Abstract

Not in his earlier works and in Estetica. Teoria della formatività, but in the studies of his last period, i. e. Dostoevskij and Ontologia della libertà, Luigi Pareyson left us important suggestions for a philosophical theory of the novel and of the narrative essence of truth. According to Pareyson’s hermeneutics, interpretation has no other object than truth, and truth emerges through the interpretation of tales and stories, because the reality is not a chain of facts, but an eventful horizon where liberty is more significant than necessity. When looking for truth – not truth in itself, but truth for us, the truth which reveals us a possible meaning of the human life and world – we find it in that original form of revelation which is the myth. Novel, Pareyson says, is nothing else than myth – secularized myth, we could add, a myth of the modern times. Moving from this conviction, Pareyson approaches Dostoevskij’s novels and discovers in them not only a lot of philosophical problems, but also a real chance for a new philosophy of liberty and of the sense of being.