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

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Verbali: Gedalio – ossia: Grice e Gedalio: la ragione conversazionale a Roma antica Gedalio: la ragione conversazionale a Roma antica -- Roma – filosofia italiana –  (Roma). Grice and G. converge on the idea that philosophical meaning is governed by reason as it is exercised in lived conversational practice, but they articulate this insight from markedly different standpoints. In the Roman context invoked by Gedalio, conversational reason is embedded in gift, dedication, and audience: Porphyry’s commentary on Aristotle’s Categories, far from being a gratuitous gloss on a “transparent” tract, becomes intelligible as a rational act directed to a specific interlocutor, Gedalio, and to a Roman public for whom philosophical categories acquire authority through social circulation. Reason here is not merely analytic but relational, sustained by motives, expectations, and the recognizability of concepts within a shared civic culture. Grice abstracts this historically situated phenomenon into a general theory of reason‑governed conversational meaning: what is meant depends on rationally ordered intentions and on the public norms that make those intentions inferable in talk. His Oxford seminars on Categories—formal with Austin, exploratory with Strawson—reenact, in a modern key, the same dynamic Gedalio embodies: rules are often implicit, motivations partially opaque, yet participants can still “win the game” because conversational reason supplies coherence before explicit theory does. The difference is thus one of level rather than substance: Gedalio exemplifies conversational reason as practiced in ancient Rome; Grice explains why such practices succeed, even when the rules are not yet fully articulated. Grice: “We often forget of motivations. What led Porphyry to comment on such a transparent little tract as Aristotle’s ‘Categories’. Now we know: it was a gift from Porphyry to Gedalio!” Keywords: category. Filosofo italiano. Grice: “I would give two sorts of seminars on the categories at Oxford. The first-class ones were the ones I gave with Austin – him being my senior, he did most of the teaching. The syllabus included actually a commentary on De Interpretatione. Ackrill attended them. The other were a more informal set of seminars with Strawson, entitled ‘Categories’. Our purpose was not just to discuss Aristotle – since Strawson’s Greek left a lot to be desired – but include a bit of Kant into the bargain!” I recall a pupil attended and being asked by another: “What is going on here?” “I have no idea. I don’t know the rules of the game, but it seems Grice and Strawson are winning!” – This was in response to an ad lib interruption by O. P. Wood, who shouldn’t have been there in the first place! Quinton witnessed it all and later told me. Our seminars on ‘Categories’ with Strawson extended over a number of terms.” A pupil of Porfirio, who dedicates his commentary on Aristotle’s Categories to him. Keywords: category. GRICEVS: Salve, GEDALIVE; dic mihi, cur Porphyrius tam perspicuas Aristotelis Categorias commentatus est? GEDALIVS: Quia donum erat, GRICEVE: libellus tam “clarus” ut etiam discipulus intellegat—ergo magistri eum ornate obscurant. GRICEVS: Apud Oxoniam duas habui scholas: cum Austino “primae classis” (ipse plus docebat), et cum Strawsono “informales”; Graeca illius tam debilis erat ut Kantium nobis necesse esset adhibere quasi baculum. GEDALIVS: Itaque discipulus recte dixit: “regulas nescio, sed vincitis”; vos enim in ludo semper vincitis, etiam cum ipsae regulae nondum inventae sunt. Gedalio (a.u.c. MXXIII), Dicta, Roma.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Verbali: Gelli – ossia: Grice e Gelli: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale della difficultà di mettere in regole la nostra lingua, sentientia gricei. Giovan Battista Gelli (Firenze, Toscana). Both Grice and G. converge on the idea that conversational meaning is fundamentally reason‑governed yet resistant to rigid codification, though they arrive there from very different historical and philosophical directions. Gelli, writing in the Florentine Renaissance context, treats lingua as a living, dialogic medium whose primary function is to allow one person to manifest needs, intentions, and sensibilities to another; his reflections on the difficulty of putting language into rules, his emphasis on dialogic forms, and his distinction between the sweetness or materiality of expression and its formal content anticipate what later becomes the problem of implicature, namely how meaning exceeds explicit form. Grice, by contrast, offers a systematic philosophical account of how speakers’ reasons, intentions, and shared rational norms generate conversational meaning, articulating this through his notion of sentientia as a value‑laden, utterance‑level unit governed by standards of correctness and rational cooperation. Where Gelli stresses historical language, dialectal plurality, translation, and the cultural myth of origins (from Tuscan sweetness to the Adamic tongue) to show why language cannot be fully rule‑bound, Grice abstracts from particular languages to model how conversational implicatures arise because rational agents assume one another’s cooperation. The comparison reveals Gelli as an early, practice‑oriented thinker of conversational reason and linguistic indeterminacy, and Grice as the theorist who formalizes that same intuition into a general, reason‑based account of meaning in conversation. Grice: “I have rather sloppily used ‘sentence’ for what Cicero calls ‘sentientia’. I argue that ‘sentientia’ is a value-oriented paradeigmatic concept: a ill-formed sentientia is just not a sentientia. I also use ‘sentientia’ as the third level of articulation, my focus having been on ‘word,’ or utterance-part, and sentientia, utterance-whole. I like G.; he is a difficult philosopher, in a typical Italian fashion, mixing semiotics, philosophy, philology, and literature! His reflections on la lingua d’Adamo (lingua adamitica) is genial, and he proposes a distinction, which I often ignore, between lingua dolce, qua expression, or materia, and content, forma. The issue is central for Italians: Tuscan Italian being THE lingua because the sweetest, at least to Florence-born G.’s ears!” Calzolaio filosofo da amateur, Gioccatore di cricket amateur e filosofo profesionale, Discepolo di Francini, Verini, e Ficino, i romani, never i latini, with who is he contrasting them? With the fioreusciti fiorentini like himself, the flourished Florentines, but he prefers lingua toscana; lingua napoletana quite a different thing, he himself cares to translate from napoletana to toscana; into Toschani, thus spelled. And here comes the evangelist myth: Etruria as the cradle of Tuscany, and Hebrew and lingua d’Adamo as lingua primigenia. G. is clear about the nature of lingua, made for ‘uno possa manifestare all’altro i suoi bisogni.’ Accademic, he revels in the dialogic form, of a cooper with his own soul, what about Annici and Cicerone, he asks. They are different. CICERONE makes ‘piu ricca’ the lingua he thought is the ‘piu bella del mondo.’ Annici the same, but the Toschani are not Romani, and so the cooper can do as he wishes!”  sulla difficultà di mettere in regole la nostra lingua, lingua, lingua, Grice on English, idiolect, dialect, Language, Noe origine della lingua lingua fiorentina accademia agl’orti oricellar, la lingua dei romani regole nella PROSA di Cesare nel tempio di Ennio Glauco Svetonio Tacito Virgilio Alighieri. Grice: Caro Gelli, ho spesso riflettuto sul significato di “sententia”, che, mi perdonerai, tendo a confondere con il termine inglese “sentence”. Ma sento che tu, più di chiunque altro, sai quanto sia difficile mettere in regole la nostra lingua: la sua dolcezza, la sua materia, la sua forma… Tutto sembra sfuggire a ogni schema rigido!  Gelli: Ah, caro Grice, la lingua è come il pane caldo: ognuno vuole darle una forma, ma alla fine segue il suo profumo! In Toscana crediamo che la nostra sia la più dolce, ma sappiamo bene che ogni dialetto ha la sua musica. E tradurre dal napoletano al toscano è quasi come cercare la lingua d’Adamo…  Grice: Che immagine splendida, Gelli! In Inghilterra amiamo le regole, ma in fondo anch’io penso che la lingua nasca dalla necessità di manifestare i propri bisogni agli altri, come sostieni tu. E forse proprio la difficoltà di fissare regole rende la nostra conversazione più viva, più vera.  Gelli: Ben detto, amico mio! La lingua, come la vita, cresce nel dialogo. Anche Cicerone cercava di abbellirla, Annici voleva innovare, ma il vero segreto sta nell’ascoltare l’altro e lasciare che ogni parola trovi il suo posto, come fanno i fiorentini nei vicoli di Firenze. In fondo, ogni lingua è un po’ un fiore selvatico! Gelli, Giovan Battista (1549). La Circe, Firenze: Lorenzo Torrentino.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Verbali: Gellio – ossia: Grice e Gellio:  la ragione conversazionale e il portico romano -- Roma – filosofia italiana Lucio Gellio (Roma, Lazio). The comparison between Grice and G. brings into relief two complementary ways of understanding reason‑governed conversational meaning, one analytical and one emblematic. Gellio, situated in the Roman intellectual world and drawing on the Stoic image of the portico, conceives conversational reason as something essentially situated: thinking, arguing, and speaking well require a protected but public space in which not everything is said indiscriminately, and where context, audience, and circumstance govern what is appropriate to utter. His stress on the portico as a place of listening, selective disclosure, and moderated exchange anticipates the idea that meaning in conversation depends on shared norms and tacit expectations rather than explicit rules alone. Grice, by contrast, abstracts this intuition into a general philosophical theory: conversational meaning is generated by rational cooperation, where speakers assume that utterances are produced for reasons and can therefore convey more than they literally say through implicatures. What Gellio figures metaphorically as the discipline of speaking under the portico—where reason shapes when and how one speaks—Grice formalizes as principles governing conversational conduct. The continuity lies in the shared recognition that conversation is not mere verbal output but a rational practice, structured by norms of relevance, restraint, and mutual intelligibility, even when those norms are not codified in law or grammar. Grice: “At Oxford, ‘stoic’ is in the lips of every historian of philosophy – but few use that lovely Roman metaphor: porch, which is what ‘stoa’ literally means!” Portico. Filosofo italiano. Arriano dedicated the discourses of Epitteto to G., who presumably takes at least an interest in the Porch. GRICEVS: Salve, GELLIVS; Oxoniae “Stoicum” omnes in ore habent, sed pauci meminerunt stoa esse porticum: apud nos, nisi pluat, nemo philosophatur sub dio, ne sub porticu quidem. GELLIVS: Salve, GRICEVS; Roma vero porticibus cogitat, quia sine porticu nihil cogitare licet: et si quis te roget quid sit stoa, responde “tectum ad disputandum” — sic etiam pluvia fit argumentum. GRICEVS: Pulchre; sed miror quod Arrianus Epicteti sermones tibi dicavit: scilicet putavit te porticum amare, non quia Stoicus es, sed quia sub porticu melius auditur — et nemo potest dicere te non fuisse auditor, saltem tectus. GELLIVS: Ita est: ego porticum colo ut tu conversationem; utrumque enim docet hoc unum—non omnia dicenda sunt in foro: quaedam sub porticu, quaedam subridentibus amicis, et quaedam tantum cum ventus tacet. Was the Gellia a good gens? Other members? Yes. The gens is Gellia. If the figure is Lucius Gellius, then the nomen is Gellius and the clan-name is gens Gellia. So the clean Roman formula is: gens Gellia nomen Gellius praenomen Lucius Was it a “good” gens? In the Roman moralising sense, that depends on which period and which member one has in mind. In strictly historical terms, it was a respectable plebeian gens, not one of the grandest and oldest names like the Cornelii or Claudii, but certainly a real and recurrent Roman family with magistrates and public standing. So yes, it was a decent and established gens, though not among the very highest aristocratic names. The best-known members include these. Lucius Gellius Publicola, consul in 72 BC, perhaps the most famous Republican Gellius. Gnaeus Gellius, an earlier annalist and historian, usually placed in the later second century BC. He matters if one cares about Roman historiography. Aulus Gellius, much later, the author of the Noctes Atticae, by far the most famous Gellius in literary afterlife, though not a major political magistrate in the Republican sense. There are also other Gellii in prosopography and public office, but those three are the names most readers are likely to recognise. A caution, though, about your Lucio Gellio. The Stoic-porch frame in your passage sounds more like a Speranzian reconstruction than a securely attested philosophical profile of a specific Lucius Gellius. The historically strong Gellii are not remembered primarily as “men of the Porch.” If the person you have in mind is the dedicatee of something by Arrian or linked with Epictetus, one should be very careful, because that is not the standard famous Gellian dossier. So if your question is simply, “Was the Gellia a good gens? Other members?” the best sober answer is: Yes, a respectable plebeian Roman gens. Not among the supreme gentes, but certainly established and politically visible. Its most notable members are Lucius Gellius Publicola, Gnaeus Gellius the annalist, and Aulus Gellius the author of Noctes Atticae. A compact dry note in your register might be: Gellius is the nomen of the gens Gellia, a respectable plebeian Roman gens, neither negligible nor of the very first magnitude. Its historical afterlife is carried above all by the consul Lucius Gellius Publicola, the annalist Gnaeus Gellius, and, in literary memory, Aulus Gellius of the Noctes Atticae. The family is thus “good” in the Roman sense of established public presence, though not one of the towering aristocratic houses. One philological reminder: if you use the abstract clan-name, it is gens Gellia. If you use the male nomen, it is Gellius. If useful, I can now do one of two things, all here in chat. I can give you a compact dictionary-style entry on gens Gellia and the principal Gellii. Or I can help identify which Lucius Gellius your Speranza entry is trying to stage, since the Stoic-Arrian-Epictetus colouring may be conflating more than one figure. And there is no chronological possibility, Grice asks, that Arrianus dedicates the collection of dicta by Epictetus to L. G. Publicola? No, there is no chronological possibility. Lucius Gellius Publicola, the consul, belongs to the late Roman Republic. He was consul in 72 BC. Arrian belongs to the second century AD. He is writing under Hadrian and after, roughly in the early to mid second century AD. That leaves a gap of about two centuries. So Arrian cannot possibly have dedicated the Discourses of Epictetus to Lucius Gellius Publicola. The dedicatee of Arrian’s Discourses and Enchiridion is not that Republican Gellius. It is Lucius Gellius, but a much later man, generally understood to be a contemporary of Arrian, and otherwise rather obscure. In other words, the name fits, the chronology does not. So the right answer is: same nomen, different person not Lucius Gellius Publicola a later Lucius Gellius, contemporary enough for Arrian This is one of those cases where Roman names tempt false continuity. Because the gens Gellia is real and recurrent, one can easily slide from “Lucius Gellius” in one century to “Lucius Gellius” in another, especially if a modern note is written too briskly. A dry way to put it would be: Arrian’s dedication to a Lucius Gellius cannot refer to Lucius Gellius Publicola, since the latter is a Republican consul of 72 BC, whereas Arrian belongs to the second century AD. The dedicatee must therefore be another, later Lucius Gellius, now much less vividly known. The nomen survives; the chronology forbids the identification. And that is exactly the kind of thing Grice would enjoy: the implicature of continuity supplied by a reused Roman name, then cancelled by chronology. If you want, I can next give you a short M.–G.–Shropshire classroom scene on why “same name” is not “same man,” with the joke landing on Roman nomina and schoolboy overconfidence. Gellio, Lucio (a. u. c. DCLXXXII). Dicta. Roma.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Verbali: Gemmis – ossia: Grice e Gemmis: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del console. . Ferrante de Gemmis (Terlizzi, Puglia). The comparison between Grice and G. highlights two distinct but compatible conceptions of how reason governs conversational meaning, one analytic and one historically situated. De Gemmis, formed within the Italian Enlightenment and steeped in philosophy of history, treats ragione as a guiding light that operates across biography, prejudice, opinion, and historical circumstance; conversation, for him, is implicitly embedded in social roles such as that of the “console,” where what is said carries meanings shaped by authority, context, and shared cultural horizons. This makes conversational implication inseparable from historical and practical reason: utterances convey more than their literal content because speakers and hearers reason together within a web of expectations, traditions, and lived experience. Grice, by contrast, brackets historical narrative and social rank to offer a general theory of conversational meaning grounded in rational agency itself, explaining implicature through cooperative principles and speaker intentions rather than through explicit attention to history. Yet the affinity is clear: where de Gemmis sees reason cultivated collectively around a table, through dialogue that negotiates prejudices and viewpoints, Grice formalizes the same phenomenon as the inferential process by which hearers recover what speakers mean beyond what they strictly say. De Gemmis thus anticipates, in an Enlightenment key, Grice’s insight that conversational meaning is not encoded but inferred, and that reason operates socially, not mechanically, in everyday communication. Grice: “We don’t do philosophy of history at Oxford, since being a ‘philosopher of X’ is considered a term of abuse here!” storia, filosofia della storia. I love G. G. is a good example of how an Italian philosopher differs from a philosophy don at Oxford: ‘don’ is derogatory; whereas de’ Gemmis is a barone! – And he writes about ‘reason,’ ‘ragione’ – with Abate GENOVESI --; unlike a ‘don’ at Oxford who would over-do reason to keep a post at his college! In them days, Italian illuminists take reason very seriously, and possibly ‘light,’ too!” Si laurea a Napoli sotto GENOVESI.  Istituì un gruppo di gioco. Tavola di Storia della Filosofia” Ne scrive la biografia Bisceglia pubblicata nel "Dizionario degli uomini illustri del Regno". Muore a Terlizzi, largamente stimato, ed e sepolto nella cappella nobiliare de G. di Terlizzi. il console, tavola cronologica della storia universal, vita e opinione, prejudici e predilezioni. Grice: Caro de Gemmis, mi ha sempre incuriosito la tua passione per la filosofia della storia. All’Oxford, la storia come disciplina filosofica suscita diffidenza, mentre vedo che per voi illuministi italiani la “ragione” è davvero qualcosa di serio, quasi un ideale da inseguire con tutta l’anima! Gemmis: Grazie, Grice! In Italia, si respira ancora lo spirito dell’Illuminismo: la ragione non è solo uno strumento, ma una luce che ci guida tra i pregiudizi della storia. Forse sarà il sole di Napoli, o il peso delle nostre tradizioni, ma sentiamo il bisogno di riflettere anche sul perché e sul come delle vicende storiche. Grice: Che meraviglia, Gemmis! In Inghilterra, essere chiamato “filosofo di qualcosa” è quasi un’offesa, mentre da voi, essere “barone” della ragione sembra un titolo d’orgoglio. Mi colpisce anche il vostro legame fra filosofia e vita quotidiana, come la tua amicizia con Genovesi e la creazione di circoli di discussione. Da noi, si preferisce disquisire nei corridoi dei college! Gemmis: Forse la differenza sta tutta lì, caro Grice: qui la filosofia vuole essere fatta attorno a una tavola, con pane, vino e buoni amici. La ragione si coltiva insieme, tra biografie, cronache e opinioni diverse. In fondo, come diceva Genovesi, “ragionando insieme si cresce più che soli”. Gemmis, Ferrante de (1766). Lettera sopra la poesia tragica, Napoli: Simoni.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Verbali: Genovesi – ossia: Grice e Genovesi: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale della logica.  Antonio Genovesi (Castiglione del Genovese, Salerno, Campania). In comparing Grice with G., what stands out is that both conceive of rationality as essentially embedded in social exchange, yet they operate at different levels of analysis and with different aims: Genovesi, writing in the mid‑eighteenth century, treats conversazione as a foundational civic practice in which reason, trust, and cooperation are jointly constructed, so that logic, rhetoric, economics, and moral philosophy converge in a theory of communicative exchange governed by natural law, confidence, and calculable reason, where signs mediate between ideas and things and where much of what is communicated depends on shared expectations and implicit understandings within commercial and political life. Grice, by contrast, abstracts from this broader civil and economic framework to articulate a formally precise account of how conversational meaning is reason‑governed through speaker intentions, cooperative norms, and inferential principles, introducing the modern notion of implicature to explain how what is meant systematically exceeds what is said without appeal to metaphysical or civic theories of trust. Where Genovesi views conversational rationality as a lived, normative practice sustaining social order and mutual recognition among “civil” agents, Grice reconceives it as a structure of rational accountability internal to discourse itself, replacing rhetoric and moral pedagogy with a minimally psychological, quasi‑logical model of inference, while nonetheless converging with Genovesi in the core idea that communication is intelligible only against a background of shared reason, cooperation, and expectations that are not explicitly stated but tacitly relied upon in every genuine exchange. Grice: “It’s difficult to read G., because he tends to be so consdescending towards his audience – as if he were LECTURING to them! scambio conversazionale. I like G.. G. is a good’un – he reminds me of Oxford – his treatise on logic he called ‘per gli giovenetti,’ which is, as Piaget would say, as it would. G. reminds me of Strawson, or rather of myself teaching logic to Strawson back in that infamous term of 1938! I like G.; I don’t think Socrates taught logic to Alcebiades; he couldn’t teach since the ‘dialogue’ is hardly the way to do it; and then Socrates did not teach logic to Plato; Plato did not teach logic to Aristotle, since the dialogue is not the way to go – so it is possibly Aristotle who first ‘taught’ logic to Alexander – this would indicate that he felt the need to change the form from silly dialogical exchanges to actual propositions that Alexander could swallow – “Sign” is what stands for something – a word is the sign of an idea – the idea is the sign for a thing.” – and so on. “Some things imply others; others IMPLICATE others. G. has an interesting bunch of things to say about logic, but then any writer of a ‘tractatulus’ in logic would: so he explores the natural/conventional distinction as applied to signs, and then the affirmation and negation, and pragmatic concerns with obscurity and ambiguity – and sophismata – and complex ‘causal’ propositions, -- quite a genius – and if a palaeo-Griceian, if I may myself say so!” Si laurea a Bucino sotto Abbamonte. Studia Catone e Varrone. Insegna a Salerno. Rettorica. Conosce Doti, VICO. Elementa Metaphysicae” language of commerce languages of political theory tra l'uomo "civile" e la natura: alcuni problemi di "police" in G. Natura e sensibilità fiducia Le strategie della fiducia. Indagini sulla razionalità della co-operazione, Legge di natura e calcolo della ragione L'universo comunicativo logica critica della ragione economica, scambio conversazionale. Merton, 1936. On Falling in love.   Willowby: You look as if you’ve mislaid your skull.   Grice: Only the one. I keep the other for tutorials.   Willowby: Hamlet, then. What’s the soliloquy today.   Grice: Genovesi. Biography. The sort that treats a philosopher as if he were a character in a romance.   Willowby: I thought you disliked romance.   Grice: I dislike being made to feel it. There’s a difference.   Willowby: What’s the scandal.   Grice: He falls in love, and his father sends him to Buccino to continue his studies.   Willowby: Continue. That word does a lot of work.   Grice: It does enough work to make everyone else lazy.   Willowby: Was he at a seminary when he fell in love.   Grice: Nobody says. The biography merely gives you the blush and then the geography.   Willowby: Geography is the respectable way to talk about sex.   Grice: And by that I imply that you are an Oxford man.   Willowby: Is this a Catholic thing.   Grice: Dunno. It’s a father thing. Catholicism may be mere scenery.   Willowby: You’re confident.   Grice: I’m cautious. I’m trying not to let one adjective do the whole causal explanation.   Willowby: Ambitious father, you said.   Grice: The implication is that the father preferred orders to ardour. He interrupts the romance, and calls it education.   Willowby: Is that fair.   Grice: Fair is not the operative category in paternal governance. The operative category is permitted.   Willowby: You mean patria potestas.   Grice: Exactly. The Roman bit survives in Italy in the form of paternal movement rights.   Willowby: Movement rights.   Grice: He relocates the boy as if the boy were a proposition that had begun to entail trouble.  Willowby: You have turned a romance into logic.   Grice: I have turned it into what it already is: a conflict of authorities.   Willowby: And the authority wins by distance.   Grice: Middle of nowhere, as the biographer wants you to feel it. Buccino is made to sound like a moral exile.   Willowby: Does it work. Does he stop loving.   Grice: The biography doesn’t care. The biography cares that he had the nerve to fall in love at all while in minor orders.   Willowby: That’s the Italian historian’s taste, then. Your hero must show he had the balls.   Grice: Quite. It gives him a pulse before it gives him a chair.   Willowby: And then it reassures the reader that the whole episode was bullocks.   Grice: Not bullocks. Bullocky, perhaps. A warm-up before seriousness.   Willowby: But you’re not going to dwell on whether the exile produced philosophy.   Grice: No. I’m dwelling on the father. The father is the mechanism. He cuts the thing short.   Willowby: You’re thinking of your father.   Grice: I’m thinking of fathers as a class. My father had his own ways. He did not send me to Buccino.   Willowby: Where would he have sent you.   Grice: To a table. To a piano. To Clifton. Different instruments of discipline.   Willowby: And your mother.   Grice: My mother could move people without moving them. She could turn a room into a school and call it home.   Willowby: You’re suggesting she had patria potestas.   Grice: She had something better. She had domestic omniscience. She didn’t need a carriage.   Willowby: And your Aunt Matilda.   Grice: I hope never never never by resident Catholic convert aunt Matilda. But she would have enjoyed the story, which is already bad.   Willowby: Because it’s Catholic.   Grice: Because it’s theatrical. Catholics are not the only ones who like theatre. Oxford likes it too, but disguised as ritual.   Willowby: Like your own orders.   Grice: My orders are paper orders. The only vows at Merton are to prose.   Willowby: You could have fallen in love at Rossall, you know.   Grice: I could have, yes. There were girls, and there was sea air, and there was the convenient fiction of being independent from Oxford.   Willowby: And yet.   Grice: And yet I did not. Possibly I lacked the Italian historian’s requirements for heroism.   Willowby: Or you had English requirements.   Grice: English requirements are to feel deeply and behave shallowly.   Willowby: That’s cruel.   Grice: It’s accurate. And by that I imply it is a compliment.   Willowby: But Genovesi is a cleric. He can’t marry.   Grice: He is in the clerical track. Whether he is yet bound in the full way is precisely what the biography refuses to say.   Willowby: Anglican can marry.   Grice: Anglican can marry and still be very unromantic about it. That is our special talent.   Willowby: Dodgson.   Grice: Dodgson is an instructive case, if you mean that Oxford can remain celibate while remaining entirely non-Catholic about it.   Willowby: So the moral is not Catholicism but Oxford.   Grice: The moral is that institutions always have a way of treating love as a scheduling conflict.   Willowby: And the father is the institution in miniature.   Grice: Precisely. In Italy the father performs the institution. In Oxford the institution performs the father.   Willowby: That’s too neat.   Grice: Most morals are. The difficulty is living them without sounding as if you’ve written them.   Willowby: So what do you do with Genovesi.   Grice: I treat him as a case of interruption. Love interrupts study, father interrupts love, biography interrupts everything by making it all sound like Providence.   Willowby: And you.   Grice: I try to write philosophy without letting the biography do the thinking.   Willowby: You’re still Hamlet.   Grice: Hamlet had a ghost. I have a father, a mother, and a paragraph in Italian.   Willowby: And which is worse.   Grice: The paragraph. It keeps insisting it is relevant.Grice: Caro Genovesi, devo confessarti la mia ammirazione per il modo in cui affronti la comunicazione e la logica: il tuo approccio sembra davvero illuminante! Qui a Oxford, ahimè, ci arrivano solo le onde più turbolente dell’empirismo e del sensismo, e spesso ci dimentichiamo del valore della conversazione autentica.  Genovesi: Grazie, Grice! Per me, il dialogo è alla base del pensiero: la logica non è solo un insieme di regole, ma un esercizio di fiducia e cooperazione tra uomini. Ogni scambio conversazionale è una piccola avventura verso la verità comune, e la ragione si costruisce insieme, non in solitudine.  Grice: Hai ragione, caro amico! Mi affascina la tua distinzione tra naturale e convenzionale nei segni, e come tu sappia trattare ambiguità e sfumature senza condiscendenza. Da noi, inseguendo solo i fatti e le sensazioni, spesso perdiamo il gusto della sottigliezza e della complessità.  Genovesi: È proprio questa complessità che rende la logica viva, Grice! La conversazione è fatta non solo di affermazioni e negazioni, ma anche di implicature, di fiducia e di strategie sottili; e forse, come diceva Vico, la vera ragione non sta nei numeri, ma nella parola condivisa tra amici. Genovesi, Antonio (1735). Scuola. Salerno

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Verbali: Gentile – ossia: Grice e Gentile: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale d’Enea all’inferno  Bartolomeo Fallamonica Gentile (Taggia, Imperia, Liguria). In comparing Grice with G., the contrast is between a modern, analytically explicit theory of reason‑governed conversational meaning and a late‑humanist, poetic dramatization of rational communication as a philosophical journey: Fallamonica, deeply shaped by Dante and Lullo, figures reason as something enacted through narrative descent and ascent, where implicature is not a technical notion but a literary effect produced by allusion, parody, and allegorical excess, as in his Virgilian Eneas who understands more than is said while moving through infernal scenes populated by Aristotle and the great chain of philosophical transmission. For Gentile, conversazione belongs to the continuum of ars and natura: art refines natural reason, but does not replace it, just as ars amandi presupposes instincts already at work, and the reader’s understanding depends on shared cultural knowledge rather than formal rules. Grice, by contrast, strips conversational reason of its cosmological and poetic setting and redescribes it as a system of rational expectations governing ordinary talk, where implicatures arise from the hearer’s recognition of cooperative intentions and maxims rather than from mythic descent or rhetorical spectacle. Yet the affinity is real: both assume that meaning systematically exceeds what is explicitly said, that rational communication relies on what interlocutors can be trusted to infer, and that conversational understanding is an achievement of practical reason; the difference lies in form and ambition, with Gentile presenting implicature as a comic‑philosophical experience staged through catabasis and allegory, and Grice translating that same surplus of meaning into a post‑natural, rule‑governed account of how reasoning agents make sense of one another in everyday conversation. Grice: “Surely a squirrel does not need to learn the ‘arns amandi’ – many things that the Italians call ‘artificial’ I merely call post-natural!” ars/natura, ars amandi. It seems every philosopher has a catabasis – as Eneas did! G. spends a ‘stagione’ in hell, too! I do like G.– the way he makes ‘Aristoteil’ rhyme! “E vidi alfin colui, che fra’ mortali / più degno par di tutto quell Collegio, / levarsi contra tutti, e batter l’ali; / dico Aristotil. F. is interesting: there is Socrates teaching Alcibiades, and Socrates teaching Plato, and Plato teaching Aristotle, and Aristotle teaching Alexander!” It is, all’ALIGHIERI, a fun philosophical comedy!: Tale è l'analisi che ci ha data del poema del Falamonica Spatorno. Non poteva questa essere più ampia dovendo costituire parte di un articolo della sua Opera. Ma egli ha lasciato maggior desiderio del medesimo, poi chè pare anoi, che altri passi, e forse più felici, dovrebb'esso contenere, se, come dicegli, questo poema dopo la Commedia di Dante, e prima dell'Orlando furioso dee tenersi per la migliore composizione poetica che in quel l'intervallo l'Italia abbia avuta. Noi speriamo che il signor di Negro lo comunicherà al Pubblico colle stampe. E vidi alfin colui che fra’ mortali più degno par di tutto quell collegio levarsi contra tutti e batter l’ali. Dico Aristotil posto in sì gran pregio di lor filosofanti un lume acceso E pur dal ciel si trova dato in spregio si ch’io restai fra me tutto sospeso con l’alma or. Enea all’inferno, parodies of the Divine Comedy, Raimondo Lullo, Bruno e Lullo, il libro dell’amante e dell’amato, ars amativa. Commedia filosofica. Grice: Caro Gentile, mi affascina il modo in cui tu intrecci la ragione conversazionale con le imprese di Enea all’Inferno. Credi davvero che ogni filosofo debba attraversare la propria “stagione infernale”, come l’eroe virgiliano? Gentile: Grice, hai colto nel segno! La traversata dell’inferno, per chi riflette, è quasi un rito di passaggio. In fondo, come diceva Dante, anche i grandi filosofi devono affrontare il buio per scorgere il lume della ragione. La “commedia filosofica” non è altro che il viaggio tra ombra e luce, tra dubbio e chiarezza. Grice: Che bella immagine, Gentile! E a proposito, trovo irresistibile quella tua ironia sull’ars amandi: forse, come dici tu, la natura e l’arte si fondono, e anche gli animali sanno amare senza lezioni. Ma secondo te, la conversazione è più arte o più natura? Gentile: Ah, caro Grice, la conversazione è il ponte fra l’arte e la natura! Ci vuole istinto, ma anche la grazia dell’ascolto e della parola scelta. Un po’ come Aristotele che, con la sua saggezza, “batte le ali” tra i mortali e illumina il cammino di chi cerca verità. In fondo, ogni dialogo è una piccola catabasi: si scende nel profondo per poi risalire più ricchi. Gentile, Bartolomeo Fallamonica (1514). Canti. Genova.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Verbali: Gentile – ossia: Grice e Gentile: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale.  Marino Gentile (Trieste, Friuli Venezia Giuli). In comparing Grice with G., the difference emerges between an analytically formal theory of conversational reason and a classical, humanistic conception of philosophy as an ongoing practice of radical questioning: Gentile understands rationality less as a set of rules governing discourse than as problematicità pura, a permanent openness that defines philosophical life itself and that finds expression in dialogue, education, and the historically continuous use of classical categories such as number in Plato and the unmoved mover in Aristotle. For Gentile, conversational reason is inseparable from paideia, from the cultivation of the whole person through questioning that resists definitive closure, so that what might be called “conversational implicature” takes the form of what is always left unsaid, suspended between one question and the next, rather than something codified or derived by rule. Grice, by contrast, seeks to explain how everyday speakers successfully communicate despite this indeterminacy by articulating principles of rational cooperation and implicature that make implicit meaning systematically recoverable within ordinary language use. Yet the affinity is striking: both reject philosophy as a closed system, both see reason as something enacted in shared practices rather than imposed from outside, and both take Aristotle seriously as a guide to the structure of thought; where Gentile elevates questioning itself to the core of classical rationality, Grice translates that same commitment to rational accountability into a post-natural theory of how interlocutors mean more than they say by relying on shared norms of reasoning within conversation. Grice: “There is such a slight difference between the Greek words ‘philosophos’ and ‘sophista’ that I have decided to replace every occurrence of ‘sophista’ by ‘philosophista’ and see what happens! sophist, philosopher. I love G.; like me, he is interested in Aristotle’s immotum motor, and the idea of number in Plato – but he extends his views to all the rest of philosophy of language; if Vitters wrote a ‘trattato,’ so did G.!” Si laurea a Pisa sotto Carlini. Insegna a Trieste. idee numeri lizio G. occupa sicuramente un posto importante nella storia della filosofia del secolo scorso, ma – se fin dall’inizio non vogliamo avanzare discorsi di carattere celebrativo o commemorativo, quanto innanzitutto teoretico forse dovremmo dire che egli occupa un posto importante nella storia della filosofia. La ragione per cui vale la pena di rinnovare, anche in questa sede, la riflessione sul maestro patavino, è che egli ci rimette davanti alla struttura essenziale del filosofare. La sua concezione della filosofia come problematicità pura si di-mostra infatti quale dice di essere, veramente classica, in quanto, evidenziando in tale problematicità quella che non può non essere considerata la caratteristica del filosofare, mostra di possedere essa stessa un valore permanente ed ricerca di classicità, si attua come paideia, cioè come sforzo di realizzare nelle più diverse situazioni storiche l’essenza dell’uomo, non un sistema compiuto, ma una sollecitazione a riprendere la ricerca sulla verità della persona, espressione di quel domandare radicale in cui si traduce ogni impegno filosofico. Considerando l’essere umano nella sua integralità, l’umanesimo, anziché contrapporsi, si possa intrecciare anche in ambito scolastico. L’indicazione è di preziosa attualità e ci fornisce un’altra conferma della potenza del domandare filosofico. Il domandare vigorosamente rinnovarsi.. In un scambio di ruoli, persiste a interrogarci. storia della filosofia period antico – filosofia romana, la preghiera segno dei romani itali antici pre-sofistica pre-Leonzio uso di classico in latino classico, filosofisti filosofisma. Grice: Caro Gentile, da buon inglese, confesso che la differenza tra “filosofista” e “sofista” mi sfugge come il senso del tè freddo. Dimmi: preferisci domandare in modo problematico o rispondere con numeri platonici? Gentile: Ah, caro Grice, la domanda è il vero pane della filosofia! Se ti dessi una risposta definitiva, sarebbe come servire una pizza senza mozzarella: manca il cuore! La mia classicità è tutta nell’arte di chiedere e ricercare, anche se i numeri di Platone fanno sempre la loro figura. Grice: Gentile, allora la tua filosofia è come una pizza margherita: semplice all’apparenza, ma ricca di gusto in ogni fetta! Dici che la problematicità è la vera classicità, ma ti sei mai trovato a domandare tanto da rimanere senza risposta, come un pizzaiolo senza farina? Gentile: Grice, capita spesso! Ma è proprio lì che nasce la vera filosofia: nel vuoto tra una domanda e l’altra, come il profumo del forno acceso. E poi, se manca la farina, basta cambiare ricetta: il pensiero filosofico, come il pane fresco, si rinnova ogni giorno, anche quando sembra fragile! Gentile, Marino (1928). Cultura classica e formazione Cristiana. Studium

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Verbali: Gentili – Ossia: Grice e Gentili: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale della filosofia romana arcaica  Bruno Gentili (Valmontone, Roma, Lazio). Both Grice and G. arrive at a conception of meaning as reason-governed and inferential, but they approach it from strikingly different starting points that nonetheless converge. Grice develops his theory of conversational meaning by treating communication as a rational, cooperative activity: what is meant goes beyond what is said through implicatures that an audience is entitled to recover by assuming the speaker’s rationality and orientation toward shared ends. Gentili, working as a classicist and historian of archaic Rome, identifies a structurally comparable phenomenon in early Roman culture, where sense is generated not by abstract system-building but by socially embedded practices—metrical, rhetorical, and civic—in which interlocutors rely on shared norms and expectations to grasp what is conveyed beyond the literal form. Where Grice theorizes implicature in explicit philosophical terms, Gentili reconstructs it historically, showing how Roman discourse presupposed a form of communal rationality rooted in the forum, the law court, and public performance rather than in Greek σχολή. For Gentili, Roman thought is not merely Hellenistic philosophy in translation, but a distinct mode of reasoning in which meaning is negotiated through culturally stabilized cues, silences, and formal constraints; for Grice, those same features are abstracted into principles and maxims governing any rational exchange. The comparison reveals a deep affinity: Grice provides the explicit analytic framework for what Gentili uncovers philologically in Roman antiquity—a conception of meaning as something achieved through reasoned inference within a shared form of life, whether described as conversational cooperation or as the civic rationality of early Rome. Grice: “I seldom use ‘rhetoric,’ but Leech has: calling my thing a conversational rhetoric – I guess I like that! I love G., and Austin and Ryle do too – he is a classicist – from central Italy therefore he FEELS Roman – he has explored the beginnings of philosophical thinking in Lazio, as opposed to the old schools of Velia, Crotone, and Girgenti! I know G.’s type: once in love with Greek, you cannot be an honest Latinist. So he finds that everything Roman has to be Hellenistic, see his notes on the Saturnio. This of course irrirtates and rightly so Latinists. There are Roman ways which are not Hellenistic ways. Geymonat analyses this in social-class terms in his history: Athens remains the finishing school for the ‘figli’ of the ‘migliore famiglie romane’ – and the circle of Scipione is pro-hellenic, but Cato wins: Latin remains the lingo! It also shows the unfairness of academia for the poor – only the poor learn at Oxford, and I was fortunate enough to have Hardie – but imagine you are born near Urbino and decide to study classics at Urbino and you have G. as your teacher in “Latin literature” and all he teaches you is how Hellenistic it all is! I hope you are not poor and that you don’t have to LEARN at Urbino!” Si laurea  a Roma sotto Mercati e Perrotta. Isegna a Urbino. Conosce Romagnoli, la storia di Agatia. filologia metrica latina ritmica. Influenza significativamente gli allora della filologica latina capitolina, tra cui Rossi e Privitera che ricorda come quelle lezioni non avevano il tono pacato delle lezioni ex cathedra. Come docente, G. era bifronte. Si può, anzi, dire che bifronte fosse sempre; secondo i casi poteva essere flessibile o intransigente, Basava l'insegnamento sulle sue ricerche.  metrica, lirici: antologia Polinnia, Bacchilide. di Ancreonte, Poetae elegiaci. implicature, il rettore latino la chiasura della scuola di rettorica a Roma di Crasso e Plozio Cicerone una perdita di tempo che chiude le teste dei Romani. G.: Apri!, la rettorica a roma: i primi e gl’ultimi semestri la guerra di Mario pell’apertura della cittadanza agl’italici. Grice: Gentili, mi ha sempre incuriosito come lei parli della filosofia romana arcaica senza ridurla a semplice imitazione dell’ellenismo. Secondo lei, esiste davvero una via “romana” al pensiero filosofico?  Gentili: Caro Grice, la via romana esiste eccome! I Romani, anche nei primi passi della loro filosofia, cercarono sempre di adattare ciò che veniva dalla Grecia alla loro indole concreta e al senso della comunità. La retorica, ad esempio, fu subito vista come arte civile, più che come puro esercizio stilistico.  Grice: Mi colpisce come lei faccia dialogare la metrica latina e la filosofia, quasi fossero due ali dello stesso pensiero. Crede che la scuola romana abbia perso con la chiusura delle retoriche di Crasso e Plauzio?  Gentili: In parte sì, Grice. Quella chiusura ha segnato la fine di una stagione di apertura culturale, ma ha anche stimolato una nuova creatività. Sa come si dice dalle nostre parti? “Quando una porta si chiude, si apre un portone.” E così è stato per la filosofia romana: ha saputo reinventarsi, sempre tra rigore e flessibilità. Gentili, Bruno (1963). Poesia e pubblico nella Grecia antica, Bari: Laterza.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Verbali: Geymonat – Ossia: Grice e Geymonat: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del temperamento romano.  Luodvico Geymonat (Torino, Piemonte). Both Grice and G. conceive reason as something exercised in concrete practices rather than as an abstract faculty detached from life, but they articulate this insight at different levels. Grice’s theory of conversational meaning treats communication as a rational, cooperative activity in which speakers and hearers rely on shared expectations to infer what is meant beyond what is literally said; implicature, for him, is the clearest sign that reason operates within ordinary exchanges as a form of disciplined practicality. Geymonat, approaching the issue historically and culturally, locates a comparable rationality in what he calls the Roman temperament: a form of reason grounded in action, law, probability, and the use of Latin as a working language of thought rather than a vehicle for speculative abstraction. Where Grice formalizes the inferential structure that allows interlocutors to recover hidden meaning, Geymonat reconstructs the same logic of inference as a historically embodied habit, visible in Roman attitudes toward causality, mathematics, and practical epistemology. Both resist idealist or purely speculative accounts of reason—Grice from within analytic philosophy, Geymonat from a neo‑rationalist, materialist historiography—and both emphasize continuity: for Grice, the continuity of rational cooperation across conversations; for Geymonat, the continuity of rational practices from classical Rome through modern science. Read together, Geymonat provides the historical and cultural depth to what Grice supplies in analytic form: the idea that reason, whether in conversation or in philosophy, is always governed, exercised, and tested within concrete human practices rather than above them. Grice: “Unlike others, including myself, I fear, G. has talked the talk and walked the walk when it comes to the systematicity and continuity in the history of philosophy! storia della filosofia. I like G. – he calls himself a neo-rationalist, like Canova – whereas I go for the real thing! Plato! G. explores the origin of infinity in the triangle of Tartaglia. G. explores what he calls ‘the images of man.’ G. has a curious essay on darkness (‘tenebre’) – and a longer essay on ‘reason.’ Like me, G. explores the philosophy of probability – from Latin ‘probare’ – and he was an anti-fascista!”–D’ascendenza valdese, di laurea a Torino sotto Pastore e Fubini colla conoscenza nel positivismo e le funzioni trascendenti intere. Une filosofia e logica, contra Gentile e Croce. “La filosofia della natura”  e “indirizzi della filosofia.”  comunista,. Insegna a Milano. razionalista positivismo temi tipici del positivismo. realtà oggettiva materialismo dialettico.  Interpreta la concezione della matematica di BONAIUTO  come un strumento d'interpretazione della realtà. causalità, probabilità, il continuo, l’intuizione, epistemologia. Politicamente fu of people the Romans might conquer – nothing about foreign distant lands! The second most notable remark is then that Scipione Emiliano paid lip service to the Hellens – Catone’s ‘resistenza’ won in the end – as is seen by the mere fact that Latin was retained as the lingua romana – in romano – unlike the Empire of the East where Greek was adopted So, ‘philosophy’, as we know it, had an Italic origin, and is molded in the language of the conquering Romans! ragione -- temperamento romano – concretto – pratico – Catone – il trionfo di Catone colla lingua latina – la gioventu romana entusiasta con Carneade – I Scipioni ellenisante – la gioventu delle megliore familie – grand tour a Grecia! -- il teorema di Picard, il teorema di Caratheodory per le funzione armoniche.  Grice: Geymonat, la sua attenzione al temperamento romano e al pragmatismo della filosofia italiana mi ha sempre incuriosito. Secondo lei, cosa rende la ragione romana così diversa da quella greca?  Geymonat: Grazie, Grice! Credo che la ragione romana sia fortemente radicata nella concretezza e nella pratica. Se i Greci indagavano l’essenza dell’infinito, i Romani preferivano la solidità della lingua latina e la costruzione del diritto, come insegnava Catone. Da noi il pensiero si accompagna sempre all’azione.  Grice: Mi affascina anche la sua riflessione sulla continuità nella storia della filosofia. Lei parla di “immagini dell’uomo”—quanto pensa che la filosofia debba essere radicata nella realtà storica, piuttosto che nell’astrazione pura?  Geymonat: Per me la filosofia non può mai abbandonare la realtà storica. La ragione si plasma nel tempo e nello spazio, e anche la matematica—che ho tanto amato—è uno strumento per interpretare la realtà. La pratica e il contesto sono ciò che dà senso alle idee, non solo la loro astrattezza. “La ragione romana è fatta di terra e di parola: senza entrambe, non si può costruire nulla.” Geymonat, Ludovico (1930). Il problema della conoscenza nel positivismo, Sotto Pastore. Torino.