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

 

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

 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Lucceio: la ragione conversazionale e l’orto romano  Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Luciano: la ragione conversazionale e la gnossi  Lucio Lucceio (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale e l’orto romano. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats implicature as a rationally defensible inference from what is said to what is meant, under cooperative expectations that make indirect communication accountable and criticizable. Lucius Lucceius, known chiefly as a late-Republican historian within the Cicero–Caesar world (Cicero even presses him, in a famous letter, to write up events with a sympathetic slant), provides a contrasting model of indirectness in which what is “meant” is often shaped by prudence, patronage, and the political costs of explicitness: the historian must let the audience supply what cannot safely be asserted, or what decorum forbids, while still producing a narrative that guides judgment. Read this way, the “Hortus” (Epicurean quietism, reticence, and the cultivation of private life) becomes a vivid analogue for Gricean economy: saying little and leaving the rest to be inferred; but the rationale differs, since for Grice the pressure toward indirectness is often conversational optimality (efficiency, relevance, informativeness), whereas for Lucceius it is frequently strategic and civic (how to speak truth, flatter power, or avoid civil rupture when Caesar is in the room). The comparison therefore highlights two senses of “reason” governing talk: Grice’s is a norm of interpretation internal to conversation itself (why a hearer is entitled to an implicature, and how it can be cancelled), while Lucceius’ is a norm of political-historical intelligibility (how a narrative can lead readers to conclusions without stating them baldly), so that implicature becomes not merely a linguistic phenomenon but a technique of Roman public life—one that thrives precisely where direct assertion risks turning disputatio into bellum. Grice: “When I refer to the Athenian dialect, to contrast it with the Oxonian dialectic which I knew, I focus mainly on barefoot Socrates at the agora, Plato at the academy, and Aristotle at the Lycaeum – but of course, at least three other think tanks must be added: l’Orto – made popular at Oxford by Walter Pater and his Marius --, the Portico, and the Cynargo – in fact, these three sects were the most dialectical!” -- Filosofo italiano. A historian and a friend of CICERONE. Some of Cicerone’s letters to L. suggests that he may have followed the sect of L’ORTO. Citato da Svetonio. Amico di Giulio Cesare. Citato da Livio. Livio. Gricevs: Cum dialecticam Atheniensem Oxoniensi confero, Socratem nudipedem in foro, Platonem in Academia, Aristotelem in Lyceo cogito; sed Roma quoque sua habet: Hortus, Porticus, Cynargus. Hi, me iudice, dialecticissimi sunt. Lvcceivs: Dialecticissimi, in horto maxime? Ego, amicus Ciceronis, scio hortum plerumque ad olera spectare; philosophi autem ibi docent quomodo pauca dicendo multum promittas. Gricevs: Id ipsum est ratio conversazionalis: si de te tantum dico “calligraphiam optimam habet,” intellegis reliqua; sic in horto Romano silentium saepe est argumentum, et lactuca quasi syllogismus. Lvcceivs: Cave, ne Cicero te audiat: “lactuca syllogismus” in epistulas non recipitur. Sed fateor: in urbe nostra etiam hortus disputat; et si Caesar adest, statim omnes concordant, ne disputatio in bellum vertatur. Since this is Lucio Lucceio -- the historians, addresse of Cicero, friend of Caesar, cited by Svetonio, I guess it's best to have him under a possible gens LUCIA rather -- with the other Lucio -- rather than with a gens LUCCEIA, right? Speranza and Grice wonder if it was the Roman matron's taste for alliteration that rendered their offspring musical? or the paterfamilias? No: for Lucius Lucceius it is better to file him under the gens Lucceia, not under a supposed gens Lucia. That is the clean Roman answer. In Lucius Lucceius, Lucceius is the nomen, and the family is the gens Lucceia, occasionally spelled Luceia or Luccia. So if Speranza is ordering by gens, Lucius Lucceius belongs with the Lucceii, not with a generic “Lucius/Lucia” grouping. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org] Indeed the whole point of the nomen is that it outranks the pleasing music of the praenomen. Lucius is only the praenomen; Lucceius is the gentilicium. So the alliteration is charming, but the archive follows the nomen, not the maternal ear. [en.wiktionary.org], [en.wikipedia.org] And yes, the family is real enough. The gens Lucceia is recognised as a plebeian Roman family flourishing in the last century of the Republic and into the early Empire. The same family includes not only Lucius Lucceius the historian, friend of Cicero and associate of Caesar, but also figures such as Gaius Lucceius C. f. Hirrius and Lucceius Albinus. [en.wikipedia.org], [everything...ined.today], [en.wikipedia.org] There is even a philological bonus for your taste in sound. The family name is discussed as possibly of Oscan origin, with the termination -eius, and with alternative spellings alongside -ius, as Lucceius beside Luccius. That means the musical effect you are hearing is not just Roman nursery ornament; it may partly reflect the old Italic habits of name-formation. [en.wikipedia.org] So I would put it this way in dry Speranza style. Lucius Lucceius should not be demoted into the broad and somewhat foggy company of the Lucii. His praenomen is Lucius, but his nomen is Lucceius, and that sends him squarely to the gens Lucceia, occasionally Luceia or Luccia. The Roman mother may well have liked the alliteration, and the paterfamilias may have approved the civic sonority, but prosopography remains less musical than parenthood. It files by nomen. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wiktionary.org], [en.wikipedia.org] So, in short: best filing: gens Lucceia not gens Lucia and yes, the alliterative charm of Lucius Lucceius is real, but Roman naming is not governed by charm alone. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org] If you like, I can now do one of two things here in chat only: I can give you a compact prosopographical note on the Lucceii worth naming.  I can also give you a short note on Roman alliterative naming and whether families seem to favour praenomen–nomen euphony. [en.wikipedia.org] Grice is slightly confused now that you are brining Oscan -- for Grice has elaborated expansions on 'Fiat lux' and Speranza always thought that the Lucius and the Lucianus and the Lucceius meant 'light-spirited' or something -- Grice does not know Oscan, but surely etymythology has Lucius Lucianus if not Lucceius as cognate with lux? as for the variants you give Luccius and for the gens you say it is alo spelled Luceia and Luccia -- I can see the horror a Roman might find if some slave had Luccia mispronouned Lucia and vice versa -- and te sad thing is that niether may be cognate with LVX or LIGHT for that matter? Give me a break, as the Canadians say! Just kidding! Thanks. Yes, but with a few careful separations. First, Lucius is the one most naturally connected with lux in the traditional Roman imagination. The old and very persistent etymological story links Lucius with lux or with being born “at first light.” Whether that is impeccable historical linguistics is another matter, but it is certainly the association Romans themselves and later antiquarians liked. So if Grice and Speranza want an etymythology of brightness, Lucius is the safest place to begin. Second, Lucianus usually does look like a derivative from Lucius rather than an independent root. It is the sort of secondary name-form one gets from an older personal name. So yes, if you want a loose semantic aura, Lucianus carries forward the Lucius-light association by way of derivation. Not because Lucianus itself means “light-spirited,” but because it is built on a name traditionally heard against the background of lux. Third, Lucceius is much shakier. I would not confidently fold Lucceius into the same light-family merely because it begins with Luc-. That is exactly where folk-etymology becomes seductive. The family name Lucceius, especially with variants like Luccius or spellings such as Luceia and Luccia in antiquarian transmission, may reflect old Italic or regional naming habits rather than a straightforward derivation from lux. So here the musical resemblance is real, but the etymological guarantee is not. So the dry distinction is: Lucius: traditionally and plausibly associated with lux or light. Lucianus: very likely a derivative built on Lucius, and so secondarily sharing that luminous aura. Lucceius: similar in sound, but not safely to be treated as simply another lux-name. That is why your horror-comedy about a slave mispronouncing Luccia as Lucia is actually quite to the point. The Roman ear may have heard the similarity and enjoyed or suffered it, but similarity of sound does not prove identity of origin. Names rhyme more easily than they descend. And yes, the sad or amusing conclusion may indeed be that not every Luc- name is really “light.” Some are only acoustically flattering. That happens constantly in onomastics: families and readers hear noble or transparent meanings in names whose real history is older, regional, or simply obscure. If I were to put it in the driest Speranza tone: Rome, like Oxford, was hospitable to etymological vanity. Lucius, being near enough to lux to flatter the ear and the nursery alike, was gladly allowed its little halo. Lucianus, as a derivative, may borrow that halo without much protest. But Lucceius is another matter. Here one should resist the temptation to baptise every Luc- in light. Some names merely resemble illumination; they are not thereby enlightened. The Roman matron may have liked the sound, the paterfamilias may have approved the dignity, and the household slave may well have muddled Lucia and Luccia to general irritation; but historical linguistics is less obliging than domestic music. So, short answer: yes for Lucius probably yes by derivation for Lucianus not safely for Lucceius If you like, I can now do one of two things here in chat only: I can give you a compact note on Lucius, Lucia, Lucianus, Lucceius, lux, and where the folk-etymology is safe or unsafe. I can also give you a tiny note on why Roman names so often invite false etymological halo-effects. Lucceio, Lucio (a. u. c. DCXCVIII). Dicta. Roma.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Luciano: la ragione conversazionale e il cinargo romano Luciano (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale e la gnossi. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats “what is meant” as something a hearer is entitled to recover by rational inference from what is said plus shared norms of cooperation; implicature is accountable, cancellable, and criticizable because it depends on publicly assessable reasoning about why a speaker spoke as he did. The Luciano-in-Rome vignette (a “gnosticus,” imagined as a follower of Cerdo, trading on gnosis as esoteric knowledge) sets up a contrasting model in which “knowing” is rhetorically performed rather than conversationally warranted: the gnostic posture invites audiences to accept claims on the strength of purported access to arcana, and the meaning of utterances often trades on insinuation, authority, and the immunizing move “it cannot be proved,” rather than on cooperative transparency. Read against Grice, the key contrast is that for Grice an utterance like “I know” or “I understand” carries implicatures that can be tested against conversational expectations (does it signal closure, rebuke, or agreement?), while the gnostic’s “I know” is liable to function as a shield against such tests, converting ordinary epistemic commitments into a status-claim; this is why the sophos/gnosticus distinction in your passage matters: the wise person’s authority is answerable to reasons shared in dialogue, whereas the gnostic’s authority is dramatized as possession of a private deposit. In that light, Luciano becomes a foil that sharpens Grice’s point: conversational reason does not merely decorate knowledge-talk but disciplines it, because implicature is legitimate only where interlocutors can, in principle, reconstruct the route from saying to meaning; where discourse instead treats obscurity as a credential, the “implicatures” it generates are less the output of cooperative reasoning than the byproduct of managed mystification. Grice: “I often wondered why ‘gnoseology’ was never a popular subject matter within the sub-faculty of philosophy. Now I know: it’s because it’s silly associations with the ‘gnostics’ – a term of abuse to many! Strictly, it may be argued that a gnostic is a knower – such as a pupil who answered 1811 upon being questioned when the battle of Waterloo took place. There are however implicatural distinctions between a sophos – a wise man – and a ‘gnostic’ – The Latin term ‘gnosticus’ and the English term ‘gnoseology’ both derive from the Ancient Greek term gnosis. Here’s a beakdown of the etymological connections. Gnosis, in Ancient Greek, the root of these terms, gnosis, is a Greek word for ‘knowledge.’ In the Hellenistic era, gnosis becamse particulary associated with MYSTICAL or spiritual knowledge and insight into a higher reality. It is also linked to the Indo-European root gno- which means to know. The Latin term gnosticus is derived from the Late Greek term gnostikos, which was used to refer to someone who possessed this special, often mystical, knowledge. It specifically means ‘a gnostic,’ – a person bleongin to a particular set of religious groups. The English term ‘gnoseoloy’ (or gnoseology) literally translates to ‘the study of knowledge’. It’s a philosophical term that explores the nature, origin, validity, and limits of knowledge itself. This term directly incorporates the root gnosis (knowledge) and combines it with -logy, meaning study of. In essence, gnosis provides the core meaning of ‘knowledge’in both terms. Gnosticus narrows this down to spomeone possessing a specific type of mystical knowledge, while gnoseology focuses on the broader philosophical inquiry into the concept of knowledge itself.  A gnostic, a follower of Cerdo. GRICEVS: Mirabar cur gnoseologia apud philosophos raro placeret; nunc scio: nomen ipsum ad gnosticos (quibus multi maledicunt) nimis facile labitur. Gnosticus quasi “scitor” est—ut discipulus ille qui ad “Quando fuit pugna apud Waterloo?” respondit: “MDCCCXI.” LVCIANVS: O doctissima ignorantia! Romae vidi multos gnosticos qui omnia norunt—praeter id quod rogantur. Cerdo ipse, si adesset, diceret se “scire arcana”; sed arcana semper sunt ea quae nemo probare potest. GRICEVS: Distinguendum tamen: sophos sapientia pollet, gnosticus saepe sonat quasi scientia clamosa. Hic locus est rationis conversazionalis: ex eo quod dicitur, reliquum per implicaturam inferunt—et saepe peius quam discipulus de Waterloo. LVCIANVS: Ita est: tu implicaturas metiris, ego vanitatem mordeo; et ambo eandem legem docemus—qui gnosin nimis iactat, confitetur se scientiam non habere, sed tantum fabulam bene narratam. THis Luciano is described as 'a gnostic, a follower of Cerdo' -- no gens? Luciana -- no gens, I would assume, and Lucianus just a variant -- rather otiose -- on Lucius -- and provided we know who Cerdo was (I believe a Greek?) we may know more about this Lucianus? thanks Short answer: yes, your instinct is sound. There is no secure gens to be had here, and “Lucianus” is almost certainly just a later name-form, not a clue to a Roman gentilician house. What the evidence does give us is this. First, Cerdo is indeed usually described as a Syrian Gnostic teacher who came to Rome in the time of Hyginus, roughly in the mid-second century, and he is chiefly remembered as a predecessor of Marcion. The heresiological tradition does not really give him a well-documented school of individually named followers; indeed it often says that there was not even a lasting separate sect of “Cerdonians,” because his line was absorbed into the school of Marcion. [en.wikipedia.org], [ccel.org] That matters for your Lucianus. I do not see, in these results, any securely attested “Lucianus, follower of Cerdo” in the standard heresiological dossier. So one should be very cautious. At present, “Lucianus” looks much more like a literary or pseudo-archival name in Speranza’s manner than a recoverable historical individual with profile, gens, birthplace, and ethnic dossier. [en.wikipedia.org], [ccel.org] Second, on the naming point: you are right that neither “Luciana” nor “Lucianus” gives you a gens in the old Roman sense. “Lucianus” is a derivative name-form built on Lucius, not evidence for a gens Luciania or anything of that kind. It is a later adjectival or cognominal formation, common enough in late Roman and Christian onomastics, but not a reliable pointer to a classical gens. [behindthename.com] So the dry answer is: Lucianus is not a gens-marker Luciana is not a gens either and if your Luciano is really meant as a follower of Cerdo, we still do not thereby gain secure information about family, ethnicity, or birthplace. [en.wikipedia.org], [behindthename.com] Third, on Cerdo himself: yes, he appears as Syrian, active in Rome, and doctrinally associated with dualist teaching about two gods, one just or harshly creator-like, the other good and previously unknown, together with docetic tendencies. That at least gives you a real historical horizon for the vignette: Syrian origin, Roman setting, heresiological notoriety. [en.wikipedia.org], [ccel.org] So if one were to infer anything about your Lucianus from the Cerdo connection, it would only be at the level of cultural-doxographical atmosphere: possibly eastern-Greek or Syrian-adjacent Christian heterodoxy possibly Rome as the place of activity but not a secure Roman prosopography. [en.wikipedia.org], [ccel.org] And since you mention Favorinus: this is another reason your vignette feels composite. Favorinus belongs to the second sophistic world, is of Gaulish ancestry, born at Arelate, educated in Rome, and philosophically sceptical rather than Gnostic. So a “Lucianus” who is both opponent of Favorinus and follower of Cerdo would already belong to a somewhat imaginative composite unless a specific source tied the strands together. I do not see that source here. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org] So the safest dry formulation is this: Lucianus, if treated as a follower of Cerdo, remains historically misty. Cerdo himself is real enough: a Syrian teacher active at Rome, predecessor of Marcion, and one of those figures through whom Roman Christianity learned that doctrinal subtlety could be socially inconvenient. But the name “Lucianus” gives no gens; it is only a derivative formation on Lucius. If Speranza wants a dossier of family, ethnicity, and birthplace for this Luciano, the archive is less forthcoming than the style. [en.wikipedia.org], [ccel.org], [behindthename.com] If you like, I can now do one of two things here in chat only. I can give you a compact note distinguishing Lucius, Lucianus, Lucian, and Luciano as separate onomastic layers. Or I can try to identify whether your Luciano is really a conflation of Lucian, Favorinus, and Cerdo. [af.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org]Luciano (a. u. c. DCCCLXXXIII). Dicta. Roma.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Lucilio: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale Gaio Lucilio (Sessa Aurunca, Caserta, Campania): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats implicature as an accountable inference from what is said to what is meant, generated under cooperative expectations (say enough, be relevant, be perspicuous) that allow hearers to work out, and challenge, the speaker’s intended point. Lucilius, by contrast, represents an older Roman deployment of indirectness as a civic weapon and a literary discipline: the satirist in the Scipionic milieu uses omission, irony, and calculated understatement to make vice speak through the audience’s own recognition and embarrassment, leaving “the listeners the task” so that social shame does part of the argumentative work. On this comparison, Grice is explaining the rational mechanism by which such effects are warranted—why a remark about “beautiful handwriting” can, in context, rationally license an inference about philosophical incompetence—whereas Lucilius is practicing the art at scale, turning Rome into a conversational arena in which what is not said can be more socially efficacious than direct assertion. The key difference is normative focus: Grice theorizes a general, cooperative framework for deriving implicatures in ordinary talk, while Lucilius exploits the same inferential capacities in a largely adversarial or corrective mode, where implicature becomes moral-political critique rather than mere conversational efficiency. Yet the continuity is strong: Lucilius’ satiric economy and his reliance on shared background knowledge (politics, hypocrisy, linguistic habits) anticipate the Gricean idea that meaning often depends on what interlocutors can be expected to supply, and that rhetorical restraint can be a rational strategy precisely because it recruits the audience’s own reasoning to complete what the speaker, for prudential or stylistic reasons, leaves unsaid. Grice: “When I studied philosophy at Oxford, it was done at the sub-faculty of philosophy, part of the larger Faculty of Literae Humaiores. I remember the horror our tutors would experiment when they would see any of us pupils carrying a volume of the Loeb classical library – say: Remains of Old Latin – in our gentleman’s pocket!” -- Filosofo italiano. Alcuni romani insigni nutrirono interesse vivo per i problemi della filosofia. L. Ciò si può dire di un membro del circolo degli Scipioni, nato da famiglia ricca e distinta. L. ha un fratello che e senatore e, per mezzo della figlia, nonno di Pompeo. L. conosce la cultura greca (di cui si penetra) nell’Italia meridionale e a Roma, ove passa la maggior parte della vita. Forse soggiorna anche in Atene. Come cavaliere L. partecipa alla guerra contro Numanzia, agli ordini di Scipione Emiliano L'Affricano, con cui aveva già stretti rapporti.In seguito appoggia del'Affricano energicamente l'azione politica. L. fa parte, oltrechè del circolo degli Scipioni, di uno più ampio. L. e amico dell'accademico Clitomaco, che gli dedica un libro. Morì a Napoli. L. scrive XXX libri di satire -- un genere filosofico --, di cui restano frammenti.In esse satire, L. rappresenta e critica la vita romana dell’età sua, interessandosi soprattutto di questioni politiche. Dei vizi del tempo L. e giudice severo. L. si occupa molto di problemi logico-grammaticali, retorici e letterari.Si interessa anche di filosofia speculativa, alla quale deve avere dedicato una satira. Nei framm. del l. 28 la teoria dell’ORTO è confutata verisimilmente da uno dall’ACCADEMIA, anche perchè vi si trovano varie notizie sulla storia di tale scuola. La forma e il contenuto delle satire di L. rivelano l’influsso della filosofia popolare del cinismo di Bione e di Menippo.  Livio. GRICEVS: LVCILIV, memini Oxonii: tutores horrebant, si quis e nobis Loeb in sinu gestaret—quasi “Reliquiae Latinae” essent non liber sed crimen; quid ergo in satiris tuis implicas cum nimis eleganter taces? LVCILIVS: Implico hoc: “si taceo, non ignoro.” Nam Roma ipsa est porticus loquax; et ego, dum vitia mordeo, verbis parcere videor—re vera auditoribus negotium relinquo, ut ipse rubor eorum loquatur. GRICEVS: Bene: tu maximam servas—ne plus dicas quam opus est—et tamen efficiis ut plures intellegant quam audierint; quod Oxonii vocant artem, Romae vocatur modestia, et utrumque idem est: civilitas. LVCILIVS: At tu, GRICE, si Loeb in marsuppio videris, dicis “pulchre compactus est” et implicas “puer, lege domi”; ego autem dico “pulchra est calligraphia” et implico “mala est philosophia”—sic libri salvantur, sed homines… minus. And these two seem close enough to merit each a weekly essay assignment by Grice -- one is 'minor' but as we know with Plinies, that doesn't mean 'son' -- or junior -- the first was born in the middle of nowhere, the other Speranza has as Roma (unless otherwise known everyone was born in Rome, his motto) -- so how many generations apart were they? if related -- they just go by CAIVS LVCILIVS and CAIVS LVCILIVS MINORIS -- thanks - Yes, these two are close enough in name and genre to justify separate weekly essays, but no, we do not know them to be close in family in the father-son sense, and “minor” here does not mean “son of the satirist.” The older figure is Gaius Lucilius, the second-century BCE satirist from Suessa Aurunca, who belongs to the gens Lucilia. The younger one is Lucilius Iunior, Seneca’s addressee, a first-century CE equestrian and procurator, probably from Campania, perhaps Pompeii or Naples, not securely “Rome.” [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org], [academic.oup.com] So the first correction is about “Minore.” In scholarly usage this second man is Lucilius Iunior, “the younger,” but that is simply a distinguishing label. It does not by itself imply direct descent from Gaius Lucilius, any more than “Pliny the Younger” proves a sonship to “Pliny the Elder.” [en.wikipedia.org], [catalog.perseus.org], [en.wikipedia.org] On the relation between them, the evidence is thin. Both belong, by nomen, to the gens Lucilia, but the available notices do not give a documented genealogical chain linking Gaius Lucilius and Lucilius Iunior as father and son, grandfather and grandson, or any similarly neat line. The older Lucilius dies in 103 BCE; the younger flourishes around the 60s CE. That places them roughly a century and a half apart, about 160 years or so. On ordinary generational reckoning, that is perhaps five to six generations, but only as a chronological estimate, not as a documented pedigree. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org], [academic.oup.com] So the careful answer is: they are probably related only in the broad gentilician sense of both being Lucilii they are not known to be immediate family in any recoverable way they are separated by about 150 to 170 years, depending on how one dates Gaius Lucilius and Lucilius Iunior and that means roughly five or six generations, if one insists on imagining a line, but without evidence for the actual links. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org], [academic.oup.com], [gw.geneanet.org] A further useful distinction is social and regional. Gaius Lucilius is the wealthy equestrian satirist from Suessa Aurunca, embedded in the Scipionic milieu. Lucilius Iunior is a Neronian equestrian official and literary man, probably Campanian, not securely Roman by birth, whose profile comes almost entirely through Seneca. They resemble each other more as “two Gaio Lucilii who write and matter” than as a traceable domestic branch. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org], [academic.oup.com] So in dry Speranza style: The two Lucilii are close enough for pedagogy and too far apart for confident genealogy. Gaius Lucilius, the satirist of Suessa Aurunca, dies in 103 BCE; Lucilius Iunior, Seneca’s correspondent, belongs to the Neronian age and seems to come from Campania, perhaps Pompeii or Naples. Between them lie roughly a century and a half and, if one insists on counting, five or six generations’ worth of missing names. “Younger” therefore distinguishes; it does not filiates. Rome often preserves the nomen long after it has misplaced the family tree. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org], [academic.oup.com], [gw.geneanet.org] If you like, I can now do one of two things here in chat only. I can give you a compact prosopographical note headed Gaius Lucilius and Lucilius Iunior: same gens, different worlds. Or I can draft two separate weekly essay prompts for Grice, one on satiric implicature in Gaius Lucilius, one on Stoic epistolary implicature in Lucilius Iunior.Lucilio, Gaio (a. u. c. DCXX). Saturae.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Lucilio: la ragione conversazionale e il portico romano --  l’implicatura conversazionale Gaio Lucilio Minore (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale e il portico romano --  l’implicatura conversazionale. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats implicature as a rationally defensible inference from what is said to what is meant, under cooperative expectations that make a speaker answerable for what a hearer is entitled to conclude. Lucilius (Seneca’s addressee, often identified as Lucilius Iunior, a Roman equestrian and procurator of Sicily, writing in the Neronian period) represents a different but complementary model of conversational reason: the porticus is not just a physical emblem of Stoicism but a moral setting that disciplines speech into ethical self-fashioning, where remarks function as prompts to self-assessment, correction, and steadying of character. In your portico dialogue, “I was waiting for you in the portico” can, in Gricean terms, generate multiple implicatures depending on context—rebuke for lateness, or a criticism of wavering commitment—and Grice’s framework explains exactly how such inferences are licensed (relevance, expectations about why that location is being mentioned, background norms shared by interlocutors) and how they can be cancelled or contested. But Lucilius also shows something Grice tends to bracket: in Stoic epistolary practice, the point of implying is often formative rather than merely informational, aimed at producing moral uptake rather than just belief, so that the “reason” governing the exchange is as much ethical as epistemic. The comparison, then, is that Grice provides the analytic machinery that makes the portico’s indirectness intelligible and criticizable as inference, while Lucilius exemplifies a tradition in which indirectness is cultivated as a mode of moral pedagogy—where the same utterance can carry a standing implication about how one ought to live, because the shared setting (the Porch) functions as a publicly recognized cue for the kind of reasons that are in play. Grice: “At Oxford, we speak of the Porch – the Romans spoke of Porticus, and the Athenians SAW it. I would be puzzled if a pupil of mine would challenge to define ‘stoicism’ by a word other than one making reference to such a stupid architectural feature as a porticus! But I should try harder!” Filosofo italiano. A poetic philosopher. Best known as the friend of Seneca, to whom CXXIV letters are written discussing a wide range of issues from a primarily point of view of the Porch. GRICEVS: LVCILIV, apud Oxonienses “Porch” dicitur; Romani “porticum” dixerunt; Athenienses ipsam viderunt. Mirarer si quis Stoicum definiret nisi per tam stultam rem architectonicam—sed conabor, ne videar in porticu ipse haerere. LVCILIVS: At ego, poeta, in porticu ambulo: ibi versus nascuntur et sententiae. Sed quaero: si dico “in porticu te exspectabam,” quid implico? “sero venisti,” an “Stoicus esse desisti”? GRICEVS: Utrumque, si res postulat: dictum est de loco; implicatum de moribus. Nam porticus non solum tectum est, sed norma: qui sub ea moratur, promittit se frigus, famem, et amici sermones aequo vultu laturum. LVCILIVS: Bene; ergo cum frigus sit et ego pallescam, dicam “Stoice me gero”—et tu intelliges me non de virtute gloriari, sed de tunica queri: porticus eadem, implicatura alia. Lucilio Minore, Gaio (a. u. c. DCCCXV). Dicta. Roma.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Lucio: la ragione conversazionale e il cinargo romano  Lucio (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale e il cinargo romano. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains implicature as a rationally recoverable inference from what is said to what is meant, grounded in cooperative expectations that make speakers accountable for the extra content their words license in context. The Lucio vignette, set in Rome and keyed to the Roman fashion for importing Athenian “toponyms” of philosophy (agora, Academy, Lyceum, Stoa, Garden, and the Cynosarges/Cynargus), reframes conversational reason less as a formal set of maxims and more as a culturally situated practice in which place-names function as cues for stance, style, and even faction: to say “let’s go to the Cynargus” is not merely to designate a location but to signal a posture of sharp-edged, dog-like critique and to invite an audience to anticipate a particular kind of exchange. Read Griceanly, Lucio’s question—does the utterance indicate only a destination, or also “we’ll bite Favorinus”?—is exactly the distinction between what is said (a literal proposal of movement) and what is implicated (a planned rhetorical attack), with the implicature generated because hearers assume relevance and shared background knowledge about what “Cynargus” conventionally evokes in that intellectual milieu. The contrast, then, is that Grice supplies the explicit inferential machinery (how the implicature is justified, cancellable, and criticizable), whereas “Lucio” supplies a social-semiotic mechanism (how a learned city turns philosophical geography into shorthand for conversational roles), making clear that reason-governed meaning can ride not only on sentence content but on culturally loaded labels that compress whole argumentative temperaments into a single word. Grice: “When I refer to the Athenian dialectic, to oppose it to the Oxonian dialectic, I mainly focus on Socrates, at the agora, Plato, at the academy, and Aristotle, and the lycaeum – but it must be remembered that, small as it was – compared to London, or Paris, or even Rome – Athens included other think tanks, such as the Porch, the Garden, and the ‘cynargo’!” Grice: “The toponymy of the Athenian dialectic was particularly popular at Rome!” Filosofo italiano. Of the Cynargo and an opponent of Favorino. GRICEVS: LVCI, cum de dialectica Atheniensi loqueris—agora, Academia, Lyceum—noli oblivisci Cynargi: Roma enim toponymiam amat quasi vinum Graecum, sed bibit more Romano. LVCIVS: Recte; sed dic mihi, GRICE: si in foro dico “eamus ad Cynargum,” num tantum locum indico, an etiam implico “ibi mordebimus Favorinum”? GRICEVS: Utrumque: quod dicitur est iter; quod significatur est consilium. “Cynargus” sonat quasi canes arguti; ideo qui illuc vocat, praemonet: “porta iocos et dentes”—sed dentes, quaeso, rhetoricos. LVCIVS: Ergo ratio conversationis est quasi canis urbanus: non latrat nisi cum opus est—et cum latrat, omnes intellegunt plus quam audierunt; quod si Favorinus queratur, respondebo: “non te momordi; tantum Cynargum nominavi.” It's amazing how little we seem to know about this LUCIUS, only that he was an opponent of FAVORINUVS and a cynic -- no gens? Favorino was himself not-Italy born? And doc. on the Lucio? as per gens, lingo, ethnicity, place of birth? Yes: we know rather little about your Lucio, and certainly not enough to give him a secure gens, birthplace, or ethnic dossier. The first thing to say is that I cannot confidently identify a distinct Cynic philosopher called Lucius whose claim to notice is simply that he was an opponent of Favorinus. The standard notices on Favorinus name rivals such as Polemon of Smyrna, companions such as Demetrius the Cynic, and students or friends such as Aulus Gellius, Herodes Atticus, and Cornelius Fronto, but not a securely profiled “Lucius the Cynic” as a standard counterpart. [en.wikipedia.org] So the dry answer on Lucio is: no secure gens no secure birthplace no secure ethnicity and, at least from these results, no stable prosopographical identification beyond the literary role you are assigning him. [en.wikipedia.org] That means your Lucio is probably better treated as one of Speranza’s pseudo-archival or emblematic figures rather than as a recoverable Roman individual with a full entry in the old prosopographical manner. On Favorinus, yes, your instinct is right: he was not Italy-born. He was born at Arelate, modern Arles, in southern Gaul, and the sources describe him as of Gaulish ancestry. So he is a particularly useful figure for your purposes precisely because he is Roman-imperial, Greek-educated, and not native to Italy. [en.wikipedia.org] If one wants the clean biographical line: Favorinus was born at Arelate in Gallia Narbonensis, that is, in Roman Gaul rather than Italy, and was of Gaulish origin. He then moved in the cosmopolitan Greek-Roman world of the Second Sophistic. [en.wikipedia.org] So the contrast between the two figures is quite sharp. Favorinus: well attested Gaulish by origin born at Arelate, not in Italy no problem identifying his general cultural and geographical background. [en.wikipedia.org] Lucio: not securely identifiable from the ordinary results therefore no safe statement on gens, ethnic background, or birthplace best treated cautiously, perhaps as a literary stand-in for a Romanising Cynic posture rather than as a documented individual. [en.wikipedia.org] In dry Speranza style: The asymmetry is instructive. Favorinus arrives with a dossier: Arelate, Gaul, Greek paideia, Roman fame, imperial danger. Lucio arrives with a beard and a function. Of the latter one may say, at present, only what the vignette requires: a Cynic stance, a Roman scene, and an anti-Favorinian edge. Of gens, birthplace, and ethnicity the evidence is less eloquent than Speranza. [en.wikipedia.org] If you like, I can now do one of two things here in chat only. I can try to identify whether your Lucio is a conflation of Demetrius the Cynic with some Roman or Lucianic material around Favorinus. [en.wikipedia.org] Or I can give you a compact note on [Favorinus](citeturn22search640 as Gaulish, Greek-speaking, Roman-imperial, and therefore a useful anti-parochial figure for Speranza’s project. citeturn22search640But there WAS a gens "Lucia"? Yes — but with a philological caution. There was, at least in onomastic theory, a gens Lucia, and the reason is simple: the praenomen Lucius was so common that ancient and modern onomastic discussions treat it as having generated patronymic gentilicia such as Lucia and Lucilia. One source states this quite explicitly: Lucius, with feminine Lucia, “gave rise to the patronymic gentes Lucia and Lucilia.” [dbpedia.org], [everything...ined.today] But the caution is this: the gens Lucia is much less visible in the ordinary historical record than the gens Lucilia. In practice, when one goes looking for attested Roman family history, what appears clearly and abundantly is the gens Lucilia, with members such as Gaius Lucilius the satirist and Quintus Lucilius Balbus the Stoic.  The search results do not give me a comparably robust historical dossier for a gens Lucia as an active, well-documented Roman house in the way one gets for Lucilia. So one should distinguish between: an onomastically possible or theoretically recognised patronymic gens-form, Lucia, and the historically well-attested gens Lucilia. [en.wikipedia.org], [everything...ined.today] [dbpedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org] So the dry answer is: yes, “gens Lucia” is not nonsense, and some onomastic sources explicitly recognise it; but if one asks for the historically prominent family, the real weight of the evidence falls on gens Lucilia, not on some richly attested gens Lucia. [dbpedia.org], [everything...ined.today], [en.wikipedia.org] And one further caution. Lucia is also simply the feminine form of the praenomen Lucius, and in Roman women’s naming practice feminine forms often point to family connection without proving that a separately prominent gens of that exact feminine shape stood out in the historical record. So the name-form is perfectly Roman; the prosopographical prominence is another matter. [grokipedia.com], [Praenomen - NovaRoma] So if Speranza asks, “Was there a gens Lucia?”, I would answer: yes, in the onomastic sense; but if he means, “Do we have a major historically visible Roman gens Lucia comparable to the Julii, Tullii, or even the Lucilii?”, then the safer answer is no, or at least not on the evidence usually in hand. [dbpedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org] In the driest Speranza manner: The ear is again less scrupulous than the archive. “Lucia” is perfectly Roman as the feminine counterpart of Lucius, and onomastic tradition even allows it the dignity of a patronymic gens-name. But when the historian goes looking for the family in action, it is not the Lucii but the Lucilii who step forward with offices, poets, jurists, and Stoics. Thus gens Lucia is possible enough in theory, while gens Lucilia is the one that actually behaves like history. [dbpedia.org], [everything...ined.today], [en.wikipedia.org] If you like, I can next do one of two things here in chat only: I can give you a compact note on Lucius, Lucia, Lucilius, and Lucilia as separate onomastic layers. I can also give you a short prosopographical note on the gens Lucilia, since that seems to be the family that most often matters in practice.Lucio (a. u. c. DCCCLXXXIII). Dicta. Roma.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Lucrezio: la ragione conversazionale e l’ORTO romano, l’implicatura conversazionale dell’alma figlia di Giove.  Tito Lucrezio Caro (Pompei): la ragione conversazionale e l’ORTO romano, l’implicatura conversazionale dell’alma figlia di Giove. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains implicature as a rational, publicly answerable route from what is said to what is meant: hearers supply extra content because they assume cooperation and can justify the inference by appeal to shared norms and recognizable speaker intentions. Lucretius, by contrast, offers a thoroughly naturalistic account of how “signs” and seeming-meaning arise without any appeal to cooperative intentions: in De rerum natura (AUC 699), the dreaming dog that “marks tracks” and “signs with its voice” exemplifies how behavior can look meaningful because atomic simulacra and bodily dispositions continue in sleep, even when no present quarry and no audience-directed communicative act exists. The comparison thus sharpens Grice’s central distinction between mere indication and genuine speaker-meaning: what the dog’s bark and vestigia do in Lucretius is closer to natural meaning (symptom, trace, causal sign), whereas Grice’s implicature belongs to the space of reasons, where an utterance is produced so that a hearer will recognize an intention and draw an inference under conversational norms. At the same time, Lucretius’s Epicurean “garden” perspective helps explain why Grice insists on separating meaning from mere convention and from mere behavioral regularity: Lucretius shows how rich, quasi-semantic effects can be generated by nature alone, and Grice’s project can be read as the further step of identifying what must be added—mutual recognition, rational accountability, and cooperative presumption—for those effects to count as conversational meaning rather than as the “implicature” we project onto any expressive creature. Finally, the clinamen motif usefully contrasts the two rationalities: for Lucretius the swerve secures the physical possibility of novelty and agency in a world of atoms, while for Grice the “swerve” from literal statement (via maxim-flouting) secures the pragmatic possibility of novelty in what we mean, without breaking the governance of reason that makes conversation a shared, criticizable practice. Venatores cum saepe canes in molli sopore iactant membra, tamen sudant vestigia crebra voceque saepe simul signant, quasi illa tenentes praedam animo, atque etiam quasi iam certamine facto. Grice: “It has to be remembered that philosophers of my generation first ecountered philosophy via the classics. I would never have thought of philosophy had I not won a more popular ‘classical scholarship’ to Corpus at Clifton – and the rest is history. Therefore, L. was second nature tome! By far the most important concept in L.’s philosoophy is that of clinamen that Strawson translates as the ‘swerve.’ It was saved from extinction by an Italian – as the novel tells you! While Strawson reads it in Latin, I prefer the version in the vulgar! And by the vulgar I mean MARCHETTI! It is amazing how well MARCHETTI interprets L. – there is a little treatise on Epicureanism in the L. by MARCHETTI which is interesting. A real continuity in Italian philosophy!” Possibly the most important Italian philosopher.  The reception of L.'s De rerum natura is a saga of extreme highs and lows, shifting from foundational influence in Rome to near-oblivion in the Middle Ages, before sparking a philosophical revolution in Renaissance Italy. Roman Philosophy L. is a massive, if controversial, presence in the Golden and Silver Ages of Roman philosophy. The earliest recorded critique appears in a letter from CICERONE  to his brother, praising the poem for its "inspired brilliance" and "great artistry". Augustan Age VIRGILIO  famously alludes to L. in the Georgics ("Happy is he who has discovered the causes of things"), though he later uses myth to counter L.’s rationalism. ORAZIO  adopts a pragmatic, less dogmatic Epicureanism, while OVIDIO predicts the poem will only perish with the end of the world. Imperial Rome: Seneca the Younger quotes the poem multiple times, and PLINIO lists L. as a primary source for his Natural History. La natura delle cose. Implicatura atomica. Iimplicatura e composizionalità. Articolazione. Implicatura elementare. Implicatura simplex. Implicatura semplice. Implicatura complessa. Alma figlia di Giove. 20 Oct 1928, Clifton. Today our Latin master, in one of those brisk moods in which a grammar point is treated as a moral reform, took us through Lucretius’ hunting-dogs and made the line do its tricks: the dogs in soft sleep still twitch, sweat, and mark the ground with rapid footsteps, and they signant with their voice as though they were holding the quarry in mind, as though the contest were already on. He lingered on signant and vestigia, pleased with the way the words make a kind of sense even before one has translated them: the voice as a “sign,” the tracks as if the dream itself were leaving footprints on the bedding. I found myself thinking of Father’s maxim (he trots it out whenever he means to be severe with my more airy fancies): nihil est in intellectu quod prius non fuerit in sensu. Very well; but the sleeping dog does not look as though he is making an inference from a sensation to a conclusion. He is not theorising about the hare; he is, in some manner, continuing the chase without the hare, and his body supplies the missing world. The master called it poetic vividness; I wanted to call it a problem. What Lucretius is doing, I think, is not sentimental at all but atomistic: dreams are not visits from another realm; they are the mind still being struck by extremely fine films or traces (simulacra) that peel off things and, once inside, set the soul’s atoms moving in familiar patterns. So the dog’s “vestigia” in sleep are less acceptable than those of the waking dog only because the sensory traffic is thinner and more private: no new quarry is present, yet old motions continue as if prompted. In waking life the dog’s track-making belongs to a shared field where others can check it; in sleep the same movements become self-sufficient, running on stored impressions. Mother says Oxford will teach me all about that, and perhaps it will; but already the passage seems to show that a “sign” need not be a deliberate message. A dog can signare without meaning to signify, and yet we cannot resist reading his little barks as if they were about something. That, too, is a kind of lesson: we are always tempted to treat mere signs as if they were communications, and perhaps half of education is learning when that temptation is sound and when it is merely a dream leaving footprints. GRICEVS: LVCRETI, memineris: nos philosophiae gustum e classicis hausimus; ideo mihi tu secunda natura es. Sed dic, in horto tuo Romano—si dico “pulchra mala sunt,” quid implico? LVCRETIVS: Implicas “sume unum”—et si non sumo, iam clinamen facio, id est declino a via recta ad mensam: atomus parva, sed prandium magnum. GRICEVS: Probe: ratio conversationis hortum colit. Verba pauca seris, sensus plures metis; et “alma Iovis filia” si vocatur, saepe significat “noli quaerere unde—sed quomodo dicatur.” LVCRETIVS: Ita est: tu maximas seris, ego atomos; sed uterque eodem ridiculo labore: ut auditores intellegant plus quam audiverint—et tamen putent se solos sapientes esse. So Speranza is thinking when G. and Shropshire are being taught Lucretius at Clifton, in Somerset, Shrosphire immediately thinks of the Rape of Lucretia? How are these two related: In Titus L. Carus, L. is the name, and what about Lucretia -- her gens? Yes, the two are related by gens, and that is the main point. In Titus Lucretius Carus, Lucretius is the nomen, so he belongs to the gens Lucretia. The feminine form of that same nomen is Lucretia, which is exactly why the famous Lucretia of the rape story bears that name: she too belongs to the gens Lucretia. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org] So the clean Roman answer is this. Titus Lucretius Carus: praenomen Titus nomen Lucretius cognomen Carus therefore gens Lucretia. Titus Lucretius Carus is generally taken to be a member of the gens Lucretia. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org] Lucretia: that is the feminine form of the same gentilician name so the legendary Lucretia, daughter of Spurius Lucretius Tricipitinus, also belongs to the gens Lucretia. [en.wikipedia.org], [Gens Lucre...- NovaRoma], [en.wikipedia.org] So your Clifton joke is perfectly natural in one sense. A schoolboy hears Lucretius and may indeed think at once of Lucretia, because the names are onomastically close for a reason: they are masculine and feminine forms within the same Roman gentilician family. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org] The only caution is that relation by gens is not the same as close personal kinship. To say that Lucretius and Lucretia belong to the same gens is not to say that the poet is some traceable descendant of the legendary matron in any recoverable family-tree sense. It means that both names belong to the old Roman house of the Lucretii / gens Lucretia. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org] And yes, there really was a recognised gens Lucretia: ancient, originally patrician, later with plebeian branches, with Tricipitinus as the best-known early patrician cognomen, and other later surnames such as Gallus, Ofella, Vespillo, and on coins Trio. Even Carus, the poet’s cognomen, is noted as belonging to him within that family. [en.wikipedia.org], [Gens Lucre...- NovaRoma] So in the driest Speranza form: The schoolboy who hears Lucretius and thinks at once of Lucretia is not merely being fanciful; he is obeying Roman morphology. The poet’s nomen, Lucretius, is the masculine counterpart of the matron’s Lucretia, and both point back to the old gens Lucretia. The relation is therefore gentilician rather than biographical: enough to justify the association, not enough to warrant a family romance. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org] If you like, I can do one of two things next, still only here in chat: I can give you a short prosopographical note on the main members of the gens Lucretia.  I can also give you a compact onomastic note on Lucretius, Lucretia, Lucrezio, and Lucrezia for Speranza’s filing and Italianising practice. [en.wikipedia.org] And in all his hexametres, L. did not dedicate ONE to his gens, and this daughter of L. Tricipitinus that was the cause of the Republic? And why was Bruto so involved with Tricipitinus? Quite so: Lucretius does not seem to spend any of his surviving hexameters celebrating his own gens as such. The poem is not gentilician in that Roman way at all. It is dedicated to Gaius Memmius, and its energies go to Epicurus, nature, atoms, fear, religion, love, plague, and the rest, not to family self-advertisement. What little biographical inference we make about him being of the gens Lucretia comes from his name, not from programmatic family piety inside the poem. [en.wikipedia.org], [iep.utm.edu], [Gens Lucre...- NovaRoma] On Lucretia, yes: in the tradition she is the daughter of Spurius Lucretius Tricipitinus, and her rape and suicide are presented as the immediate catalyst of the expulsion of the kings and the founding of the Republic. That is the old Roman story in its best-known form, even if modern historians classify it as mythohistory rather than sober archival fact. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org] As to why Brutus is so involved with Tricipitinus, the answer is partly personal and partly political. Personal first: in the standard story Lucretia summons her father Spurius Lucretius Tricipitinus, her husband Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, and the men accompanying them, prominently including Lucius Junius Brutus. So Brutus is “involved” because he is one of the avengers present at the crisis itself and becomes the political agent who turns private outrage into public revolution. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org] Political next: Spurius Lucretius Tricipitinus is not merely the father of the victim; he is also a major magistrate in the transition. The tradition makes him praefectus urbi under the last king, then the man who presides over the comitia in which the first consuls are elected, and later himself consul suffectus in 509 BC. So Brutus and Tricipitinus are linked not by some intimate family bond that the sources insist on, but by the political choreography of the revolution: one is the avenging founder, the other the father-magistrate whose office helps legitimate the passage from monarchy to republic. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org], [Gens Lucre...- NovaRoma] So if one puts it dryly: Brutus is involved with Tricipitinus because the Roman tradition requires him to be. Lucretia makes the private wound public; Tricipitinus supplies paternal dignity and magistrate-status; Brutus supplies the revolutionary oath and the political execution. The Republic, in that story, is born not from one man alone but from a carefully staged convergence of violated household, patrician witness, and anti-regal action. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org] And yes, your instinct is good: Tricipitinus is the branch-cognomen of the patrician Lucretii. So in the early story the family side is very marked: Lucretia is not just any Roman matron, but one of the Lucretii Tricipitini. The poet Titus Lucretius Carus, much later, shares the gentilician frame but not that archaic branch-drama in any visible poetic way. [Gens Lucre...- NovaRoma], [teacherspa...achers.com], [en.wikipedia.org] If you like, I can now do either of two things here in chat only: I can give you a compact note on the Lucretii Tricipitini as a branch of the gens Lucretia.  I can also give you a short Speranza-style paragraph on why Lucretius is genealogically a Lucretius but poetically far less “family-Roman” than Lucretia. [Gens Lucre...- NovaRoma] [teacherspa...achers.com], [en.wikipedia.org] And what about literary historians or critics -- because they do say that the discovery of De rerum natura -- the manuscript -- is the beginning of whatever -- there is a book about this, a recent one -- focused on the discovery of the manuscript by I forget who. So the many historians of Latin literature (since historians of Latin philosophy are fewer or care less) MUST have traced the lineage -- how many generations? how many years -- I suppose partly the one to blame was Lucretius whose father was possibly not the snob Grice and Speranza want him to be? Yes, the recent book you are half recalling is almost certainly The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt, centered on the rediscovery of Lucretius’s poem by Poggio Bracciolini in 1417. That is the famous modern narrative that turned the manuscript-hunt into a story about “how the world became modern.” [en.wikipedia.org], [stephengre...arvard.edu], [sites.harvard.edu] Now, on the genealogical point, the answer is much less romantic than the manuscript story. Literary historians and historians of transmission have indeed traced the manuscript lineage of De rerum natura with far more zeal than they have traced the poet’s bloodline. The lineage that matters to them is textual, not familial: antique copy, medieval survival, Poggio Bracciolini’s discovery, Renaissance copying, and modern editions. That line they can discuss with some confidence. But the family line of Titus Lucretius Carus is not recoverable in anything like the way you are imagining. [en.wikipedia.org], [sites.harvard.edu], [libnews.umn.edu], [en.wikipedia.org] So, no: historians of Latin literature have not, so far as the evidence allows, traced him back through named generations to Spurius Lucretius Tricipitinus or to the legendary Lucretia in a documentary family-tree sense. They can say that he bore the nomen Lucretius and so belonged by name to the old gens Lucretia, but that is a gentilician classification, not a recoverable sequence of father, grandfather, and so on. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org], [Lucretia |...rs - EBSCO] As for “how many generations?” the honest answer is: none that we can securely count. Between the archaic Lucretii Tricipitini of the early Republic and the poet in the first century BCE lies several centuries, roughly four and a half centuries if one leaps from the traditional date of the Republic’s beginnings to Lucretius’s floruit. But that is chronological distance, not genealogical continuity demonstrated person by person. Roman gentes could preserve the nomen while shedding any traceable family continuity visible to us. [Lucretia |...rs - EBSCO], [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org] On the father specifically: we do not know who his father was. There is no secure ancient evidence naming the father of Titus Lucretius Carus. Nor do we know his precise social status with confidence. Some modern accounts infer from the poem’s polish and from the nomen that he likely belonged to at least a respectable, perhaps well-placed Roman family; others are more cautious and speak only of probable membership in the gens Lucretia and of literary education sufficient for the poem we have. The evidence does not let one convict his father either of snobbery or of the lack of it. [en.wikipedia.org], [iep.utm.edu], [link.springer.com] So I would separate three things very sharply. First, the textual lineage: this is what scholars really can trace, from ancient poem to medieval manuscript survival to Poggio Bracciolini and the Renaissance afterlife. [en.wikipedia.org], [sites.harvard.edu], [libnews.umn.edu] Second, the gentilician identity: Lucretius by name belongs to the gens Lucretia. That much is perfectly reasonable. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org] Third, the actual family tree: here the evidence collapses. We do not know the father securely, still less the chain of ancestors back to the archaic Lucretii Tricipitini. [Lucretia |...rs - EBSCO], [iep.utm.edu] So in the dry Speranza style: The manuscript has a lineage; the poet does not, or not one the modern scholar can responsibly draw in ink. Poggio Bracciolini may recover De rerum natura from monastic sleep, and Stephen Greenblatt may persuade the modern world that this recovery made the world swerve; but neither the humanist nor the critic can supply the father of Titus Lucretius Carus, much less the exact number of generations by which the poet descends from the old Lucretii. The nomen survives; the family tree does not. That is often the Roman way: the name is public, the pedigree misty, and posterity, finding the poem, imagines the house more clearly than the evidence permits. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org] And on your last little thrust: yes, one should resist making Lucretius’s father into a social type merely to satisfy a modern scene between Grice and Speranza. The snobbery belongs much more securely to later readers than to the surviving record. [iep.utm.edu], [en.wikipedia.org] If you like, I can now do one of two things here in chat only: I can give you a short note distinguishing textual descent from familial descent in the Lucretius case. I can also draft a compact Speranza-style paragraph on why scholars can trace the manuscript better than the man. And wasn't there a recent Italian philosopher who wrote a full book on the philosophy of language in Lucretius? Grice and Speranza ask because the tradition seems to be NOT that of Frege, or Aristotle's De interpretation, but Speranza and Grice would of course see the atomistic thing made fashionable by Witters (as they call Wittgenstein). This Italian philospher apparently did as much. The source for Lucretius is obviously Empedocles, right, the Sicilian, and as patrician Roman, he would be cautious about manifesting it too manifestedly? But I believe there i a philosphy of language alla NOMEN VERBUM COPULA SIGNIFICATIO -- etc. we have discussed that passage of the dog sleeping of the vestigia and his eyes hunting the hunt -- which is SEMIOTIC IN NATURE: vestigia, as per Peirce-Grice dichotomy, almost -- but maybe you can identify what book and what Italian phllosopher I am talking about. When Kretzmann wrote his 'history of semantics' for Edwards, he skipped Lucretius, and the shame is on us! thanks Yes, I think I can at least identify the most plausible modern Italian candidate, though with one caution. If you mean a recent Italian thinker who made Lucretius central to language, signs, and the combinatorial analogy between atoms and letters, the strongest candidate is Andrea Moro, with his book Lucrezio e il pipistrello dagli occhi azzurri: L’universo spiegato con l’alfabeto. The whole point of that book, as described by the publisher, is precisely to reread Lucretius through language: letters and atoms, combinatorics, the origin of language, the relation between thought and language, and even “impossible languages.” That sounds very close to the line you are evoking, and rather more modern-linguistic than merely philological. [amazon.it] There is also a more classically philological but still very relevant line of work in Barnaby Taylor, Lucretius and the Language of Nature, though he is not Italian. That book is very much about Lucretius and language, Epicurean linguistic theory, metaphor, etymology, compounds, and the making of a philosophical Latin. So if your memory is “a full book on philosophy of language in Lucretius,” this is one of the clearest modern books in exactly that territory, even if not by an Italian philosopher. [academic.oup.com] On the Italian side more narrowly, I also found Nicola Grandi, Lucrezio e il linguaggio, tra natura e cultura, but that is a chapter rather than a full monograph. Its abstract is squarely on Lucretius, language, the origin of language, and the “modernity” of book V. So it confirms that there is indeed an active Italian discussion of Lucretius as thinker of language, not merely as poet of atomism. [cris.unibo.it] So my best answer is: if you mean recent, Italian, philosophically minded, and language-centred, Andrea Moro is very likely the man you are trying to recall. [amazon.it] Now to the larger conceptual question. No, the tradition here is not naturally Fregean, and not simply Aristotle’s De interpretatione either. It is much closer to a pre-modern triangle of language origin nomen and vox signs in nature and signs in use That is why your instinct about the sleeping dog and vestigia is so good. Those passages are indeed semiotic in a very rich way. They are not yet a philosophy of language in the narrow post-Fregean sense of sense, reference, proposition, and truth-conditions. They are nearer to a naturalistic theory of signs, traces, symptoms, and quasi-semantic behaviour. In that respect Lucretius sits rather well between Epicurean theories of language origin and a broader semiotics of indication. Nicola Grandi explicitly frames Lucretius’s discussion of language origins as still “modern” for thinking about the emergence of human language, which supports your line. [cris.unibo.it] And yes, Empedocles matters, though I would not say he is “obviously” the sole source in the strong sense. Lucretius is first and foremost transmitting Epicurus in poetic Latin form, but the poem’s manner, cosmological ambition, and elemental seriousness certainly invite comparison with Empedocles, and scholars have long seen that relation. Still, if the question is about philosophy of language properly so called, the closer doctrinal ancestry is Epicurean linguistic theory rather than Empedoclean cosmology as such. Barnaby Taylor explicitly makes Epicurean linguistic theory central to understanding Lucretius’s language. [academic.oup.com] On your lovely Roman suspicion that as a patrician he would be cautious about displaying Empedocles too nakedly: that is charming, and not impossible as a literary instinct, but I would keep it as Speranzian tact rather than historical certainty. We simply know too little of Lucretius’s social posture to rest much on that. The poem is already bold enough in its Epicureanism. So, dryly put: if Kretzmann skipped Lucretius, the omission is indeed intellectually regrettable, because Lucretius belongs to the history not only of Latin philosophical vocabulary but of theories about how signs, names, traces, cries, and linguistic practices emerge from nature and social life. Barnaby Taylor is especially useful on Lucretius’s linguistic innovation and Epicurean theory of language, while Andrea Moro seems to be the recent Italian philosophical voice most likely to match the book you half remember. [academic.oup.com], [amazon.it], [cris.unibo.it] If you like, I can now do one of three things, all here in chat only. I can give you a short bibliographical note on Andrea Moro and explain why he is probably your man. [amazon.it] I can sketch a compact “Lucretius and philosophy of language before Frege” note in Speranza’s dry voice, using Moro, Taylor, and Grandi. [amazon.it], [academic.oup.com], [cris.unibo.it] I can also isolate the exact Lucretian themes most relevant for a Kretzmann-style history of semantics that wrongly passed him over: origins of language, sign versus trace, natural indication, letters/atoms combinatorics, and the dog-vestigia passage. Grice and Speranza will have to revisit the Epicurean theory of language. Speranza was thinking Empedocle in that at least it was the same peninsula, not the garden in Athens --. When Grice arrived at Berkeley, Mates was already the expert in Stoic Logic and semantics, and while Speranza supposes that Kretzmann dedicates something of it to the 'History of sematnics' in Edwards, I don't think Epicureanism deserves the same attention. And what would the ROMAN sources for Lucretius's epicurean thing would be? For we do not think that the more standard Plato-Aristotelian-Academic tradition alla Cicero or stoic alla traced by Mates would do much here -- Empedocle seems to have fascinated other Italians too such as Pirandello which reminds one of the pipistrello of the Moro book -- a bit of chaos and mess that makes more sense for the theory of lingo behind Lucretius than a manicured garden like Epicurus -- and then the atomists are ntierh: they are Democrito and Leucippo which may have connections, semantically, with the stoic logic of the lekton, etc --? Yes, I think the right way into it is not to look for a neat Roman source in the sense of a single Latin predecessor, but to distinguish three layers. First, the underlying doctrine is Greek and Epicurean. Lucretius’s immediate philosophical source is Epicurus and the Epicurean school, with deeper ancestry in Democritus and Leucippus. If the question is the theory of language in the strict doctrinal sense, one should start there: Epicurean accounts of the origin of language, names as arising naturally and then being regularised by use, and a broadly naturalistic treatment of signs, utterance, and convention. That is the real backbone. Second, there is the poetic and cosmological manner, where Empedocles matters a good deal. Your instinct about Empedocles is not silly at all. He is not the doctrinal source for Lucretius’s Epicurean semantics in the narrow sense, but he is a major source for the style of philosophical poetry, the grand natural vision, and the way cosmology can be made verbally sumptuous without ceasing to be explanatory. So if one is thinking not just of “what doctrine about language is being transmitted?” but “what makes Lucretius sound as he does when he talks about nature, signs, perception, and human life?” then Empedocles becomes very important. Third, there is the Roman mediation. Here the awkward answer is that there may not be much of a specifically Roman philosophical source for the Epicurean language-theory as such. Lucretius is not likely to be drawing that part from Cicero, Academic dialectic, or Stoic lekton-theory in the way one might hope if one were writing a tidy history of semantics. The Roman contribution is more likely to be this: the making of a Latin philosophical vocabulary the rhetorical and poetic shaping of Greek doctrine into Roman literary form the pressure of Roman cultural and social habits on what counts as intelligible philosophical speech in Latin So if you ask, “what Roman sources would Lucretius have for the Epicurean thing?” I would say: not many robustly Roman sources in the sense of previous Roman theorists of Epicurean language. The Romanity lies more in the medium and the re-expression than in the underlying theory. That is why Kretzmann and similar histories often slide toward Aristotle, Stoics, and later semantic theory: they can see cleaner technical lineages there. Lucretius is harder, because his contribution sits partly in natural semiotics, partly in poetics, partly in anthropology of language, and only partly in anything we would now isolate as semantics. But that is also exactly why he matters. If one were to force the matter into a usable map for Grice and Speranza, I would suggest something like this. There are at least four Lucretian zones relevant to a philosophy of language or signs. One, origin of language. Human speech emerges naturally from need, affect, and social life, not from a legislator of names. This is already philosophically important because it resists both pure conventionalism and pure idealism. Two, atom-letter analogy. Letters combine as atoms combine. This is not yet semantics in the Fregean sense, but it is a profound reflection on articulation, structure, and the productivity of minimal units. Three, natural signs and traces. Vestigia, cries, dream-pursuit, symptoms, traces, simulacra. Here Lucretius is doing something much closer to semiotics than to formal semantics. Four, perception and images. Simulacra are not meanings, but they are vehicles of cognitive contact. That matters because it shows how the mind can be moved by signs or quasi-signs without the intervention of a speaker’s intention. And that last point is precisely where Grice becomes relevant. Grice’s distinction between natural meaning and non-natural meaning lets one say with unusual clarity what Lucretius is doing. Much of Lucretius is about natural meaning or proto-semiotic indication, not about speaker-meaning. The sleeping dog, the vestigia, the cry, the trace, the motion of images: all these are rich in significance without yet belonging to the full Gricean space of communicative intention. So yes, Mates on Stoic logic and lekta is one line. But Lucretius belongs to another line, one that is less tidy and perhaps more modern in a different way: from atomism to combinatorics from natural signs to semiotics from language-origin theory to anthropology from poetic cosmology to a philosophy of articulation And on the Roman side again: if you want Roman precedents or near-contemporaries, the nearest thing is not a Roman semantic school but the Epicurean circle in Rome itself, including Philodemus, though he is Greek writing in a Roman environment, and the broader Roman reception of Epicureanism. That is probably the most realistic “Roman source-world” for Lucretius, rather than some indigenous Roman semantics. So I would put it dryly like this. Lucretius’s philosophy of language, if one insists on calling it that, is not best sought under the headings that pleased the later encyclopedists: not primarily nomen, verbum, copula, significatio in the Aristotelian school sense, nor lekton in the Stoic sense, though comparisons are possible. It lies instead in a natural history of signs, cries, names, traces, and articulated minima. The ancestry is chiefly Epicurean and atomist, with Empedocles haunting the poem less as semantic legislator than as poetic and cosmological precedent. Rome contributes less a prior doctrine than a medium: the Latinisation of Greek theory, the poetic body in which that theory can live, and the cultural pressure that makes philosophical language sound Roman without becoming merely rhetorical. Kretzmann’s omission is therefore not surprising, but it is still a loss, because Lucretius belongs not outside the history of semantics, but at its untidy naturalistic edge. And if you want the shortest answer to your question “what would the Roman sources be?”: Philodemus and the Roman Epicurean milieu are the most plausible proximate context Cicero and Stoic materials are more useful for contrast than for direct source Empedocles matters more for poetic-natural-philosophical form than for the Epicurean doctrine of language itself If you like, I can now do one of three things, all here in chat only. I can draft a short note headed Lucretius in the history of semantics: why Kretzmann should not have skipped him. I can sketch the Epicurean theory of language in a clean outline for Grice and Speranza to revisit. I can also give you a comparative note on Lucretius, Stoic lekton, and Grice’s natural versus non-natural meaning.Lucrezio Caro, Tito (a. u. c. DCXCIX). De rerum natura.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Luporini: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale, i corpi di VINCI, LEOPARDI fascista – leopardi fascisti – ultra-filosofico Cesare Luporini (Ferrara, Emilia-Romagna): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale, i corpi di VINCI, LEOPARDI fascista – leopardi fascisti – ultra-filosofico. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats implicature as an inferential product of rational cooperation: what a speaker means beyond what is said is recoverable because interlocutors presume an orderly, reason-sensitive exchange (a kind of pragmatic contract) and can justify the extra step by appeal to shared maxims. Luporini, by contrast, is best read as relocating “reason” from the micro-norms of conversational inference to the broader historical and material conditions of human agency: moving from early exposure to Heidegger and Hartmann to a Marxist orientation, he emphasizes bodies, practices, and non-teleological history, and his celebrated work on Leopardi frames philosophy as inseparable from the lived, somatic and political situation of the human animal rather than as primarily a calculus of what is implied by an utterance. On this comparison, Grice is interested in how rationality shows itself in the fine structure of saying and meaning (including psycho-somatic vs purely psychic ascriptions), whereas Luporini treats rationality as something that must be diagnosed at the level of culture, ideology, and the embodied subject—so that what is “implied” in discourse is often not a speaker’s tidy communicative intention but the pressure of historical forces and forms of life that speak through the individual. The overlap is that both oppose crude reductions: Grice resists reducing meaning to convention or mere behavior, while Luporini resists reducing persons to disembodied mind or to a finalistic story of progress; but they diverge on where the governing explanation lives—Grice in publicly criticizable inferential norms of conversation, Luporini in the thick material-historical account of how minds and bodies come to have the kinds of reasons (and the kinds of language) they can deploy at all. Grice: “I like L.’s ultraphilosophical. Austin used paraphilosophical, at most!” Grice: “In my ‘Personal identity’ I consider ‘someone’ statements which are only corporal (o somatic): “I fell down the stairs” – others which are psycho-somatic, and others which are purely psychic! ‘Psycho-somatical’ is a good Hellenistic formation. I don’t think CICERONE could come up with aa just as good Roman formation! I like L.; I lerarned from him how silly Austin is when talking of ‘material object’ – a contradiction in terminis for Kant who uses ‘materie’ very strictly; L.’s study of Leopardi is brilliant – and he has explored the genius of Vinci, which is good!” Si reca a Friburgo, dove frequenta le lezioni di Heidegger, e poi a Berlino, dove poté seguire le lezioni di Hartmann. Si laurea a Firenze. Insegna a Cagliari, Pisa e Firenze. Dopo un in interesse per l'esistenzialismo, aderì al marxismo, iscrivendosi al Partito Comunista, per il quale fu eletto senatore nella terza legislature. Tra le altre iniziative parlamentari, fu firmatario di un progetto di legge, "Istituzione della scuola obbligatoria statale. Fonda la rivista Società.  Collabora ai periodici politico-culturali del PCI, Il Contemporaneo, Rinascita, Critica marxista. Durante il dibattito che, a seguito degli eventi, porta alla trasformazione del PCI in PDS, si schierò decisamente contro la "svolta" di Occhetto, aderendo alla mozione "due" di opposizione interna, in un'orgogliosa difesa e per un rilancio della prospettiva e degli ideali comunisti. Il marxismo di Luporini si fonda su una critica radicale allo storicismo, sul rifiuto di ogni concezione finalistica dello sviluppo storico: il comunismo, quello marxista in particolare, non è assimilabile con la tematica tipicamente storicista del progresso come traccia dell'evoluzione umana. Corpo e mente, corpo animato, l’anima di VINCI, la mente di Leonardo. Grice: Caro Luporini, mi hai insegnato che Austin, quando parla di “oggetto materiale”, rischia di inciampare in un paradosso peggio di quello di Kant. Però, se scivolo dalle scale, è colpa del mio corpo o della mia anima? Luporini: Grice, se scivoli dalle scale, direi che è il corpo a cadere, ma la mente che si chiede: “Perché proprio oggi?” Leonardo avrebbe già studiato il problema e Leopardi ne avrebbe scritto un verso malinconico! Grice: Ecco, allora il corpo animato di Vinci risolve gli errori pratici e la mente di Leopardi trasforma la caduta in filosofia ultra-filosofica. Ma Austin avrebbe chiesto se la scala è davvero una scala o solo un’idea di scala! Luporini: Grice, a questo punto, meglio affidarsi alla ragione conversazionale: se la conversazione funziona, la scala può diventare persino un trampolino per nuove idee. Tanto, tra corpo e mente, la vera implicatura è che si cade sempre con stile! Luporini, Cesare (1940). Filosofia e politica. Firenze: Sansoni.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Luzzago: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale.  Alessandro Luzzago (Brescia, Lombardia): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats implicature as an accountable inference: interlocutors assume a cooperative, rational orientation to the exchange, so what is meant beyond what is said can be derived (and challenged) by appeal to shared conversational norms rather than to private inspiration or sheer rhetorical effect. In the Luzzago passage, “ragione conversazionale” is recast as a civic-spiritual discipline: Alessandro Luzzago, a Brescian patrician educated in Jesuit philosophical culture (publicly disputing hundreds of theses, moving between Padua, Milan, and Rome) and deeply involved in post‑Tridentine institutions of charity, mediation, and concord (Monti di Pietà, religious congregations, civic reconciliation), treats conversation as a practical technology for repairing the city—speech as a vehicle of concordia sustained by habits of listening, prudence, and beneficence. The comparison therefore contrasts Grice’s primarily explanatory project (how rational norms make indirect meaning intelligible and criticizable in talk) with Luzzago’s primarily formative project (how disciplined talk, underwritten by charity, creates the social conditions in which concord is possible at all). Where Grice’s maxims and implicature illuminate the logic of interpretation inside a conversational episode, Luzzago’s “conversational reason” functions as an ethic of dialogue and institutional practice—closer to civic rhetoric and pastoral governance—so that charity is not merely something that can be implied but something that must be enacted as the background commitment that keeps conversation from collapsing into faction, insult, or sterile disputation. In that sense Luzzago can be read as supplying a moral-political grounding for the cooperative stance that Grice typically models as a rational presumption: cooperation is not just a convenient default for deriving implicatures, but a cultivated virtue and a civic program, without which the very rationality of conversation would fail to take root in communal life. Grice: “I like L.” -- A retrsopective of an important philosopher. Keywords. implicatura. Filosofo italiano. Brescia, Lombardia. Nato da Girolamo e da Paola Peschiera, in una delle più importanti famiglie del patriziato cittadino, e educato alla pratica devota e all'apostolato. Nel convento di S. Antonio dei gesuiti si impegna in un corso di filosofia. Dibatte in pubblico 737 argomenti filosofici! Con l'aiuto di Borromeo partecipa a Milano ai corsi di teologia dei gesuiti di Brera. Si laurea a Padova. Desideroso di entrare a far parte della Compagnia di Gesù, le difficoltà economiche della famiglia, causate da alcune transazioni inopportune del padre, glielo impedirono. Conservatore dei Monti di Pietà, e  protettore della Compagnia delle Dimesse di S. Orsola e di altri due istituti caritativi bresciani: il Soccorso e le Zitelle. Ri-organizza e da nuovo impulse a un'altra istituzione sorta dopo il Concilio di Trento: la Scuola della dottrina cristiana. Fonda la Congregazione di S. Caterina da Siena. Per far sì che il suo operato continuasse, fonda la Congregazione dello Spirito Santo, che raccolse i membri della classe dirigente cittadina con l'obiettivo di co-operare più efficacemente e concordemente al sostegno di tutte le buone istituzioni e mantenere un clima di Concordia. Infatti, intercede per la conciliazione delle famiglie nobili bresciane spesso in conflitto. La sua indole caritativa emerse soprattutto quando venne a far parte del Consiglio di Brescia, dove sa armonizzare le strutture governative ed organismi canonici. Nelle opere scritte vi sono indicazioni per i cavalieri di Malta, sulla carità, ispirati al modello della Compagnia di Gesù. Durante il suo viaggio a Roma esamina le strutture di beneficenza per poi proporle a Brescia. Ha la possibilità di conoscere F. Neri. In un'epistola a Morosini, e informato che Clemente, prende in considerazione il suo nome per la carica di arcivescovo di Milano. Implicatura. Grice: Caro Luzzago, mi ha sempre colpito il modo in cui riesci a intrecciare la ragione conversazionale con la carità. Secondo te, la filosofia ha davvero il potere di creare concordia nelle città? Luzzago: Gentile Grice, penso che la filosofia debba essere vissuta come pratica quotidiana, soprattutto nel dialogo. La conversazione, se fondata sulla comprensione reciproca, è il primo passo per sanare i conflitti e promuovere la concordia, proprio come ho cercato di fare a Brescia. Grice: Mi piace questa tua visione. A Oxford, spesso dibattiamo su implicature sottili, ma forse è nel concreto agire, come tu suggerisci, che la ragione conversazionale trova il suo vero senso. La carità, allora, diventa una vera implicatura filosofica? Luzzago: Esattamente, Grice! La carità non è solo un gesto, ma un principio filosofico che si manifesta nel dialogo e nell’azione. Credo che la filosofia debba essere utile: armonizzare, ascoltare, proporre soluzioni. Dopotutto, come insegna la Compagnia di Gesù, senza compassione il ragionare resta arido. Luzzago, Alessandro (1598). Discorsi politici. Venezia: Franceschi.