Impure Thinkers: Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Nicolas Gomez Davila, Alessandro Biral, Giorgio Colli 4018-KONW100-CLASS

The course begins by outlining pure thinking, or presenting a genealogical analysis of the modern Cartesian subject. We will try to show how the modern-age ego capable of cognizing the truth is the result of ignoring the personal experiences, passions and interests of the cognizing subject. The modern ego subordinates to rational criticism anything that does not belong to pure reason and thus hinders logical argumentation leading to the truth. In this sense, pure reason is an abstract reason, and its truths are just as abstract, being separated from the specific lives of people, from their experiences, hopes, and requirements.
The impure thinkers define their philosophical attitude precisely in opposition to the critical philosophy developed during the mechanistic revolution of the 17th century by Descartes, Hobbes, and Spinoza. Without disregarding the importance of the modern age’s philosophical heroes, the impure thinkers have tried to restore personal experiences, passions and fears to their original positions.
Rosenstock-Huessy first reflected on the history of the West in the fields of Verdun, where he fought as a soldier in World War I. It is exactly in this sense that philosophy cannot disregard autobiography; however, the point is not that extreme subjectivism is the only road to cognition. Rather, what is confirmed here is that our experiences and events build us, which means they also shape and deform our cognition. Humans are not pure ego because they are made up of past memories, current actions, and future hopes. According to the impure thinkers, the modern ego does not cognize the real truth, the truth that is meaningful to humans because it makes our lives better and happier, precisely because it disregards the temporal dimension of the truth. Pure truth is true at any time, just like Newton’s laws of physics have always been and always will be true. Human truths, on the other hand, are temporal and temporary, even though this means they stop being truths.
From a political viewpoint, the result of modern philosophical theories is Revolution. Revolution was a bloody way of translating the true theories of the new political science developed by Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau into reality. In short, whereas the relationship between people in pre-modern societies consisted in loyalty and trust, the relationship between individuals and between individuals, society and the State now consists in mistrust. Since, according to modern thinkers, human nature is structurally egotistical and since every person cannot but consistently pursue his or her own interests, the function of Revolution is to establish a legal State that would be able to deter everyone from doing one another harm in the pursuit of their own interests.
According to the impure thinkers, the natural freedom and equality of people, which is the principle of modern politics, is the fruit of theory abstracted from experience. If we consider the different and unique experiences of every person, on top of their character and passions, people are never the same, which means there is always someone more adapted than others to the responsibility of government.
Tracing the ideas of Rosenstock-Huessy, the course will explain the notion of the “Copernican revolution in grammar” created by this philosopher. According to the German thinker, the real first historical person is “you” and not “I”, because when people are born they are first named by others, and do not become able to name themselves until later. The primacy of the other over the ego is actually an element we can also find in Gomez Davila (where the other is the person of Christ) and Biral (where cognizing oneself is unthinkable without intervention from a master, a doctor of souls, in whom we should put our trust).
Another topic of the course will be the distinction proposed by Biral between the ancient and modern type of human; these two types, far from being a chronological division, have always coexisted, and the difference between them is based on a different perspective on happiness. Modern people find happiness in pleasures, in power, in prosperity, and they include many noble people (Nietzsche, for example). In antiquity, the modern type of human being was personified by the Sophists. The ancient type, on the other hand, identifies happiness – as Plato put it – with likening oneself to a god. Ancient types of people are present also in the modern age.
Thus, the impure thinkers try to make philosophy return to the Greek thinking in which life was not separate from theory. On the contrary, it was necessary primum vivere, deinde philosophari. In this perspective, we will try to illustrate some of the ideas offered by the impure philosophy of Giorgio Colli. He was not only the editor of Nietzsche’s posthumously published notes but also, throughout his life, studied Greek wisdom, the relation between primeval knowledge and philosophy as well as the reasons why the human philosophical type was born in Greece.