H. P. GRICE E J. L. SPERANZA: LA CONVERSAZIONE -- I VERBALI: PL
Catalogue
Raisonné of J. L. Speranza’s Publications – H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La
Conversazione – I Verbali: PL
Speranza, J. L.
(n. d.). ‘Grice e Plantadossi: l’implicatura conversazionale e gl’universali,
l’implicatura conversazionale, la scuola di Ripatransone, la filosofia
marchese, e la filosofia italiana (Ripatransone). Filosofo italiano.
Ripatransone, Ascoli Piceno, Giovanni
Plantadossi (Ripatransone, Ascoli Piceno, Marche): l’implicatura
conversazionale e gl’universali, l’implicatura conversazionale, la scuola di
Ripatransone, la filosofia marchese, e la filosofia italiana. Grice’s reason-governed account of conversational meaning starts from
the idea that hearers treat speakers as rational agents in a cooperative
enterprise, so that they recover what is meant by attributing intentions under
shared norms (relevance, informativeness, clarity, etc.), and they compute
implicatures when a literal contribution would otherwise seem pointlessly weak,
oddly chosen, or in tension with the assumed goal of the exchange.
“Plantadossi” (better: Iohannes de Ripa / Giovanni da Ripatransone) sits at an
instructive angle to this, because scholastic practice at the Sorbonne is
itself a highly regulated conversational game: the Sentences lecturing cycle,
quaestiones, determinationes, and sets of conclusiones are moves governed by
institutional rules of burden, objection, reply, and authorized inference, with
uptake presupposed by the shared methodological commitments of the disputants.
In that setting, what modern pragmatics calls implicature can be seen as
structurally built in: a one-word title like Conclusiones functions less as an
informative descriptor than as a genre-marker licensing an audience to supply
the missing contextual frame (the teaching occasion, the disputed loci, the
baccalaureus’s role), much as Gricean hearers supply missing content to
preserve rationality and relevance; likewise, a technical innovation such as
immutatio vitalis in discussions of visio beatifica can be read as a controlled
way of satisfying multiple conversational constraints at once (saying enough to
secure the doctrinal and metaphysical desiderata, but not so much as to
collapse creator/creature distance), i.e., a scholastic analogue of maximizing
communicative goals under tight normative limits. The contrast, then, is that
Grice theorizes these norms as lightweight, flexible presumptions of everyday
talk, whereas the Parisian scholastic arena makes them explicit, juridical, and
role-bound; but the underlying commonality is that in both cases meaning is not
exhausted by what is said, because participants rely on shared rules of
rational exchange to bridge from formula to intended doctrine, from sparse
heading to recognized argumentative move. Conclusiones,
Lectura super sententiarum, prologi; questiones; Questio de gradu supremo. Not
to be confused with [Giovanni] FRANCESCO of Marchia. This is JOHN of
Marchia. Nannini – metafisica, idea, exemplaris. Grice, “The problem of the
universals: from Ripa to me.” Giovanni da Ripa.
Giovanni da Ripatransone. Giovanni da Ripatransone, Iohannes de Ripa; o de
Marchia, Giovanni da Ripatransone, Iohannes de Ripa; o de Marchia, filosofo,
detto dottore difficile e dottore sovra-suttile. Francescano, baccelliere
sentenziario alla Sorbona. Filosofo di primo piano, si confronta colle
posizioni di filosofi francescani, come MARCA , e agostiniani, come RIMINI ,
non senza ignorare le dispute oxoniensi tra Bradwardine
e Buckingham. Importante è la sua soluzione al problema della visio
beatifica, e in partic. il concetto di immutatio vitalis, volto a
salvaguardare, nella presenza compiuta dell’essenza divina a un intelletto
creato, sia l’insuperabile distanza tra Dio e la creatura, sia la pienezza
della beatitudine. Significative anche le sue riflessioni sul rapporto tra
immensità divina e infinità possibile nell’ordine creaturale, e sulla
possibilità di confrontare diversi tipi di infinito, che si ripercuoteno sulla
dimostrabilità dell’esistenza del divino, mentre sulla questione dei futuri
contingenti rimase nella scia di Scoto. Oltre che in relazione alla sua tesi
delle distinzioni formali in Dio, che già suscita la scandalizzata reazione di
Gerson, P. è studiato pelle sue dottrine trinitarie e cristologiche. Tra i suoi
saggi vanno ricordate la lectura sui libri delle sentenze di Lombardo, la
quaestio de gradu supremo e infine le determinationes. Giovanni da Ripa, o da
Ripatransone, al secolo Giovanni P. filosofo, teologo e religioso
italiano. implicatura, universale, il problema degl’universali,
Combes, Vignaux, Nannini. Grice: “St John’s. Old Kneale and his wife are
running a wonderfully earnest seminar in Oxford on the growth of logic, and
Potts, one of my tutees, came back looking pleased with himself. “Today was on
the Conclusiones,” he said, as if that settled anything. “Conclusiones of
what?” I asked. “John of Ripa’s early Paris stuff, circa 1354—back when
Italians were fashionable because their Latin made the Franks sound like they’d
learned it from a shop sign.” “That still doesn’t tell me what he’s concluding
about,” I said. Potts looked almost relieved. “That’s the best part,” he said.
“The Kneales didn’t supply any conclusive evidence that they knew either.”
“Oxford scholarship for you,” I told him, and set him an essay for next week:
How to conclude without knowing what you’re concluding about—and how your
audience manages to cooperate anyway.” Grice:
Plantadossi, ho letto con grande interesse delle sue riflessioni sul problema
degli universali. Mi incuriosisce come lei riesca a collegare l’implicatura
conversazionale alla questione metafisica: secondo lei, il linguaggio può
davvero aiutarci a sciogliere i nodi dei concetti universali? Plantadossi: Caro
Grice, la conversazione filosofica è spesso il terreno privilegiato per
affrontare tali problemi. L’implicatura, come lei insegna, mostra che molto di
ciò che intendiamo va oltre il detto — e questo vale anche per gli universali,
che si manifestano nel dialogo come idee condivise e, a volte, contestate tra
interlocutori. Grice: Mi trova d’accordo! Penso che l’implicatura sia la chiave
per capire come le idee universali siano trasmesse, non solo formalmente, ma
anche nel modo in cui le viviamo e le interpretiamo. Nella sua “lectura super
sententiarum”, come affronta il rapporto tra immutatio vitalis e la distanza
tra il divino e il creato? Plantadossi: La mia tesi è che la beatitudine, pur
essendo pienezza, non annulla mai la differenza tra Dio e creatura. L’immutatio
vitalis rappresenta un mutamento interno dell’intelletto, che accoglie la
presenza divina senza abolire la distanza. Così, anche nel dialogo, possiamo
avvicinarci alla verità, pur rimanendo consapevoli dei nostri limiti. Il
linguaggio è ponte, ma mai scorciatoia. Plantadossi, Giovanni (1354).
Conclusiones. Sorbona.
Speranza, J. L.
(n. d.). ‘Grice e Plebe: all’isola, la ragione conversazionele o il dizionario
della conversazione, la filosofia siciliana, la scuola d’Alessandria, la
filosofia piemontese, e la filosofia italiana (Alessandria). Filosofo
italiano. Alessandria, Piemonte. Armando
Plebe (Alessandria, Piemonte): all’isola, la ragione conversazionele o il
dizionario della conversazione, la filosofia siciliana, la scuola
d’Alessandria, la filosofia piemontese, e la filosofia italiana. Grice’s account of reason-governed conversational meaning starts from
the thought that understanding is a rational achievement under shared norms:
interlocutors presume cooperation, attribute intentions, and compute
implicatures when what is said would otherwise look irrational or unhelpful, so
that the “extra” meaning is what a reasonable hearer is licensed to infer given
the speaker’s apparent respect for (or strategic flouting of) relevance,
informativeness, sincerity, and clarity. Plebe, as your passage frames him,
approaches many of the same phenomena from a different angle, via rhetoric,
classical philology, and the history of ancient thought: his recurring interest
in Cicero, Quintilian, and the Latin rhetorical tradition foregrounds how
meaning is shaped by culturally stabilized techniques of address,
audience-management, and persuasive form, i.e., by an art of speaking well
rather than by a quasi-mathematical ideal of cooperative inference; in that
sense Plebe can be read as supplying a thicker genealogy for what Grice formalizes,
because rhetorical practice already presupposes that hearers will routinely go
beyond the literal and will treat strategic understatement, emphasis, and
indirection as intelligible moves within a shared social game. Online
bibliographic pointers add a useful specificity to this comparison: Plebe’s
Introduzione alla logica formale (Laterza; various catalogues date it
1964/1966, with an explicit Aristotelian orientation) shows his willingness to
bring modern formal tools to bear on ancient materials, while Breve storia
della retorica antica (catalogued in 1968 at Laterza, but also attested in a
1961 Nuova Accademia edition in library records) places him squarely in the
tradition where “implicature-like” effects are treated as standard rhetorical
resources; put together, these strands suggest a clean contrast that still
yields convergence, namely that Grice treats implicature as the product of
rational cooperative constraints on conversation, whereas Plebe’s
rhetorical-historical lens treats indirectness and surplus meaning as normal
products of trained discourse in which the governing “reason” is not only
logical accountability but also stylistic economy, decorum, and the practical
aim of moving an audience. Grice: “I think I love P.: he contributes
a beautiful chapter on Cicero and Latin rhetoric for his ‘brief history of
ancient rhetoric,’ and, like my tutee Strawson, he approaches Aristotle and
modernist logic in a genial way --.” I have been criticised for titling
‘Sicilian philosophy’ -- anyone from Sicily, even if he left Sicily when he was
three years old. In such a case, P. is a representative of Sicilian philosophy,
my critic would say. Born in Italy, he jumps to the isle to teach …
philosophy!” Seguo il verso di ORAZIO . Odio la massa e me ne tengo
lontano. Solo in questo sono uomo di destra. Studia a Torino. Insegna a Perugia
e Palermo. Filosofo inizialmente marxista, ha una clamorosa rottura e viene
annoverato fra i sostenitori dell'anti-comunismo politico-culturale. Dopo una
militanza con i social-democratici di Saragat, aderisce al movimento sociale.
Rompe anche. Adere al partito democrazia nazionale. Storico della filosofia, in
particolare la antica filosofia italica. il dizionario, Gentile hegeliano,
Torino SEI, storia della filosofia, antica filosofia italica, filosofia italica
e filosofia romana, antica filosofia romana, filosofia dell’antica roma, azione
e reazione, cicerone e la retorica Latina, la rhetorica ad herennium; Cicerone
e la disputa tra retorica e filosofia; la retorica come arte nel ‘De oratore’
ciceroniano; la polemica di Quintiliano contro Seneca sulle sententiae; forma a
contenuto nella retorica ciceroniana; il dialogo de oratoribus; quintiliano, la
decadenza della retorica Latina; lessico logico, valore di verita, Strawson citato
da P, testo di Strawson tradutto da Plebe in “Logica formale”, la polemica
Grice/Quine sotto Aristotele, connetivi, quantificatori, quadrato
dell’opposizione, indice alla storia della filosofia antica di Plebe, approccio
hegeliano alla storia della filosofia antica Latina – indice. Grice: “St John’s,
1954. Pears has invited me to open his Third Programme series on metaphysics,
and he says—without blinking—that the aim is to “educate the masses.” He also
tells me he wants a whole run on what he insists on calling “the freedom of the
will.” “Why not just ‘free will’?” I say. “It’s idiomatic, and it spares us the
sound of a sermon.” Pears replies that sermons are precisely what Auntie Beeb
is for. “Then,” I tell him, “you should have a look at Plebe. Blackwell’s has
his new Filosofia della libertà in the window, which is either a title or a
dare.” Pears, being Pears, is perfectly calm: whatever Plebe means by it, he
says, will be cleared up by the Bolognese in due course—and in any case Bologna
has always fancied itself older than Oxford, which they once had the impudence
to Latinise as Vadum Boum. Still, I add, I hope Plebe doesn’t mean what Isaiah
Berlin means: Berlin calls it the history of ideas, but it’s mostly taxonomy
with good manners. If we are going to talk about freedom on the wireless, it
ought to be philosophy, not a guided tour of slogans. G.: Turin, 1950. Plebe
has produced one of those titles that make one feel philosophy is trying on an
overcoat. S.: Which title. G.: Il concetto hegeliano di filosofia
della storia. One can hear the youth in every syllable. Not history.
Not Hegel and history. But the Hegelian concept of philosophy of history. S.:
You object to the scholastic weight of it. G.: I object to its confidence. A
man of twenty-one writes as if he has already decided that history requires two
things before breakfast: a concept, and Hegel to provide it. S.: Under Guzzo,
that is hardly surprising. G.: Quite. Guzzo published La filosofia della storia
in 1945. A relatore who has made philosophy of history sound like a living room
rather than a ruin will naturally produce pupils who think it normal to install
themselves there. S.: And Guzzo would not have regarded philosophy of history
as antiquarian lumber. G.: No. In Turin it was alive. In Oxford it is mostly a
smell from another century unless Collingwood walks in carrying it under his
arm. That is the first contrast. S.: Yet you are not against it entirely. G.: I
am against the phrase when it pretends to do too much. “Philosophy of history”
sounds, in young hands, like the sort of discipline that ought to settle
everything from Waterloo to the Kingdom of Prussia by means of a sufficiently
elevated noun. S.: Which is, admittedly, very Hegelian. G.: Or very
anti-Hegelian, depending on whether the youth is quoting him or correcting him.
The title has the proper filial insolence. It can be read as school obedience
or school rebellion. “The Hegelian concept of philosophy of history” may mean:
here is the doctrine of the master. Or: here are the limits of the doctrine,
respectfully demonstrated under the eyes of the master’s delegate. S.: You are
turning Plebe into a subtle strategist. G.: Any thesis under a relatore is
strategy with footnotes. The student is saying two things at once. I am your pupil.
And: I have noticed where you are wrong. S.: Then tell me where you think the
pressure lies. G.: In the genitive, or rather in the Italian avoidance of one. Il concetto hegeliano di filosofia della storia. Not della filosofia della
storia. That is the nice point. He does not say “the concept
of the philosophy of history,” as if “philosophy of history” were already a
secured department. He says “the Hegelian concept of philosophy of history,”
which allows the whole thing to remain under Hegel’s specific responsibility.
S.: You like the di. G.: I like it because it is less pompous than it looks. It
says: this is Hegel’s way of construing the enterprise, not an eternal faculty
of the mind. S.: But you still prefer Vico. G.: If I am to be asked, in Italy,
to sit through a philosophy of history, I should like it to begin with Vico
before any tedesco starts unfolding Spirit across Europe. S.: Ah yes. Your
anti-Hegelian patriotism by proxy. G.: Not patriotism. Propriety. If Naples has
already given us Vico, why should Turin send a Piemontese boy to kneel before
Hegel on this particular altar. S.: Because Turin is not Naples. G.: Exactly.
Turin has its own intellectual weather, and that weather is drier, more
school-like, more willing to let Hegel sound like a live academic subject
rather than a rival claim to Vico’s throne. S.: So for Guzzo and Plebe,
philosophy of history is a living thing. G.: Yes, and that is what Grice’s
Oxford largely lacks. Oxford has history, and it has philosophy, and it
occasionally allows them to shake hands, but it distrusts the compound whenever
it begins to sound teleological. S.: Not entirely. There is Collingwood. G.:
Collingwood is the bridge, not the city. He carries enough of
idealist-historicist seriousness to remind Oxford that history is not a heap of
dates. But he is not Hegel in a gown and certainly not Guzzo in Italian. S.:
And Berlin later. G.: Berlin philosophises about ideas in history, not about
history as a self-unfolding rational whole. The Chichele is a good place to resist
monism, not to enthrone it. S.: Gardiner too. G.: Gardiner philosophises about
historical explanation, which is a much more English enterprise: how historians
explain, what counts as cause, how objectivity behaves. It is not Geist in
search of a state. S.: So Grice’s Oxford is suspicious of philosophy of
history. G.: Suspicious of the strong kind. It is willing to philosophise about
history, but less willing to let history itself become the great
self-interpreting process. S.: Which brings us back to Plebe. You hear in his
title the pressure of school and counter-school. G.: Yes. And also the problem
of lineality versus recurrence. S.: Explain. G.: Hegel’s philosophy of history
wants a line. Not a straight line, to be fair, but a dialectical advance: Spirit,
freedom, state, world-history, the lot. Vico gives you recurrence: corsi and
ricorsi, structured returns, not simple repetition but the thought that human
things come round again. S.: And you want to apply that contrast not merely to
history but to the history of philosophy. G.: Naturally. Because if the history
of philosophy is simply lineal, then one gets those ridiculous textbook
processions: Plato to Aristotle, Kant to Hegel, Moore to Russell, Russell to
all who matter, and so on. S.: You dislike processions. G.: I dislike any
procession that forgets that problems return in philosophy. They do not simply
get buried by successors. A problem can be solved, and then solved again, and
then reappear as if no one had solved it at all. S.: So not thesis, antithesis,
synthesis. G.: No. That triad is schoolroom Hegel and hardly worth dignifying.
I prefer something more modest and more accurate: problem, solution, new
problem. Or perhaps problem, attempted solution, rediscovered problem. S.:
Which is already more Vichian than Hegelian. G.: In the sense that it allows
recurrence, yes. Not mechanical circles, but the return of questions under new
forms. S.: Give me an example. G.: Plato and Aristotle, if you like. One can
tell a lineal story: Plato first, Aristotle revises. But one can also tell a
recurrent story: problems of universals, substance, reason, politics, and
explanation return under altered idioms. S.: Hence your absurd compounds. G.:
Aristokant, Kantotle, Heglato. Yes. They are absurd only because textbooks are
too neat. In real philosophy the old problems leak forward and the new
solutions leak backward. We do not merely move from Plato to Hegel; sometimes
we discover Plathegel, or Heglato if you prefer a stronger monstrosity. S.: And
this is where the history of philosophy becomes unlike history simpliciter. G.:
Precisely. History simpliciter gives you Waterloo, Trafalgar, Charles I losing
his head, the French Revolution, the American Revolution before it, all the
events Hegel likes because they let him sound like Providence with a timetable.
S.: And the Prussian state waiting at the end like a rather over-dressed
conclusion. G.: Quite. The Kaiser of Prussia as if he were the highest mode of
being. One can see why Italians might hesitate before treating that as their
own culmination. S.: Especially in postwar 1950. G.: Especially then. That is
what makes Plebe’s early Hegel book interesting in context. Italy has just come
out of one sort of historical grand narrative and is being asked to take another
one seriously in the lecture room. S.: And because he is young, perhaps too
young for the war in the full older sense, he can still treat philosophy of
history as a live academic programme rather than as a wreck. G.: Exactly. He is
of the generation that reaches the university just after catastrophe but not
yet in its full personal burden. So his relation to history is scholarly before
it is penitential. S.: Unlike Piovani. G.: Unlike Piovani, yes. Piovani has
wartime journalism, fascist slogans, a moral re-entry to perform. Plebe has
Turin, Guzzo, Hegel, and the problem of whether philosophy of history is still
respectable after the collapse of so many public absolutes. S.: Then perhaps
the title is not pompous but brave. G.: I would not go that far. It is still
pompous. But it is pompous in a recognisably academic way. The youth has
decided that the right answer to history is another noun. S.: Oxford would have
preferred a thinner title. G.: Oxford would have preferred Hegel and History,
and then spent the book denying that either term had been defined. S.: You are
unfair. G.: I am local. S.: Then let us ask the direct question. Did Hegel
himself use Geschichtsphilosophie. G.: The safer phrase is Philosophie der
Geschichte. The compound belongs more readily to later German habits. Plebe,
being Italian, cannot make a single Germanic word of it, and perhaps does not
want to. So he gets the matter right by being clumsy. S.: Il concetto hegeliano
di filosofia della storia. G.: Exactly. Young, earnest, thesis-like, and
careful enough not to write “concept of history,” which would be far more
diffuse. S.: Because “concept of philosophy of history” suggests that Hegel is
not merely thinking about history, but about the discipline itself. G.: Which
is what the young scholar wants to prove. Hegel did not merely have views on
historical events; he gave shape to the very enterprise that treats history
philosophically. S.: And then one can limit him from within. G.: Precisely. The
best way to attack a giant is first to grant that he built the room in which
you are standing. S.: That sounds more Hegelian than Vichian. G.: A tactical
Hegelianism is sometimes the best way of defending Vico. S.: Then compare them
directly. G.: Gladly. Vico gives you recurrence, poetic wisdom, nations making
their own world, the civil world as made and therefore knowable. Hegel gives
you direction, Spirit, freedom unfolding, world-history as cumulative
rationality. S.: So one is circular, the other progressive. G.: Broadly yes.
Vico is cyclical or recurrent. Hegel is developmental and non-circular. But
philosophy itself behaves, I think, more like Vico than Hegel. S.: There you go
again. G.: Because philosophy’s problems return. They are not simply outgrown.
We still ask about universals, action, freedom, personhood, knowledge, and law.
We ask them in new diction, but the recurrence is real. S.: Yet there is also
lineality. G.: Certainly. Plato before Aristotle is not the same as Aristotle
before Plato. Kant before Hegel is not the same as Hegel before Kant. Some
orders matter because solutions become available only after certain
formulations. S.: So the right image is not a circle and not a straight line.
G.: More like a winding track with recognisable stations and recurring
landscapes. Or, to stay less poetic, a sequence of problem-clusters that
reappear under altered conceptual pressures. S.: Which means the history of
philosophy has a unity, but not the sort of unity Hegel hoped to assign to
world-history. G.: Exactly. A unity of revisitable problems, not a unity of
final destination. S.: That would already trouble Guzzo. G.: Not necessarily. A
good relatore can tolerate a gifted pupil discovering that “philosophy of
history” is safer when applied to the history of philosophy than to history itself.
S.: Because philosophy offers recurrence without cannon fire. G.: And without
the beheading of Charles I, though Oxford never quite forgets that one either.
S.: Or Waterloo. Or Trafalgar. G.: Or the French Revolution, which Hegel loved
as a philosophical event and everyone else had to survive as an actual one. S.:
And the American Revolution before it. G.: Yes. There is the key contrast.
Hegel’s philosophy of history feeds on history simpliciter: wars, states,
revolutions, constitutions, victories, defeats. Philosophy of the history of
philosophy feeds on texts, arguments, recoveries, refutations, and the strange
fact that the dead keep answering back. S.: So if Plebe writes on Hegel’s
philosophy of history, he is one step away from being pulled into a larger
problem: why philosophy of history at all, and not simply history. G.:
Precisely. And perhaps that is the hidden drama of the title. It looks like one
more dutiful Turinese exercise under Guzzo, but it already contains the crack.
S.: The crack being. G.: That if one asks too hard what philosophy of history
is, one may end up preferring a philosophy of the history of philosophy
instead. S.: Which is more manageable, more textual, and less dangerous. G.:
Less dangerous politically, yes. Less likely to conclude in Prussian absolutes
or Italian imitations of them. S.: You are still thinking of postwar Europe.
G.: One cannot avoid it in 1950. The word history itself has changed
temperature. Germans and Italians alike are trying to re-enter decency. Oxford
pretends to have remained decent by continuity, which is its own vanity. S.:
And Grice. G.: Grice has the winning side’s privilege of continuity, yes. He
can turn from war to ordinary language and treat the return as if it were a
refinement rather than a moral reconstruction. S.: Whereas Plebe can return to
Hegel because he is young enough to encounter Hegel academically, not
penitentially. G.: Yes. Which is why the title still smells of classroom rather
than catastrophe. S.: Yet the larger point remains: does philosophy need the
philosophy of history to understand itself. G.: It may. But not in the way
Hegel thinks. What philosophy needs is some account of why its questions recur
and why its answers never stay dead. S.: That is nearly Vico. G.: Nearly. Vico
with footnotes and less folklore. S.: And perhaps more Oxford. G.: Oxford likes
recurrence once it can call it “revisiting the ancients.” S.: Then perhaps
Plebe is more useful than he first appears. G.: Quite. A ridiculous title can
hide a real pressure. Young men often discover important things while sounding
pompous. S.: You are generous now. G.: Age allows it. One sees that “Il
concetto hegeliano di filosofia della storia” is the sort of title a
twenty-one-year-old writes when he suspects, dimly but correctly, that history
is too much for philosophy and philosophy too recurrent for history. S.: And
Guzzo? G.: Guzzo lets the young man write it because he too believes philosophy
of history is alive. That is the point. Turin still grants the subject citizenship.
S.: Whereas Oxford grants it only visas. G.: Well put. Oxford lets Collingwood
speak, lets Berlin historicise ideas, lets Gardiner analyse explanation. But it
does not, on the whole, hand over the keys to a strong speculative philosophy
of history. S.: Then where does the conversation end. G.: With Plebe standing
between Vico and Hegel, pretending to serve the latter while perhaps smuggling
the former in through the back door. S.: And Grice. G.: Grice, hearing all this
from Oxford, says: if history is linear, that is tidy; if it recurs, that is
truer; and if philosophy’s own history proceeds by recurring problems and
repaired solutions, then perhaps what matters is not philosophy of history but
history enough to keep philosophy modest. S.: That sounds suspiciously final.
G.: Then let me ruin it. If the history of philosophy were purely Hegelian,
Oxford would be impossible. If it were purely Vichian, Turin would be bored. As
it is, both survive, which is proof enough that neither has finished the argument.Grice:
Professore Plebe, ho sempre ammirato il suo contributo sulla retorica latina,
specialmente la sua analisi di Cicerone. Trovo che il
suo approccio unisca tradizione e originalità: come vede oggi il ruolo della
retorica nella filosofia italiana? Plebe: Grazie, Grice! La retorica, secondo
me, rimane una chiave per comprendere il pensiero filosofico, soprattutto nella
nostra tradizione. Cicerone ha saputo legare forma e contenuto, e oggi questa
sintesi dovrebbe guidare il modo in cui dialoghiamo e argomentiamo. Lei stesso,
con la sua teoria della conversazione, ha dato nuova linfa a questo tema!
Grice: È vero, e confesso che il suo modo di integrare logica e storia mi ha
ispirato. Ho notato che spesso cita Strawson, ma aggiunge una prospettiva tutta
italiana: come crede che la filosofia logica possa arricchire la discussione
filosofica, senza perderne la dimensione umana? Plebe: La logica, se intesa
come lessico vivo e non come arida matematica, può arricchire la filosofia. Ho
tradotto Strawson proprio per questo: perché il dialogo logico sia un ponte,
non una barriera. La conversazione, come lei insegna, implica ascolto e
comprensione reciproca. E solo così la filosofia può tornare a essere parte
integrante della nostra vita culturale. Plebe, Armando (1948). Il concetto di
filosofia della storia. Sotto Guzzo. Torino.
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