Esercizi Filosofici 07, 1/2 (2012)

This article provides an explanation of the debate occurred among scholars about an issue raised by some Augustine’s statements written in the third book of the De libero arbitrio and thus summarized in the Retractationes: «Quamvis ignorantia et difficultas, etiamsi essent hominis primordia naturalia; nec sic culpandus, sed laudandus esset Deus». The mentioned contributions were written between 1930 and 2005 and they attempt to understand whether it is possible to ascribe to Augustine the conception of an idea of pure nature. Did the bishop of Hippo really think that God could create man burdened with moral weakness and ignorance? The summary rules out this hypothesis.

For Hegel the determinate place in which the humans are settled is in no way to be thought as an “external place”, for human individuality in general makes its space and its time on its own. Moreover, Hegel’s systematic transition from Nature to Spirit introduces a social and civil mediation between universality and individuality, accounting for the “local spirits” of the natural (outward) dispositions and the (inward) intellectual and ethical characters of the populations. Theo D’haen was invited to lecture on post-colonial literature within the research frame of Ferrini’s 2011-12 course on “Space and Geography” in Hegel, in interdisciplinary collaboration with Michela Calderaro’s course centred on Wide Sargasso Sea, the re-writing of Jean Eyre from Bertha Mason’s standpoint. Our common aim is to open a philosophical topic to the contribution of literary studies to deepen our understanding and representation of the relation between human and natural spaces.

The word lokāyata both in Pali and Buddhist Sanskrit is generally used as substantive to mean disputatio. It is attested by the Suttas in the Tipiṭaka as well as the Śārdūla-karṇāvadānasūtra (in Divyāvadāna). The emendations made by Cowell and Neil, Mukhopadhyaya, and Vaidya in the latter text clearly show that in all cases of its occurrence lokāyata is to be taken as a Brahminical subject of study. In view of this, the only solution to the reading of a problematic passage in the Sad-dharma-puṇḍarīka-sūtra is to emend the text, not on the basis of further manuscript evidence but by such evidences as are found in other Pali and Buddhist Sanskrit texts. Since lokāyataṃ in all available sources stands for the science for disputation, there is no reason why it should mean something else in this instance. In the Milindapañha the king is described as «fond of wordy disputation and eager for discussion with casuists, sophists, and gentry of that sort» Similarly, Milinda is «skilled alike in casuistry and in the knowledge of the bodily marks that foreshadow the greatness of a man» As Rhys Davids has noted: «The above are the stock phrases for the learning of a scholarly Brahman […]». What seems to have happened in the case of the Sad-dharma-puṇḍarīka-sūtra is this: the scribe has mistakenly written the word lokāyatamantradhārakān in place of lokāyatayajñamantradhārakān (or °pāragān), and without noticing his own error went on copying. The basis of this emendation is that lokāyata, yajñamantra, and mahāpuruṣalakṣaṇa are found mentioned in Buddhist literature while enumerating the curriculum for a Brahmin or a prince.

Il testo rappresenta una ricostruzione del concetto di “antropotecnica” nel pensiero di Peter Sloterdijk. A partire dal testo del 2009 Du musst dein Leben ändern vengono ricostruite a ritroso le tappe che dal 1993 hanno portato Sloterdijk alla formulazione (per la prima volta nel 1997) del concetto e allo sviluppo di una teoria filosofica che nell’antropotecnica trovasse il suo cardine principale. Nel saggio vengono presi in considerazione i testi di antropologia religiosa di Sloterdijk (Weltrevolution der Seele, Weltfremdheit) e quelli relativi all’antropogenesi sociale e individuale (Im selben Boot, Nicht gerettet) quali precursori del concetto di antropotecnica collegato a quello di esercizio, che è al centro della speculazione sloterdijkiana recente.

Judith Butler’s investigation of gender identities – and of their being socially and culturally constructed – is grounded on the concept of performativity. In this paper I outline Butler’s elaboration of gender performativity in connection with John L. Austin’s analysis of performative utterances. The aim of this paper is to highlight the gap between these two elaborations of the notion of perfomativity which are usually understood as constituting a theoretical continuum.

Variation is the procedure used by both Bolzano and Frege to define their respective notions of the objective content – or, rather, the direct object – of thought (representations in themselves and sense, respectively) They use it in utterly different ways, though: for Bolzano resistance to variation is essential to all representations in themselves, simply as such, while for Frege it is the hallmark of (both the reference and) the sense of unsaturated expressions only, the saturated ones being rather extraneous than resistant to variation. However, the two notions thus defined are not barely incommensurable: there is a matter between them. Moreover, in each of the two philosophers variation – and therefore thought – implies drawing a profile of the entire world: by predicating or simply by representing, thinking implies outlining nothing less than the world. From both Frege and Bolzano variation can be traced forward to XX century transcendental philosophy: Wittgenstein, Husserl and Heidegger all share this background.

The starting point of this lecture is Hegel’s analysis of the human being as embodied spirit, located in a here that is now, which points to a philosophy of the human environmental spaces that provides the geographical basis of his Philosophy of world history. The paper retraces how the position that natural location occupies in the imaginary of a particular period in European history figures in some fictions relating to the Caribbean and the related literary studies or re-writings. In particular, against the background of the transfer of power over nature in The Tempest, D’haen focusses on the 1847 novel Jane Eyre, where Bertha Mason is the literal embodiment of temptation, and as such also an impersonation of the lure of the tropics in the guise of its lush nature, and Wuthering Heights, where the role Heathcliff plays is close to that of Bertha for the hint at the possibility of his not being of European stock.