The intelligibility of the story of the French author, who in 1964 refused the Nobel Prize for Literature, will kick off the series on twentieth-century thought curated by Carlo Sini: it starts on 25 February
In philosophy we do not start from books, even if their chain over time is indispensable and precious, but we start from what everyone does as a human being. with this in mind that the philosopher Carlo Sini has built the series of great works of thought entitled Filosofi del Novecento, from 25 February on newsstands with Corriere. He explains it in the presentation text of the volume The intelligibility of the story by Jean-Paul Sartre who, perhaps surprisingly, opens the series. At the base of the choice there is the idea of philosophy as a research and action project where every philosopher starts from scratch, always asks again “what philosophy?”, as if he were alone and lost in the darkness.
The philosophy of the twentieth century as Sini understands it is therefore not an objectively definable thing, but the plural and evolving result of actions, thoughts and practices: Without this plural and collective, institutional and private action, philosophy would in fact remain a dead letter. Extract from the great canon of the twentieth century a series of texts, writes Sini, like throwing a probe shot into deep complexity and untranslatable, in an irreducible, uncircumscribable, irresolvable abyss.
Starting from these premises we understand better the idea of start the series from an author like Jean-Paul Sartre that the philosophical habit never leaves him. Symbol of existentialism, author, in 1943, of Being and nothingan all-out intellectual, Sartre also left a mark in literature with his novel Nauseapublished in 1938 after a long series of revisions, with the collection of short stories The wallwith the self-portrait The word in which he recounts the birth into a large middle-class family, the discovery of literature in the home library.
Playwright, founder of the Marxist magazine Les Temps Modernes, critic of communist orthodoxy but alongside the youth protest (in 1968 he took part in the French May and was arrested for civil disobedience), and of the movements of the Third World, Sartre the obligatory stage from which to pass to fully understand the twentieth century (The century of Sartre not surprisingly, the title of a book dedicated to him by Bernard-Henri Lvy).
Critical of American capitalist imperialism, of Gaullism at home, a great accuser of French colonialism in Algeria, whose liberation he supported, the philosopher has attracted the great thoughts and energies of the last century forcing entire generations to say or not sartriane. He did it with his work of him, but also with his personality, with the long association of love and thought that linked him to Simone de Beauvoir and through the cultural collaboration relationships with numerous intellectuals of the time such as Albert Camus and Bertrand Russell. Also the great refusal of 1964, when he returned the Nobel Prize to the sender for literature to avoid being transformed into an institution and being forced to abdicate its cultural and political role, which was part of the myth.
The intelligibility of the story has a complex path, all enclosed in its being an unfinished book, an open construction site as defined by Pier Aldo Rovatti author of one of the texts of the rich introductory apparatus. the second volume of the Critique of dialectical reason, written in 1958 and then abandoned, even though Sartre had already written hundreds of pages in an almost final form. In 1960 the philosopher publishes the first tome, Practical set theoryand leaves in the drawer the second that only much later, in 1985 (Sartre died in 1980 at the age of seventy-five) was published in France by Gallimard.
Gabriella Farina in her introductory text clarifies that the indication of the second volume is inappropriate and questionable since it collects texts written by Sartre in different periods between the years 1958-1962, therefore in part contemporary and in part subsequent to the drafting of the first volume of the Critique (perhaps deliberately discarded by the author): In fact, the two texts interact with each other and integrate into a design which aims to reflect on the legitimacy foundation of historical knowledge.
The volume poses decisive challenges to thought: investigate the meaning of history, ask ourselves how, how much and what we can understand of this meaning, penetrate its opacity. It is enough, writes Rovatti, to justify the fact that the yard has remained a construction site, open for us but abandoned by Sartre and therefore left completely aside for other companies, not so small, in any case more feasible, and not so far theoretically. how The idiot of the familymonumental biographical study on Gustave Flaubert.
At the construction site, Sartre left the philosopher’s tools available to the reader because, beyond the circumstantial and recognizable historical situations to which he refers, the writer poses strong and current questions, which are decisive at all timeslike freedom in history, intersubjective relationships and war, a vocation that is always present in various eras and in different geographical areas.
The critical thinking of the West in 25 weekly volumes
The book by Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) is out on newsstands on February 25 The intelligibility of the story, at the price of 8.90 euros plus the cost of the newspaper. This is the first title in the Filosofi del Novecento series, edited by Carlo Sini, which offers a selection of works published by the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. In all, there are 25 volumes, out every week on Friday, which cover a very wide range of topics: the first opens with a general presentation signed by Professor Sini and each of them contains a guide to reading Paolo Beretta. The second volume of the Philosophers of the Twentieth Century series will be Mysticism and logic by Bertrand Russell, on newsstands starting March 4. They will follow Signpost by Martin Heidegger (March 11); Vita activa by Hannah Arendt (March 18); Prison notebooks (Volume II, Quaderni 10-11) by Antonio Gramsci (March 25); Logic of scientific discovery by Karl R. Popper (April 1). The archeology of knowledge by Michel Foucault (April 8).
February 24, 2022 (change February 24, 2022 | 20:58)
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