In the following interview with Manlio Iofrida, Aldo Giorgio Gargani retraces the fundamental moments and key phases of his intellectual development: his early childhood and adolescence in Genoa, strongly marked by the influence of his artist father and of the social context of the immediate post-war situation; his studies at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, and subsequently at the University of Oxford, which resulted to his first book on Wittgenstein; the achievement during the 1960s of a distinctive (...) philosophical position of his own, reflected in the publication of the book Il sapere senza fondamenti [Knowledge without Foundations]; the renewal of philosophical culture in Italy in the 1980s and 1990s, in which Gargani himself was one of the main protagonists; the return to an engagement with Wittgenstein, after a period in which he had dedicated himself principally to literary questions and concerns, one pursued specifically in the context of the new issues raised at the beginning of the 21st century. This historical and autobiographical reconstruction of his intellectual career is accompanied at every turn by philosophical reflections on our contemporary situation and by specific critical responses to other contemporary philosophical trends and developments: the interview thus constitutes a telling summation of the fundamental themes and aspects of the author’s thought in general. (shrink)

English summary: Aldo Giorgio Gargani innovates in his use of Wittgensteinian concepts to argue that the formation of scientific and philosophical knowledge is not a linear progression, but a collection of instruments or conceptual and behavioral models, decisional procedures that are born of the different forms of human life as extensions of their anthropological contexts. Through this book Gargani demonstrates how Wittgensteins thinking can be used a truly efficient toolbox. French description: Aldo Giorgio Gargani (1933-2009) (...) fait dans ce livre un usage novateur des concepts wittgensteiniens pour soutenir que la formation du savoir scientifique et philosophique n'est pas une progression lineaire, cumulative et definitive de techniques cognitives: le savoir est plutot un recueil d'instruments, d'habitus conceptuels, de modeles comportementaux, de conduites operationnelles et de procedures decisionnelles qui naissent des formes de vie des hommes, en tant qu'extensions de leurs contextes anthropologiques. Si l'expression savoir sans fondements est maintenant tres repandue dans les sciences humaines, c'est Gargani qui a magistralement elabore toutes les consequences de cette idee, et son livre est l'analyse la plus riche de ces rituels epistemologiques qui decoulent de notre agir humain, lui-meme depourvu de fondements. A travers ce livre on voit comment la pensee de Wittgenstein peut etre utilisee comme une boite a outils veritablement efficace. (shrink)

Résumé Comme poète et comme romancière, Ingeborg Bachmann a tenté de confronter le langage à ses limites à la suite de Ludwig Wittgenstein. Sa lecture permet à Gargani de réfléchir philosophiquement au langage et à la connaissance et ainsi de découvrir l’utopie d’un « nouveau langage ».

Es gibt eine enge Verbindung zwischen Wittgensteins ethischer Einstellung und seiner Ablehnung des philosophischen Theoretisierens. Wittgenstein betrachtet es als Aufgabe des Menschen, in sich selbst mit Mut hinunterzusteigen, um durch eine sprachliche Analyse seine innere Natur zu enthüllen. Wittgenstein arbeitet den Unterschied zwischen oberflächlichen und tiefergehenden ethischen Einstellungen als sprachphilosophischen Unterschied zwischen Oberflächengrammatik und Tiefengrammatik heraus. Die von Wittgenstein so bezeichnete Oberflächengrammatik ruft die grammatischen Täuschungen hervor, die für die Sublimierung und Idealisierung der philosophischen Theorien verantwortlich sind.

Beginning with an analysis of the notion of repetition as an essential factor shaping linguistic, logical, mathematical and scientific procedures some parallels are drawn between Psychoanalysis and Wittgensteinian Philosophy. The view is put forward that in the case of Freud's concept of neurosis as well as in Wittgenstein's concept of rule-following there is not just a monotonous and unvarying replay of one and the same content but rather a steady modification. Thus generating new moments again and again both in Wittgenstein's (...) procedure of philosophical investigation and in Freudian analysis the aesthetical becomes an important aspect. Finally ethical moments are considered in comparing suppression with Wittgenstein's statements on superficial philosophical theorizing. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophical and scientific culture is characterized by limiting conditions and bounds of various kind which conflict with the human being’s attitude and propensity to generalizing hypotheses and theories beyond the bounds of their legitimate application. Nonetheless, bounds and limits are not to be seen only as being obstacles to knowledge, but they are shown to get new intellectual possibilities off the ground by their putting aside illegitimate generalizations and substituting a new domain of differences for the latter, with the (...) final result of enlarging the horizon of our intellectual possibilities. (shrink)

Gargani's work aims at discovering the link connecting the multifarious aspects of contemporary Austrian culture in the connection between ethics and aesthetics. In Gargani's view this connection is responsible for the strong criticism of contemporary society, based on mechanization and automatic processes, as it is instanced by such authors as F. Kafka, L. Wittgenstein, R. Musil, I. Bachmann and above all Thomas Bernhard. According to Gargani's essay, starting from the rejection of the notion of a correspondence relation (...) of language to the world, T. Bernhard puts forward a sort of literature conceived no more as being a description of reality, but rather as being a critical analysis and a deconstruction of human existence. In substance, the core of Bernhard's literary work consists in revealing the truth content of the lie (der Wahrheitsgehalt der Lüge). If human existence on the whole is doomed to failure on the one hand, Bernhard acknowledges literature itself as the only possibility of safety for man on the other hand. On clarifying the peculiar structure of Bernhard's writing, Gargani shows how the indirect narration of events and thoughts carried out by Bernhard aims at an indirect truth, which is the only available one and which is preciselythe mediated truth of literature. (shrink)

Giorgio Gargani non aveva detto a nessuno la verità sul suo male; e il motivo, come avevo intuito non appena lo avevo saputo, non più di dieci giorni prima del suo decesso, e come d’altra parte mi aveva confermato al funerale il figlio maggiore Alberto, era che confessare il suo male avrebbe significato ridurre il carico dei suoi impegni e del suo lavoro. Giorgio Gargani ha lavorato, scritto, studiato, partecipato a conferenze fino a pochi giorni prima della sua (...) morte, e questa passione per l... (shrink)

The article sheds light on some points of convergence between Rorty’s theoretical proposal to reject systematic and foundational philosophy favoring a “post-Philosophy” and Gargani’s idea of knowledge without foundations. In particular, the article argues how Gargani’s interpretation of Rorty’s thought is in line with Gargani’s critique of universal and ahistorical rationality in favor of naturalized anthropology, expressing in a praxis that, although without foundations, is not an expression of irrationality. The last part of the article highlights some (...) differences between Gargani and Rorty on the possibility of adopting some different facets of Heidegger’s thought. (shrink)

Gathers the pre-Sand Country Almanac writings of Aldo Leopold, showing that he was not born an ecologist, but evolved over time through experimentation and thought.

The Spiritual Forms in Nicolai Hartmann’s critical ontology. For a critical-genetic interpretation of The Problem of Spiritual Being. The Author critically discusses the theoretical assumptions underlying Nicolai Hartmann’s 1933 The Problem of Spiritual Being. The Author deals with the main categorial problems involved in the Hartmannian discussion about the spiritual being, also looking at his previous production. In particular, the Author analyzes the position of the ontic level of spiritual being with respect to the previous three real ontic levels (inorganic, (...) organic, psychological) and the mutual relationship between the three fundamental forms of spiritual being identified by Hartmann (personal, objective, objectified). The Author believes that the 1933 volume has been poorly considered in its direct links with the overall project of critical ontology. (shrink)

_Nicolai Hartmann and Alexius Meinong on Apriority and Causality. Notes on the Correspondence_ The article offers a critical reading of the nine letters composing the correspondence exchanged by Alexius Meinong (1853-1920) and Nicolai Hartmann (1882-1950) in 1915 and 1918-1920. The author explores the main contents of the correspondence, through a chronological-thematic analysis. The letters of 1915 are eminently dedicated to a discussion of the gnoseology-ontology relationship. Here, the author focuses (1.1) on the relationship between reality and knowledge and (1.2) on (...) that between a priori and cognitive principles. The analysis (2) of the 1918-1920 correspondence concludes the article, engaging in the theme of the law of causality. Different in the philosophical background and argumentative style, the late Meinong and the young Hartmann find a field of dialogue that appears not lacking in consequences on the philosophical evolution of the latter. (shrink)

Intuition and Knowledge in Nicolai Hartmann (1911-1926). On the Premises of Critical Ontology. The author considers Nicolai Hartmann’s main points on the relationship between intuition and knowledge in his early and middle works (1911-1926). The author first shows how Hartmann’s critical ontology emerged as a reaction to the approach of the logical idealism of the Marburg School, against which Hartmann defends the existence of an irrational dimension of knowledge that legitimizes a minimum of metaphysics even in the gnoseological sphere. The (...) author then focuses on the way in which Hartmann interprets the relationship between intuition and givenness, apriority, status of a priori principles, and understanding. Hartmann argues that intuition is not exclusively the same as empirical intuition, and that the problem of knowledge should no longer be considered in terms of the distinction between sensibility and understanding, but through the difference between a priori and a posteriori knowledge. (shrink)

The author addresses some central aspects of Antonio Labriola’s Marxist thought moving from Un marxismo «alquanto aristocratico». Studi su Antonio Labriola (2023) by Alberto Burgio and La rivoluzione come problema pedagogico (2022) by Massimo Gabella. The topics of materialistic dialectics and theoretical autonomy of Marxism are also critically reconsidered in the context of Labriola’s political theory.