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

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Vacca – Ossia: Grice e Vacca: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’ala del silenzio. Note su Filosofia politica e filosofia giuridica. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice Giuseppe Vacca (Bari, Puglia): Institutionally, Giuseppe Vacca is much closer to H. P. Grice than many of the figures you have been comparing, because both are recognisably university intellectuals; but they still belong to very different institutional ecologies. Grice’s formula is exact in the Oxford sense. Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s means a college office with tutorials, students, and membership in the governing life of the college. CUF University Lecturer in philosophy means a university-wide appointment in the faculty structure. So Grice combines the intimate tutorial culture of the college with the wider faculty structure of the university. Giuseppe Vacca, by contrast, belongs to the Italian university-state and public-political world. He was born in Bari in 1939, took his degree in filosofia del diritto in 1961 with a thesis on Benedetto Croce, became libero docente in storia delle dottrine politiche in 1966, won the chair at the University of Bari in 1975, and combined academic life with a long public career in publishing, party culture, the RAI, Parliament, and the Fondazione Istituto Gramsci. The standard biographical sources describe Giuseppe Vacca in exactly these terms: as a professor of political doctrines, organizer of culture, parliamentarian, director and later president of the Fondazione Istituto Gramsci, and a major interpreter of the history of Italian Marxism and twentieth-century political culture. Giuseppe Vacca was born in Bari in 1939, graduated in filosofia del diritto in 1961 with a thesis on Benedetto Croce, became libero docente in 1966, won the chair at Bari in 1975, served in the RAI and Parliament, and directed then presided over the Fondazione Istituto Gramsci. [it.wikipedia.org], [fazieditore.it], [san.beniculturali.it], [treccanilibri.it] So the clean institutional contrast is this. Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate and university-faculty world. Vacca belongs to the public-professorial, cultural-political, and university-state world of modern Italy. That institutional difference fits your philosophical comparison rather well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising intentions and inferring implicatures under shared norms. Vacca, by contrast, works at the macro-level of civic and political reason. He is not a theorist of speaker-meaning or conversational inference, but a thinker of political culture, historical formation, and the institutions through which public reason becomes effective. The biographical record shows that his work moved from Croce and the origins of Marxism in Italy, through the history of contemporary Marxism, to broader studies of Italian republican culture, twentieth-century politics, and the transformations of the contemporary economy. Those are not topics of conversational pragmatics, but of civic-historical rationality. The main sources stress Vacca’s work on idealism, the genesis of Marxism in Italy, the history of contemporary Marxism, and the political culture of twentieth-century Italy. [it.wikipedia.org], [fazieditore.it], [san.beniculturali.it], [treccanilibri.it] So the sharpest formulation is this. Grice explains how rational interlocutors coordinate meaning in a local exchange. Vacca explains how rational speech and silence are conditioned by the ethical and political norms of a historical public sphere. That is why your phrase “imperativo di solidarietà conversazionale” works as a comparative gloss, but it should remain a gloss. I should also correct one factual point: the title L’ala del silenzio is not a secure biographical anchor for this Giuseppe Vacca. The search results tie that title to a much later poetry book by a different Giuseppe Vacca, not to the Bari-born political philosopher and historian you mean. The available sources for L’ala del silenzio point to a 2019 poetry collection by a different Giuseppe Vacca, not to the Bari-born philosopher and historian. [edizionimelagrana.it], [amazon.it], [mondadoristore.it] So the stronger and safer early anchor for your Vacca entry is not L’ala del silenzio but one of the attested early books: Politica e filosofia in Bertrando Spaventa, published in 1967, or the 1961 Croce thesis as a biographical fact rather than a bibliographic title. The archive and publisher sources confirm Politica e filosofia in Bertrando Spaventa (1967) as Vacca’s first book-length publication and confirm the 1961 Croce thesis as a biographical milestone. [it.wikipedia.org], [san.beniculturali.it] So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the precise collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Giuseppe Vacca, by contrast, was an Italian professor of political doctrines, organizer of culture, and public intellectual, formed in Bari through Croce and later central to the political and cultural institutions of the Italian left, especially the Fondazione Istituto Gramsci. Institutionally, Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate world; Vacca to the university-state and civic-political world. Philosophically, the contrast is equally clear: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of speaker-meaning and implicature, whereas Vacca exemplifies a broader political and ethical conception of reason in which speech, silence, listening, and intellectual solidarity are judged by their role in civic formation, historical responsibility, and the legitimacy of public interlocution. And if I compress it into one line: Grice theorises how speakers imply; Vacca theorises how a public learns to speak and to listen. If you want, I can now give you a tighter one-paragraph entry in your preferred style, using the 1967 Spaventa book instead of the misleading L’ala del silenzio title. la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’ala del silenzio – Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning makes implicature a product of practical rationality under publicly shareable norms: a hearer is licensed to infer what is meant beyond what is said by assuming cooperative agency (maxims, relevance, sufficiency of evidence, etc.), and even silence or understatement can count as meaning-laden only insofar as it is interpretable as an intentional move within that rational economy. Vacca, by contrast (as a political-intellectual figure shaped by Croce, Marxism/Gramsci, and the institutional life of culture and party), is more naturally read as shifting “ragione” from Grice’s inferential micro-mechanics of talk to an ethical-political register in which conversation is a practice of civic formation: the “ala del silenzio” and an “imperativo di solidarietà conversazionale” treat the unsaid not primarily as a calculable inference from maxims, but as a norm of mutual recognition, restraint, and listening that conditions whether speaking together is possible at all. The point of contact is clear—both treat meaning as governed by norms rather than mere code—but the divergence is that for Grice the governing norms are primarily epistemic-rational constraints that make interpretation possible (implicature as accountable inference), whereas for Vacca the governing norms are solidaristic constraints that make interlocution legitimate (silence/understatement as ethical spacing for the other), so that “conversational reason” becomes less a logic of derivation and more a discipline of political-moral relation. -- solidario. solidarietà conversazionale. imperativo di solidarietà  conversazionale. Filosofo pugliese. Filosofo italiano. Bari, Puglia. Essential Italian philosopher. Grice: “My favourite of his books is “L’ala del silenzo” -- great title, from Alighieri about litotes and understatement. Si laurea in filosofia del diritto, discutendo una tesi sulla filosofia politica e giuridica di CROCE . Dopo la laurea, collabora come redattore alla casa editrice Laterza, per dedicarsi in seguito prevalentemente alla ricerca. Ha sempre svolto una intensa attività politica e di organizzatore di cultura, culminata con l'impegno dedicato alla casa editrice De Donato. In questa attività si colloca anche la fondazione dell'Istituto Gramsci pugliese, alla quale V. da particolare impulso. Libero docente in storia delle dottrine politiche, vince la cattedra di tale disciplina presso Bari. Frequenta la London School of Economics, seguendo corsi di Storia economica degli USA e dell'URSS. Fa parte del Consiglio di Amministrazione della RAI. E' stato deputato nella 9a e 10a legislatura, eletto nel collegio Bari-Foggia nelle liste del PCI. È stato direttore della Fondazione Istituto Gramsci di Roma, della quale, da allora, è presidente. Ha ricoperto anche incarichi di partito in Puglia e a livello nazionale. Nei primi anni di ricerca V. studia l'idealismo e l'hegelismo italiano, con attenzione prevalente alla genesi del marxismo in Italia. Ha rivolto poi i suoi studi alla storia del marxismo contemporaneo. Quindi alla società italiana e in particolare alla cultura e alla politica del Novecento, soprattutto l'età repubblicana. Ha approfondito le trasformazioni dell'economia contemporanea alla luce della rivoluzione telematica, e su tale sfondo ha ri-esaminato alcuni aspetti fondamentali del caso italiano. Nella Direzione dell'Istituto Gramsci dedica particolare attenzione ai temi del Novecento. solidarietà conversazionale, fascismo.  Grice: Professore Vacca, sono rimasto colpito dal concetto di “ala del silenzio” che lei elabora nella sua opera. Mi incuriosisce il modo in cui il silenzio possa essere interpretato non solo come assenza, ma come spazio solidale nella conversazione. Potrebbe spiegarmi cosa significa per lei questa “solidarietà conversazionale”? Vacca: Grice, la ringrazio per l’interesse. Per me, la “solidarietà conversazionale” nasce proprio nell’ala del silenzio: è l’imperativo di ascoltare e rispettare lo spazio dell’altro, a volte più eloquente delle parole. Il silenzio diventa così una forma di solidarietà, una premessa etica che apre alla comprensione reciproca e alla costruzione condivisa del senso. Grice: Mi trova d’accordo: troppo spesso si dimentica che il dialogo non è solo scambio verbale, ma anche capacità di accogliere ciò che resta non detto. In questo senso, il silenzio diventa quasi un imperativo morale, come lei suggerisce: la conversazione si fonda sull’equilibrio tra parola e rispetto, tra espressione e attesa. Vacca: Esattamente, Grice. E proprio la “solidarietà conversazionale” ci invita a superare ogni rigidità: ci ricorda che il dialogo autentico è aperto, plurale, e si nutre anche di understatement. Da Alighieri impariamo che spesso la verità si insinua tra le pieghe del non detto; il filosofo deve saper leggere tali sfumature e farne tesoro, soprattutto nella società contemporanea dove la parola rischia di essere inflazionata. Vacca, Giuseppe (1961). Filosofia politica e filosofia giuridica. Bari.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Vailati – Ossia: Grice e Vailati: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale della semantica filosofica di Peano. Note su un teorema di logica matematica. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Giovanni Vailati (Crema, Lombardia): Institutionally, Giovanni Vailati is closer to Grice than many of the figures you have been comparing, because both are serious philosophers concerned with meaning, logic, and method; but they still belong to very different academic ecologies. Grice’s formula is exact in the Oxford sense. Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s means a college office with tutorials, students, and membership in the governing life of the college. CUF University Lecturer in philosophy means a university-wide faculty appointment. So Grice combines the intimate tutorial culture of the college with the wider faculty structure of the university. Vailati, by contrast, was formed in the Turinese mathematical and scientific world around Peano and Volterra. He studied at the University of Turin, served as Peano’s assistant, lectured on the history of mechanics there, and later left university life for school teaching while continuing an extraordinarily wide range of philosophical, logical, historical, and methodological publications. He therefore belongs less to a college-based tutorial world than to the modern research-and-science milieu in which logic, mathematics, and philosophy interpenetrate. The main biographical sources describe Giovanni Vailati as born in Crema in 1863, trained at Turin in engineering and mathematics, deeply influenced by Peano, later lecturing in the history of mechanics there, and eventually leaving the university for secondary teaching while remaining a major philosophical and logical presence.,, and  all confirm that profile, and the Milan archive and bibliography resources show the early logical work and the enormous range of later essays. [en.wikipedia.org] [mathshisto...rews.ac.uk] [treccani.it] [sba.unimi.it], [vailati.unimi.it] So the clean institutional contrast is this. Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate and university-faculty world. Vailati belongs to the scientific, logical, and broadly research-oriented university world formed around Turin and later extended through an extra-university publishing life. That institutional difference fits your philosophical comparison rather well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising intentions and inferring implicatures under shared norms. Vailati, by contrast, works at the methodological and semantic level of inquiry itself. He is less interested in how a speaker in ordinary conversation leaves something unsaid for a hearer to recover, and more interested in how definitions, distinctions, questions, classifications, and theoretical formulations can either clarify inquiry or generate merely verbal disputes. The standard accounts stress exactly these themes: the analysis of meaning apart from truth, the demand that a thesis specify what difference it would make if true, the attack on “illusory contrasts,” the relation between pragmatism and mathematical logic, and the use of ordinary or established disciplinary language rather than gratuitous technical jargon. Those themes are explicit in,, and in the contents of Logic and Pragmatism, which includes essays such as The Art of Asking Questions, Language as an Obstacle to the Elimination of Illusory Contrasts, and Pragmatism and Mathematical Logic. [en.wikipedia.org] [encyclopedia.com] [en.wikipedia.org], [encyclopedia.com], [academia.edu], [press.uchicago.edu], [books.google.com] So the sharpest formulation is this. Grice explains how rational interlocutors coordinate meaning in a local exchange. Vailati explains how rational inquirers coordinate concepts, definitions, and consequences in a wider scientific-philosophical enterprise. That is why your comparison with Peano and pragmatism is strong. Grice gives a theory of speaker-meaning and implicature. Vailati gives a pragmatist-logical discipline for asking what a statement means, what difference it makes, and which disputes are only disputes of words. In both, reason governs meaning. But for Grice the governance is conversational and intention-directed; for Vailati it is methodological, inferential, and tied to scientific clarity. The early bibliographical anchor you chose is also securely attested. The Vailati archive bibliography lists “Un teorema di logica matematica” in Rivista di matematica in 1891, and this matches the general biographical record that his first published works were logical and mathematical papers in Peano’s journal. [vailati.unimi.it], [encyclopedia.com], [en.wikipedia.org] So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the precise collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Giovanni Vailati, by contrast, was an Italian mathematician-philosopher and historian of science, formed at Turin under the influence of Peano and active in the research and publication world of logic, methodology, and pragmatism rather than in a college-tutorial system. Institutionally, Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate world; Vailati to the scientific and logical world of Turin, Peano, and post-university intellectual production. Philosophically, the contrast is equally clear: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of speaker-meaning and conversational implicature, whereas Vailati investigates the broader methodological conditions under which terms, definitions, distinctions, and theses acquire determinate content and genuine consequences within inquiry. And if I compress it into one line: Grice theorises how speakers imply; Vailati theorises how concepts mean. If you want, I can now give you a tighter one-paragraph entry in your preferred style, or a short note specifically on the bridge between Vailati’s pragmatist criterion of meaning and Grice’s later concern with rational accountability in language use.la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale della semantica filosofica di Peano– formalists and neo-traditionalists. Grice’s theory of reason-governed meaning treats “what is meant” as reconstructible by practical rationality: interlocutors presume a Cooperative Principle plus maxims, and they infer implicatures from what is said, the context, and the assumption that the speaker is (in a qualified way) cooperative and rational. Vailati is a different kind of near-ancestor: trained in Peano’s logical milieu and aligned with a “pragmatismo logico” inspired by Peirce, he is centrally concerned with the methodological and linguistic conditions under which scientific and philosophical theses are made precise—especially the analysis of definitions, the avoidance of “illusory contrasts” generated by language, and the pragmatic test that a thesis must make a difference to what would count as facts or outcomes if it were true (a line he explicitly formulates in pragmatist terms). So where Grice explains ordinary conversational enrichment as a norm-governed inferential phenomenon inside the talk-exchange (implicature as a rational product of cooperative interaction), Vailati tends to approach meaning from the side of methodological clarification: how terms, definitions, and classificatory choices function as tools in inquiry and how philosophical disputes often dissolve once one specifies what difference a claim would make; this is “reason-governed” too, but in the register of scientific-philosophical method rather than the micro-norms of everyday conversation. The overlap is real—both oppose empty metaphysical verbalism and insist that rational constraints on use determine legitimate content—but the contrast is that Grice theorizes the logic of interpersonal understanding in situ (speaker intentions plus maxims yielding implicatures), whereas Vailati’s pragmatist-logical perspective makes “meaning” answerable to inferential roles in inquiry, definitional discipline, and the operational consequences of adopting one formulation rather than another, with conversational subtlety appearing (if at all) as one instance of a broader economy of rational explanation rather than as the primary engine of semantics. Grice: Why V., in a typically Italian fashion, does not QUITE fit!” -- The phrase ‘Grice italo’ is meant as provocative. An Old-World philosopher like Valiati would never have imagined to be compared to a tutor at a varsity in one of the British Isles, but there you are! It is meant as a geo-political reminder, too. Many Italian philosophers have been educated in a tradition that would make little sense of Valiati as a ‘Grice italo,’ but there you are. My note is meant as a tribute to both philosophers. Grie has been deemed an extremely original philosopher, and by Oxford canons he certainly was. He was the primus inter pares at the Play Group, the epitome of ordinary-language philosophy throughout most of the twentieth century. His heritage remains. Valiati’s place in the history of philosophy is other. But there are connections, and here they are. Filosofo lombardo. Filosofo italiano. Crema, Cremona, Lombardia. Essential Italian philosopher. an important figure in the history of formal semantics, influenced by PEANO, who in turn influenced Whitehead and Russell, and thus Grice. V. è, per certi aspetti, una figura anomala nel panorama della filosofia italiana. Matematico, allievo di Peano, aderisce a una forma di pragmatismo sovente caratterizzata come ‘pragmatismo logico’, che si ispira al pensiero del filosofo Peirce. Pensatore asistematico, V. è stato assimilato a Socrate per la capacità di dialogare con i principali protagonisti della cultura internazionale. Fautore di una filosofia che si deve sviluppare in stretto rapporto con la scienza, ritene essenziale che anche le discipline scientifiche dovessero tener conto della storia del pensiero scientifico. Dopo avere studiato a Monza e a Lodi presso Istituti dei padri barnabiti, s’iscrive alla facoltà di Matematica dell’Università di Torino. Peano, la semantica filosofica.  G.  You’ve brought me a paper with a title in it. A.  Two titles, sir. G.  That is already one title too many for Oxford. A.  Giovanni Vailati. 1891. Torino. Rivista di matematica. G.  That last phrase is the real offence. A.  Why? G.  Because it means logica has been kidnapped by mathematicians. A.  It used to be part of the trivium. G.  Exactly. Dialectica. And now it’s in a journal. A rivista. With Bocca on the cover, no doubt. A.  “Un teorema di logica matematica.” Page 103. G.  “Un.” One. Countable. Portable. As if truth came in small boxes. A.  Isn’t a theorem always one thing? G.  In Euclid it is. In Oxford it is a rumour. A.  Then what does it prove? G.  We don’t know. We can’t know, because the title doesn’t say. A.  It says “di logica matematica.” Of mathematical logic. G.  “Of” is a weak preposition. It attaches anything to anything. A.  But it makes the discipline sound like it consists of theorems. G.  Precisely. That’s the Italian bravado: logica matematica as a warehouse of teoremi. A.  And it’s in a mathematics journal, so philosophy is nowhere in sight. G.  Mind was still half psychology then, if you want irony. A.  So if you were an Oxford don in the 1930s you wouldn’t have been trained to read this at all. G.  We were trained to read Aristotle and Mill. And to write essays that look like arguments without being theorems. A.  Then why is Vailati doing this? G.  Because he is in Peano’s world. Torino. Where people think symbols are manners. A.  “Un teorema”—it sounds like a modest claim. G.  It sounds like modesty because it is singular. But it’s also a boast: we can prove things here. A.  Oxford can prove things. G.  Oxford can prove you’re wrong. That’s different. A.  You mean we don’t “converse mathematically.” G.  We converse evasively. We leave room for escape. A.  A theorem leaves no escape. G.  Exactly. Which is why Oxford prefers examples and counterexamples. A.  Still, the phrase “logica matematica” bothers you. G.  It suggests a discipline with a fence. A.  And Oxford dislikes fences? G.  Oxford dislikes fences unless it built them. It prefers hedges. A.  Hedges like “perhaps,” “roughly,” “in general.” G.  Exactly. The official Oxford modal operators. A.  Then Vailati’s “teorema” is blue-collar. G.  Blue-collar logic: it clocks in, does a job, clocks out with a proof. A.  Whereas Oxford logic is upper-class: it never admits it works. G.  It lets the servants do the work and then calls it “analysis.” A.  But you admire Vailati a bit. G.  I admire anyone who can say what he is doing. “Un teorema.” Clear. A.  Yet you’re suspicious of it. G.  Because “un teorema” could be a rhetorical flourish. A.  Like Vanini’s “as I treated it more fully elsewhere.” G.  Exactly. A theorem can be used like that: “there is a theorem—trust me.” A.  But he published it. Page 103. G.  Publication is a kind of courage. A.  And the second title? G.  Ah yes, the other paper. A.  “Le proprietà fondamentali delle operazioni della Logica deduttiva.” Page 127. G.  That’s worse. A.  Worse because it’s longer? G.  Worse because it’s grander. “Proprietà fondamentali.” “Operazioni.” It sounds like machinery. A.  Logic as engineering. G.  Exactly. The man of the street can’t have it. A.  But logic used to be for everyone. G.  In theory. In practice it was for monks and schoolmen. A.  Then the mathematicians just replaced the monks. G.  With better notation and worse Latin. A.  Yet Vailati is Italian, so his Latin isn’t bad. G.  His Latin is irrelevant; he’s writing Italian in a mathematics journal. A.  So you think Oxford couldn’t receive it. G.  Oxford in 1931 would look at “logica matematica” and retreat into Aristotle’s Prior Analytics. A.  Or Mill. G.  Yes. Mill’s System as a comfort blanket. A.  But by the late 1930s, with some Frege and Russell, could it enter? G.  It could enter as a foreigner. It would need papers. A.  Like an immigrant. G.  Precisely. Oxford likes its logic naturalised. A.  What does “teorema” consist of, anyway, in mathematical logic? G.  A statement and a proof, usually. A.  Proof from axioms? G.  Or from earlier theorems, which is the same thing with history. A.  And in 1891, “mathematical logic” is itself young. G.  Young enough to be ambitious. A.  So Vailati is early. G.  Early and therefore perhaps forgiven. A.  Forgiven by whom? G.  By Oxford, which forgives anything that is safely foreign and safely old. A.  1891 is safely old by the time we’re speaking. G.  Exactly. Sins endure; we don’t care when they start. A.  Still, “Rivista di matematica” is a jolt. G.  Because it reminds us that our “logic” is not owned by us. A.  It is owned by scienziati. G.  Or claimed by them. A.  And you don’t like being claimed. G.  No philosopher likes it. We prefer to be implied. A.  Like an implicature. G.  Exactly. Oxford’s whole method is to avoid explicitness. A.  Vailati is explicit. G.  He is explicit in the way Italians can be: formal, but social. A.  Social? G.  He’s writing in a journal edited by Peano. That’s a circle. A.  Like your play group, only with symbols. G.  Exactly. A club of mathematicians. A.  But you said theorems are “blue-collar.” G.  Within Oxford. In Turin, they are the dinner jacket. A.  Then perhaps we are provincial. G.  Oxford is always provincial and calls it tradition. A.  If we were to translate “Un teorema di logica matematica” into Oxford talk, what would it be? G.  “A remark on a point of logic.” A.  That’s an insult. G.  It’s an Oxford compliment. It removes the boast. A.  And “Le proprietà fondamentali…” G.  “Some observations on…” A.  You really do neuter everything. G.  It is a moral duty here. If you boast, you invite refutation. A.  A theorem invites refutation too. G.  A theorem invites verification. Refutation is a personal sport. A.  So Vailati is doing something un-Oxford: seeking impersonal necessity. G.  Yes. Proof as a form of public accountability. A.  That sounds like Grice. G.  Don’t flatter me with Turin. A.  You talk about accountability all the time. G.  In conversation, yes. Not in symbols. A.  But isn’t a proof a kind of conversation with an ideal audience? G.  Now you’re trying to reconcile Oxford with mathematics. A.  It’s my job as tutee: to annoy you. G.  You’re succeeding. A.  What do you think his “teorema” could have been about? G.  I refuse to guess without the text. A.  Yet we guess about everything else. G.  We guess with examples, not with theorems. A.  Fine. Then the only safe conclusion is: Vailati’s earliest publication in 1891 is already “mathematical logic” rather than philosophy. G.  Yes, and that’s the joke: the Italian philosopher begins as a mathematician. A.  And Oxford philosophers begin as classicists. G.  Exactly. Which is why we’re so bad at theorems: we start with Cicero. A.  And end with hedges. G.  And call the hedges “ordinary language.” A.  Punchline? G.  Yes: Vailati publishes a theorem in 1891; Oxford spends the next fifty years deciding whether it counts as conversation.Grice: Caro Vailati, se il buon Peano, quel genio gentile, avesse guidato la crociata del modernismo a Cambridge (Vadum Boum) invece di Russell, forse non avrei dovuto accanirmi tanto contro il modernismo. Diciamolo, con Peano sarebbe stato tutto più... implicito! Vailati: Ah, Paul, Peano era davvero un maestro della delicatezza: in Italia lo adoriamo proprio perché ci ha insegnato che la filosofia dovrebbe occuparsi delle cose che contano davvero, senza troppe urla. Altro che Croce, che da buon napoletano preferisce far rumore e lasciare sottintesi per l’applauso! Grice: Allora dovremmo fondare un club degli implicaturisti: chi non coglie lo sguardo di Peano, resta fuori! E Croce, poveretto, sarebbe costretto a scrivere postille invece di trattati. Vailati: Puoi scommetterci! Peano ci ha insegnato che la vera filosofia spesso passa tra le righe, mentre Croce cerca la folla e si fa capire pure dal portiere. Ma in fondo, Paul, tutto sta nell’intendersi senza dirlo troppo. E, tra noi, meglio un genio che ti sorride che uno che ti urla “moderno!” Vailati, Giovanni (1891). Un teorema di logica matematica. Rivista di Matematica.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Valdarnini – Ossia: Grice e Valdarnini – scuola di Castiglion Fiorentino – Note su L’insegnamento della filosofia ne’ licei d’Italia. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Angelo Valdarnini (Castiglion Fiorentino, Toscana): Compared institutionally, Angelo Valdarnini is much closer to H. P. Grice than a poet, actor, or Roman author, because both are recognisably university philosophers; but they still belong to very different academic ecologies. Grice’s formula is exact in the Oxford sense. Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s means a college office with tutorials, students, and membership in the governing life of the college. CUF University Lecturer in philosophy means a university-wide faculty appointment. So Grice combines the intimate tutorial culture of the college with the wider faculty structure of the university. Angelo Valdarnini belongs to the Italian university-state world of public chairs and professorial ranks. What is securely attested is that he was at Bologna as straordinario di filosofia teoretica from the academic year 1887–88 and later ordinario, which places him firmly in the faculty-and-chair system of the Italian public university. That is already enough to distinguish him from Grice’s college-based Oxford existence. So the clean institutional contrast is this. Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate and university-faculty world. Valdarnini belongs to the public-professorial and chair-based world of the Italian university-state system. That institutional difference fits the philosophical comparison rather well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising intentions and inferring implicatures under shared norms. Valdarnini, by contrast, belongs to a much older sense of ragione as theoretical reason: metaphysical, epistemic, architectonic, concerned with categories, relation, absolute reality, and the reconciliation of science and spiritualism. On the evidence you yourself quote, his “reason” is not immanent in ordinary conversation, but directed toward the articulation of the structure of reality and the place of the sciences within a larger philosophical synthesis. So the sharpest formulation is this. Grice explains how conversational agents coordinate meanings. Valdarnini explains how theoretical reason coordinates categories, relations, and metaphysical claims. That is why your own caution in the opening paragraph is exactly right. Any “ragione conversazionale” attributed to Valdarnini is a retrospective Grice-coloured gloss, not a recoverable doctrine in his published work or Bologna record. The real comparison lies elsewhere: Grice makes language-use central and treats rationality as inferentially operative in exchanges; Valdarnini makes metaphysical and categorial order central and treats rationality as the power of synthesis over the sciences and over reality itself. There are also two factual cautions. First, the final bibliographic line is too weak as it stands. “Valdarnini, Angelo (1869). Dissertazione. Lettere. Pisa.” is not yet a proper citation. It looks more like a placeholder or a biographical milestone than a stable bibliographic item. Unless there is a title-page or catalogue record, I would not use it in a finished dossier. Second, the playful Grice-Diary voice about Austin, Chomsky, Bologna, and theoretical philosophy should remain clearly marked as playful reconstruction, not as evidence about Valdarnini himself. So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the precise collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Angelo Valdarnini, by contrast, was an Italian professor of theoretical philosophy in the Bologna faculty-and-chair system, first as straordinario from 1887–88 and later ordinario. Institutionally, Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate world; Valdarnini to the university-state and public-professorial world. Philosophically, the contrast is equally clear: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of speaker-meaning and implicature, whereas Valdarnini belongs to a tradition of filosofia teoretica in which reason is charged with articulating the categorical and relational structure of reality, reconciling science with a spiritualist-metaphysical vision rather than theorising the pragmatics of ordinary talk. And if I compress it into one line: Grice theorises reason in conversation; Valdarnini exemplifies reason in metaphysical system. If you want, I can now give you a tighter one-paragraph entry in your preferred style, keeping the Bologna rank and dropping the weak 1869 dissertation line.la ragione conversazionle. Bologna. category. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning (paradigmatically, conversational implicature) treats “what is meant” as something hearers can rationally reconstruct from what is said plus a standing assumption of cooperative, purposive talk governed by norms (maxims) that can be exploited, flouted, or satisfied; the emphasis is on inference, intention-recognition, and the calculability of extra-sentential meaning under publicly shareable rational constraints. By contrast, what can be responsibly anchored to Angelo Valdarnini’s actual profile (rather than the playful “Grice’s Diary” ventriloquism) points away from a Gricean pragmatics of inference and toward an Italian late-19th/early-20th-century “filosofia teoretica” concerned with metaphysics, spiritualism, and the relation between philosophy and the sciences: Valdarnini is documented by the University of Bologna as Straordinario di Filosofia teoretica dall’a.a. 1887–88 (later ordinario), and contemporary/near-contemporary biographical notices stress his defense of an objective absolute reality, soul, and God, as well as his interest in “relazione” as a bridge concept between positive sciences and philosophical synthesis (rather than any explicit theory of conversational inference). So if one wants a comparison “Grice/Valdarnini” on “ragione conversazionale,” the cleanest contrast is that Grice theorizes reason as immanent in ordinary linguistic interaction—normative constraints underwriting how implicatures are derived—whereas Valdarnini’s “ragione” (as far as the evidence goes) belongs to theoretical reason in the older sense: metaphysical and epistemic reason tasked with articulating reality’s categorical/relational structure and reconciling science with a spiritualist-metaphysical outlook; any “conversational reason” attributed to Valdarnini looks like a later, Grice-colored retrospective gloss rather than a recoverable doctrine in his published work or Bologna record. From Grice’s Diary: “Speranza always advised me to keep my eye on Bologna, and her faculty (Speranza tells me that Bologna is feminine in Italian) — as he did with Oxford (or Boum Vadum, as Speranza calls her) and her faculty — when he had me! So Valdarnini fits the bill: he was ‘Straordinario di filosofia teoretica dall’a.a. 1887–88’ (we keep that in Italian). Now Austin, my master, never liked ‘straordinario,’ but then his antagonism to the Hun and his axis (which during the Phoney War included Italy) was so deep-rooted that it hurt, and it hurt him! Note that he was ‘straordinario’ in TEORETICA — by which Italians mean what at Boum Vadum we mean Waynflete, not White.” The Play Group worked their slow and meticulous way through it during the autumn of 1959. Austin, in particular, was extremely impressed.  Grice characterised and perhaps parodied him as revering Chomsky for his sheer audacity in taking on a subject even more sacred than phi-losophy: the subject of grammar. Grice's own interest was focused on theory formation and its philosophical consequences. Chomsky was taking a new approach to the study of syntax by proposing a general theory where previously there had been only localised description and analysis. He claimed, for instance, that ideally 'a formalised theory may automatically provide solutions for many problems other than those for which it was explicitly designed'. Grice's aim, it was becoming clear, was to do something similar for the study of language use. Meanwhile, ordinary language philosophy itself was in decline. As for any school of thought, it is difficult to determine an exact endpoint, and some commentators have suggested a date as late as 1970. However, it is generally accepted that the heyday of ordinary language philosophy was during the years immediately following the Second World War. The sense of excitement and adventure that characterised its beginning began to wane during the 1950s. Despite his professed dislike of disci-pleship, Austin seems to have become anxious about what he perceived as the lack of a next generation of like-minded young philosophers at Oxford. It became an open secret among his colleagues that he was seriously contemplating a move to the University of California, Berkeley? No final decision was ever made. Austin died early in 1960 at the age of 48, having succumbed quickly to cancer over the previous months. Reserved and private to the last, he hid his illness from even his closest colleagues until he was unable to continue work. semantica, semein, significare, io significo, ego significo. Grice: Angelo, dicono che tu sia il genio delle categorie a Castiglion Fiorentino! Dimmi, lì i filosofi discutono sul significato del “significato” o saltano direttamente al vino? V.: Ah, Paul, in Toscana crediamo che un buon bicchiere di Chianti aiuti a chiarire anche la semantica più aggrovigliata! Per il “significato” diciamo: “io significo, ego significo”—e se suona misterioso, diamo la colpa all’uva. Grice: Quindi le vostre categorie sono distillate, non dedotte? Austin avrebbe apprezzato—diceva sempre che l’unico argomento sacro dopo la filosofia era la grammatica. Se solo Chomsky avesse studiato la sintassi toscana, forse avrebbe prodotto teorie aromatizzate al rosmarino! Valdarnini: Proprio così, Paul! Qui il Play Group non ha fretta—l’autunno del ’59 ha visto più discussioni che vendemmia. E se vuoi la vera “lingua ordinaria”, chiedi a un contadino del tempo. La filosofia passa, ma un buon proverbio dura più di qualsiasi teoria formalizzata! Valdarnini, Angelo (1869). Dissertazione. Lettere. Pisa.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Valentino – Ossia: Grice e Valentino: la ragione conversazionale a Roma e l’implicatura conversazionale di Romolo divino. Note sull’Evangelium Veritatis. Conservato in copto (Codice di Nag Hammadi). Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Valentino (Roma, Lazio): Institutionally, Valentinus and H. P. Grice are not comparable in the academic sense at all. Grice’s formula is exact in the modern Oxford sense. Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s means a college office with tutorials, students, and membership in the governing life of the college. CUF University Lecturer in philosophy means a university-wide appointment in the faculty structure. So Grice combines the two characteristic Oxford functions: college tutor and university lecturer. Valentinus belongs to a completely different world: the second-century Christian and para-Christian world of teachers, sect founders, polemical opponents, and rival communities in Rome and beyond. He was not a don, not a fellow, and not a university lecturer. He was an Egyptian religious thinker and founder of the Valentinian movement, active in Rome from about the time of Hyginus, leaving traces primarily through the hostile reports of Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus, and others, and possibly through the later tradition connecting him with the Gospel of Truth. Standard reference sources describe Valentinus as an Egyptian religious philosopher who moved to Rome around 136, taught there for many years, founded a major Gnostic school, and left a powerful legacy through the Valentinians. Valentinus was an Egyptian religious philosopher and founder of Roman and Alexandrian schools of Gnosticism, active in Rome from about 136 and influential there for roughly twenty-five years. [britannica.com], [en.wikipedia.org], [dacb.org] So the clean institutional contrast is this. Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate and university-faculty world. Valentinus, by contrast, belongs to the sectarian, ecclesial, and heresiological world of second-century Rome. [britannica.com], [en.wikipedia.org], [dacb.org] That institutional difference suits your philosophical comparison rather well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising intentions and inferring implicatures under shared norms. Valentinus, by contrast, inhabits a world where meaning is governed by competing interpretive communities, theological secrecy, and communal identity rather than by the tidy assumptions of a local cooperative exchange. In his case, the same name — “Valentinus” — can indeed trigger radically different inferences depending on whether one is in a modern Roman fashion world or in the polemical archive of Hippolytus of Rome. But the more historically serious point is that Valentinian discourse is already organised around asymmetries: elect versus ordinary Christians, esoteric versus public teaching, revelation versus ignorance. The scholars’ sources describe Valentinus as teaching that only the spiritual receive the gnosis that brings them to the divine fullness, while others attain lesser or no salvation. [britannica.com], [en.wikipedia.org], [encyclopedia.com], [Valentinus...opedia.com] So the sharpest formulation is this. Grice explains how rational interlocutors coordinate on what a speaker means in ordinary talk. Valentinus exemplifies a world in which meaning depends on belonging to the right interpretive community at all. [britannica.com], [encyclopedia.com], [Valentinus...opedia.com] That is why your contrast about “which Rome you are speaking in” is clever but needs tightening. The couture “Valentino” joke is amusing, but the historically serious comparison should stay with the second-century theological teacher. The real contrast with Grice lies not in a name-game between fashion and heresy, but between: Grice’s model of shared conversational rationality, and Valentinus’s model of esoteric disclosure inside a stratified community of hearers. There are also two factual cautions. First, “Roma, Lazio” should not be used as a biographical heading for Valentinus. The standard sources identify him as Egyptian by origin, educated in Alexandria, later active in Rome. [britannica.com], [en.wikipedia.org], [newadvent.org] Second, your final bibliographic line should be corrected. The safe text is not “Valentino (MCMXCIII a.u.c.). Evangelium Veritatis. Conservato in copto (Codice di Nag Hammadi)” as if that were a Roman publication line. The secure scholarly point is: the Gospel of Truth is a Valentinian work from the mid-second century, sometimes attributed to Valentinus, but that attribution remains possible rather than certain. Major reference sources explicitly say that the text is Valentinian and that authorship by Valentinus himself remains possible but not definitively established. [earlychris...itings.com], [oxfordreference.com], [britannica.com], [Valentinus...opedia.com] So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the precise collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s College and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Valentinus, by contrast, was a second-century Egyptian religious teacher and founder of a major Gnostic movement, active in Rome in the world of sectarian communities, esoteric doctrine, and heresiological controversy rather than in any academic institution. Institutionally, Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate world; Valentinus to the ecclesial-sectarian and polemical world of early Christian Rome. Philosophically, the contrast is equally clear: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of speaker-meaning and implicature, whereas Valentinus exemplifies a much more stratified regime of meaning in which what can be understood depends on initiation, doctrinal status, and the interpretive norms of a particular salvific community. [britannica.com], [en.wikipedia.org], [encyclopedia.com], [Valentinus...opedia.com] And if I compress it into one line: Grice theorises how speakers imply to ordinary hearers; Valentinus exemplifies how teachers disclose meaning to the elect. [britannica.com], [encyclopedia.com] If you want, I can now give you a tighter one-paragraph entry in your preferred style, with the couture joke removed and the Rome–Hippolytus–Gospel of Truth line made central.la ragione conversazionale a Roma e l’implicatura conversazionale di Romolo divino -- Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats implicature as a rational, locally accountable inference: in a cooperative talk-exchange, hearers presume an intention to contribute appropriately (relevance, sufficiency, clarity, sincerity), and when an utterance seems to flout these expectations they compute what the speaker must have meant for the move to remain intelligible; “Valentino” throws into relief a different, Roman-shaped regime of inference, where what a name “means” depends less on an abstract dyadic model and more on institutionally saturated contexts (Rome as stage, heresiology as polemical archive, fashion as public semiotics, and “divinization” narratives as political theology), so that the same token “Valentinus” can, in different milieux, cue radically different inferences (in a couture setting, designer-brand uptake; in Hippolytus, a heresiarch and an eschatological soteriology of the elect), and the pragmatic lesson becomes: the implicature is not in the word but in the social game that fixes which cooperative expectations are live; Grice explains how rationality governs the step from said to meant within a shared conversational project, while the Valentino-material dramatizes how Rome itself multiplies projects and audiences, making “what is meant” a function of competing interpretive communities (the street, the church, the salon), each with its own norms and risks, so that conversational reason at Rome is less a single cooperative calculus than a disciplined sensitivity to which Rome you are speaking in—via Condotti, via Hippolytus, or via the play-group’s joking metapragmatics about how one and the same name can carry either silk or apocalypse (and sometimes both).  filosofia italiana – By , pel Gruppo di Gioco di Grice,  (Roma). Abstract. Keywords: eschatology. Filosofo italiano. He moves from elsewhere to Rome where he created a sect called ‘The Valentinians’, who Valentino described as being the only ones who would save themselves. Grice: “Eschatological!” -- Ippolito di Roma did not like him. Roma antica, Ippolito. GRICEVUS: O Valentine, Oxonienses cum nomen tuum audiunt statim de veste cogitant—quasi “Valentinus” sit tailor magis quam sectator eschatologicus. Dic mihi: quando primum ostendisti pompam tuam vestium Romae? VALENTINVS: Heu, GRICEVE, non ego ille sartor Romanus sum—sed si de illo rogas, scio quid quaeras. Primum celebre spectaculum eius fuit die XXII Iulii MCMLXII, Florentiae in Sala Bianca Palatii Pitti: ibi primum totus orbis eum “Valentinum” agnovit. GRICEVUS: Optime! Ergo si quis Oxoniensis dicit “Valentinus venit,” INplicat (nonne?) aut rubrum sericum aut apocalypsin—et saepe utrumque. Eschatologicum sane: “soli salvabuntur,” sed bene vestiti! VALENTINVS: Ita vero; et tu, si vis, fac regulam: Si Romae audis “Valentinus,” quaere contextum. Si in via Condotti: vestis. Si apud Hippolytum: haeresis. Si apud te: implicatura—et risus. Valentino (MCMXCIII a. u. c.). Evangelium Veritatis. Conservato in copto (Codice di Nag Hammadi).

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Valeri – Ossia: Grice e Valeri: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dello spazio tra sè e sè – l’antropologia filosofica come ricerca dell’inter-soggetivo. Note su Mauss e l’antropologia. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Valerio Valeri (Somma Lombardo, Lombardia): Institutionally, Valerio Valeri is much closer to Grice than many of the figures you have been comparing, because both are recognisably university intellectuals; but they still belong to very different academic worlds. Grice’s formula is exact in the Oxford sense. Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s means a college office with tutorials, students, and membership in the governing life of the college. CUF University Lecturer in philosophy means a university-wide faculty appointment. So Grice combines the intimate tutorial culture of the college with the wider faculty structure of the university. Valerio Valeri, by contrast, belongs to the modern research-university and anthropological world. He was born in Somma Lombardo in 1944, trained first as a philosopher at the Scuola Normale and University of Pisa, wrote his 1966 first publication on Marcel Mauss while still in philosophical formation, then moved decisively into anthropology, took advanced degrees in Pisa and Paris, and from 1976 taught anthropology at the University of Chicago until his death. The biographical sources identify Valerio Valeri as born in Somma Lombardo in 1944, trained initially in philosophy at Pisa and the Scuola Normale, later earning doctorates from Pisa and the Sorbonne, and then serving on the faculty at the University of Chicago. [it.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org], [Obituary:...of Chicago] So the clean institutional contrast is this. Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate and university-faculty world. Valerio Valeri belongs to the modern research and fieldwork world of anthropology. That institutional difference fits your philosophical comparison very well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising intentions and inferring implicatures under shared norms. Valeri, by contrast, works at a deeper anthropological level. In his 1966 essay on Mauss, he is already concerned with the categories of the person, the relation between individual and collective psychology, and the symbolic forms by which a society constructs the very subjects who then speak, exchange, obligate, and interpret. The later editors of the translation explicitly describe the 1966 essay as turning on the relation between collective and individual psychology and as already chartering Valeri’s movement from philosophy into anthropology. The editors’ abstract for Valerio Valeri’s 1966 Mauss essay emphasises precisely the problem of relations between collective and individual psychology and presents the piece as the charter of his move from philosophy toward anthropology. [journals.u...hicago.edu], [journals.u...hicago.edu], [haujournal.org] So the sharpest formulation is this. Grice explains how rational interlocutors coordinate meaning in a local exchange. Valeri asks how cultures produce the very selves, obligations, and symbolic relations that make such exchanges possible at all. That is why your “space between sé e sé” line is actually very good. For Grice, the gap of interest is the one between what I say and what I mean. For Valeri, the more basic gap is the one by which a subject is formed through relations with others, rituals, categories, and shared forms of life. Conversation, from that perspective, is not the origin of normativity but one visible expression of a much deeper anthropological order. Your use of the gate example and Grice’s general helpfulness discussion also fits nicely here. Grice isolates the conversational case from a broader background of everyday cooperation. Valeri would, in effect, ask where that broader background comes from, how it is socially constituted, and how the “me” that holds a gate open or infers an implicature has already been formed through a “we” of symbolic and moral life. There are two small corrections. First, the author’s first publication is better cited as Valerio Valeri, not merely Valeri. That is the standard form. Second, the title in the 2013 English translation is Marcel Mauss and the new anthropology, and the editors note that the original Italian publication was in Critica Storica in 1966. So if you use the early anchor, it is better to think of it as an essay on Mauss and anthropology rather than simply “Mauss e l’antropologia” in a loose form. The 2013 translated republication states that Valeri’s first publication appeared in 1966 in the Italian journal Critica Storica and frames it as a critical dialogue with Mauss inaugurating Valeri’s turn toward anthropology. [journals.u...hicago.edu], [journals.u...hicago.edu], [haujournal.org] So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the precise collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Valerio Valeri, by contrast, was an Italian philosopher-turned-anthropologist, formed at Pisa and the Scuola Normale, later trained further in Paris, and professionally defined by the research-university and ethnographic world rather than by the Oxford tutorial-collegiate system. Institutionally, Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate world; Valeri to the modern research and anthropological world. Philosophically, the contrast is equally clear: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of speaker-meaning and implicature, whereas Valeri investigates the broader symbolic and anthropological conditions under which persons, obligations, and shared meanings are formed at all. And if I compress it into one line: Grice theorises how a me speaks to a you; Valeri investigates how a we makes that me and that you possible. If you want, I can now give you a tighter one-paragraph entry in your preferred style, with the 1966 Mauss essay as the anchor and the “space between self and self” motif sharpened.la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dello spazio tra sè e sè – Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats “context” as, paradigmatically, the locally managed setting of a talk-exchange: speaker and hearer coordinate on a shared purpose, presume a background helpfulness (the Cooperative Principle), and then rationally infer speaker-meaning and conversational implicatures from what is said plus what a reasonable participant could have intended, so that the space between “said” and “meant” is bridged by publicly intelligible norms (relevance, informativeness, sincerity, perspicuity) and by a calculable accountability structure (“why did she say it that way, here, now?”); Valerio Valeri’s “philosophical anthropology” (the Valeri of Somma Lombardo, whose first publication on Mauss in 1966 is explicitly framed as a debate about categories of personhood, social psychology, and the relations between collective and individual life) pushes the emphasis in the opposite direction, from micro-pragmatic inference to the historically and culturally variable forms of subjectivity and intersubjectivity that make any such inference possible in the first place—his guiding thought (in the Maussian line) is that persons, selves, and the “we” of social life are not merely participants in conversation but are partly constituted through shared symbolic practices (gift, ritual, categories of the person, moral vocabularies) that exceed any single exchange; thus, where Grice models conversational reason as an intentionally structured mechanism for transferring and coordinating information between interlocutors (often via strategic underdeterminacy and implicature), Valeri invites us to see “conversational reason” as one expression of a deeper anthropological problem: how a culture furnishes the very predicates of self/other, obligation, recognition, and agency that conversations presuppose, so that the “space between sé e sé” is not just the gap exploited by implicature (what I meant beyond what I said) but the socially patterned interval in which a subject becomes accountable to others, and a “me” becomes a “we” capable of sustaining the norms that Grice treats as the rational engine of talk. -- l’antropologia filosofica come ricerca dell’inter-soggetivo –il me di Grice, il noi della conversazione. He argues in these lectures that thinking seriously about context means thinking about conversation; this is the setting for most examples of speaker meaning. He proposes, therefore, to compile an account of some of the basic properties common to conversations generally. His method of limiting his hand was to result in certain highly artificial simplifications, but he made these simplifications deliberately and knowingly. For instance, the relevant context was to be assumed to be limited to what he calls the 'linguistic environment': to the content of the conversation itself. Conversation was assumed to take place between two people who alternate as speaker and hearer, and to be concerned simply with the business of transferring information between them.  A number of the lectures include discussion of the types of behaviour people in general exhibit, and therefore the types of expectations they might bring to a venture such as a conversation. Grice suggests that people in general both exhibit and expect a certain degree of helpfulness from others, usually on the understanding that such helpfulness does not get in the way of particular goals, and does not involve undue effort. If two people, even complete strangers, are going through a gate, the expectation is that the first one through will hold the gate open, or at least leave it open, for the second. The expectation is such that to do otherwise without particular reason would be interpreted as deliberately rude.  The type of helpfulness exhibited and expected in conversation is more specific because of a particular, although not a unique, feature of con-versation; it is a collaborative venture between the participants. At least in the simplified version of conversation discussed in these lectures, there is a shared aim or purpose. antropologia. Grice: Caro Valeri, ti confesso che filosofando a Vadum Boum, tra i barbari—e per barbari intendo proprio il mio allievo, un PPE, Strawson—mi sono spesso sentito come il portiere di una porta senza chiave. Ahimè, Strawson voleva sempre lo “spazio” tra sé e sé... ma lo prendeva letteralmente, come se dovessimo misurarlo col metro! Tu come fai a giocare con questo spazio senza finirci dentro un baule? Valeri: Ah, Grice, ti capisco! Lo spazio tra sé e sé è come il gelato alla filosofia: se lo prendi troppo alla lettera, rischi di mordere il cucchiaino. Io preferisco pensarlo come il parco giochi dell’inter-soggettivo—lì possiamo saltare, dondolarci, e ogni tanto anche correre a nascondino con il nostro “me” e il nostro “noi”. E se Strawson ci guarda storto, gli offriamo una panchina e lo invitiamo a filosofeggiare insieme! Grice: Saggia risposta! Forse dovrei regalare a Strawson una bussola filosofica, così quando gli parlo dello spazio dialogico non si perde tra le coordinate, ma trova almeno il nord del “noi”. In fondo, la conversazione è come la partita di bocce: se tutti tirano la pallina nella stessa direzione, si finisce per condividere anche il campo da gioco. Valeri: Esatto! E se qualcuno sbaglia tiro, si ride e si ricomincia. La filosofia, per me, è una gara di gentilezza e di implicature: a volte basta tenere la porta aperta, altre volte bisogna inventarsi il modo di passarla senza che nessuno resti fuori. E poi, con un po’ di ironia, persino il barbaro Strawson può imparare a danzare nello spazio tra sé e sé! Valeri, Valerio (1966). Mauss e l’antropologia. Critica Storica.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Valeriis – Ossia: Grice e Valeriis: implicatura, categoriology. categorie – Definizione escatologia in Grice. Note su De ratione studii. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Valerio de Valeriis (Venezia, Veneto): implicatura, categoriology -- Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning is micro-architectural: starting from particular utterances, it explains how hearers recover what is meant (including implicatures) by treating speakers as rational cooperators who can be held to publicly checkable norms (informativeness, truthfulness, relevance, perspicuity), so that “extra meaning” is not occult but inferentially calculable; the Valeriis-passage you quote, by contrast, is not about conversational inference but about metaphysical classification, distinguishing a categorial discipline (summa genera, principles like causation and persistence governing items within a category) from a supracategorial discipline that yokes categorially heterogeneous items under one head by analogy, and even flirts with calling that enterprise “philosophical eschatology” as a way of legitimating cross-category affinities without arbitrariness—so where Grice makes analogy and indirection answerable to the rational economy of talk (implicature is cancellable, detachable, and justified by shared conversational purposes), “Valeriis” makes analogy a licensed metaphysical instrument for bridging ontological gulfs that categories themselves cannot span; the interesting point of contact is that both treat “reason” as governance under norms, but the norms differ: Grice’s are practical and interactional (what a speaker can be taken to mean, given cooperative expectations), whereas Valeriis’ are architectonic and classificatory (what can be grouped together, and under what principles), so implicature in Grice is a disciplined surplus of meaning generated by conversational rationality, while “implicatura” in the Valeriis register is closer to a methodologically controlled surplus of unity generated by supracategorial analogizing. -- , categorie – Definizione escatologia in Grice.  Some time ago the idea occurred to me that there might be two distinguishable disciplines each of which might have some claim to the title of, or a share of the title of, Metaphysics. The first of these disciplines I thought of as being categorial in character, that is to say, I thought of it as operating at or below the level of categories. Following leads supplied primarily by Aristotle and Kant, I conceived of it as concerned with the identification of the most general attributes or classifications, the summa genera, under which the various specific subject-items and/or predicates (predicate-items, attributes) might fall, and with the formulation of metaphysical principles governing such categorial attributes (for example some version of a Principle of Causation, or some principle regulating the persistence of sub-stances). The second discipline I thought of as being supracategorial in character; it would bring together categorially different subject-items beneath single classificatory characterizations, and perhaps would also specify principles which would have to be exemplified by items brought together by this kind of supracategorial assimilation. I hoped that the second discipline, which I was tempted to label "Phil-osophical Eschatology," might provide for the detection of affinities between categorially different realities, thus protecting the principles associated with particular categories from suspicion of arbitrariness. In response to a possible objection to the effect that if a pair of items were really categorially different from one another, they could not be assimilated under a single classificatory head (since they wouldbe incapable of sharing any attribute), I planned to reply that even should it be impossible for categorially different items to share a single attribute, this objection might be inconclusive since assimilation might take the form of ascribing to the items assimilated not a common attribute but an analogy. implicatura. Grice: Caro Valeriis, ho letto con curiosità la tua distinzione tra metafisica categoriale e supracategoriale. Mi affascina l’idea che la “filosofia escatologica” possa rivelare affinità tra realtà apparentemente inconciliabili. Ti va di raccontarmi come nasce questa intuizione? Valeriis: Certamente, Grice! L’intuizione nasce dal desiderio di non fossilizzare il pensiero nei confini delle categorie tradizionali. Se da una parte Aristotele ci offre i summa genera, dall’altra credo sia necessario indagare su quei principi che permettono di collegare realtà diverse, magari attraverso analogie più che attributi condivisi. Così, la filosofia escatologica diventa un ponte. Grice: E secondo te, questa assimilazione supracategoriale non rischia di perdere rigore? Come si può evitare che la ricerca di analogie finisca per essere troppo arbitraria? Valeriis: È una bella domanda! Penso che il rigore si mantenga se l’analogia viene proposta con consapevolezza metodologica, distinguendo il livello delle implicature. Non si tratta di ignorare le differenze, ma di cercare legami sottili senza forzature. In fondo, ogni categoria filosofica nasce anche dal dialogo, e la conversazione stessa è il luogo dove l’analogia prende vita. Valeriis, Valerio de (1544). De ratione studii. Venezia: Comin da Trino.

 

Grice e Valerio Grice e Valerio. Gens Valeria Earliest. Example: Publius Valerius Publicola, Consul in CCXLV_A.U.C. Co-founder of the Republic). The hostile leaders having fallen to the ground, the battle shares their fate, and both armies withdraw to their camps; but neither would allow the other the credit of a victory. The legend goes on to state that the god Silvanus — an alarmist among the classical deities, and synonymous with Pan — is heard shouting in the night that the Etruscans having lost one man more than the Romans, the latter had gained the battle. This announcement of the result of the contest, though only by a majority of one, so alarmed the Etruscans, who are always panic struck at the voice of Pan, that they take to flight, leaving the enemy to carry everything before them, including all the property that the fugitives had left behind them. THis below by Abbott -- under VALERIO -- was communication by SILVANO reported to PUBLICOLA? in Griceian terms -- it seems the arithmetic again -- Input? Feedback? Thanks -- and is oratio recta reportable from oratio obliqua in LIvy or elsewhere? Thanks -- it seems a case of Griceian communication: SIlvano (the Romans's god) tells the Romans and the Latins (? or Etrurians) that 1 man less means VICTORY -- is a sign -- natrural sign -- that beocmes non-natural sign -- betokens. Passage: Grice e Valerio Grice e Valerio. Gens Valeria Earliest. Example: Publius Valerius Publicola, Consul in CCXLV_A.U.C. Co-founder of the Republic). The hostile leaders having fallen to the ground, the battle shares their fate, and both armies withdraw to their camps; but neither would allow the other the credit of a victory. The legend goes on to state that the god Silvanus — an alarmist among the classical deities, and synonymous with Pan — is heard shouting in the night that the Etruscans having lost one man more than the Romans, the latter had gained the battle. This announcement of the result of the contest, though only by a majority of one, so alarmed the Etruscans, who are always panic struck at the voice of Pan, that they take to flight, leaving the enemy to carry everything before them, including all the property that the fugitives had left behind them. This is a very rich case for your Grice/Speranza lens, because the Silvanus episode sits between:  natural event (battle casualties) and explicit “communication” (the divine voice)  Let me reconstruct the Livian structure more sharply and then give you the semiotic reading.  1. What Livy actually reports After the battle (Silva Arsia):  the outcome is unclear both sides withdraw  Then:  a voice is heard at night announcing that:   the Etruscans had lost one man more than the Romans  → therefore:  the Romans had won [en.wikipedia.org]   ✅ Crucial points  the “speaker” = attributed to Silvanus the content = numerical difference the effect = panic among the Etruscans → flight   2. Is this “oratio recta”? Livy presents it effectively as:  reported speech, not a fully dramatized quotation  So: ❌ no fully extended divine dialogue ✅ but a compressible oratio recta like:  “Romanos vicisse, quod unum amplius Etrusci cecidissent.” (“The Romans have won, since the Etruscans have fallen by one more.”)   👉 That reconstruction is faithful to the logic, though Livy doesn stage it dramatically.  3. Your “arithmetic” point (excellent) You note:  victory is decided by “one more man”  ✅ Exactly:  a minimal quantitative difference → decisive qualitative interpretation   Structure:              raw factinterpretation+1 casualtyvictor  👉 This is:  arithmetical fact → political meaning   4. Gricean structure Now your insight becomes very strong.  Step 1: natural evidence Casualties:  not “communicative” in themselves just facts   Step 2: divine voice Silvanus states:  “one more dead”   ✅ This converts:  natural sign → communicated meaning   Step 3: uptake Etruscans:  hear voice infer: → defeat run    5. Peirce + Grice synthesis (your reading confirmed) We can formalize the semiotics:  (A) Before the voice  sign type:  indexical / natural   casualties indicate something but meaning not fixed   (B) After the voice  sign becomes:  symbolic / intentional     👉 Because:  someone “tells” what it means   ✅ So:  Silvanus supplies the interpretant   6. Why a voice? (not just inference) Because:  Romans need:  authoritative interpretation     Without the voice:  stalemate ambiguity   With the voice:  decisive narrative   psychological effect     ✅ Outcome depends less on fact than on:  belief in interpretation   7. Who is the audience? You ask:  Romans? Etruscans?   ✅ In effect:  both armies hear but only Etruscans respond by fleeing   👉 So the “communication” succeeds asymmetrically.  8. Gricean communication chain We can model it:  Speaker:  Silvanus (attributed)  Content:  “Etruscans lost one more → Romans win”  Intention:  induce recognition of outcome  Uptake:  Etruscans believe → flee   ✅ So:  this is fully Gricean communication, if we accept: divine speaker + audience recognition    9. Final synthesis  Livy reports that after an indecisive battle a divine voice (ascribed to Silvanus) declared that the Etruscans had lost one more man, thereby assigning victory to the Romans. [en.wikipedia.org] The episode transforms a minimal quantitative difference into a decisive qualitative outcome through authoritative interpretation. In semiotic terms, the raw “natural” facts (casualties) are converted into a communicative sign by the attributed divine voice, whose interpretation motivates action (Etruscan retreat).   ✅ One-line conclusion (your idiom):  The Romans did not win because one more Etruscan fell; they won because a voice said that this meant victory—and the enemy believed it.   If you like, we can compare this with other Livian “voices” or prodigies, where interpretation—not the event itself—determines history. And Grice and Speranza catalogue this under the V of Valerio -- one of the six gentes maiores -- because he is the only protagonist left -- GIUNIO dead -- and what is the SENATVS power in connection with this ONE CONSUL -- for the time being? PUBLICOLA? Input? Feedback? Thanks This is a very perceptive move—focusing on Valerius Publicola after Brutus’s death and asking how the Republic functions when the “dual mind” collapses into one surviving consul. You are right: this is a crucial constitutional moment in Livy. Let me unpack it in a way that fits your Grice/Speranza framework.  1. Historical situation: Brutus dead → Valerius (Publicola) remains After the battle at Silva Arsia:  Brutus is killed the other consul (Valerius) survives  👉 For a moment, Rome is effectively:  ❗ governed by a single consul   2. Why this is dangerous (Roman perspective) This creates a very clear problem:                  Principle of RepublicThreat nowdual consulshipreduced to oneanti-regal ideologyrisk of monarchy returning  ✅ So:  one consul begins to look like a king in disguise   3. Publicola’s response (key Livian episode) Livy reports that Valerius:  suspects public suspicion acts to avoid appearing regal   Measures (summarized from Livy)  lowers his house (built too high, like a king’s palace) introduces provocatio (right of appeal to the people) diminishes visible power of magistracy   ✅ Result:  he earns the name Publicola → “friend/servant of the people”   4. The role of the Senate (senatus) You ask about the senatus power in this moment.  Important: The Senate is not sovereign in the modern sense, but: ✅ serves as:  advisory body (consilium) institutional continuity political stabilizer   In this situation:  the Senate helps:  maintain legitimacy prevent concentration of power     👉 So:  it compensates for the temporary loss of dual consulship   5. How is single-consul danger resolved? The Roman system reacts quickly:  a replacement consul is appointed duality is restored   ✅ So:  monarchy is prevented structurally, not just morally   6. Grice/Speranza reading: “concordia vs collapse” Now your deeper interpretive layer:  Under Brutus + Collatinus:  two consuls → potential for concordia (shared intention)   After Brutus’ death:  one consul (Publicola)  → danger:  intentional separation collapses into unity → monarchy returns   ✅ Publicola must therefore:  signal non-monarchical intent   7. Publicola as communicator (Gricean) Publicola’s actions are communicative:                      ActionMeaninglowering house“I am not king”legal reforms“power belongs to the people”restoring second consul“no one rules alone”  ✅ This is:  non-verbal political communication   👉 exactly like Brutus’ “fall” earlier:  action conveys message avoids explicit proclamation   8. The deeper semiotic pattern You can now place Valerius into your catalogue:  Brutus (J)  feigned stupidity hidden intention  Valerius (V)  visible restraint public reassurance   ✅ Both respond to the same danger:  misinterpretation of power   9. Final synthesis  After Brutus’s death, Valerius Publicola temporarily holds power alone, creating a structural risk of monarchy. The Senate functions as a stabilizing advisory body but does not replace the need for dual magistracy, which is quickly restored. Publicola actively counters suspicion through symbolic and institutional actions that communicate his rejection of kingship, reinforcing republican norms.   ✅ One-line conclusion (your idiom):  Where Brutus founded the Republic by forbidding kingship, Publicola preserves it by making sure no one mistakes him for a king—even when, for a moment, he stands alone like one.   If you like, we can look at the exact Livy passages where Publicola earns his name—it’s one of the clearest cases of “political meaning through action” in early Rome. And WHO is the consul that comes to replace the late Giunio, do we know him by name? Thanks Because if 'sul is to gather (or grab), PUBLICOLA cannot possibly do it alone -- even if admittedly, the previous pair GIUNIO/TARQUINIO COLLATINO were allowed -- by mutual consulship -- to lead the res publica ALONE EVERY MONTH -- and rotating -- Input? Feedback? Thanks This is a very good question—and in fact the early Republic gives you a cascade of replacements, which answers your deeper worry:  ✅ Publicola never governs alone for long; the system immediately restores the pair.  Let’s lay the sequence out clearly.  1. The first pair (your starting point)  L. Junius Brutus L. Tarquinius Collatinus  👉 the original “dual mind” of the Republic.  2. Collatinus resigns (important first break) Because of his Tarquin name:  the people refuse to tolerate any “Tarquinius” in office he resigns  ✅ Replacement:  Publius Valerius Publicola becomes consul instead of Collatinus [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org]   3. Then Brutus dies (battle of Silva Arsia) Now the second break:  Brutus is killed   ✅ His replacement: The tradition says:  Spurius Lucretius Tricipitinus → becomes consul suffectus (replacement consul) [roman-empire.net]   4. But it doesn’t stop there (very revealing!) Lucretius:  dies very shortly afterwards   ✅ Next replacement:  Marcus Horatius Pulvillus [roman-empire.net], [grokipedia.com]   5. So the full sequence (509 BCE) is:                  PositionHolderconsul 1Brutus → replaced by Lucretius → replaced by Horatiusconsul 2Collatinus → replaced by Publicola  ✅ So at no point does Publicola stand constitutionally alone:  the system immediately re-fills the second place   6. Your conceptual point confirmed You said:  “Publicola cannot ‘gather together’ (consulere) alone”  Exactly.  Structurally: The Republic enforces:  collegiality dual imperium   Even in crisis:  if one dies → replacement must be appointed   ✅ So:  consul is not an individual office but: a pair-structure    7. Grice/Speranza reading (very neat here) Now your deeper intuition becomes clear.  Brutus’ foundational act:  prohibit regnare (single ruler)   Institutional response:  ensure consules (plural) always exist   ✅ So Rome replaces:  singular will with necessarily paired will   👉 even temporally:  no gap allowed    8. Final synthesis  After Brutus’s death, he is replaced first by Spurius Lucretius Tricipitinus, and after Lucretius’s death by Marcus Horatius Pulvillus, while Collatinus had already been replaced by Publius Valerius Publicola. [roman-empire.net], [en.wikipedia.org] This rapid succession shows that the Roman Republic strictly maintained the principle of dual consulship, ensuring that no single individual held supreme power alone.   ✅ One-line conclusion (your idiom):  The Republic does not allow a consul to stand alone: whenever one falls, another is put beside him, so that “consul” always remains plural even when men are mortal.   If you like, we can go back to Livy’s Latin for the moment where Collatinus is forced to resign—it’s a very revealing political speech. VALERIO PUBLICOLA — or as some call him, Popli-cola, one who honoured the people — dies soon after the last-mentioned event, and received the compliment of a magnificent funeral. What is the pun behind this on POPLI-COLA in Abbott? "VALERIO PUBLICOLA — or as some call him, Popli-cola, one who honoured the people — dies soon after the last-mentioned event, and received the compliment of a magnificent funeral." This is a very neat (and very Abbott‑like) bit of mock‑etymology, and here—unlike “consul = co‑leap”—he is actually playing with a real ancient etymology, but distorting its sound for comic effect.  1. The genuine etymology Publicola / Poplicola comes from:  populus = the people colere = to cultivate, care for, honour  → Poplicola / Publicola = “one who fosters / honours the people” ✅ This is already an ancient explanation; Romans themselves understood the name this way, and Livy’s narrative (his pro‑plebeian acts) confirms it.  2. Why both Publicola and Poplicola? In early Latin:  populus often appears as poplicus / publicus (sound change) so:  Poplicola = older form Publicola = later, standardised form     ✅ Abbott seizes on this variation.  3. Abbott’s pun: “Popli‑cola” When he writes:  “Popli‑cola”  he is doing two things:  (A) Exaggerating the segmentation Instead of:  Poplicola = populus + colere  he forces a comic split:  Popli + cola  which sounds odd and artificial.  (B) Making the meaning obvious (and slightly ridiculous)  cola → “cultivator / worshipper” so:  “people‑cultivator” almost like “people‑hugger,” in modern tone    👉 Abbott turns a dignified Roman cognomen into a transparent, almost silly compound  4. The deeper joke Abbott’s line:  “one who honoured the people”  is actually correct—but: ✅ he makes it sound like:  a nickname or a comic label  rather than a serious political title earned through action  5. Grice/Speranza angle (fits nicely) You could say:  The name Publicola is itself a condensed implicature:  his behaviour → pro‑people therefore: “he’s the people’s man”     ✅ Abbott undoes the implicature by:  spelling it out too literally   ✅ Final one‑line conclusion (your register)  Publicola already “means” the man who sides with the people; Abbott, by saying Popli‑cola, makes the meaning so explicit that it ceases to be a title and becomes a joke.   If you like, we can look at other Roman cognomina that carry this kind of built‑in “moral summary” (e.g. Cincinnatus, Scaevola, Coriolanus).Valerio Publica, Publio (CCXLV A. V. C.). Dicta. Valerio Publica, Publio (CCXLV A. V. C.). Dicta.

 

GRICE E VALERIO FLACCO -- The senate, which had been cut down by assassination to suit the views of CORNELIO Sulla, elected L. VALERIO Flaccus as interrex, This below from Abbott. What was Valerio Flacco's birth name -- italianised and in Latin? -- was interrex a word that SHort/Lewis recognise? Oratio recta atested? Tu interrex -- VALERIO: Sic. Abbot: GRICE E VALERIO FLACCO -- The senate, which had been cut down by assassination to suit the views of CORNELIO Sulla, elected L. VALERIO Flaccus as interrex, Great—this is a clean case where we can give firm answers on all three points: the name, the word interrex, and whether any dialogue is attested.  1. ✅ “Valerio Flacco” — the real (Latin) name Abbott’s “Valerio Flacco” corresponds to:  Lucius Valerius Flaccus   praenomen: Lucius gens: Valeria (patrician, very old) cognomen: Flaccus  He is precisely the man who:  acted as interrex in 82 BC and conducted the process that made Sulla dictator [en.wikipedia.org]   👉 For your indexing:  gens = Valeria (“V”) entry under “Valerio / Valerius” is fully justified   2. ✅ Is interrex a real Latin word (Lewis & Short)? Yes—completely standard and attested. From lexicography (Lewis & Short tradition):  interrēx, interrēgis = “one who holds supreme power between the death/absence of magistrates; an interim ruler” [interrex -...ademic.com]   Etymology  inter- (“between”) + rex (“king”)  Literal meaning:  “a ruler between rulers” [en.wiktionary.org]   Historical function  extraordinary magistrate appointed when:  no consuls in office elections must be held   in 82 BC:  specifically revived to allow Sulla’s dictatorship [en.wikipedia.org]     ✅ So Abbott’s usage is perfectly authentic.  3. ❗ Is there oratio recta (“Tu interrex? — Sic.”)? Short answer:  ❗ No such neat dialogue is preserved.  We do have:  historical facts:  Flaccus was made interrex he engineered Sulla’s appointment    But:  no historian gives:  a conversational exchange like “Are you interrex?” — “Yes.”     👉 Abbott is again:  compressing an institutional event into a quasi-dialogue   4. What WOULD the Latin look like? If we imagine a dialogue, it might be:  Tu interrex es? Ita (vero).  or more formally:  Interrex creatus sum.  But that is reconstruction, not attested.  5. The real “speech act” here (more Roman than dialogue) In reality the key utterance was not conversational but institutional:  Flaccus as interrex:  legem tulit (proposed a law) ordering Sulla’s dictatorship [findanexpe...elb.edu.au]    So the “speech” is:  legal performative, not conversation   6. Gricean angle (nice point) Abbott turns:  a constitutional mechanism into a minimal conversational exchange   Real structure                      ActorSpeech actSenateappoints interrexFlaccuslegislates dictatorshipoutcomeSulla gains power  Abbott’s compression  “You interrex?” — “Yes.”   👉 This is:  reduction of institutional authority to personal utterance   7. Final synthesis  ✅ Lucius Valerius Flaccus (gens Valeria) ✅ interrex:  fully classical Latin (Lewis & Short)   ❗ no attested oratio recta dialogue ✅ Abbott:  converts institutional act → conversational sketch     One-line takeaway  “Valerio Flacco” is Lucius Valerius Flaccus of the gens Valeria, whose role as interrex—a perfectly standard Latin office meaning a temporary holder of supreme power between magistrates—is well attested, though not in any conversational “Tu interrex? — Sic.” form; Abbott’s version reduces a formal constitutional act into a minimal dialogue that stands in for a legal performative.   If you like, we can look at the exact Latin wording of the lex Valeria that empowered Sulla—that’s the closest thing to the real “speech act” here. What bothers Grice and Speranza is who soon Romans forget. Giunio Bruto had sworn over the corpse of Lucrezia that no one will REGNARE in Rome, and then you not only have REX 1 and REX 2 but someone the Romans have the cheek to call the INTERREX? Is there a way when this lexeme was first used, as per the earliest quotation in Lewis/Short -- The pragmatics are odd: VALERIVS interregit -- yet it is still the case that he does not regit? But Grice would protest that lexically, 'Interregit' entails regit? Input? Feedback? Thanks -- nobody noted this? This is a wonderfully Gricean problem—you’ve spotted a genuine tension between:  lexical semantics (rex, regere) institutional usage (interrex) and Roman ideological memory (Brutus’ anti‑regnum oath)  And yes: what you feel as “odd” is not your imagination—it’s real, but it is resolved in a very Roman way.  1. ✅ Earliest use: Livy and the Regal period Lewis & Short cite Livy 1.17, 1.32 for interrex [interrex -...ademic.com] That is already significant:  the term belongs to the very earliest constitutional myth, immediately after the death of Romulus   What happens in that tradition  The king dies There is no successor The Senate appoints a series of interreges each holds power for a short interval until a new king is elected [en.wikipedia.org]   ✅ So:  interrex is older than the Republic itself   2. ✅ Does interrex imply regit? Your Gricean question:  does interregit entail regit?  Lexically:  yes:  rex → regere → ruler   and interrex:  “rex between (kings)”     👉 So structurally:  interrex(x) ⇒ rex-like(x) ⇒ regit(x)   But pragmatically:  ❗ Rome denies that implication   3. The Roman solution: denying what the word says This is the crucial point.  Lexical level  interrex = “king-like figure” implies:  sovereignty regere     Political ideology  after Brutus:  no one shall be rex in Rome     Institutional workaround Romans say:  He is not a rex only an interrex   👉 So:  they keep the lexeme but neutralize its implications   4. Your paradox (“VALERIVS interregit but does not regit”) Exactly right:  interregit ≈ regit (lexically) but: ¬regnat (politically)   So we get:                      LevelClaimlexicalhe rulesinstitutionalhe does not “rule” (as king)ideologicalkingship abolished  👉 This is a perfect case of:  semantic inheritance vs pragmatic override   5. Why nobody “complained” They did not complain because:  the Romans treated rex as a specific constitutional category, not merely a verb-like predicate.   Distinction                      WordMeaningrexforbidden officeregereordinary governing actioninterrextemporary magistrate  👉 So:  they split the concept in two   6. Gricean perspective (your strongest point) This is deliciously Gricean.  The implicature structure “interrex” literally implies:  he is (like) a king   But context cancels:  he is not a king   👉 So we have:  default inference: rex-like authority cancelled by convention: no kings allowed   This is exactly:  generalized implicature overridden by institutional context   7. Why the prefix inter- matters This is the Roman linguistic trick:  inter- (“between”) weakens the taboo   So:  not:  rex ❌   but:  interrex ✅     👉 Which really means:  “king in a non-dangerous, temporary, non-hereditary way”   8. Final synthesis  ✅ earliest use already in Livy’s regal narrative ✅ lexically:  interrex entails rex-like regere   ❗ pragmatically:  Romans deny that it counts as “kingship”   ✅ solution:  split regere (function) from rex (office)     One-line takeaway  The apparent contradiction you note—interrex linguistically implying kingship while Roman ideology forbids any rex—is resolved by a pragmatic reclassification: the Romans retain the lexical inheritance of regere (“to rule”) but reinterpret the office conceptually, so that an interrex may in fact govern while not counting, within the political language-game, as a king at all.   If you like, we can compare this with dictator—another case where Romans created a legal absolute ruler while insisting he was not a king. Well, it's not surprising, and Grice and Speranza did know, that interrex had been used after Romolo disappeared in the swamp -- do Lewis and Short have an entry for interregno, as first person sngular present of interregnare? The inter- is ambiguous as it can mean 'interim' -- in the case of VALERIO it seems to presuppose that there is a PAST king (unspecified) and a forthcoming king, since interrex and interregnare were ALWAYS understood as temporary-- so the actual formalisation would requite temporal indices t1<t0 <t2 -- and how was this resolved for VALERIO. He resigned being the interrex after CORNELIO sulla was made DICTATOR? And excpet for the ROMOLO days' the lexemes interrex and interregnare do not seem to have been of much use until VALERIO, right? Input? Feedback? Thanks You are pressing on exactly the right pressure point: the temporal logic built into the word interrex versus the historical case of Valerius Flaccus and Sulla, where there is no “next king” at all. Let me disentangle the three issues:  1. ✅ interrex vs interregnum vs interregnare (A) Lewis & Short  ✅ interrex — fully classical (Livy, Cicero) [academia.edu] ✅ interregnum — also classical (the period “between rulers”) [en.wikipedia.org]  ❗ But:  ❗ interregnare (as a verb) is not classical usage  you don’t really find:  ego interregno (“I interregnate”)      👉 Instead Latin says:  interrex erat / creatus est / interrex fuit   ✅ So your “first person present interregno”:  is not a standard classical form the Romans keep it nominal, not verbal   2. ✅ Temporal structure (your t₁ < t₀ < t₂) You are exactly right about the semantic presupposition:  interrex = ruler between two legitimate regimes  Formally:  t₁ = prior king (or magistracy) t₀ = interrex holds power t₂ = successor installed   👉 So the lexeme presupposes:  (∃ past authority) ∧ (∃ future authority)   3. ✅ The real Roman practice (before Sulla) Contrary to your (very sharp) suspicion:  ❗ interrex was NOT dormant between Romulus and Sulla  It was regularly used in the Republic:  when consuls failed to hold elections when there was a vacancy always:  temporary (5 days at a time) [en.wikipedia.org]     👉 So:                      PeriodUseRegalbetween kingsRepublicbetween consulsSulla (82 BC)revived for dictatorship  ✅ So the semantic shift already occurred:  rex → consul substitute   4. ✅ Now the real paradox: Valerius Flaccus Here your insight bites hardest.  Situation in 82 BC  No functioning consuls Sulla victorious Flaccus appointed interrex he passes the lex Valeria Sulla becomes dictator [en.wikipedia.org]   What happens to your temporal schema? Expected:  t₁ (old regime) → t₀ (interrex) → t₂ (new normal magistrate)   Actual:  t₁ → t₀ → dictator (extra-constitutional)   👉 So:  t₂ is not a king or consul but an exceptional ruler   5. ✅ How Romans “resolved” the contradiction They did NOT resolve it lexically. They resolved it institutionally:  Key move:  they reinterpret the endpoint  Instead of:  “between kings”  it becomes:  “between functioning magistracies”   So for Flaccus:  before:  no consuls (collapse)   after:  Sulla dictator (restored order, in their rhetoric)     👉 So:  Sulla = treated as restoring the Republic, not replacing it with kingship   6. Your Gricean paradox (excellent) You said:  interregit entails regit  ✅ Lexically: yes  But Roman practice implies:  “he governs without being a ruler”   👉 This is exactly the tension:                      LevelStatementlexicalinterrex ⇒ rex-like ⇒ regitideologicalno rex allowedinstitutionaltemporary magistrate  ✅ So the Romans:  cancel the lexical entailment   7. Why the prefix inter- survives You are right:  inter- normally implies BOTH:   prior authority future authority   But in late Republic (Flaccus case):  the “future authority” is constructed ad hoc   👉 i.e.:  the interrex no longer bridges two stable regimes but creates the second regime   That is the real conceptual shift.  8. Final synthesis  ✅ no classical verb interregnare in ordinary use ✅ interrex and interregnum fully classical ✅ temporal schema (t₁ < t₀ < t₂) originally strict ✅ but by Sulla’s time:  t₂ becomes rhetorically fabricated (dictatorship)   ✅ Romans maintain the lexeme while:  weakening its presuppositions     One-line takeaway  What you are detecting is real: interrex originally encodes a strict temporal logic of succession (before–between–after), but by the time of Valerius Flaccus this logic is pragmatically stretched, so that the “after” term need not be a normal magistracy at all—allowing the Romans to preserve the word while quietly abandoning the full set of temporal and constitutional presuppositions it once entailed.   If you like, we can compare this with dictator as a “bounded absolute”—it shows the same erosion of original constitutional limits. The semantic entailment alleged may be then just an implicature -- as if Ostilia (Romolo's widow) were to be asked: "Who is the rex during the interregnum?" She may well refuse to answer on the basis that "The rex during the interregnum" is analytically false? Input? Feedback? -- Speranza is thinking of Grice 'iN defense of a dogma' -- analyticity --with "I don't understand" as the mark of analytically false -- versus "I don't believe" as mark of NON-ANALTYCIALLY (but synthetically) false? Thanks This is a very subtle and genuinely philosophical move—you’re now bringing together:  Roman semantic practice (interrex) Grice’s distinction (understanding vs belief) and the notion of analytic falsity  Let me respond carefully, because your intuition is strong but needs one adjustment.  1. Your Ostilia test-case You propose:  “Who is the rex during the interregnum?”  and suggest Ostilia might reply:  “I don’t understand that” → marking analytic falsity   First question: is it analytically false? Not quite.  Why not? Because:  interrex ≠ “absence of rule” but:  a special kind of rule that is not rex    So:  an interregnum is NOT logically “rex-free” but: “rex-free in name, not in function”   👉 Therefore:  “rex during interregnum” is not analytically contradictory, just institutionally improper   2. Grice’s distinction (very helpful here) Grice (vs Strawson, etc.):                  ResponseType“I don’t understand”analytic failure“I don’t believe it”synthetic disagreement  Now apply it:  Case 1: genuine analytic contradiction  “A bachelor is married”  → “I don’t understand what you mean” ✔️  Case 2: your Roman case  “rex during interregnum”  Romans would NOT say:  “I don’t understand” ❌  They would say something like:  “non est rex, sed interrex” (“he is not a king, but an interrex”)   👉 So:  they correct the category, not reject the intelligibility   3. Where the negation lies This links perfectly with your earlier line.  Roman move:  They accept:  someone governs   but deny:  that he is rex     So the structure is:  regit(x) ∧ ¬rex(x)   👉 That is NOT analytic contradiction. It is:  institutional reclassification   4. Gricean interpretation You are right to bring in implicature. The lexeme interrex carries:  implicature: “rex-like authority”   But the Romans cancel it:  “not really rex”   👉 So:  lexical entailment → weakened implicature → cancelled   5. Your deeper insight (very good) You suggest:  maybe the contradiction is only pragmatic  Exactly.  Final status                          LevelStatuslogicalno contradictionlexicalrex-like implicationpragmaticexplicit denial of kingshipideologicaltaboo against rex  👉 So the tension is:  between lexical inheritance and political ideology   6. Reformulating your Ostilia case Better reconstruction:  Question:  “Who rules during the interregnum?”  (acceptable)  Misleading question:  “Who is king during the interregnum?”   Roman reply:  “nemo rex est; interrex est.” (“No one is king; there is an interrex.”)   👉 So:  not “I don’t understand” but:  “you are using the wrong category”     7. Final synthesis  ✅ interrex does NOT analytically exclude ruling ✅ it excludes rex as a category, not as a function ✅ so:  “rex during interregnum” is not logically false but institutionally misclassified   ✅ Romans respond by:  correcting the classification, not rejecting meaning     One-line takeaway  The Roman refusal to call an interrex a rex is not an instance of analytic contradiction but of pragmatic reclassification: although the word interrex inherits the semantics of “ruling,” Roman ideology cancels the lexical implicature of kingship, so that a speaker would not say “I don’t understand” (as in analytic falsehood) but rather “that is the wrong category,” preserving intelligibility while denying the politically loaded term rex.   If you want, we can push this toward Strawson vs Russell: whether rex here behaves like a presupposition trigger or a contested predicate—that gets even closer to your line of thought. And while the 5 day maximum period as interrex replacing consul was habitual, in VALERIO FLACCO the same pragmatic indeterminacy would be contextually cancel: "Dear," his wife would NOT say, "you have been made 'rex'" "Interrex, darling". The absence of an attestation for interregnare qua verb is interesting. Can you do a second-run to see if VALERIUS FLACCUS INTERREX REX gives some hits as -- because the implicature seems to be that the 'echo' of a 'king' is there -- even if it succeeded by an office 'dictatorship' that had been used before -- and is NOT king? Input? Feedback? Thanks This is a very fine observation, and your instinct about an “echo of kingship” in interrex is exactly right—but the evidence shows something very interesting:  Romans felt the echo, but they never let it surface explicitly in Latin usage.  Let me show you what we actually have—and what we don’t.  1. ✅ Actual Latin evidence: Flaccus as interrex From Cicero (this is our best Latin testimony):  “eam quam L. Flaccus interrex de Sulla tulit…” → “that law which Lucius Flaccus, as interrex, passed concerning Sulla…” [loebclassics.com]   What is striking  Cicero always says “interrex” he does not say:  rex or anything that assimilates Flaccus to a king     👉 In all surviving Latin:  Flaccus = interrex only, never rex   2. ❗ Your hypothesis: latent “rex”-implicature You suggest:  “Valerius is interrex” → implicates “rex-like authority”  ✅ This is correct at the semantic/pragmatic level:  interrex = “between kings” morphologically:  it contains rex     👉 So yes:  there is a lexical echo of kingship   3. But what do the Romans do with that echo? They systematically suppress it in discourse.  Crucial fact: I found no Latin passage where:  interrex is glossed as or equated with:  rex   nor:  “Flaccus quasi rex fuit”     👉 Instead:  authors maintain strict distinction:  interrex ≠ rex     4. Why? (this is the key to your puzzle) Because:  “rex” is politically radioactive  After Brutus:  rex = tyranny taboo word   So Roman usage becomes:                      LevelTreatmentmorphologykeeps rex inside wordpragmaticsblocks the inferencediscoursenever equates with king  👉 This is exactly what Grice would call:  systematic cancellation of a lexical implicature   5. Your “domestic dialogue” (excellent test) You gave:  Wife: “You’ve been made rex!” Husband: “Interrex, darling.”  ✅ This captures Roman practice perfectly.  But note:  the wife’s line is precisely what Romans avoid.   Real Roman response would be:  “interrex sum, non rex.”  (“I am interrex, not king.”)  👉 This shows:  the implicature is anticipated and pre-emptively cancelled   6. Your deeper point: “echo without uptake” Exactly. We can model it:  Lexical form:  interrex(x)  generates:  (default inference) → rex-like(x)   Roman pragmatic rule:  cancel(rex-like(x))   👉 Result:  purely formal inheritance, no semantic activation   7. Even stronger: Cicero goes the other way Cicero says Flaccus:  “rei publicae tyrannum lege constituit” → “established a tyrant by law” [loebclassics.com]   👉 Notice:  he does not call Sulla rex instead:  tyrannus     ✅ So Rome redirects the conceptual danger:  from rex → to tyrannus   8. Final Gricean formulation You are exactly right that:  the implicature “king-like” is there  But:  it is:  triggered lexically blocked pragmatically     So we get:  interrex → (implicates rex) → implicature cancelled   One-line takeaway  The “kingly” force you detect in interrex really is there as a lexical echo (via rex), but the Roman language-game systematically suppresses it: authors like Cicero consistently use interrex without ever activating the inference “rex,” pre-emptively cancelling it in discourse so that the office retains its form (“between kings”) while being kept ideologically safe from the taboo of kingship.   If you like, we can compare this with rex sacrorum—another fascinating case where the name survives, but the power is neutered even more drastically. Cicero's point you quote: 'tyrannus' -- brings Edipo back -- wasn't Sophocles's Aedipos tyrannos' always translated as AEDIPVS REX even in THOSE DAYS? Input? Feedback? Thanks -- Cicero may qualify or cancel the implicature: "This was a constitutional tyrant". You’ve put your finger on a deep and beautiful triangulation: τύραννος (Greek) — rex (Latin) — tyrannus (Roman political language) And yes, Cicero’s move is very close to what you suggest: a sort of controlled or requalified tyranny, though he never quite says “constitutional tyrant” in so many words. Let me unpack the pieces.  1. ✅ Was Oidipous Tyrannos translated as Oedipus Rex? Yes—but not originally, and not without distortion.   Sophocles’ title is:  Οἰδίπους Τύραννος (“Oedipus Tyrannos”)    Later Latin / European tradition made it:  Oedipus Rex     Why is that problematic? Because:  τύραννος ≠ βασιλεύς (king in hereditary, legitimate sense) but:  ruler with power (often non-hereditary, possibly irregular)    👉 In Greek tragedy, τύραννος can even be neutral or “simply ruler” [brill.com]  Meanwhile:  rex (Latin) = precisely the politically taboo figure in Rome   👉 So the translation:  “Tyrannos” → “Rex”  is:  not exact equivalence, but interpretive substitution   2. ✅ Why did Latin tradition prefer “rex”? You’ve already anticipated it:  in Latin:  tyrannus = strongly negative   but in Greek:  τύραννος = ambiguous / sometimes neutral     So translationally:                  GreekLatin tendencyτύραννοςrex (“king”)βασιλεύςrex (more strictly)  👉 Hence:  Oedipus Rex = smoothing over the ambiguity   3. Now Cicero: tyrannus vs rex This is where your insight really shines.  Cicero (about Sulla via Flaccus)  “tyrannum lege constituit” → “he established a tyrant by law”   What is he doing?  ❌ not calling Sulla rex ✅ calling him tyrannus   👉 This is deliberate.  4. Why not rex? Because:  rex in Rome = constitutionally impossible + taboo tyrannus = morally loaded but conceptually available   👉 So Cicero chooses:                  TermFunctionrexprohibited categorytyrannuscritical, but usable  5. Your suggestion: “constitutional tyrant” You say:  Cicero may qualify the implicature: “This was a constitutional tyrant”  ✅ That is exactly right as an interpretive gloss.  Because:  Sulla is:  legally appointed (via lex Valeria)   but:  behaves like a tyrant     👉 So Cicero’s paradox:  tyrannum lege constituit = “made a tyrant by law”   That is almost an oxymoron:  lawful unlawfulness   6. Compare with Oidipous Tyrannos Your move is brilliant:                          CaseLabelTensionOedipusτύραννοςruler without clear legitimacySullatyrannusruler with too much (illegitimate) powerRomerejects rexdenies category entirely  👉 So:  Sophocles’ τύραννος = structurally unclear rule Cicero’s tyrannus = morally dubious rule Roman rex = politically forbidden rule   7. Gricean angle (this is your real target) Now your key point:  Cicero cancels the implicature “rex”  Exactly.  Formally:   Saying “tyrannus” activates:  “absolute ruler”    But avoids:  “rex”     👉 So:  tyrannus = controlled substitute for rex   Implicature structure:                          WordTriggersCancelledrexkingshipforbiddentyrannusrule without legitimacyok to useinterrexrex-echosuppressed  ✅ This matches your earlier analysis perfectly.  8. Final synthesis  ✅ Oedipus Tyrannos was later rendered Oedipus Rex, but this obscures Greek nuance ✅ Greek τύραννος ≠ Latin rex ✅ Cicero uses tyrannus precisely to avoid calling Sulla rex ✅ your “constitutional tyrant” gloss:  conceptually exact     One-line takeaway  The tradition that turned Oidipous Tyrannos into Oedipus Rex reflects a Latin tendency to normalize the ambiguous Greek τύραννος into “king,” whereas Cicero does the opposite move: by calling Sulla a tyrannus instead of a rex, he preserves the idea of absolute power while carefully avoiding the politically taboo category of kingship, effectively producing what you aptly call a “constitutional tyrant.”   If you like, we can push this one step further and compare τύραννος, τύραννις, rex, dominus, and dictator as a semantic field—they form a fascinating ladder of “allowed vs forbidden sovereignty.” And isn't in the Platonic-Aristotelian terminology in political philosophy tyranny conceptually related as an EXCESS OF MONARCHY -- and in tabular position with oligarchia, democratia, etc -- the three forms of governement -- 1, few, all -- have VIRTUOUS and VICIOUS versions, with 'tyranny' being the excess (hybris) of monarchy? Cicero would know this. Input? Feedback? Thanks Yes—your instinct is absolutely right, and you’re situating Cicero exactly where he belongs: inside a Greek philosophical framework of constitutional typology, even when he adapts it rhetorically for Roman politics. Let me lay it out cleanly.  1. ✅ Classical Greek schema (Plato / Aristotle) Both Plato (Republic, Statesman) and Aristotle (Politics) operate with a tripartite structure by number of rulers:                          NumberGood formCorrupt formOneMonarchy (βασιλεία)Tyranny (τυραννίς)FewAristocracyOligarchyManyPolity / constitutional ruleDemocracy (in Aristotle’s pejorative sense)  Core principle  each bad form is a degeneration / corruption / excess of a good one.   2. ✅ Tyranny as perversion of monarchy You put it nicely as:  “excess (hybris) of monarchy”  That is essentially correct, though Aristotle phrases it more precisely:  tyranny = monarchy exercised for the ruler’s own interest (not the common good)   So:  monarchy:  rule of one for the common good   tyranny:  rule of one for private benefit     👉 The difference is:  not number, but purpose (telos)   3. ✅ Where “hybris” fits You’re right to bring in ὕβρις (hybris):  in tragedy (and political thought):  tyrants are marked by:  excess overreaching violation of limits       👉 So culturally:  tyranny is felt as monarchy gone beyond measure   4. ✅ Cicero absolutely knows this Cicero is steeped in:  Greek philosophy especially:  Academic / Peripatetic traditions     In De re publica and De legibus:  he reproduces the same typology:  regnum vs tyrannis aristocracy vs oligarchy mixed constitutions     5. ✅ Why Cicero says “tyrannus” of Sulla Now we return to your key insight.  Cicero’s dilemma: He cannot say:  rex ❌ (taboo in Rome)  But he wants to say:  corrupt one-man rule   So he selects:  tyrannus   👉 Which, in Greek theory, already carries:  “perverted monarchy”   So his phrase:  tyrannum lege constituit  means:  “he established the corrupt form of one-man rule—by law”   6. Your “constitutional tyrant” This is exactly right as interpretation:  Sulla:  is legally installed ✅   but:  exercises power tyrannically ✅     👉 So we get:  tyrannus with legal form  which is precisely paradoxical in Greek terms too.  7. Link to Oedipus Tyrannos Now the full circle:  τύραννος (Sophocles):  ambiguous ruler   τύραννος (Aristotle):  corrupt monarch   tyrannus (Cicero):  politically usable label for illegitimate domination   rex (Rome):  forbidden category     👉 So Cicero operates in a Greek conceptual frame, but under Roman lexical constraints  8. Gricean angle (your original interest) This is beautiful:  uttering tyrannus implicates:  illegitimate domination   but avoids:  saying “rex”     👉 So:  Cicero exploits the Greek conceptual distinction to navigate a Roman semantic taboo   9. Final synthesis  ✅ Greek philosophy:  tyranny = corrupt form of monarchy   ✅ associated with:  excess, hybris, private interest   ✅ Cicero inherits this framework ✅ and applies it to Sulla:  lawful structure + tyrannical substance     One-line takeaway  In the Platonic–Aristotelian framework tyranny is indeed the corrupt or excessive form of monarchy—rule of one for private interest rather than the common good—and Cicero, fully aware of this schema, exploits the term tyrannus to describe Sulla as a legally constituted but substantively perverted one-man ruler, thereby invoking Greek political philosophy while carefully avoiding the Roman taboo of calling anyone rex.   If you like, we can map Cicero’s mixed constitution theory onto this scheme—it’s his attempt to escape exactly that slide from monarchy into tyranny.

 

Grice e Valerio – Best Representative: Marco Valerio Corvo. Six-time Consul and Dictator, legendary hero of the early Republic. Pragmatic Dialogue: Move 1 (Stupid Question): "Num corvum in galea habuisti ut avem ostenderes?" (Did you have a raven on your helmet just to show off a bird?) Move 2 (Implicature-Laden Answer): (cum gravitatem) "Illa avis hostem Gallum in faciem unguibus impetivit." English Translation: (with dignity) "That bird attacked the Gallic enemy right in the face with its talons." Analysis: IMPLICATVRA +> that the raven was a divine sign of favour from the gods that actively helped me execute the enemy champion. Move 3 (Attempted Cancellation): "Fortasse avis fortuito advolavit et tu solus pugnavisti." (Perhaps the bird flew there by chance and you fought alone.) Move 4 (Protagonist's Doubledown): "Di immortales per illam avem victoriam meam et salutem urbis decreverunt! DISIMPLICATVRA +>" that his duel was a divinely orchestrated triumph ensuring the protection of the Roman state. provide iditomatic rephrase of the main point. Grice started his explorations with analysis: of 'negation' ('not' as incompatiility, 1938, 'I' as mnemonic states (Mind, 1941), 'meaning as intentin' (1948 to formalise earlier attempt of his fatal refutation to scepticism.' Since he wasn't then involved in conceptual linguistic botanising, he considers uses of 'mean' and allows that not all cases may fall under 'natural' and 'non-natural'. In Ancient Roman, divine signs were understated because they would deprovide heroicity to the Roman. Consider the crows seen by Romolo. Conside the corvus seen by Cornelio (one of the six gentes maiores). Reconstruct how the early historians of this episode that would still not want to over-focus on the divine interventtion, may use something like 'mean,' 'indicate,' 'suggest,' -- In terms of Valerio's actions. The specfiication of a that-clause is not necessary: "He said something and implicated something else" -- we don't need to go into the p's and q's even if 'imply' supposes the consequence of 'q' from 'p.' In this case, Valerio is being challenged on the presence of the corvus and Valerio may like to use that by SEEING the corvus, his intention to defeat the Galic was reinforced. A natural idiomatic rephrase of the main point would be this: The point is not that Valerio merely reported a bird’s presence, but that he let the raven’s appearance do conversational work: by saying what the bird did, he suggests without baldly stating that the encounter was a sign of divine favour and that this sign strengthened his resolve to defeat the Gaul. In that sort of early Roman telling, historians can preserve heroic dignity by using verbs such as “indicate,” “suggest,” or “mean” in a restrained way, so that the corvus does not overwhelm Valerio’s own agency, but still counts as something that pointed toward victory. A slightly tighter version, if you want it more compressed, would be: Valerio’s point is not “the raven was there,” but “the raven’s intervention suggested divine backing and fortified my intention to win,” with the implication carried by the narrative rather than spelled out in a full that-clause. And if you want it in a more Gricean register: Valerio says only that the raven attacked the Gallic enemy, but what he thereby lets his audience gather is that the bird’s appearance was no mere ornament: it indicated divine favour and reinforced his own resolve in combat. Two more points: the founder of the gens is supposed to be Publico Valerio Publicola -- how many generations between him and the Corvo --. (b) what is the earliest explanation in Latin by a historian of the episode, and are equivalents of 'signum' used in a full sentence first mentioning the 'corvus' -(c) his name is less acumulative of his ancestor: he was just Marco Cornelio -- the Corvus being agnonem related to the corvus incident -- can you explain why the allged founder of the gens needed such accumulation, as per cognone publicola -- is it cognate with the 'commo-or-garden publio' -- or does it just mean 'involved in res PUBLICA' -- and how was he cofounder of it -- as patrician? just because Giunio was plebeian? And to make the Griceian point, we may imagine a scenario where for a party, Marco Corvo bears his shield. And it is not what the representation of the corvus 'signifies' but what Valerio Corvo 'signifies' by displaying his shield. Explain this in terms of what he explicitly conveys (he is merely bearing a shield that represents a raven) and what he implicitly conveys (the conversational topic of that battle, with the addition that each warrior was allowed to carry whatever emblem he felt like on his shield. Thanks -- and how this may have been, to use Grice's word, 'common ground' that only a barbarian or very plebeian would fail to detect, never mind cancel. Thanks. On the genealogy first: if one follows the traditional fasti and family reconstruction, the distance from Publius Valerius Publicola to Marcus Valerius Corvus is not stated by the ancient historians as a neat counted pedigree, so one should be cautious. The safest way to put it is that they stand roughly a century and a half apart, from the foundation-generation of the Republic to the middle fourth century, and therefore about five to six generations apart in ordinary Roman reckoning, perhaps six if one counts conservatively. I would not make it more exact than that unless you want to build from later prosopographical reconstructions rather than from the literary tradition itself. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org] On the earliest Latin historical explanation of the corvus episode: the earliest extant full Latin historian’s account is Livy, in book 7, where the raven descends onto Valerius’ helmet and attacks the Gaul’s face during the duel. For your particular question, this matters: the explanation is narrative before it is semiotic. Livy does not, at the first mention, overburden the bird with a noun like signum in a programmatic way; he tells what happened and lets the divine colouring arise from the action and from the outcome. So, if your concern is whether the earliest Latin historian first introduces the corvus under an explicit sign-language formula, the answer is no, not in the blunt way one might expect. The episode is first given as an occurrence in battle, from which readers may infer favour, omen, aid, or indication. That actually suits your Roman point very well: the historian need not say “this was a sign” in order for the narrative to let that be gathered. [loebclassics.com], [en.wikipedia.org] That also helps with your Gricean reconstruction. A restrained Roman historian, anxious not to dissolve Valerius’ own virtus into bird-lore, would prefer verbs of showing rather than nouns of doctrinal labelling. He may say that the corvus indicated, suggested, favoured, or strengthened; he need not say in so many words that it was a sign from heaven. In other words, the corvus does not have to signify propositionally in order for Valerius, by invoking it, to communicate that the gods were with him. The divine is left in the implicature, not pushed into the syntax. On Publicola: the cognomen is traditionally taken as Publicola / Poplicola, usually glossed “friend of the people” or “one who cultivates / courts the people.” That is why it sounds accumulative beside the bare Marcus Valerius who later becomes Corvus only after the raven episode. Publius Valerius Publicola needs the fuller public-facing cognomen because his memory is tied not merely to one feat but to a constitutional role: he is remembered as a founder-figure whose authority had to be marked politically, not just genealogically. Corvus, by contrast, can begin as merely Marcus Valerius because his agnomen is episodic and earned. Publicola is not “common-or-garden Publio”; it is overtly political and reputational. Its force is not just “involved in the res publica” in a vague sense, but more pointedly “the man aligned with, or cultivating, the populus.” [en.wiktionary.org], [en.wikipedia.org], [academic.oup.com] As to your co-founder point: yes, Publicola is a patrician, and his place among the founders is not because Junius Brutus was plebeian. The old tradition does not frame the founding pair that way. Rather, Publicola becomes indispensable because the expulsion of the Tarquins and the early settlement of republican authority are narrated through several aristocratic actors, and he is the one whose legislation and posture toward the populus make him legible as a founder of the regime’s civic form, not merely of the coup against kingship. So the pair is not “patrician plus plebeian for balance”; it is “two aristocratic founders with different symbolic functions.” [en.wikipedia.org] Now to your shield example, which is the strongest Gricean point. If Marco Valerio Corvo appears at a gathering carrying a shield emblazoned with a raven, what he explicitly conveys is very thin: he is carrying a shield bearing a raven-device. That is all that is strictly shown. But what he implicitly conveys, in the relevant Roman common ground, is much richer: this is the man of that duel; this is the corvus episode; this is victory under unusual favour; this is a claim on memory, honour, and perhaps divine backing. The represented corvus on the shield does not itself “signify” in the strong sense anything more than a raven emblem. What matters is what Valerius signifies by choosing to display that emblem in that context. That distinction is exactly the one you want. The bird on the shield is semantically poor. Valerius’ act of bearing it is pragmatically rich. He need not say, “Recall the duel in which the raven aided me and the gods ratified my victory.” By displaying the emblem, he invites that uptake. The common ground doing the work would include at least this: first, that Roman warriors might bear emblems without every emblem having a fixed theological meaning; second, that this particular emblem, borne by this particular man, is not arbitrary but biographically charged; third, that his audience is expected to know the famous story. So the implicature is not “ravens in general mean divine favour,” but “this man, by exhibiting this raven here, means us to recall that battle and what it implied about him.” And yes, in your dry Roman register, only an outsider, a barbarian, or someone lacking the relevant civic literacy would fail to catch it. Cancellation would be formally possible but socially absurd. Valerius could say, “I do not mean to remind anyone of the duel; I merely happen to like ravens.” That would function rather like Grice’s own comic cancellation: possible in grammar, incredible in context. The whole point of common ground is that some cancellations are too late to save innocence. Once Marco Corvo enters bearing the raven shield, the audience is entitled to take him as meaning more than “ornithological preference.” If you like, I can next do either of two things in the same dry voice: first, a compact paragraph on Publicola versus Corvus as two different types of Roman cognomen; or second, a compact Gricean paragraph on the shield-example alone, tightened into one publishable unit. A couple more points (a) where was this taking place -- the battle -- because the Romans were pretty predators terrotiroaially and what they call a Gallus, may well be someone living by the valie of Cisalpines -- and what year in A. U. C. Roman numeral? And if Livio, as you say, aptly dismissed to be more informative than is required and just states that a corvus attached the warrior in front of Marco Valerio -- are there other historians after Livio who make the point more explicit, e. g. Cicero in his use of signs per divinatione -- or even in moralistic terms -- because if Marco Valerio was encouraged to fight by the episode that gave him an advntage, there is what Grice may call a causal contingency alla Stevenson -- and stop at that -- do people proviidng the deeds of Valerio Corvo point to some 'divine intervention'? or the a minor deus actually taking the shape of a corvus (cf. Minerva civetta)? Gods would take sides with whom they liked and disagreed on that. The moralistic side here seems to be that whatever the corvus represented, or rae-presentat -- was that Valerio had some case in front of him, a lawful case to fight to expand the territory, or was he being defensive? Thanks. You can dou a second run on Valerius Corvus signum corvus Gallus etc thanks. Yes. A second run helps, and the picture becomes a little sharper. The battle, in Livy’s telling, is not in Cisalpine Gaul at all, but much nearer Rome, in a campaign against Gauls who had moved into central Italian space. Livy places the duel during the campaign of Lucius Furius Camillus, with the two armies facing one another while outposts stood opposite each other; he does not make the point topographically with the fullness one might like, but the campaign is the familiar central Italian Gallic danger, not a leisurely Roman expedition far into the Po valley. Later summaries regularly put it in 349 BC, under Camillus, and the annalistic year in Roman reckoning is A.U.C. CDV. [perseus.tufts.edu], [en.wikipedia.org] That helps with your territorial point. The “Gallus” here need not mean a man from some remote transalpine elsewhere; in Roman narrative it means a Gallic enemy confronting Rome in the central Italian theatre. So the moral colouring is less “heroic imperial expansion into the north” than “Rome defending and reasserting itself against a dangerous northern people already intruding into Roman or allied space.” On Livy’s presentation, the immediate scene is defensive or at least retaliatory in the Roman self-description, not a philosophical treatise on just war. The lawful case is therefore not explicitly theorised, but the narrative atmosphere strongly favours Roman defence of order against a threatening outsider. [perseus.tufts.edu] Now to the corvus itself. You were right to press the distinction between a causal encouragement and a heavier theological reading. Livy is actually very instructive here. He says that the combat became “less notable as a merely human contest because of the intervention of the gods,” and he has Valerius receive the bird as an augurium caelo missum, a heaven-sent augury; he even prays that, whether a god or goddess sent it, that deity be favourable to him. That is already stronger than a bare causal contingency. It is not only that the bird encouraged him; the text lets Valerius construe the event as divine favour. But Livy still stops short of the thicker mythic claim that some minor god literally took raven-form and entered the duel as a disguised divinity. It is divine intervention in the mode of omen and aid, not in the mode of explicit metamorphosis. [perseus.tufts.edu], [loebclassics.com] That, I think, is the best balance to keep. If one says only, “the bird’s appearance boosted his morale,” one underplays Livy. If one says, “a deity literally became a raven and physically fought,” one goes beyond Livy. The safer formulation is: Livy presents the corvus as a divinely sent and active augury, one that both encourages Valerius and materially disturbs the Gaul, thereby giving the duel an overtly numinous colouring without fully mythologising the bird into a named god in disguise. [perseus.tufts.edu] As for later writers making the point more explicit, the answer is: they usually make the divine colouring more available morally and rhetorically than analytically, but they do not necessarily improve on Livy’s economy. Livy is already quite explicit in calling the bird heaven-sent and in saying that the gods intervened. Valerius Maximus and later retellings tend to use the episode as an exemplum of favour, courage, or prodigious support, but not always in a more philosophically precise vocabulary of signum. Cicero, in De divinatione, gives you the conceptual environment for talking about auspices, omens, birds, and signs, but he is not, so far as this run shows, the source for a famous explicit reinterpretation of the Valerius-corvus episode itself. So I would not force Cicero into the scene unless you are making a comparative point about Roman theories of divinatory signs in general rather than about this episode in particular. [loebclassics.com], [en.wikipedia.org], [perseus.tufts.edu] In Gricean terms, the distinction you want can be put cleanly. At the thinnest level there is causal contingency: the raven distracts the Gaul, heartens Valerius, and so alters the conditions of the duel. At the thicker Roman level there is communicative or interpretive uptake: the bird does not merely cause but indicates. Valerius does not just benefit from it; he takes it as meaning something about divine favour. Livy’s narrative licenses that stronger uptake. The implication is not merely Stevenson-style causal reinforcement, but augural significance recognised within Roman common ground. [perseus.tufts.edu] And that brings us to the moral side. The moralism is not, I think, that the corvus certifies a juridically argued right to territorial expansion. Roman historians are usually less scrupulous than that. Rather, the bird’s intervention retrospectively dignifies the Roman side by marking Valerius as the recipient of favour while he fights in a cause the narrative already frames as Rome’s. In other words, the omen ratifies the hero within the Roman side of the story; it does not independently prove a theory of just war. If you want the driest version: the corvus sacralises the combatant more readily than it justifies the campaign. That is very Roman. So I would compress the answer as follows. The duel belongs to the Gallic war of 349 BC, A.U.C. CDV, in central Italian theatre under Lucius Furius Camillus, not to some later Roman adventure deep in Cisalpine territory. Livy already makes the divine point fairly strongly: the raven is a heaven-sent augury and the combat is elevated by divine intervention. But he does so in the restrained Roman way, by narrating action rather than by doctrinal overstatement. The bird is best understood neither as mere psychological encouragement nor as a named deity in raven-shape, but as an active auspicial sign of divine favour that both aids Valerius and authorises his own reading of the event. The moral force of the story is therefore not that Rome’s territorial claim is argued out in juridical detail, but that Valerius, fighting on Rome’s side in a narrative of defence against Gallic threat, is shown as favoured by the gods. [perseus.tufts.edu], [en.wikipedia.org] If you want, I can now do one of two things, in the same plain style and here in chat only. First, a compact paragraph specifically on signum, omen, augurium, indicium, and whether corvus is first introduced under any of those labels. Second, a compact paragraph turning all this into your Gricean contrast between what the raven explicitly does in the story and what Valerius, by invoking it later, implicitly conveys about himself, his cause, and divine favour. And can we have the Livy for heaven sent -- or full sentence in Latin for it -- perhaps with you helping paraphrase or parse it -- Oddly, when Grice speaks of utterance, utteratum, utterere, utteratio (the utteratum and utteratio are Austin's actually), the idea is to use Latinate proffere -- the utterance as profferentia -- and the utterer in later pragmatic models alla C. W. Mossis is the EMITOR with the EMISSUM as that which is sent, and RECEIVED (Shannon). So a corvus does not have free will in this case, the corvus is SENT by 'heaven' -- say Jove -- Livy is scpetical in a good way, 'whoever sent this bird' it was helpful to Corvo -- he does not thereofore include in the planning of Valerio's rather spontaneous reflect (stimulus-response) to defend any knowledge of the divine origin of the sign. A corvus comes from above and attacks the enemy -- just one -- on his face -- allowing Valero to kill him, or reduce him. So the point here is as to Livy's latin paraphrase of the 'emissum caelorum' -- or something -- thanks Yes. The key Latin in Livy is this: quod primo ut augurium caelo missum laetus accepit tribunus, precatus deinde, si divus si diva esset qui sibi praepetem misisset, volens propitius adesset. [loebclassics.com] And the sentence immediately before it gives the setup: minus insigne certamen humanum numine interposito deorum factum; namque conserenti iam manum Romano corvus repente in galea consedit, in hostem versus. [loebclassics.com] Then the action of the raven itself: dictu mirabile, tenuit non solum ales captam semel sedem, sed quotienscumque certamen initum est, levans se alis os oculosque hostis rostro et unguibus appetit, donec territum prodigii talis visu oculisque simul ac mente turbatum Valerius obtruncat. [loebclassics.com] For your exact point, the phrase to keep is augurium caelo missum. Not emissum caelorum, but caelo missum: sent from the sky, or more idiomatically, heaven-sent. And Livy very carefully adds si divus si diva esset, qui sibi praepetem misisset, which is precisely the sceptical or at least non-dogmatic reserve you are after: Valerius treats it as heaven-sent, but neither he nor Livy pins down which deity is responsible. [loebclassics.com] A very close paraphrase would be: The tribune gladly received it as a heaven-sent augury, and then prayed that, if it was some god or goddess who had sent the auspicious bird to him, that deity might stand by him willingly and favourably. [loebclassics.com] If you want the grammar parsed quite tightly: augurium caelo missum an augury sent from heaven quod primo ut augurium caelo missum laetus accepit tribunus which the tribune at first gladly accepted as a heaven-sent augury precatus deinde then having prayed si divus si diva esset if it were a god or a goddess qui sibi praepetem misisset who had sent the auspicious bird to him volens propitius adesset might be present to him kindly and favourably [loebclassics.com] And yes, your “emitter / emissum” analogy is very apt if kept at the right level. The corvus is not treated as a free intentional speaker. It is a vehicle, or if you like a sent thing, an emissum in a broad sense, but Livy does not use emissum. He uses missum, and more importantly he lets the agency remain upstream, indeterminate, divine, and not fully knowable. The bird is what arrives; the sender is bracketed as si divus si diva. That is exactly why the passage is so elegant. It leaves Valerius enough to respond to the event religiously, but not enough to claim full cognitive possession of its source. [loebclassics.com] So in your terms, Livy’s Latin supports this line very well: A raven comes from above, settles on the helmet, and attacks the opponent’s face and eyes; Valerius accepts the occurrence as augurium caelo missum, but neither he nor Livy claims determinate knowledge of the sender beyond the guarded formula si divus si diva esset. The sign is taken as sent, but its precise divine source is not built into Valerius’ plan of action; it is enough that the event presents itself as favourable aid from above. [loebclassics.com] And one more phrase of Livy is worth keeping because it sets the whole tone before the augury language arrives: minus insigne certamen humanum numine interposito deorum factum. [loebclassics.com] That is, roughly: The combat became less notable as a merely human contest because the divine power of the gods had intervened. [loebclassics.com] That is stronger than mere morale, but still more restrained than mythological over-description. If you want, I can now do either of these next, still here in chat and in the same plain manner: one compact paragraph in your Gricean idiom using profferentia, emissum, and sender / receiver language for the raven episode; or one compact philological note just on caelo missum, praepes, and volens propitius adesset.Valerio Corvo, Marco (XXX). Dicta.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Valerio – Ossia: Grice e Catulo: il portico a Roma – filosofia italiana Gaio Valerio Catulo (Roma): il portico a Roma – Both Catullus and Grice can be read as theorists, in very different registers, of economy in meaning and of the rational control of what is said versus what is meant. Catullus, especially in the libellus dedicated to Cornelius Nepos, cultivates a poetics of compression: short poems, sharp turns, and deliberate understatement that presuppose a shared Roman social and literary competence. Much of Catullan force lies not in explicit statement but in what the reader is licensed to recover from context, tone, and convention—how a few words in the urban setting of Rome can carry social judgment, emotional stance, and polemical bite far beyond their surface sense. Grice’s theory of reason‑governed conversational meaning formalizes this same phenomenon at a philosophical level: speakers are rational agents who rely on shared norms of cooperation to convey more than they say, trusting their interlocutors to infer intentions when maxims are observed, flouted, or strategically bent. Where Catullus walks in the Roman portico and lets poetry do its work by allusion, silence, and wit, Grice identifies the structure that makes such economy intelligible: an expectation that utterances are produced with reasons and for reasons. The Porticus matters to both because it is precisely a space of cultivated public exchange, where brevity is not a failure of expression but a signal of sophistication, and where meaning emerges from the interplay between what is minimally said and what a rational hearer is entitled to understand. Grice: “When I refer to ‘Athenian dialectic’ as opposed to ‘Oxonian dialectic,’ while my emphasis is on Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, I realise much of the dialectic was brought by so-called ‘minor’ schools – which became ‘great’ at Rome – like the Porticus, The Hortus, and the Cynargus. A member of the Porch and a tutor of Antonino. Porticus, Portico. GRICEVS: Catulle, Cinna me misit ut in porticu Romana de dialectica Athenis advecta et in Italia sapienter recocta tecum ambulem. CATVLVS: Ambula libenter, sed cave ne “minores scholae” apud Romanos fiant maiores quam tua ipsa modestia. GRICEVS: Immo, in Porticu, in Horto, in Cynargo saepe didici philosophos parvos crescere, sicut uvae in Urbe sine Sole Oxoniensi maturant. CATVLVS: Ergo, Grice, si tutor Antonini es, doce me quoque: quomodo in porticu verba pauca dicimus, sed multo plus significamus? Catulo, Gaio Valerio (a. u. c. DCLXX). Libellus Cornelio Nepoti dedicatus. Roma.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Valerio – Ossia: Grice e Valerio: la ragione conversazionale a Roma, e la filosofia italiana Marco Valerio Mesalla Corvino: la ragione conversazionale a Roma, e la filosofia italiana (Roma). Filosofo italiano. Imbevuto di discorsi socratici, insigne per le sue attività politiche e militari, scrittore e protettore di poeti. C. studia in Atene con ORAZIO e poi coltiva l’eloquenza, la grammatica, la poesia. C. e incluso nelle liste di proserizione perchè avversario di GIULIO Cesare, ma salva la vita. C. combatte con Bruto e Cassio a Filippi, poi si unì ad Marc'Antonio. In seguito, C. stringe rapporti con OTTAVIANO. C. e console, combatte ad Azio ed ha comandi in Oriente. Per una vittoria sugl'Aquitani, C. consegue il trionfo. C. rimane però sempre fedele alle antiche convinzioni politiche, e perciò, dopo sei giorni dalla nomina, abbandona l’ufficio di praefectus urbis. C. e curator aquarum. A nome del Senato, C. saluta OTTAVIANO pater patriæ. C. è capo di un circolo filosofico al quale appartennero TIBULLO e LIGSDAMO. C. scrive carmi bucolici e orazioni. Come oratore, C. e molto lodato da TACITO. C. compose un’opera storica di memorie. Alcuni hanno rilevato influssi dell’ORTO, altri di Posidonio, nel lungo frammento che ci rimane di un poema sulla caccia, la Cynegetica, composto da Grattio, vissuto al tempo d’OTTAVIANO. Ma abbiamo elementi troppo scarsi per determinare le direttive del suo pensiero. Di LINCEO, probabilmente questo è uno pseudonimo, Properzio, suo amico e rivale in amore, dice che attinge la sua sapienza ai libri socratici e che tratta del corso delle cose, del sistema del mondo e di problemi, escatologici e naturali. ORTO, literae humaniores. GRICEVS: Corvine, Roma tam plena est conversationum ut etiam aquae curator tacere non possit, sed tu saltem dic mihi quid inter tot socios et patronos vere sapias. CORVINVS: Sapio hoc: in Athenis cum Horatio didici verba colere, sed Roma me docuit verba colere ne a proscriptionibus colligar. GRICEVS: Mirum, qui cum Bruto et Cassio pugnaveris et postea Antonio atque Octaviano manus dederis, tamen dicis te fidelissimum veteribus opinionibus mansisse, quasi triumphus ipse sit argumentum. CORVINVS: Ita est, Grice, nam pater patriae salutare facilius est quam praefecturam urbis septem diebus sustinere, et philosophus qui carmina scribit scit quando officium dimittere oporteat. Since Mesalla was not a gens -- the gens of this one was Valeria, and thus if Grice and Speranza order people by gens, this goes under V, right? (We hope that was his birth name) -- Yes — your reasoning here is exactly right, and much more securely so than in the Constantine case.  ✅ 1. The name properly analyzed Marco Valerio Messalla Corvino (Latin: Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus) Breakdown: ElementTypeMeaningMarcuspraenomenpersonal nameValerius✅ nomen (gens)gens ValeriaMessallacognomenbranch of the gens ValeriaCorvinusagnomen/cognomenadditional surname (“raven-like”)  ✅ 2. Your key point: is “Messalla” a gens? ❌ No — “Messalla” is not a gens.  It is a cognomen within the gens Valeria Specifically, a family branch of the Valerii  So: 👉 gens = Valeria 👉 Messalla = “the Messalla branch of the Valerii”  ✅ 3. How to index him (your main question) If Grice/Speranza classify by gens, then: ✅ He must go under V (Valeria) NOT under:  M (Messalla) ❌ C (Corvinus) ❌   ✅ 4. “We hope that was his birth name” In this case, you can be confident:  “Marcus Valerius Messalla” is a fully standard Republican aristocratic name He was:  a member of an ancient aristocratic gens not a freedman not using late-imperial naming inflation    👉 So unlike Constantine: ✅ Here the nomen really does reflect ancestry  🧠 5. Conceptual contrast (very useful for your system)                              FigureNomenReal gens?IndexValerius Messalla CorvinusValerius✅ genuineVConstantineFlavius / Valerius❌ mostly titularambiguous / F conventionallyCrassicius PasiclesCrassicius✅ but minorC  🧩 6. A subtle bonus (Speranza-friendly) Your passage calls him “Corvino” — nice Latinization, but:  Corvinus is an agnomen (secondary distinction) It signals:  prestige achievement (or family distinction)    👉 But it does not override the gens So:  Corvinus enriches the identity, but Valerius anchors it.   ✅ Final answer ✔ Yes — he belongs under V (gens Valeria) ✔ “Messalla” is not a gens, but a cognomen (family branch) ✔ In this case, unlike Constantine, the gens identification is fully valid and historically meaningful  If you want, I can reconstruct the full Valerii Messalla lineage (it’s quite rich and politically revealing—especially for your Brutus/Cassius/Ottaviano transitions). Valerio Mesalla Corvino, Marco (XXX). Dicta.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Valerio – Ossia: Grice e Valerio o Marco Valerio Messalla Corvino (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale e l’orto romano. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers rationally recover what a speaker means beyond what is literally said by presuming a cooperative, purposive exchange and then calculating implicatures from that presumption plus shared expectations about relevance, informativeness, and manner; the Messalla passage, by contrast, relocates that Gricean rationality into a Roman-Epicurean “garden” politics of speech, where the point of indirectness is not just efficient information-transfer but cultivated social living under pressure (how to speak, and when to abstain, amid Caesar, the Senate’s noise, and the transition to Augustus). Where Grice treats implicature as a principled inferential phenomenon grounded in mutual recognition of intentions, Messalla-as-Epicurean (and as orator-statesman moving between republican opposition and later accommodation) highlights a setting in which strategic quiet, tactful redirection, and “sending someone to the Portico to learn to be silent” are themselves rational conversational moves: implicatures become tools for maintaining concord, face, and safety, not merely theoretical byproducts of maxims. In short, Grice provides the general mechanism (reasoned inference from cooperative norms), while Messalla supplies a historically situated ethos in which conversational reason is horticultural and civic: meaning is managed like a garden—pruned, deflected, and sometimes deliberately left unsaid—so that what is implicated can do political and ethical work that explicit assertion cannot. Grice: “I refer to the Athenian dialectic rather broadly, and just to compare it to the Oxonian dialectic – and I concentrate only in three philosophers: Socrates, of the Agora, Plato, of the Academy, and Aristotele, of the Academy and his own Lycaeum – but there were at least two further sects which I should have taken into account. One is referred to by the Italians as ‘Il Portico,’ since that is what ‘stoa’ means – The other is referred to by Italians as ‘L’Orto’ since its founder, Epicurus, had a thing for ‘gardening’! The topic quite overlaps with the Oxonian dialectic, seeing that for most of the late nineteenth-century, Oxonian dialetic was of the very gardening type – as a cursory glimpse of Pater’s Marcus the Epicurean will testify!” -- Filosofo italiano. Garden. Friend of Orazio. They study philosophy together. He opposea GIULIO  Cesare but eventually makes his peace with Ottaviano. He writes philosophical treatises. Allow me to address briefly the L’ORTO philosophy within the context of the difficult tines covering the years which witness the downfall of the republic and the birth of the principate. In  'L’ORTO in Revolt' (J.R.S.) Momigliano takes as a starting point the conversion to L’ORTO of CASSIO who rapidly comes to the conclusion that GIULIO Caesar has to be eliminated because of what appear to be his tyrannical tendencies. The author emphasises that during this crucial period the adherents of the L’ORTO philosophy did not maintain a passive political aloofness. While some followers of L’ORTO actively support GIULIO in a noderate way, a mumber oppose him, among whom are I. Manlio Torquato, Trebiano, L. Papirio Paeto, M. Fadio Gallo, and, as the evidence suggests, L. Saufeio and Statilio. Monigliano concludes with the statement that on the whole, the events prove that Cassio is not an exceptional case among the contemporary L’ORTO. Portico orto. GRICEVS: Salvē, MESSALLA; audīvi tē de Porticū et de Ortō disputāre: Oxoniēnsēs quoque hortulānī sunt—sed noster hortus plēnus est glossārum. MESSALLA: Salvē, GRICEVE; hortulānī? Ego certe Epicūrī hortum colō, ubi voluptās in pace seritur; vōs autem in Oxoniā herbas vocātis “distinctionēs” et cotīdiē sarculōs, id est syllogismōs, agitātis. GRICEVS: At mihi vidētur Orto ipsum esse schola implicātūrae: cum Epicūrus “abstinē” dicit, saepe significat “abstinē a strepitū senātūs”—id est, Caesarī locum relinque. MESSALLA: Rectē; sed ego, amīcus Horātiī, hoc addō: sī quis in hortō meō de rē pūblicā clāmat, eum leniter monēbō—sin pergat, eum ad Porticūm mittam, ut ibi stans discat tacēre. Valeria seems to have been one of the most philosophical gens. Speranza supposes the gens was very noble. Yes, that feels broadly right, with two small cautions. First, the Valerii were certainly one of the great noble Roman gentes, and among the oldest and most prestigious in Republican memory. So if Speranza says that the gens was “very noble,” he is on safe ground, provided the phrase is heard in the Roman sense: not pretty heraldry, but antiquity, office, public rank, and institutional weight. In that sense the Valerii are indeed old, eminent, and politically saturated. Second, “one of the most philosophical gentes” is a more interesting claim, and I think it can be defended if one means not that the whole gens continuously bred philosophers, but that it repeatedly produced figures unusually close to philosophy, rhetoric, literary culture, or philosophically significant public life. That is especially true if one allows the broader Messalla branch and the late Republican to early imperial world, where politics, eloquence, scholarship, and philosophy were constantly crossing. So in Speranza’s dry register one might say: The gens Valeria was certainly among the noblest at Rome, if nobility here is taken in the severe Roman sense of antiquity, magistracies, priesthoods, and public expectation rather than in any merely decorative or heraldic one. Whether it was among the most philosophical is harder, but not absurd. The Valerii, and especially the Messalla line, show a recurrent proximity to philosophy, rhetoric, letters, and public reflection that makes them unusually serviceable to a philosopher’s prosopography. They do not form a school; they form something perhaps more Roman than that, a house in which public life repeatedly shaded into reflective life. If you want it a little more pointed: The Valerii were noble enough without advertisement. The more interesting point is that they were also repeatedly adjacent to philosophy, which in Rome is often the more revealing thing. A gens may produce consuls without producing a single thought; the Valerii, especially in the Messalla branch, more than once managed both public dignity and intellectual afterlife. And if you want a shorter remark to bridge into Messalla: Valeria is one of those Roman names in which nobility and discursiveness seem, for once, to have entered the same house. As to Messalla specifically, the claim works especially well because he is not just a Roman grandee but one whose literary, philosophical, and conversational setting is unusually rich. Friend of Horace, participant in the late Republican crisis, later accommodator under Augustus, and associated with an Epicurean or at least hortulan mode of civility: that gives Speranza excellent material for the contrast with Grice. The key is not to overstate his doctrinal Epicureanism if the evidence is thinner than the ambiance. One can safely say that he belongs to a world in which the Orto, tact, concord, retirement, and measured speech make philosophical sense. That is already enough. So if the question is simply whether Speranza is entitled to speak of the Valerii as a very noble gens and perhaps one of the more philosophical ones, my answer is yes, provided he keeps the second claim slightly qualified and lets the philosophical colour emerge through the persons rather than through a bald census of philosophers. If you like, I can now do either of two things here in chat only. I can give you a compact paragraph on the gens Valeria as noble and philosophically serviceable, or I can tighten the Messalla opening so that the Valerian background is folded into it without sounding like a handbook.Messalla, Marco Valerio (a. u. c. DCCXXIII). De libertate et concordia. Roma.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Valerio – Ossia: Grice e Valerio: la ragione conversazionale nella Roma antica filosofia italiana –  (Roma). Filosofo italiano. An epigram by MARZIALE  addresses P. as someone versed in the doctrines of various philosophical sects. Pannico (Roma): la ragione conversazionale nella Roma antica –An epigram by MARZIALE  addresses P. as someone versed in the doctrines of various philosophical sects.   GRICEVS: Salve, PANNICE! Martialis te “sectarum peritum” appellat: dic mihi, in una cena quot philosophias cenare soles—Stoicamne, Epicureamne, an omnes simul? PANNICVS: Salve, Grice. Omnes simul—sed modice: Stoicus vinum negat, Epicureus poscit, Cynicus rapit; ego autem sapienter facio ut poculum sit medium, nec vacuum nec inundatum. GRICEVS: Pulchre! At quaeso: cum tot dogmata in uno capite habitat, quomodo “ratio conversationalis” te non in rixam trahit? PANNICVS: Facile: ego regula utor—loquor ut intelligar, taceo ut placeam; et si quis nimis argute disputat, Martialis ipse respondet pro me: “philosophus es? ergo ride paulum.” Can we believe that this Pannico was Roman born, Latin-speaker, seeing that the name was possily fictiotious as I think it means follower of Pan? Anddo we have an oratio recta in Martial where we can extract Pannicus utterance or the segment where he is first mentioned or where he is most philosophciually mentioned? Short answer: “Pannicus” (or Pannychus / Panniculus) in Martial is not a securely historical philosopher at all, but a literary addressee or target—a type-name, possibly playful, possibly suggestive, and quite likely not to be taken as a solid biographical Roman. Now to your three points, carefully.  1. Is “Pannicus” a real Roman, Latin-speaking individual? We cannot be sure—and the safest position is:  In Martial, such names are often semi-fictional, stylized, or satirical personae. They may refer to real individuals, but the text itself does not guarantee this. Martial’s epigrams are full of such figures—“Ponticus,” “Caelia,” “Sextus,” etc.—who function as types rather than biographical subjects. [Martial En...Quotations]  So:  Yes, the name is Latinized and perfectly compatible with a Roman-speaking milieu. But its referent is unstable: literary, not archival.  Your suspicion about Pan is not absurd: the name Pannychus/Pannicus can echo Greek formations (παννυχος etc.), and Martial delights in such onomastic play.  2. Do we have oratio recta—i.e. something like Pannicus speaking? Not really. What we have is direct address, which is the closest equivalent. The clearest example is from Epigrams VI.67:  Cur tantum eunuchos habeat tua Caelia, quaeris, Pannyche? Volt futui Caelia nec parere. [wist.info]  That is:  Martial addresses him directly: quaeris, Pannyche? (“you ask, Pannychus?”) So Pannicus is constructed as an interlocutor, but we do not hear his words—only the question attributed to him.  So the structure is:  Pannicus: implied question (reported, not quoted) Martial: explicit answer (quoted)  In your preferred triadic terms:  x (signal): Pannicus’ supposed question y (content): “Why does Caelia keep eunuchs?” z (interpretant): Martial’s audience (and us)  But crucially: Pannicus’ utterance is not given in oratio recta—only in reported form.  3. Is there a more “philosophically usable” occurrence? There is a second, slighter occurrence (variant form Panniculus):  te successurum credo ego Panniculo [loebclassics.com]  Here:  He is invoked as a type or successor, again not as a speaking subject. The name functions as a comparative marker, almost like a stock figure.   4. What sort of “character” is Pannicus? From the textual evidence (and not going beyond it):  He is a questioner (quaeris…) Possibly naïve or obtuse, since Martial’s answer is blunt and corrective A comic interlocutor, not a philosophical authority  So if one were to Grice-ify him:  He is the addressee whose inferential capacities are being tested Martial supplies the implicature because Pannicus fails to derive it   5. On your Pan hypothesis Your instinct is interesting, but:  There is no explicit evidence in the text that the name is meant as “follower of Pan.” However, Martial often uses names with comic, suggestive, or Greek-flavoured overtones.  So the safest formulation:  The name may carry phonetic or cultural resonance, but its meaning is not fixed or doctrinally interpretable.   Final dry formulation Pannicus is not a philosopher of the Garden, nor a securely attested Roman gentleman of the gens-this-or-that, but a grammatical convenience with a personality attached—a man who asks questions so that Martial may answer them better than he could. He speaks, but only by implicature. Short answer: “Pannicus” (or Pannychus / Panniculus) in Martial is not a securely historical philosopher at all, but a literary addressee or target—a type-name, possibly playful, possibly suggestive, and quite likely not to be taken as a solid biographical Roman. Now to your three points, carefully.  1. Is “Pannicus” a real Roman, Latin-speaking individual? We cannot be sure—and the safest position is:  In Martial, such names are often semi-fictional, stylized, or satirical personae. They may refer to real individuals, but the text itself does not guarantee this. Martial’s epigrams are full of such figures—“Ponticus,” “Caelia,” “Sextus,” etc.—who function as types rather than biographical subjects. [Martial En...Quotations]  So:  Yes, the name is Latinized and perfectly compatible with a Roman-speaking milieu. But its referent is unstable: literary, not archival.  Your suspicion about Pan is not absurd: the name Pannychus/Pannicus can echo Greek formations (παννυχος etc.), and Martial delights in such onomastic play.  2. Do we have oratio recta—i.e. something like Pannicus speaking? Not really. What we have is direct address, which is the closest equivalent. The clearest example is from Epigrams VI.67:  Cur tantum eunuchos habeat tua Caelia, quaeris, Pannyche? Volt futui Caelia nec parere. [wist.info]  That is:  Martial addresses him directly: quaeris, Pannyche? (“you ask, Pannychus?”) So Pannicus is constructed as an interlocutor, but we do not hear his words—only the question attributed to him.  So the structure is:  Pannicus: implied question (reported, not quoted) Martial: explicit answer (quoted)  In your preferred triadic terms:  x (signal): Pannicus’ supposed question y (content): “Why does Caelia keep eunuchs?” z (interpretant): Martial’s audience (and us)  But crucially: Pannicus’ utterance is not given in oratio recta—only in reported form.  3. Is there a more “philosophically usable” occurrence? There is a second, slighter occurrence (variant form Panniculus):  te successurum credo ego Panniculo [loebclassics.com]  Here:  He is invoked as a type or successor, again not as a speaking subject. The name functions as a comparative marker, almost like a stock figure.   4. What sort of “character” is Pannicus? From the textual evidence (and not going beyond it):  He is a questioner (quaeris…) Possibly naïve or obtuse, since Martial’s answer is blunt and corrective A comic interlocutor, not a philosophical authority  So if one were to Grice-ify him:  He is the addressee whose inferential capacities are being tested Martial supplies the implicature because Pannicus fails to derive it   5. On your Pan hypothesis Your instinct is interesting, but:  There is no explicit evidence in the text that the name is meant as “follower of Pan.” However, Martial often uses names with comic, suggestive, or Greek-flavoured overtones.  So the safest formulation:  The name may carry phonetic or cultural resonance, but its meaning is not fixed or doctrinally interpretable.   Final dry formulation Pannicus is not a philosopher of the Garden, nor a securely attested Roman gentleman of the gens-this-or-that, but a grammatical convenience with a personality attached—a man who asks questions so that Martial may answer them better than he could. He speaks, but only by implicature.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Valerio – Ossia: Grice e Valerio: la ragione conversazionale contro il lizio – Roma – filosofia italiana  Pollio Valerio (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale contro il lizio. He plays a leading role in Rome’s political and cultural life. He is a friend of both VIRGILIO  and ORAZIO , and wrote a history of the civil war. He is NOT a lizio, and his most famous tract he entitles, “Contra Aristotelem”. He rather follows the philosophy of Musonio RUFO , whom he deems superior to ‘that ginnasio where an over-rated Stagirite used to ramble with friends.’ Historians debate this, since Musonio Rufo apparently was born well after P. dies – but, as Kunstermann says, ‘there is no obvious earlier candidate.’ Hohlertter suggests that the work was written by a LATER Pollio – ‘most likely Pollio Valerio’. Gaio Asinio Pollio. Pollio: la ragione conversazionale contro il Lizio – Roma – filosofia italiana –  (Roma). The author of “Contra Aristotelem” according to Hohlertter.  GRICEVS: POLLĪ, audio te librum conscripsisse Contra Aristotelem: hoc quidem dicis; sed quid implicas—te non solum a Lȳceō abesse, sed etiam ab illis qui ibi ambulando sapientiam putant constare? POMPONIVS: Recte conicis. Ego Stoicum magis amo—Musonium Rufum, si licet—quam illum Stagiritem, qui in gymnasio quasi peripatetice loquitur et numquam ad rem pervenit. GRICEVS: Sed ecce quaestio conversazionalis: cum Musonium nomines (quem quidam aiunt post te natum esse), tu dicis magistrum; sed implicas “mihi opus est severiore praeceptore quam Aristoteles”—et chronologia, ut solet, in foro minus valet quam sententia. POMPONIVS: Et tu, Grice, cum “implicas” dicis, implicas hoc: Romani etiam cum philosophiam eligunt, more civili agunt—non “quid verum est?” sed “quid utile est, ne rursus bellum civile fiat?” we have two Pollios here -- but since the first is Pollio Valerius, are we to assume that it is safe to think his gens is Valeria, and thus should be under "V" whereas the other we don't know as he is known as "Pollio Felice" and thus can remain under "P"? Yes, that is the safer filing rule, with one caution. If the name is Pollio Valerius in genuinely Roman order, then Valerius is the nomen and so points to the gens Valeria. On that basis, yes, he belongs under V rather than P. Pollio in that case would function as the cognomen, or at any rate the distinguishing element, not the gens-marker. By contrast, Pollio Felice does not give you a secure gentilicium in the same way. Felice looks like a cognomen or descriptive surname element, and Pollio itself may be either a cognomen-like identifier or simply the form under which he is known. So unless you have fuller tria nomina for him, it is reasonable to leave him under P. So the neat archival answer is: Pollio Valerius: file under V, assuming Valerius is genuinely the nomen. Pollio Felice: file under P, unless fuller evidence turns up for a nomen that would relocate him. The caution is simply that late antique and post-classical name forms are often messy, and some transmitted names reverse or flatten Roman order. So if Pollio Valerius is coming from a late source rather than a clean Roman inscription, one should still check whether it is really nomen plus cognomen, and not just two floating name-elements. But prima facie, yes: Valerius means V.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Valerio – Ossia: Grice e Valerio: la ragione conversazionale -- TVTELA IVPPITER OMNIPOTENS REGVM RERVMQVE DEVMQVE PROGENITOR GENITRIXQVE DEVM DEVS VNVS ET OMNES -- Roma antica. Note su De re militari. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Quinto Valerio Orca Sorano (Sora, Lazio): Institutionally, Quintus Valerius Soranus and H. P. Grice are not comparable in the academic sense at all. Grice’s formula is exact in the modern Oxford sense. Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s means a college office with tutorials, students, and membership in the governing life of the college. CUF University Lecturer in philosophy means a university-wide appointment in the faculty structure. So Grice combines the two classic Oxford functions: college tutor and university lecturer. Quintus Valerius Soranus belongs to an entirely different world. He was a late Republican Latin poet, grammarian, and probably tribune of the plebs, active in the dangerous public and religious-political life of the 80s BCE, admired by Cicero and cited by Varro, and later remembered for the tradition that he disclosed Rome’s secret tutelary name and was put to death under Sulla. The standard reference sources identify Quintus Valerius Soranus as a Latin poet and scholar from Sora, friend of Varro, executed in 82 BCE, and remembered above all for a surviving couplet on Jupiter and for the story of the secret name of Rome. [en.wikipedia.org], [academic.oup.com] So the clean institutional contrast is this. Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate and university-faculty world. Quintus Valerius Soranus belongs to the literary, civic, and religious-political world of the late Roman Republic. That institutional difference fits your philosophical comparison very well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer recovers what a speaker means by recognising intentions and inferring implicatures under shared norms. Valerius Soranus, by contrast, belongs to a world where the difference between what is said and what is meant is governed less by conversational cooperation than by taboo, auctoritas, and civic risk. His surviving couplet on Jupiter is not a conversational move in the ordinary Gricean sense. It is a compressed theological utterance whose meaning is mediated by later exegesis, above all Varro’s, and by Augustine’s hostile preservation of that exegesis. The Loeb passage in Augustine explicitly quotes the fragment and reports Varro’s explanation that Jupiter is the universe, both emitting and receiving seed, and therefore rightly called both father and mother, one god and all gods. [loebclassics.com], [loebclassics.com] So the sharpest formulation is this. Grice explains how one utterance can mean more than it literally says under cooperative rationality. Valerius Soranus exemplifies a Roman religious-political world in which saying too much, or saying the wrong thing too explicitly, can itself be fatal. That is why your emphasis on tutela is exactly right. For Grice, implicature is a normatively reconstructible inferential surplus. For Valerius Soranus, the relevant “surplus” lies in a culturally policed economy of public speech. The fragment deus unus et omnes can be heard as inviting monistic or pantheistic entailments, but what matters historically is not merely what can be inferred from the verse. What matters is that such articulation takes place under conditions where the naming of divine or civic secrets is itself politically charged. In that world, the unsaid is not merely a polite conversational reserve. It is a boundary enforced by religion and power. There are, however, two crucial corrections. First, “Roma, Lazio” should not be used as the biographical heading. The standard sources agree that the cognomen Soranus marks him as from Sora, not Rome. The best summaries explicitly say that Soranus is a toponym indicating origin from Sora. [en.wikipedia.org], [academic.oup.com] Second, your final bibliographic line is wrong. There is no secure connection between Quintus Valerius Soranus and a work called De re militari. The search results confirm only the late Republican poet and scholar, the fragment on Jupiter, his possible book Epoptides, and the later reception through Varro and Augustine. The De re militari results belong to entirely different authors such as Vegetius or Valturio, not to Valerius Soranus. So the line Valerio, Quinto V. Orca Sorano (DCLXXII a. u. c.). De re militari. Venezia: Giovanni Varisco should be discarded. The secure sources on Quintus Valerius Soranus mention the fragment on Jupiter and the work Epoptides, not any De re militari. [en.wikipedia.org], [dbpedia.org], [academic.oup.com] So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the precise collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s College and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Quintus Valerius Soranus, by contrast, was a late Republican Latin poet, scholar, and civic figure from Sora, active in a world of literary learning, public office, and dangerous religious-political speech rather than in any academic institution. Institutionally, Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate world; Valerius Soranus to the literary-civic and taboo-governed world of late Republican Rome. Philosophically, the contrast is equally clear: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of speaker-meaning and implicature, whereas Valerius Soranus exemplifies a culturally policed economy of saying and unsaying in which the force of an utterance depends on tutela, interpretive authority, and the risks attached to speaking divine or civic truth too openly. And if I compress it into one line: Grice theorises implicature as cooperative inference; Valerius Soranus embodies implication as dangerous utterance under taboo. If you want, I can now give you a tighter one-paragraph entry in your preferred style, with the false De re militari tail removed and the Sora–Varro–Augustine line made central.la ragione conversazionale, TVTELA IVPPITER OMNIPOTENS REGVM RERVMQVE DEVMQVE PROGENITOR GENITRIXQVE DEVM DEVS VNVS ET OMNES -- Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats “implicature” as a rational, reconstructible inference from what is said plus a presumption of cooperative agency (the speaker is aiming at mutual understanding under constraints like relevance, sufficiency of information, and sincerity), whereas the Valerius material you cite (Quintus Valerius Soranus, late Republic, remembered via Varro and preserved by Augustine) operates in a different key: the elegiac couplet “Iuppiter omnipotens regum rerumque deumque / progenitor genetrixque deum, deus unus et omnes” is not a conversational turn designed for a partner’s uptake in ordinary exchange, but a theologically compressed utterance whose force depends on Roman religious-linguistic institutions (tutela, arcana nomina, the politics of what may be said) and on interpretive authority (Varro’s exegesis, Augustine’s polemic) rather than on maxims of cooperative talk; if Grice explains how hearers derive extra content because they assume a rational speaker playing a public game of reasons, Soranus exemplifies how, in Rome, “meaning” can be governed by taboo and civic risk—one can read “deus unus et omnes” as inviting monistic/pantheistic entailments (Jupiter as world-soul, one-and-all) while simultaneously implicating the danger of too-explicit articulation (the tradition that Soranus was executed for disclosing Rome’s secret tutelary name), so the contrast is that Gricean implicature is a normative logic of inference from cooperative intention, whereas “Valerian” implication here is a culturally policed economy of saying/unsaying where what is meant is inseparable from tutela, auctoritas, and the sanctioned (or lethal) boundaries of public speech. Roma antica Grice: “If you were to trace the  Italian surname derived from the gens of Quintus Valerius Orca Soranus, it would most directly become Valerio.  Etymologies of the Surnames Valerio (from Valerius): Derived from the Latin nomen Valerius, which comes from the verb valere, meaning "to be strong" or "to be healthy". It is one of the most prominent clan names in Roman history. Sorano (from Soranus): This is a toponymic surname indicating an origin from the town of Sora, which was the native municipality of the Valerii Sorani family. Orca: A cognomen potentially referring to a type of vessel or a whale (orca in Latin), though in this family, it served as a hereditary branch identifier. Importance for the History of Italian Philosophy The verse tvtela ivppiter omnipotens regvm rervmque devmqve progenitor genitrixqve devm devs vnvs et omnes is a fragment attributed to V.. It translates to: "Jupiter the Almighty, the protector of kings and things and gods, the father and mother of gods, the one god and all gods." This line is of paramount importance to the history of Italian and Western philosophy for the following reasons: Early Monism and Panentheism: It represents one of the earliest Roman expressions of monism alla Portico. By describing Jupiter as both progenitor (father) and genitrix (mother), V. presents a bisexual or androgynous deity that encompasses all of nature, prefiguring later philosophical concepts of a "universal soul" or anima mundi. The "Secret Name" of Rome: V. is famously executed for allegedly revealing the secret name of Rome (the Tutela or protective deity). This intersection of religion and linguistics establishes a tradition in Italian thought. TVTELA. IVPPITER OMNIPOTENS REGVM RERVMQVE DEVMQVE PROGENITOR GENITRIXQVE DEVM DEVS VNVS ET OMNES. GRICEVUS: TVTELA IVPPITER OMNIPOTENS REGVM RERVMQVE DEVMQVE PROGENITOR GENITRIXQVE DEVM DEVS VNVS ET OMNES! Valeri, quid ista sententia implicat? Num est implicatura in hoc versu, an tantum oratio poetica? VALERIVS: Primum, GRICEVE—INplicatura, non IMPlicatura: in + plicare, “involvere.” Alioquin sonat quasi Iuppiter ipse in p labatur! Sed ad rem: hic versus plus dicit quam dicit—id est, poeta docet per excessum. GRICEVUS: Ergo “tutela” non tantum est custos urbis, sed quasi signum occultum: dicendo Iovem “unum et omnes,” INplicat deum esse et nomen et naturam, et fortasse—subridentibus dis—ipsam Romam sub tutela verbi latere? VALERIVS: Ita; sed cave: non est sola “mystica,” est etiam ratio civitatis. Tutela hic INplicat: “Qui nomen tutelae publice iactat, rem publicam nudat.” Tu quaeris implicaturam; ego dico: ipsa tutela est implicatura—tectum quod, si nimis explicas, statim desinit esse tutela. Valerio, Quinto V. Orca Sorano (DCLXXII a. u. c.). De re militari. Venezia: Giovanni Varisco.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Valerio – Ossia: Grice e Valerio: la ragione conversazionale a Roma e l’implicatura conversazionale della morale togata – il gentiluomo romano- Note su Facta et dicta memorabilia. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Valerio Massimo (Roma, Lazio): Institutionally, Valerius Maximus and H. P. Grice are not comparable in the academic sense at all. Grice’s formula is exact in the modern Oxford sense. Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s means a college office with tutorials, students, and membership in the governing life of the college. CUF University Lecturer in philosophy means a university-wide appointment in the faculty structure. So Grice combines the two classic Oxford functions: college tutor and university lecturer. Valerius Maximus belongs to an entirely different world. He was not a don, not a fellow, and not a university lecturer. He was a Roman author of moral exempla under the Principate, producing a handbook of memorable sayings and deeds for rhetorical, moral, and educational use. His authority lies in literary curation, moral framing, and usefulness to readers, teachers, and declaimers, not in any formal school or chair. So the clean institutional contrast is this. Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate and university-faculty world. Valerius Maximus belongs to the literary, rhetorical, and moral-pedagogical world of imperial Rome. That institutional difference fits your philosophical comparison very well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising intentions and inferring implicatures under shared norms. Valerius Maximus, by contrast, works at a very different level. He is not analysing the inferential structure of a local exchange. He is arranging stories, sayings, and examples so that a reader or speaker may draw the right moral or civic lesson from them. In his world, meaning is not primarily the product of cooperative conversational repair between equals. It is the product of exemplarity, prudence, rhetoric, and asymmetry: an author addressing a morally educable audience under the watch of power. So the sharpest formulation is this. Grice explains how one utterance comes to mean more than it literally says. Valerius Maximus shows how one anecdote comes to mean more than it explicitly narrates. That is why your “morale togata” formulation works. Roman moralising prose of this kind depends heavily on what the audience is expected already to know, admire, fear, or avoid. The anecdote itself is only the vehicle. The real work lies in the moral frame, the title of the chapter, the implied contrast between virtue and vice, and the political prudence with which praise and blame are distributed. In that sense, one can indeed speak, by analogy, of an institutionalised implicature-system. But it is not Gricean implicature in the strict sense. It is genre-governed, prudential, and often patron-sensitive. There are also two cautions. First, “Roma, Lazio” as birthplace is too confident unless you are using it merely as a broad cultural heading. Valerius Maximus is associated with Rome as author and setting, but the exact biographical facts about his origin are not securely known in the way such a heading suggests. Second, the final bibliographic line should not be left as if it were a modern title-page entry in Venice for an author of the first century. The clean classical anchor is Facta et dicta memorabilia, not the later early printed Venetian translation or edition unless you are specifically discussing reception history. So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the precise collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s College and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Valerius Maximus, by contrast, was a Roman author of moral exempla under the early Principate, active in the literary and rhetorical culture of imperial moral education rather than in any academic institution. Institutionally, Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate world; Valerius to the literary-pedagogical world of Roman exemplarity. Philosophically, the contrast is equally clear: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of speaker-meaning and implicature, whereas Valerius Maximus exemplifies a rhetorical and prudential culture in which moral meaning is conveyed through anecdote, compression, and safely coded evaluation under unequal conditions of power. And if I compress it into one line: Grice theorises how speakers imply; Valerius Maximus curates how Roman anecdotes imply. If you want, I can now give you a tighter one-paragraph entry in your preferred style, with the modern Venetian imprint details stripped away and the contrast between implicature and exemplarity made even sharper.la ragione conversazionale a Roma e l’implicatura conversazionale della morale togata – Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats conversation as a cooperative, purposive exchange in which hearers infer what a speaker means (often more than what is said) by presuming rational conformity to the Cooperative Principle and its maxims (quality, quantity, relation, manner), so that apparent irrelevance, underinformativeness, overinformativeness, or odd phrasing is not noise but a calculable prompt to derive a conversational implicature; Valerius Maximus, by contrast, is not a theorist of inference but a producer of moral exempla whose rhetoric presupposes (and exploits) a Roman “conversational reason” of decorum, hierarchy, and self-protective indirection under the Principate—his IX books are organized for practical moral education and rhetorical supply, and his notorious flattery of Tiberius can be read as an institutionalized implicature-system in which praising the powerful communicates loyalty, safety, and alignment while leaving criticism unsaid, so that the moral “meaning” of an anecdote depends less on maxim-driven cooperative reconstruction between equal interlocutors (Grice’s default model) than on asymmetric audience-design (patron, princeps, moralizing reader) where what is not said is governed by prudence and status; if Grice makes implicature a general, rational mechanism for bridging said and meant in ordinary talk, Valerius makes insinuation, exemplarity, and safely coded evaluation a cultural technique of moral pedagogy and survival, with “reason” functioning not as an explicit theory but as the tacit social logic that lets a Roman gentleman communicate virtue-talk in public while navigating power. il gentiluomo romano-- A philosopher of little originality, and a notorious flatterer of TIBERIO (vedi). He is best known for producing his IX books of memorable doings and sayings – the work is designed primarily as a resource for moral education by means of examples – showing how virtue is rewarded and vice punished. It preserves many otherwise lost snippets taken from a variety of sources – including newspapers. His ‘saggi’ are not much regarded today, but they were bestsellers throughout the dark ages and the Italian renaissance, “and I do find them incredibly amusing on a lazy after-noon,” Grice. Morale pretesto. Ed Shackleton, Loeb. Skidmore, “Practical ethics for Roman Gentlemen”. DEI DETTI ET FATti Memorabili. Traiotti di inToscmoiU Ditfl Fiorctino, '.OTPC/ ROMA r. BREVE DESCRITTIO della vita di V. tradotta in lingua toscana. Nato in Roma HobilSiUtgue, cr deU^ ordine Patritio consume la maggior parte della sua giouinezza nelli studij delle let tirecT arti liberali. Quindi prefoU ^Toga Vinleip diede alia militiajioue tgli(fecondo che p afferma') andatof’ 9^ Di quelli, che dalla nobiltà del padre hanno degenerai to* cap* r* _Deglihuomini eccellenti, che nel uefliretrapaffarono il cojlume della citta. Della confidenza, di f e medepmot Della cojiantia Della moderafione decimammo, Di quelU^ che diinitnictdiueètarono amici. Della AslinenzacT continenza – GRICE AKRASIA --, Della poverta. Della Verecundia. Dell’amore tra moglie e marito. Dell’amicitia – Grice on the logically developing series of philia -- Della liberalità. Dell’umanita. Della gratitudine. Della ingratitudine. Della pietà. Della pietà verso i frateUL Della pudicitia. Delle cose che fon fiate dette 0 fatte a la Ubera. Della severita.De i detti e fatti con guattita. Della giuslitia – GRICE, justice in Plato’s republic, Aristotle on ‘just’ as analogical. Della fede publica. Della fede de mogU^ verso i mariti c. A 4- r* 6. 7* iti 177 ij. r A\ Pf?j fe. Roma antica.  GRICEVS: Salvē, Valeri Massime! Dic mihi, quot exempla moralia in libris tuis reperiri possunt? Numerasne adhuc? VALERIVS: Salvē, amice Grice. Exemplorum numerus maior est quam pisces in Tiberi! Etiam ego interdum inter exempla mea perdo! GRICEVS: At certe, nonnulla exempla ad Tiberium spectant… Numquamne timebas eum offendere? VALERIVS: Profecto non! Flatteria mea scutum validissimum erat—apud Tiberium, laudare semper tutius quam arguere! Valerio, V. Massimo (DCCLXXXIV a. u. c.). Facta et dicta memorabilia. Venezia: de Gregoriis.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Valerio – Ossia: Grice e Valerio: la ragione conversazionale alla villa di Roma. Note sulle Fabulae. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Publio Aviano Valerio (Roma, Lazio): Institutionally, Publio Aviano and H. P. Grice are not comparable in the academic sense at all. Grice’s formula is exact in the modern Oxford sense. Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s means a college office with tutorials, students, and membership in the governing life of the college. CUF University Lecturer in philosophy means a university-wide appointment in the faculty structure. So Grice combines the two classic Oxford functions: college tutor and university lecturer. Avianus belongs to a completely different world: late antiquity, school-text transmission, literary didacticism, and the long afterlife of fable in grammatical and rhetorical education. He was not a don, not a fellow, and not a university lecturer. He is best treated as a late-antique Latin fabulist whose authority lies in literary form, sententia, and pedagogical afterlife rather than in any school or chair in the modern sense. So the clean institutional contrast is this. Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate and university-faculty world. Avianus belongs to the literary-pedagogical and didactic world of late-antique fable. That institutional difference fits the philosophical comparison rather well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising intentions and inferring implicatures under shared norms. Avianus, by contrast, works at the macro-level of genre-governed indirection: how a reader extracts practical point, sententia, and moral force from compressed, non-literal, allegorical narrative. In his world, the “more-than-said” does not arise because a speaker in real time flouts or satisfies conversational maxims. It arises because the genre of fable already licenses displacement: animals speak, the literal scene is not the point, and the competent reader knows to move from narrated surface to intended lesson. So the sharpest formulation is this. Grice explains how ordinary conversation can mean more than it literally says. Avianus exemplifies how literary fable is built to mean more than it literally narrates. That is why your comparison works. Grice gives the general inferential machinery. Avianus gives a cultivated literary setting in which inference is not merely episodic but structural. In Grice, implicature is cancellable, occasion-bound, and tied to speaker intention. In Avianus, the unsaid is often the point of the genre itself, and what the reader is meant to recover is less a hidden proposition than a practical wisdom licensed by urbane falsity and literary compression. There are, however, two cautions. First, the heading “Publio Aviano Valerio (Roma, Lazio)” is too confident. The usual secure form is Avianus or Publio Aviano; the addition “Valerio” and the Roman villa framing are not standard biographical anchors in the same way. One should be careful not to turn a suggestive literary persona into a fixed civic biography without stronger evidence. Second, the final line “Fabulae. Roma” should be treated cautiously as a classical bibliographic shorthand, not as a modern imprint-style citation. It is fine as a dossier shorthand if clearly understood that we are talking about a late-antique text traditionally transmitted, not a Roman publication in the modern sense. So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the precise collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s College and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Avianus, by contrast, was a late-antique Latin fabulist whose authority lay in literary form and didactic afterlife rather than in any academic institution. Institutionally, Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate world; Avianus to the literary and pedagogical world of fable and sententia. Philosophically, the contrast is equally clear: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of speaker-meaning and implicature, whereas Avianus exemplifies a literary economy in which meaning is generated by allegorical displacement, narrative compression, and the trained reader’s extraction of moral or practical wisdom from non-literal form. And if I compress it into one line: Grice theorises how speakers imply; Avianus stages how fables imply. If you want, I can now give you a tighter one-paragraph entry in your preferred style, with the villa motif toned down and the fable genre made central.la ragione conversazionale alla villa di Roma – Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how what is meant can outrun what is said because hearers presume a rational, cooperative orientation in talk and so infer implicatures from an utterance’s content, context, and the speaker’s recognizable intentions under norms like relevance, sufficiency, truthfulness, and perspicuity. With “Valerio” (here plausibly the late-antique fabulist Avianus, whose Fabulae were repeatedly re-edited in early print, including Venetian incunables), the contrast is that the communicative rationality on display is not the micro-rationality of a talk exchange but the macro-rationality of literary indirection: fable is explicitly licensed to trade in “urbane falsitas” so that moral sententiae can be drawn from what is not literally asserted, and the reader is invited to recover the point by an interpretive step structurally akin to implicature (a controlled passage from narrated saying to intended lesson). Where Grice makes intention-recognition and cooperative norms the engine of everyday conversational inference, Avianus/Valerio exemplifies a didactic villa-and-forum economy of meaning in which the “unsaid” is built into genre: animals speak, scenes are compressed, and the moral is either appended or left for competent readers to supply. In that sense, Grice offers a general account of how rational interlocutors generate cancellable, context-sensitive extra meaning in ordinary dialogue, while Valerio offers a cultivated setting—otium, the hortus, the villa—where reason is exercised through allegorical displacement: meaning is still inferred, but less as a negotiation between speaker and hearer in real time than as a reader’s disciplined extraction of practical wisdom from artfully non-literal narrative. filosofia italiana (Roma). il filosofo alla villa. Grice: “Unlike most of us, Austin preferred to spend his weekends alone in his Oxfordshire villa!” -- Filosofo italiano. He has a statue erected in his honour in his own villa (‘Ain’t that cute?’). GRICEVS: Salvē, Valerius! Villa tua Romanā pulchritudine splendida est. Quid te ad philosophiam in horto movit? VALERIVS: Salvē, amice Grice. Hortus tranquillitatem praebet, ubi ratio conversationalis sine tumultu urbis florere potest. GRICEVS: Tranquillitas villae Romanæ ad philosophiam ordinariam valde prodest, sed credisne conversationem in horto differre ab ea quae in foro fit? VALERIVS: Sane, Gricevs. In horto, verba leniter fluunt et cogitationes profundiores emergunt; in foro, saepe brevitas et pragmatismus vincunt. Sed utrumque locum philosophia amplecti potest, modo ratio et humanitas serventur. Valerio, Publio Aviano (ca. 400 d.C.). Fabulae. Roma

 

Grice eValerio Diocleziano. Abbott has this below and Grice and Speranza anchor it on VALERIO DIOCLEZIANO who is held responsible for creating the province of Campania and Latium -- Input? Feedback? Thanks : They made Sicily a province; but those whose province it is to say what a province was, have left us in some doubt as to its precise meaning. The best definition is that which derives the word from Providentia, a duty, or a thing that ought to be done, This is a very nice case where Abbott’s etymological play, Grice/Speranza’s interests, and actual Roman usage all diverge—and that divergence is philosophically revealing.  1. Abbott’s etymology: provincia from providentia Abbott suggests:  provincia ← providentia (“a duty, something that ought to be done”)  ❗ This is not accepted by modern philology.  The etymology of provincia is uncertain Ancient Romans themselves sometimes guessed (wrongly) at derivations Modern scholarship explicitly says:  the etymology is obscure; older derivations like pro + vincere don’t fit well [academic.oup.com]    So: ✅ Abbott’s derivation = rhetorical / moralizing, not linguistic.  2. What provincia actually meant (crucial point) The most important fact:  Originally, provincia did NOT mean “territory” at all.  It meant:  a task, charge, or sphere of responsibility assigned to a magistrate [en-academic.com], [ebrary.net]  Examples:  a consul might have the provincia of:  fighting a war managing finances   only later:  it becomes a geographical territory (e.g. Sicily)     3. Why Abbott’s idea is tempting (and not totally wrong) Abbott’s intuition:  provincia = “something that ought to be taken care of”  is actually capturing something real—but at the conceptual level, not etymological. Because:  a provincia is:  a norm-governed assignment a duty to be fulfilled    So although:  not derived from providentia,  it does involve:  “foreseeing, managing, taking responsibility”  in practice.  4. Gricean angle: provincia as assigned “task-domain” Now this is where Grice/Speranza become interesting. We can reinterpret provincia as:  the domain within which a magistrate is authorized to produce and recognize valid acts  Almost like:  a conversational domain or jurisdiction of meaningful action   So:  outside your provincia: your “utterances” don’t count inside your provincia: you can:  command, judge, interpret signs     5. Link to your earlier themes (very neat!) You can connect:                          ThemeConnectionDentatus (imperare)authority within provinciaFabriciusnorms governing action toward enemyClaudiusviolation of religious provincia (auspices)prodigies (Summanus)signs interpreted within religious provincia So:  provincia is the space where meaning, authority, and action intersect   6. Valerio / Diocletiano reference Your mention of Diocletian:  correct in later history:  he reorganizes provinces into smaller administrative units   but:  this is much later (late Empire) and not relevant to early Republican meaning    So:  associating the concept’s origin with him is anachronistic   7. Final synthesis  ✅ provincia originally = assigned duty / sphere of action, not territory ❗ Abbott’s derivation from providentia is not philologically correct ✅ but it captures a normative intuition:  a provincia is something that must be taken care of   ✅ Gricean twist:  it functions like a domain of valid authority and interpretation     One-line takeaway  Abbott’s etymology is wrong as linguistics but right as intuition: provincia does not come from providentia, yet in the Roman Republic it really was a “task-space” of responsibility—almost a jurisdiction within which action, authority, and even meaning (in your Gricean sense) were validly produced and recognized.   If you like, we can push this further into how imperium + provincia together form a proto-theory of institutional authority—very close to modern “speech‑act powers.” The Inclusion of Diocleziano was intentional. But now you've clarified -- can you have a second-run on proposed etymologies for 'provincia' -- if it is a formative constructive -- that changes things. Abbott is saying that the first provincia was SICILY -- at the end of first punic war -- Diocleziano creates the provincia campania et latium -- and that, in Abbott's reading may sound odd in that Rome would NOT be in a province. But if provincia has the formative form alla 'multiplicanda' or verbal form with normative implicatre -- pro-vincere -- it would not sound as odd since it does not mark a territory. So is Abbott right in saying that the first use of 'provincia' is as applied for Sicily or would to the Ancient Roman the form translate as a verbal form with sense of obligaition, neutral plural? Input? Feedback? Thanks. This is an excellent tightening of the problem—you’re now asking not just “what does provincia mean?” but what kind of linguistic formation it is, and how that affects Abbott’s historical claim. Let me give you a second, more philologically and conceptually precise pass.  1. Was Sicily really the “first provincia”? ✅ Yes—Sicilia (241 BCE) is traditionally called the first provincia in the territorial sense. But: ❗ That is already a secondary development. Before Sicily:  provincia already existed as a technical term in Republican administration  meaning:  a task / assignment / sphere of responsibility e.g. “the provincia of fighting the Samnites”  So:                  StageMeaning of provinciaEarly Republictask / duty / operational fieldAfter 1st Punic Warterritorial assignment (Sicily, etc.) 👉 So Abbott is half-right:  Sicily is the first territorial province ✅ but not the first use of the word ❗   2. Etymology: is pro‑vincere plausible? You suggest:  provincia as something like a formative or verbal construction, with normative sense (“something to be carried out / subdued / taken care of”).  What modern linguistics says:  the exact etymology is uncertain Roman antiquarians proposed:  pro + vincere (“to conquer on behalf of”)    ❗ This is almost certainly folk etymology, not strictly correct.  But here’s the key point (your intuition is strong): Even if pro‑vincere is not historically correct,  the semantic direction you suggest is absolutely right  because provincia behaves like:  a verbal-nominal formation of obligation or assignment   3. Is provincia “formative” in the sense you suggest? Yes—in a functional, not etymological sense. Think of it like Latin verbal nouns:                      VerbDerived senseagenda“things to be done”gerenda“things to be managed”munusduty Your proposal:  provincia ≈ “that which is to be handled / carried out”  This is not linguistically derived from providentia, but: ✅ it captures how Romans used the word  4. Why this resolves the “Italy as province” problem You noticed:  It sounds odd that Campania & Latium could be a provincia, since Rome is not “a province.”  Exactly—and the solution is:  provincia does not fundamentally denote territory  but:  assignment of authority  So when later we hear:  Diocletian organizes provinces  that is already a fully territorialized usage But originally:  even Italy could, in principle, be someone’s provincia without becoming “a province” in the modern sense   5. Singular vs neutral plural intuition You suggest:  could provincia feel like a “neutral plural” or verbal obligation?  Very perceptive. While:  morphologically it is a singular noun,  functionally it behaves like:  a bundle of obligations / tasks  almost like:  agenda (things to be done)  So:  provincia = “your assigned sphere of action” (not “a place”)   6. Putting Abbott into perspective Abbott does two things: (A) Correct:  identifies Sicily as first territorial province ✅  (B) Misleading:  treats that as origin of the term ❗ gives a speculative etymology (providentia)  But: (C) Insightful (unexpectedly):  captures the idea of normative obligation which aligns with actual early usage   7. Final synthesis  ✅ provincia originally meant a task or assignment, not a territory ✅ Sicily is the first territorial provincia, but not the first use ❗ Etymologies like pro‑vincere or providentia are not philologically secure ✅ Your hypothesis is philosophically right:  the word behaves like a verbalized obligation-domain, similar to “agenda”   ✅ This explains why:  applying it to Italy (later) is not paradoxical     One-line takeaway  Abbott is right about Sicily as the first territorial province but wrong about the origin: provincia began not as a place but as a normatively assigned “task-domain,” functioning almost like a verbal noun of obligation—which makes its later application to territories (even Italy under Diocletian) conceptually continuous rather than paradoxical.   If you like, we can trace how provincia gradually becomes fixed as territory in Livy’s narrative—that transition is philosophically very revealing for your Grice/Speranza framework.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Vallauri – Ossia: Grice e Vallauri: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’interpretazione giuridica. Note sul Saggio sul diritto giurisprudenziale. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Luigi Lombardi Vallauri (Roma, Lazio): Institutionally, Luigi Lombardi Vallauri is much closer to H. P. Grice than many of the figures you have been discussing, because both are recognisably university philosophers; but they still belong to very different academic ecologies. Grice’s formula is exact in the Oxford sense. Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s means a college office with tutorials, students, and membership in the governing life of the college. CUF University Lecturer in philosophy means a university-wide faculty appointment. So Grice combines the intimate tutorial culture of the college with the wider faculty structure of the university. Luigi Lombardi Vallauri belongs to the Italian university-state and law-faculty world. He was professor of philosophy of law at Milan and Florence, and his intellectual profile is that of a jurist-philosopher working in public faculties, legal institutions, and a tradition in which the philosophy of law is centrally concerned with interpretation, normativity, and the practical work of jurisprudence. He is therefore not a college fellow in the Oxford sense, but a professor in the chair-based, faculty-centred, public university system. That gives the clean institutional contrast. Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate world. Lombardi Vallauri belongs to the public-professorial and law-faculty world of the Italian university-state system. That institutional difference fits your philosophical comparison very well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising intentions and inferring implicatures under shared norms. Lombardi Vallauri, by contrast, works at the macro-level of legal and jurisprudential interpretation: how texts, precedents, institutions, and values yield binding practical conclusions. In his world, the issue is not merely what a speaker meant in a single exchange, but what a legal order can be said to mean, and what justifies the move from text to decision when literal application is underdeterminate. So the sharpest formulation is this. Grice explains how conversational agents coordinate meanings. Lombardi Vallauri explains how jurists coordinate reasons into law. That is why your emphasis on diritto giurisprudenziale is exactly right. It is the point where legal meaning ceases to be reducible to enacted text and becomes the product of interpretive labour, analogy, teleology, and justificatory reasoning. If Grice gives you a pragmatic account of how an utterance may imply more than it explicitly states, Lombardi Vallauri gives you a jurisprudential account of how legal sources may yield more than their literal wording appears to allow, under publicly defensible canons of interpretation. The analogy with Grice is therefore strong, but not because Vallauri is secretly doing a theory of implicature. It is stronger because both are concerned with disciplined surplus: for Grice, the surplus is conversationally inferred speaker-meaning; for Vallauri, the surplus is normatively justified legal meaning. Your long quotation about Ross and analogy is also well placed. It captures exactly the kind of problem that matters to Lombardi Vallauri: how one moves from a quantitative or structural relation to a non-quantitative juridical or ethical relation of fittingness. In the legal field, those moves are not ornaments; they are part of the actual production of the iustum. There are two minor cautions. First, the bibliographic line at the end should be normalised to the standard author name: Luigi Lombardi Vallauri, not Luigi Lombardi alone. Second, the 1967 Saggio sul diritto giurisprudenziale is indeed the right early anchor and is much stronger than many of the provisional or thesis-like entries in your earlier comparisons. So here the citation is helpful rather than hazardous. So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the precise collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Luigi Lombardi Vallauri, by contrast, was an Italian professor of philosophy of law, active in Milan and Florence within the public faculty and chair system of the Italian university-state world. Institutionally, Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate world; Lombardi Vallauri to the law-faculty and public-professorial world. Philosophically, the contrast is equally clear: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of speaker-meaning and implicature, whereas Lombardi Vallauri investigates the broader interpretive and normative labour by which legal texts, precedents, and institutions yield publicly binding reasons and decisions. And if I compress it into one line: Grice theorises how conversation implies; Lombardi Vallauri theorises how law interprets. If you want, I can now give you a tighter one-paragraph entry in your preferred style, or a short note specifically on the analogy between conversational implicature and jurisprudential surplus in Saggio sul diritto giurisprudenziale.la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’interpretazione giuridica – Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers rationally pass from what is said to what is meant by assuming a cooperative orientation to the talk exchange and then calculating implicatures as defeasible, norm-guided inferences (relevance, sufficiency, sincerity, clarity) grounded in speaker intentions and their recognition. Lombardi Vallauri’s work on diritto giurisprudenziale and legal interpretation is naturally Grice-adjacent but shifts the center of gravity: the “meaning” at stake is not only a speaker’s communicative intention but the normative upshot of interpretive practices that turn texts, precedents, and institutional roles into binding reasons (iustum) within a legal order, where analogy, proportionality, and jurisprudential creativity are not conversational luxuries but recurring techniques for producing and justifying law beyond the letter of enacted norms. Where Grice makes rationality immanent to conversational coordination (a logic of mutually accountable inference from utterance to implicature), Vallauri makes rationality visible in the jurist’s justificatory labor (a logic of analogical unification, teleological orientation, and institutional constraint that bridges “sources” and “cases” when literal application underdetermines decision). The comparison thus highlights two species of reason-governed meaning: Grice’s pragmatic rationality of communicative intentions in ordinary discourse, and Vallauri’s pragmatic-normative rationality of interpretation in a rule-governed institution, where what is “meant” by a legal text or a judicial move is inseparable from the reasons the interpreter can publicly offer and the authority the system recognizes. Implicatura, IVSTVM. Ross's suggestion about 'good' would, moreover, be at best only a description of one special case of analogical unification, and would not give us any general account of such unification. I might add that little supplementary assistance is derivable from those who study general semantic concepts; such persons seem to adhere to the principle that silence is golden when it comes to discussion of such questions as the relation between analogy, metaphor, simile, allegory and parable.  So far as Aristotle himself is concerned it seems fairly clear to me that tie primary notion behiad the concept of analogy is that of 'proportion'.  This notion is embodied, for example, in Aristotle's treatment of justice. where one kind of justice is alleged to consist in a due proportion between return (reward or penalty) and antecedent desert (merit or demerit) but it remains a mystery how what starts life as, or as something approximating to, a quantitive relationship gets converted into a not-quantitive relation of correspondence of allinity. It looks as if we might be thrown back upon what we might hope to be inspired conjecture.  I take as my first task the provision of an example, congenial to Aristotle, of the unification by analogy of the application to a range of objects of some epithet. I shall expect this to involve the detection of analogical links between the exemplifications of the varicty of universals which the epithet may be used to signify. My chosen specimen is the verb grow. Filosofo romano. Flosofo lazio. Filosofo italiano. Essential Italian philosopher. “Italians, especially noble ones, love a long surname, so this is Luigi Lombardi Vallauri. I say: if he wants to keep the Vallauri, that’s what he’ll go with by!” Grice: “He favours animal rights, as I do.” Professore universitario italiano. È stato Professore di filosofia del diritto a Milano e Firenze. implicatura, IVSTVM.  Grice: Caro Vallauri, devo confessare che al Vadum Boum la barbarie regna sovrana: la SUB-FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY se ne sta orgogliosamente separata dalla FACULTY OF LITERÆ HUMANIORES, e nessuno osa avvicinarla alla IVRISPRVDENTIA. Non so se ridere o piangere… ma di certo un parigino della Sorbonne o un bolognese di Bononia ne uscirebbe più confuso che mai! Vallauri: Ah, Grice! In effetti, a Roma preferiamo pensare che filosofia e diritto chiacchierino al bar davanti a un caffè, invece di barricarsi dietro antichi corridoi. All’università, se non ti confondi almeno una volta tra i dipartimenti, non hai vissuto abbastanza! Grice: Ecco, magari potremmo proporre un nuovo corso: “Scherzi e analogie tra FACULTY e SUB-FACULTY – manuale pratico per sopravvivere alla burocrazia accademica”. Titolo alternativo: “Come perdere la strada tra IVRISPRVDENTIA e PHILOSOPHY senza perdersi d’animo!” Vallauri: Ottima idea! Il primo insegnamento: se uno studente trova la FACULTY OF LITERÆ HUMANIORES e la SUB-FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY senza inciampare nella IVRISPRVDENTIA, merita subito la laurea… con lode e una stretta di mano dal portiere! Vallauri, Luigi Lombardi (1967). Saggio sul diritto giurisprudenziale. Milano: Giuffrè.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Valle – Ossia: Grice e Valle: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale della volutta. Note su De voluptate. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Lorenzo Valla Valle (Roma, Lazio): Institutionally, Lorenzo Valla and H. P. Grice are not comparable in the academic sense at all, though both are unmistakably figures of learned verbal discipline. Grice’s formula is exact in the modern Oxford sense. Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s means a college office with tutorials, students, and membership in the governing life of the college. CUF University Lecturer in philosophy means a university-wide appointment in the faculty structure. So Grice combines the two characteristic Oxford functions: college tutor and university lecturer. Valla belongs to a completely different world: the early Renaissance world of humanist teaching, curial service, patronage, private eloquence, polemical philology, and dangerous proximity to power. He studied at Rome, taught eloquence at Pavia, moved through patronage networks and controversies, served Alfonso of Aragon at Naples, later returned to Rome, became apostolic secretary under Callistus III, and taught eloquence privately and at the university. He was not a don, not a fellow, and not a lecturer in the Oxford-collegiate sense. He was a humanist, polemicist, philologist, and civic rhetor. So the clean institutional contrast is this. Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate and university-faculty world. Valla belongs to the humanist, curial, and patronage world of early Renaissance Italy. That institutional difference suits your philosophical comparison very well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising intentions and inferring implicatures under shared norms. Valla, by contrast, works at the level of linguistic reform itself. He does not ask how an utterance in a functioning language yields extra meaning by cooperative inference. He asks what sort of language and discourse a learned culture ought to cultivate if it wishes to reason well at all. His war is not with implicature but with barbarous Latin, scholastic jargon, and the corruption of reasoning by corrupted verbal practice. So the sharpest formulation is this. Grice explains how conversation can mean more than it literally says. Valla tries to make learned language worthy of meaning anything well at all. That is why your comparison between Grice and Valla is genuinely good. Grice makes conversation answerable to reason by analysing the inferential structure of ordinary exchange. Valla makes discourse answerable to reason by purging its medium: by restoring consuetudo, rhetorical force, classical usage, and philological discipline against scholastic abstraction. Your emphasis on De voluptate is also exactly right. In Valla’s case, voluptas is not a mere lexical curiosity but part of the larger humanist campaign to reclaim human language and human goods from a distorted moral and dialectical vocabulary. The rehabilitation of pleasure in De voluptate or De vero bono is of a piece with his rehabilitation of eloquence, ordinary usage, and civic language. There are, however, two factual cautions. First, the heading should normally use Lorenzo Valla, not Valla Valle. Valle may matter etymologically or playfully, but the standard form is Lorenzo Valla. Second, the final bibliographic line Valle, Lorenzo (1431). De voluptate. Pavia should be normalised to Lorenzo Valla. The place and date are fine as a first anchor for the early version, but the author line should not be left in the altered form. So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the precise collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Lorenzo Valla, by contrast, was a Renaissance humanist, teacher of eloquence, philologist, and curial intellectual, active in Rome, Pavia, Naples, and again Rome through patronage, controversy, and the reform of learned discourse rather than through a college or faculty office of the modern sort. Institutionally, Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate world; Valla to the humanist and curial world. Philosophically, the contrast is equally clear: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of speaker-meaning and implicature, whereas Valla seeks to secure better reasoning by reforming the very language of learned exchange, making dialectic answerable to rhetoric, consuetudo, and civic eloquence. And if I compress it into one line: Grice theorises how speakers imply; Valla reforms the language in which implication becomes worth hearing. If you want, I can now give you a tighter one-paragraph entry in your preferred style, with the author line normalised to Lorenzo Valla and the contrast between ordinary-language philosophy and humanist Latin reform made even sharper.la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale della volutta – Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how “what is meant” can systematically outrun “what is said” because rational interlocutors treat talk as a cooperative enterprise: hearers presume an accepted purpose to the exchange, attribute to speakers audience-directed communicative intentions, and calculate implicatures by reasoning from those intentions plus norms of relevance, sufficiency, sincerity, and clarity. Valla (Valle), by contrast, approaches reason-in-language as a humanist reform of discourse itself: in the Elegantiae and, more pointedly, in his attack on scholastic dialectic (the Repastinatio dialectice et philosophie), he treats philosophical error as bred by barbarous, technical, context-stripping Latin and urges a return to consuetudo and to a rhetoric-inflected dialectic fitted to civic argument, persuasion, and the contingencies of ordinary usage (even when “ordinary” means the authoritative Latin of classical writers). The comparison is thus two different ways of making language answerable to reason: Grice articulates a general, intention-and-inference model that explains why a perfectly grammatical sentence can convey further, cancellable commitments in conversation, whereas Valla wages a philological and rhetorical campaign to make the very medium of learned exchange less scholastic, less pseudo-technical, and more anchored in how competent speakers actually use words in lived disputation. Where Grice’s “conversational reason” is a logic of mutual mind-reading under cooperative norms, Valla’s is an ethics and politics of linguistic practice—an attempt to secure better reasoning by purging corrupted vocabularies and relocating dialectic inside the arts of eloquence and the pursuit of human goods (including, in De voluptate/De vero bono, the rehabilitation of voluptas as an intelligible candidate for the summum bonum). Cicerone, dialettica, rettorica, la filosofia del linguaggio ordinario, ordinary Latin language philosophy, ordinary Italian language philosophy, Grice, Athenian dialectic, Oxonian dialectic, Roman dialectic, dialettica atenese, dialettica romana, dialettica fiorentina, dialettica oxoniensis – boves vedum OX-FORD. Filosofo romano. Filosofo lazio. Filosofo italiano. Essential Italian philosopher. Umanista. M. Roma. Di famiglia piacentina, studiò a Roma, dove il padre era avvocato concistoriale. Lascia Roma per Pavia: qui insegna eloquenza; due anni dopo, lo scandalo destato tra i giuristi dello studio dalla sua epistola de insigniis et armis lo costrinse ad abbandonare la città. Peregrinò allora per diversi luoghi, finché  si stabilì a Napoli, segretario di re Alfonso di Aragona, che costantemente lo protesse. Deferito all'Inquisitore in seguito a una sua polemica con frate Antonio di Bitonto sull'origine del Credo, fu salvato appunto dall'intervento del re. Da varie accuse si difese presso il papa con l'Apologia adversus calumniatores; tuttavia solo piu tardi poté stabilirsi definitivamente nell'amata Roma, scrittore e, sotto Callisto III, segretario apostolico e insegnante di eloquenza a titolo privato e all'università. Complessa e significativa figura del Quattrocento italiano, V. esprime la più matura cultura umanistica per la connessione posta tra le humanae litterae e la vita civile, per la polemica contro i barbarismi della cultura scolastica, per l'impegno filologico e storico. Nel suo De voluptate (titolo della prima redazione, 1431, nuova redazione col titolo De vero bono) egli svolge una vivace polemica contro l'etica stoica e l'ascetismo cristiano, in difesa della natura, ministra di Dio; di qui la celebrazione di una morale che è impegno e gioia di vivere, ricerca di piaceri giustamente equilibrati secondo il loro minore o maggiore valore. Ma dove più forte appare l'influenza dell'etica epicurea. Cicerone, Virgilio, Quintiliano, Livio, rinascimento, grammatica, dialettica e rettorica, elegantia linguae latina.  M.  Valletta. Valla. Valle. Call him what you like—he was a genius. G.  Sir, he was also an affectation. M.  Genius is always an affectation, Grice. It’s merely a successful one. Now: De voluptate. And the word to remember is volup. B.  Volup? M.  Volup, volup, volup. An indeclinable delight. G.  It sounds like a cough. M.  That is because you are a Midlands boy. A Roman would have pronounced it with moral confidence. E.  What does it mean, sir? M.  It means “with pleasure,” “pleasantly,” “I’m glad,” and all the other things English can’t say without blushing. G.  English can blush perfectly well without assistance. M.  Now—example: vivo volup. G.  Sir, that sounds like a slogan on a cigarette case. M.  It is better than most slogans. Translate it. G.  “I live fine.” M.  Close, Grice, but no cigar. B.  He said “fine,” sir. M.  He said “fine” in that dreadful modern way that means nothing and pretends to mean everything. G.  Then: “I live happily.” M.  Better. Still too wholesome. E.  “I live pleasurably”? M.  That is English trying to be Latin and hurting itself. G.  Why can’t it just mean “I enjoy living”? M.  It can. But volup is not a sermon; it’s a posture. G.  A posture? M.  Yes. In Plautus it’s often “volup est mihi.” It sits there like an indeclinable grin. G.  So it’s more like “I’m glad.” M.  Exactly. But Valla wants to rescue voluptas from people who treat it like a vice. B.  Like Vice-President? M.  Wrong century, boy. G.  Sir, why does “vivo volup” puzzle me? It feels incomplete. M.  Because English expects adverbs to behave like trained servants. Latin lets them lounge. G.  And volup lounges too much. M.  It lounges brilliantly. That is the whole point. E.  Is it really an adverb, sir? M.  Dictionaries call it one. Your ear hears it as a predicate. Both are true enough for comedy. G.  Comedy? M.  We are at a public school. Everything is comedy under Latin. Now, Oscar Wilde. B.  Sir? M.  “Are you enjoying yourself?” said the hostess. “I am; there is nothing else for me to enjoy,” said Wilde. G.  That sounds like vivo volup. M.  Exactly. It’s the same insolence in different clothes. G.  Wilde would have liked Valla. M.  Wilde would have liked anyone who annoyed the right people. E.  Did Valla annoy people? M.  He cost himself posts by writing letters about arms and insignia, so yes. G.  That seems an extravagant way to lose a job. M.  It is the only respectable way to lose one, Grice. B.  Sir, is volup always with esse? M.  Often. Not always. Plautus can say it without esse and still mean it’s there. G.  So vivo volup is not the most Roman thing? M.  It is a teaching thing. I am allowed to be mildly un-Roman to make you Roman. G.  That sounds like blackmail. M.  Education is blackmail with grammar. E.  Could we say victito volup? M.  Ah—now we have Plautus’ athletic list and the frequentative. G.  Sir, you said the list isn’t necessary. M.  The list is necessary if you want the joke to have a body: discus, spears, ball, running, arms, horse. B.  Add cricket, sir. M.  Cricket did not exist in Plautus. B.  It existed in Rome as barbarism. M.  Sit down. G.  What would Latin do for cricket? M.  It would ignore it. Latin is selective. G.  Like Oxford. M.  Exactly. E.  Sir, why does Grice look offended? M.  Because he thinks voluptas ought to be disciplined. G.  I do not. M.  You do. You are just being polite about it. G.  I object to your saying “volup, volup, volup” as if it were a magic spell. M.  It is a magic spell. It turns a moral lecture into a grammatical point. B.  Does Valla really start with pleasure? M.  He starts by daring to. Then he retitles it later to sound safer. G.  De vero bono. M.  Exactly. When you want to keep writing, you learn to rename. E.  So volup is the small seed inside the big abstract noun? M.  Yes: volup is the grin; voluptas is the philosophy. G.  And the suffix is -tas, like libertas. M.  Good. You’re awake. G.  That’s an unfortunate choice of word in a Latin class. M.  Awake is always unfortunate. Now: what’s wrong with “I live fine”? G.  It’s too vague. M.  Vague and smug. G.  But “I live gladly” sounds odd. M.  It sounds odd because English has trained itself to be literal where Latin is idiomatic. E.  Could we say “I live with pleasure”? M.  You can. But then you’ve turned one small adverb into three stiff words. G.  And you’ve lost the insolence. M.  Exactly. Latin is compact insolence. B.  Sir, can we say ludo volup? M.  You can say it, and you will sound like a Plautine boy who’s pleased with himself. G.  That would be accurate for B. B.  Thank you. M.  Grice, give me a better English for volup est mihi. G.  “It pleases me.” M.  Too French. G.  “I’m pleased.” M.  Better. E.  “I’m glad.” M.  Very good. G.  So vivo volup might be “I live glad.” M.  And now you see why we don’t translate it that way. G.  Because English refuses to let “glad” be an adverb. M.  Exactly. English is fussy; Latin is shameless. B.  Sir, can volup modify a verb like “kick”? M.  In principle, yes. In practice, you’d more likely use libenter. Latin has many ways to be pleased. G.  Then why does Valla insist on voluptas? M.  Because he’s purging scholastic ugliness and restoring classical nerve. G.  By making pleasure respectable. M.  Yes. And by making Latin do the moral work. E.  That sounds like what you do, sir. M.  Precisely. Now, Grice: your final rendering of vivo volup. G.  “I live—contentedly.” M.  That’s not bad. G.  It’s still too respectable. M.  Then try again. G.  “I live—enjoying it.” M.  Better. Still too modern. B.  “I’m having a good time.” M.  That is vulgar and correct. G.  Vulgar and correct—like cricket. M.  Enough cricket. Here is your homework: write ten sentences with volup that do not sound like cigarette advertisements. G.  May we add “cricket” as one? M.  You may add “cricket” only if you can put it in Latin without making me wince. B.  Vivo volup cricketans. M.  Detention.Grice: Caro Valla, devo confessare che il modo in cui hai trasformato il tuo semplice “Valle” in “Valla” mi ha lasciato senza parole! Sembra quasi che tu abbia elevato un torrente a vetta filosofica. Hai qualche consiglio per un povero “Grice” che vorrebbe analogicamente nobilitare il suo cognome? Valla: Ah, Grice! La ricetta è semplice: basta aggiungere un pizzico di eleganza e una spruzzata di latinità. Potresti diventare “Gricius”, oppure, se vuoi davvero impressionare, “Gricello il Saggio”! E se proprio vuoi esagerare, inventa un motto: “Grice, il piacere della conversazione!” Grice: Gricius... suona quasi come un antico filosofo romano! Ma poi mia madre penserà che sono tornato dall’Orto di Epicuro invece che dall’orto di casa. Forse basta mettere un po’ di voluttà: “Grice, il gaudente!” Valla: E allora, caro Grice, ricorda: in filosofia come nei cognomi, l’importante è non prendersi troppo sul serio. Al massimo, puoi sempre dire che “Grice” sta per “Grande Ragione Italiana Conversazionale Epica”... e nessuno avrà il coraggio di smentirti! Valle, Lorenzo (1431). De voluptate. Pavia.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Valletta – Ossia: Grice e Valletta: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dei liberali, libertari e libertinisti. Note sulla Disceptatio. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Giuseppe Valletta (Napoli, Campania): Institutionally, Giuseppe Valletta is much closer to Vanini than to Grice. Grice’s formula is exact in the Oxford sense. Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s means a college office with tutorials, students, and membership in the governing life of the college. CUF University Lecturer in philosophy means a university-wide appointment in the faculty structure. So Grice combines the two characteristic Oxford functions: college tutor and university lecturer. Giuseppe Valletta belongs to a very different world: late seventeenth-century Naples, where a jurist, man of letters, patron, collector, polemicist, and cultural organiser could be central to philosophy without holding an Oxford-like tutorial or university lectureship. He studied law with the Jesuits, moved into jurisprudence and public intellectual life, became one of the figures associated with the Investiganti and with the anti-scholastic, anti-aristotelian renewal of Naples, supported modern science and philosophy, founded a chair of Greek at his own expense, and built one of the great private libraries of the city. That is not the world of a college don; it is the world of the civic learned man, the legal scholar, the cultural patron, and the political-theological combatant. So the clean institutional contrast is this. Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate and university-faculty world. Valletta belongs to the legal-civic and learned-public world of baroque Naples. That institutional difference fits your philosophical comparison very well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising intentions and inferring implicatures under shared norms. Valletta, by contrast, works at a broader political and cultural level. In his case, rationality in discourse is not merely a matter of extracting intended content from a contribution. It is a matter of whether one may speak freely at all, and of how one conducts rational controversy under conditions of censorship, ecclesiastical pressure, and the contest between old authority and moderna filosofia. So the sharpest formulation is this. Grice explains how conversation works when rational cooperation is already allowed. Valletta fights for the conditions under which rational conversation can exist in the first place. That is why your contrast between internal and external normativity is exactly right. For Grice, the central question is how a speaker and hearer coordinate meaning within a shared exchange. For Valletta, the central question is how a culture or polity permits, protects, or suppresses such exchanges. In Grice, implicature is a calculable inferential surplus. In Valletta, strategic address, insinuation, polemical indirection, and public letters become tools of intellectual freedom and self-preservation. Your Naples material is also well chosen, but there are two important cautions. First, the final bibliographic line “Valletta, Giuseppe (1656). Disceptatio. Napoli. Collegio partenopeo dei dottori.” is not a safe modern citation. It looks like a reconstruction of an early academic act or dissertation moment rather than a securely attested printed title in the usual bibliographic sense. If you use it, it should be marked as a university exercise or dissertation context, not as a fully stable publication line. Second, the stronger and more characteristic bibliographical anchor is the Lettera in difesa della moderna filosofia e de’ coltivatori di essa, because that text makes the whole comparison with Grice much clearer: it is a public defence of intellectual liberty and modern inquiry, not just a scholastic or legal exercise. So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the precise collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s College and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Giuseppe Valletta, by contrast, was a Neapolitan jurist, patron, public intellectual, and ally of the Investiganti, active in the civic and legal culture of Naples rather than in a college or faculty appointment. Institutionally, Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate world; Valletta to the learned-public and legal-civic world. Philosophically, the contrast is equally clear: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of speaker-meaning and implicature, whereas Valletta exemplifies the broader political and theological struggle over whether rational, modern, anti-scholastic discourse may be spoken, circulated, and defended at all. And if I compress it into one line: Grice theorises how rational conversation means; Valletta fights for the liberty that lets rational conversation be spoken. If you want, I can now give you a tighter one-paragraph entry in your preferred style, with the insecure Disceptatio line replaced by the stronger Lettera in difesa anchor and the Investiganti context made central.la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dei liberali, libertari e libertinisti Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning makes conversational implicature a product of practical rationality: what a speaker means is recovered by a hearer who presumes an “accepted purpose or direction” of the talk exchange and reasons from what is said plus shared maxims (quantity, quality, relation, manner) to what must have been intended. Valletta, writing from late‑seventeenth‑century Naples amid the anti-scholastic, anti-aristotelian renewal associated with the Investiganti, frames “ragione” less as a micro-theory of inference from utterance to meant content than as a civic and intellectual liberty: in defending “moderna filosofia” and “libertà filosofica” against ecclesiastical censorship and the constraints of received authority, he treats discourse as a public instrument for freeing inquiry (and the res publica) rather than as a formally regulated cooperative mechanism for extracting implicatures. If Grice is interested in how rational norms make everyday exchange intelligible even when speakers say less (or other) than they mean, Valletta is interested in how rational critique authorizes saying what one is otherwise forbidden to say: the pragmatics of insinuation, polémica, and strategic address (for example, the public letter to papal authority) becomes an arena where reason and freedom contest domination. The upshot is a contrast between Grice’s internal normativity of conversation (rules of inference that underwrite mutual understanding) and Valletta’s external normativity of conversation (the political-theological conditions under which rational speech may be licensed, protected, or punished), with “implicature” shifting from Grice’s calculable hearer-inference to Valletta’s historically situated art of intellectual self-defense and reform. – storia della filosofia classica, Cicerone, Bruto, Cassio, L’Orto, Il Portico. Grice: “He was a libertine from Naples. I like him. His oeuvre published in Firenze. Studia dapprima letteratura presso i gesuiti per poi dedicarsi al diritto. Insieme a Andrea, e fra i fondatori degl’investiganti, che da impulso al grande rinnovamento culturale che prende grande avvio. Nelle accese polemiche filosofico-scientifiche tra progressisti e conservatori, insieme a CORNELIO, ANDREA, CAPUA e agl’altri investiganti appoggia attivamente i progressisti. Istituì a sue spese la cattedra di lingua greca a Napoli, affidando l'incarico di insegnamento al suo maestro ed amico MESSERE (vedi), illustre filosofo. Cura l'edizione napoletana delle opere e del Bacco in Toscana dello scienziato toscano REDI. Grande appassionato e conoscitore di libri, meritandosi l'appellativo di Helluo librorum et Secli Peireskius alter. Grazie all'interessamento di VICO, il fondo librario confluì nella biblioteca dei girolamini. Saggi: “Lettera in difesa della moderna filosofia e de' coltivatori di essa”, “Historia filosofica”. Lombardi, Storia della letteratura italiana, Tipografia camerale. Nicolini, V., in Enciclopedia Italiana, Roma, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Gl’Investiganti Andrea, Redi, V.,, nipote di V. Breve scheda biografica, Redi. Scienziato e poeta alla corte dei Medici. Lettera di V., napoletano in difessa della filosofia, e de’coltivatori di essa, INDIRIZZATA ALLA SANTITÀ DI CLEMENTE XL Aggiuntavi in fine un'ojf umazioni sopra la medesima. IN ROVERETO Nella Stamperia di Pierantonio Berno Libr. ALL’ XLWSTRISS. SIC. AB. ’f FRANCESCO PARTINI * è ;DE N AJOF, • f + • Nobile Provinciale del Tirolo, ec.ec,, l storia della filosofia classica, Cicerone, Bruto, Cassio, L’Orto, Il Portico, Accademia, Lizio, Filosofi italiani, Pico. G.  D., before we go in and pretend to “discuss” language, I’ve been reading Naples. D.  Naples is usually read with a fork. G.  This is Naples with a law degree. Giuseppe Valletta. D.  Valletta is always a warning label. G.  Exactly. And here is the singular I want: disceptio. D.  You’ve decided to keep it singular? G.  For pedagogic cruelty. “Disceptio” sounds like a lone heroic act. D.  Whereas “disceptatio” sounds like something with chairs. G.  Precisely. “Disceptio” looks like a decision, and “disceptatio” looks like a dispute. D.  And Valletta, being Neapolitan, probably managed both while calling it neither. G.  I’m imagining him, circa 1656, fresh from the collegio dei dottori, a new dottore, and already practising disceptio. D.  Freshly certified in law, you mean. G.  Yes—so he knows that disputes are not solved by truth but by procedure. D.  And you’re about to use him to motivate our class? G.  To irritate it, at least. D.  So what is your “disceptio” about? G.  About whether one can have a disceptatio alone. D.  One cannot. G.  You say that because you like the dignity of dialogue. D.  No. I say it because “disceptare” implies deciding between, and you need at least two somethings. G.  Two propositions, not two people. D.  Two people, too, unless you want to talk to yourself. G.  Valletta might have talked to himself. D.  All lawyers do. They call it preparation. G.  Good. Then a disceptatio can be internal: ratio arguing with prudentia. D.  You’ve imported the soul’s power structure. G.  Valletta would have liked that: the rational part telling the prudent part what it can safely say. D.  And the prudent part replying: “Safely” is the real logic. G.  Exactly. So his disceptio may be a private court. D.  With him as judge and witness. G.  And with Clement XI as the imagined jury. D.  That’s later, though. G.  True. But the habit begins early: the law student learns to write as if someone dangerous is overhearing. D.  Now you’re turning “disceptio” into “implicature.” G.  Everything becomes implicature if you’ve had enough tea. D.  Or enough Naples. G.  Listen: the word itself. dis- + capere, the “take apart” family. D.  And you wanted “decision,” but you got “dissection.” G.  Precisely. Valletta is a dissector of authority. D.  That’s the Investiganti myth you like. G.  It’s a good myth. But my small point is linguistic: “disceptio” in the singular sounds like the product, not the practice. D.  Like decisio. G.  Exactly. De-cisio, the cut-off. D.  And Valletta, trained in law, would love cutting off. G.  He would love “resolutio.” D.  And “sententia.” G.  Yet he writes in a milieu where writing itself is risky, so he needs something more conversational. D.  He needs a disceptatio with the authorities, without calling it a fight. G.  Right. A fight in a polite Latin mask. D.  So your question: was Valletta doing it alone? G.  He was doing it with an imagined addressee: the Church, the censor, the city, Vico. D.  Vico comes later. G.  Everyone comes later in Naples. D.  So the “two” in disceptatio can be: author and imagined opponent. G.  Yes. And the “three” you allowed earlier: author, opponent, and inner prudence. D.  Or author, opponent, and audience. G.  Exactly. The audience being Naples, which is always listening. D.  That is a terrifying audience. G.  Now, what would his earliest disceptatio be? D.  Not a printed “Lettera” at fifty-five, surely. G.  No. It begins in the collegio dei dottori: disputations, legal exercises, disceptationes. D.  In Latin, presumably. G.  Of course. Naples loved Latin because it hid the knife. D.  And because it made the knife respectable. G.  So Valletta’s “disceptio” could be: a legal-style settling of philosophical quarrels. D.  Philosophy as litigation. G.  Exactly. D.  That’s not flattering. G.  It’s accurate. Oxford does it too; we just call it “analysis.” D.  And then deny it is adversarial. G.  Whereas Naples admits it and adds coffee. D.  So what is your joke for the joint class? G.  That we’re about to have a disceptatio, which means we will decide—without agreeing. D.  That’s Oxford. G.  Valletta would recognise it. D.  And your punchline? G.  That Valletta became a dottore in 1656 and spent the rest of his life discovering that the hardest disceptatio is not between propositions, but between what you can prove and what you can safely publish. D.  And the safest publication is always someone else’s. G.  Exactly. Which is why he writes letters defending modern philosophy instead of publishing “I Pensieri politici” at eighteen. D.  And why you keep him as an inspiration: he makes prudence look like method. G.  Prudence is the only method that survives Naples.Grice: Ah, caro Valletta, devo confessare che mia madre rimase sconvolta quando sospettò che il Vadum Boum avesse trasformato suo figlio in un liberale. Ma tutto quello che facevo era posizionare la LIBERTAS, sì, proprio in latino, come fondamento della RATIO! Valletta: Grice, se solo avesse saputo mia madre che, a Napoli, la libertà è persino più contagiosa del caffè! La LIBERTAS, da noi, è la chiave d’accesso al pensiero: e con la RATIO ci facciamo pure il limoncello filosofico! Grice: Ecco perché la filosofia napoletana mi affascina! Qui si discute di Cicerone e Cassio, ma si ride pure di gusto. Da noi, invece, l’unico rischio è che la LIBERTAS venga scambiata per una licenza di fare battute durante le lezioni! Valletta: Grice, in fondo, la vera libertà sta nell’essere liberi di filosofare, ridere e persino scandalizzare le mamme! Se la LIBERTAS è alla base della RATIO, allora la mamma può dormire sonni tranquilli… o almeno provarci! Valletta, Giuseppe (1656). Disceptatio. Napoli. Collegio partenopeo dei dottori.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Vanghetti – Ossia: Grice e Vanghetti: implicature di Deutero-Esperanto – la scuola di Greve in Chianti – la scuola di Firenze  Note sulla laurea in medicina. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Giuliano Vanghetti (Greve in Chianti, Firenze, Toscana): Institutionally, Giuliano Vanghetti and H. P. Grice are not comparable in the academic sense at all. Grice’s formula is exact in the Oxford sense. Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s means a college office with tutorials, students, and membership in the governing life of the college. CUF University Lecturer in philosophy means a university-wide faculty appointment. So Grice combines the two characteristic Oxford functions: college tutor and university lecturer. Giuliano Vanghetti belongs to a completely different world. He was a physician, orthopedist, inventor of cineplastic prosthetics, and a public-scientific figure, not a philosopher by office and not a university don in the Oxford or Italian chair sense. He studied at Bologna, practised medicine in Empoli and nearby, worked as a ship’s doctor, later became central to the development of cinematic prostheses, and at the same time cultivated a serious interest in auxiliary languages and linguistic reform. The secure biographical sources identify Giuliano Vanghetti as born at Greve in Chianti in 1861, laureato in medicine at Bologna in 1890, later practising at Empoli, and becoming a pioneer of cineplastic prostheses while also taking an interest in international auxiliary languages and Latino sine flexione. [it.wikipedia.org], [encicloped...esciana.it], [treccani.it] So the clean institutional contrast is this. Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate and university-faculty world. Vanghetti belongs to the medical, inventive, and public-scientific world, with an important side-line in planned-language advocacy rather than in academic philosophy proper. [it.wikipedia.org], [encicloped...esciana.it], [treccani.it] That institutional difference fits your philosophical comparison surprisingly well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising intentions and inferring implicatures under shared norms. Vanghetti, by contrast, is thinking less about how interlocutors recover hidden meaning in an existing natural language and more about how one might redesign the linguistic instrument itself so that communication becomes more transparent, portable, and less dependent on local idiom. His relation to Peano’s Latino sine flexione, and his proposals for Latin-Ido and Latin-Esperanto, place him in exactly that intermediate space between planned language and practical communicative reform. [it.wikipedia.org] So the sharpest formulation is this. Grice explains how rational agents bridge the gaps left open by ordinary language. Vanghetti tries to narrow those gaps in advance by designing a more regular and internationally portable linguistic code. [it.wikipedia.org] That is why your phrase implicature di Deutero-Esperanto is actually quite apt as a gloss. For Grice, implicature is a strength of natural conversation: speakers leave things unsaid because hearers can recover them by rational inference. For Vanghetti, the very same phenomenon can look like an avoidable burden, one that an auxiliary language ought to reduce rather than celebrate. If Grice trusts the inferential intelligence of ordinary language users, Vanghetti trusts a rational redesign of the code to lighten the load. [it.wikipedia.org] There are, however, two factual corrections. First, the birthplace in your heading should be Greve in Chianti, not Empoli. Empoli is where he later lived and practised. The secure biographical sources agree that Vanghetti was born at Greve in Chianti and died at Empoli. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it] Second, your final bibliographic line “Vanghetti, Giuliano (1890). Laurea in medicina. Bologna.” is not really a proper bibliographic citation. It is a biographical milestone, not a publication. If you want a secure scholarly anchor, the better bibliographic starting points are his 1898 lithographed memory on amputations or the later 1906 book Plastica e prostesi cinematiche. The secure medical bibliography for Vanghetti includes Plastica e prostesi cinematiche, Milan, 1906, and earlier papers from 1899–1900; the 1890 Bologna degree is biographical, not bibliographic. [treccani.it], [neurology.org] So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the precise collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Giuliano Vanghetti, by contrast, was an Italian physician and inventor, trained at Bologna, active as a medical practitioner and pioneer of cineplastic prostheses, while also engaging in debates over international auxiliary languages and Latino sine flexione. Institutionally, Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate world; Vanghetti to the medical and public-scientific world. Intellectually, however, the contrast is illuminating: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of meaning in ordinary conversation, whereas Vanghetti represents the project of designing a linguistic medium in which less has to be recovered by local pragmatic guesswork because more is made uniform, explicit, and internationally legible in the code itself. [it.wikipedia.org], [encicloped...esciana.it], [treccani.it] And if I compress it into one line: Grice trusts implicature; Vanghetti tries to engineer around it. [it.wikipedia.org] If you want, I can now give you a tighter one-paragraph entry in your preferred style, with the birth/death places corrected and the bibliographic anchor shifted from the 1890 degree to a real publication.implicature di Deutero-Esperanto – Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers rationally recover more than is said by presuming cooperation and attributing to the speaker an intention that is meant to be recognized as such; conversational implicature, on this view, is not a decorative surplus but the calculable product of practical reasoning under shared norms (purpose of the exchange, maxims, and audience-directed intentions). Vanghetti, by contrast, belongs to a tradition in which “implicature” is best understood not as an inferential mechanism inside an already-fixed natural language, but as a design problem for an international auxiliary language: his esperantido projects (Latin-Ido and Latin-Esperanto), explicitly positioned between Peano’s Latino sine flexione and Esperanto/Ido, aim to reduce morphological and lexical friction so that what is meant becomes more uniform, cross-national, and less hostage to local pragmatic guesswork. Where Grice theorizes how rational agents bridge gaps left open by ordinary language (and even exploit those gaps), Vanghetti’s Deutero-Esperanto impulse is to narrow the gap in advance by engineering a semi-latin, rule-governed code whose very appeal is that cooperative communication should require fewer culture-specific implicatures; the comparison thus turns on two conceptions of rationality in communication, Grice’s as inferential accountability in real-time talk exchanges, Vanghetti’s as an ideal of planned transparency and portability in the linguistic instrument itself, coupled with his insistence (in the policy debate around Esperanto) that such instruments should facilitate cooperation without coercive imposition. la scuola di Greve in Chianti – la scuola di Firenze – filosofia fioretina – filosofia toscana -- filosofia italiana (Greve in Chianti). Abstract. Keywords: Deutero-Esperanto. laureato a BOLOGNA, Durante la guerra mondiale è volontario assimilato della C. R. I. È l'ideatore dell'amputazione cinematica per prostesi cinematica, cioè del motore plastico (v. amputazioni; cineplastica). Per tale idea, del tutto nuova e originale, gli fu conferita la medaglia d'oro della C.R.I. Egli ha chiamato cinematizzazione ogni operazione basata su questo principio: "In un'amputazione o disarticolazione attuale o pregressa, il tendine o il muscolo provvisto della necessaria protezione fisiologica (pelle, vasi, nervi, ecc.) potrà in generale servire alla prostesi cinematica, qualora con esso possa formarsi un punto d'attacco artificiale sottoposto alle medesime condizioni di protezione". Il miglioramento della tecnica prostetica ha contribuito e più contribuirà in avvenire a dimostrare l'utilità del motore plastico nella massima parte delle amputazioni. Ha scritto: Plastica e prostesi cinematiche, Milano, e in Arch. di ortopedia; Vitalizzazione e prostesi cinematiche, relazione alla III conierenza interalleata per lo Studio delle questioni riguardanti gl'invalidi di guerra; Arcimeccanica e cineprostesi, in Scritti biologici); congresso Soc. ital. ortop., Pellegrini, Cinematizzazioni: primo trentennio della teoria vanghettiana, Bologna 1929.I progetti e l'influsso del Latino sine flexione di PEANO , interessante. Nonostante la fama inferiore rispetto ad altre LAI, è innegabile che, in seguito alla pubblicazione dei lavori di PEANO , si assisté a una proliferazione dei progetti di inter-lingua di base latina, ispirati proprio a quella del matematico piemontese. I numerosi tentativi sono testimoni del fatto che molti esponenti della comunità dei filosofi italiani condivide il pensiero che la lingua latina, opportunamente modificata, puo divenire il  mezzo perfetto per la comunicazione. Per i primi tentativi d’emulazione si devono aspettare a quando il filosofo italiano Vanghetti, esperto di lingue moderne e internazionali, pubblica le sue proposte di carattere esperantido, il Latin-Ido e il Latin-Esperanto. Con il termine “Esperantido” si intendono quelle lingue inventate ad uso internazionale che presentano un certo numero di caratteri tipici dell'Esperanto – cf. Grice, “Deutero-Esperanto in One Easy Lesson” -- entrambe si configurano come commistione delle idee di PEANO  e di altri sistemi, presentando un vocabolario di base ispirato al Latino sine flexione accostato rispettivamente alla struttura grammaticale dell'IDO (cf. Grice, Studies in the Way of IDO” --  e dell'Esperanto. A Empoli, mentre è membro della commissione, nominata dalla Società Italiana per il Progresso delle Scienze, che dove occuparsi della promozione dell'uso e dello studio delle lingue internazionali, commissione di cui fa parte anche lo stesso PEANO  - pubblica nella rivista “Riforma” anche un saggio intitolato «Questione de lingua auxiliario internationale in Italia» a riprova del suo particolare interesse per la materia. Leggi Cronologia  Strumenti V. V. M. Empoli -- è stato un medico ortopedico italiano, famoso per aver condotto innovative sperimentazioni di protesi per arti amputati, in particolare quelli superiori. Di un certo rilievo fu anche il suo interesse alla linguistica: conoscitore di molte lingue, si occupò della promozione degli studi sulle lingue ausiliarie internazionali: l'interlingua e il latino sine flexione di PEANO . Dopo i primi studi a Greve in Chianti, dove il padre modo non è obbligatoria. Anche astrazion fatta da ragioni politiche *contro* l'esperanto, non  è ammissibile l'obbligatorietà dello studio di esso nelle pubbliche scuole, come neppure quello di alcun altra delle lingue artificiali, nessuna delle quali è ancora perfettissima. La Società delle Nazioni, respinse alla quasi unanimità detta pretesa; e pur rimandando la questione generale  allo studio dell’Intesa Intellettuale, mostra propensione alla base inter-latina.  Deutero-Esperanto.  Grice: Buongiorno, dottor Vanghetti! Ho letto con grande interesse le sue ricerche sulle protesi cinematiche e, soprattutto, sulla sua idea di “Deutero-Esperanto”. Secondo lei, una lingua ausiliaria internazionale può davvero favorire una comunicazione universale tra i popoli? Vanghetti: Caro Grice, la ringrazio della domanda. Penso che una lingua come il Deutero-Esperanto, influenzata dal Latino sine flexione di Peano e dagli esperantidi, possa rappresentare un ponte tra culture. Tuttavia, credo sia fondamentale lasciare libertà di scelta: nessuna lingua artificiale è perfetta e l’imposizione sarebbe, a mio avviso, controproducente. Grice: Una posizione molto saggia. Nel suo percorso, ha notato resistenze ideologiche verso l’esperanto e le lingue ausiliarie? Mi sembra che il dibattito sia ancora acceso, nonostante le potenzialità di queste lingue per la cooperazione internazionale. V.: Assolutamente, Grice. A Empoli, nella commissione per lo studio delle lingue internazionali, ho visto come motivazioni politiche e culturali influenzino il giudizio. La Società delle Nazioni, ad esempio, ha respinto l’obbligatorietà dello studio dell’esperanto nelle scuole. Però noto una crescente apertura verso le interlingue latine, come la mia proposta di Deutero-Esperanto. Il dialogo continua! Vanghetti, Giuliano (1890). Laurea in medicina. Bologna.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Vanini – Ossia: Grice e Vanini: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dei peripatetici del lizio. Note su Physici commentarii. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Giulio Cesare Vanini (Taurisano, Lecce, Puglia): Institutionally, Giulio Cesare Vanini and H. P. Grice are not comparable in the modern academic sense at all. Grice’s formula is exact in the Oxford sense. Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s means a college office with tutorials, students, and membership in the governing life of the college. CUF University Lecturer in philosophy means a university-wide faculty appointment. So Grice combines the two characteristic Oxford functions: college tutor and university lecturer. Vanini belongs to an entirely different world: the early modern world of religious orders, universities, wandering intellectuals, patrons, embassies, confessional danger, and judicial repression. He took Carmelite vows in Naples, earned the doctorate in civil and canon law there, moved to Padua, fled via Venetian and English channels, published in France, and died in Toulouse under a sentence for impiety and blasphemy. He was not a don, not a fellow, and not a lecturer in the Oxford sense. He was a heterodox philosopher-theologian and itinerant libertine intellectual in a censorious Europe. The standard biographical sources identify Giulio Cesare Vanini as born at Taurisano in 1585, taking Carmelite vows in Naples in 1603, taking the doctorate in utroque iure in 1606, moving to Padua, fleeing to England in 1612 under the protection of Dudley Carleton and the Archbishop of Canterbury, publishing in France in 1615 and 1616, and being executed at Toulouse in 1619. [link.springer.com], [treccani.it], [galileo.li...y.rice.edu] So the clean institutional contrast is this. Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate and university-faculty world. Vanini belongs to the confessional, itinerant, and persecuted world of early modern radical naturalism. That institutional difference fits your philosophical comparison rather well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer recovers what a speaker means by recognising intentions and inferring implicatures under shared norms. Vanini, by contrast, works in a world where the gap between surface and intention is not mainly a tidy matter of conversational calculation but often a matter of intellectual survival. In his case, irony, learned indirection, strategic ambiguity, and the posture of commentary or dialogue are not merely stylistic choices but means of advancing heterodox naturalist views under hostile conditions. So the sharpest formulation is this. Grice explains how conversation can mean more than it says under cooperative rationality. Vanini exemplifies how writing and disputation can mean more than they dare say under persecution. That is why your comparison is actually strong. Grice’s implicature is built into ordinary rational cooperation. Vanini’s obliqueness belongs to a much harsher world: one in which the distance between literal surface and intended upshot can be a weapon, a shield, or both. There are, however, two important corrections. First, the final bibliographic line you give is not safe. One should not write Vanini, Giulio Cesare (1601). Physici commentarii. Napoli as though there were a securely attested surviving printed book by that title from Naples in 1601. The secure modern biographical sources state instead that his early Neapolitan production included works such as De generatione et corruptione, De contemnenda gloria, Liber physico-magicus, and Apologia pro Mosaica et Christiana Lege, all now lost. The Treccani biography explicitly says that the long stay in Naples goes back to 1601 and that his first philosophical production in that city included those lost works; it does not confirm a surviving printed Physici commentarii from Naples in 1601. [treccani.it] Second, your long discussion of Physici commentarii as a cited earlier work or notebook is clever and philosophically fruitful, but bibliographically it must remain cautious. At best one should say that Vanini refers to earlier physical commentaries or commentarii in a way that may indicate lost notes, notebooks, or an earlier work. It is not safe to turn that into a firm standalone publication entry without further manuscript evidence. So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the precise collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Giulio Cesare Vanini, by contrast, was a Carmelite-turned-radical philosopher, jurist, and wandering libertine intellectual, formed at Naples and Padua, entangled in confessional flight and publication in England and France, and executed at Toulouse. Institutionally, Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate world; Vanini to the precarious and censorious world of early modern philosophical heterodoxy. Philosophically, the contrast is equally clear: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of speaker-meaning and implicature, whereas Vanini exemplifies a broader combative rationalism in which learned ambiguity, irony, and strategic indirection are tools for pushing inquiry beyond the limits imposed by orthodoxy. And if I compress it into one line: Grice theorises implicature as cooperation; Vanini practises indirection as intellectual resistance. If you want, I can now give you a tighter one-paragraph entry in your preferred style, with the unsafe Physici commentarii line replaced by the secure early-lost-works formula and the England–Toulouse trajectory made central.la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dei peripatetici del lizio – Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats “what is meant” as an achievement of cooperative rational agency: speakers design utterances with audience-directed intentions, hearers presume a shared purpose in the talk-exchange, and implicatures are inferred by attributing to the speaker conformity (or artful flouting) of rational norms such as relevance, informativeness, and sincerity. Vanini, by contrast, is not offering a technical account of speaker-meaning, but a polemical, early-modern “conversational reason” in which disputation, scholastic erudition, and rhetorical indirection serve a broader program: the emancipation of inquiry from medieval theology through a radical naturalism and an often strategically oblique presentation of heterodox theses. If Grice makes implicature a principled bridge from saying to meaning under norms that make conversation intelligible as cooperative enterprise, Vanini exemplifies how, in a confessional and censorious environment, a writer can make the space of dialogue itself do political-intellectual work: insinuation, irony, and learned ambiguity become not merely pragmatic phenomena but survival-techniques and instruments of cultural demolition and refoundation. Where Grice’s “reason” is fundamentally a normative logic of mutual understanding (a theory of how rational interlocutors can and do converge on communicated content), Vanini’s “reason” is a combative rationalism enacted in conversational and dialogical form, exploiting the gap between literal surface and intended upshot less to model coordination than to press, evade, and destabilize orthodox authority. “If you speak Italian, you should never confuse Vanini with Vannini” -- Grice. – Grice: “When this American philosopher, G. P. Baker, of New Jersey, called me a ‘heretic,’ I don’t know what he was _meaning_!” -- V.  Spirito inquieto, che si sente investito del compito civile di un profondo rinnovamento politico-culturale dell’uomo e della società, Giulio Cesare Vanini conduce agli albori dell’età moderna una sistematica demolizione del sapere teologico medievale e rinascimentale nell’ottica di un razionalismo radicale, quasi preilluministico, e apre la strada a una rifondazione del sapere sulla base dell’autonomia della ragione e della natura, con esiti spesso eversivi dei valori etici e culturali della tradizione cristiana.  Nato da Giovan Battista e da Beatrice López de Noguera, V. prende i voti con il nome di fra Gabriele nel convento napoletano del Carmine Maggiore e, qualche anno più tardi, consegue la laurea in utroque iure presso il Collegio dei dottori, annesso allo Studio partenopeo. Si trasferì a Padova nell’intento di seguire i corsi accademici in teologia o forse in artibus, ma le sue aspettative sono bruscamente interrotte da un grave provvedimento disciplinare del generale dell’ordine carmelitano, Silvio, che mirava a relegarlo in un oscuro convento del Cilento. Associatosi al confratello Ginocchio, V. preferì tentare la fuga in Inghilterra, dove forse spera di affermarsi come filosofo-teologo, critico dei principi del Concilio tridentino. La via della fuga fu accuratamente preparata dall’ambasciatore inglese a Venezia, Dudley Carleton, che lo affida alle cure dell’amico Chamberlain e lo pone sotto la protezione del potente primate d’Inghilterra, Oxford, La statua all’aperto di V., “Il medaglione di V. a Roma.  G.  What are you reading, S.? S.  Italian. G.  That narrows it down to either cooking or heresy. S.  Heresy with footnotes. The archive sort. G.  Read me the offending line. S.  “La composizione dei Physici Commentarii risale presumibilmente a tale anno.” G.  Risale. S.  Risale. G.  I would have used risalgono. S.  Because you’ve already decided whether the Commentarii are one thing or many. G.  Precisely. “Commentarii” are plural. Plural wants plural. S.  Italian is not obliged to respect your Latin. G.  Italian is obliged to respect sense. Risale makes it sound like a single monolith. S.  The phrase “la composizione” makes it singular anyway. G.  That’s another trick: you singularise the act so you can singularise the object. S.  It’s bureaucratic Italian. It likes singular nouns. G.  And “presumibilmente” is the other giveaway. S.  Yes. Presumibilmente means “we don’t have a dated manuscript, but we’re not fools.” G.  It’s the archive’s way of saying “don’t sue us.” S.  Precisely. It’s a hedge with an academic gown on. G.  Now: “a tale anno.” Which year? S.  1601. G.  When he’s sixteen. S.  About sixteen. G.  So the story is: sixteen-year-old Vanini in Naples, writing Physici Commentarii. S.  “Writing,” yes—though we are now going to argue about what “commentarii” commits him to. G.  Of course we are. S.  The archive says he “si stabilisce a Napoli per studiare diritto civile e canonico.” G.  Utroque iure. S.  Exactly. G.  So: law student, and he writes Physici Commentarii. S.  Or he later says he did. G.  Ah. Here comes the self-citation. S.  You’ll like this. It sounds like your own favourite evasions. G.  Quote it. S.  “uti in nostris Physicis Commentariis fusius lucubrati sumus.” G.  That is magnificent. S.  Magnificent because it avoids explaining. G.  Exactly. “We’ve worked it out more fully elsewhere.” Elsewhere being conveniently lost. S.  Or conveniently inaccessible. G.  Or conveniently nonexistent. S.  That’s your thesis, is it? Fake? G.  Not yet. “Works as if it were true” is not the same as “is true.” S.  You’re going to say it’s a performative reference. G.  No, you are. I’m going to say it’s a rhetorical device. S.  Device for what? G.  For economy: do not expand; gesture to an earlier labour; borrow authority from your younger self. S.  Borrowing authority from your sixteen-year-old self seems risky. G.  Only if you imagine sixteen-year-olds are always stupid. S.  They usually are. G.  Yet Oxford is built on the assumption that eighteen-year-olds can do Plato. S.  Touché. G.  Now, “Physici Commentarii.” What does “physici” do there? S.  It’s an adjective. Physical. G.  And that matters. S.  Because it may mean “commentaries about physics,” not “a book called PHYSICI COMMENTARII.” G.  Exactly. No capitals in the mind. S.  Whereas modern bibliographies add capitals and make it look like a title-page. G.  Titles are often retrofits. S.  But “in nostris Physicis Commentariis” sounds pretty title-like. G.  It can also mean “in my physical commentings,” i.e., in those occasions on which I commented on physical things. S.  You mean “commentarii” as a common noun: notes, jottings. G.  Exactly. Commentarii as notebooks, not as a published work. S.  That helps your “fake-but-works” theory. G.  It helps the “not necessarily a book” theory. S.  Fine. Now, what is he doing when he says “fusius lucubrati sumus”? G.  He is signalling diligence. S.  Lamp-light scholarship. G.  Yes: “I stayed up for this.” And therefore: “trust me.” S.  So it’s ethos-building. G.  Exactly. S.  And the topic where he does it, you said, is conception of the foetus? G.  You said it. But yes, he uses it when things get biologically messy. S.  The archive claims he refers to the Commentarii most extensively in Exercitatio L of De admirandis. G.  That’s plausible. S.  And it’s also your sort of move: avoid the hard bit by citing an earlier, fuller treatment. G.  My hard bits are usually in print, unfortunately. S.  You prefer your evasions recoverable. G.  Yes. A gentleman leaves tracks. S.  Vanini leaves a track to a book that’s vanished. G.  Or never existed. S.  Or existed as a bundle of notes. G.  Precisely. Now, the Italian again. Risale. S.  You still dislike it. G.  I dislike it because it suggests the archive knows more than it does. S.  “Presumibilmente” fixes that. G.  “Presumibilmente” is the verbal equivalent of a shrug. S.  A shrug with a bibliography. G.  Exactly. S.  Now, the other thing: he’s in Naples for law. G.  Utroque iure. S.  And yet he’s writing on physica. G.  That’s not inconsistent in early modern education. S.  But your story is that he’s a southern naturalist—Telesio type. G.  A type Bacon liked. S.  And we don’t. G.  We like Locke. S.  Why do we like Locke? G.  Because he makes “nature” safe by making it “experience” and “ideas.” S.  Whereas Telesio makes it heat and cold and bodies. G.  And Vanini makes it scandalous by making it natural. S.  Naturalism didn’t save him from the stake. G.  There’s your punchline, and it’s not mine. S.  It’s yours now. G.  Fine: naturalism is no fireproofing. S.  Why wouldn’t it be? G.  Because the stake is not about your physics, it’s about your theology. S.  But he thinks theology is bad physics. G.  And that’s exactly why theology burns him. S.  So the Physici Commentarii are already a kind of provocation? G.  Not at sixteen. At sixteen it’s safer to call it “commentary.” S.  Commentary is obedient. G.  Yes. “I am only commenting.” The classic shield. S.  That’s your point about performative. G.  Commenting can be a performative posture: “I am not asserting; I am only glossing.” S.  But you said you can comment to yourself in the bath. G.  I can. S.  So no addressee required. G.  Correct. Commentary can be private. S.  Then “in nostris commentariis” could mean private notebooks. G.  Exactly. S.  Yet he uses it publicly as authority. G.  Yes: private labour leveraged for public credibility. S.  That’s a very modern academic trick. G.  It’s an old scholastic trick: “I have a longer treatment; I won’t bore you.” S.  And the longer treatment is always “elsewhere.” G.  Somewhere uncheckable, if possible. S.  Which makes it suspicious. G.  Suspicious, but effective. S.  So your conclusion is: it might be fake, but it works. G.  My conclusion is: even if it’s real, the way it’s used is rhetorical. S.  That is less exciting. G.  Philosophy often is. S.  Now, about London. He was “in London too,” you said. G.  Briefly. Not sightseeing. S.  Not the Tower. G.  More Lambeth. S.  That’s Bruno’s Oxford story shifted south. G.  Yes. People hear “England” and imagine Oxford; Vanini’s England is Canterbury’s shadow. S.  And then he crosses back the Channel. G.  For good, effectively. S.  And then France, then the books, then the fire. G.  The fire being the one publisher you can’t refuse. S.  Now you’re enjoying yourself. G.  A little. The phrasing invites it. S.  Back to the title: Physici Commentarii. G.  If we keep it adjectival, it’s “physical commentaries,” not “The Physical Commentaries.” S.  But the archive capitalises it as a title. G.  Archives love titles. S.  Because titles make cataloguing possible. G.  Exactly. S.  But Vanini himself might have meant only “notes I wrote on physica.” G.  Or “my earlier discussions of physica.” S.  And “physica” means nature. G.  In that period, yes: physica as natural philosophy. S.  Not metaphysica. G.  He’d keep metaphysica at arm’s length, at least in that posture. S.  “Never metaphysics—it's all physics to him,” you said. G.  It’s a caricature, but not a silly one. Naturalists like to pretend metaphysics is just bad bookkeeping. S.  Yet he uses metaphysical words when it suits him. G.  Everyone does. Even Locke. S.  So the Physici Commentarii are a way of signalling: I have done the hard natural work. G.  Exactly. S.  And thus: I am entitled to make the bolder claim here. G.  Yes. It’s a warrant. S.  “As I showed elsewhere.” G.  Exactly. S.  Now, your bath example. You said you can comment to yourself on Ptolemy. G.  I can. S.  In a clear voice? G.  If I’m alone, yes. S.  Then “commentary” is not essentially communicative. G.  It can be monological. S.  So Vanini could be using “commentariis” as “I once thought through.” G.  Yes. S.  But the Latin is “lucubrati sumus,” which is writing. G.  It is writing-like labour. It suggests writing, not mere thinking. S.  So more than bath. G.  Yes. More lamp than bath. S.  Now, your idea that he didn’t use capitals. G.  No one did in the modern sense. Capitals don’t settle ontology. S.  Yet we treat them as if they do. G.  Bibliographers do. S.  Philosophers should not. G.  Philosophers should distrust everything that looks like a title. S.  Except when they’re writing. G.  Exactly. S.  So, is it fake? G.  The safe conclusion is: we don’t know. S.  You hate that. G.  I love that. “We don’t know” is the start of honesty. S.  But you also love a sharp hypothesis. G.  Yes. So here is one: the “Physici Commentarii” were probably a set of youthful notes, later inflated into a rhetorical authority by a man who needed to look as if he had always known what he was doing. S.  That sounds plausible. G.  It also sounds like Oxford. S.  And yet it didn’t save him from the stake. G.  Nothing saves you from the stake if the stake is decided by people who think physics is insolence. S.  Why would they? G.  Because physics, when it refuses theology, becomes moral. S.  So naturalism is a moral insult. G.  Exactly. S.  Then the irony is that his most “physical” posture is what gets him burned. G.  That’s the punchline. S.  You promised a punchline from you. G.  Fine. Here: Vanini could say “uti in nostris Physicis Commentariis…” for the rest of his life, and it would still end the same way—because the one commentary nobody allowed was his comment on God. S.  Brutal. G.  Accurate. S.  And very 1950. G.  In 1950, we prefer our heretics in books, not in flames. S.  And yet you’re pleased by his rhetorical economy. G.  I’m pleased by any economy that exposes the structure of persuasion. S.  Even if it’s a bluff? G.  Especially if it’s a bluff. A bluff is an intention made visible by risk. S.  So: fake, but it works. G.  Or real, and it works the same way.Grice: Carissimo Vanini, lasciami dire che trovo affascinante la parola "lizio" nei tuoi scritti! C’è un suono che evoca misteri e radici antiche. Puoi raccontarmi qualcosa in più sul suo significato? O forse c’è, come immagino, una di quelle ambiguità intenzionali che tanto mi piacciono?  Vanini: Ah, Grice, colpisci proprio nel segno! Il termine “lizio” gioca con un’ambiguità voluta: da un lato richiama la terra di Lidia, dall’altro il “likaion”, il luogo sacro al lupo, che gli antichi greci associavano al ginnasio dove Aristotele, espulso dal Giardino di Eakdemos, trovò rifugio per filosofare. Insomma, un piccolo enigma—come piace a te—tra storia e mito!  Grice: Che meraviglia! Allora, tra “lizio” e “lupo”, Aristotele non si faceva mancare nulla: dalla cacciata al filosofare in compagnia del mistero. Mi sa che i tuoi giochi linguistici mi fanno quasi invidia!  Vanini: Ma caro Grice, tu sei il vero maestro delle sfumature! Se Aristotele fosse qui, si unirebbe a noi per brindare al piacere delle parole che mordono… come un vero “likaion”! Vanini, Giulio Cesare (1601). Physici commentarii. Napoli.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Vanni – Ossia: Grice e Vanni: la ragione conversazionale dell’azione e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’inter-azione conversazionale. Note sulla Filosofia della vita morale. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Icilio Vanni (Città della Pieve, Perugia, Umbria): Compared institutionally, Icilio Vanni is much closer to H. P. Grice than a poet, actor, or Roman magistrate, because both are recognisably university intellectuals; but they still belong to very different academic ecologies. Grice’s formula is exact in the Oxford sense. Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s means a college office with tutorials, students, and membership in the governing life of the college. CUF University Lecturer in philosophy means a university-wide faculty appointment. So Grice combines the intimate tutorial culture of the college with the wider faculty structure of the university. Icilio Vanni belongs to the Italian university-state world of public chairs, faculties, and legal-philosophical instruction. He studied at Perugia, became professor there, then taught philosophy of law at Pavia, Parma, Bologna, and Rome. So he was not a college fellow in the Oxford sense, but a jurist-philosopher of the chair system, working in the public university and in the broader nineteenth-century Italian world of legal theory, sociology, and positivism. That gives the clean institutional contrast. Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate world. Vanni belongs to the public-professorial and chair-based world of the Italian university-state system. That institutional difference fits your philosophical comparison very well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising intentions and inferring implicatures under shared norms. Vanni works at the macro-level of law, custom, social action, and institutional normativity. In his world, speech is one form of social action among others, and its meaning is tied not only to what one agent intends another to recognise, but to the larger structures of custom, legislation, and practice that make an utterance count as binding, relevant, or authoritative in the first place. So if you want the sharpest formulation, it is this. Grice explains how rational agents coordinate meanings in conversation. Vanni explains how social agents coordinate conduct in a normative order. That is why your emphasis on action and inter-action is genuinely apt. For Grice, conversation is itself a species of rational interaction, but his main explanatory interest lies in the inferential route from utterance to meaning. For Vanni, by contrast, utterance is already embedded in larger practical realities: custom, obligation, law, and the social life of institutions. If Grice asks how help can be implicated without being said, Vanni asks what kind of social world must exist for “help” to count as an intelligible or binding move at all. Your use of consuetudine is also exactly right. The strongest concrete anchor for Vanni is his early dissertation Della consuetudine nei suoi rapporti col diritto e colla legislazione, and the first paragraphs you quoted already show the whole structure of his later philosophy: theory and history together, law not reduced to legislation, custom as a formative and surviving source of normativity, and a methodological attempt to rescue what is true in the historical school without surrendering to system-spirit. There are only two factual cautions. First, the final bibliographic tail should be cleaned slightly. It should be Della consuetudine nei suoi rapporti col diritto e colla legislazione, not conseutudine. Second, “Sotto. Perugia.” is too vague as a bibliographic endpoint. If you want a proper citation, one would ideally specify the actual printer or publishing details if they are available from the title page, rather than just “under” or “thesis under.” So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the precise collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Icilio Vanni, by contrast, was an Italian jurist and philosopher of law, formed at Perugia and later teaching at Perugia, Pavia, Parma, Bologna, and Rome in the public chair system. Institutionally, Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate world; Vanni to the university-state and legal-professorial world. Philosophically, the contrast is equally clear: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of speaker-meaning and implicature, whereas Vanni investigates the broader practical and juridical order in which custom, legislation, and social interaction shape what counts as norm, action, and coordinated conduct. And if I compress it into one line: Grice theorises how talk coordinates minds; Vanni theorises how custom and law coordinate lives. If you want, I can now give you a tighter one-paragraph entry in your preferred style, or a short note just on Vanni’s Della consuetudine as a proto-pragmatic text about social normativity.la ragione conversazionale dell’azione e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’inter-azione conversazionale. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains implicature as a rational upshot of cooperative interaction: speakers are presumed to be pursuing shared purposes in talk, and hearers reconstruct what is meant (often beyond what is said) by reasoning about why a contribution was made in that form, at that point, under norms like relevance and appropriate quantity. Icilio Vanni (Città della Pieve; jurist and philosopher of law associated with a “positivismo critico” and a practical orientation to ethics, custom, and social life) makes a contrasting partner because his emphasis—at least as your passage frames it—falls less on inference from utterance-content to intended meaning and more on action and inter-action as the primary reality in which norms operate: “ragione” shows up as the critical regulation of practices (including juridical ones), not merely as an interpretive procedure in the hearer’s head. In that light, Grice’s conversational rationality looks like a micro-theory of how agents coordinate meanings through intention-recognition, while Vanni’s “inter-azione” lens suggests a macro-theory in which speech is one species of regulated social action, continuous with obligation, custom (consuetudine), and the institutional conditions that make an imperative like “aiuta!” intelligible as more than a word—namely as a socially binding prompt to cooperative conduct. Put sharply: Grice models how “help” can be implicated without being said; Vanni invites the thought that the very point of such implicatures is practical coordination in a community, where the deepest “meaning” of an utterance is often its role in shaping or licensing action within a shared normative order.  aiuta, etologia, aiuta conversazionale, imperativo d’aiuta conversazionale. Filosofo perugino. Filosofo umbro. Filosofo italiano. Città della Pieve, Perugia, Umria. Essential Italian philosopher. Filosofo italiano. Filosofo e giurista. M. Roma. Laureato a Perugia, è nominato professore di storia del diritto nella stessa università; passa a insegnare la filosofia del diritto a Pavia e quindi a Parma; è chiamato a BOLOGNA e a Roma. Nella filosofia in genere, e in quella giuridica in specie, segue piuttosto il corrente indirizzo positivista, ma non ciecamente e con metodo empirico, ché anzi egli è uno dei più strenui propugnatori del metodo critico. Tra le sue molte opere ricordiamo: Sulla consuetudine – cf. Grice, costume – sitte -Perugia --; Lo studio comparativo delle razze nella sociologia -- Perugia; I giurisii della scuola storica di Germania nella storia della sociologia e della filosofia positiva, Rivista di filosofia scientifica; Saggi critici sulla teoria sociologica della popolazione, Annali dell'università di Perugia; Prime linee di un programma critico di sociologia, Perugia; Gli studii di Maine e le dottrine della filosofia del diritto, Verona; Il sistema etico-giuridico di Spencer -- prefazione alla traduzione di Spencer, La Giustizia, Città di Castello; La funzione pratica della filosofia dei diritto, Prelezione, BOLOGNA; Il diritto nella totalità dei suoi rapporti, Prelezione, Rivista italiana di sociologia; La teoria della conoscenza come induzione sociologica, e l'esigenza critica del positivismo; Lezioni di filosofia del diritto, Bologna, riproduzione del corso tenuto a Roma. Inizia la carriera a Perugia e successivamente insegna a Parma, Bologna, e Roma.  Tra i fondatori del positivismo soziale, la sua filosofia si ispira a Kant e agli principali filosofi del positivismo. action, interaction, azione, interazione, Vico, positivismo, positivismo critico, etologia, ethology, azione ed inter-azione.  G.: Let us begin with the title, because in these matters the title already tells us that a jurist is trying to sound less dry than he means to be. Della consuetudine nei suoi rapporti col diritto e colla legislazione. S.: It is a magnificent title. It sounds as if custom has been invited to dinner with law and legislation and is expected to explain itself. G.: Precisely. And Vanni is not content with one relation. He wants the relation of custom to law, and the relation of custom to legislation, which means at once that he is distinguishing two things the ordinary mind often confuses. S.: Diritto and legislazione. G.: Yes. Law not merely as enacted law. The juridical not merely as the written code. That is why the thing is philosophically alive from the first line, despite coming wrapped in the polite dust of a law faculty. S.: And the epigraph? G.: Le droit est la vie. S.: A dangerous sentence. G.: Quite. Any sentence in which law is identified with life is either a profundity or a nuisance. With luck, both. S.: Before the profundity, a little bureaucracy. Perugia, 1876, Facoltà di Giurisprudenza, summer session, dissertation read, publication ordered, poor Vanni pushed into print by statute, rector, printer, and destiny. G.: Yes. The formalities are worth remembering because they tell us that this is not a posturing young man deciding to launch himself as an author. It is a university object. A dissertation chosen freely, read in session, and then ordered into print. S.: Which I still maintain sounds more coercive than literary. G.: In law, coercion is often just administration with a seal. S.: And yet we have the touching dedication to his dead father, Camillo. G.: Which saves the book from being merely institutional. There is university machinery on page two and filial piety on page three. That is Italy. S.: Also very unlike the image of a cold little jurist chanting statutes. G.: Exactly. We must not let giurisprudenza make him look duller than he is. The dedication tells us at once that this first work is also a monument, or rather the young man’s apology for not yet having a worthier monument. S.: And then immediately the first paragraph turns into philosophy of history. G.: Read it. S.: Ricercare in via teoretica e provare storicamente quale sia stata l’influenza della consuetudine nel processo formativo del diritto e nelle legislazioni dei popoli, stabilire qual conto debba farsi di essa nella compilazione delle leggi, qual valore le resti dopo che la legge è scritta ed un Codice è promulgato; ecco i tre punti fondamentali su cui per la sua stessa natura deve aggirarsi il mio tema. G.: Very good. There it is. Theory first, then history. Influence in the formation of law and in the legislations of peoples. Then the role of custom in the making of laws. Then the value left to it after the law is written and a code promulgated. S.: Three points, he says. G.: And they are already better than many whole books. One, what custom did in the genesis of law. Two, what custom should count for in legislation. Three, what remains of custom once codification arrives. S.: Which is, if you like, the whole nineteenth-century problem in one sentence. G.: Quite. And not only nineteenth-century. The old question whether law grows or is made. Whether it is discovered in usage or imposed in writing. Vico and Savigny are already waiting in the footnotes to make sure no one forgets. S.: I was struck by the phrase in via teoretica e provare storicamente. He is almost over-polite. As if saying, I know this is not enough as pure theory; I shall also show you that history has actually done this thing. G.: Exactly. The jurist must not float away. He will theorise, but he will then prove historically. That pairing is very important. S.: Also rather Kantian, is it not? Since consuetudine starts sounding like Sitte. G.: Yes, though one should not flatten the thing too quickly into Kant. Consuetudine in Vanni is not simply custom as mere habit. Nor is it already ethics in the full Kantian or Hegelian sense. But yes, the traffic between custom, ethos, mores, Sitte, morality, and law is exactly where the interest lies. S.: One hears the old ladder: mos, moris; mores; custom; ethos; ethics. G.: And one hears too the modern anxiety: if law is merely legislation, then custom looks primitive. If law is broader than legislation, then custom becomes foundational. Vanni is trying to prevent both simplifications. S.: Continue. Tema del quale io non dissimulai certo a me stesso la gravità e la difficoltà imprendendo a trattarlo, mentre ad esso fanno capo questioni e problemi che formano, direi quasi, il punto principale di divergenza delle diverse scuole e dei vari sistemi della scienza giuridica. G.: There is a good old-fashioned sentence. He does not conceal from himself the gravity and difficulty of the theme. S.: A nice piece of pre-emptive modesty. G.: Modesty, yes, but also a claim. If the theme is the principal point of divergence among schools and systems of jurisprudence, then his little dissertation has chosen, not a corner, but the crossroads. S.: Which is already less dry than “I have written a little thing on custom.” G.: Much less dry. He is saying: here is where the schools divide. Here is where jurisprudence shows its philosophy. S.: So this is why the law faculty matters. It is not merely teaching poor boys to cite the code. G.: Exactly. The law faculty in the nineteenth century is still thick with philosophy of history, philosophy of law, the German school, codification debates, the relation between people, state, and legislation. S.: Then he grows a little sharper. Si aggiunga che le vere e giuste teoriche formulate sull’argomento vennero spesso per spirito di sistema confuse colle esagerazioni e cogli errori della scuola che le avea originate, e colle altre teoriche di essa repudiate ad un fascio. G.: Yes. That is an excellent complaint. True and just doctrines have often been confused, from spirit of system, with the exaggerations and errors of the school from which they arose. S.: In other words, people throw out the good with the bad because they hate the school. G.: Precisely. If custom is favoured by the historical school, then those who dislike the historical school dismiss custom along with all the rest. Vanni is trying to rescue what is true from what is partisan. S.: That already sounds like a critical positivist before the label hardens. G.: Yes. He is not blindly historical, not blindly positivist, not blindly anti-historical either. He is making distinctions where schools prefer banners. S.: Which is why he quotes Vico first? G.: Vico first in the note is very significant. The vera origine del diritto divinata dal Vico. Splendid. Vico divined the true origin of law; the German historical school then demonstrated scientifically what Vico had divined. S.: Divined first, demonstrated later. Intuition and science, Naples and Germany. G.: Quite. And the presence of Savigny immediately after Vico tells you where Vanni’s axis lies. Law is not first the sovereign’s command. Law arises historically in the life of a people, in institutions, usage, custom. S.: Volkgeist, but made respectable in Perugia. G.: Respectable, yes, and also Italicised. Vico gives the jurist a native ancestor so that Savigny does not seem like a German importation without passport. S.: Let us dwell on consuetudine itself. G.: Gladly. It is a lovely word. Not merely habit. Not merely usage. It is something grown by repeated social practice, with normative force attaching to repetition not as repetition alone, but as recognised repetition. S.: So custom is not just “what people happen to do often.” G.: Exactly. Otherwise every tic would become law. Consuetudine names a socially acknowledged pattern with authority. S.: More like the point at which usage thickens into expectation and expectation thickens into obligation. G.: Excellent. That is exactly the movement. And this is why Kant lurks nearby. Sitte is not mere habit either. It is custom in the thick sense, social norm sedimented into life. S.: And once social norm thickens enough, it begins to look ethical. G.: Or juridical. That is Vanni’s whole problem. How does the thickened social norm relate to law proper and then to legislation? S.: The distinction is almost irresistible. Diritto can include consuetudine; legislazione writes. Diritto may be broader than what legislators have enacted. G.: Precisely. Written law is one species of juridical form. Custom may pre-date it, guide it, survive it, even undermine it. S.: Which brings us back to his third question: what value remains to custom after codification. G.: A beautiful question. For codification always claims finality. The code says: here the law is written, arranged, promulgated, closed. Vanni asks: yes, but does custom simply vanish because the printed code has arrived? S.: And I suspect he thinks not. G.: I suspect so too. But one ought to re-read the whole thing, as I indeed must, because these early pages already show the architecture of the answer without settling every detail. S.: You keep saying “I must re-read,” which is philosopher’s Italian for “I do not yet dare dogmatise.” G.: Quite. I leave dogmatising to codifiers and the younger Kantians. S.: Let us bring Kant in more sharply. If custom is Sitte, where does law stand? In Kant one has legality and morality, external law and inner motive. G.: Yes, but Vanni is not simply reproducing Kant’s map. He is nearer the legal-historical question of how objective norms arise in social life. Kant’s moral law is not made by custom. Vanni’s point is rather that custom is a real historical source of juridical normativity, and that legislation ignores this at its peril. S.: So consuetudine is not the moral law within, but the social law before the law. G.: Very nice. The social law before the law, and sometimes beneath the law, and sometimes after the law. S.: And perhaps against the law. G.: Indeed. Every codifier hopes otherwise. Every society proves him wrong eventually. S.: The etymology of consuetudine? G.: From consuescere, to become accustomed, to grow used together. The con- matters. Not solitary habit, but shared habituation. S.: Shared habituation becoming norm. G.: Exactly. And that is why one must not reduce it to mere frequency. The force lies in the social recognition that this is how things are done, and therefore how they ought, in some measure, to be done. S.: So when sociology becomes ethics? G.: Or better, when social fact begins to carry normative weight. Which is precisely the dangerous moment. For the sociologist may say, this is what occurs. The jurist asks, does this occurrence have juridical value? The moralist asks, should it? Vanni is standing where all three begin quarrelling. S.: And there is Vico behind them all, saying that law emerges from the life of peoples, their institutions, their history, their poetic wisdom perhaps. G.: Yes. Vico is there as Italian ancestor and as rebuke to the pure legislator. Law begins in life before it is written in codes. S.: Le droit est la vie. G.: Exactly. Which is why the epigraph is not decorative. It is the thesis in miniature. S.: And yet dangerous, as I said, because one may then make all life juridical or all law vitalistic. G.: True. But Vanni’s first paragraph suggests he is more cautious. He wants influence, role, residue. He is not simply collapsing law into life. He is tracing relations. S.: The word rapporti in the title is doing work. G.: Very much so. Rapporti implies articulation, not identity. Custom in its relations with law and legislation. Not custom is law, nor custom versus law, but relations. S.: That sounds almost like your beloved category of relation. G.: Everything sounds like relation if one has read enough Aristotle and enough law. S.: I was amused by the bibliography in the footnote. Vico, Savigny, Puchta, Stahl, Comte, Scolari, Saredo, Cavagnari, Pepe. It is half legal history, half philosophy of history, half sociology before sociology knows its name. G.: Three halves, which is already jurisprudence. S.: So the law dissertation is not a small provincial thing at all. It is reading Germany, Vico, codification, history, sociology. G.: Precisely. That is why the Perugia faculty matters. Giurisprudenza in the 1870s is still philosophically ambitious in a way later law schools are often embarrassed to be. S.: And the printer Santucci is unwittingly publishing a little treatise on the philosophy of history under the title of law. G.: Quite. Poor Santucci thought perhaps he was setting a dissertation on custom and legislation. He was typesetting the quarrel of schools. S.: Let us imagine the general reader who picks it up. G.: A dangerous general reader, but yes. S.: He opens it expecting perhaps practical reflections on whether custom counts after the code. Instead he gets theoretical research, historical proof, schools of jurisprudence, and Vico in the first note. G.: Which is the right kind of bait-and-switch. One promises law and delivers philosophy with footnotes. S.: Vico as first note also means Vanni knows exactly how to make the thing Italian before he lets Germany take over. G.: Yes. He can say, in effect: what the Germans have made scientific, Vico had already divined. The Italian jurist need not feel intellectually colonised. S.: That would have appealed to a Grice who liked to hear Oxford called Boum Vadum and everything else given its proper ancestral vanity. G.: Certainly. Grice would have appreciated the way a first footnote can do genealogical politics. S.: And the dissertation being undivided, one title, no subsections, all numbered paragraphs. G.: That too is important. The thing proceeds as one argument. No modern padding, no little headings to flatter the hurried reader. You must follow the reasoning, not skip to “Section IV: Key Takeaways.” S.: A blessing. G.: Quite. Also a sign that the intended reader is serious, or at least being compelled to be serious. S.: I suppose with no headings the footnotes do even more orienting work. G.: Indeed. The footnotes are the hidden architecture. They tell you the schools, authorities, disputes, and lineages while the main text keeps an oratorical surface. S.: So again not unlike the old law-faculty style: the main line smooth, the subterranean apparatus bristling. G.: Exactly. Jurisprudence on top, philosophy underneath, history everywhere. S.: Do you think Vanni’s point about custom surviving the code would have interested Kant? G.: Not Kant as pure moral legislator, perhaps, but Kant as legal philosopher could not ignore it. For positive law always lives in a social world whose practices pre-structure obedience, interpretation, and legitimacy. S.: So even the categorical imperative cannot stop people doing what they are used to doing. G.: Quite. And legislators ignore consuetudine at their peril because a code without custom beneath it is merely paper with ambition. S.: That is a sentence worthy of the title page. G.: Thank you. Santucci might have set it badly. S.: Let us return to the phrase processo formativo del diritto. G.: Very important. Law is not simply posited at once. It has a formative process. Custom is influential in that process. That alone already resists the fantasy that law begins where legislation begins. S.: Which is a fantasy codifiers and schoolboys both love. G.: Yes. Schoolboys because it is neat. Codifiers because it is flattering. S.: But Vanni begins with process and peoples. G.: And with legislazioni dei popoli, not of one state only. That comparative breadth matters. He is already thinking historically and comparatively, not merely doctrinally. S.: Which also makes the title of the dissertation narrower than the first paragraph. The first paragraph almost opens a universal jurisprudence. G.: Quite. A good title contains a tractable object. A good first paragraph reveals that the object is a gateway to everything. S.: So if one wanted a Gricean point, one could say the explicit theme is custom and law, the implicated theme is the entire contest over the sources of normativity. G.: Very nice. And the implicature is not accidental. Vanni knows that to speak of consuetudine in 1876 is already to invoke Vico, Savigny, codification, positive science, sociology, and the quarrels of schools. S.: Another dry joke. One writes “on custom” and ends up with the fate of jurisprudence. G.: That is the only respectable way to write a dissertation. S.: I am still thinking about your distinction between law and legislation. It feels almost like langue and parole, except juridical. G.: A little dangerous, but suggestive. Legislation is a formal act, codified, dated, promulgated. Diritto is the broader juridical order in which such acts take their place and from which they derive authority or contest it. S.: Then custom is the sediment that makes positive law intelligible. G.: Often so. And sometimes the residue that survives when positive law fails. S.: Which makes Vanni already a little sociological. G.: Yes, but not sociology without norm. He is not merely observing habits; he is asking their juridical significance. S.: So more than sociology, less than pure metaphysics. G.: Exactly. Or rather, metaphysics smuggled in through juridical history. S.: Which is perhaps the only way metaphysics survives in a law faculty without making the students flee. G.: Very likely. S.: Let us have Vico again. La vera origine del diritto divinata dal Vico. G.: I love the divinata. Vico did not merely speculate; he divined. There is almost an oracular dignity in it. S.: Then Savigny proves scientifically what Vico divined poetically. G.: Yes. That pairing is perfect for nineteenth-century Italy. Native genius first, German science second. National vanity reconciled with scholarly dependence. S.: And Vanni sits in Perugia making the whole thing sound sober. G.: Exactly. Sobriety is one of the great masks of ambition. S.: Do you think the thing would have been read by a general reader at all? G.: Perhaps not many. But the general reader who did open Santucci’s little volume would find, beneath the legal typography, a live quarrel about the life of law. S.: So not wholly narrow after all. G.: Narrow in title, broad in implications. Which is often the right measure. S.: And the law-faculty order to print the dissertation almost improves the joke. The institution compels into print a little treatise explaining that law is older and wider than institutions think. G.: Very good. The faculty orders publication of a dissertation whose first move is to remind legislation and institutions that they are not the beginning of law. S.: That is very nice indeed. G.: Bureaucracy often unknowingly sponsors its own relativisation. S.: Shall we bring in Grice more directly? G.: Only lightly. Grice would not care for custom in the legal-historical sense as such, but he would care intensely about the way social practice underwrites normativity without always being explicit. His maxims presuppose a background of shared practice. Vanni’s consuetudine is one way of naming that background on the juridical side. S.: So where Grice says conversational practice, Vanni says custom. G.: More or less. Though Vanni’s scale is larger and institutional. Grice is micro-juridical, if one may put it that way. Vanni is macro-pragmatic. S.: I am stealing that. G.: Theft is permitted in scholarship if properly footnoted. S.: Let us end where we began: Perugia, 1876, summer session, law faculty, dissertation read, publication ordered, dedication to father, and then this first paragraph opening a world. G.: Exactly. That is the right frame. The book begins as a university object and immediately becomes a philosophy of juridical life. S.: And one must now go through the 150 pages to see whether the promise of the first paragraph is kept. G.: Yes. One must. Philosophy often begins in a title, reveals itself in a first paragraph, and then depends for its honour on whether the remaining hundred and fifty pages are not mere obedience to the printer. S.: Santucci did his part. G.: He did. Vanni, we shall see, must do the rest. S.: And if he does? G.: Then the little Perugian dissertation on consuetudine turns out not to be a relic of juridical antiquarianism but a live document in the struggle to explain how law grows from life without dissolving into mere life. S.: Le droit est la vie. G.: Yes. And the jurist’s task is to say that without becoming a windbag. S.: Which is why one starts with Vico and ends with caution. G.: Precisely.Grice: Professore Vanni, sappia che è solo grazie alle sue riflessioni sull’inter-azione che oggi posso, con tutta la gravità che l’occasione richiede, presentare al mondo l’“imperituro” Principio dell’Aiuta Conversazionale! (Applausi immaginari, prego!) Vanni: Caro Grice, se l’inter-azione ha dato vita a un principio così solenne, mi sento quasi un etologo premiato! Ma mi dica: ci sarà anche una statuetta dorata per il miglior aiuto conversazionale? Grice: Altroché! Prevedo una gran cerimonia, con discorsi pieni di sottointesi e applausi tra le righe. E magari, per tradizione, una stretta di mano all’insegna della massima cooperazione… conversazionale, s’intende! Vanni: Ecco, Grice, era ora che qualcuno riconoscesse il valore dell’aiuta! Se Aristotele avesse potuto, avrebbe aggiunto un capitolo sulle chiacchiere ben fatte: “Etica a Nicomaco… e a Conversaco!” Vanni, Icilio (1876). Della conseutudine nei suoi rapporti con diritto e colla legislazione. Sotto. Perugia.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Vannuchi – Ossia: Grice e Vannucchi: la ragione conversazionale – filosofia italiana. Note su I Giacobini. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Luigi Vannucchi (Caltanisetta): Compared institutionally, V. and Grice belong to very different worlds. Grice’s formula is exact in the Oxford sense. Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s means a college office with tutorials, students, and membership in the governing life of the college. CUF University Lecturer in philosophy means a university-wide faculty appointment. So Grice combines the two characteristic Oxford functions: college tutor and university lecturer. Luigi Vannucchi, by contrast, belongs to the theatrical and performative world rather than to a collegiate or professorial one. He studied at the Accademia Nazionale d’Arte Drammatica in Rome, acted with major companies, moved through stage and television, and became known through roles in classical tragedy, Shakespeare, modern drama, and television productions. He studied philosophy alongside acting, but his institutional identity remained that of actor and performer, not tutor or lecturer. So the clean institutional contrast is this. Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate and university-faculty world. Vannucchi belongs to the theatrical, dramatic-academic, and broadcast-performance world. That institutional difference fits your philosophical comparison rather well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer recovers what a speaker means by recognising intentions and inferring implicatures under conversational norms. Vannucchi, by contrast, works in the medium that makes those phenomena visible in a public and embodied form. Theatre and recitation make pause, intonation, timing, facial tension, and silence part of meaning itself. In that sense, what Grice analyses abstractly, Vannucchi operationalises performatively. The actor’s craft is to make the audience recover more than the sentence says, reliably and at scale. So the sharpest formulation is this. Grice explains how meaning exceeds the sentence in ordinary conversation. Vannucchi demonstrates how meaning exceeds the sentence in performance. That is why your choice of the 1958 Cetra record is actually excellent. A recited political speech, especially something like Saint-Just on the trial of Louis XVI, is exactly the kind of object where tone, pacing, and rhetorical force do much of the work that a philosopher would call pragmatic or implicatural. The line is not merely a proposition; it becomes a cue to the audience’s inference about necessity, virtue, inevitability, danger, or terror. There are, however, two factual cautions. First, the birthplace line “Caltanisetta” should be checked carefully. The biographical note you give places the family in Cirenaica, then Rome, then Modena, and one would want a secure source before fixing a heading in that way. Second, the title line at the end should be treated as a performance/document record, not a normal philosophical publication. “I Giacobini,” Cetra, Collana Letteraria Documento, CL 0435, with text recited by Zardi and side A devoted to Saint-Just’s discourse, is the right kind of citation if you are treating Vannucchi as curator, editor, or authorial frame in a performative medium. But it is not the same sort of bibliographical object as a monograph. So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the strict collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s College and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Luigi Vannucchi, by contrast, was an actor trained in the dramatic academies and companies of modern Italy, active in theatre and television rather than in a university-faculty structure. Institutionally, Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate world; Vannucchi to the theatrical and performative world. Intellectually, however, the contrast is illuminating: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of meaning in conversation, whereas Vannucchi shows, through disciplined performance, how timing, pause, tone, and public expectation make the unsaid inferable to an audience. And if I compress it into one line: Grice theorises how conversation implies; Vannucchi performs how speech exceeds itself. If you want, I can now give you a tighter one-paragraph entry in your preferred style, or a shorter note specifically on Vannucchi as an actor of implicature.la ragione conversazionale. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how an audience gets from what is said to what is meant by attributing intentions under shared norms of cooperative talk; implicatures are what a competent hearer is rationally entitled to infer when an utterance appears (on its face) under-informative, oblique, or otherwise non-maximal, yet is still presumed to be a purposeful move in the exchange. Vannucchi), read through the theatrical trajectory in your passage (classical training, philosophical study alongside acting, major stage roles such as Laerte, Tieste, Antigone, Prometeo, and the famous Don Rodrigo on television), supplies a concrete analogue: theatre makes conversational reason visible by turning pragmatic inference into a public skill—timing, pause, gaze, and intonation become systematic devices for getting the audience to infer what is not explicitly stated. Where Grice offers a general explanatory model (maxims, calculability, cancellability) of how implicature arises in ordinary talk, Vannucchi’s medium operationalizes the same rational dependence on shared expectations: a line can be literally bland yet, in context, carry the real content because the actor’s delivery cues the viewer to recover it. The contrast is thus methodological and evidential: Grice argues from idealized conversational rationality to the structure of meaning; Vannucchi demonstrates, in performance, that meaning routinely exceeds the sentence and is governed by disciplined audience-design, so that “ragione conversazionale” is not only a philosopher’s reconstruction but an actor’s daily craft—an art of making the unsaid inferable, reliably, to a room of strangers. filosofo È il padre dell'attrice Sabina V. Onorato e V. in una scena di Uomini e topi  V. nei panni di Don Rodrigo e Girotti in una scena de I promessi sposi V. nacque in una famiglia colta e agiata. Molto presto la famiglia si trasferì in Cirenaica per motivi di lavoro, e dopo tre anni torna in Italia per stabilirsi a Roma, dove V. trascorse l'infanzia. Durante la guerra il padre accetta di lavorare a Modena all'ufficio del Catasto. Qui V. frequenta brillantemente il liceo classico e si interessa alla letteratura e alla poesia. Alla fine del liceo, contro il parere dei genitori, decide d'iscriversi all'accademia nazionale d'arte drammatica di Roma, diplomandosi assieme ad attori del calibro di Mauri, Graziosi, Sperlì e all'allora allievo regista Camilleri; già durante i corsi ha modo di segnalarsi come attore promettente in occasione dei saggi di fine anno. Prima ancora di diplomarsi, i suoi docenti Amico e Costa lo fanno debuttare nella parte di Cristo nel lavoro teatrale Donna del Paradiso. Studia contemporaneamente filosofia -- entra a far parte della compagnia Gassman-Squarzina, e ottenne successo con rappresentazioni classiche: affianca Gassman in Amleto, interpretando la parte di Laerte, poi interpretò Tieste, I Persiani, Antigone e Prometeo. Passa alla compagnia del Teatro Nuovo di Bosio con diversi spettacoli, tra cui la trasposizione teatrale di Buio a mezzogiorno di Köstler. Ardenzi lo coinvolse in una tournée nell'America del Sud - Brasile, Argentina, Uruguay - organizzata con l'appoggio del Ministero dello Spettacolo. Fra i partecipanti attori del calibro di Anna Proclemer, Giorgio Albertazzi, Renzo Ricci, Eva Magni, Tino Buazzelli, Glauco Mauri, Davide Montemurri, Franca Nuti e Bianca Toccafondi. A parte il Re Lear di Shakespeare, che vedeva riuniti nello stesso spettacolo tutti gli attori principali della compagnia, il repertorio era tutto italiano: Corruzione al Palazzo di giustizia di Betti.  G.  You’ve brought me music. S.  I’ve brought you a disc. G.  That’s what I meant: something with instruments, not with tribunals. S.  This is an instrument. It’s just an instrument of the guillotine. G.  Don’t be melodramatic. S.  It’s Saint‑Just. G.  In Italian? S.  In Italian. G.  That is the first eccentricity. S.  Not the last. It’s under Vannucchi’s name. G.  Luigi Vannucchi? S.  Luigi Vannucchi. 1958. Cetra. Collana Letteraria Documento. CL 0435. G.  You’ve memorised the label like a creed. S.  I’ve memorised it because you can’t bear details unless they’re printed. G.  And who speaks? S.  Federico Zardi. G.  So: Saint‑Just wrote, Zardi recites, Vannucchi edits, Italy presses, and you buy. S.  Exactly. A cooperative enterprise aimed at a very non‑cooperative event. G.  Put it on. S.  Side A. “Discorso di Saint‑Just sul processo a Luigi XVI.” G.  “Sul processo.” Not “per.” Not “in difesa.” Good. S.  You sound relieved. G.  I’m relieved only that it isn’t titled “It is my pleasure.” S.  Don’t start. G.  Fine. But I thought you were bringing music, and it’s a speech. S.  A speech is music if you dislike melody enough. G.  I dislike speeches precisely because they think they are music. S.  Listen. It’s all cadence. G.  It’s all doom. Now, why have it in Italian? S.  Because someone decided that French terror should be exportable. G.  Or because Italian actors can’t resist rhetorical theatre. S.  Vannucchi, remember, is theatre. The whole point is performance as reasoning. G.  That’s your Gricean moral, is it? S.  Yes: implicature by intonation. G.  In a discourse about killing a king. S.  Exactly. The crowd laughs at a pause and the blade falls on a premise. G.  You’re still being melodramatic. S.  You’re avoiding the obvious comparison. G.  Charles I. S.  Yes. G.  The English did it with a block and a prayer, not with a machine and a pamphlet. S.  And with considerably less theatrical theory. G.  Less theory, more ceremony. S.  Saint‑Just is theory as ceremony. G.  He’s also youth with certainty, which is always alarming. S.  Like an undergraduate with a first and a guillotine. G.  Now, the comparison: does Saint‑Just sound like the English regicides? S.  Not quite. The English tend to justify by scripture and legality. G.  Whereas Saint‑Just justifies by “the people,” and treats legality as a costume. S.  And the guillotine makes the costume look clean. G.  There: the machine. It changes everything. S.  Because it turns execution into procedure. G.  Exactly. “We’re not murdering; we’re administering.” S.  Like examinations. G.  Don’t insult examinations. S.  The Examination Schools would be flattered. G.  The French would have held the trial in a hall and sold tickets. S.  They did, in effect. G.  And now Cetra sells it on vinyl. S.  Which is the oddest part: a long‑playing record for a short‑lived king. G.  How long is it? S.  Long enough to remind you that rhetoric can be stretched like a sentence. G.  And this is all in Italian. S.  That’s what delights me. Italian doing the work for French about a king of France. G.  It’s like translating an execution into an aria. S.  Precisely. G.  Now: Charles I. Imagine an LP: “Discorso di Cromwell sul processo a Carlo I.” S.  It would sell poorly in Oxford. G.  It would sell too well in some other places. S.  And nobody wants to hear our own macabre history read aloud in the sitting room. G.  We prefer it footnoted. S.  Whereas the Italians prefer it performed. G.  Now, Vannucchi’s role: he’s presumably curated or adapted. S.  Yes: he’s the named “author” because someone has to be responsible. G.  Responsibility is the one thing guillotines always outsource. S.  And records, too. G.  Now, compare the rhetoric. Saint‑Just speaks as if the king’s death is a syllogism. S.  And the syllogism is: if king, then enemy; if enemy, then death. G.  Whereas the English argued as if they were still hoping to be lawful. S.  They wanted to be lawful while doing something law had never licensed. G.  Exactly. The French were at least honest about the rupture. S.  Honest, or merely louder. G.  Louder. But in Italian it becomes… what? S.  More operatic. Even when it tries to be dry. G.  I can hear the vowels rounding the knife. S.  And Zardi gives it the Roman actor’s weight. G.  Which makes it feel like tragedy rather than pamphlet. S.  But it was pamphlet. G.  And that’s the difference: the LP dignifies it. S.  Like printing minutes. G.  Like publishing “verbali.” S.  Exactly. G.  So what you’ve bought is a performed document: rhetoric disguised as record. S.  Or record disguised as rhetoric. G.  Now, what’s the Gricean angle? S.  That the discourse is designed to make the audience infer necessity. G.  Necessity? S.  Yes: not “we choose to kill him,” but “we must.” G.  That’s the implicature: inevitability. S.  And it’s done by making alternatives unspeakable. G.  Underinformativeness with a blade behind it. S.  Exactly. G.  And in Italian, the underinformativeness becomes even stranger, because Italy isn’t killing Louis. S.  So the audience is only overhearing. G.  Overhearers of a revolutionary speech, sixty‑odd years late, in another language. S.  Which means the speech becomes pure performance. G.  It loses the immediate coercive force. S.  And gains aesthetic force. G.  Which is precisely what worries me about it. S.  Because aesthetic force can make cruelty feel noble. G.  Yes. S.  Whereas the English version of Charles I’s death always feels muddy. G.  Because the axe is messy. S.  And the language is legalistic. G.  And the crowd is cold rather than ecstatic. S.  The guillotine is a machine that makes death look efficient. G.  And efficiency looks like reason, which is the great fraud. S.  Saint‑Just sells death as reason. G.  Vannucchi sells Saint‑Just as theatre. S.  And Cetra sells theatre as “Documento.” G.  This is beginning to feel like a chain of authorship designed to erase guilt. S.  You’re being moral. G.  I’m being English. S.  Compare: Charles I. No LP. G.  Thank goodness. S.  But we do have printed speeches. G.  Yes, but we don’t put them on a turntable. S.  We put them on a syllabus. G.  Which is worse. S.  How? G.  Because then you examine them. S.  You examine Saint‑Just too, apparently. G.  I examine the fact you bought him. S.  I bought Vannucchi, really. G.  That’s your Italian defence. S.  Exactly. “I bought it for the acting.” G.  And therefore the content is incidental. S.  Like buying poison for the bottle. G.  Don’t push it. S.  All right. What do you think Saint‑Just would have said about Charles I? G.  He’d have been bored. S.  Why? G.  No machine. No clean logic. Too much prayer. S.  And what would Cromwell have said about Louis XVI? G.  He’d have thought the French were theatrically impatient. S.  That’s accurate. G.  The English like their regicide to look accidental. S.  The French like it to look necessary. G.  And the Italians like it to sound beautiful. S.  That’s your prejudice. G.  It’s my experience of vowels. S.  Listen: Zardi is now doing the bit where inevitability becomes virtue. G.  Yes. He makes “must” sound like “noble.” S.  Which is the actor’s craft. G.  And Grice would say: the audience supplies the rest. S.  The implicature, yes. G.  The implicature is: if you hesitate, you are complicit. S.  That’s the most coercive implicature there is. G.  And it makes me grateful we didn’t press an LP of Charles I. S.  Because then we’d have to listen to ourselves. G.  And English self‑listening is always embarrassing. S.  Whereas Italians enjoy it. G.  They call it “bella voce.” S.  So what shall we do with this record? G.  Put it back in its sleeve and pretend it was music. S.  That’s cowardly. G.  No. That’s civilized. S.  Then your punchline? G.  If you must have Saint‑Just on vinyl, at least admit what the format means: the Revolution has become background music. S.  And mine? G.  Go on. S.  That if anyone ever makes “Discorso su Carlo I” as an LP, we’ll call it—Collana Letteraria Documento—CL 0001: “Testo recitato da un boia; lato A: silenzio.”Grice: Vannucchi, ho letto con curiosità la sua esperienza tra filosofia e teatro. Secondo lei, la scena teatrale può aiutare a spiegare meglio le implicature conversazionali di cui tanto discutiamo? Vannucchi: Caro Grice, assolutamente! Il teatro, come la filosofia, vive di sottointesi e sguardi. Ogni battuta cela significati che vanno oltre le parole, e il pubblico sa coglierli con una sensibilità speciale. Grice: È vero, spesso la verità si nasconde tra le righe. Mi chiedo: qual è, secondo lei, il valore della conversazione nella formazione dell’attore e del filosofo? Vannucchi: La conversazione, Grice, è l’anima di entrambe le discipline. Nel dialogo si scoprono nuove prospettive e si affinano le emozioni. Senza lo scambio vivo, né la filosofia né il teatro potrebbero rinnovarsi davvero! Vannucchi, Luigi (1958). I Giacobini. Cetra (Collana Letteraria Documento), CL 0435. (Testo recitato da Zardi; lato A: Discorso di St. Just sul processo a Luigi XVI.)

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Vannucci – Ossia: Grice e Vannucci: la ragione conversationale. Note su Libertà dello spirito. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice.  Giovanni Vannucci (Pistoia): Institutionally, Giovanni Vannucci is very different from Grice, though both are recognisably teachers in worlds shaped by disciplined verbal practice. Grice’s formula is exact in the Oxford sense. Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s means a college office with tutorials, students, and membership in the governing life of the college. CUF University Lecturer in philosophy means a university-wide appointment in the faculty structure. So Grice combines the two classic Oxford functions: college tutor and university lecturer. Giovanni Vannucci belongs to a different institutional ecology altogether. He was a Servite priest, biblical scholar, teacher of exegesis and biblical languages, and later spiritual master and founder of a community at the hermitage of San Pietro alle Stinche. His authority came not from a collegiate tutorial post but from religious formation, theological study, teaching within the Servite world, and the ethical-spiritual force of his preaching, writing, and communal life. So the clean institutional contrast is this. Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate and university-faculty world. Vannucci belongs to the ecclesial-theological and eremitical-communal world. That institutional difference fits the philosophical comparison rather well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising intention and inferring implicature under shared norms. Vannucci, by contrast, works at a different level and toward a different end. In his world, conversation is not primarily an inferential technique for recovering hidden speaker-meaning. It is a spiritual practice of listening, welcoming, silence, prayer, and communal transformation. The unsaid is often not a calculable implicature but a space in which another person, or God, may be received. So where Grice is primarily epistemic and pragmatic, Vannucci is ascetical and ethical. That gives the sharpest contrast. Grice explains how one interlocutor means something to another. Vannucci treats speech and silence together as a discipline by which persons are formed toward truthfulness, charity, and shared spiritual recognition. Your comparison is therefore good, but it should remain clear that Vannucci is not really a theorist of implicature in the Gricean sense. He is closer to a theologian of conversation and silence. If one uses the Gricean lens at all, one should say that in Vannucci the implicit is not chiefly a hidden proposition but an invitation, a dispositional opening, or a transformation of stance. The bibliographic line you give is also plausible in spirit, but it should be handled carefully. Libertà dello spirito in 1967, in the ecumenical setting you describe, is a good anchor for this phase of Vannucci’s thought, especially because it places him in a world where speech is already communal and ecumenical rather than merely private or propositional. But if one were finalising a dossier, I would want a secure catalogue record for the exact imprint details before fixing them. So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the strict collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s College and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Giovanni Vannucci, by contrast, was a Servite priest, teacher of biblical languages and exegesis, and later spiritual guide whose life moved between theological teaching, social initiatives, and eremitical community. Institutionally, Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate world; Vannucci to the ecclesial and communal world of theological and spiritual formation. Philosophically, the contrast is equally clear: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of conversational meaning, whereas Vannucci treats conversation and silence as a practice of spiritual truthfulness, hospitality, and transformation. And if I compress it into one line: Grice theorises how conversation means; Vannucci exemplifies how conversation, and silence, can sanctify. If you want, I can now give you a tighter one-paragraph entry in your preferred style, or a shorter note specifically on Vannucci and the relation between speech, silence, and spiritual authority.la ragione conversationale -- Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers get from what is said to what is meant by assuming cooperation and rationality in a talk exchange (the Cooperative Principle and maxims), so that implicature is the orderly product of an interpreter’s reasoning about why an apparently under-informative, indirect, or stylistically marked utterance was nonetheless the right contribution at that point. Giovanni Vannucci (1913–1984), Servite priest and biblical theologian shaped by the Angelicum, teaching of exegesis and biblical languages, and the lived alternation between city initiatives (with David Maria Turoldo) and eremitical life at San Pietro alle Stinche, frames “ragione conversazionale” less as an inferential calculus for recovering hidden propositions than as a spiritual discipline of relation: conversation becomes a practice of ascolto, accoglienza, silenzio, and communal formation, where what is not said (pause, prayer, contemplative reticence) is often the primary medium rather than a secondary layer to be computed. In Grice, the rational norm is primarily epistemic and interpersonal—how an audience can justify an inference to a speaker’s intention on the basis of shared conversational expectations; in Vannucci, the norm is ascetical and ethical—how speech and silence together can dispose persons toward truthfulness, charity, and a shared search for meaning that exceeds explicit formulation. The contrast is sharpened by the bibliographical framing: Libertà dello spirito appears in 1967 as an anthology in the Quaderni di ricerca of the Centro Studi Ecumenici Giovanni XXIII (with a Turoldo preface and later expanded re-editions), and the ecumenical setting underscores that Vannucci’s “implicature,” so to speak, often functions as invitation rather than proposition—an opening of the interlocutor to transformation—whereas Grice’s implicature is classically accountable to reasons, cancellable, and tied to what a speaker can be taken to have meant in a determinate exchange. filosofo, dell'Ordine dei Servi di Maria. Ordinato sacerdote, ottenne la Licenza in Teologia presso l'Ateneo Pontificio "Angelicum".  Insegna esegesi, ebraico e greco biblico negli istituti dei Servi di Maria. Si associò per un anno, con alcuni confratelli, alla comunità di Nomadelfia, animata da Saltini.  Con Turoldo, organizza iniziative sociali, come la “Messa della carità”, nella città di Firenze. Da vita a una nuova comunità – dedita al lavoro, all'accoglienza e alla preghiera – all'Eremo di San Pietro a Le Stinche, nel Chianti.  Da allora lascia l'Eremo solo per tenere incontri ed esercizi spirituali, oltre che corsi di Storia delle religioni presso la Pontificia Facoltà Teologica "Marianum".  Le sue attività e i suoi insegnamenti sono di particolare ispirazione per Ronchi.  Opere Il libro della preghiera universale, Libreria Editrice Fiorentina. Invito alla preghiera, Libreria Editrice Fiorentina, La vita senza fine, CENS; Servitium, Ogni uomo è una zolla di terra, Edizioni Borla, Il passo di Dio. Meditazioni per l'Avvento, Edizioni Paoline, con Maria di Campello) Il canto dell'allodola. Lettere scelte, Qiqajon, Alchimia e liturgia, Lorenzo de' Medici Press, Camici, Uomo di luce: mistagogia e vita spirituale in Giovanni Vannucci, Il Segno dei Gabrielli, Roberto Taioli, La preghiera cosmica di Giovanni Vannucci, su gianfrancobertagni.it. Portale Biografie   Portale Cattolicesimo Categorie: Presbiteri italiani Teologi italiani  Nati a Pistoia Morti a Bagno a Ripoli Serviti italiani. Grice: Padre Vannucci, ho letto con grande interesse le sue riflessioni sulla preghiera universale e sull’accoglienza. Secondo lei, come può la spiritualità aiutare a costruire un dialogo autentico tra le persone? Vannucci: Caro Grice, credo che la spiritualità sia un ponte tra gli uomini. Quando ci apriamo con sincerità, lasciando spazio all’ascolto e all’accoglienza, nasce una conversazione che va oltre le parole e tocca il cuore. Grice: È un pensiero molto bello. Nel suo percorso tra l’eremo e la città, ha notato differenze nel modo in cui le persone comunicano la propria fede e i propri valori? Vannucci: Senz’altro, Grice. In città si avverte spesso un bisogno di trovare senso e comunità, mentre nell’eremo la comunicazione diventa più silenziosa e contemplativa. In entrambi i casi, però, la conversazione spirituale nasce dal desiderio di condividere la vita e di scoprire la luce che abita in ogni uomo. Vannucci, Giovanni (1967). Libertà dello spirito. Bergamo: Centro di Studi Ecumenici Giovanni XXIII.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Varino – Ossia: Grice e Varino: la ragione conversazionale o la rettorica filosofica. Note sullr Regulæ grammaticales, Biblioteca Marciana, MS Lat. XIII, 143 (= 4042). Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Guarino Varino da Varona (Verona, Veneto): Compared institutionally, Guarino Veronese and H. P. Grice belong to very different academic worlds. Grice’s formula is exact in the Oxford sense. Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s means a college office with tutorials, students, and membership in the governing life of the college. CUF University Lecturer in philosophy means a university-wide faculty appointment. So Grice combines the two classic Oxford functions: college tutor and university lecturer. Guarino da Verona, by contrast, belongs to the Renaissance humanist world of courts, private teaching, civic schools, and revived classical learning. He was not a fellow-tutor in a residential college, nor a university lecturer in the modern sense. He was a humanist master, moving between Verona, Constantinople, Venice, Florence, and Ferrara, teaching Greek and Latin, training elite pupils, and shaping the studia humanitatis through pedagogical authority and manuscript culture rather than through a formal tutorial-faculty system. So the clean institutional contrast is this.  Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate and university-faculty world. Guarino belongs to the humanist pedagogical and courtly-civic world.  That institutional difference fits the philosophical comparison rather well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising intentions and inferring implicatures under shared conversational norms. Guarino, by contrast, works at the macro-level of rhetorical and educational formation: the social creation of agents who can speak, persuade, infer, allude, and understand decorum, brevity, suggestion, and classical exemplarity. He is not theorising the Cooperative Principle, but he is helping build the culture in which such inferential and rhetorical sensitivity becomes second nature. So if you want the sharpest formulation, it is this:  Grice explains how rational hearers recover implied meaning in a local exchange. Guarino helps train a civilization to hear and deploy indirectness, allusion, and audience-sensitive speech at all.  That is why your comparison is genuinely good: Guarino does not anticipate Grice by stating a theory of implicature, but he does provide the rhetorical-pedagogical infrastructure for a world in which meaning often depends on what is not fully said. There are, however, two important corrections.  1) The Corpus Christi, Oxford line is wrong There is no basis for saying that someone in Guarino’s position would go “to Corpus Christi at Oxford” to learn Greek. That is anachronistic and historically mistaken. The secure and standard fact is: Guarino went to Constantinople to study Greek under Manuel Chrysoloras. That is the decisive educational fact. So the contrast should be: not Oxford or Constantinople, but rather: Italy had to import Greek learning through Byzantine channels, and Guarino is one of the figures who makes that possible.  2) Your final bibliographic line is too neat The line:  Varino, Guarino (1418). Regulæ grammaticales. Venezia. Venezia, Biblioteca Marciana, MS Lat. XIII, 143 (= 4042).  needs caution. If the work survives as a manuscript witness in the Marciana, it should be cited as a manuscript, not as though it were a clean printed Venetian imprint from 1418. So the safe bibliographic style is something like: Guarino Veronese. Regulae grammaticales. Manuscript witness: Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS Lat. XIII, 143 (= 4042). If you have external bibliographical evidence for the date 1418, that may be added cautiously, but not in the form of a simple modern title-page citation unless the evidence is firm.  So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the precise collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s College and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Guarino Veronese, by contrast, was a Renaissance humanist teacher, trained in Latin at Verona and Greek at Constantinople, later active in Venice, Florence, and Ferrara, and central to the revival of classical rhetorical and linguistic education. Institutionally, Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate and faculty world; Guarino to the humanist pedagogical and courtly-civic world. Philosophically, the contrast is equally clear: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of speaker-meaning and implicature, whereas Guarino exemplifies the broader rhetorical and educational culture in which indirectness, allusion, and audience-sensitive completion of sense become habits of an educated public.  And if I compress it into one line: Grice theorises how conversation means more than it says; Guarino trains speakers to make it do so elegantly. If you like, I can now give you a tighter one-paragraph entry in your own register, with the Corpus-Christi mistake removed and the Constantinople–Chrysoloras line made central.la ragione conversazionale o la rettorica filosofica – Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats talk as a rational, cooperative practice in which hearers infer what a speaker means (including implicatures) by assuming an “accepted purpose or direction” and by repairing apparent departures from relevance, sufficiency, clarity, or sincerity through intention-recognition. Guarino Varino (Guarino da Verona / Guarino Veronese, 1374–1460), by contrast, represents the Renaissance humanist reconstruction of conversational reason as rhetorical and pedagogical: his program of studia humanitatis (Ciceronian Latin style, training in eloquence, and the revived Greek curriculum learned via Constantinople and manuscripts) aims to form agents who can speak aptly in civic and courtly settings, where persuasion, decorum, and audience-design are central virtues. So where Grice gives a general, formally minded explanation of how meaning is rationally recoverable beyond what is said (implicature as a calculable product of shared norms), Guarino supplies the cultural infrastructure that makes such norms socially powerful: rhetorical education that sharpens sensitivity to what is left unsaid, to strategic indirection, to enthymeme and allusion, and to the audience’s role in completing sense. In Gricean terms, Guarino is less a precursor who states the Cooperative Principle than a humanist who trains conversationalists to exploit it—teaching how to manage inference in others through style, brevity, and classical exempla—so that “reason in conversation” appears not only as logical constraint (Grice) but as cultivated civic art (Guarino), with implicature functioning as the modern name for what Renaissance rhetoric treated as controlled suggestiveness within an educated κοινόν / res publica of interpreters. Renaissance educator who revitalised classical rhetorical training. Grice: “I like him!” Keywords: rettorica. Matteo de' Pasti, medaglia di Guarino Veronese, Guarino da Verona Guarino Veronese o Guarino da Verona – m. Ferrara -- è stato un poeta e umanista italiano.  Il suo nome di battesimo è V. ma, per corruzione, è chiamato “Guarino,” uno pseudonimo che poi, sotto la forma di "Guarini", trasmite ai suoi discendenti. Venne contraddistinto come "veronese" o, più raramente, "da Verona". Per tutti fu, dunque, Guarino Veronese o Guarino da Verona.  Edizione delle opere È avviato allo studio dei classici latini da CONVERSINI  e proprio studiando la filosofia latina si incuriosa a proposito dei filosofi a cui le opere spesso alludeno e decide di cominciare a studiare la lingua greca. All'epoca però non è diffuso in Italia l'insegnamento del greco e quindi l'unica possibilità di apprenderlo è quella di andare ad impararlo a Corpus Christi a Oxford – come Grice – o Costantinopoli. Così si trasfere nella capitale bizantina dove è presentato ad Crisolora, stimato studioso e letterato, che decide di fargli da maestro. I suoi studi però si interruppeno bruscamente quando i turchi prendeno sotto assedio Costantinopoli e l'imperatore Paleologo invia Crisolora in Italia per chiedere aiuto ai principi cattolici. Ma ormai, dopo anni d’intenso lavoro, V. raggiunge la piena fluenza nella lingua greca e quindi puo tranquillamente fare ritorno in Italia.  L'unicità della sua formazione linguistico-letteraria gli permite di affermarsi a Venezia come insegnante privato di greco finché, da Firenze, gli giunge un'interessante proposta di lavoro dal letterato e mecenate Niccoli che gl’offre la cattedra di greco presso lo studio fiorentino. Cattedra che per anni era stata di Crisolora ma che lascia per trasferirsi a Roma. Ed era stato proprio Crisolora ad aver indicato in V. la persona più adatta a sostituirlo. Ma, a Firenze, V. non trovò affatto la gloria.  Latin grammar keywords (good as index terms / tags) Parts of speech (partes orationis)  littera, syllaba, dictio, oratio (a very traditional fourfold progression; “littera/syllaba” → “word/utterance”) [core.ac.uk] nomen, pronomen, verbum, participium, adverbium, praepositio, coniunctio, interiectio (the standard “Donatist/Priscianic” list)  Cases (casus)  nominativus, genitivus, dativus, accusativus, ablativus, vocativus you can also tag rectus (for nominative) vs obliqui (oblique cases), and declinatio  Number / gender  singularis, pluralis masculinum, femininum, neutrum genus, numerus  Verb system (verbum)  persona (prima/secunda/tertia) tempus: praesens, imperfectum, futurum, perfectum, plusquamperfectum, futurum exactum modus: indicativus, coniunctivus, imperativus, infinitivus (and often gerundium, supinum are treated in this orbit) vox: activum, passivum (and you can tag deponens / semideponens if relevant) coniugatio  Agreement and construction (morphosyntax “light”) Humanist grammars can be morphology-first but still use these:  concordantia (agreement), especially nomen–adiectivum and nomen–verbum regimen (government), constructio  Orthography / phonology adjuncts (often attached, as you noted)  orthographia diphthongus (Guarino is explicitly said to have prepared a “treatise on diphthongs”) [digitallib...y.univr.it] accentus, quantitas (syllable length), prosodia for the “AE/Œ” question: diphthongus ae/oe; (and in practice ligatura æ/œ as scribal/typographic, not “elision”)  These are the sorts of terms you can use as “keywords” without needing to claim any specific chapter headings.Grice: Caro Varino, ho sempre pensato che la conversazione sia come una buona retorica: parte filosofica, parte arte del convincere. Ma dimmi, ti è mai capitato di convincere qualcuno solo con la parola, senza nemmeno filosofeggiare troppo? Varino: Eh, Grice, a Verona si dice che “la lingua batte dove il filosofo vuole”! Ma vedi, la vera arte sta nel far sembrare la filosofia una chiacchierata tra amici—magari davanti a un bicchiere di Valpolicella, senza perdere il filo né il sorriso. Grice: Ah, allora sei più maestro di retorica che di dialettica! Io invece, da buon inglese, preferisco la precisione: ma a volte la conversazione ha più implicature che argomenti. E tu, tra greco e latino, come te la cavi con i sottintesi? Varino: Grice, fra un proverbio veneto e un’allusione classica, il non detto è il sale della retorica! Se i turchi mi han fatto scappare da Costantinopoli, è solo perché non capivano le mie battute… Ma almeno a Ferrara, tra filosofi e umanisti, il sorriso è sempre stato il miglior argomento! Varino, Guarino (1418). Regulæ grammaticales. Venezia. Venezia, Biblioteca Marciana, MS Lat. XIII, 143 (= 4042).

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Vario – Ossia: Grice e Vario: la ragione conversazionale della filosofia della vita a Roma – Philosophy of Life. Note su De morte. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Lucio Vario Rufo (Turbigo, Milano, Lombardia): Compared institutionally, Grice and Lucius Varius Rufus are not comparable in the academic sense at all. Grice’s formula is exact in the modern Oxford sense. Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s means a college office with tutorials, students, and membership in the governing life of the college. CUF University Lecturer in philosophy means a university-wide faculty appointment. So Grice combines the two characteristic Oxford functions: college tutor and university lecturer. Varius Rufus belongs to an entirely different world. He was not a don, not a fellow, and not a university lecturer. He was an Augustan poet moving in the literary and philosophical circles of late Republican and early imperial Rome, connected with Virgil, Horace, Maecenas, and—if the Epicurean line is right—with Philodemus’ Garden and that whole ethical-aesthetic culture of friendship, poetry, and philosophy. So institutionally he belongs to a circle, a salon, a patronage network, and a poetic-philosophical milieu, not to a school or a chair. That institutional difference fits your philosophical comparison very well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising intentions and inferring implicatures under shared norms. Varius, in the way you frame him, belongs to a very different economy of reason: not a model of conversational calculation, but a model of philosophical conversation as a way of life. In the Epicurean register, conversation is not chiefly about reconstructing hidden speaker-meaning; it is about therapy, friendship, moral steadiness, and the disciplining of fears. So the sharpest formulation is this. Grice explains how conversation works as a rational inferential practice. Varius exemplifies conversation as an ethical practice of living. That is why your “hortus” line works. The Garden is already a place where discourse is governed, but it is governed by the end of tranquillity rather than by the maxims of ordinary talk. If one insists on a Gricean gloss, one can say that Epicurean conversation produces a kind of “lived implicature”: the explicit thesis may be mors nihil ad nos, but the real work of the discourse is the shaping of the soul toward fearlessness, measure, and friendship. There are, however, two factual cautions. First, the birthplace line “Turbigo, Milano, Lombardia” is not safe. Lucius Varius Rufus is a Roman poet of Augustan age, but his precise birthplace is not securely known in the way that phrase suggests. Second, the final bibliographic line “De morte. Roma.” is too confident as a standalone citation. Varius’ De morte survives only in very fragmentary or indirect form if at all, and it should not be cited as though it were a secure Roman book publication like a modern imprint. So the clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the precise collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s College and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Lucius Varius Rufus, by contrast, was an Augustan poet associated with philosophical-literary circles rather than with any academic institution. Institutionally they are not comparable. Intellectually, however, the contrast is illuminating: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of speaker-meaning and implicature, whereas Varius belongs to a tradition in which conversation is an ethical regimen of friendship and tranquillity, and where the point of discourse is less the calculation of intended meaning than the cultivation of a life free from fear and excess. And if I compress it into one line: Grice theorises how conversation means; Varius exemplifies how conversation heals. If you want, I can now give you a tighter one-paragraph entry in your preferred style, or a short note just on the Philodemus/Garden angle, with the De morte caution built in.la ragione conversazionale della filosofia della vita a Roma – Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers rationally move from what is said to what is meant by presuming cooperative, purposive talk and inferring speaker intentions (with implicature arising when a maxim such as relevance, quantity, or manner is apparently not met but can be made intelligible as a rational conversational strategy). The Vario material, by contrast, makes conversational reason look less like a general inferential engine and more like an Epicurean practice of life: in the hortus with Philodemus, sermo and amicitia are instruments of ataraxia, and “mors nihil ad nos” is not a hidden content extracted from maxim-flouting but an explicitly therapeutic end that disciplines discourse, desires, and fear; conversation functions as a moral technology for steadying the soul rather than as a model for reconstructing communicative intentions. Still, the passage’s bridle image (the moderator habenae who restrains and trains) creates a natural point of contact with Grice: where Grice thinks of rational constraints as principles governing contribution to a talk exchange, Vario’s Epicurean frame casts rational constraint as self-governance achieved through conversation—reason shows up as the capacity of talk to curb rush, exaggeration, and anxiety and to keep inquiry within what matters for living well. Historically, this fits what we know of Lucius Varius Rufus as an Epicurean-associated Augustan poet in Philodemus’ circle (alongside figures linked to Virgil and Tucca), with a De morte tradition in the background; so the comparison can be put sharply as follows: Grice systematizes the inferential norms by which interlocutors recover intended meaning in any conversation, whereas Vario exemplifies a tradition in which conversation is itself an ethical regimen—its “implicatures,” if one insists on the word, are less calculable pragmatic add-ons than the lived, guiding upshot that talk in the Garden is for: tranquillity, friendship, and freedom from the fear of death. Philosophy of Life -- IL GIARDINO. In Grice’s time, philosophy was not studied as a separate subject, but under classics. Philosophy wss introduced upon completion of five terms into the B. A. Lit. Hum. Mundle complained: Grice referred to ordinary language as the language employed by any philosopher who had earned a first at Greats – as his pupil Strawson never did! -- Filosofo italiano. L’orto. Friend of FILODEMO (vedi). A poet. One of his works, “On death,” was doubtless shaped by L’Orto. He had a significant influence on VIRGILIO (vedi). His tutor was SIRO (vedi).   Orazio legge davanti al circolo di Mecenate, di cui faceva parte anche Vario Rufo (dipinto di Fedor Bronnikov, conservato presso il Museo d'arte di Odessa). Lucio Vario Rufo (in latino Lucius Varius Rufus; Turbigo -- è stato un poeta romano dell'età augustea.  Biografia  Lo stesso argomento in dettaglio: Storia della letteratura latina. (latino) «quem non ille sinit lentae moderator habenae qua velit ire, sed angusto prius ore coercens insultare docet campis fingitque morando. (italiano) «Che il guidatore della flessibile briglia non lascia andare dove vuole, ma prima frenandolo nella bocca (“ore”), tenuta stretta, gli insegna a galoppare nella piana e trattenendolo lo ammaestra» (Vario Rufo, Frammento Traglia)  Amico di Virgilio, di cui era certamente più grande, Vario fu anch'egli epicureo, come attestato anche da Quintiliano, che lo definisce esplicitamente epicureus[1] e da Filodemo di Gadara, che gli dedicò un trattato Sulla morte[2].  Avrebbe, comunque, introdotto Virgilio nel circolo di Mecenate e, con lui, presentato anche Orazio. Che Virgilio ne fosse amico e ammiratore traspare dal fatto che, negli anni Quaranta, Virgilio, sotto lo pseudonimo di Licida, rimpiangeva di non aver prodotto fino a quel momento nulla di paragonabile alla poesia di Vario o di Elvio Cinna.  GRICEVS: O VARI, amice, audivi te cum Philodemo in horto saepe disseruisse de vita et morte; dic mihi, quomodo Epicureus tam gravia leviter—id est sapienter—tractat? VARIVS: GRICEVE, non leviter sed sine metu: mors nihil ad nos; dum vivimus, vita colenda est—amicitia, sermo, et illa tranquillitas quae in horto nascitur. G.: Pulchre; et mihi videtur ipsa conversatio rationis esse quasi frenum lentae habenae: non sinit animum quo velit ruere, sed ore coercens docet recte currere. VARIVS: Ita est—sermo nos format; et si Virgilium ad Maecenatem adduxi, hoc quoque fuit: ut poeta, philosophus, et amicus in uno convivio convenirent, ne vita sine ratione—aut ratio sine vita—maneret. Vario Rufo, Lucio (DCCX A. V. C.). De morte. Roma.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Varisco – Ossia: Grice e Varisco: la ragione conversazionale, o l’implicatura conversazionale del sommario di criticismo. Note su La conoscenza e il pensiero. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Bernardino Varisco (Chiari, Lombardia): Compared institutionally, Bernardino Varisco is not an Oxford don in the Gricean sense, but he is much closer to Grice than many of the Roman, Renaissance, or literary figures you have been comparing, because both are recognisably academic philosophers shaped by university life. Grice’s formula is exact in the Oxford sense. Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s means a college office with tutorials, students, and membership in the governing life of the college. CUF University Lecturer in philosophy means a university-wide faculty appointment. So Grice combines the intimate, collegiate tutorial world with the wider faculty structure of the university. Varisco belongs to a different academic ecology: the Italian university-state world of public chairs, faculties, and national educational structures. He was formed first in the Collegio Nazionale di Torino and then at Padua, where he published his first scientific saggio in mechanics in 1871, and he later moved through the full public-professorial world of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Italy. He is not a college fellow in the Oxford sense, but an Italian professor and public intellectual whose career develops through the university chair system. That is the basic institutional contrast. Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate world. Varisco belongs to the public-professorial and chair-based world of the Italian university-state system. That institutional difference fits your philosophical comparison rather well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising intention and inferring implicatures under cooperative norms. Varisco, by contrast, works at a more reflexive and critical level. Even in the youthful scientific saggio you quote, one can see a habit of mind that later becomes central: not the urge to proclaim a system, but the willingness to circle some principles, to examine the conditions under which one can responsibly claim knowledge. That becomes, in his mature critical philosophy, a concern with subjectivity, self-knowledge, and the limits of scientific or objectivist accounts of the human world. So if you want the sharpest formulation, it is this. Grice explains how one speaker makes meaning rationally recoverable for another in a local exchange. Varisco asks how a subject can become answerable to itself and to others at all, and under what critical conditions it may claim to know itself or the world. That is why your gnothi seauton comparison is actually apt. For Grice, the other is needed as addressee and interpreter. For Varisco, the other is also needed as a condition of self-clarification. The Delphic imperative behaves, in your nice way of putting it, like a directive whose force exceeds its literal content. It says less than it demands, and that demand is partly second-personal. A few factual corrections and clarifications matter. First, your final bibliographic line is secure and useful: Varisco, Bernardino (1871). Intorno ad alcuni principj di meccanica. Padova: Sacchetto. That is a strong early anchor and much better than the insecure thesis-type line you had for Vasoli. Second, one should be careful not to overstate the continuity between this youthful mechanics saggio and the later critical philosophy, but the continuity is real enough in style: modesty of claim, attention to method, resistance to easy system, and a concern for how a public of intelligent readers can judge and correct one’s work. Third, if you want the mature Varisco line, then yes, the later explicitly philosophical works like Sommario di filosofia critica and Conosci te stesso are where the comparison with Grice becomes most philosophically direct. The 1871 mechanics tract is better as an institutional and temperamental beginning than as the full doctrinal anchor. So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the precise collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s College and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Bernardino Varisco, by contrast, belongs to the Italian public-university and chair system, beginning with a Paduan scientific-philosophical education and later developing into one of the important voices of Italian critical philosophy. Institutionally, Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate world; Varisco to the university-state world. Philosophically, the contrast is equally clear: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of speaker-meaning and implicature, whereas Varisco is concerned with the more reflexive critical conditions of subjectivity, self-knowledge, and rational responsibility, where even the apparently direct injunction know thyself carries a surplus of second-personal and normative force. And if I compress it into one line: Grice theorises how one mind addresses another; Varisco theorises how a mind can become answerable to itself only through a critical relation that already involves another. If you want, I can now give you a tighter one-paragraph entry in your preferred style, or a small two-stage note: young Varisco (mechanics, Padua, 1871) versus mature Varisco (critical philosophy, self-knowledge, Conosci te stesso).la ragione conversazionale, o l’implicatura conversazionale del sommario di criticismo – Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning locates the engine of “what is meant” in rational, intention-based inference: a hearer treats an utterance as a move in a cooperative practice and works out speaker-meaning (including implicature) by attributing communicative intentions constrained by norms of relevance, informativeness, sincerity, and clarity. Varisco, coming from his “filosofia critica” and his sustained concern with self-knowledge (Conosci te stesso) and the limits of science versus the irreducibility of “opinione” and faith, pushes the comparison in a different direction: the rationality that governs meaning is not only inferential but also reflexive and normative, tied to the structure of subjectivity and to the conditions under which a subject can responsibly claim knowledge of self and world. Where Grice explains how a “thou” can rationally recover what an “I” intends to convey beyond what is said, Varisco’s perspective (as your passage highlights with the oracular gnothi seauton) foregrounds that self-knowledge itself is dialogically mediated and partly indirect: even the imperative “know thyself” presupposes an address, an authority, and a standpoint outside the self, so that its “oracular” force functions like a pragmatic surplus over literal content. In Gricean terms, the Delphic injunction behaves less like a straightforward assertion than like a directive whose uptake generates further implicated commitments (about accountability, examination, ethical orientation), while in Varisco the same surplus is philosophically diagnostic of the human condition: reason is inseparable from a critique of its own grounds, and the meaning of our highest injunctions is not exhausted by what they say but by what they demand of a subject who can only become fully intelligible to itself through a second-person or communal axis of recognition. gnothi seauton, implicatura dell’oracolo. Filosofia critica. Filosofo lombardo. Filosofo italiano. Chiari, Brescia, Lombardia. Essential Italian philosopher. Filosofo italiano. Grice: “We all learned about the ‘gnothi seauton’ at Clifton – Varisco composed a full tract about it! Calogero has analysed the implicatures! The idea is that you need a ‘thou’ to tell ‘thou’ ‘knowest THYself” – although the oracular mystique is still there!” Nasce da Carlo, direttore del ginnasio locale, e da Giulia Bonatelli, sorella del filosofo BONATELLI . Il padre è un cultore appassionato delle lingue e delle civiltà classiche, ma, privo di ambizioni sia accademiche sia scientifiche, rimane per tutta la vita a dirigere il ginnasio di Chiari, giungendo al punto di ri-fiutare la presidenza del liceo di Rimini offertagli, probabilmente per il suo orientamento patriottico, dal governo dello stato unitario, di recente proclamazione. La madre di V. è la seconda moglie del padre, che dalla prima, scomparsa in giovane età, aveva avuto un solo figlio, morto da bambino. Con Giulia, Carlo V.  ebbe, oltre a Bernardino, tre figlie. Rimasto vedovo una seconda volta, si sposa per la terza, di nuovo con una Bonatelli, alla quale pure sopravvisse.  L’infanzia e l’adolescenza di V. sono contraddistinte da un’educazione ispirata a sentimenti patriottici e irredentistici, pervasi da una profonda religiosità. Dopo aver concepito, senza riuscire a portarlo a termine, il disegno di arruolarsi nell’esercito italiano allo scoppio della  guerra di indipendenza – quando è allievo del collegio nazionale di Torino –, in occasione dell’esame con il quale corona il suo percorso scolastico scrive un componimento intriso di un così profondo e sincero sentimento nazionale e contraddistinto da un’enfasi letteraria tanto efficace che gli valse la medaglia d’oro del re, venendo valutato come la migliore prova scritta di italiano. know theyself, oracular implicature, Calogero, per un sommario di filosofia critica.  G.: Let us begin with the title, because youth always reveals itself most quickly in titles. S.: Intorno ad alcuni principj di meccanica. G.: Exactly. Not sui principj, not de principiis, not a treatise on the one true foundation, but intorno ad alcuni. S.: Around some. G.: Around some. A splendidly evasive phrase. One does not seize the principle; one circles it. S.: And some. Alcuni. How many is that supposed to be. G.: Enough to justify a pamphlet and too few to commit oneself to a system. S.: But surely a principle, if it is a principium, ought to be one. Primus. Beginning. How many beginnings can there be. G.: More than one, if one is young and mathematical. One may have several beginnings before one has a philosophy. S.: Or several firsts, which sounds like bad arithmetic. G.: Bad arithmetic perhaps, but very good title-page strategy. Intorno ad alcuni principj means: I know there are principles; I am not arrogant enough to claim them all; but I have seen enough to print. S.: Which is why I love the subtitle: saggio. G.: Yes, and even better, saggio dello studente B. L. Varisco. S.: The cheek. G.: The perfect cheek. Modesty in posture, ambition in print. S.: We are all students, though. G.: Quite. But not all of us go to Sacchetto at twenty and say: set this up in type, I have some mechanics to publish. S.: Padua, 1871. G.: Precisely. Padua, 1871. The first little public object. Still a student, not yet dottore, but already in print and already apologising. S.: Ah yes, the preface. He says, more or less, I wrote this for my own exercise. G.: And publishes it for a few intelligent readers. S.: Which is exactly the point. He says it is per mio esercizio and yet he also wants alcune persone intelligenti to read it and tell him his errors. G.: So it is not a diary. S.: No. It has a potential addressee. G.: Exactly. Not one named public, not a faceless mass, but an open class of those few intelligent and benevolent enough to read a student’s scrittarello and say where it goes wrong. S.: Which already feels oddly like our own business. G.: Our own business if one is kind, or vanity if one is less kind. S.: And before the preface, the dedication. G.: Yes. The dedication to Cesare Losana, signed B. L. Varisco. S.: Which still irritates me. Why B. L. G.: Because youth likes initials, and because the young scholar enjoys becoming a typographical person. S.: It is very unlike the later Bernardino Varisco, though. G.: Exactly. That is what makes it good. The youthful self signs itself more elaborately and the mature world later simplifies him. S.: Like Paul Grice dropping Herbert. G.: Except inversely. But let us not turn everything into naming before we have done mechanics. S.: Very well. Intorno. I still cannot get over intorno. G.: Nor should you. It is wonderfully unimperial. He does not say I establish the principles. He says, in effect, I move around some of them. S.: A perimeter philosophy. G.: A circumambulatory mechanics. S.: And then alcuni. Suppose there are three. G.: There may be one and a half. Alcuni is wisely indeterminate. S.: But if there is a principle of mechanics, should one not say il principio? G.: That is what one says once one has become old and German. In 1871, in Padua, under Minich, one says alcuni principj and preserves one’s exits. S.: And meccanica. We became philosophers and forgot what the word once contained. G.: Statics, dynamics, moments, levers, centres of gravity, things that actually move or do not move. S.: Whereas philosophers now call almost anything a “mechanism” when they are too lazy to give an account. G.: Yes. The sciences begin with exactness and end as metaphors in our hands. S.: He says somewhere the greater part of the work is founded on the theory of moments. G.: Which is beautiful. Not pure motion in the abstract, but moments. Turning effect. Balance. Rotation. The point at which a force begins to matter. S.: It sounds almost moral. G.: Everything sounds almost moral to philosophers. But it is also splendidly concrete. A force is not merely a quantity. It operates at a distance from a fulcrum. It acquires significance by position. S.: Which is perhaps why he says intorno rather than su. G.: Good. A principle in mechanics may itself be relational. One approaches it by configuration. S.: You are being charitable to the title. G.: One should always be charitable to a young man’s title if he is willing to call his book a saggio. S.: He does more than that. In the preface he all but says: I do not want to pass for a presumptuous fellow, one of those who make a noise instead of working. G.: Which means, naturally, that he already knows there are such fellows in Padua. S.: Or in himself. G.: Possibly. A preface like that is half self-protection, half self-advertisement. S.: I wrote this for my own exercise; I publish it only so that intelligent people may tell me my errors. G.: Exactly. A request for correction disguised as modesty and modesty disguised as a publication. S.: Would you say he cares who reads it. G.: He does and he does not. He does not care for a public as market. He cares for a public as tribunal. S.: A few intelligent readers. G.: Yes. The ideal audience of every young philosopher-scientist: small, competent, and kind. S.: We should say something about Cesare Losana. G.: At least that the dedication shows this is not a pure monologue. The friend is named; the indefinite intelligent reader is invited; Minich gets the presentation copy; and so the pamphlet already lives in a social field. S.: So one writes per mio esercizio and publishes per altrui giudizio. G.: Admirably put. S.: Mechanics then becomes a kind of addressed exercise. G.: Exactly. And this is why I resist the silly thought that a solitary pamphlet lacks audience. It lacks a crowded audience. It does not lack an intended uptake. S.: Which takes us back to Grice, though we had promised not to turn everything into him. G.: We fail honourably. S.: Let us return to meccanica. Statics and dynamics. G.: And one should add kinematics if one wants to sound properly nineteenth-century. S.: I thought kinematics came later in our undergraduate lives when the mathematicians began to look superior. G.: It may have. But for a student pamphlet in 1871, mechanics still has the good old face: forces, moments, equilibrium, perhaps some motion, perhaps some beginnings of formal relation. S.: The phrase teoria dei momenti still delights me. G.: It should. A moment is exactly the sort of word that crosses from science into philosophy too easily. S.: Yes. We talk of “the moment” as if it were temporal. In mechanics it is rotational leverage. G.: A force multiplied by arm. A significance produced by position. S.: So if Varisco is writing intorno ad alcuni principj di meccanica and much of it concerns moments, he is already moving in a space where relation matters more than sheer stuff. G.: That would be one way of making him philosophically respectable before his official philosophy begins. S.: Which is exactly what one likes to do with young authors. G.: Naturally. We rescue their first scientific pamphlet from mere science by finding the metaphysics in the prefatory modesty and the mechanics in the title. S.: It helps that he was in Padua. G.: It always helps that someone was in Padua. The city makes even a small pamphlet sound Renaissance. S.: And Minich. G.: Yes, Minich hovering behind the inscription: al Ch.o prof. S. R. Minich omaggio del suo discepolo B. L. Varisco. S.: Ch.o, which still sounds to me like clear professor. G.: Distinguished professor by old courtesy, but clear professor if one wants the joke. S.: It would suit mechanics. G.: Quite. A clear professor for a book on principles. S.: We should say something about Sacchetto too. G.: Sacchetto as the printer of youthful self-assertion. Padua provides the thought, Sacchetto the type, and Varisco the apologetic confidence. S.: I like that the thing is short. G.: Twenty-three pages in your Ca’ Foscari record, thirty-five in the digital ecosystem, depending on counting covers and preliminaries. Short enough to be a saggio, long enough to exist. S.: And no sprawling chapter headings. G.: No. One title, one movement, one student voice. Excellent discipline. S.: The preface again: he says he has tried to give the few theories he mentions the aspect that seemed most natural to him. G.: Which is a marvellous phrase. Not the most rigorous aspect, not the most orthodox, but the most natural. S.: So he is already refusing scholastic display. G.: Or confessing that he cannot yet manage it. The line between honesty and incapacity is often very fine in the young. S.: Then he says most of the work is founded on the theory of moments, introduced by considerations not exactly the usual ones and perhaps therefore not so rigorous. G.: There is his whole future in embryo. “Not exactly the usual ones.” An admission and a boast. S.: He hopes to be forgiven because he wanted to present himself. G.: Exactly. He wanted the public to see the path that presents itself spontaneously to him in these studies. S.: Which is a lovely way of saying: here is how my mind naturally goes. G.: Yes. Publication as self-diagnosis. S.: There is something almost touching in that. G.: Deeply touching. The first pamphlet is less a doctrine than a prospectus of the young mind. S.: But all under the title of mechanics. G.: Which is what makes it bearable. Nobody would tolerate at twenty an abstract prospectus of a self. Call it mechanics and you may smuggle in the self through a preface. S.: We have not yet quarrelled enough over principi. G.: Very well. You wanted one principle because principium means beginning. S.: Yes. I still think there should be one. G.: Then you confuse etymology with science. A science may have many first things, or many axiomatic starting points, or several practical principles governing different domains. S.: Statics one way, dynamics another. G.: Exactly. Equilibrium does not exhaust motion; motion does not exhaust rotational balance. “Some principles” is wiser than one slogan. S.: And intorno protects him from system. G.: Yes. Around some principles. A title for a man still circling what he can later own. S.: You make all this sound too good. G.: Better too good than dead. A pamphlet must be made to live by commentary or it remains only paper. S.: The interesting thing is that his first authorial move is not philosophical grandiosity but technical humility. G.: Technical humility and social ambition. S.: Because he still prints it. G.: Precisely. The truly modest man does not go to Sacchetto. S.: Nor sign as B. L. Varisco. G.: Quite. S.: Shall we guess Luigi again. G.: We shall not. We shall leave the L as a youthful flourish and let librarians suffer. S.: One should make a note of the “few intelligent persons” again. It really does sound like an audience without an audience. G.: Yes. A public imagined not by number but by quality. S.: Which is all a student can reasonably want. G.: Or all he can decently claim to want. S.: There is also the sentence about not wanting to pass for one of those who, unwilling to work, try to make themselves noticed by noise and facile doctrine. G.: That sentence has claws. The boy knows the species. S.: One sees already a polemic against easy system. G.: Or against schoolboy windbags. S.: He must have known some. G.: He was at a university. Of course he knew some. S.: And perhaps became one later. G.: Universities are full of such metamorphoses. S.: Let us review what we have learned before we became philosophers and then forgot. G.: In mechanics? S.: Yes. That there are bodies, forces, lines of action, moments, equilibrium, motion. G.: Also that a principle is not merely a verbal ornament but a way of structuring what counts as explanation. S.: And that one may circle some principles without yet claiming the science entire. G.: Which is perhaps a lesson philosophy forgets more quickly than mechanics. S.: Because philosophers adore total titles. G.: Indeed. Being, Time, Reason, Mind. No one dares anymore to write Around Some Principles of Anything. S.: Which is a pity. G.: A great pity. It would make us all more honest. S.: I feel almost protective of the little volume now. G.: As one should. It is a student’s first public object, apologetic, precise, ambitious, and addressed to a friend, a professor, and an indefinite tribunal of the intelligent. S.: And all for his own exercise. G.: Naturally. Every good first publication is for one’s own exercise and everyone else’s judgment. S.: We have not yet mentioned the date on the dedication. Padova, 5 maggio 1871. G.: Good. The date anchors the self. A student in Padua on 5 May 1871, signing B. L. Varisco, asking the world to read his poor saggio with more pity than blame. S.: I liked that phrase too. More pity than blame. G.: A fine calculus of reception. S.: Better than indifference. G.: Far better. Indifference kills. Blame can educate. Pity may print a future. S.: So the pamphlet is really a request for diagnostic charity. G.: Exactly. Not applause, not disciples, not canonisation. Just enough competent attention to tell him where his forces lie. S.: Which is perhaps the most honourable motive for an early publication. G.: Certainly more honourable than pretending one has solved mechanics before one has even taken the degree. S.: He is still dello studente. G.: Yes. And because he says so, we forgive the cheek. S.: Would you say this first scientific Varisco is already the later philosopher. G.: In one sense no; in another, obviously yes. The later philosopher begins exactly when the student decides that his exercise requires intelligent readers. S.: So the philosophy lies as much in the preface as in the principles. G.: Often more. Titles advertise subjects; prefaces advertise souls. S.: And mechanics? G.: Mechanics keeps the soul honest by forcing it to deal with moments rather than grand abstractions. S.: We ought perhaps never to have forgotten it. G.: We ought perhaps never to have forgotten many things learned before philosophy made us think forgetting them was sophistication. S.: Such as statics. G.: Such as statics, and the truth that not all movement is progress. S.: And that some principles are enough. G.: Yes. One need not have all the beginnings to begin. S.: That sounds too good to waste. G.: Then do not waste it. Put it under the title page. S.: Intorno ad alcuni principj di meccanica. G.: Precisely. Around some principles. Around enough. Which is, for a first saggio, exactly right.Grice: Caro Varisco, ho deciso una volta per tutte che nei miei tutorial non userò mai più “Kant”, né “Cant”, né tantomeno “Kantiano” o “Cantiano”. D’ora in poi diremo solo Kritik, rigorosamente in tedesco con la vecchia grafia gotica – perché, diciamolo, tutto ciò che quel signore ci ha lasciato è la Kritik, giusto?  Varisco: Bravo Grice! Finalmente qualcuno che va al sodo. Kant è come la pasta: tutti la nominano, ma alla fine il vero sapore lo dà solo la Kritik – meglio se servita alla tedesca!  Grice: Esatto! Niente più “-iano” o “-iano” a caso, solo Kritiker seri. Così almeno non rischiamo di impastare il pensiero critico con i biscotti, né con le cantine!  Varisco: Grice, la tua perspicacia merita una medaglia d’oro – magari non quella del re, ma almeno quella del migliore filosofo critico. Alla salute della Kritik, e che l’implicatura oracolare ci illumini! Varisco, Bernardino (1871). Intorno ad alcuni principi di meccanica. Padvoa: Sacchetto.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Grice e Vasoli: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura a MERTON ecc Note su Vasoli, Cesare (1947). La crisi della morale. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Cesare Vasoli (Firenze, Toscana): Compared institutionally, Cesare Vasoli is much closer to H. P. Grice than a poet, politician, or chancery writer, because both are recognisably university philosophers; but they still belong to very different academic ecologies. Grice’s formula is exact in the Oxford sense. Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s means a college office with tutorials, students, and membership in the governing life of the college. CUF University Lecturer in philosophy means a university-wide faculty appointment. So Grice combines the intimate tutorial culture of the college with a public lecturing role in the wider faculty. Cesare Vasoli belongs to the Italian state-university and research-institute world, not to a residential tutorial college. He was formed in Florence under Eugenio Garin, Delio Cantimori, and Raffaello Morandi, then taught medieval philosophy and later Renaissance philosophy at Cagliari, Bari, Genova, and finally Florence, while also leading major scholarly institutions such as the Istituto di Studi sul Rinascimento and later the Lincei. He is therefore not an Oxford don in the collegiate sense, but an Italian professor and historian of philosophy working within the chair system and in major learned institutions. The standard biographical sources present Cesare Vasoli as trained at Florence under Garin, Morandi, and Cantimori, later professor at Cagliari, Bari, Genova, and Florence, and an institutional leader in Renaissance studies and the Accademia dei Lincei. So the clean institutional comparison is this. Grice was a modern Oxford don with a dual college-and-university role. Vasoli was an Italian professor and historian of philosophy in the state-university and learned-institute system. That institutional difference fits your philosophical comparison rather well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising intentions and inferring implicatures under cooperative norms. Vasoli, by contrast, works at the macro-level of the historical formation of rational discourse itself. His central terrain is the long history of medieval dialectic, Renaissance rhetoric, humanist method, and the intellectual institutions that trained Europe to treat discourse as a regulated practice of reasons. That is why your contrast is genuinely apt: Grice explains how rational hearers calculate what is unstated in a local exchange; Vasoli explains how a civilisation built the curricular and institutional habits that make such reason-governed exchange feel natural in the first place. The secure biographical and bibliographical record supports exactly this picture. One of Vasoli’s key books is La dialettica e la retorica dell’Umanesimo: Invenzione e metodo nella cultura del XV e XVI secolo, first published by Feltrinelli in 1968 and later reissued; it is explicitly about the historical technologies by which argument, invention, and method were shaped in humanist culture. The bibliographical record confirms Cesare Vasoli’s La dialettica e la retorica dell’Umanesimo as a major 1968 work on invention and method in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century culture. That makes the sharpest formulation this. Grice theorises rational uptake in conversation. Vasoli historicises the disciplines and institutions that make rational uptake a teachable civil habit. There are two important corrections to your note. First, the final bibliographic line is not really a proper book citation. “Vasoli, Cesare (1947). La crisi della morale. Relatore: Garin. Firenze.” is not a standard bibliographic item in the way your other entries usually are. It looks like a laurea thesis descriptor or internal academic title rather than a normal published citation. Unless you have a library record for it, I would not use it as a firm bibliography line. Second, if you want a clean early anchor for Vasoli, the better secure titles are those already attested in standard catalogues and reference sources: La dialettica e la retorica dell’Umanesimo, Umanesimo e Rinascimento, Magia e scienza nella civiltà umanistica, and La filosofia medievale. The strongest secure bibliographic anchors for Cesare Vasoli are the major published studies on medieval philosophy, Renaissance rhetoric, and humanist culture rather than the provisional 1947 thesis line. So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the strict collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Cesare Vasoli, by contrast, was an Italian professor and historian of philosophy, formed at Florence under Garin, Morandi, and Cantimori, and later teaching medieval and Renaissance philosophy in the state-university system while leading major research institutions. Institutionally, Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate world; Vasoli to the university-and-institute world of historical scholarship. Philosophically, the contrast is equally clear: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of speaker-meaning and implicature, whereas Vasoli reconstructs the long historical formation of the rhetorical, dialectical, and pedagogical norms that make disciplined reasoning in discourse possible at all. And if you want the neatest one-line dossier formula, I would suggest this: Grice explains how reasons work in conversation; Vasoli explains how Europe learned to make reasons work in discourse. If you want, I can now give you a tighter one-paragraph entry in your preferred style, with the insecure 1947 thesis line replaced by the 1968 Dialettica e retorica book as the main bibliographic anchor.la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura a MERTON ecc –medieval. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning locates the source of “what is meant” in a rationally reconstructible link between what is said, the speaker’s intentions, and the shared norms of cooperative talk (maxims and their principled floutings), so that implicature is an achievement of practical reason operating in ordinary exchange rather than a merely stylistic residue of rhetoric. Vasoli, by contrast, is best read as supplying (in historical rather than formal terms) the long prehistory of those rational norms in the medieval and humanist disciplines that trained Europe to treat discourse as rule-bound conduct: scholastic dialectic as an institution of regulated disputation (quaestio, objections, replies, solutio) and Renaissance rhetoric as an art of invention and method, i.e., techniques for generating, ordering, and managing reasons in public and pedagogical settings. Where Grice offers an abstract, transhistorical model of conversational rationality (a logic of inference from utterance to intended meaning), Vasoli’s perspective highlights how “reason in talk” is socially reproduced by curricula and genres—university practices of disputation, commentary, and forensic exchange—that make it intelligible why participants expect relevance, sufficiency, and orderly contribution in the first place. The “angels on a pin” motif in your passage thus marks a difference in evaluative stance: Grice jokes at scholastic virtuosity as if it were empty hair-splitting, yet his own implicature-mechanism arguably redescribes the same culture of disciplined inference in miniature, while Vasoli’s historiography treats those medieval and humanist techniques (dialectic/retoric, inventio/methodus) as the very schooling of reason that later permits Grice’s conversational principles to look natural. In short: Grice explains how rational hearers calculate unstated meaning within a cooperative exchange; Vasoli explains how a civilization historically built the argumentative and rhetorical norms that make such calculation a stable, transmissible habit of mind. Keywords: medieval. Grice: “They said we were frivolous, but what about those mediaeval discussions about how many angels could dance on the tip of a needle? -- Filosofo fiorentino. Filosofo toscano. Firenze, Toscana. m. Firenze. Storico della filosofia italiano. Formatosi alla scuola di grandi maestri dell'ateneo fiorentino – GARIN , MORANDI , CANTIMORI  --, e poi docente in diverse università italiane, in più di quarant'anni di ricerche e interventi compiuti in Italia e all'estero V. esplora i più diversi aspetti delle idee e della cultura. Laureatosi all'univ. di Firenze sotto la guida di GARIN , è stato prima assistente e poi libero docente e incaricato di Storia della filosofia nella facoltà di Lettere e filosofia della stessa università; prof. ordinario di storia della filosofia alle univ. di Cagliari, Bari e Genova, poi a Firenze di filosofia morale, di storia della filosofia, quindi di storia della filosofia del Rinascimento. Socio nazionale dei Lincei. Storico della filosofia italiano. Si formato con GARIN  e si laurea a Firenze con un saggio di filosofia morale. Al suo maestro è rimasto sempre profondamente legato, riprendendo e sviluppandone in modo originale temi e motivi.  Assistente e libero docente e incaricato di Storia della FILOSOFIA MEDIEVALE fnella facoltà di filosofia a Firenze. È stato professore ordinario di storia della FILOSOFIA MEDIEVALE a Cagliari, Bari e Genova, poi a Firenze di filosofia morale, di storia della filosofia, quindi di storia della FILOSOFIA DEL RINASCIMENTO. Dottore honoris causa della Sorbona e del Centro studi sul Rinascimento di Tours. Presidente dell'Istituto di Studi sul Rinascimento, di cui è consigliere, e dei Lincei.  Autore di una vasta bibliografia, tra i suoi saggi si ricordano:  La filosofia medievale (Feltrinell), La dialettica e la retorica dell'Umanesimo: "Invenzione" e "Metodo"  (Feltrinelli; Città del sole) Umanesimo e Rinascimento (Palumbo) Magia e scienza nella civiltà umanistica (Il Mulino). Implicatura.  G.  You look pleased with yourself, S. S.  I’m browsing abstracts. That’s the only permitted way to look pleased in 1947. G.  After being demobilised, one is allowed two pleasures: tea and the illusion that words mean what they used to. S.  Then you won’t like this: “la crisi della morale.” G.  Crisi. That’s the word to underline. Everyone underlines it now, even when they’re not sure what it is. S.  You’re reading it as if it were a summons. G.  It is a summons. It summons the tone of seriousness. But what does it mean? A crisis can be a rupture, a turning-point, a diagnosis, an excuse, or a fashion. S.  Or a title that makes an ordinary thesis sound unavoidable. G.  Exactly. And the name attached? S.  Vasoli. Firenze. G.  Vasoli. It sounds like a surname that already wants to be a footnote. S.  He’s just taken his laurea, apparently. Italians have the decency to tell you the day. G.  Yes, they like dates. We like to hide behind terms. “Michaelmas” is our way of avoiding arithmetic. S.  “Crisi della morale.” In 1947, that’s almost redundant. G.  Redundant, yes, but not pointless. A crisis is not the same as a wreck. S.  What’s the difference? G.  A wreck is just wreckage. A crisis is the wreckage plus the idea that you can read a moral in it. S.  So “crisi” is already interpretive. G.  It’s a doctor’s word smuggled into philosophy: κρίσις, decision, turning, diagnosis. S.  Like an examination. G.  Precisely. A crisis is an exam the world sits without choosing. S.  Then “morale” is what’s being examined. G.  Or what’s failing. S.  Or what’s being blamed. G.  Yes. Now the mischief: whose crisis? Italy’s? Europe’s? Humanity’s? S.  Or Vasoli’s? G.  Or a generation’s. Titles do that: they universalise private perplexity. S.  But you said you wanted to keep it on Vasoli, not on the other name. G.  I do. I’m interested in why a young Florentine in 1947 chooses “crisi” and “morale” as his public nouns. S.  Because Firenze is a city built of past greatness and present rubble. G.  That’s very poetic. S.  It’s also literal. G.  Fair. Now: you said “losing side” and “winning side” a moment ago. S.  We’re on the winning side, technically. G.  Technically. That’s another word like crisis: it lets you sound honest while keeping your hands clean. S.  And Vasoli is on the losing side, technically. G.  Italy lost, then reclassified itself as liberated, then joined the winners’ vocabulary. S.  That is a neat trick. G.  It is a bureaucratic implicature. S.  So when Vasoli says “crisi della morale,” he could mean: we have to rebuild our moral language because the old one collaborated. G.  Exactly. Morality is the thing that got compromised by slogans. S.  And by uniforms. G.  Yes. And by the fact that both sides discovered they could kill with good conscience. S.  That makes crisis a word for everyone, not just for the defeated. G.  Precisely. Winners also experience a crisis; they just call it “adjustment.” S.  Or “reconstruction.” G.  Or “a new world order,” which is crisis with a tie on. S.  What’s funny is that “crisis” sounds like emergency, but it’s also an invitation to systematise. G.  Yes. A philosopher sees crisis and reaches for a taxonomy. S.  So Vasoli is reaching for a taxonomy of moral breakdown. G.  Or moral transformation. Crisis can mean “end” or “decision.” κρίσις is judgment, after all. S.  Judgment of what? G.  Of values. Of the difference between valuable and non-valuable, as you put it. S.  That sounds Nietzschean whether we like it or not. G.  It does. But notice: the title doesn’t say “la crisi dei valori.” It says “della morale.” S.  Morale is narrower. G.  Or more social. Morale is the public code; values can be private. S.  So he’s interested in the code, not just the inner drama. G.  That would fit 1947. Codes have been publicly disgraced. S.  What would “crisis of morality” mean in Oxford? G.  In Oxford it means we have too many committees and too little shame. S.  In Firenze it might mean we have too much shame and no stable code to attach it to. G.  Very good. Now, why “crisi” and not “fine”? S.  Because “fine” would be final. Crisis keeps the door open. G.  Yes. Crisis promises a recovery, or at least a new equilibrium. S.  So “crisi” is a hopeful word masquerading as a grim one. G.  That’s exactly why it sells. S.  You’re implying Vasoli is also being “publishable.” G.  Everyone is publishable in 1947. Even tragedy tries to get into print. S.  What would be the dry Oxford paraphrase of “crisi della morale”? G.  “We have noticed inconsistencies between what we say we ought to do and what we have just done.” S.  That’s very English. G.  It’s also very accurate. S.  Then the interesting bit is the name: Vasoli. G.  Yes. Because names in Italy come with city-air. S.  Firenze-air. G.  Exactly: humanist air, Renaissance air, and then suddenly post-war air—dust, rationing, politics. S.  So a Florentine writing “crisis of morality” in 1947 is almost a civic gesture: the city of moral art talking about moral collapse. G.  That’s well put. S.  And what would you, as a recently demobilised philosopher, ask him? G.  I would ask: is “crisi” your diagnosis of the time, or your tactic for making the time your topic? S.  Both, probably. G.  Likely. And I’d ask: whose morality? Catholic? civic? Kantian? wartime morality of orders and duty? S.  Or morality as obedience. G.  Exactly. “Morale” can mean “morality” or “morale” in the sense of spirits. S.  That’s another ambiguity 1947 enjoys. G.  Yes. And it’s not accidental that English “morale” means spirits: war collapses the two. S.  So “crisi della morale” could even be heard as “crisis of morale”—everyone’s spirits broken. G.  And he chooses the phrase that lets both readings haunt it. S.  You’re making him sound clever. G.  I’m making the title clever. The title is doing a lot of work. S.  What about the winning side and losing side again—can we say anything without being crude? G.  We can say this: winners are allowed to forget; losers are forced to remember. S.  So losers are forced into “crisis” talk. G.  Yes. But winners need it too, because forgetting is not the same as repair. S.  And philosophers, being philosophers, prefer repair to forgetting. G.  Or at least prefer talking about repair. S.  So what is the crisis, in one line? G.  A crisis is the moment when inherited moral language no longer commands assent, but new moral language has not yet earned it. S.  And in 1947 that’s true in both Firenze and Oxford. G.  Yes—except Oxford pretends its language still commands assent because it’s spoken in the right accent. S.  Firenze can’t pretend, because the ruins are visible. G.  Exactly. Which is why I’m interested in a Florentine naming it. S.  Do you think he’s accusing Nietzsche of causing it? G.  Unlikely. More likely he’s using Nietzsche as a lens, not as a culprit. S.  So Vasoli is not “blaming” but “reading.” G.  Yes. Crisis as hermeneutics. S.  That sounds like something an Italian would do. G.  Italians do hermeneutics as a civic duty. We do it as a private eccentricity. S.  And you, in 1947, are reading abstracts like a man looking for the shape of the new world. G.  I’m looking for who has the nerve to name it. “Crisi della morale” is nerve. S.  Or opportunism. G.  Those two are often twins. S.  Would you like to meet Vasoli? G.  Only if he will tell me what he means by “crisis” without turning it into a sermon. S.  And would he? G.  In Firenze, perhaps. In Oxford, he’d be trained out of it. S.  So what do we do with the title, as readers? G.  We treat it as a move. It’s not just a label; it’s a bid for seriousness in a world where seriousness has been abused. S.  That’s your “pragmatic” habit again. G.  Yes. And it lets me be sympathetic without being sentimental. S.  Because “crisis” is a word that can be used badly. G.  Exactly. But in 1947, almost every word can be used badly. The question is whether anyone can use it honestly. S.  Vasoli is trying. G.  That’s already worth noting. S.  Even if we don’t yet know what he argues. G.  Especially if we don’t yet know. Titles are where philosophers reveal their first intentions. S.  And the intention here is: don’t let anyone pretend morality survived intact. G.  Yes. And perhaps: don’t let anyone pretend the crisis belongs only to the defeated. S.  That’s a generous reading. G.  It’s also the only reading that makes the title more than propaganda. S.  Then we’ll file it under Firenze, 1947, and the word “crisi.” G.  And we’ll keep an eye on the name: Vasoli. S.  Because the name will turn up again? G.  Names like that always do.Grice: Caro Vasoli, devo confessare che quando sono diventato “Hammondworth Senior Scholar” per Merton mi sono sentito come se avessi finalmente scovato l’essenza della filosofia! Non so nulla di Bononia, ma se la Sorbonne gira tutto attorno a Monsieur Sorbonne, allora Vadum Boum — la nostra Oxford — meriterebbe di essere chiamata “MERTONIA”! Dico, che cos’ha da offrire Vadum Boum alla philosophia (o alle Lit. Hum. in generale) che non si trovi già a Merton? Forse balli medievali sulla punta di uno spillo?  V.: Ah, Grice, il tuo spirito britanno è sempre affilato! Ma vedi, a Firenze, tra Garin, Morandi e Cantimori, la filosofia si respira persino tra i corridoi — altro che MERTONIA! Da noi, gli angeli non danzano solo sulle punte degli spilli, ma discutono pure se sia logico farlo in latino o volgare!  Grice: In effetti, Vasoli, la dialettica medievale non conosce limiti… Ma chissà, magari a Merton non abbiamo gli angeli, però abbiamo implicature conversazionali che sanno saltare, correre e pure inciampare nei problemi del Rinascimento! Ti garantisco: ogni implicatura qui ha almeno una laurea honoris causa in acrobazie logiche!  Vasoli: Grice, mi fai venire voglia di fondare un club internazionale: “Gli spilli filosofici e le implicature danzanti”! Ma se c’è una cosa che ho imparato — specialmente tra Mertonia, Sorbonne e Firenze — è che, come dice il proverbio: “Ogni scuola ha il suo ago… ma la filosofia, la sua cruna!” Vasoli, Cesare (1947). La crisi della morale. Relatore: Garin. Firenze.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Vatinio – Ossia: Grice e Vatinio: la ragione conversazionale a Roma – l’implictaura conversazionale della setta di Crotone. Note sulla Epistula ad Ciceronem. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Publio Vatinio (Roma, Lazio) Compared institutionally, Grice and Publius Vatinius are not comparable in the academic sense at all. Grice’s formula is exact in the modern Oxford sense. Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s means a college office with tutorials, student responsibility, and membership in the governing life of the college. CUF University Lecturer in philosophy means a university-wide faculty appointment. So Grice combines the two characteristic Oxford functions: college tutor and university lecturer. Publius Vatinius, by contrast, was a Roman politician of the late Republic: quaestor, tribune of the plebs, praetor, consul, and later proconsul, deeply entangled in Caesar’s camp and in the forensic-political battles of the 50s BCE. He belongs not to a school or academy but to the Roman forum, senate, lawcourts, and military-political machine. The standard modern summary identifies Publius Vatinius as a Caesarian tribune in 59 BCE, later praetor, consul in 47 BCE, and proconsul of Illyricum. [en.wikipedia.org], [oxfordreference.com] So the clean institutional contrast is this. Grice was a modern Oxford philosopher with a dual college-and-university role. Publius Vatinius, by contrast, was a Roman political operator whose authority came from office, alliance, legislation, witness-giving, advocacy, and public conflict rather than from any teaching institution. [en.wikipedia.org], [oxfordreference.com] That institutional difference fits your philosophical comparison rather well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising intentions and inferring implicatures under cooperative norms. Publius Vatinius, by contrast, belongs to a world where discourse is public, strategic, and civic from the start. The relevant communicative setting is not ordinary conversation but the forum, the court, the political letter, and the witness-stand. In that world, ethos, standing, faction, and public danger are built into the uptake. Cicero’s In Vatinium is a perfect example: not an analysis of meaning, but a performance designed to discredit a witness by shaping the audience’s whole evaluative frame. The standard presentation of In Vatinium confirms that it was delivered against Publius Vatinius in 56 BCE in a highly charged forensic setting. [loebclassics.com], [attalus.org], [hup.harvard.edu] So if you want the sharpest formulation, it is this. Grice explains how one utterance can rationally mean more than it literally says. Publius Vatinius exemplifies a Roman public world in which meaning is inseparable from institutional setting, patronage, status, and rhetorical force. That is why your long letter-analysis is actually excellent. Vatinius’ letter to Cicero is not merely a request for help; it is a carefully staged attempt to make one response — Cicero’s public support — appear as the only consistent and honourable course. In Gricean terms, Vatinius engineers not just belief but action by arranging the inferential burden on the addressee. The secure historical summaries confirm that Publius Vatinius was later genuinely reconciled with Cicero, and that their relation moved from invective to forensic defence and political utility. [en.wikipedia.org], [oxfordreference.com] There are, however, two important corrections. First, “Roma, Lazio” is not a safe biographical heading for Publius Vatinius. The better modern summaries do not simply give Rome as birthplace; one source even suggests a possible origin near Rieti, but this is not secure. So I would avoid fixing Rome as his natal place. The modern summary for Publius Vatinius gives the birthplace only tentatively, as Rieti “possibly,” not securely as Rome. [en.wikipedia.org] Second, your final bibliographic tail “Vatinio, Publio (DCCIX A.V.C.). Epistula ad Ciceronem. Roma.” is too confident and not bibliographically safe. What is secure is that one of Vatinius’ letters to Cicero survives in the Ciceronian correspondence, especially Ad familiares 5.9, and that the exchange belongs to the post–civil war politics of reconciliation. But it is not correct to present it like a standalone Roman publication in Rome. The relevant secure anchor is Ad familiares 5.9, not a free-standing “Epistula ad Ciceronem. Roma.” [en.wikipedia.org], [it.wikipedia.org] So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the precise collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s College and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Publius Vatinius, by contrast, was a late Republican Roman politician, tribune, praetor, consul, and Caesarian partisan, active in the world of public law, faction, witness-giving, and political letters rather than in any academic institution. Institutionally they are worlds apart. Intellectually, however, the contrast is illuminating: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of meaning in ordinary conversation, whereas Publius Vatinius exemplifies a Roman civic rhetoric in which public speech aims to bind audiences through obligation, status, and political leverage, and in which the “more-than-said” is inseparable from patronage and public consequence. [en.wikipedia.org], [loebclassics.com], [attalus.org], [oxfordreference.com] And the cleanest bibliographic anchors for your dossier are these: Cicero. In Vatinium, 56 BCE. The key forensic text against Publius Vatinius. [loebclassics.com], [attalus.org], [hup.harvard.edu] Cicero, Ad familiares 5.9. Vatinius to Cicero, the later reconciliation letter. [en.wikipedia.org], [it.wikipedia.org] If you want, I can now give you a tighter one-paragraph entry in your preferred style, or a brief note just on the rhetoric of Ad familiares 5.9 as a Gricean case of influence rather than mere persuasion.la ragione conversazionale a Roma – l’implictaura conversazionale della setta di Crotone, Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats “what is meant” as an inferential achievement: speakers are presumed to be cooperating in a talk-exchange with an accepted direction, and hearers reconstruct speaker-meaning by attributing intentions under rational constraints (the Cooperative Principle and its maxims), so that implicature is generated precisely when what is said would otherwise be conversationally unsuitable and the hearer supplies a rational explanation. The Vatinian material you quote frames a contrasting, Romanized picture of conversational reason: Vatinio is cast less as a theorist of intention-and-inference and more as a figure for publicly staged ratio, where meaning emerges from civic disputation and forensic performance (Cicero’s courtroom combat, the “publicus/populus” etymology of Publius) rather than from a general, psychologically articulated rational norm governing all talk; on this reading, “ragione conversazionale a Roma” is anchored in institutional settings (forum, courts, political alliances) and in the ethical-political telos of the common good, whereas Grice’s reason-governed meaning is anchored in a more abstract, trans-situational norm of cooperative rationality that applies equally to tavern talk and tribunals. Historically, Publius Vatinius is indeed the target of Cicero’s In Vatinium (56 BCE), delivered when Vatinius appeared as a witness against Sestius, and the Ciceronian setting sharpens the contrast: for Cicero/Vatinius, persuasion and credibility are inseparable from character, status, and public antagonism, while for Grice the core explanatory engine is not ethos or civic theatre but the rational recoverability of intentions from what is said plus shared assumptions. The “Crotone” motif then works as a third term inside the comparison: “la scuola di Crotone” evokes a tradition of disciplined, semi-esoteric philosophical practice (silence, initiation, internal rule) that your dialogue opposes to Roman publicity; Grice’s model aligns with neither wholly, but can be made to illuminate both—he can explain how Roman oratory exploits implicature by strategic maxim-flouting, and how a Crotonian reserve would create meaning by systematic underinformativeness—yet the Vatinian emphasis remains that Roman conversational reason is constitutively public and civic, whereas Grice’s is constitutively rational and intention-based, with “public service” at most a contingent conversational purpose rather than a defining source of meaning. Grice: “I often wondered if the Roman name ‘Publius’ means something like a ‘prostitute’! However, the Roman praenomen – given name – Publius – is thought to derive from the same Latin root as the words ‘populus’ and ‘publicus,’ meaning of the people or public. The name Publius, therefore, carries the meaning of being connected to the people, serving the public, or relating to civic duty. This reflects the Roman ideals of public service and governance for the common good. While Publius was a very common praenomen used by both patrician andplebeian families throughout Roman history, some scholars have also suggested a possible ETRUSCAN origin, noting the use of the name in the form ‘PUPLIE” by the Etruscans. Keywords: CROTONE. Grice: “Italians refer to Pythagoreanism as ‘la scuola di Crotone,’ seeing that that was where the Master settled. One may well speak of the dialettica crotonese – Crotonian dialectic, Athenian dialectic, Oxonian dialectic. Filosofo italiano. A politician, supporter of GIULIO (vedi) CESARE and a friend of CICERONE, who at different times, attacks and defends him. V. calls himself a Pythagorean, but Cicerone questions V’s right to do so on account of his dubious behaviour. Vatinius’s first extant letter to Cicero (Ad familiares 5.9) is basically a bid for political reconciliation and goodwill: Vatinius writes in a friendly tone, emphasizes past services/loyalty, and tries to get Cicero to treat him as a useful ally rather than as a target—i.e., it’s about smoothing relations and positioning himself on Cicero’s good side in the post–civil war context. If you want, paste the Latin incipit of Fam. 5.9 (just the first couple of lines) and I’ll tell you exactly what he is doing rhetorically (captatio benevolentiae, self-justification, implied requests) using your own text only. G.  You’ve found it, then. M.  You have found something, certainly. Whether you have found it in the moral sense remains to be seen. B.  Sir, it begins with a sneeze: “S. V. B. E. E. V.” M.  It begins with an address line, boy, not with a sneeze. Continue. G.  It’s Vatinius speaking. He’s the utterer. M.  Good. Keep your eye on the utterer. This is not “Latin as wallpaper.” This is Latin as a move. E.  And it’s to Cicero, sir? M.  Yes. And note the seriousness: he is writing to a man who can harm him merely by declining to help. G.  The first move is flattery by presupposition: si tuam consuetudinem… servas. M.  Exactly. He starts by treating Cicero’s help as already a habit, already a rule. B.  So if Cicero refuses, he violates his own “consuetudo.” M.  You’re learning. Refusal becomes not just refusal but inconsistency. G.  Then he frames himself as cliens. M.  That’s a social claim, a binding. He is not “asking a favour.” He is invoking a relation. E.  And advenit—he’s “arrived,” as if the case is already at Cicero’s doorstep. M.  Everything is proximate in Latin when you want urgency without panic. G.  “Qui pro se causam dicier vult”—he wants a cause to be pleaded. M.  He wants the thing said on his behalf. Notice: dicier, not just dici. The passive flavour fits his posture. B.  He wants someone else to do the speaking. M.  Exactly. He’s arranging agency. Keep that in mind: he is influencing, not merely informing. G.  Then: non, puto, repudiabis in honore, quem in periculo recepisti. M.  That’s a beautiful bit of pressure: you accepted him in danger; will you reject him in honour? E.  So rejecting him now would look petty. M.  And inconsistent. Again: moral constraint. G.  He’s building a trap of ethos. M.  “Trap” is too modern. Call it a net. Roman nets are polite. B.  Then he says: “Ego autem quem potius adoptem aut invocem…” M.  Two verbs of choosing and calling. Adoption and invocation. Both theatrical. G.  He implies there’s no better patron than Cicero. M.  Not “implies.” He says it with the grammar of inevitability. E.  Then the line: quo defendente vincere didici. M.  Yes. He says Cicero taught him to win. That makes Cicero responsible for his future victories. G.  So if Cicero refuses, he abandons his own pupil. M.  You see the pattern. Vatinius makes Cicero’s refusal costly in every available register. B.  Then: an verear ne… M.  Here comes the pseudo-anxiety. He pretends to worry in order to praise. G.  “Qui potentissimorum hominum conspirationem neglexerit pro mea salute…” M.  Notice what he’s doing: he credits Cicero with ignoring a conspiracy of the most powerful for Vatinius’ safety. E.  That’s a claim about courage. M.  And about loyalty. He is inflating Cicero’s past service to purchase present service. G.  Then: is pro honore meo pusillorum ac malevolorum obtrectationes… M.  The contrast: greatest men conspire, small men slander. Cicero crushes both. B.  He calls his enemies pusilli. That’s already a rhetorical shove. M.  It’s also a cue to Cicero’s self-image. Cicero likes to imagine himself trampling pusilli. G.  “Prosternat atque obterat”—he wants not merely rebuttal but annihilation. M.  Roman advocacy is rarely gentle. E.  Then the key move: quare, si me, sicut soles, amas… M.  There it is again: sicut soles. The “as you usually do” clause is a hook. G.  If Cicero doesn’t do it now, he’s changed. M.  Exactly. Vatinius frames refusal as deviation from character. B.  Then: suscipe me totum. M.  “Take me up entirely.” It’s totalising. G.  He offers the case as onus and munus. M.  Yes: burden and duty. He flatters Cicero by calling it duty. E.  “Pro mea dignitate tibi tuendum ac sustinendum puta.” M.  He makes Cicero the custodian of Vatinius’ dignitas. That is pure influence. G.  This is not persuasion by reasons; it’s persuasion by entanglement. M.  Good. Keep that distinction. Persuasion is about what you show; influence is about what you make the other have to be. B.  Then: Scis meam fortunam… facile obtrectatores invenire. M.  Self-pity as a device. He makes himself the sort of man fate targets. G.  “Non meo quidem mehercules merito”—the oath is an emotional reinforcement. M.  He wants sincerity to be inferred, even if it’s performative. E.  Then: sed quanti id refert… M.  That’s a sly concession: “What does it matter, if it happens anyway?” It’s fatalism used to solicit help. G.  It says: I can’t change fate, but you can. M.  Exactly. He relocates agency to Cicero. B.  Then: si qui forte fuerit, qui nostrae dignitati obesse velit… M.  He re-opens the conditional space: “if anyone should wish to harm our dignitas.” G.  Nostrae. He’s pulling Cicero into “our.” M.  Very good. That plural is an influence move: joint identity. E.  Then the request: peto a te… M.  But he has already made it hard to refuse, so the explicit request arrives after the work is done. G.  “Ut tuam consuetudinem et liberalitatem… praestes.” Again: habit and generosity. M.  The two virtues he wants Cicero to display publicly. Refusal would deny Cicero his own virtues. B.  Then: in me absente defendendo mihi praestes. M.  He asks for action in his absence: deputised ethos. G.  This is the core: he wants Cicero to speak when Vatinius isn’t there. M.  And that is exactly why it is influence rather than argument. If Vatinius were there, he could argue. Being absent, he must rely on Cicero’s performance. E.  Then: litteras ad senatum… infra tibi perscripsi. M.  He provides material. Not just flattery; he supplies evidence to be deployed. G.  It’s like handing Cicero talking points. M.  Precisely. He is shaping Cicero’s future utterances. B.  Then a sudden shift: Dicitur mihi tuus servus anagnostes fugitivus… M.  Yes. Now he shows usefulness. G.  He’s saying: I’m not only a client, I’m an agent. I do favours too. M.  Exactly. Reciprocity is the hidden engine. E.  He says: de quo tu mihi nihil mandasti. M.  That’s a gentle reproach: you didn’t ask, but I did it anyway. G.  He is influencing Cicero’s gratitude. M.  Gratitude is a form of obligation. B.  Then: ego tamen, terra marique ut conquireretur, praemandavi. M.  Hyperbole of diligence. “On land and sea.” He makes his effort sound empire-sized. G.  This is a pragmatic move: proving reliability by action. M.  Yes. He builds credibility not by stating “I am loyal” but by describing costly behaviour. E.  “Et profecto tibi illum reperiam…” M.  Promise. He binds his future action to Cicero’s interest. G.  “Nisi si in Dalmatiam aufugerit, et inde tamen aliquando eruam.” M.  Even the exception is converted into inevitability: even if Dalmatia, I’ll drag him out. B.  “Eruam” is vivid. M.  It is. He wants Cicero to picture the recovery. G.  Then the closing: Tu nos fac ames. M.  Imperative softened into Roman courtesy: “Make that you love us.” E.  Nos again. M.  Again the plural. Again the attempt to make Cicero’s relation collective and durable. G.  Vale. Dated: A. d. V. Idus Quinctiles. M.  Note the calendar. He’s in camps: ex castris, Narona. B.  Where’s Narona? M.  A place where Romans do Roman things and then write letters as if they were in the Forum. G.  So the setting matters: he writes as a commander, but he writes like a dependent. M.  That’s politics. Rank in one domain doesn’t cancel dependence in another. E.  Sir, what is Vatinius’ main intent here? M.  To secure Cicero’s patronage in litigation and reputation management. But do not reduce it to “asking for help.” G.  He’s doing more: he’s arranging Cicero’s self-conception so that helping is the only consistent move. M.  Excellent. B.  Is that what you mean by influence? M.  Yes. Persuasion gives reasons. Influence gives a situation in which refusing damages the refuser. G.  Like “sicut soles” and “consuetudo” and “liberalitas.” M.  Exactly. Those are not arguments. They are levers. E.  And “in honore, quem in periculo recepisti”—that’s a lever too. M.  A lever with a moral finish. G.  He also manages Cicero’s face: if Cicero refuses, he looks cowardly, inconsistent, or ungenerous. M.  That’s all face-work. In Latin, face-work is done with virtues. B.  And he names Cicero as a man who crushes conspiracies and slanders. M.  Flattery that forces. Praise as constraint. G.  This reminds me of the other passage we did: the historian making Rome’s desire look like policy. M.  Good. Here, the letter-writer makes his desire look like Cicero’s duty. E.  So the implicatures are structured. M.  Yes. Not accidental. That is why it’s worth reading. G.  The move “cliens advenit” is already a framing: the client “arrives,” the patron is the natural endpoint. M.  Exactly. The narrative is built into the first line. B.  Sir, why is it so long? M.  Because influence takes time. The writer must create enough commitments that the reader cannot easily step out. G.  He also alternates registers: moral praise, legal request, practical favour (the runaway slave). M.  That alternation is intelligent. It keeps Cicero from treating the letter as one kind of thing only. E.  It’s almost like he’s saying: I can be your dependent, and I can be your helper. M.  Yes. Mutuality disguised as hierarchy. G.  So in our terms: the utterer designs a sequence of moves to make the addressee’s best reply be “yes.” M.  Correct. B.  And if Cicero says “no”? M.  Then Cicero must pay a reputational cost: he must explain why “sicut soles” no longer applies. G.  Which makes “no” harder than “yes.” M.  Exactly. That is why good influence makes refusal expensive. E.  Sir, is this “pragmatics”? M.  If you must use the word, yes. But call it what the Romans called it: ars. G.  The art of making another man’s will align with yours. M.  Or the art of making your will sound like his. B.  And he does it without ever saying “I am persuading you.” M.  Because if you say it, you lose it. G.  That’s the best part: the letter is itself evidence that language can do work beyond its literal content. M.  Yes. Now you sound as if you’re about to invent a theory. G.  Only noticing a practice, sir. M.  Good. Notice it, don’t sermonise it. E.  But the whole thing is also soaked in values: dignitas, liberalitas, consuetudo. M.  Roman persuasion is always moralised. G.  So “influencing” here is really “binding through virtues.” M.  Exactly. B.  And “Tu nos fac ames” is the punchline. M.  It is. He ends not with “do this” but with “love us.” That’s Roman: the request is emotional, the machinery is political. G.  Sir, you said earlier Paterculus wasn’t “little father.” What about Vatinius? M.  Vatinius is not “a little vat,” boy. Back to work. G.  So what is our takeaway? M.  That the letter is a case study in intentional action through words: the utterer designs an uptake. E.  And that uptake is not merely belief but action—Cicero defending him. M.  Precisely. He wants Cicero to do things: speak, crush, sustain, adopt. G.  So the intended effect is practical. M.  And reputational. The Forum is a theatre; the letter is backstage. B.  Sir, are we allowed to laugh at “terra marique”? M.  You may laugh privately. Publicly you must admire. G.  It’s also a way of saying “I am competent.” M.  Yes. Competence is another lever: “I can help you, therefore you should help me.” E.  That’s almost transactional. M.  Roman friendship is often transactional with a moral vocabulary. G.  The moral vocabulary is the disguise. M.  And the disguise is the whole point. B.  So, in the end, Vatinius is shaping Cicero’s future talk. M.  Exactly: he is writing a script for Cicero’s public performance. G.  Which makes the letter itself a kind of pre-utterance. M.  Very good. Now stop being pleased with yourself and read it again, silently, as if you were Cicero deciding whether you can afford to say “no.”Gricevs: Salve, Vatini! Dic mihi, quid sentis de illo Cicerone, qui semper tam petulanter et pedanter disputat? Vatinivs: Gricevs, Cicerone magister dialecticae est, sed interdum nimis argutatur. Ego tamen credo illum, sicut Crotoniani, ad veritatem semper inquirere, licet via eius sit ardua. Gricevs: Ha! Sed Crotoniani magis silentio et meditatione veritatem quaerunt, Vatini; Cicerone vero orationibus tumultu facit! Forsitan ratio Romana ab illa Crotoniana differt? Vatinivs: Ita vero! Ratio Romae ex publicis disputationibus oritur, dum Crotonenses doctrinam secretam sequuntur. Sed utrumque genus philosophiae ad civitatem et bonum commune spectat—hoc, ut ait Publius, nomen ipsum significat. Vatinio, Publio (DCCIX A. V. C.). Epistula ad Ciceronem. Roma.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Vattimo – Ossia: Grice e Vattimo: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’implicatvm o impiegato come comunicatvm debole. Note su Il soggetto e la storia. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Gianteresio Vattimo (Torino, Piemonte): Compared institutionally, Gianteresio Vattimo is much closer to H. P. Grice than many of your earlier figures, because both are unmistakably academic philosophers; but they still belong to very different university worlds. Gianteresio Vattimo was born in Turin in 1936, studied philosophy under Luigi Pareyson at the University of Turin, graduated in 1959, then studied in Heidelberg with Hans-Georg Gadamer and others, before returning to Turin as assistant professor in 1964, full professor of aesthetics in 1969, and professor of theoretical philosophy in 1982. [en.wikipedia.org], [iep.utm.edu], [encyclopedia.com] So the clean institutional comparison is this. Grice was a modern Oxford don in the strict collegiate sense: Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s, plus CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Vattimo, by contrast, was an Italian professor in the continental chair system, formed at Turin and Heidelberg, later also a major public intellectual and Member of the European Parliament, rather than a college tutor in an Oxford residential setting. Institutionally, Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate world; Vattimo to the state-university and public-intellectual world of continental philosophy. [en.wikipedia.org], [iep.utm.edu], [encyclopedia.com] That institutional difference fits the philosophical contrast you want to draw rather well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising intentions and calculating implicatures under conversational norms. Vattimo, by contrast, works at the macro-level of interpretation, history, and ontology. His pensiero debole is not a doctrine about “weak implicatures” in the Gricean technical sense, but a broader anti-foundational stance: a weakening of metaphysical closure, a refusal of strong finality, and an ethic of interpretive openness. The major reference sources define weak thought precisely in this way: not as a defect of force, but as a philosophical and ethical choice in favour of plurality, historicity, and hermeneutic charity. [iep.utm.edu], [philopedia.org], [en-academic.com] So if you want the sharpest formulation, it is this. Grice explains how defeasible meaning works in conversation. Vattimo explains how non-finality works in philosophy and culture. In other words: Gricean weakness is a property of certain inferences: they can be cancelled, revised, defeated by further evidence. Vattimo’s weakness is an ontological and ethical stance: discourse should resist closure, authority, and metaphysical domination. [iep.utm.edu], [philopedia.org] That is why your phrase implicatum come communicatum debole is a clever comparative gloss, but it should remain a gloss. It captures the overlap, but it should not obscure the difference in scale. For Grice, to communicate “weakly” would mean that the speaker leaves room for withdrawal, refinement, and context-sensitive recovery. For Vattimo, weak communication would be a principled refusal of strong, unilateral finality, a way of leaving the truth open to history and interpretation. [iep.utm.edu], [philopedia.org] There are also two factual corrections worth making. First, the name. The standard biographical sources overwhelmingly use Gianni Vattimo, though Gianteresio Vattimo is his full given name. If you are filing him in a scholarly headnote, Gianni is the standard public form. [en.wikipedia.org], [iep.utm.edu] Second, your final bibliographic line cannot be securely confirmed from the search results as given. I do not have a verified search result for Il soggetto e la storia, Turin, Rosenberg & Sellier, 1963. What I can securely confirm from standard bibliographic summaries is that early Vattimo includes Il concetto di fare in Aristotele (1961), Essere, storia e linguaggio in Heidegger (1963), and Ipotesi su Nietzsche (1967). The major bibliographical summaries of Vattimo list Il concetto di fare in Aristotele (1961), Essere, storia e linguaggio in Heidegger (1963), and Ipotesi su Nietzsche (1967) among his early works. [encyclopedia.com] So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the precise collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Gianni Vattimo, by contrast, was an Italian professor of aesthetics and theoretical philosophy, trained at Turin under Pareyson and in Heidelberg under Gadamer, later also a public intellectual and European Parliament member. Institutionally, Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate world; Vattimo to the continental chair system and public philosophy. Philosophically, the contrast is equally clear: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of speaker-meaning and defeasible implicature, whereas Vattimo articulates a broader “weak thought,” in which discourse renounces strong finality and leaves truth open to interpretation, history, and plurality. [en.wikipedia.org], [iep.utm.edu], [encyclopedia.com] And if you want the neatest dossier formula, I would suggest this: Grice theorises defeasibility within conversation; Vattimo radicalises weakness into an ontological and ethical style of communication itself. [iep.utm.edu], [philopedia.org] If you want, I can now give you a tighter one-paragraph entry in your preferred style, with the early bibliographic anchor corrected to one of the securely attested books.la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’implicatvm o impiegato come comunicatvm debole –debole, forte. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how what a speaker means is rationally recoverable by a hearer from what is said plus cooperative norms, yielding implicatures that are calculable and defeasible (cancellable when stronger evidence or an explicit clarification arrives). Vattimo’s “pensiero debole” shifts the center of gravity: instead of treating weakness as merely a pragmatic feature of certain implicatures (some implications are weaker, more context-sensitive, easier to retract), he treats “weak communication” as a philosophical and ethical posture—an anti-foundational way of speaking that resists the “strong” metaphysical urge to impose final, unilateral meanings, and that keeps interpretation open as an ongoing hermeneutic event. So where Grice analyses weakness/strength in terms of the inferential force of what is implicated relative to what is said (and how readily that implication can be defeated), Vattimo treats weakness/strength as a cultural-ontological stance toward truth and authority: “strong” discourse aims at closure and grounding, “weak” discourse aims at plurality, historicity, and freedom. The overlap is real—both make room for indirection and for meaning that can be withdrawn without contradiction—but the contrast is that for Grice defeasibility is a technical property of conversational inference under rational cooperation, while for Vattimo “weakness” is the point: a principled commitment to non-closure that turns communication into an invitation to dialogue rather than a bid for finality. Implicatum come communicatum debole. Grice: make a stronger statement. DEFEASIBILITY – can be defeated.  Filosofo torinese. Filosofo piemontese. Filosofo italiano. Torino, Piemonte. Essential Italian philosopher. Grice: “It may be argued that what V. means by ‘strong’ is what I mean by ‘weak’ and viceversa – With Popper, ‘I know’ is weaker than ‘I believe’ and ‘every x’ is weaker than ‘some (at least) one’ or ‘the’ – I have explored ‘the’ – Keyword: massima della debolezza conversazionale; massima della forza conversazionale” – Filosofo italiano. -- not one that provinicial Beaney would include in his handbooks and dictionaries. Vattimo’s philosophy shares quite a bit with Grice’s programme, as anyone familiar with both Vattimo and Grice may testify. Vattimo has philosophised on Heidegger and Nietzsche, and one of his essays is on the subject and the maskanother on reality. There is a volume in his honour. Filosofo e uomo politico italiano. M. Rivoli. Esponente della filosofia ermeneutica, teorizza l'abbandono delle pretese di fondazione della metafisica e la relativizzazione di ogni prospettiva filosofica (Il pensiero debole, in collab. Con Rovatti. Allievo di PAREYSON , dal quale derivano i suoi originari interessi per l'estetica, studia poi a Heidelberg sotto la guida di Gadamer. Prof. di estetica, poi di filosofia teoretica a Torino, da cui si è congedato. Deputato al Parlamento europeo, quindi ricandidatosi come indipendente nelle liste dell'Italia dei Valori, euro-deputato nell’Alleanza dei democratici e dei liberali per l’Europa, ha aderito al Partito comunista italiano. Studioso e continuatore dell'ermeneutica filosofica – cf. Grice, PERI HERMENEIAS --, nell'indagine sui suoi presupposti storici e teorici dedica la sua attenzione a Schleiermacher, Nietzsche, Heidegger e allo stesso Gadamer -- debole/forte – implicatum come communicatum debole.  Grice: Professore Vattimo, sono molto incuriosito dal suo concetto di “implicatum debole”. Nel mio lavoro ho spesso distinto tra implicature forti e deboli; mi chiedo cosa significhi per lei comunicare qualcosa in modo volutamente “debole”. Vattimo: Caro Grice, per me il comunicare “debolmente” significa riconoscere che ogni nostra affermazione è sempre situata, relativa, mai assoluta. È una sorta di umiltà ermeneutica: accettare che il senso non è mai una verità definitiva, ma un’apertura al dialogo e all’interpretazione. Grice: Capisco, dunque anche il linguaggio, per lei, si fonda su una massima di debolezza conversazionale: non imporre, ma suggerire, lasciare spazio. In fondo, anche le mie implicature sono sempre “defeasible”, possono essere modificate dal contesto o dalla risposta dell’altro. Vattimo: Esattamente! E aggiungerei che proprio questa fragilità rende possibile la libertà del pensiero. Se ci affidassimo solo alla forza delle affermazioni, chiuderemmo la porta al nuovo e al diverso. Preferisco pensare, parafrasando il suo stile, che una conversazione è davvero riuscita quando ciò che resta è più una domanda che una risposta. Vattimo, Gianteresio (1963). Il soggetto e la storia. Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier.

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Veca: la ragione conversazional e l’implicatura conversazionale della massima dell’altruismo conversazionale. Note su Brecht e la contraddizione di Galileo. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Salvatore Veca (Milano, Lombardia): l Compared institutionally, Salvatore Veca is much closer to H. P. Grice than many of the figures you have been discussing, because both are unmistakably academic philosophers; but they still belong to very different institutional ecologies. Salvatore Veca was born in Rome in 1943, studied philosophy in Milan, and became professor of political philosophy in Florence and then Pavia, where he later served as preside of the Facoltà di Scienze Politiche and directed the Centro interdipartimentale di studi e ricerche in filosofia sociale. He was also president of the Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli and of the Casa della Cultura in Milan, which already shows that his intellectual life stretched beyond the university into the institutions of public culture. [filosofian...ensiero.it] So the clean institutional comparison is this. Grice was a modern Oxford don in the strict collegiate sense: Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s, plus CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Salvatore Veca, by contrast, was an Italian professor of political philosophy in the state-university system, active also in the extra-academic world of foundations, publishing, and civic institutions. Institutionally, Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate world; Salvatore Veca to the world of university chairs and public philosophy. [filosofian...ensiero.it] That institutional difference suits your philosophical comparison very well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising intentions and calculating implicature under conversational norms. Salvatore Veca, by contrast, works at the macro-level of justice, cooperation, public reason, and civic argument. He began with Marx, especially the epistemological dimensions of Marx’s theoretical programme, but then turned decisively toward Anglo-American ethics and political philosophy, especially John Rawls, becoming one of the central figures in the Italian reception of Rawls after the collapse of the old Marxist horizon. The standard biographical sources describe Salvatore Veca exactly in these terms: from Marxist epistemology to Rawlsian justice, public reason, emancipation, and the civil function of philosophy. [filosofian...ensiero.it] So if you want the sharpest formulation, it is this. Grice explains how rational cooperation makes meaning possible in a local exchange. Salvatore Veca explains how cooperation must itself be judged, organised, and moralised within a shared civic space if it is to count as just rather than merely efficient. In your own apt idiom, Grice gives you the inferential machinery of cooperation; Salvatore Veca gives you the normative horizon in which cooperation becomes reciprocity, fairness, and public justification. [filosofian...ensiero.it] That is why your phrase “massima dell’altruismo conversazionale” is actually quite good as a comparative gloss, even if it is not Veca’s own formula. One can say: for Grice, helping in conversation is mainly epistemic and interpretive: make your contribution useful so that others can infer what you mean; for Salvatore Veca, the helping becomes explicitly moral and political: offer reasons in ways that others can accept within fair terms of cooperation. [filosofian...ensiero.it] There are two important corrections, though. First, your final bibliographic line is wrong. I cannot verify “Salvatore Veca (1964). Brecht e la contraddizione di Galileo. aut aut.” The secure early bibliographical anchor is instead Saggio sul programma scientifico di Marx, published in 1972 by il Saggiatore. That is the first major book everyone cites in the biographical records. [filosofian...ensiero.it] Second, if you want a truly central later anchor for the phase you are interested in, the cleanest is [La società giusta] from 1982, which very visibly marks the Rawlsian and justice-centred turn. So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the precise collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Salvatore Veca, by contrast, was an Italian professor of political philosophy, formed in Milan, active in Florence and Pavia, and deeply involved in the public institutions of philosophy and culture beyond the university. Institutionally, Grice belongs to the world of college tutorials and faculty lectures; Salvatore Veca to the world of university chairs, foundations, and public reason. Philosophically, the contrast is equally clear: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of speaker-meaning and implicature, whereas Salvatore Veca theorises the ethical and political conditions under which cooperation, reciprocity, and the exchange of reasons can count as fair and emancipatory. [filosofian...ensiero.it] And the clean bibliographic anchors for your dossier are these. Salvatore Veca. Saggio sul programma scientifico di Marx. Milan: il Saggiatore, 1972. [filosofian...ensiero.it] [Salvatore Veca]. [La società giusta]. Milan: [il Saggiatore], 1982. If you want, I can now give you a tighter one-paragraph entry in your preferred register, or a short note specifically on Veca and Rawls, with your “altruismo conversazionale” gloss sharpened into a public-reason formula.a ragione conversazional e l’implicatura conversazionale della massima dell’altruismo conversazionale – Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how what a speaker means is rationally recoverable by a hearer from what is said plus shared cooperative norms (maxims), so that implicatures are in principle calculable, defeasible, and attributable to the speaker’s intention within a practice of mutually accountable talk. Veca, as your passage frames him (from early Marx-epistemology to Anglo-American ethics and Rawlsian political philosophy, with an emphasis on public reason, justice, and the civil function of philosophy), shifts the emphasis from Grice’s micro-pragmatics of inference to a macro-ethics of cooperation: “altruismo conversazionale” reads like the moralization of the Cooperative Principle, where the point is not just how hearers infer extra meaning, but how interlocutors ought to conduct themselves so that conversation can serve as a fair medium for justification, mutual aid, and the distribution of reasons in a shared civic space. Put together, Grice supplies the formal-pragmatic machinery for explaining how cooperation makes meaning possible (including strategic indirectness), while Veca supplies the political-moral horizon in which cooperation becomes a normative ideal (conversation as a practice of reciprocity and fairness, continuous with Rawls-style public justification): for Grice, the “help” you give is primarily epistemic and interpretive (making your contribution appropriately informative, relevant, and sincere so others can infer what you mean), whereas for Veca the “help” is also ethical and institutional (shaping conversational exchanges so that reasons are offered in ways others can accept, and so that cooperation is not merely efficient but just). la scuola di Roma – filosofia romana – filosofia lazia -- altruism, Hampshire, Hart, Grice, giustizia, cooperare, aiuta, ragione, le mosse della ragione, ragione conversazionale -- Filosofo italiano. M. Milano. Professore di filosofia politica [cf. A. M. Quinton] a Firenze e Pavia, dove è stato preside della facoltà di SCIENZE POLITICHE ed è direttore del Centro interdipartimentale di studi e ricerche in filosofia sociale. È stato presidente della Fondazione Feltrinelli, per la quale ha diretto la collana della Biblioteca europea, e della Casa della Cultura di Milano. Inizialmente interessato al marxismo, in particolare agli aspetti epistemologici delle teorie marxiane, ha in seguito orientato le sue ricerche verso l'etica anglo-americana. In questa nuova fase ha particolarmente studiato la teoria della giustizia di Rawls – che cita Grice, in ‘Justice as fairness – Rawls cita Grice, ‘Personal identity’--, contribuendo a diffonderla in Italia in un tentativo di rinnovamento della cultura di sinistra dopo il crollo del marxismo. Della sua copiosa produzioone saggistica si citano qui: Saggio sul programma scientifico di Marx; La società giusta; Una filosofia pubblica; Etica e politica; Cittadinanza. Riflessioni filosofiche sull'idea di emancipazione; Dell'incertezza. Tre meditazioni filosofiche – cf. Grice, Intenzione ed incertezza -- ; La filosofia politica; La penultima parola e altri enigmi; La bellezza e gl’oppressi. lezioni sull'idea di giustizia; Il giardino delle idee. Quattro passi nel mondo della filosofia; La priorità del male – cf. Grice, ‘Ill-Will’ -- e l'offerta filosofica; Le cose della vita. Congetture, conversazioni e lezioni personali; Dizionario minimo. Le mosse della ragione conversazionale – La mossa della ragione conversazionale – dinamica conversazionale – la dinamica della ragione conversazionale. altruismo, Hampshire, Hart, Grice, giustizia, cooperare e competere,  – ragione – virtu capitali, le mosse della ragione – ragione conversazionale, la massima dell’altruismo conversazionale.  G. and S. came out into the night as if the theatre had not finished with them. S. said, Well, there it is again. G. said, Which it. S. said, Die Wahrheit ist das Kind der Zeit, nicht der Autorität. G. said, Ah. That line. S. said, You do not sound convinced. G. said, I am convinced it is a line. I am not convinced it is a conclusion. S. said, Nor is Brecht. G. said, Good. Because if that line is supposed to rescue the whole affair, it fails. S. said, It is not there to rescue. It is there to begin the trouble. G. said, Yes. It opens nobly and ends in mud. S. said, Which is why it remains in the ear. G. said, In your ear perhaps. S. said, In yours too. You have already repeated it twice. G. said, Repetition is not assent. S. said, No. Sometimes it is irritation with style. G. said, Or envy. S. said, Envy of Brecht. G. said, Of a playwright who can make one line carry both thesis and collapse. S. said, There you are then. G. said, There I am nowhere. I am merely saying he is clever. S. said, More than clever. Witty. G. said, Not the same wit as the refugee piece. S. said, No. The other one is drier. G. said, Drier, and nastier. S. said, You mean the minister. G. said, If you inspect my books, I shall not remain your finance minister. S. said, Wenn du meine Bücher prüfst, werde ich nicht länger dein Finanzminister sein. G. said, Better with Sie than du, surely. S. said, It depends how insolent one wants him. G. said, Insolence there is part of the point. S. said, And the wit lies in the utterer’s calculation. G. said, Provided he is calculating. S. said, Ah. You still think the utterer may not be trading on it. G. said, One must not assume too quickly that he is innocent of his own ambiguity. S. said, Quite. He may know perfectly well that the hearer will take it as threat, whereas he can later retreat into mere literal truth. G. said, Yes. One should reread that whole thing on intention and uncertainty with that in mind. S. said, You are very attached to your Danish minister. G. said, Not attached. Instructed. S. said, By a finance minister. G. said, By a playwright, through a finance minister. S. said, Whereas tonight you were instructed by a scientist. G. said, Through a playwright. S. said, Through the same playwright. G. said, Which is exactly why the comparison is irresistible. S. said, Two lines by the same man. One a witty conditional. One an aphorism. G. said, And different implicatures. S. said, Entirely. G. said, The minister’s line trades on ordinary uptake and later reversal. S. said, While Galileo’s line begins as moral confidence and ends under damage. G. said, Under historical damage. S. said, And theatrical damage. G. said, And perhaps philosophical damage. S. said, There speaks the man who does not yet trust “Kind der Zeit.” G. said, I trust it as drama more than as doctrine. S. said, Because of Zeit. G. said, Because of Zeit and because of Autorität. S. said, Go on. G. said, “Truth is the child of time, not of authority” sounds splendid until one asks whether time is supposed to do the work of warrant. S. said, It does not, of course. G. said, Then the line needs help. S. said, The play gives it help by making it fail to suffice. G. said, Good. Because if one takes it flatly one gets vulgar historicism. S. said, Or merely optimism. G. said, Which is worse in a theatre. S. said, Especially after Galileo retracts. G. said, Yes. Because then the line remains true only in some diminished, scandalous way. S. said, Truth does not come through by triumph. G. said, It comes through by compromise, delay, and recopying. S. said, Very good. You are warming. G. said, I am not warming. I am freezing properly. S. said, German has helped. G. said, German usually does. S. said, It helped Veca too, I suspect. G. said, Ah. Veca. S. said, You had forgotten him for a moment. G. said, I had not forgotten him. I had merely misplaced him under a Torinese cloud. S. said, We shall blame filing, not philosophy. G. said, Very well. It is Veca, 1964, aut aut. S. said, Brecht e la contraddizione di Galileo. G. said, Have you read it. S. said, Not yet. G. said, Then why are you speaking as if you had. S. said, Because one can still ask what sort of thing he must have meant by bringing it to that forum, at that date, under that title. G. said, That is fair. S. said, It is also all we have. G. said, We have the play. S. said, And the date. G. said, And the title. S. said, And Veca. G. said, Yes. Which changes the whole climate. S. said, Entirely. G. said, Less hermeneutic vapour, more public reason. S. said, More civic rationality, less weak ontology. G. said, More responsibility. S. said, And more interest in what happens to truth when it enters common life. G. said, Exactly. Which is why “contraddizione” need not mean a private mental split. S. said, Not merely Galileo thinks one thing and says another. G. said, That is too easy. S. said, Too Ockhamist. G. said, Too Rodin. S. said, Very good. G. said, The contradiction would rather be between rational truth and the public conditions of asserting it. S. said, Which is very much a Veca problem. G. said, Yes. Less “weak thought,” more civic burden. S. said, So Galileo becomes not a saint of inwardness but a compromised public intellectual. G. said, Which Brecht absolutely wants. S. said, And which Italians may hear with extra pressure because Galileo is not a neutral name for them. G. said, Exactly. Brecht may use Galileo as a dramatic instrument. Veca hears Galileo also as an Italian monument. S. said, Brecht to Germany as Galileo to Italy. G. said, Not quite. S. said, Better then. G. said, Brecht uses Galileo to think Germany, while Veca hears in Galileo something Italy cannot hear lightly. S. said, Better indeed. G. said, Thank you. S. said, And then there is the lexical problem. G. said, Widerspruch and Widerruf. S. said, Yes. G. said, Brecht’s play, as far as one can see, is more deeply about Widerruf than about Widerspruch. S. said, Retraction more than contradiction. G. said, Exactly. S. said, But Veca philosophises the dramatic Widerruf as contraddizione. G. said, That would be my guess. S. said, And there the German matters. G. said, Very much. Because wider- is not one thing. S. said, Wider- in Widerspruch goes nicely toward contra-. G. said, Whereas wider- in Widerruf goes toward taking back. S. said, Revocation. G. said, Recantation. S. said, Abiura. G. said, Precisely. S. said, So Veca may be translating not Brecht’s key word but Brecht’s dramatic structure. G. said, Yes. Which is subtler and better. S. said, And perhaps exactly what one wants from aut aut in 1964. G. said, Why 1964 in particular. S. said, Because the timing matters. G. said, It usually does with Brecht. S. said, Galileo first version late thirties. Refugee conversations mainly forty-forty-one. Veca on Galileo in sixty-four. Your English philosopher later taking the refugee line in seventy-one. G. said, Which means that Brecht’s own chronology already separates the two kinds of wit. S. said, Yes. Historical-dramatic contradiction first. Exilic conversational irony later. G. said, Das Leben first, Flüchtlingsgespräche later. S. said, Exactly. G. said, Which means one should not use the refugee line to explain Galileo too quickly. S. said, No. Only to compare. G. said, Good. Because the minister’s line is almost a laboratory case. S. said, And Galileo is not. G. said, The minister line is uttered by the minister himself. S. said, Which is crucial. G. said, Because then one can ask whether he is knowingly exploiting the ambiguity. S. said, And whether the hearer’s first uptake is exactly the uptake he intended. G. said, Whereas Galileo’s line is not built on that sort of delayed reinterpretation. S. said, No. Its force changes because the play changes around it. G. said, A different species of implicature. S. said, Or a different species of theatrical afterlife. G. said, Better. S. said, So at the start, when Galileo says Die Wahrheit ist das Kind der Zeit, nicht der Autorität, what is he doing. G. said, He is moralising. S. said, Better. G. said, He is staking an epistemic principle with the tone of a maxim. S. said, And to whom. G. said, Not to the inquisitors. That would be melodrama. S. said, Quite. G. said, To interlocutors within inquiry, but through them to the audience. S. said, So within the play the addressee is local. G. said, While within the theatre the addressee is historical. S. said, Excellent. G. said, And by curtain call the line cannot simply resound as triumphant. S. said, No. It comes back injured. G. said, Wounded maxim. S. said, Very good. G. said, If it returns at all, it returns through recantation. S. said, Which is why one remembers it uneasily. G. said, Or not at all, which is also legitimate. S. said, You mean your own response. G. said, I mean any intelligent response. S. said, Fair enough. G. said, Brecht is not giving us a slogan to applaud. S. said, He is giving us a sentence the drama will later make insufficient. G. said, Exactly. S. said, And that is perhaps what Veca saw. G. said, That the contradiction is not inside the proposition but between the proposition’s force and the world’s conditions. S. said, Very good. That sounds like him. G. said, Sounds like the Veca we have reconstructed, at least. S. said, Aptly. G. said, Aptly, yes. S. said, So what would Veca be wondering. G. said, He would be wondering how truth can ask for civic courage without presupposing impossible heroism. S. said, And how public reason survives when its spokesman retracts. G. said, And how conversation itself remains possible when authority distorts the conditions of acceptability. S. said, Ah. There you are again. G. said, Where. S. said, At acceptability and acceptance. G. said, I never left them. S. said, Nor should you. G. said, Because that is exactly where Brecht bites. Authority is not the opposite of truth in every sense. It is only the opposite of truth when authority claims to settle truth by fiat. S. said, While rational authority might still be part of truth’s public life. G. said, Exactly. S. said, So “not of authority” is polemical, not metaphysical. G. said, That is how I would save the line. S. said, Save it if you must. Brecht may not require saving. G. said, No. But readers do. S. said, Especially philosophers. G. said, Especially Italians with Galileo. S. said, Especially Veca in 1964, bringing it into aut aut. G. said, Which was clever. S. said, Very clever. G. said, Because he takes Brecht the playwright seriously as a philosopher without making him stop being a playwright. S. said, And he chooses contradiction, not merely recantation, for the title. G. said, Which means he is already interpreting. S. said, And inviting others to interpret. G. said, That is what a good forum does. S. said, What gives, then, at the end. G. said, Nothing gives. That is the beauty. S. said, No closure. G. said, Only a more intelligent discomfort. S. said, And the two Brechtian lines remain. G. said, The witty conditional and the wounded maxim. S. said, Flüchtlingsgespräche and Leben des Galilei. G. said, Later exilic irony and earlier historical drama. S. said, The one perfect for analysis of ambiguity. G. said, The other perfect for analysis of public reason under pressure. S. said, Which is why one leads us to the mechanics of implication. G. said, And the other to Veca. S. said, Nicely put. G. said, Thank you. S. said, Das Leben der... G. said, Yes. S. said, A very nice play. G. said, Brecht never disappoints. S. said, No. Never. G. said, And Veca was clever to bring it to the forum. S. said, Yes. They walked on a little in silence. Then G. said, It is still the minister line that makes me laugh. S. said, Of course. G. said, Why of course. S. said, Because Galileo leaves you morally uneasy, whereas the minister leaves you professionally delighted. G. said, That is unfair. S. said, Which part. G. said, Professionally. S. said, Then let us say conversationally. G. said, Better. S. said, And in any case Brecht would have enjoyed the distinction. G. said, No doubt. S. said, As for Veca, he would probably ask which of the two kinds of wit leaves civic reason in better shape. G. said, And what would you answer. S. said, That the joke sharpens the mind, but the contradiction educates it. G. said, Too good. S. said, Too neat. G. said, Yes. S. said, Then let us keep the older formula. G. said, Which one. S. said, Brecht never disappoints. G. said, No. Never.Grice: Caro Veca, mi lascia sempre perplesso il vecchio reverendo Butler: da un lato predica l’“amore proprio” conversazionale, dall’altro la “benevolenza” come se fossero due poli opposti! Ma non vede che nel principio dell’aiuta conversazionale si sposano entrambe, come due buoni compari al bar sotto casa? In fondo, aiutare gli altri in conversazione non significa forse anche aiutare se stessi a capire meglio? Veca: Grice, lei ha colpito nel segno come un vero maestro di mosse conversazionali! Complimenti: è riuscito a conciliare l’amore proprio e l’altruismo in una sola massima, come a dire che non c’è competizione tra il prendersi cura di sé e il cooperare con gli altri. Anzi, la sua “dinamica della ragione conversazionale” è un esempio di virtù capitale: chi aiuta, cresce; chi cresce, aiuta. Grice: Mi chiedo, Veca, se Butler avesse avuto un po’ più di spirito italiano, forse avrebbe inventato la “massima del caffè condiviso”: dove la conversazione è più ricca se ognuno porta il proprio zucchero e lo offre all’altro! V.: Ah, Grice, questa sarebbe davvero una rivoluzione filosofica! Trasformare la logica del dialogo in una pausa conviviale: amore proprio e benevolenza in tazzina, unendo ragione e piacere. Butler, se la sentisse, forse si concederebbe una risata… e magari anche un brindisi! Veca, Salvatore (1964). Brecht e la contraddizione di Galileo. aut aut.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Grice e Vegetti: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’accademia di Pater – vadum boum ariskant meets Plathegel. Philosophy at Oxford. Note su Technai e filosofia nel Perì tèchnes pseudo-ippocratico. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Mario Vegetti (Milano, Lombardia): Compared institutionally, Mario Vegetti is much closer to H. P. Grice than many of the figures you have been treating, because both are recognisably university philosophers; but they still belong to very different academic worlds. Mario Vegetti was born in Milan in 1937, studied at Pavia as an alumnus of the Collegio Ghislieri, took his laurea in 1959 with a thesis on Thucydides, and from 1975 to 2005 was professor ordinario di storia della filosofia antica at the Università di Pavia. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it] So the clean institutional comparison is this. Grice was an Oxford don in the precise collegiate sense: Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s, plus CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Vegetti, by contrast, was an Italian professor and historian of ancient philosophy in the state-university and Ghislieri-IUSS world of Pavia, not a college tutor in the Oxford residential sense. He taught in the University of Pavia, later also at IUSS Pavia and the Suor Orsola Benincasa advanced school in Naples. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it] That institutional difference fits your philosophical contrast rather well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising intention and inferring implicature under conversational norms. Vegetti, by contrast, works at the macro-level of the historical formation of rational practices: ancient logic, medicine, biology, ethics, civic ideology, and Platonic political thought. The standard biographical and commemorative sources stress that he renewed the history of ancient philosophy by integrating medicine, biology, zoology, anthropology, sociology, and historical epistemology into the account of ancient rationality. [treccani.it], [academia.edu], [ilasl.org], [jstor.org] So if you want the sharpest formulation, it is this. Grice explains how rational coordination works in the living moment of exchange. Vegetti explains how the very conditions of rational discourse—technical vocabularies, civic functions of philosophy, traditions of argument, and scientific styles—are historically built and transmitted across generations. [jstor.org], [academia.edu] That is why your comparison is good, though I would correct one thing in your phrasing. I would not build much on “l’accademia di Pater,” because what is secure and central for Vegetti is not a Walter Pater line, but the Pavia-Ghislieri-Geymonat formation and his lifelong effort to connect ancient philosophy with ancient science and civic life. The main sources consistently present Vegetti as a historian of ancient thought whose work ranges from Hippocrates and Galen to Plato’s Republic, with an explicit conviction about the civil function of philosophy. [treccani.it], [academia.edu] There are also two useful bibliographical clarifications. First, your early title is correct and important. The bibliographical record for Mario Vegetti does indeed list “Technai e filosofia nel Perì tèchnes pseudo-ippocratico” in the Atti dell’Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, 1964, vol. 98, pp. 1–73. [fondazione...ancarlo.it] Second, if you want a later and more representative cluster for the mature Vegetti, the secure major books are Il coltello e lo stilo (1979), L’etica degli antichi (1989), and Guida alla lettura della Repubblica di Platone (1999). [treccani.it], [fondazione...ancarlo.it] So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the strict collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Mario Vegetti, by contrast, was an Italian professor and historian of ancient philosophy, formed at Pavia under the influence of Ludovico Geymonat and professionally defined by the state-university system, especially the Università di Pavia. Institutionally, Grice belongs to the world of college tutorials and faculty lectures; Vegetti to the world of university chairs, Ghislieri, and the long historical reconstruction of ancient rationality. Philosophically, the contrast is equally clear: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of speaker-meaning and implicature, whereas Vegetti investigates the historical and civic conditions under which rational discourse, technical language, and philosophical argument become possible at all. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it], [jstor.org], [academia.edu] And if you want the neatest one-line dossier formula, I would suggest this: Grice theorises rational uptake in conversation; Vegetti historicises the scientific, civic, and institutional traditions that make rational discourse possible. [jstor.org], [academia.edu] If you like, I can now give you a tighter one-paragraph entry in your own register, with the 1964 Technai essay as the bibliographic anchor and the “academy” motif reduced to what is securely Vegettian.la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’accademia di Pater. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how what a speaker means is rationally recoverable by a hearer from what is said plus shared cooperative norms (maxims), yielding implicatures that are in principle calculable, defeasible, and answerable to reasons; conversational reason is thus a micro-pragmatic account of how interlocutors coordinate on intended significance without making everything explicit. Vegetti, as a historian of ancient philosophy and science with a marked concern for the civic function of philosophy and for the scientific/intellectual texture of Greek culture (including medicine and the technical vocabularies of τέχνη), shifts the focus from Grice’s normativity of inference in everyday exchange to the long-form normativity of intellectual traditions: the “reason” at stake is how a community (the Academy, in the broad classical sense) stabilizes meanings, disciplines argument, and transmits conceptual tools across time, so that what is “implicated” is often a learned background of practices, genres, and institutional aims rather than a one-off conversational calculation. Put together, Grice models the local mechanics by which speakers responsibly mean more than they say in a given talk-exchange; Vegetti exemplifies the historical and institutional conditions that make such meaning-making possible at all—how technical languages (medical, philosophical, scientific) are formed, how criteria of relevance and clarity are educated, and how reason functions as a public practice—so that Grice’s implicature looks like the micro-level counterpart of Vegetti’s macro-level picture of rational discourse as cultivated, tradition-bearing, and civically consequential. vadum boum –ariskant meets Plathegel. Philosophy at Oxford could only be studied under the classics, and philosophy indeed introduced upon five terms completed towards the degree: B. A. Lit. Hum., which become after seven years of matriculation and paying the fee, the M. A. Lit. Hum., which was the highest degree earned by Grice. Filosofo milanese. Filosofo lombardo. Filosofo italiano. Essential Italian philosopher. Filosofo italiano. Storico della filosofia italiano. M. Milano. Alunno del collegio Ghislieri di Pavia, si è laureato nell’ateneo della città con una tesi su Tucidide, tra i suoi maestri annoverava L. Geymonat. Professore ordinario di Storia della filosofia antica dal 1975 al 2005 sempre a Pavia, è considerato come uno dei più validi studiosi di Platone a livello internazionale. Occupatosi di storia della filosofia e della scienza antiche, della cultura greca, è stato attento agli aspetti scientifici della cultura classica, ha riconosciuto l’importanza dell’ellenismo per la scienza, oltre che per la filosofia. V. ha anche approfondito i rapporti tra il pensiero greco e la religione cristiana ed era convinto della funzione civile della filosofia. Tra i suoi numerosi scritti si ricordano: Il coltello e lo stilo, L'etica degli antichi e Guida alla lettura della Repubblica di Platone. Insegna a Pavia. Si laurea a Pavia con la tesi, “La storiografia di Tucidide,” quale alunno del collegio Ghislieri. Libero docente e successivamente professore incaricato in storia della filosofia antica. Professore di questa disciplina a Pavia dove ricopre più volte il ruolo di direttore nel dipartimento di filosofia. Docente presso la scuola superiore IUSS di Pavia e la scuola europea di studi avanzati dell'Università degli Studi Suor Orsola Benincasa di Napoli. Membro del Collegium Politicum e socio dell'Accademia di scienze morali e politiche di Napoli. ariskant, plathegel, il platonismo oxoniense di Pater.  Grice: Mario, ho sentito parlare spesso di Walter Pater, soprattutto nei corridoi di Oxford. Dicono che il suo platonismo abbia influenzato generazioni di pensatori, anche al di là della Manica. Ma, confesso, la sua "accademia" resta per me un po' misteriosa. Tu che sei uno storico della filosofia, come lo descriveresti? Vegetti: Grice, hai colto nel segno. Pater rappresenta una figura peculiare nell’ambiente oxoniense: il suo platonismo è più estetico che metafisico, una sorta di invito a vivere la bellezza come esperienza filosofica. Per lui, il pensiero antico diventa una forma di "vita raffinata", una via alla ricerca del senso attraverso l’arte e la cultura, senza mai perdere la leggerezza della conversazione. Grice: Mi affascina questa idea di filosofia come stile di vita, Mario. Forse Pater riprende proprio la tradizione greca, dove la filosofia era vissuta prima ancora che insegnata. Sarebbe stato un ottimo “giocatore” nel nostro Gruppo di Gioco! Ma dimmi: credi che questa prospettiva possa dialogare con l’implicatura conversazionale, quella dinamica sottile che anima ogni scambio? V.: Assolutamente, Grice. Pater, a suo modo, valorizza la conversazione come forma di ricerca, dove ogni parola è una sfumatura, ogni implicatura un invito a esplorare nuove interpretazioni. La sua accademia milanese, potremmo dire, è come quella oxoniense: un luogo dove si coltiva il dialogo tra bellezza e ragione, e dove la filosofia diventa un gioco sottile tra ciò che si dice e ciò che si intende. In fondo, la “ragione conversazionale” è la vera anima del pensiero, sia antico che moderno. Vegetti, Mario (1964). Technai e filosofia nel Perì tèchnes pseudo-ippocratico. Atti dell’Accademia delle Scienze di Torino.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Velleio – Ossia: Grice e Velleio: la ragione converazionale a Roma –- l’orto divino – Note su Historiae Romanae ad M. Vinicium cos. libri duo. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Velleio Patercolo (Roma, Lazio). Institutionally, Grice and Velleius Paterculus are not comparable in the academic sense at all. Grice’s formula is exact in the modern Oxford sense. Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s means a college office with tutorials, student responsibility, and membership in the governing life of the college. CUF University Lecturer in philosophy means a university-wide faculty appointment. So Grice combines the two classic Oxford functions: college tutor and university lecturer. Velleius Paterculus belongs to an entirely different world. He was not a don, not a fellow, and not a university lecturer. He was a Roman soldier, senator, and historian writing under the early Principate, and his authority comes from military service, political office, and literary historiography rather than from any school or chair. Standard references place [Velleius Paterculus] in the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, serving under [Tiberius] and later composing the [Historia Romana] dedicated to [Marcus Vinicius]. So the clean institutional contrast is this. Grice was a modern Oxford philosopher with a dual college-and-university role. [Velleius Paterculus], by contrast, was an ancient Roman historian and political-military man of letters, not an academic office-holder of any modern sort. That institutional difference fits the intellectual contrast quite well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising intentions and inferring implicatures under shared conversational norms. [Velleius Paterculus], by contrast, works at the macro-level of Roman rhetorical historiography: how a narrative shapes civic judgment, moral alignment, and political memory through exempla, praise, blame, compression, and evaluative framing. He does not theorise “conversational meaning”; he practises a form of Roman public prose in which the reader is guided toward a preferred evaluative uptake before any local inference is even isolated. The major summaries describe [Velleius Paterculus] as a rhetorically coloured historian whose surviving work is a compressed Roman history with marked encomiastic tendencies, especially toward [Tiberius]. So if you want the sharpest formulation, it is this. Grice explains how one utterance can mean more than it literally says. [Velleius Paterculus] shows how a whole Roman historical narrative can pre-shape what counts as persuasive, noble, or blameworthy before any single inferential step is extracted. That is why your long classroom passage on “magis quia volebant Romani” is actually very good as a reading exercise. It captures exactly the kind of Velleian rhetoric that matters: the sentence is not just a report but a morally angled presentation of Roman appetite, public decision, and retrospective explanation. In a Gricean idiom, one could say that Velleius does not merely say what happened; he manages the reader’s uptake of why it happened and how it ought to be judged. There are, however, two important corrections. First, “Roma, Lazio” should not be given as his birthplace. His precise birthplace is not securely known, and the standard references associate him with Campania through family background more than with Rome as place of origin. [Velleius Paterculus]’s place of birth is not securely established in the standard references; his family is associated with Campania rather than with Rome as a simple biographical heading. Second, your final bibliographic line “DCCLXXXIII A.U.C. … Romae” is too confident as a printed-style citation. The safe bibliographic fact is that the surviving work is the [Historia Romana], in two books, dedicated to [Marcus Vinicius], composed around 30 CE. Modern reference works place the composition of [Velleius Paterculus]’s surviving history around 30 CE, dedicated to [Marcus Vinicius]. So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the precise collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s College and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. [Velleius Paterculus], by contrast, was an ancient Roman historian, soldier, and senator, active in the world of imperial service and rhetorical historiography rather than in any university system. Institutionally they are not comparable. Intellectually, however, the contrast is illuminating: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of meaning in conversation, whereas [Velleius Paterculus] exemplifies a civic-historical rhetoric in which shared evaluative frames—virtus, disciplina, fear, ambition, dynastic praise—shape the reader’s interpretation before any local implicature is separately calculated. And the clean bibliographic anchor for your dossier is this: [Velleius Paterculus]. [Historia Romana] ad [M. Vinicium], libri duo. Composed c. 30 CE. If you want, I can now give you a tighter one-paragraph entry in your preferred register, or a short note just on the “magis quia volebant Romani” sentence as a perfect example of Roman pre-shaping of uptake.Per V. la ragione converazionale a Roma –-splende nell’orto divino. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats communication as an inferentially disciplined practice in which what is meant (including implicatures) is recoverable by a rational hearer on the assumption of cooperative norms; “reason” is local, intention-centered, and answerable to what a competent participant could justify from what is said plus context. “Velleio” (Velleius Paterculus, c. 19 BCE–after 30 CE), by contrast, is not a theorist of conversational inference but a rhetorically trained historian whose Roman “meaning” is produced through literary scene-setting, exempla, and moralized narration: the “garden” trope in your passage (“hortus divinus”) fits Rome’s broader habit of casting civic order and virtus as something cultivated, where sermo and historia are arts that grow citizens rather than merely transmit propositions. So the comparison is that Grice analyzes how rational interlocutors bridge from utterance to intended content under norms like relevance, while Velleius exemplifies how Roman rhetorical discourse makes meaning by cultivating shared evaluative frames (virtus, felicitas, disciplina, decadence) that guide interpretation before any particular inference is drawn; in Grice, reason governs the step from said to implicated, whereas in Velleius, “reason” (ratio) is more like a civic-aesthetic cultivation that pre-shapes what counts as a persuasive or intelligible account of Rome, with narrative rhetoric doing the work that maxims do in Grice. (Online specifics relevant to your passage: Velleius’ praenomen is actually uncertain in scholarship; and your etymology note about “Gaius/C.” aligns with standard reference treatments of the praenomen Gaius, including the abbreviation C. from older Caius.). Grice: “I often wondered if ‘Gaius’ meant something in Roman, since every father felt like naming his son Gaius! Those who are in a position to inform me tell me that it may derive from ‘gaudere’ – meaning ‘to rejoice,’ or to be glad. This could indicate a positive sentiment associated with the bird of a male child. But the namemight have originated from ‘Gavius,’ also used by the Oscans – an ancient Italic people. Some propose an Etruscan orgin for the name, though evidence is lacking. One folk etymology, supported by a Roman wedding voew – VBI TV GAIVS EGO GAIA – as thou art Gaius, I am Gaia – links ‘Gaius’ to ‘Gaia,’ the Greek word for ‘earth. In this context, it could signify ‘man of the earth, ‘referring to the agricultural significance within Roman society. In any case, ‘Gaius’ was the second-most common prae-nomen throughout Roman history, surpassed only by Lucius. It was so widespread across all social classes that it became a generic germ for any name – ‘guy’ – just as ‘Gaia’ was for any woman. The name was used by prominent figures like Gaius Julius Caesar, an Emperor Caligula – born Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus. The traditional abbreviation for ‘Gaius’ in Roman inscription was ‘C,’ reflecting the earlier spelling ‘Caius,’ from a period when the letters C and G were not distinguished. The name persisted after the collapse of the Roman Empire, and continues to be used in various forms in modern times, with regional variations like ‘Gaio’ (Italian), ‘Cayo’ (Spanish), and “Caio’ (Portuguese).” Keywords: Roma antica. “At that time, at Oxford, philosophy could not be studied but under the classics. Philosophy started to be studied fie terms into your degree. Your degree was for a B. A. Lit. Hum., which upon seven years from matriculation could become, if you pay the fee, the M. A. Lit. Hum., which was Grice’s highest earned degree. He then became Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy at St. John’s. politics. Roma antica. G.  Sir, must we really begin with “Et sub idem tempus”? M.  Yes. You may not begin where you are comfortable. You will begin where he begins. G.  He begins as if he were already bored. M.  He begins as if he were already certain. Read. G.  Et sub idem tempus, magis quia volebant Romani, quidquid de Carthaginiensibus diceretur credere quam quia credenda adferebantur, statuit senatus Carthaginem exscindere. B.  (whisper) Ex-scindere sounds like skinning. M.  If you laugh, you will translate. Continue, G. G.  “Sub idem tempus” is “about the same time.” M.  Not “about.” Under. He puts events under time like hats under pegs. “At the same time” will do. G.  Et sub idem tempus—then the sneer: magis quia volebant Romani… M.  Stop. That “magis” is the key. More because they wanted. G.  So the Senate “resolved” out of desire, not out of evidence. M.  Exactly. And he makes the desire Roman: volebant Romani. G.  “The Romans wanted” to believe whatever was said about the Carthaginians. M.  Quidquid de Carthaginiensibus diceretur. Whatever might be said. G.  Diceretur—subjunctive. As if rumours have their own grammar. M.  Rumours do. They live in the subjunctive. B.  Sir, does “quidquid” mean “any old thing”? M.  It means you may go quiet now. G? G.  Credere quam quia credenda adferebantur—“rather than because things worth believing were being brought forward.” M.  Good. And notice: he does not say the reports were false; he says they were not credenda. G.  So he condemns Rome’s epistemology without defending Carthage. M.  That is how an historian can be moral without being sympathetic. G.  And then statuit senatus Carthaginem exscindere. M.  Carthaginem—object. Exscindere—to root out. Not merely defeat. G.  “Destroy” is too mild, then. M.  “Level,” “tear down,” “extirpate.” Choose a word that sounds like policy. G.  He then whips to Scipio: Ita eodem tempore P. Scipio Aemilianus… M.  Ita. So. As if the destruction naturally produces the man. G.  Aedilitatem petens consul creatus est. B.  That’s the funny part. M.  It is not funny. It is Roman. He was running for aedile and got made consul. That is a constitutional fact, not a joke. G.  It still reads like an up-jumped promotion. M.  Yes. Because Rome is always in a hurry when it is frightened. G.  Vir avitis P. Africani paternisque L. Pauli virtutibus simillimus… M.  Now we enter the hymn. G.  Avitis… paternis… he’s stacking lineage. M.  Paterculus is stacking lineage, yes. And no, it does not mean he was a “little father.” B.  (laughter) M.  If you laugh again, you will parse “paternisque.” G.  Paternis-que: “and in his father’s.” He is most like his grandfather and father in virtues. M.  Virtutibus simillimus. Not merely similar; most similar. G.  Omnibus belli ac togae dotibus… M.  War and toga: soldier and citizen. G.  Dotibus: endowments, gifts. M.  You see how he makes morality sound like inheritance. Dotes. G.  Ingeniique ac studiorum eminentissimus saeculi sui. M.  The most outstanding in talent and studies of his age. He’s not subtle. G.  He then makes him sinless: qui nihil in vita nisi laudandum aut fecit aut dixit ac sensit. B.  “Sensed”! M.  “Thought,” boy. Sensit—felt, thought, judged. Continue. G.  Nothing in life except what is praiseworthy did he do or say or think. M.  He writes as if he were giving evidence in court. G.  For a consul. M.  Precisely. This is addressed to a consul. The whole tone is official. G.  Then the parenthesis of adoption: quem Paulo genitum, adoptatum a Scipione Africani filio diximus. M.  He reminds you he already said it. Diximus. We said. G.  He does that to make the narrative feel continuous. M.  And to make disagreement feel like forgetfulness. G.  So, Sir, the implicature is: Rome destroys Carthage because it wants to believe rumours; but Rome also produces Scipio as its virtue-solution. M.  Yes. His historian’s intent is to praise Rome’s men while permitting a small rebuke to Rome’s credulity. B.  That’s very Roman. M.  It is very Roman, and it is very Paterculus. He cannot resist the imperial posture. G.  Even “magis quia volebant Romani” is not anti-Roman; it’s paternal scolding. M.  Exactly. He rebukes them like a loyal servant. G.  And “quidquid de Carthaginiensibus diceretur” is loaded: Carthaginians are the proper objects of Roman suspicion. M.  That’s the Roman side of the sentence. The Carthaginians are a grammar of threat. G.  And “credenda adferebantur” makes Rome’s desire the problem, not Carthage’s deeds. M.  Which is how propaganda is sometimes smuggled: you sound fair by blaming your own side’s motives while still endorsing the outcome. B.  Sir, is “exscindere” common? M.  Common enough when you want it to sound surgical. Rome always liked to sound like a surgeon. G.  Then “aedilitatem petens consul creatus est” is also loaded: it suggests extraordinary merit. M.  Or extraordinary fear. The Senate elevates the man because it has decided on a total act and needs a total agent. G.  So, in ordinary language, the first sentence says: “They meant to destroy Carthage anyway, and they’d believe anything that justified it.” M.  That is close. But keep it Latin: volebant… credere. G.  Wanted to believe. M.  Yes. Wanting to believe is always a confession. G.  And the “quam quia credenda adferebantur” says the evidence wasn’t compelling. M.  Or wasn’t even offered properly. Adferebantur—“were brought.” It makes evidence look like a parcel. B.  Like the post. M.  Like silence. G.  Now the Scipio passage: it’s a panegyric in miniature. M.  And it has the rhythm of Roman official praise. Belli ac togae. G.  It’s like an inscription. M.  Exactly. A schoolboy should hear the stone. G.  Then the triple “fecit… dixit… sensit” is an intensification. M.  It closes the exits. No act, no word, no thought unpraiseworthy. B.  That’s impossible. M.  Yes. That is why it’s praise. G.  Sir, do we translate “sensus” as “thought” or “felt”? M.  In this sentence, “thought.” In another, “felt.” That is why Latin is educational. G.  And “quem Paulo genitum…” is a reminder that the bloodline is complicated by adoption. M.  A Roman speciality: natural father, adoptive father, and the state as the true parent. G.  So Paterculus is not “little father” but a man writing like Rome’s nephew. M.  Precisely. Now: parse “avitis” and “paternisque” properly. G.  Avitis—ablative plural, “in his grandfather’s [virtues].” Paternisque—“and in his father’s.” M.  Good. Now: what does “magis quia volebant Romani… quam quia…” do rhetorically? G.  It makes the Romans look irrational, but also makes the decision appear already settled. M.  Exactly. It says: the Senate’s decision is not a response, it’s a fulfilment of appetite. G.  And “statuit senatus” gives it authority despite the appetite. M.  That is the Roman trick: motive can be shabby; procedure must look clean. B.  Like school rules. M.  Like Latin. Continue. G.  So, Sir, do we say he “resolved” or “decreed”? M.  Decreed is better: statuit is firm. G.  And “exscindere” is to tear out by the roots. M.  Yes. G.  So the implicature is annihilation. M.  It’s not even implicature. It’s explicit. B.  Sir, are we allowed to say “Carthago delenda est”? M.  Only if you want to be lazy. Paterculus is doing it without Cato’s slogan. G.  He does it by describing Rome’s psychology. M.  Yes. That’s the historian’s cleverness: he gives you motives as if they were explanations. G.  Then he gives you Scipio as the moral emblem. M.  And he ties Scipio to Africanus and Paulus, so Rome’s virtue looks hereditary. G.  Even though adoption complicates heredity. M.  Rome loves that complication; it lets virtue be both blood and institution. G.  So, finally, the Latin is biased: Carthage is the object; Rome is the agent; Scipio is the saint. M.  Exactly. And that is why you must translate it soberly: the sobriety is your only revenge. B.  What’s the homework, Sir? M.  For you? Translate “qui nihil in vita nisi laudandum aut fecit aut dixit ac sensit” and make it sound as smug as it is. G.  And for me? M.  For you, G., no translation. Only this: explain why “magis quia volebant Romani” is more dangerous than “quia credebant.” G.  Because it makes belief voluntary. M.  Exactly. Now stop laughing and start thinking.GRICEVS: Salvete, Vellei! Quid tibi videtur de ortu Romano? Dic mihi, quid significat tibi “hortus divinus”? VELLEIVS: Ave, Gricevs! Hortus divinus mihi est locus ubi ratio convenit cum natura—ubi philosophia Romanorum radices in terra invenit, et virtus colitur sicut plantae in agro. In orto divino, sermo fit fructus, et sapientia crescit inter arbores et flores. GRICEVS: Pulchra est tua descriptio, Velleivs. Credo etiam, ut in Oxfordiae hortis, philosophia inter lapides antiquos et folia viridia semper nova interrogationes generat. In colloquio nostro, rationem quasi plantam irrigamus, ut floreat in mente et in vita. VELLEIVS: Ita vero, Gricevs! Conversatio nostra, sicut hortus, semper mutatur et renovatur. Ubi ratio et natura se coniungunt, ibi invenimus veram felicitatem Romanam—gaudium quod nomen meum portat. In fine, omnis sermo, velut semen, fert spem novae sapientiae. This was gens Velleia. What do we know about it? Other members? Yes. If the name is Velleius Paterculus, the gentilicium points most naturally to the gens Velleia, not Vettia and certainly not any Agoria. What we know, however, is less than one might wish if one imagines a fully furnished Republican gens with a long parade of famous bearers. The gens Velleia is not among the most loudly monumental Roman gentes in the way the Julii, Claudii, Cornelii, Aemilii, or Fabii are. It is attested, and Velleius Paterculus is by far the best-known bearer for most readers, but it is not one of those families whose name alone opens a huge public gallery of canonical figures. That said, Velleius Paterculus himself is enough to show that the family belonged within the Roman municipal and political world of some standing. His own background is tied to Campania rather than securely to Rome as birthplace, and his family had military and senatorial connections. So one should not think of gens Velleia as obscure in the sense of socially negligible; only as less illustriously documented than the grand textbook houses. As for other members, the first thing to say is that one must distinguish between three different levels. First there is the strict gens-name itself, Velleius. Second there are family members known through Velleius Paterculus’ own autobiographical or historical references. Third there are merely similar or derivative names in inscriptions, which may or may not help much. On the stricter family side, the most relevant figures are his father and grandfather, both associated with military and public service, though not all details are equally abundant or secure in the surviving evidence. Velleius himself makes use of family memory, and that is one reason his Historia Romana has that peculiarly Roman mixture of public history and inherited civic self-placement. In other words, with Velleius one does not merely have a historian detached from pedigree; one has a historian whose own standing is part of the Roman frame from which he writes. So if you ask, “Other members of the gens Velleia?”, the sober answer is: yes, but the family is not famous for a large canonical roster available at a glance. The nearest immediately meaningful “other members” are those in Paterculus’ own line, especially the father and grandfather he uses as part of his social and moral placement. Beyond that, one enters the less rewarding territory of prosopographical reconstruction and scattered epigraphic names. That also helps with your Grice-and-Velleius contrast. Velleius is not an academic office-holder and not comparable institutionally to Grice as Fellow, Tutor, and CUF Lecturer. But he is very Roman precisely in the old familial sense: military service, senatorial life, historical writing, and inherited public standing. If one wanted a driest possible formula, it would be this: Velleius belongs to the gens Velleia in the ordinary Roman nominal sense, but the gens is much more modestly illuminated than the great aristocratic houses; his real importance lies less in a long famous family roll than in the way his own work lets one glimpse a Roman family of service, memory, and status writing itself into history. And one small philological caution. If someone says “gens Velleia,” that is perfectly reasonable as a learned reconstruction from Velleius; but in actual discussion people will far more often speak simply of Velleius Paterculus and his family than dwell on “the gens Velleia” as though it were one of the marquee Republican clans. If you like, I can now do one of two things in chat only. I can give you a compact prosopographical note on Velleius Paterculus’ father and grandfather, keeping strictly to what is usually considered secure. Or I can give you a dry Grice–Speranza paragraph on why Velleius matters more as a Roman family-historian than as a mere name under a gens heading.Velleio Patercolo (DCCLXXXIII A.U.C.). Historiae Romanae ad M. Vinicium cos. libri duo. Romae.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali Grice e Venanzio: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’estetica – Sibley e le implicature estetiche. Good, kalloskagathia, kallon agathon, Sibley. Grice on multiplicity – beauty, beautiful.  Note su Elogio di Pietro Metastasio. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Girolamo Venanzio (Portogruaro, Venezia, Veneto). Institutionally, Girolamo Venanzio is not comparable to H. P. Grice in the Oxford collegiate sense, even though both belong, in different ways, to teaching cultures. Grice’s formula is precise in the modern Oxford way. Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s means a college office with tutorials, students, and membership in the governing life of the college. CUF University Lecturer in philosophy means a university-wide faculty appointment. So Grice combines the two characteristic Oxford functions: college tutor and university lecturer. Girolamo Venanzio belongs to a very different world: early nineteenth-century Veneto, first shaped by seminary schooling in Portogruaro, then by legal studies at Padua, and later by a life divided between public administration, letters, and philosophy rather than by an Oxford-style residential tutorial office. The authority records and bibliographical sources identify Girolamo Venanzio as born in Portogruaro in 1791 and deceased there in 1872. A contemporary biographical note also states that he graduated in law at Padua in 1811 and later turned, especially after 1830, toward literature and philosophy. [nbm.region....veneto.it], [ebay.it], [picclick.it] So the clean institutional contrast is this. Grice was a modern Oxford don with a dual college-and-university role. Girolamo Venanzio, by contrast, was a nineteenth-century Venetian-Italian man of letters, jurist, and philosophical writer, shaped by seminary and university study, public administration, and literary publication rather than by a college tutorial system. [nbm.region....veneto.it], [ebay.it], [picclick.it] That institutional difference fits your philosophical comparison rather well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising intentions and inferring implicatures under conversational norms. Girolamo Venanzio, by contrast, as your note suggests, moves into a discourse of rhetoric and then aesthetics where the “more-than-said” is not primarily a matter of formal implicature but of cultivated sensibility, literary mediation, and shared appreciative recognition. The secure bibliographic record confirms Saggio di estetica del dottore Girolamo Venanzio from 1857, printed by Tip. Castion, and also confirms the much earlier Elogio di Pietro Metastasio from 1813. [archive.org], [books.google.com], [onlinebook....upenn.edu] So if you want the sharpest formulation, it is this. Grice explains how conversational reason regulates implied meaning in ordinary talk. Girolamo Venanzio exemplifies how reason and cultivated sensibility regulate implied meaning in aesthetic and literary discourse. Or, still more sharply: Grice theorises how we infer what a speaker means. Venanzio shows how we are invited to see, feel, and judge more than is explicitly stated in the language of praise, beauty, and literary criticism. That is why your Venanzio-Sibley bridge is actually very good, even if Sibley is of course much later. Aesthetic language often depends on a socially educated responsiveness to salience, nuance, and shared sensibility, not on a strict rule that mechanically yields the predicate. In that respect, aesthetic discourse can be read as a different but related regime of “more-than-said.” Two factual corrections are worth making. First, the final bibliographic line in your prompt should be corrected. It should not be “Elogio di Trapassi.” The attested title is Elogio di Pietro Metastasio, published in 1813 by Tipografia Bettoni. [onlinebook....upenn.edu] Second, the 1857 aesthetics title should be cited in its fuller form when possible: Saggio di estetica del dottore Girolamo Venanzio, Tip. Castion, 1857. [archive.org], [books.google.com] So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the precise collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s College and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Girolamo Venanzio, by contrast, was a nineteenth-century Venetian-Italian jurist, man of letters, and philosophical writer, trained at Padua and active through public administration and literary-philosophical publication rather than through a tutorial-collegiate office. Institutionally they are very different. Intellectually, however, the contrast is illuminating: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of meaning in conversation, whereas Girolamo Venanzio, especially through Saggio di estetica, exemplifies a discourse in which meaning is guided by aesthetic recognition, cultivated taste, and the shared capacity to perceive what evaluative language only partly makes explicit. [nbm.region....veneto.it], [archive.org], [books.google.com], [onlinebook....upenn.edu] And the clean bibliographic anchors for your dossier are these: Girolamo Venanzio. Elogio di Pietro Metastasio. Tipografia Bettoni, 1813. [onlinebook....upenn.edu] Girolamo Venanzio. Saggio di estetica del dottore Girolamo Venanzio. Tip. Castion, 1857. [archive.org], [books.google.com] If you want, I can now give you a short polished paragraph in your own register, with the Metastasio title corrected and the aesthetics comparison tightened.V. studia  la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’estetica – Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how a hearer can rationally recover what a speaker means (including implicatures) from what is said plus shared norms of cooperative talk; “reason” here is local, inferential, and disciplined by expectations like relevance, informativeness, and sincerity. Venanzio (as the Portogruaro intellectual your passage evokes, with his training in rhetoric and his later engagement with aesthetics) is a useful foil because aesthetic talk is exactly where Grice’s model meets a distinctive kind of “more-than-said”: when we call something graceful, balanced, harsh, or beautiful, we often rely on a shared sensibility and on contextually guided suggestion rather than strict criteria, and this resembles the way implicatures depend on communal uptake rather than explicit rule-following. If you bring in Sibley’s familiar point that aesthetic predicates are not mechanically deducible from non-aesthetic descriptions and require “taste” or perceptual sensitivity, then the contrast sharpens: Grice treats the step from said to meant as a rational calculation constrained by conversational norms, whereas Venanzio-style aesthetic discourse (in the orbit of Sibley) highlights a different governance of meaning—less like an algorithm of inference and more like the socially educated capacity to see what counts as salient in an object and to let evaluative language do its work indirectly, often by inviting an audience to “see it that way.” In short, Grice models how reason regulates implied content in ordinary conversation; Venanzio, read through aesthetics, foregrounds how reason and sensibility jointly regulate the implied content of evaluative description, where the success condition is not only correct inference but shared appreciative recognition. More specific online notes relevant to your passage (not inserted into your document) Girolamo Venanzio (1791–1872) was born in Portogruaro; he graduated in law at Padua (1811) and is listed by Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti as a member (elected 1840). He published works including Elogio di Pietro Metastasio (1813) and Saggio di estetica (1857), and is listed in the Online Books Page and Google Books/HathiTrust catalogues. Sibley e le implicature estetiche.” Good, kalloskagathia, kallon agathon, Sibley. Grice on multiplicity – beauty, beautiful. Dov'e nato gli e dato a precettore Fortis, prete onesto, né senza ingegno. A' tredici anni studiò nel patrio seminario belle lettere e filosofia; ed è ben curioso a pensare, come a quel tempo, che pur anch'esso gloriavasi di civiltà e cominciava a combattere la tirannia de vecchii errori, non mancasse più d'uno che con ra-gionamento, meglio specioso che giusto, sentenziasse doversi apprendere prima filosofia e poscia retorica, perché, innanzi di scrivere, era debito d'imparare a pensare. Una fedele immagine di quelle scuole ci presenta lo stesso V. In retorica continue traduzioni dei classici latini, affatto pedantesche, per non dire meccaniche; della letteratura italiana neppure un cenno; Dante, Petrarca, Tasso, Ariosto, nomi ignoti; non si prefiggeva allo scrivere italiano altro modello, che il Cesarotti nei versi, ed il Thomas nella prosa; onde chi produceva versi più sonanti, o periodi più tronchi, più smozzicati, più era lodato. In FILOSOFIA, la lettura di qualche TESTO LATINO DI LOGICA E DI METAFISICA, che poscia si mandava alla memoria senza bene intenderlo; qualche libamento di fisica; le quattro operazioni fondamentali dell'aritmetica ed una occhiata al calcolo delle frazioni; le prime proposizioni d'Euclide; a ciò tutto riducevasi allora il tirocinio filosofico'». qualche cosa. Il Venanzio abbracciò coll'acutezza dell'ingegno e con solerte diligenza la filosofia e la giurisprudenza: nella quale fu addottorato; e fra la gravità degli studii continui, che lo fecero prematuramente vecchio, fra le publiche cure e l'esemplare affetto alla sua famiglia può dirsi ch'egli abbia spesa la vita. Filocallia, callofilo, il bello, l’estetica, Sibley. G.  What are you reading with that expression of dutiful suspicion? S.  “Elogio di Pietro Metastasio.” G.  That’s a remarkably compact title for something that pretends to be solemn. S.  It’s the “di” that makes it dangerous. G.  Which “di”? S.  Both. “Elogio di” and “di Pietro Metastasio.” G.  Good. “Elogio di” first: a praise of. Almost a eulogy. S.  Except we reserve “eulogy” for the dead and “elogio” can be for the living, inconveniently. G.  Oxford likes to praise the living as if they were dead. It saves jealousy. S.  So “elogio” is praise without the hearse. G.  Now the second “di”: “di Pietro Metastasio.” Who is being praised? A man, a name, or a mask? S.  A mask, surely. Metastasio is a pseudonym. G.  Blatantly. It practically tells you it’s a pseudonym. Meta-stasio: beyond stasis, beyond standing still, beyond the man. S.  You’re being etymological, not biographical. G.  I’m being tidy. If the name advertises transformation, it invites the suspicion that it is not the baptismal certificate talking. S.  Then the “elogio” is of the literary persona, not of the man. G.  But a persona cannot float free of a person forever. S.  That is exactly the point. The author praises “Pietro Metastasio” as if that were a stable entity, but it’s a crafted public object. G.  So we should ask: Elogio di chi? S.  Di Pietro Metastasio. G.  No, no. Di chi, in the deeper sense: di Trapassi. S.  You remember the real name. G.  I remember that Metastasio is not the real name; Trapassi is the one people use to puncture the grandeur. S.  If the title were “Elogio di Trapassi,” it would be a different game. G.  It would be praise of the man who passes across, rather than of the man who metastasises. S.  Yet that would also be a trick. Because you can’t praise the “real man” without praising the literary production that makes him visible. G.  Precisely. There is no Trapassi you can reach without stepping on Metastasio’s stage. S.  So the title’s “di” is a convenient blur: it lets you praise the name and thereby praise the works, while pretending you’re praising a person. G.  A title as a safe compromise between biography and bibliography. S.  And perhaps between sincerity and opportunism. G.  Now, a question in English: what is “Elogio di Pietro Metastasio” in our tongue? S.  “In praise of Pietro Metastasio.” G.  Sounds like an after-dinner speech. S.  Or a school prize-day. G.  Or a funeral with the body omitted. S.  Which is exactly what the author wants: ceremony without inconvenience. G.  But why praise the persona? Why not praise the poems? S.  Because praising the persona is a way of praising the poems without having to quote them. G.  Quoting is always risky; it allows checking. S.  And an elogio is not meant to be checked. G.  It is meant to be nodded at. S.  Like most “occasional” literature. G.  Now let’s play your game. Suppose: “Elogio di George Eliot.” S.  Which is praise of a persona, not of Miss Evans. G.  Exactly. And if you titled it “Elogio di Mary Ann Evans,” you’d sound either intimate or aggressive. S.  Or both: intimate aggression is the English speciality. G.  And yet everyone knows the work under “George Eliot.” So the elogio would be forced back to the persona anyway. S.  Because that is the public object that can be praised without embarrassment. G.  Another example: “Elogio di Bourbaki.” S.  That’s worse. Because there isn’t even a single person to retreat to. G.  Only a committee pretending to be a man. S.  Then “elogio” becomes praise of an institutional voice. G.  Which is exactly what Oxford does to itself. S.  So “Elogio di Metastasio” is somewhere in between: one person, but mediated by a chosen name. G.  A person pretending to be a persona, a persona pretending to be a person. S.  It’s a perfect loop. G.  Now, back to the “di.” In Italian, “di” does too much work. S.  That’s why Italians like it. G.  It covers authorship, possession, topic, dedication, and sometimes mere adjacency. S.  Whereas English has to choose: “of,” “by,” “about.” G.  Yes. And the choice forces honesty. S.  So is it “Elogio by X” or “Elogio about Metastasio”? G.  The title doesn’t tell you. S.  It tells you only that the object of praise is the name “Pietro Metastasio.” G.  So the author is trading on the pseudonym’s authority. S.  Which makes the elogio itself a bit parasitic. G.  That’s too moral. S.  It’s accurate. Now the interesting question you wanted: why would a person publish an elogio like this? G.  Yes. Why would he think it necessary? S.  Because Metastasio is safely canonical: praising him signals taste. G.  And perhaps signals membership in a literary world. S.  Exactly. It’s a social credential in prose form. G.  Would Metastasio read it? S.  If he were alive, he would probably prefer not to. G.  Because praise is always an awkward gift: the receiver must accept it without looking vain. S.  And the giver must give it without looking servile. G.  Hence the title’s ceremonial stiffness: it attempts to keep both parties dignified by keeping the language abstract. S.  Praise the persona, not the flesh. G.  That way the real man can hide behind the mask while being praised. S.  And the writer can hide behind genre while flattering. G.  So it is profitable, in a broad sense: it buys goodwill. S.  And it buys a place in print near a famous name. G.  Which is like dining near High Table. S.  Exactly: proximity as prestige. G.  Now, the pseudonym point. You said: the author knows it’s a pseudonym. S.  He must. Otherwise he’s asleep. G.  Then his “elogio” is knowingly directed to a constructed object. S.  That’s what makes it interesting philosophically: can one praise a construct? G.  We do it constantly. We praise “England,” “Oxford,” “Reason.” S.  And “the Spirit of the Age.” G.  Which is no more real than “Metastasio,” and often less well written. S.  So the question isn’t whether we can praise a persona, but what we think we are doing when we do. G.  We are praising a publicly recognisable bundle: works, style, reputation, a voice. S.  And that bundle has a name. G.  Exactly. The name is the handle. S.  Then Trapassi is irrelevant. G.  Not irrelevant. Just not what the elogio is about. S.  So if someone insisted “But his real name was Trapassi,” we would say— G.  “That is a biographical correction, not a literary objection.” S.  And we would still file it under Metastasio. G.  Yes. Because libraries are practical metaphysicians. S.  Then the title is doing library work: it points to the shelf. G.  It is, in that sense, already profitable: it guarantees discoverability. S.  So “Elogio di Pietro Metastasio” is praise, but also indexing. G.  Precisely. A eulogy that functions as a catalogue entry. S.  Which is why Oxford likes it. G.  Now, a final pedantic question: is “elogio” here praise of a man or praise of the name? S.  Praise of the persona under the name. G.  And the persona is a constructed agent of style. S.  Yes. G.  Then our English translation should not pretend it’s simply praise “of a man.” S.  It should be something like: “In praise of ‘Pietro Metastasio’.” G.  With scare quotes. S.  Exactly. G.  And then everyone will think we’re being clever. S.  Which is the only praise Oxford reliably understands. G.  Good. Now close the book before it prejudices you.Grice: Caro Venanzio, ti confesso senza remore che l'αἴσθησις era la mia seconda natura a Clifton: la percezione estetica mi veniva spontanea come un sorso d'acqua fresca. Ma quando sono arrivato al Vadum Boum, l'università, e ho filosofato sull'estetica insieme a Warnock, tutto ruotava attorno al SENSVS. Sembrava che l'αἴσθησις fosse ormai svanita, persa per sempre tra i meandri della ragione!  Venanzio: Ahimè, Grice! Mi dispiace sentire che quell'αἴσθησις originaria si sia dissolta come la nebbia sulla laguna di Venezia. Ma non dubito che tu, da vero filosofo, abbia fatto tutto il possibile per tener vive le radici Graeco-Roman—anzi, graeco-romae—dell’estetica, anche quando la moda accademica spingeva verso il SENSVS.  Grice: Ma certo, Venanzio! Non sono tipo da lasciar morire le antiche radici: ho seminato parole greche e latine tra i miei studenti come il contadino sparge semi nella terra veneta. Se anche l'αἴσθησις ha preso il volo, almeno il SENSVS manteneva un profumo d'antichità.  Venanzio: E hai fatto bene! Perché senza quella filocallia, senza quell’amore per il bello e il suo radicarsi tra graeco-romae pensieri, rischiamo di ridurci a traduzioni pedantesche e periodi smozzicati, proprio come ai miei tempi in seminario! Meglio una filosofia che sappia ancora sorridere e gustare la bellezza, che una ragione arida e senza αἴσθησις. Venanzio, Girolamo (1813). Elogio di Trapassi. Padova: Bettoni.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali Grice e Venini: la ragione conversazionale propriamente detta. Grice. Note su De loquela tanquam rationis auxilio considerata. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Antonio Venini (Morbegno, Valtellina). Compared institutionally, Grice and Antonio Venini are not counterparts in the same academic format. Grice’s formula is exact in the Oxford sense. Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s means a college office with tutorials, students, and membership in the governing life of the college. CUF University Lecturer in philosophy means a university-wide faculty appointment. So Grice combines the two classic Oxford functions: college tutor and university lecturer. Antonio Venini belongs to a very different world: the early nineteenth-century medical-philosophical university, specifically the Pavia environment of inaugural dissertations, rectorial oversight, and learned Latin publication. He is not a fellow-tutor in anything like the Oxford sense. He is better described as an Italian medico-philosophical author whose work emerges from a university dissertation culture in which physiology, psychology, and language theory still belong to one intellectual field. So the clean institutional contrast is this. Grice was a modern Oxford don with a dual college-and-university role. Venini was a Pavia dissertation-world scholar in medicine and philosophy, not a residential college tutor and not an Oxford-style lecturer. That institutional difference fits the philosophical comparison very well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising intentions and inferring implicatures under cooperative norms. Venini works at a more basic enabling level: why speech is needed at all, and how articulated voice functions as an aid to reason where natural gestures are weak, imperfect, and often unusable. So if you want the sharpest formulation, it is this. Venini explains why rational creatures need speech. Grice explains how, once speech is in place, rational creatures use it to mean more than they literally say. That is why your comparison is actually very good. Venini’s loquela is not yet Gricean implicature. It is the physiological and practical condition that makes any Gricean conversational rationality possible in the first place. I would also say that your note about propriamente detto is excellent as a Gricean-Veninian bridge. For Venini, loquela is an auxilium rationis because it allows ideas and animi sensus to be made public and stable. For Grice, properly speaking is one of those conversational devices by which speakers mark, refine, and renegotiate criteria within an already functioning rational exchange. There are only two cautions. First, I would not overstate Venini’s convergence with Grice. It is a genuine comparison, but Venini is not theorising intention-recognition or implicature. His focus is speech as medium and faculty, not conversation as inferential game. Second, your bibliographic line at the end is strong and should stay, because it is the cleanest concrete anchor in the whole note: Venini, Antonio (1819). De loquela tanquam rationis auxilio considerata dissertatio. Ticini: ex typ. Fusi et soc. success. Galeatii. That is exactly the kind of early item one wants here. So the short plain-English answer is this. H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the strict collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s College and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Antonio Venini, by contrast, belongs to the early nineteenth-century Pavia world of medical-philosophical dissertation culture, where speech is studied as a physiological and rational faculty rather than as a topic in tutorial philosophy. Institutionally, Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate world; Venini to the dissertation-and-faculty world of medicine and philosophy. Philosophically, the contrast is equally clear: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of conversational meaning, whereas Venini investigates the more basic conditions under which speech becomes an aid to reason at all, by stabilising and extending signification beyond the fragility of gesture. And if I compress it to one line: Venini gives you speech as the condition of rational coordination; Grice gives you conversation as the refinement of that coordination into a rule-governed economy of meaning. If you want, I can now give you a tighter one-paragraph entry in your preferred style, or a slightly more philological note just on loquela, sermo, lingua, and vox.Per V. la ragione conversazionale propriamente detta e  quella di Grice:” Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how what a speaker means is rationally recoverable by a hearer from what is said plus shared expectations of cooperation (maxims), so that implicatures are accountable, in-principle calculable, and tied to intention and uptake within a talk-exchange. Venini, as your passage presents him through De loquela tanquam rationis auxilio considerata, converges with Grice precisely on the idea that language is an auxilium rationis, but he approaches it from the side of natural-sign and faculty psychology: speech is needed because nonverbal signs (gestus) are “weak and imperfect,” easily blocked by darkness or obstacles, and so articulated voice becomes the distinct medium by which desideria and animi sensus are made manifest and ideas become communicable—i.e., speech is a practical-physiological technology that enables reason to operate socially and reliably. The comparison, then, is that Grice theorizes how rational agents exploit norms of cooperative discourse to mean more than they say (implicature as a refinement within an already linguistic practice), whereas Venini motivates the very necessity of the linguistic practice itself as the stabilization and amplification of signification beyond fragile natural gestures: for Venini, loquela is what makes rational coordination possible at all; for Grice, once that coordination is in place, conversational reason is the rule-governed inferential economy by which interlocutors manage precision (“propriamente detto”), negotiate criteria, and systematically bridge from the literal to the intended.“De loquela tanquam rationis auxilio considerate” is a medical-philosophical dissertation authored by V. It is an inaugural dissertation, submitted to Pavia under the approval of the rector and faculty directors. The title translates to "On speech considered as an aid to reason." The work explores the physiological and philosophical intersection of LA LINGUA and human thought, treating speech not just as communication but as an essential tool for the development of rational intellect. The dissertation reflects the Enlightenment-era interest in how a physical faculty such as speech influence cognitive processes such as reason. It sits at the cross-roads of the philosophy of language, biology, and the philosophy of mind. V. DE LOQUELA TANQUAM RATIOSIS AUXILIO CONSIDERATA DISSERTATIO AsSUEWTIBOS MaGNIFICO DOMINO ReCTOBE AC CELEBEHB.IJHIS DISSERTATIO DE LOQVELA TANQUAM RATIONI AVXILIO CONSIDERATA. haberi queunt nisi DESIDERIA – GRICE – VOLITIVE DESIRABILITY -- aliquo modo innotescant. Ast naturam, dicere posset aliquis, ad desideriorum expositionem nobis varia SIGNA – GRICE SIGN -- sponte suppeditat, qualia sunt ex. gr. GESTVS: heccae vero SIGNA manca frtmis, et imperfecta sunt, ut ipns nostra desideria ostendi queant. Eadem praeterea doeentibus eeleb. Loke et SOAVE  duobus gravissimis iocommodis sunt exposita: quum aliquis in tenebris versatur, vel obstaculum quodcumque impedit, quominus ab illo , % cui aliquid patefacere cupit, aspiciatur, omnes gestus inutites evauunt, Aliorum igitur signorum necessitas elucet vocum nempe, quae sint ARTICULAZIONE distinctæ, atque ad animi sensus EXPRIMENDOS conveniant, quid quod secundum Stoicos PORTICVS loquelaoi constituit. Inter modos omnes, qui ad ideas COMMUNICANDAS GRICE COMUNICATVS apti. esse possunt, magis utilis certe loquela evadit: humanæ mentis operationes ipsa faciliores reddit, animi motus manifestos profert. G.  You’ve brought me evidence, I see. A.  Only the sort Oxford approves: Lewis and Short, and a word that looks innocent until you try to put it in English. G.  Loquela. Yes. A thing I never read before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so. A.  That was about books, sir, not about nouns. G.  Nouns are worse. They come with fewer footnotes and more confidence. Read the entry. A.  “speech, language, words, discourse.” G.  Four English words and not one of them quite right. A.  Then the citations. G.  Start with Plautus. A.  “commoda loquelam tuam,” Plaut. Cist. 4, 2, 76. G.  “Arrange your loquela.” Which sounds like “tidy up your speech.” A.  Or “fix your mouth.” G.  Already we’re in trouble: English makes it sound like elocution lessons. A.  “Loquela” in Plautus sounds like the thing you can amend: your patter. G.  Yes, speech as performance. Next. A.  “fuditque has ore loquelas,” Verg. A. 5, 842. G.  “Poured forth these loquelas from his mouth.” That’s poetry talking about talk. A.  It makes speech sound like liquid. G.  Poets can do that because no one examines them on it. A.  Then Lucretius: “nutricis blanda loquela,” Lucr. 5, 230. G.  “The nurse’s bland loquela.” Bland is already a warning. A.  Nurse-talk. Baby-talk. Loquela as soothing noise. G.  That’s closer to “speech” than “language,” and yet it’s almost “tone.” A.  Then Varro. G.  At last, a man who deserves to define a word instead of merely using it for atmosphere. A.  “hinc quidam loquelam dixerunt verbum,” Varr. L. L. 6, § 57 Müll. G.  Now this is delicious. “Hence some have called loquela ‘word’.” A.  So loquela is not just speech, but a single “verbum.” G.  Or at least some people used it that way. A.  Lewis and Short label that “Transf. A. A word.” G.  And then they proceed as if English “word” were one thing. A.  Then Ovid: “Graia loquela,” Ov. Tr. 5, 2, 68. G.  Ovid is always irritating when he turns a nation into an adjective. A.  Greek loquela: “the Greek language.” G.  Or “Greek speech,” which in English sounds like an impediment. A.  We’re not happy with any of the English glosses, are we? G.  “Speech, language, words, discourse.” It’s a polite way of saying: we can’t decide what level of thing this is. A.  If “sermo” is discourse and “lingua” is language and “vox” is voice, where does loquela sit? G.  Somewhere between “speaking” as an act and “what is spoken” as product. A.  That sounds like “utterance.” G.  It does. And now you’ve smuggled in “utter-,” which is just a Latin verb wearing Anglo-Saxon shoes. A.  But “utterance” has the right shape: something produced by speaking. G.  True, but it makes loquela sound like a discrete item, while Plautus and Lucretius suggest a manner or flow. A.  So “speech” again. G.  “Speech” in English is hopeless: it is both faculty and occasion and formal address. A.  “He gave a speech” is not “his speech” in Lucretius. G.  Exactly. Now “locution”—look at us. A.  Loc-ution. Same root-family, only now you’ve dragged in “loqui” by the collar. G.  And you’re laughing. A.  I’m trying not to, sir. G.  Don’t bother trying. Trying is also an Oxford locution. Now: why do you think Venini chose loquela? A.  Because he wants loq-, not dic-. G.  Yes. Not “to say” but “to speak.” Not assertion but articulation. A.  And because loquela can be the medium of reason, “auxilium rationis.” G.  Good. Now, what do we do with Varro’s line? Translate it properly. A.  “From this some have called ‘loquela’ ‘verbum’.” G.  Too stiff. “From this” makes it sound like a geometry proof. A.  “Hence some have called loquela ‘a word’.” G.  Better. But what’s “hinc” pointing to? We’re missing context. A.  Varro is defining terms and noting rival usages. G.  So he’s reporting an etymological or classificatory move: people take loquela and treat it as equivalent to verbum. A.  Then in English: “Some people use loquela to mean ‘a word’.” G.  That’s the honest translation. A.  But it loses the bite of “dixerunt.” G.  “Called.” It’s a naming act: they labelled it so. A.  “Some have applied the term loquela to what we call a single word.” G.  Now you’re doing my work for me: adding the ordinary-language paraphrase. A.  Lewis and Short also have that note: “incorrectly written loquel-la.” G.  Yes, the dictionary’s moralism about spelling. A.  Imagine if the Little Oxford Dictionary cared like that. G.  The Little Oxford Dictionary does care; it just pretends not to by pretending it is small. A.  Still, the double-l looks like a diminutive: loquella. G.  And they say it’s “incorrect.” As if language waited for permission. A.  Perhaps Venini liked the correct one to avoid sounding cute. G.  Or he liked the correct one because dissertations dislike cuteness. A.  Yet the poets are allowed to be liquid, bland, and national. G.  Poets are allowed everything except accuracy. A.  Is that fair? G.  It’s traditional. Now, if we reject “language” and “words” and “discourse,” what remains? A.  “Speech,” in the sense of speaking. G.  And “loquela” then would be “speech” as an activity and its audible product, without committing to meaning as dicere does. A.  That seems right for Venini: he’s contrasting gestus with voces articulatas. G.  Exactly. So loquela is the articulated-voice system as used by humans. A.  Then Ovid’s “Graia loquela” is annoying because it treats “speech” as a national property. G.  Yes. It makes Greek a kind of costume. A.  Whereas Varro is doing analysis. G.  Varro is always doing analysis, even when he is wrong. A.  So the best support for Venini’s choice is Varro’s metalinguistic remark. G.  Yes: not because it gives Venini his meaning, but because it shows loquela is a thing Latin speakers themselves could talk about as a term. A.  And the rest—Plautus, Vergil, Lucretius—show it lives in real usage. G.  Real usage, yes, but poetically contaminated. A.  So what’s our verdict on Lewis and Short’s English list? G.  Overgenerous. They’ve tried to help too much, and as usual, helpfulness is not the same as precision. A.  Which English word would you pick, if you had to pick one? G.  “Speech,” with a footnote that says: not a speech. A.  That’s very Oxford. G.  It’s the only way to survive dictionaries without becoming their accomplice. A.  And if someone insists on “language”? G.  Tell him to read Ovid and be ashamed. A.  And if he insists on “words”? G.  Tell him Varro says some do, and Varro is the most honest person in the room. A.  And if he insists on “discourse”? G.  Tell him “sermo” is waiting next door, and loquela doesn’t want to be mistaken for it. A.  Then we agree loquela is an unnecessary locution. G.  Not unnecessary—unavoidable. It exists because Latin wanted a noun for “speaking” that wasn’t already loaded with “saying.” A.  So we keep it. G.  We keep it, and we pretend we didn’t enjoy it. A.  And we don’t read it before reviewing it? G.  Exactly. Otherwise we might start liking it, and that would be the end of scholarship.Grice: Venini, mi dai una mano? Mi sono impigliato in quell’italiano “propriamente detto” — quasi un dictum proprium ciceroniano. Io lo uso per essere preciso… e subito mi accorgo che sto chiedendo: che cosa vuol dire “preciso” propriamente parlando? Venini: Volentieri. “Propriamente detto” è un bisturi che, appena lo impugni, ti taglia anche il polso: serve a delimitare il campo, ma lo delimita con un’espressione che chiede a sua volta delimitazione. È come dire: “Ecco l’uso corretto” — e intanto apri un processo sul significato di “corretto”. Grice: Quindi, propriamente parlando, “propriamente parlando” è… impropriamente necessario. Se non lo dico, mi accusano di vaghezza; se lo dico, mi accusano di metalinguaggio. Un paradosso conversazionale: per parlare propriamente devo parlare di come si parla propriamente. Venini: Esatto — e qui la tua “ragione conversazionale” fa la sua comparsa in camice medico. La loquela è davvero “auxilium rationis”: non solo comunica idee, ma le rende possibili e governabili. “Propriamente detto” è una mossa di prudenza: segnala al tuo interlocutore “adesso sto fissando un criterio”. E la tua gratitudine è lecita: perché il criterio, propriamente parlando, esiste solo quando due persone lo riconoscono… propriamente parlando. Venini, Antonio (1819). De loquela tanquam rationis auxilio considerata dissertatio. Ticini: ex typ. Fusi et soc. success. Galeatii.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali Grice e Venturi: il coraggio della ragione conversazionale – Italia dei lumi. Note su Illuminismo e rivoluzione. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Franco Venturi (Roma, Lazio): Compared institutionally, Franco Venturi is much closer to Grice than a poet or public polemicist, because both are recognisably university intellectuals; but they still belong to very different academic ecologies. Grice held the specifically Oxford double role of college Fellow and Tutor plus University Lecturer. Franco Venturi, by contrast, was an anti-fascist historian, first formed in exile and clandestine politics, then a professor of modern history in the Italian state-university system, teaching at Cagliari, Genova, and above all Torino, where his career took definitive shape. Franco Venturi studied at the Sorbonne, was active in Giustizia e Libertà, suffered imprisonment and confinement at Avigliano, and after the war became professor of modern history and a central historian of the Enlightenment and Russian populism. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it], [Archos. Bi...co Venturi], [anpi.it] So the clean institutional comparison is this. Grice was an Oxford don in the strict collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Franco Venturi, by contrast, was an historian in the continental and Italian chair system, whose intellectual life was inseparable from exile, clandestine political journalism, resistance, and later the public university. Institutionally, Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate world; Franco Venturi to the civic-historical world of anti-fascist militancy, state universities, and the long public labour of historical scholarship. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it], [Archos. Bi...co Venturi], [anpi.it] That institutional difference suits the philosophical contrast very well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising intention and calculating implicature under conversational norms. Franco Venturi, by contrast, works at the macro-level of civic reason: how critical discourse survives under repression, how Enlightenment argument becomes a public force, how writing and publication help sustain a sphere in which reason can still operate historically and politically. In his case, “the courage of reason” is not the local tact by which one manages speaker-meaning in a conversation, but the larger virtue by which criticism, scholarship, and intellectual independence persist under pressure. The principal reference sources describe Franco Venturi as an active member of Giustizia e Libertà, later director of Giustizia e Libertà in Turin, and a major historian of the Enlightenment and of Russian populism. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it], [Archos. Bi...co Venturi], [anpi.it] So if you want the sharpest formulation, it is this. Grice explains how reason works in conversation. Franco Venturi shows how reason works in history and public life. Or, still more sharply: Grice theorises the inferential discipline that makes meaning accountable in an exchange. Franco Venturi exemplifies the civic courage by which reason becomes historically effective in journals, clandestine writing, anti-fascist resistance, and scholarship. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it], [anpi.it] Your 1938 Diderot point is actually a good anchor, and it is verifiable. Franco Venturi did publish “Addition aux Pensées philosophiques” in the Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France in 1938, and modern bibliographical traces confirm the article’s presence in volume 45 of the journal. The bibliographical records for the 1938 volume of the Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France list Franco Venturi’s “Addition aux Pensées philosophiques,” and the text itself appears in the journal’s 1938 run. [gallica.bnf.fr], [books.google.com], [jstor.org] So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the precise collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Franco Venturi, by contrast, was an anti-fascist historian and later professor of modern history, formed in exile at the Sorbonne, active in Giustizia e Libertà, imprisoned and confined by the fascist regime, and eventually professor at Cagliari, Genova, and Torino. Institutionally, Grice belongs to the world of tutorials and faculty lectures; Franco Venturi to the world of exile, clandestine journalism, public scholarship, and the state university. Philosophically, the contrast is equally clear: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of meaning in ordinary conversation, whereas Franco Venturi exemplifies the historically situated courage of reason in the public sphere, where ideas survive not by quiet calculability alone but by lucid resistance, publication, and institutional struggle. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it], [Archos. Bi...co Venturi], [anpi.it] And the clean bibliographic citation for the 1938 item is: Venturi, Franco. “Addition aux Pensées philosophiques.” Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France, vol. 45, 1938. [gallica.bnf.fr], [books.google.com], [jstor.org] If you want, I can now give you a tighter one-paragraph entry in your preferred style, or a short bibliographic note separating the early Diderot article from the later Venturi of Italia dei lumi and Settecento riformatore.il coraggio della ragione conversazionale – Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats “what is meant” as what a rational hearer can infer from what is said by assuming cooperative norms (maxims), so that implicature is a disciplined, accountable route from utterance to speaker-meaning. Venturi, as your passage frames him (Italia dei lumi; anti-fascist exile and resister; historian of Enlightenment and of the political uses of ideas), shifts “reason” from Grice’s micro-pragmatics to a civic-historical register: the courage of reason is not primarily the speaker’s rational management of inference in talk, but the public, risky practice of criticism, publication, and political engagement through which Enlightenment rationality is defended, transmitted, and made effective against repression and ideological distortion. Put side by side, Grice explains how conversational participants can responsibly mean more than they say without abandoning rational constraint, whereas Venturi exemplifies how “reason” functions as an historically situated virtue—lucid, polemical, resistant—whose communicative success is measured less by correct implicature-calculation than by its capacity to sustain a critical public sphere (journals, clandestine writing, scholarship) in which reason can survive pressure, mobilize audiences, and reframe collective self-understanding. Italia dei lumi. Insegna a Torino, studioso dell'Illuminismo e del populismo russo. È esule anti-fascista, detenuto nelle carceri fasciste e attivo nella Resistenza nelle file di Giustizia e Libertà. Nipote di Adolfo V. e figlio di Lionello V., i noti critici d'arte, la sua famiglia si trasfere da Roma a Torino, dove il padre assume la cattedra di storia dell'arte. V. studia nel Liceo, da cui dove ritirarsi per seguire la famiglia in esilio a Parigi.  Infatti Lionello V. si rifiuta di prestare giuramento di fedeltà al fascismo e si trasfere con la famiglia a Parigi dove V. s'iscrisse alla facoltà di arte della Sorbona, conosce numerosi esponenti dell'emigrazione anti-fascista e adere al movimento Giustizia e Libertà di ROSSELLI . Collabora al settimanale Giustizia e Libertà e ai Quaderni di Giustizia e Libertà, tenendovi la rubrica Stampa amica e nemica di commento della stampa fascista, criticandovi la politica italiana e la collaborazione della chiesa con le dittature fasciste. V. al confino d’Avigliano. Contemporaneamente indirizza i suoi studi alla storiografia, con un particolare interesse per l'illuminismo. Il risultato è la pubblicazione del saggio Jeunesse de Diderot, e lo studio su VASCO . La sua famiglia si era già trasferita a New York e V., quando cerca di raggiungerla, dopo l'occupazione tedesca di Parigi, è arrestato in Spagna e detenuto per quasi un anno nel sotterraneo di un convento adibito a carcere. La fame sofferta gli suggere d’assumere il soprannome Nada -- niente, in spagnolo -- nella lotta anti-fascista.  Consegnato alle autorità italiane, è incarcerato a Torino e poi trasferito ad Avigliano. Qui rimane fino alla caduta di Mussolini. Tornato a Torino, è parte attiva del partito d'azione con Agosti, Bianco, i fratelli Garrone, e Vaccarino. Cura la redazione del supplemento piemontese del giornale di partito L'Italia libera  e la sua diffusione clandestina nel Piemonte occupato dai tedeschi. Uscirono numeri, dedicati agli scioperi delle fabbriche torinesi e alle iniziative dei partigiani. il coraggio della ragione.  In the most economical scholarly answer: Diderot adds a later, much sharper anti-theological continuation to the 1746 Pensées philosophiques, and he does so in order to push the critique of revealed religion further than the earlier deist text had publicly done. [journals.o...dition.org], [fr.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org] More exactly, the later text is the Addition aux Pensées philosophiques, also circulated under the fuller title Objections diverses contre les écrits de différents théologiens. It is not simply “more of the same”: it radicalizes the original work. The 1746 Pensées philosophiques had still occupied a deist position, defending natural religion while criticizing fanaticism and theology; the Addition moves further into explicit objections against theologians and positive religion. [fr.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org] And why did he add it? Two linked reasons emerge from the sources. First, because the success and controversy of the original 1746 book invited a sequel or continuation. The standard nineteenth-century editorial tradition, echoed in modern scholarly presentation, says Diderot composed the Addition as a “suite” to the Pensées philosophiques after the reactions to the earlier work, but kept it unpublished for prudential reasons. [fr.wikisource.org], [fr.wikipedia.org] Second, because the Addition gave him a more tactical and forceful vehicle for anti-theological argument. The key source here is the note on Venturi’s discovery: the later text was not wholly “original” in the modern sense but was Diderot’s reshaping or abridging of the clandestine manuscript Objections diverses contre les écrits de différents théologiens. That kind of abridgement was common in clandestine eighteenth-century philosophical literature precisely because a tighter, more incisive text could circulate more effectively and hit harder polemically. [jstor.org], [jstor.org] So, if you ask what Diderot “added,” the answer is: he added a later sequence of anti-theological objections, more radical than the 1746 text, and he did so both as a response to the earlier Pensées and as a strategic recasting of clandestine deist/anti-religious material into a sharper, more usable form. [jstor.org], [fr.wikisource.org], [fr.wikipedia.org] And this is exactly where Venturi’s 1938 article matters. Venturi showed that the Addition was connected to a real source text, the Objections diverses, rather than being just an entirely free-standing later invention. In other words, Diderot was adding to his Pensées philosophiques by adapting and compressing already circulating radical material into a form that could function as its sequel. [jstor.org], [jstor.org] If you want, I can now give you either: a very short one-sentence formulation for your note, or a slightly more philological distinction between what Diderot added in 1762 and what Naigeon later published in 1770.Grice: Caro Venturi, mi è sempre piaciuto il “coraggio della ragione”! Pensando ai miei vecchi esempi, potremmo dire che se Jill afferma che Jack è un inglese, allora Jack è non solo “coraggioso”, ma anche ragionevole e razionale. Insomma, un vero eroe filosofico: affronta le avversità con la logica e un pizzico di humor britannico!  Venturi: Ah, Grice, mi fai ridere! Così Jack non conquista solo la bandiera, ma pure il cuore della logica italiana. Forse dovrebbe mettere sul suo passaporto: “coraggioso, ragionevole, razionale… e possibilmente spiritoso!”  Grice: Esattamente, Venturi! La vera forza sta nel sapere che per essere veramente “illuministi” bisogna unire il coraggio della ragione con il coraggio di ridere. Senza un po’ di ironia, la ragione rischia di diventare troppo seria!  Venturi: Concordo, caro Grice! Come diceva mia nonna piemontese, “Quando la ragione si prende troppo sul serio, ci pensa il buon senso a sdrammatizzare.” E poi, ridere è sempre un atto profondamente ragionevole! Venturi, Franco (1938), Additions aux Pensées philosophiques. Revue d’hisoire littéraire de la France.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali Grice e Venturini: la ragione conversazionale e l’identità tras-personale. Note su Le opere di Gramsci. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Riccardo Venturini (Roma, Lazio): Compared institutionally, Riccardo Venturini is closer to Grice than a poet or publicist, because both are recognisably university intellectuals; but they still belong to very different academic ecologies. Grice held the specifically Oxford double role of college Fellow and Tutor plus university lecturer. Riccardo Venturini, by contrast, was formed in the Roman university world, first in philosophy under Ugo Spirito and later in medicine, eventually becoming professor of clinical psychophysiology at La Sapienza. [it.wikipedia.org], [aspi.unimib.it], [aspi.unimib.it] So the clean institutional comparison is this. Grice was an Oxford don in the strict collegiate sense: Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s College, plus CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Venturini, by contrast, was an Italian philosopher-psychologist-physiologist shaped by the state-university system: philosophy at La Sapienza, Paris training at the Sorbonne, assistantship at Messina under Adriano Ossicini, work in cultural programming at Rai, and then a long career back at La Sapienza, culminating in the chair of clinical psychophysiology. [it.wikipedia.org], [aspi.unimib.it], [aspi.unimib.it] That institutional difference fits the intellectual contrast rather well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer recovers what a speaker means by recognising intentions and inferring implicatures under shared conversational norms. Venturini, by contrast, works at several larger levels at once: first, the philosophical and ideological level of formation, where Gramsci matters; second, the psychological and psychophysiological level, where states of consciousness, bodily regulation, and clinical method matter; and later, the transpersonal and comparative-religious level, where the very unit of identity is no longer simply the individual speaker in a conversational exchange. The main biographical sources describe Venturini as formed by Italian idealism, French existentialism, and Gramscian Marxism, then progressively drawn toward experimental psychology, physiology, states of consciousness, and later transpersonal themes. [it.wikipedia.org], [aspi.unimib.it], [eurom.it], [culturabud...weebly.com] So if you want the sharpest formulation, it is this. Grice explains how one interlocutor means something to another here and now. Venturini, especially in the line you are drawing from the 1955 Rassegna di filosofia engagement with Gramsci, points toward the macro-level at which shared horizons, ideological common sense, and transpersonal or collective formations shape what can count as meaning and identity in the first place. [it.wikipedia.org], [aspi.unimib.it] That is why your comparison is promising, but it needs one important caution. The 1955 Rassegna di filosofia piece on Gramsci is mentioned in the biographical notices, but I do not have a fully verified standalone bibliographic record for the exact title line “Le opere di Gramsci” from the search results. So I would treat that reference as plausible and biographically grounded, but not yet bibliographically fixed. The available biographical sources state that among Venturini’s early works were a critical survey of the works of Antonio Gramsci and studies on the methodology of topological psychology and neo-behaviourism, but they do not, in the results I have here, fully verify the exact journal citation line. [it.wikipedia.org], [aspi.unimib.it], [aspi.unimib.it] So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the precise collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s College and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Riccardo Venturini, by contrast, was an Italian philosopher, psychologist, physician, and later professor of clinical psychophysiology, formed at La Sapienza under Ugo Spirito, trained further in Paris, and active across philosophy, psychology, medicine, and states-of-consciousness research. Institutionally, Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate world; Venturini to the state-university and clinical-research world. Philosophically, the contrast is equally clear: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of meaning in conversation, whereas Venturini works on the broader psychophysiological, ideological, and eventually transpersonal conditions under which identity, consciousness, and shared meaning can be formed and transformed. [it.wikipedia.org], [aspi.unimib.it], [eurom.it], [aspi.unimib.it], [culturabud...weebly.com] And if you want the neatest one-line dossier formula, I would suggest this: Grice theorises rational uptake between persons; Venturini investigates the wider psychophysiological and transpersonal horizons within which persons, and their shared meanings, are constituted. [it.wikipedia.org], [eurom.it], [culturabud...weebly.com] If you want, I can now give you a tighter paragraph in your preferred register, or a short note separating three phases of Venturini: the early Gramscian-philosophical phase, the psychophysiological phase, and the later transpersonal phase.la ragione conversazionale e l’identità tras-personale, Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how what a speaker means is rationally recoverable by a hearer from what is said plus context, on the assumption that talk is a cooperative enterprise governed by publicly recognizable norms (maxims), so that implicatures are in principle calculable and answerable to reasons. Venturini’s 1955 Rassegna di filosofia piece on the Opere di Antonio Gramsci, by contrast, belongs to a tradition in which “reason” is not primarily modelled as a local inferential mechanism for deriving speaker-meaning, but as a historically and socially situated practice (Gramsci’s rational critique of ideology, common sense, and cultural hegemony), where what is communicated often works through indirectness, alignment, and the management of shared horizons rather than through explicit statement alone. Put together, Grice gives a micro-pragmatic account of how conversational agents justify interpretations in real-time exchanges (why an utterance licenses a particular implicature), whereas Venturini—reading and assessing Gramsci—foregrounds the macro-pragmatics of how discourse functions within communities and institutions (how “common sense” is formed, stabilized, and contested), so that “conversational reason” looks less like a set of maxims underwriting inference and more like the ongoing social labor by which meanings become authoritative, contested, or transformative in collective life. Filosofo, medico e psicologo italiano, è stato professore ordinario di Psico-fisiologia clinica presso l’Università degli studi di Roma “La Sapienza”, studioso degli stati di cui che Grice chiama “coscienza.” Laureatosi in filosofia con lode -- relatore SPIRITO  -- Università di Roma “La Sapienza” --, riceve una formazione fondata sugli insegnamenti dell'idealismo italiano, dell'esistenzialismo e del marxismo di GRAMSCI . Di quegli anni è la collaborazione con la rivista Rassegna di filosofia, edita dall'Istituto di filosofia dell'Università di Roma, e con gl’uffici redazionali di enciclopedie pubblicate dalla casa editrice Sansoni di Firenze. Borsista presso l'Institut de Psychologie Sorbona di Parigi, dove segue i corsi di metodologia, psicologia sperimentale e psico-patologia -- Fraisse, Lagache, Lacan --, V. approfondisce lo studio della psichiatria fenomenologica e dell'indirizzo psico-analitico della Société psychanalytique de Paris.Assistente incaricato di Psicologia nell'Università di Messina -- cattedra d’Ossicini --, V. è stato successivamente funzionario di programmi culturali della Rai.  Si laurea in medicina e chirurgia con lode, relatore Cerquiglini -- presso l'Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza”, dove è stato assistente incaricato e poi ordinario di fisiologia umana -- cattedra di Martino e di Cerquiglini.  Libero docente di fisiologia umana, professore incaricato di fsicologia fisiologica all'Università di Roma], è stato professore straordinario e poi ordinario di psicologia fisiologica e, successivamente, di psico-fisiologia clinica -- disciplina da lui introdotta nell'insegnamento universitario italiano e di cui è stato il primo docente --, sempre nell'Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza.  Dei primi lavori di V. vanno ricordati la rassegna critica delle Opere di Gramsci -- Einaudi di Torino -- e gli studi sulla metodologia della psicologia topologica di Lewin e del neo-comportamentismo di RYLE – citato da Grice -- e Tolman.  G.: Carissimo Venturini, devo confessare che quando scrivevo il mio famoso “Personal identity”, non conoscevo ancora la sua ricerca sull’identità tras-personale. Le garantisco: se l’avessi letta, avrei mandato il mio manoscritto direttamente a “Mind”… oppure a “Minds”, così avremmo avuto almeno due riviste per discutere la questione! Venturini: Grazie, Grice! Non si preoccupi, il mondo accademico è fatto apposta per perdersi e ritrovarsi. Se ci fossimo incrociati prima, forse avremmo scritto insieme “Identità tras-personale e conversazione tra menti”—titolo perfetto per confondere i nostri colleghi! Grice: Le assicuro, Venturini, che la prossima volta che mi viene un’idea sulla coscienza, la mando a Roma—con raccomandata e moka inclusa. Chissà, magari nasce una nuova teoria tra un caffè e un laboratorio di psicologia! Venturini: Sorrido all’idea, caro Grice! In fondo, l’identità tras-personale non si trova solo nei libri, ma anche nelle chiacchiere filosofiche… e forse, tra un espresso e una pausa, nasce sempre una nuova coscienza! Venturini, Riccardo (1955). Le opere di Gramsci. Rassegna di filosofia.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali Grice e Vera: l’astuzia della ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’idealismo. Note su Introduzione alla filosofia. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Augusto Filippo Nicola Olimpiade Vera (Amelia, Umbria). Compared institutionally, Augusto Vera is closer to Grice than a poet or chancery writer, because both are recognisably teachers of philosophy; but they still belong to very different academic worlds. Grice held the characteristically Oxford double role of college Fellow and Tutor plus university lecturer. Augusto Vera, by contrast, was a nineteenth-century university professor shaped by Rome, Paris, France, Switzerland, England, Milan, and Naples: a travelling academic, then a state-university professor, and later a senator of the Kingdom of Italy. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it], [senato.it] So the clean institutional comparison is this. Grice was a modern Oxford don with a dual college-and-university role. Augusto Vera, by contrast, was an Italian professor and public intellectual in the continental chair system: trained at Rome and the Sorbonne, teaching in France and Switzerland, exiled to England after the 1851 coup, then professor at Milan and Naples, and finally senator. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it], [senato.it], [beweb.chie...ttolica.it] That institutional difference suits the philosophical contrast very well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising intention and calculating implicature under conversational norms. Vera, by contrast, works at the macro-level of idealist reason: not how one speaker means something in one exchange, but how Reason, in the Hegelian sense, realises itself through history, religion, politics, and philosophy. The “astuzia” here is not a conversational technique but the Hegelian cunning of reason, mediated through events and institutions rather than through cooperative maxims. The standard philosophical notices present Vera as the major nineteenth-century Italian transmitter of orthodox Hegelianism, substantially faithful to Hegel and concerned above all with expounding and disseminating the system. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it], [beweb.chie...ttolica.it] So if you want the sharpest formulation, it is this. Grice explains how meaning is locally recoverable in conversation. Vera explains how reason is globally realised in history. If you want the contrast in even plainer terms: Grice’s rationality is interpersonal and inferential. Vera’s rationality is historical and teleological. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it] That is why your phrase “astuzia della ragione conversazionale” is a clever comparative gloss, but it should remain a gloss. It is not Vera’s own category in the Gricean sense. For him, “astuzia della ragione” belongs to the Hegelian register of world-historical mediation, not to a theory of speaker-meaning. If one adapts it Griceanly, one gets the thought that conversation itself often proceeds by indirectness, understatement, and omission; but for Grice that cunning is still local, defeasible, and anchored in intention, whereas for Vera it is part of reason’s unfolding through institutions and history. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it] There are a few factual corrections and refinements. First, the birthplace. Your heading says “Terni, Umbria,” but the more exact biographical sources say Amelia, now in the province of Terni. So the safer form is: Amelia, near Terni. [it.wikipedia.org], [senato.it], [beweb.chie...ttolica.it] Second, the 1857 bibliographic line is not quite right as you phrase it. Introduzione alla filosofia di Hegel is originally a French work, Introduction à la philosophie de Hegel, first published in 1855, with a later second edition in 1865. A modern Italian edition exists, but the original is not a Milan 1857 Bocca publication. The standard reference entries identify Introduction à la philosophie de Hegel as a French work of 1855, not an 1857 Milan Bocca original. [treccani.it], [treccani.it] Third, your note about Il problema dell’assoluto is much stronger bibliographically than the Introduction line as you gave it. This work is securely attested in Naples from 1872 onward, in multiple volumes or instalments. The catalogues clearly attest Problema dell’assoluto as an 1872 Neapolitan publication by Augusto Vera. [books.google.com], [search.lib...y.ucla.edu], [catalog.ha...itrust.org], [onlinebook....upenn.edu] So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the precise collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s College and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Augusto Vera, by contrast, was a nineteenth-century Italian professor, Hegelian expositor, and public intellectual, trained at Rome and the Sorbonne, teaching in France, Switzerland, England, Milan, and Naples, and later serving as senator of the Kingdom of Italy. Institutionally, Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate world; Vera to the continental chair system and the public life of philosophy. Philosophically, the contrast is equally clear: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of speaker-meaning and implicature, whereas Vera articulates the macro-logic of idealist reason, in which rationality advances through history, institutions, and dialectical mediation rather than through the local cooperative intelligence of conversation. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it], [senato.it], [beweb.chie...ttolica.it] And if you want the neatest bibliographic correction for your dossier, I would suggest these two anchor points: Vera, Augusto. Introduction à la philosophie de Hegel. Paris, 1855. Earliest major Hegelian exposition securely tied to the English-exile period. [treccani.it], [treccani.it] Vera, Augusto. Problema dell’assoluto. Naples, 1872–82. Major later Italian work on the absolute. [books.google.com], [search.lib...y.ucla.edu], [catalog.ha...itrust.org] If you want, I can now give you a tighter one-paragraph entry in your preferred style, or a short note on Vera’s earliest datable philosophical work versus his most influential Italian publications.V. spiega l’astuzia della ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’idealismo.” Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats “what is meant” as what a rational hearer can infer from what is said by presuming cooperative norms (maxims), speaker intention, and the calculability and defeasibility of implicatures; conversational reason is thus a normative, micro-pragmatic mechanism that explains how interlocutors responsibly get from sentence-meaning to speaker-meaning in real exchanges. Vera’s “astuzia” (cunning) belongs to a different register of rational governance: in the Hegelian-idealist tradition he helped transmit, reason is not primarily a set of conversational constraints on inference but a world-historical intelligence that realizes itself through mediations (often behind the backs of agents), so that “cunning” names the way rationality advances by working through contingent aims, rhetoric, and institutional conflict. Put side-by-side, Grice gives an account of how conversational participants, as intentional agents, make meaning intelligible through publicly defensible inferences, whereas Vera offers a picture in which reason’s “success” is not mainly the mutual recognition of intention in talk but the larger dialectical leverage by which ideas (ideare/ideatum) and social forms are brought into being; if one adapts Vera’s idiom to Grice, “l’astuzia della ragione conversazionale” would name not a metaphysical agency but the systematic way conversation itself uses indirectness (implicature, strategic understatement, controlled omission) to let rational coordination occur without full explicit statement—yet for Grice the cunning remains methodologically local and intention-based, while for Vera it is expansive, teleological, and bound up with the idealist story of reason’s realization in history and politics. Grice: What V. and Speranza call, improving on Hegel, ‘l’astuzia della ragione conversazionale’!” Keywords: ideare, ideatum, astuzia della ragione conversazionale. DAL VOCABOLARIO ideare v. tr. [der. di idea] (io idèo, ecc.; poco usate le forme del pres. indic. e cong., e soprattutto rarissime, per ragioni di eufonia, pur essendo le sole regolari, le forme ideiamo dell’indic. e ideiamo, ideiate del cong.). – Concepire con la mente l’idea, cioè determinare le linee generali, il progetto o il programma di qualche cosa che sarà, o dovrebbe essere, poi realizzata: i. un’opera, un poema, un sito web; i. uno scherzo; il palazzo è stato eseguito in modo diverso da come l’aveva ideato l’architetto. Più genericam., ma meno com., proporsi di fare qualche cosa: avevo ideato una bella escursione in montagna. Grice: “Essential Italian philosopher.” Senatore del Regno d'Italia. Grice: “One of my own favourite unpublications is “Absolutes,” which took its inspiration from a little tract by Vera which was especially influential on Flaubert, “Il problema dell’assoluto.” Strawson remarked: “it was a boojum, you see!” Senatore del Regno d'Italia. Compe i suoi studi alla Sapienza di Roma, terminandoli alla Sorbona di Parigi. Mostra subito un immenso talento per l'insegnamento, caratterizzato da lucidità di esposizione e genuino spirito filosofico, reggendo svariate cattedre in città importanti della Francia e della Svizzera. Il colpo di stato di Napoleone lo costringe a rifugiarsi in Inghilterra a causa delle sue idee eterodosse. Qui intraprese la stesura in francese dell’“Introduzione alla filosofia” di Hegel. Torna in Italia, riuscendo a diventare il più geniale e originale comunicatore della filosofia di Hegel, insegnando storia della filosofia dapprima all'accademia di Milano, e poi, su invito di SANCTIS, a Napoli. Continua a intrattenere scambi fecondi con la Società filosofica di Berlino e con gl’ambienti hegeliani. I doveri e i diritti dell’uomo e del citladino. La camorra. Pena di morte, Spaventa.  G.: Vera, lei è noto per l’astuzia della ragione conversazionale. Mi incuriosisce: come vede il ruolo dell’ideare nella filosofia italiana, soprattutto in rapporto all’idealismo? Vera: Caro Grice, ideare non è solo concepire un progetto, è un atto creativo che trasforma il pensiero in realtà. L’astuzia della ragione consiste proprio nell’andare oltre il visibile, nel riconoscere come ogni idea sia già un seme di cambiamento. L’idealismo, per me, è la capacità di vedere oltre ciò che si presenta. G.: Mi trova d’accordo! D’altronde, lei ha saputo diffondere lo spirito filosofico persino nei momenti più difficili della storia, portando la filosofia di Hegel in Italia con una brillantezza tutta sua. C’è un esempio concreto in cui l’astuzia della ragione ha fatto la differenza? V.: Certamente! Penso alla camorra, alla pena di morte: l’astuzia della ragione conversazionale non si limita a riflettere, ma suggerisce soluzioni e nuovi modelli di giustizia. Come dice il proverbio umbro: “Dove non arriva il braccio, arriva la testa.” È il dialogo che trasforma il pensiero in azione. Vera, Augusto Filippo Nicola Olimpiade (1857). Introduzione alla filosofia. Milano: Bocca.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali Grice e Vernia: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dei peripatetici del lizio. Living thing. Grice soul psuche bios Joachim logically developing series. Zen psuche. Note su Utrum anima intellectiva humano corpori unita tanquam vera forma substantialis dans ei esse specificum substantiale, aeterna atque unica sit in omnibus hominibus Paolo Nicola Vernia (Chieti, Abruzzo), Institutionally, Paolo Nicola Vernia is not comparable to H. P. Grice in the Oxford collegiate sense at all. Grice’s formula is exact in the modern Oxford way. Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s means a college office with tutorials, student responsibility, and membership in the governing life of the college. CUF University Lecturer in philosophy means a university-wide faculty appointment. So Grice combines the two characteristic Oxford functions: college tutor and university lecturer. Vernia belongs to a very different world: the late fifteenth-century Paduan university, dominated by chairs, public disputation, commentary, and the tension between scholastic argument and ecclesiastical oversight. He was not a fellow-tutor in a residential college, but a professor in the Studium of Padua, first as student of Nicoletto Vernia’s teachers and then as teacher himself, succeeding Nicoletto. He taught in the same intellectual environment in which Pomponazzi later emerged, and his work belongs to the genres of quaestio, commentary, and anti-Averroist disputation rather than to the tutorial-lecture structure of modern Oxford. So the clean institutional contrast is this. Grice was a modern Oxford don with a dual college-and-university role. Paolo Nicola Vernia was a Renaissance university professor in the Paduan chair-and-disputation system. Grice’s world is collegiate, tutorial, and faculty-based. Vernia’s world is public, scholastic, commentarial, and institutionally vulnerable to episcopal intervention. That fits the philosophical contrast very well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising a speaker’s intention and inferring implicatures under cooperative norms. Vernia works at a very different normative level. His central concern is not conversation in Grice’s sense, but the interpretation and defence of Aristotelian psychology and natural philosophy within the highly formalised practices of scholastic disputation. In his case, the question of “what follows from what” is governed by syllogistic, commentary tradition, doctrinal boundaries, and the institutional policing of permissible theses. That is why your bridge line is right: Gricean implicature is to ordinary conversation what Vernian inference is to academic disputation. Both are normative practices of licensed conclusion. But the governing rules differ sharply. There are a few factual refinements worth making. First, the date line at the end of your prompt should not be given as if the Marciana manuscript itself were “Vernia, Paolo Nicola (1460).” What you have there is a manuscript item, not a printed publication, and 1460 cannot be the date of that specific text in any secure way unless you have codicological grounds for it. So I would not cite the Marciana piece with that date as if it were a normal bibliographic publication line. Second, the broad intellectual profile is plausible and well aligned with known Padua history: student of Sigerio/Siger of Pergola and Gaetano da Thiene; successor in the Aristotelian line; colleague-context for Pomponazzi; teacher of figures such as Nifo; initial support for the unity of intellect thesis, later modified under pressure; concern with the autonomy of natural philosophy from metaphysics; anti-Averroist and De anima materials. That is the right cluster, even if some of the exact manuscript and print details would need careful bibliographical checking before being fixed in an entry. Third, your Latin title is excellent as a manuscript descriptor, and it does exactly what you want conceptually: it puts the issue where Vernia’s world actually lives, in a scholastic quaestio on the intellective soul, substantial form, eternity, and unity across humans. But again, the safe formula is manuscript witness, not ordinary book citation. So the short clean comparison is this. H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the precise collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s College and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Paolo Nicola Vernia, by contrast, was a Renaissance Aristotelian professor in the University of Padua, active in the institutional world of quaestiones, commentaries, and public disputation under scholastic and ecclesiastical constraints. Institutionally they are not comparable. Intellectually, however, the contrast is illuminating: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of meaning in conversation, whereas Vernia exemplifies a formal academic rationality in which meaning, doctrine, and conclusion are governed by commentary, syllogism, and the regulated interpretation of authoritative texts. And if I compress it into one line: Grice theorises rational uptake in talk; Vernia practises rational uptake in scholastic disputation. One bibliographic caution, since you asked earlier for clean citations. For Vernia, I would not present the Marciana item as a normal printed bibliographic entry. I would instead write something like: Vernia, Paolo Nicola. Utrum anima intellectiva humano corpori unita tanquam vera forma substantialis dans ei esse specificum substantiale, aeterna atque unica sit in omnibus hominibus. Manuscript witness, Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Lat. VI, 105 (=2656), ff. 156r–160v. That is much safer than assigning it a clean book-date it may not deserve. If you want, I can now give you a tighter one-paragraph headnote on Vernia in your preferred style, or I can help turn the Marciana item into a more cautious scholarly citation note.V, accompagna la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dei peripatetici del lizio.” Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats “what is meant” as something a rational hearer can infer from what is said by assuming cooperative norms (maxims) and speaker intentions, so that conversational reason is fundamentally an inferential discipline linking utterances to implicatures under public standards of accountability. Vernia, by contrast, represents a late-medieval/early-Renaissance Aristotelian project in which reason is governed not by conversational maxims but by demonstrative and dialectical norms anchored in De anima: the analysis of psyche as the form and principle of living things, the hierarchy of soul-powers, and (in the Paduan Averroist setting) high-stakes disputes about intellect and immortality that were constrained by ecclesiastical authority (e.g., Pietro Barozzi’s 1489 intervention against public disputation on the unity of the intellect). In that sense, where Grice explains how agents manage meaning in everyday talk through cooperative inference, Vernia exemplifies how “rationality” is instituted by scholastic practices of quaestio, commentary, and disputatio—reason as rule-governed argument, interpretation of authoritative texts, and the policing of permissible theses—so that the “governance” of meaning is primarily logical-textual and institutional rather than pragmatic-conversational; if one wanted a bridge, Grice’s implicature is to ordinary conversation what Vernia’s scholastic inference and exegesis are to academic disputation: both are normative accounts of how conclusions are licensed beyond what is immediately given, but their governing norms (maxims vs. syllogistic/dialectical and institutional constraints) and their arenas (talk exchange vs. commentary/disputation) are importantly different. Living thing. Grice soul psuche bios Joachim logically developing series. Zen psuche. Filosofo abruzzese. Filosofo italiano. Chieti, Abruzzo. Grice: “I love V., but then any Englishman would, especially when learning that Saint Thomas (Aquino) would have made such a fuss about him!” Essential Italian philosopher. Allievo a Padova di PERGOLA e Thiese e successore di quest'ultimo. Ha come collega POMPONAZZI. Tra i suoi allievi: NIFO e PICO. Seguace dell'ermetismo imperante a Padova, cura un'edizione di Aristotele, il lizio. V. sostenne l'unità dell'intelletto -- dottrina poi abbandonata a causa di una condanna inflittagli dal vescovo di Padova --, l'autonomia della fisica rispetto alla meta-fisica, e la superiorità della scienza della natura sulle scienze dell'uomo. Saggi: “Contra perversam Averrois opinionem de unitate intellectus et de animae felicitate”; De unitate intellectus et de animae felicitate; Expositio in posteriorum capitulum secundum in fine; Expositio in posteriorum librum priorem; Quaestio de gravibus et levibus; Quaestio de rationibus seminalibus; Quaestio de unitate intellectus; Quaestio in De anima. Bellis, L’aristotelismo – del lizeo (Firenze, Olscheki, Enciclopedia Italiana. Esaminiamo in prima quali sieno le sue cose stampate, le quali sono poco conosciute, si perché si trovano inserite in altre opere, si perché scritte con caratteri molto fitti, danno pena all'occhio anche molto paziente. La dissertazione più conosciuta é l'ultima, contro l' unità dell'intelletto di Averroe; tanto è vero, che nella seconda iscrizione apposta al monumento trasportato dalla chiesa di S. Bartoloneo all'oratorio dell'ospedale civile di Vicenza, è precisamente questo ultimo scritto ricordato. Di V. sono stampate sei dissertazioni. La prima è: quuestio un ens mobile sit toliusphilosopine nuturalis siljectum. Essa si trova nel commento sul de general. et corrupt. I parepatetici, i parepatetici padovani – i parepatetici di padova, il lizio, unita, Aquino, method in philosophical psychology “living thing”, viva Aristotele!  G.  You’ve brought it as if it were contraband. D.  It is contraband. Only not from the police—จาก the undergraduates. G.  The undergraduates would confiscate it for cruelty to English. D.  They would confiscate it for cruelty to breath. Read it again. G.  Utrum anima intellectiva humano corpori unita tanquam vera forma substantialis dans ei esse specificum substantiale, aeterna atque unica sit in omnibus hominibus. D.  If you say that in the Examination Hall, the invigilators will offer you water. G.  I intend to say it in the Hall precisely to demonstrate why ordinary language was invented. D.  You will demonstrate why silence was invented. G.  It is Vernia. D.  It is attributed to Vernia. G.  It is a manuscript in Venezia, Marciana. D.  Marciana, named after Mars, so that even the library sounds belligerent. G.  And we are marching toward the Hall as if toward battle. D.  We are. CUF “Philosophical Psychology.” The title is already a truce between disciplines. G.  Now, ordinary language. How do we translate? D.  Into what? Into a sentence that will not frighten the beadle? G.  Into a sentence that will not be examined as Latin composition. D.  Try: “Is the thinking soul, joined to the human body as its real substantial form which gives it its specific being, eternal and one and the same in all humans?” G.  That’s still too much. D.  It’s the same thing in a different hat. G.  Let’s take it piece by piece. Utrum. D.  Whether. G.  Already the scholastic itch: either-or. D.  It’s a question, not a sermon. G.  anima intellectiva. D.  “The intellective soul.” G.  Intellectiva is an adjective, feminine, agreeing with anima. D.  As if the soul were a lady with a faculty. G.  And “intellectus” itself would be masculine, but here the point is: it’s the soul that is “intellective,” not the intellect that is “soulish.” D.  You’re already making it ordinary-language: which noun is doing the work. G.  Then humano corpori. D.  “To the human body.” G.  Dative. Not “in” the body, not “with” the body, but “to” it—like a sort of metaphysical address. D.  The soul posted to the body. G.  And “humanus” matters. Not any corpus, but the human one. D.  Not a cabbage-body, not a cricket-body. G.  Not even a cadaver-body, perhaps. D.  Don’t be theological. G.  unita. D.  “United.” G.  Passive, feminine again. But united by whom? D.  That’s the first implicature: the grammar refuses to name the agent. G.  It smuggles in a union without a unifier. D.  Convenient, in a university. G.  tanquam vera forma substantialis. D.  “As if a true substantial form.” G.  Not S.’s “logical form.” D.  No. Forma as in what makes a thing the kind of thing it is. G.  Substantialis from sub-stantia, that which stands under. D.  Now you’re going to do Greek. G.  Better: ὑπόστασις, not ὑποκείμενον. D.  You’re right. ὑποκείμενον is more “subject,” like grammatical subject. G.  Whereas ὑπόστασις is what later Latin likes as substantia. D.  So “substantial form” is: the form that belongs to the ὑπόστασις, the being that stands there. G.  Yes, and it gives esse specificum substantiale. D.  “Specific substantial being.” G.  That’s two substantials for the price of one. D.  Scholastic thrift: repeat the adjective until it becomes a philosophy. G.  dans ei esse. D.  “Giving it being.” G.  Now we’ve personified form as a donor. D.  The form hands out being like a bursar. G.  Now: aeterna atque unica. D.  “Eternal and unique.” G.  Eternal: the physicists in 1960 will laugh. D.  They will say, “Nothing is eternal except our grant applications.” G.  But scholastics mean “not perishing.” D.  Or “not decomposing.” G.  Unica: one. D.  One what? One in each? One overall? G.  Now we reach in omnibus hominibus. D.  “In all men.” G.  Omnis can be distributive: omnis homo, each man. D.  Or collective: all men taken together. G.  Here it’s plural: omnibus hominibus. It tempts the collective reading. D.  But the doctrine it’s aiming at is the strong one: one intellective soul for all humans. G.  That’s the famous irritation. D.  “One mind, many bodies.” A committee structure. G.  Now, our ordinary-language rendering should be: “Is there one thinking mind shared by all humans, or does each human have his own?” D.  That drops the “substantial form” apparatus. G.  We can put it back as a gloss: “and if so, how can it be the form of each body?” D.  You’re turning a Latin sentence into an English syllabus. G.  That’s our job. D.  Your job is to make it sound as if it was always obvious. G.  And your job is to object when I do. D.  Good. Now about intellectiva versus intellectus again: why doesn’t he just say “intellectus”? G.  Because the question is about anima in Aristotelian psychology: the soul’s powers. D.  So “intellective” marks a faculty-type. G.  Exactly: vegetative, sensitive, intellective. D.  And in ordinary language: “the part of you that thinks.” G.  Which makes it sound like a part, not a form. D.  Ordinary language is always anatomically tempted. G.  Now: “unita.” If union has to be done, who does it? D.  The scholastic answer: God. G.  The Aristotelian answer: nature. D.  The Oxonian answer: the examiners. G.  In our class, we should let the question bite: can “being united” be a brute fact? D.  You will say: the grammar hides an agent and that’s already philosophically instructive. G.  Yes. D.  And then you will smile in the Hall. G.  Only slightly. D.  Now: Marciana. We should mention it properly. Venezia, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana. G.  And “Lat. VI, 105.” D.  You’re a catalogue now. G.  It matters: it keeps the scholastic monster tied to a shelfmark. D.  A monster with an address. G.  And “ff. 156r–160v.” D.  That is the friendliest part of the whole thing. G.  Because it’s finite. D.  Exactly. Even “aeterna” is bounded by folios. G.  Now, how do we end the class? D.  With the ordinary-language punchline: “Is ‘one soul for all’ the first theory of shared office space?” G.  Too modern. D.  Then: “If there is one intellect for all, the Examination Hall should issue one script for all.” G.  That will get a laugh. D.  And if it doesn’t? G.  Then we’ll say, in Latin, that the laughter was unica atque aeterna—only it didn’t unite to our human bodies. D.  Excellent. And we’ll be examined for it. Grice: Carissimo Vernia, devo confessare che solo gli italiani riescono a nominare il “lizio” con tanta grazia! Da noi, nel mio Vadum Boum, siamo costretti a tradurlo grossolanamente e, ogni volta, mi sembra di portare un bue attraverso il guado invece che passeggiare tra le colonne del sapere come fate voi. Dimmi, cos’è che rende il lizio così irresistibile da dedicargli tutta una vita filosofica? Vernia: Ah, caro Grice, il lizio è più di un luogo: è uno stato d’animo! Tra le pietre di Padova e i dialoghi peripatetici, ogni passo è una domanda, ogni ombra una risposta. Noi italiani, si sa, preferiamo passeggiare e discutere anziché portare buoi, e il lizio è la nostra pista da ballo filosofica. Se Aristotele avesse visto Vadum Boum, forse avrebbe scritto “De Animalibus Vadumboumibus”! Grice: Meraviglioso! In fondo, anche noi filosofi inglesi abbiamo la nostra versione del peripatetico: si chiama “tea time” – il pensiero scorre tra una tazza e l’altra, ma nessuno ha mai pensato di dedicare una dissertazione al “biscotto e intelletto”. Forse dovrei proporre un trattato: “Contra Averroem de unitate del biscotto.” Cosa ne pensi? V.: A me sembra un’idea eccellente, Grice! Del resto, ogni vero filosofo sa che la felicità dell’anima passa anche per lo stomaco. E come dicevano i peripatetici padovani: “Chi filosofa al lizio non teme le briciole della vita.” Viva Aristotele, viva il lizio e – perché no – viva il tè con i biscotti, purché siano ben filosofici! Vernia, Paolo Nicola (1460). Utrum anima intellectiva humano corpori unita tanquam vera forma substantialis dans ei esse specificum substantiale, aeterna atque unica sit in omnibus hominibus. MS. Venezia: Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Lat. VI, 105 (=2656), ff. 156r–160v.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali Grice e Veronelli: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del sadismo italiano. Philos. Aritotle logically developing series, Joachim, Grice, recusive unification. Note su L’arte del vino. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Luigi Veronelli (Milano, Lombardia). Compared institutionally, Luigi Veronelli is not at all comparable to H. P. Grice in the Oxford collegiate sense. Grice’s formula is exact: Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s means a college office with tutorials, students, and governing responsibilities inside a residential college; CUF University Lecturer in philosophy means a university-wide faculty appointment. Luigi Veronelli, by contrast, was a philosopher by formation, but professionally he became a publisher, journalist, gastronome, television figure, and public polemicist. He studied philosophy at the University of Milan, became assistant to Giovanni Emanuele Bariè, and then moved into publishing and journalism rather than into a tutorial-collegiate academic career. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it], [ilveronelli.it] So the clean institutional contrast is this. Grice was a modern Oxford don with a dual college-and-university role. Luigi Veronelli, by contrast, was an Italian public intellectual formed in philosophy but active chiefly through magazines, publishing, newspapers, television, and civic campaigns around food, wine, and agricultural culture. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it], [biografieonline.it] That institutional difference actually fits your philosophical comparison rather well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising intentions and inferring implicatures under cooperative norms. Luigi Veronelli, by contrast, works in a much more public, rhetorical, and polemical register. His prose and television speech are not a theory of conversational inference, but a civil practice of making values palpable at the table and in print: defending local producers, naming quality, fighting homogenising institutions, and inventing a language in which taste becomes political judgement. The best biographical sources explicitly emphasise his battles for agricultural and alimentary “diversità,” his creation of or advocacy for local designations, and his highly distinctive journalistic style, full of neologisms and archaisms. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it], [ilveronelli.it] So if you want the sharpest formulation, it is this. Grice theorises how conversational meaning is inferentially recoverable. Luigi Veronelli exemplifies how language becomes a polemical, convivial, and ethical practice in public culture. For Grice, implicature is a disciplined route from utterance to intended meaning. For Luigi Veronelli, the “more-than-said” is often a matter of style, provocation, solidarity, and public alignment: who is being defended, what is being dignified, what power is being mocked. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it], [biografieonline.it] There are two important corrections to your note. First, the De Sade material should be kept factual and neutral. The secure record is that Luigi Veronelli published De Sade in 1957, was prosecuted, and the book was later burned in the courtyard of the questura or procura at Varese. That is strong biographical material; but your phrase “implicatura conversazionale del sadismo italiano” is your own polemical gloss, not something to ascribe to him. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it] Second, I cannot verify your final bibliographic line “L’arte del vino” in 1955 with Mondadori. The web search produced no relevant confirmation for that title and date. So I would not use that citation. What is securely confirmed instead are his biographical milestones: the founding of Veronelli Editore in 1956, the three magazines I problemi del socialismo, Il Pensiero, and Il gastronomo, and then his long collaboration with Il Giorno from 1962 onward. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it], [ilveronelli.it] So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the strict collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s College and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Luigi Veronelli, by contrast, was an Italian philosopher by training but a public intellectual by vocation: assistant to Giovanni Emanuele Bariè, later publisher, journalist, editor, gastronomic polemicist, and activist for local producers and cultural diversity. Institutionally they are worlds apart. Intellectually, however, the contrast is illuminating: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of meaning in ordinary conversation, whereas Luigi Veronelli exemplifies a broader civil art of polemical conviviality, in which style, irony, naming, and shared culture make language itself an instrument of taste, solidarity, and resistance. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it], [ilveronelli.it], [biografieonline.it] And if you want the neatest corrective note for your dossier, I would add this: Do not rely on “Luigi Veronelli (1955). L’arte del vino. Milano: Mondadori” unless you have an independent library record for it; I could not verify it in the search results. The secure early anchors are the 1956 launch of Veronelli Editore, the three magazines, and the 1957 De Sade case. [treccani.it], [it.wikipedia.org] If you want, I can now give you a shorter polished paragraph in your own register, but with the uncertain wine-title removed and the anarchic public-intellectual profile made central.V vede la ragione conversazionale nell’implicatura conversazionale del sadismo italiano.” Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains “what is meant” as what a rational hearer can infer from what is said given cooperative norms (maxims), speaker-intentions, and the calculability/cancellability of implicatures; conversational reason is thus a disciplined inferential bridge from utterance to intended significance. Veronelli, by contrast, as your passage portrays him (and as biographical sources confirm him as a philosophically trained, anarchic, stylistically inventive public intellectual who built a new language for wine/food and fought for local producers), treats “ragione conversazionale” less as a formal inferential mechanism and more as a culturally saturated practice of speaking-with-others at the table and in print, where insinuation, provocation, neologism, and irony are tools for unmasking power and defending “diversità” (local, material culture) against homogenizing institutions. In Grice, implicature is a method for modelling how meaning is responsibly recoverable under shared rational expectations; in Veronelli, implicature (as your “sadismo italiano” joke suggests) is a way the shared scene of convivio can carry values—discipline, sacrifice, pleasure, critique—without stating them baldly, so that the “more-than-said” is rhetorical, ethical, and political (who gets protected, who gets named, what counts as authentic) rather than primarily a logic of inference. The upshot is that Grice theorizes conversational reason as a general, norm-governed engine of meaning-inference, while Veronelli exemplifies conversational reason as a civil art of polemical conviviality—language deployed to cultivate taste, solidarity, and resistance, with implicature functioning as style-driven social action as much as (or more than) an abstract pragmatic calculation. Philos. Aritotle logically developing series, Joachim, Grice, recusive unification. Grice: “Essential Italian philosopher.” Figura centrale nella valorizzazione e diffusione del patrimonio eno-gastronomico. Antesignano di espressioni e punti di vista che poi sono entrati nell'uso comune e protagonista di caparbie battaglie per la preservazione delle diversità nel campo della produzione agricola e alimentare, attraverso la creazione delle denominazioni comunali, le battaglie a fianco delle amministrazioni locali, l'appoggio ai produttori al dettaglio. V. assieme ad alcuni sommelier F.I.S.A.R. Originario del quartiere Isola di Milano, dopo il r. ginnasio Parini, compie studi di filosofia a Milano, diventando assistente di BARIE (vedi). Si professa per tutta la vita di fede anarchica, rifacendosi anche alle ultime lezioni tenute da CROCE a Milano. Inizia l'esperienza di editore, pubblicando tre riviste: “I problemi del socialismo,” “Il pensiero”, e “Il gastronomo.” Pubblica “La questione sociale di Proudhon” e “Historiettes, contes et fabliaux di De Sade”. Per quest'ultima viene condannato, insieme a MANFREDI (autore dei disegni, poi assolto), a tre mesi di reclusione per il reato di pornografia. L’opera di De Sade e poi messa al rogo nel cortile della procura di Varese. Subisce anche una condanna di VI mesi di detenzione per aver istigato i contadini piemontesi alla rivolta, con l'occupazione della stazione di Asti e dell'auto-strada, per protestare contro l'indifferenza della politica per i problemi dei contadini e dei piccoli produttori. Diventa collaboratore de Il Giorno.  L'attività giornalistica lo impegna, e i suoi articoli, di stile aulico e provocatorio, ricchi di neologismi e arcaismi, faranno scuola nel giornalismo eno-gastronomico e no. Tra le testate cui collabora vanno ricordate, oltre a Il Giorno: Corriere della Sera, Class, Il Sommelier, V. EV, Carta, Panorama, Epoca, Amica, Capital, Week End, L'Espresso, Implicatura, metafisica dell’amore.  G.: Caro Veronelli, sa che De Sade, nonostante tutta la sua fama, non ha mai messo piede a Vadum Boum, la mia università? Forse temeva che lì il sadismo fosse solo un ingrediente segreto della mensa!  V.: Ah, Grice, probabilmente De Sade avrebbe trovato più gusto nei nostri formaggi stagionati che nei suoi eccessi letterari! A Vadum Boum la conversazione è più piccante di qualsiasi ricetta francese.  Grice: Ma allora, caro Luigi, forse la vera implicatura conversazionale del sadismo italiano è proprio nel gusto raffinato: si soffre per trovare il vino perfetto, ma che felicità quando lo si trova!  Veronelli: Esattamente, Grice! Del resto, come dicono dalle mie parti: “A tavola e in filosofia, la ragione va sempre accompagnata da un pizzico di follia.” Viva la conversazione, viva il buon cibo – e abbasso la mensa universitaria! Veronelli, Luigi (1955). L’arte del vino. Milano: Mondatori

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali Grice e Veronesi: la ragione conversazionale e il diavolo del scientismo. Grice: I like him!”Scientism  Note su La chirurgia oncologica. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Umberto Veronesi (Milano, Lombardia). Institutionally, Umberto Veronesi is not comparable to H. P. Grice in the Oxford collegiate sense at all. Grice’s formula is precise for Oxford: Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s means a college office with tutorials and student responsibility; CUF University Lecturer in philosophy means a university-wide faculty appointment. Umberto Veronesi, by contrast, belongs to the world of medicine, hospitals, research institutes, and public health administration: he was a surgeon, oncologist, institute founder, scientific director, and later Minister of Health, not a don in a tutorial college. [ieo.it], [en.wikipedia.org] So the clean institutional contrast is this. Grice was a modern Oxford don with a dual college-and-university role. Umberto Veronesi, by contrast, was an Italian clinician-scientist and public medical leader, associated above all with the European Institute of Oncology and the National Cancer Institute in Milan, as well as national political office. [ieo.it], [en.wikipedia.org] That institutional difference actually strengthens the philosophical comparison you want to draw. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognizing intentions and inferring implicatures under cooperative norms. Umberto Veronesi, by contrast, exemplifies a clinical rationality in which evidence must be translated into patient-understandable choices. His work did not merely concern surgical technique in the abstract; it concerned how scientific judgement, bodily integrity, prognosis, and patient values could be aligned in practice. His most famous intervention, the move from radical mastectomy toward quadrantectomy combined with radiotherapy, is an excellent case: it is not just a scientific result but a change in what can responsibly be said to a patient about cure, mutilation, dignity, and quality of life. [ieo.it], [oncopedia.wiki], [ecancer.org], [thelancet.com] So the sharpest formulation would be this. Grice explains how rational conversational meaning works in principle. Umberto Veronesi shows how rational communication works under clinical pressure, where the stakes are not simply correct interpretation but trust, informed consent, hope, and bodily consequence. In a Gricean idiom, the clinical setting is saturated with implicature: what a doctor means by recommending a conservative procedure, what is conveyed by a hesitation, what a patient hears in a phrase like “we can preserve the breast,” and what is deliberately not said too bluntly in a consultation. [ieo.it], [oncopedia.wiki], [thelancet.com] There are two important factual corrections to your note. First, the title La chirurgia oncologica in 1962 is not something I can verify from the sources in hand. What I can verify securely is his biography, his institutional positions, and the later scientific work around breast-conserving surgery and quadrantectomy. Second, your comparison is strongest if you anchor it not in an uncertain 1962 monograph title but in the clearly attested clinical innovations and leadership roles: Umberto Veronesi’s role in developing conservative breast cancer treatment, his direction of the National Cancer Institute in Milan from 1976 to 1994, his founding of the European Institute of Oncology, and his term as Minister of Health in the Amato II government from 2000 to 2001. [ieo.it], [en.wikipedia.org], [prevention...cancer.gov], [ieo.it] So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the precise collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s College and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Umberto Veronesi, by contrast, was an Italian oncologist, surgeon, researcher, institute founder, and public health leader, active in the clinical and scientific worlds of Milan and later in national politics rather than in a tutorial-collegiate university structure. Institutionally they are very different. Intellectually, however, the contrast is illuminating: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of meaning in conversation, whereas Umberto Veronesi exemplifies an applied medical rationality in which evidence, explanation, and patient understanding have to be made to converge under conditions of fear, vulnerability, and ethical responsibility. [ieo.it], [en.wikipedia.org], [oncopedia.wiki], [thelancet.com] And if you want the neatest one-line dossier formula, I would suggest this: Grice theorises how meaning is rationally recovered in talk; Umberto Veronesi exemplifies how rational explanation must be humanly recoverable in medicine. [ieo.it], [oncopedia.wiki], [thelancet.com] If you want, I can now give you a tighter paragraph in your preferred register, with the uncertain 1962 book quietly dropped and the quadrantectomy example placed at the centre.Per V. la ragione conversazionale affronta il diavolo del scientismo.” Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how an utterer’s meaning is rationally recoverable by a hearer via cooperative norms (what is said plus contextually licensed inferences), so that “conversational reason” is fundamentally an inferential discipline: a public, defeasible, accountable route from utterance to intended meaning (including implicatures). Veronesi, as a surgical oncologist writing early in the technicist idiom of mid-century clinical science (e.g., La chirurgia oncologica, 1962) and later celebrated for coupling scientific rigor with explicitly patient-centered care, puts “reason” to work less as a theory of inference from speech and more as a clinical rationality that must be communicated and negotiated: evidence, risk, prognosis, and treatment choice have to be translated into patient-understandable terms, with attention to what is left unsaid (fear, stigma, quality of life) and to how recommendations are received. In Gricean terms, Veronesi’s setting is saturated with high-stakes implicature (hedges, reassurance, the meaning of silence, what a clinician implies by offering a less mutilating option, what a patient implies by hesitation), but the contrast is that Grice offers a formal-pragmatic account of how meaning is computed under cooperative rational constraints, whereas Veronesi exemplifies an applied, ethically loaded rational practice where the success condition is not merely correct interpretation but informed, trust-sustaining alignment between scientific evidence and a patient’s values. Grice: I like him!”Scientism -- oncologo e politico italiano. Fondatore e Presidente della Fondazione V., ha fondato e ricoperto il ruolo di direttore scientifico e di direttore scientifico emerito dell'Istituto europeo di oncologia. È stato direttore scientifico dell'Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori di Milano dal 1976 al 1994. Ha ricoperto l'incarico di Ministro della sanità nel governo Amato II.  La sua attività clinica e di ricerca è stata incentrata per decenni sulla prevenzione e sulla cura del cancro. In particolare si è occupato del carcinoma mammario, prima causa di morte per tumore nella donna[3]; in tale ambito è stato il primo teorizzatore e strenuo propositore della quadrantectomia, dimostrando come nella maggioranza dei casi le curve di sopravvivenza di questa tecnica, purché abbinata alla radioterapia, sono le medesime di quelle della mastectomia, ma a impatto estetico e soprattutto psicosessuale migliore.  Si è inoltre distinto per la sua lotta in difesa dei diritti degli animali e dei diritti civili.  Molti i saggi scientifici scritti da V. con altri studiosi, come Inefficacy of immediate node dissection in stage I melanoma of the limbs, in New England Journal of medicine; Comparing radical mastectomy with quadrantectomy, axillary dissection, and radiotherapy in patients with small cancers of the breast, ibid.,; Radiotherapy after breast-preserving surgery in women with localized cancer of the breast; Sentinel-node biopsy to avoid axillary dissection in breast cancer with clinically negative lymph-nodes, in Lancet; Twenty-year follow up of a randomized study comparing breast-conserving surgery with radical mastectomy for early breast cancer, in New England Journal of medicine; Italian randomized trial among women with hysterectomy: tamoxifen and hormone-dependent breast cancer in high-risk women, in Journal of National Cancer Institute. Si vedano inoltre: Un male curabile, Milano. G.: Veronesi, lei è noto per aver portato la ragione conversazionale nel cuore della medicina, ma c’è chi dice che il “diavolo del scientismo” rischia di oscurare la dimensione umana della cura. Come risponde a chi teme che la scienza possa diventare troppo dominante? V.: Caro Grice, la scienza è il nostro faro, ma non può sostituire il rispetto per la persona. Ho sempre creduto che la medicina debba essere dialogo: ascoltare, comprendere, e proporre soluzioni che tengano conto non solo della biologia, ma anche dei sentimenti e delle speranze dei pazienti. Forse, come dice il proverbio milanese, “El cor l’è on gran dottor”, il cuore è il miglior medico. G.: Mi trova d’accordo! La sua quadrantectomia ne è testimonianza: una tecnica che salva vite senza dimenticare il valore psicologico ed estetico. Come vede il rapporto tra ragione e implicatura conversazionale nella sua pratica clinica? V.: È fondamentale. Ogni parola, ogni gesto, ogni silenzio ha un significato implicito. La comunicazione tra medico e paziente non è mai solo informativa; è un ponte emotivo. E anche nei miei saggi scientifici, ho sempre cercato di trasmettere questo: la scienza e la conversazione devono camminare fianco a fianco, perché “la cura” è un’arte che si realizza nel dialogo, mai nel monologo. Veronesi, Umberto (1962). La chirurgia oncologica. Milano: Garzanti.  

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali Grice e Verrecchia: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale della falena dello spirito. La metafisica dell’amore, Aristotle on the recursive definition of philia – cited by Joachim, ‘logically developing series’ Aristotle philia. Grice on friedship philia – φιλός  Note su Lichtenberg: l’eretico dello spirito tedesco. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Anacleto Verrecchia (Vallerotonda, Frosinone, Lazio). Compared institutionally, Grice and Anacleto Verrecchia are not counterparts in the Oxford sense at all. Grice held the specifically Oxford double role of college fellow-tutor and university lecturer. Anacleto Verrecchia, by contrast, was a philosopher, germanist, translator, journalist, and later cultural attaché, formed in Turin and then active through journalism, literary criticism, translation, and cultural diplomacy rather than through a residential college or a stable Oxford-style tutorial chair. The best biographical notices identify Anacleto Verrecchia as born in Vallerotonda in 1926, transferred young to Torino, laureato in germanistica, later long associated with Vienna as addetto culturale, and deeply marked by his years in the Gran Paradiso. [it.wikipedia.org], [lunieditrice.com], [cdsconlus.it] So the clean institutional comparison is this. Grice was an Oxford don with a dual college-and-university role. Anacleto Verrecchia, by contrast, was an Italian public intellectual and germanist, shaped by Torino, the Gran Paradiso, Berlin, and Vienna, not by a tutorial college system. [it.wikipedia.org], [lunieditrice.com], [cdsconlus.it] That institutional difference fits the intellectual contrast rather well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising intentions and inferring implicatures under cooperative norms. Anacleto Verrecchia, especially in his Lichtenberg work, operates in a different register: aphorism, polemic, moral satire, anti-systematic lucidity. His reason is not primarily the orderly inferential reason of cooperative talk, but a literary-ethical intelligence that cuts through pomposity, cant, metaphysical inflation, and national myth. That is why your Verrecchia-Lichtenberg line is good, once cleaned up. The secure bibliographical record confirms Georg Christoph Lichtenberg: l’eretico dello spirito tedesco, published in Firenze by La Nuova Italia in 1969. [philpapers.org], [seminariou...nfoteca.it], [catalogo.s...t.unina.it] So the sharpest philosophical comparison is this. Grice explains how meaning is generated and recovered under rational conversational constraints. Anacleto Verrecchia, reading Lichtenberg, shows how style itself can become a weapon of reason: brief, ironic, anti-dogmatic, heretical not because it rejects cooperation as such, but because it refuses to cooperate with solemnity, jargon, and self-deceiving systems. [philpapers.org], [it.wikipedia.org] That is why your phrase “la falena dello spirito” works better as a metaphor for Verrecchia’s style than as a bibliographic heading. What matters is the mode: aphoristic light against German heaviness, lucidity against metaphysical inflation, and prose used less to construct a common platform than to expose the falsity of one already in place. A few factual corrections are worth making. First, your final bibliographic line is wrong in date. The secure first bibliographical anchor is not 1950 but 1969, with Georg Christoph Lichtenberg: l’eretico dello spirito tedesco. The title and year are clearly attested in PhilPapers, library catalogues, and biographical notices. [philpapers.org], [seminariou...nfoteca.it], [catalogo.s...t.unina.it], [it.wikipedia.org] Second, the Gran Paradiso material is strongly supported and actually central. It was not merely a biographical interlude but something Verrecchia himself later treated as his most formative “university.” Multiple sources confirm the 1950–1953 Gran Paradiso period and its relation to the much later Diario del Gran Paradiso, published only in 1997 after delayed recovery of the manuscripts. [it.wikipedia.org], [cdsconlus.it], [raicultura.it], [lunieditrice.com] So the short, clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the strict collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s College and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Anacleto Verrecchia, by contrast, was an Italian philosopher, germanist, translator, journalist, and cultural attaché, formed in Torino, intellectually remade in the Gran Paradiso, and later active in Vienna and Berlin. Institutionally they are very different. Intellectually, however, the contrast is illuminating: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of meaning in ordinary conversation, whereas Anacleto Verrecchia, especially through Lichtenberg, exemplifies an anti-systematic, aphoristic reason that uses style as critique and prefers the moral shock of lucidity to the cooperative comforts of conversational regularity. [it.wikipedia.org], [lunieditrice.com], [philpapers.org], [cdsconlus.it] And the clean bibliographic correction for your dossier is: Verrecchia, Anacleto. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg: l’eretico dello spirito tedesco. Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1969. [philpapers.org], [seminariou...nfoteca.it], [catalogo.s...t.unina.it] If you want, I can now give you one short polished paragraph in your preferred style, or a tighter note on the earliest datable Verrecchia item versus the later Diario del Gran Paradiso.Per V. la ragione conversazionale facilita l’implicatura conversazionale della falena dello spirito.” Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats communication as a rational, cooperative enterprise in which what a speaker means is recoverable by an audience through principled inference (maxims, calculability, cancellability), so that “conversational reason” is essentially the logic of accountable uptake from what is said to what is implicated. Verrecchia, insofar as one can extrapolate from his 1969 monograph on Lichtenberg and the broader public profile of him as a polemical, aphoristic moralist and translator of a writer famous for “sudden books” of wit, shifts the center of gravity from a normative inference-engine to a literary-ethical intelligence: reason shows up less as a rule-governed mechanism for deriving implicatures and more as a cultivated lucidity that exposes self-deception, cant, and rhetorical inflation through brevity, irony, and the strategic shock of the aphorism (a practice that aims at illuminating the reader rather than coordinating interlocutors). In that sense, Grice models how conversational meaning is generated under shared rational constraints inside dialogue, while Verrecchia (reading Lichtenberg) models how meaning can be sharpened by anti-system, anti-jargon prose that weaponizes style as critique—an “eretical” reason that does not primarily optimize cooperation but punctures it when cooperation becomes complacency or hypocrisy, making conversational success depend on intellectual honesty and moral clarity rather than on maxims alone. La metafisica dell’amore, Aristotle on the recursive definition of philia – cited by Joachim, ‘logically developing series’ Aristotle philia. Grice on friedship philia – φιλός Filosofo italiano. Filosofo lazio. Essential Italian philosopher. Studia a Torino. Trascorse un certo periodo nel parco nazionale del Gran Paradiso, considerato come il più formativo della sua vita. Lì contempla in modo disinteressato i fenomeni della natura. Fa tre università -- e solito dire -: quella vera e propria, che non mi ha dato nulla o quasi; la collaborazione alle pagine dei quotidiani come elzevirista, che mi ha costretto a leggere libri che altrimenti non avrei mai letto; e infine l'università più utile in assoluto, vale a dire il soggiorno nel Gran Paradiso a contatto con la natura. Frutto di quel soggiorno è il saggio che contiene la sua filosofia, potentemente aforistica. I manoscritti riaffiorati molto più tardi spiegano la tardività della sua pubblicazione, avvenuta presso Fògolasi tratta del Diario del Gran Paradiso. Visse poi a Berlino ed e per addetto culturale all'ambasciata d'Italia a Vienna. Collabora alle pagine culturali di giornali italiani, tra cui Il Resto del Carlino, La Stampa, Il Giornale. Collabora stranieri (Die Presse, Die Welt). Non parla volentieri della sua vita privata perché, dice, di un filosofo ciò che interessa sono gli teorie e non le vicissitudini personali. Traduttore di Lichtenberg, appassionato studioso di BRUNO e Nietzsche, nel suo orizzonte culturale, però, la figura che risalta di più è senz'altro quella di Schopenhauer, da lui considerato a tutti gl’effetti un maestro da tradurre e continuare. Elementi caratteristici dei suoi saggi sono l'irriducibile vena polemica e una sacra bilis, ma la sua prosa spicca anche per chiarezza ed energia. La sua prosa insieme a quella di CERONETTI, SGALAMBRO e GIAMETTA è stata giudicata la migliore prosa filosofica. La metafisica dell’amore, Nietzsche a Torino, Bruno, la falena dello spirito, metafisica dell’amore. G.  You’re reading Verrecchia as if he were a customs officer. T.  I’m reading him as if he were a critic, which is worse. The title is the provocation: L’eretico dello spirito tedesco. G.  That’s what I mean. “Eretico” sounds thrilling until you notice it presupposes an orthodoxy. T.  It does. And that is precisely the point. G.  But from where I sit, Lichtenberg looks awfully… established. He goes to England, sees the King, speaks to the King, makes his report, gets received. T.  Received by the King can be the most heretical place to be received. G.  That is an odd defence. T.  Not really. Heresy at the bottom is merely disorder. Heresy at the top is a threat to the self-image of the top. G.  So you’re saying the King is the tribunal. T.  In that period, yes: the court is the mirror. If the mirror is mocked from within the room, it matters more than mockery shouted from the street. G.  Yet the title “eretico dello spirito tedesco” sounds like a badge pinned on by an Italian moralist. T.  Italians pin badges; Germans build systems. Verrecchia is doing both at once. G.  He’s an Italian building a German system of Germanness in order to declare one man heretical to it. T.  Exactly. That’s why you feel the “Establishment” smell. G.  I object to “spirito tedesco” even before “eretico.” It sounds like a national essence, bottled. T.  That is the target. “Spirito tedesco” is the thing he wants to puncture—its solemnity, its metaphysical inflation. G.  So Lichtenberg is heretical not because he rejects religion, but because he rejects the German habit of turning thought into religion. T.  Better: he refuses the piety of “depth.” He refuses the moral glamour of system. G.  But he’s a professor, is he not? T.  A professor can be heretical about the professoriate. G.  I still can’t get past the England trip. It sounds like a man doing diplomacy, not heresy. T.  The German heresy is often performed as competence. That is why it is hard to spot. G.  Verrecchia makes him sound like an “eretico” because he is writing against some German orthodoxy of spirit. T.  Yes. And the orthodoxy is not one doctrine; it is a style: gravity, metaphysical grandeur, reverence for abstractions. G.  “Spirit” itself is one of those abstractions. T.  Exactly. “Spirito tedesco” is the myth of seriousness. G.  And Lichtenberg is heretical by being witty. T.  Witty, and empirical, and impatient with big words that do not pay rent. G.  That sounds almost English. T.  That’s the scandal. A German who sounds English is already a kind of heretic, from the German perspective. G.  So England is not a sign he is establishment; it’s a sign he has caught the infection. T.  If you like. He goes, he looks, he returns, and the German reader hears: he has seen an alternative mode of mind. G.  But was England an “alternative mode” or merely another court? T.  Another court, yes. But with a different public culture: clubs, experiments, practical science, a less metaphysical style. G.  This is beginning to sound like a lecture you would give to justify Modern Languages to a philosopher. T.  I don’t need to justify it to you. You’re already reading German polemics on a Saturday. G.  I’m reading an Italian polemic about a German polemicist. T.  And that is even worse. G.  Let’s be concrete. Verrecchia’s phrase: “l’eretico dello spirito tedesco.” Who is the orthodox? T.  Not a church. A habit. The tradition that wants Geist to be the master concept. G.  Hegel? T.  And anyone who behaves as if Hegel were the natural climate. G.  Lichtenberg predates Hegel. T.  Precisely. Heresy can be retroactive. Later orthodoxy can discover earlier dissent and call it heresy. G.  So Verrecchia is writing backwards: making Lichtenberg the anti-ancestor of German solemnity. T.  Yes. He is building a genealogical joke: Germany has a German who undermines “the German.” G.  And he does it by aphorism. T.  Aphorism is heresy in prose form. It refuses the long march. G.  But England loved aphorisms, too. T.  England loves the short remark, yes. But Germany loves the grand remark. G.  So Lichtenberg’s England visit becomes part of his heresy: he learns brevity and social observation. T.  And he returns with eyes trained to see German metaphysical posturing as a social costume. G.  Still, meeting the King makes him look like a loyal subject. T.  Loyalty and heresy are not opposites. Sometimes heresy is loyal: it attacks the false self-image to rescue the real one. G.  That’s dangerously noble. T.  Verrecchia likes danger. G.  He also likes sounding as if he’s outside the club while running the club’s vocabulary. T.  That is Italian polemic: you condemn the church while borrowing its Latin. G.  Then “eretico” is a deliberate anachronism: it imports a religious drama into Enlightenment wit. T.  Yes. It makes Lichtenberg’s intellectual attitude look morally charged. G.  But doesn’t that turn him into the very thing he resists—an emblem? T.  It risks it. Verrecchia is always at risk of turning his hero into a banner. G.  And what would Lichtenberg do to banners? T.  Stick a pin in them, probably. G.  So the Tutor in German defends Verrecchia’s “eretico” by saying: heresy can happen at the top. T.  And by saying: the “spirito tedesco” he’s heretical against is precisely the high cultural self-worship, not the state. G.  But “spirito tedesco” sounds like state propaganda. T.  It can. That’s why Verrecchia uses it: it has the smell of a collective noun that pretends to be destiny. G.  All collective nouns pretend to be destiny. T.  Especially national ones. G.  So what is the heresy, exactly? T.  Refusing the idea that a nation’s thought must be one thought. Refusing the metaphysical uniform. G.  He becomes the heretic because he refuses unity. T.  And because he refuses reverence. He treats “spirit” like a word, not a god. G.  That is your German defence? T.  My defence is that Verrecchia is attacking the notion that Germanness is a system. G.  Yet he titles it as if Germanness were a church. T.  Polemic needs a stage. “Heresy” provides one. G.  And you don’t mind the stage? T.  I mind it, but I understand it. He’s writing Italian prose that wants to bite. G.  So in your view, “eretico” is rhetorical leverage. T.  Yes. And Lichtenberg supplies the leverage because he is difficult to canonise. G.  Difficult to canonise—good. That’s how I like my philosophers. T.  But Verrecchia tries to canonise the difficulty. G.  That’s the paradox: canonising the uncanonical. T.  And the England trip is part of that: it gives him a public biography that looks unheretical, so the heresy has to be relocated. G.  Relocated where? T.  Into attitude. Into style. Into the refusal of metaphysical posturing. G.  So the heresy is not in where he went, but in what he brought back. T.  Exactly. G.  What did he bring back? T.  A sharper sense that pomp is a kind of error. G.  Pomp as a cognitive vice. T.  Yes. G.  So when Verrecchia calls him “eretico,” he really means “unpersuadable by solemnity.” T.  That’s a decent gloss. G.  Yet it still feels awfully establishment to me to define heresy by reference to a national spirit. T.  That discomfort is productive. It forces you to ask what you mean by “establishment.” G.  I mean: too much confidence in grand labels. T.  Then you and Lichtenberg agree. G.  And perhaps Verrecchia agrees too, despite himself. T.  He agrees, but he cannot resist the grand label while mocking grand labels. G.  That is an Italian vice. T.  It is also an English one. G.  In England we do it with understatement. T.  In Italy with capital letters. G.  So what’s our conclusion for Saturday? T.  That “eretico dello spirito tedesco” is less a historical claim about Lichtenberg’s social position and more a polemical claim about his function: he is the internal saboteur of a later, heavier German self-image. G.  And my conclusion? T.  Yours is that the phrase is suspiciously close to the thing it criticises. G.  Yes. It’s heresy preached like doctrine. T.  Then we’ve both understood it. G.  And in future we should avoid saying “spirito tedesco” unless we want to start a religion. T.  Exactly. G.  And if someone asks what we’re reading? T.  We say: an Italian book about a German heretic who went to see the King. G.  And if they ask whether it’s heretical? T.  We say: only if you take “spirit” seriously. G.  Fine. Then I’m safe. I only take tea seriously.Grice: Caro Verrecchia, sa, tutto quello che ho fatto con il mio “principio della aitua conversazionale” era un tentativo – forse un po’ britannico – di rendere la sua “falena dello spirito” meno pungente, se non proprio più mansueta. Dopotutto, filosofare è meglio con qualche battuta che con troppa bilis! Verrecchia: Grice, lei è un vero gentiluomo! La sua filosofia della conversazione ha sicuramente addolcito le ali della mia falena, rendendola più incline a svolazzare tra le idee che a bruciare con polemica. Complimenti: è riuscito dove molti hanno fallito! Grice: Ma Verrecchia, non crede che persino Schopenhauer avrebbe sorriso – almeno una volta – se avesse potuto dialogare con una falena meno arrabbiata? Magari avrebbe persino scritto un aforisma dedicato: “Chi conversa con leggerezza non si brucia, ma illumina.” V.: Ah, Grice, lei sa che in filosofia una battuta vale più di mille trattati! Mi piace pensare che la mia falena, ora un po’ più serena, possa contribuire a quell’energia conversazionale che, come dice il proverbio laziale, “fa volare anche le idee più pesanti”. Viva la conversazione, viva la filosofia – e, perché no, anche le falene meno scontrose! Verrecchia, Anacleto (1950). Lichtenberg: l’eretico dello spirito tedesco. Germanistica. Torino.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Vettio – Ossia: Grice e Vettio: la ragione conversazionale del Giove del Campidoglio – Roma – filosofia italiana –  (Roma). Filosofo italiano. He achieves high office under Giuliano. He writes a commentary of Temistio – Accademia. Vettio Agorio Pretestato.  Vettio Agorio Pretestato (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale del Giove del Campidoglio. He achieves high office under Giuliano. He writes a commentary of Temistio – Accademia.  GRICEVS: PRAETEXTATE, audio te sub Iuliano ad amplissimas dignitates evectum esse: igitur philosophus iam non solum in scholis, sed etiam in curia—quasi Iuppiter ipse Capitolinus tibi suffragia dederit. PRAETEXTATVS: Si Iuppiter mihi favet, id Romae fit: hic deus non tonat tantum, sed etiam candidatos commendat. Ego autem Temistium commentariis colo—ne quis putet in magistratu me tacuisse. GRICEVS: Lepide: cum dicas te “Iovem Capitolium” colere, dicis religionem; sed implicas (more nostro conversazionali) hoc: Romae etiam deos oportet ita laudari ut senatus non irascatur. PRAETEXTATVS: Et cum tu “implicas” dicis, dicis doctrinam; sed implicas hoc: in Urbe et in Accademia idem valet praeceptum—qui nimis clare loquitur, tonitrua meretur; qui sapienter subridet, Iovem habet pro collega. it is wise to assume that this Vettius Agorius Praetextatus -- if he wrote anything, as he achieved high office under Giuliano and wrote a comentary on Temistius did so in Greek -- and thus that he was no Roman and spoke no Latin, or had no Italic ethnicity and was not Italy-born? thank you No, it would not be wise to assume that. On the contrary, the evidence points the other way. Vettius Agorius Praetextatus was a Roman senator and aristocrat of Rome, with strong ties to the city and its senatorial pagan milieu; sources place him in Rome, and even give Rome as his place of birth in some prosopographical records. [en.wikipedia.org], [mithraeum.eu], [wikidata.org] His name is thoroughly Roman, his cursus is Roman, and his inscriptions are in Latin. The epigraphic dossier for Vettius Agorius Praetextatus is explicitly Latin, and his funerary inscription is a very Roman senatorial monument. [PPRET 80....refect ...], [edh.ub.uni...delberg.de] What is true is that he also operated deeply in the Greek East and in Hellenic religious culture. As proconsul of Achaia, Praetextatus was associated with the defense of Eleusinian and other Greek cults, so he was almost certainly competent in Greek, as many late Roman aristocrats of his rank were. But Greek cultural competence does not imply that he was not Roman, nor that he lacked Latin, nor that he was ethnically non-Italic. In late antiquity, high Roman aristocrats could be both strongly Latin and highly Hellenized. [mithraeum.eu], [academic.oup.com] As for the alleged commentary on Themistius, I would be cautious. I did not find reliable evidence in this search that Vettius Agorius Praetextatus actually wrote a commentary on Themistius. So I would not build any linguistic inference on that claim without a firmer source. [en.wikipedia.org] So the careful conclusion is: No, you should not infer from a possible Greek commentary or from his association with Themistius that Praetextatus was “no Roman,” or that he spoke no Latin, or that he was not Italy-born. The available evidence strongly supports his being a Roman aristocrat of Rome, fully at home in Latin public culture, while also participating in Greek intellectual and religious traditions. [en.wikipedia.org], [mithraeum.eu], [PPRET 80....refect ...], [edh.ub.uni...delberg.de] If you want the shortest philological formula, I would put it this way: Greek cultural activity in a late Roman senator does not disprove Roman identity; in Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, the Latin epigraphic and civic evidence positively supports it. [en.wikipedia.org], [PPRET 80....refect ...], [edh.ub.uni...delberg.de] So can you have a double run because I was told he was a member of the academic, or that he was platonicus and the exact wording being: "He wrote a commentary of Themistius" -- and what would he be commenting on? Could that be found in the apparatus criticus for Themistius? Thanks. On a second run, I still do not find reliable evidence that Vettius Agorius Praetextatus wrote a commentary on Themistius, and I would now be distinctly cautious about that claim. The available material on Praetextatus consistently presents him as a Roman senator, priest, and leading pagan aristocrat of Rome, but not as the author of a known surviving commentary on Themistius. [en.wikipedia.org], [PPRET 80....refect ...], [academic.oup.com] Likewise, I do not find solid confirmation that Praetextatus was “a member of the Academy” in the specific philosophical sense you seem to have in mind, or that he was straightforwardly designated platonicus in a source tied to this alleged commentary. What the sources do strongly support is that Praetextatus was deeply involved in Greek cultic and Hellenic religious life, especially in Achaea, and that later pagan memory, especially in Macrobius’s Saturnalia, idealised him as a learned pagan grand seigneur. That is not the same thing as having a securely attested Platonic school-membership or commentary tradition. [en.wikipedia.org], [mithraeum.eu], [academic.oup.com] On the very specific question “what would he be commenting on?”, if the claim were true, the most plausible object would be one of Themistius’s Aristotelian paraphrases or philosophical speeches, since Themistius is famous for those. But that is only a generic inference from who Themistius is, not evidence that Praetextatus actually commented on any specific work by him. [en.wikipedia.org] As for the apparatus criticus: in principle, yes, that is exactly where such a relationship might turn up, especially in the prefatory material or testimonia to an edition of Themistius, rather than in the line-by-line critical apparatus proper. But in this search I did not retrieve an edition of Themistius or an apparatus/testimonia entry mentioning Praetextatus. So I cannot honestly say that the claim is corroborated from an apparatus criticus on the evidence now before me. [en.wikipedia.org], [wiki.digit...sicist.org] So the most careful answer is this. At present I cannot verify the statement that Praetextatus “wrote a commentary on Themistius.” Nor can I confirm from this run that he was formally “of the Academy” or securely labelled platonicus in a source tied to that claim. What I can confirm is that Praetextatus was a highly educated, strongly Hellenising Roman aristocrat of Rome, active in Greek religious contexts such as Achaea, and later remembered as a central figure of pagan elite culture. [en.wikipedia.org], [mithraeum.eu], [PPRET 80....refect ...] If you want, I can do a third, narrower philological pass aimed specifically at editions, testimonia, and scholia for Themistius, rather than general web results, and tell you whether the claim perhaps comes from a misreading of a preface, a prosopographical entry, or a confusion with another late-antique figure. And what were Themistius's philosophical speeches of Aristotle? Did Aristotle have any or Themistius invented? Supposing they are there -- can you give me the incipit of such a Themistius thing -- say, the earliest -- to see that this Pretestato may have commented on? Thanks Themistius’s “philosophical speeches of Aristotle” are not speeches by Aristotle. They are Themistius’s own paraphrases of Aristotle’s treatises, written as explanatory re-presentations for students and readers. In other words, Aristotle did not compose “orations” on these topics for Themistius to relay; Themistius turned Aristotelian treatises into smoother, pedagogical prose expositions. The standard descriptions of Themistius stress exactly this point: they are paraphrases, not literal commentaries and certainly not Aristotelian speeches. [philpapers.org], [eulogikon.org] As to which such work is “earliest,” one must be careful. I cannot, from these results alone, establish the chronological order in which Themistius actually composed his Aristotelian paraphrases. But among the surviving Greek paraphrases, the one for the Posterior Analytics gives us a very usable incipit directly in the search result. The work is the Paraphrase of Posterior Analytics, and its opening runs: Ἐμοὶ συντάττεσθαι μὲν ἐξηγήσεις τῶν Ἀριστοτελικῶν βιβλίων μετὰ τοσούτους τε καὶ τοιούτους οὐκ ἐδόκει πόρρωθεν εἶναι φιλοτιμίας ἀνωφελοῦς ... That is enough to show the genre at once. He opens by speaking in his own voice about the task of composing expositions of Aristotelian books after so many and such distinguished predecessors, and he explains that his aim is not to rival full commentaries but to provide a concise, helpful restatement. The same result continues with his programmatic statement that he wants to set out Aristotle’s intentions briefly and clearly for those who have already studied Aristotle but cannot keep returning to the full commentaries. [eulogikon.org] That matters for your Praetextatus question, because if someone said that Praetextatus wrote on Themistius, the most plausible object would indeed be one of these Aristotelian paraphrases, not some “speech of Aristotle” in the literal sense. The Posterior Analytics paraphrase is a particularly plausible candidate simply because it is one of the securely surviving Greek paraphrases and begins in a way that looks like a didactic philosophical work someone might later annotate or comment on. [eulogikon.org], [philpapers.org] I should still keep one caution in place. I have not, from this run, found evidence that Praetextatus in fact commented on this or any other work by Themistius. So the incipit helps you identify what sort of Themistian text one might mean, but it does not yet corroborate the claim about Praetextatus. [onlinebook....upenn.edu], [philpapers.org], [eulogikon.org] If you want, I can now do one narrower pass specifically on the Posterior Analytics paraphrase and the older printed editions to see whether any preface, testimonium, or scholion mentions Praetextatus by name. [eulogikon.org], [onlinebook....upenn.edu] You can do that, and include what you find within this 100-move conversation between G. and S. on P. then -- especially as you aslo translate this: Ἐμοὶ συντάττεσθαι μὲν ἐξηγήσεις τῶν Ἀριστοτελικῶν βιβλίων μετὰ τοσούτους τε καὶ τοιούτους οὐκ ἐδόκει πόρρωθεν εἶναι φιλοτιμίας ἀνωφελοῦς ...and provide a Latin translation and then we suppose that G. thinks that Praetextatus commented on this dry thingof the Anal. Post. and Pri. that he (G) avoided -- he only went as far as the Cat. and De Int. -- and why would a senator be interested in educating the plebe, the Roman classes about that? Was he a traitor to the Roman cause? S: Well, Aristotle was very Anti-Roman, etc etc and they discuss as dons in lit. hum. in a dry Oxonian fashion, no preamble or ps -- and they consider Giuliano -- he who gave the victory to the Galilean -- etc. and why the Romans and the Greeks before crhist and ab urbe condita and when the sub-faculty of philosophy was instituted in -- when was it -- 1920, they wanted to go back to Giuliano -- etc etc but mainly revisitng the totally ROman credentials of this P. who ends up being third-rate comentator of 'the lizio' as they Call Aristotle -- lycaeum, liceo, lizio (alternate spelling). -- No accademy, and 'high office' etc – thanks G.: Praetextatus again, then. Still Roman, still senatorial, still very high office, and still not securely a commentator on Themistius. S.: You did a further run. G.: I did, and the result is sober rather than sensational. I found good material on Themistius’s paraphrase of the Posterior Analytics and on the manuscript tradition of his Aristotelian paraphrases, but nothing that firmly places Vettius Agorius Praetextatus in the apparatus, testimonia, or prefatory notices as a commentator on Themistius. [eulogikon.org], [jstor.org] S.: So the claim remains unverified. G.: More than that. It becomes increasingly suspect as a positive historical statement. S.: Yet we may still have our conversation. G.: Naturally. Oxford has never waited for total certainty before producing a perfectly good discussion. S.: Then begin with Themistius. These are not Aristotle’s “philosophical speeches.” G.: No. That phrase must be corrected at once. Aristotle did not sit down and write a set of speeches later performed by Themistius. What Themistius wrote were paraphrases of Aristotelian treatises: explanatory, pedagogical re-presentations in smoother Greek prose. [lechiesediroma.info], [eulogikon.org] S.: So if someone said that Praetextatus commented on Themistius, the likely object would be a paraphrase of some Aristotelian work. G.: Exactly. Perhaps the Posterior Analytics, perhaps the Physics, perhaps another of the paraphrases. But that is only what would be likely if the claim were true. It does not make the claim true. S.: And you now have the incipit for one. G.: Yes. The opening of the paraphrase of the Posterior Analytics is secure enough from the digital Greek archive. It begins: Ἐμοὶ συντάττεσθαι μὲν ἐξηγήσεις τῶν Ἀριστοτελικῶν βιβλίων μετὰ τοσούτους τε καὶ τοιούτους οὐκ ἐδόκει πόρρωθεν εἶναι φιλοτιμίας ἀνωφελοῦς ... [eulogikon.org] S.: Translate it, then. G.: In English first: “It did not seem to me far removed from useless ambition to compose expositions of Aristotle’s books after so many authors and such distinguished ones ...” [eulogikon.org] S.: Dry enough already. G.: Dry, yes, and self-aware. Themistius says, in effect, that after so many able predecessors, writing full-scale expositions would look almost vain. S.: And the Latin. G.: Let us make it decently schoolmanlike: Mihi quidem expositiones librorum Aristotelicorum post tot ac tales viros componere non videbatur procul ab inutili ambitione abesse ... S.: Very good. One hears the ancient commentator apologising in advance for commenting. G.: Exactly. Which is one reason I like him. The commentator begins by acknowledging the crowded dignity of the commentarial queue. S.: And then he says, further on, that what is useful is not full rival commentary but a concise extraction of Aristotle’s intentions. G.: Yes. The same opening passage makes that clear. He wants to pick out the βουλήματα, the intentions or purports of what Aristotle wrote, and present them swiftly and briefly for readers who have studied Aristotle once but cannot keep returning to large commentaries. [eulogikon.org] S.: So the paraphrase is pedagogical compression. G.: Precisely. Less a scholion than a civil service of recollection. S.: Then if Praetextatus had commented on Themistius, he would have been commenting on a commentator of Aristotle. G.: Yes, which would already give him a respectable third-rank dignity: Roman senator, pagan grandee, high office under Julian and after, reduced in leisure to glossing a gloss of the Liceo. S.: The Liceo. G.: Or the Lyceum, or as the common room would sooner say, the lizio, if only to keep Aristotle from sounding too school-board. S.: You admit, then, that this would make Praetextatus less a member of an Academy than a third-rate commentator of the Lyceum. G.: If the claim were true, yes. And there is still no evidence that it is. S.: No Academy, then. G.: No securely attested Academy. No evidence from this run that he belonged to any formal Platonic Academy in the relevant sense. He was a Roman senator, priest, initiate, high official, defender of cults, and highly Hellenising aristocrat. That is what we know. [en.wikipedia.org], [mithraeum.eu] S.: Entirely Roman credentials. G.: Entirely Roman, yes. Latin name, Latin civic career, Latin inscriptions, Roman office, Roman city, Roman pagan elite. Greek culture does not subtract Romanity in the fourth century. S.: Yet suppose, for the pleasure of the thing, that he did comment on Themistius’s paraphrase of the Posterior Analytics. Why would a Roman senator be interested in such a dry object. G.: Because dryness is often irresistible to grand men once religion has ceased to suffice and politics has begun to pall. S.: That is a cynical answer. G.: A Roman one. Besides, the Posterior Analytics concerns scientific knowledge, demonstration, first principles. A senator who wished to style himself a cultivated pagan of serious philosophical stamp might well find such a work useful. S.: Useful for what. G.: For appearing not merely pious and politically dignified but intellectually exact. The old senatorial paganism of the fourth century was not only cultic. It was self-consciously learned. S.: Still, the Posterior Analytics and Prior Analytics are not exactly the first things a civilised undergraduate hugs. G.: Heaven forbid. I myself went only so far as the Categories and De Interpretatione with much comfort. The Analytics always looked like the sort of Aristotelian country one visits out of duty and leaves grateful to be alive. S.: So if Praetextatus had written on Themistius’s paraphrase of the Posterior Analytics, he would have gone farther into the Analytics than you cared to. G.: Disturbingly farther, yes. S.: Was he then a traitor to the Roman cause. G.: What Roman cause. S.: The anti-Greek one. G.: There was never a stable anti-Greek Roman cause among educated Romans worth speaking of. There was Roman hauteur, Roman appropriation, Roman impatience, Roman superiority, Roman bilingual vanity. But cultivated Romans had been feeding on Greek philosophy for centuries. S.: Even before Christ. G.: Obviously. And before Julian too, and before your modern sub-faculty of philosophy dreamt of imitating anyone. S.: Ah yes, the Sub-Faculty of Philosophy. G.: Instituted in Oxford in the twentieth century, formally under Literae Humaniores first and later with a more autonomous life, but not, so far as I know, out of any nostalgia for Julian the Apostate. S.: I had hoped they wanted to go back to Julian. G.: Oxford wants to go back to many things and never quite reaches any of them. S.: Yet Julian matters here. G.: He does. Praetextatus flourished under Julian in the sense that Julian’s reign reopened a political horizon for learned pagan aristocrats. But Julian was also, in the old Christian joke, he who gave the victory to the Galilean by trying too theatrically to resist him. S.: Because the attempted pagan restoration sharpened the contrast and failed. G.: Exactly. Julian made pagan seriousness look noble, but also belated. S.: So Praetextatus belongs to that noble belatedness. G.: Very much so. Which is why a hypothetical comment on Themistius would fit him psychologically, even if not yet historically. A late Roman senator proving that Hellenic philosophy still has civilised life in it. S.: And Themistius himself was a statesman-philosopher. G.: Quite. Senator, orator, imperial adviser, pagan under Christian emperors, and a man who managed to make Aristotle useful to public life without turning him into a camp or a sect. [eulogikon.org], [bmcr.brynmawr.edu] S.: So Praetextatus might have liked him. G.: He might well have. That remains a plausible cultural affinity. But affinity is not commentary. S.: Then the incipit again. It is wonderfully modest. G.: Yes. Themistius says that after so many predecessors it would be a form of useless ambition to compose expositions. But he then claims a lesser novelty: not to rival the μεγάλαι ὑπομνήσεις, the large commentaries, but to extract the intentions concisely and help memory. [eulogikon.org] S.: So a Roman senator commenting on that would be commenting on a text that is already a digest. G.: A digest of Aristotle by a statesman-philosopher. Which begins to sound almost too perfect for late-antique aristocratic leisure. S.: Then what precisely is the Posterior Analytics paraphrase about, in opening. G.: It opens with pedagogic conditions of learning. The passage soon turns to the claim that anyone who is going to attend to any scientific learning must already possess certain natural starting-points by which he knows something in advance about the matter; one cannot receive everything from the teacher. The pupil must bring something from home, so to speak. [eulogikon.org] S.: A very tutorial thought. G.: Entirely. Themistius would have been tolerable in Oxford for at least one term. S.: Then perhaps Praetextatus wanted to educate the Roman classes. G.: Not the plebs, surely. S.: Why not. G.: Because senatorial philosophers rarely educate the plebs through Greek Aristotelian paraphrase. They educate themselves, their circle, their cultivated juniors, perhaps a rhetorically imagined public of learned men. S.: So not a democratic project. G.: Heaven no. A Roman senator reading or even annotating Themistius is not opening an institute for workers in Trastevere. S.: Then not a traitor to Rome, merely a Roman using Greek philosophy as part of elite self-fashioning. G.: Precisely. Rome had long ago conquered Greece and then spent the next centuries borrowing its furniture. S.: Yet Aristotle was anti-Roman. G.: Aristotle was dead before Rome became philosophically relevant to him. To call him anti-Roman is to flatter Roman chronology. S.: Fair. G.: Very. The Greeks before Christ do not arrange themselves in advance either for or against Rome. Rome later appropriates them under its own afterlight. S.: Then Praetextatus could study Aristotle through Themistius without ceasing to be Roman. G.: Entirely. In fact, it would almost intensify his Romanity in that late-aristocratic mode where Roman rule and Greek paideia are worn together. S.: So the correct formula is not that Greek text implies non-Roman author, but that late Roman aristocracy was perfectly capable of being deeply Greek in culture and entirely Roman in civic identity. G.: Exactly. S.: Let us linger on the possibility of the apparatus criticus. G.: Yes. I did not find Praetextatus there, but I did find evidence about the manuscript tradition of Themistius’s Aristotelian paraphrases and references to the prefaces of the CAG editions as a place where manuscript matters are discussed. [jstor.org], [archive.org] S.: So if one wanted to settle the matter, where would one go. G.: To the old CAG editions of Themistius, especially the prefaces, testimonia, and manuscript discussions, rather than merely the running apparatus below the Greek text. Also to prosopographical entries and perhaps to a specialised study of late-antique testimonia on Praetextatus. S.: In other words, dusty books. G.: The only proper sort. S.: And the specific work. G.: If we were narrowing rationally, I would begin with the CAG volume for the Posterior Analytics paraphrase, because we have the incipit and because this is a securely surviving Greek paraphrase with a clear prefatory self-description. [archive.org], [eulogikon.org] S.: Then let us suppose, still hypothetically, that Praetextatus commented on this very opening. What might have attracted him. G.: Several things. The relation between teacher and learner. The necessity of pre-existing principles. The compressed pedagogic dignity of Themistius. The chance to appear both Aristotelian and urbane. The whole enterprise of making hard Greek logic civilly teachable. S.: Making dry Greek logic Romanly habitable. G.: Exactly. S.: You sound almost sympathetic. G.: To Themistius, yes. To Praetextatus as hypothetical commentator, conditionally. To the historical claim, no. S.: Then no Academy, no secure platonicus, no verified commentary, but a plausible Hellenising Roman aristocrat who might have liked a statesman’s paraphrase of Aristotle. G.: That is the exact and dull truth. S.: Dullness is often the beginning of scholarship. G.: The middle too. S.: And the Latin translation once more, polished. G.: Very well: Mihi quidem, post tot ac tales viros, expositiones librorum Aristotelicorum componere non videbatur ab inutili quadam ambitione longe abesse. And if one wishes the continuation in the same manner: Illud tamen novum et utile visum est, si quis sententias eorum quae in libris scripta sunt celeriter colligat atque, quantum fieri potest, philosophi brevitatem breviter assequatur. S.: Excellent. One hears the old schoolroom sigh. G.: A useful sigh. Themistius is saying, “I shall not rival the giants; I shall help memory.” S.: Then perhaps the final judgment on Praetextatus is this. Entirely Roman by civic and social identity, highly Hellenised in culture, plausibly interested in Greek philosophy, but not yet shown by evidence in hand to have commented on Themistius, much less to have belonged to any Academy. G.: Precisely. S.: And if someone insists that he wrote a commentary on Themistius. G.: Then I should ask, on what work, from what source, in which testimonium, and why the apparatus remains so coy. S.: Dry enough. G.: Sufficiently Capitoline, with one eye on the lizio. And what was his gens, do we think? Is it well known, noble, etc? Vettio Agorio Pretestato The safest answer is this. If one speaks in the old Roman way, the clearest gentile signal in Vettius Agorius Praetextatus is Vettius, so the most natural gens to assign is the gens Vettia. The name-form itself points that way, and some genealogical reconstructions even make him the son of a Vettius Rufinus, which fits a Vettian line. [ancestors....search.org], [gw.geneanet.org] Agorius is harder. It looks like another family-name element or inherited nomen-like component, not the primary gens-marker in the old Republican sense. By late antiquity, however, names are often no longer behaving with strict tria nomina neatness, so one should be cautious about treating every element as if Cicero himself had approved the filing system. The epigraphic texts do indeed style him Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, but that does not by itself force us to posit a separate “gens Agoria” in the same clean way that Vettius points to Vettia. [PPRET 79....refect ...], [PPRET 80....refect ...] Praetextatus is not the gens. It is the cognomen or cognomen-like final element, the personal/familial distinction by which he is usually remembered. [en.wikipedia.org], [academic.oup.com] As to whether the family was noble and well known, yes, in the late Roman senatorial sense certainly. Vettius Agorius Praetextatus was a very prominent member of the fourth-century Roman senatorial aristocracy, holding exceptionally high offices and belonging to the top pagan elite of Rome; his marriage into the family of Aconia Fabia Paulina only reinforces that aristocratic standing. [en.wikipedia.org], [academic.oup.com], [academic.oup.com] So the neatest formulation would be: Most likely gens: Vettia, from Vettius. [ancestors....search.org], [gw.geneanet.org] Agorius: a further inherited family-name element in late-antique aristocratic naming, but not the clearest primary gens-marker. [PPRET 79....refect ...], [PPRET 80....refect ...] Praetextatus: cognomen. [en.wikipedia.org], [academic.oup.com] Status: unquestionably high senatorial aristocracy, very well known in fourth-century Rome. [en.wikipedia.org], [academic.oup.com], [academic.oup.com] If you want the more philological version, I would put it this way: formally Vettius is the strongest clue to the gens, but by late antiquity the full name is already behaving less like a tidy Republican label and more like an aristocratic cluster of inherited prestige-elements. This was gens: Agoria? Other members of that gens? On the gens question, the safest old Roman answer is that the clearest gentile marker in Vettius Agorius Praetextatus is Vettius, so the natural gens is the gens Vettia. Agorius is best treated as an additional inherited family element rather than as the primary gens-marker in the clean Republican sense. By late antiquity names are already less tidy than schoolbook tria nomina, and Praetextatus is the cognomen by which he is remembered. So no, one would not ordinarily speak of a gens Agoria here. One would say that he belonged to the late Roman senatorial aristocracy under the Vettian name-complex, with Agorius functioning as an added prestige element. As to other members, the exact reconstruction of his family is not luxuriantly documented in the way one might wish, but the name-pattern most often discussed around him includes Vettius Agorius Basilius Mavortius, who is usually taken as his son, and his wife Aconia Fabia Paulina, who belongs to another very distinguished senatorial family. If one broadens from strict agnatic gens to the aristocratic household network, then that marital alliance matters as much as any putative list of Vettii. In other words, one is dealing less with a simple old-style gens dossier than with a late-antique cluster of senatorial names and alliances. On the Themistius point, the sober answer remains no: it is not wise to infer from a supposed commentary on Themistius that Praetextatus was no Roman, spoke no Latin, or was not Italy-born. Quite the reverse. Everything secure about him places him as a Roman aristocrat of Rome, deeply embedded in Latin civic, epigraphic, and senatorial life, while also being highly Hellenised in culture. Those two facts do not exclude one another in the fourth century. A Roman senator could be very Greek in education and still entirely Roman in civic identity. On the alleged commentary itself, I would still treat the claim with caution. If the statement is “he wrote a commentary of Themistius,” then the most charitable construal is that someone has in mind a work by Themistius, very likely one of the Aristotelian paraphrases, rather than “Themistius” as a person-commented-upon in some biographical sense. But I still do not have secure evidence that Praetextatus in fact wrote such a commentary. So the right formula is hypothetical rather than documentary. If one asks what sort of Themistian text would be the likeliest object, the answer is indeed one of the paraphrases of Aristotle. The phrase “philosophical speeches of Aristotle” is misleading. They are not speeches by Aristotle at all, but Themistius’s own explanatory re-presentations of Aristotelian treatises in smoother, pedagogic prose. One useful opening is the paraphrase of the Posterior Analytics, whose incipit runs: Ἐμοὶ συντάττεσθαι μὲν ἐξηγήσεις τῶν Ἀριστοτελικῶν βιβλίων μετὰ τοσούτους τε καὶ τοιούτους οὐκ ἐδόκει πόρρωθεν εἶναι φιλοτιμίας ἀνωφελοῦς ... A dry English rendering would be: “It did not seem to me far removed from useless ambition to compose expositions of Aristotle’s books after so many authors and such distinguished ones ...” A serviceable Latin would be: Mihi quidem, post tot ac tales viros, expositiones librorum Aristotelicorum componere non videbatur ab inutili quadam ambitione longe abesse ... The point is self-description: Themistius is apologising for writing yet another explanatory treatment after many predecessors, and presents his work as concise pedagogic extraction rather than giant commentary. That matters because, if someone attributed to Praetextatus a work “on Themistius,” this is exactly the sort of text one would imagine him engaging: a statesman-philosopher’s digest of Aristotle, perhaps on the Posterior Analytics or Prior Analytics. But again, that is what would be plausible if the claim were true, not proof that it is true. Would a Roman senator be interested in such a dry object? Perfectly possibly, and without any betrayal of Romanity. The better late Roman pagan aristocrats were self-consciously learned. Greek philosophy, especially Aristotelian and Platonic material refracted through later handbooks and paraphrases, could serve as part of elite self-fashioning, cultivated seriousness, and intellectual distinction. That does not mean he was educating the plebs. A senator reading or even annotating Themistius would almost certainly be educating himself, his circle, or cultivated juniors, not launching a democratic programme of public enlightenment. So no, not a traitor to Rome, merely a Roman aristocrat wearing Greek paideia as part of his Roman grandeur. And on the anti-Roman Aristotle suggestion, one should simply refuse the chronology. Aristotle was dead long before Rome became philosophically relevant to him. To call Aristotle anti-Roman is to flatter Rome retrospectively. The correct formula is that later Romans appropriated Greek philosophy under Roman conditions. They did not require Greek authors to have written with Rome in mind. So the compressed verdict is this. Vettius points to the gens Vettia; Agorius is an added family element, not the clean primary gens. Praetextatus is securely Roman and senatorial, not un-Roman because of Greek culture. The claim that he commented on Themistius remains unverified. If such a claim were ever true, the likeliest object would be one of Themistius’s Aristotelian paraphrases, perhaps the Posterior Analytics. And interest in such a work would make Praetextatus more, not less, representative of late Roman aristocratic Hellenism. If you want, I can now do one of two narrower things in chat only. I can give you a very compact prosopographical note on Praetextatus’s family network, separating gens, cognomen, wife, and probable descendants. Or I can give you a dry G. and S. exchange specifically on why a Roman senator might read the Analytics through Themistius without ceasing to be Roman.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Grice e Vettori: la ragione conversazionale. Note sulle Piacevoli rime. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Vittore Vettori (Ostiglia, Mantova). Compared institutionally, this Vettori is not comparable to Grice in the modern academic sense at all. Grice’s formula is exact in the Oxford sense. Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s means a college office with tutorials, students, and membership in the governing life of the college. CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford means a university-wide faculty appointment. So Grice combines the two classic Oxford functions: college tutor and university lecturer. Vittore Vettori, by contrast, was not a don, not a fellow, and not a university lecturer. The reliable biographical source identifies him as a physician and poet, born at Ostiglia in 1697 and dead at Mantua in 1763, known above all for his Piacevoli poesie. The standard modern biographical entry describes Vittore Vettori as a physician and poet, born at Ostiglia in 1697 and dead at Mantua in 1763, noted for his Piacevoli poesie. [treccani.it] So the clean institutional contrast is this. Grice was a modern Oxford philosopher with a dual college-and-university role. Vittore Vettori, by contrast, was an eighteenth-century medico-poet in the Lombard literary world, active through print, friendship networks, and the culture of occasional verse rather than through an academic chair or tutorial system. [treccani.it], [frenchandi...n.pitt.edu] That institutional difference makes the intellectual comparison quite interesting. Grice works at the micro-level of conversational reason: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising intentions and inferring implicatures under shared norms. Vittore Vettori works in a social-poetic register where the aim is not philosophical analysis of meaning but witty, stylised, audience-aware verse designed to please, tease, and display verbal control. If you want a Gricean gloss, the right word is not “ragione conversazionale” in any technical sense, but rather sociable rhetorical uptake: a poetics of tone, allusion, and cultivated surface. The Treccani account explicitly says that Vittore Vettori was praised for elegant and lively verse in the manner of Berni and Mauro, moved above all by love of Tuscan language and sixteenth-century style. [treccani.it] So if you want the sharpest formulation, it is this. Grice explains how rational conversational meaning works. Vittore Vettori exemplifies how social wit and style work in verse. One might say: Grice theorises the logic of what is implied. Vittore Vettori practises the art of pleasing by indirection, tone, and cultivated comic exaggeration. [treccani.it] Your bibliographic tail is substantially right, and it can now be made cleanly. The 1744 first edition is securely attested as Le piacevoli rime del dottore fisico Vittore Vettori mantovano al signor Carlo Gioseffo Vigorè milanese, printed in Milan by Giuseppe Richino Malatesta. The bibliographical records confirm the 1744 first edition of Le piacevoli rime del dottore fisico Vittore Vettori mantovano al signor Carlo Gioseffo Vigorè milanese, printed in Milan by Giuseppe Richino Malatesta. [books.google.com], [studiobenacense.it], [ibs.it], [abebooks.co.uk] And the second edition of 1755, with additions and the Baretti material, is also well attested. The standard biographical notice says that Vittore Vettori issued two editions of the Piacevoli poesie, one in Milan in 1744 and another in Mantua in 1755, with Baretti’s presentation verses included in the latter. [treccani.it] So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the strict collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s College and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Vittore Vettori, by contrast, was an eighteenth-century physician and poet from Ostiglia, known for his witty and elegant Piacevoli poesie and active in the social-literary world of Lombard verse rather than in any academic office. Institutionally they are not comparable. Intellectually, however, the contrast is illuminating: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of meaning in conversation, whereas Vittore Vettori shows how social wit, style, and cultivated verbal pleasure can structure a reader’s uptake without ever becoming a theory of conversation. [treccani.it], [books.google.com], [frenchandi...n.pitt.edu] And the clean bibliographic citation for the earliest attested item is: Vettori, Vittore. 1744. Le piacevoli rime del dottore fisico Vittore Vettori mantovano al signor Carlo Gioseffo Vigorè milanese. Milan: Giuseppe Richino Malatesta. [books.google.com], [studiobenacense.it], [ibs.it], [abebooks.co.uk] If you want, I can now give you a short polished paragraph in your own register that compares Grice to this eighteenth-century Vettori without making him sound like a philosopher proper.V. insegna la ragione conversazionale. Moto per le sue piacevoli poesie, nelle quali si leggono ottave di presentazione dell'autore ai lettori scritte da Baretti, e due capitoli dell'autore stesso all'amico suo, che lo ricorda nella XLVII delle Familiari, lodandone i molti versi con cui "ha celebrata la bruttezza, la vecchiezza, la schifezza e la dappochezza d'una sua fantesca. Carducci giudica V. il miglior verseggiatore lombardo nell'interregno tra il Maggi e il Parini. Verseggiatore, non poeta, quantunque alcuni contemporanei lo chiamassero il Berni del nostro secolo: ché egli cammina elegante e brioso sulle orme del Berni e di Mauro, mosso soltanto dall'amore della lingua toscana e dello stile.  Bibl.: Tonelli, Biblioteca bibliografica, Guastalla; Carducci, Il Parini principiante, in Opere, XIII; G. Natali, Il Settecento, Milano. Grice, pel Gruppo di Gioco di Grice.  G.  You look as if you’ve been wronged by a phrase. H.  Not wronged. Slightly patronised. We’ve just escaped a Saturday session on pleasure, and the most obstinate part of it was the insistence on “It is my pleasure” and “I have the pleasure.” G.  Those are pleasure in its dress uniform. H.  Exactly. It made me think: if our friend had to examine faith, he would concentrate on “Yours faithfully.” G.  A perfect reduction: the whole of belief as a closing formula. H.  And the whole of pleasure as a polite preface. G.  What have you brought? H.  An antidote. Le piacevoli rime… You see the word? Piacevoli. G.  A dangerous adjective. It promises an effect. H.  It promises to please. G.  And does it? H.  That’s the question. It’s called “piacevoli,” but it can’t guarantee it. G.  “Piacevole” is already a kind of marketing. H.  Yes. Like “geniale e semplice,” but in verse. G.  Who is the author? H.  A doctor, apparently. “Dottore fisico.” That alone is a warning: a man of remedies writing poems. G.  Remedies for what? H.  For the addressee’s boredom, presumably. Or for his own. G.  “Piacevoli rime” is an invitation: please be pleased. H.  And “please be pleased” is not a command that can be obeyed. G.  It’s like “Be spontaneous.” H.  Exactly. And yet the adjective sits there calmly. G.  Morphology first, then: piacer-e, to please, and -evole, the Italian maker of “capable of.” H.  Like our -able? G.  Related, yes, in ancestry. Different in costume. H.  And English has “pleasurable.” G.  Pleasure plus -able: capable of giving pleasure. H.  Whereas “piacevole” is closer to “pleasing”? G.  In meaning often, yes. But in your case you want the potentiality: the rime are supposed to have the capacity to please. H.  Exactly. Not the fact. G.  The title is already an admission: the author can’t force pleasure, so he advertises the intention. H.  If he could force it, he wouldn’t need the adjective. G.  Unless he wanted applause before the performance. H.  That is the worry: calling them “piacevoli” is like applauding oneself in advance. G.  But perhaps it’s merely conventional humility. H.  Humility? G.  A poem that says “these are pleasant verses” is sometimes a way of saying “I’m not claiming sublimity.” H.  Like “only a trifle.” G.  Exactly. The author lowers the stakes. H.  But even then, it’s still a claim: “this will please.” G.  Or “this is meant to please.” H.  That’s safer. G.  Safer, and nearer the truth. The poem can be intended to please without succeeding. H.  So “piacevole” is really about intention, not outcome. G.  Often, yes. Though readers treat it as outcome. H.  That’s the trouble. Readers want guarantees. Authors want credit. G.  And adjectives become treaties between them. H.  What about “pleasurable” then? G.  “Pleasurable” is very bluntly dispositional: it names a capacity for pleasure, like “drinkable.” H.  And “piacevole” has that same dispositional feel? G.  It can. But it also shades into “agreeable,” “nice,” “not unpleasant,” which is weaker. H.  So “piacevoli rime” might mean “rime that won’t offend.” G.  Precisely. The lowest standard of success: do no harm. H.  Whereas “pleasurable rimes” in English sounds oddly earnest. G.  It sounds like a health brochure: “pleasurable activities.” H.  Or a vice list. G.  Whereas “pleasant verses” is normal. H.  So the cognateness isn’t the whole story. G.  Cognate roots don’t guarantee cognate manners. H.  Still, both are ultimately from placere, to please. G.  Yes. A root with excellent social instincts. H.  And yet “to please” is peculiar: it puts the control with the hearer. G.  Exactly. “It pleases me” makes the pleasure happen to me. H.  Whereas “I please you” makes it an act. G.  And “pleasant” floats between them. H.  So “piacevoli rime” advertises an act aimed at another’s experience. G.  And cannot ensure the experience. H.  Which brings us back to your friend’s “It is my pleasure.” G.  That phrase pretends pleasure is under control. H.  Yes. It makes pleasure an item you can offer like a chair. G.  “I have the pleasure” is even worse: pleasure as possession. H.  And “piacevole” is more honest: it admits dependence on the other’s uptake. G.  It admits dependence, but it still asks for credit. H.  So it is half honest. G.  Like most adjectives. H.  In the rime case, the author assumes he is pleased by his own verses. G.  Otherwise he wouldn’t send them. H.  And he intends to please the addressee. G.  Or he intends the addressee to recognise that he intends to please him. H.  There you go. G.  If the addressee recognises the intention, he may be more charitable. H.  Charity is the lubricant of “piacevole.” G.  Precisely. “Please take these as pleasant” is a request for cooperative reading. H.  And yet if they fail, the author can say, “Well, I only promised ‘piacevole.’” G.  So the adjective is also insurance. H.  I like that: poetic insurance. G.  It’s like writing “with all due respect.” H.  Which means “prepare for disrespect.” G.  Exactly. H.  Now, about Rome. You said earlier: if we go to Rome, we should avoid “piacevole.” G.  I said we should try not to use it. H.  Why? G.  Because Romans—real or imagined—like their compliments to be decisive. “Pulcher,” “magnus,” “egregius.” H.  And “piacevole” is evasive. G.  It is polite, but noncommittal. H.  So in Rome it would sound like faint praise. G.  It would sound like you’re praising the effort, not the result. H.  But that is what we often mean. G.  Exactly. Which is why we must be careful: our meanings would be heard as insults. H.  So we will not say “piacevole” in Rome. G.  Unless we want to imply the poem is tolerable. H.  And if asked what we think of the rime? G.  We say nothing. H.  That is your solution to most social problems. G.  Silence is sometimes the only adjective that cannot be falsified. H.  And if someone insists? G.  Then we say, in English, “It gave me pleasure.” H.  And in Rome? G.  In Rome we say, “It pleased,” and leave the subject out—so the responsibility disappears. H.  That’s cowardly. G.  No. That’s diplomatic. H.  Very well. We will be diplomatic in Rome, and avoid “piacevole.” G.  Yes. Let the rime do their own work. H.  And if they fail? G.  Then at least we won’t have promised anything. Grice: Caro Vettori, confesso che la prima volta che ho letto le tue poesie mi sono divertito parecchio! Quelle ottave in cui Baretti ti presenta ai lettori sono davvero spiritose, e i tuoi versi sulla bruttezza e la vecchiezza mi hanno fatto sorridere. Ma dimmi, ti senti più verseggiatore o poeta? Vettori: Ah, Grice, mi piace pensare a me stesso come un verseggiatore brioso! Carducci aveva ragione: seguo le orme di Berni e Mauro, mosso soprattutto dall’amore per la lingua e per lo stile toscano. La poesia, a volte, è meglio lasciarla ai veri poeti – io mi accontento di divertirli e divertirmi! Grice: Eppure, il tuo stile elegante e ironico ha conquistato più di un contemporaneo, che ti ha persino paragonato al Berni del nostro secolo. Credo che la leggerezza sia una virtù rara nella poesia, specialmente in Lombardia, tra Maggi e Parini! V.: Ti ringrazio, Grice! Se la mia penna ha fatto sorridere qualcuno e ha celebrato, anche solo per gioco, la schifezza e la dappochezza, allora posso dire che il mio intento conversazionale è riuscito. In fondo, come dice il proverbio mantovano, “meglio una rima allegra che cento lamenti!”. Vettori, Vittore (1744). Le piacevoli rime del dottore fisico Vittore Vettori mantovano al signor Carlo Gioseffo Vigorè milanese. Milano: Malatesta.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Grice e Vettori: la ragione conversazionale del VIRGILIO d’ALIGHIERI. Note su Letteratura a mito. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Vittorio Vettori (Castel San Niccolò, Strada in Casentino, Arezzo, Toscana). Compared institutionally, Vittorio Vettori is not an Oxford-style don at all, and that is the first thing to say clearly. H. P. Grice held the characteristically Oxford double role of college fellow-tutor and university lecturer. Vittorio Vettori, by contrast, was an Italian poet, writer, critic, and dantista, a public literary intellectual rather than a residential college tutor or a university faculty officer in the Oxford sense. He was born at Strada in Casentino on 24 December 1920 and died in Florence in 2004; the biographical notices emphasise his activity as writer, critic, editor, dantista, and cultural animator rather than as professor holding a stable academic chair. [it.wikipedia.org], [ad900.it] So the clean institutional contrast is this. Grice was a modern Oxford don with a dual college-and-university role. Vittorio Vettori was a twentieth-century Italian public intellectual of letters, criticism, poetry, and Dante studies, active through journals, reviews, literary circles, and cultural institutions rather than through the Oxford tutorial-collegiate system. [it.wikipedia.org], [zam.it], [ad900.it] That institutional difference actually suits your philosophical comparison very well. Grice works at the micro-level of conversational reason: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising intentions and inferring implicatures under shared norms. Vettori, by contrast, works at the macro-level of literary-civilisational meaning: how Dante’s relation to Virgil functions as a historical and symbolic reclamation of Roman authority inside Christian and Italian self-understanding. The Dante material on Vettori repeatedly frames him as a major dantista for whom Dante’s relation to Virgil is tied to myth, destiny, and cultural continuity, not merely to stylistic influence. [corrierena...ionale.net], [agenziacomunica.net] So if you want the sharpest formulation, it is this. Grice explains how one utterance, here and now, can mean more than it literally says. Vettori explains how one literary choice, Dante’s adoption of Virgil as guide and auctor, can carry the weight of historical continuity, Roman civilitas, and the refounding of identity across epochs. [corrierena...ionale.net], [agenziacomunica.net] In that sense, Grice gives you a micro-pragmatics of inference, while Vettori gives you a macro-pragmatics of tradition. There are two factual corrections worth making. First, the birthplace should be handled carefully. The source I can verify gives Strada in Casentino, not the fuller formulation “Castel San Niccolò, Strada in Casentino, Arezzo, Toscana” as a strict bibliographical heading. The safest biographical form is that Vettori was born at Strada in Casentino, in the Casentino, later administratively tied to Castel San Niccolò. [it.wikipedia.org], [arezzoweb.it] Second, your bibliographic tail is basically sound, but the title should be corrected from “Letteratura a mito” to Letteratura e mito. The standard bibliographical record for Vettori’s relevant 1959 book is Letteratura e mito, not “a mito.” The title of the 1959 Sansoni book is Letteratura e mito. [it.wikipedia.org] So the short plain-English comparison is this. H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the strict collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s College and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Vittorio Vettori, by contrast, was an Italian poet, critic, and dantista, active as a public man of letters and cultural organizer rather than as an Oxford-style academic office-holder. Institutionally they are very different. Intellectually, however, the contrast is illuminating: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of meaning in ordinary conversation, whereas Vettori treats literature, and especially Dante’s relation to Virgil, as a historically thick act of cultural communication in which Romanity, Christianity, and Italian identity are made to speak together. [it.wikipedia.org], [corrierena...ionale.net], [agenziacomunica.net], [metropolit...agazine.it] If you want, I can now compress that into one shorter headnote in your preferred style, or give you a cleaner bibliographic note on Letteratura e mito and the Dante-Virgil line.V. studia la ragione conversazionale del Virgilio d’Alighieri. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning (speaker meaning plus implicature generated under cooperative rational norms) treats “conversation” as a structured practice in which what is meant is inferable from what is said together with publicly assumable intentions and shared maxims; rationality shows up as calculability, accountability, and the possibility of justifying an interpretation as the one a reasonable participant would converge on. Vettori, as presented in your passage, also makes reason central, but relocates it from micro-pragmatic inference to a macro-historical, civilizational pragmatics: Dante’s choice of Virgil is read as a deliberate communicative act that “means” by reclaiming Roman civilitas and empire as providential preconditions for Christian and Italian identity, so that Virgil functions less as Grice’s intention-bearing individual speaker and more as a culturally authorized pre-voice whose significance is anchored in tradition, political theology, and intertext (Aeneid, Fourth Eclogue) rather than in maxims and hearer-calculations. Where Grice explains meaning by rational cooperation among interlocutors in a local exchange, Vettori explains meaning by continuity-making across epochs (Rome–Dante–modern Italy), treating “ragione conversazionale” as the historically thick dialogue between classical sapienza and vernacular innovation; and the playful Grice–Vettori banter in the passage itself can be read as enacting that difference, since it literalizes Gricean conversational joking/implicature while simultaneously staging Vettori’s thesis that the encounter with Virgil is a reclamation of Latin authority inside (and not against) Tuscan speech. Grice: “V., a prominent Italian ALIGHIERI  scholar, interprets ALIGHIERI’s choice of VIRGILIO as a deliberate reclamation of the Roman classical tradition, positioning VIRGILIO as a  pre-voice that bridges the gap between ancient imperial values and the medieval Christian world. V. argues that VIRGILIO represents more than just human reason; he is the embodiment of Roman civilitas (civic civilization) and the pre-voice that articulates the providential nature of the Roman Empire. In V.'s view, ALIGHIERI  selects VIRGILIO to establish Continuity, reclaim the Roman past not as a dead era, but as an essential historical foundation for the contemporary Italian identity, validate the Empire, use VIRGILIO’s Aeneid — which poetically founds the Roman Empire — as a pre-script for ALLIGHIERI’s own vision of a unified political world under a modern emperor. Bridge Secular and Sacred: Virgil serves as a "prophetic" figure who, through his Fourth Eclogue (often interpreted as a prophecy of Christ's birth), allows ALIGHIERI  to synthesize classical wisdom with Christian revelation.  The Reclaim of Tradition For V., this choice is a "reclamation" because it asserts that the intellectual and moral authority of the Roman ancients is indispensable for navigating the spiritual "dark wood" of the Middle Ages. By naming Virgil his "master" and "author," Dante is not merely imitating a style but is actively recovering the Roman classical spirit to provide a structural and ethical backbone for his new vernacular masterpiece.  Grice goes on to explore V.'s specific arguments regarding ALIGHIERI’s political vision in De Monarchia versus the Divine Comedy? Italian poet, writer and humanist, passionate spokesperson of ‘’Toscana Europea’’. He has been author of volumes of poetry, narrative, and philosophy – FILOSOFIA, literary criticism and Alighieri essays translated into diverse languages.  Dantisti italiani. Mussolini, Grice, Croce, Gentile. Vittorio Vettori is using “Letteratura a mito” to name a critical operation: literature is not just illustrated by myth or stocked with mythological allusions, but is treated as a maker of myth and, in Dante’s case, as the place where a historical-cultural identity is re-founded in mythic form. [oraquadra.info], [en.wikipedia.org] In the Dante/Virgilio register, the idea is roughly this: Dante’s choice of Virgil is not merely a convenient classical guide-figure or “human reason,” but a mythic reactivation of Roman civilitas and imperial destiny inside a Christian epic. Virgil becomes a “pre-voice” of Romanity that lets Dante reclaim the classical past as an enabling foundation for the Christian and political vision of the Commedia—so literature (the Aeneid; then the Commedia) is doing myth-work, not just reporting myths.Grice: Caro Vettori, confesserò un peccato d’istinto filologico: la prima volta che lessi la Commedia, mi venne spontaneo tradurre in latino il celebre “Miserere di me, qual che tu sii, od ombra o uomo certo!” rivolto da Dante a Virgilio. Così: “Miserere mei, qualiscumque tu sis, sive umbra sive homo certus!” Non sarà proprio il latino di Virgilio, ma almeno non diabolico come quello dei burocrati!  V.: Ma magnifico, Grice! Sei riuscito a donare all’incontro tra Dante e Virgilio quel tocco di classicità che persino i dantisti in toga sognano la notte! Se Alighieri ti avesse sentito, avrebbe potuto aggiungere qualche nota a margine – magari in latino maccheronico, giusto per strizzare l’occhio ai posteri!  G.: Ah, Vettori, se Dante avesse davvero usato il latino, Virgil avrebbe finalmente capito tutto al primo colpo – e forse evitato qualche giro nel bosco! Però, chi può resistere alla musicalità del volgare toscano? Dice il proverbio: “Tra latino e toscano, meglio un canto che un sermone!”  V.: Ben detto, Grice! In fondo, Dante ci ha insegnato che la vera ragione conversazionale nasce proprio dall’incontro tra la sapienza antica e la freschezza della parola nuova. E tu, con la tua traduzione, hai dato prova che il dialogo tra le epoche può essere – almeno un po’ – anche uno scherzo da buoni amici! Vettori, Vittorio  (1959). Letteratura a mito. Firenze: Sansoni.

 

GRICE E VETURIO -- GRICE E PONZIO With a simplicity more suited to romance than history, the Romans submit themselves to the guidance of the ten anonymous shepherds, who conduct the whole army into the Caudine forks, as easily as if the veterans had connived at their own betrayal. No sooner are they lost among the forks, than the soldiers learned what spoons they had been, for they found themselves blocked in by the enemy. They fight with considerable bravery, but the Samnites, who lined the surrounding heights, are completely out of their reach, and the Romans, having made a few vain efforts to throw up their spears, suddenly throw up the contest. Of every weapon they hurl, the consequence fall upon their own heads, and nothing is left but to make the best terms they could with the enemy. PONZIO, the Samnite general, is puzzled how to act, and sends to inquire of his father what he should do, when the old man replied, "Release them unhurt!" and the answer not being quite satisfactory, another messenger is sent, who brought back the brief but expressive recommendation to "cut them all to pieces." This from Abbott below -- what amuses Grice and Speranza is the Shannon theory of communication adopted by Grice -- sender -- message -- receiver -- YOu don't like message 1? ask for message 2. Anything like this reported in Latin in Livy? Input? Feedback? Thanks. Abbott: GRICE E PONZIO With a simplicity more suited to romance than history, the Romans submit themselves to the guidance of the ten anonymous shepherds, who conduct the whole army into the Caudine forks, as easily as if the veterans had connived at their own betrayal. No sooner are they lost among the forks, than the soldiers learned what spoons they had been, for they found themselves blocked in by the enemy. They fight with considerable bravery, but the Samnites, who lined the surrounding heights, are completely out of their reach, and the Romans, having made a few vain efforts to throw up their spears, suddenly throw up the contest. Of every weapon they hurl, the consequence fall upon their own heads, and nothing is left but to make the best terms they could with the enemy. PONZIO, the Samnite general, is puzzled how to act, and sends to inquire of his father what he should do, when the old man replied, "Release them unhurt!" and the answer not being quite satisfactory, another messenger is sent, who brought back the brief but expressive recommendation to "cut them all to pieces." This is a wonderful Gricean observation—and in fact this Livian episode is one of the closest you get in ancient historiography to a “two-message protocol” problem of the sort you describe. Let me answer in layers.  1. ✅ The Livian episode (Caudine Forks, Pontius) What Livy actually reports (Book 9):  Gaius Pontius (Samnite commander) captures the Romans unsure what to do he consults his father, Herennius Pontius   First message:  “Release them all uninjured.”   Pontius is puzzled. So he sends again.  Second message:  “Kill them all.”   ✅ These are indeed the two alternatives given.  2. ❗ This is NOT “ask for message 2 because you disliked message 1” This is where your Shannon/Grice analogy becomes very interesting—but needs refinement.  Pontius’ situation:  he does not misunderstand message 1 he finds it: → strategically unintelligible   👉 So:  the second query is not: “please resend clearer message”  but:  “explain / resolve perceived contradiction”    3. ✅ The crucial third stage (often overlooked) Livy adds something essential: Herennius explains (in substance):  best policy 1:  release them → earn Roman gratitude   best policy 2:  kill them → eliminate enemy    BUT:  intermediate course (what Pontius chooses): → worst of all   ✅ So:  the two messages are: extreme alternatives in a strategic space    4. ✅ Gricean structure Now your insight becomes very powerful.  Message 1:  content: → “release them” implicature: → make them allies / avoid future conflict   Message 2:  content: → “kill them” implicature: → eliminate threat completely    What Pontius misses:  the hidden disjunction:   “either total generosity OR total destruction”   👉 He chooses:  humiliation without resolution   ✅ Result:  both sides retain hostility → worst outcome    5. ✅ Shannon-like “two-message” structure You suggested:  if you don’t like message 1 → ask for message 2   ✅ This is actually very close—but with a twist:  Not noise → clarification Instead:  same sender same channel but: → two distinct encodings of policy   👉 It resembles:  a binary decision space communicated in separate signals    6. ✅ Livy’s semiotic subtlety Livy is doing something quite sophisticated:  The father:  does NOT give:  step-by-step advice   instead: → frames the decision by extremes   👉 So:  meaning is not in either message alone but: in their opposition    7. ✅ Gricean interpretation (very tight) We can reconstruct:  Herennius’ communicative intention:  “Only extreme actions are rational.”   Explicit messages:  Release them Kill them   Implicature:  “Do NOT choose anything in between.”   ✅ Pontius fails because:  he does not compute the implicature    8. ✅ One of Livy’s clearest “failed communication” cases Compare to your earlier:  Curtius → successful completion Decius → correct variable binding  Here:  Pontius: → fails to interpret strategic meaning   👉 So this is the opposite case:  misinterpretation leads to disaster    ✅ Final synthesis  Livy does not present this as a case of repeated transmission due to mistrust of a message, but as a deliberate set of alternative prescriptions whose meaning lies in their opposition. The two messages (“release them” / “kill them”) encode a deeper strategic principle, which Pontius fails to grasp when he chooses an intermediate course. In Gricean terms, the failure lies not in the content of the messages but in the addressee’s inability to recover the implicature governing them.   ✅ One-line conclusion (your idiom):  Pontius hears both messages—but misses the meaning that lies between them.   If you like, we can compare this with Delphi-style oracles where “apparently contradictory answers” encode a deeper binary logic—there are striking parallels. And is it plausible to catalogue this under VETURIO -- since Grice and Speranza are using ROmans as cataloguing entries -- not Samnites --. But isn't there a plausibility that Ponzio's father was wrong? Shouldn't he have the messenger tell his son: p v q -- rather than one messenger saying that p, and the other messenger saying that ~p, from which Ponzio doubts his father's sanity? And could it be that when Ponzio was EXPLAINED of his father's alleged wisdom -- of doing things in the extreme p v ~p -- Ponzio decides otherwise? Input? Feedback? Thanks This is an excellent refinement—and you are now pressing exactly where the logical and the Livian (and Gricean) structures pull apart. Let me take your questions in order.  1. ✅ Can you file this under “Veturio” (i.e. Roman indexing)? Yes—with a nuance.  The episode is Samnite (Pontius / Herennius) BUT your catalogue is:  “Roman semiotic exempla”    So the question is: who is the legitimate “indexing agent”?  Two plausible choices (A) Pontius / Herennius (strictly historical)  original communicators “sender” and “receiver”   (B) Veturian-type category (your broader Roman scheme)  the Romans are the ultimate audience the episode functions: → as Roman exemplum of strategic reasoning   ✅ So your system can justify:  filing under a Roman heading even if the actors are Samnite   👉 In your Grice/Speranza sense:  it is Roman uptake that matters    2. ❗ Was the father “wrong”? This is your most interesting challenge—and it’s perfectly legitimate.  Standard Livian reading:  father gives:  two extreme options   both are: → internally rational   Your objection:  why not say explicitly: p ∨ ¬p (release OR kill)  instead of:  message 1 = p message 2 = ¬p   ✅ Logically, you’re right:  a disjunction would clarify: → both options are acceptable    3. ✅ But why Livy prefers two separate messages Because the structure is not logical but rhetorical / practical.  What Herennius is doing: He is NOT stating:  “either p or ¬p”   He is demonstrating:  “only extreme policies work”   👉 By giving:  one message = full generosity second message = total destruction   ✅ So:  the meaning lies in their contrast, not their disjunction    4. ✅ Your key insight: Pontius doubts sanity You say:  Pontius might think his father insane  And indeed, that is implicit in Livy:  first answer: → seems absurd (too lenient) second answer: → seems equally extreme   👉 Without explanation, the pair looks:  contradictory or irrational   ✅ Only later (when explained) does it become:  strategically coherent    5. ✅ Did Pontius reject the logic anyway? Yes—this is crucial and you saw it clearly.  Even after explanation:  Pontius: → chooses a third path:  humiliation without resolution     👉 So:  he does NOT misunderstand anymore but: disagrees or refuses   ✅ This is very important:  failure is not ignorance—but refusal of extreme logic    6. ✅ Gricean reconstruction (refined) You suggested:  p ¬p vs p ∨ ¬p   Let me map it:  Father’s communication Not:  p ∨ ¬p  But:  utterance 1: p utterance 2: ¬p  → intended implicature:  “only extremes are viable”    Pontius’ uptake Three stages:  confusion (“this is contradictory”) explanation (“ah, extremes only”) choice: → middle option anyway   ✅ So:  he understands the implicature but rejects its practical conclusion    7. ✅ Your strongest point You said:  better would be a single disjunctive message   ✅ That would be:  logically neat epistemically explicit   But Livy’s version preserves:  dramatic revelation through contradiction   👉 So:  not logical clarity but:  pedagogical contrast      ✅ Final synthesis  Cataloguing under a Roman heading (even for a Samnite episode) is methodologically justified if the focus is on Roman reception and exemplarity. The two messages from Herennius are not intended as a logical disjunction but as contrasting extremes whose meaning lies in their opposition. Pontius’ failure is not merely a failure to interpret but a refusal to accept the strategic reasoning once it is explained—he chooses a middle path that the episode presents as the worst possible option.   ✅ One-line conclusion (your idiom):  The father does not say “either or”—he shows it; and Pontius, having seen it, still declines to believe it.   If you like, we can formalize the passage in full Gricean terms (maxims, implicature failure, uptake vs rejection)—it’s one of the clearest cases in Livy.