Foreword

Among the activities of philosophers, in addition to building more or less implausible theories, there is also that of crafting metaphors. Especially metaphors for knowledge. We all know – or more plainly, we all have some kind of interaction with – the world around us. But describing how we know is not easy. It means proposing a knowledge of knowledge itself. And thus we immediately fall into the trap of infinite regress, from which we could escape only by pulling ourselves out of the water by our hair, like Baron Munchausen. This is where metaphors come to our aid. A metaphor shows us indirectly, through an image, what we are already and always embedded in. Knowing is like emerging from a cave and progressing toward increasingly distinct degrees of brightness. Knowing is like moving toward the things themselves, encountering them in the way they give themselves to us. Knowing is like grasping something in your hand, holding it tightly and making it your own. Or, knowing is like dealing with perspectives. Which means that we know by virtue of a triangulation of “reality, truth, interpretations”.

The “Philosophical Question” that opens this issue, edited by Alberto de Vita, focuses precisely on this metaphor and this triangulation. What does it mean to say that our relationship to truth is perspectival? And what does this metaphor tell us about our way of conceiving knowledge as access to the real? The contributions gathered in the “Philosophical Question” section explore these questions in a highly articulated way, taking Nietzsche’s thought as a guiding star and tracing its legacy and reinterpretation by various, more or less well-known authors (from Foucault, Vattimo, and Deleuze to Bradley, Whitehead, and Latour). We don’t want to deprive the reader of the pleasure of discovering the metamorphoses of perspectivism by reading the texts collected in the section, but perhaps it is worth anticipating, without revealing too much, at least two conclusions. The first: speaking of perspective always means believing in a vanishing point. One can multiply viewpoints, one can become like Argus with a thousand eyes—which is to say, without metaphor: one can shatter truth into an infinite number of interpretations, recognize it as irreducible to a single color, infinitely variegated. And yet, perspective always hopes that there is something to see, a vanishing point – partial, subjective, debatable, maybe biased – but which tells us it is still worth asking about truth. A need (perhaps pathological) for truth, as Nietzsche says. The second result of the inquiry conducted in this issue’s “Philosophical Question”: perspectivism invites us to imagine new, unprecedented metaphors for knowledge. And since the section’s curator, Alberto de Vita, opens his introduction with a poetic quotation, we might echo it with another poem:

it is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.
(Elizabeth Bishop, At the Fishhouses)

The two texts featured in the “Laboratory” section address the same theme—albeit from very different yet not divergent perspectives: the question of evil. Simonetta Orlandini opens with Note sull’idea del male nella quarta parte dell’Etica di Spinoza, starting from Spinoza’s assertion that evil should be understood through Proposition 64, according to which knowledge of evil is inadequate knowledge. This does not mean that the profound impact of emotional forces should be denied or neglected, but rather that their direction must be guided by the causative virtue of reason – something that belongs to the stance of the wise person. From reason emanates intelligence, which is in-tendere – to attend to, to appropriate the intention that initiates the path to a good life. The vibrant and fertile spring of this path is conatus: the drive for self-preservation and empowerment, engaging the body-mind in its entirety in the pursuit of true good. This entails a practice in harmony with one’s ethos, taking the form of a meditatio that characterizes the philosophical approach as a practice of the good life. As a result, the good one seeks for oneself is also desired for others. The outcome of this askesis is happiness, because it is the acquisition of freedom.

For their part, Cecilia Morello and Luciano Sesta, in Cecità etica e coscienza morale. Una rilettura pedagogica, offer a path that highlights particular aspects of the experience of evil, with references to our contemporary world and ways to reprocess and transcend it through an appropriate pedagogy. Inspired by Saramago’s novel Blindness, the authors emphasize the ethical indifference that produces a kind of
blindness – the failure to perceive the opposition between good and evil – that can escalate into a habitual practice of evil, even mistaking it for good. Their rereading of Primo Levi’s desolate depiction of Auschwitz in The Drowned and the Saved points to the tragedy’s apex in the “gray zone” that ends up associating victims and perpetrators alike. Hence arises the need for an educational emergency response – not based on
punitive or repressive judgment, but rather on offering young people a guide to responsible ethics in building a path to eudaimonia.

At this point, it’s worth noting the remarkable coincidence – certainly unplanned – that both contributions in the “Laboratory” section conclude by envisioning a horizon of happiness.

The “Cultures” section features an insightful contribution by Maria Angelillo, Unità e differenza nell’esperienza letteraria indiana, which highlights the cultural differences that characterize this vast country in our time. Supporters of the idea of a fundamental Indian cultural and literary unity point to the enduring presence, across different literary traditions, of the same characters and recurring narrative themes drawn from the two great Sanskrit epics, the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa. In the early 1950s, both intellectuals and the charismatic leader of the time, Jawaharlal Nehru, spoke of a single pan-Indian culture expressed in many different languages. The desire to emphasize cultural unity in support of the recently achieved and fragile political unity was understandable and widely shared. However, the author argues that, nearly 80 years later, the evidence now points to the value of language diversity and thematic richness, bearing witness to the variety and wealth of the different regional traditions in literature and culture.

The “Intersections” section presents Benjamin, appunti sulla Moda: cercando di comporre figure da frammenti sparsi by Josella Greco, a text that follows up on issue 17’s focus on Benjamin’s Passages, but here centers on a specific topic: Parisian fashion in the early 20th century. These are quite scattered notes accompanied by a series of beautiful period images with no systematic intent, although Greco dares to suggest an underlying thread running through the fragments: the extreme polarities of frivolity and death. Within the circle of these two poles, numerous ideas emerge: annotations and open-ended questions about fashion as ritual and commodity-fetish, the connection between pure beauty and seductive allure, the habit of the lower classes imitating the clothing of the upper classes, the transition from crinolines to more comfortable skirts. A political reference is also made to the utopian philosophical novel Voyage to Icaria by Étienne Cabet, where Benjamin appreciates that all luxury related to fashion is banned. The author closes with a striking line from one of the many pages of the Passages, which in our translation sounds as “fashion compensates for the fatal effects of forgetting. The more ephemeral an era, the more it orientates itself according to fashion.” This illustrates Benjamin’s unmatched ability to probe society in all its varied facets and derive unsettling philosophical insights.

In the “Correspondences” section, Laureano Lopez offers us a panorama of the teaching of philosophy in Spain. Drawing from his personal experience first as a student and then as a scholar Lopez reconstructs the academic and cultural geography of Spanish philosophical debate: a context that, while close and historically similar to the Italian one, remains largely unfamiliar to us. Lopez effectively identifies the specific features of his education at the University of Barcelona, while also seizing the opportunity for broader reflections on the status of philosophy in Spain, which he sharply defines as “a tradition without state or territory.”

The “Philosophical Practices” section includes a contribution by Maria Regina Brioschi, which in a sense mirrors the section’s title: Il sé tra senso comune, abiti e algoritmi: laboratorio di filosofia in pratica. This refers to an innovative experience carried out by the University of Milan with several high school classes. The goal was to initiate moments of personal reflection and group discussion on concrete life experiences in which students are directly involved, subjecting pre-formed opinions and habitual behaviors to philosophical scrutiny. The facilitator led the activity through three modules: an individual thematic survey on personal experiences, the division into subgroups on specific topics, and the presentation of each subgroup’s findings to the whole class in a final discussion session. Interestingly, the conclusions reached often differed from prevailing views in national surveys on the topics covered during the workshop, which supports the hope of repeating and expanding this experience.

The “Readings and Events” section in this issue is devoted solely to reviews, though we hope to include reports on events (debates, conferences, and workshops) in upcoming issues. This section features the following contributions: Danilo Di Matteo on La vita delle piante. Metafisica della mescolanza by Emanuele Coccia; Gianfranco Cordi on Istituzione by Roberto Esposito; Martina Lodi on Tolleranza, intolleranza, intollerabile by Paul Ricoeur; Federico Nicolosi on De scriptura. Dolore e salvezza in Proust by Enrico Palma; Elia Pilotto on Ci ha Dio. In dialogo con Jean-Luc Marion by Paolo Marino Cattorini; Gianni Trimarchi on Vita e potenza. Marco Aurelio, Spinoza, Nietzsche by Rossella Fabbrichesi.