_ Source: _Volume 48, Issue 2, pp 197 - 208 The movement of New Realism, which in Italy has been launched by Maurizio Ferraris, is conceived explicitly in opposition to Kant. In his defense of the distinction between ontology and epistemology, Ferraris starts from the presupposition that it is Kant himself who is responsible for their confusion because of his transcendental philosophy and its consequent constructionism. In this paper I will defend Kant’s perspective, explaining his reasons, even against Meillasoux’s “speculative (...) realism.” The basic idea is that Kant’s transcendental philosophy requires a new philosophical attitude, which implies a shift from reality to possibility as the fundamental philosophical category, since only possibility enables a critical perspective on reality. (shrink)

Unlike most readings of Plato’s Theaetetus, which concentrate on gnoseology, this paper places it in the debate on commensurable and incommensurable magnitudes that distinguished Greek philosophical and mathematical thought at the beginning of the 4th century BC and in which Theaetetus played a leading role. The argumentation of the dialogue shows clearly how this debate was important for Plato, to the point that the entire dialogue can be considered as an attempt to consider seriously how incommensurability, and its ontological correlate, (...) the concept of dynamis, could elaborate a new form of logos. (shrink)

In this paper I try to establish a relation between some fundamental concepts of Gadamerian philosophy—namely, the concepts of play, of transmutation into form, and of increase in being—and the concept of truth. The concept of play allows one to conceive the extra-methodical character of truth as an objectivity radically different from that of science: the objectivity of what happens and is thus unrepeatable, absolutely independent of any methodical mastery; the concept of transmutation into form is a theorization of the (...) effectual character of truth; the concept of increase in being shows its nonredundant character, i.e., the idea that truth is more than reality. Truth is eventually conceived as a “transformational concept,” in which ontology, knowledge, and ethics are indissolubly interconnected. (shrink)

La defensa gadameriana del carácter extra-metódico de la verdad de las ciencias humanas, teorizada en Verdad y método, no es el simple rechazo del método; ella nace de la conciencia de que hay verdades que no pueden ser reducibles a las condiciones del método, porque se refieren a una dimensión ontológica que no se refiere a la repetitividad y a la conmensurabilidad. Tales aspectos de lo real son los acontecimientos contingentes, accidentales, aquellos que definimos como propiamente históricos. En este texto (...) me propongo poner a la luz esta dimensión ontológica, que en Aristóteles está en particular en aquella de la praxis, de la acción humana, buscando mostrar que la necesidad de su tematización está estrechamente ligada a las discusiones lógicas y ontológicas que atravesaron el pensamiento griego después del descubrimiento de las grandezas inconmensurables. La ontología de la praxis es una ontología que toma en consideración aquella “irracionalidad” constituida a partir de lo contingente y lo accidental, a la que corresponde una forma de racionalidad que no es más conmensuradora sino mediadora, representada por la phrónesis Gadamer’s vindication of the extra-methodical feature of truth in the human sciences put forward in Truth and Method does not mean a mere refusal of method: rather, it arises from the awareness that there are truths which are not reducible to the conditions of repeatability and commensurability set up by methodical thinking. In fact, the truths of the human sciences refer to the ontological dimension of the contingent and the accidental, i.e. to the dimension of the historical. In this essay I aim at highlighting this ontological dimension, which for Aristotle is eminently that of the praxis and of human action. I will show that such an ontology is a consequence of the logical and ontological discussions which crisscrossed Greek thought after the discovery of the incommensurable magnitudes. The ontology of praxis is an ontology which takes into account the “irrationality” represented by the contingent, the accidental, to which a new form of rationality corresponds: that of phrónesis. Phrónesis is in fact not a commensurative but a mediative rationality. (shrink)

Plato’s Theaetetus sets the problem of the definition of science; moreover, what there is in question is the problem of the definition in general. Defining means measuring, referring to definite parameters what is initially indefinite. But it is not a case that the dialogue opens with the discussion about the commensurable and incommensurable numbers: the search for what is common to all sciences is the search for their common measure, for the term to which various elements are or can be (...) commensurated. The apories Plato is showing in refuting the Protagorean thesis appear clearly as an objection against the absolute commensurability of all things: each sense is a parameter of a determinate sensible object and then results as quite incommensurable with another sense; a present sensation is incommensurable with a non present one, either past or future; all these facts question the possibility of the definition, for they reduce the knowledge, and the reality, to a set of atomic and quite unrelated elements. In the same way, the other definitions of science are rejected because of their incompleteness. But the negative conclusion of the Theaetetus regarding the definition of science must be assumed in a positive way: every operation of defining constantly presents an excess which belongs to the incommensurability and leaves every definition in a state of incompleteness. Through a comparison with the problem of the commensurable and incommensurable numbers, what is eventually shown is that the Being itself, as a mean between subject and predicate in the proposition, constitutes the diagonal element of every process of definition, irreducible to the elements that come into play. Being is, literally said, the incommensurable. (shrink)

“Radical understanding” – an expression recalling Quine’s “radical translation” and Davidson’s “radical interpretation” – concerns that necessary presupposition of every understanding that is shown in extreme cases of indecipherability. Such a minimum content consists in understanding an existence. Indeed, Heideggerian ontological hermeneutics has weaved together understanding and existence to the point that it is possible to establish an analogy between the existential analysis and the several grades of text decipherability: the passage from the inauthentic to the authentic existence can be (...) read as a passage from the semantic (radical interpretation) to the syntactic (radical translation) and to the ontological level (radical understanding). The level of radical understanding is the one in which the minimal content of understanding coincides with its formal condition of possibility, in which understanding is to understand an existence. (shrink)

Hermeneutic rationality arises from the idea that experience is a cumulative process, in which differences are not eliminated but preserved. The universality which derives from this process is an “intensional universality”, which follows a law of direct proportionality between extension and intension: the more an educated individual enriches her experiences, the more she is able to universalize her understanding of others. Experience is then inevitably open and never closed, that is, free for other experiences. If we use the word “domain” (...) to describe the condition of a closed and predetermined system or ontology, the entities of which are pre-assumed, we can therefore call this open universality a “universality without domain”.This description of hermeneutical experience leads to a question about its logical and ontological presuppositions. In the second part of the paper I refer to a particular practice which is central for hermeneutical theory in order to show how I understand these presuppositions: the practice of translation. In translation we experience the impossibility of rendering completely the sense of the source language in a target language, that is, we experience a difference which cannot be suppressed. I compare this experience to the discovery of the incommensurable magnitudes in ancient Greek mathematics, a discovery that shook Parmenidean and Pythagorean ontology: in my opinion, philosophical hermeneutics more or less implicitly develops the consequences of this incredible discovery, which marks the passage to a differential, comparative and integrative rationality and ontology. (shrink)

Con la palabra “biotecnología” podemos entender una tecnología que modifica la vida en el sentido de zoé o de bios. Mientras en el primer caso hablamos de OGM, en el segundo sería más indicado hablar de OCM. En este texto me propongo examinar el significado de esta intervención tecnológica sobre la vida, partiendo de que el hombre es un animal intrínsecamente cultural, que modifica con la tecnología el ambiente circundante y por lo tanto a sí mismo. Los conceptos que intervienen (...) en la definición del hombre como OCM son el de “mundo” y el de “espíritu objetivo”. En la parte final presento una confrontación con la teoría de la mente extendida de Clark y Chalmers, proponiendo una tesis diferente, la “mente concreta”. (shrink)

La traduction n’est pas seulement un problème linguistique mais aussi, et d’abord, un problème d’ordre éthique et politique. Chez les Grecs les présupposés linguistiques de la communauté font de la traduc­tion une opération visant à mettre en évidence les équivalences ou les synonymies, qui sont les fondements de toute conception universaliste du langage. Certaines théories contemporaines de la traduction – notamment celles de Benjamin et d’Ortega y Gasset – permettent en revanche d’en­tendre le processus traductif d’une manière différente : comme (...) un pro­cessus historique de déploiement des différences qui, dans leur totalité, recomposent la langue pure, chez Benjamin ; ou comme un processus où les déséquivalences et l’incommensurabilité entre les langues viennent au premier plan, favorisant l’ouverture vers l’autre et l’étranger, chez Ortega y Gasset. Une telle conception de la traduction nous permet de penser une ontologie différente, dans laquelle le concept de dynamis occupe une posi­tion centrale. (shrink)