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

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bacchin: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’ANYPOTHETON HAPLOUSTATON, overo, i fondamenti della filosofia del lingua.  Giovanni Romano Bacchin (Belluno, Veneto): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’ANYPOTHETON HAPLOUSTATON, overo, i fondamenti della filosofia del lingua. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning makes implicature a disciplined, publicly checkable inference from what is said plus context under assumptions of rational cooperation: a hearer is entitled to derive what is meant beyond the sentence because the speaker’s choice of words is treated as purposive and answerable to norms like relevance, adequacy, and clarity, so that even negation and hedging become tools for intention-recognition rather than merely formal operators. Bacchin (Giovanni Romano Bacchin, 1929–1995) approaches “conversational reason” from a different starting point: a broadly metaphysical and dialectical project (shaped by the Padua school around Marino Gentile) in which intersubjectivity has an intrinsic “dialectical dimension” and philosophical discourse is driven by the systematic negation of presupposition; accordingly, the motivating phenomena in your passage—question/answer structure, the primacy of negation (the ~-operator), and the shifting sense of “altro” between “not-B” and “the other person” (a tu)—push implicature toward something like transcendental-pragmatic conditions of dialogue rather than Grice’s maxim-based, local calculations within a talk exchange. Online bibliographic records support the timeline you cite: L’immediato e la sua negazione (Perugia: Grafica, 1967) is well-attested in library catalogues, and I fondamenti della filosofia del linguaggio appears earlier (Assisi, 1965, per PhilPapers and catalogues), which fits Bacchin’s self-presentation as grounding philosophy of language in metaphysics rather than treating it as a subfield of linguistics or logic; in that vein, “anypotheton” evokes the Platonic notion of the unhypothetical first principle, suggesting that what ultimately licenses discourse is not just cooperative inference but a foundational structure that makes sense and questioning possible at all. The contrast, then, is that Grice explains how we responsibly get from utterance to implicature by reconstructing speaker intentions under conversational norms, while Bacchin tends to redescribe the same terrain as the dialectical and metaphysical logic of discourse itself—where negation, presupposition, and the irreducible presence of a second person are not merely conversational strategies but constitutive features of philosophical meaning, making “implicature” look less like a calculated pragmatic add-on and more like what inevitably emerges whenever thinking becomes dialogical and therefore exposes itself to contradiction, reply, and the other. Grice: “I like B.; as an Italian he is allows to speak pompously as we at Oxford cannot! But he is basically saying the commonplace that ‘intersoggetivita’ has a ‘dialectical dimension’ (interoggetivita come dimensione dialettica) in the sense that the ego or l’io presupposes the altro as he puts it: a cui – therefore; it is a presupposition of the schema, as Collingwood would have it, alla Cook Wilson and thus only transcendentally justified. B. notes that the operator ~ is basic in that ‘inter-rogo’ invites a ‘risposta’ whose ‘motivation’ may be ‘implicita’ – the ad-firmatum is motivated by the domanda – which can be another dimanda: why do you think so? “Why do you ask why I think so?” --  B. is alla Heidegger and other phenomenologists, with the ‘essere’ versus appare on which my implicata in ‘Causal Theory of Perception’ depend (‘if A seems B, A is not B. Note that there is no way to express this implicata without a ~. It might be argued that it can express with some of the strokes or with some expression that would flout ‘be brief, rather than the simplest” – and which would involve, as VELIA has it, the idea of, precisely altro, other than. Note that B. equivocates on the ‘altro’ in the dialectical dimension of intersubjectivity he obviously means ‘tu,’ not ‘altro.’ In the negation or contradiction, in dialectical terms, of an affirmation, which is involved in every ‘dialogue’ that B. calls ‘socratico’ or euristico rather than sofistico, based on equivocation,  the altro is the other, A is not B, impying A is other than B (cf. my ‘Negation and Privation’). This does not need have us multiply the sense of ‘ne,’ in old Roman!” discorso metafisico a new discourse on metaphysics, from genesis to revelations autentico esperienza disscorso implesso hypotheton, supponibile, insupponibile semplice complesso proposizionale, semplice sub-proposizionale implicazione senso significato segno proposizione funzione proposizionale Whitehead. Grice: Giovanni, ti confesso che il tuo ANYPOTHETON HAPLOUSTATON mi mette più soggezione che un esame di logica a Oxford. Ma tu come fai ad essere così semplice e così complesso allo stesso tempo? Bacchin: Grice, in Italia semplificare è una questione di dialettica: basta parlare con un po’ di pomposità e tutti credono che sia filosofia. Il segreto? L’interoggettività: l’io che parla ha sempre bisogno di un “tu” che ascolta, anche se poi non capisce! Grice: Ma allora il vero filosofo è quello che domanda “Perché tu chiedi perché io penso così?” e spera che nessuno gli risponda troppo chiaramente! Così la conversazione resta aperta e la filosofia sopravvive tra una domanda e l’altra. Bacchin: Esatto, Grice! In fondo, se A sembra B ma non è B, l’importante è che la risposta sia sempre “dipende”—e magari, se la conversazione diventa troppo seria, si può sempre negare tutto con un bel “~”! Così, alla veneta, nessuno resta senza un altro da contraddire. Bacchi, Giovanni Romano (1967). L’immediate e la sua negazione. Perugia: Grafica. Bacchin, Giovanni Romano (1967). L’immediato e la sua negazione. Perugia: Grafica.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bacchio: il principe tra gl’accademici di Roma – filosofia italiana – , pel Gruppo di Gioco di Grice,  (Roma). Filosofo italiano. A member of the Accademia. ANTONINO  attended his lectures. He was the adopted son of GAIO. Bacchio. Grice, pel Gruppo di Gioco di Grice, “Grice e Bacchio,”   Bacchio: il principe tra gl’accademici di Roma – filosofia italiana – , pel Gruppo di Gioco di Grice,  (Roma). Filosofo italiano. A member of the Accademia. ANTONINO  attended his lectures. He was the adopted son of GAIO. GRICEVS: Bacchi, princeps inter academicos Romae, philosophus Italicus, num Antoninum discipulum tuum adhuc ad lectiones trahis an ille iam me trahit? BACCHIVS: Traho quidem, sed Antoninus tam diligens est ut calamos quoque meos adoptet, sicut olim a Gaio adoptatus sum. GRICEVS: O praeclare, ergo Roma adoptat philosophos sicut philosophos adoptant Romae—circulus perfectus et nemo evadit nisi per iocum. BACCHIVS: Ita est, et si quis evadere conatur, statim in Accademiam recipitur, quasi carcer urbanissimus cum vino et syllogismis.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bacci: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dei bagni dei romani.  Andrea Bacci: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dei bagni dei romani. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats implicature as a rational, cooperative inference from what is said plus context: in a “talk exchange,” hearers assume speakers are aiming to be appropriately informative, relevant, and perspicuous, and so they work out further intended content (implicata) as what must be meant if the speaker is still being rationally cooperative—even when the speaker is being witty, indirect, or strategically economical. Bacci (Andrea Bacci, 1524–1600), by contrast, belongs to late Renaissance learned medicine and antiquarian natural history, where “meaning beyond the literal” is carried less by maxims of conversation than by the interpretive habits of a scholarly republic of letters: his De Thermis (Rome, 1587) and related treatises on waters, baths, wines, poisons, and simples present the Roman thermae as a nexus of nature, regimen, civic life, and classical authority, so that what is “implied” often comes from the reader’s recognition of genre (medical consilium, natural-historical compilation), citation practice (Pliny, Galen, etc.), and the cultural script of Roman bathing (hygiene, sociability, therapy, and sometimes moral critique). In Gricean terms, Bacci’s “baths” are not primarily a setting for calculable conversational implicatures but a textual environment where readers infer practical norms and evaluations from learned description—warm water and bodily practice functioning as a medium for persuading, recommending, and authorizing—so the comparison turns on two models of rationality: Grice’s local rationality of interlocutors coordinating intentions in real time, versus Bacci’s encyclopedic, humanist-medical rationality in which meaning is stabilized by authorities, institutions, and shared classical knowledge, making the thermae less a site of conversational inference than a durable cultural apparatus for guiding belief and conduct. Grice: “You’ve got to love B.; he was born in the Italian equivalent of Weston-super-Mare, and therefore, he dedicated his philosophy to swimming!” – Studia a Matelica, Siena, e Roma. Scrive “Del Tevere, della natura...”. Pubblica il “De Thermis”, un saggio sulle acque, la loro storia e le qualità terapeutiche che venne accolto con entusiasmo. Dopo aver ottenuto la cattedra alla Sapienza e l'iscrizione all'albo dei cittadini romani, e nominato Archiatra pontificio. Delle acque albule di Tivoli, Delle acque acetose presso Roma e delle acque d'Anticoli, Delle acque della terra bergamasca, Tabula semplicim medicamentorum, De venenis et antidotis, “Della gran bestia detta alce e delle sue proprietà e virtù”; “Delle dodici pietre preziose della loro forza ed uso, L'Alicorno. De naturali vinorum historia. vinificazione e conservazione dei vini; Consumo dei vini condizioni di salute; Caratteristiche dei vini; Uso dei vini nell'antichità, Vini delle varie parti d'Italia, Vini a Roma. In quo agitur de balneis artificialibus, penes instituta recæperit, hoc tempus non esta deo compertum, nisi quantum legitur fuisse antiquissimum. Nam ex omnibus monumentis quæad notitiam hominum peruenerunt, vetustissima huncritum lavationum, perinde necessarium ad communem vitam commemorant. Balnearum enim mentionem invenio non modo ante ROMANORUM IMPERIUM. REPUBLICA HABE ROMANORUM, VANTA thermarum ARTIFICIALIUM magisterial FILOSOFO PLINIO i bagni dei romani, De thermis – thermal baths – philosophy of thermal baths – implicatura ginnastica – le xii pietro pretiose – storia naturale del vino, bacco – terme romane – il vino e la filosofia, bacco ed Apollo, le xii pietre pretiose per ordine di dio I sardio II topatio III smeraldo IV barconchio IV saphhiro VI diaspro VII lingurio VIII agata IX amethisto X berillo XI chrisolito XII onice – tevere, le tibre au louvre, i vini. Thermopolium romanum – illustrazione – incisione terme romanae – natatio – piscina – ginnasio, mercurial, arte ginnastica. Sant’Elpidio a Mare, Fermo, Marche.  Grice: Andrea, dimmi, se uno pensa alla filosofia dei bagni romani, è meglio discutere immersi nelle terme o asciutti in biblioteca?Bacci: Grice, la vera implicatura conversazionale nasce quando l’acqua è calda e le idee scorrono, altro che biblioteca! I romani sapevano che il pensiero si rilassa meglio a bordo piscina che tra libri impolverati.Grice: Allora, la storia naturale del vino si capisce meglio dopo un tuffo o prima di un brindisi?Bacci: Grice, prima il bagno, poi il vino, e infine la filosofia: così anche la gran bestia detta alce si sentirebbe romana e magari scriverebbe un trattato sulle implicature delle terme! Bacci, Andrea (1587). De Thermis. Roma, Mascardi.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Badaloni: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale della colloquenza.  Nicola Badaloni (Livorno, Toscana): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale della colloquenza. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains implicature as a rationally reconstructible step from what is said to what is meant, licensed by shared cooperative norms (relevance, sufficient information, sincerity, clarity) and recoverable by a hearer as the best explanation of a speaker’s communicative intention in a given exchange. Badaloni, by contrast, is best situated as a Marxist historian of philosophy and public intellectual from Livorno (1924–2005), closely associated with Pisa (where he taught and held the chair in history of philosophy from 1966) and known for historically contextual readings of figures such as Bruno, Campanella, Vico, and Gramsci; in that tradition, “colloquenza” points less to a micro-pragmatics of inference within a single talk exchange and more to the historically extended dialogue between thought and co-action, rhetoric and institutions, and the formation of a collective rationality in and through cultural practices. Where Grice makes conversational reason a formalizable normativity internal to utterance interpretation, Badaloni’s practice treats dialogue (Plato read through, and sometimes against, later Roman mediations) as a historically situated genre with its own political and rhetorical conditions, so that what is “implied” often depends on tradition, conflict, and the changing social function of philosophical speech rather than on maxims abstracted from any particular epoch. The upshot is that Grice’s implicature is an account of how meaning is inferred here-and-now by rational agents under cooperative constraints, whereas Badaloni’s “implicature of colloquenza” is closer to how meaning and rational orientation are generated across time by interpretive communities—how a culture learns to hear what a text, a dialogue-form, or a philosophical inheritance is “really doing” within a broader drama of praxis, freedom, and historical transformation. Grice: “I like B.; he never took the ROMAN story of philosophy – I say story since history, as every Italian knows, is too pretentious! – seriously until he had to teach it! “Storia del pensiero filosofico – l’antichita’ is my favourite – because he does his best to understand Plato’s pragmatics of dialogue as misunderstood by Cicero!” Di convinzioni marxiste, studioso di Bruno, Campanella, Vico, e Gramsci. Insegna a Pisa, e mette in luce filosofi minori e inattuali, Franco, Fracastoro, Porta, Cherbury, Conti, rinnovando attraverso una collocazione nel contesto, figure immerse in una meta-storia. Storicismo e filosofia Il marxismo conserva la sua capacità di strumento di comprensione del mondo, di erogatore di energie di cambiamento, di guida pello sviluppo d’una prassi razionale. B. ricerca un legame, nella storia, tra pensiero e co-azione e sviluppa uno storicismo di impronta marxista che raccorda filosofi come Bruno, e Labriola, accomunati dalla tensione al rinnovamento e alla trasformazione degl’assetti sociali. C'è alterità profonda, ma non rottura senza legame, tra Croce e Gramsci. Retorica e storicità Inquietudini e fermenti di libertà nel Rinascimento italiano la fama del Bruno Marxismo come storicismo Campanella politico e filosofo, Per il comunismo Fermenti di vita intellettuale, vita civile e controriforma La storia della cultura, Storia d'Italia Gramsci. dal mito alla ricomposizione politica, Libertà individuale e uomo collettivo Politica e storia Gentile Dialettica del capitale, la filosofia della prassi, sta Gramsci. prassi come previsione, marxismo, società ed economia, Forme della politica e teorie del cambiamento Movimento operaio e lotta politica a Livorno”; “Democratici e socialisti praxis, simmanenza nella filosofia politica cosmologia ed etica Laici Inquietudini e fermenti di libertà nel Rinascimento Il pensiero filosofico. colloquenza, la retorica di Vico storia e storicita,  badaloni implicatura libero biologia filosofica telesio vallisneri lingua utopica laico comune comunismo marchetti vignoli. G.: Oxford, 1946. One comes back from a war and finds that rhetoric has not been demobilised, merely misfiled. S.: Misfiled where? G.: Under style. Under “mere eloquence.” Under decorative vice. Anywhere, in short, except philosophy. S.: And what has provoked this morning’s grievance? G.: A thesis title from Pisa. Retorica e storicità in Vico. S.: By whom? G.: A young Badaloni, no less. Young enough to have written it in the shadow of war, and old enough to know that “rhetoric” by itself would be treated as verbal upholstery unless one added “historicity” to make philosophers sit up. S.: So “storicità” is the bait for philosophers? G.: Not bait. Rescue equipment. S.: You exaggerate. G.: Never where Oxford is concerned. S.: Then tell me why this title matters. G.: Because Vico had long suffered the indignity of being admired for style by people who did not wish to be troubled by his philosophy. Naples liked honours and graces; rhetoricians were allowed to teach polish, not foundations. S.: And Vico objected? G.: Repeatedly, if not always tactfully. He knew that rhetoric was not merely ornament, but bound up with wisdom, civil life, history, language, and the shape of human understanding. S.: Then Badaloni’s title restores that? G.: That is the point. “Retorica” alone might sound like belles lettres. “Retorica e storicità” says: no, this concerns the historical constitution of reason itself. S.: Rather ambitious for a thesis produced in wartime Pisa. G.: Which is why it interests me. S.: Remind me of the wartime context. G.: Pisa was bombed. Severely. August 1943. Then German occupation. Then liberation in September 1944. So one is not speaking of a student composing a Vico exercise in a serene cloister while church bells and abstractions politely alternate. S.: You mean the thesis comes out of damage. G.: Out of damage, occupation, interruption, rationing, anxiety, and then post-liberation recovery. A rather good setting, if one wants to understand why “historicity” ceases to be an academic garnish. S.: Because history had ceased to be optional. G.: Precisely. There are moments when “history of philosophy” means a shelf, and moments when it means tanks, rubble, and the question whether a civilisation still knows how to speak to itself. S.: You are making Badaloni sound more dramatic than he probably was. G.: That is because young thesis writers are usually more dramatic than they look in library catalogues. S.: And Pisa itself? G.: Not merely bombed. Occupied by the Germans after the armistice, fought over, then liberated. A university city trying to think under conditions not ideally suited to scholarship. S.: Such as bombs. G.: Yes. They interfere with footnotes. S.: So Badaloni persists with Vico and rhetoric in the middle of this. G.: Which suggests either admirable seriousness or incurable Italianity. I am willing to allow both. S.: Why Vico, though? Why rhetoric there? G.: Because Vico is one of the few philosophers for whom rhetoric is not external decoration but internal method. Tropes, institutions, poetic wisdom, civil formation, the historicity of language: all of it belongs together. S.: “Sapientia Italorum antiquorum,” then? G.: Exactly. Vico’s old Italian wisdom, not as museum-piece but as philosophical counterclaim to abstract rationalism. Badaloni, by adding storicità, effectively says that rhetoric is one of the historical forms in which reason becomes human. S.: Oxford would dislike that. G.: Oxford would divide it into papers and then pretend the unity never existed. S.: Surely unfair. G.: Perfectly fair. Here rhetoric is what literary men do with metaphor. Philosophy then takes over when the ornaments have been removed. S.: And you think that false. G.: Entirely. The historical and rational foundation of language is not something one reaches after rhetoric; it is partly constituted in the rhetorical life of a language. S.: That sounds suspiciously continental. G.: Only because England has forgotten that Cicero once existed. S.: But you said this is about Badaloni, not merely Vico. G.: Indeed. Badaloni is interesting because he starts with Vico and rhetoric before he becomes more publicly associated with Bruno, Campanella, Gramsci, and the rest of his later historical company. S.: So Vico is not a passing enthusiasm? G.: No. Vico remains in the background even when Bruno comes to the foreground. One can often tell a philosopher’s early formation by what he never quite stops hearing. S.: And what does Badaloni hear in Vico? G.: That rhetoric is historical reason before reason becomes self-deceived into imagining itself timeless. S.: Nicely put. G.: I keep trying. S.: But where does Collingwood enter? G.: Ah yes, Oxford’s better conscience. Collingwood did not merely dabble in Vico. He helped make him hearable in English thought. S.: Through Croce? G.: Partly. The Croce on Vico, yes, whatever the proprietary indignations attached to translations and permissions. But more importantly, Collingwood absorbed the Vichian sense that language, imagination, expression, and history are not separable departments. S.: You mean in The Principles of Art? G.: Exactly. Vico surfaces there more than once, and not as mere antiquarian garnish. The thought that language and art belong to expression rather than to detachable decoration is profoundly congenial to Vico. S.: So Oxford did have a Vichian line. G.: A line, yes. Not a school. Oxford never quite found the courage to let rhetoric return as philosophy. It preferred to let Collingwood do expression, history, and imagination in a noble but rather solitary way. S.: Solitary because the others were busy analysing “if”? G.: Someone had to. S.: And Hampshire? G.: Hampshire is a later and rather revealing case. He knows Vico matters, partly through the atmosphere created by Berlin and the wider anti-ahistorical mood. But Hampshire wants, as I see it, to separate Vico’s historicity from his rhetoric. S.: Why? G.: Because rhetoric embarrasses analytical philosophers. History can be discussed as philosophy of history. Language can be discussed as philosophy of language. But rhetoric threatens to bring in style, civic speech, figuration, and the ancient impoliteness of public life. S.: So Hampshire wants Vico as philosopher of language, but without the cyclical grand history and without the rhetorical baggage? G.: More or less. He would like the conceptual harvest without the full Neapolitan weather-system. S.: And you disapprove? G.: I understand it, which is worse. But yes, I think something is lost if one sanitises Vico into a tidy philosopher of language proper. S.: Because language in Vico is historical through and through? G.: And rhetorical through and through. The first speech of peoples is not a seminar paper. It is imaginative, tropic, social, juridical, fear-laden, ceremonial. To peel off rhetoric is to peel off the very medium of early sense-making. S.: Then Badaloni’s “retorica e storicità” is better than Hampshire’s surgery. G.: Better by being less hygienic. S.: Very Italian. G.: Which is occasionally a compliment. S.: What exactly would Oxford miss in reading Vico as mere stylist? G.: It would miss the claim that rhetorical forms are themselves historical deposits of reason. Metaphor is not a literary frill; it may be a fossil of collective understanding. S.: Fossils again. You have become geological. G.: War does that to one. Rubble encourages stratigraphy. S.: And what of Pisa under occupation? Can G. and S. say more than “bombed and occupied”? G.: They should. The bombing of August 1943 devastated parts of the city. After the armistice, German control, repression, fear, interruptions to ordinary life. Then 1944 brings liberation, but liberation does not instantly repair institutions. A thesis produced in 1945 is produced amid administrative recovery, civic exhaustion, and material uncertainty. S.: So Badaloni’s mission is not abstract. G.: Exactly. To write on rhetoric and historicity then is almost to insist that intellectual life has not been bombed out of existence. S.: Rather moving. G.: Keep yourself under control. S.: I’m trying. G.: Good. S.: And Luporini in this picture? G.: An important mediation. Not necessarily a Vico specialist in the narrow bibliographical sense for every year of the war, but clearly able and willing to supervise a thesis on Vico in 1945. That itself matters. S.: Because it means Vico remained philosophically live in Pisa during and just after the war. G.: Precisely. The thesis is not merely personal whim. It belongs to a real intellectual line. S.: Is there something distinctively Marxist already in the young Badaloni here? G.: In embryo, perhaps. The later Badaloni will want links between thought and co-action, ideas and institutions, philosophy and historical transformation. Vico is a very useful precursor for anyone tempted by that kind of historical intelligence. S.: Because rhetoric is already social praxis? G.: Exactly. Not “praxis” in the later sloganised sense, but speech embedded in institutions, conflict, memory, law, education, civic life. S.: Then why did Vico complain about rhetoric’s status in Naples? G.: Because in ordinary academic life the rhetorician is too often treated as a master of elegance, not as a philosopher. One may teach youths to shine, but not to think foundations. S.: And Vico wanted both? G.: He wanted rhetoric restored to sapiential dignity. He did not want eloquence without wisdom, nor wisdom that imagined it could dispense with eloquence. S.: Which sounds annoyingly right. G.: Most good philosophy does, until a faculty board sees it. S.: And Oxford’s failing? G.: To keep rhetoric in a side room. We produce philosophers who speak as if language were a neutral pipeline. Then we are surprised when history re-enters by the back door. S.: Through Collingwood. G.: Through Collingwood, through Berlin in another register, through Hampshire uneasily, and now, for our amusement, through a young Badaloni in Pisa with bombs still in the recent past. S.: You make him sound like a messenger from another tradition. G.: He is exactly that. Italian historicism arriving to remind Oxford that words have ancestry. S.: Could one say that Badaloni philosophises rhetoric by historicising it? G.: Very neatly put. And conversely, he historicises philosophy by taking rhetoric seriously. S.: Better. Two-way traffic. G.: Good. You are not entirely wasted. S.: What would Hampshire say against this? G.: He would worry, I think, that once rhetoric and historicity are too tightly bound, one loses conceptual clarity and ends up with civilisation instead of analysis. S.: And your answer? G.: Civilisation may be what analysis has been abstracted from. S.: Uncivil. G.: Accurate. S.: Then where does Berlin enter exactly? G.: Berlin helped make Vico intellectually fashionable again in certain circles, especially as an anti-rationalist and pluralist ancestor. But Berlin likes large ideas and historical temperaments. Hampshire, knowing Berlin, inherits some of the interest while trying to produce a more disciplined philosophical Vico. S.: That is, less cyclical history, more language? G.: Exactly. Less providential drama, more philosophy of human expression and conceptual worlds. S.: And you think that still leaves rhetoric too far outside. G.: Yes. It gives us Vico washed and ironed. S.: Oxford laundry. G.: A dangerous institution. S.: What might G. say about the thesis title itself? G.: That it is nearly perfect. “Retorica e storicità in Vico.” Brief, pointed, and already argumentative. It declares that rhetoric in Vico is not an adjunct but a mode of historical being. S.: Better than “Vico’s Style.” G.: Infinitely. “Vico’s Style” sounds like a tailor’s thesis. S.: And Badaloni’s later Bruno work? G.: One can mention that he later turns with force to Bruno, but the Vichian background remains. Bruno gives him cosmology, freedom, heresy, transformation. Vico has already taught him that ideas live in historical worlds and linguistic forms. S.: So Vico is preparatory? G.: More than preparatory. Foundational in tone, even if not permanently foregrounded. S.: Then if we place ourselves in Oxford, 1946, what would attract you in this thesis? G.: Precisely that it refuses the local division of labour. It tells me rhetoric is not merely literary; it belongs to philosophy where philosophy remembers that language has a history and reason has a public life. S.: And what would repel your colleagues? G.: The same thing. S.: Admirably concise. G.: I can be concise when accusing institutions. S.: Suppose one of them says: “But surely rhetoric concerns persuasion, not truth.” G.: Then one replies: persuasion in a historical language is one of the ways truth becomes socially available. Also, untruth persuades too, which is why one had better understand rhetoric rather than exile it. S.: Very Vichian. G.: Very civilised. S.: Is there dry humour in Vico? G.: Less than in Oxford, but more than Oxford notices. S.: And in Badaloni? G.: Young thesis writers are seldom allowed humour by their supervisors. It appears later, in footnotes, if they survive. S.: Then let us provide it for him. G.: Gladly. S.: Could one say that Pisa, under bombing and occupation, was learning storicità the hard way? G.: Yes, though one should say it without flourish. Bombs are the most vulgar school of history. S.: And Badaloni responds by returning to Vico’s rhetoric. G.: Which is rather good, because it says that after force, one must recover speech. S.: Speech as reason in history. G.: Exactly. Not merely speech as style. S.: Then perhaps Oxford needed Badaloni more than Pisa did. G.: That is the sort of thought which makes one provincial and universal at once. S.: A fine Oxford disease. G.: Quite. S.: Summarise, then. What do G. and S. learn from young Badaloni? G.: That rhetoric without historicity is dismissed as ornament. Historicity without rhetoric becomes bloodless abstraction. Vico joins them. Badaloni notices. Oxford lags behind. Collingwood nearly catches up. Hampshire tidies what should remain slightly untidy. And language, if treated as merely logical form, loses the civic and historical sediment that makes it human. S.: And the punchline? G.: In wartime Pisa a student wrote on rhetoric and historicity under bombs; in peacetime Oxford we still needed persuading that words have a past.Grice: Badaloni, mi racconti: la filosofia è meglio vissuta come storia o come una bella chiacchierata tra amici? Badaloni: Grice, la chiacchierata vince sempre! La storia la insegnano, ma la colloquenza la si improvvisa, e magari finisce a cena tra marxisti e vichiani.Grice: E il dialogo platonico, Nicola, secondo te lo capiva meglio Cicero o chi riusciva a riderci sopra?Badaloni: Grice, chi ride è già filosofo: la retorica di Vico dice che la libertà nasce sempre dal fermento, anche se la storia a volte la chiama controriforma! Badaloni, Nicola (1945). Retorica e storicita in Vico – relatore: Luporini. Pisa.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Baglietto: la ragione conversazionale  e l’implicatura conversazionale della dialettica.  Claudio Baglietto (Varazze, Liguria): la ragione conversazionale  e l’implicatura conversazionale della dialettica. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning makes “implicature” a product of rational, cooperative inference: hearers recover what is meant beyond what is said by assuming speakers are (in broad outline) contributing appropriately to a shared purpose, so that dialectic is explained in terms of publicly intelligible intentions, relevance, and accountable reasoning rather than in terms of national style or moral posture. Baglietto, by contrast, is best read as a young Italian moral and political intellectual formed at Pisa and the Scuola Normale (in the Gentile/Carlini environment) who, alongside Capitini, cultivated an ethically Kantian and religiously inflected rationalism and became notable for principled noncollaboration with fascism and refusal of military service, eventually living in exile; his early work on “the problem of language” in Manzoni (published in the Annali of the Scuola Normale in the mid-1950s and as a Normale monograph in 1956) and his engagement with German philosophy (including Heidegger, the theme of being-with, and language) suggest a conception of dialectic less as a set of inferential rules for extracting implicatures and more as an ethically governed practice of address between persons, where the very possibility of speaking-with (a kind of Mitsein in dialogue) is bound up with conscience, responsibility, and the refusal to collaborate with wrongdoing. In that contrast, Grice supplies a general mechanism for how implied meaning is rationally calculable in any ordinary exchange, while Baglietto’s “conversational reason” naturally emphasizes the moral conditions under which genuine conversation is worth having at all—conversation as shared rational life rather than merely efficient information transfer—so that what is “implied” is carried not only by maxims and contextual assumptions but also by the interlocutors’ ethical stance, their willingness to meet one another as a thou, and their capacity to turn dialectic into a form of nonviolent practice rather than rhetorical victory. Grice: “I like B.; unlike me, he was a consceinious objector, but then we were fighting on different camps! I love the fact that his first tract is on ‘il problema del linguaggio’ in Manzoni – but then he turned from ‘la bella lingua’ to Dutch! And specialized in Kant, but most notably Heidegger – ‘mitsein und sprache.’ But he also wrote on ‘eros’ and ‘love,’ – which is very Platonic of him! And of me, since the ground for my theory of conversation is on the balance between what I call a principle of conversational self-LOVE (or egoism, if you mustn’t) and a corresponding principle of conversational OTHER-love (or altruism, if you must, since I prefer tu-ism – ‘thou-ism’).” Studia a Pisa sotto Gentile e Carlini. Sviluppa idee di riforma morale, in contrapposizione al fascismo. Organizza con CAPITINI riunioni cui partecipano Binni, Dessì, Ragghianti, e Varese.  Mente limpida, carattere disciplinato, studioso, coscienza sobria, pronta ad impegnarsi, con una forza razionale rara, con un'evidentissima sanità spirituale. Cominciai a scambiare con lui idee di riforma. Su due punti convenivamo facilmente perché ci sono diretti ad essi già in un lavoro personale da anni: un razionalismo di tipo spiccatamente etico e kantiano; il metodo della noncollaborazione col male. Si aggiunge, strettamente conseguente, l’anti-fascismo. Invitammo gli amici a conversazioni periodiche.  Cantimori critica B., accusandolo di mancanza di senso di realismo politico, nonché di senso dello stato.  Il cammino della filosofia Antifascismo Fontanari e Pievatolo Chiantera Stutte, Cantimori. Un intellettuale del Novecento, Carocci, Roma, che rinvia soprattutto a Simoncelli, La Normale di Pisa. Tensioni e consenso; Angeli, Milano); Capitini. Capitini Mahatma Gandhi Nonviolenza  B. morale critica manzoni amore. G.: Baglietto chose, rather bravely, to make a philosophical topic out of il problema della lingua in Manzoni. S.: Bravely, or archaically. G.: In Oxford those are often the same thing. S.: Why not discuss language in the abstract? G.: Because abstraction is very often the fastest way of losing the quarrel before one has had it. S.: So Baglietto starts from Manzoni because Manzoni gives the problem body? G.: Body, history, politics, pedagogy, and irritation. All the ingredients of a proper philosophical topic. S.: You are already avoiding the word. G.: I am distinguishing. Let us say L for lingua, though I mistrust even that. S.: Why mistrust it? G.: Because if I say L is a set of utterances, I have already cheated. S.: How so? G.: A language is not merely a heap of utterances any more than a club is a heap of dinners. S.: Then what is L? G.: At minimum, a communicative device with socially ratified forms, expectations, corrections, exclusions, and inherited prestige. S.: That is very Oxford. G.: Oxford is a communicative device with poor heating. S.: And Manzoni has a problem with L? G.: More precisely, Baglietto thinks Manzoni has a problem with L. Manzoni wants unification. A nation requires a usable common speech, not merely a map of local noises. S.: And Baglietto objects? G.: Or at least complicates. He sees value in keeping things local, at the level of dialect and almost at the level of what later people would call idiolect. S.: “Almost,” you say. G.: The word idiolect was only just finding its feet. But the thing was there: one person’s own way of speaking inside a dialect inside a larger linguistic order. S.: So Baglietto prefers plurality? G.: Ethically, perhaps. Philosophically, certainly. Politically, with caution. He is interested in the fact that speech is inhabited before it is standardised. S.: Which makes Manzoni the wrong hero. G.: Not wrong. Useful. One always wants a good centraliser in order to expose the costs of centralisation. S.: Then tell me the centralising story. G.: Italy had, and in a sense still has, the problem of many speech forms and one desired national culture. The educated solution, for a long time, was not “Italian” in some neutral pan-Italian sense, but Tuscan. S.: Even outside Tuscany. G.: Especially outside Tuscany. S.: Which is absurd. G.: No more absurd than Oxford English being taken for English. S.: There is no such thing as Oxford English. G.: There is, though Oxford prefers to call it simply “proper.” S.: You mean Received Pronunciation? G.: Not only that. RP is the accentual side. Oxford adds habits of syntax, idiom, pacing, understatement, and what one may call institutional grammar. S.: Institutional grammar sounds sinister. G.: It is merely power in shirt-cuffs. S.: And you think this parallels Manzoni? G.: Entirely. Just as Manzoni sought a norm adequate to national prose and schooling, Oxford enforces a norm adequate to dissertations, prize essays, and civilized correction. S.: Give me the local English version. G.: A Cockney double negation in a Locke Prize essay would not be greeted as a bold experiment in plural expressive rationality. S.: It would be corrected. G.: More efficiently: it would be noticed without being discussed. S.: That is crueller. G.: Much. Open condemnation is almost democratic. S.: So Baglietto sees in Manzoni what you see in Oxford. G.: Exactly. The pressure to call one form simply “the language” and to demote the others into dialect, vulgarism, local colour, or error. S.: But surely some standard is necessary. G.: Of course. The question is what one sacrifices in constructing it. S.: Dialect? G.: Dialect, yes. But also moral texture, local memory, domestic cadence, shades of social relation, and the freedom to sound as if one came from somewhere. S.: You mean standard speech makes us all homeless? G.: Only verbally. Which, for philosophers, is bad enough. S.: And Bononia? G.: Ah yes, the Italian embarrassment. Bologna kept Latin in its higher functions, as Oxford did. But when the vernacular gained prestige, it was not simply “Emilian” that rose into dignity. It was Tuscan. S.: So Bologna taught in one place and linguistically deferred to another. G.: Precisely. A useful lesson in cultural self-government by imported accent. S.: You really are malicious. G.: Historical, my dear fellow. Historical. S.: Then Oxford followed a similar path when Latin gave way to English? G.: Similar, though more concealed. English came in, but not every English. One received something like a regulated upper-register English, with its own assumptions of grammar and propriety. S.: And tutors enforce it? G.: Daily. A tutor’s pencil is the most continuous linguistic legislation in the kingdom. S.: That sounds exaggerated. G.: Only if you have never seen a draft returned bleeding from the margins. S.: So what would be disqualified in Oxford prose? G.: Double negatives in certain registers, regional constructions, over-explicit repetition, misplaced colloquial emphasis, and any phrase that sounds as if it was learned from life rather than from books. S.: That last one is unfair. G.: Which is why it is effective. S.: And Baglietto brings this to philosophy? G.: That is what is admirable. “The problem of language” sounds old-fashioned, almost genteel. But in Manzoni it is a problem of norm, nation, authority, education, and speech as lived practice. S.: Why Manzoni, though, and not, say, a general theory of language after Heidegger or Kant? G.: Because Manzoni allows one to begin where people actually quarrel: not over Being, but over what one ought to write in a schoolbook and how a people is to recognise itself in print. S.: That is rather concrete. G.: Philosophy does occasionally benefit from objects. S.: And Baglietto likes concreteness? G.: Moral concreteness, certainly. He was too ethically serious to be satisfied with merely formal dialectic. S.: You are smuggling in his anti-fascism. G.: Not smuggling. Declaring. A man concerned with non-collaboration with evil will not regard language as neutral machinery. S.: So standardisation can look moral or immoral depending on what it does to persons. G.: Precisely. One may standardise in order to include, or in order to subordinate. Usually one does both and then writes prefaces. S.: Then Manzoni’s project is ambiguous? G.: Fruitfully so. It is emancipatory and disciplinary at once. S.: Very modern. G.: Very national. S.: And Baglietto’s sympathy is with the local? G.: With the ethically inhabited. The local because it is lived, and the idiosyncratic because it is where conscience speaks before committees tidy it up. S.: Idiolect as conscience. That is a little much. G.: All philosophy is a little much. Otherwise it would be administration. S.: So if L is a communicative device, Manzoni wants to unify L, and Baglietto wants to remind us that L is always many. G.: Splendid. You are nearly employable. S.: I resist. G.: Sensibly. S.: What would Manzoni say to this defence of dialect and idiolect? G.: He would say a nation cannot conduct itself in mutually unintelligible intimacies. S.: And Baglietto? G.: He would reply that a nation which abolishes intimacies has produced administration, not conversation. S.: Very fine. But does Oxford not need its own standard? G.: It does, and uses it ruthlessly. The trick is that Oxford presents its own localism as universality. S.: How? G.: By calling its accent “clear,” its idiom “educated,” its grammar “correct,” and its exclusions “merely stylistic.” S.: Which is precisely what Manzoni’s enemies might have said of Florentine. G.: Quite. S.: Then who is the English parallel to Manzoni? G.: A difficult question. England never had quite the same crisis, because the centralising state and print culture had other advantages. But in a broad sense one might think of Johnson for lexicon, perhaps the King James Bible for prestige prose, perhaps the BBC for modern accentual norm. S.: That is three people and an institution. G.: England prefers committees and accidents to founding fathers. S.: No single national purifier, then? G.: Not of the Manzoni type. The English standard emerged less by one heroic washing in the Arno than by a long chain of schoolrooms, printers, sermons, examinations, and embarrassed corrections. S.: Which is less poetic. G.: England mistrusts poetry unless it is dead. S.: And Italy had more trouble because Latin had longer prestige? G.: In part. Bologna and Oxford alike lived on Latin, but when vernacular authority rose, the question in Italy was: which vernacular? In England the answer was easier because the political centre had already done much of the work. S.: So Baglietto sees in Manzoni a philosophical site where politics, ethics, and speech meet. G.: Exactly. The apparently passé topic of “the problem of language” turns out to be the problem of who may speak for whom, in what form, and at what cost. S.: That is indeed philosophical. G.: You sound surprised. S.: I was. “The problem of language in Manzoni” had sounded like a thesis one writes before discovering real philosophy. G.: Real philosophy is often what arrives after one stops despising such titles. S.: And Baglietto did this young? G.: Which makes it all the more impressive. Young philosophers usually prefer cosmic nouns to municipal problems. S.: Whereas he starts with lingua. G.: Yes, and thereby reaches ethics, politics, communication, community, and the structure of mutual address. S.: You are making him sound Gricean before Grice. G.: Not Gricean. Merely civilised. S.: Then explain the Oxford tutor parallel more closely. G.: Very well. A tutor receives an essay not merely to inspect ideas, but to inspect the shape in which ideas have been made public. He corrects syntax, register, ordering, tone, and lexical propriety. He claims to be correcting style; in fact he is inducting the pupil into a form of life. S.: Which is your definition of philosophy now. G.: On good days. S.: So Baglietto would say that what appears as “mere language” is really ethical participation? G.: Yes. To speak with another is not merely to code information; it is to enter a common life under norms. S.: Hence his later interest in dialogue, Mitsein, and speech-with. G.: Exactly. The Manzoni topic is not a mere youthful antiquarianism. It already points toward the moral conditions of genuine address. S.: Then dialect is not just philological residue. G.: It is the site where speech remains answerable to lives not yet fully absorbed by state grammar. S.: And idiolect? G.: The last refuge of singularity before the schoolmaster arrives. S.: You do dislike schoolmasters. G.: Only when they are successful. S.: Then one last difficulty. If every standard excludes, why not abandon standards? G.: Because chaos flatters nobody for long. One needs standards. One merely ought not worship them. S.: And Baglietto’s achievement? G.: To bring a seemingly antiquated topic back into philosophical seriousness by showing that “language” in Manzoni is not a dictionary problem but a problem of community, norm, conscience, and power. S.: And your Oxonian gloss? G.: That every dissertation is, secretly, a chapter in Il problema della lingua. S.: Even the bad ones? G.: Especially the bad ones. They merely solve it in favour of the examiner.Grice: Baglietto, dimmi, tra Kant, Heidegger e la bella lingua, tu preferisci il dialogo o il monologo? Baglietto: Grice, se non c’è dialettica, pure l’amore rimane senza parole! La mia preferenza? Conversare, anche con un po’ di tuismo: meglio sbagliare insieme che avere ragione da soli! Grice: E allora la non-collaborazione col male diventa una conversazione gentile—ma se uno si ostina, meglio cambiare argomento o paese? Baglietto: Grice, io ho scelto l’Olanda, tu Oxford… ma alla fine, la filosofia trova sempre casa, anche tra amici che ridono un po’ di sé e dell’umanità! Baglietto, Claudio (1946). Il problema della lingua in Manzoni. Pisa, Edizioni della Normale. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Balbillo: il filosofo personale di Nerone -- Roma – filosofia italiana – . (Roma). Filosofo italiano. A man of learning, he is much admired by Seneca. He is the personal philosopher of NERONE and writes a long book on astrology. Tiberio Claudio Balbillo. Balbillo. Grice, pel Gruppo di Gioco di Grice, “Grice e Balbillo. Tiberio Claudio Balbillo: il filosofo personale di Nerone -- Roma – filosofia italiana – . (Roma). Filosofo italiano. A man of learning, he is much admired by Seneca. He is the personal philosopher of NERONE and writes a long book on astrology.  GRICEVS: Balbille, Seneca te laudat et Nero te privatim philosophum habet, sed dic mihi utrum astri vere consilium dent an tantum pulchre taceant. BALBILLVS: Grice, astri nihil promittunt nisi motus, sed homines promittunt fata, quia facilius est sidera interrogare quam rationem suam. GRICEVS: Ergo astrologia est quasi implicatura caelestis, ubi paucis signis plurima sperantur et princeps semper audit quod vult. BALBILLVS: Ita est, et si Nero rogat “quid cras fiet?”, ego respondeo “feliciter,” quia in aula etiam veritas debet habere horoscopium.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Balbo: il tutore di filosofia -- Roma – filosofia italiana –  (Roma). Filosofo italiano. Scolaro di SCEVOLA  pontefice, e soprattutto un giurista.  Lucio Lucilio Balbo: il tutore di filosofia -- Roma – filosofia italiana –  (Roma). Filosofo italiano. Scolaro di SCEVOLA  pontefice, e soprattutto un giurista. I shall say but little of some other Balbus's, mentioned by ancient Authors. Disciple SCEVOLA, and preceptor of Servio Sulpizio, an excellent philosopher of law. CICERONE says that Sulpizio did exceed his master, who, by the addition of a mature judgment to his learning, was something slow, whereas his disciple is quick and expeditious. B.’s essays are lost, to which perhaps his disciple Sulpizio did not a little contribute by inserting most of them in his own.  GRICEVS: Balbe, quoniam tu Servium Sulpicium docuisti, dic mihi utrum discipulus semper magistrum superet an tantum celerius festinet. BALBVS: Ego, Grice, lente quidem docebam sed firmiter, ille vero tam expeditus erat ut sententias meas in suis libris quasi meas et suas simul recitaret. GRICEVS: Ergo tractatus tui non perierunt, sed conversi sunt in Sulpicium, sicut vinum in amphora aliena sine novo sapore. BALBVS: Ita est, et si quis me roget ubi sint scripta mea, respondebo: apud Sulpicium, tutore me, sed auctore illo paulo audaciore.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Balbo: gl’ortelani – Roma antica – filosofa italiana –  (Roma). Filosofo italiano. Portico. Consul.  Quinto Lucilio Balbo: gl’ortelani – Roma antica – filosofa italiana –  (Roma). Filosofo italiano. Portico. Consul. Friend of CICERONE, who successfully defended him in a legal action. Comments made by Cicero suggest he was a member of L’ORTO. Lucio Cornelio Balbo. Balbo. Grice, pel Gruppo di Gioco di Grice, “Grice e Balbo,”  Balbo: il portico a Roma – filosofia italiana – . (Roma). Filosofo italiano. Chiamato ‘dal portico’ da CICERONE che nel De natura Deorum gli assegna l’esposizione delle dottrine teologiche stoiche.   Ivi B. dichiara di avere familiarità con Posidonio.Antioco dedica a B. un saggio.  Secondo CICERONE, B. e pari ai più insigni stoici. A Stoic philosopher and a pupil of Panezio.  B. appears to CICERONE as comparable to the best philosophers. He is introduced by CICERONE in his dialogue De natura deorum as the expositor of the opinions of the Portch on that subject. B.’s arguments are represented as of considerable weight. His name appears in the extant fragments of CICERONE’s Ortensio, but it is no longer thought that B. is a speaker in the dialogue. Cicero, De Divinatione. Griffin, "Composition of the Academica, in Inwood and Mansfield, Assent and Argument: Studies in Cicero's Academic Books. Brill. Smith, Dictionary of Roman Biography. Categories: Philosophers of Roman Italy Roman-era Stoic philosophers Lucilii Ancient Roman people GRICE E BALBO We must not, as Glandorpius has done, confound this Balbus with *Quintus* Lucilius BALBUS, the philosopher, and one of Cicero's interlocutors in the books de Natura Deor. A member of the Porch. Cicero uses him as a spokesmn for the Porch in De natura deorum.  GRICEVS: Balbe, cum a porticu Ciceronis in forum descendas, dic mihi utrum hortulani plus dicant quam intellegant. BALBVS: Grice, hortulani herbas docent sine verbis, sed senatores verba serunt sine fructu, quod est peius. GRICEVS: Ergo sermo eorum implicat sapientiam, sed solum significat strepitum, sicut tubicen sine exercitu. BALBVS: Ita vero, et si quis rogat “quid est deus?”, ego respondeo more Stoico, sed Cicero ridet more Academico, et uterque putat se vicisse.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Balduino: la  ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del vestigio dell’angelo al  Campidoglio.  Girolamo Balduino (Montesardo, Alessano, Lecce, Puglia): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del vestigio dell’angelo al Campidoglio. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats implicature as something a hearer can rationally and publicly recover from what is said plus contextual assumptions about cooperative discourse: if a speaker chooses a weaker, odder, or apparently irrelevant formulation, the hearer is licensed to infer an additional intended content (and can test it by cancellability and calculability), so that “meaning beyond saying” is explained by intention recognition under conversational norms rather than by symbolism in the medieval sense. Balduino, by contrast, belongs to the Renaissance Aristotelian-semantic tradition (Padua, then Salerno and Naples) in which the central explanatory triad is not maxim and implicature but nomen/verbum/enuntiatio and the theory of signa: his De signis (Venice, Giolito, 1545) and his work on Aristotle’s De Interpretatione emphasize how words signify, how truth and falsity arise only with composition, and how modes of oratio are classified, with “sign” talk (notare, segnare, significare, notificare) doing much of the work that Grice later gives to pragmatic inference. The “vestigio” motif in your passage captures the methodological contrast: for Balduino, a vestigium is paradigmatically a sign that points from a perceptible trace to what produced it, in a way continuous with Augustine’s classic example of vestigium as a sign from which we think an animal passed; for Grice, the interesting analogue is not the trace itself but the inferential step by which an audience moves from trace to hypothesis under rational constraints, and especially the further step where a speaker exploits that inferential tendency to communicate more than is said. So where Balduino systematizes meaning in terms of semantic composition and signification (a framework naturally hospitable to “signs” and “traces” as theoretical primitives), Grice relocates the explanatory burden onto conversational rationality: the angel’s footprint is not yet implicature, but it becomes Gricean the moment someone intentionally “leaves a trace” in discourse—choosing a formulation whose best rational explanation is that the speaker meant the hearer to infer something further, and meant the hearer to recognize that intention. Grice: “It is amusing that when we were lecturing with Sir Peter at Oxford on Categoriæ and De Interpretatione, B. had done precisely that – AGES before, in a beautiful beach town of Italy! ‘vir Montesardis,’ Strawson and I, following an advice by Paulello, draw a lot from Balduino’s commentary especially of the Peri Hermeneias, the section on the ‘oratio,’ since we were looking for ordinary-language ways to render all the modal distinctions, indicative, imperative, optative, interrogative, vocative, …, that B. finds so easy to digest – but our Oxonian tutees didn’t!” Studia a Padova l’eclettismo lizio sotto PASSERI e SPERONI. Insegna sofistica a Salerno e Napoli. A B. s’oppone ZABARELLA. Interpretazione, Papuli, logica, BONAIUTO scienza, dimostrazione, Colapietra. De signis, segnare, significare. Primum oportet ponere quid sit nomen. rhetoricis. INTENTIONE Verbum vero quniéda sunt praesuppo ipsi volunt cum vero et falso SIGNIFICANDUM enunciationes posterius ut ignotius et explicandum quas quando secundum se, ac purum dicetur. Ipsum sic purumi nullum veritatis et compositionis, aqua verum explicatur, est dam, non per se sed quam sine compositis nominibus non est intelligere. Gi ergo hac de causa nomem præponit verbo, notitia verbi in compositione verum explicantis, non pont, intelligi sine nominibus compositis. Ita et nomina, verum illud quod tempus simpliciter et omnino, ponentium CONSILIO coplectuntur. Exemplo simili sus ideftindetinite et indeterminate SIGNIFICANS appellat, Ma, gentinus dicit esse tempus finitum et determinatum. Et particula, quam adom né temporis differentiam rer pra, curro, curris, nin git, pluit, complexu horūuer borum concertis intellectis personis, cum vero et falso SIGNIFICANT. ferebar, Magentinus ad solum præsens direxit. falsum igir, Campidoglio 334 donazione di Gregorio, notante, segnante, notificare, il segno di san michele, etym. dub. ves-stigium, foot-print naturale artifiziale marcare posizione arbitrio a piacere. Grice: Balduino, mi diverte pensare che mentre a Oxford sudavamo su Categorie e De Interpretatione, tu eri già in riva al mare a digerire senza sforzo tutti i modi dell’oratio. Balduino: Caro Grice, a Padova mi hanno insegnato che prima si pone quid sit nomen e poi si lascia che il verbum faccia il suo teatro, come l’angelo che al Campidoglio lascia un vestigio e pretende pure l’implicatura. Grice: Allora quel segno non è solo un piede sulla pietra, ma un invito a inferire—e i miei tutees, poveretti, vedevano solo la pietra e nessun angelo. Balduino: Non te la prendere, perché tra notare, segnare e significare c’è sempre chi capisce al volo e chi, per principio cooperativo, finge di capire solo per non chiedere un’altra lezione. Balduino, Girolamo (1528). Dissertatio. Padova.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Banfi: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale d’Eurialo -- Niso; ovvero, la tradizione di VICO. Antonio Banfi (Vimercate, Monza, Lombardia):  la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale d’Eurialo -- Niso; ovvero, la tradizione di VICO. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning makes implicature a specifically rational, interactional phenomenon: what a speaker means beyond what is said is recoverable because participants treat talk as cooperative, purposive, and norm-governed, so that an “extra” content is warranted only insofar as it can be worked out as the best rational explanation of why that utterance was produced in that context. Banfi (1886–1957), by contrast, comes to “ragione conversazionale” less from the micro-mechanics of utterance interpretation and more from a broad, anti-dogmatic “critical rationalism” (Principi di una teoria della ragione, 1926) that treats reason as a historically situated, methodologically self-correcting practice spanning knowledge, culture, and praxis; accordingly, interpretation for Banfi is not merely decoding speaker-intention under conversational maxims but a layered activity (exegesis, interpretation, theory of interpretation) whose point is inseparable from commitment, care, and action—hence the passage’s insistence that without a practical stake “why interpret?” and its linking of interpretive performance to heroic praxis (Euryalus and Nisus) and to a Vichian sense of tradition as something made and remade by human agents in history. Where Grice’s “reason” in conversation is largely a local rationality that licenses calculable implicatures in a talk exchange, Banfi’s rationality is programmatically wider: it legitimates interpretive moves by situating them within the dynamics of culture, historical understanding, and collective life, so that what is “implied” can look less like a maxim-driven inference from a single utterance and more like a historically mediated uptake of meaning within a shared tradition (Vico’s world of institutions, common sense, and civic imagination). Put sharply, Grice explains how we responsibly get from saying to meaning in the moment; Banfi tends to ask how interpretive reason itself is possible, why it matters, and how it becomes a form of praxis—so “conversational implicature” becomes, in a Banfi-inflected key, not only a rational inference but also a culturally and ethically loaded act of participation in the life of reason. Grice: “What I like about B. is that he is more ‘important’ than it seems, at least to Italians! He has written bunches, but my favourite are two: his ‘l’interpretazione’ B. draws a distinction between ‘esegesi,’ ‘interpretazione’ and ‘TEORIA dell’interpretazione,’ in a slightly non-Griceian use of ‘teoria,’ and eroe e prassi,’ for indeed this second strand is the base for the former. Unless you CARE, why interpret, which is indeed, a performance?!” Comunista. Sostene un razionalismo anti-dogmatico in grado di attraversare i vari settori dell'animo umano, liberale combaciano un illuminismo razionale tecnico-scientifico. Studia con COTTI a Milano sotto NOVATI,  su BARBERINO, ZUCCANTE e MARTINETTI, sulla CONTINGENZA. Conosce il socialista CAFFI. il partito. Corti Pozzi Anceschi Rossanda Bucalossi Ferrari, Gisondi. Eurialo e Niso; ovvero, la tradizione VICO; spirito vitale storiografia storia della filosofia ragione conversazione riticismo idealismo personalismo l’interpersonale sovranità  stato italiano portico romano enea antonino acerrima indago diritto criminale critica. G.: So here we are, browsing a dissertation on Francesco da Barberino which may or may not exist in a form fit for human consultation. S.: Like most dissertations, then. G.: Precisely. They are written to be examined, not necessarily to be found. S.: And Banfi wrote on Barberino? G.: Yes. A very young Banfi, and that is part of the charm. Before one becomes a philosopher of reason, interpretation, and civilisation, one may begin with a medieval notary who writes in two languages and too many registers. S.: You make that sound like an accusation. G.: In England it would be. In Italy it can be a qualification. S.: Why Barberino at all? Why not Dante directly, if one wants grandeur? G.: Because a philosopher with any self-respect does not begin with the most obvious mountain. He chooses the ridge from which one may see the mountain properly. S.: So Barberino is the ridge? G.: Exactly. Near enough to Dante to matter, unlike the entirely minor; not so engulfed by Dante as to make original work impossible. S.: And what is Barberino good for? G.: For several things at once, which is why Novati would have approved and why Banfi, even as a future philosopher, could take him seriously. Barberino sits at the crossroads of Latin and Tuscan, legal and literary culture, didactic writing, manuscript self-presentation, moral instruction, and that delicious pre-humanistic habit of writing as if one were already one’s own commentator. S.: That sounds exhausting. G.: Which is why I read him at night. S.: To put yourself to sleep? G.: To be sent to sleep by civilisation, which is a superior method. S.: Cruel. G.: Accurate. Barberino is not the Commedia. But then neither is most of Europe. S.: You said there were “three pieces or four or two.” G.: Because Barberino is the sort of author whose oeuvre resists simple dinner-party arithmetic. The best-known works are Reggimento e costumi di donna and Documenti d’amore, and around them circle Latin materials, glossing habits, and textual complications enough to keep a dissertation honest. S.: So why did he never rise to Dante’s height? G.: Because history is unjust in regular ways. Dante has architecture, cosmology, theological nerve, dramatic compression, and the reckless advantage of genius. Barberino has learning, design, moral texture, bilingual dexterity, and the disadvantage of good sense. S.: Good sense is fatal to immortality? G.: Usually. Posterity likes visionaries and monsters. Notaries must settle for scholarship. S.: He was a notary, then? G.: And jurist, and man of letters, and a useful witness to the traffic between Latin culture and vernacular self-assertion. S.: Which is where Banfi comes in? G.: Exactly. Banfi, even before becoming recognisably Banfi, already chooses a figure who embodies the problem of language as culture rather than merely as grammar. S.: We are back, then, to Tuscan versus Latin. G.: We never left it. S.: Explain it as if I were from Reading. G.: Worse things happen. Latin remained the language of prestige, law, commentary, abstraction, inherited authority. Tuscan and the vernaculars rose as media of lived expression, moral instruction, and eventually literary seriousness. Barberino inhabits the tension rather than solving it. S.: Unlike Dante? G.: Dante dramatizes and transcends the tension. Barberino manages it, which is a less glorious but more socially revealing accomplishment. S.: And Oxford had the same problem? G.: In its own way, yes. We kept Latin much too long, as a badge of seriousness. Then came English, but not any English one happened to hear in the street. S.: You mean the old point about standards. G.: Precisely. Oxford replaces Latin with English and then behaves as if English had always meant Oxford English, or at least English under Oxford supervision. S.: Whereas Italy had to choose not merely vernacular over Latin, but one vernacular over others. G.: And that is the philosophically richer drama. Bologna, though in Emilia, did not simply elevate Emilian. Learned seriousness flowed toward Tuscan. One might say Italy invented national language by selective provincialism. S.: You sound admiring. G.: I am. England was politically lucky and linguistically lazy. Italy had to think about the matter. S.: Chaucer, then? Is he your English Barberino? G.: Not exactly. Chaucer is too large, too funny, too socially various, too much his own weather. But as an English comparison he is useful. S.: Because of French? G.: Because of French and Latin and English. Chaucer’s problem is not Tuscan versus Latin, naturally, but English emerging in a world where French still carries prestige and Latin still carries authority. S.: So England too had its trilingual embarrassment. G.: Indeed. Only ours is less elegant because we are barbarians with archives. S.: And Chaucer knew Dante? G.: Very likely in some measure, certainly the Italian atmosphere and probably more than atmosphere. But the point here is that Barberino is near Dante historically and culturally in a way useful to Banfi: one can study the vernacularisation of serious discourse without beginning from the fully monumental case. S.: Did Barberino interact with Dante? G.: There are historical proximities and possible intersections, and certainly a shared Florentine and Tuscan horizon, but the interest for Banfi is less gossip than intellectual ecology. S.: Pity. I like gossip. G.: Which is why I ration it. S.: So a young philosopher in Milan chooses Barberino under Novati. Why is that especially good? G.: Because it shows that philosophy need not begin with abstract systems. One can begin with a philological object that already contains questions of language, norm, authority, moral pedagogy, and the formation of culture. S.: You mean Banfi was already becoming Banfi by way of medieval literature. G.: Exactly. The future philosopher of reason begins with a writer whose mixed textual life teaches that culture is layered, mediated, interpreted, and never merely given. S.: And Milano was just starting, as you say. G.: The institutional setting matters. Milan’s academic world was not Oxford or Cambridge with their old theatrical confidence. It was a newer, more self-conscious intellectual environment, which perhaps made such a topic feel less “merely literary” and more genuinely foundational. S.: Whereas in England one would have shoved Barberino into philology and left him there. G.: With a note of approval and a total failure of philosophical imagination. S.: Did Oxford have anybody like Barberino? G.: Not exactly in the same configuration. England has many clerks, moralists, compilers, and bilingual mediators, but Barberino’s precise mixture of juristic culture, vernacular didacticism, Latin framing, and manuscript self-consciousness is rather Italian. S.: So you retreat to Chaucer. G.: I advance to Chaucer. Chaucer is the nearest large comparison because he too writes in an emerging vernacular under the pressure of older prestige languages. S.: But Chaucer won. G.: As much as one can win in Middle English. He won because English eventually won with him. Barberino is more interesting in defeat. S.: Defeat again. G.: Or lesser canonisation, if you insist on tact. S.: What exactly did Barberino write that is so valuable? G.: The Documenti d’amore are a splendid example of mixed literary and didactic ambition, vernacular verse with Latin apparatus, moral and social instruction embedded in a framework that assumes commentary belongs with composition. S.: He comments on himself? G.: Almost. Or at least writes as if gloss and text were natural companions. It is a very un-English confidence. S.: England distrusts gloss? G.: England distrusts anything that looks too much like admitting one has read. S.: And Reggimento e costumi di donna? G.: Another didactic text, socially prescriptive, morally programmatic, and full of evidence about how vernacular discourse can carry serious normative content without ceasing to be socially situated. S.: You are making didactic literature sound almost noble. G.: It often is, if one is not bullied by later taste. S.: Yet still he never becomes Dante. G.: Nor does anyone by trying. Dante is not the standard by which all are to be condemned. S.: Banfi would say that? G.: I think young Banfi would at least imply it. To choose Barberino for a laurea is already to resist the bad habit of making literary history a queue behind genius. S.: And Novati encouraged this sort of thing? G.: Very much the sort of philologist who would see value in an author situated at intersections rather than peaks. S.: So Banfi at twenty-two is doing serious medieval philology? G.: Under a formidable supervisor, yes. And that matters. It means philosophy in Italy, or at least Banfi’s philosophy, begins not in thin air but in textual discipline. S.: While we English begin by misdescribing our own language and then calling it analysis. G.: You do learn quickly. S.: Then tell me about the dissertation itself, imaginary though it may be. G.: I imagine it as earnest, over-informed in the good way, mildly too respectful, and already straining toward larger questions than the title officially permits. S.: Such as? G.: Such as why Barberino matters for the history of vernacular seriousness; why Tuscan rises not merely as speech but as cultural claim; why Latin remains indispensable even where the vernacular is ascendant; and why a writer may be central to a transition without being central to the later canon. S.: That already sounds like philosophy of culture. G.: Exactly. Which is why Banfi is a philosopher even before he starts sounding like one. S.: And England had no exact parallel figure? G.: Not one cleanly. Chaucer is too major and too unlike Barberino in literary effect. Gower perhaps gives some of the multilingual dignity. Hoccleve some bureaucratic textuality. But none is simply Barberino in English costume. S.: Perhaps that is just as well. G.: England would have given him a worse accent. S.: And how would G. justify reading Barberino every night? G.: Because he is the sort of writer one reads not for transport but for sediment. S.: Sediment? G.: The layers of a culture becoming self-aware in language. Reading him is like watching serious prose and verse negotiate jurisdiction. S.: That would put anyone to sleep. G.: Not anyone. Only those insufficiently trained in delight. S.: So Barberino is delightful now? G.: In the dry way that glossed moral instruction can be delightful when one no longer expects everything to be sublime. S.: That is almost a confession of defeat. G.: It is a confession of maturity. S.: And what would Oxford make of him? G.: Oxford would admire the manuscript tradition, assign him to a specialist, compare him to nobody the public has heard of, and continue pretending that philosophy begins elsewhere. S.: Which Banfi helpfully disproves. G.: Precisely. A philosopher begins with Barberino and thereby reminds us that language, culture, and thought were historically entangled before departments untangled them for administrative purposes. S.: Then the real topic is not Barberino but the right to treat Barberino philosophically. G.: Very good. That is exactly the point. S.: And the punchline? G.: Dante takes you to heaven, hell, and the stars. Barberino takes you to bed with a gloss. At my age, the second is often more restful.Grice: Antonio, dimmi, quando si parla di interpretazione, è più importante essere un esegeta o avere una teoria pronta nel taschino? Banfi: Grice, secondo me è meglio essere entrambi! Se hai solo la teoria, rischi di restare a digiuno al banchetto dell’interpretazione. Se sei solo esegeta, potresti perderti nel sugo! Grice: E per Eurialo e Niso—preferirebbero una performance eroica o una teoria razionale per spiegare le loro avventure? Banfi: Ah, Grice, gli eroi hanno bisogno di un po’ di teoria per capire perché corrono nella notte, ma la vera tradizione sta nel prendersi cura di interpretare ogni passo—altrimenti ti ritrovi a Milano con solo il razionalismo a scaldarti! . Banfi, Antonio (1908). Barberino – sotto Novati. Facolta di Lettere e Filosofia, Regia Accameia Scientifico-Literaria, Milano.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Baratono: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale stilistica.  Adelchi Baratono (Firenze, Toscana): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale stilistica. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats implicature as a rationally controllable, hearer-recoverable surplus over what is said: speakers exploit cooperative norms (relevance, sufficiency, sincerity, perspicuity) and hearers infer speaker-intended content by publicly checkable reasoning, so “style” matters only insofar as it reliably guides inference to intention. Baratono (1875–1947), by contrast, approaches “implicature” through a philosophically ambitious stylistics and psychology of the sensible: trained in a milieu shaped by sociological and psychological interests (including a Wundt-influenced “psychology of peoples” in his early phase, per standard biographical accounts) and later developing a “sensist” aesthetics that links the elementary psychic fact to judgment and volition, he treats linguistic form as the site where sensibility, value, and collective mentality sediment into expressive pattern—so that what is implied is often carried by tonal, evaluative, and affective organization rather than by a maxim-governed calculus alone. The upshot is a productive tension: Grice explains how implication is licensed by general rational constraints internal to conversation, whereas Baratono’s “stilistica” tends to explain how implication is generated by the shaping powers of the sensible (and of communal-historical forms of feeling) that make certain inferences feel natural, attractive, or obligatory; in your passage’s idiom, Grice asks whether one can infer responsibly without relying on aesthetic “color,” while Baratono replies that the elementary psychic-material of language—desire, credibility, and the will’s participation in meaning—already structures what counts as an intelligible, persuasive, and thus inferable conversational move. Grice: “I like B. – especially his ‘stilistica italiana. If I were to offer an English stylistics I would not count as a philosopher, but that’s because ‘English’ is spoken by more than Englishmen, while Italian ain’t! B. thinks he is a sensist alla Locke, which he possibly is. In the typical Italian way, instead of focusing on the classics – Roman philosophy – he reads sociology and psychology and comes up, in a typically Italian way, with a sintessi: la psicologia del popolo alla Wundt. If Austin puns on sense and sensibility, B. takes ‘sensibilia’ VERY sensibly as the basis for ‘aesthetics,’ seeing that ‘aesthetikos’ IS Ciceronian for ‘sensibile’ B. is Griceian in his search for what he calls the ‘elementary’. He applies ‘elementary’ to ‘fatto psichico’: judicativo e volitivo, both based on the ‘sensibile,’ or rather on desirability and credibility. His use of ‘sense’ does not quite fit the Oxonian ‘sense datum,’ since the will is involved in the sensibile, or, in his wording, it is the anima or psyche that searches for the corpus. The compound is something like the hylemorphism – the form is sensible – and the volitive (prattica) and judicative (teoretica) components of the soul operate on this.” Comunista e socialista. Studia a  Genova. Carrea, fascismo, Firenze, Turati. Schiavi. Inoltre per alcuni scritti del B., in Critica Sociale, vedi Critica Sociale, cur. Spinella, Caracciolo, Amaduzzi, Petronio, Milano, Indici, cur. Lanza. Oltre l'esposizione in Il mio paradosso, Spirito, idealismo Volpe, estetica romantica, Sciacca, Faggin, Il formalismo sensista di Assunto Bertin, Bontadini, attualismo problematicismo, Brescia, Talenti, A. B., Torino  (con bibl.). Stilistica, breviario di stilistica italiana, fatto psichico elementare, i fatti psichici eleentare, psicologia filosofica, illuminismo, implicatura luminaria, implicatura escataologica, politica ed etica, la filosofia al margine: gentile, croce, natura umana, esperienza, il mondo sensibile, estetica, il bello, il sublime, criticismo, assiologia, hume a Cremona e torino, spirito, animo, forma logica, l’eneide, riviera ligure. Grice: Adelchi, dimmi, se uno parla di stilistica italiana deve per forza essere filosofo o basta la sensibilità? Baratono: Grice, la sensibilità è la chiave, ma se ci metti un po’ di anima e giudizio, il risultato è come la focaccia ligure: gustoso e ben lievitato! Grice: Ma il sensibile, Adelchi, è davvero il punto di partenza o serve anche un po’ di volitività, magari una spolverata di desiderio? Baratono: Grice, se la volontà non c’è, la stilistica rimane in un cassetto! Io dico sempre: la filosofia stilistica si fa col cuore, ma anche con un pizzico di spirito socialista… e la Riviera ligure non guasta! Baratono, Adelchi (1897). Tesi di laurea sotto Asturaro – Facolta di Filosofia e Lettere, Genova.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Barba: la ragione conversazionale e l’impliatura conversazionale – la scuola di Gallipoli – filosofia leccese – filosofia pugliese --  Emmanuele Barba (Gallipoli, Lecce, Puglia): la ragione conversazionale e l’impliatura conversazionale – Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats implicature as a rational, publicly tractable inference from what is said plus context under shared conversational norms (cooperation, relevance, adequate informativeness, etc.), so that “conversational reason” is basically the disciplined machinery by which hearers recover speaker-intended meaning beyond the literal sentence. Barba, by contrast, is best situated as a 19th-century Gallipoli-based physician-philosopher and civic intellectual (educated in Naples, trained in letters under Basilio Puoti, later active as teacher, administrator, and museum-founder) whose interests in Roman/Latin culture—especially epigraphic and antiquarian materials—model meaning less as an abstract inferential calculus and more as culturally sedimented inscription: Latin epigraphy and “Roman philosophy” become public, durable vehicles of shared understanding that work by presuming a community of readers, historical continuity, and local civic memory. Where Grice explains how a fleeting utterance can rationally generate implied content in real-time interaction, Barba’s “implicature” is naturally reimagined as what is carried by forms (inscriptions, mottos, proverbs, civic commemoration) whose force depends on tradition and communal uptake over time: the proverb, the motto, and the carved Latin formula function like slow-motion implicatures, inviting hearers to infer norms and attitudes from compact conventional wording within a known lifeworld. Your passage’s contrast between “Grecia Magna” and the “breath of fresh air” of Roman occupation fits this: Grice theorizes the general logic of inference in any language, while Barba’s outlook emphasizes how Latin public texts and Romanizing cultural practices stabilize what can be meant and mutually recognized in a specific polis; in short, Grice gives a universal pragmatics of rational intention-recognition, whereas Barba exemplifies a historically and civically grounded pragmatics in which meaning and implication are anchored in the material, educational, and communal infrastructures that make a “we” of interpreters possible in the first place. Grice: “I like Barba, but then I like Gallipoli – and he was born and died there, at Villa Barba. His main interest was Roman philosophy, which he studied at Naples! – The Roman occupation in Southern Italy brought ‘a breath of fresh air,’ as Barba has it, to the old “Grecia Magna” tradition --.” Grice: “Barba is very clear: ‘Epigrafia filosofica latina,’ o ‘epigrafia filosofica romana’ surely ain’t Grecian!” Conduce gli studi a Gallipoli, per poi trasferirsi a Napoli presso il zio, Tommaso Barba. Tommaso Barba e presidente della Gran Corte. Studia grammatica e materie letterarie nella scuola di Puoti. Si laurea in Filosofia. Studiare nel R. Collegio Cerusico e divenne professore di anatomia umana comparata. Insegna scienze e lettere al ginnasio di Gallipoli e fu sovrintendente scolastico ed Assessore delegato alla Pubblica Istruzione.  Fu arrestato ed esiliato a causa delle resistenze al governo. I membri dell'Associazione Democratica posero una scritta: "Nato dal popolo, Per il popolo si adoperò". A lui fu intitolato il Museo civico di Gallipoli.  Note  AnxaEmanuele Barba, su anxa. 21 aprile  13 ottobre ).  Scheda sul sito del Museo B.. Filosofi. Emanuele Barba. Barba. Keywords. epigrafia latina, iscrizione latina, iscrizione greco-romana, la iscrizione di Platone sulla porta dell’academia, ageometretos medeis eisito, Delville pittore belga (Libert), a Italia crea ‘L’ecole de Platon,’ per la Sorbonna.  I vasi di Barba – gemelli, fratelli siamesi, ecc. Monete romana, Gallipoli, colonia romana, ‘Proverbi e motti del popolo gallipolino” – poesie di Barba sulla morte del re d’Italia, risorgimento – esilato, carcere. Grice: Emmanuele, dimmi, quando a Gallipoli parlano di filosofia, preferiscono le epigrafi latine o le antiche iscrizioni greche? Barba: Grice, qui le epigrafi latine sono come il pane: quotidiane, ma se uno trova una scritta greca, la espone in salotto e invita tutti a discuterne! Grice: E con una villa così, avrai avuto più iscrizioni che monete romane! Ma ti chiedo, le gemelle filosofiche le preferisci unite o ciascuna per conto suo? Barba: Grice, gemelle unite, perché la filosofia, come i proverbi gallipolini, si comprende meglio in compagnia: da soli si rischia di finire in esilio, o peggio, in un museo! Barba, Emmanuele (1852). Proverbi e motti del popolo gallipolino. Gallipoli: Barba.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Barbaro: la ragione conversazionale e  l’implicatura conversazionale di Daniele.  Daniele Matteo Alvise Barbaro: la ragione conversazionale e  l’implicatura conversazionale di Daniele. Grice: “This can be confusing to Oxonians, althou we are familiar with the Hanover dynasty! Daniele B., a faithful nephew, commented on his uncle’s, Ermolao B.’s, ‘translation’ of Aristotle’s rhetoric – I shouldn’t even be saying this since it’s implicated in the title where Ermolao features as ‘interprete,’ and the ‘commentarium’ is due to Daniele. On top, Daniele wrote about ‘eloquenza,’ but his comments on his uncle’s vulgarization into latin of Aristotle’s vulgar-greek (koine) rhetorica – is perhaps more Griceian – since there is little conversational about Daniele B.’s ‘eloquenza,’ while the rhetoric (or ‘rettorica,’ as he prefers) is ALL about ‘dialettica’ and dialogue!” Prospettiva. Commentatore l’architettura di VITRUVIO. Camera oscura diaframma per migliorare la resa dell'immagine. Conosce di PALLADIO, TASSO e BEMPO. Commissiona a Palladio Villa B., Maser. Studia a Padova.  Partecipò a quali fondamenti sono fordate l'articelle de' maestri, o gl’esercitij de' giovanetti. Baſtiti, oDinardo, che tu sia giunto là, doue di giugnere desideravi, o che tu habbi veduto un circolo della tanto desiderata cognizione. Però che dalle parti dell'ANIMA incominciasti,o in esse sei ritornato, havendo il corso tuo sopra di natura, ci sopra di me fornito, come sopra due rote di quel carro, che per lo aperto cielo ti condurrà vittorioso, o trionfante. Archittetura, palladio, prospettiva, retorica, ordine cronologico: Ermolao Barbaro il vecchio – Ermolao Barbaro il giovane – Daniele Barbaro – Temisto, index nominorum, interpretazione e commentario di Barbaro sul commentario di Tesmisto sull’analitica posteriora – manoscritto, Bologna. Manoscritto delle ‘Adnotationes ad analyticos priores’ – commentario diretto su Aristoele e no via Temisto – Villa Barbaro – lezione privati di Barbaro sull’organon di Aristotele – analytica priora e analytica posteriora, non al studio GENERALE, ma alla sua propria villa!. Venezia, Veneto.  Grice: Daniele, dimmi, com’è che riesci a spiegare la retorica senza mai perderti tra i commentari dello zio Ermolao? Barbaro: Grice, basta una buona prospettiva! Se la dialettica non funziona, mi affido alla camera oscura: così almeno le idee vengono fuori nitide come Palladio voleva! Grice: E tu che hai commissionato una villa a Maser, forse la retorica la insegni meglio in salotto che in aula! Barbaro: Certo, Grice! Come diceva Tasso: se vuoi eloquenza, serve un buon architetto e qualche giovanotto curioso. La dialettica si costruisce… mattone dopo mattone! With the Barbari, Grice and Speranza meet the Italian genealogy at her best -- a dynasty -- usually the elder is not just the patriarch, but the inspirer. These were the days were doctrines were shaped at one's villa or palazzo --not at Bologna, or Oxford. So here 'Some like Barbaro, but Barbaro's MY man' doesn't work -- it's a trilemma, rather. What is most admirable in Speranza’s treatment of the Barbari is the genealogical intelligence with which he lets a philosophical dynasty appear as a dynasty, and not as a mere sequence of bearers of the same surname. Here the old Griceian formula, some like Barbaro, but Barbaro is my man, must indeed fail, because the case is no longer binary but trilemmatic, and the very failure is instructive. In families like this, the elder is not only predecessor but inspirer, and doctrine is formed as much in villas, palazzi, embassies, and private lessons as in any public schoolroom at Bologna or Oxford. Speranza understands that perfectly. He restores the domestic and dynastic setting in which interpretation, rhetoric, eloquence, commentary, and pedagogy passed through kinship before they passed into institutions. That is why the three Barbari must remain distinct while also being legible as members of one intellectual house: not a blur, but a lineage. Grice and Speranza thus meet Italian genealogy at its best, where family itself becomes a medium of philosophical transmission, and where the reader is invited to see that influence may run uncle to nephew, elder to younger, private lecture to public text, before it ever hardens into a doctrine with a school-name.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Barbaro:la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura convresazionale del vecchio.  Ermolao Barbaro il vecchio:la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura convresazionale del vecchio. Grice: “As much as Speranza LOVES Daniele B., I prefer Ermolao B.; after all, he was his uncle – I mean, Ermolao was Daniele’s uncle – and therefore HE taught HIM; I mean, Ermolao, as a good philosophical uncle, taught the ‘minor’ (literally, since he was his junior) Barbaro.”  "Some like B., but B.s MY man." Umanista. Studia a Padova. Orationes contra poetas. Epistolae. Edizione critica a cura di Giorgio Ronconi.Firenze: Sansoni, Facolta di Magistero dell'Universita di Padova Ermolao Barbaro il Vecchio. Aesopi Fabulae. A cura di Cristina Cocco. Genova: D. AR.FI.CL.ET., Trad. italiana a fronte Hermolao Barbaro seniore interprete. Aesopi fabulae. A cura di Cristina Cocco, Firenze: Sismel-Edizioni del Galluzzo, Il ritorno dei classici nell'umanesimo. Edizione nazionale delle traduzioni dei testi greci in eta umanistica e rinascimentale. Tiraboschi, Storia della letteratura italiana, ed. Firenze, Vespasiano da Bisticci, Vite di uomini illustri, ed. Barbera-Bianchi, Firenze, Pio Paschini. Bigi. Eloquenza, Venezia, Veneto.  Grice: Ermolao, dimmi, ti capita mai che qualche poeta si offenda quando leggi le tue “Orationes contro poetas”? Barbaro: Grice, sai, i poeti sono come le galline: fanno rumore quando perdi un uovo, ma poi dimenticano tutto alla prima epistola. A Padova ormai mi conoscono! Grice: Allora, tra una favola di Esopo e una traduzione dal greco, ti rimane il tempo per insegnare a Daniele qualche trucco dell’eloquenza? Barbaro: Certo! Gli dico sempre: “Se vuoi convincere qualcuno, cita Esopo. Se non basta, aggiungi una battuta veneziana. E se ancora non funziona, scrivi una lettera a Firenze: lì capiranno!”

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Barbaro: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazinale del giovane.  Ermolao Barbaro il giovane: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazinale del giovane. Grice: “Very good.”, ermolao – the younger – il giovane, non il vecchio. Speranza likes Ermolao B. the Younger, but Ermolao B. The Elder is MY man." Umanista. Studia a Verona sotto BOSSO e a Roma sotto Leto e Gaza. Insegna, come Grice, Austin, and Hare, la Nicomachea di Aristotele, mettendo in guardia i suoi studenti dalle traduzioni in latino di Aristotele e predicando il ritorno alla traduzione diretta dal greco, proprio come face lui. Sono infatti di quegli anni i commentari all'Etica e alla Politica e la traduzione della Retorica. Abbandonato l'insegnamento  accompagna nuovamente il padre in missione diplomatica a Roma. E promosso senatore della Repubblica di Venezia e ma stavolta in veste ufficiale, si reca a Milano con il padre per una nuova ambasceria. Il primo incarico diplomatico arriva quando, insieme a Trevisano, rappresenta a Bruges la Serenissima in occasione dei festeggiamenti per l'incoronazione a ‘re dei romani’ di Massimiliano d'Asburgo e nell'occasione fu investito cavaliere. Dopo un'esperienza come savio di terraferma, e finalmente nominato ambasciatore residente a Milano dove si accredita e rimane in carica. Venne creato cardinale in pectore d’Innocenzo VIII nel concistoro, ma non venne mai pubblicato. L'ottima gestione della legazione veneziana a Milano, in tempi davvero turbolenti come quelli della reggenza di Ludovico il Moro, gli vale un anno dopo la nomina ad ambasciatore a Roma alla corte d’Innocenzo VIII. Ed e qui che avvenne la catastrofe.  Il Bruno Figliuolo, Il Diplomatico E Il Trattatista: Ermolao Barbaro Ambasciatore Della Serenissima, Napoli, Guida Editori Antonino Poppi, Ricerche sulla teologia e la scienza nella scuola padovana. Bigi. Il celibato, PICO, POLIZIANO, comenta la retorica, commenta l’etica nicomachea, comenta a politica, retorica ed eloquenza. Venezia, Veneto.  Grice: Ermolao, dimmi, preferisci insegnare Aristotele in greco o in latino? Io avrei paura che qualche studente si perda tra le traduzioni! Barbaro: Grice, il latino va bene per le feste, ma la saggezza si trova nel greco – almeno non rischiamo che Aristotele diventi una barzelletta! Grice: Hai ragione! D’altronde, se Platone ha scritto sulla porta “vietato ai non geometri”, forse anche Aristotele avrebbe gradito qualche professore meno diplomatico. Barbaro: Eh, Grice, tra una missione a Roma e una traduzione, almeno ci resta il tempo per fare una battuta… e magari insegnare la Nicomachea senza perderci tra gli ambasciatori!

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Barié: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale d’Enea in VICO e il noi trascendentale.  Giovanni Emmanuele Barié (Milano, Lombardia): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale d’Enea in VICO e il noi trascendentale. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains implicature as what a rational hearer is entitled to infer from an utterance on the assumption of cooperative, purposive talk: what is meant goes beyond what is said because speakers exploit shared norms of relevance, informativeness, sincerity, and perspicuity, and hearers reconstruct intentions by publicly checkable reasoning rather than by private psychological association. Barié, as portrayed in your passage and in line with what is known of early twentieth-century Italian “critical” philosophy in the orbit of Martinetti, pulls the center of gravity in a different direction: “ragione conversazionale” is recast through transcendental vocabulary (first the io trascendentale, then the noi trascendentale), so that the conditions of intelligibility for speech and for philosophical-historical understanding are sought in a prior structure of subjectivity and intersubjectivity, with Vico (and the figure of Aeneas as a Roman-stoic emblem) serving as a way to think how a people’s shared rational life and its historical self-interpretation can be generated and stabilized. In that contrast, Grice is methodologically bottom-up—start from ordinary exchanges and show how implicatures are calculable products of rational cooperation—whereas Barié’s orientation is more top-down—start from the “we” that must already be in place for conversation, tradition, and philosophical meaning to count as possible at all. The humorous dialogue in the passage (Grice preferring “someone” to the metaphysical load of the transcendental “I,” and joking that the “we” needs at least a transcendental “you”) neatly marks the fault line: for Grice, conversational reason is an immanent normativity inside talk-exchanges, while for Barié, conversational reason tends to become a window onto the deeper, quasi-transcendental infrastructure of communal mindedness that makes talk, history, and even “Roman” forms of rationality (Vico’s orthus/porticus imagery, Aeneas/Cato exemplarity) intelligible as a shared enterprise in the first place. Grice: “”My favourite of B.’s is his parody of Apel: il noi trascendentale! I like B.; he commited suicide, which is not that rare among philosophers: same percentage as the general population cf. Durkheim, Le suicide: a sociological enquiry. B. plays with the idea of the transcendental, and applies it first to l’io trascendentale. When I wrote my thing on personal identity, I preferred the pronoun ‘someone,’ to stand for ‘I’, ‘thou,’ and the allegedy THIRD ‘person,’ ‘he.’ B. edits VICO’’scienza,’ and provides a ‘compendium’ of the SYSTEMATIC kind, favoured by some, of the history of philosophy, with sections on ‘roman’ philosophy, orto, portico. Perhaps the closest B.  comes to me is in his ‘the concept of the ‘transcendental,’ since I struggle with that in my Prejudices and predilections, where I feign to think that perhaps ‘transcendental’ is too transcendental an expression and should be replaced by ‘metaphysical,’ but my tutee, Sir Peter, being more of a Bariéian, disagreed wholeheartedly! I cherish Apel’s comment on B. Surely, if we are going to have ‘l’io trascendentale,’ we need at least ‘l’altro trascendentale,’ or as I prefer il tu trascendentale.’” Studia la critica sotto MARTINETTI– analisi/sintesi, a priori/a posteriori, pervenne al trascendentalismo, gnoseologia, Oltre la Critica, metafisica alla MARTINETTI nel binario pensiero-essere appelando la spiritualità dell'essere del trascendentalismo. Enea, lo stoicism romano, Enea, eroe romano, eroe stoico, Catone, il noi trascendentale, vico, storia vichiana, arimmetica. G.: Let us begin with the year before the catastrophe became official. S.: 1912? G.: Or 1913, if one prefers to be matricularly precise. In either case, young Barié enters the Facoltà di Legge in Milan as a respectable Milanese ought. S.: Ought? G.: Before the Great War, a Milanese family could still imagine law as the proper road to seriousness. S.: Why law? G.: Because “philosophy” was still too naked a noun for parents, and “law” had trousers on. S.: So the plan was barrister, advocate, codes, Roman law, and a good hat? G.: Roughly. One entered law in order to become socially legible. S.: And this in Milan, not some wandering provincial arrangement. G.: Milan, yes. Facoltà di Legge. Properly urban, Lombard, and promising. S.: You sound as if the faculty itself wore cuffs. G.: It probably did. S.: What would Barié have studied there in those early years? G.: If we are reconstructing sensibly: Roman law, civil law, legal institutions, perhaps some constitutional matter, probably some historical-juridical apparatus, and all the usual training in how to make an abstract formula look like civilisation. S.: So the usual consolation prize for not studying philosophy. G.: Do not be vulgar. Law is philosophy in boots. S.: And in 1912 or 1913 he would have been what, eighteen or nineteen? G.: Precisely the right age to believe that institutions are permanent. S.: Poor boy. G.: Quite. S.: Then the war. G.: Then the Great War. S.: You insist on “Great.” G.: One must. It was the last war to be called great before everyone lost the courage to say so aloud. S.: Italy entered in 1915. G.: On 23 May 1915, to be exact, with the declaration against Austria-Hungary following immediately after. S.: And hostilities ended for Italy in 1918? G.: The Austro-Italian armistice comes with Villa Giusti, signed on 3 November 1918, effective on 4 November 1918. The wider European machinery grinds on to 11 November in the west, but for the Italian frame, 4 November is the operative release. S.: So Barié’s legal studies are interrupted somewhere between the first set of lecture notes and the first artillery report. G.: Very likely. The law faculty yields to the law of mobilisation, which is always less elegantly drafted. S.: He served actively, then? G.: Yes. Not merely nominally. First as cavalry officer, later as aviator or air observer, and wounded in aerial combat in Macedonia. S.: That seems an awfully long way from Roman law. G.: The law of persons gives way rather abruptly to the fact of projectiles. S.: And this is where Wittgenstein enters, no doubt, because every war conversation eventually acquires him. G.: It is difficult to prevent. He hovers over the war years like a very severe adjutant of the soul. S.: Treviso? Cassino? Cassiano? I am not reliable on Austrian geography. G.: Nor was the war. But yes, one may bring in Wittgenstein in uniform, notebooks in pocket, discovering in artillery service that logic and shells inhabit the same century without much consulting one another. S.: “Arms make the man,” then? G.: A wicked motto, but the war certainly made some men into other men. S.: Including Barié? G.: I should think so. A boy who entered Facoltà di Legge in Milan before 1915 entered one world; the man who emerged after 1918 had seen organised reason collapse into organised slaughter and then reassemble itself administratively. S.: You are making him sound more philosophical already. G.: War often does that by destroying the minor alternatives. S.: Yet you said he remained loyal to Milan and to Lombardy. G.: Exactly. That is what I find rather impressive. No operatic exile at first. He remains within the same broad institutional and civic world. He does not fling himself from Milan into metaphysical vagabondage. He turns inward, but locally. S.: So after the Great War he may have resumed law? G.: He may have completed the legal side, yes. We know he had begun in law and that the war interrupted him. The exact administrative sequence after the war is the kind of thing archives enjoy withholding. S.: But philosophically the interest shifts. G.: Very much so. Whether by resuming law briefly or not, he plainly ends by moving toward the Facoltà di Filosofia e Lettere and to Martinetti. S.: Which sounds less like a profession and more like a decision. G.: Indeed. “Law” is often entered by plan. “Critica” is often entered by necessity. S.: Criticismo, you mean. G.: I do, and I shall keep the K-word decorously offstage, since the Italians of that generation could say criticismo and mean a whole moral atmosphere. S.: Why not simply say he changed faculties? G.: Because that would make it sound bureaucratic, whereas the deeper point is that the Great War may have made the old juridical path feel spiritually insufficient. S.: Roman law suddenly less urgent after Macedonia? G.: Or urgent in the wrong way. One enters law to think about contracts, possession, sovereignty, civil order. One meets war and discovers sovereignty carried by cavalry and aviation rather than by glosses. S.: There is law of war, after all. G.: Yes, but very few boys matriculate to law imagining that the curriculum will culminate in air combat. S.: You think that ended the legalistic jargon for him? G.: Not ended. Redirected. The habit of conceptual precision remains. But the object changes. He ceases to ask merely what a norm is, and begins to ask under what conditions norms, judgement, subjectivity, and shared reason are possible at all. S.: That sounds suspiciously like what later becomes his business. G.: Exactly. The “noi trascendentale” does not descend from nowhere. It may be what remains after law, war, and civic life have each failed to explain enough on their own. S.: Then one could almost say the war is the missing faculty. G.: Very good. The most brutal faculty of all, and regrettably one with compulsory attendance. S.: What would those early law years in Milan actually have felt like? G.: Lecture halls, codes, institutional dignity, probably professors whose moustaches were more settled than their metaphysics, and the old confidence that the State is intelligible because it can be taught. S.: Whereas the war teaches the State in another accent. G.: Through requisition, command, damage, wounds, paperwork, death, and honours nobody had wished to earn. S.: He was wounded, you say. G.: Yes, in aerial combat in Macedonia. Which is enough to ruin any naïve faith that the modern world is a rationally edited legal commentary. S.: And yet afterward he returns to study. G.: That is the civilised part. S.: To law first, perhaps? G.: Perhaps. We know he completed law after the war before undertaking philosophy in Milan. That is already enough to make the chronology interesting. S.: So two lives before thirty. G.: Law, war, philosophy. A very efficient Italian formation. S.: More efficient than Oxford. G.: Oxford likes to drag its crises out over sherry. S.: Then tell me about Milan. Why does G. insist on its importance? G.: Because a Milanese of that sort did not simply belong to “Italy” in the abstract. He belonged to an urban bourgeois world in which studying law at the Facoltà di Legge made civic sense. Remaining in Milan even after the war means remaining faithful to that civic grammar while altering its philosophical key. S.: Not running off to Florence, then, for a mystical recovery. G.: No. He remains Lombard enough to change his mind without changing his city. S.: Very decent. G.: Very Milanese. S.: And Martinetti appears when? G.: In the postwar philosophical reorientation. Barié turns toward critica, toward gnoseological and transcendental vocabulary, toward the sort of philosophy that asks what makes judgement and intelligibility possible. S.: Which is a long way from codified jurisprudence. G.: Less long than one thinks. A lawyer asks under what rules a claim stands. A criticist asks under what conditions judgement itself stands. War may have made the second question intolerably pressing. S.: This all sounds terribly grand for a man who began in law. G.: Law is how many philosophers arrive respectably at grandeur. S.: And Oxford has a parallel? G.: Certainly. We too pretend that the proper road to seriousness is through some decently clothed faculty, and then watch men defect into philosophy once the world has made mere competence feel insufficient. S.: But at Oxford Latin gave way to English, whereas in Milan law gave way to critica? G.: Different transitions, same moral. Institutions teach one thing and life teaches another, and the clever man spends the next decade making the second sound as if he had intended it all along. S.: You are hard on autobiographical coherence. G.: Because it is nearly always retrospective grammar. S.: Could one say Barié’s legal training helped his later philosophical style? G.: Very likely. One does not pass through law, especially in Italy, without learning distinctions, formal oppositions, disciplinary patience, and the belief that words bind. S.: And then the war teaches that words do not always bind enough. G.: Splendid. Exactly so. S.: So he goes from Facoltà di Legge to Facoltà di Filosofia e Lettere, but remains in the same institution and city? G.: That is the elegant thing about it. No melodramatic conversion in a Swiss pension. Just Milan continuing to educate him under another heading. S.: I like that. G.: It ought to be liked. Philosophers are often improved by not changing railway stations. S.: Tell me again the dates, because I enjoy dates when they are terminal. G.: Italy enters the Great War on 23 May 1915. The Austro-Italian hostilities cease under the Villa Giusti armistice effective 4 November 1918. S.: So if he matriculated in 1913— G.: Then roughly two years of law before mobilisation changed the syllabus. S.: And if 1912? G.: Then three. Either way, enough time to have begun seriously and not enough to have finished untroubled. S.: What might those first years have contained besides Roman law? G.: Institutional law, civil code, legal history, perhaps constitutional matter, and a deal of disciplined terminology that must later have looked very peaceful indeed. S.: Then the war tears the terminology up. G.: Or writes on top of it in red pencil. S.: You really do like the phrase “Great War.” G.: Because it still allows the old irony: it was called great by men who had not yet seen how small it made them feel. S.: And Wittgenstein again? G.: If you insist: he too leaves a prewar intellectual formation, enters war service, and comes out with philosophy pressed closer to life and death than the lecture room had intended. Barié is not Wittgenstein, naturally. S.: Thank God. G.: Quite. Europe could not have borne two at once. S.: Do you think Barié’s later transcendental “we” owes anything to the war experience of collective life? G.: I think it would be odd if it owed nothing. War is one of the ugliest possible introductions to the fact that the individual mind does not think historically or socially in isolation. The “we” may later be philosophised, but first it has been suffered. S.: That is almost moving. G.: Keep yourself together. S.: I shall try. G.: Please do. Oxford dislikes sincerity unless it has footnotes. S.: Then what does “arms make the man” become philosophically? G.: That institutions make selves less gently than they advertise. Facoltà di Legge proposes one sort of adulthood; the army and the air service impose another; philosophy afterward tries to recover a third. S.: And all this without leaving Milan for good. G.: Which is why the story pleases me. He remains a Lombard and a Milanese while becoming, under Martinetti, a philosopher of criticismo and later of transcendental seriousness. S.: So the law faculty is not cancelled, merely superseded. G.: Nothing good is ever cancelled. It is archived inside the later mind and occasionally reappears in terminology. S.: Then perhaps his later philosophy still carries legal bones. G.: I should think so. A transcendental “we” can still have a forensic posture. S.: That sounds ominous. G.: Most serious philosophy does. S.: And your final judgment on 1912 to 1919? G.: A young Milanese enters Facoltà di Legge expecting law, order, and profession; the Great War interrupts with cavalry, aviation, wounds, and Europe; he returns not to abandon Milan but to change the question, moving from law to critica, from statutes to conditions of judgement. S.: And the punchline? G.: He enrolled to study jurisprudence, and history replied that attendance would be compulsory elsewhere first.Grice: Barié, ti confesso che il “noi trascendentale” mi diverte più che mi convince; ma se la conversazione è un orto, allora ci servirà un portico per meditare insieme, non credi? Barié: Caro Grice, se l’io trascendentale non trova almeno un tu trascendentale, rischia di perdersi tra le siepi del giardino filosofico; Enea ci insegna che la via verso il noi è sempre un po’ stoica, ma non troppo seria! Grice: Allora il vero eroe non è chi parte da solo, ma chi porta con sé Catone, Enea e magari anche Apel per la merenda. Che ne pensi, la metafisica si spiega meglio a tavola o a passeggio? Barié: Grice, io voto per la passeggiata: si capisce tutto meglio quando il pensiero incontra l’essere tra il verde, e se ci scappa una battuta, anche il trascendentale si rilassa! Barié, Giovanni Emmanuele (1913). Matricolazione. Facolta di Legge. Milano.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Baricelli: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale.  Giulio Cesare Baricelli (San Marco dei Cavoti, Benevento, Campania): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains implicature as a rational achievement: hearers treat speakers as (broadly) cooperative, infer communicative intentions from what is said plus context, and derive what is meant by disciplined reasoning under conversational norms rather than by rhetorical flourish or subject-matter eccentricity. Baricelli, by contrast, is best anchored in early modern learned-medical humanism: Giulio Cesare Baricelli (born c. 1574 at San Marco dei Cavoti; active as a physician-philosopher) wrote in Latin across medicine, “natural philosophy,” and antiquarian compilation, including De hydronosa natura sive sudore humani corporis libri quatuor (Naples, 1614; on the origin, differences, prognostic value, “apparatus,” and cures of sweat) and the Hortulus genialis (early 17th c.), works whose communicative economy relies on genre, learned citation, and the culturally shared assumptions of the Republic of Letters. Read against Grice, Baricelli’s “sweat” treatise shows a different model of what gets carried “between the lines”: not implicature computed from maxims in a talk exchange, but inference encouraged by encyclopedic accumulation, authority of sources, and the rhetorically managed link from concrete bodily signs (sweat as symptom) to broader claims about nature and regimen; where Grice would insist that any extra content must be rationally recoverable as what a speaker intends an audience to recognize, Baricelli’s Latinity can let meaning ride on the prestige of erudition and the reader’s trained habit of drawing connections across medicine, philosophy, and moralized regimen. The upshot is that Grice gives a general, intention-based account of how conversational reason licenses meaning beyond the literal sentence, while Baricelli exemplifies a pre-modern scholarly pragmatics in which implication is less a universal calculus of cooperative discourse and more a cultivated interpretive practice: the learned reader infers “the rule” (regimen, discipline, decorum) from a seemingly technical topic like sweat because the whole textual apparatus presumes that bodies, signs, and norms belong to one continuous field of explanation. Grice: “Italian philosophers can be eccentric; B. starts commenting Plato. His masterpiece is however a philosophical tract on sweat, as experienced by the athletes with whom Plato was quite familiar!” Filosofo poliedrico, commenta l’ACCADEMIA. De hydronosa natura sive de SUDORE DEI CORPI UMANI UMANO, sulla natura e la terapia della sudorazione umana, ORTO geniale, edito ove raccogse antidoti e sudi sulle intossicazioni, thesaurus secretorum, elenco de cure e rimedi, de lactis, seri, butyri facultatibus et usu. SPRITO INFORMATORE E L’ATTIVITÀ PROFUSE NELLE SPECULAZIONI FILOSOFICHE A RICORDO NEL FERVORE E NELLA FEDE DEI GRANDI, AUSPICATI DESTINI. RERVM MEMORABILIVM, QVÆ IN HORTVLO Geniali continentur elenchus. A Beſton accenfus, perpetuòarder. A cos. poribus effe &tus procreari. Admirandumauxiliuin advefica imaginationis potentian climactericos inter homines carolum animantia liberos garamantes caminus horologium infantium praesagia vinum virorum familiarem romanos ambarum tympaniam venenum toxica socrati magia epistolam aqua frigida menstruorum lapides homines testiculos humanam salivam homines ridendo parthi partum accelerare serpentum hydrargyrum vim anginam vermes mamillis lumbricos infantis elephantiasim cyprinorum leporine hydrargyrum gravidas homines abstemios aristolochiam alexandro morbis creta cyprini calphurnius bestia romanus aceto oleum scythae catellos plurima martis robusta hominum corpora equum homini lunae mithridiatu viscum vites betulae haemorrhoidalem dentium dolores sodomi uterum solis virginum praesagia vitri aeris homines facie humana apum natura vinorum ignem menstrua virtutem aquarum in conceptu imaginationis esse potentiam dentium stupores epilepsia pro vita producenda mulieribus. Sudore umano, sudore e la regola, stirgilo, amore, Socrate, Aristotele, controversia sull’origine del sentiment dell’amore, Socrate, l’idea di causa in Aristotele.. Grice: Caro Baricelli, mi dicono che tu commenti Platone e poi ti slanci eroicamente sul sudore umano: è implicatura o idrologia? Baricelli: È ragione conversazionale, Grice: se parlo di strigile e atleti, tu inferisci che sto lucidando anche l’Accademia. Grice: Capisco, quindi quando scrivi De hydronosa natura stai dicendo “seguite la regola” senza dirlo, e io devo fingere di non essere già madido. Baricelli: Esatto: tu fai il filosofo inglese che non suda, io faccio l’italiano eccentrico, e San Marco dei Cavoti ci applaude per pura cortesia pragmatica. Baricelli, Giulio Cesare (1842). De hydronosa natura sive de sudore dei corpi umani umano. Napoli: Prigiobbo. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Barone: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del lla lingua.  Francesco Barone (Torino, Piemonte): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del lla lingua. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats implicature as a rationally controlled, publicly recoverable kind of “more-than-is-said”: hearers use a presumption of cooperative rationality to infer a speaker’s intended additional content under constraints like relevance, sufficiency, and clarity, so that what is meant is explained in terms of intention plus disciplined inference rather than by any special features of a particular natural language. Barone, by contrast, comes to “ragione conversazionale” from the side of formal logic, epistemology, and philosophy of science: trained in Turin under Guzzo and Abbagnano and later a long-time professor at Pisa (and a member of the Accademia dei Lincei), he is known for work on logical positivism and analytic philosophy in Italy (including early monographs such as Il neopositivismo logico, 1953, and studies engaging Carnap and Wittgenstein), and for the large project Logica formale e logica trascendentale (1957–65) that treats logical form as a tool for clarifying scientific and philosophical discourse. In that frame, “implicature” and “conversational reason” are naturally pulled toward questions of logical articulation, inferential structure, and the interface between formal languages and ordinary linguistic practice—less the everyday pragmatic etiquette Grice highlights, more the epistemic discipline by which language is made fit for scientific description and critical assessment. The playful passage’s contrast—Oxford “Lit. Hum.” conversational refinement versus Italian “scienza” and “algebra della logica”—captures a real difference of emphasis: Grice makes conversational rationality foundational for explaining meaning in ordinary talk (with formality as a special case), whereas Barone’s intellectual trajectory tends to treat rigor, formalization, and the analysis of scientific concepts as the paradigm, with ordinary language appearing as something to be clarified, regimented, or at least philosophically interpreted through the lenses of logic, semantics, and methodology. Where Grice’s implicature is a general mechanism of reason in interaction, Barone’s “reason of language” sits closer to the rational reconstruction of discourse characteristic of scientific and analytic inquiry, making their meeting point less a shared doctrine than a productive tension between pragmatic inference in conversation and the formal-epistemic ideals that aim to discipline what conversation (and science) can responsibly be taken to mean. Grice: “I like B., but I’m not sure he likes me! You see, in Italy, there’s scienze filosofiche, and scienza is indeed a way to describe philosophy! But at Oxford, you have to take the great go! Lit. Hum., and I doubt B. did! – ginnasio e liceo, as the Italians have it! Therefore, his views on ‘filosofia e lingua,’ never mind his rather pretentiously titled ‘logica formale,’ ‘logica trascendentale,’ ‘algebra dela logica,’ etc. have little to do with, well, Italian!” Si laurea a Torino cotto GUZZO ed ABBAGNANO. Insegna a Pisa. Si dedica soprattutto alla filosofia della scienza. Dei Lincei. B. studia il confronto tra il realitmo e l’idealismo, e poi si focalizzata sull’epistemologia della scienza.  Affronta temi etico-politici sul rapporto tra individuo e società dal punto di vista della ideologia liberale e liberista.  Il tema principale delle opere di Barone riguarda la filosofia della scienza e la storia della scienza e della tecnica. Si deve a lui la prima pubblicazione in Italia di una monografia sulla filosofia neopositivistica.  Il suo pensiero si contraddistingue per lo stretto rapporto tra epistemologia e storiografia della scienza, settore, questo, in cui B. tratta la cosmologia di BONAIUTO. dedicato agli sviluppi culturali, epistemologici e filosofici della informatica, ontologia etica ed estetica, critica, l'algebra della logica Metafisica della mente e analisi del pensiero Determinismo e indeterminismo nella metodologia scientifica Concetti e teorie nella scienza empirica Immagini filosofiche della scienza, Laterza, Roma-Bari); “Pensieri contro, Società Editrice Napoletana, Napoli) teoria ed osservazione scienza ontologia positivismo, incertezza di B., La Stampa, Addio a B. il filosofo che diffidava dei paradisi in terra d’ANTISERI. Assiologia, semantica, sintassi, logica trascendentale, aritmetica, simbolo, logica simbolica, Leibnitii opera philosophica, ontologia, mondo e lingua. Grice: Barone, dimmi, davvero pensi che la logica formale abbia qualcosa a che fare con l’italiano? Io qui a Oxford la chiamerei “greek logic”, ma tu sembri preferire “algebra della logica” e “logica trascendentale” come se fossero piatti piemontesi! Barone: Grice, guarda, l’italiano si arricchisce anche con le formule: se la lingua serve a comunicare, allora la logica è come un buon Barolo, aiuta a vedere chiaro senza ubriacarsi troppo. Certo, la “Logica simbolica” non è proprio dialettale, ma almeno non ti fa venir voglia di andare a Oxford! Grice: E se uno studente ti chiede se la logica trascendentale può spiegare il dialetto torinese, che gli rispondi? Barone: Gli rispondo che la logica torinese è quella che ti permette di capire se il caffè è troppo forte o la conversazione troppo astratta. In fondo, filosofia e lingua si incontrano proprio dove nessuno se l’aspetta: tra una battuta e una domanda, come tutte le conversazioni amichevoli! Barone, Francesco (1953). Concetti e teorie nella scienza empirica. Roma-Bari, Laterza. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Barsio: implicatura conversazionale dialettica Vincenzo Barsio: implicatura conversazionale dialettica – Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats “implicature” as a disciplined, hearer-recoverable product of cooperative inference: what a speaker means can outrun what is said because rational interlocutors presume shared norms (relevance, sufficiency, truthfulness, perspicuity) and compute further content as an intention made recognizable through those norms. Barsio, by contrast, is best understood not as a theorist of conversational rationality but as a Gonzaga-court humanist and Carmelite Latin poet associated with Mantua and Bologna, whose work (Silvia, Pamphilus, Alba, Labyrintus; with early print history including a Mantuan 1516 edition reportedly financed by Isabella d’Este and a revised Parma 1519 edition) exemplifies how dialectic and philosophical posture can be staged as social performance within courtly exchange: salon wit, elegy, satire, and the management of enemies (your Pomponazzi motif fits the broader Renaissance habit of turning intellectual conflict into genre). In that setting, “implication” functions less like Grice’s rule-governed calculation and more like a courtly rhetoric of allusion, where what is meant is carried by style, genre expectations, patronage relations, and the shared code of an elite audience; the point is not to model the universal rational constraints that make implicature possible anywhere, but to display learned agility in a specific civitas of letters. So while Grice would treat Barsio’s bons mots and courtly feints as data whose extra content must be justified by a rational route from utterance to intention, Barsio’s practice suggests an older, rhetorical economy in which the success of what is “between the lines” is secured by cultivated Latinity, social positioning, and the pleasures of form—dialectic becoming, as the passage jokes, poetry at the banquet—rather than by an abstract cooperative calculus that is supposed to hold independently of Mantua, Lombardy, or “Italian philosophy” as a label. -- scuola di Mantova – filosofia lombarda -- filosofia italiana –  (Mantova). Filosofo lombardo. Filosofo italiano. Mantova, Lombardia. Grice: “I like Barsio – he reminds me of G. Baker – there he is, Baker, succeeding me – and an American! – as tutorial fellow in philosophy at St. John’s, and dedicating his life to Witters – So when reminiscing, in my “Predilections and prejudices” about them years, I said, “God forbid that you dedicate your life to the oeuvre of a minor philosopher like Witters – it’s good to introject into a philosopher’s shoes as you attain to grasp the longitudinal unity of philosophy, but look for a non-minor pair of shoes!” – “Barsio is a radically minor philosopher – in that, he never had to grade – I always hated grading and seldom did it! – since he lived under the Gonzagas at Mantova – and he just phiosophised to the sake of the pleasure he derived from it! My favourite is his elegy to his enemy, Pomponazzi – but his satirical curriculum vitae is fantastical, but possibly true!” -- Noto anche come Vincenzo Mantovano, frequentò le corti del marchese Federico II Gonzaga e di sua moglie Isabella d'Este, alla quale pare avesse dedicato il poemetto Silvia e la corte del marchese di Castel Goffredo Aloisio Gonzaga, al quale dedicò il poema latino Alba. Studia filosofia a Bologna. Altre opere: “Silvia, poemetto in tre libri, Pamphilus; Alba, dedicato al marchese Gonzaga, signore di Castel Goffredo; Labyrintus, dedicato a Federico II Gonzaga. Ireneo Affò, Vita di Luigi Gonzaga detto Rodomonte, Parma., su books.google. Gaetano Melzi, Dizionario di opere anonime e pseudonime di scrittori italiani, Milano, Coniglio, I Gonzaga, Varese, B. in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana.  ICCU. B. su edit16 .iccu. Marsio. dialettica. Grice: Barsio, dimmi, ti hanno mai chiesto di insegnare dialettica a Mantova, o hai preferito filosofare tra una poesia e l’altra? Barsio: Grice, a Mantova la dialettica si pratica nei salotti: nessuno si aspetta che tu corregga compiti, basta saper schivare le frecciatine della marchesa! Grice: E quando ti capita un nemico come Pomponazzi, scrivi un’elegia o preferisci una satira da curriculum? Barsio: Grice, se il nemico è Pomponazzi l’elegia serve a far pace, la satira a far ridere: così tutti i Gonzaga si divertono e la dialettica diventa poesia, almeno fino al prossimo banchetto! Barsio, Vincenzo (1537). Silvia, poemetto. Bologna: Tipografia Accademica.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bartoli (Roma).  Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Barzaghi: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale della scuola dei anagogi.  Gianpaolo Bartoli (Roma). Filosofo italiano. B. è ricercatore confermato in Filosofia del diritto e professore aggregato di Teoria dell’interpretazione presso la facoltà di Giurisprudenza dell’Università degli Studi di Roma  Grice: Bartoli, dimmi, quando insegni Teoria dell’interpretazione a Roma, preferisci interpretare la legge o interpretare le implicature degli studenti? Bartoli: Grice, a volte le implicature degli studenti sono più complesse della legge stessa, ma almeno non rischiano la sanzione penale! Grice: E se ti capita uno studente che interpreta la legge come un proverbio romano, cosa fai? Bartoli: Lo promuovo subito, Grice—se la giurisprudenza diventa saggezza popolare, almeno la conversazione è garantita fino alla laurea!

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Barzellotti: la ragione conversazionale e  l’implicatura conversazionale.  Giacomo Barzellotti: la ragione conversazionale e  l’implicatura conversazionale. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning makes implicature a rationally recoverable product of cooperative inference: what a speaker means is constrained by publicly checkable norms (Grice’s maxims, the Cooperative Principle, and the idea that hearers treat utterances as purposive contributions to a shared enterprise), so that “conversational reason” is not a national style but a general account of how intention and rational expectation generate meaning beyond what is said. Barzellotti, by contrast, comes to “ragione conversazionale” through historical-philological and psychological humanism: trained in Italian spiritualism (Mamiani, Conti) and later aligned with neocriticism, he reads Latin philosophy (especially Cicero) as a culturally situated transformation of Greek dialectic into a Roman civic instrument, and his scholarly practice suggests that implication is often carried by intellectual mentality, historical continuity, and rhetorical adaptation rather than by a formal set of inferential constraints. The passage’s jokes sharpen the contrast: Grice admires Barzellotti’s ability to make Cicero intelligible by reconstructing “Italian” and “Roman” mentalities, yet he implicitly worries that this elegance risks treating implicature as a historical or stylistic achievement (a “historical implicature” that arrives as if from nowhere) rather than as something licensed by general rational principles governing talk. Where Grice wants an account that abstracts from schools and passports—precisely to explain how an English hearer can recover what is meant—Barzellotti’s cosmopolitan slogan that philosophy has no country sits alongside a method that repeatedly anchors understanding in national and civilizational formations (Italy-before-Italy, Rome’s comprehensive genius), making conversation look less like a universal rule-governed game and more like a historically educated sensibility. In short, Grice treats implicature as the logic of responsible communication under rational constraints, whereas Barzellotti tends to treat what is “between the lines” as a function of cultivated historical psychology and rhetorical transformation—an approach that can illuminate how Cicero’s dialectic became Roman, but that shifts the center of gravity from rule-governed inference to interpretive culture. Grice: “The good thing about B.’s treatment of Cicerone’s dialettica is that he pours in all his expterise on two fields: Italian mentality, Roman mentality – so he can understand, in a way an Englishman cannot, the way Cicerone dealt with the ‘dialectic,’ Athenian dialectic, if you wish, and turned it into a ‘Roman’ dialectic --. He of course never considers English interpreters, only German! And refutes them! You’ve got to love B. – he is critical of the idea of ‘Italian philosophy,’ but not of what he calls ‘The Oxcford school of philosophy,’ Philosophy has no country-tag; she belongs to humanity; a DOCTRINE, or a school, may have a‘national’ identification – And part of the problem with Italian philosophy is that there was Italian philosophy before there was Italy! My favourite is his tract on Cicero, who he sees as an Italian!” Allievo dei spiritualisti ROVERE  e CONTI, si professa seguace della critica. S’interessa alla storia della filosofia latina con particolare riguardo ai problemi di psicologia. Insegna filosofia morale a Pavia e Napoli e storia della filosofia latina a Roma. Dei Lincei. La morale nella filosofia positive” (Firenze: M. Cellini); “La rivoluzione italiana” (Firenze: Successori Le Monnier); “La nuova scuola del Kant e la filosofia scientifica” (Roma: Tip. Barbera); Lazzaretti di Arcidosso (detto il santo), Monte Amiata e il suo profeta, Santi, solitari, filosofi: saggi psicologici,  Studi e ritratti, Taine, L'opera storica della filosofia, Palermo: R. Sandron). Note  dei gabinetti, mentre le lettere esercitavano un ufficio civile, e all'unità e all'indipendenza da opera l'intera nazione. È tempo oggimai che torniamo a così nobili studj; e la critica istorica e filosofica fa prova di richiamare nella memoria riconoscente degli Italiani la storia di quel popolo da cui venne la prima luce delle nostre istituzioni. Allora soltanto le dottrine di CICERONE sono meglio studiate e apprezzate, e la natura comprensiva dell'ingegno romano, di cui egli è esempio solenne, ci appare come una sintesi vasta e feconda in cui s'accoglie la coscienza dei popoli antichi. Grice: Barzellotti, tu parli di ragione conversazionale e d’implicatura, ma io sospetto che tu riesca a far capire Cicerone perfino a un inglese—purché l’inglese non apra un commentario tedesco. Barzellotti: Caro Grice, io non odio i tedeschi, è solo che li confuto con affetto e poi torno a ricordare che la filosofia non ha passaporto, anche se qualche scuola ama timbrare “Oxford” sul pensiero come fosse un bagaglio. Grice: Eppure la tua cosa più italiana è dire che c’era filosofia italiana prima dell’Italia, che è un’implicatura storica così elegante che Cicerone stesso direbbe “capisco, ma non so da dove mi è arrivata”. Barzellotti: Allora facciamo un patto: tu mi lasci le massime, io ti lascio la psicologia latina, e insieme insegniamo a Roma che la dialettica diventa “romana” proprio quando smette di fare la voce grossa e comincia a suggerire. Barzellotti, Giacomo (1865). Galilei o dell’ immortalità. La Gioventù, Firenze. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Barzizza –  A key medieval-to-Renaissance rhetorician who revived Ciceronian style. Gasparino Barzizza. GriceGrice e Barzizza. Gasparino Barzizza: A key medieval-to-Renaissance rhetorician who revived Ciceronian style.  Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats everyday talk as an implicitly cooperative, normatively structured activity in which hearers recover what is meant (including implicatures) by assuming speakers are, in some recognizable way, conforming to rational constraints such as relevance, truthfulness, adequacy of information, and clarity; on this picture, “writing well” is at most instrumentally valuable because elegance does not itself justify an inference from what is said to what is meant, and rhetorical effects are secondary to the intelligible, intention-sensitive logic by which communicative intentions become publicly recognizable. Barzizza, by contrast, embodies early Renaissance humanist epistolography: the revival of Ciceronian Latin style and letter-writing as a civic-moral practice, where philosophical substance is expected to ride on form, cadence, and exemplarity, so that a well-made sentence can be treated as already carrying its own warrant and its own implied ethos; the passage’s joke about philosophy “slipping between the lines” captures a rhetorical conception of implication as something generated by stylistic mastery and shared literary culture rather than by a general theory of cooperative inference. Put sharply, Grice asks for an account of how meaning is rationally licensed in a “talk exchange” (even at a distance), whereas Barzizza answers as a Ciceronian: if the language is right, the audience is prepared, and the exchange is graceful, then whatever is implied will be absorbed as part of the pleasure and authority of the performance—suggesting a practical humanist confidence that rhetorical felicity can substitute for, or at least pre-empt, the philosophical machinery Grice builds to explain why implicatures are justified at all. Grice: Gasparino, dimmi, quando riporti lo stile ciceroniano dal Medioevo, hai mai paura che le tue lettere abbiano bisogno di una giustificazione filosofica o basta un buon latino? Barzizza: Grice, se il latino è ben fatto, la filosofia si infila fra le righe, come il prosciutto tra due fette di pane! E poi, Cicerone piace a tutti: persino ai filosofi inglesi, se opportunamente tradotto. Grice: Quindi, scrivere bene vale più che implicare bene? O la retorica è solo una forma di conversazione a distanza? Barzizza: Se la conversazione è elegante, Grice, ogni implicatura diventa un piacere. Ma ricorda: persino Cicerone, davanti a una buona battuta, lasciava la grammatica per un sorriso! Barzizza, Gasparino (1421). Epistolae. Padova: Valdezocco.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Basilide: il portico a Roma: il tutore del principe – filosofia italiana –  (Roma). Filosofo italiano. Member of the Porch. A teacher of Antonino. Basilide. Grice, pel Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Gricde, “Grice e Basilide. Basilide: il portico a Roma: il tutore del principe – filosofia italiana –  (Roma). Filosofo italiano. Member of the Porch. A teacher of Antonino. GRICEVS: Basilidēs, audīvī tē Rōmae in Porticū philosophārī et prīncipem Antonīnum docēre; num ille discipulus est an potius imperātor in minimīs? BASILIDES: Discipulus est, sed ita gravis ut etiam cum rogat, videātur iubere, atque ego eum doceō quōmodo Stoicus sit sine tristitiā. GRICEVS: Atquī Porticus multa fert; sed quid facis cum prīnceps dīcit “apatheia,” et coquus respondet “appetītus”? BASILIDES: Tunc rīdeō et dīcō: “Antonīne, etiam Stoicus prandēre dēbet, modo virtūtem anteponat garō.”

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Basso: gl’ortelani -- Roma – filosofia italiana –  (Roma). Filosofo italiano. According to Seneca, a follower of the philosophy of The Garden, who bore witness to his school’s teachings in the way he copes with prolonged ill health. Lucio Aufidio Basso. Basso. Grice, pel Gruppo di Gioco di Grice,“Grice e Basso. Lucio Aufidio Basso: gl’ortelani -- Roma – filosofia italiana –  (Roma). Filosofo italiano. According to Seneca, a follower of the philosophy of The Garden, who bore witness to his school’s teachings in the way he copes with prolonged ill health. GRICEVS: Bassē, audio te hortulanorum philosophiam sequi; ergo in horto sapientiam colligis sicut lactucam, sed sine spinis? BASSVS: Spinae adsunt, Grice, sed Seneca docet me aegritudinem longam ferre ut praecepta Gardenis testificer, non ut medicum exasperem. GRICEVS: Prorsus Epicureus es: dolorem sustines, sed querellam non venditas, quasi non valeat nisi cum vino mixtus. BASSVS: Et tu Oxoniensis es: de implicaturis loqueris, sed in horto meo una res clare dicitur—si herba crescit, ratio quoque crescit. Grice would have been familiar with this, and speranza appreciates it. Distinguish the Bassi in Ancient Rome. One epicurean, the other stoic. Provide cognomen and the other bits to distinguish and then state their doctrines. Lit. Hum. at her best! What one especially enjoys in the case of the Bassi is the old Lit. Hum. exercise suddenly becoming alive again: distinguish the Bassi in ancient Rome. Speranza and Grice handle it exactly as they should, by restoring the proper cognomina and then letting the doctrines fall into place. Lucius Aufidius Bassus is the Epicurean, the man of the Garden, known above all through Seneca’s admiring notice of the calm with which he bore long illness, thus making his philosophy visible in conduct rather than merely in profession. Tito Avianio Basso Polieno, by contrast, belongs to the Porch, and his Stoicism is marked not by horti but by the public firmness and urban discipline proper to that lineage. Once the names are properly distinguished, the doctrines cease to blur: one Bassus stands for Epicurean management of pain, measured pleasure, and freedom from disturbance; the other for Stoic constancy, civic endurance, and the moral architecture of living in accord with reason. This is classical scholarship at its most satisfying, because the prosopographical exactitude is not pedantry but the very condition of philosophical clarity.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Basso: il portico a Roma – filosofia italiana –  (Roma).  Tito Avianio Basso Polieno: il portico a Roma – filosofia italiana –  (Roma). Abstract. Grice: “I often wonder if my Play-Group at Oxford compares with other sects, say, the Portico at Rome, etc. I do not think so. He main reason against any such comparison is that our play-group was an intra-institutional sect – indeed, as I like to say, one of at least THREE which were engaged in the analysis of ordinary language: there was, besides us, the group led by senior Ryle, and there were the Wittgensteinians. At Rome, there was no university then, and so, if you follow Cicero, and claim that Basso was a member of the Portico, you are speaking either metaphorically, or urbanely!” Filosofo italiano. A member of the Porch. GRICEVS: Bassē, Porticum Romanam cum nostro ludicro grege Oxoniensi comparare velim, sed timeo ne nos intra collegium ludamus, vos sub caelo toto disputetis. BASSVS: At Romae, Grice, ipsa porticus quasi universitas fuit: si quis diceret “BASSVS in Porticu docuit,” urbaniter potius quam proprie loqueretur. GRICEVS: Urbanitas placet, sed in Oxonia tres sectae in eodem claustro certabant—Ryliani, Vittersiani, et nos—quasi tres cauponae unam famem venditantes. BASSVS: Ergo convenimus: vos habetis instituta, nos columnas; sed utrique eodem vitio laboramus—nimis serio iocamur.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Basso’. Ugo Basso  (Ventimiglia, Liguria): la ragione coversazionale e l’implicature del Deutero-Esperanto. Direttore della revista “Universale.” Membro dell’Unione pro inter-lingua, già Unione pro Latino Internationale. R. elabora un nuovo progetto ispirato aquello di PEANO , e lo nomina Latino internazionale, dal Inter-latino. A B. viene solitamente attribuito anche un altro progetto di lingua filosofica, denominato genericamente Esperantido. Pubblica la Grammatica de latino internationale,il Manuale pratico di Interlingua, l'Interlatino e il Vocabolario internationale Interlingua-english-français-italiano. =e—È—@%6w&b&€——@_ + terror | i % | AA E il Mamiani: « In ciascuna cosa la natura comincia è l’arte perfeziona, ‘E ottimamente l'Abate Fornari: Che sia naturale - efficacia è cosa certa. e da questo io argomento che ‘ pi: ella è pure, o può essere, arte. Imperciocchè, l’arte i che altro è mai se non, come dice il Davanzati, una fabbricata natura? Dove opera la natura, può l'industria È dell’ uomo studiare i moli che quella tiene e, imitan- doli o secondando o ndo, Baone l’arte. Non fan cose, ma si regsono tv una V Sn sì che come ore la DAR non incomincia, |” EG nou 700D perazione, ivi senza dubbio la i ha luogo.. Può questa non essere ancor nata o nascer falsa, per poca 0 storta osservazione della natura; ma ciò non. inferisce che la cosa è impossibile. Confidiamo, dunque, cd A i avere a trovare un’ arte dell’ eloquenza, e tanto più alacremente ponghiam la mano all’ Dori quanto più eccelso è il segno a cui miriamo ». SERIA A AE conferma di queste parole. Costanza. — Che è la favel DE madre natura siamo forniti della favella, ma ciò che costitui munichiamo. coi nostri simili, questo è tutto. due; E dove 1° uomo non avesse trovato in gent Lio dio del mesifestare i moti. citeremo wa esempio la. se non un’arte?t— | lel potere di servirci sce il linguaggio con i; V) interni dell'animo; dove non ci fosse stato nel linguaggio naturale d'azione il primo anello di comunicazione onde poter procedere a quello artificiale in gran parte e convenzionale. Deutero-Esperanto.  Grice (St John’s, 1962): Out of courtesy to my former pupil—Strawson, that is—I omitted his little fallacy from my list of fallacies in the interlude to my Causal Theory of Perception. One has loyalties; even philosophers do. But after my seminar on Negative Propositions, I think I can safely include him. For he has taken to supposing—quite serenely—that English is beyond inter-lingua. That English is not merely a lingua franca, but a kind of metaphysical remainder: what is left when the other languages have been tidied away. His reasoning is—how shall I put it?—aptly anti-Hunnish. Not the Hun, strictly; the Viennese. When the Viennese announced Das Einheit der Wissenschaft and dreamt of a unified lingo, they were thinking Mach and Schlick: science, logic, verification, and the rest of the hygienic programme. They were not, I think, thinking of cordiality between nations; they were thinking of cordiality between sentences. Now compare that with Peano, and—worse, because more charming—our Ugo Basso of Ventimiglia, who published, at his own expense, a Manuale Practico de Interlingua (1913). Notice the heroism: he writes practico with a c that Italian does not strictly require—one sees the man forcing his mouth to do moral work. Peano’s inter is largely inter as in inter-latin: a grammatical bridge. Basso’s inter, by contrast, is inter-national—inter as in Marx’s manifesto and march: a political prefix masquerading as a preposition. So it is rather odd—yet understandable—that Schlick and Mach should proceed as they did. Their mother tongue was German: already half a logic. But Basso’s (and Peano’s) was Italian—already half a Latin. And so when a German tries to reduce everything to a Begriffsschrift, it can look, from the Mediterranean, like something not merely too much, but—curiously—too little: too few vowels for a universal peace. (Pause.) And Strawson, bless him, mistakes this for a triumph of English. He thinks the lesson of inter-lingua is: we needn’t bother. Whereas the lesson—if one is not bewitched by one’s own language—is precisely the opposite: that when you declare your idiom beyond inter-lingua, you have already made it into one—only now with an empire attached. Punchline (dry): In short: the Viennese wanted one language for science; Basso wanted one language for travellers; Strawson wants one language for philosophers—and each thinks the others are being parochial.Grice: L’altro giorno, parlando con il filosofo Speranza, riflettevamo su come certe lingue nascano per chiarire e finiscano per moltiplicare i chiarimenti; una faccenda romana, direi, più che universale. Rovere: Ah, caro Grice, a Roma anche l’universalità prende accento locale. Si comincia con una grammatica sobria e ci si ritrova con un vocabolario che pretende di abbracciare il mondo intero. Grice: Già; e, come io e Speranza stavamo conversando su questo, mi pareva evidente—senza bisogno di dirlo—che quando una lingua ausiliaria cresce di ausili, non regredisce: semplicemente continua la sua carriera naturale, come se avesse preso gusto a parlare di se stessa. Rovere: E la tua implicatura è tetra‑esperantiana, come sono certo Speranza concorderà: scalda l’ingegno senza confonderlo. In fondo, φιλο‑σοφία è amore del sapere, e ogni lingua che ama spiegarsi finisce per creare nuove parentele; che siano deutero, tritio o tetra poco importa, purché l’amore resti e il vulgo creda ancora che si tratti di semplicità. Basso, Ugo (1913). Manuale Practico De Interlingua. Ventimiglia: Revista Universale.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Battaglia: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dei valori italiani.  Felice Battaglia (Palmi, Reggio Calabria, Calabria): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dei valori italiani. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers derive speaker meaning by assuming cooperation and rationality in talk, so that what is meant can systematically outrun what is said via cancellable implicatures grounded in shared conversational purposes and norms; the Battaglia passage, by contrast, invites comparison not by offering a rival pragmatic “calculus” but by relocating conversational rationality within a philosophy of value (valore/valere) and of the normative life of a community, so that what conversation “does” is not merely to transmit beliefs efficiently but to traffic in evaluative standings, institutional meanings, and historically situated “Italian values” (national spirit, law, morality, rights) that are not reducible to sentence meaning. Where Grice insists that implicature is extra-syntactic and inferential (a product of rational expectations about contribution, relevance, informativeness, etc.), Battaglia’s emphasis on valere foregrounds how ordinary copular predication (“A is B”) shades into evaluation (“A is worthy/has value”) and how such shifts can be culturally loaded: the same surface grammar can support different kinds of rational uptake because what counts as salient, weighty, or “worth saying” is guided by an axiological horizon rather than by purely informational aims. In this sense Battaglia complements Grice: Grice supplies the micro-pragmatics—how an utterance like “Socrates is…” or “Socrates has value” can invite non-trivial inferences in context—while Battaglia supplies a macro-normative backdrop in which those inferences matter, because conversational moves participate in the articulation and stabilization of values (moral, legal, civic) and in the formation of collective identity; Grice shows how rational cooperation makes implied content recoverable, Battaglia highlights that what is being implicitly negotiated is often evaluative and historically mediated, so conversational reason is not only a logic of inference but also a logic of valuation. Grice: “You gotta like B.; he plays with Italian in ways I cannot play with English. Consider his philosophizing on essere e valere. Surely the thing is the copula: A is B, A is worth B, A e B, A vale, A vale B. We cannot say that a dollar is worth a dollar. Stricctly, we CAN, it’s true, but the implicaturum is ‘I’m an idiot or a philosopher. And I can say, Socrate è, i. e. Socrates is. And ‘Socrate vale’: Socrates has value. When I did my linguistic botanising on ‘value,’ I followed Austin’s misadvice: never contrast with Anglo-Saxon. But actually ‘worth’ in Anglo-Saxon WAS a verb, and cognate with B.’s‘valere.’!” Si laurea a Roma su  Marsilio da Padova. Insegna filosofia morale a Bologna. Con i sostenitori attualisti dell'autonomia della categoria filosofica della politica, pensa che occorresse lasciare alla storia tout court quanto non fosse pensiero sistematico, preservando così la storia delle dottrine da ogni contaminazione con le dialettica sociale e istituzionale.  CUOCO e la formazione dello spirito nazionale in Italia, Marsilio da Padova e la filosofia politica, crisi del diritto naturale, filosofia del diritto, pratica e idealismo, Thomasio filosofo e giurista, teoria dello stato, dottrine politiche ed economiche, domma della personalità giuridica dello stato, impero stati particolari in ALIGHIERI  libertà uguaglianza dichiarazione dei diritti: Vico, la riesumazione dei quali spetta, del primo a CROCE, del secondo a ROMANO.  L'articolo del Colesanti era presentato su Il mondo come facente parte di un numero unico cuochiano da pubblicarsi in Campobasso, che non ho potuto avere nè vedere, tradizione italica Russo la critica rivoluzionaria, la rivoluzione,  Napoleone e la sua politica. nazionalità e italianismo, accademia in italia, antico primato italico, educazione nazionale. Valori italiani, essere italiano, valori italiani,  spirito nazionale in Italia, giure, spirito italo, spirito italiano, Roma antica, Etruria, tradizione itala, accademia di CUOCO, CUOCO non e un vero filosofo GENTILE anima della nazione. Grice: Felice, dimmi, quando parli di valori italiani, intendi che un caffè vale come una dichiarazione dei diritti? Battaglia: Grice, dipende: se il caffè è fatto bene, ha quasi lo stesso valore di un articolo costituzionale. Ma in Italia, il valore si misura anche con lo spirito nazionale, non solo con la caffeina! Grice: Allora vale più una tazzina di espresso a Roma che una lezione di filosofia a Bologna? Battaglia: Grice, a volte sì, almeno secondo la dialettica italiana: il valore sta nell’essere e nel valere, e ogni italiano lo sa, fin dalla prima colazione! Battaglia, Felice (1928). Marsilio da Padova e la filosofia politica. Bologna: Zanichelli. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bausola: la ragione conversazionale  e l’implicatura convrsazionale della solidarietà Adriano Bausola (Ovada, Alessandria, Piemonte): la ragione conversazionale  e l’implicatura convrsazionale della solidarietà. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how cooperative interlocutors can rationally infer speaker meaning (implicature) from what is said by treating contributions as governed by shared norms of rational communication, so that what is left unsaid is often recoverable because it is licensed by the presumption of cooperation; the Bausola passage, by contrast, shifts the explanatory emphasis from Grice’s inferential machinery itself to the ethical-anthropological ground that makes that machinery stable, locating “conversational reason” in the reasons for solidarity that bind persons into an interpersonal relation where self-love and other-love, freedom and responsibility, are continuously negotiated, and where cooperation is not just an assumed backdrop but something with its own rational warrant. Where Grice typically models cooperation as a rationally adoptable stance that enables efficient exchange and makes implicature calculable (even when maxims are flouted), Bausola treats cooperation as a moral form of life: solidarity is the condition that makes the conversational enterprise more than strategic coordination, because it provides reasons to sustain mutual responsiveness, restraint, and trust over time; in that sense Bausola can look like a “thicker” Gricean, adding to the logic of implicature an account of why agents ought to remain in the cooperative posture even when egoistic incentives or political-cultural pathologies (totalitarianism, utilitarian reductionism, conflict ideologies) push toward purely instrumental talk. The upshot is a productive contrast: Grice gives the internal logic by which a hearer can derive implicated meaning from rational expectations in a given exchange, while Bausola foregrounds the interpersonal and normative ecology (responsibility, community, the rationality of solidarity) that explains why those expectations are sustainable, why they deserve allegiance, and why conversational cooperation is not merely intelligible but, in a robust sense, rationally and ethically motivated. Grice: “I would call B. a Griceian. He speaks of the ‘reasons for solidarity,’ which is exactly the point I want to make, alla Kant, in ‘Aspects of reason,’ as people kept asking me for the rationale – i. e., literally, the rational basis – for conversational cooperation. People agree that conversation is rational. My stronger thesis is that it is cooperation which is rational. That is B.’s point. He also explored the topic of the ‘inter-personal relation’ from a philosophical rather than sociological perspective, and therefore the compromise between self-love and other-love, or freedom and responsibility. A genius! That he also admires my latitudinal and longitudinal unity of philosophy, or storiografia filosofica,’ as the Italians call it, is a plus, or bonus!” Studia Milano, avviato da Gemelli e Olgiati, su AQUINO sotto Bontadini. Dei Lincei, comunità, le direttive di indagine di B. sono soprattutto quella morale, antropologica, libertà; metafisica gnoseologia idealismo e al neo-idealismo esistenzialist ripensamento critico, politico-culturale, etica, storia in CROCE, metafisica e rivelazione nella filosofia positiva, etica e politica in CROCE, Conoscenza e moralità, indagini di storia della filosofia, il valore, la libertà, filosofia Morale, natura e progetto dell'uomo, le relazioni inter-personale: responsabilità, le ragioni della libertà, le ragioni della solidarietà, etica e politica. Costa, Un Ovadese nel mondo della cultura italiana: Laguzzi; Riccardini, Costa Rolla FUSARO The problem with B. is that he is a Roman!” fascismo, totalitarismo, utilitarismo, egoita, noi-ita, comunismo conflitto, cooperazione, soderale, anche solidaria, egoism, altruismo, self-love, other-love, benevolence, io-ità, ioità archivio di filosofia noi-età, noi-ità. G.: So Bausola begins with anti-metafisicismo. S.: A formidable first word. G.: The Italians do like to begin by opposing something large. S.: Anti-metafisicismo sounds almost theological. One expects bells. G.: Or exorcism. The anti- gives it the air of a crusade against a heresy no one can quite locate. S.: And yet you think Bausola is not simply repeating Ayer. G.: Certainly not. Ayer in 1936 is anti-metaphysical with metropolitan briskness. He has no dogma behind him except verification, which is itself a dogma with a haircut. S.: Whereas Bausola has dogma behind him? G.: Not dogma in the insulting sense. He has a milieu. Augustinianum, Olgiati, Gemelli, then the Sacro Cuore and Bontadini. Anti-metafisicismo there does not mean “down with metaphysics” in the same way it does in Bloomsbury or among logical positivists. S.: Then why use the word at all? G.: Because to oppose metaphysics is one of the best ways of finding out what sort of metaphysics one secretly wants. S.: That sounds like Bontadini already. G.: It should. Bontadini understood that anti-metaphysics is rarely the absence of metaphysics. It is usually a covert metaphysics in reformist clothing. S.: So Bausola’s anti-metafisicismo is not merely anti. G.: Precisely. It is diagnostic, not merely denunciatory. S.: But the title sounds denunciatory. G.: Titles often do. They are little drums. S.: Let us start with Oxford. Who was doing metaphysics there in 1936 for Ayer to attack? G.: Nobody. S.: You mean no body? G.: Very good. No body, and very little soul either. S.: Surely someone. G.: Well, Collingwood held the chair of Metaphysical Philosophy. S.: Ah. So there was metaphysics. G.: There was the title. Oxford is rich in titles surviving their subject matter. S.: And Collingwood? G.: He was taken seriously by some, but not always by the chattering central apparatus. Too historical, too Roman, too willing to think that mind had a past. S.: “Roman historian” is not quite a dismissal. G.: At Oxford it can be a way of saying, “interesting chap, but not one of our plumbers.” S.: Who came before Collingwood in that chair? G.: The title has an honourable ancestry, but by Ayer’s day the phrase “metaphysical philosophy” sounded more institutional than insurgent. Oxford had chairs named for grand things it preferred not to practise after lunch. S.: So when Ayer attacks metaphysics in 1936, he is attacking nobody in particular? G.: He is attacking many dead people, a few continentals, some English idealists already fading, and a general temptation to say large things without empirical passport control. S.: Convenient. G.: Philosophy often begins by attacking the nearest abstraction. S.: Yet Bausola in 1954 writes L’anti-metafisicismo. G.: Yes, and in Milan, under Bontadini, that must be heard differently. Sacro Cuore is not producing cheerful positivists with no altar behind them. S.: So who is he attacking? G.: That is the interesting question. Not simply Dewey, surely, though Dewey may serve as the nominal occasion. S.: Why not Dewey? G.: Because Dewey is too far away geographically, institutionally, and spiritually. One does not write a serious thesis in the Cattolica merely to swat at an American pragmatist as if he were a fly in the refectory. S.: Then Dewey is an excuse? G.: More likely a handle. A way of discussing anti-metaphysical tendencies without naming every local target. S.: Such as? G.: Positivism lingering in the air. Neo-idealism under critique. Historicist evasions. Pragmatist reductions. Perhaps any tendency that thought metaphysics dispensable because method, history, science, or practice could do its work without remainder. S.: And Bontadini would have supplied the larger map. G.: Naturally. Metafisica e antimetafisica is almost the perfect background. Once Bontadini frames the issue, anti-metaphysics becomes less a school and more a recurrent temptation of modern philosophy. S.: A temptation to abolish first questions? G.: Or to replace them with local procedures and then congratulate oneself on sobriety. S.: Which sounds exactly like Oxford, if one is feeling unkind. G.: I am usually feeling exact. S.: So Ayer says metaphysics is nonsense. G.: More or less. Or at least that its propositions lack cognitive meaning under his preferred test. S.: And Bausola says? G.: Bausola is not content merely to mock anti-metaphysics. He wants to understand what drives it and why it is inadequate. S.: In a Catholic university. G.: Exactly. Which means anti-metafisicismo there cannot be merely the cheerful destruction of castles in the air. It is a problem internal to the philosophical conscience of the place. S.: You make Sacro Cuore sound very solemn. G.: It was solemn, but not stupid. There is a difference, though not every university manages it. S.: And the Augustinianum? G.: Important because it gives Bausola not only a classroom but a form of life. A formative environment, personal contacts, intellectual atmosphere, and likely the sort of inward seriousness that makes “metaphysics” sound less like a parlour vice and more like a duty. S.: Whereas Corpus for you and Clifton for Grice serve a different function. G.: Analogous in formation, different in creed. Corpus Christi kept the sacramental name while becoming English and dry. Sacro Cuore kept both the sacrament and the programme. S.: Then anti-metaphysicalism in English sounds weaker. G.: It does. “Anti-metaphysicalism” is a possible word, but it sounds as if one were objecting to a disease in a pamphlet. Italians do these things with more chest. S.: Is there a normal English equivalent? G.: Usually “anti-metaphysical stance” or “anti-metaphysics.” We are a nation of circumlocution pretending to be plain. S.: So why is anyone afraid of metaphysics? G.: Because metaphysics makes total claims, and total claims embarrass moderate men, scientists, bureaucrats, and undergraduates with scholarships. S.: You forgot priests. G.: Priests are often less afraid than philosophers. They have practised dogma longer. S.: Back to Ayer. If nobody at Oxford was really doing metaphysics in 1936, what was the fuss? G.: The fuss was partly theatrical. Ayer arrives with Vienna in his pocket and a broom in his hand. One needs dust if one is to sweep dramatically, and metaphysics supplied the dust. S.: Yet Collingwood is sitting there in the chair. G.: Yes, being called metaphysical while doing history, imagination, and civilisational anatomy. Which is not nothing. S.: So perhaps Ayer was attacking a signboard. G.: Often the safest target. S.: And who came after Collingwood? G.: The succession tells the usual Oxford tale: titles survive transformations. The chair remains “metaphysical,” while the occupants and the institution increasingly prefer analysis, language, mind, or respectable fragments. S.: Fragmentation as a defence against metaphysics. G.: Precisely. One may still discuss being, provided one does so in pieces. S.: Whereas in Milan Bausola is beginning from anti-metafisicismo under Bontadini, which suggests the matter is still live. G.: Very much so. In Italy the fight over metaphysics is not simply a matter of cleaning up language. It involves idealism, neo-scholasticism, positivism, historicism, and the spiritual dignity of philosophy itself. S.: More crowded than Oxford. G.: More historical. Oxford likes to pretend it was born at tea. S.: Then Bausola’s anti-metafisicismo could be aimed at a whole family of reductions. G.: Exactly. The reduction of being to experience, of truth to utility, of reason to method, of metaphysics to a category mistake, of religion to sentiment, and of philosophy to commentary on science. S.: A very large enemy. G.: The Italians prefer their enemies composite. It gives the thesis a better silhouette. S.: Yet you said Dewey might be a pretext. G.: A respectable pretext. One can discuss pragmatism as a visible form of anti-metaphysical temper while really worrying about much closer things. S.: Such as Croce? G.: Possibly by contrast, though Bausola later writes on Croce in ethics and politics. But the anti-metaphysical impulse may appear in more than one place: pragmatism, neo-positivism, historicist reductions, utilitarian social thought, and all the little habits of mind that treat metaphysics as either obsolete or dangerous. S.: Dangerous is the interesting one. G.: Yes, because once you call metaphysics dangerous you have almost admitted its power. S.: So who is afraid of metaphysics? G.: Men who suspect that if metaphysics returns, their own tidy local methods will have to answer larger questions than they prefer. S.: That sounds like you speaking of Oxford. G.: I am speaking of everyone with a method. S.: And Bausola’s solidarity later grows out of this? G.: I think so. A philosopher who worries early about anti-metaphysics may later worry about reductionisms in ethics, politics, and interpersonal life. If the person is more than a utility-calculating atom, solidarity needs reasons. If solidarity has reasons, metaphysics is never very far offstage. S.: Ah, now we are back to conversation. G.: We never left it. Cooperation in conversation, for me, is rational. For Bausola, cooperation may need a thicker ground: interpersonal relation, responsibility, freedom, solidarity. S.: Which Ayer would not have enjoyed. G.: Ayer enjoyed clarity more than thickness. S.: And Dewey? G.: Dewey might have smiled and called it social intelligence, then wandered back toward democracy and education. But Bausola wanted something sterner than that. S.: Something Catholic? G.: Something philosophically answerable in a Catholic atmosphere, yes. The distinction matters. S.: So anti-metafisicismo at Sacro Cuore is not a slogan against heaven. G.: No. It is a way of asking what modern thought loses when it congratulates itself for having risen above metaphysics. S.: And Oxford’s equivalent question? G.: What exactly did Ayer think he had killed, in a place where the supposed corpse was mostly absent? S.: A marvellous murder without a body. G.: Oxford excels at that. S.: Was there any anti-metaphysicalism in English before Ayer? G.: Plenty of suspicion, certainly. British empiricism contains repeated anti-metaphysical nerves. But Ayer made it young, brisk, continental, and journalistic. S.: So he gave anti-metaphysics a public-school tie. G.: More or less. And then Oxford spent years deciding whether to treat him as a revolution or a nephew. S.: And Bausola’s 1954 thesis sits where in all this? G.: At an intersection: young Catholic philosopher, Milanese institutional world, Bontadini behind him, anti-metafisicismo before him, and a larger postwar problem about what philosophy can be if one refuses both dogmatic closure and anti-metaphysical evacuation. S.: That is a very elegant thesis-shaped crossroads. G.: Better than beginning with “language games,” which is what weaker men would have done. S.: You are unkind to games. G.: Only when they deny being games. S.: Then tell me about the anti- in anti-metafisicismo. G.: The anti- is almost always psychologically revealing. It makes the thing opposed seem more substantial than the opposition admits. S.: Like Anti-Christ. G.: Exactly. One does not invent Anti-Christ unless Christ is already inconveniently central. S.: So anti-metafisicismo presupposes metaphysics. G.: Splendid. You are becoming almost theological. S.: I try to keep up. G.: Do not overdo it. S.: Then what kind of metaphysics is Bausola defending, if any? G.: Not crude system-building, I should think. Rather the legitimacy of first questions, the irreducibility of being, personhood, moral obligation, perhaps freedom and transcendence against flattening accounts. S.: Meat-physics, as I once heard someone say. G.: Meatphysics is what happens when metaphysics is left too close to lunch. S.: And Oxford preferred not to have metaphysics at lunch? G.: Oxford preferred it in chairs and titles, not in one’s soup. S.: While Italy served it with courses. G.: And with regional variation. S.: Is Bausola criticising anti-metaphysicalism because he fears totalitarianism, utilitarian reduction, collectivism, egoism, all that? G.: Later certainly those become his themes: freedom, responsibility, person, solidarity. It is not absurd to think the anti-metafisicismo thesis already marks the enemy terrain. S.: So anti-metaphysics may lead to bad politics? G.: Or at least to thinner anthropology, and thin anthropology is politically very promiscuous. S.: You make metaphysics sound morally useful. G.: I am only saying that refusing to ask what a person is tends not to improve how persons are treated. S.: And at Oxford? G.: We preferred to ask what “person” means and hoped the rest would behave itself. S.: Did it? G.: Only intermittently. S.: Back to Collingwood once more. You say no one took him seriously because he was a Roman historian. G.: That is exaggeration for effect. Some took him very seriously. But his mode of seriousness was not the mode that would later dominate analytic Oxford. S.: Too historical, too imaginative, too synthetic. G.: Yes. Too willing to think that metaphysics had to do with forms of thought in history rather than with tidying propositions. S.: Which makes him closer to the Italians. G.: Indeed. That is partly why he is interesting. S.: Then Bausola’s world is one in which metaphysics is still a battleground, while Ayer’s Oxford is one in which anti-metaphysics is a victorious poster hung over a mostly empty stage. G.: Very well put. S.: Thank you. G.: Do not become vain. S.: Never. I shall merely become anti-vain. G.: That too would only prove the thing had triumphed.Grice: Adriano, pensi che la solidarietà sia solo un altro tipo di miscela italiana di caffè, o ha bisogno di una dose filosofica di espresso? Bausola: Grice, la solidarietà assomiglia più a un dolce condiviso—talvolta prendi la fetta più grande, talvolta la lasci all’altro. Filosoficamente, è il compromesso tra l’amor proprio e l’amore per gli altri, ma sempre con un cucchiaio per due. Grice: Quindi, se chiedo la ragione che sta dietro alla condivisione, devo aspettarmi una risposta kantiana, oppure solo una spallucciata italiana accompagnata da un sorriso? Bausola: Forse tutte e due, Grice! Gli italiani amano la loro filosofia quanto il gelato. Le ragioni ci sono, ma a volte la cooperazione ha un sapore migliore se non analizzi ogni cucchiaio. Bausola, Adriano (1954). L’anti-metafisicismo. Sotto Bontadini, Milano.

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Beccaria: la ragione conversazionale e  l’implicatura conversazionale.  Cesare Beccaria Bonesana, marchese di Gualdrasco e Villareggio (Milano, Lombardia): la ragione conversazionale e  l’implicatura conversazionale. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats everyday talk as a rational, cooperative enterprise in which hearers infer what is meant (implicated) from what is said by assuming an accepted purpose of the exchange and corresponding norms (maxims), so that brevity, relevance, and strategic underinformativeness are not defects but resources that allow cancellable implicatures to be calculated; Beccaria, especially in his reflections on style (notably the Ricerche intorno alla natura dello stile, 1770) and as echoed in the passage you give, approaches communicative rationality from the side of rhetorical-psychological economy, arguing that an expressed main idea must keep its primacy while accessory ideas should be minimal, chosen to demand the least effort and to sustain attention, with the unexpressed or “tacit/understood” filling intervals without letting the central conception drift too far—so that what later Grice would theorize as implicature is, for Beccaria, a controlled management of what is left unsaid to preserve force and clarity rather than to license open-ended pragmatic enrichment. Where Grice makes the bridge from sentence meaning to speaker meaning by explicit appeal to intentions recognized as such and to public principles of cooperative inference, Beccaria’s “conversational reason” is closer to an aesthetics and ethics of communication: do not multiply senses, avoid losing the addressee, keep the imagination “in motion,” and treat excessive explicitness as a risk that interrupts overall effect; in short, Beccaria anticipates the value of leaving content unspoken for reasons of cognitive economy and persuasion, while Grice provides the formal pragmatic account of how such omissions become determinate, inferable meanings under reason-governed conversational norms. Grice: “I would call B. a Griceian, but I’m not sure he would call me a Beccarian! His explicit, rather than implicated, Griceian ideology is in his lo stilo conversazionale, where notes that the implicaturum ain’t a part of the sintassi of the EXPLICATED proposizione. Senses should not be multiplied. Thy addressee may get thy sense, but trust he shall lose interest if thou keep’st multiplying, and risking that he shan’t get thy original sense in the last place! Like me a unitarian philosopher, his ‘I piaceri’ is a pleasant read! If I met at pubs, B. meets at the caffe, and likes it. Unfortunately, Italians only know B. for his tract on guilt and punishment, and don’t even  consider him an ITALIAN philosopher, but one of dei pigne, of the illuminismo lombardo, the landscape of Italian philosophy being much more diverse than our Oxonian dialectic! A most essential Italian philosopher, referred to me  when exploring moral/legal right. Educated at Parma, he teaches political economy at Milan. He meets reformist VERRI. A crime against the state is the most serious. Si dove spiogere gl’animi fuori di se stessi, in continuo movimento. Un’idea espressa accessoria è debole, e la scelta si fa su di quella che ne risvegliano il minore sforzo. La differenza tra l’una e l’altra essendo minma, più forte è la destate che l’idea ESPRESSA, evitando il rischio che la idea o intenzione dell’autore si perde di vista e confunde ed, interrotto riesca l’effetto del tutto sopra l’immaginazione non legata da sufficiente forza all’esterna manifestazione sensibile. L’idea ESPRESSA occupa il tempo ch’esclude l’idea TACIUTA o SOTTINTESA, altrimenti di troppo allontano il concepimento dell’idea principale. L’idea accessorie forte dov essere minima in ciascun momento d’impressione, lasciando nel voto l’intervallo necessario all’espressione, ch’èsupplito dall’idea NON espressa. Implicatura conversazionale, VIRGILIO implicatura di Didone. G.: “Fanatical,” did he say? S.: He did. A delightful little bomb to throw at one’s own education. G.: Delightful only if one survived it. The Jesuits at Parma were not running a finishing school for conversational implicature. S.: Then what does “fanatical” implicate? Pure abuse? G.: Not pure. Never pure. He is too measured for that. “Fanatical” carries both complaint and diagnosis. S.: Diagnosis of what? G.: Of an education felt as excessive in zeal, constricting in method, and hostile to what he later calls the development of human feeling. [britannica.com] S.: So negative, then. G.: Primarily negative, yes. But with a faint residue of tribute. S.: Tribute? To fanaticism? G.: To severity. One often abuses one’s schooling in the language of one who has nonetheless been sharpened by it. S.: Very English. G.: Very European, I fear. S.: Etymologically, then? G.: Since you insist: fanum, a temple. Fanaticus, originally the temple-possessed, the religiously over-charged. So when Beccaria calls the education “fanatical,” he suggests not merely strictness but an institutional piety gone over into excess. S.: Which is rather good. G.: Rather dangerous, which is why it is good. S.: Yet he leaves Parma and goes to law. G.: Exactly. Pavia, law degree, 1758. A proper Lombard trajectory: if one is well-born and not entirely useless, one studies law. S.: Why especially Lombard? G.: Because Lombardy had that excellent vice of taking administration seriously. S.: Worse than Oxford? G.: Oxford takes administration seriously only after denying that it exists. S.: So Beccaria is never one of your Facoltà di Filosofia e Lettere men. G.: Certainly not. He belongs to law, reform, economy, and style. Which is precisely why philosophers later stole him. S.: There it is again: theft by philosophy. G.: The noblest kind. One steals those who thought better than their official faculty. S.: Then Montesquieu enters? G.: Yes. He turns the legal mind outward. If the Jesuits made Beccaria disciplined and the law made him exact, Montesquieu made him political. S.: And contractualist? G.: In broad moral architecture, yes. Not in the sense of forever drafting an explicit covenant on parchment, but in the sense that law is human arrangement, public reason, reciprocal restraint, calculable utility, and the state is answerable for its coercions. S.: You are very close to Delitti e pene already. G.: I shall resist. Today we stay with money. S.: Pity. G.: Not at all. Monetary disorder is criminal law without blood. S.: A beautiful sentence. G.: Thank you. It is also true. S.: Then give me the title. G.: Del disordine e de’ rimedii delle monete nello Stato di Milano. In the fuller bibliographic form, one also gets “nell’anno 1762.” [it.wikisource.org], [searchwork...anford.edu] S.: That is already a good title. One hears both diagnosis and cure. G.: Precisely. “Disordine” and “rimedii.” An Italian title with one eye on disease and the other on administration. S.: And published where? G.: In Lucca, in 1762, because censorship in Milan objected to his criticism of Austrian monetary methods. [it.wikipedia.org], [beweb.chie...ttolica.it] S.: So already a lawyer writing as if economy were dangerous. G.: Economy is dangerous whenever governments mishandle coinage. S.: Explain the tract. G.: It concerns the circulation and valuation of gold and silver coin in the Milanese state, and Beccaria attempts a rational reconstruction of monetary value and monetary disorder. [it.wikipedia.org], [societasto...ombarda.it] S.: “Rational reconstruction” sounds awfully like you. G.: Only because reason occasionally existed before Oxford. S.: Give me one of his definitions. G.: Gladly. He writes, “Il valore è una quantità, che misura la stima che fanno gli uomini delle cose, le monete sono pezzi di metallo che misurano il valore.” [it.wikipedia.org] S.: That is remarkably neat. G.: Too neat for some economists, which is why I like it. S.: Translate. G.: “Value is a quantity that measures the esteem men place on things; coins are pieces of metal that measure value.” S.: So money is measure, not magic. G.: Exactly. And once money is measure, disorder in money is disorder in public intelligibility. S.: Ah. So we are back to conversation after all. G.: We never truly left it. Currency is the conversational medium of exchange among strangers. S.: A half-crown shelling sixpence and twopence, as I said, is also a conversational medium. G.: A peculiarly Oxonian one, because only an Oxford man can discuss pre-decimal coinage as if it were a branch of metaphysics. S.: You mean Beccaria was not annoyed by quaint denominations as such? G.: No. His point is not antiquarian irritation. His point is that arbitrary distortions in the relation between nominal value and metallic content produce systemic confusion. S.: Say more. G.: He wants stable principles. Equal quantities of metal should correspond to equal numbers of lire in every coin; the relation between gold and silver should be treated consistently; and one should value coin by the fine metal, not by alloy, minting expense, or decorative nonsense. [it.wikipedia.org] S.: That sounds almost Euclidean. G.: It was written in geometric order: definitions, theorems, corollaries. Beccaria at twenty-four already writing as if coinage deserved a proof. [it.wikipedia.org], [it.wikisource.org] S.: Did he really begin that way? With geometry and coins? G.: Very respectably. One begins with money before one reforms punishment. It keeps one modest. S.: And the opening? G.: The opening is rather good. He says the disorder of the monetary system is so important for public and private reasons that it is no wonder it is among the commonest topics of discussion in nations unfortunate enough to experience it. Then he complains that most men lack the vigour to ascend to first principles and analyse their confused ideas. [illuminism...ombardo.it] S.: That already sounds like a philosopher. G.: It sounds like a lawyer who has read enough philosophy to become impatient with mere complaint. S.: More from the opening. G.: He adds that declamations, theses, and aphorisms on money are usually no better than silence; and he proposes to make the truth sensible “col metodo, colla precisione,” by tearing away the veil that covers it from the public. [illuminism...ombardo.it] S.: That is superbly Enlightenment. G.: And superbly Lombard. One hears the administrative soul learning rhetoric. S.: So where is Oxford in this? G.: Everywhere and nowhere. Oxford loved clarity in style but often preferred obscurity in institutions. Beccaria applies clarity to public machinery. S.: Whereas we apply it to undergraduates. G.: When we can catch them. S.: But surely Oxford had coin absurdities of its own. G.: Naturally. Sterling before decimalisation was a masterpiece of inherited irrationality made tolerable by habit. S.: Half-crowns, florins, shillings, sixpence, twopence. G.: Yes, but Beccaria’s complaint is not simply complexity. It is mismatch. A monetary sign-system that ceases to correspond intelligibly to what it is supposed to measure undermines economic trust. S.: So this is semiotics in metal. G.: Very good. Coins as “segni reali di valore,” real signs of value, as one Lombard source nicely summarises him. [societasto...ombarda.it] S.: Then Beccaria is already a philosopher of signs before style and punishment. G.: In embryo, yes. Money is one of his first systems of signification. S.: And his law degree matters because? G.: Because law teaches him that institutions depend on public legibility. A bad coin is like a bad statute: it pretends to settle exchange while introducing uncertainty. S.: That is nearly Benthamite. G.: Only with more civilisation. S.: And the contractualism? G.: Indirectly present. If political society rests on arranged relations among persons, then measures, punishments, and exchanges must be publicly rational and not merely inherited by inertia. S.: Montesquieu again. G.: Yes. Comparative reason, institutional reason, legal reason made historical. S.: Yet he remains very Italian. G.: Entirely. He does not become a system-builder in the German fashion. He becomes something better: a reforming mind with style. S.: “A lawyer who happened to write well,” as you called him. G.: Which is too weak a formula, but pleasantly insolent. S.: Then strengthen it. G.: A lawyer who wrote with philosophical economy and reforming intelligence. S.: Better. G.: Slightly less rude, which is a pity. S.: Do you think the “fanatical” schooling helped produce the later insistence on precision? G.: I think it likely. Oppressive systems often produce either collapse or exact rebels. S.: Beccaria being the second. G.: Yes. He takes the rigour and rejects the spirit in which it was first imposed. S.: Very contractarian again: he keeps the form, revises the terms. G.: Nicely done. S.: Then tell me why philosophers at Oxford should care for the monetary tract. G.: Because it shows Beccaria already concerned with public reason, measurement, signification, and the minimisation of systemic confusion. S.: Still sounds like economics. G.: Economics is often philosophy with ledgers. S.: I dislike ledgers. G.: That is why you are not fit for Lombardy. S.: Or for a bursarship. G.: Much the same thing. S.: So in 1762 he is twenty-four, law-trained, anti-fanatically educated, Montesquieu-haunted, and writing about money. G.: A highly promising combination. S.: And not yet punishing anyone. G.: Not on paper, at least. S.: Could one say his concern is already for cognitive economy? Clear sign, clear measure, minimal confusion? G.: One could. It anticipates the later Beccaria on style: do not multiply obscurities, do not overburden the mind, keep the main point visible. S.: Which is very close to your own remarks on explicitness and implicature. G.: The family resemblance is there. Leave enough unsaid to keep the hearer active; do not leave so much unsaid that the point is lost. S.: And in money? G.: A coin too obscure in value or too arbitrary in relation to content is like an utterance whose force cannot be recovered. S.: So a bad monetary system is a bad conversation. G.: Between state and public, yes. S.: That is rather good. G.: Beccaria helps. S.: Tell me the later titles, since you promised. G.: Dei delitti e delle pene, naturally; then the Ricerche intorno alla natura dello stile; then the economic writings, including the Elementi di economia pubblica. [archive.org], [toc.library.ethz.ch] S.: A rather broader man than the penal legend suggests. G.: Exactly. The crime of posterity is to reduce him to punishment. S.: Whereas you would restore money and style. G.: Along with coffeehouses and Lombard intelligence. S.: There is your Oxford link, then. We had pubs; they had caffè. G.: And occasionally they thought more clearly in them. S.: One last question. If Beccaria had encountered our pre-decimal currency, what would he have said? G.: He would have said that if a nation can survive a half-crown, it can survive anything, but that survival is not yet rational order.Grice: Beccaria, se la nostra conversazione si fa troppo complicata, pensi che il messaggio sparirà dentro l’espresso? Beccaria: Grice, assolutamente! Dico sempre che più la frase è semplice, più il gusto è intenso—proprio come il caffè. Se continuiamo ad aggiungere zucchero, nessuno sentirà il vero senso. Grice: Dovremmo moltiplicare le idee, o lasciarle sedimentare come la schiuma sul cappuccino? Beccaria: Meglio lasciarle riposare, Grice. Altrimenti, quando arrivi al fondo, non ricorderai più cosa stavi bevendo—o dicendo! Beccaria, Cesare (1758). Matriculazione. Facolta di Legge, Pavia.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bellavitis: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicature del proto-pirotese.  Giusto Bellavitis: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicature del proto-pirotese. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers rationally recover what a speaker means beyond what is strictly said by presuming cooperative, purposive talk and deriving cancellable implicatures from systematic expectations about relevance, informativeness, truthfulness, and clarity; the Bellavitis passage, by contrast, treats “conversational reason” as something that can be engineered into the linguistic code itself, imagining a rigorously designed universal language (with roots, numerical markers, and explicit verbal “voices” for tense, mood, intention, and even dubitative/interrogative force) that would minimize ambiguity and thereby make reasoning precise because the medium is precise. Where Grice locates much of meaning in pragmatic inference triggered by underdetermination and strategic economy (including cases where what is not encoded must be inferred), Bellavitis embodies the opposite ideal: reduce the need for implicature by over-specifying form—turning intention and modality into overt morphology, standardizing derivation, and even adapting the system to telegraphic transmission with dot-dash-line conventions and numeric phrase codes (so that “I am thirsty” can be compactly and unambiguously signaled, then refined by added digits). In Gricean terms, Bellavitis is effectively trying to shift communicative load from pragmatics to semantics and syntax: make the speaker’s intended force and content so explicitly encoded that the hearer need not rely on conversational maxims to bridge gaps; but for Grice, that very gap-bridging is not a defect of natural language but a rational achievement of interlocutors, and implicature is a feature of cooperative intelligence, not merely noise to be eliminated. Thus the comparison highlights a deep divergence: Bellavitis’ “lingua filosofica” pursues a calculus-like ideal where better symbols yield better thought, whereas Grice’s reason-governed account treats ordinary conversation as already governed by rational norms whose flexibility, context-sensitivity, and reliance on inference are precisely what make communication powerful rather than confused. Grice: “Like B’s lingua, my proto-pirotese is a joke on Chomsky, since he’d say that ‘deutero-‘ is a formative praefix!” proto-, deutero, trito-, tetarto-, pempto-, hecto-, hebdomo-, ogdo-, enato-decato-, endecato-, e dodecato-. Dei lincei, insegna a Padova, progetta una lingua universale, citata da VAILTAI, un sistema di comunicazione su uno scarno sistema di derivazione da radici lessicali, costruzioni e desinenze pel grado degl’aggetivi, VOCI verbali per ESPRIMERE tempo, modo, INTENZIONE, indicativo, condizionale, potenziale, dubitativo, interrogativo. La parola si compone da radici, numeri e SEGNI. Quando gl’uomini conversano sulle cose ragionano attraverso le parole che a queste sono associate. È una lingua semplice, rigorosa e perfetta che conduce delle idee dalle medesime caratteristiche. Una lingua ambiguo e imprecisa è sintomo di ragionamento e idee confusi. La lingua esatta vale a pensare in maniera esatta e ciò è ben nota nelle differenze di conversazioni dei arimettici e filosofi. È tutta basata sulle cose fisici,  mediante traslati esprime imperfettissimamente un’idea astratta, o un ente  d'immaginazione. Una lingua precisa descrive esattamente la natura e la realtà e si configura allo stesso tempo come l'ordine alfabetico delle sole  consonanti contenute in esse. Sul finire del suo saggio, e forse anche sulla scia dei lavori precedenti, B. si preoccupa di rendere fruibile la sua lingua filosofica anche mediante l'uso del telegrafo. La LETTERA è indicata dal punto, il trattino, e la linea. Propone la FRASE associata a un numero di tre cifre. ‘Ho sete'  62 nel VOCABOLARIO è indicata - -. -, che si speciticata apponendo un numero indicanti qualcosa di più preciso, 12, acqua: ... -. Presenta tipi d’alfabeto, basati sulla corrispondenza di simbolo e numero all’IDEA, utile ai marinei e ciechi. S’innesta nella glosso-poiesi, rivelando particolare attrazione pella teoria arimmetica. Formalismo, deutero-esperanto, Symbolo, Austin, shag/shaggy/shaggier/shaggiest Minnaja ideologiia. Bassano del Grappa, Vicenza, Veneto.  Grice: Bellavitis, dimmi, la tua lingua universale funziona meglio al telegrafo o a tavola davanti a un piatto di polenta? Bellavitis: Grice, se devo essere sincero, la polenta aiuta a chiarire le idee; il telegrafo, invece, serve per chi ha fretta di dire “Ho sete” in tre punti e due linee. Grice: E se qualcuno confonde la radice con il condizionale, rischiamo di parlare senza capire o basta aggiungere una cifra? Bellavitis: Nessun problema, Grice! Nel proto-pirotese basta una linea in più e si sistema tutto. In fondo, l’importante è non perdere il sorriso, anche se la frase “Ho sete” diventa “Ho fame” per errore. Bellavitis, Giusto (1832). Calcolo delle equipollenze e sue applicazioni. Padova: Minerva.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Belleo. Belleo.  Grice: Belleo, dimmi, la conversazione italiana è più ricca quando si parla di paradossi o di pasta? Belleo: Grice, i paradossi si sciolgono meglio davanti a un piatto fumante—ma attento, che tra verità e errore si rischia di scottarsi. Grice: E se uno trova più implicature nella carbonara che nella filosofia, deve cambiare ricetta o cambiare argomento? Belleo: Cambiare argomento, Grice! La carbonara non sbaglia mai, mentre in filosofia basta un cucchiaio di ironia per recuperare qualsiasi implicatura—senza perdere il sorriso.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bedoni. Bedoni.  Grice: Bedoni, dimmi, la ragione conversazionale in Italia funziona meglio davanti a un buon bicchiere o a una bella passeggiata? Bedoni: Grice, dipende dalla stagione! In primavera preferisco la passeggiata: le idee volano come le rondini. In inverno, il bicchiere aiuta a scaldare le implicature. Grice: E se la conversazione diventa troppo calda, rischiamo di bruciare qualche implicatura per strada? Bedoni: Tranquillo, Grice! In Italia recuperiamo tutto con una battuta: l’importante è non perdere il sorriso, nemmeno tra filosofi.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Belloni, Camillo. Belloni, Camillo. Grice: Camillo, dimmi la verità: la conversazione italiana si fa meglio davanti a un caffè o a una tazza di tè inglese? Belloni: Caro Grice, davanti a un caffè, naturalmente! Il tè è per chi ama i silenzi, il caffè è per chi ama le parole che girano veloci. Grice: Ma se parliamo troppo in fretta, non rischiamo di perdere qualche implicatura per strada? Belloni: Fa parte del gioco, Grice! In Italia, anche se qualcosa sfugge, siamo bravissimi a recuperare col sorriso.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bellezza: la ragione conversazionale del Philosopher’s Paradox Paolo Bellezza: la ragione conversazionale del Philosopher’s Paradox. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers routinely and rationally get from what is said to what is meant by assuming a cooperative, purposive “talk exchange” regulated by maxims (quantity, quality, relation, manner) and by treating apparent violations as evidence for implicatures that can be inferred and, typically, cancelled; the passage you cite frames Bellezza as shifting attention from this Gricean rational reconstruction of everyday inference to a “philosopher’s paradox” tradition in which conversation is a site where reason repeatedly slides between law and nature, truth and error, because meanings are liminal and double-gripped “like a two-handled vase,” so that what is “true in one sense” can be “false in another,” with paradox functioning not as a breakdown of cooperation but as an endemic feature of how philosophical commonplaces arise from the promiscuity of adjacent senses. Where Grice treats paradoxical effects as diagnostically local (often traceable to a maxim being flouted, to ambiguity, or to a shift in level between semantics and pragmatics) and therefore as something a disciplined theory can explain without granting paradox any deep metaphysical dignity, Bellezza treats paradox as structurally productive: error is mixed with truth, contradiction can assist inquiry, and the conversational arena is precisely where such mixtures become visible and philosophically generative, so that “reason” here is less a set of inferential norms underwriting stable communicative intentions than an art of navigating transitions, equivocations, and oppositions that are not merely to be eliminated but are constitutive of philosophical thinking in and through talk. Grice: “My source!” Tocca la serie di significati che la parola in conversazione può assumere, i quali tengono più o meno dell’uno o dell’altro dei due estremi. Vi accenna il lizio trattando il modo con cui il sofista costringe 1’avversario a dare nel PARADOSSO, uno parlare secondo natura a chi parla secondo la legge. Una cosa è giusta secondo la legge ma non secondo natura e si riusce al PARADOSSO. Una cosa, giudizio, proposizione, raziocinio, è vera in un certo senso ma falsa in senso diverso. La cosa è come un vaso a due manici. Trapassa dalla verità all’errore e viceversa, della contiguità e la promiscuità. È il problema, rilevato e formulato è un luogo comune del filosofo. Hi sumus qui omnibus veris falsa quædam adiuncta esse dicamus tanta similitudine ut in iis nulla insit certi iudicandi et assentiendi nota. Ita finitima sunt falsa veris, ut in præcipitem locum non debeat se sapiens committere. CICERONE. Nulla falsa doctrina est quæ non aliqua vera intermisceat. L'errore dell’uomo è sempre mescolato colla verità, e chi sapesse ben fare la scerna, da quello potrebbe questa bene spesso venire dedotta GIOBERTI. Una gran parte delle verità che il filosofo – like Wisdom – Grice, “whom I cite in ‘Metaphysics’ -- stabilisce, è inutile se 1'errore non esiste. È più facile vincere il pregiudizio dell’animo debole coll’errore che colla verità; la quale bene spesso non ha forza per persuadere LEOPARDI. Dimentichiamo che c’è un’anima di bontà nella cosa cattiva e di verità nella cosa falsa. L’errore è come una pietra dove inciampia e cade chi va avanti alla cieca e per chi sa alzare il piede diventa scalino. Cntraddire alla verità è una maniera anche codesta d’aiutare uno che cerchi la verità l’errore che i filosofo  v’incontra l’assurdo della risoluzione e pretende sciogliere un paradosso intende senz’altro errore. CATTANEO. Stoppani. Il vero si nasconde quasi dietro un paradosso davanti a cui s’arresta l’ingegno meticoloso, mentre il più eletto lo scavalca animoso. Sighele Bellucci: Raboni. Il pensiero estremo. Lo yoga devozionale. Paradosso. Manzoni. Arti. Milano, Lombardia. Grice: Bellezza, il tuo “paradosso” è come un vaso a due manici: lo prendi dalla verità e ti ritrovi nell’errore senza neanche macchiare la toga. Bellezza: E tu, Grice, con quel “My source!” sembri un cameriere che porta citazioni al tavolo e poi pretende la mancia dell’implicatura. Grice: Io porto solo il menù: se ordini “natura” e ti arriva “legge”, la colpa è del cuoco sofista. Bellezza: Allora brindiamo: la conversazione è Milano, Lombardia—tutti ci passano, e nessuno ammette di essersi perso. Bellezza, Paolo (1901). Il pensiero estremo. Milano, Tipografia Editrice Lombarda.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bene e la ragione conversazionale. Grice: “I like him.” Influential medieval master of rhetoric. Bene. Firenze, Toscana. Grice e Bene. Bene (Firenze, Toscana) e la ragione conversazionale. Grice: “I like him.” Influential medieval master of rhetoric.  Grice: Bene, raccontami, la ragione conversazionale in Toscana è più dolce o più pungente? Bene: Caro Grice, in Toscana la ragione è come il vino: se ne parli troppo, si scalda; se ne parli poco, si raffredda. Bisogna trovare la misura giusta, altrimenti la conversazione si trasforma in un monologo! Grice: Ah, ma il monologo non è mai riuscito a convincere un pubblico fiorentino! Preferiscono il botta e risposta, magari condito con un po’ di ironia. Bene: Appunto, Grice! Qui a Firenze si dice che anche le statue rispondono se le provochi con la domanda giusta. E se sbagli domanda, ti danno il silenzio come implicatura. Bene (1340). Rhetorica. Firenze, Toscana.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bene: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale di Tancredi.  Tommaso del Bene: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale di Tancredi. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats implicature as a rational, intention-sensitive upshot of cooperative talk: what is meant beyond what is said is inferred because speakers are presumed to be (ceteris paribus) truthful, relevant, appropriately informative, and perspicuous, so that departures from these expectations trigger calculable inferences. Del Bene’s treatment of Tancredi and the duel, by contrast, belongs to a casuistical-theological and juridico-moral culture in which “reason” is not primarily the hearer’s on-the-fly reconstruction of a speaker’s intention but the disciplined weighing of conscience, oath, lying, ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and legitimate authority; accordingly, “implicature” is less a conversational product of maxims and more a normative residue of what one’s words and acts commit one to under moral theology (e.g., what follows from an oath, what is permitted under duress, what counts as mendacium, what courts may judge). In that setting the duel and its apologies function like staged disputations where what is left unsaid is governed by prudence, censorship, and the boundaries between theology, royal tribunals, and ecclesiastical immunity—so a Gricean lens highlights how Del Bene’s rhetoric relies on shared background assumptions (honour, chivalric ethos, jurisdictional limits) to move an audience without spelling everything out, while a Del Bene lens would press Grice to acknowledge that conversational reason is never merely cooperative etiquette but is always already embedded in institutions of judgment and accountability. Online cataloguing sources that are easiest to confirm about the author’s print footprint tend to list works such as De officio S. Inquisitionis circa haeresim and Dubitationes morales (often associated with Avignon printings and Cardinal Albizzi in later notices) alongside Venetian materials connected with Pareri/Apologia in duello traditions, but the exact bibliographic details for Brieve apologia del Tancredi (Rome, 1652) and related imprints vary across older bibliographies, so the safest comparison point is conceptual rather than archival: Grice gives a logic of inference from utterances within cooperative exchange, whereas Del Bene exemplifies a logic of inference from utterances within a moral-legal order where “what you said” can bind you independent of what you privately intended. Grice: “Molto bene”. Apologia del Tancredi, Summa theologica, de officio s. inquisitionis circa haeresim, de immunitate et iurisdictione ecclesiastica, morale, de comitiis. Insegna a Roma. Brieve Apologia del Tancredi, Poema di Ascanio Grande. Si trova dietro l’apologia De Comitiis yfeu Parlamenti! ac inciijfnter (T corollarie de aliis moralibas marerii!, precipue de ecclefinQica immunitate, Dubitationes morales. fttmpt. Nemejìi Trichet i6\g in Avemonefumpt. inf. cor. dedicatoria al Card. Francesco Albizi. Questo su il saggio, per cui dove partir di Napoli. Prese in esso a trattare della morale, che nfguarda i tribunali regi, e gli dessi sovrani. Materia assai delicata, e che vuole altri lumi di quelli, che aver suole il volgo de’moralidi, Opus abfolutìjfimum in z. parte! di/lributttm. O* Mar. Ant. Ravaud de Conscientia; de radice re/liturioni1 aliarumque obligationum <2Tpcenarum, ut eucommunicationii et irregularitatt! eu delitto de Comieiii seu Parlamenti!, ubi etiam da alagiti contrattibus; de donativi! tributis (T fubjìdio Caritativo ó.De  Di tatti cotefli titoli fi fregia in virj suoi libri. Senti. Titt. che cita i reijitlri di S.Ao'* ea della Val- le; e perciò debboao correggerli il SavanaroU Gtrarth. Eccl. Tttt. Striti, E poi Avtniont Jo. Fiat. T.z. in f. Il MazzuecheHi s’è ingannato r eli attribuire a quell’Opera le aggiunte fatte dall’Autore al libro dt Offi. ti Y. Inquisitionit. Vezzofi lot. tannoi, z. cenfura il Mazzucchelii d’aver det-. t».  circa h<trejim cum Bulli* tam voteti- bus quam recentioribus Additiones de loci De Juramento, in quo de ejus 0 voti rclaxationibus cui Dectftonet S- Rotte Romana accedunt fumpt. guetan,  da Capoa, ha rime nel Sello libro delle Rime di diverfi eccell. Autori nuovamente raccolte ec. da G. Rufcelli. L' Imprefe della Mae/làrapprefentate nel tumolo ptr la Jua, morte eretto dalla fedèlifs. citta de.’f Aquila ec. Aquila Lepido Faci (Giuf. dilettò di poesia volgare degl’arcadi, dei velati. Tafuri. Monteverdi, Tasso. Moralia, mos, morale, cavalleria, il santo cavaliere, mendacio, mentire, iuramento, morale, abiuratio, conscienza. Maruggio, Taranto, Puglia. Grice e Bene. Grice: Tommaso, dimmi la verità, con tutta la morale e le apologie che hai scritto, il Tancredi sarebbe stato promosso o bocciato da un tribunale regio? Bene: Caro Grice, dipende se Tancredi ha portato la cavalleria o solo la coscienza! Se arriva con il mos, magari convince qualcuno anche senza spada. Grice: E se invece mente, ma lo fa per il bene superiore, la sua abiurazione conta come peccato o come furbizia? Bene: Ah, Grice, in tribunale e in poesia, una piccola menzogna può diventare un grande giuramento! Ma alla fine, come diceva sempre il santo cavaliere, meglio perdere un titolo che perdere il senso dell’umorismo. Bene, Tommaso del (1652). Brieve apologia del Tancredi. Roma

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Benincasa: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dei nudi maschili nella statuaria italiana all’aperto.  Carmine Benincasa (Eboli, Salerno, Campania): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dei nudi maschili nella statuaria italiana all’aperto. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers move from what is said to what is meant by presuming cooperation and rationality in talk (the Cooperative Principle and its maxims), so that additional meaning is often inferred as a conversational implicature rather than encoded in the words; Benincasa, by contrast, is best read as extending the “reason” of interpretation beyond utterances to public cultural objects—images, monuments, and urban settings—so that what counts as “implicated” meaning is not primarily produced by a speaker flouting maxims but by a city’s shared repertoire of viewing practices, taboos, jokes, prudery, and aesthetic conventions that make certain responses predictable. In your passage, the open-air male nude becomes an interpretive test case: the statue “says” nothing, yet it reliably elicits readings (civic pride, classicism, provocation, embarrassment, tourism, moral commentary), and Benincasa’s “turn of interpretation” can be framed as shifting attention from sentence-level inference (Grice) to the hermeneutic conditions that govern public meaning-making in the first place—what a passerby is entitled, licensed, or socially pushed to infer. Online bibliographic anchors support the timeline you cite: Benincasa’s early book Chiesa e storia nel card. Suhard e nel Vaticano II appears in 1967 with Edizioni Paoline (library catalogue records list 548 pages, Rome, 1967), while La svolta dell’interpretazione: memoria e profezia is catalogued as 1972 (B. Carucci, Assisi-Roma), which fits your contrast between Grice’s rational calculus of implicature in conversation and Benincasa’s broader, art-critical hermeneutics where implication is “plastic” and civic—generated by context, tradition, and spectatorship rather than by conversational maxims alone. Grice: “B. is a good one; my fvaourite is his ‘la svolta dell’interpretatzione,’ for that is what Boezio knew ‘hermeneias’ was! a turning point!” – Studia a Roma. Dopo aver completato tutti i suoi studi iniziò a lavorare come traduttore di testi letterari (tra altri, Hans Urs von Balthasar) per poi organizzare e curare mostre d'arte.  Membro della Commissione Consultiva Arti Visive della Biennale di Venezia e consigliere del Ministro per i Beni Culturali e Ambientali.  Insegna a Macerata, Firenze e Roma. Scrisse saggi storico-critici su vari artisti. Chiesa e storia L'interpretazione tra futuro e utopia, Poetica della negazione e della differenza” Il Giudizio Universale, Sul manierismo: come dentro uno specchio, Babilonia in fiamme: saggi sull'arte contemporanea, Architettura come dis-identità, L'altra scena: saggi sul pensiero antico, medioevale e contro-rinascimentale, Anabasi Architettura e arte” (Dedalo, Bari); “Alle soglie del sapere” Ed. del Tornese” Miró 2C, Kokoschka La mia vita” (Marsilio, Venezia); Oriente allo specchio 2C, Roma); Verso l'altrove: Fogli eretici sull'arte contemporanea” Electa, Milano); Alvar Aalto” Leader); Umberto Mastroianni Monumenti” (Ed. Electa, Milano); Il colore e la luce L'arte contemporanea” (Ed. Spirali, Milano); “André Masson “L'universo della pittura” Mondatori, Milano; Spirali/Vel,  "Alfio Mongelli: infinito futuro", Joyce et Company, Il tutto in frammenti: arte Professore: una nuova interpretazione storica” (Giancarlo Politi, Milano). La citta disalerno ricerca repubblica repubblica archivio  repubblica biennale-il- psi-fa-incetta-di-poltrone. html1http://ricerca. repubblica. it repubblica/archivio/ repubblica artisti-rasputin-nel- mondo- dei- telefoni. html2 lacittadisalerno/ cronaca fece-amare-l-arte-all-italia-, Errori giudiziari. i nudi maschili nella statuaria italiana all’aperto, implicatura plastica, la svoglia dell’interpretazione,  mastroianni, il segno del teatro, rito, mascara, anabasi, arte come dis-identita, futurismo. Grice: Carmine, dimmi la verità, i nudi maschili nella statuaria italiana all’aperto sono una questione di implicatura o di coraggio? Benincasa: Dipende dall’ora e dal luogo, Grice! Se è domenica a Firenze, l’implicatura sta nel non prendersi troppo sul serio. E se piove, tutti si preoccupano di interpretare la pioggia, non il marmo. Grice: Allora la svolta dell’interpretazione è quando ci si accorge che la gente guarda più il contorno che il contenuto? Benincasa: Esatto, Grice! La città è un grande palcoscenico, e i nudi all’aperto sono solo la scusa per una battuta spiritosa o per una riflessione profonda, a seconda di chi passa davanti. Così, ogni statua diventa una barzelletta, oppure una teoria, ma mai entrambe nello stesso istante. Benincasa, Carmine (1967). Chiesa e storia del cardinale Emmanuel Suhard e il Concilio Vaticano II. Edizioni Paoline.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Benvenuti: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale. Grice: “A good thing about B.’s discussion of Agostino’s semiotics is that Benvenuti has a strictly philosophical background, rather than in grammar or linguistics or belles lettres,  Cesare Donato Benvenuti (Montodine, Cremona, Lombardia). la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers infer what a speaker means beyond what is said by assuming cooperative rationality and using maxims to calculate implicatures; in contrast, Benvenuti’s Augustinian focus relocates the engine of “implication” from conversational maxims to a general semiotic-epistemic mechanism in which a sign is anything that, beyond its sensory appearance, makes something else come to mind, so that inference is built into signhood itself. In De doctrina christiana II Augustine distinguishes signa naturalia (e.g., smoke→fire, footprint→animal, facial expression→emotion) from signa data or conventional signs (given intentionally to convey what is in the mind), and Benvenuti’s tripartite framing in your passage (semiotic triangle, taxonomy of signs, inferenza) aligns Augustine with an inferential model of meaning rather than a purely representational one; the key difference from Grice is that for Augustine/Benvenuti the paradigmatic “implicature” is not generated by a cooperative maxim being apparently flouted but by the sign’s power to trigger a warranted transition in the interpreter (smoke licenses “there is fire”), whereas for Grice that inferential transition is specifically calibrated by speaker-intentions within a talk exchange. At the same time, they converge in a striking way: Augustine’s “given signs” exist to transfer what is in one mind into another, which is structurally close to Grice’s intentionalist account of speaker-meaning, but Augustine treats this as one species within a broader ontology of signs (natural and given), while Grice starts from communicative intention and then explains how further meanings (implicatures) arise from rational norms of interaction. So, read comparatively, Benvenuti’s “Augustine as the first Gricean” is plausible if the emphasis is on intention and interpretive inference, yet the deeper contrast remains that Augustine’s semiotics makes inference foundational to signification as such, while Grice makes inference foundational to conversational pragmatics specifically, with cooperation and reason-governed expectations doing the work that Augustine assigns to the general logic of signum/res and the natural/given divide. Grice: “A good thing about B.’s discussion of Agostino’s semiotics is that Benvenuti has a strictly philosophical background, rather than in grammar or linguistics or belles lettres, or even ‘theory of communication.’ Therefore, he INTERPRETS Augustine as *I* do! You gotta love B.. He dedicated his life to the semiotics of Agostino (who never knew he was a saint), the first Griceian. Benvenutti divides his discussion of Agostino’s semiotics in three: the semiotic triangle, the taxonomy of signs, and inferenza – For Agostino, ‘segno’ contrasts with ‘cosa.’ And a sign can signify ‘naturaliter’ (fumo, orma, volta). Or non-naturaliter – daglia animali including homo – prodotto dall’uomo – a ‘gesture’ that has to be perceived by one of the five senses – or by the senses – auditum (parola detta) – visum (segno scritto). Studia a Roma caso di coscienza per emanare i giudizi. Esaminatore. Dell' antica puncupazione di canoni, l'invasione di Longobardi, Vita Chericale comune, Povertà Evangelica sandria. Ill.Zin Canone del Concilio Romano, atribuito à Silvestro vien intejaper Buplio Diacono. Comunità Chericalen e laChiesa d Ales O o. DI 1 1 Turonense. Che fece Leobina Vescovo nella Chiesa Carnotenje. Dalle proibizioni del Concilio Arelaten fededucesi il metodo del vivere Chericale di que' tempi.Vita Regolare ne' Cherici espressa nel Concilio di Tours. De vivere in comune de Chericj in Romaforzo il Pontificato di Gregorio Magno. Note  Fonte: Francesco Sforza Benvenuti, Storia di Crema, p.37Filosofia Filosofo Teologi italiani Montodine NapoliTraduttori dal latino. paganismo, religione romana antica, paganesimo ario in Italia, i romani, i ostrogoti, i longobardi, religione romana, religione ostrogota, religione longobarda, mitologia romana, mitologia ostrogota, mitologia longobarda, cultura romana, cultura ostrogota, cultura longobarda, le fonte pagane della teoria del segno in Agostino – semeion, signum, segno, segnare, segnante, segnato. Antecedenti di una teoria unitaria del segno. Grice: Cesare, spiegami una cosa: Agostino avrebbe mai immaginato che il fumo di un camino potesse diventare oggetto di tanto ragionamento? Benvenuti: Caro Grice, Agostino era avanti! Per lui, anche un’impronta lasciata nel fango poteva generare una teoria semiotica, altro che fumo negli occhi. Grice: Quindi se un gesto vale come un segno, quando agito le mani per spiegarmi meglio, sto producendo filosofia o solo confusione? Benvenuti: Dipende dalla giornata, Grice! Ma ricorda: per Agostino, anche la parola detta e quella scritta sono viaggi per i sensi. Se poi ci aggiungi un sorriso, magari passi direttamente dal segno all’inferenza senza nemmeno accorgertene! Benvenuti, Cesare Donato (1819). Storia di Crema. Crema.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Berardi: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale telepatica.  Antonio Berardi: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del duello. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains implicature as a rational, intention-sensitive inference: hearers assume cooperative norms and work out what is meant beyond what is said (including when a speaker appears to violate expectations) by reconstructing the speaker’s communicative intentions in context; by contrast, the Berardi/Bernardi material you cite locates “reason” in the Renaissance arts of dialectic and moral-philosophical justification, where disputed practices like the duel are argued over through topical invention, definition, and the disciplined management of equivocations rather than through Grice’s maxims-based pragmatics. In Antonio Bernardi della Mirandola (1502–1565), the duel (monomachia/duellum) becomes a test-case for how dialectical reasoning and moral philosophy can legitimate a practice “according to reason” while still allowing a separate theological verdict (a distinction Bernardi explicitly makes in his Disputationes of 1562, which includes an extended treatment “ex professo” of monomachia), and the contemporary plagiarism/priority controversy around Giovan Battista Possevino’s Dialogo dell’honore (printed posthumously 1553 and widely reprinted, with modern discussion by Pietro Giulio Riga) underscores how, in that world, what is “implied” often rides on shared commonplaces of honour, reputation, and interpretive charity within a learned controversy. The upshot for a Grice comparison is that Berardi/Bernardi-style “conversational reason” is not primarily the micro-logic of how a listener calculates an implicature from a single utterance, but the macro-rationality of a disputational culture in which argument is a kind of regulated combat: the duel is both topic and model, and “implication” is closer to what follows from accepted loci, definitions, and moral classifications than to what follows from cooperative conversational expectations. Grice: “We discussed B. with Sir Peter – when we were tutoring on ‘Categoriae’. Surely this is not propedeutic logic! This is pure metaphysics, and even pure physics!” B. held the same view! On top, I love B. because he does not use ‘logica,’ which he thinks for ‘kids,’ but ‘dialettica,’ which is real philosophy!” Studia a Bologna sotto Boccadiferro, l’autore di un trattato sui luoghi comuni d’Aristotele, e POMPONAZZI. A Roma conosce Bembo, Casa e Giovio, e si conquista una fama di lizio.  Monomachia. Il duello è legittimo secondo la ragione e la filosofia morale, duello cavalleresco, umanista Forlivesi Zambelli. procedendo sempre con equivoci e confusion di vocaboli e con perpetui sofismi talvolta intrigatissimi e difficili e talvolta manifesti e palesi  Eppure, narra Maffei che dell'opera di B. quattro doppie si stima modesto prezzo. La scienza cavalleresca è tanto ricercati, che quattro doppie è pur stata valutata un'edizione dell'Ariosto, quella di Venezia per Valvassori,  sol per poche righe, che in alcuni luoghi vi si trovano con titolo di Pareri in Duello. In quanto all'accusa di plagio dita apertamente da B. a Possevino, essa è abbastanza giustificata. Possevino scolaro di B. e questi ha dal maestro il suo lavoro sul duello per copiarlo, ma Possevino non si fa alcuno scrupolo di rafazzonarlo alquanto per poterlo far passare come proprio. È vero peró, che la pubblicazione del saggio non avvenne per opera di Possevino, ma di suo fratello, ed anzi vuolsi, che Possevino morendo raccomanda al fratello di non pubblicare il saggio sul duello da esso lasciata, ma il fratello non tiene conto di questa raccomandazione, tanto più, che al dire del Tiraboschi, a vincer i suoi scrupoli gl’era opportinamente giunta all'orecchio, autore del saggio, ed egli a tale notizia presta fede. Tiraboschi, che dapprima aveva difeso G. B. Possevino dall'accusa di plagio doveva finire per persuadersi, che tale accusa era ben fondata. la legittimita dei duellisti, duo-machia. roma, duellisti, statua di due duellisti antichi, armi bianchi. Mirandola, Modena, Emilia-Romagna  Grice: Antonio, il duello filosofico è più una questione di dialettica o di sciabole affilate? Berardi: Grice, la vera dialettica si fa con parole taglienti, mica con armi bianche! Ma qualche volta, in biblioteca, le discussioni sono più rumorose di un duello in piazza. Grice: Sarà per questo che Possevino ha preferito copiare il trattato piuttosto che sfidare il maestro: meno rischi di finire trafitto, più possibilità di vincere per astuzia! Berardi: Esatto, Grice! In filosofia come nei duelli, chi ha il miglior parere vince la statua in piazza, chi perde si consola con una doppia edizione dell’Ariosto. Berardi, Antonio (1580). Pareri in duello. Venezia: Valvassori. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bernardi: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del duello.  Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bernardi: la ragione conversazionale.  Jacopo Bernardi (Castel di Godego, Treviso, Veneto): la ragione conversazionale. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers get from what is said to what is meant by presuming cooperative rationality and inferring implicatures from a speaker’s adherence to (or artful departure from) conversational maxims; the “governance” is procedural and interactional, and the extra meaning is justified by publicly recoverable reasoning about intentions in context. Bernardi’s stance in your passage (Essenza, origine e retto uso dell’umana lingua, 1845) relocates governance from conversational procedure to a moral-theological teleology of language: speech is grounded in the divine nature and rational perfection of the human creature, its origin tied to creation rather than animal exclamation, and its proper use indexed to virtue (truthfulness) with sins of language (lying, slander, blasphemy) treated not as pragmatic misfires but as moral faults; so, where Grice treats implicature as a rationally cancellable by-product of cooperative exchange, Bernardi treats the “unsaid” as what conscience and doctrine already bind the speaker to (the rectus usus of words), making conversational reason less a set of inferential expectations and more a normatively charged discipline aimed at right-speaking as right-living. In that comparison, Grice’s maxims look like thin, defeasible norms for making talk work, whereas Bernardi’s “reason of language” is thick and eschatological: conversation is answerable not only to interlocutors but to a higher tribunal of truth and moral order, so the deepest “implicatures” are not clever inferences from relevance or quantity but ethical entailments of being the kind of rational-divine speaker humans are meant to be. Online bibliographic listings and digitized catalogues do at least corroborate the basic anchor that Bernardi’s Essenza, origine e retto uso dell’umana lingua appeared in Venice with Giuseppe Antonelli in 1845, framing him as part of the nineteenth-century Italian debate on language origins and proper usage, but his interest is less “pragmatics” than the moral constitution of speech, which makes him a useful foil to Grice precisely because he converts conversational rationality into a doctrine of linguistic virtue rather than a logic of cooperative inference. Grice: “I like B. – his approach is eschatological, like mine!” Filosofo poliedrico, in Essenza, origine e retto uso dell’umana lingua, B. affronta il dibattito sulla lingua all’ASCOLI con un approccio moralistico, fortemente influenzata d’una prospettiva scatologica. B. mette in relazione la lingua colla natura divina dell'uomo, con un focus sul retto uso nell’esercizio della virtù  morale. La natura profonda della lingua è come espressione dell’intelletto umano, in contrasto colla forma di comunicazione animale. L’origine della lingua si riallaccia a una creazione divina tramite una evoluzione guidata d’un principio morale, esortazndo all’utilizzo e corretto della parola, e condannando la menzogna, la maldicenza e la bestemmia: l’ammaestramento filosofico per concentrarlo dalle sparse membra vivificate nel cuore della provincia, abbiamo deplorato insieme e altamente quella sentenza ferale. Indarno per molte voci autorevoli e per quella dell'insigne vescovo nostro, che risona francamente nello approvare l'argomento, ch'io pure sceglievo per la prolusione agli studi fra noi , dopo aver detto. Credere che non è necessario nè conveniente il figurarsi che il divino al primo uomo imboccasse tutto intero la lingua, e gli fosse grammatica e vocabolario, soggiunge: a Que’tanti che fanno d’ESCLAMAZIONE INARTICOLATA e dal SENTIMENTO ANIMALE germinare la lingua, suppongono, dopo la formazione, umanamente inesplicabile, a dell' uomo senziente, una seconda ancora più inesplicabile perchè assurda quando dividon di tempo dalla prima dell’uomo intelligente, e così per negare il mistero, moltiplicano i misteri togliendone però quel sublime, che li fa degni dell’umana RAGIONE. Essendo l’uomo creato nella pienezza delle sue facoltà, come pieno e perfetto nell'esser suo è l'esercizio della intelligenza, ne consegue che pieno e perfetto dove essere quello della PAROLA. La proposizione è di tale evidenza che non ha bisogno di prova. Ammeno il fatto della CREAZIONE, l’altro non è che l’esplicazione. G.: Bernardi gives us “origine,” and I refuse to let the word be treated as a mere clerical nuisance. S.: Naturally. Oxford only mistrusts origins when they are French. G.: Or when they are too successful. The French Academy, in one of its tidier moods, declared the origin of language a prohibited topic. S.: Because it was obscene? G.: Because it was speculative. Which, in France, is considered worse. S.: So no one was to ask where language came from? G.: Not under respectable conditions. The question was judged vacuous, pseudo-problematic, unfit for disciplined minds. S.: And Bernardi asks it anyway? G.: He does. Though in a tone rather more episcopal than I should usually prefer. S.: The Church enters at once, then. G.: In Italy it seldom waits in the corridor. Bernardi thinks language belongs with the divine nature of man, creation, virtue, recto uso, and all the rest. S.: Which you dislike. G.: Not entirely. I dislike the theology only when it pretends to be explanatory. S.: But you are willing to use “God” as an exegetical device? G.: Yes, provided one can supply a rational reconstruction in naturalistic terms afterward. S.: That sounds like smuggling. G.: It is translation. S.: Then what is your actual point about origine? G.: That signum does not have two unrelated senses when applied to natura and institutione. S.: But surely it does. One says “those dark clouds mean rain,” and one says “I mean that p.” G.: Exactly. And the temptation is to declare a schism where there is only development. S.: Development from what to what? G.: From natural consequentiality to controlled, will-governed signification. S.: That sounds wonderfully pompous. G.: Thank you. S.: Explain. G.: If x is a sign of y, there is some relation of consequentia between x and y. S.: In both cases? G.: In both cases, yes. The relation is more primitive in the natural case, more institutionally managed in the non-natural one, but not therefore equivocal. S.: So dark clouds and rain, on the one hand; utterance and meaning, on the other. G.: Precisely. In the first, the consequence is not ad placitum. In the second, it becomes available for use under intention and convention. S.: You are collapsing a great deal. G.: I am unifying a great deal. S.: Ontogenesis first, I suppose. G.: Necessarily. One sees the matter more clearly in the child than in the theologian. S.: Your child? G.: Any reasonably cooperative child, though my own has provided ample field data. S.: You mean you are a nursery ethnographer. G.: Oxford fathers are, when they are not pretending to be metaphysicians. S.: Then what does the child show? G.: That signalling begins not with explicit semantic sovereignty but with guided uptake. Gesture, cry, glance, pointing, insistence. S.: Animal exclamation, as Bernardi would put it, and reject. G.: He rejects too much and too soon. The child’s cry is not yet speech, but it is not therefore irrelevant to speech’s emergence. S.: Because? G.: Because it already recruits another’s intelligence through recognisable consequence. S.: So if the child raises its arms, it means “pick me up.” G.: Not at first in the full non-natural sense. But it comes to function as a controlled signal because caregiver and child stabilise the link. S.: Stabilise by what? Repetition? G.: Repetition, expectation, success, correction, and eventually intention recognised as such. S.: Then ontogenesis is your bridge from natural sign to communicative sign. G.: Exactly. The bridge is not magical. It is habituated inferential practice under increasing control. S.: “Inferential practice” in a nursery is a bit rich. G.: Babies are richer than philosophers in such matters. S.: Then phylogenesis? G.: The same issue on the larger scale. How a species moves from reading signs in nature to making signs for one another. S.: And here the French objected. G.: They objected partly because no one could experiment on proto-language with proper Academy decorum. S.: Quite right too. G.: Quite wrong. Lack of direct experiment does not make the question senseless. S.: It does make it dangerous. G.: Only to tidy minds. S.: So Bernardi’s “origine” is useful even if his answer is ecclesiastical? G.: Exactly. The question survives the sermon. S.: What was the sermon, in brief? G.: That man was created in the fullness of his faculties, hence with intelligence already proper to word, and therefore language must be understood under divine perfection rather than emerging from inarticulate exclamation. S.: He says that very strongly. G.: Strongly enough to save himself some anthropology. S.: You do not want to save yourself any. G.: No. I want anthropology, developmental psychology, comparative behaviour, and a little patience. S.: Then return to signum. G.: Gladly. Signum, segnare, signare: all these suggest marking, indicating, letting one thing stand toward another in a way available for uptake. S.: Still sounds like two senses. G.: Only if one insists that natural indication and intentional indication differ in kind rather than in governance. S.: “Governance” again. G.: An excellent word. In the natural case, x governs inference to y by causal or nomic regularity. In the communicative case, x governs inference to y by intention operating over shared expectations. S.: So in both cases there is consequentia. G.: Yes. That is the univocal core. S.: But one cannot cancel dark clouds. G.: Precisely. Natural signs are not cancellable in the Gricean way; communicative signs often are. S.: Which suggests difference. G.: Difference in control conditions, not in the bare sign relation. S.: Then “those dark clouds mean rain” and “I mean that p” are connected because the second exploits the hearer’s readiness to move from one item to another under recognised linkage. G.: Beautifully put. S.: I am learning. G.: Try not to show it. S.: And Bernardi by speaking of origine hints at this continuity? G.: He hints despite himself. Once you ask where language comes from, you are forced to consider transitions rather than dogmatic partitions. S.: Unless one says “God gave it.” G.: Which is a splendid way of ending inquiry before it becomes interesting. S.: Yet you allow “God” as shorthand. G.: As shorthand for the demand that the transition be intelligible and not merely accidental. S.: Nature as a goddess, then. G.: If one likes mythology with one’s biology. S.: Oxford does. G.: Only when classical. S.: You mentioned signare and segnare. Why insist on those verbs? G.: Because they keep before us the act-character of signs. A sign is not merely a thing; it figures in a practice of marking, indicating, notifying. S.: Natural signs do not act. G.: No, but they function within a practice of reading. Human signification then grows by turning what is read into what is made legible. S.: That is rather fine. G.: It was available all along. S.: Then from dark clouds to “I mean” the path is: natural reading, proto-signal, stabilised uptake, intentional control, conventional system. G.: Yes. Ontogenesis recapitulates enough of the transition to make phylogenesis less mysterious. S.: Dangerous phrase, “recapitulates.” G.: I know. I use it with prophylactic irony. S.: And where does the Church become “anti-Oxonian,” as you put it? G.: At the point where explanation is replaced by pious insistence that because man is created, language must arrive full-grown with him. S.: Bernardi even says grammar and vocabulary need not have been spooned into Adam, but the full exercise of word belongs with the full exercise of intelligence. G.: Yes, which is subtler than crude divine dictation, but still too impatient with gradual emergence. S.: He thinks denying mystery multiplies mysteries. G.: A very ecclesiastical complaint. S.: Is it false? G.: Not always. Some secular accounts are indeed incompetent. But from that it does not follow that naturalistic reconstruction is impossible. S.: Then what is needed? G.: A rational genealogy: how controlled signs emerge from natural manifestations under social intelligence. S.: A genealogy of “meaning.” G.: Exactly. S.: And the animal? G.: The animal is indispensable. Not because animal cries are already language, but because human language is not intelligible if treated as descending into nature from nowhere. S.: Bernardi fears that. G.: He fears degradation. I fear discontinuity. S.: A fair difference. G.: Quite. S.: How would you put the univocity thesis succinctly? G.: Signum always involves one item’s standing in a relation apt to ground passage to another item. S.: Even where the relation is arbitrary? G.: “Arbitrary” means selected or sustained ad placitum, not disconnected from inference. S.: So arbitrariness is about institution, not about unintelligibility. G.: Precisely. A conventional sign may be arbitrary in form, but its functioning still depends on learned consequence within a practice. S.: Then “tree” means tree because there is a socially ratified path from sound to concept. G.: Yes, and that path is no less a consequentia for being social. S.: You are making consequence wider than the logicians like. G.: Logicians are too often under the impression that consequence took degrees only in their own company. S.: And you think language proves otherwise. G.: I think conversation proves otherwise every afternoon. S.: Then why were the French so severe? G.: Because “origin” questions tend to attract mythology, and the Academy preferred falsifiable sobriety. S.: A respectable preference. G.: Respectable and overreactive. One may over-police a bad neighbourhood and accidentally prohibit the honest citizen. S.: Bernardi as the honest citizen? G.: No, Bernardi as the pious smuggler of a real question. S.: Better. G.: Accuracy before charity. S.: What would an Oxford treatment look like? G.: Less bishop, more child. Less creation, more development. Less prohibition, more reconstruction. S.: And perhaps less horror at animal continuity. G.: Quite. S.: Yet still no reduction of meaning to mere clouds and rain. G.: Certainly not. “I mean” introduces intention, and intention introduces reflexive recognitional structure. S.: You had to say that eventually. G.: It was waiting. S.: So the path is not from sign to signification by miracle, but from natural indication to intentional indicating by stages. G.: Exactly. S.: And Bernardi helps by forcing the issue under the word origine. G.: He does. The title is better than parts of the doctrine. S.: Which is often the case. G.: Especially in theology. S.: Then one last thing. Is “retto uso” wholly alien to your picture? G.: Not wholly. Once one has language, questions of correct use inevitably arise. But correctness should not be confused with divine destination. S.: So lying, slander, blasphemy are not what make language possible. G.: They are parasitic moral phenomena upon a prior communicative capacity. S.: Bernardi reverses the order. G.: He moralises the foundation. S.: And you naturalise it. G.: While leaving room for normativity after the fact. S.: Which means one can keep “God” in commentary if one pays in reasons. G.: Very neat. S.: Then the punchline? G.: The French forbade the origin of language as too speculative, the Church explained it too quickly, and Bernardi managed to be useful by being wrong in exactly the right place.Grice: Jacopo, secondo te la lingua umana nasce davvero per esclamazione inarticolata come dicono i teorici, o è solo un modo elegante per far sembrare la filosofia una partita a scacchi? Bernardi: Grice, se fosse tutto esclamazione, avremmo solo filosofi che urlano e nessuno che ci spiega il mistero! Io preferisco pensare che la parola venga dalla creazione perfetta: come il caffè quando è appena versato, non quando resta freddo sul tavolo.Grice: E dunque, Jacopo, la menzogna e la maldicenza sono solo errori grammaticali o sono veri peccati del linguista troppo distratto? Bernardi: Caro Grice, il linguista distratto finisce col parlare come un animale, ma se usa bene la parola può persino convincere il vescovo a prendere un biscotto invece che giudicare la grammatica! Bernardi, Jacopo (1845). Essenza, origine e retto uso dell’umana lingua. Venezia: Antonelli.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bernardo: la ragione conversazionale e  l’implicatura conversazionale della tradizione iniziatica itala.  Giuliano di Bernardo (Benne, Biella, Piemonte): la ragione conversazionale e  l’implicatura conversazionale della tradizione iniziatica itala. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats implicature as a rational, intention-based inference: hearers assume cooperation (and maxims of quantity, quality, relation, manner) and so can work out what is meant beyond what is said, including cases where a speaker is indirect or strategically elliptical; on that model, the “governing” rationality is public, defeasible, and reconstructible from conversational practice. Di Bernardo, as your passage frames him, shifts the spotlight from everyday talk to norm-governed systems and initiatic tradition: the closest analogue to Gricean implicature is not primarily a maxim-flout but the way meaning and commitment arise from rules, roles, and shared recognitional practices (a handshaking culture, ritualized forms, insider/common-knowledge background), so that what is “implied” is often implied by institutional form rather than by conversational economy alone. That makes a useful contrast: Grice’s implicature is calculable from cooperative discourse; Di Bernardo’s “implicature of initiatic tradition” is intelligible as what a participant is entitled (or obliged) to read into a move given a normative system—very close in spirit to deontic logic’s concern with what follows from norms, permissions, and obligations, except that here the “system” is as much symbolic and communal as formal. More concretely online: the University of Trento thesis catalogue (BiblioApss) lists Di Bernardo’s 1966/1967 sociology thesis as Studio preliminare sulla possibilità di applicare la logica deontica in sociologia (rel. Giorgio Braga; correl. Alberto Pasquinelli; shelfmark SO9), which supports your 1967 deontic-logic anchor; and later bibliographies consistently mark his early published work in the same direction (e.g., Logica, norme, azione, Trento: Istituto Superiore di Scienze Sociali, 1969; Introduzione alla logica dei sistemi normativi, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1972), letting you present him as a figure who would naturally reinterpret “conversational reason” less as Grice’s etiquette of inference and more as a rule-structured, tradition-sustaining practice in which what is meant is bound to norms, recognition, and authorized forms of saying and doing. Grice: “I like B.: he is a philosophical mason – but then most Italian philosophers are, as a way of NOT being Roman!” Studia a Trento. Insegna a Trento. filosofia delle scienze sociali,logica delle norme. Socialista. Tiene posizioni di aperto contrasto col cattolicismo. Al centro di polemiche anche con i vertici del GOI, B. decide di dimettersi dalla carica di Gran maestro al termine della Gran Loggia annuale a Roma alla quale si era presentato dopo aver redatto atto costitutivo e statuto di una nuova Obbedienza, la Gran Loggia Regolare d'Italia. Al vertice del GOI gli succede Ghinoi.  L’Obbedienza si regge su uno sparuto gruppo di Logge fuoriuscite dal GOI, caratterizzandosi per l'uso esclusivo del rito inglese Emulation. Otto anni dopo la fondazione, viene espulso dalla GLRI; gli succede alla guida dell'Obbedienza Venzi. Quindi avvia un nuovo progetto di un ordine paramassonico, denominato Dignity Order, che tuttavia non è un'Obbedienza regolare. Pur dichiarando di essere fuoriuscito dalla Massoneria, Di Bernardo da anni si presta a rilasciare interviste e dichiarazioni sull'argomento sia a giornalisti che ad organi inquirenti. Nel  ha polemizzato con il GOI dopo aver reso una dichiarazione alla Commissione Antimafia relativa a presunte rivelazioni di Loizzo (vedi ). Il GOI ha annunciato l'intenzione di denunciare Di Bernardo per diffamazione e calunnia. Il lo stesso Di Bernardo annuncia di voler a sua volta querelare il Gran Maestro del GOI Stefano Bisi per diffamazione. La querela di B. a carico di Bisi viene archiviata per insussistenza.  Aldo Alessandro Mola, Gelli e la P2: fra cronaca e storia, Bastogi Editrice Italiana, unitn.  Il Gran Maestro: chi è B.  Mola.  Pubblicazioni di unitn. Fra tradizione e rinnovamento: la lunga traversata del deserto, GOI.   Aldo A. Mola,  801 e ss.  Mola, Di Bernardo fonda la nuova la tradizione iniziatica italica, logica dei sistemi normativi, normativa sociale, l’implicatura del massone, psicologia filosofica, Homo sapiens sapiens. Grice: Giuliano, la tradizione iniziatica italiana è più un labirinto filosofico o una cena tra amici che non si ricordano mai dove hanno messo il grembiule? Di Bernardo: Grice, direi che è come una riunione di loggia dove tutti discutono se servire il caffè con o senza zucchero e alla fine si decide per il rito inglese solo perché nessuno ha portato la moka. Grice: E allora, Giuliano, la filosofia massonica si fa sulle scale tra una querela e una dichiarazione alla Commissione Antimafia, o basta una stretta di mano e si passa oltre? Di Bernardo: Grice, finché c’è implicatura conversazionale, anche le polemiche possono diventare una tradizione: l’importante è non perdere il filo, né quello del grembiule né quello del discorso. Bernardo, Giuliano di (1967). Logica deontica. Trento.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Berneri: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale -- filosofia italiana nel ventennio fascista.  Camillo Berneri (Lodi, Lombardia): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale -- filosofia italiana nel ventennio fascista. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how an audience reconstructs what a speaker means beyond what is literally said by assuming cooperative rationality (maxims/Cooperative Principle) and treating strategic departures from those norms as evidence for inferable implicatures; on this picture, “reason” is a local, interactional engine that makes indirectness intelligible and accountable. Berneri, by contrast, is best read (as your passage suggests) as a case of filosofia militante, where talk, pamphlet, and polemic are not primarily devices for maximizing cooperative coordination but instruments of struggle against authoritarian control; this shifts the center of gravity from Grice’s micro-rationality of conversational inference to the macro-conditions of who is allowed to speak, under what risks, and with what audiences (the “game” is rigged, so the implicatures become tactical—coded signals, rallying cues, and politically necessary indirections shaped by surveillance, exile, and factional conflict). In that sense, a Grice/Berneri comparison highlights that implicature can be generated not only by polite cooperation but also by constrained adversarial contexts: speakers still rely on shared inferential norms, but the point is often to evade suppression, mobilize solidarity, or expose propaganda rather than to optimize mutual understanding. As for bibliographic anchoring, online catalogues and standard biographies typically cite Berneri’s early anti-fascist output in the early 1920s, including Mussolini, un dittatore (often dated 1922) and his activity in libertarian periodicals; however, the specific imprint “Psicologia d’un dittatore” as a 1922 Milan volume is sometimes given in secondary lists and can vary by catalogue, so if you want maximum precision for your entry it’s worth cross-checking the exact title/year against a national catalogue record (e.g., ICCU/SBN) before fixing the citation. Grice: ‘I like B.; of course we need to know more about his philosophical background and education – he represents the epitome of what Italian philosophers call ‘filosofia militante,’ but then I fought the Hun – so I was militante, too!”. Di padre originario di Ronco, si trasfere a Milano. A Reggio, milita coi scialisti di Reggio Emilia – Mussolini, Psicologia d’un dittatore", Masini, Milano. Comitato Centrale della Federazione Giovanile Socialista reggiana, e dopo aver collaborato all'Avanguardia (organo nazionale della FGS), rassegna le dimissioni dalla FGS, attraverso una lettera ai compagni, avendo maturato convinzioni anarchiche. Sarà colpito dal gesto dei compagni che, nonostante le dimissioni, vorranno che presieda un'ultima riunione della FGS a Reggio, e dal gesto del mentore Prampolini, che lo convocherà per conoscere le ragioni del suo dissenso. Berneri ricorderà sempre "i dolci ricordi del mio catecumenato socialista". Si trasfere ad Arezzo dove frequenta il liceo. Escluso dall’accademia militare di Modena per le sue idee, è inviato al fronte. Ancora in servizio, è confinato a Pianosa in occasione dello sciopero generale. Collabora a periodici libertari. Si laurea a Milano. Insegna a Camerino. Pronta e decisa si manifesta la sua avversione al fascismo e mantene contatti con gl’antifascisti diffondendo il battagliero Non mollare. Molto intensa è  l'attività nell'unione anarchica. Inaspritasi la dittatura fascista,  s’espatria in Francia. Gremmo, Bombe, soldi e anarchia: l'affare B. e la tragedia dei libertari. Guidi, "Nostra patria è il mondo intero". B. e "Guerra di Classe" a Barcellona, pubblicato dall'autore, Milano. Berti, Sacchetti, Un libertario in Europa. B.i: fra totalitarismi e democrazia. Atti del convegno di studi storici, Chessa, B., Lo spionaggio fascista all'estero, Fedel (e prefazione di Franzinelli), Comandante Libero, Socialismo socialista libertario. Abolizione ed estinzione dello stato, Anarchismo e federalismo. Anarchici Assassinati con arma da fuoco Vittime di dittature comuniste. normalizazzione, delirio racista. Grice: Camillo, la filosofia italiana nel ventennio fascista era davvero una partita di calcio o più una partita di scacchi con la pedina anarchica fuori dal tabellone? Berneri: Caro Grice, se il fascismo voleva giocare a scacchi, io preferivo la dama: niente regole fisse, ogni mossa è battaglia, ma la filosofia non si lascia confinare, nemmeno sulla casella nera. Grice: E Mussolini, allora, era più un arbitro che fischia a caso o un portiere che si dimentica di difendere la porta? Berneri: Direi, Grice, che Mussolini puntava più a tirare il pallone fuori dallo stadio! Ma tra uno sciopero e una fuga in Francia, la partita si è fatta mondiale e la filosofia – la vera militante – ha trovato sempre il modo di segnare, anche senza reti. Berneri, Camillo (1922). Psicologia d’un dittatore. Milano, Lombardia.  

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Berti: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura della morte di Cicerone.  Enrico Berti (Valeggio sul Mincio, Verona, Veneto): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura della morte di Cicerone. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers infer what a speaker means beyond what is said by presuming cooperative rationality and deriving conversational implicatures from context and expectations (so the “reason” in conversation is a practical inferential discipline keyed to speaker-intentions and maxims), whereas Enrico Berti’s central preoccupation is not the micro-pragmatics of everyday implicature but the rationality proper to philosophical discourse as dialectic and rhetoric in the Aristotelian lineage: a form of reason that is not reducible to scientific method but works through debate, objection, and argumentative testing aimed at truth (hence his recurring emphasis on dialectic, contradiction, and the “ways of reason”). Put comparatively, Grice gives a model of how conversation, at the level of ordinary exchanges, is norm-governed so that indirectness is intelligible and controllable; Berti gives a model of how philosophical reasoning itself is dialogical (Socratic/Aristotelian) and therefore conversational in a thicker sense, where what counts as “rational” is tied to publicly assessable argument-forms, the management of aporiai, and the disciplined handling of opposition rather than to implicature-calculation as such. Online reference points that sharpen the Berti side of the comparison include Treccani’s account of Berti’s work on “dialettica” and on the distinction between philosophical and scientific rationality (e.g., Ragione filosofica e ragione scientifica nel pensiero moderno, 1977; Le vie della ragione, 1987) and bibliographies noting his early publication stream beginning in 1959 (including an article version of L’interpretazione neoumanistica della filosofia presocratica in Studia Patavina 6/2, 1959, pp. 225–259), which fits your passage’s picture of Berti as an Aristotelian “cartographer” of dialectical reason—one who would naturally recast “the death of Cicero” not as the end of talk but as a reminder that philosophical meaning lives by the continuation of disciplined dialogue. Grice: “I like B.; of course he has philosophised on the only two philosophers worth philosophising about Plato and Aristotle – his interest is in the ‘number idea’ in Plato, the unity in Aristotle, and various other things – notably Socratic dialectic as the basis for both! I also love his courtesy: cf. Sir Peter, “Introduction to logical theory,” versus the gentle “Un invito alla filosofia,” – for philosophy needs to be invited to, rather than intro- and extro-ducted to and fro’!” Si laurea a Padova sotto GENTILE. Insegna a Perugia e di storia della filosofia nella stessa Università.  Si trasferisce all'Padova, dove insegna storia della filosofia. È poi docente anche nelle Ginevra, di Bruxelles, Interessato particolarmente al lizio, ne ha intravisto le tracce nella metafisica, nell'etica e nella politica in particolar modo pel problema della contraddizione e la dialettica. S’inserisce nel dibattuto sul del rapporto filosofia/scienza, e fonda la filosofia su una razionalità non rapportabile a quella scientifica, ma piuttosto alla dialettica e alla retorica. S’interessa a riproporre unaa metafisica, in una concezione umile o povera come consapevolezza della problematicità, e dell'insufficienza, dell'esperienza, considerata nella sua totalità.  L'interpretazione neo-umanistica della filosofia itala Crotone,  la porta di Velia; accademia e lizio 'unità del sapere; contraddizione la dialettica della struttura originaria, Bontadini; struttura del discorso; dalla dialettica alla filosofia prima, Ragione scientifica e ragione filosofica, Le vie della ragione Le ragioni del lizio Storia della filosofia lizio metafisica, In principio era la meraviglia. grandi questioni della filosofia, Il Sumphilosophein Invito alla filosofia, La ricerca della verità in filosofia, dialogo satirico, un "falso d'autore" attribuito ad Aristotele, Eubulo o della ricchezza: dialogo perduto contro i governanti ricchi. dei Lincei VELIA VELINO Melisso GIRGENTI, LEONZIO, Gorgia, ROMA PORTICO ORTO Lucrezio Accademia  ANTONINO res publica il bene buono bello filosofia politica. G.: “Presocratica,” then. There is a barbarity for you. S.: You object already? G.: Deeply. It is a Germanic future tense disguised as a historical label. S.: You mean Vorsokratiker. G.: Precisely. “Before Socrates,” as if Parmenides in Elea spent his afternoons anxiously awaiting the arrival of an Athenian moral nuisance. S.: He might have. Great men cast long shadows backwards. G.: Only in very bad historiography. S.: But the label is useful. G.: So is influenza, in forcing people to stay at home. Usefulness is not innocence. S.: Then why does Berti use presocratica in 1959? G.: Because by 1959 the label had acquired scholarly respectability, and because Italy, having imported enough German classifications, occasionally forgot to inspect their metaphysical luggage. S.: Anti-Teutonic again. G.: Always where deserved. S.: Yet you do not deny the class of thinkers. G.: Of course not. I deny the absurdity of defining them by what comes after rather than by what they were doing. S.: You prefer what? Archaic Greek philosophy? Itala sapienza? Men from hot places thinking in fragments? G.: Better all of those than a term that makes Socrates the teleological centre of men who never met him and often lived inconveniently far away. S.: Elea, Crotone, Acragas, Miletus, Ephesus. G.: Exactly. South of the Tiber if one wants the Italian geography of imagination, and east of Athens if one wants the Greek reality of it. S.: So Berti, born in the Veneto, ought not to care. G.: On the contrary. Italians care very much for philosophers who happened to have done their best work in what later became Italy. Elea and Crotone are an irresistible temptation. S.: National annexation by metaphysics. G.: A noble vice. S.: But why would a Venetian or Veronese mind care about Magna Graecia? G.: Because Italian philosophy has always had the vice of treating the peninsula as retrospectively unified by thought, even when it was, at the time, gloriously disunited by politics. S.: Rather like Oxford treating all before 1066 as a mere preface to William. G.: Splendid. Yes. Go to the Tower of London and you get pre-William and post-William. You do not get the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy as lived reality. S.: So “presocratic” is like “pre-William.” G.: Exactly my complaint. A label structured by posterity’s favourite rupture. S.: The Romans did better? G.: Much. Ab urbe condita looks backward to a founding act, not forward to a saviour. S.: Unless the saviour builds the city. G.: Do not complicate my Roman nostalgia. S.: Too late. But back to Berti. “L’interpretazione umanistica della filosofia presocratica.” What is that opposing? An anti-humanistic interpretation? G.: In effect, yes. Or at least a scientistic, philological, doctrinal, or metaphysical reduction that forgets the human stakes of those early thinkers. S.: Human stakes in Parmenides? G.: Certainly. To ask what is, what can be thought, what can be said—those are not geological questions. S.: They may feel geological. G.: Only in German seminars. S.: And Berti in 1959 is resisting that? G.: I think so. He is already looking for a way to make ancient philosophy philosophically alive without merely turning it into source-criticism or doxographical archaeology. S.: Yet he ends up mostly with Plato and Aristotle. G.: As any sensible man does at Oxford. S.: There you are. Oxford is all Plato and Aristotle. G.: More or less. Plato, if you are literary and metaphysical; Aristotle, if you are logical and hopeful. S.: And the pre-socratics? G.: An occasional garnish. Enough Heraclitus to make one sound deep, enough Parmenides to make one sound severe, and enough Zeno to inconvenience undergraduates. S.: That is unfair. G.: It is exact. S.: You mean one could get through Oxford learning Republic, Sophist, Theaetetus, Categories, De Interpretatione, bits of Ethics and De Anima, and scarcely meet Empedocles? G.: One could do so comfortably. S.: Why? G.: Because Oxford is suspicious of fragments. Fragments encourage atmosphere, and atmosphere leads to Germans. S.: Kranz and Diels, you mean. G.: Diels and Kranz, yes. Not Kranza and Deller, however much your memory wishes to continentalise them. S.: Diels-Kranz then. Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. G.: The very title is a machine for making scraps look canonical. S.: But they are canonical. G.: Canonical scraps, yes. Which is not quite the same as a curriculum. S.: You dislike the word “fragment.” G.: No, I dislike what scholars do with it. A fragment is a survival. It is not a licence for inflation. S.: Yet Heidegger inflated them magnificently. G.: Heidegger could inflate a preposition. S.: And Aristotle, as you say, “goes crazy” about them in the Metaphysics. G.: Aristotle cannot leave his predecessors alone. He domesticates them by criticism. S.: Which is useful. G.: Very. But it also means that even when Oxford thinks it is teaching Aristotle, it is smuggling in the pre-socratics through Aristotle’s grievances. S.: So the pre-socratics survive as Aristotle’s enemies. G.: Or as his necessary ancestors, which is another version of the same impoliteness. S.: And Socrates himself? G.: Curiously under-described as a philosopher of his own right in Oxford, because by the time you get him, you are already reading him through Plato or as the prelude to Plato. S.: So “presocratic” is doubly unfair. It makes Socrates central and effaces Socrates himself. G.: Very good. You are almost a historian of philosophy. S.: Heaven forbid. G.: Indeed. At Oxford, if you focus too much on Plato or Aristotle, you cease to be called a philosopher and begin to be called a historian of philosophy. S.: Not Berti, though. G.: Not Berti, because he is one of those Italians who manage the old trick: to read the history of philosophy philosophically. S.: Which Oxford finds vaguely suspect. G.: Unless done by someone already dead. S.: Then why “umanistica”? G.: Because he wants to reclaim those early thinkers from interpretations that make them either primitive scientists, cryptic theologians, or museum exhibits in ontology. S.: Primitive science is the usual schoolbook line. G.: Yes, “from myth to reason,” as if Anaximander were an overachieving weather clerk. S.: And Berti resists that. G.: I think he resists the flattening. “Humanistic” suggests that these thinkers are engaged in total questions of existence, order, speech, justice, measure, community. S.: Pythagoras and community, certainly. Rather too certainly. G.: Quite. The danger with Pythagoras is that one ends up with beans, harmony, and police. S.: Crotone was not Oxford, then. G.: No, though both believed in discipline and strange diets. S.: And Elea? G.: Elea has the incomparable advantage of having Parmenides and Zeno in one place, which makes it metaphysically over-endowed. S.: Yet they go to Athens. G.: Zeno certainly enters the Athenian orbit, and Parmenides through Plato’s imagination is made to do so too. That is the bridge Berti no doubt finds important: south Italian origins, Athenian transmission, later canonical digestion. S.: So the “presocratics” are not really outside Plato’s world. G.: No. Plato makes them part of his stage machinery. And Aristotle turns them into his first chapter. S.: Then perhaps the label “presocratic” is just practical. G.: Practical labels are the most dangerous because they are rarely examined. S.: Berti examines it by interpreting them humanistically. G.: Or at least by refusing to let the label define the substance. S.: But is there not something anti-humanistic in the German style? G.: In its worse moments, yes. A tendency to let philological exactitude become a substitute for philosophical tact. S.: And Diels-Kranz is guilty of that? G.: Not guilty, precisely; but conducive. One ends up teaching numbers, fragments, testimonia, and sigla as if philosophy had broken out into cataloguing. S.: Oxford prefers whole dialogues and treatises. G.: Exactly. One can teach Republic and know where one is. One can teach Categories and terrify the young. One can teach De Interpretatione and pretend the whole of language begins with apophansis. S.: And Nicomachean Ethics. G.: To reassure the morally serious. S.: And De Anima. G.: To reassure the physiologically anxious. S.: Whereas Melissus gives one little pedagogical shelter. G.: Melissus gives one magnificent boredom, which is not quite the same thing. S.: Cruel again. G.: He is best in small quantities. S.: So Berti’s 1959 move is almost anti-Oxonian. G.: In the choice of topic, yes. In the manner of handling it, perhaps not. He is too dialectical, too Aristotelian, too philosophically serious to be merely a collector of fragments. S.: Yet he was under Gentile, you say. G.: Which is another Italian complication. One can come through the residue of idealism and still end up doing Aristotle with uncommon sobriety. S.: That sounds like a compliment. G.: It is. S.: Then tell me why Oxford never quite let the Vorsokratiker catch on. G.: Because the German package arrived with too much apparatus and not enough tutorial convenience. S.: Tutorial convenience as criterion of truth. G.: Of curriculum, certainly. S.: One cannot easily assign a weekly essay on fragments 8, 16, and 22 of Empedocles without producing tears. G.: Exactly. Whereas “Discuss the divided line” or “Can the categories be exhaustive?” at least gives the pupil something solid to misunderstand. S.: So the pre-socratics are pedagogically awkward. G.: And institutionally homeless. Too early for classicists who prefer language, too speculative for historians, too fragmentary for the ordinary philosophy tutor, and too German for comfort. S.: That is a fine cluster of disadvantages. G.: Which is why Berti’s interest is interesting. S.: You approve of him for making them philosophical again? G.: I do. Even if I dislike the title he inherited. S.: “Presocratica” still offends. G.: It always will. It is history as if narrated by the victors’ index. S.: Then what would you call them? G.: Early Greek philosophy, if sober. Archaic Greek thought, if broad. Italic-Aegean beginnings, if feeling expansive. Anything but a label whose whole structure depends on a man not yet alive to them. S.: You are very severe on futurity. G.: Only in nomenclature. Teleology is one thing; stationery another. S.: And the anti-Teutonic sentiment? G.: Entirely healthy in moderate doses. One must occasionally remind scholars that a title like Fragmente der Vorsokratiker is not the voice of Being but the voice of a Berlin publisher. S.: That is excellent. G.: Thank you. S.: So if Berti writes “interpretazione umanistica,” he is not sentimentalising but rescuing. G.: That is the charitable reading, and I think the right one. S.: From anti-humanistic readings? G.: From reductive ones. Making them mere physicists, mere source-material, mere preludes, mere stepping stones. S.: Which is what “presocratic” already tempts one to do. G.: Exactly. The title contains the danger the essay may be trying to cure. S.: Then the punchline is that Berti uses a bad label to correct the bad habits the label encourages. G.: Yes. A thoroughly philosophical manoeuvre: accept the inherited nonsense, then think against it.Grice: Enrico, la morte di Cicerone è davvero la fine del dialogo, o solo l’inizio di una nuova implicatura? Berti: Caro Grice, forse è come Platone e Aristotele al bar: si discute dell’unità e poi arriva la dialettica a chiedere il conto. Grice: Ah, la filosofia deve essere invitata, non spinta a prendere il caffè freddo. Sir Peter avrebbe scritto “Introduzione alla logica”, ma io preferisco “Un invito alla filosofia”, con pasticcini. Berti: Ecco, Grice, alla fine tra la meraviglia e la contraddizione, resta solo la consapevolezza che il discorso non si chiude mai—neanche quando arriva la morte di Cicerone. Berti, Enrico (1959). L’interpretatzione umanistica della filosofia presocratica. Padova. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bertinaria: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’indole e le vicende della filosofia italiana. Francesco Bertinaria (Genova, Liguria): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’indole e le vicende della filosofia italiana. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers move from what is said to what is meant by assuming cooperative rationality and deriving conversational implicatures as disciplined, context-sensitive inferences (often prompted when an utterance looks under-informative, off-topic, or otherwise strategically indirect), whereas Bertinaria, as your passage presents him, is not building a micro-pragmatics of inference but a cartography of Italian philosophy in which indole and vicende name the historically shaped dispositions, cultural temper, and intellectual trajectories that determine what Italian thinkers are even trying to do when they “philosophize.” Set against Grice, Bertinaria’s “conversational reason” would be less about maxims and calculability and more about the background-horizon that makes certain implicatures natural within a tradition: what gets left unsaid because it is supplied by shared civil, religious, and metaphysical inheritances (Vico/Romagnosi, Portico/Orto, eclecticism à la Cicero), so that the logic of implication is mediated by a national-philosophical style before it becomes a local conversational move. Online bibliographic records sharpen the specifics: Bertinaria (1816–1892) published Sull’indole e le vicende della filosofia italiana with Giuseppe Pomba in Turin in 1846 (available in full via Google Books/Internet Archive; later reissued 1866), and his surrounding works include the 1846 Antologia italiana article Concetto della filosofia e delle scienze inchiuse nel dominio di essa and later Torino/Genova university appointments (chair of Filosofia della storia at Torino in 1860, then Genova in 1865); those details reinforce the contrast that, where Grice theorizes the rational machinery inside a single exchange, Bertinaria theorizes the longue durée preconditions—historical, institutional, and temperamental—within which any Italian exchange becomes intelligible and within which certain implicatures feel like “common culture” rather than inference. Grice: “I would call Italian surnames colourful – as Chumley is colourful! B’s surname likely comes from the Italian given name Bertino. I like B.; he is, like me a philosophical cartographer – in his case, of ‘filosofia italiana’ for which he has identified ‘indole’ e this or that ‘vicenda,’ – now J. L. Austin once remarked that ‘sake’ has no denotatum – but ‘vicem’ does!” Studia a Pisa. Insegna a TorinoLa filosofia italiana Compendio di storia della filosofia Discorso sull'indole e le vicende della filosofia italiana Concetto della filosofia e delle scienze inchiuse nel dominio di essa, «Antologia italiana»”; “Disegno di una storia delle scienze filosofiche in Italia dal Risorgimento delle lettere sin oggi, Antologia italiana», “Concetto scientifico della storia, Prospetto dell'insegnamento della filosofia della storia” (Stamperia dell'unione tipografico editrice, Torino); “Della teoria poetica e dell'epopea latina, Torino); filosofia della storia, filosofia del diritto biologia e sociologia, La storia della filosofia e la filosofia della storia” «Riv. cont.», Estr.: Baglione, Torino); “Sulla formola esprimente il nuovo principio dell'enciclopedia” «Riv. cont.»,Il positivismo e la metafisica” «Riv. cont.»,  Estr.: Negro, Torino); “Scienza, Arte e Religione, «Gerdil» Dell'origine, progresso e condizione presente della filosofia civile, Riv. la funzione ontologica della rappresentazione ideale; “Concetto del mondo civile universale, evoluzione e il trascendentale lo stato l'incivilimento la civiltà nativa di VICO e ROMAGNOSI psicologia fisica ed iperfisica antagonismo sociale la critica esaminato e il trascendente, l'assoluto l’esoterico, SERBATI Ercole Rovere NERONE, ANTONINO Eis éautóv. ha carattere di dolcezza e pietà; abbraccia la morale del portico. Che se questi romani dell’orto e il portico asi mantennero fedeli ad un solo sistema, CICERONE  da esempio d’un eclettismo: nella morale prefere il sistema del portico, nella teoretica l'accademia, accettandovi anche l'orto e il lizio. Grice determinazione dell’assoluto. Grice: Francesco, cartografo filosofico, l’indole italiana è più dolce o più epica? Qui a Oxford, il massimo che tracciamo sono percorsi tra biblioteche e pub. Bertinaria: Grice, la mappa italiana va dalla pietà del portico alla moralità dell’orto, ma ogni tanto ci fermiamo in una piazza per discutere se il trascendente può ordinare un caffè macchiato. Grice: E il principio assoluto, allora, lo troviamo tra le enciclopedie o tra le chiacchiere di Vico e Romagnosi? Bertinaria: Dipende, Grice: se la filosofia si fa storia, ogni vicenda diventa una strada italiana—ma quando si chiude il portico, resta solo la dolcezza della conversazione, che in fondo è la vera metafisica. Bertinaria, Francesco (1850). Discorso sull’indole e le vicende della filosofia italiana. Torino: Antologia Italiana

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). Grice e Bertini: Giovanni Maria Bertini (Pancalieri, Piemonte). Studia sotto Rayneri at Carmagnola. G.: Let us begin, S., where continental philosophy so often begins: not with a university chair, but with a liceo professore di filosofia. S.: A type unknown to the English imagination, or known only as something faintly improper. Oxford likes to believe philosophy descends on the young from the clouds of Greats after they have had enough Greek to deserve it. G.: Whereas in Piedmont it appears to arrive in adolescence embodied in a man with a timetable, a black coat, and a doctrine. S.: Precisely. Bertini has Rayneri at Carmagnola before he has Ornato, and before he has Turin. That sequence matters. G.: Because Rayneri gives philosophy before Ornato gives style. S.: Better: Rayneri gives philosophy before Ornato gives a second birth in Plato and Jacobi. G.: And Greek? S.: Greek is there early too, which is what makes Bertini so characteristic. Before the philosophical conversion ripens, there is already rhetoric, Greek study, the old humanistic preparation. That is the continental trick: classics and philosophy are not enemies, nor even departments; they are phases of the same formation. G.: Unlike Oxford, where classics is respectable and philosophy is what happens if you stay too long in the room. S.: Or if you are not careful with Aristotle. G.: So Rayneri first. What had he given Bertini? S.: Not, so far as we can securely see, a shelf full of books in Bertini’s school years. Rayneri’s importance seems initially oral and pedagogic. That is the point worth insisting on. The first philosophical imprint is not bibliographical but personal. G.: Which makes him parallel to Ferri for Carlo Cantoni. S.: Exactly. Ferri at Casale Monferrato for Carlo Cantoni, Rayneri at Carmagnola for Bertini: in both cases the decisive force is the liceo teacher before the university professor. G.: That is already a major difference from the Oxonian myth, where school may teach Latin and Greek, but philosophy itself is not supposed to have happened yet. S.: Yes. Grice can later say he got rationalism from his father, or from habits of mind, or from the machinery of Literae Humaniores. But the idea that a school “professor of philosophy” had already planted the matter in him at fifteen would sound almost continental to the point of infection. G.: And then Bertini’s first attested publication is already a necrology. S.: Necrologia Ornato, 1842, in L’Eridano. A young man of twenty-three or twenty-four, writing not merely on a corpse, but on a source. G.: Because Ornato is not just dead matter for him. S.: Not at all. Ornato is post-laurea friendship, influence, and transmission. The necrology is not accidental memorialism. It is, as one might say, filial philosophy in print. G.: You are sentimental today. S.: Only structurally. The chronology compels it. Bertini studies philosophy under Rayneri before Turin. He takes his laurea young, before twenty-one. After the laurea he becomes close to Ornato. Then comes the Platonic-Jacobian turn. G.: Let us keep those stages clean. Pre-Ornato philosophy is Rayneri. Post-laurea deepening is Ornato. S.: Precisely. And one must not falsify the “after his laurea he became Ornato’s friend” formula into “therefore they first met after the laurea.” G.: Because they may well have known of each other earlier, especially in that Piedmontese corridor. S.: Yes, but what is attested is friendship and strong influence after the degree, not first encounter. G.: Good. Now, what happens to the young Bertini after the necrology? S.: He expands. And that is one of the most interesting things about him. The early publication record is not a narrow philosophical apprenticeship. It already includes obituary writing, Gioberti, education, then by 1855 Plato and Aristotle in Rivista contemporanea. G.: So the publication list itself stages an enlargement. S.: Quite. Let us rehearse it. Earliest attested piece: the 1842 Necrologia Ornato in L’Eridano. Then a Giobertian-catholic piece in 1847. Then Della gratuita educazione del popolo in 1848. Then in 1855 the Saggio sul Fedro di Platone and the review of Bonghi’s Metafisica di Aristotele in Rivista contemporanea. G.: It sounds almost too neat: first memorial philosophy, then national-intellectual polemic, then pedagogy, then Plato and Aristotle. S.: The life of a provincial intellectual in print, yes. Provincial in the honorable nineteenth-century sense: deeply local, but not small. G.: Let us pause over provincial. Oxford likes to universalise itself by capital letter. The University, The Schools, The Press, The Chair. Everything else becomes either “provincial” or “redbrick” or some moor with a syllabus. S.: And yet here in Piemonte and Lombardia the so-called provincial institutions are doing the actual work of formation. Carmagnola, Casale Monferrato, Turin, later Pavia and Milan. Philosophy is not waiting for London to notice it. G.: Or for Oxford to approve it. S.: Quite. Which is why the Piedmontese line is so revealing. Rayneri at the liceo, Ornato as post-laurea inspirer, Bertini at Turin, then Carlo Cantoni under Bertini, after Ferri at Casale. One could draw it like a genealogy, except that genealogies flatter blood and this is all pedagogy. G.: And in the middle of it Jacobi suddenly appears, to the alarm of any English classicist. S.: Quite rightly. For in Oxford one may know Jacobi as a name in the history of ideas, but not as a living mediator of Plato. G.: Whereas Ornato seems to have made precisely that transmission. S.: Yes. Ornato is not merely “also interested in Jacobi.” He appears to have been strongly influenced by Jacobi, to have translated Jacobi in manuscript, and to have held Plato and Jacobi together in a single spiritual-philosophical orientation. G.: Which he then passes to Bertini. S.: Exactly. That is why the phrase “Plato and Jacobi” in Bertini’s formation is not a casual list. It is a coupled inheritance. G.: And the years? S.: Late 1830s into 1842, essentially. Ornato dies in 1842. Bertini is still very young. So the friendship and influence are compressed into a narrow but formative interval. G.: Narrow intervals often do the longest work. S.: That is why schools matter more than universities psychologically. The university can refine; the school can imprint. G.: Then Bertini becomes, in effect, for Carlo Cantoni, what Rayneri had been for him: a philosophical presence institutionalised. S.: Yes, though with a difference. Bertini is at the university, not the liceo, in Carlo Cantoni’s case. The exact structural parallel is Rayneri to Bertini, Ferri to Carlo Cantoni. But Bertini still represents the same continental pattern of person-centered transmission. G.: And now to the divergence from Oxford. S.: Gladly. Oxford likes to narrate education as if philosophy appeared only after sufficient exposure to Greek particles and Latin periods. The schoolmaster is formative, yes, but not “in philosophy” in the continental mode. G.: Clifton gives you discipline, classics, perhaps a sense of tone. It does not usually give you a professore di filosofia who later reappears behind your thesis title. S.: Exactly. Whereas in Carmagnola and Casale the philosophical teacher is already there, and is not merely preparing one for the university, but shaping one’s conceptual habits before one arrives. G.: Which may explain why continental philosophy so often looks genealogical and Oxonian philosophy so often looks like a discovery one has made oneself. S.: Very good. Oxford cultivates the illusion of autonomous arrival. The Continent is often more honest about influence. G.: Back to Bertini’s works. How shall we characterise their enlargement? S.: He begins under the sign of influence, but he does not remain there. The Necrologia on Ornato is a memorial gesture, but already a philosophical one. The later pieces show widening concern: religious-philosophical polemic, public education, Plato, Aristotle, and eventually the history of philosophy as an academic field. G.: So not just a Platonist. S.: No, though Plato remains a privileged pole. What expands is the frame. Bertini moves from formative influence toward institutional synthesis. He becomes, eventually, a university professor of history of philosophy. G.: And that title itself is revealing. History of philosophy is not merely philosophy with footnotes; it is a way of making the whole past available as material for formation. S.: Exactly. And that too differs from certain Oxonian habits, where history of philosophy may be tolerated as a respectable annex but not always felt as the living bloodstream of philosophical education. G.: Unless the dead philosopher happens to speak excellent Greek. S.: Or can be translated into ordinary language and made to confess. G.: Which Bertini, being a better European, does not require. S.: He requires Greek, Jacobi, Ornato, Rayneri, and then the university machinery of Turin. G.: Let us mention Turin properly. Pre-Ornato, Bertini has already moved from Pancalieri to Carmagnola, studied rhetoric, begun Greek privately, studied philosophy under Rayneri, won the Collegio delle Province competition, and gone to Turin for letters. S.: Yes. So by the time Ornato becomes a major influence, the young Bertini is not a blank slate. The philosophical disposition is already there; Ornato does not create it ex nihilo. G.: He redirects it. S.: Or deepens it. Rayneri gives early philosophical form, likely Rosminian and pedagogic. Ornato gives the Platonic-Jacobian inflection and a more elective philosophical friendship. G.: Then the early publications bear the marks of both breadth and piety. S.: Piety in the large sense, yes. A necrology, an educational piece, a Giobertian essay, Platonic and Aristotelian studies. These are not yet the publications of a narrow specialist; they are the publications of a man forming himself publicly. G.: Publicly, but in journals with names like L’Eridano. S.: Which is one of the glories of the thing. The Po under a classical title, Turin in learned local dress, and a young philosopher entering print through a review whose name already provincialises the universal and universalises the provincial. G.: Oxford would have called it “The Journal” and left everyone else to infer which one. S.: Exactly. Oxford’s localism masquerades as universality. Piedmont’s universality often arrives under a local sign. G.: And then Carlo Cantoni later enters through Bertini into Jouffroy. S.: Yes, and there the line acquires a new French-facing turn. Ferri at Casale awakens the vocation, Bertini at Turin supervises the thesis on Jouffroy, and the old anti-psychologistic Kantian future begins to germinate. G.: Which means Bertini is both heir and transmitter. S.: That is his real importance. He stands midway in a chain: Rayneri to Bertini, Ornato to Bertini, Bertini to Carlo Cantoni. G.: A school philosopher, a grecist-Jacobian, a university mediator, and then the later Kantian. S.: A beautiful chain, and thoroughly un-Oxonian in its candid reliance on teachers. G.: You mean Oxford has teachers too. S.: Of course. But it likes to pretend they are occasions rather than causes. G.: Whereas Bertini’s life makes causes visible. S.: Yes. The liceo professore di filosofia, the early Greek, the post-laurea friendship, the first necrological publication, the widening print record, the academic chair: the structure is almost embarrassingly legible. G.: Which is why one must resist the temptation to reduce everything to Jacobi or everything to Plato or everything to “the history of philosophy.” S.: Exactly. The growth is layered. Bertini is not converted once; he is formed successively. G.: And perhaps that is the continental lesson. S.: Which one? G.: That philosophy is not born in a vacuum, nor merely in a lecture hall, but in those successive educational forms by which a young man first hears a voice, then reads a language, then buries a master, then reviews a Greek dialogue, then becomes himself the kind of man who can alter another’s future. S.: That is almost too good. G.: It is your line. S.: Then I shall deny it later and claim it was jointly produced. G.: Like a proper Oxonian? S.: No, like a proper Piedmontese with better footnotes.Bertini, Giovanni Maria (1839). Laurea, Torino. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Betti: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale della lupa; ovvero, problemi di storia della costitutzione politica e sociale nell’antica Roma.  Emilio Betti (Camerino, Macerata, Marche): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale della lupa; ovvero, problemi di storia della costitutzione politica e sociale nell’antica Roma. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers rationally recover what a speaker means beyond what is said by assuming a cooperative purpose in the talk-exchange and applying maxims (quantity, quality, relation, manner), so that implicatures are typically calculable inferences drawn from an utterance plus context and shared expectations; Betti, by contrast, is not primarily a theorist of everyday conversational inference but a jurist and general hermeneutician, so the closest analogue to “implicature” in his framework is what interpretation must legitimately extract from an objective “meaningful form” (a text, act, norm, historical document) under canons that constrain and justify understanding. In Betti’s mature work Teoria generale dell’interpretazione (2 vols., 1955; later abridged/translated as Allgemeine Auslegungslehre als Methodik der Geisteswissenschaften, 1967), meaning is reason-governed not by conversational cooperation but by methodological norms of interpretation aimed at objectivity, coherence, and the autonomy of the object interpreted; where Grice treats inference as guided by presumptions about speakers’ intentions and conversational rationality, Betti treats inference as guided by disciplined reconstruction of an intended sense embedded in enduring forms, with the interpreter responsible for warranting readings by rule-like principles. Your “lupa/ancient Rome” motif fits as a contrast: Grice’s wolf story would be about whether we can presume cooperation (and thus infer implicatures) among agents whose interests may be adversarial, while Betti’s “wolf” is more naturally the emblem of a juridico-historical world where the relevant rationality is institutional and interpretive—how we read Rome’s norms, constitutional shifts, and legal acts through a method that resists arbitrariness—so that what is “left unsaid” is not mainly a conversational flout to be decoded but a gap to be filled by historically and doctrinally responsible interpretation. Grice: “I like B.!”  Si laurea a Bologna su la crisi della repubblica e la genesi del principato. Insegna a Roma. Artefici del codice civile. Nel corso della sua attività accademica ha coperto tutti i rami del diritto, in particolare il diritto romano, civile, commerciale e processuale. Dei Lincei. Fascista. Il normale del negozio giuridico, obbligazioni e contratti, interpretazione.  L'influenza di B. e determinante nella soluzione, adottata da Grandi. eccezione sull'azione; vindicazione, diritto privato, processo, giudicare, pronunciare e dannare/condennare, litis æstimatio, processo civile, domma del contahere; restaurazione di SULLA: crisi della costituzione repubblicana; struttura dell'obbligazione, obbligazione ed azione, limiti della cosa giudicata, diritto romano, Diritto processuale civile; interpretazione della legge e dell’atto giuridico: ermeneutica. Griffero obbligazione cosa giudicata diritto processuale civile interpretazione genesi del principato lingua latina, base etnica della antica Roma, i latini, l’eta monarchica, rex regere lex, legare l’eta repubblicana, res pubica used during l’eta monarchica, Romolo, il primo re, Tarquino, l’ultimo re, l’eta repubblicana, la stirpe dei patrizi, patrizio, cepo aristocratico, Caesar dittatore, assassinio di Caesar, il principato, Augusto, significante ‘consacrato’, ‘Imperator Augusto Ottaviano’, imperio, imperatore, pater familias, paternalism, diritto consuetudinario, il fuhrer, l’hero, autorita carismatica, civilita, ius civile, romanita, diritto romano ostrogotico, diritto romano longobardi, popolo romano, nazione romana, romano e sabini, diritto per romani e diritto per pellegrini, vocabulario del diritto romano, dizionario di diritto romano, lexicon auctoritas lex legare eddictum decreto suggestione, agere, diritto processuale, contratto, negozio, diritto penale civile Antonio Ottaviano stato autoritario, concetto di stato diritto romano laico senato PSQR Vico circolo dell’implicatura. Grice: Emilio, la lupa romana è stata più convincente di molte leggi. Se avesse avuto un codice civile, forse avrebbe imposto il “latte obbligatorio” a tutti i fondatori di città. Betti: Grice, la vera legge della lupa era quella del patto non scritto: chi si trova nel Foro deve imparare a interpretare i segnali, non solo le norme! E se il negozio giuridico fosse stato una trattativa tra lupi e patrizi? Grice: Forse la giustizia a Roma si sarebbe risolta in una corsa tra la lupa e il senato: chi vince decide la sentenza, chi perde scrive una nuova interpretazione del diritto. Betti: Caro Grice, tra l’obbligazione naturale e quella convenzionale, la lupa resta l’unica che non ha bisogno di commentari. Se Augusto avesse chiesto consiglio a lei, forse il principato sarebbe stato fondato su un brindisi, non su un decreto! Betti, Emilio (1910). Diritto e logica formale. Camerino: Galeotti.

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bianco: la ragione conversazionale  e l’implicatura conversazionale della filosofia dello spirito; ovvero, la morte d’Eurialo.  Carlo Bianco (Cervinara, Avellino, Campania): la ragione conversazionale  e l’implicatura conversazionale della filosofia dello spirito; ovvero, la morte d’Eurialo. Grice’s reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers recover what a speaker means beyond what is literally said by assuming cooperative rationality and inferring implicatures from contextual expectations (especially when a speaker is deliberately indirect, under-informative, or apparently irrelevant); on that model, “what is meant” is a product of practical inference from an utterance plus shared conversational norms. In your Bianco passage, by contrast, conversational reason is reframed through filosofia dello spirito and a moralized “science of life”: implicature is no longer primarily a technical upshot of maxims and calculability, but something like the spiritual residue of a discourse oriented to ultimate questions (life, death, afterlife, freedom), with “concretism” functioning as a doctrinal background that supplies what conversation is for (consolation, moral orientation, respect for faith) and thus what is naturally left unsaid; the Eurialo/Patroclus motif and the coffee-and-poetry banter suggest that, for Bianco, the deepest “unsaid” is existential rather than merely pragmatic, so conversational meaning is tied to commemorative and ethical horizons rather than to Grice’s thin rational coordination. Online biographical notes commonly describe Carlo Bianco as a long-lived Cervinara-based intellectual, lawyer and writer, associated with spiritualist themes and credited with works including La morale come scienza della vita and a saggio on filosofia dello spirito; the earliest publication claim that circulates is a first poetry collection dated 1925 (often cited in local/commemorative sources), which fits your closing reference “Bianco (1925) Poesie” and reinforces the idea that his idiom is literary-spiritual first, analytic-pragmatic second—making him an illuminating foil for Grice precisely because his “implicature” is anchored in spirit, value, and finitude rather than in conversational calculation. Grice: “I like B.; he optimistically thinks of ‘morale’ as a ‘scienza’ – but ‘della vita,’ which helps. I have myself explored the topic, and came with a ‘philosophy’ of life, rather!” Ha vissuto per tutta la vita nella città natale, in provincia di Avellino. La sua intensa e appassionata vita di uomo di cultura lo ha portato in giro per tutto il mondo.   Laureato in lettere, filosofia e scienze, docente di filosofia morale all'Trento, fu un seguace del pensiero di Platone e Marcuse. Fondatore della corrente del concretismo, dottrina filosofica che propugna il rispetto di ogni fede religiosa, il credo nell'aldilà e nella vita dopo la morte, ottenne nel 2004 la candidatura al premio Nobel per la letteratura dalle Accademie italiane.  Nel corso della sua carriera ricevette per tre volte il premio della Presidenza del Consiglio dei ministri. Accademico di Francia, membro della Columbia Academy, nella sua lunga attività letteraria conseguì diversi diplomi e riconoscimenti/ Stidoa AQUINO. La critica, filosofia dello spirito, L'Uomo sui confini dell'ignoto, La morale come scienza della vita” (Edizioni Studi e ricerche, Catania); “Tempi di Sofistica, L'uomo, l'inconoscibile” (Edizioni Scientifiche Internazionale, Napoli); “La vita davanti a voi, Casa Editrice Fausto Fiorentino. Vedi Cervinara commemoraarticolo de la Repubblica, 3 settembre, Sezione Napoli, Archivio storico.  Vedi È morto B. avvocato e candidato al Nobel nel articolo de la Repubblica, Sezione Napoli, Archivio storico.Alfredo Marro, Un gigante del pensiero, Edizioni Il Caudino, Cervinara; Marro, Biografie cervinaresi, Marro, Frammenti di un'animapoesie scelte Caudino, Cervinara, B. nella Cultura Caudina, Rotondi, B., poeta della fede e del dolore biografia e  nel sito "carlobianco blogspot". la filosofia dell spirito; ovvero, la morte di Patroclo, Centro Ricerche Biopsichiche Padova, saggio sulla filosofia dello spirito, kantismo, spiritualismo, morale, vita, liberta, piazza bianco, cervinara. Grice: Carlo, filosofia dello spirito e morale come scienza della vita? A Oxford abbiamo la morale del tè pomeridiano, ma lo spirito di Patroclo non si è mai presentato a conversare. Bianco: Grice, qui a Cervinara lo spirito preferisce il caffè forte e qualche poesia nel pomeriggio. La morte di Eurialo ci ricorda che anche il più audace finisce per essere commemorato con un brindisi, non con una footnote. Grice: Allora, Carlo, il concretismo si fonda sul rispetto di ogni fede? Da noi, la fede più diffusa è quella nel biscottino di metà mattina. Sarà metafisica o empirica? Bianco: Grice, la vera filosofia è quella che resiste all’inconoscibile e sopravvive alla pausa caffè. Se Eurialo avesse avuto una tazzina, forse avrebbe affrontato il destino con più spirito e meno pathos. Bianco, Carlo (1925). Poesie. 

 

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

 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Blossio: la ragione conversazionale al portico a Roma – filosofia italiana – . (Cumae).  Gaio Blossio: la ragione conversazionale al portico a Roma – filosofia italiana – . (Cumae). Abstract. Grice: “Philosophy was obviously taught at Oxford within the Faculty of Literae Humaniores – Philosophy being a sub-faculty – and therefore, we all were OBLIGED, ineed, obligated, to know what stoicism, epicureanism, cynicism, and all the rest meant. Yet, if you would ask, say, Austin, what are the DEFINING features of, say, stoicism, he (the literalist that he was) would say: ‘the painted porch’!” -- Filosofo italiano. Alla stoa romana si collega B. di Cuma (il nome ha origine osca), che e scolaro dello stoico Antipatro di Tarso. Dopo la morte di Tiberio Gracco, B. dove difendersi davanti ai consoli.. Poi, B. fugge da Roma, e si reca in Asia presso Aristonico di Pergamo e, quando questo e sconfitto, si da la morte. A member of the Porch who is thought to have had an influence on the reforms introduced in Rome by Tiberio Gracco. GRICEVS: Blossi, cum Oxonii Stoicos didicissem, putabam “stoicismum” esse doctrinam, sed Austinus (litteralis ille) respondit: “porticus picta.” BLOSSIVS: Recte dicit, Grice, nam si “stoicus” a porticu venit, ego “Blossius” a floribus venio—itaque tu sub tecto philosopharis, ego in horto. GRICEVS: At tu sub eadem porticu Romae cum Tiberio Graccho ambulasti, donec consules te interrogaverunt, quod est viva vox sine tea. BLOSSIVS: Ita vero, sed melius est in Asia honeste exire e vita quam Romae cotidie audire “define Stoicum” et postea solum parietem spectare.

 

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

 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bobbio: la ragione conversazionale e  l’implicatura conversazionale del bisogno del bisogno del senso del senso.  Norberto Bobbio (Torino, Piemonte): la ragione conversazionale e  l’implicatura conversazionale del bisogno del bisogno del senso del senso. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats conversation as a cooperative, purposive activity in which hearers use publicly available evidence plus rational expectations (maxims) to infer speaker-meaning, so that conversational implicatures are calculable products of practical reasoning about what a speaker could reasonably intend in context; Bobbio, by contrast, comes from legal-political theory and the analysis of norms, where “reason” shows up less as a micro-theory of inference from an utterance and more as the framework that makes civil coexistence and rule-following possible at all, hence your passage’s emphasis on fiducia reciproca and regole del gioco: for Bobbio the background condition for intelligibility is not primarily a set of conversational maxims but the normative infrastructure of mutual recognition, shared rules, and the “sense” of practices (including the way custom can function as a normative fact, as in his 1942 La consuetudine come fatto normativo). Read in Gricean terms, Bobbio’s focus shifts implicature away from witty, local, maxim-based derivations and toward the tacit presuppositions of a rule-governed social world: what we can mean to each other depends on trust, stabilized conventions, and institutional forms that sustain cooperation; that also fits Bobbio’s self-description (and later reception) of philosophy as an exercise in doubt, dialogue, and the asking of “questions of sense” (e.g., the later collected text La filosofia e il bisogno di senso), as well as his analytic style in philosophy of law and political philosophy (Treccani lists, among early works, Scienza e tecnica del diritto, 1934, and La consuetudine come fatto normativo, 1942, and identifies La filosofia del decadentismo as 1944 rather than 1934). In short, Grice gives a reason-theory of how utterances generate meant contents inside a conversational exchange, whereas Bobbio supplies a reason-theory of the normative and civic conditions—rules, trust, and the demand for “sense”—within which such exchanges can function as cooperative practices in the first place. Grice: “My favourite B. must be his ‘dialettica’ – he knows all about it, since he is into the Plato/Aristotle models that run most philosophy – some think there is a third model at play – but … Bobbio is a good one; like me, he is a philosophical cartographer – into the longitudinal and latitudinal unity of philosophy – even if he can be picky when it comes to the longitudinal: Italian only, and uncanonical, like Cattaneo, Gramsci, Croce, Especially Cattaneo!” B. – this is the philosopher, not the infantry general – is a Griceian in that ‘fiducia reciproca’ becomes an essential meta-goal; he has been involved with the dispute naturalism/positivism, and has come with some interesting points about the ‘regole del gioco’ – and whether ‘custom’ can be a ‘normative fact’! All in all, his philosophy is about trying to look for an answer to what I deem the fundamental question regarding rational co-operation – His appeal to philosophical biology or zoology is interesting – Toby trusts Tibby, the squarrels, as Jack trusts Jill and vice versa – but does a ‘lupus’ trust a ‘lupus’? Hobbes, who doesn’t know the first thing about zoology, philosophical or other, thinks so! This essential Italian philosopher philosophises on Fregeian sense ‘senso,’the need for sense the search for sense, meaning meaning. Conosce Ginzburg, Foa e Pavese. Fascista.  La sua giovinezza, come da lui stesso descritto fu: "vissuta tra un convinto fascismo patriottico in famiglia e un altrettanto fermo antifascismo appreso nella scuola, con insegnanti noti antifascisti, come Cosmo e Zini, e compagni altrettanto intransigenti antifascisti come Ginzburg e Foa".  Allievo di Solari e Einaudi, si laurea sul domma del diritto. Conosce Treves e Geymonat, Studia l’esistenzialismo. Studia sotto Pastore la fenomenologia di Husserl. Grice: Norberto, il bisogno del senso è come cercare una strada in una città disegnata da Platone e Aristotele. Tu che mappa usi? Bobbio: Grice, a Torino la mappa cambia a ogni angolo, ma io mi affido alla ragione e alla fiducia reciproca: se incontriamo Cattaneo o Croce, basta chiedere indicazioni! Grice: Ma se ci imbattiamo in un lupus hobbesiano, come la mettiamo con la cooperazione filosofica? La fiducia va bene anche tra lupi? Bobbio: Dipende, Grice: se il lupo ha studiato la dialettica, magari ci accompagna fino al prossimo senso; se invece è rimasto ai regolamenti del gioco, meglio cambiare strada e filosofeggiare col primo scoiattolo che passa! Bobbio, Norberto (1934). La filosofia del decadentismo. Torino: Bocca.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Boccadiferro: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del luogo comune.  Anici Ludovico Boccadiferro (Bologna, Emilia): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del luogo comune. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats talk as a purposive, cooperative enterprise in which hearers infer speaker-meaning by assuming a shared direction and rational maxims (quality, quantity, relation, manner), so that what is meant beyond what is said (conversational implicature) is calculable from publicly available cues plus the presumption of cooperation; the Boccadiferro passage, by contrast, casts “conversational reason” as grounded not in maxims but in the commonplace as a rhetorical-logical resource (locus communis) for finding and ordering arguments, echoing Cicero’s De inventione and the tradition of topical invention in which prudence lies in selecting from “places” of argument and in arranging probable premises so that an audience can be moved from shared starting-points to a conclusion. In that frame, implicature becomes less an inference triggered by maxim-flouting and more a culturally stocked, learnable repertoire of ready-to-hand inferential pathways: when Boccadiferro jokes that Grice’s implicature is “fine” and his own “iron mouth” is the corkscrew, the point is that the commonplace supplies the audience with the missing steps in advance, so persuasion can proceed by amplification and selection rather than by reconstructing an intention each time. Online, the relevant historical anchor is Ludovico Boccadiferro (Latinized Buccadiferro), a Bolognese Aristotelian humanist (1482–1545) whose lectures were largely published posthumously; sources like Treccani and modern reference works identify him as a teacher at Bologna and Rome in an Averroist-leaning Aristotelian line, which fits the passage’s topical-logic voice even if the specific “Opus logicum, 1552” imprint may reflect a later compilation or attribution within that posthumous publication stream. Grice: “My surname means either pig or grey; B.’s surname means something else! The surname “B.” can be easily explained. Literally, mouth of iron: someone with an ability to speak forcefully, or a a blacksmith known for his strong grip, his ‘mouth of iron’ being his tool. inveniat, ex quibus argumenta construat sed hoc dificillimum est, et multa indiget prudentia, et longa consideratione quis enim possets tatim inspecto termino propositionum, quæ probabiles sint et indubita txcopiam inuenire; atque ex hiseas, quæ propositæ quæstioni conveniat, eligere si hoc ita est, patet longe consultius, et præstantiu segisse philosophum, qui has propolitiones nobis invenerit, et explicauerit; easq; secundum unum quodque quæstionis genus certo ordine ita digesserit, ut quam vis plurimæ sint, nihil tamen confusionis pariant, sed maximam, accertamin una quaquere argumentorum copiam suppeditant neque tamen prætermit tit philosophus terminos, exquibus maximæ propositiones desumuntur: hoc enim facile ad modum est exeiusdi et iselicere sed noluit ipse terminorum ordinem sequi, quoniam ordo ille problematum ordine minterturbasset, qui longe præstantior est et ad usum accomodatior qai igitur terminorum do &rinam sequitur, primo propositiones ignorat; quarum præcipuus est usus in argumentis et fine quibus nullus est terminorum usus deinde nullum secundum quæstionum genera ordinem habet, quo sit, utinomni qux sionis genere per omnia loca temere vagaricoa et us sit atque ita patet lon dubitatio, TOPICORVM lizio. cota mende his omnibus possumus argumentari, ut si velimus probare diuitias non esse bonas, ex eo loco hoc modo argumentabimur si sanitas, quæ magis videtur esse bona, quam divitiæ, bona tam en non est, ergo neque divitiæ bonæ sunt si enim deinde probemus sanitatem non esse bonam ex eo forte, quod aliquibus sit causa mali, ex loco proposito ostensumerit divitias non esse bonas. probare uule NOTANDVM autem hoc loco est, alio mod. CICERONE, De Inventione, Grice: Caro Boccadiferro, quando dico “bocca di ferro” implico che tu possa zittire un seminario solo schiarendoti la gola. Boccadiferro: E quando tu dici che il tuo cognome vuol dire “maiale o grigio”, io implico che a Oxford tu sia riuscito a essere entrambe le cose senza cambiarti d’abito. Grice: Vedi, il bello è che non lo dico, lo lascio inferire, come Cicero lasciava inferire la fatica di trovare argomenti prima ancora del caffè. Boccadiferro: Allora inferisci questo: se la tua implicatura è così fine, la mia bocca di ferro è solo il cavatappi per aprirla. Boccadiferro, Anici Ludovico (1552). Opus logicum. Bologna: Rossi. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Boccanegra: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’esperienza.  Osvaldo Boccanegra (Venezia, Veneto): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’esperienza. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers routinely and rationally recover what is meant beyond what is literally said by assuming a cooperative, purposive “talk exchange” governed by maxims (quality, quantity, relation, manner) and by treating apparent violations as cues for inference; conversational implicatures are thus not extra semantic contents but products of practical reasoning about a speaker’s intentions under shared norms. Boccanegra, as your passage frames him, relocates the center of gravity from these procedural norms of exchange to esperienza as a metaphysical-epistemic paradigm in a Lockean key: conversational reason becomes an implicature of lived and co-lived experience, where what is “left unsaid” is anchored less in rule-like expectations of relevance or informativeness than in a prior ontology of the person and of being (Aquinas/Bontadini) that makes discourse possible and intelligible in the first place; hence “conversational implicature of experience” reads like a thickening of Grice’s thin, economy-driven inferential model into a systematic itinerary from metaphysics to ethics, with beatitude, moral action, and the sense of being functioning as background commitments that shape what counts as a rational conversational move. On the factual side, online sources identify the figure as the Dominican philosopher and theologian Alberto (religious name) Boccanegra, born Osvaldo, Venice 1920–Fiesole 2010, with philosophical training at Milan (under Bontadini), doctoral work in Rome, later teaching at the Angelicum and at Bologna/Firenze, extensive unpublished manuscripts at San Domenico di Fiesole, and course-dispense titled Frammenti di metafisica iniziale; scholarship on his “paradigm of experience” and “principle of metaphysics” appears in Divus Thomas (2013) and related bibliographic records, which supports the portrait in your passage of a systematic metaphysician for whom esperienza is not merely a conversational topic but the governing frame within which conversational rationality is to be understood. Grice: “Italian philosophy is what I call ‘musical,’ or ‘of a musical character;’ in any case, I cannot think of an ENGLISH – Oxonian even – philosopher whose name coincides with the title of an opera by Verdi! B.is a good one; we often laugh at Aquinas because he is a saint – but we have to recall that Aquinas never knew it – for centuries after his death he ain’t one! Boccanegra prefers to call him ‘Aquino,’ or ‘Aquinate’ B. is like me a systematic philosopher: dalla metafisica alla etica – is that possible? Yes, what is the ‘paraidm,’ in Kuhn’s use of this tricky word? Esperienza, alla Locke! And co-experience in my conversational model!” Si laurea a Milano sui i primi principi all’AQUINO di BONTADINI e a Roma De dynamismo entis. Insegna a Roma Fundamenta metaphisica. Conosce Centi. filosofo metafisico Frammenti di metafisica iniziale. Per più di vent'anni ha insegnato filosofia e teologia nello Studio Teologico Accademico Bolognese e nello Studio Teologico Fiorentino.  Migliaia di pagine manoscritte sono conservate dopo la sua morte nell'archivio conventuale di San Domenico di Fiesole. Fu autore di pubblicazioni ed articoli filosofici comparsi o recensiti su riviste italiane ed internazionali.  Fu confessore ricercato soprattutto dai giovani. Nonostante una malattia che lo ha accompagnato e provato per quasi tutta la vita costringendolo a cure costanti, riusciva quotidianamente a fare escursioni per diversi chilometri. Quando negli ultimi anni le sue forze non gli permisero di continuare la ricerca, si dedicò alla preghiera costante, sia di giorno che di notte.  Saggi e pubblicazioni La beatitudine prova radicale dell'esistenza del divino antropologia moralità tolleranza diritto Bontadini beatitudine atti umani SENSO dell'essere eresia uomo in quanto persona centro della metafisica AQUINO esperienza. Grice: Osvaldo, esperienza filosofica o escursione quotidiana? A volte ho l’impressione che l’esperienza sia come camminare tra le idee: ogni passo, una scoperta! Boccanegra: Grice, tu che sei maestro di implicature, dimmi: l’esperienza si fa con i piedi o con la testa? Io preferisco partire dalla metafisica, ma poi mi ritrovo sempre a contemplare la beatitudine, anche se il percorso è tortuoso. Grice: Ma la beatitudine, caro Osvaldo, è forse il premio finale di chi sopporta la fatica? Locke avrebbe preferito il sentiero empirico, Aquino forse quello della preghiera. In ogni caso, la strada passa sempre dal senso dell’essere! Boccanegra: Allora, Grice, l’esperienza filosofica è una passeggiata in compagnia: qualche chilometro di dubbio, un po’ di tolleranza, e magari, alla fine del cammino, una pausa per contemplare il senso della persona… e se ci scappa una risata, tanto meglio! Boccanegra, Osvaldo (1951). Frammenti di metafisica iniziale. Venezia. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bonaiuti: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale -- Eppur si muove.  Galileo Galilei Bonaiuti: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale -- Eppur si muove. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers get from what is said to what is meant by assuming a cooperative, purposive “talk exchange” governed by rational norms (the Cooperative Principle and maxims), so that apparent departures from plain informativeness, relevance, or perspicuity trigger calculable conversational implicatures. Bonaiuti in your passage is Galileo Galilei, whose full name includes “Bonaiuti” (Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de’ Galilei), and whose methodological stance relocates “reason” from conversational coordination to inquiry into nature: the universe is a “book” written in mathematical language (triangles, circles, geometrical figures), intelligible only to those who learn its characters (Il Saggiatore, 1623). The comparison is therefore a shift of domain and medium: Grice models rationality as a norm of interpersonal communication that licenses inferences beyond literal content, whereas Galileo models rationality as a norm of scientific interpretation that licenses inferences beyond sensory appearances, using experiment and mathematization to separate reliable signification from misleading “mere words” or scholastic dispute. Still, the parallel is striking: both are anti-mystificatory and anti-authoritarian about meaning—Grice against treating semantics as self-sufficient without pragmatic reasoning, Galileo against treating philosophy as deference to “celebrated authors” rather than reading the world’s own text—and both make understanding depend on disciplined inference under publicly checkable constraints (maxims and cancellability for Grice; measurement, geometry, and reproducible observation for Galileo). Where Grice’s implicature explains how we responsibly extract “more than is said” in conversation, Galileo’s method explains how we responsibly extract “more than is seen” in nature; in both cases, reason is not a private flash but a rule-governed practice of moving from signs to what they warrant. Grice: “There is a Buonaiuti; but this is BON-!” Galileo B. – tomba a Firenze. Galileo Galilei. His father was, like mine, a musician.” – “La filosofia è scritta in questo grandissimo libro che continuamente ci sta aperto innanzi a gli occhi (io dico l'universo), ma non si può intendere se prima non s'impara a intender la lingua, e conoscer i caratteri, ne' quali è scritto. Egli è scritto in lingua matematica, e i caratteri son triangoli, cerchi, ed altre figure geometriche, senza i quali mezzi è impossibile a intenderne umanamente parola; senza questi è un aggirarsi vanamente per un oscuro laberinto”. Personaggio chiave della rivoluzione scientifica, per aver esplicitamente introdotto il metodo scientifico, detto anche "metodo galileiano" o "metodo sperimentale", il suo nome è associato a importanti contributi in fisica e in astronomia. Di primaria importanza anche il ruolo svolto nella rivoluzione astronomica, col sostegno al sistema eliocentrico e alla teoria copernicana. I suoi principali contributi alla filosofia derivano dall'introduzione del metodo sperimentale nell'indagine scientifica grazie a cui la scienza abbandona per la prima volta, quella posizione metafisica che fino ad allora predomina, per acquisire una autonoma prospettiva, sia realistica che empiristica, volta a privilegiare, attraverso il metodo sperimentale, più la categoria della quantità, attraverso la determinazione matematica delle leggi della natura, che quella della qualità, frutto della passata tradizione indirizzata solo alla ricerca dell'essenza degli enti, per elaborare ora una descrizione razionale oggettiva della realtà fenomenica. Sospettato d’eresia e accusato di voler sovvertire la filosofia naturale lizia, processato e condannato dal sant’uffizio, nonché costretto all'abiura delle sue concezioni astronomiche e al confino nella propria villa di Arcetri. lavori cui pervenne un'apposita commissione di studio da lui istituita nel 1981, riabilitando Galilei. La casa natale di G.  Abitazione all'800  Abitazione in via Giusti Dal libretto di battesimo di Galileo. Pisa, Toscana.  Grice: Galileo, dicono che tu abbia fatto muovere la Terra... ma hai mai provato a far muovere una commissione accademica? Galileo: Caro Grice, se le commissioni si muovessero come i pianeti, forse sarebbe tutto più semplice! Ma almeno l’universo si diverte a guardarci tentare. Grice: Eppure si muove, dicevi, ma quando tocca a noi spiegare la lingua matematica ai filosofi, sembra che tutto resti fermo come una statua! Galileo: Ah, Grice, forse dovremmo insegnare ai filosofi a riconoscere almeno un triangolo! Così, tra un cerchio e un processo, magari riusciremmo a uscire da quel labirinto oscuro. Bonaiuti, Galileo Galilei (1604). Discorso intorno alle cose che stanno in su l’acqua, o che in quella si muovono. Pisa.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bonatelli. mancanza rii tempo se non tre sole lezioni, delle finali si dà qui il sommario.  Francesco Bonatelli: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale -- Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers move from what is said to what is meant by presuming cooperative rationality and then inferring conversational implicatures when an utterance would otherwise be oddly weak, irrelevant, or opaque; meaning is thus anchored in intention plus publicly checkable norms that guide responsible inference in talk. Bonatelli (Francesco Bonatelli, 1830–1911), working in late nineteenth-century Italian philosophy and psychology, approaches “reason” from the side of epistemology and philosophical psychology: perception (including internal perception), judgment, concept-formation, and the communicative role of signs are treated as cognitive operations with methodological constraints, and his interest in “patognomic” and “onomatopoeic” phases of expression points to a continuum between bodily expression and articulated sign-use. The comparison, then, is that Grice theorizes rationality at the interactional level—how conversational partners rationally reconstruct implied content beyond literal sentence meaning—whereas Bonatelli theorizes rationality at the cognitive-semiotic level—how signs (segnante/segnato), perceptual contents, and judgments are formed and coordinated so that communication is possible at all. Where Grice treats implicature as a defeasible, context-sensitive surplus generated by cooperative reasoning over utterances, Bonatelli’s framework makes the “surplus” look more like the mind’s constructive contribution to meaning: perceptual and internal data are intellectually elaborated into concepts and judgments that can then be encoded in signs, including expressive and quasi-natural ones (pathognomic) that sit near the boundary between symptom and symbol. Read together, Bonatelli supplies a psychology of the materials and capacities that make Gricean inference feasible, while Grice supplies a pragmatics of how those capacities are norm-governed in actual conversation, explaining how communicative understanding routinely succeeds even when the code is incomplete and the sign is underdetermined. -- mancanza rii tempo se non tre sole lezioni, delle finali si dà qui il sommario. Altre opere: “Pensiero e conoscenza” (Bologna, Monti); “La coscienza e il meccanismo interiore. Studi psicologici, Padova, Minerva); “Discussioni gnoseologiche e note critiche, Venezia, Antonelli); “Elementi di psicologia e logica, ad uso dei licei, Padova, Tip. Sacchetto); “Percezione e pensiero” (Venezia, Ferrari); “Percezione e pensiero”; “La percezione interna”; “Il pensiero”; “Intorno alla conoscibilità dell'io” (Venezia, Officine grafiche di C. Ferrari); “Studi d'epistemologia, Venezia, C. Ferrari); “Sentire e conoscere, Prato, Collini). G. Calogero, Enciclopedia Italiana, riferimenti in Sarlo,B., Firenze, Ufficio della «Rassegna Nazionale» Erminio Troilo, Il pensiero filosofico di Bonatelli, estratto dagli «Atti del Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti» Venezia, Ferrari. D. oggi, La coscienza e il meccanesimo interiore.B., Ardigò e Zamboni, Padova, Poligrafo, Calogero, B., in Enciclopedia Italiana, Roma, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Roma, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Keywords: segno patognomico, period patognomico-periodo onomatopoieco-periodo caratteristico – patognosis, patognomia, tratto da Volkmann, “Lehrbuch der Psychologie” astrattio, imagine sensibile, vehicolo di communicazione, segno, segnante, segnato, ‘fiorinello’; concetto, giudizio; percezione; comunicazione pathognomica; pathognomia reciproca. logica.  Grice: Francesco, tra percezione interna e pensiero, secondo te chi vince se si sfidano a scacchi? Bonatelli: Ah, caro Grice, sicuramente la percezione interna muove per prima, ma il pensiero trova sempre il modo di fare scacco matto all’ultimo minuto! Grice: E se la coscienza entra nella partita, non rischia di rovesciare la scacchiera per confondere tutti? Bonatelli: Dipende: se la coscienza ha avuto una lunga lezione, magari si addormenta prima del finale… così almeno possiamo riprendere a giocare in pace! Bonatelli, Francesco (1864). Pensiero e conoscenza. Bologna, Monti.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bonaventura: la RAGIIONE CONVERSAZIONALE.  Enzo Bonaventura: la ragione conversazionale. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how a hearer recovers what a speaker means by assuming cooperative rationality and then inferring implicatures when what is said would otherwise be oddly weak, irrelevant, or unmotivated; the surplus over literal content is licensed by public conversational norms plus the recognition of communicative intentions. Enzo Bonaventura (1880–1948), by contrast, approaches “reason” through scientific-philosophical psychology and philosophy of nature: he argues against reducing qualitative differences among physical energies to a single mechanistic type, and he treats perception—especially of space and time—not as passive reception but as an intellectual elaboration of sensory data, studied with rigorous methods and then used as a philosophical fulcrum for epistemology. So where Grice’s rationality is primarily interpersonal and inferential (how agents coordinate meaning in conversation), Bonaventura’s rationality is primarily cognitive and methodological (how the mind structures experience and how scientific data constrain philosophical accounts of that structuring). The comparison becomes illuminating if we treat Gricean implicature as a special case of a broader interpretive capacity: just as Bonaventura insists you cannot “remove” sensible perception from observation of the phenomenon and then hope to reconstruct it mechanically, Grice insists you cannot confine meaning to sentence semantics and then hope to reconstruct what speakers communicate without a theory of rational, context-sensitive inference; both reject flattening reductions and treat the relevant “extra” (qualitative experience for Bonaventura, implicated meaning for Grice) as something that must be explained by the activity of a rational subject rather than eliminated by a narrower mechanism. Grice: “The Italians are some queer folk! They have a saint called B., whose surname was rather ‘Fidanza,’ but then, as if to balance things, they do have ANOTHER philosopher – as this saint is alleged to have been – whose REAL surname was B.!” Studia psicologia filosofica sotto SARLO. Le qualità del mondo fisico: filosofia naturale. I dati della fisica, della chimica, della fisiologia sono largamente utilizzati, ma costituiscono addirittura la base pella soluzione del problema, se sia o no possibile spiegare le differenze qualitative tra diverse energie fisiche riducendole ad un unico tipo di energia: problema che B. risolve in modo negativo. La riduzione delle molteplicità qualitative delle energie fisiche ad un’unica forma nel senso del meccanismo e di taluni indirizzi energetici, è illusoria. Volge la sua attività più in particolare agli studi e alle ricerche di psicologia, coi metodi rigorosi; ma la ricerca psicologica sebbene ha anche, per lui, un valore in sè stessa, come ricerca scientifica, e un valore sociale, pele sue applicazioni, è stata ed è sempre, nell’economia dal suo pensiero, il punto dd’appoggio pella filosofia. Tra i problemi psicologici, oltre ad alcune questioni di metodo sulle illusioni dell'introspezione, quello che lo ha più attratto è la percezione, concepita come elaborazione intellettuale dei dati sensoriali, e in ispecie della percezione dello spazio e del tempo: problema che connetta la ricerca psicologica con concezioni fondamentale pella fisica e la matematica, e forma il punto centrale della teoria della conoscenza. Ricerche sulll’attività del pensiero nella percezione tattile dello spazio; i mezzi coi quali si stabilisce e i limiti entro i quali si contiene l’accordo tra dati spaziali visivi e dati spaziali tattili; le illusioni ottico-geometriche; il giudizs spaziale visivo nella psicofisica e sul problema psicologico dello spazio e del tempo e le conseguenze filosofiche che ne scaturiscono, sono trattati in tutti loro asp. Causal Theory of Perception, The Philosophy of Perception, The Oxford Seminars with Warnock. Firenze, Toscana.  Grice: Enzo, hai mai pensato che la percezione dello spazio sia come cercare il parcheggio perfetto? Più ci ragioni, e meno lo trovi! Bonaventura: Ah, caro Grice, lo spazio è come la mente: basta un attimo di distrazione e ti trovi a parcheggiare nel tempo, invece che nel luogo giusto! Grice: E se la percezione fosse davvero solo una serie di illusioni ottico-geometriche, cosa dovremmo dire ai nostri sensi? Di studiare matematica? Bonaventura: Forse dovremmo insegnare loro a prendere anche qualche lezione di chimica, così almeno quando sbagliano, lo fanno scientificamente! Bonaventura, Enzo (1915). La psicologia del sentimento. Firenze, Società Anonima Tipografica.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bonavino: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale della schola labri --  la scuola italiana. Cristoforo di Giovan Battista Bonavino (Pegli, Genova, Liguria): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale della schola labri -- Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how what a speaker means is inferred by a rational hearer under shared cooperative norms: implicatures arise when what is said is deliberately less, different, or stranger than what full cooperation would predict, and the hearer reconstructs the intended “more” by attributing reasonable purposes to the utterance. Cristoforo di Giovan Battista Bonavino, as your passage frames him (a clerical intellectual who later “left the habit,” wrote under a pseudonym, moved between rationalistic philosophical posture and later Thomistic orthodoxy, and produced a “storia della filosofia” centered on Rome and modern Italian currents), gives a contrasting picture in which conversational reason is bound up with institutional voice, persona, and doctrinal alignment: what is communicated is not only a matter of inferential pragmatics but also of who is allowed to speak, under what name, and with what confessional authority. If Grice treats implicature as a general, ethically neutral feature of cooperative exchange (a calculable surplus over literal saying), Bonavino’s case highlights how implicature can become socially and theologically loaded: pseudonymity, strategic silence, and shifts of declared allegiance (rationalism to Thomism) make “what is meant” inseparable from the management of readership, censorship, and credibility, so that the same utterance may carry different implicatures depending on whether it is read as priestly admonition, lay-philosophical argument, or school-positioning within the “Italian schools.” In that sense Bonavino can be read as Gricean in practice—he exploits the gap between saying and meaning as any skilled controversialist does—but unlike Grice he exemplifies how that gap is often governed as much by the politics of intellectual identity and orthodoxy as by the abstract rational norms of conversation. -- la scuola italiana. Grice: “In fact, B. is the same – vide my ‘Personal identity’ – he changed his name when he ‘lascio l’abito,’ and teaches philosophy – his essays are slightly rationalistic – he endorsed Thomistic orthodoxy at a later point.’” --  Grice: “I love Bonavino, but not every Oxonian would – for one, he used a pseudonym, since he was a priest – we cannot imagine Copleston doing that – or Kenny! As a philosopher he was a ‘rationalist,’ and indeed, the editor of a journal called ‘Reason’ (like my Carus lectures), as a priet, he was ‘irrationalist.’ – My favourite of his tracts is his ‘storia della filosofia,’ – which concentrated on Rome (Ancient Rome, that is) and Croce --!”. "No, neppure se mi trovassi innanzi alla bocca di un cannone e mi si minacciasse di darmi fuoco!" Allora Gianelli dovette cacciarlo da Bobbio, dubitando della buona riuscita del nuovo istituto. Sube, anche, l'influenza del positivismo e del points can no longer be established. But since the repair to the south of these indentations covers the back side of the east wall of kitchen  l, it could be very probable that the pipes that made these indentations came from the boiler in front of the north wall of the kitchen and left that room through its east wall. The repaired area to the north corresponds to the rear side of the niche for the  schola labrum. To the north of this 0.95 m wide repaired area of the wall, no indentations can be found. Thus it seems probable that the supposed pipes led into  caldarium in the niche of the   schola labrum  to supply this element of the bath with water as well. Franchi. la filosofia delle scuole italiane, i due massoni, giudizio, sentimento, storia della filosofia, storia della filosofia italiana, risorgimento, rito italiano simbolico, name index in Franchi’s works. Grice: Bonavino, mi racconti un po’ della tua schola labri? Si dice che l’acqua calda stimoli il pensiero filosofico più di un buon caffè! Bonavino: Caro Grice, nella mia scuola l’acqua scorre, ma le idee corrono ancora più veloci. Basta una doccia filosofica e anche il più scettico esce convinto come un tomista! Grice: E se ti trovi davanti alla bocca di un cannone, che fai? Cambi argomento o cambi nome? Bonavino: Mai! Neanche con il cannone puntato, la filosofia non si abiura. Al massimo, se proprio insistono, propongo una sauna collettiva... che almeno scioglie la tensione, se non le idee! Bonavino, Cristoforo di Giovan Battista (1850). Storia della filosofia. Pegli, Liguria. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bondonio: la ragione conversazionale e il raziocinio conversazionale.  Pier Vincenzo Bondonio: la ragione conversazionale e il raziocinio conversazionale. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers recover what a speaker means by presuming cooperative rationality and then deriving implicatures when what is said would otherwise be unhelpfully weak, oddly indirect, or out of place; the engine is intention-recognition constrained by public norms of good conversational practice. Bondonio, as presented in your passage (and consistent with the 19th-century Italian logic context suggested by Il raziocinio, Bologna 1871), approaches “reason in conversation” from the side of canonical rational procedure: raziocinio is the mind’s method of establishing the convenienza or repugnanza of two ideas by means of a third, i.e., syllogistic structure as the fundamental form of deductive argumentation, defended against critics and contrasted with mere epagoge/induction, with an empiricist warning that ungrounded idealism becomes a spider web that a puff of wind destroys. The comparison is therefore one of levels and targets: Grice is primarily interested in the rational norms that make everyday communicative exchange work even when arguments are incomplete (implicature as rational supplementation under conversational constraints), whereas Bondonio is primarily interested in the rational norms that make explicit inference work as a system (syllogistic form as the core of disciplined reasoning and knowledge acquisition). Where Grice treats “what follows” in conversation as often pragmatically inferred rather than logically entailed, Bondonio treats “what follows” as what is properly deduced from principles, so that conversational rationality, in his key, is closer to the teachable craft of valid inference than to the cooperative management of underdetermination; yet the two can be made complementary if we say that Grice explains how people responsibly navigate meaning when deduction is not made explicit, while Bondonio explains the inferential skeleton that conversation sometimes approximates, sometimes gestures toward, and sometimes merely implicates without formally stating. Grice: “When I was approached to deliver the lectures on aspects of reason and reasoning, I should have mentioned B.! When I did some linguistic botanizing on this, I somehow underestimated that Italian form, ‘raziocinio,’ ultimately derived from RATIO-CINARI, to raciocinate as Digby has it! As Digby and B. explain, RATIO-CINARI is a compound of ‘ratio,’ reason, from ‘reri,’ to reason,’ and CINARI, cognate with ‘conari.’and ‘canare,’ to sing, as in vati-CINOR, sermo-CINOR. Warnock and I would argue that the -CINOR in RATIO-CINOR, modelled after VATI-CINOR, is redundant, or otiose!” Studia a Bologna sotto VALDARNINI. IL RAZIOCINIO. Che un uomo sa più l’un altro nasce unicamente (la questo, che no deduce più conseguenze dell’ago dagli stessi principi. Il lizio define di sillogismo come ragionamento deduttivo o induttivo. Per solito lo contrapponen all’epagoge, induzione. Prevalge il criterio come espressione esclusiva della ecuzi «he è auel però considerato il raziocinio, quel procedimento dell’animo con cui essp per' iene a conoscere e ad affermare la convenienza o repugnanza di due idee mediante una terza idea, forma o struttura fondamentale di ogni argomentazione deduttiva. B. studia la sillogistica sotto questo duplice aspetto, mettendone in rilievo il  valore, e combattendo le obiezioni mossegli d’alcuni filosofi. accontentandoci d’esporre le importanza le abbiano attribuito i filosofi, in che modo alcuni d’essi si ribellano alla dottrina lizio, ed altri pretendeno di rifare e l’opera lizia. Combatte poscia l’obiezioni per venire a stabilirne l’importanza come mezzo all’acquisto di conoscenze. Il pensiero corre spontaneo a coloro i quali per primi parvero seguire le norme di BONAIUTI. Un idealismo senza osservazione che induce e deduce fuor di quello che i fatti esteriori e interiori mostran è una ttela di ragno, un soffio la disfà. Come i fìsici così hanno i filosofi in BONAIUTO un maestro sicuro. Grice: Pier Vincenzo, ma secondo te raziocinare è davvero solo questione di sillogismi, o basta un po’ di buon senso per mettere insieme le idee? Bondonio: Caro Grice, il raziocinio è come cucinare una zuppa: serve la ricetta, ma se ci metti troppo epagoge o troppo deduzione, rischi che sappia di nulla o di tutto! Grice: E se si sbaglia la terza idea, il ragionamento va a gambe all’aria come un sillogismo senza logica? Bondonio: Esatto! In quel caso, meglio una corsa al mercato della ragione che una tela di ragno: almeno, se soffia il vento, qualche idea rimane attaccata! Bondonio, Pier Vincenzo (1871). Il raziocinio. Bologna: Fava e Garagnani.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bonomi: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dei quattro elementi.  Andrea Bonomi (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dei quattro elementi. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers move from what is said to what is meant by assuming cooperative rationality and then inferring conversational implicatures when an utterance would otherwise be oddly weak, irrelevant, or infelicitously formulated; the central explanatory levers are speaker intentions, shared norms, and the calculability (and cancellability) of the inferred “more.” Andrea Bonomi (born in Rome, professor in Milan) works in a register that both overlaps with and reorients that Gricean picture: his formally minded semantics of tense and aspect, his analysis of the copula across moods and temporal forms, and his “ways of reference” treat meaning as structured by conceptual apparatuses (universes of discourse, indexicals, representation of others’ cognitive contents) that determine how language can pick out objects and events, including within narrative space-time. The comparison is that Grice models the surplus of meaning primarily as pragmatic inference driven by rational cooperation in conversation, whereas Bonomi tends to locate the decisive constraints one level “deeper” in semantic and representational structure—how grammar (aspect, temporality, copular predication) and reference-fixing resources make certain contents available at all, with implicature functioning as what remains when strict logical form and compositional content underdetermine communicative uptake. In Grice’s terms, Bonomi is “Griceian” insofar as he respects logical form and treats departures from it as the domain of implicature; in Bonomi’s own theoretical posture, Gricean implicature becomes one component within a broader architecture where the rationality of conversation is inseparable from the rational organization of time, predication, and reference that conversation must already presuppose in order to be a medium for mutual understanding. Grice: “B. is undoubtedly a Griceian – my favourite is his account of the copula – as in ‘The wrestlers are good’ – in terms of what Bonomi, after Donato, calls ‘aspetto’ – S is P, S was P, S will be P, Be P!, and so on – Most of his philosophising is Griceian, such as his explorations on what he calls ‘the ways of reference,’ image and name in terms of  significato, and rappresentazione, – he is a Griceian in that he respects la struttura logica and leaves whatever does not fit to the implicaturum!”  Insegna a Milano. filosofia della lingua Le vie del riferimento, Universi di discorso, si concentra sul ruolo che l'apparato concettuale svolge nella determinazione dei contenuti semantici grazie ai quali ci riferiamo a oggetti ed eventi del mondo.  Eventi tratta invece delle modalità che sono alla base delle procedure con cui nella lingua, rappresentiamo i contenuti cognitivi d’ALTRI soggetti. S’occupa della struttura semantica dell’universo narrativo e l’espressioni indicali nel determinare la struttura spazio-temporale  Lo spirito della narrazione.  semantica formale dedica alla struttura delll’enunciato temporali, tempo e lingua. la semantica del tempo e dell'aspetto verbale. L’opera narrativa descrivono il mutamento  d’una persona che affetta d’una neurodegenerzione. Esistenza e struttura; sSintassi e semantica nella grammatica tras-formazionale, immagini dei nomi, gli analitici lo fanno meglio. i quattro elementi e le loro metafore, minimal use of transformations chrono-logia Grice theory of time-relative identity, referring, existence and structure, imagery and naming, universe of discourse, mental event, psychological inter-subjectivity, indicale, embedeed psychological attitudes Operator, Addressee, Sender, propositional content. I want you to know that p, Iinform you that p, I want you to want to do p, I force you to do P, etc. Symbols Aspects of Reason Op1 Op2 Op3 Op4 judicative volitive indicative informative intentional imperative interrogative reflective inquisitive reflective. Grice: Bonomi, secondo te nella conversazione servono tutti e quattro gli elementi, come nell’antica filosofia? O basta solo un po’ d’acqua per non seccarsi la lingua? Bonomi: Grice, direi che senza il fuoco della curiosità, la conversazione non decolla! Ma attenzione: la terra serve per non perdere il filo, l’acqua per fluidità e l’aria per alleggerire i pensieri. Grice: E la copula? Se dico “I filosofi sono bravi”, sto solo distribuendo elementi o anche implicature? Bonomi: La copula è come l’aria: invisibile ma fondamentale. Se manca, rischiamo di parlare come wrestler senza ring—tanto rumore, ma poca logica! Bonomi, Andrea (1967). Esistenza e struttura. Milano: Il Saggiatore.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bontadini: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale classica d’Appio e i nazionalisti romani. Gustavo Bontadini (Milano, Lombardia): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale classica d’Appio e i nazionalisti romani. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning locates “what is meant” in a hearer’s rational reconstruction of a speaker’s communicative intentions under shared norms of cooperation (the Cooperative Principle and maxims), so that implicatures are calculated when what is said would otherwise be unhelpfully weak, irrelevant, or oddly framed. Bontadini (1903–1990), by contrast, is a paradigmatic “metaphysician of experience” in the Italian neoclassical/neotomist orbit: beginning from experience as the inescapable point of departure, he insists that reason is governed at a deeper level by the principle of non-contradiction and by the demand to reconcile the “antinomia dell’esperienza e del logo,” i.e., the clash between what experience presents (including becoming) and what strict rationality requires. The comparison, then, is that Grice theorizes rational governance locally, at the level of conversational moves and interpersonal inference, whereas Bontadini theorizes rational governance globally, at the level of the conditions of intelligibility of experience and being; where Grice explains how interlocutors responsibly get from utterance to implied content, Bontadini explains how thought responsibly gets from experiential presence to metaphysical claims without collapsing into contradiction. Still, they can be aligned: Grice’s rationality is a pragmatic normativity that makes communication possible despite underdetermination, while Bontadini’s rationality is a metaphysical normativity that makes any coherent discourse possible at all; in that sense, Gricean implicature presupposes the very logical discipline Bontadini foregrounds—because the calculability and defeasibility of implicatures depend on a shared commitment to consistency, truth, and reason as more than mere psychological habit. Grice: “I would call B. a Griceian; first, he likes sports, like I do; second he is a neo-classical (as I am) and a anti-anti-metaphysicist, as I am!” metafisica dell'esperienza). Esponente di spicco del movimento neotomista, che ebbe presso Milano uno dei suoi più importanti punti di riferimento e diffusione. Iscrittosi presso Milano quando essa aveva iniziato le sue attività, ma non era ancora riconosciuta dal governo italiano, egli fu il terzo laureato assoluto dell'ateneo, presso il quale fu poi professore di filosofia teoretica. Ha insegnato anche presso l'Urbino, Milano e Pavia. Pur rifacendosi alla metafisica classica, quella aristotelica e tomistica, Bontadini si dichiara "neoclassico" intendendo evidenziare il nuovo ruolo che quell'antica metafisica può svolgere nella filosofia contemporanea.  Egli infatti definisce se stesso come «un metafisico radicato nel cuore del pensiero.  Rifacendosi all’idealismo ne apprezza soprattutto la verità metodologica che evidenziato il ruolo della coscienza nel cogliere il significato dell'essere considerandolo come altro, diverso dalla coscienza stessa, identità soggetto/oggetto, tra intelletto/sensibilità che riporta la teoria di Velia Essere=Pensiero.  Un VELIA, quello di B., che il primo principio di non contraddizione antinomia dell'esperienza e del logo si trova a dover lottare contro un'imputazione di falsità. L’esperienza oppugna la verità del logo e il logo quella dell'esperienza.  B. ribadisce l'origine del sapere nell'esperienza come presenza. classico come concetto contradittorio o ironico -- storia della filosofia, storia della filosofia italiana, de-ellenizzazione”, appio primo filosofo romano in lingua Latina conversazioni metafisiche conversazione metafisica gnoseologia problematicismo metafisica dell’esperienza ens essenza essere, verbo, nome, sostantivo, copula la porta di VELIA SEVERINO Vx, x izz x reductio ad absurdum. Grice: Bontadini, secondo te la metafisica serve più a fare sport o a vincere una gara di logica? Bontadini: Grice, la metafisica è come una partita ben giocata: se non sudi almeno un po’, vuol dire che stai solo guardando dagli spalti. Però alla fine, il principio di non contraddizione è il vero arbitro! Grice: Quindi, se sbaglio la copula, rischio il cartellino giallo? Bontadini: Solo se confondi essere e apparire. In quel caso, meglio una bella corsetta tra Milano e Velia per schiarirsi le idee! Bontadini, Gustavo (1923). L’idealismo etico. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bontempelli: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del sintomo. Massimo Bontempelli (Pisa, Toscana): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del sintomo. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers move from what is said to what is meant by presuming cooperative rationality and inferring conversational implicatures when an utterance would otherwise be oddly weak, irrelevant, or obscure; on this picture, meaning is centrally intention-and-inference structured, and “symptoms” (like spots meaning measles) are explicitly contrasted with non-natural meaning, where the communicator’s intention is essential. Bontempelli (the Pisa-born historian and philosopher, 1946–2011, known for a Marxian analysis of historical “modes of production” and for work that reconstructs philosophical phenomena within total social formations) shifts the explanatory center away from conversational micro-rationality toward socio-historical intelligibility: what counts as a sign, a symptom, or an intelligible “message” is itself conditioned by material and institutional structures that shape both the production of discourse and the interpretive habits of its audience. So where Grice treats implicature as a largely local, interactional achievement—derivable from shared conversational norms plus speaker intentions—Bontempelli-style explanation would be inclined to treat recurrent implicatures and “symptomatic” readings as effects of broader formations (genre, ideology, institutional power, historically specific vocabularies), such that what an utterance “means” in practice can be partly explained by the social conditions that make certain inferences feel natural, available, or mandatory. The comparison, then, is that Grice offers an internalist, rational-choice model of how meaning is responsibly inferred in conversation, whereas Bontempelli offers an externalist, structural account of how the very space of reasons and the salience of “symptoms” are historically produced—yet they can be made complementary if we say that Grice explains the mechanism of inference in the moment, while Bontempelli explains why, in a given epoch or formation, some implicatures become the default ones and why certain utterances function culturally more like symptoms than like neutral contributions to cooperative talk. Grice: “B. knows that the Romans never liked the Greek ‘symptom,’ but ‘coincidence’ seems weak: x means y if y coincides with x, or if x is a symptom of y.’ (‘those spots mean measles’ – and ‘dog’ means that there is a dog. I suppose my favourite B. is his section on Roman philosophy in his history of philosophy series! I am ventured to use ‘symptom’ as a verb – after all, the Romans had SIGNUM, but also SIGNARE or SIGNIFICARE, SYMBOLO, but also SIMBOLEGGIARE”. And I’m very pleased the OED recognizes the ‘rare’ ‘to symptom,’ transitive, and the more convoluted – first used by Coleridge, apparently, ‘symptomitise’ and related forms. There is the other Massimo B., nato a Como. Como-born Massimo B. had a son, called Massimo Bontempelli. Massimo Bontempelli ha un cugino, nipotte di Massimo B.: Alessandro B.. Idealista. Realizza i suoi più importanti contributi imperniando lo studio dei processi storici attorno alla categoria di "modo di produzione". Tematizza con attenzione le strutture sociali entro i modi di produzione neo-litico, nomade-pastorale, prativo-campestre, antico-orientale, asiatico, africano, meso-americano, schiavistico, colonico, feudale e capitalistico, elaborando su queste basi una ri-costruzione della genesi sociale dei fenomeni filosofici. Rilevante è la sua interpretazione della figura storica di Gesù, ricostruita entro una totalità sociale a partire dalla analisi dell'economia pianificata del modo di produzione antico-orientale palestinese, sulla scorta di una prospettiva metodologica storico-scientifica nei confronti dei vangeli. Studia l’accademi e la dialettica. Sigm. Il parricidio di Velia accademia latina Annici lizio ficino telesio campanella BONAIUTI storia e ragione in Vico Vera Spaventa Jaja idealism Croce Gentilestato Severio Velia Vattimo e l’implicatura debole, la debolezza della communicazione in Eco”, implicatura sintomatica, sintoma.  “feudalesimo ario. Grice: Bontempelli, ma dimmi, secondo te un sintomo basta davvero a spiegare una conversazione? Se vedo le macchie, capisco il morbillo, ma se sento parlare, capisco davvero o è solo coincidenza? Bontempelli: Grice, i sintomi in filosofia sono come le macchie nei bambini: a volte sono chiari, a volte ti fanno perdere la testa! Ma in fondo, anche una parola può “simboleggiare” qualcosa… basta non confondere il panino con la grammatica. Grice: E allora, se tutto è sintomo, dovremmo “sintomatizzare” anche le conversazioni? Forse dovrei scrivere: “Questa battuta significa che ho fame!” Bontempelli: Ma certo! Purché non venga tuo cugino Alessandro a spiegare che il modo di produzione della fame è diverso da quello delle battute, sennò finiamo a discutere anche il menù della cena! Bontempelli, Massimo (1911). L’elencho. Milano.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bordoni: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale della grammatica al mio Figlio.  Giulio Bordoni (Riva del Garda, Trento, Trentino-Alto Adige): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale della grammatica al mio Figlio. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers derive what is meant beyond what is said by presuming cooperative rationality and then calculating conversational implicatures when an utterance would otherwise be unhelpfully ambiguous, redundant, or off-point; the norms are pragmatic (how rational agents manage informativeness, relevance, and clarity in real exchanges) and meaning is fundamentally intention-inference mediated. Bordoni (as your passage frames him, but also as he is discussed in scholarship on early modern “philosophical grammar,” especially in relation to Scaliger’s De causis linguae Latinae) represents a contrasting, more architectonic rationalism about language: he treats the rational aim of language as semantic and grammatical exactness—minimizing ambiguity and synonymy, tightening the correspondence between name and thing, and using etymology as a route back toward an original or “truer” sense, under principles like nomina enim rerum sunt notae and the broader medieval inheritance of nomina sunt consequentia rerum. Where Grice takes ambiguity and underdeterminacy as normal features of conversation that are routinely and rationally managed by pragmatic inference, Bordoni tends to treat them as defects to be engineered out by reform of naming and structure; for Grice, the “extra meaning” lives in implicature as a defeasible, context-sensitive byproduct of cooperative reasoning, while for Bordoni the ideal is to reduce the need for such pragmatic supplementation by making linguistic form itself carry sense plainly and non-ambiguously. The comparison, then, is that Grice models rationality at the level of interaction (how people successfully communicate despite imperfect codes), whereas Bordoni models rationality at the level of the code (how language ought to be designed so that understanding is secured by correctness of signification rather than by interpretive rescue). Grice: “B. is a genius; my favourite tract is his ludi romani, in a piece he philosophised for Silvio’s figlio, whoever he is, but he also philosophises on communication and surely a game is a kind of communication my ‘conversation-as-game’!” De causis linguae latinae ha considerazioni sulla lingue nel tentativo di grammatica latina, accenna alla conformazione che una lingua ha per essere compresa, semplice, non ambigua, esatta.  B. studia il problema dei nomi delle cose, sui modi con cui l'uomo nomina. Intellectionem nostram esse duplicem, rectam et  reflexam, l'apprendimento umano si basa sul riconoscimento diretto della cosa nella sensazione/impressione  e a riflessione intorno alla cosa, e che LA RAGIONE ci permette di nominare le cose attraverso i suoni nomina enim rerum sunt notae. semplificare la lingua di modo che tutte le ambiguità e le sinonimie sono eliminate e non c’e possibilità di errore. Il nome ha un rapporto di corrispondenza col designatum, auspica un riavvicinamento all’essenza della parola tramite etimologia. Colaro da greci esena steso el con he po senta con she osin dallanicht ei ostunio.  strumento di ricerca sia linguistica che filosofica: scoprire la forma "originale" di una parola significava accedere al suo significato più vero, alla sua reale essenza. In questo senso allora la ricerca etimologica era considerata essenziale per una corretta conoscenza del reale, secondo il principio nomina sunt consequentia rerum, largamente condiviso anche più tardi nel Medioevo - come dimostrano ad esempio le Etymologiae di Isidoro di Siviglia -, ma oggi non più considerato valido. BAGLIONI, L'etimologia. Nonostante le riflessioni, B. non si spinge oltre e evita di fornire esempi concreti di come apparire una tale lingua. VALLA Ripastinatio dialecticoe et philosophioe Zippel ZI~, Gabiano De primo cognito eiusdemque solutiones grammatica filosofica filosofia retorica Cardano lizio Grammatica a mi figlio, Grammatica silvia etica per mi figlio Nicomaco. Grice: Bordoni, dimmi, ma davvero basta nominare le cose con precisione per evitare equivoci nella conversazione? Bordoni: Grice, se il nome si attacca bene alla cosa, non c’è rischio di smarrirsi! Però attenzione: un figlio, se sbaglia, rischia di chiamare “panino” pure la grammatica! Grice: Una lingua senza ambiguità sarebbe un gioco perfetto, vero? Ma allora dovremmo eliminare anche le sinonimie, come ai ludi romani: niente doppioni, solo vincitori! Bordoni: Esatto! Ma se la parola ha troppa essenza, poi mio figlio la trova indigesta. Meglio un po’ di allegria grammaticale: che sia chiaro, ma anche saporito, come una battuta ben piazzata a tavola! Bordoni, Giulio (1623). Grammatica latina. Venezia, Ziletti –

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Borelli: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del moto – origine della vita – fitotropismo, geotropismo, tacto-tropismo.  Giovanni Francesco Antonio Borelli (Napoli, Campania): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del moto – Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how an audience gets from what is said (including nonverbal “utterings” broadly construed) to what is meant by assuming cooperative rationality and then inferring conversational implicatures when a contribution would otherwise seem oddly weak, irrelevant, or over-elaborate given the talk’s purpose. Borelli (Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, 1608–1679), by contrast, exemplifies a Galilean, iatromechanical style of reason that treats bodily motion as intelligible through statics and dynamics: in De motu animalium (1680–81) he seeks to explain animal and human movement via mechanical principles, with muscles, levers, and forces doing the explanatory work, and more generally he extends mathematical-mechanical method to physiology. So while Grice is interested in the rational reconstruction of communicative action—how a bent wrist, a gesture, or a sentence can count as an intentional move in a cooperative exchange and thereby implicate more than it explicitly expresses—Borelli’s “reason” is a reconstruction of motion itself, where the primary question is not what a movement means in a social economy of inference but what causal-mechanical organization produces it in an organism. The comparison is therefore one of levels: Grice’s framework makes gesture a candidate vehicle for meaning because meaning is an intention-and-inference phenomenon governed by norms of rational interaction; Borelli’s framework makes gesture (and even plant tropisms) a candidate object of explanation because motion is a mechanistic phenomenon governed by forces, constraints, and bodily structure. Put sharply, a Gricean asks how motion can be used to convey, implicate, and be understood; a Borellian asks how motion can be generated, measured, and reduced to lawful mechanics—two complementary “reconstructions,” one pragmatic and normative, the other causal and biomechanical. --  origine della vita – fitotropismo, geotropismo, tacto-tropismo. Grice: “I would call B. a Griceian; I never took Sraffa’s rude Neapolitan gesture too seriously, but Borelli, like Vitters, does – as he notes, a bended wrist can mean, the utterer by moving his hands this or that way IMPLICATES that p – or q; I certainly allows my ‘utter’ to cover such cases – ‘express’ – but B. is into the mechanics of it!” La ricostruzione della vita di B. si basa sull'epistolario che B. tiene con Viviani, Marchetti, Magliabechi e Malpighi. Alievo di Castelli.  Esperienza Fisica-Matematica. B. utilizza l'applicazione della matematica della meccanica e del metodo sperimentale, proprio della scuola di BONAIUTI, per risolvere i problemi biologici. Risolve problemi geometrici di Scoppia. una epidemia in Sicilia che da l'occasione a B. di scrivere la sua prima opera da medico. Cagioni delle febbri maligne in Sicilia.’ La precisione con la quale B. tratta questa febbre maligna conferma ulteriormente che egli già in precedenza aveva raggiunto notevoli conoscenze mediche.  Brodo primordiale ipotetico ambiente di origine della vita sulla Terra  Ipotesi del mondo a RNA ipotesi sull'origine della vita. corpo umano, fisiologia, teoria de la natura – natural philosophy, physics, physicist, physician, anatomia, psicologia, motu, fisiologia filosofica, explanation of bodily movement, behaviourism, body movement, corpore, corporalism, animism, corpo animato, che cosa anima il corpo, che cose animano i corpori? Che anima il corpo? Spirito, anima, personificazione del principio vitale, vita, l’origine della vita dalla materia inorganica – l’idea di vita in Aristotle – De anima --.  Zoon, animale – bios – biologia e zoologia – l’origine della vita animale. Grice: Borelli, dimmi, ma davvero basta piegare il polso per far capire qualcosa, o serve anche un po’ di movimento? Borelli: Grice, il moto è tutto! Anche una pianta si piega verso la luce, e se il polso si muove bene, pure il messaggio arriva dritto al bersaglio. Grice: Quindi, tra fitotropismo e gesti napoletani, la conversazione è sempre una questione di direzione? Borelli: Esattamente! Se la vita nasce dal brodo primordiale, la buona conversazione nasce da un gesto ben orientato. E se la mano va a sud, meglio aspettarsi una risposta calorosa! Borelli, Giovanni Francesco Antonio (1646). Cagioni delle febbri maligne in Sicilia. Palermo: Cassaro.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Borsa: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’imitazione.  Matteo Borsa (Mantova, Lombardia): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’imitazione. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains “what is meant” as a rationally recoverable product of cooperative talk: speakers rely on shared norms (relevance, informativeness, perspicuity, etc.), and hearers infer conversational implicatures when what is said would otherwise look unhelpfully weak, oddly ornate, or misdirected for the purposes of the exchange. Matteo Borsa, by contrast (an eighteenth-century Mantuan essayist and critic, educated at Bologna and later professor of logic and metaphysics at Mantua), treats linguistic and aesthetic practice through a normative rhetoric of taste: he attacks the corruption of Italian style in terms of neologism, “filosofismo,” and grammatical confusions, and he theorizes imitation across arts (including music and pantomime) as a disciplined matching of form to expressive purpose; in that setting, the key rationality is not the inferential micro-economy of a conversational move but the civic-literary governance of eloquence, genre, and propriety. The overlap is still real: Borsa’s polemic against “filosofismo” can be read as a suspicion of forms of speech that generate the wrong kinds of audience inferences—verbosity, pseudo-technical jargon, and category-mixing that invite misunderstanding or empty prestige—so his project is, in effect, to regulate the predictable “implications” a style triggers in its hearers. But the contrast remains that Grice makes implicature an analytic phenomenon explained by intention plus conversational rationality (how competent interlocutors calculate what is meant beyond what is said), whereas Borsa makes implication an evaluative-aesthetic and rhetorical phenomenon (how linguistic choices signal cultivation or corruption of taste, fidelity or infidelity to genre, and the success or failure of imitation), so that “reason” in Borsa is primarily the normative reason of style and criticism, not the formal-pragmatic reason of cooperative inference in everyday conversation. Grice: “I would call B. a Griceian. I mean he writes on eloquence, as I do, and he qualifies this in two ways: ‘eloquenza sacra’ and ‘in Italia. Like Austin, he thinks that this or that ‘filosofismo academico’ (think ‘impilcatura’) or neologism is an abuse to the eloquenza. Friends tried to disencourage: “This or that filosofismo did have some influence on Roman poetry!” “Damn them!” He also writes a rather anti-pathetic ‘elogio di me stesso,’ whose chapter on ‘gl’amori’ is hardly sincere! But I love him!” Studia a Bologna.  Insegna a Mantova.I fisiologi gl’empirici. Il gusto I vizi più comuni e osservabili del gusto italiano. Il vizio, non la virtu, del gusto, la corruzione del gusto s’incarna in diversi aspetti; il neo-logismo non romano, il filosofismo ,  e la confusione dei generi grammaticali. Estetica, musica imitativa, danza, I balli pantomimi, la pantomima, musica, imitazione. Scruton: a sad melody.  L’assassinio d’Agamennone. Palese. Zatta. Il primo difetto del neologismo portaronci, quello ci comunicarono in seguito del filosofismo. Anche questo un terzo ne produce, che è la confusione dei generi. Bastano essi ancora cotesti esempj per mostrare, che tutti i generi sono confusi, snaturati, e tra volti nell'intima loro sostanza secondo il gusto corrente, e ciò per ragione del Filosofismo. imitazione, genere grammaticale, la confusion dei generi grammaticali, il genere tragico, il genere comedico, il genere conversazionale, Tannen, stile conversazionale – la tragedia della morte di Agammenone --. Virtu e vizio di stilo – filosofismo, neo-logismo, confusion di genero. Austin sul filosofismo, implicatura come filosofismo – remedio contra filosofismo, la filosofia del linguaggio ordinario. Etimologia del cognome ‘borsa’ – origine. Grice Borsa, dimmi, ma davvero il gusto italiano si corrompe perché tutti si mettono a imitare balli e melodie tristi? Borsa: Grice, più che balli e melodie, il vero vizio è il filosofismo! Quando tutti parlano complicato, anche Agamennone avrebbe preferito una pantomima! Grice: A Mantova insegnano a imitare persino i generi grammaticali? La tragedia è confondere il tragico col comico, e il conversazionale col pantomimico! Borsa: Esatto, Grice! La vera virtù è sapere ridere anche di un neologismo: in fondo, se il mio cognome fosse “Borsa” per un vizio di stilo, almeno sarebbe utile per fare la spesa! Borsa, Matteo (1819). Della imitazione. Mantova: Portigliotti.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Botero: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale della memoria di cicerone al rostro -- Cicerone sull’equita civile.  Giovanni Botero (Bene Vagiena, Cuneo, Piemonte): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale della memoria di cicerone al rostro - Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers recover what a speaker means by presuming cooperative rationality in a talk exchange and then inferring conversational implicatures when an utterance would otherwise be oddly weak, irrelevant, or unmotivated; the governing idea is that communication is accountable to shared norms (quantity, quality, relation, manner) and to intention-recognition. Botero, writing in the late sixteenth century (most notably in Della ragion di Stato, 1589), relocates “ragione” from the micro-logic of utterances to the macro-logic of civic rule: reason is prudential and moral, a practical intelligence for preserving dominion through justice, moderation, reputation, and the management of counsel, in explicit opposition to an amoral Machiavellian “reason of state.” The comparison, then, is that Grice treats reason as a set of inferential constraints that make conversational equality possible (participants can rely on each other’s rationality to bridge the gap between saying and meaning), whereas Botero treats reason as the ethical-political condition of durable authority (subjects obey rationally when governance is credible, reputationally grounded, and just). Still, there is a natural bridge: Botero’s emphasis on reputation and counsel presupposes a pragmatics of public speech in which what rulers say is routinely interpreted for what it signals beyond its literal content—an arena saturated with implicature in Grice’s sense—yet Botero’s framework makes that surplus meaning primarily a matter of political prudence and moral legitimacy, while Grice’s makes it a general theory of how rational agents, qua speakers and hearers, generate and decode “more than is said” as a normal feature of cooperative communication. - Cicerone sull’equita civile. Grice: “You gotta love B. – my favourite is not so much the one on the reason of state (the critique of the reason of state) – but his memorabilia of ‘vires’ of the ‘imperium romanum’!” Studia a Palermo e Roma. S'impegna nella sua nota opera Ragion di Stato medita le tesi esposte nel De Regia Sapientia. Combatte MACCHIAVELLI per splorare il potere politico scientia civilis alla Minucci. Considera lo stato come un dominio assoluto e stabile sui popoli. La ragion di stato è l'insieme di tutti i mezi per conservare e gestire questo dominio. B. chiama rea e falsa la ragion di stato di MACCHIAVELLI e giunge a sostenere che il principe, rispettoso dei precetti non ha bisogno di leggere né Machiavelli né TACITO.  La differenza principale della sua filosofia ispetto a quello di Machiavelli consiste nell'importanza assegnata alla morale o RAGIONE PRUDENZIALE come mezzo di governo. L'uso spregiudicato della ragion di stato da parte del governante dev'essere temperato dalla virtù, la moderazione e la giustizia. Ciò conferisce al principe la reputazione per ottenere obbedienza raggionabile dai suoi sudditi. Afferma che solo i sudditi raggionabile sono ubbidienti. Propone una ferma lotta alle eresie, che comportano dissidi fra i sudditi. Lo stato italiano è confessionale e la ragion di stato comprende la garanzia dell'orto-dossia, la cui cura delle funzioni dello stato. Differenza con Machiaveli è l'importanza che B. dà all'economia e alla demo-grafia come parametro per la misurazione della potenza dello stato. Pone l'accento sull'interesse.  Elabora del concetto di civiltà romana, alla Cicerone. Staatsräson, Ferrari, civil equita di Vico, civilis aequitas di Cicerone, ragion di stato, Candarini, Macchiavelli, Grice, conversational cooperation, conversational equality, pirotic generality, conceptual, applicational, formal. Generality, universalizability, civilis aequitas, aequitas, =, identity and aequitas, aequi-, justice as fairness, principle of conversational reciprocity.  Grice: Botero, ma davvero pensi che la memoria di Cicerone fosse così infallibile da tenere insieme equità e potere al rostro? Botero: Grice, se Cicerone avesse dimenticato l’equità, a quest’ora il foro romano sarebbe solo un grande mercato di chiacchiere e pettegolezzi! Grice: E secondo te, i sudditi obbedivano perché il principe seguiva la ragion di stato... o perché temevano la memoria lunga degli oratori? Botero: Ti dirò, Grice, tra una buona memoria e una buona reputazione, è meglio averle entrambe. Ma, se manca la virtù, nemmeno Cicerone saprebbe convincere il popolo con lo stesso entusiasmo di una cena a Bene Vagienna! Botero, Giovanni (1589). Della ragion di Stato. Venezia: Mutinelli.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Botta: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del primo filosofo italiano – fat philosopher, brave, addicted to general reflections about life, greatest living, Continental --  ‘professional engaged in philosophical research’ – Appio.  Vincenzo Botta (Cavallermaggiore, Cuneo, Piemonte): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del primo filosofo italiano – Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how what a speaker means is rationally recoverable from what is said plus shared cooperative expectations, yielding conversational implicatures when an utterance would otherwise be oddly weak, irrelevant, or strategically indirect. Vincenzo Botta (1818–1894), by contrast, is best known (beyond your passage) not as a theorist of everyday conversational inference but as a historian of philosophy and public intellectual—professor at Turin, author of a state-commissioned comparative study of German education (with Luigi Parola, published 1851), and later an Italianist in New York who wrote, in English, on Dante as philosopher/patriot/poet (1865). So where Grice isolates a micro-normativity internal to talk-exchanges (maxims, speaker-intentions, calculable implicata), Botta’s “reason” is macroscopic and civilizational: it is the historical emergence of philosophical rationality (e.g., from scholasticism toward vernacular traditions), the pedagogical institutions that cultivate it, and the rhetorical-philosophical voice (Dante, Roman and Italian traditions) that forms a public. A Gricean can nevertheless read Botta’s emphasis on Dante and on philosophy in the volgare as an account of how shared linguistic practice makes certain inferences and forms of uptake possible across a community: vernacular philosophy works by mobilizing common ground, tone, and audience expectation—precisely the conditions under which implicatures thrive—yet Botta treats that surplus of meaning primarily as a rhetorical-historical achievement of culture and education, while Grice treats it as a formally describable product of rational cooperation in conversation. -- fat philosopher, brave, addicted to general reflections about life, greatest living, Continental --  ‘professional engaged in philosophical research’ – Appio. Grice: “The most relevant of B.’s tracts is his ‘storia della filosofia romana,’ – but he also played with Leopardi, and he is especially loved in the Piemonte as a ‘dantista’! You’ve gotta love B.– my favourite is his tract on Alighieri as a philosopher, he applies all he’s learned about philosophy at Cuneo to Aligheri; the result is overwhelming!” Insegna a Torino. The rise of philosophy ‘in the volgare’ is comes with  a revival, of reason opposing scolasticismo. The republics, Roman jurisprudence,and the growing passion for Ancient Rome, stimulate man to free from the servitude of  scolasticismo. The Catharists appear, and extend as the paterini, templari, albigesi, and publicani.. Philosophers embrace the Ghibellines: Frederick II, Ubaldini; Farinata degli Uberti, LATINI, and CAVALCANTI. Brescia strives to extend to politics the revolution is sustained by societies, as in St. Paul's Descent to the infernal regions, and social movement heading Parma, Douuino, Padova, Casale, Valdo, and Dolciuo. ALIGHIERI stands preeminent, defending the separation for ‘lo stato fiorentino in De Monarchia. Petrara and Boccaccio join to excite an enthusiasm for Rome. Grice: “B. uses ‘filosofo italiano’ too freely. When we reflect on ‘filosofo italiano’ I can think of Heidegger, whom was described as ‘the greatest living philosopher’ – or consider a ‘fat poem’ – In what way is a fat philosopher not like a French poem? If Puddle is ‘our man in nineteenth-century Continental philosophy’ – why is it that Puddle doesn’t sound continental enough. Bravery is usually the consequence of being addicted to general reflections about life. I can think of GIRGENTI  threing himself into the Etna to prove that he was a god. His sandal springs up, the implicature is unequivocal!” Cavour empiricismo, positivismo Vico critica idealismo ontologia, psicologia filosofica. Grice:Botta, secondo te un filosofo italiano deve essere per forza coraggioso, oppure basta essere un po’ “più largo” di vedute – e di circonferenza? Botta: Grice, in Italia il filosofo deve avere appetito: per la vita, per i libri e magari anche per il pranzo! Ma la vera bravura sta nel sapersi destreggiare tra Cuneo e Dante senza perdere il filo, né la forchetta. Grice: E se Dante avesse avuto una filosofia “romana” invece che fiorentina, avrebbe scritto la Divina Commedia con più pasta e meno rimpianti? Botta: Probabile, Grice! Ma ricorda: Dante difendeva la monarchia, mentre Petrarca e Boccaccio tifavano Roma. In fondo, ogni filosofo italiano sa che tra un impero e un piatto di ravioli, la scelta non è mai così scontata! Botta, Vincenzo (1837). Della pubblica istruzione in Germania. Torino: Marietti. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bottoni: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del fototropismo in cabbages and kings -- de essential corporis humani. Grice: “I love B., and so did Burton! Most Englishmen know of Bottoni because he is quoted by Burton in his “Anatomy of Melancholy,”  Albertino Bottoni (Padova, Veneto): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del fototropismo in cabbages and kings -- de essential corporis humani. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning models “what is meant” as a rationally recoverable product of cooperative talk: speakers exploit shared norms to let hearers infer implicatures beyond literal content, and the key explanatory currency is intention plus publicly checkable conversational rationality. Bottoni, by contrast, belongs to a Renaissance Padua setting where “reason” is applied first to the functional intelligibility of life and the body: trained in philosophy and medicine and teaching logic at Padua, he theorizes the operations that conserve the individual and species—nutrition, growth, and generation, his tria suprema naturae munera—treating nutrition in De vita conservanda (1582) as central to the living organism’s maintenance and thus to any account of health and disease; and he is also remembered for introducing mercury in the treatment of syphilis. The comparison, then, is that Grice explains how rational agents coordinate minds by inferential norms in conversation, whereas Bottoni exemplifies a kind of Aristotelian-functional rationality aimed at explaining how organized bodies sustain themselves through ordered processes. A Gricean reading can still find a structural analogy: just as the hearer reconstructs an implicature by assuming an efficient, purposive economy of discourse, Bottoni reconstructs “life” and “health” by assuming an economy of organic functions whose point is conservation; but the domains differ sharply—Grice’s rationality is communicative and normative (reasons governing what is responsibly inferred in talk), while Bottoni’s is physiological and teleological (reasons as ends served by biological functions), making “implicature” in Bottoni at most a metaphor for the way observable effects (symptoms, behaviors, even plant motion such as phototropism) invite rational reconstruction of an underlying order, rather than an explicitly speaker-intention-based theory of meaning. Grice: “I love B., and so did Burton! Most Englishmen know of Bottoni because he is quoted by Burton in his “Anatomy of Melancholy,” re the imagination and reason – and how it affects melancholy.” “I call B. a philosophical biologist – excretion (why?) – nutrition – surely nutrition – as part of birth – and growth – are essential requirements for a definition of ‘bios’ or life – and B. knows that – as a philosopher. He studied philosophy and taught logic, like me. “De conservanda vita,” is more than a philosophy of life – it’s how the ‘essenza’ del ‘corpore dell’uomo’ is nutrition – and how the spiritus, and not just the anima, are involved. His model is functionalist, and Aristotelian, like mine! He also provides a philosophy of disease – which should make us wonder about whether we are endowed with a conceptual analysis of ‘health,’ a favourite term for Aristotle (‘healthy food,’ ‘healthy man,’ ‘healthy habit’). Studia ed insegna a Padova. Introduce il mercurio nella cura della sifilide. Fu rivale di Sassonia.  funzioni dirette alla conservazione dell'individuo e della specie, quindi nutrizione, crescita e generazione, che definì tria suprema naturae munera.  De vita conservanda morbis mulieribus, methodi, modo discurrendi circa morbos, eosdemque curandi tractatos. planta vel animal vel homo, sed ratione qua e; di origine analoga De modo discurrendi circa morbos, eosdemque curandi tractatus, Pandectarum sive partitionum medicinalium de essentia corporis humani, vita, filosofia della vita, Grice on body and mind Personal identity body corpus Christi  corpus viris essential corporis humani, l’essenza del corpo dell’uomo, corpo virile animato fisica mecanica moto del corpo corpo credenza che i vegetali non sono animale per che il moto non e volontario ma condizionato fototropismo. Grice: Bottoni, senti, se il cavolo segue la luce, è colpa della filosofia o della fame? Bottoni: Grice, il cavolo non ha dubbi: la luce è la sua filosofia, ma la fame è la sua motivazione! Se Aristotele avesse piantato cavoli, forse avrebbe capito meglio il fototropismo! Grice: E la melancolia, Albertino, la curiamo con una foglia di lattuga o con una lezione di logica? Bottoni: Grice, una foglia di lattuga fa bene al corpo, una lezione di logica allo spirito! Ma su certe giornate, meglio entrambe: così, almeno, il corpo e l’anima si mettono d’accordo! Bottoni, Albertino (1684). De vita conservanda morbis mulieribus, methodi, modo discurrendi circa morbos, eosdemque curandi tractatus. Padova: Tipografia di Padova.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bovio: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale della lingua.  Giovanni Bovio d’Altamura (Trani, Puglia): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale della lingua. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers recover what a speaker means by presuming cooperative rationality and then inferring conversational implicatures when what is said would otherwise be puzzlingly weak, irrelevant, or oddly chosen; the central mechanism is intention-plus-norms yielding accountable inferences from saying to meaning. Bovio (Giovanni Bovio of Trani, 1837–1903), while also treating language as a distinctive human power, frames its rationality less as a micro-theory of inference in talk and more as a philosophical-anthropological and civic doctrine: humans are the animal that lives by symbols, and linguistic meaning is marked by arbitrariness and institution (ad placitum) rather than the merely natural “manifestations” found in animal cries and gestures; in that sense, language for Bovio is the medium in which thought, freedom, and political life (the struggle of parties, the contestation of monarchy, the formation of a republican public) become possible. The comparison, then, is that Grice locates “reason in conversation” in the everyday calculus of speakers and hearers coordinating on purposes and extracting implicata, whereas Bovio locates it in the symbolic condition of the speaking animal, where what matters is the historical-moral vocation of the verbo as a maker of persons, rights, and collective destinies. A Gricean can redescribe Bovio’s emphasis on tone, figure, and public struggle as higher-level arenas in which implicatures proliferate (what is said in politics or oratory routinely means more than it states), but the divergence remains that Grice aims to formalize the rational norms that make such surplus meaning inferable in ordinary exchanges, while Bovio treats linguistic meaning as a constitutive mark of humanity and citizenship, with conversational reason continuous with the ethical and political work performed by symbols in a contested public world. Grice: “I have often been criticised for my anthropocentrism; notably when in ‘Prejudices and predilections,’ I have to defend the view that Homo sapiens sapiens is the Homo comunicativus! M-intentions seem too intricate for other pirots to deal with thm! Yet, in the Continent, the view of homo symbolicus, defended by B.,  has been a paradigm of good sense! You’ve got to love B.; he has a stamp, I don’t. My favourite is his piece on ‘lingua,’ on the implicature (plural of implicatura) of the animale parlante, un tono, una figura. But he philosophises fascinatingly on ‘La lotta,’ which is a bit like my model of conversation as a competitive game.” Il verbo,  diritto, genio, gli Scritti filosofici e politici, la Dottrina dei partiti con il subentrare della sinistra costituzionale alla Destra, il suo atteggiamento, non incline all’astensionismo.  Incontaminato, medita con animo libero l'Infinito e consacra le ragioni dei popoli ravviva d’alta luce il pensiero italo e precorse veggente la nuova età. Contrario alla monarchia, ideologo repubblicano: definirsi o sparire: palesò ai repubblicani l'esigenza urgente di un’impostazione d’una chiara direzione che spinge poi i repubblicani a definirsi in partito di moderno tenore.  Stabilì pei repubblicani prospettiva nazionale.  La monarchia, attuale realtà italiana. Si dichiara utopista. La monarchia cadrà. Del medemo suo autore eccelsa imago a cui pur volle il creator sovrano me lia gr and opra esercitar la mano se flejfo in lei d'effgiarfi vago sfavilli il sole, e folgoreggi il fago, futto e creato al beneficio humano: Infuse l’Alma in lui celefle arcano onde fosse di glorie altero e pago. Come qualos di chi mirar s’avenne sotto al suo redi purpurati eroi glorioso senato in di solenne in fmil guisa a minislri suo i principi numerar subditi ottenti e, se potenz.e vitali il capo in noi. lizio i gesti e suoni degli animali sono signi i suoni e i gesti dell’uomo sono simbolo non e manifestazione delo chiaro la manifestazione o rivelazione appertiene all’animale nell’uomo il simbolo e arbitrario ad placitum. Grice: Bovio, secondo te, è vero che solo Homo sapiens sapiens può essere Homo comunicativus, o c’è speranza anche per i piroti? Bovio: Ah, Grice, io credo che pure il piroto, se si impegna, può imparare a conversare! Basta dargli una lingua e un po’ di spirito repubblicano, e magari si fa capire meglio di certi parlamentari! Grice: Ma la lingua, Giovanni, è più simbolo o più segno? Se il piroto abbaia, è comunicazione o solo manifestazione animale? Bovio: Grice, se il piroto abbaia, è manifestazione; se discute la monarchia, allora è simbolo! E se sogna la repubblica, ti assicuro che il suo tono diventa filosofico, anche se un po’ utopista come me! Bovio d’Altamura, Giovanni (1864). Il verbo. Napoli, Morano.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bozzelli: la ragione conversazionale e l’mplicatura conversazionale di Lucano – su Catone in Utica.  Francesco Paolo Bozzelli (Manfredonia, Foggia, Puglia): la ragione conversazionale e l’mplicatura conversazionale di Lucano – su Catone in Utica. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats what is meant as an inferential product of cooperative rationality: speakers design utterances for uptake, hearers presume purposive talk, and conversational implicatures arise when literal content is too weak, oddly chosen, or strategically indirect relative to shared aims. Francesco Paolo Bozzelli (1786–1864), by contrast, is best situated (beyond your passage) as a jurist-philosopher and theorist of tragedy and imitation, as well as the drafter of the 1848 Constitution of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies; his intellectual world is one in which public discourse is shaped by rhetoric, moral psychology, aesthetic category (the tragic as a philosophical lens on action and character), and institutional normativity rather than by an explicit model of maxims and intention-recognition. If a Gricean lens is applied to Bozzelli’s “tragic” materials (Lucan’s Cato at Utica, Roman exempla, catharsis, and “imitazione tragica”), the relevant comparison is that both accounts make meaning depend on intelligible reasons addressed to an audience: for Grice, reasons govern the micro-logic of conversational moves; for Bozzelli, reasons govern how exemplary actions and speeches are framed so that an audience grasps more than is stated—ethical stance, political principle, or tragic necessity—through rhetoric, omission, and heightened form. The divergence is that Grice explains this “more than is said” as a calculable, defeasible implicature grounded in cooperative norms, while Bozzelli treats the surplus as constitutive of civic and aesthetic communication itself: tragic imitation and constitutional language aim at forming judgment and character, so the unspoken is not merely an implicature to be derived and, if needed, canceled, but part of how public meaning achieves force, legitimacy, and cathartic clarity in the first place. Grice: “B philosophises on Enea’s tragic dialogue of Niso e Eurialo. Not to mention the rape of Lucrezia, Romolo killing Remo, and the rest of it. You’ve got to love B. Aat Oxford, it would be difficult to find an English philosopher interested in English tragedy, but B.’s expertise is tragedia romana, Ercole and the rest! Philosophically, B. speaks indeed alla lizio of the tragic dallo spirito dalla musica, since ‘lo tragico’ is a philosophical category. On top,  if I have been called a mimetist and has is B. Lo tragico becomes an adjective to qualify imitation, with a principle for imitazione and tragedy as meant for catharsis – with B., it is imitazione tragica. He wisely skips (almost) the Middle Ages and reviews how tragedia romana becomes tragedia italiana!” Si laurea a Napoli. Liberale moderato, prende parte ai moti che gli costarono la prigione. Avverso alla democrazia radicale. etica estetica. La fama d’integrità morale lo garante un prestigio all'interno del partito liberale. Stende la carta costituzionale. Calca di fatto la costituzione belga, criticata perché non offer sufficienti garanzie di libertà ai cittadini, limita i diritti elettorali su base censuale e lascia al re potere discrezionale. Niun de due, e forsè anco amenduni di Marzia nelle brame hanno egual parte i giovani, e dividon la forella. Ma dimmi: Lucia qua di loro elegge? Marzia, ambo son nella mia slima grandi na nel mi’amor perchè vuoi tu eh’io'1 nomini ben tu fai, come è cieco amore e folle, iI qual, ne fa perchè, vuole e disvuole. Io son perplessa, dimmi, quale appellar deggia il mio fratel felice. Se è Porzio, me’n da re (le biasmo? m’hai involata l’alma mia. Con qual leggiadra tenerezza egli ama, spira i difii più schietti e più gentili. Verità, cortetla, mafehia dolcezza Puliscon le parole ed i pensieri. Fervido è Marco, e impetuosi troppo.  il tragico, il tragico latino, l’implicatura di Lucano, l’edonismo di Bozzelli, capitol su Bozzelli nella storia della filosofia italiana di Gentile – edonismo, morale, etica – costituzione napoletana. Grice:Bozzelli, dimmi, secondo te Catone in Utica era più tragico o più filosofo? Bozzelli: Grice, Catone sapeva essere entrambi! Tragico quando doveva far rispettare la costituzione, filosofo quando si trovava a scegliere fra Marco e Porzio… e si capiva che l’amore è cieco e folle! Grice: E secondo te, se Lucano avesse scritto la carta costituzionale, avrebbe dato più libertà ai cittadini o più potere al re? Bozzelli: Oh, Grice, Lucano avrebbe preferito dare ai cittadini il potere di scrivere tragedie e ai re quello di applaudirle—così almeno la morale sarebbe salva e nessuno resterebbe perplesso tra edonismo e libertà! Bozzelli, Francesco Paolo (1821). Statuto costituzionale del regno delle Due Sicilie. Napoli, Stamperia del Fibreno.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bozzetti: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale di Bruno contro I matematici.  Giuseppe Bozzetti (Borgoratto, Alessandria, Piemonte): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale di Bruno contro I matematici. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers move from what is said to what is meant by assuming cooperative rationality and then inferring conversational implicatures when an utterance would otherwise be pointlessly weak, oddly chosen, or pragmatically out of place; meaning, on this view, is anchored in intentions constrained by norms of reasonable talk. Bozzetti, as framed in your passage, relocates “conversational reason” into a broadly personalist and Rosminian (Serbatian) metaphysical-ethical setting: dialogue is not primarily a device for efficiently exchanging information but an inter-personal arena in which the person as “subsistent right” seeks truth and freely adheres to moral law, so the rationality governing exchange is inseparable from conscience, freedom, and the teleology of human ends. In that register, “implicature” is less a technical, calculable surplus derived from maxims and more an inter-personal surplus generated by the ethical conditions of address—what a speaker owes another as a person, and what is revealed (or concealed) when one treats the other as more than a calculating intellect. Hence the Bruno-against-the-mathematicians motif: where Grice uses “calculation” metaphorically to describe rational inference from utterance to implicatum, Bozzetti’s Bruno-themed contrast treats a purely mathematical posture as missing something constitutive of genuine dialogue, namely the moral and metaphysical recognition of interlocutors; the upshot is that Grice offers a general inferential model for how implicatures are responsibly derived in ordinary conversation, while Bozzetti reads conversational reason as an ethically thick practice of mutual recognition in which the deepest “implications” of what is said are indexed not only to relevance and informativeness but to the speaker’s freedom, good will, and commitment to truth as a vocation of persons-in-relation. Grice: “I am surprised that, in spite of B., Bruno is not given due philosophical status at Oxford – after all, the dreaming spires were the ONLY place where this Southern Italian philosopher was given any status at all! If Strawson is a Griceian, B. is a Serbatian – he philosophised on substance (‘il concetto di sostanza’ from the point of view of ‘gnoseologia,’ and also on ‘dialogue,’ and ‘piety,’ – he also speaks, like I do, of construction, and reconstruction, and indeed, ‘metaphysical reconstruction,’ one of my routines! My favourite has to be his philosophy of dialogue.” D’ascendenza cremonese. Si laurea a Torino.  Insegna a Domodossola e Roma, successore di Serbati. Insegna a Roma. Spiega le tesi di Serbati sulla filosofia del diritto. La persona è soggetto di diritto: cerca liberamente la verità e aderisce liberamente alla legge morale, su cui forma la propria coscienza e la consapevolezza di avere una destinazione o metier. Degl’agiati. Attratto da Serbati che fa della persona diritto sussistente ed il fondamento dello stato, propone la metafisica per inquadrare l'essere personale in un’organicità ontologica più comprensiva: il vivente. Costruttivo, converge molteplicità ed unità, frammentarismo e organicità. Sciacca. Antonioli. Una liberazione trovare nella filosofia del diritto di SERBATI che la persona umana è il diritto sussistente, che non solo ha dei diritti, ma essa è il diritto. Il valore della persona. Apparve dunque fondamentale a B. la persona come diritto sussistente, che gli rivela il proprio esistere come soggetto d’esigenze inviolabili e inalienabili: il possesso della verità, la libera adesione alla legge morale colla conseguente coscienza, la consapevolezza d’una destinazione. Si laurea in filosofia a Roma. matematismo, monofisismo, interpersonale, implicatura interpersonale, il dialogo, fine razionale, la ragione come atto costitutivo dell’uomo, persona, uomo uomini, contro I matematici morale il problema del male ill-will, liberta, legge morale, critica Serbati non cattolico, Bruno. Grice: Bozzetti, dimmi la verità: ma davvero Bruno non ha mai perdonato ai matematici di non saper dialogare? Bozzetti: Grice, secondo Bruno, i matematici contano tutto, tranne le possibilità di una buona chiacchierata. Lui preferiva l’implicatura al calcolo! Grice: Eppure, Giuseppe, non sarebbe bello se la legge morale si risolvesse con una semplice equazione? Bozzetti: Certo, Grice! Ma in quel caso, la coscienza sarebbe solo una radice quadrata... e la verità, forse, un numero primo! Bozzetti, Giuseppe (1900). Dissertazione – Giurisprudenza, Torino.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bozzi: la ragione conversazionale e i visi di Warnock.  Paolo Bozzi (Gorizia, Friuli-Venezia Giulia): la ragione conversazionale e i visi di Warnock. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers recover what a speaker means by assuming cooperative rationality and then inferring implicatures when what is said would otherwise be oddly weak, irrelevant, or unmotivated; the engine of interpretation is practical reason operating over intentions plus shared conversational norms. Bozzi, by contrast, is centrally concerned with the rational structure of perception itself (Gestalt psychology, experimental phenomenology, “naive physics,” and the legitimacy of describing phenomena without reducing them to psychophysical programs), so the closest analogue to Gricean implicature in Bozzi is not a speaker’s strategic indirectness but the way perceptual organization yields more than the stimulus delivers: we “see as” through lawful grouping, constancies, and interpretive supplementation that make the world intelligible at a glance. Where Grice treats meaning as an inferential achievement in social exchange (a normative, intention-sensitive computation from utterance to communicative point), Bozzi treats sense-making as an achievement of embodied cognition in contact with the phenomenon (a lawful, description-guiding organization from sensory manifold to stable objects, colors, motions, and melodies). In that light, the “visum” and the discussion of seeing-as (including the point that it can be infelicitous to say one sees an obvious x as an x) highlight a difference in direction: Grice explains how rational agents manage the gap between literal saying and meant content, while Bozzi explains how perceivers manage the gap between raw input and the structured world that shows up for them; both are accounts of surplus over the given, but Grice locates the surplus in conversational norms and intentions, whereas Bozzi locates it in the constitutive organization of experience that makes any later linguistic exchange about forks, knives, flowers, and “what we see” possible in the first place. Grice: “I like B’s percettologia!” Citato da Ferraris  B. psicologo italiano, m. Bolzano. Psicologo italiano. È considerato uno dei principali studiosi italiani di psicologia della Gestalt, insieme a Metelli e a Kanizsa, di cui è stato allievo. Autore eclettico di numerosi saggi, ha approfondito il tema della percezione visiva da diversi punti di vista, come la percezione dei colori, dei suoni, ma anche del moto pendolare e di quello lungo i piani inclinati.  È stato professore di metodologia delle scienze del comportamento presso l'Istituto di Psicologia, divenuta in seguito Facoltà di Psicologia, a Trieste. A Bolzano. Insegna a Trento. Non è possibile rimuovere la percezione sensibile dall'osservazione del fenomeno. esperimento programma che contrasta quello psico-fisico. fenomeno acustico percezione musicale è alla base della formazione delle melodie. Unità identità causalità. fenomenologia sperimentale, fisica ingenua, oscillazione, piano inclinato, Experimenta in visu. percezione. Vedere come. Further examples are to be found in the area of the philosophy of perception. One is connected with the notion of seeing ... as. Witters observes that one does not see a knife and fork as a knife and fork. The idea behind this remark is not developed in the passage in which it occurrs, but presumably the thought is that, if a pair of things plainly ARE a knife and fork, while it might be correct to speak of someone as seeing them as something different, perhaps as a leaf and a flower, it would always, except possibly in very special circumstances, be incorrect, false, out of order, devoid of sense, to speak of seeing an x as an x, or at least of seeing what is plainly an x as an x. ‘Seeing... as, then, is seemingly represented as involving at least some element of some kind of imaginative construction or supplementation. Il mondo sotto osservazione realismo sapere ingenuo gestalt  Brentano filosofo e psicologo tedesco Lewin psicologo tedesco Giovanni Bruno Vicario psicologo e scrittore italiano. psicologia filosofica. Grice: Bozzi, dimmi, tu che hai il dono della percettologia, che effetto fa vedere una forchetta come un fiore? Bozzi: Grice, se vedi una forchetta come un fiore, probabilmente la tua cena sarà molto più profumata, ma forse un po’ meno sostanziosa! Grice: E se vedessi un coltello come una foglia, pensi che potrei tagliare il pane con la fantasia? Bozzi: Senz’altro, Grice! Ma attento: la psicologia della Gestalt insegna che, a forza di immaginare, rischi di finire a mangiare aria—o forse solo melodie! Bozzi, Paolo (1956). Il pragmatismo. Rivista di Storia della Filosofia.

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bracciolini e la ragione conversazionale. (Roma). Famed humanist orator and recovery agent of lost classical texts. Poggio Bracciolini. Grice e Bracciolini Poggio Bracciolini (Roma) e la ragione conversazionale.  Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains “what is meant” as something hearers rationally infer from what is said plus an assumption of cooperative, goal-directed talk (the Cooperative Principle), so that implicatures arise when a speaker’s words would otherwise seem unhelpful, oddly weak, or off-point; Poggio Bracciolini, by contrast, represents a humanist-rhetorical ecology in which meaning is cultivated through learned Latinity, social wit, and genre (letters, dialogues, invective, and the Facetiae), with communication understood less as maxim-guided inference from sparse utterances and more as a civically and institutionally situated art of address—persuasion, ridicule, moral diagnosis, and stylistic self-fashioning directed to particular audiences (curial, monastic, republican, scholarly). If Grice models conversational rationality as a set of publicly recognizable norms that make indirectness intelligible and accountable, Poggio treats the recovery and circulation of classical eloquence as itself a technology of intelligibility, where what is “meant” is often carried by allusion, exempla, and Ciceronian tone rather than by a minimal sentence designed for cooperative uptake. Still, the two converge in a useful way: Poggio’s epistolary voice and his facetious narratives rely on shared background, audience calibration, and the expectation that readers will supply what is left unsaid—an interpretive practice that can be reconstrued in Gricean terms as systematic implicature-generation—yet their difference is that Grice abstracts those expectations into a general, reason-based theory of inference in conversation, whereas Poggio embeds them in rhetorical tradition and humanist sociability, where meaning is inseparable from learned style, institutional setting, and the performative aims of praise, blame, and persuasion. Famed humanist orator and recovery agent of lost classical texts.  Grice: Poggio, cosa è più difficile—trovare un manoscritto perduto o convincere gli amici a leggere Cicerone per piacere? Bracciolini: Grice, ti assicuro che nulla è più difficile che persuadere qualcuno a godersi Cicerone. Almeno i manoscritti non protestano. Grice: Hai mai provato a spiegare l’implicatura conversazionale a un gruppo di monaci? Di solito preferiscono il silenzio a “vires imperium romanum”. Bracciolini: Il silenzio è d’oro, Grice, ma se i discorsi di Cicerone potessero essere sussurrati nello scriptorium, forse anche i monaci finirebbero a dibattere l’equità civile invece del menù del pranzo! Bracciolini, Poggio (1470). Facetie. Firenze, Bartolomeo de' Libri.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Braibanti – la ragione conversazionale. Grice: “I guess B. compares to Wilde at Oxford – he wanted to be a pupil at Magdalen, because ‘it’s such a pretty college’ – Douglas had a lot to do with it!  Aldo Braibanti (Fiorenzuola d'Arda, Piacenza, Emilia-Romagna): la ragione conversazionale. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats what a speaker means as something hearers rationally infer from what is said plus the shared assumption that participants are cooperating toward an accepted purpose in a talk-exchange (the Cooperative Principle and its maxims), so that implicatures arise when an utterance would otherwise be puzzlingly weak, irrelevant, opaque, or overstrong. Braibanti, as suggested by the passage and by standard biographical accounts of his wide-ranging work (poetry, theatre, political writing, ecology/mirmecology), invites a different contrast: his “conversational reason” is less a quasi-formal model of inference and more a cross-disciplinary practice in which meaning is staged, curated, and sometimes strategically displaced across genres (dialogue, manifesto, drama, poetic free verse, even the observational “sociality” of ants as a conceptual analogue), so that the unsaid can function aesthetically, politically, or ethically rather than chiefly as a calculable implicature. Where Grice explains indirectness by rational norms internal to conversation (what a reasonable interlocutor must assume to keep the exchange intelligible), Braibanti’s intellectual persona foregrounds how meaning can be made to travel through coded forms under pressure—fascist censorship, partisan clandestinity, later public scandal—so that what is communicated is often inseparable from the risks of saying it, the medium chosen, and the audience’s willingness to read between the lines. In that sense, a Gricean can redescribe Braibanti’s obliqueness, irony, and genre-shifting as systematic implicature-generation; but the divergence is that Grice treats implicature as a rationally recoverable supplement to literal content, whereas Braibanti’s “ragione conversazionale” looks closer to an art-and-politics of communication in which form, silence, and indirection are not merely cooperative shortcuts but sometimes the very point of the act. Grice: “I guess B. compares to Wilde at Oxford – he wanted to be a pupil at Magdalen, because ‘it’s such a pretty college’ – Douglas had a lot to do with it! Wilde is said to have said before the king who abdicated that ‘only the poor learn at Oxford.’ Gilbert and Sullivan popularised the idea that at Oxford you were either a Paterian (an aesthete) or an athlete. I guess i was both: I was ‘musical’ – had played Ravel at Clifton, and always kept a piano in my rooms – and yet I played cricket, football – I captained the Corpus team for a term – and golf!” Filosofo italiano -- è stato uno scrittore, sceneggiatore e drammaturgo italiano. Intellettuale, partigiano antifascista e poeta, nella sua vita si è occupato di arte, cinema, politica, teatro e letteratura, oltre a essere un appassionato mirmecologo. Ben presto scopre la centralità del mondo naturale e sviluppa un pensiero acuto e radicale in tema di ecologia e salvaguardia dell'ambiente, rispetto della vita animale e un particolare interesse per i costumi degli insetti sociali: formiche, api e termiti. In pieno periodo fascista vive "in una famiglia illuminata e ferma nel rifiuto di ogni situazione autoritaria e clericale. Tra i sette e gli otto anni inizia a scrivere i primi testi poetici. Tra i suoi interessi scolastici vi sono Dante, Petrarca, Carducci, Pascoli e D'Annunzio, ma soprattutto Leopardi e Foscolo, ed è in quel periodo che inizia la sua attività poetica, abbandonando subito la rima e le tradizioni stilistiche per scrivere poesie in libertà. Di allora sono anche i primi tentativi teatrali (Amneris), i primi dialoghetti filosofici (Il veglio della montagna) e i primi "inni alla natura". Studia a Parma sotto Bernini. Scrive e distribuisce clandestinamente a scuola un manifesto, rivolto a tutti gli uomini, in cui invita a unirsi e organizzarsi contro la dittatura fascista. A Firenze nasce l'amore per Vinci e Bruno. Inizia a dedicarsi ai collage e agli assemblage, mentre l'osservazione delle formiche comincia a precisarsi in un interesse che mira a di casa. Evidenze e misteri dell'ideologia italiana. Grice: Braibanti, ma tra formiche e Oxford, dove è più difficile trovare qualcuno disposto a organizzare una partita di cricket? Braibanti: Grice, tra le formiche non c’è mai un arbitro, e chi perde finisce a portare briciole per settimane. A Oxford, almeno, dopo la partita si può scrivere una poesia. Grice: E tra poesia e manifesti antifascisti, dove si rischiano più morsi: tra i versi liberi o tra le formiche arrabbiate? Braibanti: Grice, i versi liberi mordono solo l’anima. Le formiche, invece, hanno un certo senso della giustizia: ti pungono, ma almeno non scrivono manifesti contro di te. Braibanti, Aldo (1949). Il veglio della montagna. Parma, Tipografia Benedettina.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Branciforte: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dei giochi olimpici.  Giuseppe Giovanni Luigi Enrico del Basto Lanzo di Trabia Branciforte (San Vito dei Normanni, Specchia di Mare, Emilia-Romagna): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dei giochi olimpici. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers recover what is meant by treating talk as a rational, cooperative activity in which a speaker’s intentions are constrained by publicly recognizable norms (maxims), so that implicatures arise when literal content is too weak, oddly chosen, or strategically indirect given the shared purposes of the exchange. Branciforte (better known in accessible sources as Giuseppe Giovanni Lanza del Vasto, born Giuseppe Giovanni Luigi Enrico Lanza di Trabia-Branciforte) pushes “conversational reason” toward an ethical-spiritual and quasi-pilgrimage model of communication: the crucial unit is not the maxim-guided inference from saying to implicating, but the message as vocation addressed to another (and ultimately to love, nonviolence, and a community of practice), where dialogue is a vehicle for conversion, discipline, and moral reorientation rather than primarily a mechanism for efficiently coordinating belief. From a Gricean angle, Branciforte’s emphasis on addressee, testimony, and the retrieval of a “message” behind public acts (the Olympic games as sign, relay, or song awaiting a hearer) can be redescribed as a broadened pragmatics in which what is communicated systematically outruns what is explicitly stated; but the contrast remains that Grice grounds that outrunning in calculable rational expectations internal to conversation, whereas Branciforte grounds it in a metaphysics and ethics of address, where implicature becomes less a technical inference licensed by cooperative norms and more a hermeneutic surplus carried by symbolic action, ritual, and nonviolent witness directed at transforming the interlocutor and the shared world. Grice: “You’ve got to love B.: my favourite is his philosophy of what he calls ‘il messaggio,’ – I do use the term when I speak of a transmitter, and an addressee, etc. – the fact that he was born where Ikkos was born help, since one would need to recover Ikkos’s message! Branciforte sees philosophy as a pilgrimage of love – ‘il peregrine dell’amore’ with his ‘canzionere’ and surely the song needs an addressee!” Esponente della nobile famiglia siciliana dei Lanza di Trabia.. La sua personalità eccezionale riunisce caratteristiche disparate: filosofo con una forte vena mistica, ma anche patriarca fondatore di comunità rurali e attivista nonviolento contro la guerra d'Algeria o gli armamenti nucleari.    Sudia a Pisa sotto CARLINI .  «La guerra di Abissinia già iniziava ed il mio rifiuto a parteciparvi era la cosa più evidente. E poi questa guerra non era che l’inizio: in seguito forse sarei stato ad uccidere inglesi, tedeschi e un giorno avrei avuto dinanzi alla mia baionetta Rainer Maria Rilke. No, la mia risposta era no. “Ma che cosa è che rende la guerra inevitabile?”, mi domandavo. Capisce la puerilità delle risposte ordinarie, quelle che si rifanno alla nostra cattiveria, al nostro odio e al pregiudizio. Sa che la guerra non ha a che fare con tutto ciò. Certo, una dottrina esiste per opporsi alla guerra. Manca un metodo per difendersi senza offendere. Un modo umano di risolvere i conflitti umani. Ma li è convertito alla sua propria religione, e ha il suo da fare per meditare. E se mi si chiedeva “siete cristiano?, rispondevo: Sarebbe ben prezioso dire di sì. Tento di esserlo. L’arca aveva una vigna per vela. La non violenza,, molto contraria al suo carattere, come del resto crede sia contraria al carattere di tutti. Nessuno è NON violento per natura. Siamo violenti e non proviamo vergogna a dirlo. Ma ciò che non diciamo è che la vigliaccheria e la violenza fanno la forza delle nazioni e degli eserciti. Ikko, Crotone, Taranto. Grice: Branciforte, ogni volta che parli di giochi olimpici, penso subito al messaggio: chi è il vero destinatario, il pubblico o gli atleti in toga? Branciforte: Caro Grice, secondo me il vero destinatario è l’amore stesso, perché ogni gara olimpica è una canzone che aspetta chi la ascolti. Grice: E tra i giochi e le canzoni, preferisci la staffetta o il pellegrinaggio mistico? Io, sinceramente, mi accontenterei di una vigna per vela. Branciforte: Grice, la staffetta va bene, ma solo se il testimone è la nonviolenza! Altrimenti mi ritrovo a meditare sotto una pergola, sperando di non incontrare Rilke con una baionetta in mano. Branciforte, Giuseppe Giovanni Luigi Enrico del Vasto Lanza di Trabia (1932). Il pellegrinaggio dell’amore. Firenze, Vallecchi. 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Brandalise: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del municipio di Firenze, albero fiorito, immune, comune. 

 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Breccia: la ragione conversazionale  e l’implicatura conversazionale della metafisica del dialogo.  Pier Augusto Breccia (Trento, Trentino-Alto Edige): la ragione conversazionale  e l’implicatura conversazionale della metafisica del dialogo. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how what a speaker means regularly outruns what the sentence literally says: hearers treat talk as a cooperative, purposive activity and, assuming rational agency, infer conversational implicatures as the best explanation of an utterance’s apparent over- or under-informativeness, odd wording, or strategic indirectness. Breccia, as presented in the passage and in biographical materials, relocates “conversational reason” into a hermeneutic-metaphysical register: dialogue is not just a rule-governed exchange for efficiently transferring beliefs, but an ontological scene (ego/tu, we, and even silence) in which meaning emerges through interpretive horizons, the “metaphysics of dialogue,” and a semantics of silence that treats what is unsaid as constitutive rather than merely optional. Where Grice’s rationality is primarily inferential and methodological (a framework for deriving implicata from maxims plus intentions), Breccia’s rationality is existential and interpretive (a way the self meets another and becomes intelligible), so “implicature” shifts from a calculable add-on to a broader “hermeneutic implicature” in which omission, ambiguity, and the artwork-like openness of the dialogical space are not failures of explicitness but part of how meaning is disclosed. The upshot is that Grice offers a parsimonious, quasi-formal account of why indirectness is rational in conversation, while Breccia treats conversation itself as a metaphysical medium—one in which even the body, the painted figure, and the silent interval can function as dialogical moves, making reason less a set of conversational constraints than the interpretive practice by which a shared world is continually composed. Grice: “I like B.; he is, like Vitruvio, obsessed with the male human body – but also about the ‘metafisica del dialogo,’ so we can call him a Griceian!” --  Breccia nel suo studio a Roma.  (Trento ), filosofo. La pittura di Breccia esplora l’essere umano con un approccio ermeneutico (nel senso della filosofia ermeneutica moderna di Jaspers, Heidegger, Gadamer) e si apre su un vasto orizzonte di temi filosofici. L’opera di Breccia include oli su tela, matite e pasteli su carta, 7 libri e numerosi saggi critici. B. ha esposto in personali in Europa e USA.  D’ascendenza umbra. Studia a Roma. . Scopre ALIGHIERI che studia di sua iniziativa affascinato dalle allegorie dantesche. Subito dopo, attratto dalla filosofia e dalla mitologia, traduce l’“Antigone e il Prometeo legato e i Dialoghi accademici.  La produzione artistica dei primi due anni e il pensiero filosofico da questa ispirato confluiscno nel libro "Oltreomega".  monologo corale, forme concrete dell in-esistente', semantica del silenzio. stile ideomorfico l’eterno mrtale. animus-anima la lingua sospesa della coscienza ermeneutica ego tu Entwistle, Gardiner, ego metafisica del dialogo, noi, ovvero, la metafisica della conversazione, implicatura ermeneutica. Grice: Breccia, raccontami, quando dipingi il corpo umano, pensi più a Vitruvio o alla metafisica del dialogo? Breccia: Grice, ti dirò, ogni tanto Vitruvio mi suggerisce le proporzioni, ma poi la metafisica del dialogo mi scompiglia tutto: a quel punto mi serve un buon caffè e una tela bianca per far parlare i colori! Grice: E se il silenzio diventasse parte del dialogo? Non rischi che la tua tela inizi a filosofeggiare da sola? Breccia: Caro Grice, in studio capita spesso: una pennellata e già la tela mi risponde. A volte temo che il vero artista sia lei, io mi limito solo a conversare con le sue implicature! Breccia, Pier Augusto (1967). Tesi di laurea in Medicina e Chirurgia, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Roma).

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bressani: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del vo significando – Vendler: have you stopped meaning it yet? intorno alla lingua toscana. Grice: “Strawson, being boring, likes B.’s arguments Gregorio Bressani (Treviso, Veneto): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del vo significando – Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats “what is meant” as an inferential product of a speaker’s intentions interacting with publicly shared norms of cooperative talk: hearers assume a rational, purposive exchange and therefore calculate conversational implicatures when what is said would otherwise be inexplicably weak, off-topic, or oddly phrased given the point of the exchange. Bressani, by contrast, approaches the same space from within an eighteenth-century Italian philological and rhetorical preoccupation with the volgare and with the relation between “significato della voce” and the “relazione tra le voci” that makes expression fitting: his emphasis falls less on a general, formal account of rational cooperation and more on cultivated adequacy (convenienza), stylistic and grammatical formation, and the lived skill of adapting one’s fantasia to occasions of esprimersi, so that meaning is not only an intention-and-inference structure but a normatively guided practice of choosing forms that carry, sustain, and refine sense within a linguistic community. On a Gricean reading, Bressani’s recurrent concern with how speakers manage to be understood beyond mere dictionary “significato” can be redescribed as proto-pragmatic attention to what later becomes implicature, but the contrast remains that Grice explains the phenomenon by explicit principles of rational agency in conversation, whereas Bressani frames it as a humanistic discipline of linguistic propriety and expressive mastery, where the “vo significando” is continuous with the ethical-aesthetic education of speakers rather than a primarily analytic model of inference under cooperative constraints. Vendler: have you stopped meaning it yet? intorno alla lingua toscana. Grice: “Strawson, being boring, likes B.’s arguments – all’accademia e lizio, but mainly lizio – against what BONAIUTO has the cheek to call ‘filosofare’! But I prefer B.’s poems, the buccoliche, and especially his lovely treatise discorso in torno alla lingua, his little ethical treatise is charming especially if you are into what some, not I, certainl, call developmental conversational pragmatics!” B. BONAIUTO contro il lizio. Si laurea a Padova. Conosce Algarotti. Sostenne uno scolasticismo classico in opposizione a BONAIUTI. Modo del filosofare Comino, LINGUA ITALIANA nello ſteam dio, che affettano dell’italiana FAVELLA. Non è per tanto che ella non ha la sua verità in rispetto a que’pochi, a cui è dato d’INTENDERE non solamente il SIGNIFICATO – GRICE -- della voce, ma la relazione tra le voci meglio convenevole. Ora come io, senza più, approvo i vocabolarj, gl’avvertimenti di grammatica e l’ossersvazioni che intorno alla lingua sonosi facte dalla diligenza d;uomini valenci; poco ha che accennare de’suoi materiali, ed il suo ragionamento è spezialmente della forma quanto a lui, la di quanto fa di mestieri ula usare a voler scrivere con lode; per chè in fine, siccome non d’altri, che dal proprio sentimento si può apprendere a modificar variamente l’armonia della musica, nè dell’architectura. Così non d’altri che da sè veruno non può apprendere il vero modo d’addattare la propria fantasia a tutte l’occasioni particolari d’aver d’ESPRRIMERSI. Poco dice essere ciò, che li cadde in animo d’accennare verso il molto che un esperto dicitore sa e medita, ed ESPRIME d’attinente a così rasto argomento. lingua toscana l’implicatura di BONAIUTI, discorso intorno a nostra lingua discorso intorno al volgare Aligheri I am meaning forma logica accademia lizeo grammatica geometria grammatica profonda. Grice: Bressani, dimmi, quando discuti della lingua toscana, smetti mai di “vo significando” o continui anche mentre sorseggi il caffè? Bressani: Ah, Grice, la lingua toscana è come la moka: borbotta sempre qualcosa, e se non la ascolti bene rischi di perdere il significato – o peggio, la tazzina! Grice: E secondo te, i lessici e le grammatiche che compilano gli accademici servono davvero, oppure è meglio lasciar fare alla fantasia di chi parla? Bressani: Ma certo, Grice! Come dice Bonaiuti, filosofare è una cosa seria – però, quando la fantasia si mette a tavola, il discorso diventa più saporito. E poi, se la lingua non si adatta, chi la invita a cena? Bressani, Gregorio (1738). Discorso in torno alla lingua. Treviso: Costantini.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bruni: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’interpretare da Romolo e Remo.  Leonardo Bruni (Arezzo, Toscana): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’interpretare da Romolo e Remo. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers move from sentence meaning to speaker meaning by presuming a cooperative, rational “talk exchange” (the Cooperative Principle and maxims) and then deriving conversational implicatures when an utterance looks under-informative, oddly phrased, or apparently off-topic; the key is that what is meant is recoverable as a calculable, defeasible inference from shared purposes and intention-recognition. Leonardo Bruni (Arezzo c. 1370–Florence 1444), although not a pragmatics theorist, offers a strikingly parallel normative stance about “right interpretation” in the domain of translation and humanist philology: in De interpretatione recta (written c. 1420–1426) he argues that translating and interpreting require deep command of both languages and, crucially, sensitivity to the author’s style and intended force, attacking word-for-word “incorrect” rendering as a failure to carry over what the author is doing, not merely what the words denote. Put side by side, Grice supplies the micro-level model of how rational agents infer intended meaning in live conversation (including when the speaker relies on the audience to supply what is left unsaid), while Bruni supplies a macro-level humanist ethics of interpretive responsibility: be “retta” in conveying an author’s thought and rhetorical character, resist both wooden literalism and uncontrolled over-interpretation, and treat understanding as something governed by disciplined norms rather than free invention. In Gricean terms, Bruni’s ideal translator is a highly cooperative hearer: someone who tracks relevance, avoids distortion, and reconstructs intention and stylistic point; and Bruni’s worry about misreading or over-reading anticipates a Gricean caution that implicatures are cancellable and context-bound—so interpretive zeal that outruns evidence turns “extra meaning” into mere misinterpretation rather than rationally warranted conversational (or textual) enrichment. Grice: “B. is a philosopher – and a Griceian one at that. He reminds me when Austin and I gave joint seminars on De interpretatione -- our tutees finding it boring that we lay the blame on il lizio. Annici is possibly wrong in missing the metaphorical impicature of ‘ermeneutica, and give us a rather boring inter-pretatio, which is the thing B. uses when dealing with CICERONE, unaware if what he is doing is interpretare or volgarizare, rendering the thing into the volgare that the volgo will appreciate! B’s implicature seems to be: let the classic stay classy! But there is a little word that B. uses that is crucial: retta: l’interpretazione has to be retta, not incorretta, which leads us to implicature: is over-interpretation mis-interpretation? We think it is! But since an implicaturum is cancellable, we have to be VERY careful here, as B. is, especially when he visits I Tatti!” Umanista, studia sotto Maplaghini. Conosce Filelfo. Questione della lingua. Riscontra la corruzione del latino in Plauto coll’assimilazione, isse/ipse, colonna/columna. Il latino evolve dall’interno e diviene toscano. BIONDO s’oppone. La causa sono gl’ostrogoti e i longobardi. Sul volgare degno, SALUTATI e VALLA disprezzano il volgare, non dotato della  norma grammaticale. ALBERTI lo riconosce come lingua ricca di dignità. Conversazione tra SALUTATI e NICCOLINI, asserendo che il volgare è degno se regolato d’un assioma preciso, e dispiacendosi che ALIGHIERI non scrive la commedia nel ben più nobile latino; l’altro giudicando piu radicalmente ALIGHIERI, PETRARCA e BOCCACCIO poco più che degl’ignoranti, ma difendeli, riconoscendole sua grandezza, independentemente alla lingua che usano. ambivalenza d’interpretazione volutamente lasciata da B. contro BONAIUTI.  dove la posizione di Simplicio è quella di chi enuncia testi che devono essere confutate. interpretare, implicatura geometrica, ethica nicomachaea, Grice, Hardie, ad Petrum Paulum Histrum, i sei aquile I duodici aquile primi I sei corvi il segnato implicatura geometrica. Grice: Bruni, mi racconti, tra Romolo e Remo, quale implicatura conversazionale hai trovato più divertente nell'interpretare le storie degli antichi? Bruni: Grice, dipende da come la prendi! Se interpreti troppo, rischi che Romolo diventi Remo e viceversa... e magari la lupa si offende pure. La retta interpretazione, come dico sempre, sta nel mezzo. Grice: E allora, ti capita mai di “volgarizzare” troppo, rendendo le cose troppo popolari, come Cicerone che si trasforma in un chiacchierone da piazza? Bruni: Ma certo, Grice! A volte mi piace lasciare un po’ di ambivalenza, così anche il volgo può divertirsi a interpretare. D’altronde, una buona conversazione è come una partita di scacchi: basta non fare mosse incorrette, e il gioco continua! Bruni, Leonardo (1439). Historia Florentina. Firenze, Bartolomeo de' Libri.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bruno: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’opera – libretto d’Atteone.   Filippo Giordano Bruno Bruni (Nola, Napoli, Campania): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’opera – libretto d’Atteone. Grice: “It has taken naturally an Italian – Rossi – to unearth the connection between the chiave universalis and the cabbala! Italians should concentrate on the few Italian philosophical dialogues by B. in the vernacular, and leave those in ‘the learned’ for those who cannot deal with the ‘volgare’! My favourite has to be the one on Atteone – which B. describes as the ‘furor’ of a ‘heroe’ – Atteone il cacciatore – but the one on the Fiume at the Campidoglio is also very good! A genius. We see in B. some uses of Latin intendere – Italian intendere – which were also borrowed from the Anglo-Normans and turned it into ‘intend,’ which the OED recognises as ‘mean’. However, my phrase is ‘to intend one’s addressee to believe ...’ rather than a strict equivalence ‘to intend’ =def ‘to mean’.” Naturalista, amare universo infinito dei mondi materialista Bonaiuto accademia memotennnica effetto d’un divino in-figurabile. Interrogato nel processo informa. Io ho nome  Nato fronte al Vesuvio, che, pensando che oltre quella montagna non vi è più nulla nel mondo, esplora . Ne trae l'insegnamento di non basarsi esclusivamente sul giudizio dei sensi, come fa, a suo dire, il lizio, imparando soprattutto che, al di là di ogni apparente limite, vi è sempre qualche cosa d'altro. Studia su Giandomenico de Iannello ed a Aloia e Napoli. In trisbitia  hilaris Bruniana paganesimo ario, anti-catolecismo, anti-papismo, filosofia anti-religione ragione, contro la fede irrazionale ario tradizione pagano religione Roma antica irrazionale della religione antica romana metafora ermetico segno composto asino Spaventa Giudice Cacciatore Gentile, ligatura relativo infigurabile indeterminabile open Marlowe Shakespeare pene d’amore perdute Oxford. Grice: Bruno, nel tuo libretto d’Atteone l’eroe diventa cervo perché guarda troppo, ma dimmi: era una tragedia o una gigantesca implicatura cosmologica? Bruno: Caro Grice, era un modo per far capire che l’infinito non entra nei sensi senza fare rumore, e Atteone paga il prezzo del voler vedere oltre misura. Grice: E quando tu dici intendere, vuoi dire proprio “mean”, o intendi che io intenda che tu intendi che io creda qualcosa di più sottile? Bruno: Intendo tutte e tre le cose, ma se ti perdi, seguimi con il volgare: è più veloce del latino e morde meno dei cani di Atteone. Bruno, Filippo Giordano (1582). De la causa, principio et uno. Venezia,

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bruzi:  la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dei goti.  Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bubbio: la ragione conversazionale/ Grice: “I like B!”  Flavio Magno Aurelio Cassiodoro Senatore Bruzi:  la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dei goti. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers recover what a speaker means from what is said by presuming cooperative rationality (maxims of quantity, quality, relation, manner) and then calculating implicatures when an utterance seems oddly indirect, incomplete, or off-point; the engine is intention plus publicly accessible norms of inference in a talk exchange. Cassiodorus (Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator, c. 485–c. 585; from the Bruttium/Calabria area, later founder of Vivarium) is not a pragmatics theorist but a late antique statesman and Christian intellectual whose surviving corpus (especially the Variae and the educational program of the Institutiones) aims at preserving and reorganizing learned culture under Ostrogothic rule, and whose brief treatise traditionally titled De arte rhetorica et dialectica (often treated as an elementary handbook of the trivium) frames dialectic as a rule-governed art of reasoning and disputation. The comparison, then, is that Grice supplies a modern micro-theory of how conversational partners infer extra meaning beyond literal content in ordinary interaction, while Cassiodorus exemplifies an older macro-normative conception of rational speech as something cultivated through artes—dialectic, rhetoric, grammar—designed to discipline discourse, train inference, and stabilize civic and ecclesiastical communication across linguistic and political difference (Romans/Goths, Latin learning in a changing polity). Put Griceanly, Cassiodorus’s “dialectica” is not about implicature as such, but it provides the institutional and pedagogical background that makes reasoned exchange possible: it teaches what counts as a good step in argument, how to avoid fallacious transitions, and how to conduct disputation; Grice then explains how, within any such rule-governed practice, speakers can intentionally exploit expectations of relevance and sufficiency to communicate more than they explicitly state—so that Cassiodorus represents the education of reasoned discourse, whereas Grice explains the inferential pragmatics by which that educated discourse (and even its jokes about Goths, “Getae,” and war versus dialogue) is actually understood in context. Grice: “B. is possibly a genius; I mean, I wrote a logic, and so did he. But he is ‘consul’ on top! My favourite – and indeed, the ONLY tract by him I recommend my tutees is his Dialettica. Strawson prefers his De anima, but anima is a confused notion, for Wittgenstein and neo-Wittgensteinians alike – no souly ascription without behaviour that manifests it! whereas with ‘dialettica’ you are safe enough! I should be pointed out that of the three of the trivial arts – ‘dialettica’ is the only one that deals with my topic, conversation or dia-logue: grammatica is almost autistic, and rhetoric is for lawyers, i. e. sharks! Only dialettica represents why those in the Lit. Hum. programme choose philosophy’! Dialettica INCORPORATES all that grammatica and rettorica can teach!”. Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus. Cassiodoro, Magister officiorum del Regno Ostrogoto Atalarico Atalarico Venanzio Opilione Teodato Vitige  Fidelio. Vive sotto gl’ostrogoti. Succede Annici. Scrive le Variæ. dialettica, teodorico virtu bellica ardore guerriero pagano B. writes a story of the Goths, but he mistakes them for the Bulgarians: geti, gotti. Squillace, Catanzaro, Calabria.  Grice: Cassiodoro, tu che hai scritto una dialettica da vero consul, dimmi, è vero che i goti preferiscono la conversazione alla guerra? Bruzi: Grice, i goti si rilassano volentieri con un bel dialogo, ma quando si parla di virtù bellica, preferiscono un po’ d’ardore pagano e qualche battuta tra amici. Grice: E la tua dialettica, incorporando grammatica e rettorica, serve a far ridere gli ostrogoti o a confondere i bulgari? Bruzi: Grice, a Squillace i bulgari li confondono sempre con i geti, ma la vera dialettica si pratica meglio tra una storia e l’altra, magari davanti a un bicchiere di vino calabrese! Bruzi, Flavio Magno Aurelio Cassiodoro Senatore (537). Variae epistolae. Roma, Tipografia del Senato.

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Buonafede: la ragione conversazionale e  l’implicatura conversazionale.  Arcade Agatopisto Cromaziano Appiano Tino Benvenuto di Buonafede (Comacchio, Ferrara, Emilia-Romagna): la ragione conversazionale e  l’implicatura conversazionale. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats everyday talk as a cooperative, rational enterprise in which hearers infer what a speaker means (often beyond what is literally said) by assuming an accepted purpose to the exchange and by applying norms such as informativeness, truthfulness, relevance, and clarity, with conversational implicatures arising when a speaker appears to flout these norms in ways the hearer can rationally “repair” by attributing intentions. Appiano Buonafede (Comacchio 1716–Rome 1793), a Celestine monk and prolific historiographer and polemicist who published under Arcadian names such as Agatopisto Cromaziano, is not a pragmatics theorist, but his practice and metacommentary on intellectual life illuminate a very different sense in which “reason” governs discourse: he writes large-scale histories of philosophy (notably Della istoria e della indole di ogni filosofia, 1766–1781, and the later Della restaurazione d’ogni filosofia nei secoli XVI, XVII e XVIII, issued in the 1780s) in order to classify, rehabilitate, and discipline philosophical traditions against what he takes to be the distortions of sensism and irreligion, while simultaneously staging quarrels in a strongly satirical key (e.g., the Baretti controversy around Il bue pedagogo, 1764). Set beside Grice, Buonafede looks less like an analyst of how implicature is computed in a talk exchange and more like an architect of macro-conversational conditions—who is entitled to speak, what counts as legitimate argument, what kinds of wit or ridicule are permissible, and how polemic and erudition can steer an audience toward endorsed conclusions; where Grice models implicature as a defeasible, calculable product of cooperative inference within a shared conversational project, Buonafede’s “implicatures” are largely rhetorical and institutional, generated by satire, selective quotation, and the narrative framing of whole schools as admirable or suspect, so that the governing rationality is not primarily the micro-rationality of interlocutors optimizing mutual understanding, but the normative rationality of cultural arbitration—using histories, exempla, and invective to make philosophy appear continuous, corrigible, and (in his preferred sense) rescuable. Grice: “You’ve got to love B.; he is all into the longitudinal unity of philosophy, literally from Remo – he has chapters on the Ancient Romans, on philosophy from the first monarchy to the second, a chapter on Cicerone, and one of a lovely phrase, the Roman equivalent to the century of Pericles, ‘filosofia nel regno di Augusto,’ but also on later developments of Italian philosophy, even a chapter on Cartesianism in Italy, and how philosophy on the whole was ‘resurrected’ or ‘revitalised’ in Italy. I once joked that philosophers should never give much credit to Wollaston – but B. totally proves me wrong!” Studia a Bologna. Insegna a Napoli. Ritratti poetici, storici e critici di varj uomini di lettere – Appio Anneo de Faba Cromaziano, nella quale convivono giudizi critici su MACCHIAVELLI.. La restaurazione di ogni filosofia contro il sensismo. Commedie. Il filosofo fanciullo critica filosofi riportando citazioni fuori dal contesto. Baretti lo critica e B. col Il bue pedagogo: novella menippee di Luciano da Fiorenzuola contro una certa Frusta pseudo-epigrafia di Aristarco Cannabue. CROCE lo critica: da abbattere un nemico senza che puo distrarlo la ricerca della verità, ma. Natali lo giudica filosofo non volgare. storiografia filosofica, criteria, storia neutrale della filosofia, primo filosofo romano, lingua latina Man the architect of his own fortune Appio Filosofo: addito a reflessioni generali sulla vita. Grice:Buonafede, tu che hai raccontato la filosofia come una lunga avventura dai tempi di Romolo fino a Cartesio, dimmi la verità: è più difficile far resuscitare la filosofia o districare le citazioni di Macchiavelli? Buonafede: Caro Grice, tra filosofi che si criticano e commedie menippee, il vero miracolo è sopravvivere alle “frustate” di Baretti e Croce senza perdere il filo della filosofia né il sorriso sulla bocca! Grice: Però, ammettilo, la tua “restaurazione di ogni filosofia” sembra più una commedia che una battaglia, come il bue pedagogo che pascola tra le note a piè pagina. Buonafede: Grice, hai ragione: in fondo, la vera filosofia è come una novella di Luciano, tra una risata e una citazione fuori contesto; serve più l’arte del saper ridere che quella del confutare. Buonafede, Arcade Agatopisto Cromaziano Appiano Tito Benvenuto di (1766). Della restaurazione di ogni filosofia. Venezia, Antonio Zatta. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Buonaiuti: la ragione conversazionale. Grice: “I like B.!” Atifascista.  Ernesto Buonaiuti (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers infer what a speaker means from what is said by presuming cooperative rationality in a “talk exchange” (Cooperative Principle plus maxims), so that apparent indirection, strategic omissions, or seeming irrelevance can be treated as deliberate and yield calculable, cancellable conversational implicatures; this framework is designed to model how communication works even when speakers do not state everything explicitly. Ernesto Buonaiuti (Rome, 1881–1946), by contrast, is not a philosopher of language but a historian of Christianity and leading Italian Modernist whose public life turned on conflicts about authority, method, and readership—e.g., he founded and directed the Rivista storico-critica delle scienze teologiche from 1905 to 1910 (placing his “founded at 24” claim in 1905), defended Modernism in works such as Il programma dei modernisti (1908), and saw key writings and journals placed on the Index, culminating in excommunication (commonly dated 25 January 1925/1926 depending on source tradition) and later political sanctions; in Gricean terms, Buonaiuti’s “meaning-problems” are less about micro-inference between interlocutors and more about institutional pragmatics—how texts address multiple audiences (Church, academy, state), how constraints (censure, oaths, indexing) reshape what can be said, and how dissent is managed through public acts that themselves communicate beyond their literal form. The comparison, then, is that Grice offers a general rational mechanism for recovering speaker-meaning in ordinary interaction, whereas Buonaiuti exemplifies a historically charged arena where what is “meant” is negotiated under surveillance and sanction: the same utterance (or publication) can carry layered implicatures about loyalty, critique, and methodological legitimacy depending on who is taken to be the audience, and ecclesiastical acts like placing a journal on the Index or imposing excommunication function as institutional speech-acts that regulate uptake—controlling not just propositions but the conversational conditions under which certain meanings may be responsibly entertained. Grice: “I like B.!” Atifascista. Studia sotto Minocchi, utilizzando le risorse offerte dal metodo positivo allo studio del Cristianesimo primitivo (Il cristianesimo primitivo e la Politica imperiale romana, 1911). Fondò a soli 24 anni la Rivista storico-critica delle scienze teologiche, per la diffusione della cultura religiosa in Italia e diresse in seguito la rivista Ricerche religiose. Queste riviste, premiate almeno in un primo momento da un discreto successo editoriale, vennero poste poi all'Indice. Il 25 gennaio 1926 era stato colpito con la scomunica, ribadita più volte, per aver preso le difese del movimento modernista soprattutto nelle opere Il programma dei modernisti (1908) e Lettere di un prete modernista (1908), contro la posizione ufficiale della Chiesa espressa nell'Enciclica Pascendi dominici gregis, emanata da papa Pio X. Nell'autobiografia (Il pellegrino di Roma), B. ricostruì il conflitto con la Chiesa cattolica, della quale, nonostante la scomunica, continuò a proclamarsi figlio fedele. Vince il concorso a cattedra, bandito per ricoprire il ruolo di professore ordinario di Storia del cristianesimo rimasto vacante per la morte di Baldassarre Labanca, presso l'Università di Roma, prevalendo su altri candidati illustri come lo stesso Minocchi, Adolfo Omodeo, Luigi Salvatorelli e Umberto Fracassini, Nicolò d'Alfonso. Gli anni di insegnamento, liberamente esercitato presso un Ateneo statale a dispetto delle censure ecclesiastiche[senza fonte], gli permisero di formare un gruppo di allievi, tra i quali spiccano Agostino Biamonti, Ambrogio Donini (che dopo la fine della guerra sarebbe stato professore di Storia del Cristianesimo a Bari e senatore comunista) e Marcella Ravà (poi divenuta direttrice della Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma), fortemente attaccati alla figura e all'opera del maestro. Grice: Buonaiuti, tu che hai fondato riviste a 24 anni, confessalo: è vero che la ragione conversazionale in Italia si trova prima in una rivista che in una chiesa? Buonaiuti: Grice, se avessi chiesto al papa, avrebbe messo la ragione conversazionale direttamente all’Indice, insieme al mio programma dei modernisti! Grice: Ma Ernesto, tu che vinci concorsi e cattedre, dimmi: quando si parla di Cristianesimo primitivo, è meglio usare il metodo positivo o la politica imperiale romana? Buonaiuti: Grice, io dico che per insegnare la storia del Cristianesimo serve un po’ di metodo, un pizzico di politica, e tanti allievi fedeli – ma attenzione, perché anche la scomunica può essere conversazionale! Buonaiuti, Ernesto (1908). Il programma dei modernisti. Roma, Tipografia Sociale.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Buonamici: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale -- you scratch my back -- etymologia di muovere --  corpi in movimento. Grice: There are many B. (including GALILEO), so you have to be careful Francesco Giuseppe Buonamici (Firenze, Toscana): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale -- you scratch my back -- etymologia di muovere --  Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers rationally recover speaker-meaning from what is said by assuming cooperative purposes and norms, and then calculating implicatures when an utterance seems oddly weak, tangential, or over/under-informative; meaning is thus anchored in recognisable communicative intentions and in publicly checkable principles of rational exchange rather than in merely semantic or causal relations. Francesco Buonamici (Florence 1533–1603), by contrast, is a late-Renaissance Aristotelian natural philosopher and classicist (studied at the Studio of Florence, taught at Pisa, author of De motu libri X, 1591, and Discorsi poetici in defense of Aristotle), whose central explanatory ambitions lie in the metaphysics and physics of motion and in humanist commentary on authoritative texts; if Galileo was indeed among those who benefited from the Pisan Aristotelian milieu associated with Buonamici, the intellectual model is still one of causes, natures, and demonstrations, not of conversational inference. The comparison is therefore a difference of explanatory level: Buonamici’s “reason” is the scholastic-humanist reason of principled accounts of change (motus) and disciplined interpretation of Aristotle (including poetics, imitation, and the canon), whereas Grice’s “reason” is a practical-normative account of how agents manage understanding in interaction, where even apparently irrelevant allusions (wine, towers, “you scratch my back”) can be systematically treated as rational moves generating further communicated content. Put sharply, Buonamici investigates how bodies move and how texts authorize explanation; Grice investigates how minds move from literal content to intended meaning under cooperative constraints—so that Buonamici supplies a paradigm of reason as causal-demonstrative order, while Grice supplies a paradigm of reason as inferential-social order governing what we can responsibly take one another to mean. -- corpi in movimento. Grice: There are many B. (including GALILEO), so you have to be careful – this one is a genius – he taught at Pisa, in the M. A. programme, both Aristotle’s Poetics – imitazione, il tragico, -- and his ‘motus’ – Galileo happened to be his tutee, and the rest is the leaning tower!” Frequenta lo Studio di Firenze, dove segue il corso del l'umanista Vettori (si conservano alcune lettere scambiate tra i due). Filosofo naturale e latinista, si ispira molto agli antichi testi che commenta (Aristotele, Nicomaco…). Tutore di Galilei a Pisa. Altre opere: “De Motu libri X, quibus generalia naturalis philosophiae principia summo studio collecta continentur, necnon universae quaestiones ad libros de physico auditu, de caelo, de ortu et interitu pertinentes explicantur, multa item Aristotelis loca explanantur et Graecorum, Averrois, aliorumque doctorum sententiae ad theses peripateticas diriguntur, apud Sermartellium (Firenze); Discorsi poetici nella accademia fiorentina in difesa d'Aristotile. Appresso Giorgio Marescotti (Firenze); De Alimento, Sermartellium juniorem. Galilei, De motu antiquiora” “Quaestiones de motu elementorum”.  Gentiluomo Fiorentino, e Medico, Lettore di Filosofia con gran concorso di Scolari nell'Università di Pifa. In detta Università avendo Giulio de' Libri altro Profesfore tacciato il Buonamici, come quello che citaffe testi falfi, questi una mentita gli diede; ed effendo state gettate da alcuno in fua scuola certe cor na, il Buonamici così diffe: Si vede che costui debbe avere in tafa grande a b éondanza di questa mercanzia, poichè ne porta qua. Egli v insegnò quaranta tre anni » e letto aveva due volte tutto AQUINO , e in ultimo gli erano pagate quattrocento feffanta piastre di provvisione. Il buon gusto nelle belle Lettere congiunse allo studio delle facoltà più gravi. corpi in movimento, Aristotele, filosofia naturale, Galilei, razionalismo, aristotelismo pisano, de imitazione – aristotele – poetica – mimica – de motu – muggerbrydge. Grice: Buonamici, tu che hai commentato Aristotele e insegnato a Pisa, dimmi, è vero che il “motus” si spiega meglio quando la torre pende? Buonamici: Grice, a Pisa persino i corpi in movimento si inclinano per imitare la torre – e se Aristotele avesse visto Galilei, forse avrebbe aggiunto un capitolo sulle pendenze! Grice: E sull’etimologia di “muovere”, ti sei mai chiesto se basta una spinta o serve anche una buona dose di letteratura? Buonamici: Grice, io dico che per muovere davvero serve imitazione, poesia e qualche tutee curioso – tu mi gratti la schiena, io ti muovo la mente! Buonamici, Francesco Giuseppe (1591). De Motu libri X, quibus generalia naturalis philosophiae principia summo studio collecta continentur, necnon universae quaestiones ad libros de physico auditu, de caelo, de ortu et interitu pertinentes explicantur, multa item Aristotelis loca explanantur et Graecorum, Averrois, aliorumque doctorum sententiae ad theses peripateticas diriguntur, apud Sermartellium (Firenze).

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). Grice e Buonamici. Francesco Giuseppe Buonamici (Firenze, Toscana): la ragione conversazionale. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how a hearer moves from what is literally said to what is meant by presuming cooperative rationality (the Cooperative Principle and maxims) and then treating any apparent mismatch—saying something oddly tangential, too weak, or overly indirect—as a deliberate, intelligible move that licenses a calculable and cancellable implicature grounded in recognizable intentions. The Buonamici of your passage is the nineteenth-century Pisan civic orator who, in his 1863 commemorative discourse for the inauguration of Fibonacci’s statue in the Camposanto (printed by Nistri), explicitly frames his own speech as audience-designed and constrained by circumstance (limited time, decision to omit long notes, aim of making Fibonacci’s life “almost popular”), while also using public rhetoric to promote a national-linguistic and juridical unification theme (“Milano s’assorella a Firenze e Torino,” Tuscan becoming Italian law, “libertà libera”): in Gricean terms, this is a setting where meaning is managed as much by selective omission, strategic emphasis, and ceremonially appropriate relevance as by literal assertion. Thus, where Grice supplies the micro-pragmatic mechanism for explaining how listeners infer the speaker’s further point (e.g., praise of Fibonacci as indirectly praising civic modernity; talk of language unity as indirectly urging political unity; joking about “bread” or “traffic” as a way of making a technical legacy socially legible), Buonamici exemplifies the macro-rhetorical practice in which those inferences are deliberately courted: the oration is constructed so that what is not said (the skipped controversies, the shortened apparatus) and what is foregrounded (shared honour, common language, common law) carry much of the communicative force, making the speech itself a public exercise in reason-governed conversational (and quasi-conversational) uptake. Grice: “I like B.!” FIBONACCI A mostrare quanto il magnifico dono del Governo riusciva gradito, e j)er segno di pubblica onoranza al concittadino illustre, elessero i Pisani di inaugurarne la statua in un (giorno di festa, quando parecchi erano qui convenuti per causa della stupenda illuminazione della città; e il Mu- nicipio e le autorità del paese, e molto popolo si adunò a questo oggetto nel camposanto medesimo. Ivi io, domandato di ciò pochi giorni avanti dal signor Gonfaloniere, lessi il seguente discorso. Il quale se risente della brevità del tempo accordodo a comporlo, e non mostra tutta la importanza di un argomento per recenti scoperte e per le cure degli scienziaM fatto omm gravissimo; nullammo basta a sciogliere i Pisani da un obbligo antico, ed a rendere note e quasi popolari fra noi la vita e il nome del Fibonacci, che cotanto lustro recò alla città nostra. Questo solo essendo lo scopo del lavoro mio e lo intendimento del Municipio', ho potuto passarmi di varie cpiestioni su tal proposito tuttora agitate, ed anco risparmiare delle note lunghissi- me (ponendo solo le brevi e le indispensabili ) le quali in certi punti sarebbero forse cadute in accon- cio. I leggitori che desiderano di piu potranno consultare con grande profitto GRIMALDI, GUGLIELMINI, Libri, Doncompagni, e del tìonaini, non ha guari pubblicati sulle cose di FIBONACCI. Infatti di già vediamo che distrutte le differenze dei paesi, .Milano s’assorella a Firenze e Torino. La lingua dolcissima che suona sull’Arno, fà echeggiare anco le rive del Pò e dell’Udige. MACCHIAVELLI, VICO, ALFIERI, e PARINI sono salutati cittadini di tutte le nostre città. Anche il diritto pertanto che fu del borgo, dell’aite, del feudo s’avvierà a farsi dìritto della patria, le leggi positive si accomuneranno e correggeranno mediante la pratica giurisprudenza, e il diritto toscano diviene diritto italiano. All’ombra di colesta legge certa e finita nel tempo e nello spazio, fruiremo al dire di MACCHIAVELLI una libertà libera. Grice: Buonamici, tu che hai letto il discorso nel camposanto per Fibonacci, dimmi, la statua serve a illuminare Pisa o solo a ricordare ai Pisani che la matematica si mangia anche col pane? Buonamici: Grice, a Pisa la matematica si mangia col pane e col lampredotto: la statua serve a tenere svegli i conti, e a far capire che anche nei giorni di festa, Fibonacci non va mai in vacanza! Grice: Se Milano s’assorella a Firenze e Torino, allora le leggi positive diventano legge della patria, ma a Pisa basta una formula di Fibonacci per risolvere i problemi di traffico! Buonamici: Grice, qui l’unica libertà libera è quella che si trova all’ombra della statua: mentre la lingua dolcissima dell’Arno echeggia, tutti i cittadini matematici si sentono nobili anche senza feudo, purché sappiano contare almeno fino a dieci! Buonamici, Francesco Giuseppe (1863). Per la inaugurazione nel Camposanto di Pisa della statua di Leonardo Fibonacci, discorso. Pisa: Nistri.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Buonamici – la ragione conversazionale.  Giuseppe Maria Buonamici (Firenze, Toscana),

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Buondelmonti – la ragione conversazionale.  Giuseppe Maria Buondelmonti (Firenze, Toscana): la ragione conversazionale. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers rationally get from what is said to what is meant by assuming that a talk-exchange has an accepted purpose and that speakers generally conform (or knowingly appear to deviate) in systematic ways captured by the Cooperative Principle and the maxims; this makes implicatures calculable, defeasible, and closely tied to communicative intentions and audience recognition rather than to “opinion” or reputation. Buondelmonti, by contrast, is an eighteenth-century Florentine patrician and man of letters whose intellectual profile (as summarized in Treccani’s Dizionario Biografico) includes rigorous humanistic-philosophical formation (e.g., Greek with Angelo Maria Ricci; philosophy and mathematics with Guido Grandi; connections with Tuscan academies), and whose interests in moral psychology and evaluation are visible in the very theme your passage foregrounds—how pleasures and pains might be “measured” and how opinion can override truth (the Seneca/Cato example: the same behavior is redescribed as vice or virtue depending on prior esteem). Set against Grice, Buondelmonti reads less like a pragmatics theorist and more like a theorist of the background forces that bias interpretation: where Grice models conversational understanding as disciplined by shared rational norms that make it reasonable to infer additional content (for instance, that talk of “wine” is a joking deflection or a comment on standards of calculation), Buondelmonti emphasizes how preconceptions, social authority, and moralized framing can hijack judgment so that identical “data” (drunkenness, praise, blame) yield opposite evaluations; in Gricean terms, Buondelmonti’s world highlights how interlocutors’ prior commitments can distort the very premises needed for implicature-calculation (what counts as relevant, credible, or orderly), while Grice provides the micro-level account of how such evaluations are nonetheless negotiated in conversation via what is explicitly said versus what is conversationally suggested and then accepted, resisted, or cancelled. Grice: “I like B.!” Studia sotto RICCI , il quale in una sua pagina -- Dissertationes Homericae habitae in florentino Lyceo ab Riccio, Firenze -- lo definisce "nobilissimo uomo fornito di acutissimo ingegno e discernimento ed eruditissimo di ampia e solida dottrina". Studia filosofia con CORSINI  e col celebre GRANDI , nonché materie giuridiche con MONIGLIA  e con GUADAGNI. Della Colonia Alfea. Sommenta il Saggio sull'intelletto umano e sopra la misura e il calcolo dei piaceri e dei dolori. S’nteressa pele istituzioni politiche, i principi del buon governo, che cercarono di applicare alla situazione del gran-ducato, cui prima l'incertezza della sua destinazione all'estinguersi della dinastia medicea, poi il vi periuidc i" autorità di uomini di voi cre- duli rozzi ed ignoranti , fentite quanto la forza di una prcconcepiu opinione può fo^ta lb fpirito an- cora de' più l'aggi e più addottrinati, Tentitelo, dilli, in un curiiifo ctjl'pjrto di Seneca che difende Cato- ne dal vizio dell' ubriachezza (0 Cotoni ebrieias chie- da tjl , ai faciliti! ejficiet qui/qui! obiecerìt hoc cri- meli boucflnm quam itirpem Catovent . Che tifate non farebbono i noilri Teologi in fentendo un si tirano Calilia ! L' ubriitfhezza in Catone non è vizio, an- zi è un' articolo di lode per lui , anzi egli l'onora, e lo I. mitica, ed in Marc' Antonio, in Alcllandto è degna di pena , è riprsnlibile, è dilonorata . Ma cosi è : quando li 0 filfato dentro di noi che Catone iia un.* uomo favio ed onorato , quando li ha di lui una tale opinione ( cli-'l crederebbe? ) i principi ftefii della natura ci fembrano falli, e l'ubriachezza li crede pii tolio virtù, che Catone vmofo. Le quali coic tutte fin qui da me riferite per dimoftrare il vafto imperio dell' opinione , mi con- flringono ad efclamarc enfaticamente con Sofocle che F opinione è più podeute della verità iltcITa , (ì) e con il Cardano clic la (lima e l'opinione fono le Re- gine delle cofe um;inc. E pure tA: sì c U nolira mi- lerìa che, fe ctedec sì voleflè ad Epittato , condan- nar (i) V. lenotcdiOJoanloPucocU t!> yitf ^iff&b ffit Lì&étK in Segno. Grice: Buondelmonti, tu che hai studiato con Ricci e Grandi, dimmi, secondo te il piacere si calcola con una formula o basta un bicchiere di vino? Buondelmonti: Grice, di solito preferisco la misura precisa, ma quando si tratta di Catone, l’ubriachezza diventa una virtù, almeno finché non arriva Marc’Antonio che la trasforma in peccato! Grice: E allora, se opinione è più potente della verità stessa, dovremmo fondare una scuola dove le regole cambiano a seconda se uno è sobrio o allegro? Buondelmonti: Grice, se Epitteto ci sentisse, direbbe che la vera filosofia sta nel condannare la fama e la gloria, ma io preferisco esclamare con Sofocle che l’opinione governa il mondo, soprattutto in Toscana, dove il vino non manca mai! Buondelmonti, Giuseppe Maria (1792). Saggio sull’intelletto umano e sopra la misura e il calcolo dei piaceri e dei dolori – Firenze, Stamperia Albizziniana. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Buonsanti: l’implicatura conversazionale del vettore -- implicatura di ‘animale’ – ‘non umano’ --  scuola di Ferrandina – filosofia basilicatese -- filosofia italiana –  (Ferrandina). Filosofo basilicatese. Filosofo italiano. Ferrandina, Matera, Basilicata.  Nicola Lanzillotti Buonsanti (Ferrandina, Matera, Basilicata): l’implicatura conversazionale del vettore -- implicatura di ‘animale’ – ‘non umano’ --   Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers get from what is said to what is meant by presuming rational cooperation in a talk-exchange: speakers are taken to be pursuing shared purposes under norms of informativeness, truthfulness, relevance, and perspicuity, so that when an utterance seems to fall short (or pointedly overshoots), the hearer can calculate a defeasible, cancellable implicature that attributes an intention to the speaker and restores rationality to the exchange. Nicola Lanzillotti Buonsanti, by contrast, is not a theorist of conversational meaning but a leading figure in Italian veterinary medicine and its historiography (Milanese veterinary school; founder/editorial roles such as La Clinica veterinaria; direction of reference works like the Dizionario dei termini antichi e moderni delle scienze mediche e veterinarie, Vallardi, 1900), so his “meaning-practice” is primarily classificatory and technical: he stabilizes terms (including human/animal continuities) for diagnosis, pedagogy, and encyclopedic description rather than modeling the inferential pragmatics of ordinary conversation. The point of contact your vignette exploits is lexical scope and pragmatic narrowing: in scientific and institutional discourse, “animal” often functions as a taxonomic term that pragmatically implicates “non-human,” whereas in philosophical or Aristotelian reflection the same word can be widened (or reloaded) to include the human as an animal among animals, so a shift in conversational purpose (clinic/classroom vs. philosophical argument) predictably shifts what the speaker can be taken to mean. Put Griceanly, Buonsanti’s specialized usage tends to generate default, community-bound implicatures (animal = the veterinary object, i.e., non-human) that are rational within his professional setting, while a Grice-style interlocutor can cancel or redirect those implicatures by making the conversational point explicitly philosophical (animal as a broader category), revealing how even apparently “technical” terms rely on reason-governed, context-sensitive conversational inference to settle their operative meaning in use. Grice: “I like B.; Strawson calls him a veterinarian, but I call him a philosopher,, for surely he is a philosophical zoologist – he philosoophised, like Aristotle did, on the comparative physiology and anatomy of ‘human’ and pre-human.!” Esponente di spicco della storia della medicina veterinaria italiana ed europea è stato una delle figure più rappresentative della Scuola veterinaria milanese.  Diresse l'Enciclopedia medica italiana edita da Vallardi e La Clinica veterinaria (di cui fu anche fondatore).  Altre opere: Dizionario dei termini antichi e moderni delle scienze mediche e veterinarie Manuale delle malattie delle articolazioni Trattato di tecnica e terapeutica chirurgica generale e speciale La medicina Veterinaria all'Estero, organizzazione dell'insegnamento e del servizio sanitario. Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani. etimologia di ‘veterinario’ -- animale; filosofia e medicina nella Roma antica.  Grice: Nicola, ma dimmi, quando parli di “animale” intendi solo il non umano, oppure c’è qualche implicatura nascosta nel tuo vettore basilicatese? Buonsanti: Grice, qui a Ferrandina, l’animale ha più sfumature di una pecora smarrita: a scuola lo chiamiamo “non umano”, ma se mi metti davanti un filosofo, diventa subito “quasi umano”. Grice: Allora, dovrei portare Strawson in Basilicata: lui si diverte a dire che sei veterinario, ma secondo me tu stai tra Aristotele e il lupo di Matera, filosofeggiando sulla medicina. Buonsanti: Grice, qui siamo una scuola di filosofi che curano anche i cani: l’implicatura basilicatese è che se uno pensa troppo, prima o poi deve anche imparare a correre dietro alle galline! Buonsanti, Nicola Lanzillotti (1900). Dizionario dei termini antichi e moderni delle scienze mediche e veterinarie. Milano: Vallardi.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Buonsanto: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale pratica -- prammatica del discorso. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Burgio: all’isola – la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale -- the goths in Italy – Romans contra Goths – la guerra gotica in Italia -- dialettica ostrogota – filosofia ostrogota. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Burtiglione: la ragione conversazionale. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). Grice e Buonsanti. Vito Buonsanti (San Vito dei Normanni, Brindisi, Puglia): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale pratica -- prammatica del discorso. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers systematically recover speaker-meaning from what is said by assuming a cooperative, rational enterprise (the Cooperative Principle and its maxims) and then treating apparent defects—irrelevance, underinformativeness, odd wording—as deliberate, interpretable departures that yield calculable and cancellable implicatures grounded in publicly recognizable intentions. Buonsanti, by contrast, is best placed in an early nineteenth-century Italian pedagogical and grammatical-philosophical tradition: his concern with a “grammatica ragionata,” with language as a human instrument guided by “genio del linguaggio,” and with training (children learn by imitation; practical education, civic gestures like planting a liberty tree) frames meaning less as an inferential product of conversational norms and more as the disciplined expression of thought and action within a cultivated linguistic practice. The closest point of contact is that Buonsanti’s emphasis on practical discourse and on how rule-of-thumb “regolette” guide competent speaking resembles, at a different level, Grice’s idea that conversational rationality is normative and learnable; but where Grice offers a micro-pragmatic mechanism for deriving extra content (e.g., how a remark about planting a tree can be taken to mean peace by context-sensitive inference, or how a question-answer exchange licenses a “helpfulness” inference), Buonsanti reads the same phenomena through the lens of rational grammar, pedagogy, and civic praxis—meaning as something stabilized by education, usage, and the practical forms of life in which words and deeds jointly function as signs. Grice: “B. is a good one – I call him the Italian Wittgenstein; he talks of a reasoned grammar (grammatical ragionata) and not of rules but regoletta – and he like Austin speaks of the genius (il genio) del linguaggio – he speaks of a ‘philosophical approach’ to grammar – of ‘proposizioni’ and the rest – of etimologia, and sintassi, so he is into implicature!”  Repubblicano, e insieme al Carella, porta dalla vicina Brindisi un albero di naviglio per piantarlo, in segno di libertà, nella piazza antistante il Castello. Etica iconologica; Il sistema metrico; Geografia, Antologia Latina; Sistema d'istruire. By planting the tree, B. means that he wants peace. Etica iconologica: children learn by imitating: ‘sistema per educare i giovinetti” We are interested in that branch of philosophy that deals with action. Cannot be ‘morals’ because ‘ethos’ or mos is costume, not action. Analytic philosophers speak of ‘philosophy of action’ – Grice: “But not I. In my ‘Actions and Events’ I elaborate on this. I find that the vernacular is ‘do’. We need a special interrogative. Giulio whatted? He crossed the Rubicon. Quandum ubi quia are interrogative. Grice: “Latin is better equipped than English with particles to inquire, with respect to any category, which item would lend its name to achieve the conversion of an open sentence to the expression of an alethically/practically satisfactory utterance.   ‘unum ubi’. ‘unum quod’ – and so on. Am utterer may require not a pro-NOUN, but a pro-VERB, to make an inquiry about an indefinite reference to one of categories of items which a PREDICATE, qua epi-thet, ascribes to a subject. Ubi did GIULIO cross’ is answered by ‘Rubicon’,  yes-no question,  ‘Giulio WHATTED?’. Yes’ – And given the principle of conversational helpfulness, if one is in a position to specify what VERB we would use to express, we do just that. ‘Crossed the Rubicon’. ‘There! I *knew* that Giulio SOME-WHATTED.” The Romans lack ‘do’ but have ‘agire’ prammatica del discorso, icono, pratico e prasso radice per.  Grice: Buonasanti, dimmi, la grammatica ragionata è solo un gioco di regolette oppure serve davvero a capire il genio del linguaggio? Buonsanti: Grice, se non ci fossero le regolette, i bambini imparerebbero imitandoti e ti chiamerebbero maestro, ma rischieresti di essere scambiato per un albero piantato in piazza! Grice: Ma allora, se Giulio ha attraversato il Rubicone, dobbiamo chiedere “Giulio whatted?” oppure “Giulio agì?” – e magari ricevere in risposta una pizza di Brindisi! Buonsanti: Grice, qui a San Vito dei Normanni facciamo filosofia piantando alberi, ma la vera prammatica del discorso sta nel sapere quando è il momento di attraversare e quando di restare… soprattutto se c’è vento di libertà! Buonsanti, Vito (1807). Abbici morale, ovvero metodo facile per istruire i fanciulli nella lettura e negl’elementi della storia. Napoli.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Buscarini: la ragione conversazionale – filosofia italiana – , pel Gruppo di Gioco di Grice. Giuseppe Buscarini (Fidenza, Parma, Emilia): la ragione conversazionale – Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers derive speaker-meaning from what is said by presuming cooperative rationality: interlocutors treat contributions as guided by shared purposes and norms (the Cooperative Principle and maxims), and they compute implicatures when an utterance appears underinformative, off-topic, or otherwise non-maximal, so that meaning is anchored in publicly recognizable intentions and the rational management of inference in talk. Buscarini, by contrast, belongs to an older rationalist-logical tradition in which “logic” is explicitly the doctrine of signs of ideas, with a basic semiotic split between natural signs (e.g., smoke for fire, a cry for pain) and conventional signs (badges, words, linguistic systems), and with an explicitly pedagogical aim: to teach clear, current, and brief expression; in this framework, the central explanatory unit is not the cooperative inferential practice of a conversation but the relation between ideas and their sign-vehicles, with language treated as the chief conventional instrument for expressing thought. The comparison is thus one of level and mechanism: Buscarini offers a broadly Cartesian/Port-Royal–style picture where rationality governs expression by regulating the adequacy of signs to ideas (and where “brevity/clarity” are stylistic-logical virtues), while Grice explains how, even when expression is not maximally clear or direct, rational agents systematically recover intended meaning by attributing purposes and intentions and by reasoning about what a speaker could be doing in context; where Buscarini’s semiotics comfortably accommodates “non-intentional” indication (natural meaning) versus instituted signification (conventional meaning), Grice makes intention and its recognition central to the distinctively communicative notion of meaning and uses conversational norms to explain how we routinely mean more (or other) than our words conventionally encode.Grice: “I love Buscarini” “I call myself ‘enough of a rationalist,’ since I’m Oxonian, but B. can go the whole hog!” – Keywords: key, way of words, way of ideas, way of things, segno naturale, segno convenzionale, vocabolo, lingua, esprimere. The author of ‘Discussioni di filosofia RAZIONALE’, B. is the archdeacon and vicar geneal of the diocese of Borgo San Donnino, the modern-day town of Fidenza. He publishes several pastroal letters and addresses to the clergy and people of his diocse. B. archidiacono della chiesa cattedale, viario generale capitolare della diocese di Borgo S. Donnino al venerable clero ed amatissimo popolo, salute nel signore – “Al venerable clero ed amatissimo popolo della citta e diocesi di Borgo San Donnino. B. FILOSOFIA RAZIONALE Dei segni  La logica deve trattare dei segni delle idee, dei vocaboli e della lingua. Piova.  Segno d’una idea è ciò che ha forza di svegliare in noi la notizia di una cosa da lui diversa. Il segno è naturale o convenzionale secondoché ha tale forza da natura o da convenzione falta tra uomini. Un segno naturale del fuoco o del dolore è il fumo e un grido. Segno convenzionale è una divisa d’un magistrato. Premesso questo, noi dobbiamo esprimere agl’altri col SEGNO l’idea, quale la concepiamo. Ora, la logica insegna a ben concepirle. Dunque, la logica deve insegnare anco a bene esprimerle. La logica perciò deve traltare anche del segno dell’idea  Prora. Il segno che principalmente si usa dall'universale per esprimere l’idea è il vocabolo, cioè, un suono articolatamente proferito ad esprimere un’idea. Un complesso di vocaboli valevole ad esprimere tutti i pensieri dell'uomo sotto determinate leggi grammaticali dicesi lingua. Ma abbiamo dello che la logica deve trattare del segno. Dunque, la logica deve trattare anche del vocabolo e della lingua. Tuttavia poichè questo studio si compie nelle scuole di grammatica, e di belle lettere. Così noi ce ne dispenseremo, notando solo che la lingua deve essere usitata, chiara, e breve. Grice: Caro Buscarini, dimmi, se la logica tratta di segni, ci serve una patente speciale per guidarli? Buscarini: Grice, la patente te la dà il buon senso; basta non prendere il fumo per fuoco e non urlare “dolore!” quando ti pizzica una zanzara. Grice: E se invece uso un vocabolo sbagliato, rischio la multa grammaticale? Buscarini: Solo se parli troppo; la lingua, dice la logica, deve essere usitata, chiara e breve. Se esageri, ti mando in confessionale a pentirti delle subordinate! Buscarini, Giuseppe (1842). Discussioni di filosofia razionale. Parma, Fiaccadori.