Viva Voce , livre ebook

Viva Voce
SUNY series in Contemporary Italian Philosophy

Silvia Benso and Brian Schroeder, editors
Viva Voce
Conversations with Italian Philosophers
Silvia Benso
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2017 State University of New York
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Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
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Production, Ryan Morris
Marketing, Kate R. Seburyamo
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Benso, Silvia, interviewer.
Title: Viva voce : conversations with Italian philosophers / [interviews by] Silvia Benso.
Description: Albany, NY : State University of New York, 2017. | Series: SUNY series in contemporary Italian philosophy | Translations from Italian. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016031444 (print) | LCCN 2017000563 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438463797 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438463803 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Philosophy, Italian. | Philosophers—Italy—Interviews. | Philosophy, Modern.
Classification: LCC B3551 .V58 2017 (print) | LCC B3551 (ebook) | DDC 195—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016031444
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Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Italian Philosophy—Threshold between Cultures
ONE

ETHICS, PASSIONS, PRACTICES
Logics of Delusion, Passions, and Time
A Conversation with Remo Bodei
Ethics, Bioethics, and Ethical Sentimentalism
A Conversation with Eugenio Lecaldano
Life, Suffering, Happiness, and Virtue
A Conversation with Salvatore Natoli
Truth, Figures of Truth, and Practices of Life
A Conversation with Carlo Sini
Metaphysics, Ethics, and Applied Ethics
A Conversation with Carmelo Vigna
TWO

HISTORY, JUSTICE, COMMUNITIES
Sexual Difference, Relational Space, and Embodied Singularities
A Conversation with Adriana Cavarero
Ontology of Contingency, Power, and Historical Space-Time
A Conversation with Giacomo Marramao
Philosophy of Right, Historiography, and Individuality
A Conversation with Fulvio Tessitore
Interpretation, History, and Politics
A Conversation with Gianni Vattimo
Global Justice, Democracy, Uncertainty, and Incompleteness
A Conversation with Salvatore Veca
THREE

IMAGINATION, ART, TECHNOLOGY
Technology, Communication, and Aesthetics of the Sublime
A Conversation with Mario Costa
Freedom, Guilt, Nihilism, and Tragic Thought
A Conversation with Sergio Givone
Imagination, Rituality, and Transit
A Conversation with Mario Perniola
FOUR

RATIONALITY, SCIENCES, EXPERIENCE
Mathematics, Sciences, Objectivity, and System Theory
A Conversation with Evandro Agazzi
Mathematics, Freedom, and Conflictual Democracy
A Conversation with Giulio Giorello
Science, Knowledge, Rationality, and Empirical Realism
A Conversation with Paolo Parrini
FIVE

BEING, NOTHING, TEMPORALITY, PLACE
Metaphysics, Experience, and Transcendence
A Conversation with Enrico Berti
The Absolute, Finite Beings, and Symbolic Language
A Conversation with Virgilio Melchiorre
Being, Memory, and the Present
A Conversation with Ugo Perone
Being, Becoming, and the Destiny of Truth
A Conversation with Emanuele Severino
Topology, Nothingness, and the Possible God
A Conversation with Vincenzo Vitiello
SIX

HUMAN BEINGS, EVIL, TRANSCENDENCE
Religious Experience, Philosophy, and Theology
A Conversation with Giovanni Ferretti
Person, Evil, and Eschatology
A Conversation with Giuseppe Riconda
Select Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
I have received great encouragement and support from many along the way—my beloved husband, esteemed colleague, and fellow philosopher, Brian Schroeder, to whom I also owe special thanks for coming up with the title for the volume; my wonderful son, Erik, whose music, smiles, and general good humor have cheered up my days; and my Italian family and friends, who have always listened and provided precious nourishment for both the mind and the body in times of need. For all that, I am very grateful.
I would also like to thank the Rochester Institute of Technology, and especially the College of Liberal Arts, for granting me leave time (which permitted extended research time in Italy to work on this project) and financial assistance (which supported the initial editing of the translations for the volume). With respect to the work of translating, I wish to thank my editorial assistant, Nolan Little, who with patience, promptness, and insight has read through an initial draft of the translations and has suggested necessary changes and revisions.
I am especially indebted to Andrew Kenyon and the staff at SUNY Press not only for their enthusiastic backing of this volume, but also for their constant support of the SUNY Series in Contemporary Italian Philosophy.
And last but not least, I extend my sincere and deepest appreciation to the contributors of this volume for their constant support, encouragement, and patience. Without them and their thinking, there would be no volume—and Italian philosophy would not be as exciting either.
Introduction
Italian Philosophy—Threshold between Cultures
AN INCREASING RECOGNITION
Several years have passed since the publication, in 2007, of the edited volume Contemporary Italian Philosophy . 1 Up to that point, a few contemporary Italian thinkers were certainly known to Anglophone readers of philosophy—most notably, Giorgio Agamben, Norberto Bobbio, Adriana Cavarero, Toni Negri, Mario Perniola, Carlo Sini, Gianni Vattimo, and a few others. Yet the translation of these thinkers’ works was more the result of fortuitous circumstances and personal events than the outcome of a concerted cultural effort to approach, understand, appreciate, and disseminate Italian philosophy in its overall context and richness. As a consequence, individualities glowed while overshadowing the culturally and philosophically rich context that had made the emergence of such singularities possible in the first place.
Despite its limits, limitations, and omissions, the above-mentioned 2007 volume was the first book in the Anglo-American landscape to explicitly engage Italian philosophy in its own right as capable of contributing its own creative, innovative, nonscholastic perspectives on major philosophical themes. 2 The volume, which gathered essays by seventeen leading Italian philosophers, added some new Italian voices to the continental philosophical tradition as known in the English-speaking countries, that is, a tradition deeply focused on French and German contributions. The chosen topic for the edited collection was the intersection of themes in ethics, politics, and religion; ever since Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Niccolò Machiavelli, Galileo Galilei, Giambattista Vico, up to Benedetto Croce and Giovanni Gentile, and, more recently, Giorgio Agamben, Adriana Cavarero, Roberto Esposito, and Gianni Vattimo, these areas have not only intertwined, they traditionally constitute the core of major debates in Italian philosophy, which is overall characterized by its civic commitment. This is what Esposito, in a recent volume, Living Thought: The Origins and Actuality of Italian Philosophy , has conceptualized in terms of the crossing of the “axis” of life, politics, and history. 3
The 2007 volume was also the inauguration of a unique series devoted to contemporary Italian philosophy—a series that, over the years, has welcomed publication of translations of Italian philosophers’ major works as well as edited volumes on either specific Italian thinkers or aspects of Italian philosophy.
There is no doubt that nowadays, within the Anglophone world, Italian philosophy has gained wider recognition and is granted much more scholarly attention than in 2007. Several volumes devoted to its representatives have appeared in various series with different publishers, and previously unknown Italian thinkers are being translated, published, and addressed in scholarly essays and conference presentations. Whether attention is paid to these authors because they are Italian or because they are philosophers is a question that can hardly be answered in the disjunctive form. Undoubtedly such thinkers receive consideration because of the theoretical merits and value of their thinking. Nevertheless, they can be the valuable thinkers that they are because they emerge out of a specific philosophical landscape, that is, the one constituted by the way in which philosophy is and has been done in Italy. In this sense, they are Italian thinkers according to a signification that accepts no partition of terms.
THE ITALIAN DIFFERENCE
One question that lurks behind the denomination “Italian thinkers” is, understandably, the appropriateness or even desirability of framing philosophy within national borders and identities. At the conceptual level, it can be argued that, at least in its Greek essentialist legacy, philosophy pursues a pro