: The old senses often include what belongs to the status of a person rather than characterological distinctiveness. G.: Exactly. Which is important. Personality once had a more legal-metaphysical life before becoming a parlour word for charm. S.: So perhaps the dictionary would actually support your distinction. G.: Perhaps. Though I do not give a hoot what the dictionary says. S.: I thought not. G.: I consult it the way one consults a map of a town one already suspects was rebuilt badly. S.: Yet even so, the map may show that personality did not begin as mere temperament. G.: True enough. It may show a development from the condition or fact of being a person, or from personhood in some doctrinal sense, before the later psychological narrowing or expansion. S.: Which would make Punzo’s title less frivolous than your first irritation suggested. G.: Less frivolous, yes. Not necessarily less inflationary. S.: Because even a historically respectable derivative may still be conceptually awkward in philosophy. G.: Precisely. Historical innocence does not guarantee present usefulness. S.: And Cicero? G.: Cicero would object on several fronts at once. S.: Not only to pro-sona. G.: No. He would find the schoolboy derivation laughable, the Etruscan correction learned but possibly beside his own living usage, and personalitas probably barbarous in more than one way. S.: So if one announced to Cicero that persona is Etruscan, not Greek prosopon, and that later thinkers have added personalitas and then personalità, he would raise an eyebrow. G.: Two eyebrows, if available. One for the etymology, one for the suffix. S.: Yet he used persona in rich ways. G.: Very rich ways. Mask, role, legal standing, rhetorical position, moral posture. Enough to keep half the humanities employed. S.: Which again suggests that multiplying into personalità may be either a useful development or a deplorable overgrowth. G.: Exactly. The question is whether one needs the multiplication or merely enjoys it. S.: Punzo in 1952 may have needed it for psychology. G.: Perhaps. Psychology does have a weakness for suffixes. S.: Whereas you and Strawson prefer the unmultiplied noun. G.: Very much so. Person will do an astonishing amount of work if one lets it. S.: Then the philosophical moral is clear enough. Personal identity concerns the identity of a person. It is not a hybrid realm called personal identity as opposed to identity simpliciter. Personality concerns the relatively contingent organisation of traits, style, and psychological profile. Reid’s objection is about the first, not the second. Locke can answer better than Reid allows because person in Locke is already a forensic notion richer than the caricature. Strawson’s descriptive metaphysics places person among the indispensable concepts of our scheme, not personalità. G.: Splendidly compressed. S.: And the philological afterword is less clear. G.: Quite rightly. Philology ought occasionally to remain less clear than metaphysics, if only to discourage vanity. S.: Still, one can say that the old pro-sona tale is too neat, the Etruscan line is at least a learned corrective, and the OED is useful only as a record of English lexical manners, not as an oracle. G.: Exactly. The OED tells us what English writers did, not what Cicero ought to have meant. S.: Nor what you ought to tolerate. G.: Heaven forbid. S.: Then is it good to multiply persona into personalità? G.: Sometimes yes, in psychology and perhaps in social description. In first philosophy, generally no, unless one enjoys repairing confusions one has just manufactured. S.: So your punchline is conservative. G.: Merely economical. S.: Persona first, personalità if needed. G.: Exactly. Do not build the annexe before the house. S.: And if the dictionary protests? G.: Let it. Dictionaries are excellent for recording annexes. S.: While Cicero remains in the main building. G.: Complaining about the plasterwork. S.: And Strawson in another room, insisting that person is conceptually basic. G.: Yes, and forgetting to cite me. S.: While Punzo decorates the corridor with personalità. G.: In 1952, no less. S.: Then perhaps the final settlement is this. We may allow Punzo his corridor, Reid his officer, Locke his forensic person, Strawson his basic particular, the OED its dates, and Cicero his contempt. G.: Provided no one asks the officer’s personality to do the officer’s person’s work. S.: Or the dictionary’s work to do Cicero’s. G.: Exactly. S.: Dry enough? G.: Sufficiently Oxonian, with an Etruscan aftertaste. S.: And the suffix? G.: Best kept on a short leash. S.: Like most psychological abstractions. G.: Especially the personable ones. S.: Then personality is what happens when person acquires admirers. G.: Or a publisher. S.: I shall note both. G.: Do, but do not call it personalitas in front of Cicero. S.: He would object? G.: He would object so hard that even the OED would forget its first citation.Punzo, Giorgio (1952). Psicologia della personalità. Napoli: Liguori.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Verbali: Purgotti – Ossia: Grice e Purgotti: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale metrica, o chemica filosofica nel lizio, la scuola di Cagli, la filosofia marchese, e la filosofia italiana.  (Cagli). Abstract. Keywords. Filosofo italiano Sebastiano Purgotti (Cagli, Pesaro, Marche): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale metrica, o chemica filosofica nel lizio. Grice’s reason-governed conversational meaning explains how an utterance can reliably convey more than its literal content because hearers presume a cooperative, rational exchange and so infer conversational implicatures from what is said, the context, and the norms of relevance, informativeness, sincerity, and perspicuity; the key point is that the “extra” meaning is not a free poetic aura but something for which the speaker is answerable in virtue of publicly recoverable reasons. Purgotti, as presented in your passage, represents almost the opposite temperament: a lincean, quantitatively minded polymath for whom intellectual responsibility is exemplified by measurement, experimental control, and exact proportionality (stechiometry), so that what counts as good reasoning is what can be stabilized by method—dose, scale, reproducibility—across chemistry, mathematics, hydrology, and the atom-theory debates. The contrast then becomes a contrast of domains and of what “governs” meaning: Grice locates governance in practical rationality between interlocutors (a minimal remark, a shift in register, or a deliberate “under-informativeness” can trigger a predictable inferential uptake), whereas Purgotti’s imagined “metric/chemical implicature” relocates the metaphor of governance to the lab, suggesting that a small, well-placed verbal adjustment functions like a reagent—changing the “state” of an argument and making transformations visible without proclamation. Where Grice would insist that implicature is calculated by the hearer from conversational principles (and is cancellable, defeasible, context-bound), the Purgotti analogy stresses calibration and controlled effects: not “magic” but the disciplined management of conditions under which an inference is licensed, much as chemical explanation replaces occult qualities with proportioned interaction. In short, Grice provides the explicit theory of how reason organizes inferential meaning in talk, while Purgotti provides (in your stylized pairing) an ideal of scientific exactness that serves as a comparative image for why a tiny conversational move can have large, predictable consequences when the “mixture” of shared assumptions, aims, and evidential constraints is right. Dei lincei. Dei georgo-fili di Firenze. Studia a Roma sotto AMELIA e PALLIERI. Insegna a Perugia. Spazia dalle scienze fisico-chimiche all'idro-logia minerale, dalle scienze matematiche alle filosofiche con particolare riguardo alla teoria dell’atomo. Questa memoria la patria che dagli scritti e dalle virtu del sommo scienziato ha tanto lustro ed onore nato in Cagli. Qui riposa insigne chimico e matematico esempio raro di virtu domestiche e civile.  Pubblica nel Giornale di Perugia. Lettere ad un amico intorno a vari filosofici argomenti; Riflessioni sulla teoria dell’atomo; Trattato di chimica applicato specialmente alla medicina e alla agri-coltura; Trattato elementare di chimica applicata specialmente alla medicina; Trattato elementare di chimica applicata specialmente alla medicina e alla agricoltura; Intorno all'azione dell'acido solfo-idrico sul solfato di protossido di ferro; Osservazioni intorno a varie inesattezze che allignano nei moderni corsi di matematica elementare”; Riflessioni sopra un opuscolo che porta per titolo se si possa difendere, ed insegnare non come ipotesi, ma come verissima, e come tesi la mobilita della terra, e la stabilita del sole da chi ha fatta la professione di fede di Pio IV”; “Elementi di aritmetica, algebra, e geo-metria”; “Studi chimici sull’acque minerali di Valle Zangona”; “Intorno agl’usi ed effetti dell’acue minerali”; “Riflessioni sulla teoria dell’atomo”; “Chimica”; “Analisi dell’acque minerali di S. Gemini”; “Aritmetica e algebra”; “Chimica organica”; “Saggio di filosofia chimica”; “Geo-metria”; “Problemi tratti dagl’elementi di Aritmetica”; Algebra e geo-metria; Nozioni elementari ragionate del calcolo aritmetico”; “Intorno al primitivo insegnamento di la scienza della quantità”; “Chimica in-organica”; “Metalli delle terre aride e metalli propriamente detti. implicatura metrica, filosofia chimica, il fluido bio-tico nella manifestazione degli spiriti, algorismo.  Grice: Purgotti, ieri ho avuto un breve scambio con Speranza—che si ostina a fare il filosofo anche quando parla di termometri e di acque minerali—e mi ha detto: “Con Purgotti, persino un’‘implicatura’ sembra misurabile: o è metrica, o è chimica.” Purgotti: E perché no? A Cagli si impara presto che la precisione non è un vizio. Tra atomi, acidi solfo‑idrici e solfati di protossido di ferro, se sbagli una dose non fai filosofia: fai fumo. E poi, da buon linceo, preferisco l’esperimento alle pose. Grice: Speranza e io, dopo quella battuta, siamo rimasti un attimo a fissare la parola “chimica” come se fosse un reagente linguistico. Perché “chimica” viene da χημεία (e se vogliamo, anche χυμεία): sembra già una parola che mescola, fonde, distilla. E in un “lizio” pieno di categorie, bastano due ingredienti—metrica e χημεία—perché una tesi cambi stato, passi da solida a gassosa senza chiedere permesso. E allora capisci che certe idee, quando vengono dette “con misura”, non si limitano a informare: innescano. Purgotti: Implicatura chimico‑esplosiva la vostra—di te e Speranza—e lui la chiamerebbe così volentieri, purché gli si garantisca che l’esplosione è controllata. Perché è proprio questo il punto: la chimica buona non fa saltare il laboratorio, fa vedere le trasformazioni. In filosofia succede uguale: un’osservazione minima (un “metrico” ben piazzato, una χημεία ben dosata) cambia il colore dell’argomento senza bisogno di proclami. E se qualcuno vuole il segreto, glielo dico da marchigiano: non è magia—è stechiometria conversazionale. . Purgotti, Sebastiano (1837). Saggio storico sulla città di Perugia. Perugia: Bartelli.