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

 

 

Verbali: Pubblicio

 

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.

 

Verbali: Pucci

 

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.

 

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.

 

 

Verbali: Puccinotti

 

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.

 

Verbali: Pudenziano

 

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.

 

 

Verbali: Punzo

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

Verbali: Purgotti

 

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. .