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

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Verbali: Fuoco – ossia: Grice e Fuoco: la ragione conversazionale.  Francesco Fuoco (Mignano, Terra di Lavoro, Mignano Monte Lungo, Caserta, Campania): la ragione conversazionale. Grice: “I love F.!” Keywords: rettorica conversazionale, il trivio – il latino, l’italiano. ESPOSIZIONE RAGIONATA D’UN METODO DI LATINITÀ ext t Si parta del Programma sul metodo di Latinità. sopra i passi di Cicerone, Salustio, e Virgilio Eloquenza Il passo questo, tratto dall’opuscolo de amicitia di Cicerone. iocedat bue tuooitat guaedam oportet termonum, atqui tnorum, haudquaquam mediocre condimentum amicitiae. Dagli allievi fu scritto cosi accettai huc guaedam Oportet termonum, atque morum, aut quamquam etc. Enron questi errori nati dalla dettatura mal’intesa o da qualche altra cagione? Gl’alunni nel dar conto del testo ccmiociarono dal leggerlo, siccome prescritto nel programma , é non sono corretti. Nel riportare questo accidente intendo di togliere ogni dritto contro il metodo ahi pur troppo si è dilettato di'screditarlo senza conoscerlo. Eloquènza, ÀI di cui solo usine -gale uà’ elogio.. Io però intendo di aver triofi- fato di essi » e delle loro. oscure detrazioni si- no a che Al giudizio col quale Io hanno onorato quei Dotti v se aneli’ Intanto io godo degli sforai che ho farti per invelale i giovani al lungo flagello (felle scuole y rendendo loro facile, breve, e piacevole il camino della vera latinità. LATINITÀ D LL’ ottavo al decimo Secolo bnjo irapenfr* trattile ravvolge le vicende d’Italia, e i tristi elfttli delle sue ìagmncvoli calamità; Déprà^ vati i costumi, soffogato il genio, e corrcttò ogni gusto, lahg-uide, e l’Italia abbarrtnnata all’ignoranza fu vittima delle violenze de’Goti, degl’Unni, degl’Alani, degli Svevi, dei Longobardi, e di altre masnade di simili depredatori. E fin d’ allora si contrasse quella rozzezza, e grossolaniià di pensare, e di esprimersi, che avevano i barbari coi qunli si conversa. Quindi la lingua del Lazio, corrotta dalle inoltiplici precedenti cagioni, sebben serbasse ancora qualche vestigio dell’antica sua bellezza, pure autlt’ e&?a infine divenne del m ikgCmà 1’opere elementari anche per la lingua inglese, e greca. Grice, Corpus, 1930. Grice: You look as if you’ve been marched in from the provinces. Shropshire: I have. I’m the commoner. No scholarship. The College is letting me in on trust, which is a joke even I can hear. Grice: Then you’re in luck. Trust is Oxford’s chief currency and it’s always counterfeit. Shropshire: You’re the scholar, then. Fresh from Clifton. Latin chiselled into you with a cane. Grice: Chiselled, planed, varnished. Cicero, Sallust, Virgil. One can scarcely sneeze without declining a noun. Shropshire: Useful, is it, being flogged into latinity? Grice: Useful in the sense that having had it beaten into you, you can stop thinking about it and start thinking about something else. Shropshire: Philosophy, you mean. Grice: Precisely. Latin becomes second nature, if only after being acquired the hard way. Then philosophy can have the first go at one’s nerves. Shropshire: And Greek? Grice: Greek is just another piece of cake, provided you don’t mind the cake biting back. Shropshire: I’ve heard the old hands say Greats is designed to make you regret having eyes. Grice: Greats is designed to make you regret having thoughts. But it’s orderly regret. Shropshire: What are you reading? Grice: An Italian schoolmaster with a noble scheme and a very sharp ear for the ways boys go wrong. Shropshire: Italian? At Corpus? Grice: Oxford has always been an international machine for producing local smugness. Shropshire: Who is he? Grice: Francesco Fuoco. Shropshire: Name like a Bonfire Night. Grice: And a method like a drill-sergeant’s prayer. The book is titled Esposizione ragionata di un nuovo metodo di latinità. Shropshire: Say that again slowly, so it can take notes. Grice: Esposizione ragionata di un nuovo metodo di latinità. Shropshire: And what’s the point of it, besides making the title longer than the Latin it teaches? Grice: The point is not a new grammar as a list of rules. It’s a method. A programme. A way of getting pupils into Latin by set passages and disciplined procedure, and then diagnosing why they fail. Shropshire: Diagnosing boys is a thriving profession. Grice: Fuoco diagnoses two classics: dictation misconstrued, and reading avoided. He treats classroom failure as a technical matter, not as Original Sin. Shropshire: That already makes him more humane than my tutor. Grice: He builds the training around the usual triumvirate. Cicero, Sallust, Virgil. Shropshire: Your private household gods. Grice: Clifton’s public gods. Shropshire: My lot had Sallust mainly because it sounded like someone you could blame. Grice: Fuoco would say the blame belongs to a bad method, or worse, a method not followed. Shropshire: Oxford’s also fond of that: you’re not wrong, you’re merely not doing it properly. Grice: Fuoco’s noble endeavour is to make the road to latinity facile, breve, e piacevole. Shropshire: Easy, short, and pleasant. That’s not Latin, that’s advertising. Grice: Exactly. But he means it. He keeps returning to classroom mechanics, as if pedagogy were engineering. Shropshire: And is it? Grice: More than most dons admit. Shropshire: So, what are these “failure modes” he’s so proud of curing? Grice: First, dictation being misunderstood. Shropshire: That’s half of school. Grice: Second, the boys not reading the passage as prescribed, then reporting nonsense as if it were scholarship. Shropshire: That’s the other half. Grice: Clifton had a boy who turned Cicero into gibberish by ear. Shropshire: Give us an example. Go on. Something humiliating. Grice: Tutor dictated from De amicitia, meaning to say: “atque morum”. Shropshire: And? Grice: The boy wrote: “atqui tnorum”. Shropshire: Tnorum. Sounds like a barbarian tribe. Grice: Exactly Fuoco’s point. One misheard consonant and you’ve invited the Goths into the sentence. Shropshire: Did the tutor correct him? Grice: The tutor corrected him. The boy corrected the tutor by continuing to be the same boy. Shropshire: That’s dictation. What’s your other example? Grice: Virgil. Dictated line, and the class produced a word that doesn’t exist but has the air of having marched in with boots. Shropshire: Which word? Grice: “iocedat”. Shropshire: What was it meant to be? Grice: It was meant to be something Latin, and it became something like a sneeze. That is what happens when boys treat dictation as a sport rather than as reading. Shropshire: I’ve seen that. The invented word always looks bolder than the real one. Shropshire: Right. Now my contribution. Sallust. Wrong passage. Grice: Excellent. Ignorance with a source. Shropshire: Tutor says, “Sallust, Jugurtha.” The boy turns up with Catiline. Grice: That is not merely a mistake, that is a change of regime. Shropshire: He reads solemnly, like a bishop, and doesn’t notice the names are all wrong. Grice: And the tutor? Shropshire: The tutor asks, “When did Jugurtha become Catiline?” and the boy says, “Sir, I thought it was all Rome.” Grice: In a sense, he’s right. In a sense, he’s finished. Shropshire: Fuoco would have approved of the diagnosis, at least. Grice: Fuoco would have said: the pupil did not read what was prescribed. He substituted the general idea for the assigned text. Shropshire: Which is what undergraduates do in philosophy papers. Grice: Precisely why I like Fuoco. He is teaching, without meaning to, the same lesson that philosophy will later exact: you cannot replace the thing with your idea of the thing and call it knowledge. Shropshire: So you think Fuoco’s method is still alive in Clifton classrooms? Grice: Alive as a ghost. The programme, the set passages, the horror of dictation errors, the belief that a boy can be trained out of barbarism by ritual exposure to Cicero and friends. Shropshire: And does it work? Grice: It works insofar as anything works on a boy. It produces a certain kind of competence, and then you spend the rest of your life trying to get beyond mere competence. Shropshire: Why is this pleasing you so much? Grice: Because if Latin is already second nature, I can stop fearing it and use it as a tool. Then philosophy becomes possible. Shropshire: And if Latin isn’t second nature? Grice: Then philosophy becomes a kind of permanent translation exercise, and you waste half your strength on the engine rather than the journey. Shropshire: That’s me, then. Grice: That’s most of us, if we’re honest. Shropshire: You’ll be one of those fellows who quotes Cicero at dinner, won’t you. Grice: Only when I want the meat to arrive sooner. Shropshire: That’s honest. Grice: It’s cooperative. Shropshire: That a new philosophy word? Grice: Not yet. But Fuoco already knows the classroom version: if the method is followed, the boy does what is expected; if the boy does not, the whole enterprise collapses into noise. Shropshire: So latinity is a bargain. Grice: Exactly. A bargain with rules. And the interesting bit is what the bargain lets you leave unsaid without being misunderstood. Shropshire: You’re already doing it. Grice: Doing what? Shropshire: Turning a Latin pedagogue into a philosophy of conversation. Grice: That is what Oxford does. It takes a school exercise and extracts a metaphysic, then pretends it was born doing so. Shropshire: And your Italian’s full title again, for the record. Grice: Esposizione ragionata di un nuovo metodo di latinità. Shropshire: Noble endeavour indeed. Grice: Yes. And the trouble with noble endeavours is that they are always defeated, not by enemies, but by boys who mishear. Shropshire: And by boys who read the wrong Sallust. Grice: Exactly. Shropshire: Welcome to Corpus. Grice: Welcome to Rome, apparently. Shropshire: Where everyone is Rome. Grice: And nobody reads the set text unless forced.Grice: Caro Fuoco, ho letto la tua esposizione ragionata sul metodo di latinità. Dimmi, secondo te, la vera eloquenza nasce tra Cicerone e i barbari o basta una buona dettatura per salvarci dagli errori? Fuoco: Grice, ti confesso che a volte bastano più errori che barbari per mettere a dura prova la latinità! Ma per fortuna, qualche vestigio dell’antica bellezza resiste sempre, anche tra le rovine di una dettatura malintesa. Grice: Allora, Fuoco, la conversazione tra noi filosofi è come un cammino tra Goti e Unni: facile smarrirsi, ma se si trova la via breve e piacevole, forse anche gli allievi si salvano dal flagello della rozzezza! Fuoco: Hai ragione, Grice! In fondo, la vera latinità è un viaggio tra calamità e genio soffocato; ma se si riesce a conversare con un po’ di buonumore, anche il latino torna a sorridere... e magari salva pure qualche inglese! Fuoco, Francesco (1820). Esposizione ragionata di un nuovo metodo di latinità. Napoli: Amula.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Verbali: Furio – ossia: Grice e Furio: la ragione conversazionale e il portico romano -- Roma – filosofia italiana –  (Roma). Abstract. Grice: “”That’s Porch!”, I would tell my Oxford pupil, Strawson. He never read the classics – so the idea of labelling a philosophy after the BUILDING where its adherents gathered was new and pathetic to him!” -- Keywords: portico. Filosofo italiano. Scholar and statesman. Probably followed the sect of the Porch. Lucio Furio Filo. Keywords: portico. GRICEVS: FVRIVS, “Istud Porticus est!” dicebam Strawsonio, qui classicos numquam legit, quasi novum atque miserum esset philosophiam ab aedificio nominari. FVRIVS: At Roma, Grice, etiam senator et scholasticus sub porticu sapiens haberi potest, modo frigus bene toleret et verba sua calefaciat. GRICEVS: Miseret tamen discipuli mei, quod putat Porticum esse tectum potius quam sectam, et “Porch” sonat ei quasi ornamentum domus, non disciplina vitae. FVRIVS: Ergo doce eum hoc: si Porticus aedificium vocatur, id fit quia ibi ratio ambulat, et qui ambulare nescit, etiam sub porticu sedens, nihil intellegit. Speranza and Grice have this gens Furia. Other members in it? Yes. The gens Furia is very well attested, and Lucius Furius Philus belongs to a genuinely important Roman gens, unlike the notional gens Fusca. The first point is on the name. In Lucius Furius Philus, Furius is the nomen and identifies the gens Furia; Philus is the cognomen. So here, unlike Aristius Fuscus, we really are dealing with a major Roman gens. Other important members of the gens Furia include, at the safer and more famous level, the following. Marcus Furius Camillus is the great early Republican name, almost the monumental Furian. He is the conqueror of Veii and later a quasi-second founder of Rome in the Roman historical imagination. If one asks for the most famous Furian, it is usually Camillus. There are also several Furii with the cognomen Fusus, especially in the earlier Republic. The Furii Fusii form one of the better known early branches. One repeatedly meets names like Publius Furius Fusus and Spurius Furius Fusus in the consular and annalistic record. One must be cautious, because early Republican prosopography is always partly filtered through later reconstruction, but the branch is certainly standard in the tradition. Then there are the Furii Medullini, another prominent early branch of the gens. Again, these appear in the fasti and consular lists of the early Republic. As for Lucius Furius Philus himself, he belongs to the later and more intellectually interesting side of the gens. He is the statesman and man of letters associated with the Scipionic milieu, and the cognomen Philus itself already advertises Greek cultural colouring. That is one reason he is so apt for a Speranzian-Gricean crossing: Roman aristocratic politics meeting Greek philosophical and rhetorical cultivation. If your question is whether there were other Furii called Philus, the answer is yes, or at least more than one member of the family bore that cognomen. The best known beside Lucius is Gaius Furius Philus. The precise internal genealogy can become a little tricky, as so often with Roman naming and repeated praenomina, but the cognomen Philus is not unique to a single isolated individual. So the clean summary is this. Furius is the nomen and marks the gens Furia. Philus is the cognomen. The gens Furia is ancient and distinguished. Its most famous member is probably Marcus Furius Camillus. Other major Furian branches include the Furii Fusii and Furii Medullini. Within the later Republic, the cognomen Philus is associated with cultivated, Hellenising aristocratic Furii, including Lucius Furius Philus and at least one other notable Philus. If you like, I can next give you a compact prosopographical note on Lucius Furius Philus specifically, with an eye to why he could be cast as Stoic-adjacent or Porch-adjacent in your Grice-Speranza register.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Verbali: Fuschi – ossia: Grice e Fuschi: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale erotica.  Michele Fuschi (Cesena, Romagna): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale erotica. Grice: “One of my pupils at Oxford said the wanted to specialize in Italian philosophy. ‘Stick to the heretics!’ I advised! iconoclast, eretico. I see my philosophy as a simplifying iconoclasm, on the whole!” I like F., and so does Eco, Rota, and Carlini! F. opposes Aquino’s truths and turns them into mistakes – since they involve things about the past – where the apostles kept property – it’s all pretty unverifiable, -- still Fuschi was thoroughly heretic! F. is the Italians’ Ockham!” Si distinse per una decisa persecuzione nei confronti degli “spirituali, sostenitori dell'assoluta povertà di Gesù Cristo e della necessità di una altrettanto rigorosa povertà dell'ordine francescano. Lo scontro tra F. e Giovanni era irreversibile.  Il ministro generale venne convocato dal papa ad Avignone e sospeso dalla sua carica. Confermato dai Francescani alla carica di ministro generale nel capitolo di un'eresia medievale, Begardi Dottrine cristologiche dei primi secoli Inquisizione Letture e interpretazioni della Bibbia Martiri di Guernsey Movimenti ereticali medievali Persone giustiziate per eresia Storia del Cristianesimo Successione apostolica eresia, su Treccani Istituto dell'Enciclopedia. Luca, ERESIA, in Enciclopedia Italiana, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, eresia, in Dizionario di storia, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Eresia, su Enciclopedia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Eresia, in "Dizionario di eresie, eretici, dissidenti religiosi", su eresie Portale Cristianesimo   Portale Religione   Portale Sociologia   Portale Storia Movimenti ereticali medievali Scisma divisione causata da una discordia fra gli individui di una stessa comunità (come un'organizzazione, movimento o credo religioso)  Catarismo movimento eretico, separato dal Cattolicesimo durante il medioevo europeo; professava un assoluto ripudio della materia in ogni sua forma. Occam  excommunicated” -- Modified Occam’s Razor”, “Cristo e povero” -- italiani eretici, tomismo, michelismo, eresia filosofica – eretico – Occam scommunicato. Grice, Merton, 1936. I had won the Harmsworth, and with it the peculiar sensation of having been granted time as if time were a scholarship. Two years at Merton lay ahead, and the future, for once, looked like a stretch of uninterrupted reading rather than a sequence of duties disguised as choices. I went into the library with the ordinary undergraduate’s superstition that the right book, met at the right moment, might provide a direction. I drew down a history of philosophy, not because I believed it would tell me what to think, but because it would at least tell me what had been thought with enough confidence to be indexed. Somewhere in the medieval chapter a name caught: Michele da Cesena, with the variant family label Fuschi, and sometimes Foschi. The entry was spare, but the spareness was already an invitation. Born circa 1270 at Cesena in Romagna, he entered the Franciscans around 1284, and then, by January 1305, appears as custos at Bologna. I paused at custos, because titles matter. Custos is not a poetical epithet; it is an office, the head of a custody, a cluster of friaries, an administrative knot in a mendicant network. Bologna is not merely a city; it is a university-world. Yet the note did not say he was a professor, only that he was in office there. Still, I could not help the presupposition: a man entrusted with governance in a learned order has already been trained into the learned life, whether by university forms or by the Order’s own schools. I took out my notebook and did what Oxford trained me to do when confronted with a date: I made it speak by arithmetic. Birth circa 1270. Custos at Bologna by January 1305. So, if those are the right dates, Fuschi is about thirty-five when he is custos. Then another date from the same sparse trail: May 1316, doctor of theology at Paris. A doctorate at Paris, in the theology world that later generations like to shorthand as “the Sorbonne,” though in his day it is cleaner to say the University of Paris. If he is born circa 1270, he is about forty-six at the doctorate. Thirty-five at Bologna, forty-six at Paris. I drew a little arrow on the page, northward, because one cannot see Bologna and Paris in the same paragraph without imagining the road between them. I wrote, half as a joke and half as a prediction: if he keeps moving north, away from his old soil, he ends up at Paris. Or, if the road takes a different bend, he ends up in Oxford. That was the moment my own antiquarian vice asserted itself. Merton. Founded 1264. I wrote it down and then subtracted. 1264 to 1305 is forty-one years. So, when Fuschi is custos at Bologna in 1305, Merton is forty-one years old. The number pleased me because it made two histories touch without merging. Fuschi, thirty-five and already a custodian in Bologna; Merton, forty-one and already old enough to look inevitable; and me, a young man in 1936, sitting in a library built on the idea that old institutions keep breeding new thoughts. I looked up at the shelves and had the small, dry sensation that Oxford always gives when it realises it is older than your ambitions but younger than your reading. Fuschi went from Romagna to Bologna and then, at last, to Paris. I, by Harmsworth luck, had gone from Birmingham to Oxford and then, without leaving the same street for long, from Corpus to Merton. His northward drift was a medieval itinerary of office and degree; mine was a modern itinerary of scholarships and libraries. But the comparison had the same shape: a man, a title, a date, and the quiet inference that learning is a kind of travel even when the body sits still. I closed the volume and wrote one last line, because it sounded like a conclusion and therefore demanded to be distrusted: between Bologna and Paris there is a road; between 1305 and 1264 there is an age; between his forty-six at Paris and my two years at Merton there is the same old academic superstition—that if you keep moving north, and keep your dates in order, you may end up not merely in Paris, but in a college that was already forty-one when your medieval custodian was doing his rounds in Bologna.Grice: Caro Fuschi, ti confesso che a Oxford mi capita spesso di consigliare agli studenti: “Se volete scoprire la filosofia italiana, puntate sugli eretici!” Del resto, senza un po’ di iconoclastia, il pensiero rischia di diventare troppo monotono, non credi? Fuschi: Grice, hai ragione! In Italia, chi infrange le regole è spesso più interessante di chi le segue. Io stesso sono stato accusato di eresia solo per aver sostenuto che Cristo era povero, e che i francescani dovrebbero seguire il suo esempio. Da noi, la conversazione è una disputa tra verità e errori… e spesso vince chi sa sorridere delle proprie scomuniche! Grice: Ecco, Fuschi, è proprio questo che mi piace della tua filosofia: sai trasformare una verità di Aquino in una battuta, e una scomunica in un’occasione di dialogo. In Inghilterra, avremmo chiamato questa tecnica “Rasoio di Occam modificato”: taglia le complicazioni, ma lascia sempre spazio a un po’ di umorismo. Fuschi: Grice, se solo gli inquisitori avessero avuto il tuo spirito, forse avrebbero risparmiato qualche martire! In fin dei conti, la vera conversazione nasce quando si riesce a discutere anche di eresia senza perdere il gusto della battuta... e senza dimenticare che ogni verità, prima o poi, può essere ribaltata da un buon dialogo. Fuschi, Michele (1305). Custos. Bologna.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Verbali: Fusinieri – ossia: Grice e Fusinieri: la ragione conversazionale – semiotica – semantica e la “nova metaphisica” a Clifton. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Ambrogio Fusinieri (Vicenza, Veneto): la ragione conversazionale – semiotica – semantica. Grice: “I love F.! – he was clear about the grammar of ‘signify’!” Sull’influenza dei segni nella formazione delle idee, explores the relationship between semiotics and cognitive processes, specifically how linguistic or symbolic "signs" impact human thought and subjectivity. Atti dell’Imperial Regio Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti. Si laurea a Padova, Metaphysica. la sua visione della materia, basata sull'idea dell'unità delle forze. facoltà viene esercitata col segno. Finalmente una ultima questione proposta è questa. Se — sa- vi Ha qualche mezzo di correggere il segno mal fatto e di rendere tutte le scienze suscettibili di dimostrazione. La risposta a tale questione è contenuta nei saggi di sopra esposti circa la possibilità dell'arte caratteristica. Dico la possibilità a cui mi sono limitato, perchè circa l’attualità di quest’arte assai difficile vi sarà ancora molto da affaticare. Intanto è certo, secondo i posti principi, che in tutte le scienze, e in quelle medesime che finora furono oscure ed incerte è possibile condursi alla certezza delle cognizioni per mezzo degli artifiq dell’arte caratteristica di cui ho dimostrata la possibilità. Dopo aver dimostrato che IL SEGNO fissa le medesime idee singolari che sortono immediatamente dalle prime impressioni dei sensi e dell’immaginazione, che notano le cognizioni tratte dalle idee singolari per essere conservate agl’usi futuri, che IL SEGNO danno vigore di memoria agl’atti dell’immaginazione, che fanno le veci dell’idea generale, che da la forma a tutti i giudizj, che compongono tutti i ragionamenti che possono subire una costruzione analoga alla natura dell’oggetto o la cosa che segna, per cui si può rendere esatte tutte le scienze, ed estendere le umane cognizioni; e per cui nelle scienze esatte sono la causa della certezza; F. crede di avere esauriti gl’usi che il segno ha nell’operazioni della mente e nell’arte di pensare. È dunque dalla perfezione del segno e dalla invenzione dell' arte caratteristica che si deve attendere la possibile perfezione dello spirito umano. Corpus, Michaelmas 1930. Minor.   Shropshire: You look pleased with yourself, which in Oxford is a confession.   Grice: It is only a symptom. I have discovered a new use for an old word.   Shropshire: Which word.   Grice: Minor.   Shropshire: You’ve been reading critics again.   Grice: You’ve been reading Housman again.   Shropshire: I read Housman because he is tidy.   Grice: Tidy despair. The most English of luxuries.   Shropshire: He was called a minor poet.   Grice: And you object.   Shropshire: I object to the insult disguised as classification.   Grice: Minor is not always an insult. It is sometimes a measurement of the reader.   Shropshire: That sounds like something you would say because you want it to be true.   Grice: I know I can be fastidious. By that I imply that I want language to behave.   Shropshire: Minor poet. Minor philosopher. Minor child. Minor key. It all sounds belittling.   Grice: Only if you hear it with your pride.   Shropshire: I hear it with my ears.   Grice: Your ears are attached to your pride.   Shropshire: What’s your new use, then.   Grice: Legal.   Shropshire: You are the last man I expected to become legal.   Grice: One becomes legal simply by sitting still while the law goes past.   Shropshire: What does the law say a minor is.   Grice: It says a minor is not yet something. Which is the most philosophical definition of all.   Shropshire: Not yet twenty-one, you mean.   Grice: In English usage, yes, though the law has its various thresholds.   Shropshire: And what has that to do with Housman.   Grice: Housman has that poem about arriving at twenty years.   Shropshire: When I was one-and-twenty.   Grice: Exactly. He is already ancient by Fusinieri’s standards.   Shropshire: Fusinieri.   Grice: What is that next to your Shropshire that you are reading, Shrophisre.   Shropshire: That is a cheap pun, even for you.   Grice: It is worse. It is an undergraduate pun.   Shropshire: It’s not my surname. It is, allegedly, Nova metaphisica.   Grice: With an I.   Shropshire: With an I. Not a Greek Y.   Grice: A new metaphysics before fifteen.   Shropshire: Not yet fifteen, Grice. A minor metaphysician.   Grice: He was perfectly entitled.   Shropshire: Entitled by what.   Grice: By audacity. And by adolescence.   Shropshire: You’re making adolescence into a licence.   Grice: Adolescence is always a licence. Adults simply call it irresponsibility.   Shropshire: And British law by 1930.   Grice: British law would not prohibit metaphysics, unfortunately.   Shropshire: It prohibits other things, though.   Grice: Yes. And then apologises by calling them age-of-consent questions.   Shropshire: So your point is: a minor can publish metaphysics.   Grice: A minor can write metaphysics and get away with it. That is the wonder.   Shropshire: Does it inspire us.   Grice: Of course it does. It implies that our own excuses are laziness, not youth.   Shropshire: You have not located it, though.   Grice: You have.   Shropshire: I have located a reference to it. A whisper. Vicenza, Veneto. A boy with too much confidence.   Grice: Vicenza sounds like it has architecture. Perhaps metaphysics grows better under Palladio.   Shropshire: You are implying Italy produces philosophers like figs.   Grice: If I were implying that, why say it. I am only noting that a boy in Vicenza wrote Nova metaphisica before he was fifteen, whereas we at Corpus are still trying to decide whether Plato is serious.   Shropshire: Plato is serious.   Grice: Plato is serious in the way Housman is serious: he makes despair tidy and then calls it an argument.   Shropshire: You are trying to provoke me.   Grice: I am trying to keep you awake. There is a difference.   Shropshire: Why are you so pleased by this boy.   Grice: Because “minor” suddenly looks like an advantage. If one is a minor, one can be outrageous and people call it promise.   Shropshire: And if one is not a minor.   Grice: Then one must be outrageous and people call it indecency.   Shropshire: So “minor poet” is indecent.   Grice: It is lazy. It lets the critic avoid saying what he actually thinks. It is a label that does the work of an argument while looking like a fact.   Shropshire: Like calling Wittgenstein minor.   Grice: You’ve jumped ahead in time.   Shropshire: You jump ahead in everything else.   Grice: Fair. Let us stay in 1930. In 1930, the only Vitters I know is a vicar.   Shropshire: And the only Bosanquet is a salad.   Grice: Exactly. Our canons are still innocent.   Shropshire: So what do we do with minor.   Grice: We keep it for the law, for music, and for boys who write metaphysics too early. We do not use it to diminish poets.   Shropshire: Housman would not mind.   Grice: Housman would mind quietly and then write a perfect stanza about minding.   Shropshire: And Fusinieri.   Grice: Fusinieri would correct the sign and then promise an arte caratteristica to make all sciences demonstrative.   Shropshire: That sounds like you.   Grice: That is your implication, and I shall not say it.   Shropshire: Say it.   Grice: If I said it, it wouldn’t be an implicature.   Shropshire: So the moral is.   Grice: The moral is that the word minor is not a verdict. It is a condition. And conditions sometimes make the best philosophers.Grice: Caro Fusinieri, devo confessarti la mia profonda ammirazione per il modo in cui affronti la questione dei segni, della comunicazione e di tutto ciò che davvero conta nella formazione delle idee. La tua chiarezza sul "significare" è, a mio avviso, un faro per chiunque si occupi di semiotica e semantica! Fusinieri: Ti ringrazio, Grice! Credo che il segno abbia un ruolo essenziale: non solo fissa le idee nate dalle impressioni, ma dà vigore alla memoria e rende possibile la certezza nelle scienze. La perfezione del segno, a mio parere, è la strada maestra per perfezionare lo spirito umano. Grice: Ecco, ne sono convinto anch’io: la tua arte caratteristica—quella capacità di rendere esatte le scienze attraverso il segno—è ciò che distingue una mente davvero filosofica. In fondo, ogni ragionamento si compone di segni: da qui nasce la possibilità di estendere la conoscenza umana oltre ciò che appare. Fusinieri: Grice, tu cogli perfettamente il punto! Se riuscissimo a correggere i segni imperfetti e a raffinare l’arte della comunicazione, allora potremmo davvero condurci alla certezza e alla chiarezza delle nostre idee. È una fatica immensa, ma solo così si può sperare in una comprensione sempre più profonda delle cose. Fusineri, Ambrogio (1789). Nova metaphisica. Vicenza.