Foreword

In a 1935 text, Bergson distinguishes the philosopher from the amateur. An amateur in philosophy, writes Bergson, is one who takes the terms of an already known philosophical problem as they are: one who believes that the problem has already been posed in a definitive manner and who limits themselves to choosing one of the presumed solutions to that problem that they find already available. On the contrary, the philosopher creates a philosophical problem and its solution as well. The philosopher creates the solution, necessarily unique, to an unprecedented problem that they have posed, and that they have posed precisely in the effort they make to resolve it. The philosopher is distinguished from the amateur because they problematize problems create new ones, and in doing so open the way to new solutions. Their domain is that of the unthought.

That Bergson was a philosopher, and not an amateur, is shown by his constant and uninterrupted vitality. His thought is a thought of openness, of posing new problems, and therefore lends itself to ever new problematizations. The dossier compiled by Veronica Cavedagna and Letizia Cipriani for the “Philosophical Question” section of this issue demonstrates this excellently. “Bergson in Movement: Hidden Readers and New Cartographies”: the Bergson that emerges from the collected contributions is a global Bergson capable of engaging with very distant thinkers and on themes that go well beyond the well-known reflections on the essence of temporality and the two sources of morality and religion.

The opening of philosophical questions, the need for constant re-problematization of problems, also constitutes the common thread of the four contributions of the “Laboratory” section. In Pensiero della complessità e ricerca sull’uomo, Giuseppe Fornari retraces his own intellectual journey, starting from his long personal and philosophical confrontation with Girard, since the mid-1990s, and then from his partnership with Mario Ceruti. The occasion is the twentieth anniversary of the volume published by Fornari and Ceruti, Cristianesimo e morte di Dio nel mondo globalizzato. What remains of that proposal? And is the question opened by that text, regarding the relationship between philosophy and technology, still open, or must one recognize its irremediable closure, which relegates it among questions good only for amateur philosophers? Federico Masciotti also reconstructs the trajectory of an intellectual biography, that of the great thinker of liberation philosophy Enrique Dussel, who passed away a couple of years ago. In his contribution Enrique Dussel, l’Europa e la filosofia della liberazione, Masciotti offers an exhaustive presentation of Dussel’s reflection, which received wide resonance in the 1980s but whose relevance is evident. Masciotti has the merit of reconstructing the contexts and influences that mark Dussel’s formation, from Zubiri to Lévinas. Above all, if Dussel’s reflection places at the center many of the questions that now dominate philosophical debate (decolonization, gender theory, the relationship between ideology and power), it has the merit of doing so with tones that surpass complacent denunciation and obtuse rejection of the contrary thesis. Philosophy, writes Dussel, emerges, within the system, as its hostage, as testimony to a new future order, in order to clearly formulate its provocation, which is the same as that of the oppressed but in the code of the dominating system. The last two contributions of the section rediscover the problem of the opening of philosophical questions starting from the confrontation between thinkers. The parallel between philosophers who interrogate themselves on the same themes allows for better highlighting the unprecedented quality of the problems they liberate. This is the case of Françoise Dolto and Jacques Lacan, analyzed by Silvia Marchesoli in her contribution Lacan e Dolto. Un confronto. The image is no longer thought by Dolto, as is still the case for Lacan, from a uniquely visual paradigm. The image becomes incorporated, becomes body, and finds in corporeality the profound reason for the functions that the relationship with images plays in our psychic life. The force of what lies outside the sphere of the intellect is also the theme of Federico Nicolosi’s article Liebe und Werte. Sviluppi e limiti della fenomenologia scheleriana dell’amore. And again the analysis passes through a comparison between two thinkers of the order of love, Max Scheler and Dietrich von Hildebrand. Von Hildebrand’s proposal is read by Nicolosi as the occasion to overcome some aporias of Scheler’s theory of values, particularly regarding the analysis of the erotic phenomenon. Above all, von Hildebrand opens to a rethinking of the status of illusions as a cognitive device: far from concealing reality, illusions make its grasp possible and best embody the “active transcendence” that characterizes the proper action of the mind.

The “Cultures” section benefits from the important contribution of anthropologist Nadia Breda, noted translator and expert of Philippe Descola’s thought, entitled La spiritualità in un mondo nomade tra usi della terra, tabù culturali e negoziazioni, in reference to her fieldwork conducted in Mongolia. Central is the close relationship between the activity of nomadic pastoralism – still about a third of this country is devoted to pastoralism – and the spiritual background that animates it by mixing shamanism and Buddhism on which it is founded. The main point of the nomadic world is the prohibition of “digging the earth” within a complex system of rules, transactions, bonds, and interdependencies between humans and non-humans. The author documents the current increasingly disruptive conflict between this strong nomadic tradition and the opposing economic and political pressures both internal and foreign for more profitable productivism based on more advanced agriculture and the excavation of precious minerals.

“Intersections” proposes – true testimony to the title that designates the section – the intersection of poetry and philosophy as it takes shape in Giacomo Leopardi according to the perspective that the young and capable scholar Beniamino Ravera, currently attending Peking University, attests in Nichilismo e poesia nella filosofia di Leopardi following the stimulating analyses of Emanuele Severino on the subject. Having established the speculative radicality of Leopardi’s nihilism, interesting is the emphasis that his poetry is not simply confirmatory of this philosophical thesis but possesses two peculiar characteristics: on one hand it intensifies a peculiar valence to it, and – even more – undermines the tyranny of boredom, proposing the pride and strength of its author to lucidly attest to the truth, even if it be the infinite vanity of everything, detracting nothing from the truth. Hence Severino’s conferral of “genius” to Leopardi’s figure and work, a title entirely shareable.

For the “Correspondences” section we find the lively and engaging report from Shanghai, Fenomenologia di uno spaesamento. L’Atelier de Recherche “Phénomènes” a Shanghai, Cina 2024 by Francesca D’Alessandris regarding a conference held at Tongji University in Shanghai on the relevance of French phenomenology on the level of ethics and aesthetics with the simultaneous participation of both European and Chinese scholars. Among the multiple interventions to note is the interest in philosophers such as Henry Maldiney, Mikel Dufrenne, Michel Henry, and Gilles Deleuze. The attention to a phenomenology differently disorienting the self in thought imposed itself for D’Alessandris together with the narration of her encounter with the disconcerting examples of contrasting architectures in the city and the Oriental-flavored foods consumed together during the meetings, speaking to a felicitous connection between the philosophical level and the level of lived experiences in the rich confrontation on diversity thematized in this Shanghai conference.

For the “Philosophical Practices” section, Giuseppe Perinei wrote La valutazione nelle scuole di secondo grado. Il caso della filosofia, a very relevant theme for the current debate on teaching. Important and stimulating are the reflections – verified by the author in his classroom work – on the passage from summative to formative evaluation in the perspective of a pedagogy that stimulates critical thinking in the student.

The “Readings and Events” section contains the following contributions: Andrea Lucchini on Disattivare. Un’idea di filosofia by Ubaldo Fadini; Giovanni Marzegalli on Phénoménologie et philosophie religieuse by Jean Héring; Alessandra Peluso on La filosofia politica di Arendt by Giulio Chiodi and Vincenzo Sorrentino; Anna Chiara Cavigioli on È il nascere che non ci voleva. Storia e teoria dell’antinatalismo by Sarah Dierna.