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

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Lia: la ragione conversazionale e la memoria conversazionale. Filippo Gesualdo di Lia (Castrovillari, Cosenza, Calabria): la ragione conversazionale e la memoria conversazionale. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers legitimately recover more than is said by relying on shared rational expectations (cooperation, relevance, informativeness) and on intention-recognition, so that the “extra” content is inferentially accountable rather than merely atmospheric. The Lia material, once corrected, sits in a very different tradition: Filippo Gesualdo (often “Gesualdi” in modern reference works), a Conventual Franciscan born at Castrovillari in Calabria (1550–1619), wrote and taught on the art of memory, most notably in Plutosofia (Padua, 1592), where remembering is engineered through loci, images, and ordered “libraries of the mind,” and his reforms as minister general even institutionalized record-keeping and training as moral discipline. Compared with Grice, this is not a theory of how conversational partners infer implied meaning from cooperative talk, but a theory of how minds are prepared to have and retain the very materials that make shared understanding possible: the background stock of narratives, exempla, and associations that later become conversational common ground. In Gricean terms, Lia supplies the infrastructure for implicature rather than its logic: mnemonic techniques build stable, retrievable premises so that a hearer can complete an inference quickly and reliably, while Grice describes the rational norms that license completing it in the first place. Where Grice emphasizes cancellability and public justification (what exactly did you mean, and why is the inference warranted?), Lia emphasizes cultivation and organization (how to ensure the relevant considerations are available to mind at all), so “memory conversazionale” becomes the practical condition for the cooperative principle to have any traction across time, institutions, and communities. Grice: “When I applied Locke’s mnemonic theory to Gallie’s ‘Someone is hearing a noise,’ I was somewhat anware that the Italians had built careers on the idea of ‘memory,’ L. being my favourite!”  Insegna a Napoli. Frate minorita. Entrato come oblato nel convento cittadino di San Francesco, retto dai frati minoriti, fu ammesso al noviziato. I Minoriti si presero cura della  sua formazione, mandandolo a studiare a Roma, Treviso e Padova. In quest’ultima città  Gesualdo prese gli ordini sacerdotali egli venne affidato un lettorato presso lo  studium. La sua attività didattica si protrasse per un ventennio in vari collegi dell’ordine  e il capitolo generale gli conferì il titolo di Maestro. Venne eletto ministro generale dell’Ordine, di cui perseguì una radicale riforma. Il generalato del Gesualdo è dunque volto al rinnovamento dei voti di povertà e di vita comune, spesso disattesi  dagli stessi frati. Tra l’agosto e il settembre dello stesso anno, egli fissò i Decreta de casuum  reservatione, con i quali venivano abolite tutte le deroghe ai voti, s’introduceva l’obbligo  di rendicontazione e conservazione dei documenti amministrativi e, infine, veniva isti-  tuita l’obbligatorietà dei seminari per i novizi. La carica a Generale venne riconfermata  per altre due volte, grazie all’appoggio di Clemente. E vescovo di Cariati  e Cerenzia. Muore a Cariati. Su di lui e la sua opera si veda Busolini; Russo; Keller-Dall’Asta; Cipani. Iofepbus Tamplorut. PJJ >. PLVTOSOFIA di FILIPPO GESVALDO MINOR CON. Nella quale, fi (piega l'Arte, della Memoria con altre cole notabili pertinenti,  *q A «Violai a: . a Ai  .v&$gij,x. 41 ALLILLVSTRISS ET REVERENDISS. SIGNOR arnolpho vchanskii,  implicature. Grice: Caro Lia, ogni volta che parlo di memoria conversazionale, mi viene in mente il tuo famoso trattato sull’arte della memoria. Diciamolo: in Inghilterra ricordiamo poco, in Italia ricordate tutto... tranne le password! Lia: Ah, Grice, se ti dicessi quante password ho dovuto annotare nei miei decreti, rischierei la scomunica! Ma almeno le memorie italiane sono più poetiche: tra documenti, voti e seminari, mi perdo più nei ricordi che nei numeri. Grice: Forse è proprio la poesia che manca ai filosofi inglesi! Noi cataloghiamo tutto, voi vivete tutto... ma dimmi, Lia, c’è un trucco segreto per ricordare la lista della spesa senza scriverla sul dorso della mano? Lia: Grice, il vero segreto sta nel collegare ogni cosa a un racconto: pane? Ricorda il sermone del convento. Vino? Una cena con Clemente. Così, ogni memoria diventa una piccola implicatura: e se ti dimentichi qualcosa, almeno hai una bella storia da raccontare! Lia, Filippo Gesualdo di (1897). Considerazioni filosofiche. Palermo: Sandron.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Liberatore: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’ULIVO DELLA PACE.  Matteo Liberatore (Salerno, Campania): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’ULIVO DELLA PACE. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning distinguishes what is naturally indicated from what is meant by a speaker, and then explains conversational implicature as an inference licensed by shared norms of rational cooperation: we are entitled to move from what is explicitly said to what is intended because we assume the speaker is being informative, relevant, and intelligible in a way that can be publicly defended. Liberatore’s Jesuit-Thomist project, by contrast, is interested in signs primarily as elements of a normative and metaphysical order: his textbook logic sharply separates natural signs (like smoke indicating fire) from conventional signs (like an olive branch signifying peace), and this semiotic distinction is deployed within a larger apologetic programme against modern rationalism and liberalism, where the authority of convention and the authority of tradition matter as much as inferential transparency. Compared with Grice, Liberatore treats the olive branch as a paradigmatic case of instituted signification, which can function even without an individual speaker’s communicative intention, whereas Grice would insist that conversational implicature is not secured by symbol-association alone but by a hearer’s rational recognition of what a speaker is doing with the symbol in a specific exchange. The contrast, then, is between Grice’s micro-pragmatics, where meaning beyond the literal is generated by accountable reasoning about intentions in context, and Liberatore’s macro-semiotics, where meaning is stabilized by natural causality or by social-religious institution, with conversation treated as one domain among others in which signs operate. At the same time, Liberatore provides a useful foil for Grice: by making the natural/conventional split vivid (smoke versus olive branch), he clarifies the boundary Grice also needs in order to explain how implicature can be rationally derived without collapsing into mere symbolism or into mere symptom-reading, and why the most interesting cases of “meaning” are those where a rational agent leverages shared conventions while still remaining answerable for what an audience is entitled to infer. Grice: “I would call L. a proto-Griceian, but he probably would not! In my talk on meaning to the Oxford philosophical society, I made fun of Italians using ‘senno,’ a corruption of ‘signum’ but then I realized that they were translating Aristotle’s semein, to signify!” Kewyords: senno. Grice: “One could write a whole dissertation – especially in Italy: their erudition has no bounds – about Liberatore’s choice of the sign being conventional, ‘ramo d’olivo’ = pace. It’s so obscure! Aeneas held one, against the Phyrgians – but did the Phyrgians know? And if Mars is often represented wearing an olive wreath, one would not think there is a ‘patto’ between Aeneas and the Phyrgian commander about that! I like L. – a systematic philosopher, as I am! His logic has the expected discussion on ‘sign.’ A conventional sign he says is a branch of olive ‘signifying’ peace – as opposed to smoke naturally meaning fire – As a footnote, one should note that in Noah’s days, the signification of the dove was ALSO natural – although not strictly ‘factive’ – but then not ALL smoke (e. g. dry ice smoke) signifies fire, as every actor knows!”. Ma il difetto molto comune degl’economisti è il mancare di giuste idee filosofiche, e con ciò non ostante voler sovente filosofare.” Entra nel collegio dei gesuiti di Napoli e chiede di far parte della Compagnia di Gesù. Insegna filosofia. Fonda a Napoli “La Scienza e la Fede” con lo scopo di criticare le nuove idee del razionalismo, dell'idealismo e del liberalismo, dalle pagine del quale venne sostenuta una strenua battaglia in favore del brigantaggio, interpretato come movimento politico contrario all'unità d'Italia, Presso I romani poi si trova per ordinari o rappresentata la pace con un ramo d’ulivo PACIFERA. In una Medaglia di Marco Aurelio, Minerva viene chiamata “pacifera”; e in una di Massimino si legge Marte puciferus, qmegli, o quella che porta la pace, PACTIA..“Segno è cio che, conosciuto, adduce alla conosence di un’altra cosa. ECO’s tesi su AQUINO. Implicatura. Grice: Caro Liberatore, devo confessarti che la tua riflessione sull’ulivo come segno convenzionale di pace mi ha ispirato profondamente. In fondo, per i Romani era l’ulivo che “segnava” la pace, non solo come oggetto ma come vero e proprio veicolo di significato!  Liberatore: Ti ringrazio sentitamente, Grice! È sempre affascinante vedere come certi simboli, come il ramo d’ulivo, travalichino i secoli e le culture, assumendo un ruolo centrale nella nostra comprensione del linguaggio e delle convenzioni sociali.  Grice: Esattamente! Il modo in cui hai distinto tra segno naturale e segno convenzionale mi ha aiutato a formulare molte delle mie teorie sulle implicature conversazionali. E pensare che tutto parte da un semplice gesto, come offrire un ramo d’ulivo!  Liberatore: Ecco la forza dei segni: nella loro semplicità sanno racchiudere accordi, speranze e perfino filosofia. Come diciamo in Italia, “dove c’è un ulivo, c’è speranza di pace”… e, a ben vedere, anche un po’ di buona filosofia! Liberatore, Matteo (1852). Elementi di filosofia. Napoli: Stamperia Reale.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Liceti: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale.   Fortunio Liceti (Rapallo, Liguria): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale.  Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning distinguishes sharply between natural meaning (a sign as evidence, like spots meaning measles) and speaker-meaning (what someone means by producing a sign so that an audience recognizes an intention), and it treats conversational implicature as a rational, publicly criticizable inference generated under cooperative expectations. Fortunio Liceti is an unusually close early-modern analogue to this contrast because his teratological and medical writings reframe prodigies and “monsters” away from supernatural messages and toward natural signs: anomalies are not divine communications but physiological indicators that can be read causally, and in that sense Liceti helps naturalize semiotics in a way that anticipates Grice’s natural meaning as non-intentional evidentiality. At the same time, Liceti’s fascination with coded forms (the fascination with hieroglyphs as figurate, priestly writing) and his rhetorical device of making organs “speak” in dialogue dramatize how easily audiences slide from the evidential to the intentional, treating nature as if it were addressing us; Grice’s framework would diagnose that slide as a category shift from natural meaning to non-natural meaning, requiring intentions that nature does not have. The comparison, then, is that Liceti supplies a scientific program for stripping intention out of the interpretation of natural phenomena (reading them as effects with causes), while Grice supplies a pragmatic program for putting intention back into the interpretation of utterances (explaining how rational agents can mean more than they say), and together they mark two complementary boundaries: where we must not over-personify nature into a speaker, and where we must not reduce speakers to mere natural symptom-producers. Grice: “We don’t have anything like L. and Oxford, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some English, and indeed Oxonian, philosopher found his philosophy inspiring!” L. is a prominent Italian philosopher known for his wide-ranging publications. It is HIGHLY probable that his writings reached England and were available at Oxford. L. is a fascinating philosopher; must say my favourite of his oeuvre is “Geroglifici,” which as he knows it’s a coded message, the old Egyptian priests kept this ‘figurata’ away from the plebs! Alice once wondered what the good of a piece of philosophy is without illustrations; surely L’s beats them all!” L. develops a semiology of nature. L.’s work repurposes the concept of the sign from a religious omen to, alla Grice, a bio-logical indicator. PIROT Expresses that he is in pain to CO-PIROT. L.’s engagement with the concept of a sign is primarily through teratology, the study of biological abnormalities or monsters.  A monster, Grice, bete noire, is seen as a divine sign or portents of God's anger. L. breaks from this, arguing that such a being is not super-natural or non-natural (alla Grice) warning but the living expression of nature's truths. Nature as Artist: L. views nature as an artist whose error, this or that monster, is a sign of its ingenuity and ability to adapt to imperfect matter. L.’s approach is often described as a naturalised semiology, where a physical traits , or a behavioural trait, such as the gait of that man, serve as a sign; ‘he is a sailor,’ that points to a physiological cause, such as a narrow uterus or placental issues, rather than a spiritual meaning.  L’s use of language is strategically significant:  L. occasionally writes in Italian notably in his dialogue La nobiltà, emphasise empirical experience. L. personifies bodily organs, e.g., the heart, brain, and even testicles, allowing them to speak to debate their own importance. L.'s sign theory is a scientific semiotics used to decode the physical world and biological monsters as natural phenomena rather than tools of human or divine communication. Allievo ed erede di CREMONINI. Implicatura. Grice: Caro Liceti, devo ammettere che la tua teoria dei segni naturali mi affascina! La tua “semiologia della natura” sembra quasi anticipare il mio modo di intendere le implicature conversazionali. Come sei arrivato a vedere i mostri come espressioni della verità naturale e non come semplici prodigi? Liceti: Caro Grice, per me la natura è un’artista ingegnosa: ogni mostro, ogni “errore”, rivela la sua capacità di adattarsi alla materia imperfetta. Ho sempre preferito interpretare i segni come indicatori biologici, non come messaggi soprannaturali. D’altronde, come diciamo in Italia, “ogni trucco svela il suo artefice”! Grice: Che bella immagine, Liceti! Mi colpisce anche il modo in cui dai voce agli organi nel tuo dialogo “La nobiltà”. È una strategia davvero efficace per mostrare la complessità dell’esperienza empirica. Secondo te, la nostra lingua può davvero decodificare la realtà fisica, o esiste sempre un margine di mistero? Liceti: Ah, Grice, la lingua è uno strumento prezioso, ma il mistero rimane! Ogni parola, ogni segno, è una finestra sull’invisibile. Tuttavia, la scienza può aiutarci a ridurre gli equivoci: osservando i fenomeni, persino i più strani, possiamo riconoscere nell’anomalia una logica naturale. E come si dice dalle mie parti, “la natura non fa nulla senza ragione”! Liceti, Fortunio (1602). De anima subiecto. Padova: Frambotto. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Licinio: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale Lucio Licinio Lucullo (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how a hearer can responsibly recover what is meant beyond what is said by assuming cooperative rationality: implicatures are justified inferences from an utterance plus shared norms, not merely witty afterthoughts or social atmosphere. Lucullus, as your passage frames him, supplies a classical case where meaning is inseparable from practical life and strategic self-presentation: the famous Plutarchan quip “Today Lucullus dines with Lucullus” trades on the ordinary presumption carried by cum/apud/secum (company, a second party) in order to redirect the audience toward an evaluative point about dignity and self-sufficiency, a miniature of how a speaker can exploit default expectations to make “alone” sound like “distinguished company.” Compared with Grice, Lucullus is not theorizing inference; he is exemplifying it in social practice, showing how conversational reason can be used to manage appearances and to control what others are entitled to conclude (the host is alone, yet the occasion is worthy of splendour), much as his military-political career required calibrated signalling amid loyalty and mutiny. The contrast is therefore between Grice’s analytical ambition to specify the principles by which such inferences are warranted and criticizable (including where they can be cancelled, or where a categorial slip is being exploited for comic effect) and Lucullus’s cultivated Roman tact in deploying those very expectations for rhetorical and ethical ends. Put simply: Grice gives the normative mechanics of implicature; Lucullus provides a high-status Roman demonstration of how a single small linguistic trigger can generate a socially powerful implicature—one that works because interlocutors share a background sense of what “with” normally commits you to, and of what it means, in a culture of public display, to be one’s own best guest. Grice: “L. is a good example of what I mean by philosophy – philosophy ain’t a profession, and it’s not an ‘extra’ to your life. L. was a philosopher, not a tutor thereof!” -- Grice: “It has to be remembered that philosophers of my generation met philosophy through the classics. I would never have even considered philosophy had I not won a ‘classics scholarship’ at Clifton for Corpus. Therefore, L. is second nature to me!” Si distingue nella guerra sociale come tribunus militum. Avendo avuto quale pro-questore sotto SILLA  nella guerra mitridatica l’incarico di recarsi dalla Grecia in Cirenaica e in Egitto e di raccogliere una flotta, L. volle avere presso di sè Antioco d’Ascalona in quel pericoloso viaggio sul mare. Pretore, propretore in Africa, e console, ottenne il governo proconsolare della Cilicia e il comando della guerra contro Mitridate e sconfisse prima questo, poi il suo alleato Tigrane re di Armenia. Negl'anni del suo comando, batiè con poche forze grossi eserciti nemici. Ma per il malcontento dei soldati le cose peggiorarono, sicchè i suoi avversari lo fanno richiamare a Roma ove soltanto gli e concesso il trionfo. L. contribuì potentemente alla diffuzione della filosofia in Roma. L. e oratore, storico -- scrive una storia della guerra socriale -- e si interessa vivamente per la filosofia, tanto che volle compagno Antioco sia da pro-questore che da pro-console e cogli studi filosofici si consola degli insuccessi politici. A rich Roman who makes a career in public and military life. A friend and pupil of Antioco, his philosophical tastes appear to have been quite eclectic. He spends his last years quietly going insane. LIVIO. 20 Oct 1928, Clifton. Today the Latin master marched us through the intrinsics of cum, that small word with the large life. He produced, as if it were a model of lucid Latin, the line: Lucullus cenat cum Lucullo. The class took it as the obvious joke (Lucullus dining alone, yet “with” himself), but I could not help feeling there is a mild categorial impropriety hidden in it, as if cum demanded plurality of persons and here is being made to do duty for the one and the same. I nearly objected that the “with” is not a relation a thing can bear to itself except by a sort of grammatical indulgence; but I remembered that Mother is set on Oxford, and that I may have years at Corpus to quarrel with small words and their pretensions. Still, it is a good joke, and not merely because it plays on reflexivity. It relies on what cum ordinarily carries: company, a second agent, a table with more than one place-setting; Lucullus exploits that ordinary presumption to make “alone” sound convivial. Perhaps that is the point: the Latin lets you say “with” and quietly invite the hearer to supply the rest—the implied contrast between dining as a public performance and dining as private appetite. One begins to suspect that half of Latin style is this art of letting a preposition do what a whole subordinate clause would do in English. If so, then cum is already a lesson in how much can be meant without being said, and Lucullus—famous for dinners that did not need an audience—has become, unintentionally, the day’s tutor in implicature. The quip is commonly reported in Plutarch’s Life of Lucullus as an anecdote about Lucullus ordering a lavish dinner when dining “alone”; when questioned, he replies, in effect, “Today Lucullus dines with Lucullus,” i.e., he is his own guest and deserves the same splendour. The Latin is often given as Lucullus hodie apud Lucullum cenat or Lucullus hodie secum cenat; cum/se(c)um/apud vary in retellings, but the pragmatic point is stable: the preposition triggers an expectation of company which the punchline cancels and redirects toward self-addressed dignity. GRICEVS: LVCVLLE, si vis rationem conversationis discere, noli quaerere artem: philosophia non est professio neque vitae accessorium; tu ipse philosophus eras, non paedagogus philosophiae. LVCVLLVS: GRICE, ego quidem proquaestor inter mare et piratas Antiochum mecum duxi; nunc rogo: si dico “intelligo,” num aliquid praeter dicta significo, an tantum me ipsum laudo? GRICEVS: Saepe, mi LVCVLLE, “intelligo” plus quam dicit: implicat “desine longius pergere.” Id est: verba modesta, sed gladius tacitus—et plerumque sine sanguine. LVCVLLVS: Ita ergo: in bello Mithridatico classis parva, in sermone verbum parvum—utraque magna facit; sed cave, ne miles ingratus sit aut auditor: tum etiam maxima tua ad Romam revocabuntur. Licinio Lucullo, Lucio (a. u. c. DCLXXX). Dicta. Roma.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Liguori: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale -- implicatura critica.  Girolamo de Liguori (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale -- implicatura critica. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats implicature as a rationally controllable inference: speakers and hearers operate under shared norms (clarity, relevance, adequacy) that make what is meant beyond what is said calculable and, crucially, criticizable. In the Liguori passage, “implicatura critica” pushes this into a deliberately anti-perspicuous aesthetic: metaphor clusters like “the abyss of reason,” “the alembic of the soul,” and the mise-en-abyme image stage meaning as something generated by reflective regress, layered self-reference, and cultivated ambiguity, so that what is left unsaid is not merely an efficiency gain but a critical weapon against complacent conceptual order. Compared with Grice, this treats opacity not as a conversational defect to be repaired by cooperative maxims but as an instrument of critique, where the reader is meant to feel the strain between rational form and the irrational residues it cannot digest; in Gricean terms, the text seems to engineer systematic floutings of manner (and sometimes relation) to force interpretive work, making the “implicature” less a tidy inference to a determinate proposition and more a pressure toward reflective reorientation. The contrast therefore is between Grice’s ideal of accountable intelligibility—implicatures should, in principle, be reconstructible by shared reasoning—and Liguori’s preference for productive unclarity, where meaning is distilled through metaphorical overdetermination and recursive framing (the abyss within the abyss), turning conversation from a cooperative exchange into an arena of philosophical provocation. Yet the comparison also reveals a continuity: both assume that readers are rational agents who will not stop at the literal surface; they diverge on whether that rational agency is best served by perspicuity (Grice) or by strategic, critical disorientation (Liguori). Grice: “At Oxford, we had a common ground – we university lecturerrs would only teach what other mmbers of the faculty would understand, since we don’t’ grade our pupils – the board of exminaers does --. On the other hand, in Italy, there is L., who teaches what he feels like! Personally, my favourite of L.’s metaphors is ‘the abyss of reason,’ since Speranza has elaborated on this: it’s Gide’s ‘mise-en-abyme’ no less, which breaks my principle of ‘conversational perspicuity’ – a mise-en-abyme text is just untextable! L. has studied the metamorphosis of language in one of his philosophical noble ancestors! I like L.i: he has the gift of the gab for metaphor: ‘i baratri della ragione,” la fucina del filosofo, l’alambicco dell’anima, la condizione del senso, il razionale dello irrazionale o le ragione dell’irrazionale “le ambiguita della ragione,” “Trasimaco ha ragione, Giustizia e carita, Ritratto. Studia a ROma. Scherzi della memoria. Si laurea colla scesi giuridica. Insegna a Lecce ed Ostuni. Insegna a Torino. Con “E il vero baratro della ragione umana, Grice, Mise-en-abyme conversazionale, viene riconosciuto come un critico, Graf, LEOPARDI, e Cartesio. Tratta Positivismo di Sergi,  Lombroso, Morselli e Vignoli; della scesi di RENSI  ponendolo in relazione tra LEOPARDI  e PIRANDELLO. Scrive di de' Liguori e di Benedictis, detto l'Aletino. Tenne rapporti epistolari con GARIN, BOBBIO, Augias, Binni, Donini, Ferrarotti e Timpanaro. Sic et Non, cui aderiscono e collaborano personalità quali Donini,  Fiore, Radice, matematico e fondatore di Riforma della scuola e docenti delle Bari, Roma e Lecce. Sic et Non s’impegna in complesse battaglie civili come quella per un dialogo tra marxisti e cattolici, ed altre incombenti questioni sociali come la campagna per il divorzio. Implicature critica, ‘… is the true abyss of human reason. Il baratro della ragione conversazionale. L’anima distilata, il lambicco dell’anima, redenzione dell’eros, la lussuria, la degenerazione, la metamorfosi delle lingue. Alfonso di Liguori. Grice: Caro Liguori, è proprio la nostra educazione classica che ci permette di gustare le sfumature sottili sia del critein greco che del latino, quelle vibrazioni che forse Kant non riusciva neppure a percepire! Mi affascina pensare come la tradizione possa arricchire il nostro dialogo filosofico. Liguori: Hai ragione, Grice! Solo chi ha camminato tra i baratri della ragione classica può cogliere il profumo antico delle parole e delle idee. La nostra formazione ci dona gli strumenti per distinguere le ambiguità della ragione, e per vedere la metamorfosi delle lingue come una fucina viva del pensiero. Grice: Ecco perché la conversazione tra noi non si limita alla mera analisi; diventa alambicco dell’anima, distillando senso dal razionale e dall’irrazionale. In fondo, trasimaco e giustizia si incontrano proprio tra i labirinti della memoria, dove il vero baratro della ragione umana si rivela come opportunità di redenzione. Liguori: Proprio così, caro Grice. Come si dice in Italia, “la ragione non si accontenta mai di soluzioni facili.” La nostra formazione ci rende critici, ma anche capaci di dialogare tra anime diverse. Ed è questo dialogo, tra il nostro Greco, il nostro Latino, e persino il nostro Kant, che permette alla filosofia di restare viva e aperta, al di là delle sordità di ogni tempo. Liguori, Girolamo de (1808). Saggio sulla filosofia morale. Roma: Salviucci. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Lilla: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale di Vico.   Vincenzo Lilla (Francavilla Fontana, Brindisi, Puglia): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale di Vico. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats implicature as a rationally defensible inference from what is said to what is meant, generated under cooperative expectations and assessable as correct or incorrect by reference to shared norms and communicative intentions. Lilla, as framed in your passage, approaches “conversational reason” from the opposite direction: as a Vichian rehabilitation project in which meaning is anchored in historical making, civil life, and the cultural institutions through which a people comes to know itself, so that what is “implied” is often not a local conversational add-on but a deep background of shared memory, providential narrative, and juridico-political purpose. Compared with Grice, this shifts the explanatory centre from micro-pragmatics (how a particular utterance licenses an inference here and now) to macro-hermeneutics (how a tradition licenses interpretations across generations), and it makes the cooperative presumption less like an abstract norm and more like a civic achievement: conversation works because a community has already built common sense, common histories, and common criteria of relevance. In that light, Lilla’s “revindication” of Vico can be read as supplying a thicker anthropology for the very capacities Grice presupposes—imagination, social recognition, and the public norms that stabilize meaning—while Grice’s framework, in turn, clarifies how Vichian talk of signs, history, and freedom must still cash out in accountable inferences made by interlocutors if it is to avoid becoming mere cultural rhetoric. The contrast is thus between Grice’s procedural rationality of talk and Lilla’s civil-historical rationality of meaning; the overlap is that both treat understanding as a practice governed by norms, only that for Grice the norms are conversational and inferential, while for Lilla (via Vico) they are also institutional and historical, shaping what a community is prepared to hear, supply, and take responsibility for in the first place. Grice: “We don’t take Vico too seriously at Oxford – unless you are Stuart Hampshire, who has a penchant to take seriously any philosopher who the rest of us Oxonian philoosphers do NOT take seriously!” On the other hand, some Italian philosophers have based their philosophical career and reputation on re-vindicating Vico, such as Lilla!” -- Filosofo italiano. Francavilla Fontana, Brindisi, Puglia. Grice: “I like Lilla; for one, he ‘revindicated,’ as he puts it, the philosophy of Vico, which, in Italy, is like at Oxford ‘revinidcare’ Locke!” Formatosi nelle scuole dei Padri Scolopi aderì alle idee cattolico liberali divulgate dai filosofi della prima metà dell'Ottocento: Gioberti, Minghetti, Balbo e SERBATI al quale dedicherà molteplici studi subendone una marcata influenza. Lascia Francavilla per l'ostentata contrarietà di tutto il clero  alle sue idee patriottiche d'ispirazione giobertiana, manifestate apertamente nel "Programma d'insegnamento filosofico" pubblicato sul giornale il "Cittadino leccese", decise di trasferirsi a Napoli ove ebbe modo di confrontarsi con le idee di Sanctis, Spaventa, Settembrini, Tari e Vera. Si laurea e insegna a Napoli. Durante questi anni videro la luce "La provvidenza e la libertà considerate nella civiltà", "Dio e il mondo", e "La personalità originaria e la personalità derivata" (Nappoli, Rocco), nei quali getta le premesse degli studi filosofici e giuridici in cui si cimenterà per tutta la vita: la storia della filosofia, la filosofia teoretica e la filosofia del diritto; sviluppando altresì e precorrendo una moderna concezione del rapporto tra "diritti umani e progresso scientifico" sin da “La scienza e la vita, titolo paradigmatico del suo saggio -- Grice, “Philosophical biology,” “Philosophy of Life” Insegna a Messina. Implicature, Vico, Vico ri-vendicato, Vico ri-vendicate, semiotica Vico. Grice: Caro Lilla, confesso che qui a Oxford Vico non è preso troppo sul serio, a meno che tu non sia Stuart Hampshire! Cosa ti ha spinto a “ri-vendicare” la filosofia di Vico in Italia? Lilla: Caro Grice, per noi italiani Vico rappresenta un punto di svolta: la sua visione della storia e della conoscenza è profondamente radicata nella nostra tradizione. Ho voluto restituirgli la dignità che merita, come voi fate con Locke a Oxford! Grice: Interessante! Mi incuriosisce come Vico abbia anticipato molte questioni sulle implicature e la memoria conversazionale, temi cari anche a me. Pensi che la sua filosofia possa dialogare con la mia teoria del significato? Lilla: Assolutamente, caro Grice! La semiotica di Vico è moderna: collega i segni, la storia e la libertà umana. La sua prospettiva può arricchire il tuo lavoro sulle implicature, aprendo nuove strade tra filosofia, diritto e progresso scientifico. D’altronde, come si dice da noi: “Chi cammina con i grandi, le sue orme lascia!” Lilla, Vincenzo (1865). Laurea. Giurisprudenza. Napoli.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Lisimaco: la ragione conversazionale al portico romano Lisimaco (Firenze, Toscana): la ragione conversazionale al portico romano. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains implicature as a rationally warranted inference from what is said to what is meant, licensed by cooperative expectations that make a speaker accountable for the hearer’s uptake; even when a term is used loosely, the point is that a hearer can justify why that looseness was reasonable in context. The Lisimaco vignette turns this into a lesson about labels and ostension: instead of defining stoicism by an essence, “the Porch” functions as a demonstrative cue, so that saying “under the portico” can implicate a whole stance (discipline, toughness, a certain kind of argumentative posture) without spelling out doctrine. Compared with Grice, this shows two different mechanisms for meaning more than one says: Grice provides the inferential machinery by which “I live under the portico” can conversationally convey “I am a Stoic” (it is relevant, it exploits shared background, and it can be cancelled), while Lisimaco’s own maneuver suggests that philosophical identity in practice is often handled by socially recognized shortcuts—toponyms, nicknames, and metonymies—whose force depends on communal recognition rather than on explicit definition. The contrast also sharpens Grice’s complaint about -isms: where “Stoic” purports to name a doctrine, “porticola” admits it is a badge worn in a conversational community, and the badge works precisely because hearers are trained to supply the doctrinal and ethical associations on minimal linguistic prompting. In this sense Lisimaco exemplifies a historically thick form of common ground, in which the “place-name” operates almost like a standing implicature trigger, whereas Grice’s theory aims to show how such triggers remain rationally controllable: you can rely on them when cooperation holds, but you also owe your audience disambiguation when the label threatens to mislead. Grice: “Philosophers can be sneaky – and allowed to be so! Consider the funny names that some -isms have in classical philosophy: stoicismus – try to define it essentially! The idea of the porticus is such an accident to this -ism that it never ceases to irritate me when someone calls himself a ‘stoic’!” -- Filosofo italiano. Firenze, Toscana. He belonged to The Porch. The tutor of Amelio Gentiliano. Since Amelio comes from Firenze, that may be taken as having been the home of L. as well. GRICEVS: Philosophi callidi esse possunt, et iure: ecce quam ridicula sunt ista nomina in -ismo, ut stoicismus; conare definire quid sit, si potes. Porticus enim est quasi accidens, et tamen quidam se “stoicum” vocat, tamquam columnae ipsum genuerint. LISIMACHVS: An LISIMACVS, si mavis; nam et in nomine meo litterae certant, sicut in Porticu dogmata. Sed Florentiae didici hoc: si de me quaeris ubi habitem, respondeo “sub porticu,” ne roges quid sentiam. GRICEVS: Id est ipsa ratio conversazionalis: cum locum dicis, doctrinam implicas; et cum doctrinam rogant, locum ostendis. Sic “stoicus” non definiri videtur, sed demonstrari, quasi digito ad columnas. LISIMACHVS: Ergo faciam ut discipulus meus Amelius: si quis me “stoicum” appellat, respondebo “porticola sum.” Si rident, bene; si non rident, etiam melius: intellegunt enim me plus tacuisse quam dixisse. Speranza thinks Lisimaco sounds Greek -- and that may even mean something in Greek -- how come he was born in Firenze, and was tutor of Amelio Gentiliano? Yes, Lisimaco is certainly Greek in sound, and Greek in fact. The name goes back to Greek Λυσίμαχος, Latinised as Lysimachus, and it means something like loosening or releasing battle, or one who ends battle. So your ear is perfectly sound: it is not an ordinary Italian name at all, but a Greek name carried into Latin usage. [lsj.gr], [behindthename.com] Now to the more interesting point: why Florence? Here the answer is that Florence is very likely wrong, or at least not supported by the standard source. The relevant notice on [Amelio Gentiliano](citeturn30search886 in [Treccani](citeturn30search888 explicitly says that he was first a pupil of [Lisimaco](citeturn30search888, and that [Amelio Gentiliano](citeturn30search886 was born in [Etruria](citeturn30search886turn30search887, not specifically [Florence](citeturn30search888. So the move from “Amelio comes from Etruria” to “therefore Lisimaco came from Florence” is too quick and not warranted by the standard notice. citeturn30search886turn30search887turn30search888 In fact, what we really know from the source in hand is only this: [Amelio Gentiliano](citeturn30search886, later associated with [Plotinus](citeturn30search887, was said to have been born in [Etruria](citeturn30search886turn30search887; before joining [Plotinus](citeturn30search887, he had studied under [Lisimaco](citeturn30search888. citeturn30search886turn30search887turn30search888 That is not nothing, but it is far less than a Florentine dossier. It does not securely make [Lisimaco](citeturn30search888 a Florentine philosopher, only a prior teacher of [Amelio Gentiliano](citeturn30search886, who himself came from [Etruria](citeturn30search886turn30search887. citeturn30search886turn30search887turn30search888 So the cautious answer is: yes, the name is Greek; no, that does not make the man un-Italian, since Greek names remained normal enough in the late antique and Roman philosophical world; and no, I do not see evidence here that he was born in [Florence](citeturn30search888. The better formula is simply that he was the earlier teacher of [Amelio Gentiliano](citeturn30search886, who was from [Etruria](citeturn30search886turn30search887. citeturn30search886turn30search887turn30search888 In dry Speranza style: The name [Lisimaco](citeturn30search880turn30search881 is Greek enough to alarm any patriot of Tuscan onomastics, but that is no scandal. Late antiquity was full of Greek names worn by people living quite Roman lives. The real difficulty lies not in the Greekness of the name, but in the Florentineness of the dossier. The standard notice gives [Amelio Gentiliano](citeturn30search886 as born in [Etruria](citeturn30search886turn30search887 and says that he first studied under [Lisimaco](citeturn30search888; it does not, so far as this evidence goes, promote [Lisimaco](citeturn30search888 into a native son of [Florence](citeturn30search888. One has, in other words, a Greek name, a late-antique teacher, and an Etruscan pupil; the rest is the kind of local patriotism at which prosopography is entitled to smile. citeturn30search880turn30search881turn30search886turn30search887turn30search888 So my short verdict is: Lisimaco is Greek in name and meaning he is known, in the source at hand, chiefly as the first teacher of [Amelio Gentiliano](citeturn30search886 and Florence looks like an over-precise inference from [Etruria](citeturn30search886turn30search887, not a securely attested birthplace. citeturn30search880turn30search881turn30search886turn30search887turn30search888 If you like, I can now do one of two things here in chat only: I can give you a compact note on [Amelio Gentiliano](citeturn30search886, [Lisimaco](citeturn30search888, and why Greek names in Roman philosophy are not evidence of foreignness. I can also rewrite the whole Lisimaco entry in a historically safer way while keeping the Portico joke. Yes, Lisimaco is certainly Greek in sound, and Greek in fact. The name goes back to Greek Λυσίμαχος, Latinised as Lysimachus, and it means something like “loosening battle” or “one who ends battle.” So your ear is perfectly sound: it is not an ordinary Italian name at all, but a Greek name carried into Latin usage. [slideshare.net], [schilbanti...uarian.com] Now to the more interesting point: why Florence? The answer is that Florence is very likely wrong, or at least not supported by the standard source. The relevant notice on Amelio Gentiliano in Treccani explicitly says that he was first a pupil of Lisimaco, and that Amelio Gentiliano was born in Etruria, not specifically Florence. So the move from “Amelio comes from Etruria” to “therefore Lisimaco came from Florence” is too quick and not warranted by the standard notice. [fity.club], [en.wikipedia.org], [everything...ined.today] What we really know from the source in hand is only this: Amelio Gentiliano, later associated with Plotinus, was said to have been born in Etruria; before joining Plotinus, he had studied under Lisimaco. [fity.club], [en.wikipedia.org], [everything...ined.today] That is not nothing, but it is far less than a Florentine dossier. It does not securely make Lisimaco a Florentine philosopher, only a prior teacher of Amelio Gentiliano, who himself came from Etruria. [fity.club], [en.wikipedia.org], [everything...ined.today] So the cautious answer is this. Yes, the name is Greek. No, that does not make the man un-Italian, since Greek names remained normal enough in the late antique and Roman philosophical world. And no, I do not see evidence here that he was born in Florence. The better formula is simply that he was the earlier teacher of Amelio Gentiliano, who was from Etruria. [fity.club], [en.wikipedia.org], [everything...ined.today] In dry Speranza style: The name Lisimaco is Greek enough to alarm any patriot of Tuscan onomastics, but that is no scandal. Late antiquity was full of Greek names worn by people living quite Roman lives. The real difficulty lies not in the Greekness of the name, but in the Florentineness of the dossier. The standard notice gives Amelio Gentiliano as born in Etruria and says that he first studied under Lisimaco; it does not, so far as this evidence goes, promote Lisimaco into a native son of Florence. One has, in other words, a Greek name, a late-antique teacher, and an Etruscan pupil; the rest is the kind of local patriotism at which prosopography is entitled to smile. [slideshare.net], [schilbanti...uarian.com], [fity.club], [en.wikipedia.org], [everything...ined.today]. Lisimaco (a. u. c. CMXIII). Dicta. Roma.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Livio: la ragione conversazionale e la storia romana come fonte della morale romana – etica togata.  Tito Livio (Padova, Veneto): la ragione conversazionale e la storia romana come fonte della morale romana – etica togata. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats implicature as a rationally recoverable inference from what is said to what is meant, licensed by cooperative expectations and answerable to criticism: the hearer is entitled to supply what is left unsaid because the speaker can be presumed to be speaking with a point, under shared norms of relevance and sufficiency. Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita (begun in the Augustan period) is a useful counterpoint because it makes moral meaning emerge not from maxims of conversation but from exempla and narrative arrangement: Livy’s history repeatedly “says” one thing (who did what, when) while “getting across” another (what counts as virtus, pietas, disciplina, or civic decay), and it often does so through strategic selection, juxtaposition, and the dignified silence of the narrator rather than through explicit argument. Compared with Grice, then, Livy’s “etica togata” is a macro-pragmatics of a culture: it relies on a thick shared Roman background in which readers can infer moral conclusions from episodes (Romulus, republican austerity, decline), whereas Grice offers a micro-pragmatics that specifies how such inferences are warranted in ordinary exchanges and how they can be challenged, cancelled, or defended. The overlap is that both are preoccupied with what is responsibly left unsaid: Livy lets the reader infer the judgment by controlling narrative emphasis, and Grice lets the hearer infer the speaker’s point by assuming rational cooperation; but where Grice’s implicature is tied to speaker intention and conversational norms, Livy’s implied morality is tied to historiographical craft and civic pedagogy—history as a vehicle that persuades by example, making “silence as argument” into a cultivated Roman mode of meaning. Grice: “I give only ONE example from the History of England in my seminars: “Decapitation willed Charles I’s death” – On the other hand, there’s Livio – a philosopher who sprinkled his philosopjhical treatises with such an abundance of historical references that the vulgus knows him as a historian, rather!” Filosofo italiano. Padova, Veneto. Disambiguazione – "Livio" rimanda qui. Se stai cercando altri significati, vedi L.  Neque indignetur sibi Herodotus aequari L. Che Erodoto non s'indigni che gli venga eguagliato L. Quintiliano, Institutio oratoria. Busto di L., opera di Moretti L. è stato uno storico romano, autore degli Ab Urbe condita, una storia di Roma dalla sua fondazione fino alla morte di Druso, figliastro d’OTTAVIANO. È considerato uno dei maggiori storici dell'Antica Roma, assieme a TACITO. Ritratto di L. Secondo Girolamo, il quale a sua volta si rifà al De historicis di Svetonio. Quintiliano ha tramandato la notizia secondo la quale l'oratore Asinio Pollione rileva in L. una certa padovanità, da intendersi come patina linguistica rivelatrice della sua origine, mentre il celebre epigrammista Valerio Marziale ricorda l'accentuato moralismo della sua terra, tipico del carattere di L., tanto quanto le sue tendenze politiche conservatrici. Lo stesso L., citando Antenore, mitico fondatore di Padova, all'inizio della sua monumentale opera, conferma indirettamente le proprie origini patavine. Per tutta la sua vita, dimostra sempre un amore sfrenato per la sua città natale. I Livii erano di origine plebea, ma la famiglia poteva fregiarsi di antenati illustri in linea materna: nella Vita di Tiberio Svetonio ricorda che la Liviorum familia «era stata onorata da otto consolati, due censure, tre trionfi e persino da una dittatura e da un magistero della cavalleria. filosofia romana, Romolo, metafisica e storia, Grice, Strawson, Pears – when history comes of age. GRICEVS: Ego in seminariis meis unum exemplum e historia Angliae fero: Decollatio mortem Caroli primi voluit. Tu autem, Livi, tot exemplis Romanis uteris ut vulgus te historicum putet, philosophum non agnoscat. LIVIVS: Vulgus, Grice, semper amat annales, quia putat virtutem in numeris latere: octo consulatus, duo censores, tres triumphi. Si addas “implicaturam”, fugient quasi a censore. GRICEVS: At ipsa “etica togata” hoc docet: historia non solum narrat sed suadet; et saepe quod suadet, non dicit. Romulus plus valet tacendo quam declamando, et hoc est meum: quod non dicitur, intellegitur. LIVIVS: Ita vero; sed cave: si nimis tacueris, te quoque historicum facient. Scribent: “Grice, vir gravis, multa praeteriit.” Et addent: “Ergo sapientissimus.” Haec est maxima Romae: silentium pro argumento. Livio, Tito (a. u. c. DCCXXVII). Ab urbe condita. Roma.