Living Thought: The Origins and Actuality of Italian PhilosophyThe work of contemporary Italian thinkers, what Roberto Esposito refers to as Italian Theory, is attracting increasing attention around the world. This book explores the reasons for its growing popularity, its distinguishing traits, and why people are turning to these authors for answers to real-world issues and problems. The approach he takes, in line with the keen historical consciousness of Italian thinkers themselves, is a historical one. He offers insights into the great "unphilosophical" philosophers of life—poets, painters, politicians and revolutionaries, film-makers and literary critics—who have made Italian thought, from its beginnings, an "impure" thought. People like Machiavelli, Croce, Gentile, and Gramsci were all compelled to fulfill important political roles in the societies of their times. No wonder they felt that the abstract vocabulary and concepts of pure philosophy were inadequate to express themselves. Similarly, artists such as Dante, Leonardo Da Vinci, Leopardi, or Pasolini all had to turn to other disciplines outside philosophy in order to discuss and grapple with the messy, constantly changing realities of their lives. For this very reason, says Esposito, because Italian thinkers have always been deeply engaged with the concrete reality of life (rather than closed up in the introspective pursuits of traditional continental philosophy) and because they have looked for the answers of today in the origins of their own historical roots, Italian theory is a "living thought." Hence the relevance or actuality that it holds for us today. Continuing in this tradition, the work of Roberto Esposito is distinguished by its interdisciplinary breadth. In this book, he passes effortlessly from literary criticism to art history, through political history and philosophy, in an expository style that welcomes non-philosophers to engage in the most pressing problems of our times. As in all his works, Esposito is inclusive rather than exclusive; in being so, he celebrates the affirmative potency of life. |
From inside the book
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... Heideggerian hermeneutics of Gianni Vattimo. Even Vattimo's polemical confrontation with Emmanuele Severino, which the editor of the anthology sees as the most significant outcome of the Italian philosophical debate, somehow re- mains ...
... or even contrastive conceptual chunks like those of Gottlob Frege and Martin Heidegger. For analytic philosophers, the original content, the raw material, is the set of linguistic statements; The Italian Difference.
... Heidegger's ontology to involve the spheres of action (in Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas, but also in John Austin and John Searle), subjectivity (in Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur), and the unconscious (in Jacques Lacan) ...
... Heidegger himself went so far as to state that. 21. On this topic, see Caterina Resta, “Il mito dell'autoctonia del pensiero (Note su Hegel, Fichte, Heidegger),” in Geofilosofia, ed. Marco Baldino, Luisa Bonesio, and Caterina Resta ...
... Heidegger's claim, that the German, if only he makes us of all his advantages, can always be superior to the foreigner and understand him fully, even better than the foreigner understands himself, and can translate the foreigner to the ...
Contents
II The Power of the Origin | |
III PhilosophyLife | |
IV Thought in Action | |
V The Return of Italian Philosophy | |
Other editions - View all
Living Thought: The Origins and Actuality of Italian Philosophy Roberto Esposito No preview available - 2012 |
Living Thought: The Origins and Actuality of Italian Philosophy Roberto Esposito No preview available - 2012 |