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La tentazione del monito: etica e metaetica in Primo Levi
Berti, Jacopo
2015
Abstract
Primo Levi’s literary work may be considered as a path to recover, enhance and preserve those human faculties that the concentration camp experience had almost demolished. Among these, ethics plays a remarkable role in Levi’s works. On the one hand, for Primo Levi, as for many other novelists, the ethic substance of a literary work lies in the capability of rousing feelings of sympathy and empathy in the reader, thus promoting an inner acceptance of the author’s moral world. On the other hand, it is essential to underline Levi’s often detached approach, in which an argumentative rationality and a didactic tone prevails. This paper shows how these two apparently contradictory aspects of Levi’s writing not only are a stylistic choice, but also a matter of meta-ethics. In this branch of philosophy it is possible to ascribe the deontological principles of a writer who wants to talk about ethics. For that purpose, I will take into account Levi’s two-faced disposition towards monition, considered, from a pragmatic point of view, as a speech act which well fulfils Levi’s communicative needs, but which also requires the reader’s acceptance of an ambiguous principle of authority.
Series
Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics
XVI (2015) 1
Publisher
EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste
Source
Jacopo Berti, "La tentazione del monito: etica e metaetica in Primo Levi", in: Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XVII (2015) 1, pp. 62-75
Languages
it
File(s)