Evo-Devo e Morfologia. L'estetico nella nuova sintesi disciplinare

Tardo stile: Godard e Beethoven

Espressione e Gestaltkreis. Sulle relazioni teoriche fra l’estesiologia di Plessner e Weizsäcker

"Onnipotenza del plasma". A proposito della legge di natura in Ejzenstejn

“Al di fuori del self”. Complessità e identità nella crisi dell’antropocene

La conclusione, celeberrima, della Lezione calviniana sulla Molteplicità guida il lettore in campo aperto, lontano anche da quella prodigiosa indagine sul Novecento e sul contemporaneo che le pagine precedenti avevano fornito, e a diretto contatto con un tempo futuro che frattanto è divenuto il nostro presente, un tempo dai confini incerti che tuttavia nelle parole di Calvino acquisisce sorprendentemente una “sigla teoretica” e una forma, con le quali è oggi di nuovo più che mai urgente confrontarci.

Antropologia utopica: Paul Celan e Oskar Becker

Du Bos fra retorica e antropologia: Huarte de San Juan e François Lamy

Il modello antropologico dell’esperienza estetica fra Dewey, Gehlen, Plessner

Editors��� Introduction: Morphology, Organism, Evolution

In biology, interest in form was the prerogative of developmental biology, while it was practically neglected by evolutionary biology. This situation has changed a lot in recent decades and has led to a reinterpretation of the concept of evolution and evolutionism focusing more on the problem of form and morphology. In Italy, especially Alessandro Minelli, one of the editors of this issue, has dedicated his studies to the need to communicate form to structure, to reconnect morphology and evolution. This theme is a highly relevant one for philosophy, inasmuch as the question of form and morphology, since the days of Goethe and Bergson, has always been considered as the starting point for a p…

Il “corpo proprio” e il sentire in comune: Empfindung, Einfühlung, Mitgefühl. La dinamica del sentire e la questione dell’empatia fra Sulzer ed Herder

The contribution aims to identify some theoretical lines that cross the German Enlightenment reflection from Leibniz and Wolff to Herder, focusing on the relationship between oneself and otherness, between the dimension of “one’s own body” and the theme of “feeling in common”. Thus, we propose to identify some of the flow lines along which reflection on empathy develops. Keywords: Empathy, German Enlightenment, Herder, Self and Otherness, Sulzer

Erweiterung des Kantismus, Umgestaltung der Metaphysik. Il giovane Viktor von Weizsäcker lettore di Kant

This paper aims to examine the relationships between the research of young Viktor von Weizsäcker and Kant’s critical thinking. Starting from the criticism of Driesch’s Neovitalism, here are considered some of the major contributions of Weizsacker in the years 1911-1926, in order to show its path between criticism of knowledge, metaphysics, construction of a biology and a medical anthropology.

Between Uexküll and Weizsäcker: the Criticism of Functionalism and the Configuration of the Biological Act

Character/State

The conceptual couple CHARACTER/STATE is an ideal candidate to demonstrate the virtues of a morphological way of proceeding that allows historically distinct disciplinary horizons to dialogue in order to achieve a new disciplinary synthesis (Love 2003) and first of all in order to reach a new morphological lexicon, aware of the traditions of reference and of the mutual advantage arising from the dialogue itself.

Wind e la sistematica dell'arte

Schopenhauer, l’antropologia e la questione morfologica

Al margine dello studio della natura

Somaesthetics as a Discipline Between Pragmatist Philosophy and Philosophical Anthropology

Richard Shusterman’s somaesthetics provides a disciplinary framework in which come together reflections on the body by the main philosophical traditions of the twentieth century; the paper investigates some relations with Plessner and philosophical anthropology, as well as the rediscovery of some of the themes of Baumgarten’s aesthetics.

L’arte di Orfeo, l’arte di Euridice

Forme viventi. Antropologia ed estetica dell'espressione

L’idea di una scienza estetica della forma vivente è l’obiettivo di questo libro; le relazioni fra antropologia filosofica ed estetica nel pensiero tedesco ne sono l’oggetto, a partire dal motivo “goethiano” della forma vivente e dal tema così decisivo della sua peculiare temporalità, per proseguire con l’analisi del movimento espressivo, inteso come momento decisivo di costruzione di un’antropologia estetica, e con la sperimentazione del valore antropologico dell’esperienza estetica. La riflessione schilleriana sulle relazioni fra movimento volontario e simpatetico nel quadro della costruzione dei grandi modelli antropologici della grazia e della dignità, il capovolgimento nazista della sc…

W.G. Sebald: Amistat i Escriptura

El nostre propòsit, aquí, és el d’articular una idea de po- ètica de l’amistat en l’obra de Winfried Georg Sebald. L’es- criptor alemany, tal vegada el més significatiu entre el final del segle xx i el començament del nou mil·lenni, ha captat l’atenció internacional per una llarga sèrie de temes que re- corren la seva obra: l’interès per la memòria històrica, amb una referència específica al tema de la Xoà i a la recons- trucció del diàleg entre el poble jueu i el poble alemany, sense oblidar temes més específicament «poetològics» com la relació entre el llenguatge i la imatge o la utilització d’es- tratègies intertextuals. Seguint l’estela de les reflexions de Walter Benjamin, Sebald també…

Dominio dello spirito e vivificazione dell’animo: sul rapporto fra volontario e involontario nel saggio schilleriano Grazia e dignità

Imagination and Körperzustand: illusion and play in Moses Mendelssohn’s aesthetic reflection

The aesthetic reflection in the eighteenth century is deeply traversed by an experience perceived as capable of disrupting the disciplinary and cognitive system of early modernity: To feel the “own body,” that is, to feel its state of well-being or discomfort means to somehow modify from the inside the anthropological project of the Century of Enlightenment and to create the space and the lexicon of a modality of relationship (play, aesthetic illusion) that redefines the relationship with oneself and the context of construction of a future community. Whereas “Knowledge” and “Will” articulate the same strategy based on the relationship between the spiritual activity of a subject and the semi…

Forma e tempo nell’antropologia filosofica a cavallo della metà del Novecento

Il sorriso sepolto di Straub-Huillet

Compositional Homology and Creative Thinking

The concept of homology is the most solid theoretical basis elaborated by the morphological thinking during its history. The enucleation of some general criteria for the interpretation of homology is today a fundamental tool for life sciences, and for restoring their own opening to the question of qualitative innovation that arose so powerfully in the original Darwinian project. The aim of this paper is to verify the possible uses of the concept of compositional homology in order to provide of an adequate understanding of the dynamics of creative thinking.

Vincoli ed esperienza: la metodologia morfologica, fra estetica ed esperienza

Formation

Since the first programmatic drafts devoted to MORPHOLOGY, Goethe establishes a very strong connection between the birth of the new science, a dynamic consideration of FORM, and the intent to reach the description of the procedures through which the FORM itself is produced, transformed, and perceived. In fact, the first private entry dedicated to MORPHOLOGY defines it as “Lehre von der Gestalt, der Bildung und Umbildung der organischen Körper”

La retorica arguta di Emanuele Tesauro e il problema del paralogismo

Haeckel Light: sulla filogenesi delle emozioni

TIPO, FORMA, MEMORIA. BUFFON E IL PROBLEMA DELLA DÉGÉNÉRATION

The concept of dégénération in Buffon plays a key role in allowing to articulate a reflection on the relationship between species and individual, in theorizing the unit of the type as hierarchical concept of higher order capable of giving an account of the reality of life in its diversification, and especially in allowing the arising of a consideration of the relationship between matter and living form that will profoundly affect the origins of modern biology as Goethe’s morphological thinking.

Un’affermazione dell’eternità attraverso le rovine del tempo. W.g. Sebald e Thomas Browne, lo sguardo saturnino sulla storia

Analisi della relazione fra Th. Browne e la prosa di Sebald

L’annuncio di sé fra vertigine dello sguardo e spazio dell’immagine

This contribution treats the theme of announcement as “announcement of the Self,” vertigo of subjectivity which, manifesting itself in reality, leads into its own abysmal freedom and responsibility. The Self puts itself in image, on the one hand; and the Self takes upon itself the reality of the image of the world, on the other hand. In this way, the Self lets itself be traversed by the world.

Il gusto nel Settecento: modelli antropologici e fisiologia

Il "genio" da Huarte de San Juan a Kant

Estetica e paradigma immunitario

J. G. Herder, Amore ed egoità, traduzione di S. Tedesco

Here's the first italian translation of Herder’s Liebe und Selbstheit (1781). Translated by Salvatore Tedesco.

Forma e forza

Morfologia estetica

Il presente studio mira ad esaminare alcuni sviluppi del dibattito morfologico novecentesco, indagando sulle relazioni fra estetica, antropologia, filosofia della natura. Se infatti già la nascita settecentesca dell’estetica moderna, con gli incroci tematici di cui essa si sostanzia nel dibattito sulla funzione delle tecniche e dell’arte in senso moderno, sulla natura e la destinazione dell’uomo, e nel progressivo sviluppo delle scienze della vita sino alla nascita della biologia, offre spazi inediti alla costruzione di una scienza della forma, una morfologia appunto nel senso attribuito a questo termine da Goethe, è però nel Novecento che gli sviluppi di una morfologia estetica vengono a i…

L'origine come materia comune

The Origin Seen as Common Matter Twentieth-century theories of form and organic form show a hard ten- sion between the idea of the origin as appropriative dynamics – in which the dynamic element refers to a metaphysics of force, and the form-centring is just defined as appropriation – and the idea of the origin as a ‘common matter’. The essay explains these two theoretical options discussing these opposite polarities in biology and analysing some cinematic examples taken from Ejzenštejn’s thought on Disney’s Silly Symphonies.

Erich Rothacker: Storia della filosofia e sistema dei saperi in prospettiva antropologica

Il ruolo che Erich Rothacker ha svolto nella storia culturale tedesca del Novecento è senza dubbio uno dei più importanti, come si può facilmente dedurre dal suo decennale lavoro all’Università di Bonn nell’ambito del seminario di filosofia da lui diretto dal 1929 al 1954. La sua riflessione e il suo contributo nel campo della storiografia filosofica all’incrocio tra “storia della filosofia”, “filosofia della storia” e “storia dei concetti” sta in qualche modo al crocevia di un ricchissimo nesso di interessi teorici in cui la questione della sistematica delle forme del sapere si sovrappone alla riflessione estetica e alla filosofia dell’arte, la costruzione di una peculiare antropologia cul…

Leibniz, l’individuo, l’Europa: Kurt Huber – Die Weisse Rose

This contribution is dedicated to the figure of Kurt Huber, one of the protagonists of the anti-Nazi resistance group of the White Rose, and to the studies he dedicated to the thought of Leibniz. The great German philosopher, investigated in the link that binds monadology to the thought of individuality, appears as a source for rethinking the relationship between Germany and Europe and for overcoming Nazi barbarism.

Esercizi spirituali di somaestetica

Ordet e la concezione luterana della retorica divina

La cultura in guerra. Ideologie identitarie, nazionalismi, conflitti: Europa 1870-1922

Il cinquantennio che va dalla Guerra franco-prussiana alla conclusione della Grande guerra e all'avvento del fascismo in Italia contrassegnano una fase nuova nel costituirsi dell'ideologia della nazione e del carattere dei popoli. Il volume raccoglie saggi che documentano, discutono e problematizzano la funzione della produzione artistica e culturale e dei dispositivi a essa connessi, nella costruzione e nel consolidamento di quelle ideologie e di quei sentimenti nazionalistici e xenofobi che, se non sono stati causa diretta della guerra, hanno creato consenso nell'opinione pubblica.

Figuration/Figure/Form

It is still Weizsäcker to show that rather than a clear contrast (usually already referring to the names of Plato and Aristotle and to the competition between the concepts of eidos and morphé) it is a necessary correlation and a way through which the fundamental problem of unity of knowledge is placed.

Herder e la questione dell’Einfühlung. Estetica e teoria della conoscenza fra Mitfühlen e Familiengefühl

Herder is usually considered to be one of the mayor sources of the aesthetics of empaty. The present contribution aims at offering a brief rewiew of some main places in Herder aesthetical theory and at reconstructing the genesis of the family of concepts including fühlen, Gefühl, Mitfühlen, Familiengefühl, in order to understand their relationship with regard to the theory of knowledge, the aesthetics, the politics.

"Condurre la vita". L'antropologia retorica come tecnica fra Blumenberg e l'estetica

La forma impudica dell'essere

«Posizione e movimento del corpo sulla scena»: a partire da Schiller e Goethe

Corpo e movimento dell'attore fra Goethe e Schiller

Incarnation

The term “INCARNATION” (Verkörperung) is introduced in the morphological lexicon by Edgar Wind in his study on Das Experiment und die Metaphysik (1934), on the basis of Warburg’s reflection on the FORM and history of the IMAGE.

“L’immagine di un uomo”. Fra letteratura e arti figurative: icone del contemporaneo

Indagine su alcuni aspetti della ricerca estetologica contemporanea, con riferimento agli scritti di Giuseppe Di Giacomo

Storia naturale dell'immagine

Umwelt

The term UMWELT spreads in the German language from the beginning of the nineteenth century, to indicate—both in a general relational and sociological sense, and in more specific reference to the peculiarities of PERCEPTION considered as an essential biological characteristic—the external world that surrounds and accompanies living organisms.

Analogia e omologia: la questione della filogenesi delle emozioni

Aim of this paper is to outline a new evolutionary interpretation of aesthetic emotions, in the light of the most recent developments in Evolutionary Biology, in particular the so-called “Extended Synthesis of Evolution” (Pigliucci-Müller 2010). Focussing on the biological concept of homology, the Author argues that, in order to effectively understand role and evolutionary value of aesthetic emotions, it should be asked not “what aesthetic emotions are for?”, rather “what kind of constraints and homologies influence the specific “shape” of human aesthetic emotions?”. In a few words, we should move from a functionalist approach to human aesthetic emotions towards a morphological one.

Forma e funzione. Crisi dell'antropologia ed estetica della natura

Fra Terrence Deacon e la biologia teoretica: l’origine della facoltà estetica e la questione del gioco

Based on a comparison between the contemporary evolutionary perspective supported, among others, by Terrence Deacon, and the biotheoretical thinking of early twentieth-century Germany, this paper purports to contribute to the debate on the origin of the aesthetic faculty, enhancing the role of morphology and the question of play, meant as an exemplary manifestation of the interaction between individuals and environments.

A. G. Baumgartens Ästhetik im Kontext der Aufklärung: Metaphysik, Rhetorik, Anthropologie

Ritmo della forma e patosofia: l’espressione del vivente nella tradizione morfologica fra Rothacker e Weizsäcker

In the tradition of twentieth-century morphological thinking, the concept of form constitutes the profound unity from which it is possible to articulate the relationship between subject and object and the expressive qualities of experience and reality. Erich Rothacker in his last book, pub- lished posthumously in 1966 and titled Zur Genealogie des menschlichen Bewusstseins, outlines a genesis of human consciousness in which the relationship with reality is structured expressively starting from sensory-motor images up to the conscience of the world (Weltbewusstsein) on the basis of a criterion of organic-expressive significance, while, even more markedly, Viktor von Weizsäcker concludes his …

Niche

No concept in ecology has been more variously defined or more universally confused than ‘niche’.

Una storia per la neoestetica

«Evo-devo meets the Mind». La questione dell’esperienza estetica e l’evoluzionismo contemporaneo, dall’ipotesi degli adattamenti modulari all’interpretazione sistemica dell’omologia

Is it achievable to read aesthetic experience as a modular adaptation, and what would be its implication on the image of man, on aesthetics and on evolutionary theory itself? An alternative path is offered by evolutionary morphology, starting from the elaboration of a biologic concept of organism and from the notion of homology of function as a system of interconnections organized in a hierarchy. We deduce the possibility of thinking the peculiar innovation of aesthetic experience in an evolutionary way.

Morphology

Phenomenology and ontology. In the Goethean project of MORPHOLOGY, some basic theoretical LINES can be seen which have not ceased to profoundly influence the further development of methodological reflection on living FORMS and their becoming, on the relationships between FORM and IMAGE, and not least on the configurations of knowledge in the light of the decisive encounter with FORM and IMAGE.

Aesthetics

Aesthetics, structure and perception of the living form. Since its modern disciplinary foundation, AESTHETICS has developed a position of great interest in defining the relationship between sensitive knowledge, FORM and the question of living FORM. In fact, defining as the aim of AESTHETICS the “perfectio cognitionis sensitivae”.

Estetica, antropologia filosofica e cinema

Una formula chimica danzante

La musica del paesaggio e la singolarità formata. (L'organismo drammatico di Castellucci)

Analisi del percorso estetico di Romeo Castellucci

Constraints, Boundaries, Responsibility: some Remarks on Contemporary Morphological Lexicon, between Aesthetics and Theoretical Biology

Ejzenstejn e i paradigmi antropologici novecenteschi

Morfologia estetica. Qualche riflessione su forma e funzione in estetica alla luce della teoria dell’evoluzione

Funktionskreis e Gestaltkreis: la metafora del circolo nella biologia teoretica

This paper aims to examine the use of the circle metaphor within the functionalist perspective by Jakob von Uexküll and the morphological perspective by Viktor von Weizsäcker. Whereas the functionalist theory dissolves the unity of the organism in the multiplicity of functional relationships, Weizsäcker’s morphology recognizes the fundamental unity of the biological act, leading to a new concept of the living organism.

Critica del riduzionismo e pensiero morfologico. La «Neuronale Ästhetik» di Olaf Breidbach

The proposal of a neuronal aesthetics developed by Olaf Breidbach looks like one of the most advanced points in contemporary morphological thinking and as an extremely challenging effort to redefine the conceptual system of aesthetics; at the same time it is, unfortunately prematurely, the theoretical testament of its author.

Politiche dei saperi e sistema dell'estetica

La promessa della Bellezza. Di Menninghaus, Winfried

Pathos/Pathic

Aristotle’s rhetoric inscribes the discourse on PATHOS within a powerful systematic framework, destined to permanently influence the historical debate, as it identifies in the form of argumentation the structure of a technical elaboration of the elements involved in the persuasive discourse.

Antropologia e retorica della dignità in Schiller

“La peinture moderne, c’est-à-dire le cinématographe”. La forma dell’immagine e il posto dello spettatore, Godard con Foucault a partire dal Manet

Analisi del saggio foucaultiano su Manet

“I nipoti non nati”: la nascita e il fantasma dell’assenza. Riscritture dell’identità come anticipazione narrativa della storia del Novecento – Lebedev, Stepanova

The paper questions the theme of identity and the configuration of historical time starting with two of the most significant authors of contemporary Russian literature, Sergej Lebedev and Marija Stepanova. Sergej Lebedev’s debut novel, The border of oblivion, is entirely based on the elaboration of post- memory, the dynamics of memory and oblivion experienced by the generations that inherit the most traumatic events of the twentieth century, entrusted to one style and a formal work that lead to an unusual icasticity and verbal splendor by probing the darkest recesses of history as the most painful twists of identity and self-recognition and by dwelling on images of shocking plasticity. At t…

"Ästhetische Arbeit": l'estetica atmosferica di Gernot Böhme e l'attualità della retorica

Tempo e forma vivente: Viktor von Weizsäcker

Type/Typology

The concept of TYPE and the reference to a modality of thought characterized by a typological STYLE undoubtedly constitute characteristic elements of the morphological discourse, whether considered in its Goethean meaning, analysed starting from the many philosophical, naturalistic, poetological sources that come together in Goethe’s thought, or still because of the modern and contemporary developments that arose from the Goethean perspective in philosophy and in the natural sciences.

La costruzione del concetto di omologia e i vincoli materiali della forma

Il concetto di omologia riveste un ruolo centrale nella biologia teoretica contemporanea perché attorno ad esso e per suo tramite trovano articolazione numerosi progetti di ricerca miranti a ripensare la centralità dell’organismo, i suoi percorsi evolutivi e il significato della sua interazione con la realtà ambientale. La rete di omologie che tesse l’organismo permette di strutturarne e canalizzarne le innovazioni morfologiche e funzionali. Appunto questa componente sistemica rende dunque l’omologia un concetto fondamentale per una considerazione dinamica della forma vivente, come quella cui mira un’estetica che non intenda limitarsi a indagare sull’atteggiamento estetico e sulle produzion…

Limiti della metafora, limiti della sensibilità. Antropogenesi e linguaggio in Herder

Come il cinema attraversa la metropoli

L'oscuro in Wolff, Baumgarten, Herder

Emergence

The concept of EMERGENCE today knows a fortune that goes beyond the scope of epistemology and the philosophy of science making it one of the leading concepts in the field of theories of COMPLEXITY and innovation and thus risking, at the same time, to disperse its undoubted conceptual power in some descriptive indeterminacy.

Economia del desiderio: piacere e conoscenza nell’estetica di Herder

Published by Herder in 1781, the short study "Liebe und Selbstheit" represents one of the most significant moments of the reception of the works of Hemsterhuis in Germany, and is, at the same time, one of the most advanced points of arrival of the aesthetic and physiological thought of its author.

Homology

“Homology is probably the most important concept in comparative biology. It has been treated in different ways, however, and more than one concept of homology is probably defensible” (Minelli 1994: 18); “Homology is one of the terms most widely employed in biology. Together with species, gene and a few others, it is likely to occur in texts devoted to the most diverse biological disciplines, from MORPHOLOGY to systematics to molecular genetics.

Introduction

Starting from Goethe. Currently, there exists no discipline whose specific boundaries could be defined as MORPHOLOGY. Nevertheless, it is possible to trace out its history in ample terms and to define its scope broadly by understanding it as the place where the semantics of FORMS are defined and where they are connected to a reference IMAGE. The central link in the field of MORPHOLOGY is FORM-IMAGE, and it refers to those dynamics of the FORM and to the DYNAMIC SYSTEMS that have taken hold in late modernity and that continue to grow today.

Esperienza e povertà del cinema, verità dell’immagine

Experience and Poverty of Cinema. The Truth of the Image Today, the aging of every ‘philosophy of history (of film)’ puts the the- oretical discourse in the face of a vital chance: coming back to draw the experiential relationship of a subject – caught in all its empirical heaviness and epistemological complexity – linked to ‘images’. But how does the subject reach this potential mode of being of the experience? How does the relationship between experience and experience of poverty (already emphasized by Benjamin) locate in cinema itself (in the system of cinema and in films)? How can one gather these pluralities in the image and in its peculiar ‘presence’?

Degeneration

Complex and in many ways enlightening, the history of this concept presents the succession of an eighteenth-century phase in which the descriptive and structural meaning prevails, and of an nineteenth-twentieth-century phase in which, vice versa, the concept is charged with highly negative evaluative meanings, to the point of becoming salient in Nazi ideology as the indicator of an anti-model to be annihilated in the name of a totalitarian program connoted at the same time and alternatively in a biological-racial and artistic-stylistic sense.

Schiller filosofo dell'espressione