Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio

Introduction

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Towards a practical aesthetics: thinking WITH

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In recent years, there has been a proliferation of approaches and formats, such as media philosophy, artistic research, the audiovisual essay, the audio paper, etc., which, although disparate, have something in common – they are grounded in what I would like to call “practical aesthetics”. I am speculating about aesthetics as a “critical practice” that imitatively observes the practice of art in its performance, i.e. a “practical aesthetics” not as “aesthetic practice”, but as an approach that takes seriously the double coding of aesthetics as science and art, and performs it from the perspective of the philosopher, not the artist – it takes the practice of the work of art not as an object of analysis, but as its own modus operandi: this approach does not want so much to think about art in terms of external (usually rational, propositional) categories, which in most cases follow the logic of the “written word” but to think with art: with images, with sound, etc. It is not about what methods we use to understand works of art, but about how we think with works of art, how they shape both our understanding and experience of the world, how they become “accomplices” to our thinking. When a practical aesthetic carries out thinking with images, with sounds, with texts, etc., such non-propositional thinking pushes strictly representational and logocentric reflection to its limits. And if what we have on our side is an accomplice, it means to enter into a relationship with someone whose sensibility one shares, in a way that is not identical, otherwise there would be nothing more to say or do. Practical aesthetics is a mobile and dynamic approach that sees art not as an object of (external) analysis, but as a subject with its own knowledge, and establishes a “co-composing” conceptual interference pattern between theory and practice.

Before Art as Experience: Dewey’s theory of perception and qualitative thought between aesthetic and linguistic practices

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In this paper I will present a fragment of a wider research project aimed at reconstructing John Dewey’s aesthetic theory of perception using and correlating writings spanning the end of the 19th and the first three decades of the 20th century, before the publication of Art as Experience. Specifically, I will analyze relevant aspects of the 1930 essay Qualitative Thought emphasizing aspects that bring to the fore Dewey’s interest in the relationship between aesthetic and linguistic practices through the lens of the core concept of ‘familiarity’.

The Seminar as an Aesthetic-Linguistic Practice

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According to Michel de Certeau, Wittgenstein’s notion of language game provides a specific tool to understand everyday practices. In this paper I will focus on a specific linguistic practice, the seminar, addressed by Certeau in a short article in 1978. In doing so, I will use the Wittgensteinian reflection on language games as a theoretic framework – recommended for the investigation of cultural practices by Certeau himself – and I will apply some key concepts from the later The Practice of Everyday Life to clarify the nature of this practice typical of philosophical discussion (and of researchers’ ‘everyday life’). Finally, I will focus on the aesthetic and linguistic aspects of the seminar in order to show its proper nature: neither the mere ‘vertical’ communication of intellectual contents, nor a fusional, ‘horizontal’ and collective experience, the seminar represents a specific linguistic and tactical game in which participants shape a new ‘sense’, a way out of institutional and disciplinary fixed knowledge.

Aphrodite's nose. Archaeology of olfactory beauty

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In L’estetica antica, Italian philosopher Gianni Carchia argues that the concept of beauty in ancient Greece has two characteristics. The first: beauty would be linked to Aphrodite and her mythological profile. The second: Aphrodite's beauty would only be visual. The article seeks to show the theoretical importance of the first thesis and, at the same time, the unsatisfactory character of the second. Precisely because Aphrodite is fundamental to the Greek concept of beauty, the olfactory character of the goddess is also part of it. The sense of smell is also an aesthetic sense, open to language and capable of offering beauty.

The World as Communication. Language and Cosmos in Florensky

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This paper aims to clarify the link between Pavel Florensky’s philosophy of language and his metaphysics of the ikona, by focusing on the theoretical issues of communication. It will nevertheless introduce the historical background and the general features of Florensky’s thought. The identity between names and ideas, as stated in fundamental works such as Mysl i jazyk (Thought and Language) or Ob imeni Bozem (The name of God), shall be read as an attempt to reassess the knowability of being. There is no such thing, Florensky argues, as a conventional or exterior sign, an arbitrary construction depending upon a subject: all beings ultimately reveal what they are, as they are what they reveal. Likewise, in his essays on aesthetics, Florensky strongly highlighted the ontological status of symbolic images as a paradigm of the peculiar symmetry between intelligible sensibility and incarnated meaning. In its immediate concreteness, the materiality of the world shows nothing but its transparency, a window to its own knowledge and purpose. Hence, both words and icons shall be interpreted as particular modes of this self-revelation.

Camérer Fukushima, beetween post-symbolic and film practices

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The article argues, through an analysis of the Peircean categories (icon, index, symbol), that the question of the post-linguistic can be reconsidered on the basis of the post-symbolic functions of the sign. These functions operate internally within the category of symbol. There is no divestment of the sign, only self-development. Considering the symbol as type, in its instituting function, the icon and the index will be analyzed as destituent phases of the signifying chain. Iconic and indexical moments will create a disassembly between phases allowing the possible and preventing signifying closure in the symbolic chain. In addition, through three examples of filmic practices, it will be shown what is meant by indicating the post-symbolic as a moment of liberation of the possibilities of the sign. In the analogy will be traced a unifying function of disparate cases, which nevertheless present structural similarities; while in the icon will be exhibited a brute power, capable of revealing the incommensurability of events. Finally, Deligny’s ‘camérer’ will be identified as a way through which filmic practice can be read, beyond any subject of practice

Acknowledging the Human: The Experience with Performance and the Application of the Concept of "Art"

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In this article, I propose some reasons to explain the relationship between experience with performances and the difficulties in applying the concepts of ‘work of art’ and ‘art’ to them. The hypothesis I formulate is that the performances are works of art that, by causing interferences in the conceptual application, encourage an imaginative activity that projects human limits and possibilities – including those in the use of concepts. This would happen because in the experience with the performances we are influenced by a sort of ‘aesthetic reflexivity’: namely, acknowledging the human – since we are human beings – we are not always able to appeal to the right concepts.

"Mythos" and "Logos": "poetic-epistemic authority" in Early Greek philosophy

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This paper focuses on the transition in ancient Greek thought from mythos (understood as “narration”) to logos (understood as “argumentation”). The aim is to investigate the difference between “mythos/narration” and “logos/argumentation” assuming the point of view of their respective conception of “(epistemic) authority” and “epistemology of testimony”. My basic claim is that Parmenides’s Poem is the turning-point in which “narration/mythos” gives way to “argumentation/logos” and that this becomes clear if we take a closer look at Parmenides’s own relationship to Hesiod. In order to develop my argument, I shall put both Parmenides’s and Hesiod’s claims within the framework of contemporary epistemology of testimony, for it might shed new light on these issues.

Remarks on the perlocutionary power of language: the case of the Logos epitaphios

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This article aims at making a contribution about the problem of the perlocutionary effects of verbal language through the study of the logos epitaphios, the funeral speech held annually in the democratic Athens of Pericles and Plato. Although we will dwell in detail on this particular type of oration, the epitaph itself is not the theoretical focus of the article. The case under study should be considered as an example, a paradigm, or an instance to bring out issues of general significance. We will begin with a description of this verbal practice in the historical context in which it came into being (§ 1). After an analysis of its structure (§ 2), we will focus on two specific aspects: the opposition between logos and ergon (§ 3) and the centrality of the pronoun «we» (§ 4). Eventually, we will briefly tackle the philosophical-linguistic question of literary genre as a point of reference (§ 5).

Giovanni Mari, 2019, Libertà nel lavoro. La sfida della rivoluzione digitale, Il Mulino, Bologna.

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