La réception de Kant en France a été un processus long et tourmenté, souvent contradictoire. Mais... more La réception de Kant en France a été un processus long et tourmenté, souvent contradictoire. Mais reconstruire son histoire ne signifie pas articuler une succession doxographique d’interprétations plus ou moins correctes. Il s’agit plutôt d’étudier la manière dont les usages et les images du criticisme ont contribué à façonner l'histoire philosophique de la France moderne et contemporaine, en relation avec des questions décisives : le dialogue entre la philosophie et la science, les relations entre les traditions philosophiques nationales ou la recherche d'une conception plus dynamique et concrète de l'esprit et de l’expérience. En analysant la période comprise entre les années 1850, début d’une confrontation systématique avec l’œuvre de Kant, et les années 1980, théâtre des dernières disputes spécifiquement françaises sur l’héritage de Kant, ce livre vise à cartographier la présence d’une référence intellectuelle constante, dont l’apport est indissociable de l’évolution même de la philosophie française.
Léon Brunschvicg's contribution to philosophical thought in fin-de-siècle France receives full ex... more Léon Brunschvicg's contribution to philosophical thought in fin-de-siècle France receives full explication in the first English-language study on his work. Arguing that Brunschvicg is crucial to understanding the philosophical schools which took root in 20th-century France, Pietro Terzi locates Brunschvicg alongside his contemporary Henri Bergson, as well as the range of thinkers he taught and influenced, including Lévinas, Merleau-Ponty, de Beauvoir, and Sartre. Brunschvicg's deep engagement with debates concerning spiritualism and rationalism, neo-Kantian philosophy, and the role of mathematics in philosophy made him the perfect supervisor for a whole host of nascent philosophical ideas which were forming in the work of his students. Terzi outlines Brunchvicg's defence of neo-Kantian judgement, historical analysis and the inextricability of the natural and humanist sciences to any rigorous system of philosophy, with wide-ranging implications for contemporary scholarship.
Kant’s Critique of Judgment represents one of the most important texts in modern philosophy. Howe... more Kant’s Critique of Judgment represents one of the most important texts in modern philosophy. However, while its importance for 19th-century philosophy has been widely acknowledged, scholars have often overlooked its far-reaching influence on 20th-century thought.
This book aims to account for the various interpretations of Kant’s notion of aesthetic judgment formulated in the last century. The book approaches the subject matter from both a historical and a theoretical point of view and in relation to different cultural contexts, also exploring in an unprecedented way its influence on some very up-to-date philosophical developments and trends. It represents the first choral and comprehensive study on this missing piece in the history of modern and contemporary philosophy, capable of cutting in a unique way across different traditions, movements and geographical areas. All main themes of Kant’s aesthetics are investigated in this book, while at the same time showing how they have been interpreted in very different ways in the 20th century.
With contributions by A. Bertinetto, P. Canivez, D. Cecchi, D. Costello, N. Emery, S. Feloj, G. Figal, T. Huhn, H.-P. Krüger, T. W. Leddy, S. Marino, C. Paolucci, A. Sauvagnargues, D. J. Schmidt, A. Schubbach, S. R. Stroud, T. Teufel, and P. Terzi.
This article sets out to examine the influence of Alain, nom de plume of Émile Chartier, on Jean-... more This article sets out to examine the influence of Alain, nom de plume of Émile Chartier, on Jean-Paul Sartre’s thought. The thesis is the following: the central categories of the phenomenological ontology articulated in Being and Nothingness recall basic tenets of Alain’s methodological dualism, i.e., the juxtaposition between, on the one hand, the anonymous, unmotivated existence, indifferent to human affairs, and, on the other hand, the subject, which denies this reality through judgment, position of values, and action aimed at the implementation of a project. The goal of the article is to contribute to correcting discontinuist readings of early twentieth-century French philosophy, which insist on the rupture of the 1930s, in order to show how authors such as Sartre took up again, updated and resemanticized ideas and problems of the philosophy of the Third Republic, which they repeatedly declared they wanted to dismiss.
This article examines the ethics of ambiguity formulated by existentialist authors in the 1940s, ... more This article examines the ethics of ambiguity formulated by existentialist authors in the 1940s, linking it to turn-of-the-century debates on ethics between philosophy and the social sciences. The underlying thesis is that, rather than representing a radical conceptual novelty, the ethical thought of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, strained between freedom and situation, constitutes a revisiting and updating of philosophical positions from the landscape of the Third Republic. To demonstrate this, the thought of Frédéric Rauh is examined. Indeed, anticipating what Beauvoir would later call "ambiguity", Rauh sought to develop an ethics of action that would constitute a third way between sociological objectivism and the empty abstractions of idealism and rationalism. By reconstructing the transitions from one generation and historical context to the next, the article shows how, and through which mediators, the existentialists were well aware of this debate and, in their own way, developed a philosophy of action, of ethical experience, similar to Rauh's.
in: Rivista di storia della filosofia, no. 4, 2023
This article focuses on a neglected chapter of the French reception of Kant: the debate on antino... more This article focuses on a neglected chapter of the French reception of Kant: the debate on antinomies. Initially understood, by Victor Cousin’s eclecticism, as symbolizing the abstractness of the Kantian system, antinomies were the focus of articulate interpretations in the second half of the nineteenth century. The debate that arose following Charles Renouvier’s solution, based on the rejection of the mathematical notion of actual infinity, was intense, involving major philosophers of the time, such as François Evellin, Louis Couturat, Henri Bergson and Léon Brunschvicg. The stakes were decisive: the nature of reason, the relationship between philosophy and science, and the possibility of a positive metaphysics. The Author reconstructs and analyzes the interpretations formulated, showing how the debate on antinomies played a decisive role in the formation of French philosophy between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
in: Journal of Transcendental Philosophy, vol. 5, no. 1, 2024
Merleau-Ponty's relationship with his Sorbonne professor Léon Brunschvicg is usually disregarded ... more Merleau-Ponty's relationship with his Sorbonne professor Léon Brunschvicg is usually disregarded or mentioned by scholars as a mere anecdote. Moreover, the rare discussions of the latter's "critical idealism" usually take at face value Merleau-Ponty's partial and biased account. In contrast, this paper argues that in order to understand the genesis of Merleau-Ponty's thought, it is necessary to reassess Brunschvicg's idealism and his views on the relationship between perception and scientific knowledge. Particular attention is drawn to a specific chapter of Brunschvicg's masterwork L'Expérience humaine et la causalité physique, entitled "Théorie intellectualiste de la perception". Therein is articulated the theory of perception that Merleau-Ponty never ceased to contest, and of which his entire oeuvre constitutes a reversal. However, far from highlighting only the elements of opposition, the author also points out the thematic continuity that survives the generational gap between the two authors.
in: Giornale critico della filosofia italiana, vol. 101, no. 3, 2022
This article traces the evolution of Charles Renouvier’s neocriticism through the history, nature... more This article traces the evolution of Charles Renouvier’s neocriticism through the history, nature and content of his journals. The interdependence between his extremely technical, vast and complex philosophical thought and the political context of France in the second half of the nineteenth century is pointed out. In the light of this, the publishing activity is not merely a translation and dissemination of abstract ideas, but a veritable moment of philosophical elaboration. Finally, the article examines the impact of Renouvier’s work and model on his contemporaries and subsequent generations.
This articles focuses on a specific knot in the articulated and, as Paul Ricœur famously said, “h... more This articles focuses on a specific knot in the articulated and, as Paul Ricœur famously said, “heretical” constellation of French phenomenology. The aim is to account for a transition that appears to be particularly interesting from both a theoretical and a historical point of view: that from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s and Mikel Dufrenne’s recasting and overcoming the lifeworld in terms of all-encompassing and more originary conceptions of Being and Nature during the 1950s and the 1960s, to the radical transgression of the phenomenological horizon itself accomplished by their disciple Jean-François Lyotard between the 1950s and the 1970s. As I will argue, far from being simply sidelined, in Lyotard the theme of the lifeworld is instead deconstructed in favor of a dramatic and “scattered” picture of the shattering impact of capitalism and modern technologies on our daily experience. Within this context, art and aesthetic experience become a privileged site of exploration and experimentation.
in: Intellectual History Review, online first 2022; vol. 33, no. 2, 2023
This article canvasses the model of history of philosophy developed by the French philosopher Cha... more This article canvasses the model of history of philosophy developed by the French philosopher Charles Renouvier in the second half of the nineteenth century. Such a model rested on a precise assumption: the entire history of philosophy would be nothing more than the diachronic embodiment of sets of contradictory conceptual pairs, which Renouvier calls "dilemmas" and whose solution would only be practical. The aim of this article is not only to lay out the distinctive traits of Renouvier's history of philosophy, but also to highlight the militant nature of his historiography. In fact, the theory of dilemmas was pitted against the historiographical model that was dominant in Renouvier's formative years, namely the eclectic spiritualism of Victor Cousin, who rather sought to distil from each philosophical system its truth content. In this context, the history of philosophy, far from being the philological discipline it is for us today, has in fact a primarily instrumental and polemical, if not political, value.
in: Rivista di storia della filosofia, no. 4, 2021
André Lalande is known to history almost exclusively as the editor of the famous Vocabulaire tech... more André Lalande is known to history almost exclusively as the editor of the famous Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philosophie, promoted by the newborn Société française de philosophie and published even nowadays. Over the years, scholarship has usually focused on the disciplinary and sociological context that instilled in fin-de-siècle academic philosophy the need for a tool codifying and normalizing the language of the discipline. From this perspective, the Vocabulaire has been primarily framed as an instrument of disciplinary self-legitimization. However, little is known about the properly philosophical vision that was at the roots of such an ambitious editorial enterprise. By bringing to light his theory of "involution", with its theoretical and social implications, this article sets out to reassess the neglected thought of André Lalande, thereby allowing us to see the philosopher behind the editor.
in: Giornale critico della filosofia italiana, vol. 100, no. 1, 2021
This article assesses Émile Boutroux’s contingentist account of scientific knowledge in light of ... more This article assesses Émile Boutroux’s contingentist account of scientific knowledge in light of his interpretation of critical philosophy. The author underlines the recasting of Kantian motives from a spiritualist perspective as well as the rejection of Kant’s stance concerning the relationship between science and metaphysics. The main purpose is to highlight how, far from being a form of neo-Kantianism, Boutroux’s philosophy of science was subordinate to strong metaphysical concerns that had their roots in the French context of the latter half of the nineteenth century.
in: History of European Ideas, vol. 46, no. 6, 2020
Like other philosophical traditions, what we call French spiritualism is a complicated constellat... more Like other philosophical traditions, what we call French spiritualism is a complicated constellation of thinkers who developed partially divergent answers to shared themes or concerns. In order to avoid easy generalizations and artificial labels, this article aims to explore the many-voiced character of this tradition by focusing on a debate on the notion of 'liberté morale' that took place in 1903 at the Société française de philosophie. Given the number and the calibre of the participants, as well as the centrality of the discussed notion, this episode sets the perfect stage for an in-situ assessment of the inner fault lines underlying any superficial unity in the French spiritualist tradition.
in: Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 82, no. 2, 2021
In 1876, the French philosopher Charles Renouvier published “Uchronie”, an obscure philosophical ... more In 1876, the French philosopher Charles Renouvier published “Uchronie”, an obscure philosophical novel narrating an alternate history where Christianity fails to take root in the West. Far from being a literary divertissement, the novel rests on an articulated philosophy of history, which emphasizes the role of contingency and human freedom in opposition to the organicist and deterministic historical narratives of the time. My purpose is to provide the theoretical outlook of Renouvier’s “philosophie analytique de l’histoire” and to place it within its original historical context, in light of Renouvier’s reactions to the political and intellectual vicissitudes of the Third Republic
in: History of the Human Sciences (forthcoming), 2020
In fin-de-siècle France, we witness a strange circulation of concepts between philosophy, theoret... more In fin-de-siècle France, we witness a strange circulation of concepts between philosophy, theoretical and experimental psychology and the borderline realm of what we would now call meta- or parapsychology. This was a time characterized by a complex process of redefinition of the disciplinary frontiers between philosophy and psychology, which favored the birth of hybrid conceptualities and stark oppositions as well. Furthermore, the great scientific advancements in physics, physiology and psychology fostered hope for a full rational explanation of reality, even of its most unfathomable layers and seemingly bizarre phenomena. Focus-ing on the case of Émile Boirac’s researches on what he termed ‘cryptopsychism’, notably in his book 'Our Hidden Forces', this article aims at showing how Kantian notions and models of consciousness belonging the to the canon of the French spiritualist philosophical psychology were taken up by scientists like Pierre Janet and winded up being assimilated and discussed in the more obscure and precarious realm of the scientific inquiries on metapsychological phenomena. Far from being a mere historical curiosity, this quest for a scientific account of the latent and subconscious life of the mind sheds light on the intricate birth of modern human sciences and their relationship with philosophy between nineteenth and twentieth century.
in: Modern Intellectual History, vol. 17, no. 4 , 2020
This article widens the scope of the history of Hegel’s reception in turn-of-the-century French p... more This article widens the scope of the history of Hegel’s reception in turn-of-the-century French philosophy by thematizing an often neglected moment, namely the years 1897 to 1927. Before the so-called “Hegel-Renaissance,” in fact, the Hegelian dialectics was generally understood as a “panlogist” doctrine aimed at dissolving the concrete individual in the abstract dimension of the concept or in the all-encompassing realm of Absolute Spirit. However, even at the beginning of the century attempts were made to provide a more positive assessment of Hegelian philosophy. The author reconstructs this panlogist controversy by analysing the points of view of some prominent philosophers of the time, namely Charles Renouvier, René Berthelot, Émile Boutroux, Émile Meyerson and Léon Brunschvicg. The aim of the article is to provide a deeper understanding of the historical continuities and discontinuities characterizing Hegel’s reception in France.
La réception de Kant en France a été un processus long et tourmenté, souvent contradictoire. Mais... more La réception de Kant en France a été un processus long et tourmenté, souvent contradictoire. Mais reconstruire son histoire ne signifie pas articuler une succession doxographique d’interprétations plus ou moins correctes. Il s’agit plutôt d’étudier la manière dont les usages et les images du criticisme ont contribué à façonner l'histoire philosophique de la France moderne et contemporaine, en relation avec des questions décisives : le dialogue entre la philosophie et la science, les relations entre les traditions philosophiques nationales ou la recherche d'une conception plus dynamique et concrète de l'esprit et de l’expérience. En analysant la période comprise entre les années 1850, début d’une confrontation systématique avec l’œuvre de Kant, et les années 1980, théâtre des dernières disputes spécifiquement françaises sur l’héritage de Kant, ce livre vise à cartographier la présence d’une référence intellectuelle constante, dont l’apport est indissociable de l’évolution même de la philosophie française.
Léon Brunschvicg's contribution to philosophical thought in fin-de-siècle France receives full ex... more Léon Brunschvicg's contribution to philosophical thought in fin-de-siècle France receives full explication in the first English-language study on his work. Arguing that Brunschvicg is crucial to understanding the philosophical schools which took root in 20th-century France, Pietro Terzi locates Brunschvicg alongside his contemporary Henri Bergson, as well as the range of thinkers he taught and influenced, including Lévinas, Merleau-Ponty, de Beauvoir, and Sartre. Brunschvicg's deep engagement with debates concerning spiritualism and rationalism, neo-Kantian philosophy, and the role of mathematics in philosophy made him the perfect supervisor for a whole host of nascent philosophical ideas which were forming in the work of his students. Terzi outlines Brunchvicg's defence of neo-Kantian judgement, historical analysis and the inextricability of the natural and humanist sciences to any rigorous system of philosophy, with wide-ranging implications for contemporary scholarship.
Kant’s Critique of Judgment represents one of the most important texts in modern philosophy. Howe... more Kant’s Critique of Judgment represents one of the most important texts in modern philosophy. However, while its importance for 19th-century philosophy has been widely acknowledged, scholars have often overlooked its far-reaching influence on 20th-century thought.
This book aims to account for the various interpretations of Kant’s notion of aesthetic judgment formulated in the last century. The book approaches the subject matter from both a historical and a theoretical point of view and in relation to different cultural contexts, also exploring in an unprecedented way its influence on some very up-to-date philosophical developments and trends. It represents the first choral and comprehensive study on this missing piece in the history of modern and contemporary philosophy, capable of cutting in a unique way across different traditions, movements and geographical areas. All main themes of Kant’s aesthetics are investigated in this book, while at the same time showing how they have been interpreted in very different ways in the 20th century.
With contributions by A. Bertinetto, P. Canivez, D. Cecchi, D. Costello, N. Emery, S. Feloj, G. Figal, T. Huhn, H.-P. Krüger, T. W. Leddy, S. Marino, C. Paolucci, A. Sauvagnargues, D. J. Schmidt, A. Schubbach, S. R. Stroud, T. Teufel, and P. Terzi.
This article sets out to examine the influence of Alain, nom de plume of Émile Chartier, on Jean-... more This article sets out to examine the influence of Alain, nom de plume of Émile Chartier, on Jean-Paul Sartre’s thought. The thesis is the following: the central categories of the phenomenological ontology articulated in Being and Nothingness recall basic tenets of Alain’s methodological dualism, i.e., the juxtaposition between, on the one hand, the anonymous, unmotivated existence, indifferent to human affairs, and, on the other hand, the subject, which denies this reality through judgment, position of values, and action aimed at the implementation of a project. The goal of the article is to contribute to correcting discontinuist readings of early twentieth-century French philosophy, which insist on the rupture of the 1930s, in order to show how authors such as Sartre took up again, updated and resemanticized ideas and problems of the philosophy of the Third Republic, which they repeatedly declared they wanted to dismiss.
This article examines the ethics of ambiguity formulated by existentialist authors in the 1940s, ... more This article examines the ethics of ambiguity formulated by existentialist authors in the 1940s, linking it to turn-of-the-century debates on ethics between philosophy and the social sciences. The underlying thesis is that, rather than representing a radical conceptual novelty, the ethical thought of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, strained between freedom and situation, constitutes a revisiting and updating of philosophical positions from the landscape of the Third Republic. To demonstrate this, the thought of Frédéric Rauh is examined. Indeed, anticipating what Beauvoir would later call "ambiguity", Rauh sought to develop an ethics of action that would constitute a third way between sociological objectivism and the empty abstractions of idealism and rationalism. By reconstructing the transitions from one generation and historical context to the next, the article shows how, and through which mediators, the existentialists were well aware of this debate and, in their own way, developed a philosophy of action, of ethical experience, similar to Rauh's.
in: Rivista di storia della filosofia, no. 4, 2023
This article focuses on a neglected chapter of the French reception of Kant: the debate on antino... more This article focuses on a neglected chapter of the French reception of Kant: the debate on antinomies. Initially understood, by Victor Cousin’s eclecticism, as symbolizing the abstractness of the Kantian system, antinomies were the focus of articulate interpretations in the second half of the nineteenth century. The debate that arose following Charles Renouvier’s solution, based on the rejection of the mathematical notion of actual infinity, was intense, involving major philosophers of the time, such as François Evellin, Louis Couturat, Henri Bergson and Léon Brunschvicg. The stakes were decisive: the nature of reason, the relationship between philosophy and science, and the possibility of a positive metaphysics. The Author reconstructs and analyzes the interpretations formulated, showing how the debate on antinomies played a decisive role in the formation of French philosophy between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
in: Journal of Transcendental Philosophy, vol. 5, no. 1, 2024
Merleau-Ponty's relationship with his Sorbonne professor Léon Brunschvicg is usually disregarded ... more Merleau-Ponty's relationship with his Sorbonne professor Léon Brunschvicg is usually disregarded or mentioned by scholars as a mere anecdote. Moreover, the rare discussions of the latter's "critical idealism" usually take at face value Merleau-Ponty's partial and biased account. In contrast, this paper argues that in order to understand the genesis of Merleau-Ponty's thought, it is necessary to reassess Brunschvicg's idealism and his views on the relationship between perception and scientific knowledge. Particular attention is drawn to a specific chapter of Brunschvicg's masterwork L'Expérience humaine et la causalité physique, entitled "Théorie intellectualiste de la perception". Therein is articulated the theory of perception that Merleau-Ponty never ceased to contest, and of which his entire oeuvre constitutes a reversal. However, far from highlighting only the elements of opposition, the author also points out the thematic continuity that survives the generational gap between the two authors.
in: Giornale critico della filosofia italiana, vol. 101, no. 3, 2022
This article traces the evolution of Charles Renouvier’s neocriticism through the history, nature... more This article traces the evolution of Charles Renouvier’s neocriticism through the history, nature and content of his journals. The interdependence between his extremely technical, vast and complex philosophical thought and the political context of France in the second half of the nineteenth century is pointed out. In the light of this, the publishing activity is not merely a translation and dissemination of abstract ideas, but a veritable moment of philosophical elaboration. Finally, the article examines the impact of Renouvier’s work and model on his contemporaries and subsequent generations.
This articles focuses on a specific knot in the articulated and, as Paul Ricœur famously said, “h... more This articles focuses on a specific knot in the articulated and, as Paul Ricœur famously said, “heretical” constellation of French phenomenology. The aim is to account for a transition that appears to be particularly interesting from both a theoretical and a historical point of view: that from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s and Mikel Dufrenne’s recasting and overcoming the lifeworld in terms of all-encompassing and more originary conceptions of Being and Nature during the 1950s and the 1960s, to the radical transgression of the phenomenological horizon itself accomplished by their disciple Jean-François Lyotard between the 1950s and the 1970s. As I will argue, far from being simply sidelined, in Lyotard the theme of the lifeworld is instead deconstructed in favor of a dramatic and “scattered” picture of the shattering impact of capitalism and modern technologies on our daily experience. Within this context, art and aesthetic experience become a privileged site of exploration and experimentation.
in: Intellectual History Review, online first 2022; vol. 33, no. 2, 2023
This article canvasses the model of history of philosophy developed by the French philosopher Cha... more This article canvasses the model of history of philosophy developed by the French philosopher Charles Renouvier in the second half of the nineteenth century. Such a model rested on a precise assumption: the entire history of philosophy would be nothing more than the diachronic embodiment of sets of contradictory conceptual pairs, which Renouvier calls "dilemmas" and whose solution would only be practical. The aim of this article is not only to lay out the distinctive traits of Renouvier's history of philosophy, but also to highlight the militant nature of his historiography. In fact, the theory of dilemmas was pitted against the historiographical model that was dominant in Renouvier's formative years, namely the eclectic spiritualism of Victor Cousin, who rather sought to distil from each philosophical system its truth content. In this context, the history of philosophy, far from being the philological discipline it is for us today, has in fact a primarily instrumental and polemical, if not political, value.
in: Rivista di storia della filosofia, no. 4, 2021
André Lalande is known to history almost exclusively as the editor of the famous Vocabulaire tech... more André Lalande is known to history almost exclusively as the editor of the famous Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philosophie, promoted by the newborn Société française de philosophie and published even nowadays. Over the years, scholarship has usually focused on the disciplinary and sociological context that instilled in fin-de-siècle academic philosophy the need for a tool codifying and normalizing the language of the discipline. From this perspective, the Vocabulaire has been primarily framed as an instrument of disciplinary self-legitimization. However, little is known about the properly philosophical vision that was at the roots of such an ambitious editorial enterprise. By bringing to light his theory of "involution", with its theoretical and social implications, this article sets out to reassess the neglected thought of André Lalande, thereby allowing us to see the philosopher behind the editor.
in: Giornale critico della filosofia italiana, vol. 100, no. 1, 2021
This article assesses Émile Boutroux’s contingentist account of scientific knowledge in light of ... more This article assesses Émile Boutroux’s contingentist account of scientific knowledge in light of his interpretation of critical philosophy. The author underlines the recasting of Kantian motives from a spiritualist perspective as well as the rejection of Kant’s stance concerning the relationship between science and metaphysics. The main purpose is to highlight how, far from being a form of neo-Kantianism, Boutroux’s philosophy of science was subordinate to strong metaphysical concerns that had their roots in the French context of the latter half of the nineteenth century.
in: History of European Ideas, vol. 46, no. 6, 2020
Like other philosophical traditions, what we call French spiritualism is a complicated constellat... more Like other philosophical traditions, what we call French spiritualism is a complicated constellation of thinkers who developed partially divergent answers to shared themes or concerns. In order to avoid easy generalizations and artificial labels, this article aims to explore the many-voiced character of this tradition by focusing on a debate on the notion of 'liberté morale' that took place in 1903 at the Société française de philosophie. Given the number and the calibre of the participants, as well as the centrality of the discussed notion, this episode sets the perfect stage for an in-situ assessment of the inner fault lines underlying any superficial unity in the French spiritualist tradition.
in: Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 82, no. 2, 2021
In 1876, the French philosopher Charles Renouvier published “Uchronie”, an obscure philosophical ... more In 1876, the French philosopher Charles Renouvier published “Uchronie”, an obscure philosophical novel narrating an alternate history where Christianity fails to take root in the West. Far from being a literary divertissement, the novel rests on an articulated philosophy of history, which emphasizes the role of contingency and human freedom in opposition to the organicist and deterministic historical narratives of the time. My purpose is to provide the theoretical outlook of Renouvier’s “philosophie analytique de l’histoire” and to place it within its original historical context, in light of Renouvier’s reactions to the political and intellectual vicissitudes of the Third Republic
in: History of the Human Sciences (forthcoming), 2020
In fin-de-siècle France, we witness a strange circulation of concepts between philosophy, theoret... more In fin-de-siècle France, we witness a strange circulation of concepts between philosophy, theoretical and experimental psychology and the borderline realm of what we would now call meta- or parapsychology. This was a time characterized by a complex process of redefinition of the disciplinary frontiers between philosophy and psychology, which favored the birth of hybrid conceptualities and stark oppositions as well. Furthermore, the great scientific advancements in physics, physiology and psychology fostered hope for a full rational explanation of reality, even of its most unfathomable layers and seemingly bizarre phenomena. Focus-ing on the case of Émile Boirac’s researches on what he termed ‘cryptopsychism’, notably in his book 'Our Hidden Forces', this article aims at showing how Kantian notions and models of consciousness belonging the to the canon of the French spiritualist philosophical psychology were taken up by scientists like Pierre Janet and winded up being assimilated and discussed in the more obscure and precarious realm of the scientific inquiries on metapsychological phenomena. Far from being a mere historical curiosity, this quest for a scientific account of the latent and subconscious life of the mind sheds light on the intricate birth of modern human sciences and their relationship with philosophy between nineteenth and twentieth century.
in: Modern Intellectual History, vol. 17, no. 4 , 2020
This article widens the scope of the history of Hegel’s reception in turn-of-the-century French p... more This article widens the scope of the history of Hegel’s reception in turn-of-the-century French philosophy by thematizing an often neglected moment, namely the years 1897 to 1927. Before the so-called “Hegel-Renaissance,” in fact, the Hegelian dialectics was generally understood as a “panlogist” doctrine aimed at dissolving the concrete individual in the abstract dimension of the concept or in the all-encompassing realm of Absolute Spirit. However, even at the beginning of the century attempts were made to provide a more positive assessment of Hegelian philosophy. The author reconstructs this panlogist controversy by analysing the points of view of some prominent philosophers of the time, namely Charles Renouvier, René Berthelot, Émile Boutroux, Émile Meyerson and Léon Brunschvicg. The aim of the article is to provide a deeper understanding of the historical continuities and discontinuities characterizing Hegel’s reception in France.
in: Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, vol. 50, n. 1, 2019
In the literature on Derrida’s philosophical formation, the name of Eugen Fink is usually forgott... more In the literature on Derrida’s philosophical formation, the name of Eugen Fink is usually forgotten. When it is recalled, it is most often because of his 1930s articles on phenomenology. In this paper, I claim on the contrary that Fink’s writings exerted a lasting influence on Derrida’s thought, well beyond his early phenomenological works. More specifically, I focus on a 1957 paper presented at conference on Husserl’s thought where Fink formulates an important distinction between operative and thematic concepts. By adopting a both historical and theoretical perspective, I show how this couple of notions can help to understand Derrida’s singular way of reading philosophical texts. In particular, I present the Derridean concept of supplement as a reworking of Fink’s notion of operative concept. I conclude by suggesting that deconstruction can be understood in part as a radicalization of Fink’s theses.
in: Research in Phenomenology, vol. 48, n. 2, 2018
In "Specters of Marx", Derrida suggests that the most fundamental condition of phenomenality lies... more In "Specters of Marx", Derrida suggests that the most fundamental condition of phenomenality lies in the ambiguous status of the noema, defined as an intentional and non-real component of Erlebnis, neither “in” the world nor “in” consciousness. This “irrealty” of the noematic correlate is conceived by Derrida as the origin of sense and experience. Already in his "Of Grammatology", Derrida maintained that the difference between the appearing and the appearance, between the world and the lived experience, is the condition of all other differences. Unfortunately, Derrida limits himself to few self-evident remarks, without further elaborating. The aim of this paper is twofold: on the one hand, to contextualize Derrida’s interpretation of the noema from a theoretical and historical perspective; on the other hand, to show its effects on the early moments of Derrida’s philosophy. The result will shed light on a neglected issue in the relationship between deconstruction and phenomenology.
in: D. Antoine-Mahut, P.-F. Moreau, R. Ragghianti, P. Vermeren (eds.), "Dictionnaire de la philosophie française du XIXème siècle". Paris: Garnier. Forthcoming, 2023
Che cosa intendiamo oggi quando parliamo di arte? Con Aisthesis, Jacques Rancière esplora alcuni ... more Che cosa intendiamo oggi quando parliamo di arte? Con Aisthesis, Jacques Rancière esplora alcuni momenti cruciali, celebri o dimenticati, che hanno modificato profondamente le categorie interpretative e le pratiche artistiche dell’età moderna, definendo l’attuale regime estetico dell’arte. Lo stupore di Winckelmann di fronte al Torso del Belvedere, una visita di Hegel al museo, una serata trascorsa da Mallarmé alle Folies-Bergère, una conferenza di Emerson, una mostra a Parigi o uno spettacolo a Mosca, ma anche l’avvento del cinema e oscuri reportage letterari sui braccianti dell’Alabama: quattordici scene, dalla Dresda del 1764 alla New York del 1941, per raccontare come una statua mutilata possa diventare un’opera perfetta, un mendicante sporco la raffigurazione dell’ideale, un mobile un tempio, una scala un personaggio, le circonvoluzioni di un velo una cosmogonia e il montaggio frenetico dei gesti la realizzazione estetica di un principio di uguaglianza. Smarcandosi dalle ricostruzioni ideologiche ed epocali del Novecento, Aisthesis traccia una controstoria della modernità artistica in cui riemerge un dialogo sotterraneo e a lungo perduto tra l’arte e l’orizzonte comune della vita sensibile.
Convegno organizzato da Fondazione Collegio San Carlo (Modena), Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes ... more Convegno organizzato da Fondazione Collegio San Carlo (Modena), Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Paris),Max-Weber-Kolleg (Erfurt) e Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia
For a long time forgotten, in the last few years dialectical thinking has been paid again great a... more For a long time forgotten, in the last few years dialectical thinking has been paid again great attention. In recent times dialectics has been resumed by and applied to philosophical debates in the Anglo-American scene, as the influential examples of John McDowell and Robert Brandom clearly show. Furthermore, it seems that dialectics is enjoying today widespread appreciation even outside of the specific domain of philosophy, as testified by some developments in the human sciences and, for example, in the realm of psychotherapy with the creation of “Dialectical Behavior Therapy” (DBT) by Marsha M. Linehan.
Among the main protagonists of contemporary philosophy who carefully and intensely dealt with dialectics, Theodor W. Adorno must be surely mentioned. In the last decade, the in-ternational philosophical community seems to have realized again how important and indeed essential his theoretical contribution has been and still is. The publication of previously unpublished writings of the Frankfurter thinker, edited by the Theodor W. Adorno Archiv, has probably contributed to the renewed interest in Adorno’s philosophy. Among these unpublished works, some of his lec-ture courses are of greatest importance, such as those on Aesthetics (1958-59), on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1959), on the Problems of Moral Philosophy (1963), and on Metaphysics (1965). The aim of this issue of “Discipline filosofiche” is to explore how Adorno contributed to the development of dialectical thinking by outlining an original kind of negative dialectics; and in particular to analyze the decisive role played by the question concerning truth that Adorno also (but not only) explored with regard to the “truth content” of art, and always (i.e. even outside of aesthetic theory) with reference to the fundamental “enigmatic character” of truth.
Contents:
- Giovanni Matteucci, Stefano Marino, Presentazione
- Stefano Marino, Giovanni Matteucci, The Dark Side of the Truth. Nature and Natural Beauty in Adorno
- Josef Fruchtl, Tell Me Lies, and Show Me Invisible Images! Adorno’s Criticism on Film – Revisited
- Tom Huhn, The Enigma of Experience; Art and Truth Content
- Giuseppe Di Giacomo, Form, Appearance, Testimony: Reflections On Adorno’s Aesthetics
- Samir Gandesha, Adorno’s Reading of Endgame: Between Autonomy and Authenticity
- Fabrizio Desideri, Ratio, Mimesis, Dialectics: On Some Motifs in Theodor W. Adorno
- Giovanni Zanotti, Contingent Antagonism. A Key to Adorno’s Dialectic
- Paolo A. Bolaños, The Promise of the Non-Identical: Adorno’s Revaluation of the Language of Philosophy
- Filippo Costantini, Cosa mostra la dialettica? Contraddizione, negazione e non identità in Hegel e Adorno
- Giacomo Fronzi, Dialettica negativa, metafisica e intersoggettività. Una lettura relazionale del pensiero di Th.W. Adorno
- Pietro Terzi, Critica e decostruzione dell’immediato. Adorno e Derrida di fronte a Husserl
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Books by Pietro Terzi
Edited Books by Pietro Terzi
This book aims to account for the various interpretations of Kant’s notion of aesthetic judgment formulated in the last century. The book approaches the subject matter from both a historical and a theoretical point of view and in relation to different cultural contexts, also exploring in an unprecedented way its influence on some very up-to-date philosophical developments and trends. It represents the first choral and comprehensive study on this missing piece in the history of modern and contemporary philosophy, capable of cutting in a unique way across different traditions, movements and geographical areas. All main themes of Kant’s aesthetics are investigated in this book, while at the same time showing how they have been interpreted in very different ways in the 20th century.
With contributions by A. Bertinetto, P. Canivez, D. Cecchi, D. Costello, N. Emery, S. Feloj, G. Figal, T. Huhn, H.-P. Krüger, T. W. Leddy, S. Marino, C. Paolucci, A. Sauvagnargues, D. J. Schmidt, A. Schubbach, S. R. Stroud, T. Teufel, and P. Terzi.
Essays by Pietro Terzi
This book aims to account for the various interpretations of Kant’s notion of aesthetic judgment formulated in the last century. The book approaches the subject matter from both a historical and a theoretical point of view and in relation to different cultural contexts, also exploring in an unprecedented way its influence on some very up-to-date philosophical developments and trends. It represents the first choral and comprehensive study on this missing piece in the history of modern and contemporary philosophy, capable of cutting in a unique way across different traditions, movements and geographical areas. All main themes of Kant’s aesthetics are investigated in this book, while at the same time showing how they have been interpreted in very different ways in the 20th century.
With contributions by A. Bertinetto, P. Canivez, D. Cecchi, D. Costello, N. Emery, S. Feloj, G. Figal, T. Huhn, H.-P. Krüger, T. W. Leddy, S. Marino, C. Paolucci, A. Sauvagnargues, D. J. Schmidt, A. Schubbach, S. R. Stroud, T. Teufel, and P. Terzi.
Lo stupore di Winckelmann di fronte al Torso del Belvedere, una visita di Hegel al museo, una serata trascorsa da Mallarmé alle Folies-Bergère, una conferenza di Emerson, una mostra a Parigi o uno spettacolo a Mosca, ma anche l’avvento del cinema e oscuri reportage letterari sui braccianti dell’Alabama: quattordici scene, dalla Dresda del 1764 alla New York del 1941, per raccontare come una statua mutilata possa diventare un’opera perfetta, un mendicante sporco la raffigurazione dell’ideale, un mobile un tempio, una scala un personaggio, le circonvoluzioni di un velo una cosmogonia e il montaggio frenetico dei gesti la realizzazione estetica di un principio di uguaglianza.
Smarcandosi dalle ricostruzioni ideologiche ed epocali del Novecento, Aisthesis traccia una controstoria della modernità artistica in cui riemerge un dialogo sotterraneo e a lungo perduto tra l’arte e l’orizzonte comune della vita sensibile.
Among the main protagonists of contemporary philosophy who carefully and intensely dealt with dialectics, Theodor W. Adorno must be surely mentioned. In the last decade, the in-ternational philosophical community seems to have realized again how important and indeed essential his theoretical contribution has been and still is. The publication of previously unpublished writings of the Frankfurter thinker, edited by the Theodor W. Adorno Archiv, has probably contributed to the renewed interest in Adorno’s philosophy. Among these unpublished works, some of his lec-ture courses are of greatest importance, such as those on Aesthetics (1958-59), on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1959), on the Problems of Moral Philosophy (1963), and on Metaphysics (1965). The aim of this issue of “Discipline filosofiche” is to explore how Adorno contributed to the development of dialectical thinking by outlining an original kind of negative dialectics; and in particular to analyze the decisive role played by the question concerning truth that Adorno also (but not only) explored with regard to the “truth content” of art, and always (i.e. even outside of aesthetic theory) with reference to the fundamental “enigmatic character” of truth.
Contents:
- Giovanni Matteucci, Stefano Marino, Presentazione
- Stefano Marino, Giovanni Matteucci, The Dark Side of the Truth. Nature and Natural Beauty in Adorno
- Josef Fruchtl, Tell Me Lies, and Show Me Invisible Images! Adorno’s Criticism on Film – Revisited
- Tom Huhn, The Enigma of Experience; Art and Truth Content
- Giuseppe Di Giacomo, Form, Appearance, Testimony: Reflections On Adorno’s Aesthetics
- Samir Gandesha, Adorno’s Reading of Endgame: Between Autonomy and Authenticity
- Fabrizio Desideri, Ratio, Mimesis, Dialectics: On Some Motifs in Theodor W. Adorno
- Giovanni Zanotti, Contingent Antagonism. A Key to Adorno’s Dialectic
- Paolo A. Bolaños, The Promise of the Non-Identical: Adorno’s Revaluation of the Language of Philosophy
- Filippo Costantini, Cosa mostra la dialettica? Contraddizione, negazione e non identità in Hegel e Adorno
- Giacomo Fronzi, Dialettica negativa, metafisica e intersoggettività. Una lettura relazionale del pensiero di Th.W. Adorno
- Pietro Terzi, Critica e decostruzione dell’immediato. Adorno e Derrida di fronte a Husserl