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

 

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

 

 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Musonio: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del Musonio di Gentile -- lingua lazia Tito Gaio Musonio Rufo (Bolsena, Viterbo, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del Musonio di Gentile -- lingua lazia -- Grice’s reason-governed account of conversational meaning finds an unusually apt foil in Musonius Rufus, whose authority, as your passage notes, was exerted largely through oral teaching and whose surviving “texts” are in effect the afterlife of uptake: apophthegms and lecture-fragments preserved by hearers (via Stobaeus, Aulus Gellius, Plutarch, and through Epictetus/Arrian). Where Grice theorizes how hearers rationally recover speaker-meaning by assuming a cooperative orientation and then calculating implicatures from what is said, Musonius exemplifies a pedagogy that forces precisely that calculative work: by refusing the security of a written treatise, he makes doctrine travel as an inferential practice, not as a fixed inscription, so that “what he meant” is inseparable from what competent auditors could responsibly reconstruct. The exile motif (Rome/Gyaros and back) sharpens the parallel: both at Nero’s court and in post-war Oxford’s “no-no” climate for Roman philosophy, institutions manage what counts as sayable; yet the Gricean point is that meaning survives censorship and fashion because it is not exhausted by the official dictum—an audience can still retrieve a standpoint from sparse prompts, silences, and pointed brevity. Your dialogue’s line “if I keep silent, you are compelled to understand” is Gricean to the core: silence and under-specification become communicative moves only against a background of shared norms, shared purposes, and the expectation that a rational agent is not wasting the interlocutor’s time. Finally, Musonius’ “lingua lazia” and Stoic plainness function like an ethics of maxim-following: speak with measured quantity and relevance, let the hearer do the rest, and treat the residue—what is not stated but becomes jointly recoverable—as the real vehicle of philosophical transmission, i.e., implicature as moral practice rather than mere semantic decoration. Grice: “I don’t know if it was Ryle, but for years, Roman philosophy was a no-no at Oxford. Gone were the days of Walter Pater and his Marius The Epicurean!” Esercita un forte influsso sui contemporanei. Di famiglia equestre dell’etrusca Volsini suscita per la sua fama di filosofo l’invidia di Nerone. Segue Rubellio Plauto nell'Asia Minore e lo incoraggia a togliersi la vita quando Nerone lo condanna a morte. Ritorna a Roma, dove e bandito insieme con Cornuto in occasione della congiura di Pisone e confinato nell’isola di Gyaros nelle Cicladi, ove per la sua rinomanza attira uditori da ogni parte.Verosimilmente richiamato a Roma da GALBA, negli ultimi giorni di Vitellio si une ad una ambasceria del Senato presso Antonio Primo per perorare la causa della pace fra i suoi soldati, ma senza successo.Quando Vespasiano assunse il potere, M. accusa davanti al Senato P. Egnazio Celere, quale delatore e falso testimonio nel processo di Borea Sorano. Vespasiano lo escluse dalla prima espulsione dei filosofi da Roma, ma poi lo esiliò per la seconda volta ; però Tito, che già lo aveva conosciuto, lo richiamò dopo la sua assunzione al trono. In seguito mancano notizie su di lui, ma da una lettera di Plinio il Giovane sembra che non fosse più in vita. Non risulta che abbia composto e pubblicato scritti, anzi sembra che si sia servito soltanto dell’insegnamento orale, del quale, però, rimangono frammenti abbastanza numerosi. Essi comprendono 19 brevi apoftegmi conservati da Plutarco, da Aulo Gellio e dallo Stobeo ; altri apoftegmi e trattazioni filosofiche relativamente ampie raccolti da Epitteto nel suo insegnamento-È e trasmessi i primi da Arriano, le seconde dallo Stobeo ; esposizioni o lezioni che si trovano nello Stobeo o costituiscono la parte più estesa dei frammenti. Etruria. Tito Gaio Musonio Rufo. GRICEVS: Nescio an Ryle fuerit; sed per annos philosophia Romana Oxonii quasi “nefas” habebatur—abiērunt dies Walteri Pater et Marii Epicurei! MVSONIVS: Miror vos: Oxonii “nefas” dicitis quod Nero “invidia” vocabat. Ille me Gyarum misit; vos tantum ad bibliothecam—quae, fateor, etiam carcer esse potest. GRICEVS: At tu—philosophus Bolsenae—tam multos auditores traxisti, et tamen nihil scripsisti. Id est implicatura maxima: “si taceo, vos cogimini intellegere.” MVSONIVS: Ita est: scripta saepe sunt longiora quam res; ego breviter doceo et diu exulō. Si ex XIX apophthegmatibus totam doctrinam colligitis, cooperative agite—et parcite mihi chartis, quas Vespasianus iterum exulare iuberet. Musonio Rufo, Tito Gaio (a. u. c. DCCLXXVIII). Dicta. Roma.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Mussolini: Ryle e la ragione conversazionale ad Oxford Arnaldo Mussolini (Dovia di Predapio, Forli-Cesena, Emilia-Romagna): Ryle e la ragione conversazionale ad Oxford. Grice’s picture of reason-governed conversational meaning helps read your Oxford vignette not as a biographical aside about an Italian public figure’s brother, but as a case study in how institutional climates reshape what can be said and, crucially, what must be left to implicature. On a Gricean view, hearers routinely assume cooperative rationality and so infer speaker-meaning from not only what is asserted but from choices of topic, tone, and omission; in the passage, the “Ryle knew” motif and the post-war hardening of attitudes toward continental philosophy can be described as a systematic management of conversational presuppositions (what counts as “live,” “serious,” or “respectable” philosophy) and of salience (what gets framed as relevant or treated with derision). The move from pre-war respectful engagement to post-war dismissal functions pragmatically like a standing implicature: that certain traditions are not merely false but not worth pursuing, so that a philosopher can communicate exclusion without having to argue for it in the open. The label “unwanted course” is likewise Gricean: it is an overtly thin description that invites the audience to supply the deeper institutional message (this material is being taught under constraint, as an obligation rather than as a shared project), and it does so by relying on shared background norms about what Oxford expects to be worth teaching. In that way, your scene ties Ryle-style gatekeeping to Grice’s central insight: conversational meaning is rationally recoverable only against a backdrop of common assumptions, and when those assumptions become politically and culturally charged, the same inferential machinery that ordinarily supports cooperation can also support exclusion—by making silence, ridicule, and curricular sidelining do the work that explicit argument used to do. Grice: “As a scholarship boy from Clifton arriving at Oxford in 1934, little did I know that Mussolini’s brother was dead – but RYLE knew! Evidence from Rowe's biography of Austin and related academic reviews suggests that when Ryle eventually did become the dominant figure of philosophy at Oxford after World War II, he deliberately suppresses praise for German philosophy and continental european thought generally, often using derision in place of his pre-war respect for it. Evidence of Suppression Shift from Respect to Hostility: Before the war, Ryle is sympathetic to continental philosophy, reviewing Heidegger's “Sein und Zeit” with respect and delivering a measured account of Husserl's work. However, after the war, this dissent "hardens into hostility," and he replaces his former respect with derision. "Unwanted Course": Ryle himself refers to a course of lectures he gives at Oxford – when Grice was a scholar at Corpus, and then a Harmsworth Schoalr at Merton, to eventually become a Fellow, and Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy at St. John’s, and eventually University Lecturer -- on the work of Bolzano, Brentano, Husserl, and Meinong [from whose ‘jungle’ – ontological jungle – Grice wants to get away as late as ‘Vacuous names’ -- as an "unwanted course," reflecting the prevailing shift in the Oxford philosophical climate away from such philosophers. Cultural Atmosphere: Rowe's biography and related analyses tie this shift to the general "political and cultural climate" in post-war Oxford, which influences dons and graduates. This atmosphere contributed to the rise of the insular Oxford "ordinary-language philosophy" led by Ryle and Austin, which largely ignores or dismisses non-anglophone traditions. Focus on British Pragmatist empiricism: Grice: Ah, Mussolini! Sa, anche io ho un fratello—‘ne ho solo uno, proprio come lei’—ma sembra che sia il suo ad essere la vera celebrità a Vadum Boum. Eppure, mentre molti preferiscono Mussolini, Mussolini è il mio uomo. La filosofia, mi creda, finisce spesso per essere dettata dalla dittatura della storia!" Mussolini: Caro Grice, la sua osservazione è davvero spassosa. L’ombra della storia pesa su tutti, persino sui pensieri—ma forse la filosofia, come il linguaggio, può liberarci dal suo fardello. La fama di mio fratello è un macigno, ma spero che anche la mia voce filosofica possa trovare spazio." Grice: "Ha centrato il punto, Arnaldo. La tirannia della storia è una realtà, ma c’è sempre spazio per un dialogo nuovo. Il filosofo, insomma, deve conversare—con eleganza, ovvio—anche col passato e proporre nuove implicature per il presente." Mussolini: "Esattamente, Professor Grice. Continuiamo allora a costruire la nostra filosofia con ragionamento e conversazione—senza mai dimenticare la storia, ma senza farci chiudere in gabbia. Grazie per la sua franchezza e questo scambio così ricco. Mussolini, Arnaldo (1902). La riforma sociale in Italia. Milano: Tipografia Editrice Sociale.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Mussolini: la ragione conversazionale e la storia della filosofia di Lamanna – la scuola di Dovia di Predapio -- filosofia emiliana -- filosofia italiana  Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (Dovia di Predapio, Forli-Cesena, Emilia-Romagna): la ragione conversazionale e la storia della filosofia di Lamanna. Grice’s reason-governed account of conversational meaning can be used, in your passage, to diagnose how political rhetoric works precisely by recruiting an audience’s practical rationality to supply what is not said: the speaker banks on the hearer’s assumption that utterances are produced with some cooperative point, so hearers infer additional content (implicatures) from selective emphasis, strategic vagueness, and the staging of “acts” as if they were arguments. Read that way, “the Duce” becomes less a partner in philosophical exchange than a case study in how public speech can exploit the very norms Grice theorizes: slogans and set-pieces invite maximal uptake with minimal propositional commitment; appeals to authority and destiny trade on the maxim of Relation by making personal action “relevant” evidence for historical necessity; and the claim that a “philosophy” is to be “desumed from acts” shifts evaluation from truth-conditions to performative display, encouraging the audience to treat power as a reason. The institutional framing you cite (culture journals, curated editions, “discorsi di circostanza”) also fits Grice’s emphasis on audience design: by controlling context, genre, and what counts as admissible background, the propagandistic speaker narrows the range of reasonable inferences until the preferred implicature feels like the only rational one. In short, your comparison can present Grice as explaining not only how cooperative conversation succeeds, but also how the appearance of rational cooperation can be engineered so that hearers do the inferential work—filling in conclusions, excusing gaps, and treating spectacle as meaning—thereby turning reason-governed interpretation into a tool that can be manipulated rather than a neutral route to understanding. Grice: “We do not study history as philosophers at Oxford – we FOUGHT it!” -- Grice: “I was thinking of Hitler, when I was callled to the arms. It was only later that I added M. to my thoughts!”—Grice: “I heard one Italian say, ‘Some like Mussolini, but Mussolin’s MY man’ – by the first, he referred to the Duce, by the second, to the Duce’s broher, the philosopher!” QUADERNI DELL'ISTITUTO NAZIONALE FASCISTA DI CULTURA. CARLINI, LA FILOSOFIA DI M. ISTITUTO NAZIONALE FASCISTA DI CULTURA, ROMA, tipografia del Senato di Bardi Ci proponiamo di mettere in rilievo, in rapidi cenni, un aspetto non ancora studiato della personalità del nostro duce: il sua ‘filosofia,’ quale si può desumere da’ suoi atti. In verità, i biografi di lui, indagando il periodo della formazione della sua personalità, non hanno trascurato questo lato. Discepolo di Nietzsche è definito anche recentemente. Egli stesso riconosce in Pareto un altro suo maestro; e tutti [Il presente studio vuol essere soltanto un saggio, anzi una semplice indicazione di un aspetto della personalità del duce: aspetto implicante svariati e importanti problemi del pensiero fascista. Per uno studio più ampio giover moltissimo la nuova, accurata, edizione de’ suoi scritti a cui s’è accinto l’editore Hoepli. M. ricorda il periodo della sua vita e della storia italiana da lui vissuta vertiginosamente, e aggiunge. Molti discorsi e scritti sono legati al movente che li provocò : sono di circostanza ». L’editore, anch’egli, dice che l’edizione « conterrà tutto ciò ch’è destinato a lassare alla storia, nella forma originaria più ampia: eliminati, quindi, i discorsi dei quali esiste solamente il riassunto ». tea with Mussolini. The Oxford University Fascist Association held its first annual dinner at the Clarendon Hotel, Cornmarket, Oxford, on Tuesday, 20 November 1934. Surviving descriptions of the printed menu record that Oswald Mosley was present and that the menu bears signatures including Mosley’s and William Joyce’s. The association is usually abbreviated OUFA. The Clarendon was a central Oxford hotel on Cornmarket Street, on the site of the old Clarendon Hotel later demolished in the 1950s. So the event was not in a college or university hall but in a commercial hotel in the middle of Oxford. The Joyce in question was William Joyce, not James Joyce. In 1934 he was a leading British fascist propagandist closely associated with Mosley and the British Union of Fascists. He later became notorious in wartime Germany as the broadcaster known as “Lord Haw-Haw,” and after the war he was tried and executed for treason. So his signature on the surviving Clarendon menu gives the dinner a significance beyond student politics: it places the occasion squarely within the wider fascist political network of the 1930s. The menu itself survives as an artefact, and the date, venue, and named attendees can be verified from sale and reproduction records, though those public traces do not by themselves yield a full transcription of the courses served. Grice: Ah, Mussolini, si dice che la filosofia non sia mai stata la sola guida dei destini d’Italia, ma mi incuriosisce il modo in cui la storia, da Dovia di Predappio, si intreccia con la ragione conversazionale. Lei ha mai pensato che il filosofo, più che studiare la storia, debba combatterla, come suggeriamo spesso ad Oxford?"  Mussolini: "Caro Grice, le sue parole colpiscono nel segno. In Italia, la storia è sempre stata una maestra severa. Io stesso, da giovane, l’ho vissuta vertiginosamente, imparando che la filosofia deve essere implicita negli atti, non solo nei libri. È così che la mia 'filosofia' si è forgiata, a volte tra Nietzsche e Pareto, a volte tra circostanze che richiedono risposte immediate."  Grice: Interessante, Mussolini. Da noi ad Oxford si ride spesso della filosofia messa sullo sfondo della storia, ma il suo modo di intendere il pensiero, come qualcosa che si desume dagli atti, mi ricorda la forza del pragmatismo. Forse il filosofo italiano è più vicino a quell’idea che la parola deve sempre farsi azione?"  Mussolini: "Direi proprio di sì, Grice. La filosofia italiana, soprattutto quella emiliana, non si accontenta di stare sulle pagine: vuole incidere nella realtà, lasciare traccia nella storia. E anche se i discorsi talvolta sono 'di circostanza', come diceva il mio editore, penso che la vera implicatura sia sempre quella di costruire—anche conversando—un destino più grande. Grazie per il suo sguardo acuto e per questa conversazione, che illumina il cuore della nostra tradizione. Mussolini, Benito Amilcare Andrea (1909). La filosofia della forza. Milano: Società Editrice Avanti.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Muzio: la ragione conversazionale nella vernacola  Girolamo Muzio (Padova, Veneto): la ragione conversazionale nella vernacola.  Grice’s reason-governed picture of conversational meaning fits Muzio almost too well: Muzio’s “battle” for the vernacular is not merely a patriotic preference for Italian over Latin, but a thesis about what makes speech intelligible and socially efficacious in the first place—namely, that speakers and hearers share practical norms of inference that let them move from what is said to what is meant without needing an elite code. In Gricean terms, Latin at Oxford functions as a gatekeeping register that can disguise a failure of communicative cooperation (one can sound learned while flouting relevance, perspicuity, or audience-design), whereas Muzio’s vernacularism implicitly backs the Cooperative Principle by insisting that philosophical teaching remain calculable by ordinary reasoners within a living linguistic community. The Padua-to-Oxford contrast in your dialogue sharpens this: Muzio treats dialect, proverb, and “osteria” wit as sites where implicature is most naturally at home, because shared form-of-life knowledge makes indirectness interpretable; Grice, though formed by the Latin-heavy Literae Humaniores regime, ultimately gives a theory that vindicates Muzio’s point by explaining how meaning routinely outruns literal sentence-meaning through rational expectations. Even the comic opposition between “toga latina” and “lingua del popolo” can be cast as a pragmatics claim: when the language is socially marked as elite, the hearer must spend effort distinguishing genuine informative intent from mere status display, while vernacular talk—precisely because it is accountable to common uptake—makes conversational rationality visible in the open, where a well-timed proverb or joke does the philosophical work by implicature rather than by scholastic formality. Grice: “It can be said, to echo M., that there is an even less natural – than in his native Italy, long, largely figurative "battle" at Oxford over the use of Latin versus the vernacular in the teaching of philosophy. This is not a single, sudden conflict but a gradual cultural and institutional shift that occurs over centuries, as the role of the Latin language as the universal language of philosophy diminished. This transition is driven by social and intellectual changes. The Latin language, unlike the vernacular, is a marker of ELITE status. Proficiency in the Latin language is a hall-mark of a gentleman's education and an upper-class trait, zealously guarded to maintain social distinctions. The vernacular is a "commoner's tongue". The vernacular is long considered too unrefined for serious philosophical discourse by many philosophers. Rise of the vernacular: A wider movement across Europe in the late Middle Ages and early modern period legitimised the nationa language, though this is slower in English at Oxford. Practicality vs. Tradition: While the Latin language allows philosophers across Europe to communicate, it becomes a barrier to wider education and the integration of ideas, not so much in philosophy, but especially in science and modern subjects.  Key Dates and Periods Period/Date Event/Significance Pre-17th Century. Every scholarship and examination at Oxford is conducted in the Latin language. Late 17th - Mid-18th Century. A gradual shift begins. While the Latin language remains the formal language of tutorials, seminars, lectures, official documents, and to this day, degrees: Grice, B. A. Lit. Hum. Oxon -- the use of the vernacular in INFORMAL discussion and SOME written work starts to increase. 1750s Prominent intellectuals and philosophers, like Johnson, regard the Latin language as superior for formal philosophical discourse, highlighting ongoing cultural resistance to the vernacular in academia. E. Muzio.  Grice: Caro Muzio, dicono che a Oxford la battaglia tra latino e vernacolo sia stata lunga e figurativa. Ma lei, da Padova, si trova più a suo agio a filosofeggiare nella lingua del popolo o preferisce indossare la toga latina? Muzio: Grice, le confesso che il vernacolo ha una musicalità che il latino non riesce a imitare. Certo, il latino fa sentire tutti un po’ aristocratici, ma provi a dire “filosofia” tra amici in dialetto veneto: è più facile trovare un buon vino che un confine tra pensiero e risata! Grice: Ah, allora forse dovremmo istituire un simposio filosofico in osteria! Chissà che, tra un proverbio e una battuta, la ragione conversazionale non si riveli più profonda che tra i marmi di Oxford. Muzio: Ottima idea, Grice! A Padova si dice che la filosofia nasce dove si brinda. E se qualcuno osa correggere la nostra lingua, lo mandiamo a declinare “buon senso” in latino, così impara che la saggezza va servita sempre col sorriso! Muzio, Girolamo (1518). Isagogicon ad Libellum (introduzione a un libretto in lode di Biagio Elcelio). Augusta.