ALLA SCUOLA DELLA FENOMENOLOGIA
EMILIO RENZI INTERPRETE DI PACI E RICOEUR
Massimo Mezzanzanica
The critical confrontation with the thought of Enzo Paci and Paul Ricoeur accompanies Emilio Renzi’s entire life as a scholar, extending over a period of more than forty years, from the degree thesis on Paul Ricoeur dalla fenomenologia all’antropologia (Paul Ricoeur from Phenomenology to Anthropology, 1961), written under the guidance of Enzo Paci, up to the most recent essays, gathered in the volume Enzo Paci e Paul Ricoeur in un dialogo e dodici saggi (Enzo Paci and Paul Ricoeur. In a Dialogue and Twelve Essays, 2010). The purpose of this article is to investigate the reasons for this confrontation, recognizable above all, as Renzi himself declares, in the claim that both of them having been thinkers «at the school of phenomenology» (according to the expression that gives the title to a collection of essays belonging to the years of Ricoeur’s apprenticeship). My contribution will focus in particular on the “imaginary” dialogue Caro Ricoeur, mon cher Paci (2006), which, in five “scenes”, winding around the various encounters between the two philosophers and weaving together summaries, paraphrases and quotations from their works, reconstructs the original development that both philosophers impress to phenomenology. Alongside this dialogue, which can be considered, as Renzi states, «a complete interpretation of Enzo Paci and a complete interpretation of Paul Ricoeur», I will also consider the short but dense essay Mann Paci Ricoeur. Letture della Montagna incantata (2008), which compares the interpretations of the Magic Mountain offered by the two thinkers, highlighting the importance that both attributed to the chapter entitled “Schnee – Neve”. In this way I will try to show what are the fundamental themes that emerge from Renzi’s interpretation of the relationship between the two philosophers: the link between reflection on the subject and the dimensions of history and anthropology, the relationship with the other as constitutive of the subject and of the person, the problems of evil and negative, the relationship between philosophy and action.