Foreword

According to Rousseau’s Émile, the first decade of life is the time of raison sensitive. A reason that does not yet reason, that knows neither judgments nor abstractions, but is formed through contact with the world, discovering it gradually and at the same time refining its senses. The aim is not to become cultured, indoctrinated, or, worse, cunning, but to become judicious and sensible. To know how to look at the world, to take its measure, and to move within it with curiosity and benefit. With this issue, InCircolo turns ten. Thanks to the intelligence of its founders, its editors, and its authors, the Journal has never ceased to become “judicious”, to open its eyes to the world, to refine its ability to grasp what is happening, what has happened, and even, at times, what will happen.

The Section “Philosophical Question” dedicated by Christian Frigerio and Camilla Zani to “How to inherit from Bruno Latour?” is an excellent example. Not “what” to inherit from a wide-ranging thinker who has shaped the history of anthropology, science, philosophy, and ecology in the latter half of the twentieth century, but “how to inherit”—that is, how to take responsibility for his questions and hypotheses. Unlike guilt or genetic traits, inheritances can be accepted but also rejected, made to flourish or allowed to remain sterile. The challenge is great, all the more so since Latour’s thought has intertwined ecology, anthropology, and reflection on the role of technology in a nexus that appears to us increasingly essential and critical every day.

The contributions in the “Laboratory” Section extend Latour’s reflection in unexpected ways, inviting us to think about the proper place of the human within the hybridization of nature and culture. In “Abitare il tempo e la storia. Han, Eliade e De Martino sulla scomparsa dei riti”, Enrico Moncado brings into dialogue two major, unconventional intellectuals of the last century and a widely heard contemporary voice in order to return to the theme of myth—or rather, the need for myths not so much as identity narratives, but as technologies for managing the crisis that is structural to human beings. And myths are such only if rituals embody them and, through their abstraction, make them the point of access to an escape from the historicity of existence. At the opposite pole to that of crisis, Paolo Bonato presents his “Bastare a se stessi e non mancare di nulla. Note intorno al concetto di autarkeia nell’Etica Nicomachea”. His survey of the meanings Aristotle assigns to the notion of autarkeia highlights the ultimate reason for the privilege granted to theoria over every other human activity— namely, that it is autotelic, that it finds its reason and its end within itself. The wise person cannot exclude themselves from the world, but may devote themselves to an activity whose pleasure does not depend in any way on the circumstances of the world. But is it legitimate to imagine this self-sufficiency as a perfect circular return to oneself? Ivan Saracino doubts it and invites us to complicate geometric analogies in his contribution on “La struttura frattale della Scienza della logica. Autosimilarità e circolarità nel sistema hegeliano”. Despite the abstract nature of the conceptual progression of his works, Hegel is a great thinker in figures, and thus the application of new mathematical models to make the movement of his thought visible is more than welcome. The Section concludes with the contribution by Matteo Mollisi entitled “The Early Stone Age in Us and its Dialectic – Christoph Türcke’s Mental Archaeology”. Although still too little known, Türcke’s philosophy represents an original synthesis that brings together the outcomes of critical theory, Freudian psychoanalysis, and a “mental archaeology” that combines speculation and scientific evidence. Once again, the theme concerns the mechanisms responsible for the specific cognitive and cultural capacities of Homo sapiens. And once again, anthropogenesis—the history of the humanity of the human—proves inseparable from the history of the world in which it acts and the techniques that enable it to interpret it.

For “Intersections”, the text by Vinicio Busacchi entitled “Sull’effetto struggente della Norma” represents an interesting essay aimed at putting into practice a philosophical exercise beyond its usual boundaries, in this case applied to Vincenzo Bellini’s remarkable opera Norma (1831). The author adopts for this purpose Paul Ricoeur’s critical hermeneutics, supported by Aristotle’s theory of tragedy as presented in the Poetics. He refers first and foremost to the rich correspondence testifying to the close collaboration between Bellini and the librettist Felice Raimondi, highlighting the tight union between word and music achieved in this work. Ricoeur’s interpretative approach makes it possible to grasp, with refined critical sensitivity, the artistic value that results from this compositional unity of a distinctly tragic-romantic narrative. Norma thus assumes the sublime character of a tragedy of purification through pain and guilt, as the hermeneutic approach brings to light.

For the “Cultures” Section, Beniamino Ravera presents “Una chiave di lettura per la tradizione cinese. Guardare in tianxia a partire dal tianxia”. He studies this term carefully and in depth, tracing its origin in the context of the unification of China under the Zhou dynasty (11th–3rd century BCE), in order to grasp its subsequent variations over time as an important semantic component of Chinese “sinicity”. The book by the political philosopher Zhao Tingyang All Under Heaven: The Tianxia System for a Possible World Order is cited as a kind of touchstone for the many facets the term has assumed in the past, with a view to its fruitful recovery based on its universalist validity. It follows that, amid the variety of interpretations, the discursive framework of tianxia – rooted in its original Confucian source – remains a significant reference point in contemporary Chinese culture.

The “Correspondences” section is marked by the correspondence of Alexey Zhavoronkov entitled “Riflessioni al crocevia culturale: l’insegnamento della filosofia in Malesia”, aimed at describing the specificity of Malaysia’s cultural reality, which draws both on intersections among different traditions of Eastern thought and on influences from the West. The country is witnessing a recent flourishing of philosophical teaching at the university level in relation to the social sciences. The update concerns both contents and methods: philosophy is open to contemporary issues, and the style of discussion – generally in English – recalls the Anglo-American tradition. One must acknowledge that in our time of globalization philosophy is spreading and assuming a significant role in parts of the world once neglected and largely ignored. A new season of pluralistic approaches to philosophy is opening, in which the barriers of the past are gradually disappearing.

In the “Philosophical Practices” Section, Matteo Canevari, in his contribution entitled “Il gruppo di ricerca filosofica Chora: la magia della filosofia”, offers documentation of a highly interesting and significant practice of local philosophical dissemination, based in the city of Voghera, with a gradual expansion toward other important meeting centers, the development of a dense network of relations with universities and philosophers at the national level, and the launch of a series of publications. The Chora Group is a valuable example of how it is possible to produce high-level philosophical initiatives for a public rooted in a local context, capable of becoming attractive even beyond it thanks to the quality and commitment of its promoters.

The “Letture ed eventi” Section contains a broad series of contributions: Gianni Trimarchi on Vita vitalis. Spinoza e gli esercizi di ortopatia by Cristina Zaltieri; Sabrina Peron on La filosofia di fronte al genocidio. Conversazione su Gaza by Étienne Balibar; Matteo Maria Buzzetti on Ipnocrazia by Jangwei Xun; Giulia Carminati on Noam Chomsky. Un intellettuale tra linguistica e politica by Giorgio Graffi; Anna Cavigioli on Thomas Hobbes by Pierre Bayle; Giovanni Arrigoni on L’aurora inapparente. Upanishad, Bruno e Böhme nella metafisica giovanile di Giorgio Colli by Ludovica Boi.

The issue concludes with the “Special Contributions” Section, which refers to the tenth anniversary of the founding of the journal. To celebrate it, we requested a sort of Festschrift from a number of Italian philosophers who serve as our referees, asking them to offer thematic suggestions dear to them that might be developed into future contributions. We received the following texts:

• Francesca Brezzi (Roma Tre University): Pensando insieme
• Rossella Fabbrichesi (University of Milan): Le riviste di filosofia come luoghi di resistenza
• Giuseppe Fornari (University of Verona): Intelligenza artificiale o intelligenza umana?
• Fabio Minazzi (University of Insubria): Rimettere in circolo l’euristica trascendentalistica?
• Gaspare Polizzi (University of Pisa): Michel Serres e Bruno Latour, verso un nuovo umanesimo
• Gabriele Scaramuzza (University of Milan): Letture come proposte

The Directors and Editorial Board of InCircolo express their deepest thanks for the generosity of these reflections and for the availability of the thematic proposals entrusted to us.