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    Fragile, Fragile Philosophy
    Fragile, Fragile Philosophy
    Fragile, Fragile Philosophy
    Ebook100 pages1 hour

    Fragile, Fragile Philosophy

    By Massimo Pistone

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    This fragile, fragile philosophy unexpectedly developed an enormous power of conviction and direction.

    It invented individual rights, it founded our way of thinking, it created science in the third century B.C. in Alexandria, it invented democracy.

    From what characteristics does all this power, the fragile philosophy, derive? These ancestors of ours, the classical philosophers, had postulated three things, then forgotten.

    a) The word is not the thing, the sentence is not the fact, the language is not the world. Not even an image of them.

    b) Our thinking is groundless, because the initial concepts, let’s say the axioms from which we start to think, are not based on anything, because they are precisely the first.

    c) Thought, rational discursive intellect, and language are the same, logos, one word indicates one and the other. Thought and language are the same thing.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAustin Macauley Publishers
    Release dateJan 5, 2024
    ISBN9781035842544
    Fragile, Fragile Philosophy
    Author

    Massimo Pistone

    Massimo Pistone is an Italian philosopher, born in Pescara. He is currently director of the department “Communication and Didactics of Art” at the Accademia dei Romani in Rome, Montecelio. For six years, he was director of the Centre for Studies and Research on “Communication, Audiovisual and Networks” at the Link Campus University of Rome. Wikipedia France has indicated him, in a special publication, among the Italian philosophers of the twentieth century. He is the founder and honorary president of the international festival dedicated to abstract cinema, Abstracta. In May 2010, he was invited by the University of Vienna to hold a seminar on “The Different Paths of Abstraction” at the Hofburg site. He is the administrator of the philosophy blog “Einstein & Parmenides”.

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      Book preview

      Fragile, Fragile Philosophy - Massimo Pistone

      About the Author

      Massimo Pistone is an Italian philosopher, born in Pescara. He is currently director of the department Communication and Didactics of Art at the Accademia dei Romani in Rome, Montecelio. For six years, he was director of the Centre for Studies and Research on Communication, Audiovisual and Networks at the Link Campus University of Rome. Wikipedia France has indicated him, in a special publication, among the Italian philosophers of the twentieth century. He is the founder and honorary president of the international festival dedicated to abstract cinema, Abstracta. In May 2010, he was invited by the University of Vienna to hold a seminar on The Different Paths of Abstraction at the Hofburg site. He is the administrator of the philosophy blog Einstein & Parmenides.

      Dedication

      Gabriella e Giovanna.

      Copyright Information ©

      Massimo Pistone 2024

      The right of Massimo Pistone to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

      Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

      The story, experiences, and words are the author’s alone.

      A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

      ISBN 9781035842537 (Paperback)

      ISBN 9781035842544 (ePub e-book)

      www.austinmacauley.co.uk

      First Published 2024

      Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

      1 Canada Square

      Canary Wharf

      London

      E14 5AA

      Acknowledgment

      Accademia dei Romani di Roma Montecelio.

      Author’s Note

      Writing in a clear and understandable way, in philosophy, is a logical obligation.

      If, in fact, philosophical activity tries to untie knots of thought and intrigues that make language and life obscure and tiring, then the positive result of that work will be expressed in a flat and clear way.

      If, on the contrary, philosophical writing will be tiring, this will indicate a failure, the fact that those knots have not been untangled.

      It is appropriate that he shuns the modern game of shuffling cards, of being nebulous, believing that this is a symptom of great depth.

      So, you just get that you can never be caught and criticised.

      But critical thinking is our nature and our strength.

      And the fathers of critical thought, the fragile fathers of the West, are the classical thinkers, from the sixth to the third century B.C.

      They are not ancient; they are our contemporaries, and we dialogue with them, letting them immunise us from philosophical chatter.

      And listening to the words of those philosophers is like being touched by a cool breeze, which is able to sweep away the confusion and make the sky clear again.

      In this book, there are philosophical cues that are sometimes untied, which happens to those who reason on different aspects of thought, trying to observe them from different points of view. The result is to make the writing jump, with the possible outcome of inviting the reader not to calm down.

      If there is darkness in this book, we apologise. Where the writing is unclear, there it failed.

      Fragile, Fragile Philosophy

      Here with us, in the Mediterranean, twenty-six centuries ago, a way of dialogue and unexpected and fragile thinking was born, which is called philosophy.

      A way of dialogue and thinking, because that dialogue is not just any interview but is guided by the system of rules of language, rules that are the foundation and decide the nature of it.

      It’s about the logic.

      Without it, we would have a vocabulary but not a language.

      A way of dialogue and thinking, because it was believed that only dialogue between people could give rise to serious theoretical research. And also, one could expect interesting developments in world knowledge.

      In fact, critical thought has no uniquely formal nature; reason has not only an abstract nature but is a comparison between people, taken in their totality of logos and nouns. Dialogue takes place between human beings.

      Unexpected, because philosophy suddenly appears with a gap that abandons mythical or religious talk.

      The myths and religious beliefs were present and alive in many places and among people around the world.

      But in the Mediterranean, a new discipline explodes, powerful and rigorous, which will characterise our way of thinking until today, with the exercise of critical thinking.

      And the invasion of philosophy in the polis modifies the rules and cultural environment for centuries.

      Unexpected, moreover, because it was not preceded by clues, by symptomatic events, that let foreshadow, or today hypothesise, such an important birth, a rupture, such a fruitful trauma.

      No hypothesis, however cultured and thorough, has been able to give a reason for that birth, unexpected before and then unexplained; maybe it is and will remain a mystery.

      Moreover, if philosophy was born from myth or some religious faith, it would not be understood why it was not born in many other places, equally marked by myths and religions.

      And philosophy is born fragile—very fragile—because it has a dialogical character.

      It is born from an agreement established between those who are interested in understanding something about the world; it is a pact, and that agreement provides for dialogue between human beings with equal dignity, without the presence of any principle of external authority. Neither words or writings of divine origin, nor words or writings of a man so authoritative and undisputed, that

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