The text is an analysis of the spiritual world of Francis of Assisi, through the topic of his being constantly on a journey. Francis acknowledges that there cannot be an authentic dwelling for those who, enlightened by Grace, mean to get closer to God and be with Him. Francis does not react to evil by opposing it forcibly, trying to destroy his enemy, he does not do good because in that way he obeys to the commands of a Law, but (...) because in doing so, he finds joy and freedom in the communion with his brethren. (shrink)

The Million of Marco Polo; the travel diaries and letters of Christopher Columbus. These are two types of chronicles, separated by two hundred years of history. In both narrative registers there is the story of concretely experienced events. But at the same time both perspectives outline literary strategies, construct an aesthetic, open a perspective to the pleasure of the text to capture readers of their new vision of what the readers themselves already know.

The article focuses on the way through which Mario Perniola evaluated the Brazilian musical and cultural movement of the late sixties known as “Tropicália”. Since after the appearance of this movement in 1968 — and especially during the celebration of its 50th anniversary in 2018 — there has been a considerable amount of approaches among Brazilian intellectuals, it is a purpose of the article as well to compare their viewpoints with Perniola’s, as an important contemporary philosopher who dedicated his attention (...) to the aforementioned cultural phenomenon. (shrink)

The present essay is dedicated to the interpretation of Vico developed by Gillo Dorfles, which is based on the reason why Vico can be seen as the father of modern aesthetics, provided that the word “aesthetics” must be understood in a non-idealistic or Crocian sense, but according to the originally eighteenth-century notion of cognitio sensitiva. The key to this interpretation is thus given by the concepts of myth and metaphor, where the second one is especially seen as the principle that (...) governs a true “logic of fantasy”. (shrink)

The essay focuses on the way our idea of the world changes according to the tools we use to measure and circumscribe its regions and provide its overall configuration. For example, with the voyage of Columbus, precisely as it is subordinated to a geographical image, the world takes on a new face, different from the previous one: it takes shape according to the scheme that man has in mind, and corresponds to the cartographic image of the world, to the map. (...) It is now the world that has to adapt to the spherical model: with Kant, ‘reason discovers only what it produces according to its design’. The essay considers the consequences that historically derive from this approach, starting from the traces it left in the works of Hegel, Jules Verne and Leon Battista Alberti. (shrink)

The classical horror journey follows the normative trajectory of the Ego, the construction of the Freudian identity towards the normative couple and its insertion into society through marriage. Starting from Psycho, going to the evolution of New Hollywood and the rejection of conventional social norms, New Horror refuses this vision and build a new imaginery; showing devastating journeys through the Nation, it follows the macabre reintegration of subject within a cannibalistic and incestuous America and it proves the real face of (...) the American family, as well as the Vietnam trauma. (shrink)

The article is divided into three sections and reconstructs Proust’s impact on Bataille’s philosophy. The first one shows how Bataille derives from Proust an atheism very much different from Nietzsche’s, but not less influential for his thought. The second part presents Bataille’s critique on Proust’s conception of Œuvre, in relation to his notion of teleology. The final part compares the episode of Mlle Vinteuil with the alleged personal experience of Proust at the brothel, providing and discussing Bataille’s reading. All sections (...) are held together by Bataille’s urge to desecrate the object he embraces. (shrink)

We intend to explore the theme of the journey by showing both its character as a metaphor and its character as a reality. The purpose of these few pages is to show that much can be grasped, understood, experienced and thought about in a journey, especially its truly metaphorical character.

Starting from Jacques Derrida’s indications about the theme of the secret, the article examines the Heideggerian notion of ‘Geheimnis’. Although standard interpretation emphasizes the link between the concept of ‘Geheimnis’ and that of concealment, or the problem of truth, it is shown in what sense it is appropriate to integrate the meaning of ‘Geheimnis’ by the later results of Heidegger’s thought. In this frame much greater attention is paid to the close relationship between ‘Geheimnis’ and the concept of world, which (...) makes paradoxical any narrow reduction of ‘Geheimnis’ to notions such as enigma, mystery, secret. (shrink)

This article develops the concept of “agnotology”, a term coined by the historian of science Robert N. Proctor and the linguist Ian Bolas. Agnotology implies the study of ignorance, especially how ignorance and doubt are strategically induced by specific agents through misinformation, misleading research and inaccurate scientific data. The aim of this article is twofold: on the one hand it summarizes the main objectives of the agnotological area of study, taking into account the state of the art over the subject (...) matter. On the other hand it criticizes agnotology from a philosophical perspective. In fact, agnotology is heir to a metaphysical conception of reality grounded upon polar oppositions such as true/false, appearance/substance, good/evil. My claim is that agnotology’s efforts in studying the spread of ignorance remain entangled in a mindset, typical of conspiracy theories, which debases the complexity of reality into a two sided clash of ideologies. (shrink)

In Donner la mort Derrida explores the difficult and little known relation between the concept of secret and the concept of responsibility. In his comment of Heretics Essays of Patocka, Derrida shows how the Western Culture is built over an orgiastic and demonic element. This element, removed, goes on to cross the languages of the European Society with unprecedented effects of a secret.

In his literary and critical work, Maurice Blanchot has not explicitly addressed the problem of secret. Yet a careful look at the dynamics that innervate his work shows how the secret is constantly present. Analysis, then, must try to intercept the secret in its precipitation into writing, in the modulation of themes apparently diametrically distant from it, in the inexhaustible excavation carried out on the language in search of the “secret” that constitutes it but that does not allow itself to (...) be captured by it. (shrink)

The West was dominated for a long time – at least until the beginning of the twentieth century – by a disembodied and inhuman ideal of beauty, ignoring other possible aesthetic nuances of beauty experienced in the Far East both in everyday life and in the literary and cultural sphere. Now in a pandemic era that has revolutionized every sphere of our private and public existence it is time to go back to another, still fruitful conception of beauty, namely the (...) Wabi Sabi Aesthetics as praise of imperfection and irregularity, in order to evaluate its potential for a new understanding of beauty in the twenty-first century, not only in Japanese culture, but also in the Western world. (shrink)

The contribution aims to deepen the critical vision of Günther Anders through three fundamental passages and with primary reference to his main work Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen. In the first place, the work examines the “anthropological” elements of the Andersian critique of technique, with particular reference to the notion of “Promethean shame”. Secondly, the “historical” aspects of Anders’ critique and his provocative reflection on the looming atomic bomb are captured. Thirdly, his “philosophical” proposal is examined, tending to combine journalism and (...) metaphysics through a philosophy that highlights the absolute problematic nature of the historical situation. (shrink)

The main focus of this article is on the unpublished seminar “The Secret”, which Derrida taught at the EHESS in 1991-1992. This seminar lays out several of the secret’s important paradoxes, that preclude any definition of the secret as such. Putting into the question the assumptions that reduce our understanding of the secret to the realms of saying and of phenomenality, of negativity, of revelation or of repression, Derrida’s absolute secret is closely related to the tropes of death, finitude and (...) the unconscious. (shrink)

What separates Mario Perniola from other philosophers of his generation, is his programmatic inquiry into the dark side of humanities, what I here call ‘dank humanities’ – with a focus on topics hard to catch, and sides of experience and interpretation which evade simple pleasure and order. Often his thinking finds a niche where one can feel barely human or sense something that in the end evades interpretation. Suggestive in tone, it inquired into these topics also in a way that (...) made his thinking hard to classify as philosophy, cultural studies and/or psychoanalysis. In my article on his work, I aspire to think of it more commonly as a form of overall humanities, and to see it as a programmatic attempt to nail the potentials of the humanities to reach beyond our pleasures, understanding and safety-driven metaphysics. (shrink)