Periagoge: Theory of Singularity and Philosophy As an Exercise of Transformation (Philosophy As a Way of Life, 4) 9004515631, 9789004515635

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success or social recognition, but in a “fragment of truth”, hidden somewhere inside each of us, which reveals itself only if we detach ourselves from our ego and its certainties. It is not, therefore, a matter of ��nding yet another philosophical theory of the meaning of existence, but rather of shedding light on the conditions under which such meaning can emerge. The author shows us that the ultimate source of our existential orientation lies in the a�fective sphere, and that the current crisis of orientation is derived from the atrophy of the process of a�fective maturation on a large scale, and from a lack of knowledge and experience about which techniques are best to reactivate it. We are like glowworms that had once unlearned how to illuminate and have since begun to hover around the magic lantern of the ascetic ideal, already criticized by Nietzsche, and then around neon advertising signs. We are glowworms that have forgotten that we have within our own a�fective structure a precious source of orientation. The basic thesis is that this source of orientation can be reactivated through the care of desire and practices of emotional sharing. GUIDO CUSINATO is Full Professor of Philosophy at the University of Verona. He conceives of philosophy as an exercise of transformation and has developed an original theory of “personal singularity” based on the concepts of “order of feeling” and “emotional sharing”. Among his most important publications are Katharsis (Napoli 1999); Person und Selbsttranszendenz. Ekstase und Epoché des Ego als Individuationsprozesse bei Schelling und Scheler (Würburg 2014); and Biosemiotica e psicopatologia dell’ordo amoris (Milano 2018).

Periagoge

remove: “Why?” The underlying thesis is that the answer must not be sought in

Theory of Singularity and Philosophy as an Exercise of Transformation

that the narcissistic culture in which we are immersed systematically tends to

Guido Cusinato

This book returns to the question at the center of our existence, a question

P H I L O S O P H Y A S A WAY O F L I F E T E X T S A N D S T U D I E S

Periagoge TH EO RY O F S I N G U L A R I TY A N D P H I LO S O P H Y A S A N E X E RC I S E O F TR A N S FO R M ATI O N

G U I DO C U S I NATO PHILOSOPHY AS A WAY OF LIFE Texts and Studies, 4 9 789004 515635

issn 2666-6243 brill.com/pwl

Translated by R I E S H I B U YA A N D K A R E N W H I TTL E

Periagoge

Philosophy as a Way of Life texts and studies Series Editors Michael Chase, Eli Kramer, Matthew Sharpe Advisory Board Western Philosophy Arnold Davidson (University of Chicago) Philipe Hoffman (École Pratique des Hautes Études Paris) Sir Richard Sorabji (University of Oxford) Richard Goulet (cnrs Centre Jean Pépin) Han Balthussen (University of Adelaide) William O. Stephens (University of Omaha) East and South Asian Philosophy Jonardon Ganeri (New York University Abu Dhabi) David Fiordalis (Linfield University) Marc-Henri Deroche (Kyoto University) Middle Eastern and Islamic Philosophy Sajjad H. Rizvi (University of Exeter) North American Philosophy Randall Auxier (Southern Illinois University Carbondale) Andrew Irvine (Maryville College) Medieval Philosophy Irene Caiazzo (cnrs-ephe-lem Paris) Psychiatry/Psychology Zofia Rosińska (University of Warsaw) African and Africana Philsophy Oludamini Ogunnaike (University of Virginia)

volume 4 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/pwl

Periagoge Theory of Singularity and Philosophy as an Exercise of Transformation

By

Guido Cusinato Translated by

Rie Shibuya and Karen Whittle

leiden | boston

Cover image: Vincent van Gogh, Irises, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. The book was originally published in Italian as: Guido Cusinato, Periagoge – Teoria della singolarità e filosofia come esercizio di trasformazione (Verona: QuiEdit, 2017, 2nd ed.) and is now translated into English by Rie Shibuya and Karen Whittle. This translation was made possible thanks to a grant from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. Questo libro è stato tradotto anche grazie a un contributo del Ministero degli Affari Esteri e della Cooperazione Internazionale italiano. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at https://catalog.loc.gov LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023038090

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 2666-6243 isbn 978-90-04-51563-5 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-52020-2 (e-book) Copyright 2023 by Guido Cusinato. Published by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Brill Wageningen Academic, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau and V&R unipress. Koninklijke Brill NV reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

To Noemi and Iris

∵

Contents Preface to the English Edition ix List of Figures xi Introduction 1 1 Experience of the Auroral Void and the Periagoge 1 2 Glossary 3 3 Ontology of Singularity and Practices of Emotional Sharing 8 4 Philosophy as an Exercise of Transformation 11 1 Hunger to Be Born and Anthropogenesis 17 1.1 The Heart’s Restlessness and the Hunger to Be Born 17 1.2 Anthropogenesis and Epigenetics 25 1.3 The Myth of Personal Identity: “Who Are You?” 33 1.4 The Singularity: Self-Transcendence and Incompleteness 38 1.5 Personal Non-Self as a Non-Autopoietic System 50 2 Periagoge and Exemplarity 63 2.1 The Periagoge of the Prisoner of the Cave 63 2.2 Desertification of the Real and Emotional Re-Enchantment 71 2.3 Exemplum and Auroral Exemplarity 83 2.4 Exemplarity and Model 90 2.5 The Main Figures in Which Exemplarity Can Be Exercised 95 2.6 Excursus: Linda Zagzebski’s Exemplarist Virtue Theory 105 3 Toward a New Order of Feeling 110 3.1 Primordial Feeling and the “Principle of Expressivity” 110 3.2 Expressive Enactivism 120 3.3 The Main Apparatuses of Expressive Enactivism 127 3.4 Beyond Bauman’s Liquid Society 133 3.5 Infatuations and the Deceptions of Feeling 151 3.6 For a Revaluation of the Concept of Feeling 156 3.7 Experience as the Result of the Non-Neutrality of Feeling 162 4 Emotions That Give Form to Existence 168 4.1 Toward Rethinking the Concept of Emotion 168 4.2 What Use Are Emotions? 175 4.3 The Order of the Heart and the Unexplored Enactivism of the Third Level 180

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4.4 The Metabolization of the Emotions 183 4.5 The Pathic: Being Touched by the World 191 4.6 Personal Emotion as an Anthropogenetic Laboratory 198 5 The Care of Desire 202 5.1 Exercises of De-Constellation: From Destiny to Destination 202 5.2 The Seedling of Desire 210 5.3 Care of Desire and Relations of Care 214 6 Philosophy as Exercise of Transformation 222 6.1 What Is a Philosophical Exercise of Transformation? 222 6.2 Exercises of the Will and Exercises of Feeling in Philosophical Practices of Transformation 240 6.3 Philosophical Exercises of Transformation 248 6.4 Katharsis: Rethinking the “Learning to Die” in the Sense of Ars Vivendi 259 6.5 The Black Sun of Egotism: Learning to Separate Oneself from One’s Own Mortiferous Part 266 6.6 Dis-Tension of the Singularity: Overcoming the Perspective of the Little Self 271 6.7 Plato’s Three Concepts of Wonder 276 6.8 Being Touched by the World: The Thauma between Horror and Wonder 285 6.9 Annunciations: Exercises for Being Born Along with the World 302 6.10 Some Considerations on Exercises of Transformation on the Reflective Level 308 7 Generative Goods and Open Community: The New Axis of Social Transformation 314 7.1 The Failure of Social Transformation in the Era of Narcissism and the Concept of Happiness 314 7.2 The Reorientation of Emotions in the Public Sphere 323 7.3 What Does an Open Community Share? 330 7.4 Generative Sharing as Material Motivation for Social Transformation 336 Bibliographical Abbreviations 347 References 349 Index 361

Preface to the English Edition The first Italian edition of this book appeared in 2014. Some time ago, Mike Chase, one of the directors of this series at Brill, contacted me to propose the publication of an English edition of the text. In view of the translation, I applied some changes to make the text more accessible to readers. In particular, I have significantly reduced footnotes that made that original edition too cumbersome to read; I have also tried to make the line of argument clearer and more linear, by making some displacements, summarizing some parts of the text, and eliminating others. I believe that the originality of this work consists in rethinking the ancient question of the meaning of human existence as a task that is closely interwoven with our anthropogenetic process of formation, which means that, as human beings, we are burdened by the “craft of living”. The novelty is that, instead of seeking the meaning of human existence, or hypothesizing what it should be, I have tried to explore what the conditions are for it to arise. We come into the world without having finished being born. This means that there is no “world of ideas” (kosmos noetos) that orients us, but also no horizon of meaning of existence that is already automatically given to us from birth, at a biological level. Rather, we are like tightrope walkers who walk a wire without any safety net beneath us. In our case, therefore, living becomes a genuine craft. Like all crafts, however, the “craft of living” is not an arbitrary activity that one can improvise, but requires apprenticeship to one or more teachers and consists in giving a form to the singularity of our existence, thanks to relations of care with the other and to practices of emotional sharing. This is a task that is not always successful, as is demonstrated by psychic suffering and the whole of psychopathology. A peculiarity of this text is that it was born and has grown with the help of images. Since it was conceived through images, it may also be read starting from images. First of all, there is the image of the prisoner of the Platonic cave, who, once freed, turns her head, thus turning her gaze away from the shadows projected onto the wall. To describe this movement of turning the head, Plato uses the term “periagoge” that also gives this book its title. A conversion of the entire soul (periagoge holes tes psyches) corresponds to this “turning” of the neck.1 The second image is that of the Wave of Hokusai. While writing the first versions of the text, I was seeking an image that could express the idea of a 1 See R. VII, 518c.

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process of formation that does not occur through an ascent to conform to some purported universal, invariable essence of human nature, but through a downward withdrawal, hence, via the experience of the fall and the crisis of one’s own certainties. In the end, I opted for the Wave of Hokusai: for at the center of this image there is not a simple ascent or descent, but the typical curving of the crest of the wave that breaks the equilibrium; the breaker is the particular individual form that the wave assumes as it falls downwards. This image seemed to me apt to represent the process thanks to which the human singularity assumes form in the experience of crisis and fall. It is an alternative image to the one according to which personal realization occurs through an upward movement of ascent, as represented, for example, by the Ladder of Climacus. The process of human formation is not, however, exhausted in the impact of the crisis or in the fall, but proceeds even further. Concerning this second moment – which becomes explicit thanks to the force of exemplarity – I have referred to two different depictions of the Annunciation: those by Botticelli and Titian. Two different concepts of orientation correspond to these two images: Botticelli depicts the Archangel Gabriel on his knees with a caring attitude, full of attention. His is a bottom-up orientation that expresses itself in relations of care. On the contrary, Titian’s Annunciation depicts an orientation that imposes itself from on high, in an authoritarian and almost menacing way. The debts incurred in the process of gestation of this book are far too many to be adequately enumerated. First and foremost, I am grateful to my students for their hunger for curiosity, and for the passionate discussions on some themes at the center of this text, those that are closest to their basic questions, which inevitably revolve around happiness, the crisis of identity, and the meaning of existence, but also around the way to rethink social transformation and to rise to the ecological challenge. Among the many friends and colleagues who have encouraged me in this research, I will limit myself to remembering, in particular, Mike Chase for his invaluable help, including the final revision of the translation and fertile discussions on some of the central themes of the book. Special thanks go to the two translators, Rie Shibuya and Karen Whittle. Finally, a thought of gratitude to my friend and colleague Elena Pulcini, who encouraged me in this endeavor, and who unfortunately passed away prematurely while the translation was in progress.

Figures 1.1 Japanese water pot (mizusashi) recomposed through the art of kintsugi 48 1.2 Vincent van Gogh, Wheatfield with Crows (1890)  55 2.1 Miniature of St. John Climacus’s Ladder of Paradise, from a twelfth-century ­manuscript preserved in the Monastery of St. Catherine of Sinai  72 2.2 Katsushika Hokusai, The Great Wave off Kanagawa (1826–1833) 81 6.1 Giotto, St Francis Giving His Mantle to a Poor Man (1295) 257 6.2 Jacopo Tintoretto, The Supper at Emmaus (1542–1543) 298 6.3 Matthias Stom, The Supper at Emmaus (1633–1639) 302 6.4 Rembrandt, The Supper at Emmaus (ca. 1628) 303 6.5 Sandro Botticelli, Cestello Annunciation (1489–1490) 306 6.6 Titian, Annunciation (ca. 1535) 307

Introduction 1 Experience of the Auroral Void and the Periagoge This book was born from the need to better understand a particular experience I went through when I was young. This experience delineated a before and an after, and marked my way of conceiving of the meaning of life. I have indicated this experience with the expression “promising void”, and later “auroral void”. It occurs as a consequence of a crisis, and at the termination of a process of emptying and of radical detachment from my own self-referential self. The auroral void is not a void to be filled; it must not be understood by means of the category of lack. Nor is it the result of an emptying that nullifies everything. Rather, it is the result of an emptying that makes the unessential disappear and re-dimensions all the entities, objects, commitments, and roles that revolve around the level or everyday life. By doing so, it becomes a space of openness that allows me to look out upon a new level of experience. But it is also “promising” or “auroral”, because, in this looking out, I do not grasp something that already exists, but I witness the dawn of something that is being born. Perhaps one day I will rewrite a text, limiting myself to directly describing this experience. Here, I am taking instead the “longer” path, which proceeds through confrontation and dialogue with the philosophical tradition. Indeed, in the years that followed, I tried to find the traces of this experience in texts written by various philosophers. The passage that struck me most was the very famous one in which Plato, in the Republic, dwells on the movement carried out by the prisoner in the cave, immediately after she had been freed. In a certain sense, each of us is tied to the perspective of her own self. Detachment from one’s own self is an experience that is similar to that of being unchained. The prisoner of the cave frees herself from customs, and from the perspective that had been imposed on her from birth. And to do so, she turns her head, and thus shifts her gaze, which until that moment had been fixed upon the shadows projected upon the wall of the cave. If I was previously squandering existence by devoting my energies to things of little account, such as the accumulation of wealth, honors, and power,1 through this technique or art of periagogic conversion (techne tes periagoges),2 I had now gained a “greater

1 See Ap. 36c. 2 See R. VII, 518d. © Guido Cusinato, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004520202_002

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Introduction

correctness of gaze” (orthoteron blepoi),3 and therefore I was able to see more clearly what mattered most for me. The significance of this technique of Platonic periagoge has been often sought starting from the final movement, in which the prisoner steps out of the cave and tries to look at the sun. According to some interpretations, Plato thus reduces the process of formation (Bildung), which is set in motion by the periagoge, to a process of straightening out or of conforming to the world of ideas. The question is rather complex, partly because the world of ideas is not visible from inside the cave, and hence the vision of it certainly cannot motivate the initial movement of the periagoge, through which the prisoner is liberated from the vision of the shadows projected onto the wall of the cave. Instead of beginning with the final moment, therefore, it seems more interesting to me to start out from the initial one: the periagoge that describes the severance and deviation from the tracks of custom. This periagoge is not something that one can decide upon through an act of the subject’s will, nor is it motivated by the vision of the world of ideas. Rather, it is the consequence of a disturbance, a dialogue, or an encounter that challenges the certainties and images that had filled my existence until that moment. In the dialogue Theaetetus, the Platonic Socrates describes the pathway of liberation of a young prisoner. After he realized that the young Theaetetus is pregnant in his soul, he decides to reveal to him the secret of his maieutic art, and offers to help him give birth. By means of short questions, he purifies him from false certainties through a process of refutation (elenchos), until he makes him modify the perspective through which he looks at what he previously believed to be true; and this makes Theaetetus experience the pathos of a vertiginous wonder. In this dialogue, a process of transformation is described: the impact of the crisis caused by the refutation obtained through maieutic dialogue; the process of emptying and the overcoming of one’s own self-referential perspective; the periagogic change of perspective; the disillusionment with the narcotizing wonder produced by the sophists to seduce and obtain power; and finally, the emergence of a different type of wonder accompanied by vertigo. What is described in the Theaetetus is a process of transformation that is set in motion by maieutic dialogue with a teacher. Yet other beginnings are also possible, such as the one that derives from tripping over the stumbling block of experience. Moreover, there is a second phase in which the process of formation comes about in taking care of the other. The teacher, too, transforms herself in dialogue with the pupil. What all these 3 See R. VII, 515d.

Introduction

3

different processes of transformation have in common is detachment from the perspective of one’s own self-referential self. 2 Glossary Some terms in this text are used in a sense that is unusual or, at any rate, very different from their common usage. Some preliminary terminological and conceptual specification may therefore be useful before we proceed. Person and the little self. “Person” is a term that is particularly controversial, which has very different meanings. Carl G. Jung, for example, understands by “person” the mask that plays a social role: “a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and, on the other, to conceal the true nature of the individual”.4 For Simone Weil, the “person corresponds to the part within us that is error or sin”; essentially, it is that part which says “I”.5 In order to indicate this concept of the person that is understood as the self-referential subject that says “I”, I use the expression “the little self”. The little self is not to be demonized, insofar as it is fundamental to human existence; but neither is it to be absolutized. Indeed, one often forgets that there is a further, profoundly different concept of person. In recent decades, there has been a long discussion in philosophy about the necessity to leave behind a philosophy that revolves around the subject that says “I”; and yet, never before has the culture of narcissism been so hegemonizing as it is today, so much so that the cult of the subject, understood as the little self, has practically become the new religious creed. What has contributed to the predominance of the ­culture of narcissism is precisely the dominant lack of distinction between person and the little self.6 Unfortunately, this distinction is rarely made in psychology, sociology, or philosophy. This is not a terminological but a conceptual problem. If one prefers, one can even decide to replace the term person, but the problem remains: Are we really only a social role or an interchangeable mask? Is there something beyond the horizon of the little self? Do the individuality and singularity of our existence coincide entirely with the self-referential subject? Are we only a little self that says “I”, or are we also a singularity that listens to the voice of the daimonion of its own individual vocation? This voice 4 Jung 1972, 264. 5 “La personne en nous, c’est la part en nous de l’erreur et du péché. Tout l’effort des mystiques a toujours visé à obtenir qu’il n’y ait plus dans leur âme aucune partie qui dise ‘je’” (Weil 2018, 19). 6 See § 1.4.1 The Dominant Indistinction between Personal Singularity and Self.

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Introduction

of the daimonion turns out to be independent of biological and environmental factors, so much so that it is often very distant from that of our own parents and of the common sense of our own original environment. Weil identifies the overcoming of the little self with the obliteration of our individuality in the Whole. If this were true, then no other form of individuality or singularity would exist outside my egoistic self. Our existence would oscillate exclusively between alienation of the little self and mystical obliteration in the Whole. What I propose is instead to identify a form of awareness and of intermediate existence between the little self and the mysticism that Weil, too, has in mind. It is an intermediate level that retains the characteristics of finite individuality, and hence of incompleteness: that is, of personal singularity. Personal singularity and fragment of truth. Lastly, there is the theological concept of person, in the sense of a spiritual substance of an individual nature. With the concept of “personal singularity”, I propose to leave behind both the immunitarian, self-referential and the substantial and confessional conceptions of person. The “personal singularity” is not a mask or the self-referential self; but neither can it be reduced to a spiritual substance. Rather, it is the result of a process of transcending one’s own little self. Under the impact of crisis, when the individual is faced by the impossibility of giving a form to her own existence, remaining within the horizons of the little self, she searches for a space for further growth in the encounter with the other. The personal singularity is the form that an individual’s existence assumes when she is reborn in the space offered by an exemplarity, once her own little self has been transcended, and, subsequently, in taking care of the other, she herself becomes a space to be offered for the growth of the other. Since the personal singularity assumes form in detachment from the self, it is a “non-self”, in the proper sense of the term. To be more precise, it is a “personal non-self” that recovers a connection with the biosphere, that is, a “cosmic non-self”. The little self aims to fill, expand, and reinforce itself, so as to reach completeness and the universal. The personal singularity follows a different logic: it assumes form thanks to an exercise of emptying. Thanks to this emptying – which can occur in a multitude of ways: from maieutic dialogue to an impact with a crisis – from the depths of our soul, a fragment of truth emerges that speaks to us with the voice of our daimonion, understood, however, as a “destination”, not as a “destiny”. Precisely because it is only a fragment and not a complete truth, we remain a personal singularity, rather than something universal or completed. The personal singularity is therefore constitutively uncompleted.7 Yet 7 See Cusinato 2008.

Introduction

5

it is this very incompleteness that enables openness and dialogue. Our singularity derives ontologically from the fact that we are only a fragment that lives to the extent that it is rubbed against other fragments of truth, in order to light the spark of dialogue. Model and exemplarity. The dominant indistinction between the little self and the personal singularity also has repercussions on that between model and exemplarity. Today we have difficulty distinguishing between a model and an exemplarity. A model is, for example, an influencer who measures her own consensus by the likes, while an exemplarity can be a teacher like Socrates. A model is a little self that has obtained social success and seeks consensus, imposing itself like a mold to be replicated in many copies, perfectly equal to the original. It works as an “instruction manual” for having success, and therefore must be followed rigorously, without exception or deviation. In contrast, the exemplarity is a testimony to the successfulness of an act of self-transcendence out of the little self. This testimony acts in a maieutic sense: it does not ask to be imitated, like the model, but offers me a space in which I can continue my birth; that is, it works as an extrauterine maternal womb that welcomes the free gestation of my singularity. While the model produces conformism and uniformity, exemplarity generates differentiation and singularity. In this case too, I distance myself from the usual meaning of “exemplarity”. Exemplarity is not a paradigm inclined to the rhetoric of good resolutions, nor does it appeal to the universal law of the ought-to-be. It is the person who promotes imitation of a model who uses the edifying rhetoric of “good resolutions” and “good intentions”. The exemplarity’s mode of action is more pure the more it is involuntary: only in this way can it exclusively refer to the nucleus of what it testifies to. Exemplarity does not consist in dispensing edifying resolutions, but in providing a concrete testimony to the successfulness of an expressive pathway of self-transcendence and detachment from the little self, to which a dignity and authoritativeness that arouses wonder and admiration corresponds. Similarly, a counter-exemplarity testifies to a failure to which an indignity that arouses disgust and repulsion corresponds. An “exemplary testimony” is therefore very different from a “moral testimony”.8 In the former case, there is an exemplarity that provides a concrete testimony to something through its acts; in the latter case, there is instead a social model that limits itself to giving good advice through assertions and declarations.

8 See Callahan 2018.

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Introduction

Self-transcendence and transcendence from the world. By self-transcendence, a term already used by Viktor Frankl,9 I understand an act of leaving behind the self-referential perspective of the little self. It refers to a “periagogic” transformation that allows one to gain a broader point of view able to accede to a meaning and information that were not available within the previous point of view. Such self-transcendence is part of the daily experience of human beings, and implies an ability to take a critical distance from one’s own little self, as in, for instance, self-irony or the ability to question one’s own ideas in the face of new events or situations. Self-transcendence raises two problems: one with regard to transcendence, and the other with regard to immanence. (1) Self-transcendence is a transcendence of the little self, and should not be confused with transcendence of the world, which instead refers to the existence of an otherworldly dimension. That there is a self-transcendence is a widely demonstrated given. A frequent mistake is to deduce from the evidence of self-­transcendence the existence of transcendence of the world. In reality, the former does not necessarily imply the latter. (2) Since self-transcendence is part of the world, the contrast between profane/immanent and sacred/­ transcendent thus falls away. Angels are among us, and dwell in the world. This enables a different interpretation of the widespread sense of dissatisfaction, meaninglessness, and boredom by means of which the everyday dramatically crushes an individual’s existence: the goal is not to escape from the world, but to overcome the perspective of the little self, that is, to self-transcend oneself. Change and transformation. By “change” I understand a reversible process: for example, the modification of the form of an elastic material that reacquires its initial form in the absence of external pressure, or the process of ­adaptation that occurs in a chameleon in order to camouflage itself, or in an individual to conform opportunistically to her environment. By “transformation” I understand instead a discontinuous and irreversible process thanks to which an organic, social, or personal system creates a new equilibrium, by generating a form that did not exist before, in the space opened up by breaching the pre-­ existing equilibrium. A transformation is not limited to homeostatically recalibrating or repairing a pre-existing equilibrium; rather, it causes the emergence of a new one. It introduces a new beginning, that is, an ontological novelty with respect to the previous pathway. This new beginning remains unforeseeable not only when it arises, but also as it develops; it is in fact an effect that exceeds the cause, and as such can be traced back neither to the logic of 9 Cf. Frankl 1966.

Introduction

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cause-effect nor to that of finalism. Prior to Goethe, the process of formation (Bildung) had been generally understood as the capability to passively receive the form of an idea, like the clay of a vase receives its form from the idea of a vase. Goethe’s notion of morphology challenges this concept of formation, and discovers that in living beings, formation (Bildung) occurs through transformation (Umbildung). The process of the formation of life does not consist in passively receiving a form that is already present in the world of ideas, but rather in the generation of a new form, that is, in transformation. In this concept of transformation, reference is no longer made to a plasticity understood as the ability to adapt oneself to the reception of a form, but to a plasticity of the living being that generates without recourse to previous models. The plasticity that is limited to receiving an already given form is change; the plasticity that generates a new form is transformation. Anthropogenesis. I indicate the process of transformation (Umbildung) intended to give a form to a being that is born without existential form, by the term “anthropogenesis”. Anthropogenesis is the process of formation that characterizes human beings. In most animal organisms, development – from a fecundated ovarian cell to a complete individual – is a process influenced by genetic and environmental factors that concludes shortly after birth, with the achievement of a completed form and the establishment of a well-defined horizon of meaning. In contrast, in human animals, this process continues in the form of anthropogenesis through practices of emotional sharing. Act and Action. Act and action refer to two distinct levels. An act is co-­performed by persons, whereas an action is performed, or carried out, by the little self or by the collectivity (or one’s own social group). The person assumes form through acts, just as the little self and the collectivity assume form through actions. I call “act” the “cell” to which the expressive metabolism of the person corresponds. Hence, the act is the “cell” through which the expressive pathways that define the person assume form. Morality and ethics. By morality I understand a set of norms and conventions that concern the autopoietic functioning of a social system by means of the reproduction of consensus. It has a function of conformist leveling out, but, at the same time, it is an indispensable presupposition for the functioning of any social system. Morality is all that promotes the social consensus upon which a social system is based. By ethics I understand instead an artisanal process of enhancing emotional literacy and growth, intended to promote individual and social transformation by means of an act of transcending the self-referential perspective

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Introduction

of singular individuals (egocentrism) and of the collectivity (common sense and common feeling).10 Morality aims at the preservation of social identity, and therefore turns out to play a functional role in the logic of autopoietic social systems. What is moral in one specific social system can turn out to be immoral in another. In contrast, ethics plays a functional role in the transformation that occurs in practices of emotional sharing and in relations of care, and hence fulfills a critical function with regard to social conformism. All that promotes openness to the world, by increasing a transformation of the personal singularity and of the social system, is ethical. Morality and ethics are therefore often in profound contrast. However, a healthy dialectic can develop between them. Feeling. A clear distinction is made in Italian between feeling as a noun (“­sentimento”) and feeling as a verb (“sentire”). In what follows, by “feeling” I understand the nominalized infinitive, “il sentire”. This term too is used in a very particular sense: by feeling I do not refer to a subjective activity that remains confined to the psychological or mental level, but to the ability of a living being to interact with the expressive level in such a way as to remain connected with the life of the biosphere. Living and feeling imply each other. Moreover, there are different levels of feeling: from primordial feeling, through which a living being remains connected to the biosphere, to emotions, which represent feeling that orients the movement of an animal organism endowed with a body schema, a social self, or a personal singularity. 3

Ontology of Singularity and Practices of Emotional Sharing

The first part of this book describes a new ontology of personal singularity as a result of an anthropogenetic process. Until now, the problem of singularity has often been confused with that of personal “identity”, and therefore has been dealt with by seeking to identify a “continuity”, that is, a substance or something that remains “identical” to itself and thus stays constant over the course of time. In this way, an ontology of singularity has been developed that ties the concepts of uniqueness and identity together. In reality, the uniqueness of the personal singularity has nothing to do with identity, since, quite 10

By “common feeling” I do not understand Aristotle’s “sensus communis”, that is, the faculty that unifies the data of different senses and refers them to a single object; nor Kant’s “sensus communis”, which allows us to share our judgments. Rather, I understand by “common feeling” the mode of feeling, or the emotional atmosphere, that prevails in the environment in which we live, and which orients our feeling in a conformist way.

Introduction

9

the contrary, it is the result of a pathway of deviation from identity that is characterized by severances, which therefore cannot be described in terms of continuity or identity. This is very well demonstrated by the phenomenon of authentic repentance. Hence, it is misleading to think that uniqueness necessarily implies identity. The personal singularity is indeed unique, but precisely insofar as it is not identical to itself over the course of time. What characterizes the singularity is not the identity of a substance, but the uniqueness of the expressive pathway through which a specific individual has overcome her own little self, in order to be reborn in the encounter with the other, and subsequently assumed form in relations of care. The various passages of the pathway that makes the singularity unique are made possible by practices of emotional sharing and by the force of exemplarity. In the first phase of the process of formation, which is characterized by the overcoming of the little self, the singularity is guided by an exemplarity of others, whereas, in the second phase, it is the singularity itself that becomes exemplary. It is just as misleading to think that the uniqueness of a personal singularity implies unrepeatability, if by unrepeatability one understands the impossibility of going over a specific expressive pathway once again. In fact, the various severances of the pathway that makes the personal singularity unique are motivated by the influence of exemplarity. This influence demonstrates that, under certain conditions, it is possible to go back over the pathway that makes a specific personal singularity unique. However, when I repeat it, I will obtain a different result. This outcome refers to the aforementioned distinction between model and exemplarity: the repetition of the model is the repetition of the rules of an “instruction manual”, and produces identity; in contrast, the repetition of exemplarity is the repetition of a maieutic testimony, which works as a springboard for the existential pathway of other personal singularities: repeatedly jumping on this springboard will have outcomes that will be different each time. Hence, what occurs in the case of the singularity is, paradoxically, a “creative repetition” that generates difference. The fetish of a uniqueness qua unrepeatable identity is the psychological result of the existential terror of becoming. To escape this terror, one resorts to the mythology of rising up. In this way, the unrepeatable identity is thought of as an identity that erects itself upon itself. Its model is that of the building up of a wall. The logic of building up refers to one of the major achievements of human beings: the achievement of the erect position, which has also become the dominant paradigm for describing the process of formation of the human being. Even the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, who is usually original and innovative, conceives of his anthropotechnique as an acrobatic building-up. However, the idea that the singularity assumes form when it builds itself upwards is the result

10

Introduction

of the confusion between the little self and singularity. What assumes form in acrobatically raising itself upwards is not the singularity, but the little self. Yet what if, reversing Sloterdijk’s perspective, the singularity assumed form when it is failing and falling down? And what if, at the origin of the process of formation of the singularity, there were an experience of crisis so radical as to call into question all of our certainties? What I propose is to describe the personal singularity starting from the impact with the crisis. The pathway that defines the singularity includes two phases. The first one consists in an arduous process of deviation from norms, from common sense, from what was believed to be certain until that moment: in short, in assuming form while falling, as is depicted by the crest of Hokusai’s wave. The second phase consists in taking care of the other by offering her a space for growth, that is, by becoming an exemplarity that orients from below the first steps of the periagoge. Here, the image of reference becomes the Cestello Annunciation by Botticelli. In sum, what characterizes the personal singularity is not the continuity and, hence, the identity of a substance, but the discontinuity and, hence, the uniqueness of an anthropogenetic pathway. The extraordinary plasticity of human formation derives from the fact that it is oriented by desire. The introduction of the concept of desire allows the opening of a new perspective on the concept of “daimon”, as developed by James Hillman when he refers to the famous myth of Er, in which Plato hypothesizes that our soul has chosen a model before our birth. In what follows, I rethink the voice of the daimonion as the voice of our “fragment of truth”, that is, as the voice of our desire. There are no “ideae ante res”, nor innate image that is to be realized and already fatalistically consigned to a “destiny” once and for all, but rather a “destination”, that is, a vocation that is to be discovered thanks to desire. Two different conceptions of the process of human formation correspond to these two conceptions of vocation . The first one is understood as the ability to passively receive the form of an ante res idea, as happens, for example, when the clay of a vase receives the form from the idea of a vase. The ­second one, for its part, generates new forms without recourse to pre-­ established models, but thanks to desire. This is not a psychological desire conceived from the perspective of an individual feeling, but an anthropogenetic desire that grows in the practices of emotional sharing directed toward relations of care. Therefore, at the ­center of the ontology of singularity there is not an individual substance, but the care of desire. A personal singularity is the result of a particular order of feeling. And yet, feeling and emotions – contrary to thought, consciousness, and knowledge – have often been considered as something immutable and ahistorical. The impression one has is that of a human being who progresses in knowledge, but not in feeling. This impression is false. Cultural evolution implies the

Introduction

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plasticity of feeling. The characteristic of the human being is that she is born with an extremely plastic feeling which, however, appears as a tiny seedling that must be cultivated and taken care of. It is on this plasticity of feeling that the ontology of singularity is based. This plasticity contradicts the presumed ­a-historicity of feeling. Indeed, the plasticity of feeling is at the basis of the process of transformation of human beings, that is, of the anthropogenetic process that distinguishes human beings. When one thinks of emotions, one often thinks of something visceral and instinctive that sweeps us away, hence something to be avoided. These catastrophes do not derive from emotions per se, but from the lack of “emotional competence” and from the phenomenon of “emotional illiteracy”. In human existence, emotions can sweep us away, precisely because they reveal an extraordinary plasticity and are no longer regulated by instinct. This plasticity must not be “corrected” or “straightened out”, but must be cultivated, insofar as emotions continue to develop and to mature even many years after biological birth. My hypothesis is that emotions fulfill a decisive function in guiding the expressive process by which our existence assumes form in the world through society, culture, and language. Emotions are part of us, and they accompany every gesture and experience of our life. In light of this, it becomes essential to comprehend them, know them, and learn to handle them: they are our window onto the world. From early infancy, it is fundamental to train emotional competence, which must not be thought of from an individualistic perspective: it consists not only in the ability to recognize and name one’s own emotions, but, above all, in the ability to express and share them. 4

Philosophy as an Exercise of Transformation

In the second part of this book, I propose to reinterpret philosophy as an exercise of transformation. There are experiences and facts that make one “tremble” because they make one feel that the ground has been taken from beneath one’s feet, and others that, in contrast, merely produce a reaction of adjustment. The former bring about a fracture and a deep transformation, while the latter only bring about a superficial, momentary change. In the continuity of change, one limits oneself to a defensive type of elastic reaction; in this case, the logic is that of cushioning and neutralizing life’s external irritations and aftershocks, so as to preserve one’s own equilibrium. In contrast, in the fracture produced by transformation, one can open the space for a new beginning. This brings about a different perception of time as well. The time of change proceeds uniformly, so much so that, in this case, I will need to look at a clock

12

Introduction

or a calendar to notice the passage of time. In contrast, the time of transformation is marked by telluric shocks of greater intensity – those that generate seismic faults, and thus leave an indelible mark – that forever mark a before and an after. In this case, to notice the passage of time, I do not need to look at a calendar or a clock. What marks the time of the personal singularity are these faults. Its time is “lived time”, that is, the time that perceives severances as feeling oneself touched by the world. This feeling oneself touched by the world constitutes the original irruption point of the personal singularity. Yet there is also a further difference depending on whether the transformation concerns the little self or the singularity. The little self perceives transformation as its own death; therefore, in its case, transformation coincides with the experience of pain and suffering. The earthquake fault is experienced only as crisis, severance, separation. For the singularity, in contrast, transformation does not necessarily coincide with suffering or pain, but also includes dawns and births, and hence can be associated with very intense positive emotions. The personal singularity can feel itself touched by the world and experience a process of transformation, insofar as its existence does not have a predetermined meaning. A duckling is born with an already innate behavior, and brings about the horizon of meaning of its own existence within the first thirty-six hours of its life, by means of the phenomenon of imprinting studied by Konrad Lorenz. A human being, in contrast, is burdened by the fact that she comes into the world without a predefined meaning: bare human existence is, properly speaking, without meaning. The human being is born with a digestive system that is already able to metabolize milk, but lacks an order of feeling capable of handling her own affective sphere. Her feeling and emotions initially develop and grow only thanks to relations of care and to practices of emotional sharing that are made possible by a maternal figure. It is only as a consequence of this growth of feeling that a horizon of meaning emerges. Human existence has no meaning, but has only possibilities of meaning. Culture is the great incubator of anthropogenesis that allows the existence of human beings to be given that horizon of meaning that is not given at the biological level. Non-human animals start out from an existence that is already encoded at the biosemiotic level. By contrast, the form of human existence is not a foregone conclusion. Its point of departure – into which it can always fall back – is formlessness. The experience of meaninglessness in the face of formlessness makes us discover that there is no biological pedestal upon which to rely in human formation, insofar as the form of human existence is a result, and not a point of departure. The psychological need for certainty has induced one to think of the form of existence as a substance or a predefined essence.

Introduction

13

However, without a continuous exercise of formation, without anthropogenesis, human existence would dissolve and fall into nonsense. For human beings, living becomes a demanding craft. Butterflies and squirrels do not need to do philosophy, for they come into the world with an already concluded structure of meaning. By contrast, human beings need to do philosophy, since they come into the world without having finished being born and lack an existential form. They need to do philosophy because, unlike non-­ human animals, they are burdened with an additional task: to give form to an existence that originally has no form, through practices of emotional sharing that are capable of cultivating their own feeling and of letting it grow. The point of departure of the personal singularity is the periagogic turn. The art of this periagogic conversion – which changes the order of priorities and allows one to look at things with new eyes, beyond common sense and common feeling – coincides with a philosophy understood as an exercise of transformation. When detached from the maieutic and anthropogenetic question, philosophy becomes a purely academic question. The problem had its origins when professional philosophers discovered that they were incapable of generating transformation, and thus were not fecund in the maieutic sense of Socrates. Those philosophers make a virtue out of their own sterility and devote themselves to mere erudition. This is probably where the origin of that philosophical pathology, denounced by Pierre Hadot when he sketches the distinction between “philosophy” and “philosophical discourse”, must be identified.11 In philosophical discourse, the connection between what one thinks and what one does is lost. From Hadot’s perspective, this represents a genuine “betrayal” of philosophy as it was practiced in antiquity, when the true philosopher was not 11

On the difference between philosophy and philosophical discourse, I quote two passages from Hadot: “Philosophy – reduced […] to philosophical discourse – develops from this point on in a different atmo­sphere and environment from that of ancient philosophy. In modern university philosophy is obviously no longer a way of life or form of life […]. Nowadays, philosophy’s element and vital milieu is the state educational institution; this has always been, and may still be, a danger for its independence” (Hadot 1995, 271). “Originally, then, philosophy is above all the choice of a form of life, to which philosophical discourse then gives justifications and theoretical foundations. Philosophical discourse is not the same thing as philosophy: the Stoics said so explicitly, and the other schools admitted it implicitly. True, there can be no philosophy without some discourse – either inner or outward – on the part of the philosopher. This can take the form of pedagogical activity carried out on others, of inner meditation, or of the discursive explanation of intuitive contemplation. But this discourse is not the essential part of philosophy, and it will have value only if it has a relationship with philosophical life” (Hadot 1995, 281–282). Cf. § 6.1.5 Hadot and the Distinction Between “Philosophy” and “Philosophical Discourse”, which is devoted to this subject.

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Introduction

someone who elaborated abstract systems of thought, but a person who applied her thought in her own style of life. A philosopher, for example, was Diogenes of Sinope, who, in accordance with his own thought, lived with that which is essential, living inside a barrel, without the need for anything else. An episode from his life is emblematic in this regard. Plutarch recounts that Alexander the Great, eager to meet Diogenes, found him basking in the sun. Wanting to help him, he asked him if he had a wish, and if he could do something for him. Confronted by such a generous offer, Diogenes limited himself to asking Alexander to move slightly out of the sun so as not to throw shade on him (Plut. Vit. Alex., 259). Philosophy as an exercise of transformation is not only a way of studying transformation, but the way in which human life transforms itself thanks to anthropogenesis. If philosophy serves to learn to think, philosophy as an exercise of transformation sets itself a further goal: it serves to learn to exist. To understand philosophy as an exercise of transformation means to see in it not so much a cognitive method or a system of thought, but first and foremost the form of knowledge in which various anthropogenetic practices of transformation, by means of which human beings have attempted to give a form to their own existence, have sedimented over the course of the millennia. Each anthropogenetic pathway, in its uniqueness, adds to this knowledge a further fragment of truth that would otherwise be lost. This knowledge cannot be translated into universal rules that are the same for all. Philosophy as transformation can therefore return to setting itself the Socratic problem of the good life, provided that it has the foresight to maintain its own task distinct from that of conferring meaning: by establishing “meanings” of human existence, indeed, philosophy would return to being an ideology. After all, it would be naïve to suppose that the widespread sensation of meaninglessness and the fragility of our current framework of cultural orientation derive from the inability to develop a new and higher-performing philosophical “theory” on the meaning of life, justice, or on the good: the meaninglessness derives rather from a deactivation of the process of affective maturation at a mass level, and from a lack of knowledge and experience about the techniques apt to reactivate it. We are like glow-worms that have unlearned how to illuminate. In the age of repressive morals, thus until Nietzsche’s announcement of the death of God, human beings hovered around the magic lantern of the ascetic ideal. Now, in the age of narcissism, they buzz around neon advertising signs instead. They are “glow-worms” who have forgotten that they have within their own affective structure a precious potentiality of orientativity.12 12

Cusinato 2008, 314.

Introduction

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Consequently, the question that should be placed today at the center of philosophy is not that of finding a theory capable of giving a completed meaning to existence and to the world, but rather that of identifying the most effective techniques for promoting a maturation of all affective layers: once reawakened, they will themselves produce orientation and a horizon of meaning, thanks to practices of emotional sharing and to the force of exemplarity. In this book I distinguish two types of transformation of human beings. The first way is the transformation hypothesized by the theory of the post-human through artificial intelligence (AI).13 The second way is represented by a transformation based on the plasticity of feeling and practices of emotional sharing. This “second way”, the anthropogenetic transformation, is obscured today by the increasingly enticing expectations offered by AI. Some time ago, Ray Kurzweil maintained that the singularity is around the corner. It will appear in the moment in which artificial intelligence will overcome human intelligence, originating a new form of life that is superior and potentially immortal.14 Conceiving of this passage from human to post-human beings as a cosmic evolution toward a “superior form of life” denotes a dangerous underestimation of risks. What characterizes these discussions on AI is the attempt to measure the overcoming of human beings exclusively in terms of “intelligence”: in good and in evil, such overcoming is conceived in terms of the development of a superior intelligence, or even of a superintelligence.15 What is not considered in such a form of “cosmic overcoming”, however, is the destiny of feeling. The question remains entirely open as to whether a superintelligence that lacks a plasticity of feeling truly represents an evolution, or whether it is not rather a “cosmic involution”. By “personal singularity” I understand something very different from Kurzweil’s “singularity”. The cultivation of desire represents a way of transformation of human beings that is primarily based on the plasticity of feeling. This does not mean underestimating artificial intelligence, but, if anything, raising the question of the link between the evolution of intelligence and the plasticity of feeling. A superintelligence detached from the plasticity of feeling, and thus from cultivation of desire, would not result in overcoming, but in suppressing the human being qua “ens amans”. From this point of view, the term “post-human” would prove to be merely an embarrassing euphemism. One would not have to do with a “cosmic evolution” from the human to the post-human, but rather a genuine replacement of the human being by a new 13 14 15

See, for example, Domingos 2015; Russel & Norving 2016. Cf. Kurzweil 2006. See, for example, Bostrom 2014.

16

Introduction

entity that is certainly more evolved from the technological point of view but dangerously crude from the point of view of feeling. The danger is real because of a very simple given fact: the human being is a being who comes into the world without a pre-established existential form; that is, without an order of feeling. The instability of the existential form exposes her to a completely new risk of extinction. In other words, the extinction of human beings will not necessarily repeat the scheme traversed in extinctions of other biological species. It will not necessarily occur due to a natural catastrophe, an epidemic, or a war. This new type of extinction will take place if this being, with its extremely precarious and unstable existential form, entirely renounces the transformation made possible by the plasticity of feeling. This is why it is important to keep open the anthropogenetic perspective of a philosophy as an exercise of transformation.

CHAPTER 1

Hunger to Be Born and Anthropogenesis 1.1

The Heart’s Restlessness and the Hunger to Be Born

1.1.1 The Heart’s Restlessness If I turn my gaze deep enough inside myself, I make out a split and an original tension. What are they? How can I interpret this distance from myself? Might it be the consequence of the Kantian gap between my current being (Sein) and my ideal “ought” (Sollen)? I think not. And then: is it really within my power to access my singularity, or will I have to finally recognize that when it comes to my happiness and existence, the will of the intellect – usually so effective – is rendered blind and dumb? Will I not have to recognize that I first have to exit myself to accede to my singularity? This tension cannot be traced back to some “heroic” will of the intellect that aims to bridge the gap between finitude and that which ideally ought to be. If I question myself, I discover a deeper dissatisfaction inside me, a dissatisfaction that concerns my heart’s restlessness; a tension between the openness of my feeling and the closedness of my self-referential being. Everyone can freely analyze her feeling and question the restlessness of her heart. If I do so, I realize that this restlessness does not proceed with hurried and faltering steps. Instead, it advances inexorably, with slow, deep, unstoppable movements. These movements cause me to waver and make me vulnerable. It is a restlessness that pauses, now baffled before what had previously seemed obvious and predictable. A restlessness that perceives the pauses and rigidifications that mark my existence. This restlessness points out to me the existence of a “space” that extends beyond the boundaries of my little self. At first, this space appears to me as an “empty hole”, a lack of fullness, so much so that my first temptation is to fill it with the logic and activities of my little self. This, moreover, is what often happens when I try to bridge the Kantian gap between being and ought-to-be. Indeed, in this case all I do is “fill” and saturate this hole with the activities of my little self. In practice, I try to make myself more “respectable”, by taking up engagements and responsibilities and responding to other people’s expectations. The hardest thing is to come to conceive of the heart’s restlessness beyond the category of “lack”. From a theological perspective, the heart’s restlessness has often been associated with the awareness of being finite and therefore being held in the vice-like grip of time. It is the lack felt by a mortal being who © Guido Cusinato, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004520202_003

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aspires to return to the perfection of God. This is what Augustine expresses in a famous passage at the beginning of his Confessions: “For thou hast made us for thyself and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in thee”.1 Yet it might be reductive to go no further than to contrast restlessness and perfection. What does this restlessness imply for my finitude? The heart’s restlessness is situated halfway between horror at the lack of meaning in what had seemed obvious to me before and wonder at the possibility of seeking a new one. This restlessness makes me waver, since it makes me aware of the inadequacy of the convictions and forms of existence that I used to follow without a second thought. Nevertheless, it also makes me hope, as it now urges my existence to find a new meaning and a new form, even though at the same time it makes me fear that I will not succeed. Hence, restlessness is not something negative, to be erased, but something precious, to be cultivated. Without doubt, for whoever seeks to rest in the certainties of her own little self, restlessness is a sign of imperfection. The little self aims at its own self-­ sufficiency. By doing so, however, it closes itself and becomes isolated within itself. In contrast, my singularity is restless because it seeks a space where it can continue its birth; but it cannot find this space inside the completeness of my little self. The heart’s restlessness marks the incompleteness of my birth, continually pushing me to carry on being born. The tension at the basis of the heart’s restlessness derives from the fact that human beings come into the world without having finished being born. Unlike non-human animals, human beings come into the world without a definitive form. In brief, I am restless because I feel that I am constitutively uncompleted. The incompleteness associated with the restlessness of the heart should not be thought of as a lack, however. The categories appropriate to it are other, such as that of childbirth. A human being giving birth is generating something beyond herself. Creative people are not lacking something, but rather are not closed within themselves. They are unsatisfied with repeating what they are already, and so are driven to create beyond repetition of the identical. The underlying idea originates with Bergson, for whom the Whole is never given once for all. Had everything already been given once for all, then lived time would be pointless, insofar as everything would be a mere repetition of what had already been given. It is this very characteristic of incompleteness that enables openness. Indeed, only to the extent that something is uncompleted does it open itself up instead of remaining closed within itself. The heart’s restlessness makes me aware that there is a space of openness at the 1 “Fecisti nos ad te, et inquietum est cor nostrum, donec non requiescat in te” (August. Conf. 1.1).

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center of my existence, made possible by my being incomplete. In this case, being uncompleted is not a lack to be remedied, but the presupposition for encountering another singularity. The heartlessness of the heart emerges from this “space of opening” at the center of my existence and, therefore, presupposes it. Without it, there would be no restlessness of the heart. What is it about? 1.1.2 The Auroral Void as a Promising Void An empty hole, understood as the lack or privation of something, can only be filled. By contrast, the space at the center of my existence, from which the restlessness of the heart is born, is only “empty” in the sense in which an opening can be “empty”. Yet filling up an opening would be like bricking up a door. This opening renounces being filled so that something else can flow forth. It is a “positive” void, like the opening from which the water of a spring gushes forth. It is a space that does not ask to be filled. It follows a profoundly different logic from the hunger of an empty stomach or the horror vacui at the basis of my little Self’s need for social recognition. It cannot be connected to the logic of lack because it does not want to take possession of something that is already there in order to absorb it, but instead signals that something is coming. It is an “auroral void”: it does not denounce a lack, but on the contrary, it announces, like the dawn, the birth of something that does not yet completely exist. There are aspects of reality that cannot appear in the space already filled by the fullness of my little self. In order for these aspects of reality to be experienced, such a space must first of all be emptied. Once emptied, it becomes capable of welcoming a presence that would not be able to emerge where others already exist. This is why the auroral void is also a “promising void”: it asks not to be filled, while tacitly promising to take in an otherwise inaccessible dimension of reality. In this void, phenomena are enriched with something they did not have before; the fragile filaments become visible along which the world of phenomena radiates into a realm otherwise invisible to the objectifying gaze. Hence, there is an auroral zone between the night and day, between that which already exists in the horizon of the little self and that which is anxious to continue being born. This dawn escapes objectifying thought and the self’s projects. The experience of this auroral void is possible only for the person that transcends her own little self thanks to an exercise of emptying. In the auroral and promising void, the announcement that something is about to be born is implicit; yet it is something that, once born, cannot be embodied in my current existence without provoking transformations. Such an experience therefore corresponds to a moment of disorientation and

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dizziness. It is a generative space, but not in the sense of a spider that creates its web by extracting it from itself, hence in the sense of autopoiesis, but of welcoming something other than oneself in order to generate beyond oneself. It opens up to something of which I cannot take possession. If this were to happen, one would witness the eclipsing of the dawn; that is, the colonization of the auroral void by the self. Contrary to what happens to the fullness of the little self, the auroral void enables a reconnection with the world from the new viewpoint of the singularity. Nevertheless, the singularity is not the “active” subject of the auroral void, but only the guardian of its generativity. The auroral void plays a functional role in the development of relations of care, which are made possible by incompleteness. Only on the basis of the auroral void is the attention that is indispensable for listening to another person, or taking care of the world, made possible. Those able to completely make space inside themselves for the fertility of the auroral void would have full access to an infinite resource. 1.1.3 The Hunger to Be Born as the Origin of Philosophy The auroral void is not an empty hole, but an opening onto a further dimension. Nevertheless, it is hard to individuate. If I do not recognize it or mistake it for something else, then I rush into the situation of the existential void. As the hours, the days and the years go by, I feel an ever-more demanding void grow inside myself. Yet I feel it growing so close to the void of my stomach and the void of the cravings of my little self that I mistake its restlessness for a hunger for food or for social recognition. Of course, this void is also hungry. Yet it is not hunger for food or recognition but the hunger for birth and existence. It does not aim to sate the self but to inaugurate a new beginning beyond the self. This hunger has been called by Schelling the “hunger for Being” or “eternal hunger and thirst for reality”,2 and, more recently, by María Zambrano, the “hunger to be born completely”.3 Zambrano’s expression is the more effective one. Nevertheless, precisely because the Whole is never given once for all (Bergson),4 this expression needs to be modified: rather than a “hunger to be born completely”, it is a hunger to continue being born in the opening made possible by incompleteness. It is hence impossible “to be born completely”, 2 The concept of “hunger” in Schelling has a central role. The spirit (Geist) itself is conceived of as a “hunger for Being” (Hunger nach dem Seyn) (cf. Schelling SW VII, 466–67) or “hunger for reality” (Hunger nach Wirklichkeit) (cf. Schelling SW XIV, 271; 283) and contrasted with egotism or the “hunger” of ego-addiction (Hunger der Selbstsucht) (cf. Schelling SW VII, 390; 483). 3 See Zambrano 1989. 4 Cf. Bergson 1959, 1331–1344.

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and this is why I prefer to use the expression “hunger to be born” rather than “hunger to be born completely”. If the hunger of the stomach and the cravings of the little self follow the logic of the horror vacui, the hunger to be born is horrified by saturation and fullness. It does not ask to ingurgitate and fill itself, or to incorporate and assimilate, but to remain open in order to welcome and generate. The satisfaction of all physiological and psychological needs and all longings for recognition would not be enough to put a stop to its increasingly painful pangs. To seek to satisfy the heart’s restlessness through the logic of filling would mean falling into something like the task of Sisyphus. It is a vicious circle that always brings us back to the point of departure: saturation in terms of filling, absorption, possession, and distraction cannot satisfy the hunger to be born, but hides it, making the existential void that gnaws at me more and more unbearable. As long as I am paying attention to a lack that must be filled, instead of generating something beyond myself, all I am doing is seeking to expand my little self. The hunger to be born shifts the perspective from lack to generation, from possession to donation. In this way, I only continue being born insofar as I transcend my little self. The sociologist Georges Friedmann, in a passage very dear to Pierre Hadot, uses the expression to “become eternal by transcending oneself”. I do not become eternal by extending my memory to future generations thanks to illustrious deeds, but by gradually displacing little bits of my existence beyond the self-referential boundaries of the little self. Eternity is not a question of temporal duration, but of self-surpassing. This hunger to be born can also be seen in the desire to generate beyond oneself in beauty (Smp. 206e). The philosophical act is love of wisdom and not concluded wisdom. It is a loving that has the form of Socrates’ “knowledge of not knowing”. The hunger to be born is the anthropogenetic form of this loving. It is a loving that teaches me not to fill the auroral void with pre-given answers, but to skirt its boundaries without entering inside, without trampling on it, without ambitions of possession, in an ongoing search that is first and foremost listening. The loving at the core of philosophy is not aimed at abstract concepts or truths, but rather at a generative dimension of reality that cannot be objectified and does not allow itself to be grasped. Instead of craving to possess something, it aims at a wider dimension of reality; hence, it produces an expansion of one’s perspective on reality. And it is from this hunger that philosophy can be born. 1.1.4 Blocking the Hunger to Be Born: Disgust and Petrification I am my hunger to be born. The hunger to be born impels me to pass through the opening made possible by my incompleteness and to entwine my existence with

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that of others. It is the desire to flow beyond one’s boundaries and give life to what does not yet exist. But this passage is not given in a clear and linear way. To continue being born, I must leave behind the part of me that is already dead and move the part that is being born beyond the little self. In this laborious movement, all of my mortiferous, that is, deadly part comes together in the “black sun” of egotism and opposes the continuation of my birth by its gravitational force. The little self is indispensable for leading any kind of social life. However, it has the tendency to become absolute, and to expand its “adiposity” beyond its boundaries, until it completely fills the auroral void. I call this adipose tendency of the little self “egotism”. It is not a matter of obliterating self-love, nor even my little self, but rather of eliminating that egotistic adiposity that has “usurped” the center of existence reserved for the auroral void. Egotism blocks the openness to the world made possible by the auroral void. If the gravitational force of egotism prevails, then the hunger to be born may be blocked, even for years, bereft of energy, as if it were paralyzed within a petrified existence; immobile and without urges, like a windless sailboat in a dead calm. The hunger to be born has a crucial anthropogenetic function: it renews a person’s existential form and opens a perspective toward the future. Therefore, if blocked, the hunger to be born causes a fragility and precarity of the existential form. As long as the hunger to be born is at work, I feel that my existential form is guaranteed. If it is blocked, my existential form cannot be renewed and I begin to fear it might waste away. It is interesting to note that there is a close correlation between the hunger to be born and disgust. In certain pathologies, such as obsessive disorders, the hunger to be born is totally blocked and is replaced by a generalized disgust.5 Hitherto, with few exceptions, the function of disgust has been undervalued in philosophy.6 Disgust is, in its essence, a spontaneous defensive reaction toward everything that is perceived as “rotten” or involved in a process of “putrefaction”. When a living form ceases to be alive, its form decomposes and rots. The Italian verb marcire – to rot – derives from the Latin verb morire, to die. “Putrefaction” is a process diametrically opposed to that which is originated by the hunger to be born: in one case there is decomposition through death, in the other creation of a vital form through birth. In putrefaction, disgust perceives the perishing of a vital form. It is true that the teeming of worms in the corpse of a bird can be interpreted as an explosion of life; however, it arouses disgust insofar as I identify with the corpse rather than with the worms. 5 On obsessive disorders, see Gebsattel 1938. 6 On disgust, see Kolnai 2004.

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If the hunger for birth produces existential form, the pathological form of generalized disgust toward everything is the reaction of an obsessive individual who fears losing her own existential form because her hunger to be born has been blocked. In the obsessive person’s modus vivendi, the enactivism of the hunger to be born is replaced by that of disgust. While in normal circumstances, disgust remains limited to processes of putrefaction, in the case of the obsessive individual, it extends to everything in existence and becomes the predominant feeling. Without the hunger to be born, one’s own existential form is not renewed, and everything that surrounds it can become a threat. Hence the obsession with becoming contaminated. Disgust is one of the few enactive resources that remain available to an existence deprived of the hunger to be born: through disgust, a person clutches to what little form she still has, and backs away from everything that could contaminate her form. Finally, in some pathological cases when the hunger to be born becomes totally blocked, there is no longer mere disgust at what is happening around oneself, but also restlessness over what is seething inside. Lacking the hunger to be born, there is the risk that the lived experiences pressing to manifest themselves are not metabolized, and hence remain formless. In this case, the disgust brought about by fear for the contamination of one’s existential form is accompanied by the petrification of one’s own inner existence caused by the inability to metabolize the formless. This is not the experience of being at a loss for words, as might happen in a therapy session for example, but of remaining petrified in the body. What petrifies is the fear of expressing the formless. A madman’s grin is the contraction of a face attempting to block the expression of the formless. The fear of expressing the formless, the obscene and the insane, petrifies existence. So as not to express the formless, as happens in the madman’s grin, existence renounces all expression, and hence becomes petrified. 1.1.5 The Hunger to Be Born and Eating Disorders The perspective of the hunger to be born can also offer a new key to reading the phenomenon of eating disorders. In such disorders, one often observes a confusion between hunger to be born and hunger of the stomach, and, in addition, between the auroral void and emptying the stomach. This confusion impels the sufferer to use the stomach in an inappropriate way. In practice, one tries to satisfy the hunger to be born by filling the stomach, and to achieve the auroral void by emptying it, that is, by vomiting. One particular case of eating disorders is anorexia. The etymology of the term literally is a lack (an-) of desire (orexis). Once again, there is a remarkable

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connection with the emotion of disgust.7 If we bear this etymology in mind, anorexia can be interpreted as a disorder of desire associated with disgust toward food. Form is the central problem in anorexia as well. In anorexia, however, unlike obsession, the fear is not of contamination resulting in the putrefaction of the form, but of a process of “adipose” degeneration of the form. Consequently, the main threat is now represented by the calories present in food. To be sure, a decisive role is also played by the influence of the canons of thinness imposed on a social level. Yet anorexia is a particularly complex process involving multiple factors, one of which can be identified precisely in relation to disturbances of the hunger to be born. What often leads to anorexia is parents’ inability to offer a convincing testimony of what it means to feed the hunger to be born, and hence to open a horizon of meaning to the child’s existence. Without this horizon of meaning, the biological motivations, which are otherwise sufficient to drive an animal organism to feed itself, become ineffective. Further support to the very close relationship between alimentary and affective nourishment in human beings is provided by the anaclitic depression described by Spitz. It appears in children under the age of one who develop a normal bond of attachment with their mother but are later abruptly deprived of it. In this case, in just a few months, the child loses interest in feeding, as if the affective deprivation also rendered the biological stimulus of hunger ineffective. Eating disorders can also arise when the child feels that her birth was not wanted, or the parents somehow stop taking care of the child’s desire or fail to give adequate recognition to her hunger to be born. Parents who do not see this hunger think that they can resolve their child’s restlessness by offering more food, gratifications and social recognition. They offer food instead of shared emotions. The child then looks trustingly into her parents’ eyes, and tries to respond to her own hunger to be born by following the logic indicated by that parental gaze: she will strive to “sate herself on existence” by eating food. Since she cannot identify her own hunger to be born, she continues eating again and again. A few years later, she looks into her parents’ eyes again, but this time with resentment. At that point, sensing that the logic that appears in the parental gaze does not correspond to the logic of her hunger to be born, she dimly intuits that she has been offered excessive attention to food as a surrogate for care for her desire. Hence, it cannot be ruled out that an anorexic person may find no motives to feed her body, because her hunger to be born was not fed beforehand by adequate relations of care. 7 For “persons with anorexia it is rather the repelling effect of disgust, which is expressed by the basic condition of one’s dependency on the body and which results above all from attention to its materiality including its nourishment” (Fuchs 2013, 305).

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Anthropogenesis and Epigenetics

1.2.1 Philosophical Anthropology and Neoteny It is surprising to note the ease with which twentieth-century philosophical anthropology is usually traced back to the category of lack. In the previous pages, I argued that the auroral void and the hunger to be born cannot be traced back to the paradigm of “lack” and “filling”. This allows light to be cast on the misunderstanding on which twentieth-century philosophical anthropology ran aground: human beings do not come into this world as beings that are lacking or deficient, but as uncompleted. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Louis Bolk attributed a crucial role in the hominization process to the phenomenon of neoteny or “chronic infancy”. The resulting deduction was that the human being is the outcome of a “premature birth”, which brings to light a fetus that requires further embryonic development outside the womb. This thesis was interpreted in two opposite ways. Arnold Gehlen, Helmuth Plessner, Adolf Portmann and Clifford Geertz, to cite just some of the most famous names, tend to consider hominization the consequence of an original organic lack, while others, including Paul Alsberg, Max Scheler, and, more recently, Edgar Morin, interpret organic deficiency as one of the various consequences of the hominization process. Upon closer examination, the first version – that of the sick animal (das kranke Tier) or deficient being (das Mängelwesen) – takes up the famous myth of Prometheus in the version which Plato places in the mouth of Protagoras (Pl. Prt. 320c–324a). According to Plato’s Protagoras, human beings are created naked and defenseless because of a mistake by Epimetheus. Then, having realized his brother’s error, Prometheus stole fire and technology from the gods and gifted them to humankind in order to enable their survival. In the ­twentieth-century version as well, humankind remains the fruit of an error, but this time the error is not that of a titan, Epimetheus, but of nature. In this new version, in order to survive, an error of nature (the sick animal) is said to have discovered fire and invented technology alone, without Prometheus’s help. In this way, the progenitor of humankind makes up for an error of nature thanks to the artificial construction of a “cultural” incubator (society) within which to survive.8 In the second version of philosophical anthropology, in contrast, neoteny is included within a hominization process that has already begun: neoteny 8 Cf. Portmann 1973.

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drove humankind to invest further in cultural and social development. In this case, neoteny is no longer an “error of nature” that fortuitously gave rise to the human, but becomes an obligatory step in the hominization process. The hypothesis that neoteny is a consequence and not a cause of the human being is also supported by some recent studies on women in the Pleistocene. The conquest of an erect position not only enabled more creative use of the hands (an activity that favored the progressive increase in the volume of the brain), but also narrowed women’s birth channel (because of the rotation of the position of the hip). Furthermore, as a result of the hominization process, the fetus’ skull became increasingly voluminous and had more and more difficulty in passing through the pelvic inlet, which had become smaller with the conquest of the erect position. In this situation, it can be deduced that only those fetuses born prematurely – hence with a smaller cranial structure or in which vast “soft spots” (a ­phenomenon known today as “fontanelles”) were still present – were at an advantage. However, while this characteristic enabled a successful birth (by allowing the skull to adapt to the reduced size of the birth channel), it necessarily postponed the development of most of the brain until after birth. This would have had no positive consequences were it not for the development in the meantime of new social practices of emotional sharing, capable of interacting directly with synaptic plasticity, and therefore of supporting a postnatal formative process. In this perspective, neoteny is not a random organic defect, but a brilliant evolutionary solution which caused an extraordinary cultural acceleration in a hominization process that was already underway. One of the first to challenge the thesis that hominization is the result of an error of nature was German bacteriologist Paul Alsberg, a name which has unjustly fallen into oblivion. In 1922 Alsberg asserted that the human being is not the result of an organic delay: on the contrary, the organic deficiency is a consequence of being human.9 The problem can be exemplified by a dilemma: were human beings the animals that started to hunt and make themselves clothes because they were sick and lacking fur, or did they lose their fur because they started to dress with the skins of the animals they hunted? According to Alsberg, no form of life characterized by a structural organic deficiency would have sufficient biological time to invent a solution like the one envisaged in the first hypothesis. In addition, Alsberg recognizes as characteristic of human beings not only a progressive organic weakening, that is, a biological involution, but also a 9 Cf. Alsberg 1922.

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contemporaneous evolution on the level of culture. For Alsberg, the human enigma is based on a growing gap between biological involution and cultural and technological development. He explains this gap by reinterpreting technological development not in the sense of compensation, but of the cause of organic deficiency. With the principle of body disengagement (Körperausschaltung), he takes his hypothesis to its extreme consequences. Indeed, for Alsberg, ­technical evolution does not have the function of integrating or making up for humankind’s original biological deficiency, but represents an evolution that follows an extra-organic logic: it is not a crutch offered to the human body, but the “killer” that weakens it to the point of elimination. Animals aim to perfect their biological body. Through technology, human beings produce “a body disengagement” that results in the body’s progressive weakening. In the future, as Alsberg sees it, this will eventually lead to the body’s replacement by what we would now define as a cyborg. In Der Mensch (1940), Gehlen adopts the core of Alsberg’s theory, but turns it on its head.10 However, by overturning Alsberg’s thesis, Gehlen puts philosophical anthropology in a problematic position, since he traces the hominization process and neoteny back to the logic of the immunitarian paradigm. By describing the human being as a deficient being (Mängelwesen), that is, as the unstable animal par excellence, he ends up assigning to institutions and society the task of stabilizing humans, at the risk of reducing the human being to the immunitarian logic of a self-enclosed system. To sum up, two fundamentally different perspectives on neoteny can be identified as running through twentieth-century philosophical anthropology. The first, now dominant perspective – Gehlen’s sick animal – remains within the immunitarian paradigm, while the second – developed by Alsberg and Scheler – paves the way for the anthropogenetic hypothesis. 1.2.2 Epigenetics and the Plasticity of Life By anthropogenesis I mean a particular type of epigenetic process. Epigenetics concerns the way in which genes are expressed. The term “epigenetic” was coined in 1942 by the British biologist and philosopher of science Conrad Hal Waddington (1905–1975), who joined the Greek prefix “epi-” (over, outside of, 10

Cf. Gehlen 1987. However, Alsberg is not quoted either in the 1940 edition or in the subsequent ones. Alsberg, a Jew, definitely had other things to think about, however, owing to his confinement in a concentration camp in Oranienburg in 1933, followed by his ­miraculous release one year later (thanks to his wife’s intercession with the British ambassador in Germany), and then his emigration to England where he devoted himself to the ­medical profession.

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around) to the term “genetics” to indicate hereditary characteristics that are not transmitted through a genetic sequence. Today, it is used to indicate phenotypical changes that can be inherited by a cell or an organism, in which no variation of the genotype is observed.11 Epigenetic factors influence the regulation of a cell’s “gene expression” without altering the DNA sequence. Possible mechanisms that can cause epigenetic effects include DNA methylation and histone acetylation. The problem at the center of epigenetics is that of cellular differentiation. An organism consists of different types of cells that have the same genome. However, cells can differentiate themselves by selectively “turning off” some of their genes during their development. For example, in the “silencing” process, also known as RNA interference (RNAi), the RNA molecules are involved in the sequence-specific suppression of gene expression. The regulation of genetic expression – its activation or repression – occurs not only in relation to stem cells during embryonic development, but also at a later stage, under the influence of epigenetic factors. Epigenetics has undermined the “genocentric” vision according to which no hereditary mutation is induced by the environment, and the adaptation of organisms is the exclusive result of the natural selection of random mutations of the genetic heritage. In fact, natural selection acts not only at the genetic level, but also at the level of epigenetics. In this epigenetic perspective, the evolutionary process is enriched by new factors. In 2005 Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb proposed a “four-dimensional evolution” resulting from the interaction of four types of variation: genetic, epigenetic, behavioral, and symbolic.12 From the epigenetic perspective, the organism is no longer conceivable as a simple genetic machine: in fact, the organism is not limited to automatically executing the genetic programme inscribed in the DNA, but creatively uses the information of the DNA to evolve in the environment. Consequently, concepts such as “plasticity” and “generativity” can no longer be dualistically opposed to the organic. The plastic and generative nature of life is further strengthened if epigenetics is rethought in the perspective of enactivism.13 1.2.3 Anthropogenesis and Epigenetics It is truly impressive to observe how a foal manages to stand up and walk as soon as a couple of hours after being born. Foals are born with an already functional 11 12 13

Cf. Francis 2011. Jablonka & Lamb 2005. On this aspect, see the § 3.3.2 Hunger to Live: Expressive Enactivism From an Epigenetic Perspective.

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body schema. They also continue “being born” after they have come into this world, but in a very limited sense. In contrast, humans are born uncompleted and without the necessary tools to survive. Humans do not have a definitive form, insofar as the plasticity of their existence cannot be enclosed within a predefined essence. At the center of human existence is not the problem of imitating a form or reproducing an eternal human essence, but of inaugurating an open process of formation. Nor can it follow a universal model. Since there is no fixed human nature, defined once and for all, each human being represents a new promise made with regard to humankind: a new Eve or Adam who, by prolonging her birth, inaugurates a new pathway for humanity. The art which, over the centuries, has been refined to try to tackle this challenge, is philosophy in the sense of an exercise of transformation. I propose to use the concept of anthropogenesis to give a more precise and complete description of the formative process that concerns the human as a being that comes into the world without having finished being born. If it is true that, as epigenetics demonstrates, life does not break off the formative process of various living beings even after biological birth, this process assumes a particularly plastic form in the human. In the human, epigenetics is taken to its extreme consequences. It becomes anthropogenesis. This amplification of genetics radically changes the meaning of experience. In anthropogenesis, experience directly fashions a human being’s physiognomy and originality. The human makes itself as it has experiences. Before settling into a habit, experience is a novelty that fertilizes, leaves a mark, touches and transforms; a novelty that offers further room for the birth of the new in me. If it is cared for and nourished, this seed can give rise to a new beginning, a new interest, a new passion. The plastic, transformative activity of the human has an enormous field of action before it, if one considers that, unlike the foal, the human newborn has a self that to a large extent still remains to be born. Anthropogenesis is a formative process that begins immediately after biological birth thanks to the mother’s relations of care with regard to the newborn. The newborn’s existence takes shape through practices of emotional sharing, which culminate in forms of “affect attunement” with the mother.14 Psychoanalysis has demonstrated how an individual’s development depends to a large extent on how the narcissistic wound that occurs in infancy is metabolized and elaborated.15 This metabolization continues throughout the individual’s existence, interacting with subsequent crises. The narcissistic wound can be considered the result of a first verification of the mode of existing that 14 15

Cf. Stern 1985. Kohut & Wolf 1978.

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the newborn had constructed around the mother’s smile, that is, around the mother’s fundamental and original affective welcome. Anthropogenesis radicalizes this intuition. Not only negative experiences, but also positive ones, are decisive from an epigenetic point of view. Furthermore, the effect of these experiences is not only psychological, but also “ontological”: it does not merely produce interpretations and re-elaborations that remain confined “inside” the mind, but it produces positioning within the world and society. 1.2.4 The Mother’s Smile and Affective Deprivation Newborn babies’ recognition of their mother’s smile is the first anthropogenetic turning point. On the mother’s part, there is something much more profound in this crucial moment than simple social recognition: instead, it is an “affective welcome”. By perceiving his mother’s smile, a newborn baby realizes that he exists for someone, hence that he exists. Moreover, he perceives that his existence has a positive value for someone. If this initial confirmation is lacking, the motivation to invest in otherness is inhibited: since the child cannot be reflected in his mother’s smile, he will be forced to be reflected narcissistically in his own image. He will invest in an empty object, and will thus remain imprisoned inside himself. In order to continue the anthropogenetic process, a newborn must be reflected in his mother’s smile, and feed off her approval and admiration. This nourishment is just as important as that provided by milk. By being reflected in his mother’s smile, the newborn draws upon that energy that makes him exist, and is the source of a pleasure that he will continue to seek for the rest of his life. To the newborn, the mother’s smile opens the first horizon of meaning that is not merely biological, one within which living is worthwhile. Without the maternal figure in the first phases of existence, there is no anthropogenesis. This is what can be deduced from Spitz’s research on the affective deprivation of children in institutionalized settings.16 Let me begin by saying that these days the studies conducted by Spitz in the 1940s would be considered unethical. They examined two different groups of newborns: the first lived in prison with their mothers since birth and were in difficult social and health conditions; the second lived without their mothers in a children’s home that guaranteed suitable sanitary conditions.17 Spitz notes that even though the newborns in the first group lived in precarious social and health conditions, their mental and physical development was normal. In contrast, after three months, the newborns in the second group 16 17

Spitz 1965. Ibid., 123.

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had entered a state similar to lethargy: they remained immobile in their cots, forming niches which for many became their graves. Of these babies, 30% died within the first twelve months and another 7% the following year.18 The highest incidence of death was among the babies at the back of the dormitory. Indeed, the staff managed to provide occasional caresses and attention only to the former newborns, situated near the entrance of the dormitory, but by the time they got to the last ones, they had little time left and limited their care to changing and feeding them hurriedly. The survivors were followed over the succeeding years: none of them learned to walk or speak correctly. However, if the relationship with a maternal figure was re-established before the twelfth month of their life, the situation changed radically. In such cases, the recovery of the baby’s mental and physical conditions was inversely proportional to the length of the period of lack of contact with the maternal figure. Spitz’s hypothesis was that this different outcome depended on the fact that the newborns in the second group did not have any intimate relations with a parental figure. During their short and unfortunate existence, they had only encountered the busy and impersonal gaze of an individual intent on fulfilling her social role. Such research demonstrates that without intimate interaction with another singularity, the newborn’s process of formation is definitively blocked. If newborn babies do not experience practices of emotional sharing with a parental figure, then there is no anthropogenesis, which means that they will become neither a biped nor a talking being. Not only will they not learn to speak, but they will not even be able to conquer the erect position. Indeed, the erect position is also learned and is not innate, as demonstrated by the children described by Spitz. 1.2.5 Anthropogenesis and Social Relations: The Case of Victor While Spitz casts light on what happens when a newborn baby, only a few months old, is deprived of parental contact, the French doctor Jean Itard describes the case of a child deprived of social contact at an older age. What would happen if a young child were suddenly left alone in nature without any social relations? On 25 January 1800, the French press broadcast the sensational news that a boy, thought to be aged around 12 and who appeared to have grown up living like a wild animal, had been found in the woods of Southern France near Aveyron. He had probably been abandoned in the woods at the age of four, 18

Ibid., 126.

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when he was old enough to somehow become biologically autonomous and survive. Nevertheless, his process of cultural education had been blocked: he could not recognize his own image in the mirror, nor was he ever able to speak. Jean Itard, the physician who took Victor into his care, wrote two reports about this case. The preface to the 1801 report begins with this exquisitely philosophical consideration: Cast onto this globe, without physical strength or innate ideas; unable to spontaneously obey the constitutional laws of his organization which call him to the first rank in the system of beings, Man can only find the eminent place that was marked out for him in nature in the midst of society; without civilization, he would be one of the most feeble and least intelligent animals: a truth that is doubtless well known, but has not yet been rigorously demonstrated.19 Itard had the courage to disagree with the diagnosis of congenital idiocy made by the internationally renowned doctor and psychiatrist Philippe Pinel (1745– 1826): this mental deficiency was not due to congenital organic causes, but to the fact that the child – whom Itard named Victor owing to the boy’s interest in the vowel “o” – had lived in total isolation at a crucial age for his development: It is therefore probable, and almost proven, that he was abandoned at the age of four or five; and if, at that age, he already owed some ideas and some words to the beginnings of some education, all that will have been erased from his memory as a result of his isolation.20 Regarding the ability to speak, Victor managed with much effort to pronounce the word “lait”. However, Itard was begrudgingly forced to notice that this word was pronounced not before, but only in response to seeing milk: thus “the pronounced word, instead of being the sign of a need, was, relative to the time in which it was articulated, nothing but a vain exclamation of joy”.21 Itard’s conclusions are rather explicit: If we proposed the following metaphysical problem: determine what would be the degree of understanding and the nature of the ideas of an adolescent youth who, deprived from childhood of all education, 19 20 21

Itard 1801, 1, my translation. Ibid., 20, my translation. Ibid., 62, my translation.

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has lived entirely separated from individuals of his own species: either I am grossly wrong, or the solution of the problem would boil down to attributing to this individual an understanding only relative to his few needs […]; well, the moral portrait of this adolescent would be that of the Savage of Aveyron.22 Itard’s report demonstrates that a child of four or five, in contact with nature deprived of social relations, regresses to a prelinguistic stage. This thesis encountered serious difficulties in being accepted, so much so that at first, the prevailing idea was that Victor was affected by congenital idiocy. Indeed, Itard’s thesis seemed to be in contrast to Rousseau’s myth of the “noble savage”, that is, of an individual who grows free and happy since she is not corrupted by civilization. It is true that Rousseau does not assert that the noble savage is an individual with no contact with her peers, but rather an individual with no contact with civilization. Nevertheless, Itard’s theses proved counterintuitive in a context such as that of French culture on the cusp of the nineteenth century, in which the myth of the “noble savage” was still in the best of health. Itard’s observations on Victor’s case suggest that the leap toward symbolic thought that distinguishes humans from other animals is enabled by social contacts with one’s peers. If Victor’s brain – which functioned perfectly but had remained isolated – lacked the ability to speak, it is because in reality only “social brains” can speak, that is, brains that experience extrauterine growth during infancy by being nurtured by social relations. What is so crucial about what Itard calls civilization or education? The social brain is not born with biological birth, but through relations of care made possible by particularly complex practices of emotional sharing. In other words, it is born through anthropogenesis. It is anthropogenesis, therefore, that enables the leap toward the symbolic thought that characterizes human beings. 1.3

The Myth of Personal Identity: “Who Are You?”

1.3.1 Alice and the Caterpillar Alice in Wonderland makes a journey of transformation that begins with a new birth, a birth that is completed when she falls down the White Rabbit’s hole. Indeed, she falls headfirst, just like a newborn who makes its way down the birth channel. Through this new birth, Alice enters into Wonderland, into 22

Ibid., 15–16, my translation.

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the auroral void, but her transformation is so profound that she does not know precisely what answer to give to the many characters who ask her who she is and where she comes from. The most striking of these is the Caterpillar, a sort of caterpillar-thinker whose favorite pastime is smoking a hookah, humming and blowing smoke letters. When they first meet, he asks the girl the fateful question, “Who are you?” To this inquiry Alice answers: “I-I hardly know, sir, just at present – at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.” As he does not understand Alice’s reply, the Caterpillar insists, asking for further clarification. Essentially, he cannot accept the fact that Alice is not able to give a precise definition of herself. Enclosed within his mental schemas, he fails to understand that Alice is a person in transformation, and that, as she transforms, she cannot be rigidified within a fixed personal identity. So, Alice is forced to repeat that she cannot give him a better answer, as she is confused after changing form so many times during the day. Tired of the Caterpillar’s continuous retorts, she finally exclaims: “Well, perhaps you haven’t found it so yet, […] but when you have to turn into a chrysalis – you will some day, you know – and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you’ll feel it a little queer, won’t you?” To which the Caterpillar replies: “Not a bit”.23 The Caterpillar, who will soon thereafter transform into a chrysalis and then into a butterfly, definitely believes in the myth of identity. In several respects, philosophers involved in the debate on personal identity over the last few decades remind us of the Caterpillar blowing smoke letters and constantly repeating the question “Who are you?”. On this topic, is it possible to shift from the Caterpillar’s perspective to that of Alice? What Alice seeks to make the Caterpillar understand is that a person cannot be understood in terms of identity, but rather in terms of transformation. 1.3.2 Hume: From the “Bundle of Perceptions” to the “Moral Self” The myth of personal identity is based on the belief that the problem of the person can be reduced to the problem of personal identity. Hence, once it has been demonstrated that the personal identity does not exist, the conclusion is that the person dissolves into a “bundle of perceptions”. Taking stock of the situation in 2004, Searle noted that “the philosophy of mind is unique among contemporary philosophical subjects, in that all of the most famous and influential theories are false”.24 Attempting to find a way out, he added: “as far as I can tell, most contemporary philosophers follow Hume in thinking that we do 23 24

Carroll 2003, 39. Searle 2004, 2.

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not have to postulate anything more [than a bundle of perceptions]; but I have been reluctantly forced to the conclusion that we do”.25 I cannot follow Searle’s line of argument here, so I will go straight to the crux of the problem. The most paradoxical aspect of the whole question is that for a long time in the philosophy of mind, the discussion on personal identity revolved around what could be defined as the “Humean misunderstanding”. For decades, based on the conclusions of Book 1 of his Treatise, attempts were made to demonstrate that according to Hume, there is no such thing as a self. Nevertheless, if one takes the time to read Books 2 and 3 as well, one discovers that Hume’s perspective is more complex.26 His secret is that he shifts the perspective of investigation and extends it to the passions. In a crucial passage of Book 2, Hume reaffirms that the human intellect cannot grasp any connection of consciousness. However, this does not mean that there is no such connection, but only that the intellect is incapable of perceiving it. Hume’s hypothesis is that this connection, invisible to the intellect, can instead be grasped through feeling: “we only feel a connexion”.27 Attempting to grasp by the intellect the connection that is constitutive of the person would be like trying to use hearing to see colors: the intellect is blind with regard to the person, not because the person does not exist, but because personal singularity can only be grasped by feeling. The skepticism that Hume displays a few lines later is therefore only relative to the attempt to solve the problem of personal identity exclusively through the rationality of the intellect. Indeed, after excluding this hypothesis, in Books 2 and 3 of the Treatise Hume offers a solution to a problem that has kept a considerable part of contemporary philosophical thought in check: that which the intellect grasps as a rational self, namely a bundle of perceptions, is instead grasped by the passions as a “moral self”. By exercising passions such as pride and humility, it is possible to grasp an “individual person […] of whose actions and sentiments each of us is intimately conscious”.28 Hume’s thesis is that the self cannot be grasped through the intellect, but only through the passions, and that while there may be no “rational self”, there is, however, a “moral self”.

25 26

27 28

Searle 2004, 281. In recent decades, various scholars have attempted to go beyond the traditional skeptical interpretation of Hume, paying more and more attention to the analysis of the passions developed in the Books 2 and 3 of the Treatise. See, in particular Árdal 1966; Baier 1991; Lecaldano 1991; Chazan 1998; Greco 2008. Hume 2007, 400 (T App.20, SBN 635–6). Hume CE 187 (T 2.1.5.3, SBN 285–6).

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1.3.3 Derek Parfit: From Personal Identity to Psychological Continuity Derek Parfit has developed one of the most pertinent reflections on the Humean perspective of the “bundle of perceptions”, interpreting the concept of personal identity in the sense of a psychological continuity. According to Parfit, if we make an objective description of the person, we should say that in a particular moment 1, there is a person a; in the following moment 2, there is a person b. If they share memories and personality traits, these persons a and b seem to be the same person. Hence, what we call “person” is merely this psychological continuity reconstructed a posteriori. What matters, therefore, is not personal identity, but only psychological continuity. The self, understood as a person, does not exist in the proper sense of the term. All that exists is the “bundle of perceptions”, that is, a series of successive selfs that are unified a posteriori in the term “person” if a certain psychic continuity subsists between them. The concept of person, identified with that of the self, hence becomes a metaphysical hypothesis or something similar to a hologram. To reinforce his line of argument, Parfit proposes the famous mental experiment of teletransportation to Mars. With this example, Parfit seeks to demonstrate that bodily identity is not a sufficient criterion to determine personal identity, and that in any case, since no such metaphysical substance as the self exists, there is no need to fear becoming a different self should one be teletransported to Mars. The example of teletransportation poses various problems. If it were devised so as not to destroy the self that remains on the earth, in the end there would be two identical selfs: one on Earth and one on Mars. Which of the two would I be? This would unleash the question of the proliferation of selfs. This is the problem posed by the film Moon (2007) by Duncan Jones. In a moonbase, a cyborg with a perfectly human appearance, Sam Bell, is used as a worker, who lives completely alone and is made to believe that he is a human. In reality, there are hundreds of hibernating clones in the secret underground spaces of the base, since after a couple of years’ work the cyborgs deteriorate and need to be replaced by a new clone implanted with exactly the same memory. The film’s plot starts out from the premise that two identical clones are mistakenly activated at the same time and go on to interact with each other. What makes these two Sam Bells, with the same body and the same initial memory, discover that they are so different from each other that they end up quarreling? What makes them different is that they have had different experiences. Hence, one could deduce that an individual is the set of her experiences. For the moment, suffice it to note that there is a correlation between the mode of having experiences and the process of individuation. In humans, experience is not a neutral but an individualizing act. Each person has experiences starting

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from her own perspective, and hence expresses her individuality in her mode of having experiences. At the same time, this individuality is modified retroactively by every experience it has. I call this interaction between experience and process of individuation “positioning in the world”. To each person corresponds a different way of positioning herself in the world. I am the result of a certain positioning in the world that takes place through my body and its artificial extensions. Indeed, my body is not merely a “physical” given. In other words: despite the fact that they are two identical bodies with the same initial memory, the two Sam Bells will discover that they are two different positionings in the world (or in this case, on the moon) to which different experiences correspond. If, on the other hand, the problem of the self is separated from that of one’s positioning in the world, then there are no longer any criteria to avoid the paradox of the infinite proliferation of the self. 1.3.4 Toward Rethinking the Person in Terms of Discontinuity Parfit’s main problem concerns the interpretation of the concept of “psychological continuity”. While Ricœur attempts to salvage the person by rethinking the concept of personal identity in the sense of a narrative identity, Parfit radicalizes the Humean image of the “bundle of perceptions”, and interprets the concept of personal identity in terms of psychological continuity. In short, all Parfit does is reformulate the Caterpillar’s question “Who are you?” in terms of “continuity” instead of “identity”. But can the personal singularity really be understood in terms of continuity? Are we not once again confusing the personal singularity with the self?29 Let us consider a person a who at moment 1 considers act x to be correct, and a person b who at moment 2 deems act x to be wrong and does not recognize herself in it. By applying Parfit’s “psychological continuity” thesis, persons a and b could never be considered the same person. Instead, it is precisely in such cases of discontinuity that the gist of the problem emerges: the person can also be expressed in producing discontinuity with regard to her own lived experiences. In certain conditions, a and b could be the same person. For example, this is what happens in cases of genuine repentance. The repentant person b no longer recognizes herself in act x carried out in the past by person a, and instead feels a strong sensation of psychological discontinuity; yet, in this case, the persons a and b refer to the same person. This is possible because, as I will argue in the next chapter, a distinction must be made 29

Parfit distinguishes continuity from identity: “If psychological continuity took a onemany or branching form, we should need, I have argued, to abandon the language of identity” (Parfit, 1971, 12).

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between self and person. Every person is necessarily in connection with her own past. Nevertheless, in the case of the person such a connection cannot be interpreted in terms of identity, continuity, or coherence. Indeed, I can perfectly well relate to a past act but no longer recognize myself in it, so much so that I may even be ashamed or embarrassed for having accomplished it. This discontinuity by no means demonstrates that the person a, who did that shameful act in the past, is not the person b, who is now ashamed, but rather that, through repentance, that person has carried out an anthropogenetic process of transformation. This discontinuity is the consequence of the continuation of a person’s birth, and it derives from the fact that, as persons, we are not born alone but are co-born with the world: a person only continues her own birth in the auroral void offered by the encounter with another singularity. Thanks to this auroral void, outside her own self-referentiality, the person goes beyond the continuity of what she already is and also creates a departure from what Parfit calls “psychological continuity”. The personal singularity does not take shape in the sense of a continuity, but in the way in which it transcends the continuity of its own self. 1.4

The Singularity: Self-Transcendence and Incompleteness

1.4.1 The Dominant Indistinction between Personal Singularity and Little Self To take a closer look at the concept of person, it is essential to better describe the difference between personal singularity and self, which already emerged in the previous chapter. This distinction rarely becomes a topic in psychology, sociology, or even in philosophy. Of course, it is first necessary to struggle to obtain social recognition in order to become a self. Beyond a certain limit, however, every further reinforcement of my self leads to the dispersion of my singularity. At that point, the only way to access my singularity is by transcending my self-referential self. A social self has a first-person perspective: it is able to speak, work, and relate socially. It possesses a self-awareness, makes decisions, and takes relatively autonomous initiatives. In short, it is the subject that directs my habitual way of living, the one that is immersed in the map of common sense. Nevertheless, this is still not sufficient to characterize me and individuate me as a singularity. There are situations or states of emergency in which my prevalent way of living enters crisis mode. In extreme cases, I encounter something unexpected that forces me to change my perspective, and it is in the interstices caused by these severances that my personal singularity assumes form. The

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case in which crises take place that can be recomposed within the framework of common sense is different. In such cases there may be misunderstandings, but common sense gives me the tools to resolve them. Nevertheless, on the basis of common sense, I will never be able to enter the intimacy of the personal singularity, since this singularity is formed through severances, that is, by going beyond common sense and conventions, thanks to a process of generative metabolization. In the liquid society,30 the self is no longer static, predefined, and immutable. Instead, it has become an extremely unstable, minimal self, a chameleonic self that can be changed like an outfit according to the circumstances. This dynamic develops within two main coordinates. The first is that of the dialectic between how I interpret myself and how others interpret me. Hence, it is precisely the social self’s chameleonic nature that can lead me to split in two when faced with an environment that does not share my way of interpreting myself. In this case, I can, for instance, construct different identities in the workplace and in the virtual reality of a social media platform. The second coordinate is the self-referential logic of an oppositional type. Even when allied in groups, the self continues to follow a self-referential logic that aims to shield itself, to “absorb”, and to expand its own territories by clashing with those who are not part of the same group. In all these cases, the self can expand and swell, or change like a chameleon, but it cannot be reborn. In contrast, the person is defined by a self-­transcending act, and hence can transform herself. The self only undergoes a superficial change, while the person undergoes a profound transformation. While the self follows reversible processes, maintaining its own coherence and “psychological continuity”, the person experiences severances and incoherencies that impel her toward an irreversible process from which there is no way back. The person’s singularization process assumes form by reversing the struggle for recognition of her own self (or identity group) into the struggle for recognition of the stranger.31 The singularity does not ask the other to recognize its own social being, as the self would do, but to welcome its own desire. Hence, the self remains on the level of empathy, while the person reaches the level of loving. Indeed, only a personal singularity can be captured by another person’s existential wake, to the point of entwining its own existence with that of the other in the act of loving. 30 31

Cf. Bauman 2000. Just as the social self is the result of an exercise of saturation driven by the horror vacui, the singularity is the result of an exercise of emptying driven by the restlessness of the heart.

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1.4.2 Toward Rethinking the Concept of Person To conceive of the person in terms of identity or continuity is to apply to the person the categories proper to the self. This is what happens when the person is understood as a narrative identity based on coherence (Ricœur), or as a sequence of selfs united by the concept of psychological continuity (Parfit). But what if continuity were not the determining aspect? What if the person assumed form in transgressing, deviating, transcending itself: that is, in expressing itself? What if, at the origin of the person, there were the impact with an unexpected experience, an experience so radical that it impels it to exit the self and psychological continuity? In a life oriented by the struggle for social recognition, I end up burying myself in commitments, worries, and concerns. Through the act of self-­ transcendence, by contrast, I am able to restructure the order of my priorities. And as soon as I drop the heavy burden of worries and expectations implicit in an excessive need for recognition, I feel great relief, so much so that, amazed, I ask myself who or what had forced me to bear such a burden until now. If the self is the coherence and continuity of these obligations, the person is instead the result of an expressive path of severance and deviation that leads me to see myself in a new perspective, until I come to experience myself as a genuine surprise. This surprise derives from the fact that I discover that I am not the set of worries and commitments that have been deposited upon my existence, making it unrecognizable, like the incrustations covering the sea god Glaucus (Pl. R. X, 611c–d). The person’s individuation process is different from that of the self in that it does not consist in an accumulation of commitments in which one’s own existence inevitably ends up being dispersed, but in a reawakening, a “turning the gaze” (R. VII, 518c–d) toward that which matters most for me. All of this leads to a radical reformulation of the concept of “person”. The person is not to be understood in a confessional perspective: it is not a “­spiritual center” or a substance that becomes successively incarnated in a body. Nor, however, is it a “rational self” or a “bundle of perceptions” from which the intellect extracts, artificially and a posteriori, a “psychological connection”. Finally, it is not even a “narrative identity” constituted in the sense of coherence. The person must be rethought on the basis of the opening made possible by its incompleteness: thanks to the very fact of this incompleteness, the person can assume form by sharing new experiences and emotions with other singularities. Incompleteness is a precious quality, insofar as it allows the person to encounter the singularity of the other. By dint of this incompleteness, the person assumes form when it crosses that opening to create new relations of care and share new experiences and emotions. In so doing, it is guided by a feeling that is not dualistically opposed to reason. Indeed, reason is a feeling of feeling;

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that is, a “meta-feeling” that pervades the instability of feeling, giving form to an order that emerges from feeling itself. The person is precisely this order of feeling: that is, an order of the heart. This opening is possible insofar as I am uncompleted and not self-sufficient. To cross this opening means to have an unforeseen experience and give form to my singularity. It is not a path of rectilinear coherence, without setbacks, severances, or skidding off course. When faced with the unforeseen, the person stumbles and proceeds by trial and error, but assumes form precisely in its way of falling and getting back up again. The person is not canceled by backward steps, failures, incoherencies, retreats, or mistakes made. The person is not the expression of an algorithm, but the ability to metabolize the unforeseen and open a new perspective on the world. 1.4.3 Person and Social Role: The Experimentum Crucis of Viktor Frankl What is bracketed in the act of self-transcendence that is at the basis of the personal singularity is not the world or reality, but merely the affective structure of the subject’s self-referential closure. This movement of self-transcendence remains immanent to the world: it is a transcendence that remains within immanence; therefore, what is transcended is the ideological structure of one’s own self-referential closure, not the real. Furthermore, this movement does not obliterate the self, but only the self’s “adiposities” that filled the auroral void. Therefore, a continuous dialectic develops between person and self. The person is not singularized by canceling the social role that defines the self, but rather by trying out forms of “role distancing”.32 The person gradually emerges as the expressive path that does not coincide with that of the social role. It is an original and creative way of interpreting the social role. By doing so, however, it differentiates itself from and exceeds it in the sense of an “original duplicity”. Insofar as it exceeds the role, the person becomes ex-centric, that is, it has two foci like an ellipse, while the self remains a circumference within which the two foci coincide.33 What happens to a person who goes back to being a circumference with a single focus? Existence is reduced to a social role, and that individual ends up living her own existence through what others think of her. In its most dramatic 32 33

Here I am referring to Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman’s concept of “role distancing” (cf. Goffman, 1961). The concept of “ex-centricity” is introduced to anthropology by Schelling, who had initially employed it to discuss Kepler’s theory of the elliptical orbit of the planets. For a reconstruction of the concept of ex-centricity in Schelling, see Cusinato 2008, 220–223; Id. 2014, 20–22. This concept subsequently becomes central in Plessner (1974).

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aspects, this situation is described by the Austrian psychiatrist and phenomenologist Viktor Frankl with his experimentum crucis in the Nazi concentration camps.34 As a Jew imprisoned in different camps from 1942 to 1945, Frankl noted that the prisoners who died first were not necessarily the weakest physically, but the ones who tended to see themselves through their torturers’ eyes. It was precisely those Jewish inmates who ended up identifying with the image that the Nazi jailers had of them as completely worthless “subhuman material” who perished first. There are individuals who live almost exclusively in the perspective of the social self. When social recognition is reversed into repudiation, these individuals are the first to collapse. What struck Frankl most was that some prisoners, in contrast, retained a glimmer of their personal singularity despite the obliteration of their social selfs. From this involuntary experiment, Frankl deduced that the person has its own structural autonomy with regard to the social self and social recognition. 1.4.4 Incompleteness as a Positive Good and Open Community Unlike the self, the singularity is not defined in terms of identity, continuity, and autonomy, but in terms of uniqueness and incompleteness. A singularity is an uncompleted uniqueness. As we have already seen, incompleteness should not be considered a lack to be filled, as opposed to an ideal of fullness or perhaps otherworldly perfection. The singularity is uncompleted in the sense that it is not an isolated and self-sufficient system, but is constitutively connected to the other singularities. Hence, incompleteness indicates a state of generative fertility: it is the expression of that “auroral void” that enables its continual rebirth in the encounter with the other. Since it cannot be enclosed within a completed essence, whether a person or a living work of art, the singularity remains an open generative process. The singularity only assumes form by going out through the gap kept open by its own “incompleteness”. Indeed, each singularity is a partial fragment of truth, but at the same time it is a fragment that is unique and non-deducible. At this level, every step forward in the exploration of the real is not made by expanding one’s own perspective to the detriment of others, but by integrating it with the fragment of truth of the other singularities. According to an Indian parable, one day an elephant appeared for the first time in a village of blind people. No one knew what an elephant was. In order 34

Cf. Frankl 2006.

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to understand it, the wise men of the village approached it to touch it. Since each of them touched a different part of the elephant, they described it in different ways: for one it had the form of a trunk, for another a tail, and for yet another a tusk. Finally, the wise men began to argue, since each one identified the elephant with his own fragment of truth. This parable is very useful for understanding the true logic of personal truth. Each personal singularity grasps only a partial but otherwise inaccessible aspect of reality. Consequently, it is wrong to state that such a fragment is purely subjective as it is to mistake it for an already concluded and absolute truth. Personal truth is unstable, and always on the verge of being rigidified. To avoid this and go forward, it needs to be integrated with the truth of the other fragments in an infinite search. What is often not taken into consideration is that having just one fragment of truth is a good and not a bad thing, since it is only because I do not already have everything that I can encounter the other. I can only succeed in encountering the other’s singularity if I know that I do not have the absolute truth, and recognize the other’s fragment of truth. Of course, in this way I lose the (illusory) good of possessing an absolute and concluded truth, but I certainly gain the possibility of entwining my existence with that of the other. A singularity is only desirable insofar as it is uncompleted, that is, open. In the long run, living with a perfect singularity would be unbearable and perhaps boring. Each singularity is the depository of a fragment of truth which, since it is unique, can prove to be precious. The openness of the fragment of truth is unlimited in the sense that it concerns primarily those who are not part of my own social group. Indeed, the fragments of truth similar to mine often enrich me less than those which, instead, are more distant and unknown. The singularity does not have the immunitarian task of disguising its own incompleteness as if it were damage, but of exposing and valorizing it. Incompleteness enables openness toward the other at a higher level. For a singularity, to exist is to make its own fragment of truth available, and make it interact with that of others. There is no reductio ad unum, synthesis or Hegelian Aufhebung, nor, a fortiori, any obliteration of singularity within “totality”. Instead, there is the contribution each singularity makes to the infinite effort of what Peirce called an “unlimited community”.35 Collectivities are made up of selfs that act according to a self-referential logic, whereas the open community consists of personal singularities that follow an “integrative” logic, in which each personal singularity seeks to integrate 35

Cf. Peirce CP 2.654.

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its own fragment of truth within an infinite process that is also open to the outside.36 In conclusion, the singularity becomes “perfect”, not in itself, but only in relation to the infinite process of transformation that it generates in the open community. 1.4.5 The Personal Non-Self and the Fragment of Truth The person has a different way of being in the world than an object or a self. A self, like a stone, an object, or a substance, “is”. It “is” precisely insofar as it is “inside” its own identity. Of course, it is also possible to imagine a flexible identity, like the one described by Husserl by the concept of “eidetic invariance”: an identity that can vary within certain parameters. Nevertheless, beyond these parameters it too ceases to be and is no longer an “is”. As every designer knows, the form of a door handle can vary at will, but beyond a certain limit, dictated by its function, it “is” no longer a door handle, since it no longer allows a door to be opened. The person “is” not in identity and continuity, but rather “exists” in its acts, and in some cases by transforming itself, that is, by violating the eidetic invariance of the self. This is what happens, as we have already seen, in the phenomenon of repentance. If I use my intellect to seek the person within the identity or psychological continuity of the self, I do not find it. The person assumes form by transcending the self, finding a position outside its self-referential horizon. In fact, the person is not a “self”. The person is rather a “personal non-self”. There is a leap, a severance, between the personal singularity and little self. The person cannot be understood from the little self, but only from the process of being emptied of the will, intentions, and logic of appropriation of the little self. The act of transcendence of the little self makes way for the auroral void, whence a small fragment of truth emerges. Until that moment, this fragment had been hidden in the depths of the soul, but now, thanks to the promising void, it cannot help but emerge. The fragment on which the personal singularity is based is the expression of a completely new logic, which has nothing to do with the truth of the little self. Since it is only a fragment, and not the complete and absolute truth, such a fragment expresses only a partial perspective and a singular physiognomy. This partial perspective is the foundation and unmistakable characteristic of the personal singularity. Indeed, if an absolute and complete truth were to emerge from the auroral void, then such a truth would be universal and impersonal. But what emerges from the auroral void is a fragment of truth that asks to 36

Cf. § 7.3.4 The Ontological Ground of Person: Incompleteness and Fragment of Truth.

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come into contact and dialogue with other fragments of truth in order to exist and thus continue its own birth. Paradoxically, the obliteration of the personal singularity is only achieved by taking the process of personal singularization to its extreme consequences. 1.4.6 What Is a Singularity? Personal non-self and singularity do not always coincide. The personal nonself is a particular kind of singularity: a living person, of flesh and blood. The class of the singularity is much broader, and does not include only living persons. There are also singularities that are not living forms in the strict sense: a work of art, a poem, even a single image, a photo, or a gesture laden with particular expressive intensity.37 By singularity, I mean the result of a unique, non-deducible expressive path of self-transcendence, motivated by the impact of a crisis on the little self. The main characteristic of a singularity is the ability to bear witness to its path and to enable others to share it, independently of how it may be materialized. Indeed, as we have seen, a singularity can also be a work of art or a particularly significant gesture. What would once have been called the “essence” of a singularity is in reality the ability to share with others the memory of the route completed by its own expressive path, the schema that encloses that path and also enables others not only to follow it but also to continue in the direction it has opened. In their uniqueness, these “schemas” are not objectifiable, as, for example, the social role of the self could be. In fact, they are the result of the co-accomplishment of acts.38 While this may not make them immediately recognizable to a self, it nevertheless enables them to be shared with other singularities in the sense of “co-participation” and “co-formation”. Whoever grasps the expressive “schema” of a singularity grasps the restlessness of its heart, and thanks to this can relive the tension of the expressive effort that has given form to that singularity. Above all, she can make it her own and develop it according to her own point of view. If these schemas are the materialization of a particularly successful expressive path of self-transcendence, then that singularity becomes an exemplarity, and one can perceive an aura in it. Lastly, under certain conditions, these “schemas” are not only sharable maieutically, but can even materialize into something independent from the personal singularity that has co-performed them. This is what happens in the creation of a work of art. 37 38

Cf. § 2.5.8 Extended Exemplarity. Cf. § 1.5.8 How Co-Performing an Act Differs From Performing an Action.

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In all these cases, what characterizes the singularity is not the identity of an essence over the course of time, or the invariance of a form in space, not even in the sense of Husserl’s eidetic invariance, but the fact that it is the result of a unique and unrepeatable expressive path of self-transcendence. The singularity is the embodiment of this expressive path. Contrary to an organism or a social self, a singularity’s expressive path is a “token” rather than a “type”, corresponding to a living species or a social role. In other words, it is relative to a single individual. 1.4.7 The Walls of the Inner Citadel and the Generative Pathos Marcus Aurelius invites us to take care of the walls of our inner citadel in order to keep control of the situation and deal with the uncertainties and risks of existence: “Be like the headland on which the waves continually break, but it stands firm and about it the boiling waters sink to sleep” (M. Aur. Med. IV. 49.1). In my view, the meaning of the walls of the inner citadel varies depending on whether they refer to the little self or the personal non-self. The little self needs these walls to protect itself in the first place from the adversities of the outside world and to equip itself for the struggle for social recognition. At the level of the personal non-self, by contrast, this wall must be erected to protect itself in the first place from its egotism, from the passions of wealth, recognition, and glory. For the personal non-self, such walls cannot be understood in the sense of an entrenchment against the world. In fact, as soon as an individual transcends the self and becomes a personal non-self, she renounces remaining closed within her own walls. This “non-self” indicates precisely the condition of vulnerability that is proper to those who expose themselves beyond their own walls of self-referential protection. The walls of the little self, indispensable at the level of the struggle for social recognition, provide protection not only against adversities, but also against novelty. This is why the irruption of the new can only find a passage toward existence by crossing the personal dimension: the personal singularity is this very passage. It is a cleft, a wound that something that does not yet exist can burst through. In going outside the self, the personal singularity becomes present to itself. Hence, the concept of person must be understood anew, starting from the essential entwinement between crisis and self-transcendence: it is no longer the linear erection of a self-referential structure on the basis of the intentionality of consciousness, but a process of formation that proceeds through the opening to the unforeseen, to crisis, displacement, and severance. If the self is erected by unfolding its own intentions and realizing its own projects, the person assumes form by emptying itself of its fullness, to become a receptacle, an auroral void, and opening itself up to a counter-intentionality

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that starts out from the world. That which characterizes the personal singularity, in this opening up to the world – thanks to the walls erected toward its own egocentrism – is a generative type of pathos. It is reductive to understand the term pathos in the sense of an inert passivity. Instead, pathos indicates the experience of feeling oneself touched by the world. It is an “active” form of “passivity”. The singularity cannot be traced back to an activity that assumes form by asserting and reinforcing itself, as happens with the self, but to an activity that generates beyond itself, insofar as it is touched by an experience. My personal singularity is not only expressed where I have control of the situation or in my way of realizing my intentions and projects, but also where my being steps back or is not recognized. It is also expressed in the face of the unforeseen, of pain, illness, defeat, and severance. This is the legacy of the auroral void. 1.4.8 The Wound and the Scar: The Paintings of Fontana and the Art of Kintsugi The slashes in a canvas by Fontana and the golden scars of a water pot put back together through the art of kintsugi are very good expressions of two essential aspects of the singularity. A singularity assumes form in transcending the self and being reborn in the encounter with another singularity. A doubt that may spontaneously arise is whether in so doing the singularity obliterates its own inner dimension and ends up flattening itself against the other’s exteriority. Fontana’s painting, Concetto spaziale, Attesa, Rosso (1965),39 suggests a different hypothesis. The compact surface of Fontana’s paintings is reminiscent of a one-dimensional individual prior to the act of self-transcendence, in other words, of the still self-referential dimension of the self. The gash, for its part, represents the wound of the other that opens to the personal dimension. By passing through this wound, the act of self-transcendence is not flattened against the other’s exteriority, but enables the singularity to experience the dimensions otherwise inaccessible to the two-dimensionality of the self. Thanks to the slash, the singularity discovers, on the one hand, a further, deeper interiority than that which is accessible to the self, and on the other an exteriority that is also further and equally inaccessible to the flat surface of the self. Placing these two further dimensions in contact makes possible a new level of attunement with the world, in the sense of Weltoffenheit.

39

See, for example: https://artsupp.com/it/artisti/lucio-fontana/concetto-spaziale-attesa -rosso.

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The gash is the auroral void that enables further birth, metaphorically the mother’s reproductive organ. In the dimension of the auroral void, my singularity encounters another singularity that is infinitely more intimate and closer to it than my two-dimensional self. Thanks to this encounter, both of us advance in the process of singularization. Exposing myself in Weltoffenheit does not mean merging my own interiority with the other’s exteriority; on the contrary, it means opening myself to the dual dimension of a deeper interiority and a higher exteriority. Paradoxically, I only enter myself by going outside myself. And it is only by transcending the two-dimensionality of my self that I can be reborn in the encounter with the other’s singularity, that is, interact with the other’s deepest interiority and with her highest exteriority. The wounds that are opened usually remain unknown, and dramatically emerge only in the shock of a crisis. But if I close these wound-openings, I prevent myself from feeling, because it is only thanks to the openness of these wounds that I can feel myself touched by the world. This is why the singularity only takes on a physiognomy by gushing forth from its own openings and exposing itself, that is, expressing itself. If, instead, I close all the openings and shelter within myself, then I become apathetic and no longer feel touched by anything. In Fontana’s canvases, the attention is often concentrated on the opening, caused by a wound, of an otherwise compact and impermeable surface. In the art of kintsugi, by contrast, the wounds are filled with something precious that becomes the glue that holds the various fragments together as if in an embrace. These scars are precious, because they bear traces of the expressive path by which a singularity has faced the crisis and put itself back together into a uniqueness.

Figure 1.1  Japanese water pot (mizusashi) recomposed through the art of kintsugi Kintsugi by Tadahiro Ikoma. Photograph by Guido Cusinato

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Fontana’s slashes represent the wounds that make gaps in the monotonous dimension of repetition, that is, the openings through which it is possible to be touched by the world and experience the unforeseen. For its part, a water pot reconstructed through the art of kintsugi represents the rebirth made possible by interweaving with another existence. The singularity does not re-elaborate the fragments of a crisis in a self-referential sense, but it allows “alien” and precious material that was not there before – “kin”, i.e., gold – to act. This additional material, which puts the fragments of the crisis back together, symbolizes relations of care. A singularity remains in contact with the world thanks to the openness of its wounds, and at the same time assumes an unmistakable and unique ­physiognomy thanks to the features of its scars. But these scars are made of gold, that is, of alterity: they are not openings that are then closed, but living signs of an interaction with the other. While the wounds of Fontana’s paintings are precious because they make an opening, the golden scars are precious insofar as they preserve a trace of a contagion, that is, of an expressive path of rebirth in the encounter with the other. The singularity is both: a wound open to the world, and a memory of a path of rebirth in the encounter with the other. 1.4.9 The Celebration of the Fleetingness of Beauty in Japanese Culture The art of kintsugi or kintsukuroi highlights the experience of a beauty perceived on the basis of the vulnerability and fragility that is typical of Japanese culture. The scar becomes aesthetic insofar as it bears witness to a severance, a fracture put back together through experience and contact with the world. In the art of kintsugi, falling, severance, and destruction become the starting point for the creation of something new and more beautiful, precisely as an expressive path that brings with it the traces of the auroral void. It is interesting to note how the tendency in Western culture is to exalt the eternity of beauty, while Japanese culture emphasizes its fleetingness. In Japan, one of the most famous ways to enjoy beauty is hanami, which consists in admiring the beauty of trees blossoming in the spring, in particular the blossoms of cherry trees (sakura). What is admired in hanami is not only the shades and interplay of the colors and forms of the cherry blossoms, but also the fact that these blossoms are something that can be extinguished in the course of a night lit by the full moon, or with the arrival of wind or rain. In hanami, what is celebrated is the fragility of beauty, but at the same time one actively identifies with the act that led to the blossoming of that beauty. The enjoyment lies in seeing the overwhelming and exuberant force of a beauty that shines in the very imminence of the end. The imminent arrival of the wind and rain makes

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this blossom even more precious and splendid. No one would dream of shaking the cherry branches to hasten the destruction of these flowers. For Westerners, by contrast, beauty is connected more to the Platonic idea: it should be something eternal that cannot die. This might be why there are contrasting reactions in the face of the fleetingness of beauty, which also leave space for the emergence of a dark and resentful side, the accursed share described by Bataille. Here the logic present in hanami seems to be turned upside down: since life is ephemeral and not eternal, since I am mortal, instead of admiring the blossoming of life on the verge of death, I find enjoyment in dissipating and violating it. Since I cannot escape death, at least I enjoy anticipating its activity. 1.5

Personal Non-Self as a Non-Autopoietic System

1.5.1 Metabolism: A New Category for the Personal System Metabolism, autopoiesis, cognition, and emergentism are some of the principal concepts that were used to analyze the living phenomenon during the twentieth century. Moreover, particular attention was directed toward the relationship between autopoiesis and cognition,40 and to that between autopoiesis and metabolism. Attention to this second relationship highlighted that the organism’s characteristics cannot be traced back to DNA alone, but should also be traced back to all the various metabolic activities.41 In contrast there is an almost total dearth of reflection on the relationship of these categories with the concept of expressivity. In the following pages, I will argue that the key relationship for a description of the personal system is that between metabolism, emergentism, and expressivity. Then, I will draw a distinction between autopoietic metabolism and non-autopoietic metabolism. Finally, I will demonstrate that, contrary to an organic or social system, a personal system is not autopoietic but the result of a non-autopoietic metabolism which I shall term “expressive metabolism”. According to the biologists Maturana and Varela, one cannot understand an organism by analyzing its physical and chemical composition, or by turning to some mysterious vitalistic principle or immaterial entity, but by describing its particular self-organization. It is on these bases that they developed the concept of “autopoiesis”. An autopoietic system is not constituted by parts

40 41

Cf. Maturana & Varela 1972; Thompson 2007. Cf. Luisi 2006.

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imported from the environment but by operations created by the system itself. This means that the system is operatively closed to the environment. In recent years, various lines of research – linked to the epigenetic perspective, for example – have pointed out the astonishing plasticity of the living system. This plasticity suggests that further attention must be paid to the comparison of autopoiesis and metabolism, hitherto underexplored. The organism is its metabolism. Guided by the organism’s operational closure, the metabolism enables cellular reproduction and cell formation. This process can be described in autopoietic terms. Environmental materials do not directly “enter” into and become part of an organic system but are first reduced to nourishment (catabolism) and then reconfigured according to the self-­organization of the system itself (anabolism). Therefore, it is through metabolism that the organism’s operational closure is expressed, and that it draws an ontological boundary between itself and the environment.42 1.5.2 The Tornado and the Organism: Epistemological and Ontological Emergentism On several occasions, Varela and Thompson have proposed the example of a tornado to explain the phenomenon of emergentism. These arguments can give rise to the misunderstanding that the way in which a tornado emerges is an example of how an autopoietic system emerges. In fact, a tornado is not an autopoietic system. What is more, the example of the tornado corresponds to an epistemological emergentism that must be clearly distinguished from the ontological emergentism that concerns an autopoietic system. In what follows, I show that the interpretation of the concept of autopoiesis in light of the concept of metabolism enables a more accurate and precise description of ontological emergentism, as well as an understanding of how it diverges from epistemological emergentism. Both an organism and a tornado can be considered examples of a whole that emerges from its parts. Nevertheless, it is obvious that an organism does not emerge from a group of cells in the same way that a tornado emerges from an accumulation of drops of water suspended in the atmosphere. The way in which a tornado represents a novelty as compared to simple drops of water is totally different from the way in which an organism represents a novelty with regard to its cells. Indeed, the “parts” of a tornado – that is, the drops of water – are not produced by the tornado itself, while the “parts” of an organism – that is, its cells – are produced by the organism’s metabolism. Tornadoes emerge 42

Cf. Cusinato 2008.

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from tiny drops of water that were already present in the environment. In contrast, the organism emerges by metabolizing cells that did not previously exist in the environment. An initial difference can be sketched by making reference to Husserl’s theory of the relation between the whole and its parts, as developed in Third Logical Investigation. Here, Husserl distinguishes between “independent parts” and “non-independent parts”. On this basis, it can be observed that the drops of water in a tornado are independent parts, while an organism’s cells are “non-independent” parts. Hence, the two cases are different. But in what sense are the cells of an organism non-independent parts? The cells (parts) are non-independent parts insofar as they are produced by the organism’s metabolism (the whole). The emergentism of a tornado, which lacks a process of metabolization, is in reality merely epistemological emergentism, in which the emergent novelty is merely cognitive or perceptual. In contrast, the organism’s emergentism is ontological, insofar as the organism, as a “whole”, represents something more than the sum of its cells. These, in turn, are an “ontological novelty” with respect to the substances that come from the environment. In fact, they have impressed into their DNA the stamp of the system’s operational closure.43 43

Let us take a carrot that is growing in a field. The primary elements with which its cells will be synthesized are water, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and minerals that are present in the soil. Thanks to photosynthesis, the carrot harnesses solar energy in order to transform carbon dioxide and water into glucose and oxygen. Furthermore, it absorbs nitrogen from the environment under the form of nitrates or ammonia, which it then synthesizes into amino acids. These in turn are synthesized into protein. All these elements are originally imported from the external environment. The logic by which these substances are synthesized, however, is not imported from the outside, but has to do with metabolism and the carrot’s own DNA. Metabolism is divided into catabolism and anabolism. The former produces energy by breaking down molecules, as when the carrot breaks down glucose into water and carbon dioxide, while the latter synthesizes complex molecules from simpler molecules and requires energy. The connection between anabolism and DNA is very close, in that DNA contains the genetic information necessary for many forms of anabolism, such as protein synthesis. The way in which DNA is replicated, for its part, is a form of anabolism: during the replication of DNA, the mother cell must duplicate its own genetic inheritance, in order to transmit its copy to each of the two daughter cells. This process of synthesis of DNA is an example of anabolism. If one follows this entire path from the start, until it arrives at the synthesis of a cell and at the replication of its DNA, one can note that the cell is composed of elements that originally come from the outside – water, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and other minerals – which are reorganized according to the genetic information contained in the DNA of the carrot, and this occurs through catabolism. In sum, one can assert that the carrot absorbs water, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and other minerals from its environment, and reorganizes them through catabolism

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1.5.3 The Particularity of the Personal System In relation to the distinction between epistemological and ontological emergentism, the way in which a living system emerges appears to remain incomprehensible on the basis of the tornado example too. It seems more promising to consider a living system from the viewpoint of ontological emergentism, mediated by metabolism. Although the prospect of describing a living system as an emergent structure is enticing, we should nevertheless bear in mind the limits of such a proposal. Indeed, if the living system is an emergent structure, it is also true that the singular “morphology” of this emergentism, or the fact that it assumes one expressive configuration rather than another, remains to be explained. Metabolism can also be the key to tackling the issue of the emerging structure’s individuality. In a living being, the emergence of a specific morphological structure is the consequence of an expressive type of metabolic process. The metabolism of a plant is connected to the emergence of a certain morphological structure typical of that species. This type of ontological emergentism can also be used to describe the personal system. On the contrary, the epistemological emergentism of the tornado cannot help us understand how a personal system emerges. Just as problematic is the application of the concept of autopoiesis to the personal system. Luhmann interprets psychic and social systems in an autopoietic sense. A psychic system produces thoughts, while a social system produces communication. Indeed, only a social system enables the communication of the thoughts of psychic systems: “only communication can communicate”.44 Contrary to what happens for psychic and social systems, Luhmann’s attempt to explain what a personal system is and what its particularity consists in remains too generic, since the category of autopoiesis does not allow us to grasp the specificity of a personal system. In conclusion, the emergentism of the person is compatible with an emergentism of an ontological kind, whereas the category of autopoiesis is not suited to describing the personal system. Later on, I will demonstrate why a personal system is not an autopoietic system. Before I do so, however, in the following pages I will attempt to describe the personal system from an ontologically emergentist perspective, using the categories of metabolism and expression. My proposal is to consider the person as the result of an “expressive metabolism”.

44

according to the genetic information of its own DNA, that is, according to its own internal ­organization. See Luhmann 1982; Id. 2005.

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1.5.4 The Person’s Expressive Metabolism The personal system is its hunger to be born. This particular concept of hunger can be analyzed through the category of metabolism, while it cannot be understood through that of autopoiesis. A personal system is born, grows, and interacts by making the expressive movements of its desires and intentionalities emerge. The emergence of these expressive movements can be interpreted as the result of a “metabolism” analogous to that of the organism. However, analogous does not mean identical. Therefore, much attention will have to be directed toward the differences as well, in order not to fall back onto a reductionist perspective of the concept of person. At the center of this analogy is hunger, which is not just the biological function that serves to make us understand what, how much, and when to eat on the basis of our organism’s needs. Even with regard to food, we can speak of an interweaving between biological and emotional hunger, as in the case of “emotional eating”. Moreover, the use of expressions such as “hunger for glory”, “hunger for recognition”, and “hunger for knowledge” shows how already in common sense, this concept indicates something that goes beyond the purely biological realm. In human beings, hunger extends to the psychological, social, and cultural dimension. The theory of personal singularity, for which I argued in the previous chapters, pointed out that the personal system is characterized by a hunger to be born, guided by a specific order of the heart. This order of the heart is the personal system’s operational closure. Not only the organic system, but the personal system as well, needs nourishment. A specific type of hunger and a specific type of metabolism corresponds to each. To the person corresponds the “hunger to be born”, which follows a quite particular logic in that it does not aim to fill the “auroral void” by means of the same logic as that by which biological hunger fills the stomach’s emptiness and assimilates food. The hunger to be born has a precise anthropogenetic function: it impels us toward the act of self-transcendence of the little self. In carrying out this act, motivated by the hunger to be born, the person traces a precise expressive path, which is what defines the person. To the hunger to be born corresponds what can be called a true “expressive metabolism”: the hunger to be born “demolishes” the self-referential logic of the little self – of its functions, actions, roles, etc. – in order to “synthesize” the expressive paths that define the person. 1.5.5 The Act as the Cell of the Person Like the organism’s metabolism, the “expressive metabolism” of the personal system “synthesizes” the components of its “cells”. I call “act” the “cell” to which the person’s expressive metabolism corresponds. Hence, the act is the

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Figure 1.2 Vincent van Gogh, Wheatfield with Crows (1890) Vincent van Gogh, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

“cell” through which the expressive pathways that define the person assume form. Acts represent for the personal system what cells are for an organism. Consequently, a personal system can be defined as an order of the heart that is expressed in the living unit of different kinds of acts. A plant metabolizes the components of its own cells using elements of the environment. Similarly, a personal system metabolizes the expressive pathways of its own acts using the elements of its own “environment”. The personal system’s environment includes the material offered by the psychic self (what Carl Stumpf called the psychic functions of seeing, hearing, remembering, etc.), the social self (social actions and roles), the affective sphere (moods, feelings, emotions), and experience. An act such as looking is different from a psychic function such as seeing: looking is not the impersonal exercise of sight, but a particular way of observing things. When a plant synthesizes the components of one of its cells using elements from the environment, it imprints its own DNA on them. When a person metabolizes the function of seeing into a particular act of looking, it imprints the unmistakable stamp of its DNA onto the anonymous and impersonal function of seeing. Hence, the same function, for example, of “seeing” the same field of wheat can give rise to completely different acts of looking. For observers of the painting Wheatfield with Crows, it is difficult to avoid the dramatic impression of tragic, twilight tension. Van Gogh looks at those crows flying over the wheatfield in a totally particular and unrepeatable manner, despite exercising the same function of sight as a passer-by who may have distractedly cast a glance upon that same field just a moment before. There is no effort, expressive metabolism, elaboration, or hermeneutics in the passer-by’s distracted seeing; consequently, there is no novelty either. Strictly speaking,

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there is not even experience. When she gets home, that hypothetical passer-by will probably no longer remember that wheatfield: indeed, the psychic function of seeing had not interacted sufficiently with her order of the heart and, as a result, had left no trace. Van Gogh, in contrast, brings seeing the wheatfield into contact with his own order of the heart. Contrary to the distracted passer-by, he feels something, he has to stop, frown, and observe several times. Then, as he fixes on the canvas those black crows that swoop down like menacing shadows from a dark sky, as if to darken the luminosity and will to live that overflows from the field of ripe grain, van Gogh does not limit himself to reflecting something, but he expresses himself, and in this way it is he who assumes further form. There is an essential difference between the simple psychic function of seeing and the act of looking. An act is what makes something exist that was not there before. In the act of looking, van Gogh creatively metabolizes the anonymous function of seeing, puts himself at risk, and expresses something that gives further form to his singularity. From this point of view, all of van Gogh’s paintings are, to a certain extent, also self-portraits. Indeed, van Gogh’s self-­portraits are more than a simple reflection of something that is already there: they are a way of specifying and intensifying his own physiognomy, and of expressing his own way of positioning himself in the world. They have an anthropogenetic function. A self-portrait is a return to the self after having stepped outside one’s self, thus bestowing a new physiognomy upon one’s own singularization. I am something profoundly different from the image that Narcissus discerns in the water: Narcissus is fascinated by every edifying extension of his own self, and by everything that is able to send back a positive image. However, this confirmation is illusory, because the reflection of his image does not come from the other, and therefore remains self-referentially based on nothing. In contrast, a self-portrait is not a mirror that functions as an extension of the self, but the space in which the singularity assumes form by discovering aspects of its self that it did not know. In painting a self-portrait, van Gogh transcends the anonymous image of his own self, and carries out an anthropogenetic act by which he gives form to the physiognomy of his own personal singularity. It is a very different image from a passport photo, which merely reflects an apathetic image of the self. 1.5.6 Exemplary Acts Although it is true that the person is present in each of its acts, nevertheless not all of them are situated at the same depth or have the same relevance and intensity. There will also be unsuccessful or improper acts; obscene acts of

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which one might be ashamed; or acts that proceed in the wake of others, hence secondary acts, acts of adjustment. Finally, there are foundational acts, acts that cut through the factual level, as occurs in the paintings of Fontana. These acts are like a precursor that opens a new horizon of meaning with respect to that of common sense, enabling us to see something previously invisible, or see it as if it were the first time. I call these kinds of acts “exemplary acts”. An exemplary act always leaves a trail behind it: it is an act that inaugurates and conditions a subsequent new series of secondary acts. In this way, exemplary acts are deeply retroactive upon a singularity’s order of the heart, so much so that they mold it irreversibly and leave behind an indelible sign. Exemplary acts also orient the way of having experiences. They pave the way to new types of experience and, insofar as they interact with the order of the heart, these experiences condition all the successive ones of that kind. It is from exemplary acts, which have disclosed the experience of loving, that a whole series of concatenations of secondary acts of loving derive their origin. Through these concatenations, exemplary acts of loving condition not only a particular person’s subsequent way of loving, but also that person’s very physiognomy. 1.5.7 Why Is the Personal System Not Autopoietic? The personal system can be described as a system that deconstructs experiences, psychic functions, and social actions of the little self (expressive catabolism), to re-elaborate them in the new expressive pathways of its own acts (expressive anabolism) thanks to the orientation of its own order of the heart (operational closure of the personal system). Nevertheless, this is still a partial description, since it leaves a crucial question up in the air. The personal system has an operational closure (the order of the heart). Does that make it an autopoietic system? According to Luhmann, the answer to this question must be affirmative. In reality, we have seen that the personal system transcends its own self, and assumes form in the auroral void offered by another singularity. To be reborn in the encounter with another singularity is to violate the operational closure of one’s own autopoietic system; hence to transform one’s order of the heart (which represents the person’s DNA) not in a self-referential way, but in a process of co-formation. Consequently, as a non-self, the personal system is not an autopoietic system, at least not as Luhmann had defined it. But how is it possible to violate such a hard-and-fast law as that of operational closure? In a certain sense, an airplane also “violates” the law of gravity,

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yet this will not make me contrive the existence of mysterious spirit-like entities that raise a plane from the ground. Instead, it will suffice for me to have an engineer explain to me how the movement of air caused by the propellers allows an airplane to take off and fly. In the same way, the personal system “violates” autopoiesis, not by dint of some mysterious spiritual force, but because there exists an “engine” that enables the achievement of this result. Once more, in order to explain how the organism violates mechanicism, I do not need to hypothesize a mysterious force called “entelechy”, as Hans Driesch did at the end of the nineteenth century. The problem therefore consists in understanding what engine we are talking about and how it works. 1.5.8 How Co-Performing an Act Differs from Performing an Action The “engine” that enables the personal system to violate autopoietic closure can be identified in the “co-performance” of an act. In fact, each co-­performance of an act corresponds to operational openness toward another personal system. The paradox lies in the fact that, in this case, violating the operational closure does not result in the dissipation of the system but, on the contrary, in a further differentiation and singularization. Co-performance represents a way of sharing an act that is deeply different from the way of sharing an action. Co-performance is a non-individual way of sharing an act, which takes place in being reborn in the encounter with another singularity. Every co-performance of an act is a further step in the process of co-formation of the personal system. While actions and roles are performed by the self or the we, within a social context, an act is instead co-performed by a person in the auroral void that is offered by another singularity. Whereas an action can be interpreted within the social context in which it happens, co-performance makes an act ex-centric with respect to the performance of an action and its context. Co-performance violates the rules and the codification in force in the social context: it is a being touched by the world that interrupts autopoietic logic and makes something emerge that did not exist before. This is why an act, unlike an action, remains unforeseeable and unobjectifiable. It is not handed over to the subject’s com-prehension (Be-Greifen) or objectifying gaze, as it can never be “known”, but only co-performed. Actions have an impersonal character, like asking what time it is or dialing a telephone number. Even when it is directed at the other’s intimate sphere, in reality it merely objectifies it, without managing to interact with the other’s singularity. This is the case of the children who were victims of affective deprivation as described by Spitz: they had the misfortune of experiencing only actions, for which reason they did not undergo anthropogenetic development.

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Only the acts of a singularity can offer the care that enables the continuation of the anthropogenetic process. 1.5.9 Personal Systems and the Immunitarian Logic of Autopoietic Systems The personal non-self presupposes a “second level of attunement”, like the one that emerges when I transcend the little self toward an open community of singularities. However, the concept of attunement needs to be explained. There are no isolated individuals who subsequently attune with each other. Attunement or synchronization can only take place on the basis of a connection that is already in act. A wasp that stings a caterpillar can only attune with the caterpillar because it forms a unity with the caterpillar right from the start, in the sense of the unipathy (Einsfühlung) of Scheler or biosemiotics. An individual or a singularity is the result of, not the precondition for a process of individuation. Prior to this attunement, the singularity does not exist. The autopoietic system remains within an immunitarian paradigm: it works like a carapace that protects against injury, but as such it becomes operationally closed toward the world. The personal system overturns immunitarian logic: it does not shield itself, it does not hide its tensions, wounds, or incompleteness; on the contrary, it labors to expose them to the auroral void of other singularities. Insofar as it is singularly uncompleted, the personal system leaves a door open in its deepest part in order to continue being born. The incompleteness of the personal system enables a level of generative attunement with other singularities that cannot be achieved by an autopoietic system. This attunement has nothing to do with a pact or an alliance like the one that exists between the members of a social group. It is the radical nature of this living attunement that makes the personal system non-autopoietic. This raises the problem of the difference between non-autopoietic personal systems and allopoietic machines (Norbert Wiener) or trivial machines (Heinz von Foester). Personal systems do not have completely closed boundaries among themselves; from this point of view, they are organizationally “ajar” systems that do not have rigid boundaries.45 Yet they have an operational closure toward autopoietic systems. This closure is the result of the fact that it is not possible to co-perform actions, but only acts. An action is a particular type of operation performed by autopoietic systems. Consequently, a personal system, insofar as it co-performs only acts, is open toward the acts of other personal 45

See Dempster 2000, 1.

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systems, but operationally closed toward all actions of autopoietic systems. It is open to other singularities, but operationally closed toward the little self and self-referential collectives. Various forms of collective collaboration and of “making-with” are not sufficient to overcome the logic of autopoietic systems.46 The mere fact that a group of individuals acts collectively does not prevent it from being an autopoietic self-referential system. There are autopoietic systems that follow an individual intentionality, but there are also autopoietic systems that follow a collective intentionality. The basic misunderstanding lies in thinking that it is enough to collaborate or do something together to undermine the operational closure of the autopoietic system. On the contrary, another step must be taken to define a non-­autopoietic system. It is the personal system that makes the difference. The surpassing of a self-referential, autopoietic, and immunitarian logic does not occur spontaneously, but requires a periagoge: that is, an act of self-­transcendence. The forms of “making-with” that do not achieve this act of self-transcendence can be traced back to collective intentionality;47 in contrast, the ones that do include it involve a new concept of intentionality that refers to open community. By “collectivity” I mean a set of individuals who come together on the basis of a pact or alliance. By “open community”, I mean a set of singularities – that is, a group of individuals who meet thanks to the transcendence of their little selfs – who share their own auroral void and their hunger to be born. Consequently, the personal system is a non-autopoietic and non-other-­ directed system. The co-performance of an act is not individual, yet it is profoundly different from the collective forms of performance of an action. The self’s identification with a collective group entails a process of standardization. On the contrary, the second-level attunement between different singularities acts as a creative co-formation that produces differentiation. The totality of singularities that interact in the same co-formative process constitute an open

46

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According to Maturana and Varela, autopoietic systems are organizationally closed, but structurally open: this means that they are not totally autonomous, but that they define their boundaries and relations with the environment exclusively on the basis of their own self-organization. In short, an autopoietic system only “makes itself” to a certain extent, that is, only in relation to its own operational closure. This means that the problem of collaboration and symbiosis between different autopoietic systems poses no threat to the theory of autopoietic systems. In this regard, Luhmann considers forms of “making-with” between autopoietic systems in the sense of structural coupling (strukturelle Kopplung), which have no effect on operational closure (cf. Luhmann 1992). See Searle 2004.

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community. Insofar as it is uncompleted, the personal singularity is always defined with reference to a specific open community. 1.5.10 The Difference between Collective Intentionality and Community Intentionality The thesis of collective intentionality sustains that groups or collectivities can have intentional states, such as beliefs, desires, and intentions. This clashes with the traditional view that only individual minds can have intentional states. The implicit idea in collective intentionality is that the self is always already acting in the world, and that this action is always already shared with others. This means that our experiences are always already molded by the actions of others, and that we are always already co-creating the world with them. Collective intentionality is a fundamental part of the human experience. It is the way in which we are connected with others and create the world. In community intentionality, a further step is accomplished. Co-performance of an act translates into a “co-acting”. Such a co-acting does not refer to two or more individuals who share an intention or collaborate with each other in order to reach a goal – as occurs in collective intentionality – but to two or more individuals who have transcended their little selfs, share their hunger to be born, and open themselves up to a counter-intentionality that comes from the world. Community intentionality is no longer an intentionality at the service of the will of an autopoietic subject, whether individual or collective. Performance of an action and co-performance of an act refer to two different forms of intentionality. Sharing an action or collectively performing an action is still an expression of the objectifying intentionality of an autopoietic system, and remains within the self-referential perspective of collective intentionality. In contrast, in co-performance, the sharp tip of the act pierces the otherwise flat surface of autopoietic intentionality. The co-performance of the act causes a fissure, like the one opened by the slashes in Fontana’s canvases, which opens to dimensions inaccessible to the “two-dimensionality” of the self and the we. Autopoietic intentionality can be that of a single self (subjective intentionality) or an intentionality shared by at least two selfs (we-intentionality or collective intentionality). In both cases, the intentionality starts out from the subject (a self, a we, or a collectivity). The co-performance of an act and the existence of personal systems cast light onto the existence of an intentionality that is not autopoietic. Community intentionality shares with collective intentionality the fact that they do not refer to an isolated subject. Nevertheless, these intentionalities have opposite directions. Collective intentionality is still an objectifying intentionality born

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from the subject. Community intentionality could instead be described as that which receives the noesis of the noema; that is, the counter-intentionality that comes from the world. Hence, community intentionality is receptive and welcoming. This allows the personal singularity to open up to the world and play host to otherwise inaccessible dimensions of reality.

CHAPTER 2

Periagoge and Exemplarity 2.1

The Periagoge of the Prisoner of the Cave

2.1.1 The Craft of Living and the Destiny of Philosophy For human beings, living is by no means a spontaneous and predictable event. Rather, it is a craft that requires a difficult apprenticeship, a technique and often various teachers. In the craft of living, every individual tries, on a daily basis, to give a form to her existence, so as to step beyond the abyss of primordial formlessness. Fortunately, the transformation practices and techniques for reawakening tried out over the past millennia have settled into a particular type of knowledge: philosophy. At birth, every human represents the first Eve or the first Adam of a new, unique, and unrepeatable anthropogenetic pathway, which, over the years, will settle into a further layer of philosophy. This will proceed in an infinite process, since philosophical knowledge is uncompleted by its very nature. Therefore, it cannot be dogmatized or encoded in universal rules that are the same for everybody. Understood as an exercise of transformation, philosophy is therefore neither a cognitive method nor even a system of thought, but a consequence of the fact that human beings come into the world without having finished being born and have therefore had to learn the craft of living. The future of philosophy is closely linked to the anthropogenetic process carried out by each human being on a daily basis. And this is also the only real reason why, in spite of everything, philosophy continues to exist: the anthropogenetic process is still underway and has not yet been completely interrupted. Hence, the destiny of philosophy will not depend on an academic dispute, since it coincides with the very future of anthropogenesis.1 A future in which some psychotropic drug were to neutralize the heart’s restlessness and the hunger to be born would be a future without philosophy. Philosophy as an exercise of transformation or as a way of life does not claim to confer meaning upon human existence. Should it seek to do so, it turns back into a “philosophical discourse” in the sense criticized by Hadot.2 The current crisis of orientation does not derive from the lack of an adequate theory of the meaning of existence, but from the mass atrophying of the process of affective 1 See Cusinato 2008. 2 See § 6.1.5 Hadot and the Distinction between “Philosophy” and “Philosophical Discourse”. © Guido Cusinato, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004520202_004

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maturation, and from a lack of knowledge and experience about which techniques are best to revive it. The question that should be placed at the center of philosophy today is not, therefore, of finding a new and more beautiful theory capable of giving meaning to the world, but rather that of identifying the most effective techniques for promoting a reawakening and maturation of the deepest layers of affectivity. Once reawoken, they themselves will produce meaning, and orient the hunger to be born that is at the basis of anthropogenesis. This passage is neither automatic nor foreseeable. The term that has often been used to describe it in the philosophical tradition is “conversion”. 2.1.2 Conversion as Epistrophe and Metanoia Pierre Hadot continually underlines that the idea of a philosophy as a practical exercise of conversion was at the center of ancient philosophy: “the idea of conversion represents one of the notions that are constitutive for Western consciousness. Indeed, one could describe the whole history of the West as a ceaselessly renewed effort to perfect the techniques of ‘conversion’: that is to say, to perfect the techniques which aim at transforming human reality”.3 In this idea, Hadot identifies a tension between two different concepts: On the one hand, there is epistrophe, which means a ‘change in orientation’, and implies the idea of a return (a return to an origin or a return to oneself); on the other hand, there is the word metanoia, which means a ‘change in thought’ or ‘repentance’, implying the idea of a mutation and a rebirth. Therefore, in the idea of conversion, there is an internal opposition between the idea of a ‘return to an origin’ and the idea of a ‘rebirth’. This polarity between fidelity and rupture has deeply marked Western consciousness since the appearance of Christianity.4 Epistrophe primarily indicates a philosophical conversion thanks to which the individual surpasses an alienated present, immersed in doxa, and returns to a condition of original unity with the whole. In this conversion, the individual does not become someone else, but returns to being what she was at the origin, in a process similar in some ways to Platonic anamnesis. In contrast, metanoia is more often associated with a religious conversion. In Christianity, under the influence of the Jewish tradition, metanoia implies the condemnation and death of the old sinful self in order to promote the rebirth of a new 3 Hadot 2020, 94. 4 Ibid., 93.

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person. Hadot seems to be inclined to bring these two forms of conversion back together, since he considers them two complementary aspects. Thus, through conversion, “a person will find again their original nature (epistrophe) through a violent extraction from the perversion in which common mortals live, and a profound disruption of the whole of their being (and here we refer to metanoia)”.5 2.1.3 Hadot’s “Cosmic” Turn and the “Oceanic Feeling” During an interview with Jeannie Carlier, Hadot relates an episode that was decisive for his way of understanding philosophy and spiritual exercises. He describes the experience as an “oceanic feeling”. When he was a teenager, as he was going home one evening, he stopped to look at the starry sky: Night had fallen. The stars were shining in an immense sky; […] I was filled with an anxiety that was both terrifying and delicious, provoked by the sentiment of the presence of the world, or of the Whole, and of me in that world. In fact, I was incapable of formulating my experience, but after the fact I felt that it might correspond to questions such as What am I? Why am I here? […] I experienced a sentiment of strangeness, of astonishment, and of wonder at being there [être-là]. […] I had the sentiment of being immersed in the world, of being a part of it, the world extending from the smallest blade of grass to the stars. This world was present to me, intensely present. Much later I would discover that this awareness of my immersion in the world, this impression of belonging to the Whole, was what Romain Rolland called the “oceanic feeling.” I think I have been a philosopher since that time, if by philosophy one understands this awareness of existence, of being-in-the-world.6 A large part of Hadot’s philosophical efforts consisted in trying to investigate and understand this youthful experience. For Hadot, a spiritual exercise is not an inner retreat, but rather a transcendence of one’s own little self in order to regain this “oceanic feeling”. This entails the necessity of a “cosmic” turn in the very way of conceiving of philosophy.7 And it is precisely in relation to 5 Ibid., 96. 6 Hadot 2011, 5–6. 7 “I am more interested by the cosmic aspect of philosophy—perhaps because of the particular experiences I have had, like that of the ‘oceanic feeling’. I therefore would like philosophy to be situated more within the perspective of the universe, or of humanity in its totality, or of humanity as Other” (Hadot 2011, 185).

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the topic of the cosmic turn that Hadot famously accuses Foucault of falling back into an “aesthetics of existence” understood as “dandyism”:8 for Hadot, Foucault’s failure to understand the centrality of the cosmic turn had driven him toward an individualistic vision of epimeleia heautou. In my opinion, if one articulates it in an ecological sense, this cosmic turn is essential for a rebirth of philosophy as an exercise of transformation, and to leave behind the many ambiguities that have thus far accompanied the philosophy of care, which has often been understood precisely as an intimist cura sui. Hadot describes this oceanic feeling both as the feeling “of being immersed in the world” and as the experience of a world that suddenly becomes “intensely present”.9 But regaining a connection with the Whole presupposes a conversion that translates into a different way of seeing nature, as Bergson underlines when describing philosophical conversion as the ability to look at nature with new eyes.10 Nevertheless, what perhaps remains in the shade from this perspective is that being rooted in nature and philosophical conversion represent two distinct ways of renewed convergence with the Whole. Indeed, the little self can be surpassed in two directions: both in order to return to being immersed in a unity and to regain a connection with the Whole through a process of rebirth in the encounter with the other. The first way is on the level of biosemiotics, while the second is based on the first but is expressed at the level of the open community of singularities. And it may be with reference to these two ways of renewed convergence with the Whole that we can rethink the concepts of epistrophe and metanoia. 2.1.4 Periagoge: The Problem of Conversion in Plato It is no easy task to pinpoint the term that Plato uses to designate his own philosophical concept of “conversion”. Foucault identifies it in the word epistrophe.11 This is a problematic assertion, since in reality Plato only uses the 8 9

10 11

Ibid. In this oceanic feeling, Hadot rediscovers the invitations of Hölderlin: “To be but one with all living things, to return, by a radiant self-forgetfulness, to the All of Nature”; and of Nietzsche: “To go beyond myself and yourself. To experience things in a cosmic way” (Hadot 2006, 319). See Hadot 2006, 212. “Hence the idea of conversion to the self (ad se convertere), the idea of a whole life activity by which one turns round to examine oneself (eis heauton epistrephein). No doubt the theme of the epistrophe is typically Platonic” (Foucault 2005, 495). “This immanence is again distinguished by the notion of a conversion to the self (epistrophe eis heauton, conversio ad se) preached by Hellenistic and Roman philosophy, and opposed both to the

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noun “epistrophe” once (R. X, 620e) and not with the explicit meaning of “conversion”.12 To tell the truth, there is no single Platonic term for “conversion”. If one term must be indicated, then the main candidates are “periagoge” and “metastrophe”. Periagoge, as is well known, is the term that indicates the famous movement of turning the head that the prisoner in the cave carries out as soon as he is freed.13 In illustrating the image of the cave, Plato specifies that what prevents the prisoners from seeing reality is not so much a lack of sight, but rather the distorted direction of their gaze (R. VII, 518b–d).14 Dishonest people are not blind, nor do they lack keen vision. Their problem is rather one of perspective, insofar as their sight “is forced to serve evil ends” (R. VII, 518e2–519a6). Conversion does not restore sight to the blind, but rather frees them from the perspective distorted by “evil ends”. Hence, for Plato conversion is “periagogic”: it makes the head turn in order to change perspective. Therefore, there must be “a specific technique of conversion” (techne […] tes periagoges) that teaches how the soul can more effectively be turned around, bearing in mind that it already possesses sight but that, without this art, it cannot turn the gaze toward “the right direction” (R. VII, 518d). For Plato, the problem of philosophy becomes a problem of perspective and periagogic conversion.

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14

Platonic epistrophe, which proposes the passage to a higher reality through recollection, and to Christian metanoia, which installs a sacrificial style of break within the self” (Foucault, 533, but see also: 209–211; 216–217). In order to avoid misunderstandings, it must be noted that the expressions “eis heauton epistrephein” and “epistrophe eis heauton” do not appear in Plato. “This daemon first led the soul under the hand of Clotho as it turned the revolving (epistrophen) spindle to confirm the fate that the lottery and its own choice had given it” (R. X, 620e). The term “epistrophe” is instead more frequent and central in Plotinus and Proclus. In Plato “periagoge” indicates the soul’s act of turning so that it can change perspective. It occurs at least six times (Plt. 270a, R. VII, 518d, 518e, 521c, 533d). “Metastrophe”, by contrast, occurs at least five times. The passage in R. VII, 532b is particularly significant because of its proximity to the movement of turning implicit in the term “periagoge”: “Then the release from bonds and the turning around [metastrophe] from shadows to statues and the light”. Hence, a periagoge is needed to correct the gaze: “what some people declare it to be, namely, putting knowledge into souls that lack it, like putting sight into blind eyes […]. But our present discussion, on the other hand, shows that the power to learn is present in everyone’s soul and that the instrument with which each learns is like an eye that cannot be turned around from darkness to light without turning the whole body. This instrument cannot be converted [periakteon, literally, turned around] from that which is coming into being without turning the whole soul until it is able to study that which is and the brightest thing that is, […] the good.” (Pl. R. VII, 518b–d).

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2.1.5 The Allegory of the Cave What does the image of the Platonic cave suggest? Common sense is conditioned by both cognitive and emotional existential bias. If we could actually step outside of common sense, in which we are constantly immersed like the air we breathe, then our condition would appear similar to that of a prisoner chained up in a cave, whose head cannot move, so that he is forced to look only at the shadows cast on the cave wall. It is interesting that Heidegger considers the allegory of the cave starting out from the final moment in which the prisoner, now outside the cave, tries to contemplate the sun (R. VII, 516b). Taking his cue from a term used by Plato himself – “orthos”, literally “straight” – Heidegger sees in this allegory the description of a repressive kind of education (Bildung), as it is the result of a forced straightening in order to conform to the absolute truth of the world of ideas. The problem is that Heidegger also interprets the movement of periagoge as the result of straightening (orthotes) the gaze toward the ideas, without considering that the periagoge takes place inside the cave, where the ideas cannot yet be seen.15 The passage in which the term “orthos” appears is the one in which Plato asserts that once the periagoge is completed, the prisoner “sees something that is closer to reality and more true, because his gaze is now more correct [orthoteron blepoi]” (R. VII, 515c–d). As we can see, the term “orthos” does not indicate a “straightening” in order to conform to the absolute truth of the world of ideas. In fact, the prisoner is still inside the cave, and is not contemplating the sun. If the vision of the sun only occurs at the end of the itinerary and not at the beginning, then it cannot be that vision that makes the prisoner turn his head and then orient his path when he is still in the cave. Rather, all Plato is doing in this passage is to assert that by being distracted from eikasia, the first level of the doxa, the gaze is now “more correct”. Therefore, the conquest of a wider perspective is not the result of a straightening stemming from the action of the ideas, but derives from the change of perspective intrinsic in the periagoge itself. 2.1.6 Periagoge in The Truman Show and The Matrix Prior to the periagoge, the prisoner lived quite satisfied in his own blessed ignorance. After the periagoge, something changes. It is true that, if he looks toward the exit, he is blinded by the light and so he instinctively turns his gaze back toward doxa. Nevertheless, after the periagoge, as already observed, his gaze becomes “more correct” (orthoteron blepoi) and he is no longer the same as before. 15

See Heidegger 1997.

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Under what conditions can the periagoge happen? To study this problem in more depth, I prefer to refer to two films. One is The Truman Show (1998, directed by Peter Weir) and the other The Matrix (1999, directed by Lana and Lilly Wachowski). Both Truman Burbank (played by Jim Carrey) and Neo (played by Keanu Reeves) unwittingly live in a fake reality. The former lives inside a gigantic television set, while the latter is immersed in a tank filled with a gelatinous amniotic fluid and connected to a computer program (Matrix) that makes him believe he is living in a normal world. The protagonists of both films live in a virtual bubble, but for all their doubts and rationalizations, they cannot succeed in getting out by themselves. In a crucial scene, Christof, the producer-demiurge of The Truman Show, notes about Truman that He can leave at any time. If it was more than just a vague ambition, if he was absolutely determined to discover the truth, there’s no way we could prevent him from leaving. What distresses you, really, caller, is that ultimately, Truman prefers his ‘cell,’ as you call it. When answering Neo’s question, Morpheus also describes this situation in terms of a mental prison: “What truth” – “That you are a slave, Neo. That you, like everyone else, was born into bondage … kept inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind. Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself”. Both The Truman Show and The Matrix pose the problem of coming out of a cave whose walls are as invisible as the air we breathe. What is new with regard to Plato’s image? What makes the difference is the explicit presence of another person who comes from outside, and does not force, but persuades the prisoner to come out of the cave. In order to break out of the virtual bubble, Truman needs to be woken up by a woman called Lauren, in the same way as Neo has to be awakened by a mysterious character who believes in him and is known as Morpheus. Of course, very strange things sometimes happen. In The Truman Show a lamp falls from the sky; a tramp who looks like Truman’s dead father is suddenly taken away by some strangers. In The Matrix, odd messages invite Neo to follow a “white rabbit”, whose nature is not further specified. But all of these facts are automatically brushed off as insignificant details or hallucinations, because they blatantly clash with the predominant common sense. That is, until the ultimate test, the reawakening that opens their eyes and forces

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them to look at true reality: Truman plows through the papier-mâché horizon of the television set in a boat, and Neo takes the red pill. The Truman Show and The Matrix both propose, once again, a very concrete philosophical thesis: the human being is not originally free, but is born unconsciously immersed in a common sense that acts as a virtual bubble. A “periagoge” is needed to get out of the bubble, but this is only possible thanks to the influence of an alterity (Lauren or Morpheus). This alterity acts as a shock that also involves the mode of feeling. The result is a feeling that is initially still confused and blinded, like that of Plato’s recently freed prisoner, but nevertheless sensitive to the argumentative strength of the Socratic dialogue. 2.1.7 Incomplete Reality The meaning of these stories is not that the world in which we are immersed is actually a cave, a television set, or a vat. Their strength instead derives from the fact that they urge us to verify whether the reality we live in is somehow incomplete. This is a topic of not only philosophical but also sociological relevance. Every social unit surrounds itself with a world of ready-to-use, decoded meanings that enable each member of the group to remain immersed in a familiar context of self-evidence that is apt to considerably simplify all day-today operations. Every familiar environment is always based on a law of reduction of complexity that allows one to save time and concentration: I catch the usual bus home, go up the stairs, enter the house, and, even if I do not turn on the light, I already know where to go and what I will encounter when I enter the hallway. This knowledge, understood sociologically as common sense, is all the more effective the more it is taken for granted. In every social unit, from the family to the largest nation, there is always a core of common sense which, in order not to rock the boat, can never be violated or questioned without sparking conflict. As long as I am moving in a familiar environment, I am proceeding within my mental map. I do not really “look at” what surrounds me, until, for instance, I happen to stumble over an object left forgotten on the ground. At that point, I get back up and look at that something again not as a Type, but as a Token. The shock makes me look around myself and quickly reconstruct a new context. However, it takes a hermeneutic effort to consider something a Token. The entertainment industry instead promises an existence in which there is no stumbling or need for a hermeneutic effort, since everything has already been metabolized, prepackaged and made usable in the form of immediate and momentary excitement. However, following the ideology of ready-made enjoyment means sinking ever more deeply into the mental maps built by the entertainment industries.

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If I find myself in a situation already given as “familiar” without making any hermeneutic effort, it is because the work of hermeneutic elaboration has already been done by someone else in my place. In the mass media, the contents transmitted are deliberately structured in such a way as to be immediately usable: an extremely high number of stimuli and images emerge from the continual flow of media knowledge without any need for further thought or elaboration. Social media do not overturn this principle but adapt it to fit the single user’s existential bias. The great misunderstanding concerning feeling, which Girard called the “romantic lie”, is to mistake immediate feeling for the authenticity of one’s own desire.16 In reality, the “spontaneity” of feeling and enjoyment has already been institutionalized by a mediatic breeding of human beings,17 directed by the media and subliminal marketing strategies. To follow this spontaneity is to remain trapped inside a virtual bubble. 2.2

Desertification of the Real and Emotional Re-Enchantment

2.2.1 Climacus’s Ladder and Kant’s Shackles (Fußschellen) The people making the invitation to come out of the cave are often presented as “guides” or “sages” who impose their orientation from above, through an authoritarian type of verticality. One of the highest expressions of authoritarian 16 17

See § 3.5 Infatuations and the Deceptions of Feeling. It is important to distinguish the process of the reproduction of social consensus from the anthropogenetic process that enables the formation (Bildung) of the personal singularity. The former is no longer a process of formation (Bildung), since it henceforth follows an industrial logic, like that which has asserted itself in the intensive farming of animals. Contrary to the process of formation of the singularity, it is a process of “domestication”, “breeding”, and indoctrination of human beings, which aims at shaping and influencing their way of thinking, beliefs, and choices. This breeding takes place unconsciously, and knows how to make itself practically invisible. It was Nietzsche who first grasped the centrality of this problem through his concept of the breeding (Züchtung) of human beings: “Zu allen Zeiten hat man die Menschen ‘verbessern’ wollen: dies vor Allem hiess Moral. Aber unter dem gleichen Wort ist das Allerverschiedenste von Tendenz versteckt. Sowohl die Zähmung der Bestie Mensch als die Züchtung einer bestimmten Gattung Mensch ist ‘Besserung’ genannt worden […]. Die Zähmung eines Thieres seine ‘Besserung’ nennen ist in unsren Ohren beinahe ein Scherz” (Nietzsche, Die “Verbesserer” der Menschheit, in Götzen-Dämmerung KSA Bd. VI, 99). In the age of narcissism, a new technique of “breeding” of human beings (industrial human breeding) is asserting itself, intended to create consensus and orient public opinion. It is based on a new “fodder”: that is, narcissistic gratification obtained through social media and based largely on the logic of cognitive bias. This new “opium of the people” is the mediatic breeding of human beings.

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Figure 2.1 Miniature of St. John Climacus’s Ladder of Paradise, from a twelfth-century ­manuscript preserved in the Monastery of St. Catherine of Sinai Monastery of St. Catherine, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

verticality is Saint John Climacus’s image of the Ladder of Paradise. It appears in a miniature from a twelfth-century manuscript preserved in the monastery of Saint Catherine in the Sinai. The top of the ladder is firmly “resting” on the divine, represented by a Christ who welcomes those who manage to reach the top rungs. Figures of devils hover in the middle of the picture, attacking those who fall.

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In past centuries, it was the authorities representing God on earth who guided Christians ever upward along the difficult path of ascent, which is represented by Climacus’s Ladder: church, state, paterfamilias. All of these authorities are currently in crisis. What happens when this ladder becomes impracticable? The complexity of the topic was already clear to Kant too. In his famous article, “Answer to the Question, What is Enlightenment?”, Kant invites us, with his famous maxim “sapere aude!” (dare to know), to leave behind the state of minority (Unmündigkeit), where minority means “the inability to make use of one’s own understanding without the guidance of another”.18 This leaving behind should take place automatically, naturally, with the passage to majority (naturaliter maiorennes). Nevertheless, Kant continues: It is so comfortable to be a minor! If I have a book that understands for me, a spiritual advisor who has a conscience for me, a doctor who decides upon a regimen for me, and so forth, I need not trouble myself at all. I have no need to think, if only I can pay; others will readily undertake the irksome business for me.19 Since they are not accustomed to using their own intelligence, human beings prefer to remain “lifelong minors”; and they even end up loving this state, which becomes a veritable “second nature” for them. Thus, Kant goes on, they find themselves imprisoned, with shackles (Fußschellen) on their feet, unable to walk on their own legs, that is, to reason with their own heads. The paradox is that the essay “What is Enlightenment?” proposes itself as a model of what it means to free oneself from the shackles of minority and to “use one’s understanding without the guidance of another”. It is also noteworthy that after this essay, more and more philosophers stopped writing books in the guise of “spiritual advisors”, and increasingly proposed themselves as models of “sapere aude!”. However, the results were not always as desired. What went wrong? First of all, the compromise solution suggested by Kant, with the distinction between public and private use of reason, did not last. In fact, Kant proposes a “contract” between the free use of reason and enlightened despotism. His invitation to give up the various spiritual advisors who think in my place is limited only to the citizen as a free thinker and scholar. When exercising the social role, by contrast, the citizen must continue to obey orders without arguing: that is, as long as there is an enlightened sovereign at the apex of the 18 19

Kant 1996, 17. Ibid.

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hierarchy. Thus, Kant is not very far from resting the top of Climacus’s ladder on the enlightened despotism of Frederick II. 2.2.2 Desertification of the Real and Weber’s Disenchantment Climacus’s ladder collapsed during the twentieth century, beneath the blows of Nietzsche’s announcement of the death of God and the Weberian disenchantment of the world. At that point, the vertical image of Climacus’s ladder was gradually replaced by a new image: the flat and horizontal image of exclusionary liquid society. The problem is to understand if, as was often thought at the end of the twentieth century, descending Climacus’s ladder (that is, getting out of the perspective of the authoritarian morality) is really sufficient to step out of the cave. Reflecting on the film The Matrix, Slavoj Žižek dwells on the sentence used by Morpheus to welcome Neo as soon as he is disconnected from the Matrix: “Welcome to the Desert of the Real”.20 In the background is Baudrillard’s theory of the “desertification of the real”. Where is Morpheus when he utters this phrase? Does the scene in which Neo is disconnected from the Matrix and wakes up in a vat of gelatinous fluid correspond to the moment when Plato’s prisoner comes out of the cave, or rather to the moment when he is untied and carries out the periagoge? Is what is here called “desertification of the real” reality as it appears once we come out of the cave, or is it the true physiognomy of the cave, once the periagoge has been carried out? The meaning of Baudrillard’s theses also changes radically, according to how one answers this question. Once we have come down Climacus’s ladder, the temptation to return to the condition of enchained but happy prisoner is very strong. This is what happens to Cypher in the film The Matrix, when, when a virtual steak is placed in front of him, he admits: “You know, I know that this steak doesn’t exist. I know when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, do you know what I’ve realized? Ignorance is bliss.” The group of rebels led by Morpheus have also carried out the periagoge. This does not mean that they have emerged from the cave: indeed, what they see is not reality, but desertified reality. The logic of domination creates apparatuses to devour nature and strip it of all of value and meaning of its own. The process of desacralizing nature is the catabolism that transforms it into a neutral and perfectly manipulable reality. It is a necessary process for digesting nature. 20

Cf. Žižek 2002.

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The end product of this metabolism is the creation of archipelagos of islands dedicated to the tribal rites of consumerism. In contrast, the waste products of this digestion process are the slums that surround these islands like an ever-more putrescent ocean. Desertified reality is the slum. Yet it is not reality, but the waste products of reality produced by human self-referentiality. Hence, Morpheus should have welcomed Neo by saying: “Welcome to the Slum of reality!” The desertification of the real is the result of how human society applied Weber’s disenchantment of the world (Entzauberung der Welt) in the last century. Instead of leading to a revaluation of Spinoza’s natura naturans, the disenchantment with regard to metaphysics and theology spilled over into a process of stripping nature naked that deprived it of all value and autonomous meaning, so that it could be better quantified and dominated according to exclusively economic values. The twentieth-century prisoner had deluded himself that to finally become free, it would suffice to come down the ladder, that is, to sweep away the last grand narratives of theology and metaphysics. Instead, the prisoner has ended up anesthetizing the “oceanic feeling” (Hadot) that connected him to the rest of the living world. Once they have become insensitive to the sacredness of nature, human beings opened the door to that process that is leading to the destruction of life in the oceans and to the horrors of intensive animal farming. 2.2.3 The First Phase of Emotional Re-Enchantment: Ready-Made Enjoyment and Narcissism In the mid-twentieth century, faith in the myth of progress was still very strong. At first, the concept of sustainable development seemed to work, so much so that increasingly large groups of the population of industrialized countries considerably improved their own economic conditions. In these nations, during the years of economic development, every generation, with few exceptions, was able to experience a better standard of living than the previous one. This experience enabled stable investments in the future through planning and implementing projects for political, economic, and cultural emancipation. This situation encountered a crisis with the emergence of forms of precarity typical of the liquid society described by Zygmunt Bauman. Once the future becomes uncertain and can no longer be planned, individuals inevitably fall back upon the present and are prompted to strengthen their little self through a narcissistic culture of self-esteem.21 Thus, the little self expands in adiposity 21

Cf. Lasch 1991.

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until it completely fills the auroral void and blocks the process of the formation of a singularity. The result is a singularity that becomes a minimal self22 which – in a liquid society based on individual responsibility and autonomous decision-making – easily falls victim to depression (Ehrenberg 1998).23 In the attempt to make at least the present inhabitable, the minimal self tries to recreate a horizon of meaning, a niche that can offer some form of protection and security. Weberian disenchantment is therefore set aside and its place taken by a truly regressive process of “re-enchantment” of the world.24 Edgar Morin had the merit of having combined the criticism of these new regressive forms of re-enchantment, typical of a “neo-archaic” culture, with the theme of ecology.25 Following Morin, the theory of singularity that I propose allows the combination of a deconstruction of the old and new forms of re-enchantment of the world with the theme of the resacralization of nature, in the sense of deep ecology. The first phase of emotional re-enchantment was celebrated with rites of ready-made enjoyment, that is, enjoyment of something that is created by someone else, which therefore does not require any effort and is accompanied by instant gratification. Such regressive forms of emotional re-enchantment found their preferred field of application in consumerism. Excitement in the face of the “wonderful” was no longer sought by entering the portals of cathedrals, but of shopping centers and practicing the rites of mass consumption. In this new “magic system”, products are bought on the basis of the wonder that they succeed in arousing, and consumer society thus makes a kind of cheap enchantment universally available .26 Consumerism, excitement for the wonderful, instant gratification, and consensus mutually fuel one another. Driven by this one-way emotional doping, the world and reality become a pill to swallow and enjoy. This has also had consequences on the logics of the reproduction of consensus. In a situation in which the social system perceives desire as a risk, the most effective solution to obtain consensus is no longer to repress enjoyment, as in the authoritarian societies of previous centuries, but to exalt it and channel it, in order to focus repressive action on desire alone. Since the 1980s, the strategy that has come to the fore has been to promote, on the cultural and editorial level, the circulation of philosophies that exalted enjoyment and at the same 22 23 24 25 26

Cf. Lasch 1984. Cf. Ehrenberg 2008. See also Taylor 2011. See Morin 1962. See Williams 1993.

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time to develop an entertainment industry capable of offering a wide range of pre-standardized and easy-to-use forms of ready-made enjoyment. That which is liquid, precisely because it is liquid, is maximally easy to channel through the mediatic breeding of human beings. The individual’s liquid state is ensured by the deactivation of the deepest layers of affectivity and the simultaneous exaltation of ready-made enjoyment accompanied by instant gratification. Deactivating desire and the hunger to be born blocks the process of formation of the singularity, and hence prevents the emergence of possible forms of dissent. For its part, the exaltation of instant gratification brings it about that the individual becomes lost in a continuous succession of excitements, without developing or maturing. After the fall of the old ideological models – and in the absence of alternative forms of orientation, such as those represented by exemplarity – the individual turns to the activity of buying and consumption as one of the few remaining ways to construct an identity and open a horizon of meaning for her own existence. The consequences for the individual’s process of formation are catastrophic. At this point, Weber’s disenchantment of the world ends up devouring everything. Not only have the traditional points of orientation been eliminated, but the very idea of value, meaning, beauty, and reality have too. Philosophy itself to a large extent has become “philosophical discourse”. The announcement of the death of God is thus often translated into the absolutization of ready-made enjoyment by a narcissistic self. Lacking a stable outlook for the future, the self now finds it counterproductive to grow and to assume responsibility, and hence to become an adult. The prolongation of the state of minority (Unmündigkeit) is no longer criticized, as was the case in Kant, but is exalted: it becomes the “wonderful” world of Peter Pan, while the heroic individual of modernity has stepped aside to make way for the myth of the enfant eternel. 2.2.4 The Second Phase of Emotional Re-Enchantment: The Wonderful World of Influencers The passage to the second phase of emotional re-enchantment is marked by the advent of social media. The instability of the liquid society, the precarity of ties and the fragmentation of the family impel people to seek alternative ways of sharing meaning, value, emotions, and experiences. In a society in which the space reserved for exemplarity and relations of care is increasingly reduced, this demand for sharing turns to the practices of emotional sharing made possible by social media, making them one of the main moments in which to share the experiences of one’s own existence.

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As I have already argued, practices of emotional sharing are at the basis of the processes of formation of individuals and society.27 In other words, they are the engines of anthropogenesis and social ontology: they ontologically produce individuals and social units. In the liquid society, practices of emotional sharing are exercised less and less through relations of care and more and more through rites of sharing the same product or the same service on social media. At the level of social ontology, different emotional sharing practices correspond to the emergence of different types of social unit. The social unit that emerges from practices of emotional sharing on social media is the magical world of the influencer. Influencers follow the logic of the model, not of exemplarity. While they can naturally also play a role of cultural and social emancipation, they are actually becoming the main form of advertising promotion. After an initial phase of initiation, the new follower finds a horizon of meaning in her existence by sharing and identifying with the “wonderful” world of the influencer. The desertified cave is furnished with forms of sharing excitement, euphoria, and meaning that correspond perfectly to her own existential biases. In many cases, this sharing leads to the formation of a veritable affective “tribe”. In each of these tribes, the members dedicate themselves to the rites in which they share and confirm exciting and immediate emotions by taking part in discussions and posting materials (photos, videos, etc.) that show the “wonderful” and “extraordinary” aspects of their own existence. In the absence of alternative forms of orientation, influencers become the main factor in the individual’s process of formation. The explosion of the need to share has been very well understood by the new strategies of “tribal” marketing. The consumption of a product increasingly tends to coincide with the emotional sharing made possible by that product. If the true product to be sold becomes the possibility of sharing one’s own emotions, and the real “currency” to be obtained in exchange becomes the user’s attention, then establishing a one-to-one approach between the consumer and a particular brand ultimately becomes a matter of secondary importance. What becomes primary, in contrast, is to promote a virtual “community” that is sufficiently attractive for the users of that product. At that point, the sense of belonging and passions shared by members of the affective tribe become the main engine for promoting the product itself, and, at the same time, for capturing the users’ attention. The word-of-mouth technique evolves into “click-to-like”. What is actually at stake is the possibility of buying one’s own ideal narrative identity: a kind of “shop window” onto one’s own existence, in which to find 27

See Cusinato 2018.

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that meaning and those motivations that are not possible in desertified reality. In exchange, the user is asked for her attention. The way in which the follower’s narrative identity is constructed resembles that of a closed box in which the reflection of one’s own existential bias is proposed ad infinitum. This causes a snowball effect, since every time this bias is confirmed and bounces back, it is reinforced. Every “like” received for a photo or post produces a dopamine effect. This is an elementary mechanism of human psychology that increasingly captures the user’s attention and acts as a motor for the logic of social media. The attention of an ever-growing number of users is captured by sending personalized ads. This is made possible by the fact that the profiles of the users of the great companies of the online world (Google, Facebook etc.) are defined with ever-more scientific accuracy by means of the technique of “data points”.28 The logic of these targeted ads is that of simplifying, polarizing, and radicalizing the debates to which the user shows herself to be most sensitive. This radicalization not only attracts and orients the user’s attention, but allows the involvement of powerful emotional catalysts such as fear, resentment, envy, and hate. In the first phase of emotional re-enchantment, what prevailed was readymade enjoyment and “shock” emotions, that is, the emotions linked to a euphoric and momentary excitement that suddenly dissolve, even before they can be diversified, mature, and influence the individual’s formation process. In the new phase of re-enchantment, slow-burning emotions such as fear, resentment, envy, and hate play a decisive role. These emotions settle into persistent and ongoing habits, capable of profoundly modifying an individual, crystallizing into beliefs and motivating her behavior in a more stable way. The force of these emotions can be directed toward specific targets thanks to the diffusion of targeted hashtags. At that point, the user is even ready to move from words to action, and perhaps even take to the streets to protest. In this way, the wonderful world of the influencer can be transformed into a tribe on the warpath, that is, into a political weapon capable of influencing public opinion. 2.2.5 The Society of Affections and Emotional Regression In the liquid society, the loss of faith in progress has demotivated investment in the future, and this has reinforced the epidermic affective layers linked to excitement, as well as to such “invasive” passions as fear, resentment, envy, and hate. In contrast, the deeper layers are viewed with growing suspicion, as they are considered risky. The restlessness of the heart and the hunger to be born 28

See Frey & Dueck 2007; Schyff et al. 2020.

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lead to investing in long-lasting and non-anonymous relationships with the other. However, commitment to a long-term relationship exposes us to the risk of failure, delusion, and betrayal; and therefore pain. In liquidity, all that can be associated with risk, crisis, and vulnerability is to be eliminated. The affective regression connected to the new forms of re-enchantment has been denounced for some time now, for example, as a “cult of emotion”,29 “emotional capitalism”,30 and “society of affections”.31 In reality, it is not the case that a cult of emotion has been affirmed in these forms of emotional regression, but rather a cult of emotionalism, which is very different. Similarly, what is described here as a “society of affections” is in fact merely a “society of affective illiteracy”. Hence, these theories must be rethought in order to discover the essential datum: in these forms of emotional re-enchantment desire and the hunger to be born are atrophied, with the consequent marginalization of the orienting capacity of exemplarity. This is a regression that nullifies the anthropogenetic problem, and opens the door to attempts to solve the heart’s restlessness on a pharmacological level. The true alternative to this cheap emotionalism hence is to be sought in the promotion of anthropogenetic dynamics. Only on the basis of such dynamics can a subversive movement develop that is capable of taking on the true emergencies of the contemporary world and promoting a real transformation of society. If the new phase of re-enchantment orients and polarizes individuals, making them increasingly go through anonymous and polarizing affective flows, then the only way out is to learn to metabolize these flows in the direction of singularization. As I will argue further on,32 immediate feeling is not the innocent expression of an autonomy of feeling: on the contrary, it almost always reflects “common feeling”. Consequently, it is indispensable to extend radical doubt to one’s own existential biases and to immediate feeling as well. This radical doubt can be traced to the periagoge, that is, to the act of self-transcendence that places in brackets the little self. 2.2.6 Assuming Form While Falling: The Crisis and Hokusai’s Wave The process of human formation is more deeply rooted than one can imagine in the logic of vertical erection. The philosophy of “verticality”, of the “subject”, 29 30 31 32

See Lacroix 2001. See Illouz 2007. See Lordon 2013. See § 3.6.1 Beyond the Opposition between Subjective Feeling and Objective Emotion.

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Figure 2.2 Katsushika Hokusai, The Great Wave off Kanagawa (1826–1833) Katsushika Hokusai, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

or of the erect self that builds itself upwards is ultimately rooted in the extraordinary evolutionary success that resulted from the conquest of the erect position. Is there an image that can represent an alternative to the verticality of Climacus’s ladder and to the horizontality of the liquid society? Hoksuai’s famous wave is part of a series of Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, carried out by the artist Katsushika Hokusai between 1831 and 1833, using the Japanese genre of artistic engraving known as Ukiyo-e: “pictures of the fluctuating world”, from uki (fluctuating), yo (world) and e (picture) – which flourished in Japan in the Edo period between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. In ­nineteenth-century Japan, it came to express, with increasing conviction, the hedonistic exhortation to immerse oneself within vital movement, accepting its turbulent instability. Looking at this magnificent image, one cannot escape the impression of a looming threat. Upon closer observation, what is unnerving is the crest of the wave. The foam of the breaking wave takes on the form of the claws of a hand against which the human being is completely defenseless. The breaking wave is not only the visual representation of breaking of the wave’s equilibrium, but is the very emblem of an explosive and uncontrolled force. Contrary to a normal wave, which raises and then lowers the raft of human existence, a breaking

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wave, if big enough, can sweep away every existence it encounters. This crisis induces a transformation that is not governed by the subject’s plans, but is experienced in the sense of being swept away. The image of the wave radically changes the perspective: indeed, the fluctuating movement of the wave introduces a dimension of verticality into the flat liquidity of ethical indifferentism. At the same time, such verticality cannot be traced back to that of the subject who wants to elevate herself by climbing Climacus’s ladder, either. The main difference between Climacus’s ladder and Hokusai’s wave concerns its upper extremity: the top of Climacus’s ladder rests firmly on an ideal level, whereas the top of the wave, finding no support, crashes down in the form of a foamy breaker. Hokusai’s wave emerges from the watery mass of an indistinct background. After this upward thrust, which separates it from the uniform environment in which it was fluctuating, the wave comes to be resting on nothing, and once it has reached the summit, it curves back and crashes down with a deafening roar. The wave expresses its own particular physiognomy in the way the crest of the breaker curves over and crashes downwards. The breaking wave has no support. And yet, when one looks more closely, it is precisely in this downward plunge that the wave’s singularity assumes form: the singularity is the crashing down of the wave itself. The image of the breaking wave is a metaphor for what happens to the singularity. The singularity does not assume form by relying on an ideal authority, nor even by erecting itself upon itself in a self-referential way, but by facing the experience of crisis, falling, and failing. The key moment of verification is when the singularity discovers that it no longer has a base upon which to rest, is seized by dizziness, and crashes downwards, just like the breaking wave. 2.2.7 Gradient of the Fall and Presence of Alterity The moment when the wave bends and breaks is the sudden instant (exaiphnes)33 when creative novelty erupts upon the scene. As the breaker crashes, the wave bends downwards. In the case of the singularity, the gradient of the fall is also determined by the type and intensity of the influence of an alterity. This is a decisive moment. As it falls, the singularity will look around in terror, searching for something to hold onto. Inevitably, it will seem better to hold onto a model rather than to continue to plunge downard. Often, however, it is precisely by continuing to plunge that, with the help of another singularity, we learn to free ourselves. I call this singularity “exemplarity”. The model seduces us and invites us to climb 33

Cf. Plato, Prm. 155e–157b.

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on it like the rungs of a ladder. In fact, however, by following this path we end up submitting, more or less consciously, to the self of the model. In contrast, exemplarity shows how it is possible to free ourselves from the only thing to which, until that point, we were still holding on: our own self. What can save a singularity that is plunging into the void is the testimony of an exemplarity that ceases to keep holding onto itself as it falls, and gains everything through this act of extreme renunciation. We will not look upon this exemplarity with envy, but, on the contrary, with immense gratitude. The fall thus assumes the meaning of a deadly leap into the void, in which we renounce everything in order to gain everything. 2.3

Exemplum and Auroral Exemplarity

2.3.1 The Figure of Socrates between Maieutic Testimony and Exemplum The final decision on whether or not to leave the cave is left up to the prisoner. The picture would change completely if the prisoner were instead dragged out of the cave against her own will. Plato’s text gives no precise indications on this point. Nevertheless, it is evident that much depends on how the figure of Socrates is interpreted. It is on precisely this point that a difference must be pointed out between the image of the Platonic Socrates and that which had been affirmed in the Hellenistic Age, for example, with Seneca and Plutarch, with the exemplum of Socrates.34 Plato’s Socrates is atopos, that is, “unclassifiable”. That which is unclassifiable is unrepeatable in its uniqueness. It is exemplary precisely because it is atypical. Contrary to the exemplum, the person who is atopos does not act by leveling and collecting consensus, but by testifying to a deviation, as a dissident might do. It is not a model of knowledge, which transmits notions, but a testimony of the knowledge of not knowing, and therefore of emptying from doxa. The concept of maieutics fulfills a crucial function in this direction. Maieutics is the specific way which Plato proposes to interpret the Socratic method in the Theaetetus. Plato’s Socrates is the Socrates who knows that he does not know, who does not have an abstract doctrine to teach, and who understands philosophy not as wisdom, but as love of wisdom. Altogether, these characteristics

34

Cf. Döring 1979.

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give a non-authoritarian image of Socrates. It is in this sense that I use the expression “maieutic testimony”.35 In short, exemplarity is a maieutic testimony that offers the singularity that auroral void that is necessary to continue its birth. The exemplum, for its part, is represented by the ideal sage who appears as a model to imitate. 2.3.2 Rethinking the Philosophical Exercise on the Basis of the Exemplarity In the philosophical exercise, there is an oscillation between exemplum and exemplarity: the exemplum often prevails in the beginning, and subsequently the exemplarity. There is nothing wrong with following rules “imposed from above” if the aspiring philosopher makes this choice of her own spontaneous will. However, this cannot become the goal of philosophical exercises. Generally speaking, Hellenistic philosophy did not intend the imitation of exemplum as an end, but only as a means. In antiquity, philosophy did not consist in the exposition of systems, but in the testimony to a certain practical way of living. The philosopher acted by examples, even before he used writing and words. Seneca provides an excellent testimony to this, when he exhorts Lucilius to make sure that “the conversation be in harmony with how we live” (Letters, 236). If, in contrast, the ultimate goal of philosophy becomes that of imitating exempla, then the problem of concretely testifying with one’s own life to the validity of a specific pathway of transformation takes a back seat. Other characteristics take center stage: faithfulness to the model, rigor and tenacity in respecting the rules, severity in countering possible heresies. Little by little, philosophy leaves behind its role as maieutic testimony to instead become an activity of commentary on the ipse dixit of whatever exemplum is in vogue. And so it becomes a philosophical discourse. In contrast, maieutic testimony, whether philosophical or mystical, is inevitably subversive: indeed, testifying to a new way of living can become a source of truth that does not correspond to, or becomes autonomous from, the ipse dixit of the exemplum. Unfortunately, just describing what Socrates did is not enough for the practice of philosophical exercises. The pages of the Platonic dialogues certainly restore for us a very effective description of how Socrates operated, but they leave unresolved the question of how that modus operandi can be reproposed today in the absence of Socrates and Plato. However admirable it may be, this 35

I use the expression “maieutic testimony” with a different meaning than that of “moral testimony” proposed by Laura Frances Callahan (see Callahan 2018). Exemplary testimony refers to an act or series of acts by an exemplarity, and not to the assertions or declarations of a social model.

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description cannot replace the living Socrates. In order for it to work, something must be added to this description. With all its limits, the Hellenistic Age can be credited with recognizing and taking on the problem. But it represents a model in which the “Socratic shock” (see Pl. Men. 80a) as well as Socrates’ typical way of doing philosophy – his unsettling irony, his critical dissent, his not knowing – risk disappearing.36 The maieutic Socrates never devoted himself to encoding his way of living in rules to be scrupulously learned and followed, nor did he ever claim to be a statue to be imitated. Written testimonies on Socrates are not enough for the philosophical exercise to work, but interaction with the living and erotic force of a concrete example also makes a contribution. In this connection, it becomes crucial to make a distinction between exemplum, in the sense of a model to imitate, and exemplarity, understood as maieutic testimony. After the attempt of the Hellenistic Age, the central problem of philosophy becomes that of integrating the Socratic exercises with a theory of exemplarity. Since it is impossible to reactualize the Socratic exercise without the living Socrates, these exercises will inevitably be something different from Socratic exercises. To distinguish these new exercises, I call them “philosophical exercises of transformation”. 2.3.3 The Pragmatic and Descriptive Meaning of the Exemplarity There is a pragmatic and descriptive meaning of exemplarity. In the first case, I will ask myself: what is exemplarity for, what are its practical effects, what happens when it is missing? In the second case, I will ask myself the question: how do I experience exemplarity when I transcend a self-referential perspective and listen to the phenomenon itself? An answer to the question of what happens when exemplarity is missing is provided by Spitz’s research on institutionalized children and affective deprivation. The parental figure is the first form of exemplarity: if this figure is missing during the first 12 months of life, the newborn’s anthropogenetic process comes to a halt. In these cases, the exemplarity works like an “extrauterine womb”, offering the newborn the space that is indispensable to continue its uncompleted birth. Albeit in different modalities, this function can also be traced in the other exemplary figures. In short, without an exemplarity, there 36

“Yet the truth is different, citizens: the only wise is the god; and he wanted to mean this in his oracle, that man’s wisdom is worth little or nothing; and, by saying that Socrates is wise, he did not want, I believe, to refer to me, Socrates himself, but only to use my name as an example; almost as if he had meant this: ‘O men, the wisest among you is he who, like Socrates, has recognized that in truth his wisdom has no value’” (Pl. Ap. 23a–b, transl. modified).

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is no anthropogenesis. As we came into the world by being born from another person who received us into her womb for nine months, so we only continue to be born thanks to the auroral void that is offered to us by the different forms of exemplarity that mold our existence. Yet what is its descriptive meaning? If I examine my experience, I can describe the exemplarity as a singularity that acts on me on the basis of the maieutic testimony of a particularly successful expressive path of self-­transcendence. An individual cannot succeed in transcending herself alone; that is, she cannot lift herself up from the little self to the personal non-self by pulling on her ponytail, any more than Baron Münchhausen tried to get out of the swamp without anyone’s help. She needs an Archimedean point of support outside of herself. Taking a critical distance from one’s own little self requires the intervention of an external force, capable of fascinating the individual and tearing her away from her own original self-referential closedness. This force is the exemplarity. 2.3.4 Exemplarity and the Schema of the Expressive Path of Self-Transcendence In the face of certain crises, the singularity becomes aware that it cannot assume form by erecting itself on itself, as the human self has instead always done since it succeeded in achieving an erect position. The singularity follows an anthropogenetic figure that differs from erectness, but is nevertheless just as important. Like the crest of a wave as it falls, the singularity experiences the lack of a foundation to rest on. It does not assume form through the logic of vertical edification, but rather through an ongoing effort to break out of the self-referential boundaries of its little self, thanks to the encounter with another singularity. In this way, the singularity leaves behind itself the trace of an expressive path of self-transcendence. The main characteristic of the singularity is the ability to testify to the “schema” of an expressive path that is ex-centric to the edification of the little self, and to make it sharable.37 If, in metabolizing a crisis, the singularity discovers a new expressive path of self-transcendence, then it becomes a trailblazer. If this path is particularly successful, then it can act as a springboard for the existence of those personal singularities with which it comes into contact. The exemplarity is this “springboard”.

37

See § 3.1.8 The Principle of Expressivity.

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When I grasp the schema of an exemplarity’s expressive path, I capture the heart’s restlessness that is at its base. By sharing this schema, I can draw from the tension of the expressive effort that gave form to that exemplarity. When this happens, the co-performance of acts is made possible. If I co-perform the acts of an exemplarity, then the testimony of this exemplarity penetrates the cracks of my little self, and merges with my existence, in the same way as gold penetrates between the pieces of a water pot in order to put it back together in the art of kintsugi. The enigma of the exemplarity is closely connected to the enigma of the singularity’s incompleteness. Thanks to the exemplarity, the different singularities – understood as uncompleted fragments – enter into dialogue and integrate their different perspectives in an infinite process of growth that is typical of the unlimited community.38 The exemplarity is a “spiritual” factor that acts in the sense of “holding together” the uncompleted fragments of the different singularities in a totally different way from fear, threat, and convenience. Therefore, it enables a totally different emotional sharing and co-existence from what can be experienced in the pact and alliance of a collective group based on gregarious identity and we-intentionality. 2.3.5 Auroral Exemplarity The destination of an individual goes back to when she was loved on the first day of her life. But what enables the singularity to bring into focus what is at first just the silent and confused image of its destination, and subsequently to come to heed its calling? In fact, it is not abstract rules or universal laws that mold a singularity; but always and only the force of exemplarity. Exemplarities are dawns. And like all dawns, they do not indicate something that already exists but merely announce something that cannot yet be seen. They announce a sunny new day. To leave metaphors aside, they announce that periagoge that enables a new gaze to be cast upon the world. Thus, they urge a new beginning and a new way of feeling. From the first instant in which they are experienced, they free the individual from the state of the rigid trap of curving back upon herself. Exemplarities reawaken the original feeling that places one back in contact with the cosmos. The encounter with the exemplarity is auroral insofar as it prefigures and anticipates previously unexpressed possibilities, and offers an unpredictable space to the hunger to be born. The exemplarity does not aim to appropriate the nucleus of another singularity, or to make it similar to itself. Instead, 38

See § 1.4.4 Incompleteness as a Positive Good and Open Community.

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contact with the singularity reawakens that nucleus and makes it germinate from within. Through the testimony of its expressive path, the exemplarity goes beyond the knowledge already encoded in the form of tradition and common sense. And it does so in such a successful and innovative way that it exerts an irresistible attractive force with regard to other singularities that remain paralyzed in the face of similar situations, and are still stumbling around in the dark in search of orientation. In these situations the exemplarity, by the simple fact of manifesting itself beyond that obstacle, transmits the leap forward that lies behind its successfulness; it radiates around itself the schema that enabled it to successfully trace that expressive path; it shares its own secret, and thus makes it possible to draw from the force that was at its basis. For the perplexed singularity, the auroral exemplarity becomes its main source of orientation. If an individual is swept away by the force of the exemplarity, it is because she feels that the generative effort at the basis of that successfulness opens further space for her own expressive pathway as well. Suddenly, the individual’s entire being experiences that exemplarity as if it were the original source of the energy that allows us to exist. In the auroral exemplarity, I recognize the existential vibration that the restlessness of my heart needed in order to emerge from disorder. It is then the entire affective structure of my being that modifies its own rhythm, begins to fibrillate, and is illuminated. This encounter results in an increased existential density and an amplification of the horizon of feeling and values. Once mature, the human being’s affective structure becomes a system of orientation designed to capture everything that has to do with this energy. What the heart’s restlessness constantly seeks is the energy that emanates, like an anomalous wave, from this core of unprecedented existential density. This is what one thinks to glimpse in the face of the beloved, just as its sudden disappearance causes one to plunge into despair. An auroral exemplarity can also materialize suddenly before my eyes in a particular way of living, a gesture, an image, or a work of art. In allowing myself to be infected by it, I enter the existential wake of its expressive path, and am dragged forward by it. Yet by letting myself be dragged along by the impetus of this existential wake, I do not find a content to imitate. What the auroral exemplarity transmits is not a content, but the forward thrust that is behind its success. In this way, the auroral exemplarity reveals itself as the most powerful force of transformation at the individual and social level. 2.3.6 Exemplarity and Counter-Exemplarity The singularity can also appear in the form of a counter-exemplarity. The alienated gaze and mournful gait that testify to the “exemplary” failure of an

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acquaintance can point out to my existence the quickest – and sometimes strangely seductive – path to hit rock bottom. Whereas previously there may have been only a vague and confused fear that assailed me in my worst nightmares, now, suddenly, the magic formula and the right alchemy for arriving at my failure in the most direct and effective way clearly materialize, right before my eyes. In other cases, by contrast, the counter-exemplarity helps me become aware of the sterility of a particular existential pathway, and hence it saves me in spite of itself, abruptly pushing me in the opposite direction. In this case, as one follows the way paved by the exemplarity because one intuits in it a promise of happiness, so, in a similar way, one avoids that path of the counter-­ exemplarity, out of fear of disaster. Ultimately exemplarity and counter-exemplarity have a similar function to the one that Plato attributed to the experience of beauty and ugliness.39 When an individual is swept away by the power of the exemplarity, it is because she feels that the creative effort at the basis of its successfulness opens a further space for the increase of her own value. It will then be her entire affective structure, which, since it wants to give birth, will impel her toward that testimony. In contrast, the counter-exemplarity, like what is ugly, stiffens and sterilizes the creative impetus, taking away her space to give birth. 2.3.7 Exemplarity and the Experience of the Sublime Bergson intuits a deep bond between the creativity of nature and of human beings. Dawn, as a metaphor of exemplarity, the starry sky that inspires the oceanic feeling in Hadot, the sublime described by Kant: these are just some of the examples that point to the existence of a deep connection between nature and exemplarity. The exemplarity is only effective if it recovers a tie with the “primordial feeling” that puts all living beings in contact. Hence, the transcendence of the little self in the direction of the singularity also presupposes a reconnection with nature. In both cases, exemplarity and experience of the sublime offer the singularity a space of transformation. 39

“All of us are pregnant, Socrates, both in body and in soul, and, as soon as we come to a certain age, we naturally desire to give birth. Now no one can possibly give birth in anything ugly; only in something beautiful. […] That’s why, whenever pregnant animals or persons draw near to beauty, they become gentle and joyfully disposed and give birth and reproduce; but near ugliness they are foul-faced and draw back in pain; they turn away and shrink back and do not reproduce, and because they hold on to what they carry inside them, the labor is painful. This is the source of the great excitement about beauty that comes to anyone who is pregnant and already teeming with life: beauty releases them from their great pain.” (Smp. 206c–e).

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The self-transcending act of the singularity is not limited to going beyond the self, but also beyond the anthropocentric perspective in the direction of a deep ecology. It implies going beyond the prejudice that the relations between human singularities can remain separate from contact with nature. I admire a sunset or the power of the waves of the sea. I cultivate friendship with an animal. I take care of a plant. All of this can be a source of inspiration. All of this can transform, and it does so as the expression of a reconnection that extends to nature. This happens because the beauty of nature also has its own uniqueness. Not all sunsets have the same meaning. Some are more beautiful and more inspirational than others. A sunset can also be unique and unrepeatable. The difference is that while the exemplarity transforms thanks to the successful testimony of a path of self-transcendence, nature touches and transforms me when it is the testimony of a disproportion in size that makes me feel the presence of a sublime and numinous cosmic dimension. Nevertheless, the two pathways entwine. Exemplarity represents the second level of attunement with nature, and it is only thanks to this further attunement that I can perceive the sublime and numinous dimension of nature. In the first level, governed by the biosemiotic laws, there is no distance that enables me to be touched by nature. Instead, I simply remain immersed and am dazed within nature. If, by contrast, I am touched by the sublime and numinous aspect of nature, then I am already at the second level of attunement with nature. 2.4

Exemplarity and Model

2.4.1 The Dominant Indistinction between Exemplarity and Model In twentieth-century philosophy, the topic of exemplarity did not manage to free itself completely from the tradition of the exemplum. In this direction, we can cite the names of Scheler, Bergson, Jaspers, Zambrano, Arendt, Hadot, and Foucault. This explains the reason why, despite its centrality for philosophy, this topic has substantially been relegated to the theological and aesthetic sphere. Indeed, the suspicion lingers that by means of this topic of exemplarity, one seeks to re-evaluate some form of authoritarianism or paternalism. This is a real concern, which needs to be taken seriously in any future attempt that wants to take up these topics. That is why, before I proceed, it is indispensable to clarify an essential difference between two different forms of orientation which hitherto have often been confused: “exemplarity” and “model”. It is a distinction that takes up and develops what has already been argued with regard to the difference between Plato’s maieutic Socrates and the Socratic exemplum.

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The exemplarity is authoritative insofar as it offers an auroral space in which I am free to radiate myself in every direction. The model also offers a space, but in this space I am already channeled toward a certain result. In the orientation offered by the model, I am obliged to move along a standardizing track, like the one that captures radiation inside an optical fiber. The rules imposed by the model channel the follower in the same way that the optical fiber channels light. This channeling represents the common sense that allows autopoietic social systems to work. The model is authoritarian insofar as it does not admit flexibility or exceptions, but intransigent respect for the rules. Every initiative that does not submit to the protocollary procedure defined by the model, and therefore escapes its rigid scheme is stigmatized and put back into line. Instructions are indeed orders to be carried out without thinking. By contrast, the exemplarity does not exonerate one from thinking, but on the contrary, demands it. It does not transmit to me a solution that has already been thought of, but motivates me to accept the challenge to solve a problem. The model is indispensable in the early years of life and childhood, as it also is for performing social roles and for the good functioning of a social system. It is often decisive in orienting and directing a social group’s struggle. Moreover, imitation of a model is required for learning specific things: a language, driving a car, etc. However, it becomes a problem when it becomes the only form of orientation of the existence of an adult or a society. The social and political consequences of this distinction must not be underestimated; they explain why totalitarian regimes place so much importance on suppressing dissent. Dissent is a social form of orientation that follows the logic of exemplarity (radiation in all directions), not of the model (channeling in a single direction). In totalitarian regimes, repression of the exemplarity coincides with repression of dissent. The repression of all the exemplarity’s maieutic forms of orientation, and the control of the model’s standardizing forms of orientation are the main characteristics of a closed society. 2.4.2 Con-ducere and Se-ducere There is a fundamental misunderstanding at the basis of the inability to distinguish exemplarity from the model: one confuses the force that allows one to exist, which radiates from the exemplarity, with the simple gratification that derives from social recognition, which one seeks to obtain by imitating the model. The model becomes charismatic when its follower deludes herself into seeing in the display of totems and symbols of success the salvific force that allows her to exist. To better outline the difference between exemplarity and model, I will refer to the two Latin verbs “con-ducere” – from the compound of “to lead”

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(-ducere) and “together” (-con) – and “se-ducere” – from the compound of “to lead” (-ducere) and “away” (se-). Exemplarity orients in the sense of con-ducere, that is, it “leads together” toward detachment from every self-referential self, even that of the very exemplarity. In contrast, the model mis-leads in the sense of se-ducere, that is, it leads (ducere) away (se-) from one’s own existence, to alienate it in that of the model. There are destructive crises that force us to leap into the darkness, and to abandon everything in order to gain everything. In order not to remain paralyzed by the fear of jumping, it can help to have an exemplarity take one by the hand, that is, a singularity that has already successfully made that leap. The exemplarity testifies, and therefore shows how it is possible to abandon one’s own little self. It is not a “ducere” toward the exemplarity’s self, but a “con-ducere” in the direction of transcending every possible self. In contrast, the model impels us to identify with the self-referential little self of the model itself. This model often corresponds to the figure of the sect’s guru. In this case, unlike the exemplarity, it does not request trust, but rather blind faith: it grasps the hand of someone who is falling to offer safety and protection, but only in exchange for absolute submission. 2.4.3 The “Universal” Validity of the Exemplarity and the Process of Transformation At the base of every exemplarity is a successful act of emptying. And yet every singularity that will be infected by that exemplarity will relive that act not as a repetition or imitation, but maieutically, that is, from its singular point of view. Hence, it will arrive at completely different results. This is because, when faced with a model I restrict myself to repeating an action, in the face of an exemplarity, I co-perform an act in the spaces offered by the auroral void. Furthermore, exemplarity does not propose itself as perfect or complete, but as an auroral void offered to the continuation of my birth: it therefore enables retroactive interaction. By contrast, the model tends to present itself as perfect and infallible. Hence, the retroactive interaction of follower to model is impossible and often only concerns verifying the coherence of the model. The consequence is that while a model tends to standardize and level out, making its followers repeat an identical procedure, an exemplarity produces difference and singularizes. An influencer’s reputation is objectively measured on the basis of the number of her followers and the likes obtained by her tweets. In contrast, the validity of an exemplarity does not depend on the consensus obtained. This does not mean that its validity is subjective. Rather, it is anthropogenetic, insofar as it depends on the ability to transform existence. Here, by transformation I

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mean an irreversible process of self-transcendence, not a reversible and chameleonic change. The validity of a model is proportional to its social success and ability to standardize. In contrast, an exemplarity is valid insofar as it transforms in a different way the order of the heart of all of the personal singularities with which it comes into contact. If a model is more universal the more it makes its followers the same, exemplarity is more universal the more it singularizes every individual that it touches, giving rise to unique and unpredictable results in each of them. Usually, a self attempts to realize itself by striving to do what is expected of it. To this end, it imitates a model or seeks to rise up to an ideal ought or a purported universal essence of human nature. In the case of the personal singularity, realizing itself means focusing on its vocation or destination thanks to interaction with the exemplarities that it meets during its existence. A vocation is not a psychological projection or a convention that the subject can establish at will. Instead, it is the expression of its own fragment of uncompleted truth: a fragment that assumes form and makes sense only when compared and integrated with the fragment of others. Insofar as it testifies to its own individual vocation, the singularity becomes an exemplarity, and in this way contributes to transforming society and humanity. 2.4.4 Exemplarity and Absence of Envy One of the distinctive characteristics of the exemplarity as compared to the model is that it is immune from envy and resentment. The miracle implicit in admiring an exemplarity consists in being able to grasp a positive value not only outside oneself, but also outside one’s own self-referential context, without thereby perceiving the existence of a positive value as a theft or an injustice toward oneself. The problem arises when I seek in the model what only the exemplarity can give me. By imitating the model, I delude myself that I have found a convenient shortcut to quell the pangs of my hunger to be born: by participating in the fullness of the model, I delude myself that I can realize my vocation, but I am only imitating someone else’s desire.40 In this way, however, I do not exist, but limit myself to living through the eyes of the model that I am imitating. In the model, the follower admires her empty ideal projection. She repeats it mechanically until she obliterates herself in it. The singularity is able to leave the projective disposition behind, insofar as it transcends itself and considers the other for what it is. 40

Scheler and Girard in particular have already dwelt on this aspect, but without clearly distinguishing between model and exemplarity.

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Thanks to exemplarity, I come into contact with the force that makes me feel alive, and therefore makes me exist. But the way is demanding: it seems easier to tap into this force by imitating the model. If the model possesses and displays something like a totem, then I will think that this object is the source of its fullness of being. This, however, is a “magical belief”. Furthermore, I will think that it is enough to take possession of that magical object in order to have an existence worthy of being lived. By so doing, the model lends itself to becoming the screen on which to project the force I cannot find inside myself, but which at the same time I intuit is indispensable to finally give density and visibility to an otherwise dull life. It is at this point that the model becomes the fulcrum of resentment and envy: if someone else manages to take possession of that totem instead of me, this automatically triggers envy and resentment. The failure of the logic of envy demonstrates that the logic that enables me to take possession of the model’s objects and being is not adequate to tap into the force that makes me exist. The model has another function. 2.4.5 The Common Roots of Exemplarity and Model Model and exemplarity are not dualistically opposed, insofar as both are originally rooted in the figure of the parent. Every formative process involves an initial phase of infatuation and attachment. In this initial phase, the dynamics of the exemplarity and the model are not yet distinct. Subsequently, their paths divide: the model produces the social consensus needed for the autopoiesis of social systems, and therefore acts on the level of morality. The exemplarity, for its part, promotes transformation on the individual and social level, and operates on the level of ethics. There is also an aspect of the exemplarity that has so far remained in the shade. It not only testifies to a path of transcending the little self (pars destruens), but also to the next expressive pathway: the one that is represented by the inauguration of a new beginning (pars construens). Indeed, the exemplarity does not limit itself to deviating from common sense, but deviates it in a specific direction. It is therefore reductive to assert that the exemplarity has a purely negative function. It shows concretely how a certain expressive path of transformation is possible. By testifying to that pathway, the exemplarity opens a horizon for me and prepares me to take a certain maieutic direction. The exemplarity also has a constructive aspect that makes the distinction from the model less rigid. When acting, the same person can move from the logic of exemplarity to that of the model, or vice versa, since every individual is traversed by a constant tension between exemplarity and model and remains balanced precariously between the two. In the proper sense, there are no purely exemplary figures, but figures in which it is possible to exercise the

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exemplarity, and others in which it is not. A phenomenology of the figures in which it is possible to exercise exemplarity has yet to be written. In what follows, I will consider just some of these, in a wholly provisional classification: parent, lover, teacher, precursor, and work of art. 2.5

The Main Figures in Which Exemplarity Can Be Exercised

2.5.1 The Maternal Parental Figure as Mediation between the Newborn and the World After biological birth, human newborns need to be welcomed by a personal singularity who orients them toward the world. The first figure in whom the action of this welcoming exemplarity can be seen is the figure traditionally identified as the mother. By “maternal parent” I do not mean biological mother, but the personal singularity who takes care of the newborn through emotional sharing practices capable of orienting the baby’s anthropogenetic birth and mediating its relations with the world. As observed by René Spitz, in the first three months a baby’s experiences are molded by affective interaction with the mother.41 Hence, the mother’s affective attitude is the filter and bridge that allows the newborn to access the rest of the world. In order for the newborn to begin the anthropogenetic process of maturation of feeling, the mother’s “welcoming” exemplarity must first ignite it through her feeling.42 Only then, through forms of maternal “affect attunement”,43 does the newborn’s anthropogenetic process get underway. 2.5.2 Anthropogenetic Birth and Human Enigma It is in the initial intimacy with the mother, during the first twelve months of life, that something specific, without which the anthropogenetic process would not be set in motion, ignites like a spark. This spark is not present at the moment of biological birth, but its effects are clearly visible when the newborn starts to react to the mother’s smile, a moment that has often been compared to a second birth. One cannot rule out the possibility that the spark that ignites the newborn’s anthropogenetic process is of the same type as the one that is at the origin of the evolution that led to the birth of humanity. In 2012, the anthropologist Ian Tattersall proposed – but quickly rejected – the hypothesis that something 41 42 43

Cf. Spitz 1965. See § 3.1 Primordial Feeling and the Principle of Expressivity. See Stern 1985.

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crucial occurred at the first hearths around which our ancestors gathered inside a cave. His hypothesis was that the emergence of symbolic thought became indispensable “to cope with the dynamics of interaction within societies that were steadily becoming more complex. In other words, modern human cognition developed under the self-reinforcing pressures of increasingly intense sociality – maybe around those campfires”. However, immediately afterwards Tattersal excludes this hypothesis: “But a mechanism of this kind [does not explain] […] why the highly social apes haven’t developed a more complex theory of mind over the time during which they have been evolving in parallel with us […]”.44 Tattersall’s objection would only hit the nail on the head if the anthropomorphous great apes were in the habit of gathering around campfires as well. So far, however, we have no information that anthropomorphous apes organized their lives around domestic hearths. How, then, can we rule out the possibility that it was precisely around those first hearths inside a cave, in a situation of “insulation” (Insulierungen) – to quote a category from Sloterdijk’s discussion of hominization – that new experiences of communicative socialization could develop, and that it was precisely from these that the stimuli that originated the leap toward symbolic thought gradually emerged? What made homo sapiens polish and engrave the two pieces of red ochre at Blombos Cave, produce ornamental objects, and rise up from those domestic hearths to start painting on the walls of the caves in which they lived? The importance of food sharing practices in the hominization process has already been emphasized by Glynn.45 It is reasonable to assume that around that hearth, in an insular – and therefore protected – environment, food sharing practices and increasingly developed habits were experienced, to the point that they gradually transformed into social relations so complex that they threatened the existing system of communication.46 Can we rule out that these sharing practices developed over hundreds of thousands of years until, still around that hearth, they gave rise to a new type of social relationship and a new system of communication? And where can we pinpoint the decisive point of that turn, the incubator of that revolution, if not in the relationships between mother and newborn that had developed in a “protected” environment such 44 45 46

Tattersall 2012, 214. See Glynn 1978; Glynn 1978a. According to anthropologist Martin Edwardes, “if we want a plausible evolutionary explanation for grammar in language, we should concentrate our search on the social process of information sharing. The question of why we need grammar is tied to the question of how a social structure evolved requiring the exchange of complex information, and what that social structure was” (Edwardes 2010, 13).

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as that of the domestic hearth? These were no longer relations of cure, but “intimate” relations of care.47 And couldn’t these new relations of care that emerged around those primitive domestic hearths have prompted that same spark which, still today, is transmitted from mother to child in the first twelve months of life? These new relations of care between mother and newborn may well have become the anthropogenetic and ontogenetic fulcrum for the leap toward symbolic thought and a new type of culture. It seems reasonable to formulate the hypothesis that, faced by increasingly complex social relations, and an increasingly complex transmission of emotional sharing practices, at a certain point, the pressure toward more efficient expressive forms and new techniques of communication, such as verbal language, eventually became so strong that it turned out to be a vital need, like the one that led to the invention of new techniques of tool-building and new hunting strategies. 2.5.3 The “Model” Father and the “Exemplary” Father After the first years of life, a parent feeds the child’s hunger to be born thanks to the testimony of her own desire. In the proper sense, this is not a transmission of desire, as if one were transferring wine from one cup to another, but rather an ignition of the child’s desire. In fact, there is no transmission of desire, but only its ignition. Thanks to this ignition of desire, the child opens a horizon of meaning to her own existence and her own future. This horizon of meaning cannot be deduced from biological birth. In this case, too, we can therefore suppose the existence of an anthropogenetic spark that is not transmitted biologically through the millennia, but culturally, from parent to child, thanks to maternal affect attunement within the first twelve months of life. To fulfill the function of a parent is to testify to a horizon of value. To deny the legitimacy of this axiological position a priori, by arguing that it corresponds to a new form of paternalism, is to confuse two deeply different things: what is paternalistic is not a parent who testifies to the adoption of a position capable of opening a horizon of meaning, without the pretense of imposing it and without judgmentalism, but the parent who limits herself to dispensing advice and rules of life. As is well known, Lacan describes a process of subjectivization that takes shape through the “funnel” of the Oedipal law of the father. Alternatively, Deleuze and Guattari have proposed, with their anti-Oedipal theory, an anarchical and rhizomatic process that avoids this “funnel” and instead assumes form through free contamination. 47

Precisely those that Spitz noted were lacking in children suffering from affective d­ eprivation.

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The paternal figure described by Lacan corresponds to the “model” father more than to an authoritarian father. Yet this figure does not exhaust the paternal function. Another figure exists alongside the “model” father: the “exemplary” father, a figure given scant consideration. The “model” father exercises a decisive function during childhood, since it is thanks to this function that the child learns to hold her enjoyment in check. However, if not gradually replaced by the “exemplary” father figure in the following years, the risk is that he will degenerate into the typical forms of authoritarianism and of paternalism. Yet the problem of the current liquid society is not constituted by the authoritarian father but by the atrophization of the “model” father and the disappearance of the “exemplary” father. During adolescence, the child needs to learn not only to keep her enjoyment in check, but also to re-elaborate it in a creative way. The “exemplary” father provides a new perspective of meaning, insofar as instead of repressing (as in the thesis of the Oedipus complex) or absolutizing enjoyment (as in the thesis of the anti-Oedipus), he shows that it can be metabolized into desire.48 It is in this direction that it is possible to exercise exemplarity in the paternal figure. 2.5.4 The Difference between Lover and Infatuated Self The second figure in which it is possible to exercise exemplarity is that of the lover. The act of loving is much less frequent than one might suppose, as it is very often confused with infatuation. Infatuation is generated by the belief that my other half exists somewhere on this planet, and that loving consists in being united with my other half. In the Symposium, Diotima already disputes this idea of eros as set out by Aristophanes’ myth of the androgyne.49 If I consider myself an incomplete and suffering half seeking to complete itself, then the beloved becomes an instrument for achieving my self-referential completeness. For her part, Diotima demonstrates that loving is not an instrument for completing oneself, but for enriching oneself, and that this happens thanks to generating beyond oneself. In infatuation, I project the image of my ideal half onto another person. Therefore, my intentionality is directed toward a person who does not exist in reality. Since it is the result of a self-referential projection, this intentional object is capable of arousing tremendous passions. When I experience such violent passions, I inevitably end up believing that they are originated by 48 49

I argue for the difference between metabolizing and repressing enjoyment in § 5.1.5 The Singularization of Enjoyment. Beyond the Opposition Between Enjoyment and Desire. Cf. Smp. 205e.

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something real. Moreover, during infatuation I continually and concretely verify the existence of an intentionality in the direction of that intentional object, that is, the “beloved”. When this intentionality is unrequited, it becomes so strong and intense as to cause excruciating pain. The fact that I suffer so much will make my last doubts vanish, and convince me once and for all that this person is my ideal half. In reality, I only experience the existence of a very strong intentionality in this way, but this does not mean that its intentional object actually coincides with the person in front of me. Seen from a different angle, the scene would convey the tragic image of someone obsessively trying to embrace a phantom. Escaping from this infatuation is difficult, as it is equivalent to breaking a genuine spell. To avoid relapsing into the mechanism of infatuation, it is vital to separate the projection of my ideal half from the real person in front of me, a discrepancy that only becomes visible if I shift from the perspective of the little self to the perspective of the singularity. In sum, the lover is not a little self infatuated by its own ideal other half, but a person who carries out a self-transcending act and loves as a singularity.50 2.5.5 The Lover and the Anticipation of Beauty Contrary to the teacher, a figure that we will consider later on, lovers are not required to have already brought a successful expressive pathway to an end. Instead, they take each other by the hand and build a life together. For them, what is relevant is not the testimony of what has been done in the past, but rather the intensity of the experience that is consummated in the present, and the repercussions it can have on the future. From this point of view, the lover is the foremost expression of the auroral, that is, anticipatory function of exemplarity. The lover’s exemplary force does not act through the testimony of something that already happened in the past, but rather like the dawn of day: that is, thanks to the capacity to announce something that will occur in the future. In this sense, to love a person in her singularity is to intuit that person’s generative beauty – namely the possibility of a greater fullness of value – and to take part in the effort to accomplish it. It means to dedicate oneself to the beloved’s further flourishing. This anticipation must not be confused with the projection that is observed in infatuation, where all I am actually doing is projecting my ideal onto my beloved. The lover makes room for the beloved’s increase in value, but is not the agent of 50

On infatuation of the lover, see also § 3.5.2 The Broken Oar and Infatuations with One’s Own Missing Half.

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this movement, which is not guided by anyone save the very movement of loving. Neither a psychological projection nor even the idealization of the beloved’s image emerges from the lover’s auroral void. Instead, what emerges is the announcement of a dimension of the beloved’s beauty that did not previously exist. In this way, the lover does not just passively reflect a pre-given image. Rather, his entranced gaze foresees an increase in value that has yet to take place. This is why the lover is able to wonder every day at the face of his beloved: indeed, the lover can see something that others cannot yet see, and which makes the relationship with the beloved unique. Everyone is able to admire the beauty of a famous actor who is already objectified and exhibited in a photo. The lover, in contrast, is a precursor who intuits the beauty in the face of a person who may have hitherto seemed banal and insignificant. The lover delves into and explores the beloved’s deepest core, and in the act of loving anticipates the vision of her future flourishing. In loving, I do not merely recognize something that is already given, but I discover what is not yet given: I do not glorify her factual way of being, but rather take part in the increase of her value. In this sense, being loved is an essential factor in the anthropogenetic process. Indeed, in the face of the beloved’s hunger to be born, the lover manages to make a more beautiful image shine than the one that already exists. It is the image of a destination that does not yet exist or is still out of focus. Hence, it is only in the beloved’s reception space that the transformation can assume form which the beloved could not otherwise manage to complete by herself, or often even foresee. Precisely because the lover goes beyond the image of the factual present, he is able to cast a retrospective gaze toward the past as well, and can perhaps recognize former splendors beneath the signs of old age. 2.5.6 Taking Care of the Beloved’s Hunger to Be Born The lover does not love an objectifiable characteristic of the beloved, but her hunger to be born. He welcomes it and consciously makes room for it inside himself; he takes care of and actively takes part in its germination process, to the point of building a life together. The hunger to be born is the desire to generate in beauty beyond what one already is. If I love a personal singularity, then my hunger to be born will become entwined with the other person’s, giving rise to a “living-together” that did not exist before. The lover’s exemplarity will depend on the force and energy with which I respect, share, and fuel the beloved’s hunger to be born. As a newborn needs to be reflected in the mother’s smile and nourished by her love in order to grow, lovers need to look into each other’s eyes, for that is how they are able to reciprocally make the other’s best part emerge. In the

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admiring gaze itself, the lover’s exemplarity anticipates the future pathway of the beloved’s successfulness. In that admiring gaze, the beloved will find the strength to flourish and rise up. The lover’s admiring gaze reawakens the desire of the beloved, and urges her to transcend the confining boundaries of the little self to which mere social recognition had relegated her. Before the lover’s admiring gaze, everything else becomes secondary. Two lovers generate in beauty and become more beautiful insofar as they take flight beyond the solipsistic existence of their own little selfs, and entwine the hunger to be born of their singularities. In this way, the lovers testify to the possibility of generating in beauty a common feature of their expressive pathways. And through this testimony they become a further matrix of generation in beauty. Hence, they generate in an exemplary fashion. 2.5.7 The Teacher and the Precursor Teachers and precursors are persons who have already completed a particularly successful expressive pathway. Nevertheless, while a teacher establishes a direct and personal contact with her pupils and exercises her function intentionally, a precursor can also be a person distant in time and space. As in the parental figure, exemplarity and model entwine in the teacher as well. Hence, there can always be some oscillation between the figures of the “maieutic teacher” and the “model teacher”. This distinction has already been considered in connection with the difference between Plato’s maieutic Socrates and the exemplum of Socrates. The “maieutic teacher” sees the pupil’s uncertainties and fears, and intuits how he could overcome the obstacles he is encountering on his way. However, the teacher does not directly offer a solution, but merely gives the pupil the tools to look for it. To this end, the teacher will cultivate the birth of an “inner teacher” in the pupil’s soul, which will ultimately take the original teacher’s place, since it is “our aim in ruling our children, [not to] allow them to be free until we establish a constitution in them, just as in a city, and – by fostering [therapeusantes] their best part with our own – equip them with a guardian and ruler similar to our own to take our place. Then, and only then, we set them free” (R. IX, 590e–591a). By coming face to face with the teacher, the pupil also manages to better understand his own destination, and fight to rise upwards. In turn, the “maieutic teacher” does not remain closed in the perfection of a doctrine, but has the need to continually put her own pathway to the test by confronting it with that of the pupil. Hence, unlike the “model teacher”, there is a feedback effect in the maieutic teacher, through which the pupil also influences the teacher.

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2.5.8 Extended Exemplarity Not always does exemplarity coincide with a human being. This is the case with the fourth form of exemplarity: extended exemplarity,51 which is the medium in which the schemas of a personal singularity’s exceptionally successful expressive pathways are deposited. They are therefore still-living “enzymes”, capable of testifying to the schema of a personal singularity’s creative act of self-­transcendence. Extended exemplarity can be identified in a book, a poem, a work of art, or sometimes even in a single image, a photo, or a gesture laden with a particular expressive intensity. If a painting, a novel, a musical motif, or even a photo manage to touch me deeply and transform me, if I feel that they act as a springboard from which my formative process manages to launch forth, then I find myself facing an exemplarity in these cases as well. Naturally, a sunset, a starry sky, or another natural phenomenon can have the same effect and cause a transformation. This, however, is not insofar as it is the result of an expressive pathway of self-transcendence, as occurs with extended exemplarity.52 The personal singularity assumes form through an expressive pathway of self-transcendence. Exemplarity is the testimony of a particularly successful expressive pathway. In some cases, this expressive pathway can be materialized into a work of art. Works of art are the materialization of the schema that enables an exemplary expressive pathway to be shared. Hence, a work of art is an example of “extended exemplarity”. Applying the concept of extended exemplarity to art provides a useful criterion for sketching a difference between what is and is not a living work of 51

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Here my use of the adjective “extended” does not correspond to the meaning encoded in the expressions of “extended mind” or “extended emotion”. Indeed, the process portrayed in these cases is one-way, that is, as the extension of the mind or an emotion through “material vehicles”. Examples could be Otto’s notebook (see Clark & Chalmers 1998) or Eve’s diary (Colombetti & Roberts 2015). By contrast, exemplarity implies an extension in two phases, as might happen were Eve’s diary to be published and become a bildungsroman. In this case one recognizes an extension from Eve to the diary in the first phase, and in the second phase from the diary to its readers. If Eve’s diary becomes exemplary, then it is not an amorphous material that simply records Eve’s intentionality. In this case, this extension is materialized in the creation of a living work of art. The diary’s extension to its readers is not passive either. In extended exemplarity, the point of departure is no longer that of a subject disseminating her intentionality on an inert material, a bit like the waves caused by a stone thrown into a pond. Instead, extended exemplarity follows the laws of expressivity, and interacts with a material right from a living beginning. It is a communication of expressive schemas which presupposes a diffuse attunement on the anthropogenetic, social, and biosemiotic levels. Indeed, through the creation of a work of art, an artist transforms herself. See § 2.3.7 Exemplarity and the Experience of the Sublime.

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art. For twentieth-century philosophy, the work of art and artistic creativity represented one of the last examples of orientation. By virtue of what did they maintain a last glimmer of authoritativeness during the twentieth century? By conceiving of his Fountain (1917), Duchamp highlights how a work of art is not such because it belongs to a certain class of objects distinct from everyday objects, but insofar as it represents an act that transcends the original context of meaning. With his experiment, Duchamp hypothesized that at the origin of the work of art is the ability to insert an object in a different context from the usual one. Duchamp’s perspective casts a new light on the topic of sublating (sich aufheben) and going beyond oneself (über sich selbst hinausgehen) which is at the center of Hegel’s reflection on the “end of art” (Ende der Kunst). For Hegel, the end of art stems from the impossibility for the beautiful to continue to be realized by surpassing the everyday toward the ideal, and the finite toward the transcendent sacred. What Duchamp seems to suggest, for his part, is that this going beyond (über sich selbst hinausgehen) can continue to be realized in contemporary art as well, as long as it is understood in the sense of a more “modest” transcending act of the original context and not of the “everyday” or the “finite”. In this perspective, any object, if placed in the condition to exercise or promote this act of self-surpassing of the original context (über sich selbst hinausgehen), can become a work of art. My proposal is to take a further step and apply it to the self-transcending act of one’s little self. By “living work of art”, I mean a work of art that is not defined in terms of identity – hence, insofar as it maintains an identical and definitive form – but insofar as it continues to transform and to have a transformative effect. The exemplary force of the living work derives from the fact that it contains within a schema the secret of the leap forward made by the expressive pathway that generated it. And this takes place when, by creating the work, the artist is able to go beyond her own little self and be transformed. In this sense, a living work is appealing insofar as it becomes the promise of a richer and more intense exchange with the world, and is striking if it acts as a springboard for its own transformation. A living work of art does not have the same effect on all observers. On the contrary, every observer establishes a “personal” relationship with a living work of art, which can be defined as “congeniality”. However, I do not use the term “congeniality” to refer to the psychological and subjective level of the author’s intentions. I do not intend to relive the artist’s subjective intentions, but rather the capacity to immerse oneself once again in the creative tension that enabled the birth of a particular work of art. If a work of art is abstracted from the

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original tension from which it has emerged, then it falls silent. It remains mute for whole eras, until someone reinterprets it and restores its right to speak. When the tension at the basis of the creative leap that originated it is grasped once again, the work of art comes “back to life” and starts to speak again. But it will speak a different language, since thanks to congeniality it manages to creatively continue the momentum that was as its basis. The fact that an artist considers her work to be concluded does not necessarily mean that the work has exhausted its expressive pathway. A work of art becomes a “living” work of art in the precise instant that it makes a new rule of experience emerge: as soon as it makes something visible that had until then remained invisible. In this way, it becomes a living and incomplete work which, as such, remains subject to the possibility of continuing to be born ad infinitum, reverberating into new and further developments. It becomes a form that generates further formation. The living work transforms insofar as it is afflicted by its own incompleteness, and urges the generative act that fueled it to be kept alive: not to block it in the perfection of its own form, but to make it available to produce further form. This, moreover, is just what happened to Cézanne when he felt constrained by an unresolved expressive tension to depict Mont Sainte-Victoire over and over again. This aspect of the living work of art is not neutralized by the technical reproducibility dwelt on by Walter Benjamin.53 Of course, the emotion one experiences when leafing through the original manuscript of an author whom one has loved, or upon contemplating an original painting that one had only been able to admire in reproductions, is indescribable. Nevertheless, in contemporary digital art the problem is not so much its technical reproducibility, but the fact that it becomes problematic to establish which is the original and which is the reproduction.54 In a living work of art, this distinction between original and reproduction tends to vanish. A work has an aura, not because it cannot be reproduced but because it is able to resist time: that is, to the extent that it manages to regenerate itself and regenerate, every time, its own peculiar tension, in other words, 53 54

See Benjamin 2013. “Everydays” is a digital work created by Beeple, pseudonym of Michael Winkelmann, which can be freely downloaded on the web by anyone. In this case, it is difficult to establish what the original is. And yet someone paid 69 million dollars – see https://www.christies .com/en/artists/beeple?lotavailability=All&sortby=relevance – to have something that was defined as the “original”, and to which the author’s “digital signature” had been added.

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the act of self-transcendence from which it arose. A work of art is living not insofar as it coincides with the original on display in a museum, but because it remains open, that is, endlessly reproducible by the different techniques that are available. It continually offers fresh cues and is re-individuated in a different way each time. From this point of view, something of the aura of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa is even transmitted in Andy Warhol’s Mona Lisa. 2.6

Excursus: Linda Zagzebski’s Exemplarist Virtue Theory

2.6.1 Zagzebski and Scheler In this brief excursus, I propose to highlight some differences between the force of exemplarity, understood as maieutic testimony, and the exemplarist virtue theory, which was recently proposed by Linda Zagzebski.55 Her thesis is reminiscent in various ways of the theory of the exemplary model (Vorbildmodell) developed by Max Scheler at the start of the twentieth century, in contrast to Kant’s formal ethics. In all, the two analyses are complementary: while Scheler focuses his attention on the effect of the exemplary model on its follower, Zagzebski dwells on the follower’s feeling of admiration when confronted with exemplarity. Neither author bases their ethics on abstract principles, but on a concrete phenomenon such as that of the successfulness and flourishing of human existence; both also attribute a central function for ethics to the affective sphere and to feelings. To present Scheler’s position in extremely summary form, it can be said that in his material ethics, the exemplary model takes the place the categorical imperative and moral law had occupied in Kant’s formal ethics. Furthermore, for Scheler there are different figures of exemplarity according to the class of values they refer to: the hedonist, the hero, the genius, and the saint. Zagzebski takes up this classification, but she leaves out the genius. To argue for this choice, she proposes a distinction between acquired excellence and natural talents. Her hypothesis is that it only makes sense to imitate excellence acquired through the hard work of repeated exercise and constant effort, while it is impossible to imitate natural talents. According to Zagzebski, this is why genius remains admirable, but it is hard to find a place for it within a theory of exemplarity. The distinction that matters to Zagzebski is therefore the

55

See Zagzebski 2017.

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distinction between genius, which cannot be imitated, and exemplarity, which in contrast can be rigorously imitated and is de facto understood as a model. In contrast, the distinction that matters to Scheler is that between the exemplary model (Vorbildmodell), anchored to the ethical level of values, and the charismatic leader (Führer), who acts autonomously from ethics. With this distinction, Scheler was already denouncing, in the late 1920s, the risks associated with an authoritarian degeneration of the cult of the Führer on German soil.56 Thus, the Führer must be clearly distinguished from the exemplary model, which in Scheler includes both maieutic exemplarity and the social model. In this way, neither Scheler nor Zagzebski makes a precise distinction between exemplarity, understood as maieutic testimony to which an overcoming of the little self corresponds, and the social model. 2.6.2 Reflective Admiration According to Zagzebski’s exemplarist virtue theory, exemplars can be recognized insofar as they arouse a subjective feeling such as admiration for a result obtained through engagement and exercise. On one hand, there is the exemplarity that has done something excellent. On the other hand, there is I, who contemplates the exemplarity with a subjective feeling of admiration and tries to imitate it. So far, we remain within a psychological perspective: indeed, my admiration could be misplaced or prove to be an illusion, as we know from the phenomena of seduction and infatuation. To go beyond this psychological-subjective dimension, Zagzebski introduces the strategic concept of reflective admiration. At this point, the line of argument shifts from the psychological-subjective level to the reflective-­ epistemological one, so that the problem becomes: how can one objectively establish what is worthy of admiration? According to Zagzebski, there is a particular category of experts, represented by theologians and philosophers, who devote themselves to this problem. On the basis of work to clarify and arrange the terms of the moral vocabulary, it is possible to establish when a person or thing is justifiably worthy of admiration. Thus, Zagzebski bases the objectivity of admiration on the reflective procedure of linguistic moral competence, which is brought about by experts in philosophy and theology. The verification at the level of “reflective admiration”, as theorized by Zagzebski, is, however, problematic for various reasons. Above all, there is the risk of a vicious circle or circular reasoning. Zagzebski, just like Scheler, does not base her ethics on a moral concept of right or good, 56

See Scheler GW IX, 24.

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but makes the concept of right and good derive from the concrete testimony of a moral exemplarity, where an exemplary person is one who is admired for her exceptional nature in the field of morality. In this way, exemplarism seems to find a non-conceptual foundation directly in the admiration of exemplarity. On closer inspection, however, for Zabzebsky this admiration must then be verified on the basis of the moral vocabulary in use, which is encoded by experts in philosophy and theology. It is evident that a verification of exemplarity on the reflective level is absolutely necessary. However, what proves to be questionable in Zagzebski’s reasoning is the fact that this verification is limited to considering conscious admiration, and furthermore that the vocabulary encoded by experts in philosophy and theology is used as an “objective” criterion of verification. In the former case, one can observe that conscious admiration does not always manage to intercept the phenomenon of exemplarity. Indeed, exemplarity very often begins to act before it is recognized, and hence is not registered at the level of reflective admiration. Those exemplarities that act at a pre-reflective level are not certified by experts, and therefore remain unverified at the level of reflective admiration. Yet it is precisely these exemplarities that act in a deeper and more incisive way. Concerning the vocabulary encoded by experts in philosophy and theology, one can note that it varies very much according to historical periods and types of society, which raises various questions. What is the real relationship between this vocabulary encoded by experts in philosophy and theology, and the dominant morality? Can this vocabulary be something more than a simple rationalization and systematization of the dominant morality? Do not the criteria of reflective admiration enunciated by Zagzebski correspond de facto to the rationalization of the criteria of the conformism that is dominant in philosophy and theology in a certain era? In this case, they would be criteria of “reflective admiration” of the moral model, not of ethical originality of exemplarity. Historically, in fact, the vocabulary encoded by experts in philosophy and theology has often been used to condemn as “dissidents” or “heretics” precisely the most original and innovative exemplarities of their own time. It is precisely on the basis of the vocabulary encoded by the most influential philosophers and theologians of the time that Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in 1600 and Galileo Galilei was forced to recant in 1633. The reflective verification of exemplarity is necessary, but requires additional criteria such as those related to the process of self-transcendence and transformation, and is often possible only a posteriori.

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Lastly, if we follow the criteria of reflective admiration, it becomes hard to explain why counter-exemplarities can also attract and influence the anthropogenetic process.57 When I passionately read a novel by Dostoevsky or follow a television series, even a diabolical or negative character can open new perspectives onto my existence. In this case, I do not in fact propose to imitate a negative character, but I nevertheless use that person’s counter-exemplarity to explore possibilities of my existence that would otherwise be inaccessible. The phenomenon of counter-exemplarity also sheds new light on the role of imitation in exemplarity. For Zagzebski, the exemplarity must necessarily be imitable. It must be remembered that precisely on the basis of this presupposition, Zagzebski argues that genius is not imitable, and that, consequently, the genius cannot be considered a figure of exemplarity. It is true that we cannot imitate the talent of genius. Nevertheless, a work of genius – of an artistic genius, for example – can inspire us and have a decisive effect on our process of formation. Indeed, the ethical problem at the center of exemplarity, understood as maieutic testimony, concerns the effect on the process of anthropogenetic transformation. 2.6.3 The Difference Between Zagzebski’s Theory of Exemplarity and the Concept of Exemplarity as Maieutic Testimony This set of problems originates in the lack of distinction between moral model and ethical exemplarity. Zagzebski focuses on reflective admiration for the moral model. Besides this, there is the problem of the inspiration that the force of exemplarity, qua maieutic testimony, is able to exert. In the proposal for which I argued in the previous chapter, exemplarity is defined by the ability to promote a process of anthropogenetic transformation, which, however, is not always immediately recognizable. The decisive question is not whether this exemplarity that I find before me, and which I might not even recognize in that moment, is worthy of being admired according to the criteria of reflective admiration, as are encoded in that moment. By applying this criterion, one does not identify the exemplarity but the social model that acts at the conscious level. What is exemplary in the sense of maieutic testimony is not necessarily that which is consciously admired, but that which transforms, perhaps acting only at an unconscious level. Exemplary is something that can sometimes only be verified a posteriori, maybe years later. In this way, Zagzebski’s distinction 57

Instead, as Zagzebski sees it, “I am interpreting admiration as focusing on the possession of good in the other person and the possibility that I can acquire it myself” (Zagzebski 2017, 52).

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between acquired skills and inborn talents of genius also enters into crisis, since this distinction is incapable of accounting for the decisive function that a work of art qua exemplarity fulfills in the anthropogenetic process. An exemplarity is a maieutic testimony if it manages to make my hunger to be born ferment or leaven, independently of whether its excellence depends on natural talents or acquired skills. The exclusion of genius demonstrates that Zagzebski’s theory is a theory of imitation of the moral model. Hence, its ultimate reference is, once again, the little self. In fact, Zagzebski considers continuity of the ego to be one of the essential characteristics of her concept of exemplarity, which is “a desire to have a consistency and continuity of ego that consciously integrates one’s past self into one’s present and future self and where one’s beliefs, desires, values, and overt behavior are harmonious. Exemplars exhibit that kind of integrity”.58 At the center of this concept of admiration of exemplarity is imitation of an ego that is de facto understood as a moral model. The exemplarity, understood as maieutic testimony, has another function that goes beyond being imitated, insofar as it provokes an experience similar to the Socratic shock: it serves primarily to refute us, shake us up, throw us intoturmoil, and awaken us, to the point of making us discover our destination. 58

Zagzebski 2017, 179.

CHAPTER 3

Toward a New Order of Feeling 3.1

Primordial Feeling and the “Principle of Expressivity”

3.1.1 The Problem of Perception in Kant and Uexküll Kant distinguishes sensation, understood as an objective representation of the senses (“objektive Vorstellung der Sinne”), from feeling (Gefühl), that is, the subjective reaction toward the perception of a sensation.1 Hence, the green color of the meadows belongs to objective sensation, as perception of an object of sense; but its agreeableness belongs to subjective sensation, through which no object is represented, i.e., to feeling, through which the object is considered as an object of satisfaction (which is not a cognition of it).2 Let us try to give an example. While I am strolling in Kant’s meadow, I carelessly tread on the tail of an adder. The adder, feeling trapped, reacts aggressively: it bends back to raise its head and quick as a flash bites my heel. How would Kant describe this “aggressive” reaction? Would it be an “objective” representation of the senses, that is, a sensation like the green of the grass, or the “subjective” result of my judgment? Kant would observe that a sensation, that is, an objective representation, only concerns the form, the color, and perhaps the speed of the movement made by the snake, but not its aggressive expression. Hence, this expression would be downgraded to a “subjective” quality that I attribute to the snake but which, in reality, does not exist at all in that meadow. It is therefore wholly comprehensible why a theory of expressivity of living beings is lacking in Kant: for Kant, in fact, expressivity does not exist outside our minds. The problem is that in a meadow like Kant’s, the worms and moles, butterflies and birds, crickets, and ants would rapidly die. In fact, they would be unable to interact with the surrounding environment by means of Kantian sensations, that is, through “objective representations of the senses” without any biological relevance. In a real meadow, by contrast, expressivity is not an invention of the subject, but the language through which different living 1 Kant 2000, 92. 2 Ibid. © Guido Cusinato, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004520202_005

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beings communicate through forms, colors, and movements. It is not an invention of the subject, because it is not the mind of the subject that “thinks it”. In that fraction of a second in which I see the aggressive expression of the adder biting my ankle – even before I have a representation (Vorstellung) of what is happening and before my brain can “think” and express a judgment (Urteil) – my body has already lifted my foot to try to avoid the threat. Even before I can have any representation of what is happening, my body has already decoded that aggressive expression as an objective danger signal. Of course, the way in which this happens is still too slow, since the adder’s reaction speed is incredibly superior to mine. Nature is rich in examples in which expressive language is used at a pre-­ reflexive level. This language is the result of a biosemiotic enactivism whose discovery can be traced back to the pioneering research of the biologist Jacob von Uexküll. The organism perceives in the sense that it marks (merkt) what is relevant and acts in correspondence to these markings (Merkmale). The original unity of movement and perception translates into an action that returns retroactively to the organism: the marking sign (Merkzeichen) returns as an operative sign (Wirkzeichen). This functional circle (Funktionskreis) defines the operative closure of the system with respect to its environment. Uexküll’s term Merkwelt is generally translated as “perceptual world”, but in my opinion, this translation weakens the sense of the German term. The Merkwelt is not simply the “perceptual world”, but a “world of semiotic markings” in which a “functional circle” (Funktionskreis) is created between, on the one hand, the perception of semiotic markings that are vitally important for the organism, and, on the other, the acting of the organism.3 Animals possess a network of marking (Merknetz) and a network of action (Wirknetz). What correspond to these are not Kant’s representations (Vorstellungen), but the marking images (Merkbilder) and action-images (Wirkbilder). These images (Bilder) are not the “subjective” result of a Kantian faculty of judgment, which is moreover lacking in many animals, but rather the base of the enactive language through which every organism interacts with its own environment.4 A form of “enactivism” can also be identified in Kant, but it is oriented by the abstract categories of the intellect. Uexküll, for his part, lays the foundations for an incorporated enactivism, which refers not to the intellect, but to the interaction between organism and environment. In this way, action becomes an extension of perception, and perception an anticipation of action.

3 See Cusinato 2020. 4 Concerning plant life see Chamovitz 2012; Mancuso 2018.

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3.1.2 The Organic Relevance of Sensation Kant conceives of sensation as the “universal building block” that can be used to construct all knowledge. In order to obtain this result, he is forced to “sterilize” sensation of all biological relevance, so as to make it neutral. With Uexküll, the concept of sensation changes profoundly, insofar as its function is no longer theoretical, but practical. Sensation does not serve to provide abstract representations, but informs the organism about the vital relevance of the surrounding environment and the possibilities of action. Uexküll demonstrates that sensation is not a neutral given, but that it has biological relevance: the sensations of a tick are predetermined by what has vital relevance for the tick, and refer to a very limited part of the reality that surrounds it. Here, a striking convergence is determined between the perspectives of Uexküll and Bergson. For Bergson, sensation is not the result of a synthetic function of the intellect, as Kant thought, but the outcome of a selective activity of the organism with regard to the surrounding environment. In practice, it is the reflex or the rip current of the interests and needs that the organism projects onto the environment in order to decode it as useful or harmful. Once the alleged “neutrality” of Kantian sensation has been exposed, the problem becomes that of outlining its extension more precisely, since it can no longer be considered as the universal building block of all perceptions or of knowledge. This is the problem that Bergson poses with the concept of “disinterested perception”. Indeed, there are domains of experience, for instance the entire aesthetic dimension, which have no biological relevance and therefore remain invisible to organic sensation. These domains turn out to be accessible only to forms of perception that are “extended” as compared to the sensation of the living body. 3.1.3 Interaction with the Expressive Level and Primordial Feeling There is a crucial question in Uexküll that nevertheless lacks a convincing answer. Uexküll is not opposed to Kant, but rather multiplies his a priori ad infinitum: there is no single “transcendental aesthetic”, but as many a prioris as there are ecological niches (Umwelten) of the different living species. In this way, however, the problem remains open as to how different living species can then interact with each other. Yet these interactions can even be extremely complex. As I have already argued, communication between different living species presupposes that they are rooted in a common biosemiotics of life.5

5 See Cusinato 2018.

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Biosemiotics regulates the interaction with the expressive level of each organism. The problem is to understand how this can take place concretely. In what follows, I argue that it takes place thanks to feeling. I call “primordial feeling”6 the most elementary way in which the organism interacts with the expressive level thanks to the laws of biosemiotics. Until now, with few exceptions, feeling has been interpreted with reference to subjective interiority.7 This perspective is misleading. Feeling is not something to attribute to an already predetermined subject. On the contrary, the subject is the result of the emergence of an order of feeling. Indeed, through feeling, the subject grasps the values that are important for her, and in this way positions herself in the world. Feeling cannot be defined in relation to subjectivity, because it is subjectivity that is defined on the basis of the order of feeling. What I propose is to shift the focus from the relationship between “feeling and subjectivity” to that between “feeling and expressivity”. Feeling is not something that takes place in the subject’s interiority, but the modality in which a living being interacts with the expressive level of life in order to position itself in the world and become a subjectivity. Feeling no longer concerns the subjective dimension, as in Kant, but that of the interaction with the expressive level starting from the biosemiotic level. 3.1.4 Biological Expressivity and Inorganic Expressivity Removing feeling and expressivity from a purely subjective dimension enables the discovery of an original unity between life, expressivity, and feeling. However, this does not mean establishing an exclusive relationship between life and expressivity. Expressivity also belongs to the intense color of a rock, the silhouette of a mountain, or the power of the waves in a stormy sea. The ­expressivity of a canyon is striking because it tells the story of a ­millennium-long struggle between wind, water, and rock. Even a variation in the simple intensity of light – and the way and perspective from which it illuminates the ­volumes and colors of objects – modifies an object’s expressivity in an impressive way. The whole of natural processuality is the result of a dialectic between content and expression.

6 I have developed this concept while thinking of the one proposed by Scheler in 1926 by means of the term “primordial impulse of feeling” (Gefühlsdrang). Cf. GW VIII, 336; in GW VIII, 443, he also speaks of “exstatische[m] Gefühlsdrang”. 7 See § 3.7.1 An Order That Emerges from Feeling.

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At the same time, a substantial difference must be recognized between inorganic and biological expressivity, a difference that is traced by biosemiotics.8 The expressivity of the Matterhorn does not interact with or have any effect on the physical or chemical processes or on the meteorological phenomena that concern the Matterhorn; the expressivity of a crystal does not have any retroactive effect on the crystallization process. In all these cases, expressivity disseminates information, but this information in no way interacts with the inorganic processes. It is this “superfluous” character that has led to the hypothesis that expressive qualities only exist in the mind of the observer. In reality, this information is irrelevant only for the inorganic world, but it is decisive for epigenetics and for the biosemiotics that regulates the interaction of organisms in the biosphere. The epigenetic process of an organism and its interaction with the environment are something profoundly different from the development of a crystal or an algorithm, insofar as they interact with the expressive level at the biosemiotic level. Of course, the way in which a sheet of paper crumples and changes color as it burns can be extremely expressive, but this expressivity is just the side effect of a chemical process. What impacts the sheet of paper is not the fire’s expressivity, but its temperature. By contrast, animals interact with the expressivity of fire and interpret it as a danger signal even before they feel its heat. What allows a deer’s motivations to interact with the expressivity of the water in a stream is not the laws of chemistry or physics, but of biosemiotics. For the deer, the water in the stream is not H2O but a vital “affordance” that says to its thirst: drink me! The deer’s motivations do not interact with the chemistry of the water, but with the sign of something refreshing that can quench its thirst. What biosemiotic laws have in addition to the laws of chemistry and physics is the ability to interact with the expressive level through feeling. This leads to a retroactive effect between self-expression and living that is totally lacking in inorganic expressivity. A desert rose is an extremely expressive aggregate of gypsum crystals, so much so that they are reminiscent of a flower. But that expressivity is only the contingent effect induced by laws of chemistry and 8 Noticing differences and grasping their specificity is not the same thing as discriminating on the basis of differences. The fact that there is no higher-order level of reality that confers value and meaning upon all the other levels in a finalistic and hierarchical perspective (the human being as the ultimate end of evolution) does not mean that there is only a basic level of reality that is governed by the laws of physics. Not recognizing the differences between different levels of reality is equivalent to justifying the reductionist thesis, according to which complex entities and phenomena can be explained in terms of the logic that governs the simpler entities into which they can be broken down.

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physics, not the result of an interaction with the expressive level. On the contrary, the colors and forms by which a flower expresses itself are the result of millions of years of evolution, and represent the expressive pathways that the plant uses to interact with pollinating insects through biosemiotic language. For that flower, living is represented by all the ways in which it can express itself and interact with the expressive level. 3.1.5 Which Was Born First: The Flower or the Eye? Life not only perceives expression, but it expresses itself, and by so doing determines itself. Between life’s mode of self-expression and its mode of perceiving expressivity, an interaction is established that has an epigenetic influence on the course of evolution. The existence of a primordial feeling allows one to conceive that nature interacted with the expressive level even before the organ of sight appeared. This means that interaction with the expressive level influenced epigenetic evolution even before the appearance of the eye. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the birth of the visual organ represented a veritable revolution. Thanks to the eye, the potentialities of interaction with the expressive level increased enormously, making the whole palette of colors and variety of forms available to the creativity of life. Once it appeared, not only did the eye change the way of perceiving expressivity, but also life’s way of expressing itself. This is attested by the explosion of life which took place in the Cambrian era, concomitantly with the appearance of the first “eye”. Andrew Parker’s “Light Switch Theory” very effectively reconstructs the enormous impact that the appearance of the visual function had on life: Suddenly, and for no obvious reason, the range and variety of life-forms erupted somewhere between 520 and 515 Ma. At no other time in Earth’s history there has been such a profusion, such an exuberance, and such an overwhelming diversity in so short time, within one million years. […]. The Light Switch Theory provides an explanation for what triggered this event – that it was the development of vision (in trilobites); the introduction of optics. Once visual capability arose, it allowed predators to identify prey, triggering an arms race. From here on, vision became a dominant force of evolution and resulted in the eyes and reflecting optics that we have in nature today.9

9 Parker 2011, 323.

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Parker’s claims about the birth of the eye have also been confirmed by more recent studies.10 At this point, we might ask ourselves whether it was the eye that defined the evolutionary success of the flower or the flower that favored the birth of the eye. The first flower specimens of which we have evidence have been traced back to the fossils of angiosperms from around 180 million years ago.11 In contrast, the oldest eye found so far belongs to the fossil of a trilobite dating to around 530 million years ago. Therefore, around 350 million years elapsed between the birth of the first eye and the birth of the first flower. The beauty of the flower was successful because there was an eye to see it. Nature plays with expression because it has found it to be a formidable tool for communication. The existence of a biosemiotics of expressivity is amply demonstrated by nature’s use of colors and forms as a means of expression, seduction, or threat. The biosphere is a semiosphere. The variety of the forms and colors of flowers, leaves, and pollen highlights the fact that nature follows a principle of superabundance. At its basis is a surplus of fantasy and an erotic ex-centricity. Indeed, the expressive logic of nature does not follow the principle of economy.12 3.1.6 Expressive Interaction and the Experience of Reality In order for there to be a synchronization between the various forms of expressivity of living organisms, it must be presupposed, as I have argued, that different organisms are rooted in an original unity of life. There is an “impersonal root of life”. The roots of a plant are hidden underground, but they are essential to its survival. The roots absorb nutrients from the soil that the plant uses to grow and flourish. Similarly, we are all connected to an invisible source of energy and creativity that nourishes us and allows us to grow and thrive. This connection is what gives life a meaning.13 10 11 12 13

See Schoenemann & Clarkson 2013; Schoenemann et al. 2017. See Fu et al. 2018. In this direction see Scheler, Buytendijk and Portmann. The living being is immersed in this connection right from the start and interacts with the expressive level thanks to this. This does not mean falling back into the hypothesis of panpsychism, which extends some characteristics of the psyche (such as embryonic forms of thought, consciousness, or mentalism) to life and matter, nor into hylozoism, which extends some characteristics of life to matter. Indeed, the ability to interact with expressivity is, as we have already seen, a characteristic that is totally absent from inorganic matter. The idea that there is an original unity at the base of life that attunes all living beings was developed at the start of the twentieth century by Scheler with the concept of a “primordial feeling” (Gefühlsdrang) at the level of “unipathy” (Einsfühlung). Through this “primordial feeling”, every living being is able to tap into a single impersonal root of life. Scheler’s theory is that the pre-individual and impersonal level of unipathy corresponds

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Primordial feeling is what connects the organism with the original unity of life, or vital attunement. Thanks to this attunement, primordial feeling is able to decode the language of biosemiotics and interact with the expressive level of life. Interaction with the expressive level determines the experience of reality. Hence, different types of expressive interaction correspond to different experiences of reality. Non-human living beings are completely immersed in vital attunement at the level of primordial feeling, and therefore do not run the risk of being able to disconnect themselves. In human beings, by contrast, this connection becomes increasingly unstable, insofar as forms of interaction with the expressive level that are autonomous or partially autonomous from vital attunement are possible. The semiotics that regulates the interaction with the expressive level in a forest does not coincide with that which is present in a metropolis. Today, it is not a given that we can immediately grasp the expressivity of nature present even in the simple brilliance of the colors of the leaves on a tree, or in the jutting, threatening shape of a protruding black branch. Expressive literacy and an artificial effort are often needed to return to this original contact. From this point of view, the development of human civilization can be read as a gradual atrophization of vital attunement. Since human beings increasingly live in connections that differ from that original vital connection, they gradually lose the ability to be rooted in the ultimate foundation of nature. Pathological forms of feeling offer various examples of what it means to have a disorder of feeling at the level of the original connection with life: we observe a partial disconnection from primordial feeling in the schizophrenic’s modus vivendi, and interaction with the expressive level results in the enactive construction of parallel universes. The most recent step in this process of “emancipation” occurred with the explosion of virtual reality. Here too, the simulation of the experience of reality cannot do without interaction with an expressive level. With a virtual reality glove, my hand will receive certain sensations by touching the virtual object that I am seeing. The tactile, auditory, and visual sensations provided by virtual reality are not merely physical data. What I perceive is information to a “universal grammar of expressivity”. This is an expression which, if understood in the sense of an innate and static grammar, can lead to various misunderstandings. In order to avoid this, I propose that Scheler’s topic of the “universal grammar of expressivity” be re-thought in the sense of a biosemiotics that regulates the original interaction of all living beings. This works like a “toolbox” that allows every organism to express and interpret the expressivity of the environment it lives in.

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that enables me to interact retroactively with the artificial environment I am immersed in. For the experience to be fully immersive, there must be a semiotic rule between the tactile sensations that I perceive with the glove and the images of the virtual reality visor. In order to perceive the meaning of reality, there must be a synchronized interaction, regulated by a coherent semiotics. The sense of reality is produced by the semiotic coherence of the living body’s interaction with the expressive level. 3.1.7 The Living Unity of Expression and Lived Experience The question at the center of the phenomenon of expression (Ausdruck) concerns the relationship with lived experience (Erlebnis).14 Having a certain lived experience but not being immediately able to find the right words to express it is something that has happened to everyone. It is precisely this difficulty in expressing what we feel that leads to the hypothesis that there is a gap between lived experience and expression: first of all, a certain lived experience takes shape, then I have to find the way to express it suitably. In this – dominant – perspective, the expression ends up becoming something additional and subjective: an attribute added from the outside to an already completed lived experience, understood as a sort of thing-in-itself (Ding an sich). In reality, lived experience and expression are entwined from the outset: entwined, but not identical. In this case, the point of departure is a “living unity” of lived experience (Erlebnis) and expression (Ausdruck). From this perspective, there is no already concluded lived experience that I only subsequently translate into an expression. At times, it so happens that I cannot find the right words to express what I feel. However, it would be wrong to deduce, in this case, that there is a split between an already concluded lived experience and an expression that is not yet born. Rather, I cannot find suitable words because in reality my lived experience is still being born along with the expression. What assumes form in the expressive process is not only the expression but also the lived experience. It follows that my lived experience is not a static and concluded substance that precedes expression, but the expressive pathway itself. 3.1.8 The Principle of Expressivity The theory of the living unity of content and expression restores an ontological dignity to expression, and also radically changes the traditional concept of “essence”. If lived experience is not a “content”, understood as a separate 14

See in particular Dilthey’s essay: Erleben, Ausdruck und Verstehen, in Dilthey 1992.

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substance from the expression, then the “essence” of the lived experience is not the idea of a content, but the schema of the expressive pathway through which that lived experience emerged. The same holds true for a living being as well. The definition that a biologist gives of a certain organism differs from the way in which this organism is concretely perceived and recognized by other living species: a living species does not associate another living species with an essence, but with the expressive pathway that makes it recognizable. In the real world, an organism is not defined with reference to an essence, but to a certain expressive pathway. This expressive pathway is the result of an interaction with the expressive level of life made possible by feeling. Once one leaves a dualistic perspective behind, feeling can be understood as the living state of matter. Thanks to interaction with the expressive level, the feeling typical of a certain species decodes the surrounding environment in terms of whether it is useful/harmful, pleasant/unpleasant. Thus, every organic species obtains a map of values that is useful for its own environmental interaction. A specific, unique, and unmistakable expressive pathway, typical of that living species, corresponds to this interaction.15 This expressive pathway allows that organism to be identified by other organisms. If individuation and expressive pathway coincide, then this expressive pathway will provide the ultimate criterion to grasp the schema of that living species’ mode of acting and of positioning itself in the environment. This is why what the organism grasps by scouring its environment is first of all expressivity. In expression, the organism presses out (in German aus-drücken) its own point of view on that environment. As we have already seen, however, this pressing-out does not consist in making a content that is already given and stored in interiority come to the surface, but rather in metabolizing an im-­pression, to then restore it to the environment as an ex-pression of the ­organism’s point of view. What remains behind, which does not emerge, is not what is essential, the thing-in-itself, but, on the contrary, the indistinct resistance of the background. Currently, synthetic biology proposes to understand life starting out from a “minimal cell”.16 The principle of expressivity shifts the perspective from the individual to the context, and considers, among the minimal characteristics of life, a particular form of “attunement” that takes place in relation to the expressive level. The “minimal cell” presupposes a “minimal attunement” at

15 16

On the “principle of expressivity” see Cusinato 2008, 284–289. See Luisi 2006.

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the biosemiotic level. Biological individuality does not emerge directly from chemistry or physics, but thanks to a biosemiotics of expression. By principle of expressivity I mean the thesis that what outlines the difference between a living system and a non-living system is the ability to interact with the expressive level through primordial feeling. Even a computer program is able to interact with the expressive level, for instance by recognizing the face of a particular person. Nevertheless, its mode of interacting is completely different from that of an organism. What computers are still missing is the ability to “feel” the expression. If a computer could manage to interact with the expressive level through a primordial feeling, then it would be an organism. The fact that primordial feeling orients interaction with the expressive level topples two hypotheses: that feeling is an internal, subjective private state (internalism) and that it exists outside the organism (externalism). Instead, primordial feeling is the bridge between organic individuality and life: it is what connects the “internal” im-pression (Ein-druck) and the “external” ex-pression (Aus-druck) into a biological individuality. Some neuroscientists, such as Damasio, explain the logic of the living being by means of a homeostatic principle of regulation. On the opposite side, various philosophers, recently Thomas Nagel (2012)17 for example, have attempted to re-evaluate teleologism. The principle of expressivity moves in a perspective that is alternative to both, and close instead to the new image of the organism offered by the epigenetic turn.18 3.2

Expressive Enactivism

3.2.1 The Ante Litteram Enactivism of Uexküll and Scheler The term “enactivism” was coined by Varela, Thompson, and Rosch in their book The Embodied Mind (1991). However, the origins of this topic can be traced back to the research by Uexküll on the relationship between organism and environment, and to Scheler’s philosophical re-elaboration of this research starting in 1909. Hence, at the beginning of the last century, enactivism and Uexküll’s ecological thought were deeply entwined. It must be emphasized that the theory of perception elaborated by Max Scheler at the beginning of the twentieth century is opposed to the theory that would later be affirmed with cognitivism. From the cognitivist perspective, sense-making is the result of an intellectual cognitive activity that is separate 17 18

See Nagel 2012. See Jablonka & Lamb 2005.

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from the body and independent from the affective sphere. Scheler, in contrast, re-elaborates Uexküll’s theories in an enactive phenomenology of the living body (Leib). According to Scheler, perception is an embodied activity that orients an organism’s interaction with its environment. In this way, Scheler demonstrates how the organism’s sensory-motor interactions can be translated into the creation of sense. Two phases can be identified in Scheler’s phenomenology of the Leib. In the first phase, which includes in particular Formalismus (1913–1916), Scheler rereads Kant’s transcendental aesthetic through Uexküll and proposes to biologize the Kantian a priori. Here, the Leib fulfills a categorial function at the pre-representational level: “it functions as a form […], we can also say, as a category of perception”.19 However, it is a categorial function that is not productive, but merely selective: the Leib is “only an analyzer” of givenness20 that scours the surrounding environment in order to select relevant elements.21 In this way, Scheler rethinks Kant’s schematism in the sense of a “schematism of the Leib”.22 In the second phase, from Erkenntnis und Arbeit (1926) to IdealismusRealismus (1928), Scheler shifts more decisively toward an “enactive” perspective, which in any case was already present in Formalismus. At this stage, Scheler pays much more attention to the problem raised by Uexküll through the notion of “Bauplan”. Consequently, he reinterprets the schematism of the Leib in the sense of a schematism that is not only selective but also “creative”. What marks the transition between these two phases is the introduction of the concept of “body schema”.23 With the notion of body schema, Scheler draws up a theory of schematism that no longer refers to the intellect (Verstand), as in Kant, but to the living body, that is, the body of the animal organism. Perception is no longer, as in Kant, the result of a synthetic activity 19 20 21 22 23

Scheler GW II, 397. See Scheler GW VII, 248. See Scheler GW X, 437. See Scheler GW II, 396–420. In developing this notion, Scheler is influenced by Paul Schilder’s analyses of the Körperschema that had been proposed a few years earlier (Scheler GW IX, 218). It is worth noting, however, that Scheler does not use the term Körperschema but Leibschema, which is coherent with his distinction between Leib and Körper. The two thinkers’ influence is reciprocal. In coining the term Körperschema, Schilder is in turn influenced by Scheler’s reflections on the notion of Leib in Formalismus (Schilder 1950, 283). In this book, Schilder may be referring to the circumstance that the idea of Leibschema is already implied in the theory of body schematism expounded in Formalismus, as eloquently shown by the use of the expression “schema of our living body” (Schema unseres Leibes) (Scheler GW II, 409).

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of the intellectual categories; but becomes an enactive activity of the living body. Scheler attributes to the living body the capacity to produce images (Bilder) as a schema that anticipates a sensory-motor activity or an action. In this perspective, the body schema has an “embodied phantasy”, that refers not to the intellect but to the drive structure (Triebstruktur) of the living body itself.24 Thus, the living body becomes the engine of an enactive process, not only relatively to the signification of the surrounding world, but also to the organism’s possibility of action in the environment. 3.2.2 The Hidden Side of Enactivism: The Relation with Value After the publication of the book The Embodied Mind (1991), the enactivist outlook succeeded in becoming widespread in the contemporary debate on the philosophy of perception. Gradually, two aspects emerged that were not made explicit in Varela’s autopoietic enactivism. The first one concerns the centrality of the affective dimension. A significant example in this sense is the enactive function performed by disgust in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD).25 More generally, even in non-pathological situations, the core of enactivism, the one that gives form to human existence, consists not only of “positive passions” and nobler feelings such as love and friendship, but is also oriented by “ignoble” passions and sentiments such as envy, hate, and disgust. The second aspect concerns the axiological dimension of sense-­making.26 In this case, the discussion about enactivism and values still remains quite generic, since it leaves the nature of the value itself undetermined and the question of how the interaction with a value takes concrete shape is not raised.27 Nevertheless, the link between emotion and value is central for enactivism. Unless this link is clarified, the very concept of participatory sense-making would be incomprehensible. Indeed, it is only by perceiving the expressive value of a phenomenon that feeling can grasp the expressivity of that phenomenon, and that emotional sharing practices become possible. In turn, emotional sharing practices are the conditions that make participatory sense-making possible. Indeed, without practices of emotional sharing, participatory sense-making is not possible. Emotional sharing is already a primordial form of participatory sense-making. Hence, “valueception” – the term by 24 25 26 27

See Cusinato 2008, 137–141; Id. 2018, 227–230. On obsessive disorders, see § 1.1.4 Blocking the Hunger to Be Born: Disgust and Petrification. In this sense, see, for example, Di Paolo et al. 2010, 33–87. See Slaby et al. 2013, 33–55.

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which I indicate the original and pre-representational perception of values – also provides a base for the affective dimension of participatory sense-making. One of the first explicit references to the concept of value from an enactive perspective appears in a famous example by Thompson and Stapleton.28 In this example, bacteria immersed in a food gradient of sugar move toward a zone of greater sugar concentration. One possible hypothesis is that the bacteria head toward this greater concentration in a “mechanical” manner. Instead, Thompson and Stapleton adopt an enactive perspective. According to their hypothesis, the movement of the bacteria derives from the fact that they somehow “perceive” exposure to a greater sugar concentration as a positive value, and exposure to a lower sugar concentration as a negative value.29 The validity of this description depends on the meaning attributed to the verb “perceive” and the concept of “value”. However, it is precisely on these points that Thompson and Stapleton remain vague. This is the missing piece in the current discussion on enactivism. It causes us to make a generic reference to value and the axiological dimension, but without specifying what is meant by value and without clarifying what it means to perceive a value at this level. 3.2.3 Beyond Representationalism: Valueception without Representations Clearly, bacteria cannot perceive the representation (Vorstellung) of sugar. Nevertheless, they may somehow react to the positive “value” of a greater sugar concentration. To tackle this topic, I introduce the concept of “valueception”, by which I mean the ability to already interact with a value at a pre-­ representational level. In this way, I foresee an “ur-intentionality” that relates to the expressive value of a phenomenon, not through a representation but through an image (Bild) with no conceptual content. While bacteria may not “perceive”, nevertheless they have something ­similar to what I proposed to call “primordial feeling”. It will therefore be a pre-­representational interaction that occurs at the biosemiotic level. Thanks to this “primordial feeling”, the bacteria are able to react to the positive “value” of the sugar concentration. At least three fundamental positions can be identified with regard to value perception: (a) Brentano argues that the perception of values necessarily presupposes representation (Vorstellung) and judgment (Urteil); more recently, in a similar vein, Martha Nussbaum has interpreted values as value judgments;30 28 29 30

See Thompson & Stapleton 2009. Ibid., 25. See Nussbaum 2004.

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(b) with her theory of emotions as evaluative perceptions, Tappolet maintains that value perception does not imply judgment, but nevertheless must presuppose representation; (c) finally, Scheler maintains that value perception can precede not only the act of judgment, but also the perception of representation. Of course, value perception can subsequently be enriched by judgment and representation; however, according to Scheler the basic act is not that which grasps a representation, but the one that grasps value. More recently, in a direction that is in some ways similar, Hutto has proposed the concept of “cognition without content”, arguing that the basic forms of cognition are purely affective and not representational.31 Obviously, the way of conceiving enactivism changes depending on which answer is chosen. The positions of Brentano, Nussbaum, and Tappolet encounter difficulties when faced by the phenomenon of phobias and the so-called recalcitrant emotions. In particular, if, as Tappolet does, one establishes an analogy between emotion and perception, then recalcitrant emotions would be interpreted as analogous to optical illusions.32 In practice, this would make a phobia of spiders analogous to the optical illusion that makes an oar immersed in water appear to be broken, but this does not explain how it comes about that everyone sees the broken oar, while only some have a phobia of spiders. Valueception, in the sense of “pre-representational perception of value”, must not be confused with the “evaluation” of judgment.33 If I inadvertently touch a red-hot object, I will pull my hand away even before I realize that the object is red-hot. Of course, before I withdraw my hand I can also create a representation of “red-hot object” to myself and then formulate the judgment that “red-hot objects are harmful”, but if I did, my hand would already have been burnt in the meantime. What makes me withdraw my hand is not the

31

32 33

See Hutto & Myin 2014; 2017. With regard to Hutto’s proposal, I agree that there is a non-representational intentionality (ur-intentionality). In my view, however, this does not mean that a form of intentionality without representations (Vorstellungen) corresponds to an intentionality without content. To be without representations does not mean to be without content. Indeed, there are forms of intentionality that do not have a representational content, but can have a pre-representational content, as might be the content that is present in a simple valueception, in the form of a pre-representational image of value. See Tappolet 2000. The concept of value perception (Wertnehmung) was introduced by Scheler in 1913 (see Formalismus GW II, 206). Scheler coined the neologism Wert-nehmung on the model of the compound Wahr-nehmung, which is usually translated as “perception”. However, whereas Wahr-nehmung literally means taking (nehmen) something to be true (wahr), Wert-nehmung means taking (nehmen) value (Wert) through feeling (fühlen).

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representation of the object, but the fact that I grasp a negative value, which is already given at the level of valueception. 3.2.4 A-Subjective Perception and Interaction with the Expressive Level Valueception orients primordial feeling in interaction with the expressive level. At first, perception coincides with this interaction. In this connection, Bergson observes that “our perception […] is originally in things rather than the mind, without us rather than within”.34 Perception is initially a pure, that is, an a-subjective experience, which takes place prior to the distinction between object and subject. Only subsequently is the problem of the distinction between “subjective” and “objective” perception raised. At first, there is no individual perception by the subject, but participation in the expressive level through primordial feeling. Yet where exactly does perception begin? Perception is not originally located in the sensorial centers, but where it appears: that is, in the expression. Originally, the perception of a phenomenon reflects the movement by which the phenomenon expresses itself. I perceive the expression of a flower. This perception is not “my” representation of a quality of that flower, but rather my participation in its expressive pathway. In perceiving its expression, it is its expressive schema that is acting on me, making me explore expressive pathways which would otherwise be inaccessible to me. In short, by participating in its expressive schema, in some respects I am the one expressing myself through the flower, and the flower is perceiving itself through me. Interaction with the expressive level of life regulates participation in the common enactive schema of life. Hence, expressive forms are not the secondary residue of the cognitive activity of a brain intent on building an objective representation of the world. They are not side effects of perception, but represent the original core of the whole perceptual structure. Indeed, to take part in the expressive pathway of another living being is to be synchronized and to establish a connection with the reality of the biosphere. 3.2.5 The Aesthetic Dimension and “Basic Expressivity” I confess that I have not the faintest idea what it is like to be a bat. To understand this, I would probably have to become a bat myself. On the other hand, on a hot summer night, when I smell the intense fragrance of magnolia flowers, I immediately experience what it means to be fragrant a certain way. In 34

Bergson 1912, 291.

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this case, I am of course not experiencing what it feels like to be a magnolia. Nevertheless, I somehow take part in its way of being fragrant and expanding into the world. When I immerse myself in the intense fragrance of its flowers, I follow a certain expressive pathway, which means that I have an experience. For the magnolia, however, having a fragrance at night has a very precise meaning. In the language of biosemiotics, this fragrance is a signal indicating to beetles that the flowers of the magnolia are ready to be pollinated. When I smell that fragrance, my way of interpreting the magnolia’s expressive pathway is therefore foreign to its biosemiotic laws. And yet, when I intensely breathe in that fragrance, I have the feeling that I too am expanding into the dark of the night, and I certainly have an experience that has a profound effect on me. Hence, I have a significant experience which nevertheless is ex-centric with regard to the laws of biosemiotics. Such experiences are proper to the aesthetic dimension, and are typical of human beings. This is precisely how art taps into the expressive dimension of biosemiotics: it transgresses the logic of the original context, according to patterns that cannot be expressed by vital relevance. At that point, I am also able to interact with the expressivity of a starry sky, or recognize myself in the brushstrokes with which van Gogh depicts it. Or else, I can be transported by the rhythm of a piece of music, as if it managed to speak to me in the language of my dreams and deepest fears. In this way, I expand into the world by taking part in the aesthetic dimension of expressivity. Another piece is needed to put the overall picture back together. I propose to indicate it by the term “basic expressivity”. When I smell the magnolia’s fragrance so intensely, I may have the sensation that I identify with it. I might then be tempted to think that, by smelling that fragrance, I also become that way of being fragrant and expanding into the world. In other words, my smelling the magnolia’s fragrance would coincide with the expressive effort of the magnolia itself. However, the fact that this is a misunderstanding emerges as soon as we consider what was said concerning my ex-centric mode of having this experience with respect to the logic of the magnolia. But let us consider another case. After a long period abroad, I return to Italy. The next day, I get up early in the morning and smell a strong odor of coffee. That intense coffee fragrance is expressive, and is a very characteristic way of expanding into the world. By smelling that fragrance, it is therefore I who expand into the world. Unlike the magnolia, however, this expressive pathway has no meaning for the coffee. The smell of coffee is expressive, but behind it there is no expressive effort by the coffee. If anything, it may have social meanings. So, what do smelling the magnolia and smelling the coffee fragrance have in common? Here we have to do with the basic structure of perception:

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perception is not the abstract representation of an object, but participation in a “basic expressivity”, that is, in an elementary way of expanding into the world. Initially, to perceive means to come into contact with the world thanks to participation in a basic expressivity. These forms of basic expressivity can be relative either to the living world or to the inorganic world. Almost all experiences connected to fragrances and smells are experiences of basic expressivity. But so is immersing oneself in the blue of a gentian flower or a cloudless Alpine sky or, at night, feeling at one with the twinkling of a starry sky. Or stopping to listen to the sound of the waves of the sea, or the chirping of the cicadas on a steamy summer’s afternoon. In all these cases I perceive, that is, I exist and expand into the world, thanks to a basic expressivity. It is through these basic expressivities that I come into contact with the rhythm of the world and its expressive language. Indeed, the participatory schemas of these basic expressivities represent the references that place me in immediate communication with smells, touches, flavors, shades, colors, and forms of the world. 3.3

The Main Apparatuses of Expressive Enactivism

3.3.1 The Different Levels of Expressive Enactivism At the basis of enactivism there is not the autonomous activity of an organism, a self, or a we, but the interaction of a propulsive core with the expressive level of life. It is from this interaction that enactivism is triggered. Different levels of reality and different propulsive cores of enactive activity – ordo naturalis, ordo carnis, ordo socialis, and ordo amoris – correspond to the different levels of expressive interaction. In this way, expressive enactivism extends to all levels of living reality. Each of these cores channels interaction with the expressive level through its own “apparatuses” which carry out the function of orienting, promoting, and accelerating the processes of expressive enactivism. The logic of these apparatuses varies according to the level of reality at which the interaction with the expressive level occurs. In particular, valueception and primordial feeling offer the theory of biosemiotic enactivism the missing pieces for ­understanding the most simple expressions of vitality, those which are ­channeled by the attunement of the organisms with the original unity of life (ordo naturalis). The next level consists of interaction with the expressive level channeled by the living body (Leib), that is, by the animal organism (ordo carnis). At this level, the main apparatuses are represented by Daniel Stern’s “forms of vitality” and Gibson’s “affordances”.

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They are dynamics that act as catalysts of expressive enactivism, and orient interaction with the expressive level even at the most basic levels: valueception is pre-representational and also acts at the level of brain-less organisms; forms of vitality govern the development of the newborn’s presymbolic knowledge; affordances also guide everyday perception at a non-conscious level. Until now, their function has been underestimated in favor of an enactivism based on representation (Vorstellung). Finally, there are the levels that correspond to the ordo socialis and the ordo amoris. In the former, the main apparatus is represented by social roles and models. What corresponds to the latter is a level of enactivism that has not yet been explored: that of the ordo amoris (order of the heart). This is the non-­ autopoietic expressive enactivism connected to the singularity’s hunger to be born. Its apparatuses consist in the various forms of exemplarity. As already highlighted, works of art can be conceived of as the materialization of the artist’s own particularly successful expressive pathways. From this point of view, they are forms of “extended exemplarity” that become autonomous from the artist herself, and can be used as springboards for further expressive pathways. Since there is an enactive expressivity at the basis of these expressive pathways, these forms of “extended exemplarity” themselves function as apparatuses for orienting the expressive enactivism of the ordo amoris (order of the heart) of another person. In other words, a piece of music touches me because I feel that it is acting as an apparatus to enactively orient my feeling. I am touched by that music insofar as it is an “extended exemplarity” that molds the order of my heart’s way of interacting with the expressive level. The enactivism of the ordo amoris is a question at the heart of anthropogenesis, and as such I will return to it at length in the following chapters. In what follows I will limit myself to briefly identifying some of the main apparatuses of the other levels of expressive enactivism, without any claim to exhaustivity. 3.3.2 Hunger to Live: Expressive Enactivism from an Epigenetic Perspective At the level of primordial feeling, the apparatuses of expressive enactivism can be traced back to the concepts of “hunger to live” and “expressive force”.35 Expressive enactivism and epigenetics open a new perspective on the concept of an organism. The organism is not a genetic machine that merely performs 35

With these concepts I am not referring to “finalistic forces” dualistically opposed to the inorganic world, as happened in the case of Driesch’s “metaphysical vitalism”. Instead, I intend to rethink expressive enactivism in an epigenetic perspective and in the direction of some of Bergson’s intuitions on life understood as an open, indeterminate, and creative system.

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the program inscribed in its genetic code, but a biological individuality that has its own point of view and acts enactively. The expressivity of the living being is the way in which, transparently and recognizably at the biosemiotic level, the organism exhibits its viewpoint, that is, its hunger to live. This hunger is not isolated, but synchronizes with the mode of being of other organisms, insofar as it interacts with the expressive level through primordial feeling. Plants are also a certain way of feeling light. Deer are a certain way of feeling water and meadow grass. Sunflowers feel light at the level of primordial feeling and so follow the movement of the sun. This is a process of expressive positioning. If I place a plant and a stone on my window sill, I can observe that over a few days the plant “adopts a position” with regard to the environment (Plessner). The stone does not. The plant’s positioning in the environment is a complex expressive process that implies the ability to interact with the environment at the biosemiotic level. It is a way of expressing its own point of view. Primordial feeling enables it to express itself, that is, to position itself. There is not just the human hunger to be born. The force that presses outwards in primordial ex-pression is the “hunger to live”. In every living form – from plants through worms to human beings – there is a hunger to live that acts as an expressive force regulated by the biosemiotics of the biosphere. 3.3.3 Affordances and Expressivity One of the apparatuses that can be identified at the level of enactivism of the living body is that of Gibson’s “affordances”.36 According to Gibson, what we perceive in the first place are affordances, that is, opportunities to engage with an environment in accordance with our plans. Like Stern’s forms of vitality, an object’s affordances do not indicate “objective” qualities, as do Kant’s sensations: being red, long, or smooth. Instead, they are part of the phenomenon’s expressive dimension. Every object expresses particular affordances in relation to the environment in which it is immersed. I do not perceive the abstract representation of a “chair”. It is rather the context that guides my living body to relate to the form of the chair and prefigure its “sittability”, that is, how I can sit on it. Until now, the relationship between affordances and expressivity still remains to be explored.37 And yet the production of affordance is a fundamental catalyst of expressive enactivism, and not only at this level. Naturally, affordance and expressivity do not coincide. Affordances are the result of an 36 37

See Gibson 1979. Interest has instead focused on the relationship between affordances and emotions. See, for example, Griffiths & Scarantino 2008.

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apparatus that selects, channels, and models expressivity in a certain way. For example, the affordance of a glass does not coincide with its expressivity, which is quite broad and includes being smooth, transparent, etc. An affordance is only a limited segment of all the possible expressive forms of a glass, for example, the segment that allows my hand to take hold of the glass. To revive a wellknown example by Kurt Koffka, a forerunner of Gibson’s theses: all things tell us something, “a fruit says, ‘Eat me’; water says, ‘Drink me’; thunder says, ‘Fear me’”. When a deer sees water in a stream, it does not see the whole range of the water’s expressivity, but only the affordance that says to its thirst: drink me! Affordances are that part of expressivity that is standardized in relation to vital, social, or cultural relevance. Nevertheless, it is evident that the way a door handle says “open me” is completely different from the way a flower will say to a bee: “pollinate me”!38 The problem is probably encapsulated in a question raised by Peirce about the essence of natural objects: It is easy to state what the essences of artificial objects are: The essence of a stove is that it is intended to diffuse warmth. But as to the essence of natural objects, if they have any, we are unable as yet to give them (Peirce CP 6.337). What determines the difference that captures Peirce’s attention? In the case of a stove, it is not the intentionality of the phenomenon itself that determines its possible uses, but the intentionality objectively sedimented in the environmental and social context. Here the affordance exclusively concerns the law of functioning or the usage practice of an artifact. The perspective changes radically, however, if we consider a living being. In this case, the affordance expresses the living system’s point of view, its biological individuality, its mode of interacting with the expressive level: a fruit will say “eat me!” and a poisonous spider: “keep away!” In the world there are not only affordances of objects that “ask” to be used and handled, but also the affordances of living beings that are threatening or seductive, attractive or frightening. This request is not “subjective” in the sense of arbitrary, since it has to do with an expressive pathway that objectively characterizes that living being or has become sedimented in a certain way. Finally, at the level of ordo amoris, affordance is no longer a way of channeling expressivity in relation to something’s usability (as in the case of the door handle or the chair) or to vital relevance (the flower’s invitation to be 38

See Cusinato 2008, 194.

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pollinated), but becomes, for instance, a person’s request to be loved. At this level, an affordance is a way of orienting interaction with the expressive level in relation to the hunger to be born. Hence, it takes on an ethical meaning. 3.3.4 The Dialectic between Expression and Context in Sociology At the level of ordo socialis, one of the main catalysts of expressive enactivism is represented by the social role and social models.39 Here, however, I will merely consider the dynamic aspect of the question, relating to the dialectic between expressivity and social context. The use of a term like “expressivity” in sociology can cause some bewilderment, owing to the tendency that has become established in sociology of phenomenological origin to reduce, if not to neutralize, the expressive phenomenon.40 In reality, there is a continuous circularity between expression and context. Therefore, in sociology, expression and context should be understood together, rather than opposed. If expressivity can only be understood on the basis of a certain context, it is also true that the context, in turn, can be retroactively modified by the creative action of expressivity. When this is not taken into consideration, sociology risks absolutizing the dominant social context, and marginalizing the problem of social transformation. The emergence of an unforeseen situation can force one to modify one’s interpretative schemas and reveal something as false that appeared absolutely unquestionable in the previous context. In everyday life, so long as things go on without a hitch, the individual refers exclusively to the dominant context: that is, she lives inside her own mental map. While traveling by train in a normal situation, I do not need to interpret the expression on the ticket inspector’s face: her intentions and role are already encoded, and I will instinctively take out my ticket to have it checked even before she asks me. However, this does not rule out that sooner or later I may encounter some incongruence, and this is where the perception of expressivity can perform its context-verifying function. This is why if I notice something strange when I speak to a person, I will instinctively try to establish a visual contact with her gaze. It might be objected that expressivity is easy to simulate, and that a look can also lie. In reality, the very simulation of a lived experience is an expressive activity. Therefore, it is possible to perceive the expression of lying as well. In practice, it is true that I can be deceived when I grasp the expression of the person in front of me but, if that person is not a good actor, I can perceive not 39 40

See Griffiths & Scarantino 2008. Cf. Gurwitsch 1977. This criticism was also taken up again more recently by Gallagher and Zahavi (cf. Gallagher & Zahavi 2007, 190–191).

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only her expression, but also the lack of correspondence between the expression and her lived experience. In other words, I can perceive that her smile is forced, and hence is an expression of falsity or hypocrisy. 3.3.5 Anthropogenesis and Generative Deviation from the Expressive Context To avoid falling into a static vision of sociology, it is also essential to consider the cases when expressive action goes beyond the context from which it emerged. Of course, in a normal situation, an expression merely signals a certain state of mind within pre-established canons; however, the perspective changes radically if we consider a generative type of expressive pathway. The expressivity of a work of art no longer serves to signal a pre-encoded lived experience, insofar as it does not conform to the context, but innovates it. Edvard Munch’s The Scream is also the result of an expressive pathway. Another person might not have seen anything unusual in that sunset. Or else, when he saw that sunset, Munch could have limited himself to directly expressing that lived experience by putting his hands in his hair and screaming. In this case, he would merely have exteriorized a lived experience in the forms already available in the context of common feeling. Instead, Munch creatively prolonged that expressive pathway, and gave form to something new. All of art demonstrates how expressivity can become an extremely complex and refined pathway that does not simply aim to reflect a lived experience according to an already-encoded schema. And it is by giving form to an innovative expressive pathway that an individual is differentiated from the common sense of the context of belonging. In the case of the personal singularity, not only is the context transcended, but the little self is transcended as well. The concept of self-transcendence allows the bond between singularity and generativity to be highlighted. It is important to distinguish the subjective dimension of expression from the generative dimension. With a generative act, an individual does not express her subjectivity, but gives forms to her physiognomy: this is not subjectivism but singularization. Singularization is the result of a generative expressivity that has nothing to do with subjectivism. Generative expressivity is not the automatic outward projection of an already-formed lived experience, but the way in which the desiring singularity sets out on a formative path to distance itself from already-encoded practices. In order to be creative, in the sense of generative, it is not enough to have particularly intense feelings or live particularly extraordinary events. What differentiates generative expressivity from the subjective extroflection of an exciting lived experience is the ability to transform oneself by metabolizing one’s own

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lived experiences. I can describe or recount an extremely exciting dream. But this narrative is not yet a generative act: it is not enough to elevate the raw and private material of a dream into a narrative to make it a living work of art. A narrative only becomes a novel if it transforms the person writing or reading it. It is only by going through a periagogic experience of transformation that a lived experience becomes the material of a living work of art. And this experience of transformation is always an experience of self-transcendence. 3.4

Beyond Bauman’s Liquid Society

3.4.1 Narcissism as the Sad Legacy of Nihilism By nihilism I understand primarily the thesis that there is no more meaning, no more values, and that therefore the great “why” questions must be obliterated. In the course of the twentieth century, nihilism had initially fulfilled a positive function. It purified culture and our way of thinking from a long list of prejudices and metaphysical lies. By the end of the twentieth century, however, this function was exhausted, and nihilism itself became the new conformism, the new common sense, or the new trendy philosophy. The victory of nihilism resulted in obliterating the great “why” questions, the questions of meaning and of values, and, at a certain point, these questions disappeared. Yet this void has been immediately filled with a new belief, a new ideology, a new dogma: that is, the absolutization of the self. Ultimately, nihilism was not capable of surviving itself and its destructive function. It left us a sad legacy: the ideology of narcissism, which increasingly shows itself to be incapable of measuring up to the questions it had canceled out, and which, with its aftermath of discomfort and suffering, brings us back, once again, to the forbidden questions, to the taboo questions of why, meaning, and values. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the thesis that there is no more meaning, no more values, was placed within a context that was deeply different from the current one. Today, this deconstructive operation must be rethought as an opportunity to reopen a new possibility of meaning. A reflection of this sad legacy can also be identified in some currents of postmodern philosophy. At the end of the twentieth century, in Italy and France, the grandiose project of Weberian disenchantment and secularization branched out in several directions. One part leveled healthy criticism at metaphysics and theology and went on to evolve toward a theory of complexity.41 By contrast, 41

Cf. Morin 2008.

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another part regressed to ideology, targeting the very core of Socratic philosophy: if values and reference points are denied, the possibility of distinguishing between a good life, conducted according to virtue, and a lethargic life, squandering existence in pursuit of honors, wealth, and recognition, collapses. This postmodern ideology established its place in philosophy in the mid1980s, concomitantly with the establishment in politics of the neoliberalism of Thatcher and Reagan. Both were based on a negative concept of freedom, in the sense of a lack of limits: a free person is a person without impediments. They differed in that postmodern ideology applied this concept of freedom to “ethical deregulation”, while neoliberalism applied it to “economic deregulation”.42 This ideology left an “empty shell” as a legacy. In the new context of the liquid society, the new generations’ request for orientation and meaning not only collided with the collapse of the old and henceforth definitively worn-out frames of reference, but also with the lack of a culture able to offer the critical tools apt to create an alternative horizon of meaning. At least in the countries of southern Europe, the new generations found themselves living in a society not designed for them and, in some cases, that stripped them of a future. Through a strange dialectic, the new forms of re-enchantment proposed by the cultural entertainment industry drew profit from precisely the deconstructive action carried out by 1980s postmodern ideology. Once the alternative forms of orientation – those based on cultivating desire and the action of the force of exemplarity – had been deconstructed, the logic of the strongest, which dominates the economic market, took hold. The disorientation and lack of values of liquid society was translated into a regressive attitude that drove human beings, who had come down from Climacus’s ladder with great hopes, to dive headlong into the logic of compulsive enjoyment and the homo oeconomicus. 3.4.2 Carl Schmitt and the Fact-Value-Distinction Why did the critical tools for a culture of transformation come to be missing? Why have they disappeared? Why is a form of regression gaining ground that calls into question the Weberian disenchantment of the world? One of the central stages in this process is represented by Heidegger’s critique of the concept of value. In Heidegger’s analysis, values are seen as mere calculation tools for dominating things by means of technology. After this critique, a part of contemporary philosophy concluded that values do not exist, except as the expression of an “ideology of values” that serves the logic of the domination of 42

Cf. Magatti 2017.

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technology, and has practically erased the word from its vocabulary. In reality, Heidegger does not affirm that values do not exist, but takes up Nietzsche’s thesis that the values that had become established in the repressive morality of nineteenth-century Europe were merely an invention by bourgeois men to disguise their private vices behind public virtues. This analysis of masking the nature of values is necessary and convincing. The problem is to understand if this is really all that philosophy has understood by “value” over the centuries. In particular, it can be observed that some of the extreme criticisms of values, instead of placing themselves in the perspective of a “thought of complexity”, have led to excessive simplifications and schematizations, resulting in the attempt to cancel the very concept of value and orientation. Years later, it is legitimate to wonder whether there were not excesses and limits in these theses. For example, does it still make sense to insist on the dichotomy between facts and values after the observations of Hilary Putnam?43 An emblematic case is Carl Schmitt’s famous critique of the so-called “­tyranny of values”. In tune with Heidegger, who speaks of “thinking in ­values” (das Denken in Werten),44 Schmitt criticizes the “thought of value” (Wertdenken). Here, Schmitt takes the dualism between facts and values to its extreme consequences. Value thus becomes a mere arbitrary expression of subjectivity, and precisely because its existence depends solely on the arbitrariness of the subject, its “value” must be validated by means of a decision of the subject, and hence imposed by force.45 In this way, the “polytheism of values” (Weber’s expression) flows not into a form of ethical pluralism or relativism, but into a genuine mortal conflict, in which “to reason in terms of values” means to validate one’s “value” through violence, and to assert oneself only by obliterating and destroying all other values. This “thinking in values” is dangerous, to the extent that it arrogantly absolutizes one’s own position, and claims to do without “mediation” (Vermittlung). In other words, Schmitt sets “thought of value” (Wertdenken) against ‘thinking through mediations’, that is, a mode of thinking capable of mediating between conflicting values. Indeed, like ideas, values also require a mediation (Vermittlung), and when, in contrast, they manifest themselves in bare immediacy, or in automatic self-performance, then there will be terrible horror and disgrace.46 In this way, Schmitt identifies value with economic

43 44 45 46

For a critique of this dichotomy, see Putnam 2004. Cf. Schmitt 2011, 38. Ibid., 41. Ibid., 53–54.

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value, and “thinking in values” with the “tyranny of values”, that is, an ideological and fanatical absolutization of one’s own positing of value. However, this line of argument turns out to be problematic. Here, I do not refer to the fact that, as has already been noted, if one applied these criteria to Schmitt’s writings that appeared during his period of adhesion to Nazism, many of them would turn out to be expressions of “thought of value”.47 Rather, the problematic character to which I refer concerns the very structure of Schmitt’s reasoning. For if I develop a philosophical critique of “thinking in values” or of the “tyranny of values”, then a very banal question inevitably arises: in the name of what “value” can I put forward such a critique? In fact, the critique of the “tyranny of values” is only possible in the name of something that cannot be reduced to economic value. Schmitt identifies this instance as the “dignity of the person”. In this context, he clearly contrasts “value” and “dignity”, as if they were irreconcilable: “Things have a value, persons have a dignity [Sachen haben einen Wert, Personen haben eine Würde]”.48 Therefore, at the center of the later Schmitt’s thought, there would be the idea that the original sin consists in reducing the dignity of the person to the logic of economic values: “Today, however, dignity is also becoming a value [Heute dagegen wird auch die Würde zu einem Wert]”.49 Ultimately, Schmitt asserts that dignity of the person is irreducible to the class of economic values. This is not a new or original thesis; on the contrary, it is a very ancient one. What makes Schmitt’s thesis distinctive is not its content, but the radicalization of its tones. What particularly catches the eye is the presupposition that “value” necessarily and exclusively coincides with “economic value”, a presupposition that is not proved, but reiterated with such tenacity that it is made to appear a veritable dogma. Moreover, Schmitt’s thesis would have been much more coherent and radical if the condemnation of the concept of “value” had also been extended to the concept of “person”. In contrast, by re-evaluating the concept of “dignity of the person”, Schmitt admits de facto the existence of an “ethical entity” that is irreducible to economic values. Of course, to remain faithful to his own initial dogma – that of the identification between value and economic value – Schmitt refuses to make a class of non-economic values correspond to such an “ethical entity”, that is, dignity of the person.

47 48 49

In this regard, cf. the observations contained in the Postface by Christoph Schönberger: Werte als Gefahr für das Recht?, in Schmitt 2011, 71–72. Schmitt 2011, 35, my translation. Ibid., my translation.

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At this point, this is no longer a philosophical problem, but rather a problem of the internal coherence of Schmitt’s thought; no longer a dispute about content, but about terms. From a philosophical point of view, the dogma of the identity of value with economic value is a mere dogma like many others, which can therefore be infringed. What is important is to overcome the ideologism and fanaticism that are implicit in the tyranny of “economic values” and to reach the level of “thinking through mediations”. This is what I propose to do in what follows, where by “value” I no longer understand a moralistic or ideological criterion for distinguishing good from evil, but an original dimension of experience that is common to all living beings and pre-given before any representational perception, sensory-motor activity, and faculty of judgment. Value is not grasped by intuition, but by feeling, already at the level of a pre-representational perception. In this way, one certainly calls into question conceptual and semantic traditions that are deeply rooted and well consolidated, but this proves to be necessary, since the catastrophe to which our current culture of narcissism is leading us will inevitably have as its outcome a profound rethinking of the question hidden behind the concept of value. It is only by confronting this question that it will be possible to avoid the opposite drifts of ideological fanaticism and of the nihilism implicit in ethical indifferentism. As was already the case with the term “person”, I am not interested in the terminological question: if one prefers, the term “value” can even be abandoned and replaced by another. But even in that case, the problem hidden behind the question of values would continue to subsist. What is this question? Ethical orientation has traditionally been thought of as something that is imposed from above on an individual’s passions, through a will that is oriented by reason, or by the intuition of an absolute ideal value. Is it possible to imagine an orientation that acts instead from below, by rooting itself in the affective sphere? What is at stake is a rethinking of values beyond the repressive paradigm, and beyond the contrast between ethical absolutism and nihilistic relativism, hence, to think of them neither as ideal qualities nor as mere arbitrary conventions. What I propose is to leave behind, once and for all, the anachronistic and ingenuous dualism between facts and values, on which Schmitt’s thesis is also based.50 It is one thing to assert, with Hume, that one cannot automatically derive an “ought” from an “is” (the is-ought problem). It is quite another to assert that only those facts exist that do not imply values. In this case, any discussion on judgments of value would be in fact useless, insofar as values would 50

According to Hilary Putnam, this dualism has produced incalculable damage, so much so that overcoming it may become even “matters of […] life and death”. See Putnam 2002, 2.

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only be arbitrary conventions of the subject that lack any relation to what is true or false. Let us take, as an example, the rape of a woman, the abuse of a child, or racial discrimination. Are these things that really exist? On the basis of the fact-value dichotomy, they are facts only if they are neither right nor wrong. If, in contrast, the terms “rape”, “abuse”, and “discrimination” somehow imply a judgment of value, which in fact they do, then they are a non-fact, and hence, properly speaking, we should conclude that rape, child abuse, and racial discrimination do not exist and never have existed on this earth. If we were to follow this dangerous drift, we would eventually even ask ourselves whether there has ever been the “extermination” of the Jewish people at Auschwitz, or the “genocide” in Rwanda. It must be underlined that the overcoming of the dualism between facts and values has very far-reaching consequences that are not limited to the ethical level alone. Indeed, the point is to undertake a radical rethinking of the question hidden in the concept of value, to the point of shifting the interpretation of value from the ideological level to the level of reality, that is, to the point of identifying the “values” within “facts”, so as to provide a concrete description of the function of values in the very process of the real. This is what happens implicitly with Jacob von Uexküll, in relation to the level of biosemiotics, when he asserts that an organism interprets its own environment (Umwelt) in terms of signals of relevance. These signals are none other than indicators of “value” for possible actions of the organism. In sum, Schmitt traces value back to economic value, and then concludes that values are imposed by violence. From this perspective, the “culture of values” would inevitably generate violence and fanaticism, and the solution would be to erase the concept of value from our vocabulary. The paradox is that this criticism of the “culture of values” is itself made in the name of a value, and did not, moreover, have the effect of eliminating the concept of value from philosophical discussion, but of absolutizing a single class of values: those functional to technological and economic domination. For example, if I want to demonstrate that colors do not exist, and then claim that just one color – green – exists, I am not arguing that colors do not exist, but absolutizing the color green. If I claim that only values functional to technology exist, I am not demonstrating that values do not exist, but merely absolutizing a certain class of values. In other words, I am neutralizing all differences in value to put them on the same level as economic value. Therefore, the solution to put a brake on the logic of values that are functional to technology or that impose themselves through violence is not to eliminate the question of values altogether, but to rediscover the values that cannot be reduced to the logic of utility and of the will to power.

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Moreover, there is no need to bother with German historicism in order to realize that the absolutization of the values of technology corresponds perfectly to the absolutization of the values dominant in one’s own historical period. The concept of value as a tool for the domination of technology corresponds to the concept of value at the basis of European industrialization, whose beginnings Thomas Ashton dates to 1760. In other words, the critique of the so-called “culture of values” only takes into consideration the value that has become predominant in the current phase of history, namely economic value, and in this way, paradoxically, makes it absolute instead of eliminating it. Consequently, a “caricatural” and simplified concept of value has become established.51 Is there a concept of value that can measure up to a “thought of complexity”? 3.4.3 Toward Rethinking the Concept of Value Why is it important to rethink the concept of value? As I have already demonstrated, value is the key to accessing the affective sphere and feeling. To eliminate the concept of value means to nullify the sphere of feeling. Weberian disenchantment (Entzauberung) is justified insofar as it criticizes dogmatism, idolatry, and superstition, but not when it results in an intellectualism unilaterally opposed to the affective sphere. This is a genuine vicious circle. The more intellectualism re-proposes a simplified concept of the affective sphere, the more the possibilities of an irrational affective regression are nourished by way of reaction. As I will show later, feeling, if cultivated, manages to organize itself in a precise order, and to express its own logic and rationality. Not only do the various forms of intellectualism fail to confront this problem, but they impose 51

Today, the issue of value is still burdened by a misunderstanding that arose in connection to Weber’s concept of value-freedom (Wertfreiheit). The problems arise insofar as Weber – in the same way as a significant part of twentieth-century thought, such as cognitivism and now Martha Nussbaum – equates “value” with “value judgment”. This is a very questionable thesis. In any case, it makes us see that Weber’s Wertfreiheit is to be understood in the sense of a liberation (freedom) from “value-judgments” (Wert-urteils-freiheit) or even better in the sense of a liberation (freedom) from “value-prejudices” (Wert-vorurteils-freiheit). In other words, Weber’s concept of “value-freedom” set out to distinguish political, moral, and religious evaluations from scientific propositions. Another question is whether value-freedom is to be understood literally, namely as the neutralization of the dimension of values. In this case, the concept of value is misunderstood and various problems are encountered, such as the one mentioned previously concerning the dichotomy between facts and values. However, as demonstrated by Paul Feyerabend for example, this absolutization of value-freedom is itself a myth and cannot be applied even to the scientific method.

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a dualism that in fact nullifies the presuppositions on which the cultivation of feeling is based. These presuppositions are valueception, care relations, emotional sharing practices, and the spaces in which to exercise the force of exemplarity. Without these presuppositions, the indiscriminate repression of feeling falls back into the logic of the “dialectic of enlightenment” and lays the foundations for the spread at the social level of irrational dynamics dominated by fear, hate, envy, and resentment. The problem is certainly not the fate of the term “value”, a term that is obsolete, worn out, and laden with misunderstandings for many. At the limit, we could even decide to eliminate this term. The problem is the fate of our societies. What needs to be saved is the possibility of rethinking the problem of orientation outside of both authoritarianism and the old repressive morals, and outside of the new techniques of the mediatic breeding of human beings, a topic that already emerged when I compared the images of Climacus’s ladder and Hokusai’s wave.52 3.4.4 What Is a Value? What, then, is a value? Value has often been conceived of as an ideal object, therefore endowed with universal validity, but also with a normative nature. In practice, a monstrosity. The other conceptions that have become widespread are the aforementioned ones of economic value, or else value as an attribute or secondary quality. What I propose is to set aside all of these conceptions and attempt a description of value starting from experience. I do not mean a particular experience of value that humans can have in a certain period of history or in a specific situation. This would inevitably lead to an anthropomorphic and historically limited understanding of the concept of value. The ethical dimension belongs to an extremely limited class of values. The primary meaning of value is ontological and perceptual: it is the meaning of opening up to reality and making room for the manifestation of a phenomenon. What I propose is to extend the concept of value to the most elementary levels of life as well, and hence to what could perhaps be called the “environmental” valence (in the sense of Uexküll). What characterizes the experience of value? Value is the first characteristic that I grasp of a phenomenon; therefore, valueception predetermines the space within which the successive perception of that phenomenon will assume form. This value orientation determines the scope of relevance, and hence the interest, that conditions all the successive perceptions of that phenomenon. 52

See § 2.2.1 Climacus’s Ladder and Kant’s Shackles (Fußschellen).

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What characterizes value itself relative to the phenomenon? Value is not an attribute or a quality of the phenomenon; but what allows the phenomenon to emerge, come to light, become manifest, and interact with other phenomena. In many interpretations, one realizes that the perception of value is something original, not mediated by reasoning. This leads one to conclude that there is a so-called “intuition of values”. In reality, value is not intuited but felt. Furthermore, this feeling is “immediate”, but only in the sense that it is not mediated by representation, judgment, or other activities of the intellect. Instead, it is mediated by the entire affective sphere. For example, when I feel a personal value, this feeling is necessarily mediated, and in a very complex manner, by the order of my heart. The insistence on the concept of “intuition of values” may also stem from the confusion between “values” and “value quality”. It is value qualities that possibly might be “intuited” as ideal objects, not values. If, by contrast, behind value intuitionism there is an attempt to overcome nihilistic relativism, then one would have to reflect on the concept of evidence that this intuitionism implies. For some time now, physics no longer relies on the concept of evidence to go beyond relativism, but rather on the concept of probability. In phenomenology, the concept of evidence had been considered by Brentano, Husserl, and Scheler, but with very different outcomes. In any case, value is not grasped in a clear-cut, apodictic way, so that illusory phenomena can arise, as in the case of infatuation. Moreover, value can be grasped from different perspectives. This is not relativism but perspectivism. A more effective way to confront nihilistic relativism and skepticism is the testimony of values with a transformative capacity. The most effective way to orient oneself in the world of ethics is not apodictic evidence, which, laden as it is with certainties, can result in dogmatism and fanaticism, but the concrete, verifiable strength of another singularity’s testimony. And this testimony does not refer to the declarations or assertions of a social model, but to the acts of an exemplarity. Hence, the part of the so-called question of values that is to be saved is not abstract values that hang from the world of ideas, but those that are rooted in feeling, and coherent with a form of orientation that comes from below, from the affective sphere. This concept of value casts new light on the phenomenon of feeling. To feel X means to perceive the value of the expressivity of X. This must be understood literally. Feeling does not merely perceive values alongside other entities. Instead, the value of expressivity is the principal aspect perceived by feeling. Feeling is the accurate perception of a thing’s value of expressivity. And this perception is not initially mediated by representation or judgment, but by the sensory-motor image of the living body.

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Re-evaluating the concept of value does not therefore imply an acritical return to the traditional concept of value. By value, I do not mean an ideal object or a moralistic criterion for distinguishing good from bad. It is not even a particular quality to attribute to a phenomenon. Rather, by value I mean the condition not only of knowledge, but also of the manifestation of a phenomenon: it is what orients and shapes the manifestation of the phenomenon (ex-pression), as well as its experience on the part of the perceiver (im-­pression). In so doing, it regulates the connection and expressive interaction between that phenomenon and the other entities with which it comes into contact. From this perspective, the greatness of a value does not depend on a moral criterion or a convention. Rather, the broader the experience and the Weltoffenheit that a value enables, the higher that value will be.53 In the following chapters I will show how valueception, feeling, and individuation are already closely entwined at a pre-representational level. This entwinement enables feeling to be withdrawn from a subjective and psychological interpretation, thus casting light on its ontological and in some cases anthropogenetic dimension. 3.4.5 The Non-Banality of Evil To obliterate the concept of value is to remove the possibility of an orientation rooted in feeling, and to foster an axiological blindness that throws the individual into ethical deserts and frightening existential voids where there is no longer any space for transforming society. There is not only ideological fanaticism, which absolutizes its own values because of an axiological blindness, but there is also the evil that is born from ethical indifferentism and the absence of values. One needs the other. Both are a threat for the open society. Arendt’s thesis of the banality of evil is well known. In it, she analyzed the case of Eichmann, and came to the conclusion that there was something very common behind his behavior: ignorance.54 According to Arendt, Eichmann was a man who carried out horrible actions, but only because he did not understand what he was really doing. In fact, if one watches the footage of his trial, at which Arendt was also present, he comes across not as aggressive, or fanatical, or arrogant, but rather as a prudent, conscientious, and reserved individual. Not a demon, but all in all a very modest individual. Indeed, this is exactly what Eichmann seemed to be in 1961: nothing more than a banal individual. Arendt’s thesis certainly grasps an important aspect of the problem, but it requires further exploration. 53 54

See Cusinato 1999. See Arendt 1963.

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This may, however, have been a hasty conclusion. Perhaps, if Arendt had followed the trial of Herman Goering in Nuremberg, she would have come to different conclusions. Contrary to Eichmann, Goering did not let himself be subsumed under the category of “banality of evil”. Moreover, it cannot be ruled out that Eichmann’s choice to keep a low profile during the trial, a choice that reinforced the image of a modest and banal character, was motivated by opportunism. In their ex-centric positionality, human beings are exposed to two fundamental risks which do not concern non-human animals: mental disorders and theodicy. In his memoirs, Rudolf Hoess, commander of the camp in Auschwitz, wrote that his legs shook with tension when he had to kill Jewish children who begged him on their knees to be spared. And yet, after confessing this to Eichmann, he was ashamed of his weakness. In fact, Eichmann pointed out to him very lucidly that if they wanted to achieve the goal of eliminating the Jewish people, it was precisely the children who had to be eliminated first, without any hesitation or pity.55 This is not the banality of evil. Eichmann understood what was happening much better than Hoess but, nevertheless, he was not outraged. One is not always outraged at an injustice or a crime. In order to be outraged, it is not enough to understand, it is also necessary to feel. Eichmann understood perfectly well what it means to kill, but he did not see the ethical disvalue of his actions, and this is why he was not able to be outraged. His deficit was therefore not at the level of cognitive ability, but of feeling. At the basis of his action was not the banality of evil, but instead a form of fanaticism, associated with a severe axiological blindness which prevented him from grasping the disvalue of the homicide of a people. Upon closer examination, this ethical blindness is also present in Socrates’ famous thesis that no one does evil voluntarily, but only out of ignorance (Ap. 25d; Prot. 358a). Indeed, the ignorance that Socrates speaks of here is not ­simple “not knowing” (agnoia), but a “not knowing” that is blinded by the presumption of knowing (amathia).56 Hence, the origin of evil and of fanaticism derives from this presumption inherent in amathia, a veritable “ethical bias”, that is, an axiological blinding that leads to the absolutization of one’s values and ethical indifferentism to everything else. Of course, as Arendt also rightly highlights, a banality of evil exists, but it follows a different logic to that of fanaticism, which can be originated by amathia. The banality of evil concerns an individual who, not being able to rely 55 56

See Hoess 2000. See chapter § 6.4.6 Axiological Dimension of Amathia.

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on her own feeling, moves in the horizon of meaning dictated by power relations, thus becoming a cog in the machine of violence. From this perspective, the only coherent choice that remains open to that individual is to stop asking herself “why”? But it is a choice that inevitably crushes her into social conformism. For her, there is no ethics, only opportunism, calculation, and interest. This is why such an individual’s ethical indifference is dangerous, and often provides a base of support for the fanaticism of violent leaders. 3.4.6 The Geometry of Feeling and the Finesse of Reason as an Antidote to Emotional Illiteracy This mechanism is also at work in our contemporary society. To stop asking “why?” is equivalent to an unconditional surrender. At that point – in a more and more competitive society – it is just a question of time, and sooner or later the individual will end up collapsing under the weight of ever greater ­expectations. Axiological blindness, ethical indifferentism, and affective illiteracy are the presuppositions for the success of the current mediatic breeding of human beings. For centuries, the prevailing perspective was that feeling and desire are in themselves irrational and therefore had to be medicalized or “straightened up”. Starting from these premises, one sought to keep the emotional sphere under control through networks of repressive morality and intellectualism, as if it were a beast to be tamed. In twentieth-century mass societies, this pressure became unmanageable, exploding several times to devastating effect. More recently, the cultural industry has tried out a new strategy, intended to directly ride the wave of explosions of emotional irrationalism. The strategy works insofar as it spreads emotional illiteracy and axiological blindness. It is no exaggeration to claim that one of the greatest challenges to present-day democracies resides in this affective illiteracy. The quality of life in common and the dominant type of orientation in future social systems will depend on the qualitative level of cultivation of feeling in the present. In other words, it will depend on the capacity to emancipate ourselves from Eichmann’s axiological blindness. The alternative is a “spirit of finesse” based on the cultivation of feeling and the care of desire. As is well known, according to Pascal there are two possible forms of knowledge. The first corresponds to the “geometric spirit” (esprit géométrique), and consists in objectifying scientific knowledge based on the intellect. The other is the “spirit of finesse” (esprit de finesse), and consists in knowledge that involves sentiments and manages to grasp the existential situation of human beings through dialogue and listening. There is a finesse of sentiment and there is a geometry of reason. These two types of knowledge are

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not in opposition, insofar as they integrate each other. Since Pascal’s times, the task of philosophy has been to develop a “geometry of feeling” and a “finesse of reason”. Without the spirit of finesse, irrational emotional dynamics take hold that are incapable of metabolizing hate, envy, and resentment. It is not wrong to feel hate per se, but without the spirit of finesse that hate becomes blind, irrational, and violent. Therefore, great attention needs to be paid when analyzing and describing the irruption of emotions onto the political and social scene. Hence the importance of a phenomenology of feeling and of emotions. To confront this topic, in the following chapters I will reconsider the two phases of re-enchantment in the light of the affective sphere. 3.4.7 Enjoyment-Excitation and the Liquid Society of the First Re-Enchantment If we carefully consider the two phases in the process of re-enchantment of the world that have taken place in Western countries, we can observe that they are characterized by different relationships with the affective sphere. In the first one, there is an attempt to recreate a horizon of meaning on the basis of the liquid logic of ready-made enjoyment and momentary excitation. This horizon of meaning is redefined primarily around rites of collective consumerism: excitement over the “wonderful” is no longer sought by stepping over the threshold of cathedrals, but of shopping centers.57 In the second phase, by contrast, which became visible with the financial crisis of 2008, what is central is the need for identity and belonging, while the concept of liquid society as described by Bauman gradually enters into crisis. The horizon of meaning continues to be constituted at the collective level and following the logic of the model, but this time through sharing enduring and “solidifying” sentiments such as fear, anger, envy, and resentment. In this second phase of re-enchantment, a storytelling technique based on a form of irrational neo-romanticism takes hold. At the social level, the emotions can follow three different logics: liquid, solid, and generative. In the first case, emotion is obliterated in the search for interchangeable excitations and ready-made enjoyment. In the second, it is solidified in a habitus and in ideologies that exalt the neo-tribal selfreferentiality of the group of belonging. Only in the third case does it promote a process of social transformation.

57

See Taylor 1991; Lipoverski 1983; Lasch 1991; Sennett 1977; Kohut 1972; Riesman 1961.

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The first form of re-enchantment reaches its peak in the liquid society. The logic of the liquid society is based on the myth of the autonomy and self-­sufficiency of the individual, and conceives of freedom exclusively in the ­negative and formal terms of being “free from”, that is, as an absence of limits and obligations. From this perspective, every bond is viewed as a hindrance: individuals are only free insofar as they can assert themselves, enjoy, and consume. Everything happens suddenly, and the momentary excitation does not have the necessary time to diversify and mature. The relationship with the world is oriented toward a present without future prospects. Bauman observes that according to the parameters of the liquid society, it is no longer worthwhile loving. Loving and creating a stable bond become a luxury to be avoided, since they mean running the risk of being betrayed or abandoned. On the contrary, the logic of the present is to be preferred, insofar as it requires no time planning and hence does not entail risks. This is why, in liquid society, ready-made enjoyment and momentary excitement prevail, at the expense of feelings that promote lasting bonds. 3.4.8 The Emotional Turn I will not dwell any longer over the first form of re-enchantment, as it has already been the subject of numerous studies. It is more interesting, in contrast, to analyze the relationship of the affective sphere with the second form. It is telling that the attempt to ride the wave of emotional irrationalism typical of the second phase of re-enchantment took place concomitantly with a deeper and less unilateral understanding of the concept of emotion. The perception of the importance of emotions changed radically during the decade from 1987 to 1996. This was particularly due to some works that reached the general public, such as those of Ronald De Sousa (1987), Antonio Damasio (1994), Daniel Goleman (1995), and Joseph LeDoux (1996). In the field of neurosciences, Damasio, referring to the famous case of Phineas P. Gage, points out that without emotions, an individual is not able to make relevant decisions or orient her existence in an appropriate way. Thought is emotional, in the sense that its practical basis is not constituted by self-founding, aseptic reason, but by emotions. If the answers I give to ­questions of my existence do not involve feeling, then they remain abstract, that is, they are non-felt. Emotions are not a disturbance, but the motivational source that confers a certain meaning, tone, and hue upon an action. Since the emotional turn, no one any longer questions the central function of emotions not only for perception, but also for sociology, ethics, and political orientation. At the same time, this greater knowledge has also translated into a greater capacity to scientifically manipulate the orientation produced by the

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emotions. And all of this has contributed to the dissemination of a simplified version of the emotional turn, under the banner of a superficial and acritical exaltation of the emotions and a “culture of empathy” that is as reassuring as it is naïve. 3.4.9 The Second Phase of Re-Enchantment and the New Need for Identity and Sharing In the first phase of re-enchantment, the primary need was not for identity, but for enjoyment and consumption. This situation changed radically as a result of various events. In 2001, the images of the September 11 attack, broadcast live on all the networks, gave rise to an emotional wave of colossal proportions that at the same time transmitted fear, anxiety, horror, and outrage, as well as many other emotions expressing a strong need for security and identity. It is a wave that has completely redrawn the logics of political consensus in a direction opposite to those of compulsive enjoyment that are typical of liquid society. Ever since that moment, emotions have been at the center of everything. In 2004, Facebook was born. Over the following years, social media diffusion accomplishes an impressive leap forward. Finally, in 2008, the economic crisis not only deeply affected the middle classes, but above all definitively undermined the authority of elites and “experts”. After all, how is it possible to continue to believe in the “experts” at your trusted bank, perhaps the same bank where your father worked, if they have made you lose your home or savings? At this point, terms such as “expert” and “trust” become definitively problematic. And all this comes on top of the crisis of the family, already underway for some time in Western countries, of ever-increasing precarity of jobs and social relations, and uncertainties about the future. In practice, the instability of liquid society reached a socially critical level with the crisis of 2008. This precarity and loss of trust not only affected buying power, but something much deeper: the possibilities of emotional sharing and stable social relations. In the face of rampant precarity in family and social relations, the need for instant and impersonal enjoyment that had been at the center of the first phase of re-enchantment faded into the background. The lack of exemplarity, reference points, and values that had already emerged in the first phase of re-enchantment adds to the crumbling and precarization of relations. In the solitude of this existential void, another need increasingly emerges: to share our own emotions, opinions, and points of view with someone, in order to demonstrate to ourselves and others that we exist, that we are not invisible, and therefore that we still have a meaning. A sharing that produces social identity. The need for sharing is in fact a need for identity. Since the demand for emotional sharing, and hence identity, no longer found an answer in the liquidity of the real world, it now discovered new possibilities

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in following and participating in the discussions that unfolded on the pages of social networks. These discussions were successful, not because of their logic or rationality, but because they strengthened group identity and gave back to their members a strong sense of belonging: the typical sense of belonging to a “digital tribe” led by an influencer. And a tribe is a tribe insofar as it has myths to believe in and enemies lying in wait who must be fought.58 3.4.10 Beyond Liquid Society and Toward Solid Society In the second phase of re-enchantment, logics have taken hold that tend toward the overcoming of liquid society. If the first phase of re-enchantment, as Bauman warned us, is characterized by liquifying even romantic partnerships, it is equally true that in the second phase, phenomena of the “solidification” of feelings and passions such as hate, envy, and resentment become increasingly evident. These passions are experienced without the spirit of finesse, and act within the void created by the neutralization of the order of the heart. Without a spirit of finesse, hate, envy, fear, resentment, etc. proceed unchecked, and are shared in the regressive form of irrational, collective emotional vibrations that are no longer transient but stable. These are solid passions that give form to “solid” and closed societies. The crystallization of a substantial part of liquid society is a process that is already taking place before our eyes, although it has not yet been adequately understood. The orientation of compulsive consumption that was typical of the first phase is no longer sufficient to govern the reproduction of social consensus. Now consensus is increasingly obtained by working on passions that are capable of bringing people together and resulting in fixed habits and precise existential biases. Yet confirmation biases are not liquid, but solid. If this is so, we have gradually moved from a liquid society to a semi-liquid and in some aspects decidedly solid society, radicalized into clear polarizations. Friends/enemies. Likes/dislikes. Indeed, if the concepts of individual, identity, and passion had been liquefied in the first phase, in the second, these categories resurface in an overwhelming, threatening way, to become solidified into enduring ideologies. They are based on the re-emergence of a per se legitimate need for identity, which, however, often degenerates into an ideology that is fueled both externally by fear of what is foreign, and internally, by hate and resentment toward the so-called “powers that be”, the “experts”, and the elite of one’s own country. The fear of strangers – which exploded with the September 11 attack – thus becomes entwined with hate and resentment toward the elite of one’s own 58

See McDermott 2018.

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country and with skepticism toward the knowledge of science and experts. All of this is accompanied by a growing trust in our capacity to inform ourselves on social media. However, we have not left liquid society completely behind us: it is rather a transition to a hybrid situation. Indeed, some aspects remain incontestably liquid. The result is that if jobs and personal relations remain liquid and precarious, the individual’s frame of reference tends to solidify once again into stable ideologies and existential biases. The liquidity implicit in nihilism serves to keep jobs precarious, whereas the solidity that emerges from new ideologies serves to orient consensus. 3.4.11 Emotional Sharing in Community and Collectivity What I propose is to distinguish two social dimensions through which emotional sharing practices take place and passions are metabolized. The first is that of collectivity, directed by the standardizing logic of the model. The second is represented by community, oriented by exemplarity. Sharing practices have completely different outcomes depending on whether they traverse the space of the collectivity or of the community: in the former case, they give rise to processes of ­consolidation and standardization, while in the latter they promote differentiation and transformation. These two processes should balance out, hold each other in check, and integrate one another. Instead, in current society, the spaces reserved for the community are reduced to a minimum and are progressively becoming atrophied. If channeled unilaterally by the logics of collectivity, the metabolization of the passions translates into polarization and violence. This has an explosive effect on the formation processes of the singularity, as it depersonalizes and standardizes the singularity’s order of feeling, violently crushing it onto the order of common feeling. Consequently, collective spaces become a factory for reproducing consensus. But it is a highly contaminating factory, as the consensus is produced by discharging pollution into society in the form of emotional illiteracy, ideology, fake news, conflict, polarization, and violence. Despite the fact that they follow deeply divergent logics, collectivity and community are continually confused. These days, if I speak of community, people will probably think of something like a “digital community”, which in reality functions according to the logic of a collectivity. The distinction between collectivity and community has become invisible, precisely because the community is disappearing. This imbalance translates into a growing gap between increasingly broad information on every possible subject in practical life, and an ever-greater poverty of orientation and testimonies. It is as if society were

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investing all its energies in increasing the know-how of “instruction booklets” and “how-to manuals”, while at the same time nullifying the problem of the “whys?” at the basis of human existence. What the first and second re-­ enchantment have in common is precisely the obliteration of this question. 3.4.12 Mediatic Breeding of Human Beings In the face of the extension of the relational void of liquid society, increasingly aseptic and indifferent, passions linked to the sense of belonging and identification assert themselves as a backlash in the second re-enchantment. At the same time, however, the cultural tools to metabolize these passions are lacking. There is no spirit of finesse. The result is that the individual risks being swept away by violent flows of passion, which pull on her strings, like a puppet. But who is the puppeteer? The power of “mediatic breeding” of human beings stems from its capacity to control the flows of passions that traverse the spaces of the collectivity. It is “breeding” in the sense of the “Züchtung” of the human being, as already highlighted by Nietzsche, and more recently by Sloterdijk.59 This “breeding” applies to human beings the logics and techniques already tested in intensive animal farming. The little self of human beings is bred to obtain consensus, in the same way as calf is bred to obtain meat. The fodder of this new technique is not only immediate pleasure offered by the entertainment industry, but also narcissistic gratification obtained through social media. The optimum conditions for mediatic breeding of human beings are offered by a desert of feeling, in which individuals reason only on the basis of interest and calculations, have stopped asking themselves “why?”, and no longer ask Socrates’ questions. Sometimes they even consider their own ethical skepticism as a sign of intellectual superiority. To oppose these processes, it is fundamental for the development of democracy to take care of the spaces reserved for communities. While it may be true that a state is secular insofar as it maintains a neutral attitude toward the processes of information and formation that citizens experience within the community spaces, it would be a catastrophic mistake to suppose that the state can remain neutral or indifferent with regard to the state of health of these spaces. A state is only secular and democratic if it invests its energy in actively taking care of the spaces of the community, while at the same time remaining neutral toward their orientation and dynamics. A democracy is only mature if it invests its best energies in guaranteeing development and a future to the spaces reserved for open communities. 59

See Sloterdijk 1999.

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Unless society invests energies and resources in expanding the spaces of the community, they will lose their autonomy and become atrophied, with the consequent failure of democracy itself, insofar as the eclipse of the orientation that emerges from these spaces is suddenly replaced by that which is produced by mediatic breeding of human beings. Hence the importance of analyzing the distortions of the affective sphere that have led to the emotional regression that characterizes the second phase of re-enchantment. 3.5

Infatuations and the Deceptions of Feeling

3.5.1 The Myth of Immediate Feeling Few topics have been so divisive in philosophy as the interpretation of feeling. It has often been considered a treacherous and chaotic material to “be governed” or, on the contrary, exalted as a source of untainted truth and authenticity. The former conception refers to an anachronistic dualism between reason and sentiment. The idea of a feeling to be “corrected” then poses the problem of who is authorized to judge another person’s feeling. But even relative to my own feeling, isn’t it true that feeling is always based on some motivation, even when it might not yet be clear to me? The crux of the matter is that terms such as “correct” and “incorrect” are inappropriate. If anything, the feeling may prove to be suitable or unsuitable. Hence, it is not a matter of judging or correcting it. From this perspective, feeling needs to be cultivated, and I can always find someone who can help me to better understand my lived experiences, or can even see something that has escaped me. The latter conception has its maximum expression in the romantic exaltation of an immediate feeling, pure in that it is untainted by social influences. It is a conception that is based on a misunderstanding. In every social unit there is not only a “common sense”, but also a “common feeling”. Usually, the individual does not distinguish immediate feeling from “common feeling”, since she has been immersed in common feeling since birth, like the air she breathes. By superimposing them, the individual does not realize that what she considers her own immediate feeling is, in reality, often just a reflection of “common feeling”, and so has nothing immediate or authentic about it. “Authentic” feeling, which springs from my personal singularity, only assumes form in a slow, laborious process of deviation from “common feeling”. Hence, it is only by transcending the immediate feeling of my little self that I can acquire the critical tools to verify and become aware of my authentic feeling. Behind this romantic illusion lies a distortion that comes from a solipsistic theory of intersubjectivity. There is no originally uncontaminated feeling,

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for the simple reason that the intimate sphere is porous from the outset, only assuming form through the dimension of social relations and practices of emotional sharing. At the moment of birth, there is no autonomous “order of feeling” in a newborn human being: it only assumes form if the newborn interacts with the mother’s order of feeling. The ability to attribute the right value and relevance to what we feel, and therefore not to under- or overestimate something, not to react in an inadequate way, either too cool or too hot-headed and impulsive, are all things that are not etched in a person’s innate code of behavior, but are gradually learned thanks to emotional sharing practices. Only thanks to a long maturation process can feeling be refined and emancipated from the horizon of common feeling, until it makes its own autonomous viewpoint emerge. The problem is that feeling is often considered a given that is completed in itself rather than a seedling to be cultivated. Potentialities or distortions of feeling do not depend on the positive or negative nature of the feeling in itself, but rather on the adequacy or inadequacy of the process of maturation of feeling. Moreover, the existence of a maturation of feeling, as the cornerstone of the process of formation of the person, is also perceived at the level of common sense, as when it is affirmed that someone is a “mature” or “immature” person. Human freedom itself depends on the level of maturity of feeling. Freedom does not consist in the possibility of immediately and automatically externalizing all that one feels, but in managing to metabolize this feeling in a creative and original way. 3.5.2 The Broken Oar and Infatuations with One’s Own Missing Half A further myth to be debunked concerns the presumed evidence of inner perception, which still lingers in Brentano’s phenomenology, for example. In reality, the phenomenon of illusion is not limited to optics, but also concerns feeling and inner perception. By “infatuations” I mean non-pathological illusions of feeling. What characterizes optical illusions is the fact that they persist even when refuted by another sense or by reasoning. Thus, I continue to see an oar immersed in water as broken, even if I touch it with my hand and feel that it is straight, or attentively study all the laws of refraction in physics. Something similar happens with infatuation. Infatuations also do not disappear when they are refuted. It is a common experience to continue to be infatuated with a person even after becoming fully aware that that person is mocking me or is the wrong person for me. In these cases, I can experience a clear dichotomy between what reason is telling me and what feeling is telling me, and it is obvious that this has nothing to do with an error of reasoning or judgment, but is a disorder of feeling. These are the experiences that gave rise

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to the saying: “love is blind”. Properly speaking, however, in these cases it is not love that makes me blind, but infatuation mistaken for love. If I analyze my past experience, I clearly see that all of my experiences of infatuation had some quite specific elements in common. Above all, there were immense expectations of the other person. I was in a similar situation to the one described by Aristophanes in the myth of the androgyne in the Symposium. In other words, I was convinced that, with the odd little tweak here and there, the other person could become my missing half. And, deep down, I was also convinced that this “little” tweak would also have been good for the other person. A second characteristic of infatuations that has always struck me is the power of their “magic”, that is, their capacity to appear as something real, that can actually be “touched with the hand” and does not vanish even if it is refuted. In particular, I still very clearly remember an episode from one afternoon many years ago. I was infatuated with a person and I was reflecting on the fact that I was perfectly aware, after many verifications, that the intentional object of this sentiment was exclusively a projection of mine. And yet, at a certain point – I remember that I had just got off a tram and was crossing the road in a city in northern Europe – I realized that for me, this intentional ray not only existed, but that I could actually “touch it with my hand”, as if it were the most real thing in the world. All in all, this was a rather banal experience, but at the time, I was impressed. I stood there, in disbelief, like someone stretching out her hand to touch the “broken oar” of her own illusion and, against all expectations based on the laws of physics, feels that it really is broken. I was lucidly aware that the intentional object of my feeling was unreal. At that precise moment, however, the intentionality of that infatuation was so strong that it became something “hyper-real”. I had the unpleasant sensation of being able to see myself as if in a movie. All of this happened despite the fact I had been immersed in the study of the intentionality of feeling and all the laws of emotional “refraction” for years. What had happened? I was probably feeling the pangs of the hunger to be born, and my entire affective structure was in search of the source of energy that grants existence. Furthermore, from my auroral void what was my fragment of truth was beginning to emerge. This was the age when one starts to sense one’s own destination, and one’s deepest desires start to take shape. But my disposition was still that of the little self that seeks to complete itself. Instead of placing myself in a situation of listening, I saw the person with whom I was infatuated as the missing piece of the puzzle of achieving my own happiness. The other was, precisely, not the other, but my missing half. In a fatal game of mirrors, instead of intending the other’s singularity, I only saw

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my own expectations. And these expectations were so strong that they seemed to be brought back to life in my unconscious by something similar to an ideal archetype. I fooled myself that all I had to do was unite with my “missing half” in order to become a “completed totality” and thus achieve supreme happiness. I had not yet understood the subtle distinction between “missing half” and “fragment of truth”. As long as I remain within the perspective of the missing half, I seek to encompass and absorb the other. And the other is perfect only insofar as her profile completes itself perfectly with my own. When I see that this does not happen, because I notice a discrepancy, then I get the sensation that I do not com-prehend (in the sense of the Latin com-prehendere, to grasp together) the other, and I start to harass them obsessively, to the point of exhaustion. In contrast, when I love, I no longer see in the other my missing half as something to “com-prehend”, but as a fragment of truth with which my own fragment can interact. This is definitely more compelling, but it forces me to call myself into question and step outside the tracks of the self-referential predictability of my expectations. 3.5.3 Infatuation: Between Enchantment and Idols What better word than “enchantment” to describe the infatuation that I experienced when I got off the tram that afternoon? It is the situation in which infatuation “enchants” and thus “enchains” one to something. My fragment of truth is only precious so long as it remains open to infinite integration. In that case, by contrast, I was chained to a choice. There is nothing wrong with making definitive choices with regard to something real. But that was a choice that chained me to a nonexistent object, and projected me into an imaginary universe. In other cases, what enchains is a choice that is free at the outset, but then subsequently becomes rigid and deformed. Infatuation is the perspective of a fragment of truth that absolutizes its own interlocking with another fragment of truth, because it mistakes it for its missing half. This is the ultimate meaning of infatuation. Infatuation is born when I project the image of my missing half onto the beloved’s fragment of truth, in order to artificially create an illusory completed “totality” that uproots me from reality. Infatuation is born whenever the auroral void is filled and saturated. This filling brings about an existential anomaly, a distortion that arouses enormous expectations. Infatuation is the illusory bubble produced by an order of the heart that is blocked in itself, because it is deprived of its propulsive center: the auroral void. From this moment on, the order of the heart transforms into a “dis-order of infatuation”. More precisely, infatuation becomes enchantment when it chains one to an idol. The idol is all everything that fills the auroral void. In enchantment,

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everything ends up revolving obsessively around that idol in uninterrupted repetition, until it consumes one’s entire existence. In this way, feeling is chained to a fixed point, around which it redesigns its own universe and destiny. Once chained to that fixed point, enchantment cannot be refuted, because it becomes the only way in which it is possible for me to exist. In this condition, enchantments are therefore not something accessory or contingent, but are as necessary as the air one breathes. Paradoxically, enchantments correspond to a “rationalization”: they are the desperate attempt to reconstruct a system of reference and meaning on the basis of the only viewpoint that remains. In idolatry, we hang onto our enchantments with the tenacity of a castaway holding onto a life preserver. This is because to eliminate them would mean to drown and cancel one’s own existence. This deception is not an error of judgment, but a defense mechanism: for an individual reduced to a minimal self that has anesthetized the hunger to be born and filled the promising void, enchantments serve the purpose of survival. For the person who has lost her own order of the heart, idolatry becomes her principium individuationis. This is why enchantment endures, even in the face of incontestable proofs and solid argumentation. Contrary to infatuations, enchantments are never refuted. At most, they can be replaced by other enchantments. The little self cannot break this vicious circle on its own. It remains chained within its own enchantment as if it were the victim of a spell in a fairy tale. It can only break out of the enchantment if awakened by another. By chaining itself to an idol, enchantment reveals itself to be a crystallization that moves in the opposite direction to the expansion of eros, understood as “giving birth in beauty” as the Symposium has it. If in authentic loving, I open my gaze and accede to a further dimension – which destabilizes all my certainties and causes a break from my past – enchantment instead chains my gaze to a single point and encloses me inside a bubble. 3.5.4 The Difference Between Feeling and the Exercise of Feeling It is not feeling as such that deceives, but the way in which it is exercised. Rage, anger, outrage, happiness, hate, and love can be expressed in a more or less successful way. I feel anger being born inside myself. If I have never seen how to manage this sentiment, if I do not have the cultural tools to express it, my only alternative will be to repress it or let it explode in an instant, primitive, and destructive way. This is why an emotional “education” is crucial. A large part of culture has this function. And it is perhaps this need that explains the success of the so-called “Bildungsromane”. Feeling a profound anguish in the face of a grave loss is not something negative in itself, but rather an appropriate emotional response to a tragic event.

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At most, this anguish becomes negative, or destructive, when its exercise, and the way in which it is metabolized and expressed, turns out to be inadequate or unbalanced. It is not feeling something that has ethical relevance, but what I then do with that feeling. Hence, at the foundation of ethics is an entwinement between the development of affective maturity and the acquisition of awareness at the reflexive level. For example, while feeling anger in itself is not ethically wrong, the way it is metabolized it can be. It is in this sense that Aristotle rightly observes that there can be no blame for “the person who is simply angry, but only for the person who is angry in a particular way” (Arist. NE 1105b). The result is that the ethical problem does not concern feeling in itself, but only the exercise of feeling. No one can judge what I feel. On the contrary, everyone can judge how I metabolize and express my feeling. But it is not just an ethical problem. If it is true that exercising virtue forges a virtuous habit, it is also true that in expressing that anger, even if not in a virtuous way, I am in any case giving myself a form. My attempts to learn to manage anger not only have ethical relevance, but also an anthropogenetic consequence. 3.6

For a Revaluation of the Concept of Feeling

3.6.1 Beyond the Opposition Between Subjective Feeling and Objective Emotion Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, emotion took precedence in the English-speaking academic debate over other terms considered less “scientific”, such as feeling, passion, sentiment, and affection.60 From then on, attention shifted to the possibility of objectively classifying the way in which emotions are expressed. This is a solidly established line of thought that can be traced back to Darwin’s research, as presented in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), down to Ekmann’s attempts to identify a universal classification of the “basic emotions”.61 The consequence of this choice has been to reflexively unload all the more unstable and subjective aspects onto the term “feeling”. From this viewpoint, it is telling that even the latest edition of the American Psychological Association Dictionary of Psychology, from 2015, considers feelings – contrary to emotions – to have no relationship with the world: “Feelings differ from emotions in being purely mental, whereas emotions are designed to engage with the world”.62 60 61 62

See Dixon 2003. See Ekman 1972. APA Dictionary of Psychology, 416.

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The opposition between an “objective” emotion that interacts with the world, and a “subjective” feeling, withdrawn into a private and subjective dimension, reveals itself to be a dangerous cage, as it prevents an adequate description of the affective sphere. Furthermore, the choice to analyze emotion exclusively in terms of an “objective” emotion results in the prevalence of a reductionist interpretation.63 3.6.2 The Intentionality of Feeling toward the World64 The reference point for Scheler’s concept of ordo amoris is Pascal’s thesis that “le coeur a ses raisons” (the heart has its reasons). Scheler interprets it in the sense that feeling has its own reason and logic which do not derive from the intellect, inasmuch as feeling is able to “see” where the intellect is, for its part, blind. Indeed, “there is a type of experiencing whose ‘objects’ are completely inaccessible to reason; reason is as blind to them as ears and hearing are blind to colors”.65 Furthermore, Scheler distinguishes feeling (Fühlen) from simple affective states (Gefühlszustände) or moods, and only acknowledges intentionality in the case of the former.66 Affective states and intentional feeling are profoundly different realities: the former merely signal a sensation of pain caused by an insect bite, for example, while for its part feeling intentionally addresses this affective state. As a consequence, the sensation (Empfindung) of pain remains at the level of an affective state, and must be clearly distinguished from the way in which I intentionally feel that pain. In fact, the affective state does not determine the modality of my feeling, so much so that I can feel the same pain in different ways: I can “‘suffer’, ‘endure’, ‘tolerate’, or even ‘enjoy’” it.67 63

64 65 66 67

Recently, in his book Feeling of Being (2008), Matthew Ratcliffe tried to re-evaluate feeling on the basis of the concept of Heidegger’s ground-moods or fundamental attunements (Grundstimmungen). Yet the concepts of ground-moods and feeling do not coincide. Furthermore, one of the essential presuppositions for re-evaluating feeling is to recognize the intentionality of feeling toward the world. However, this aspect was not discovered by Heidegger, but by Scheler in his Formalismus (1913–1916). These are the reasons why I prefer to refer directly to Scheler. Scheler stands out in that he rethinks the concept of emotional intentionality by overturning Husserl’s position: intentionality is no longer thought of on the basis of the consciousness of the subject, but of the feeling of the living body (Leib). It follows that for Scheler, intentionality is not a theoretical attitude of human consciousness, but a way of positioning oneself in the world of the living body through feeling. Intentionality is an intentionality of feeling. See Scheler GW II, 260. Scheler 1973, 255. Ibid., 256. Ibid., 256.

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Scheler discovers that feeling “is not externally brought together with an object […] through a representation […]. On the contrary, feeling originally intends its own kind of objects, namely, ‘values’. Feeling is therefore a meaningful occurrence that is capable of ‘fulfillment’ and ‘non-fulfillment’”.68 Feeling and value imply one another mutually: value is not grasped through intuition, but only through feeling. The novelty introduced by Scheler is an intentional feeling that relates directly to a particular sphere of experience, namely that of values, and takes them up without the mediation of representation.69 In other words, intentional feeling is at the basis of valueception (Wertnehmung), and this in turn is the foundation of perception itself (Wahrnehmung). Without feeling, there is no perception. With Scheler, intentional feeling becomes the starting point of perception, whose function is to disclose the world of experience before us: “During the process of intentional feeling, the world of objects ‘comes to the fore’ by itself, but only in terms of its value-aspect. […] feeling is originally an ‘objectifying act’ that does not require the mediation of representation”.70 3.6.3 The Order of Feeling and Subjectivism of Mood The intentionality of feeling does not merely orient an individual’s positioning in the world, it also expresses that individual’s way of being. In fact, intentional feeling is not an isolated and punctiform phenomenon, but a feeling capable of becoming entwined with reason and expressing itself in an order of feeling. And it is this order of feeling that constitutes the individual. The way in which intentional feeling is organized in that individual’s order of feeling corresponds exactly to the way in which the intentionality of that feeling then discloses the world to that individual. Where, then, does this widespread opinion that feeling is something arbitrary and confined to a private and psychological dimension come from? It probably derives from the confusion between intentional feeling and occasional mood. It is not the order of feeling, but mood, that is subjective and arbitrary. An individual’s bad or good mood can be taken away, and that individual will continue to exist; if, by contrast, I take away her order of feeling, she will cease to exist. 68 69 70

Ibid., 258. Ibid., 257. Ibid., 259. Scheler already expressed this thesis in 1911 (see for example GW III, 274). It was a highly innovative theory in the sphere of phenomenology, insomuch as, until at least 1912, Husserl and Meinong instead remained loyal to Brentano’s thesis that a value cannot be grasped without the mediation of representation.

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Generally, mood is described as lacking intentionality. If it is intentionality that orients positioning in the world, then it will be feeling, not mood, that orients me toward the world. Let me start with a concrete example. One morning, I wake up in a bad mood, without understanding the cause. For some time, I remain suspended in this situation of uncertainty, as if I could not manage to adopt a position toward others or to what is happening to me. In this case, it is not an intentional feeling, but rather a mood, that is, a “diffuse” and generic state of mind with no precise direction. It may even be very intense, but is characterized by having no precise intentionality. In fact, I do not understand what it is motivated by, nor what it is directed at. Then I suddenly remember that the previous night at dinner, a friend made an odd joke that I had not taken much notice of at the time. In the precise instant that I connect the two things, something is set in motion, and a precise emotion appears that metabolizes that generic mood into a specific resentment, intentionally directed toward that friend of mine. Hence, it is not my mood or state of mind that positions and orientates me in the world, but intentional feeling. If a person does not follow this pathway and remains at the mercy of states of mind and moods, she will remain without access to the world, unable to interact with others and, ultimately, unable to come into contact with herself. By positioning me in the world, the order of the heart does not act at the psychological level of subjectivism, but at the anthropogenetic level that involves the constitution of the personal singularity. Hence, what is often mistaken for the “subjectivity” of intentional feeling is actually the anthropogenetic function proper to feeling. 3.6.4 The Ramifications of Primordial Feeling A further hindrance that gets in the way of an adequate understanding of feeling is the failure to recognize that feeling is not a uniform whole, but that it branches out into different levels. I prefer to use the concept of “ramification” rather than “stratification” or “hierarchy”. Each ramification of feeling has its raison d’être and an irreplaceable importance, so much so that each one makes an essential contribution to forming the “foliage” of the process of formation of the personal singularity. At least three fundamental ramifications of feeling issue from the “trunk” of “primordial feeling” at the biosemiotic level: the feeling of the living body, of the social self and of the personal singularity. Feeling at the biosemiotic level and feeling at the level of the personal singularity are the least known, while the feeling of the living body and the social self have already been extensively investigated. “Primordial feeling” represents not only the trunk, but also the roots of the “tree of feeling”. It is feeling that allows every living being – including

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single-celled organisms and plants – to interact with the expressive dimension at the biosemiotic level. It concerns the feeling that, for example, orients the positioning of the flowering plant on the window sill. This positioning makes use of an elementary form of valueception that precedes representation. It must not be mistaken for a form of retroactive self-affectivity, typical of sensation, which is only present at the successive levels of complexity that is proper to the animal’s body schema. Recently, several works have developed a theory of affectivity with regard to child psychology or in analogy to extended mind theory. The latter proposal is based on the intention to go beyond an internalist vision, according to which cognition and affects remain confined inside the individual, and reverse it into an externalist vision. The way in which this reversal takes place, however, risks proposing an “individualistic” conception of intersubjectivity once again. What is not convincing is the idea that there is originally a “concentration of affectivity” within the individual that only subsequently extends outside. It is a thesis that can be represented by the metaphor of a stone thrown into a pond. The stone represents an already formed and completed individual who causes a series of waves when she falls into the water, which then diffuses throughout the pond. With the concept of primordial feeling I turn this image on its head: affectivity does not expand to the rest of the world from an individual, like the waves caused by a stone thrown into a pond. In fact, affectivity is not concentrated inside an isolated individual at the biosemiotic level. It is rather the individual that is the result of a process of “condensation” of a primordial feeling that is already diffused throughout the biosphere right from the outset, and is one of its fundamental dimensions. Primordial feeling is identical with life itself, and does not need to extend itself. Where there is life, there is also feeling. Where there is no feeling, there is no life. If anything, what extends is the metabolization of a memory into an object, or of a certain expressive pathway in the creation of a work of art.71 Biological individuals are not Pandora’s jars from which feeling diffuses. On the contrary, they are condensations of the primordial feeling of life at the biosemiotic level. Feeling flows along the riverbed of life, to then be condensed into the different intentionalities of living organisms. This is the situation of the impersonal as described by Bergson, Scheler, and Deleuze. It is we who see a bee as distinct from a flower through the lens of intelligence. At the level of primordial feeling, by contrast, the bee is one with the flower that it dances around. 71

See § 2.5.8 Extended Exemplarity.

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3.6.5 Feeling at the Level of Personal Singularity and the Sentiment of Respect for Cosmic Life The other level of feeling that is rarely investigated is the feeling of the personal center. It is a modality of feeling that even now is often misunderstood, since there is still a widespread tendency to confuse the ramification of feeling of the person with that of the social self. For now, I will merely observe that the feeling of the personal center transcends the autopoietic logic of bodily sensations and of the little self, but it does not transcend primordial feeling. This allows it to traverse the living body and the social self from the non-self-referential perspective of the hunger to be born. In my opinion, it was the French-German physician and philosopher Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) who best sensed the distinctive feature of feeling at the level of the personal singularity, one evening as he was sailing up a river in Gabon, the Ogooué. This is his account: On the evening of the third day, when we were near the village of Igendja at sunset, we had to sail along an island in the river that was more than a kilometer wide. On a sandbank to our left, four hippopotami with their young were plodding along in the same direction. There, in my great fatigue and discouragement, I suddenly came upon the phrase “reverence for life” [Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben], which, to my knowledge, I had never heard or read before. I immediately realized that it contained the solution to the problem I was struggling with. It dawned on me that the ethics that has to do only with our relationship with other human beings is incomplete and therefore cannot have full energy. Only the ethics of reverence for life can do this. Through it, we come to relate not only to human beings, but to all creatures within our reach, to be concerned about their fate so as not to harm them, and to be determined to stand by them in their need to the best of our ability.72 In this sentiment, a genuine periagogic conversion of feeling is realized. The direction no longer aims at the recognition of one’s own self but at reverential respect toward the sacredness of nature. In this reversal, the individual transcends her little self and becomes a personal center that can finally open itself to the world. Only eyes illuminated by this reverential respect manage to perceive the fragile filaments that penetrate the dimension of unobjectifiable reality. It is these same fragile filaments that give rise to art, when recorded in 72

Schweitzer 1963, 20, my translation.

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the words of a poet, in the paintings of artists, or captured in musical notes. It is a further dimension with regard to the one that is objectifiable, and it remains inaccessible to the eyes of the little self. 3.7

Experience as the Result of the Non-Neutrality of Feeling

3.7.1 An Order That Emerges from Feeling I have already pointed out that intentional feeling organizes itself in an individual’s order of feeling and thus becomes that individual’s constitutive principle. Where does this order come from? Behind the concept of an “order” of feeling is not the anachronistic attempt to propose some paternalistic or moralistic vision all over again. The “order” only becomes problematic if it is imposed upon feeling from above, like an alien body, not, however, if it is individuated on the basis of the feeling itself. This idea may appear strange to us, as we are used to thinking of feeling as a factor of disorder and of the concept of “order” as something that only pertains to the rationality of the intellect. But this is a vision anchored to the dualism between feeling and reason. To go beyond this dualism means to recognize the existence of an order that is born autonomously from feeling itself. Indeed, there is a geometry of feeling that is capable of originating an order of feeling. Nevertheless, an objection is often raised: if this order were to emerge from feeling, then it would surely be “subjective”, “arbitrary”, and “irrational”. This brings us back to the topic of the interaction between the spirit of finesse and the spirit of geometry. Feeling and reason are not, in fact, opposed to one another. Reason, which I distinguish from intellect, develops from the geometry of feeling, that is, from a feeling that feels itself and that, in so doing, becomes self-aware. The first forms of consciousness originate from feeling oneself, as when one touches oneself with one’s hand. It is a phenomenon of “re-flexio” of feeling: these forms are the expression of a feeling that returns to itself until it feels itself and reflects itself. Reason is born from “feeling feeling”. As forms of “meta-feeling”, reason and consciousness presuppose feeling. Besides, if feeling can organize itself into an order of feeling, then it already has its own geometric rationality in itself. The perspective is not that of an irrational vitalism. The order that emerges from an insect’s feeling is not irrational. At the biosemiotic level, there is no “irrational vitalism”. A wasp’s order of feeling allows a perfectly rational interaction with the environment. It is not even subjective, insofar as it is cosmic life that feels through the wasp. In the perspective of this “feeling one” with the cosmos, there is no subjective and isolated individual life. Instead, there is a

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single cosmic life that expresses itself in every single living system. Feeling must be conceived in a holistic sense. It does not depend on a single organism, but is the way in which life interacts with the expressive level through that organism. On our planet, subjectivism and free will are not the rule, but the exception. They are a minute island represented by the little self which, in the modern era, severed the umbilical cord with primordial feeling and the biosphere. 3.7.2 Why Are Qualia Like Truffles? A personal singularity only assumes form insofar as originally the spontaneous and indistinct flow of feeling is structured, in the encounter with the other, in knowing how and what to desire: that is, in an order of feeling. The order of feeling of the personal center, the order of the heart, is not something that is given from the start, or that romantically coincides with “immediate feeling”, but it is the unguaranteed result of a process of maturation of feeling through emotional sharing practices. This plasticity of personal feeling is often mistaken for the arbitrary subjectivism of the little self. In reality, it expresses the capacity of a person’s order of the heart to position itself and have experiences in an original way. It is the problem of a first-person qualitative experience. The plasticity of personal feeling also re-emerges in relation to the discussion of qualia, that is, the discussion as to whether the subject’s qualitative experience can be traced back to a neuronal process. What thinkers such as Daniel C. Dennett demand is to demarcate qualitative experience from the “subjectivism” that is implicit in the first-person perspective and often associated with the so-called “introspective phenomenology” of Brentano and Husserl, to shift to a third-person perspective.73 Here I propose a different approach. In reality, in certain conditions, the first-person perspective does not correspond to introspective subjectivism but to the perspective of the personal singularity, while the third-person perspective corresponds to that of the little self. Hence, the question is not resolved by simply shifting to the third-person perspective. In current debates, reference is often made to taste when investigating qualitative experience. Since this is a notoriously arbitrary sense, in this way the 73

See Dennett 1987. The phenomenology of Husserl has been often accused of subjectivism and solipsism. In reality, Husserl attempts to re-evaluate the first-person perspective by enfranchising it from the method of psychological introspection. However, this attempt is only partially successful, since Husserl conceives of lived experience (Erlebnis) and intentionality in exclusive reference to the consciousness (Bewusstsein) of the subject. Through the concept of “counter-intentionality”, I turn the perspective of Husserl upside down and make reference to a concept of intentionality that does not start out from the consciousness of the subject, but from the world.

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problem of qualitative experience implodes into subjectivism. In my view, the most suitable perspective from which to tackle this topic is instead offered by another sense: that of smell; as when we say someone has a nose for something. The sense of smell puts together two fundamental aspects of qualitative experience: non-arbitrariness and individuality. To use a metaphor, it could be said that qualia are not intuited as universal objective qualities, or tasted like the subjective qualities of a candy, but are rather “sniffed out”. Qualia are a bit like truffles sniffed out by a hound. Qualitative experience is based on something similar to a truffle hound’s individual sense of smell. There is nothing arbitrary or “subjective” about that hound’s particular sense of smell. In fact, that sense of smell reflects that hound’s typical way of qualitatively mapping the world, and is perfectly comprehensible from the point of view of biosemiotic enactivism. 3.7.3 Non-Neutrality and Interaction with the Expressive Level In reality, behind what is described as the subjectivism of first-person qualitative experience, an absolutely crucial matter is hidden: the non-neutrality of first-person feeling. By positioning herself through her own order of feeling, the individual transforms experience into non-neutrality, that is, into a qualitative experience. In other words, qualitative experience is the result of this non-neutrality. In some respects, what are commonly called “qualia” are the materialization of this non-neutrality. Hence, the problem is not solved by shifting from the first-person to the third-person perspective, but by connecting the concept of non-neutrality to the concept of positioning in the world. What is mistaken for “subjectivism” is often the trace of a non-neutrality left by an individual’s positioning in reality. If I take away that trace, I cancel the individual. The non-neutrality of feeling escapes the description of neural processes and physiology, but this does not mean that it is an arbitrary or subjective given. That which cannot be translated into a third-person qualitative experience does not necessarily coincide with subjectivism. What is mistaken for subjectivism here is the individual’s non-neutrality, that is, the “gravitational” deformation of reality produced by life as it positions itself in the world through an individual. In this positioning, the individual expresses a point of view that gives rise to the qualitative dimension of experience. Indeed, qualitative experience is not original, but the result of the mode of interpreting the expressive interaction at the biosemiotic, social, or personal level. This is why erasing non-neutrality means eliminating feeling, and therefore life. Arbitrary subjectivism is only possible in an individual who loses contact with primordial feeling.

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I do not feel the world to be something neutral, that is, indifferent, and this is because as I position myself in the world I am automatically no longer neutral toward it. I could only have a neutral feeling through an artificial process of abstraction, like the one that is requested of a scientific observer. In the other cases, a “neutral feeling” is the result of an order of the heart that does not work, and corresponds to a being that lacks positioning in the world, and hence to not existing. Neutral feeling is a form of anaffectivity like those manifested in certain serious forms of mental illness. Even in feeling a lack of meaning, nausea, or indifference, my feeling is not indifferent or neutral. Indeed, it will feel them as positive or negative. The craft of feeling is that of continually tracing a boundary between what is neutral and what is relevant for my existence. I am this boundary, I am a feeling that takes a position with regard to the world, and which, as it takes this position, makes its own viewpoint emerge as a non-neutrality. Therefore, it is a qualitative experience. I am this qualitative non-neutrality. The non-neutrality of personal feeling reflects the physiognomy of the order of the heart. Hence, it concerns not only the object of the experience, but also who has the experience in the first person. Indeed, thanks to this non-neutrality of feeling I express who I am. As a personal singularity, I exist in the first person, not the third. Besides, in which moment do I express my existence with the most intensity? When I am enjoying myself? Thinking? Wanting? Deciding? What would enjoying, thinking, wanting, deciding, or acting be if they were not felt? They would be precisely something non-felt, that is, alien. They would be something that, in their “neutrality”, traverse my existence without interacting with what I am, something that slips in alongside me without leaving a trace, without adding anything. They would be a non-experience. 3.7.4 The Experience of Something and of Someone Lived experience presupposes feeling. It might seem banal to say so, but without “feeling” the inebriating fragrance of magnolia on a warm summer’s evening, I would not be able to experience that particular scent. The expression “lived experience” means just that: at the origin of the process there is always a feeling in the first person. Lived experience has several implications. For example, when I smell the fragrance of a magnolia tree, I do not merely perceive the existence of the magnolia as an external object, or identify with the magnolia’s fragrance, but I also feel my way of grasping the magnolia’s fragrance. In other words, my singularity is involved as well. It is not just the magnolia that expresses itself, but my feeling also does so. Lived experience is not only the “experience of something”

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but also “the experience of someone” who positions herself in the world. This someone is what is obliterated in third-person experience. Consequently, lived experience is a qualitative experience in two senses: not only do the characteristics of what is being experienced express themselves in it, but the characteristics of the person having the experience also express themselves. In smelling the magnolia’s scent, not only is the magnolia’s non-neutrality expressed, but also the non-neutrality of the person smelling that scent. I am also that act of feeling the scent of magnolia, in that my personal singularity is not a substance in its own right, but is the set of reflections of my feeling’s non-neutrality upon the world. I “feel” the fragrance of the magnolia not because I am representing it, but because I come into contact with it and am taking part in it. Feeling is a form of participation in the world. The world only assumes a meaning and becomes non-neutral if I let it be cosmic life that feels through me. If, by contrast, I lose contact with this primordial feeling, the world remains without meaning, indifferent, neutral. At that point, I can also fall into the error of believing that the world is just a resource at my disposal. Feeling is the way in which life, by living in me, becomes singular – that is, non-neutral – and urges me to take a position and to ceaselessly shape and reshape my existence in search of a singular “form” of existence. I assume form in this non-indifference that permits an involvement, a participation, an existing in sharing (inter-esse). That is, a space in which I can continue to be born along with the world. 3.7.5 Feeling Is What Colors and Gives Form to My Experience What would my experience be like without feeling? If I am stripped of feeling, I cannot interact with the expressive level of life or position myself in the world. Consequently, I lose the meaning of reality. Without feeling, non-­ neutrality would be annulled, I would find myself immersed in a neutral world. Everything around me would lose meaning and value. Feeling is the pencil that colors and gives form to my experience. To color the world is equivalent to making it non-neutral. Experience is my feeling’s non-neutral reading of the world, the form that my feeling assumes by interacting with the expressive level and taking part in the world. Without feeling, reality would be reduced to a geometric or mineral world, as in a lunar landscape. A black-and-white world with no depth. At the same time, feeling also produces experience in the sense of disclosing the world. Through the order of the heart, every singularity opens a unique and unmistakable perspective onto the world, making it sharable in

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the community spaces. The singularity is the memory of the expressive pathway through which this experience has been metabolized. Lastly, feeling is everything that determines my experience. At the same time, however, everything that I experience retroactively forges the physiognomy of my singularity, that is, the order of my heart. Indeed, feeling not only determines my experience but expresses and gives form to my singularity through experience. In sum, without feeling, experience would be annulled, for the simple reason that I would no longer need to have experience, as I would be alienated from the world. Life and feeling coincide. Without feeling, I would not be a living being. A computer is an intelligent system that does not feel, therefore it is not alive. Without feeling, I would be like a computer. What would a computer need to become a living system? Certainly not an increase in processor speed or memory capacity. One would have to invent a metaprogram to enable the computer to express its own viewpoint on the meaning of the processes it performs in interacting with the expressive level of life. Feeling is this infinitely complex “meta-program”, which operates even in the most elementary living organism, which can execute this infinitely complex program since in reality it is infinitely complex itself: it is the way in which the universe expresses itself through an individual.

CHAPTER 4

Emotions That Give Form to Existence 4.1

Toward Rethinking the Concept of Emotion

4.1.1 Why Do Emotions Exist? If feeling is also intentionally directed toward the world, does it make sense to keep the distinction between feeling and emotion? Yes, but it must be profoundly rethought. If feeling orients positioning in the world, emotion does something more: it motivates and orients the capacity to move in the world. The term “emotion” derives from the Latin emovere, consisting of ex (outside) and movere (to move). Emotion indicates the movement that pushes an individual “outside”, to actively interact with the expressive level of life and position herself in the world. Emotions have existed from the instant in which the first animal organism began to move autonomously. Implicit in the concept of emotion is the idea of an autonomous expressive movement. Living beings that have roots and do not move, that is, plants, feel but do not need emotions. Emotions have a meaning only for organisms that move autonomously thanks to the existence of a body schema, and therefore they are born together with the animal organisms. At the more elementary level, the function of emotions is to motivate and orient the animal’s autonomous movements. By “autonomous movement”, I do not mean a mechanical movement, but a dynamic mode in which an organism deals with interaction with its own environment (Umwelt). Therefore, it expresses a capacity to meta-relate to one’s own environment, to which a meta-feeling corresponds. The first autonomous movement of an organism within its own environment was possible concomitantly with the emergence of the first form of a meta-feeling, that is, a “feeling of feeling” through which the organism motivates and retroactively orients the movement itself.1 Without emotions, all the possibilities of movement would be perceived by the living body as meaningless, because absolutely indifferent, and therefore any sensory-motor activity would be impossible. There is a connection between living beings. This connection is made possible by interaction with the expressive level of life. Primordial feeling is the dimension of the biosphere that regulates living beings’ interaction with the expressive level of life. In turn, emotion is the dimension that regulates this 1 Schelling interprets this passage as a “Zurück-wendung in sich selbst” of life itself (See Zur Geschichte der neueren Philosophie. Münchener Vorlesungen, in SW X, 238). © Guido Cusinato, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004520202_006

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interaction at the level of animal life. Emotions are the way in which organisms capable of autonomous movement regulate interaction with the expressive level. Hence, they are not a psychological dimension that originates “inside” the brain, but a particular dimension of the biosphere, precisely the one which motivates and orients the movement of animal organisms. If feeling is extended to the whole of life, emotion, for its part, is only present in animal life. Therefore, it is connected to sensation, the ability to move, and the existence of a body schema. Even the most recent and innovative interpretations have not yet fully overcome the idea that emotions are a psychic phenomenon that originates inside the brain, and then expand outwards into the rest of the world, a bit like the waves caused by a stone thrown into a pond. In reality, emotions are ­something much more powerful and radical. This is why, instead of starting from the usual review and discussion of the main theories that are predominant today, I will start from a very simple question: why do emotions exist? Emotion provides the three centers of animal life with motivational energy: (a) it motivates a living body to carry out a movement, to perceive and interact with the surrounding environment in order to survive, eat, and reproduce; (b) it motivates a social self to carry out an action to obtain recognition; and (c) finally, it motivates a personal singularity to co-perform an act in order to be reborn in the encounter with an exemplarity. Moreover, it gives a certain meaning, tone, and hue to this (a) movement, (b) action, and (c) act, in such a way as to make them expressive in turn. Where there are no emotions, there would no longer be any motivation to carry out any movement, action, or act and hence there would be paralysis. This paralysis would be not only muscular, but also temporal, in the sense that emotion is closely connected to the experience of lived time as well. There is a very simple and at the same time enigmatic fact from which we can start. When I think of the image of a past situation, I can only remember it, whereas when I think of the emotions I experienced in that situation, sometimes I can relive them as well. I feel once again the goosebumps that I experienced when I feared losing my balance on that mountain path. I feel once again the sensation of happiness and freedom I experienced that night when I slept with the starry sky above me. I can feel these emotions again in a quite precise, albeit less intense way. It is as if, in the case of emotion, the past is in some respects still available to me. The way of reliving emotions is different from the way of remembering a concept. While remembering a concept remains at the cognitive level, reliving emotion implies a given mode of penetrating inside reality, of expressing oneself and existing. Reliving an emotion also brings with it the way in which I

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had found an access to reality. By interacting with the expressive level, emotion becomes the key to accessing lived time. Without the possibility of autonomous movement that is proper to the animal organism, there is no emotion, and hence no experience of lived time. Past, present, and future are the three modalities of lived time through which my emotions relate to the expressive level of life, in the sense of (a) no longer being able to act, (b) acting, and (c) being able to act. The point at which interaction with the expressive level takes place indicates the contemporaneity of the present, and marks the watershed between past and future. The past-tofuture direction in which this point shifts indicates the irreversibility of lived time. 4.1.2 The Static and Dynamic Relationship of Emotion with Expression A static and a dynamic relationship are established between emotion and the expressive level. The static relationship is the one taken into consideration by Ekman, for example, and photographs the correspondence between basic emotions and their expressions. For its part, the dynamic relationship is the motivational and energetic core that leads to the metabolization of a specific expression in particular forms with respect to the schemas identified by Ekman. If the static aspect merely maps the correspondence between emotions and basic expressions, the dynamic aspect investigates what is the plastic and morphological logic that allows emotion to metabolize new nuances and tones of an expression. So far, attention has been focused almost exclusively on the static moment, while neglecting the dynamic one, which has often been demoted to a form of “subjectivism”. And yet, the dynamic relationship is present in an evident way in the very etymology of the term “emotion”, which, as we have already seen, refers to the Latin emovere, made up of ex (outside) and movere (to move). The convergence between the etymology of “emotion” and “expression” must also be pointed out. To express is composed of ex (outside) and press and, like ­emotion, indicates a pressure or movement to go “outside” oneself. The plastic-dynamic aspect is prevalent in the emotion of the personal singularity, meager in the emotion of the social self, and imperceptible at the level of emotions of the living body. In the following chapters, I will use three closely entwined concepts: enactivism, metabolism, and individuation, in order to describe this aspect. 4.1.3 The Problem of Enactivism The first concept that I will examine is enactivism. “En-action” does not only mean putting something into “action”, but also giving a horizon of meaning to

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this action, furnishing the stage on which it unfolds. I have already pointed out that “enactivism” is a recent term for a question already debated by Uexküll and Scheler in Germany at the start of the twentieth century. Uexküll anticipates enactivism by elaborating a concept – “construction plan” (Bauplan) – that highlights the organism’s ability of “sense-making” in its interaction with the environment. In Uexküll’s view, the organism does not perceive representations of real objects, but merely images of semiotic markings (Merkbilder) that represent the significance that certain aspects of the environment (Umwelt) have for the organism’s vital relevance. The problem present in Uexküll’s thesis is as follows: if reality is the product of the organism’s “enactive” activity (Bauplan), then there will be as many unique worlds as there are different living species. In this way, the anthropocentric hypothesis according to which there is a single, human world from which the other living species’ worlds are obtained by subtraction collapses definitively. While this is undoubtedly an important step forward, it brings to the surface the two problems that still afflict contemporary enactivism: relativism and the incommunicability of these different worlds. These problems can be summed up in a single question: how can a bee interact with a flower, for example, or a wasp with a caterpillar? This proves possible if the sense-making activity of enactivism is rooted in the “primordial feeling” that unites all living beings. Thanks to these common roots, the enactive activity of the organism, at the levels of both individual and species, is provided with shared rules that allow the different living species to communicate with each other. This is because they feel themselves to be the same “One”, to use the neologism “unipathy” (Eins-Fühlung), coined by Scheler.2 By rooting the enactivism of the organism within primordial feeling, the relativistic drifts of enactivism are avoided. There is no subjective relativism, but ontological perspectivism, since the enactivism of the singular living ­species must be interpreted as part of a more overarching enactive activity of the biosphere. We see the different organisms as separate, but only because we look at the world through the lenses of intelligence, and therefore have lost the original bond with life. For their part, the wasp and the caterpillar – which do not look at the world through the spectacles of intelligence – still live “inside” that original bond. In this way, the wasp does not perceive itself as separate from the caterpillar, nor does the bee see itself as separate from the flower, but they feel themselves to be part of one big organism. 2 See Scheler 1954.

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The enactive activity of an organism does not follow the isolated logic of a singular living species, but operates in the context of a biosemiotics of cosmic life. Participatory sense-making is the participation of singular organisms in the world-making of the biosphere. The communication that takes place between organisms is not a cold, neutral exchange of signs, but the very essence of life. By communicating through the language of biosemiotics, organisms create real worlds. This is no longer an epistemological activity of the singular ­isolated organism, but a becoming-with, a co-creation of reality together with cosmic life at the biosemiotic level. Rooting enactivism in a primordial feeling enables us to confront another question, which only emerged recently: that of the enactive function of ­emotion, which I will dwell on in the following chapters. 4.1.4 The Metabolism of Expression and Aporias of Ekman’s Expressive Universalism The second concept that is useful to describe how emotions work is that of the “expressive metabolism”. This concept can be applied to the thesis of Paul Ekman on the universality of basic expressions and emotions. The existence of some rudimental expressive rules shared by every living being, which Scheler theorized with his concept of unipathy, seems to receive further experimental confirmation precisely from the research of Ekman, which have identified some expressions common to the entire human race.3 Recently, however, some scholars have called these results into question, affirming that what Ekman had identified as universal expressions are really influenced by their original cultural environments.4 The problem arises because Ekman refers only to the static dimension of emotion, which represents the general schema of reference of an expression. To be clear, the one that is schematized in the faces of the main emoticons. As we have already seen, however, there is also a plastic and dynamic moment in emotion, and this is not universal. Instead, it represents the way in which every culture and singularity metabolizes a particular expressive timbre, starting out from Ekman’s general schema. Remaining within the general framework, namely, that of the smiley emoticon, a Japanese person will have a slightly different way of smiling than a Spaniard, and, furthermore, a certain Japanese person will have her own unmistakable way of smiling which might only be fully recognizable to the person who lives with her. So much so, that perhaps only the person who knows her very well is able to recognize her particular, 3 See Ekman 1999. 4 See Rachael et al. 2012.

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unmistakable style of frowning to express worry, or raising the corners of her mouth to give a hint of a smile. The expressive forms identified by Ekman represent the general frame of reference of the expressivity that revolves around the human living body that has become sedimented in the course of its evolution. Already at the level of the social self, the expressive schema of a basic emotion is metabolized by every culture in a slightly different form. In fact, the emotion of the social self elaborates expressive variations that only become typical within a certain ­society, on the basis of the models offered by Ekman’s “basic emotions”. Finally, at the level of the personal singularity, the expressivity of that social emotion will be further metabolized in reference to that individual’s particular order of the heart: in other words, it will be singularized. This takes place in an infinite process which, in turn, retroactively transforms the order of the heart, thus revealing itself to be the anthropogenetic engine of human formation. Bearing in mind this process, the frame of reference of Ekman’s expression proves to be impersonal and universal. The metabolization of this universal expressive schema in the different cultures then makes a social expressive schema emerge that is impersonal but no longer universal. Finally, a third level of metabolization, at the level of the singularity, will give this social expressive schema a personal and not universal timbre. 4.1.5 Rethinking Individuation: What Comes First: The Individual or Individuation? After “enactivism” and “metabolization”, the third conceptual tool that I will use to describe how emotion works is “individuation”. In the previous pages, I demonstrated that the propulsive core of animal enactivism can be identified in the expressive metabolization operated by emotion. I also pointed out that this emotional enactivism not only metabolizes what is felt, but also who feels it. Since this who is the real individual, the result is that emotional enactivism does not operate at the epistemological level alone, but produces a particular type of reality: individual reality. The connection between metabolism, enactivism, and emotion hence paves the way to the concept of individuation. It is usually thought that it is the individual who individualizes herself: individuation is the process through which the individual determines, develops, and completes herself. However, this perspective must be reversed: first comes the individuation process, and only subsequently does the individual emerge. The living individual is not an isolated and autonomous monad that is already given before the individuation process. This is also true of the biological individual, but it is particularly evident in the case of the personal singularity. The personal non-self assumes form as a consequence of the individuation process

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that takes place through the community spaces, that is, by advancing in openness to the world, in expressing itself, and in practices of sharing. It is clear that the lived experience of joy can take on a particular meaning in a person’s wholly intimate sphere, but this particularity is the result, not the presupposition of individuation. Moreover, individuation does not necessarily refer to the single individual: in fact, it can also concern a colony of animal organisms, a collectivity of social selfs, or a community of personal singularities. 4.1.6 Individuation through the Collectivity and through the Community Having taken this step, it is crucial to call into question the widespread prejudice according to which individuation only develops in the direction of interiority. For example, it is thought that the social self’s individuation process only takes place insofar as the individual steps back from the collectivity and develops her own individual and private perspective. I will explain why this hypothesis is wrong. The collectivity is not the sum of different social selfs. On the contrary, it is the social self that is the result of an individuation made possible by traversing the spaces of the collectivity. Hence, the social self’s participation in the collectivity does not represent an impoverishment or a cancellation of its individuation process. On the contrary, it is the presupposition for its individuation. Indeed, collectivity is the only space in which the social self is born and subsequently develops, and enriches its formation process. The misunderstanding arises when the individuation process of the social self and of the personal singularity are confused. It is the personal singularity, not the social self, that perceives a sensation of impoverishment when it traverses the spaces of the collectivity. By traversing the spaces of the collectivity, the social self is individualized and enriched, while the personal singularity is impoverished. Indeed, the personal singularity is only individualized and enriched by passing through the spaces of the community. If the singularity remains within the spaces of the collectivity, it inevitably ends up losing itself in the commitments that characterize the life of the social self. With regard to this way of living, which Socrates defined as “lethargic”, the passage through the community dimension enables a periagogic turn, that is, a new way of orienting and positioning one’s existence in the world, while learning to “turn one’s gaze” toward that which is closest to the heart. The periagoge is not a presocial and intimist retreat with respect to collective individuation. On the contrary, it is a more radical form of exposure to the other, which is made possible by the spaces of the community. In fact, the community is not the result of a sum of already-constituted personal singularities, but the space

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in which personal singularities are born and individualized through care relations and emotional sharing practices characterized by solidarity. At present, there is a widespread difficulty in grasping the difference between the concepts of “collectivity” and “community”. Often, they are thought of as the same thing. Even “communitarianism” has sometimes been conceived of as a form of neo-collectivism. In this way, it is presupposed that interaction with the other at the social level is exhausted in the collective moment, without recognizing the personal singularity’s specific form of existing-together and feeling-together that is enabled by the community. The collectivity merely replicates the immunitarian and autopoietic logic of the model. Hence, it acts as a hierarchical “extended little self”. In contrast, the community appears in two forms: hierarchical or open. The first form is an autopoietic system based on the principle of authority, while the second is a non-autopoietic system that, like the personal system, involves “exemplarity” and the sharing of “fragments of truth”. Simply watering down the different forms of community into the collectivity leads to the nullification of the spaces where subversive forms of individuation to social conformism can arise.5 On the contrary, to move from the collectivity to the community is to leave behind the logic of the reproduction of social consensus, thereby leaving room for the hunger to be born and for processes of social transformation. This passage occurs when the encounter with the sublime or with exemplarity makes me feel that I am a fragment of truth that needs to live in the encounter with other fragments of truth. In this non-self-sufficiency (distinct from the paradigm of simple lack), I do not follow the logic of common feeling, but that of desire. The “wound” inflicted by the other thus allows the personal singularity to transcend the immune system of one’s own self and to continue being born, by participating in a counter-intentionality that emanates from the other. 4.2

What Use Are Emotions?

4.2.1 Three Classes of Emotions and Three Processes of Individuation Every animal species, every social self, and every personal singularity has its own specific emotional positioning in reality. Each one has a characteristic style to interact with the expressive level of life and to advance within the world. An individual’s emotional positioning reflects all the shades of non-neutrality

5 On the difference between collectivity and community, see § 7.3.1 Collectivity and Community.

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of that individual’s order of feeling. At the same time, it is in this advancing within the world that an individual expresses herself and assumes form. As I have already argued, individuation does not have its starting point in the individual, but in the spaces from which the individual emerges, hence, from the space represented by biosemiotics, the collectivity, and the community. The individuation of the animal organism takes place in the context of the biosemiotic enactivism of the biosphere, the individuation of the social self in the context of enactivism, and the emotional sharing practices of the collectivity, just as that of the personal singularity, in the emotional sharing practices of the community. Each of these three individuation processes is oriented by a different class of emotions: body emotions, social emotions, and personal emotions. Body emotions relate to the body schema (ordo carnis). They motivate and orient ­sensory-motor activities in interaction with the world around (Um-Welt). Social emotions motivate and orient actions in the social interaction of the social self (ordo socialis). Personal emotions orient acts in the ongoing birth of the personal non-self (ordo amoris). Emotions are the motivational energy that serves to orient the three forms of movement of living beings: sensory-­ motor movement, action, and act. In what follows I will briefly hint at the first two while referring to the large body of literature that already exists on the topic for more in-depth study. In the following chapters I will instead concentrate on personal emotion, since it still remains largely unexplored. 4.2.2 Body Emotions By body emotions I mean the emotions of the living body (Leib) which therefore refer to a body schema. Even at this level, emotions are already intentional, although this intentionality is pre-representational. Furthermore, by means of this intentionality they function as indices of size, information-collectors, and markers. But of what? What are they for? At the level of body emotions, fear, disgust, pleasure, and pain indicate usefulness or harmfulness, which enable the living body to distinguish what is relevant, and map out differences in value, on the basis of which the body schema enactively creates the map of sensory-motor possibilities of its own environment. The main function of this first class of emotions is to react and respond, with a view to regulating the environmental interaction. This is the viewpoint from which Damasio develops his homeostatic interpretation of the nature of emotions. However, the term “homeostatic” is unsatisfactory. The logic that these emotions follow is instead an autopoietic logic, dedicated to maintaining the difference between organism and environment in the perspective of an enactive biosemiotics.

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Uexküll shows that an organism’s individuality can be grasped from the way in which it interacts with its environment (Umwelt). Every perceptual experience is the adoption of a position. It is a yes or no that the organism says with regard to its environment. In other words, the way in which its sensations are structured reflects its biological individuality as a species. 4.2.3 Social Emotions At the level of body emotion, the perceptual horizon and process of individuation are largely already predetermined. The influence of the plastic and dynamic aspect of emotion is hence extremely limited, contrary to what happens with the social self and above all the personal non-self. Conversely, in the latter two, experience has a determining retroactive effect on the individuation process itself: by having experience, not only do the social self and the singularity interact with their environment and express themselves, but they modify their individuality. New experiences retroactively condition the individuation process itself. This flexibility is the result of the plastic and dynamic aspect of emotion. Babies are born with a digestive system that already knows how to metabolize milk, and with an affective structure that, by contrast, does not know how to metabolize fear, anger, happiness, or the other emotions that orient social interactions. Usually, the newborn child is already able to focus on her mother’s face a couple of weeks after birth. In contrast, she requires a couple of months to respond to her mother’s smile. This temporal discrepancy shows that in human beings, the exercise of the affective sphere and of emotions is not automatic, but must be learned. Yet as she learns to express her emotions, the newborn expresses herself and gives form to her individuality. This does not happen, by contrast, in the case of breathing, digesting her mother’s milk, or focusing her gaze. This is a fundamental difference: exercising physiological functions is automatic, whereas learning to interact with the mother’s gaze – and subsequently learning to manage fear, rage, anger, happiness, and envy – are stages in the anthropogenetic individuation process of a newborn, and then of a child. This is a process that does not go without saying, and unfolds thanks to emotional sharing practices. And it is thanks to these emotional sharing practices that the newborn gradually comes to experience the immense scope of the exercise of subjectivity. Henceforth, handling objects, play, and all the basic emotions become an infinite field for exploration. What, then, are social emotions for? Social emotions such as anger, shame, rage, pride, resentment, envy, sadness, and happiness are needed to orient the social self’s constitutive process in social interaction and in the struggle for

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social recognition. Hence, they represent the motivational and enactive core of social action.6 As has already been suggested, they serve as the “scaffolding” for society, which also structures them.7 But social emotion is probably also something more than that. The different social systems are none other than the results of different emotional sharing practices and the corresponding care relations: a herd emerges from practices of sharing body emotion, a social group from practices of sharing social emotions, and, finally, the community from practices of sharing personal emotion, and in particular from love and hate. In other words, emotional sharing practices are the basis of social ontology. In this way, emotional sharing practices do not only function as “scaffolding” for social systems, but represent the entire building site. 4.2.4 Personal Emotions and the Order of the Heart What are emotions for at the level of the personal non-self? Love and hate, delight and desperation, repentance, shame, and respect do not serve either to regulate sensory-motor activities in interaction with the environment (living body) or the struggle for social recognition (social self). Rather, personal emotions orient the act by which the individual, when faced with an unexpected incident or crisis, goes outside herself to seek a space in which to be reborn in the encounter with the other in the community spaces, and reorient her existence. Neither biosemiotics nor the social context is enough to guide the human in opening up to the other’s auroral void. If I let myself be guided by the hunger to be born, the order of the heart experiences new expressive pathways that deviate from common feeling. I experience the stream of lived time as the stream of my feeling. Every experience, perception, and fact can become a question or a request which my singularity can answer by assuming a position, by saying yes or no. And in each of these passages, the process of formation of my singularity takes another step forward. The tertiary level of individuation emerges through this process. This does not happen to the detriment of secondary individuation, but on the contrary presupposes and develops it: there is always a social self alongside every personal singularity. It follows that tertiary individuation does not imply the obliteration of the concept of conflict or a relapse into some pre-­ Hegelian conception of society. On the contrary, it represents a further level

6 Cf. Griffiths & Scarantino 2013; Slaby 2014. 7 See Colombetti & Krueger 2015.

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of differentiation. Of course, the community is also a form of society, but it is based on emotional sharing practices that follow a logic of solidarity.8 4.2.5 Entering Inside the Landscape of Experience The perspective that every singularity opens onto the world is unique and unmistakable, in that it alone enables certain otherwise inaccessible values and aspects of the world to be grasped. However, once a new fragment of truth has been grasped, that singularity can make it become visible in the community spaces. Essentially, singularity is constituted precisely by keeping the uniqueness of this perspective open, and enabling the contents that can be derived from it to be shared. Every singularity is the embodiment of a periagogic conversion that has led it to turn around until it found a unique, non-deducible perspective. However, the openness and depth of this field of vision are not predetermined at the outset, but are only defined thanks to practices of sharing one’s own fragment of truth. This different perspective allows us to rethink the concept of experience. In Western thought until now, attention has been excessively focused on objectifying experience. The little self concentrates all its efforts on reinforcing itself and expanding its own domination over the things around it: in order to achieve this goal, it must calculate and objectify. For the little self, to have an experience is equivalent to dominating, objectifying, and perfecting its own mental map, while remaining in an autopoietic and self-referential perspective. The personal singularity inaugurates a different way of having experience. We witness a shift from the tendency to encompass (com-prehend, to grasp together), aimed at domination, to that of reverential respect. Thanks to this emotional disposition, reality discloses itself, and the fragile filaments of non-objectifiable reality unexpectedly become visible. By following these fragile filaments, the singularity is emotionally moved, breathes, and opens up to the fullness of the world. Personal emotions not only color the landscape of the world, but, through the positioning in reality that they make possible, they allow the person to enter and take part in that landscape. What opens up before the person is not a world to be represented with detachment, but a living, palpitating world to take part in. Pleasantness, unpleasantness, boredom, excitement, sadness, joy, fear, delight, outrage, rage, and trust: they all establish the rhythm with which my order of the heart advances or retreats, and never ceases reconfiguring

8 Cf. § 7.4 Generative Sharing as Material Motivation for Social Transformation.

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itself within the world. And in this way, they simultaneously give form to the physiognomy of my singularity. 4.3 The Order of the Heart and the Unexplored Enactivism of the Third Level 4.3.1 The Missing Piece: A Further Level of Enactivism In current discussions on the relationship between enactivism and emotions, the former has only been considered with reference to body emotions and social emotions. A piece is missing: the piece relating to third-level enactivism, the level concerning the personal emotions whose propulsive center is the order of the heart. As has already been seen, the function of personal emotions is not to regulate the interaction between organism and environment, nor the struggle for recognition of the social self. They serve rather to orient the act of self-­ transcendence through which the singularity seeks a space to be reborn in the encounter with the other. This is not subjective, but co-formative, insofar as it takes place in the community spaces. A further characteristic concerns the fact that the personal emotions no longer follow the autopoietic logic of the conformist model that dominates the collectivity, but the logic of exemplarity, which produces transformation. These characteristics are also proper to thirdlevel enactivism. Third-level enactivism is a form of non-autopoietic enactivism, and represents a particular way of dealing with the disorientation that derives from crisis. While the first two forms of enactivism attempt to resolve an irritation or crisis by following an autopoietic logic, the third type of enactivism remains within the disorientation of the crisis, without attempting a strategy of resilience and without automatically responding with fixed schemas. It does not merely “adjust” or “repair”, in an autopoietic way, the system that expresses it, but traverses the crisis, prompting an anthropogenetic type of generative transformation. The propulsive core of this generative enactivism is the order of the heart. 4.3.2 The Order of the Heart as the Principium Individuationis of the Personal Singularity The order of the heart recognizes what is relevant for the singularity, and registers the order of relevance with which phenomena knock at the door of the singularity’s existence, answering with a yes or a no when the order of the heart is touched by the world. It metabolizes experiences by adopting a position that

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expresses itself in loving and hating, preferring and postponing, consenting (feeling-together) and dissenting (feeling-apart), etc. In this way, it sculpts the singularity’s physiognomy. In short, the order of the heart is the principium individuationis of the personal singularity. So long as it remains indistinct and lacks intentionality oriented by the hunger to be born, my feeling slips alongside my order of the heart without interacting with it. Experiences traverse me without leaving a mark or being metabolized by my order of the heart. Consequently, I remain immersed in the metabolization processes of common feeling and am made to conform by the collective individuation that formats the social self. On the contrary, the more I do not let myself be traversed passively by an experience, mood, or ­sentiment, but metabolize them by calling upon the intentionality of my order of the heart, the further I will advance in the process of forming my singularity, that is, in the direction of a tertiary individuation. Why do some mistakes affect me more than others? Why does getting an act wrong or a “strong evaluation” as Charles Taylor has it,9 affect me more than making an error of calculation? An act or a strong evaluation is carried out intentionally and is a direct expression of my order of the heart, while a mistake is not. Getting a logical chain of reasoning wrong does not call into question what I am, but this is what does happen when I carry out a mistaken act or elaborate an erroneous strong evaluation. This is because the order of the heart is responsible for my acts and my “strong evaluations”, but not for my errors of calculation. Since the order of the heart is the principium individuationis of my existence, an error that derives from the order of my heart is an existential type of error. Nevertheless, strong evaluations alone are not enough to define me. Indeed, the process of individuation of the singularity is not exhausted by an enactivism that acts only at the hermeneutic level. The individuation process develops if strong evaluations go beyond the merely hermeneutic level and are translated into concrete acts. While Taylor’s strong evaluations are still conceived with reference to a personal “identity”, the singularity’s formation process presupposes an act of self-transcendence with regard to one’s identity. There is a close connection between this act of self-transcendence and the formation of the personal ­singularity: it is only by transcending the little self that the deepest affective layers can mature, and hence the orientation needed for the person’s formation process can emerge. The orientation will be unleashed in this experience 9 See Taylor 1989.

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of transcendence. Yet this will not consist in an adequation or reassertion of a value that has already been given. On the contrary, this orientation will be the consequence of the emergence of those new, higher values, which previously did not exist or were invisible. Hence, this orientation does not guide the subject’s projectuality, but the birth of the personal singularity and its ability to open itself to the world. The sacredness and dignity of the person lies in this very capacity for transcending oneself and opening oneself up to the world. In this sense, every act that promotes openness to the world and the formation of the person is ethical. There are two questions relating to the order of the heart that should be cleared up right away. The order of the heart does not repress or weaken the other ramifications of feeling. It is precisely the contrary that is true. The order of the heart constantly interacts with the order of feeling of the other ramifications, and the farther it extends to other spheres of feeling, the richer its metabolization will be. The second question concerns the rhythm with which the order of the heart opens or closes itself to the world, accepts or rejects, prefers or refuses, consents or dissents, loves or hates. This rhythm is not always the same. The order of the heart registers all the experiences that touch it, but its reactions vary in intensity: sometimes in a generative and effective way, sometimes in a way that is repetitive and rushed, sometimes maturely and appropriately, and sometimes in a way that is irrational and unfitting. The ups and downs in this rhythm of feeling indicate the degree of intensity of its metabolism, and are expressed in “peaks of feeling”.10 4.3.3 The Order of the Heart as the Propulsive Core of Third-Level Enactivism Far from representing an order of feeling internally withdrawn inside itself, the order of the heart is the organ of a person’s positioning in the world. Grasping a value, preferring a particular type of music, being struck by the intensity of a color or the transparency of a crystal, being conquered by the elegance of a gesture or wounded by the frown of a friend: these are all moments in which I advance or retreat in the world. And it is in the way of metabolizing that perceiving, preferring, or rejecting, that my singularity also expresses itself and assumes form. What is at the basis of all this? The singularity’s individuation process assumes form around the order of the heart’s hunger to be born. Where there 10

Cf. § 6.2.2 Exercises as an Anthropogenetic Practice: “Peaks of Feeling” and “Dead Calm of Feeling”.

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is hunger, there is metabolism. Third-level enactivism is at the service of the metabolism of the hunger to be born. It is this non-autopoietic metabolism that ­produces singularization. Being catapulted outside one’s customary habits, or finding oneself without ready-made answers, requires an enactivism capable of orienting beyond already known reference points and, thanks to the order of the heart, capable of setting out in search of a new perspective of meaning. This enactivism does not operate by imitation, but creates without referring to models. Hence, this enactivism is based on the person’s desire and not on the projectuality of the little self. It is an enactivism that is born by traversing the auroral void, and which, after the verification of experience, operates retroactively on the same order of the heart of which it is the expression. Above all, it is not a solipsistic enactivism, but an enactivism that operates in the participatory dimension of the community. Thus, it is an enactivism that assumes the forms of a participatory sense-making. What are the forces and factors that play a role in third-level enactivism? They are the practices of emotional sharing, the care of desire, relations of care oriented by the principle of co-responsibility and by the force of exemplarity, topics to which I will increasingly return in the following chapters. 4.4

The Metabolization of the Emotions

4.4.1 What Is Meant by “Sad Passions”? There is a tradition of thought, usually traced back to Spinoza, that indicates as “sad passions”, a class of passions that weaken the conatus of existential empowerment and therefore should be avoided. The ones usually indicated among them include rage, repentance, shame, humility, modesty, envy, resentment, etc. Ethics would consist in avoiding the sad passions, and, in contrast, in reinforcing the passions that foster existential empowerment.11 This premise leads to the conclusion that these “sad passions”, increasingly widespread in the era of narcissism, should be contained, by balancing their negative effects by those of the “positive” passions: pride, joy, enthusiasm, hope, and gratitude. All topped off with a therapy based on massive doses of “empathy”. The expression “sad passions” appears in the title of a famous bestseller by Benasayag and Schmidt. It is a striking title that had a powerful impact, but it is misleading. In reality, the topic around which this interesting text revolves is 11

Cf. Benasayag & Schmit 2003.

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actually the malaise of the new generations whose entire future has been taken from them. The main line of argument is that in the new generations there has been a radical change in the perception of the future, which, while once a “promise”, is now a “threat”. This lack of future kills hope and desire, making it impossible to frame long-term projects. Since there is no longer a perspective on the future, the function of parent and teacher is thrown into crisis, insofar as the new generations no longer find a reason to commit to growing, studying, or investing in a project. Thus, what are known as the “sad passions” take hold. However, if we try to understand what Benasayag and Schmidt mean by this expression, it becomes clear that they are not referring to a particular category of passions, in themselves negative, such as sadness, pain, etc., but rather to a fatalistic attitude, to impotence, and to a lack of meaning, that is, what in the past would have been called a “crisis of values”. After all, the text’s basic objective is not to stigmatize the presumed negativity of a certain class of emotion, but to denounce the condition in which the new generations have been abandoned. Besides, the idea that there is a class of “sad passions”, to be avoided like a contagious disease, is very dangerous. If a young person does not have a job or an outlook for the future, the solution is not to teach her techniques for avoiding sadness, but to offer her a job and an outlook for the future. If the “sad passions” were something negative in themselves, a sort of pathological “germ” that attacks the psyche of young people, then the most effective solution would be pharmacological. Quite rightly, the direction indicated by Benasayag and Schmidt is not that of eliminating the sad passions by means of a pill or a medication, but rather of promoting a social reform and politics that could restore a future and hope to the new generations. The reference to Spinoza also needs to be taken with caution and rethought. Spinoza had conceived of an ethics aimed at cultivating the passions that increase the power to act, and at avoiding those that weaken it. Yet the “Spinozan” Schelling was to point out that the formative pathway (Bildung) of human existence can never be represented as a straight line, insofar as this empowerment often also occurs by way of scissions, retreats, and defeats. For Schelling, there is no existential empowerment without existential realization and spiritual rebirth. In this way, Spinoza’s empowerment is reinterpreted in the sense of transformation, and this implies the experience of severance (Trennung) and crisis (Krisis). The fact that the empowerment of existence is not linear is not the fault of “sad passions” that are negative in themselves, but is an intrinsic characteristic of life itself. That which can be criticized is rather the moralism often associated with the so-called sad passions, and is inherent in exhibitions of

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practices of humiliation and self-imposed suffering. Throughout centuries of cheap respectability and moralism, a whole series of attitudes have been systematically exalted, to the point that they have become empty, worn-out words without meaning. Today, repentance, shame, modesty, and humility are words in which there is an echo of something hypocritical, rhetorical, and false. And yet behind these abused and worn-out words are emotions that can still carry out an essential function in the anthropogenetic process. Emotions of authentic modesty and repentance can become important antennae at the service of the singularization process. Likewise, humility and respect, once stripped of their shell of priggish moralism, can become powerful forces that propel the process of self-transcendence. 4.4.2 Do “Negative Emotions” Exist? Not only has the concept of “sad passions” become widespread, but it has been connected to the equally problematic concept of “negative emotions”, developed in particular by Daniel Goleman. The basic idea is that of a society that assumes form by “taming” the emotions, which are considered something very similar to an archaeological residue of primordial instincts. This vision leads Goleman to focus his argument on the need to extirpate or at least to contain, for example by practicing meditation, the three so-called “negative” emotions (rage, sadness, fear), considered as veritable “poisons of the mind”.12 Much less developed, in contrast, is the part Goleman devotes to how to make the most of the so-called “positive” emotions. Nor could it be otherwise, if one starts out from the presupposition that the emotions are not beacons that orient human existence, but forces that somehow need to be “tamed”. As I have already argued, however, this presupposition is unfounded, since if feeling and emotions undergo a suitable maturation process, they are the primordial source of meaning and life. The problem is not to tame them, but to learn how to draw from their source. All of this takes us back to the opening question: does something like a “­negative” emotion really exist? Goleman starts out from the correct intuition that emotional situations characterized by intense suffering require an ­intervention and an appropriate approach to be managed. Meditation can certainly be an excellent solution. Goleman’s misunderstanding rather concerns the subject to whom this “negativity” is attributed. As I have already shown, it is not the feeling in itself that is negative or positive, but the way in which I exercise it.13 The same holds true for the emotions. Maintaining that there are 12 13

See Goleman 2004. See § 3.5.4 The Difference Between Feeling and Exercise of Feeling.

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emotions that are negative per se, due to their association with pain or suffering, surreptitiously reintroduces the idea that the emotions – not all of them of course, only the “negative” ones – should not be listened to, but “cured”. In reality, that means set straight, or even obliterated. In fact, even the so-called “negative” passions are radars that have intercepted a disvalue and must be listened to very carefully. Indeed, all emotions, including so-called “negative” ones, play a fundamental part in decision-making processes. Fear is not negative in itself. During a trip to the mountains, for example, I can metabolize fear into prudent behavior. The metabolization of mourning, sadness, or suffering can also represent decisive impulses for the anthropogenetic process. Even hate and envy, if metabolized in a suitable way, can help contribute to the acquisition of self-awareness. This has nothing to do with re-proposing the Hegelian thesis of double negation. In fact, when metabolizing sadness into something positive, there is no double negation, since the point of departure, that is, the emotion of sadness, is not in itself negative. Furthermore, metabolizing is completely different from negating. Hence, a suitable metabolization of sadness has nothing to do with the negation of a negative that becomes positive, that is, with the Hegelian schema of double negation. An emotion such as sadness for the loss of a person close to me is not a negative emotion to be eliminated. Of course, in that situation of suffering a poison of the mind is at work that has to be eliminated as soon as possible, but a great deal of attention needs to be paid in identifying what is the name of that poison. It is not sadness in itself that is negative, as this emotion proves perfectly appropriate to that mourning, but it could be my inadequate method of metabolizing sadness. Mourning can cause such severe suffering that I find myself lacking the tools to metabolize it. Anger can be so violent that it blinds me. In all these cases, the problem will be to give me enough time to learn to better metabolize these emotions. The true poison of my mind is not feeling sadness or anger, but perhaps my inability to deal with them, that is, my inappropriate way of metabolizing them. Of course, in order to distance myself from an immature reaction, it can then be very useful as well to practice meditation. With the help of reason and will, I will have to try to break away from that immediate reaction, in order to give myself the time to grow and let ripen a more appropriate one. In this process, pain can become a powerful factor of growth. All emotions must be carefully listened to, including those considered less “noble”, such as boredom, disgust, nausea, frustration, and even resentment. They can all play a crucial role in the development of the singularity. Besides, what would a society be without the so-called “negative emotions”? A society

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that obliterated the sadness of mourning or the experience and the cognition of pain would be a nightmare: an anesthetized society. The same also holds true for the individual: an individual who eliminated the so-called “sad passions” or “negative emotions” would be an anesthetized individual, incapable of living or existing. Several cases make us reflect on the need to reconsider more attentively the so-called “negativity” of emotions. In the next two paragraphs I will merely consider two of the main suspects: resentment and hate.14 4.4.3 The Ambiguous Case of Resentment: Jean Améry The greatest attempt to re-evaluate the phenomenon of resentment is found in the little-known text by Jean Améry, At the Mind’s Limits. Since he was Jewish, Améry was deported to the concentration camps. After the war, he made every possible effort to overcome his own resentment toward the Nazis, but he realized that he was up against a resentment so deep that it could not be overcome. Thus, in 1978, he finally resolved to take his own life. Améry was well aware of the dual condemnation hanging over resentment: “Thus I must delimit our resentments on two sides and shield them against two explications: that of Nietzsche, who morally condemned resentment, and that of modern psychology, which is able to picture it only as a disturbing conflict”.15 In this, Améry is obliged by his personal experience: My personal task is to justify a psychic condition that has been condemned by moralists and psychologists alike. The former regard it as a taint, the latter as a kind of sickness. I must acknowledge it, bear the social taint, and first accept the sickness as an integrating part of my personality and then legitimize it.16 Améry notes that in reality there is not one unique type of resentment, but different types of resentment. Hence the need to reflect further and more deeply on the effects of some little-known forms of resentment. This is not to say that Améry has a positive conception of resentment per se. On the contrary, he himself admits that “resentment is not only an unnatural but also a logically inconsistent condition. It nails every one of us onto the cross of his ruined past”.17 14 15 16 17

Cf. Hessel 2011. Améry 1998, 68. Ibid., 64. Ibid., 68.

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Nevertheless, in some cases resentment can have a social function: nailing the victim who has suffered an injustice to her own cross, it transforms the resentful person into a living witness who keeps the memory alive in future generations as well. Resentment is justified insofar as it does not allow the crime to fall into oblivion: “my resentments are there in order that the crime become a moral reality for the criminal, in order that he be swept into the truth of his atrocity”.18 In two decades of inner contemplation of what had happened to him, Améry understands that a forgiving and forgetting induced by social pressure is immoral. Whoever lazily and cheaply forgives, subjugates himself to the social and biological time-sense, which is also called the “natural” one. Natural consciousness of time actually is rooted in the physiological process of wound-healing and became part of the social conception of reality.19 What Améry disputes is the automatic transfer of what can be called the biological logic of wound-healing to the moral plane. Whereas in biological terms it is perfectly justified to heal the wound, at the social level it is harmful for the crime to be forgotten. In this way, Améry lived his resentment as a personal protest against the antimoral natural process of healing, that is, of forgetting the crime, that time brings about. Through his protest he makes the “genuinely humane and absurd demand that time be turned back”.20 His hope is that in some cases resentment can become an apparatus to turn back the “immoral time” of healing. Through this dual crucifixion of the victim and the criminal, one could succeed in bringing the victim and criminal back into contact: “by nailing the criminal to his deed […] and through a moral turning-back of the clock, the latter can join his victim as a fellow human being”.21 4.4.4 Is Hate Negative per se? These reflections by Améry prompt us to go beyond the surface of the ­contrast between positive and negative emotions, and to ask whether emotions that are negative per se actually exist. Let us consider what is probably deemed the greatest example of a negative emotion: hate. As I have argued, hate is capable of inverting the anthropogenetic process and of destroying both the person who hates and the person who is hated. Its destructive power is not 18 19 20 21

Ibid., 70. Ibid., 72. Ibid., 77. Ibid., 72.

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psychological, but ontological, insofar as it acts not only on the surface, but penetrates, layer by layer, until it reaches the core of the personal singularity.22 It thus seems to be the “negative” emotion par excellence. And yet the question is more complex. Like every emotion, hate is based on valueception; except that in the case of hate, it concerns the perception of a disvalue of the personal class. What is negative in itself is not hate, but the disvalue that it has perceived. In the same way as loving is useful because it can discover positive values, hate is useful as it can signal to me the existence of negative values. But what is a disvalue? If value is what permits the emergence, constitution, and expression of a phenomenon, disvalue is what prevents and destroys it. Hence, in this first moment – relating to the signaling of a disvalue present in a person’s act – hate has a positive function: as long, of course, as the perceived disvalue refers only to the act and not to the person who did it. A further false move is possible when metabolizing the experience linked to the perception of this disvalue. We all know how demanding it is to deal with this type of experience. Indeed, the metabolization of an experience of abuse or violence often degenerates into the logic of the scapegoat or, at any rate, into “hate speech”, that is, into an irreversibly destructive system. Even in these cases, it is not the hate per se that is negative, but the way that this experience is managed and metabolized. Although these destructive dynamics may well be one of the biggest dangers for the democracy of our society, it is also true that eliminating hate does not resolve the problem. Indeed, this would lead us to a society that is anesthetized, indifferent, and ultimately even less democratic. If hate in itself could be eliminated, life would not improve, insofar as eliminating hate would prevent us from perceiving and reacting to a whole series of particularly negative disvalues, such as those linked to injustice. It should also be noted that, in some cases, the correct metabolization of these experiences of injustice can shed light on an exemplary function of the metabolization of hate. Gandhi may have initially “hated” violence, but in any case he was subsequently able to transform this hate into indignation and then into love for peace. Martin Luther King may have initially “hated” racism, but he succeeded in metabolizing hate, not into hate speech, but into indignation at the injustices and discrimination linked to racism, and then into love for justice and brotherhood. At first, Anna Politkovskaya may have “hated” information at the service of power, but then she transformed this hate into 22

See § 6.5.5 Purifying Oneself From Hate of the Enemy.

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indignation toward censorship, and this indignation into love for truth and freedom of the press. These are the people who transform society. Besides, we have already seen that the failed metabolization of love can degenerate into infatuation, that is, into something extremely negative. In short, the distinction between positive and negative emotions must be ­overcome since – depending on how they are metabolized – hate can have a positive function and loving a negative one. 4.4.5 The Generative Condition of Personal Emotion Yet there is another passage concerning the most secret essence of hate. In reality, hate, like loving, is not simply an emotion but a meta-emotion. Hate does not merely grasp a disvalue that has already been realized by a person’s act but, more importantly still, it determines the ontological conditions for the further development of this disvalue, and for the emergence of an even greater disvalue. The correct metabolization of hate could stop this destructive spiral. If this does not happen, then hate becomes the propulsive core of the person’s destructive energies. And it is so powerful that in some cases it really does manage to make the hated person become odious. A successful metabolization of loving, by contrast, makes it become the propulsive core of the person’s positive energies. What emerges here is the distinction between a generative and a degenerative condition of the personal emotions. The condition I call “generative” is the condition in which the personal emotions manage to engage with the successful metabolization of loving, while I call “degenerative” the condition in which they are instead in tow to the unsuccessful metabolization of hate. I use the expression “generative” instead of “creative”, since it is primarily a condition of fertility reminiscent of the generative act. If a personal emotion finds itself in a generative condition, it can metabolize experiences, moods, and sentiments into relations of care, and therefore carry out a guiding function in the anthropogenetic process. How can we recognize this condition that is at the basis of relations of care? A personal emotion is in a generative condition when it is characterized by action that is without envy and by the capacity to feel wonder and admiration for the other’s increase in value. It is interesting to note that, according to Plato, in acting without envy we come closer to the gods, as this is precisely the characteristic of the divine: acting “without envy” (aphthonos), and desiring that all things, insofar as is possible, become close to the divine, and in this way be shaken up by an erotic process of improvement.

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The Pathic: Being Touched by the World

4.5.1 The Three Phases of the Pathic In order to analyze the personal emotions in more detail, it is essential to refer to the experience of pathos. What exactly is pathos? In the term pathos, it is usually the passive aspect that is emphasized: the result is that pathos is identified with enduring and suffering. Viktor von Weizsäcker had already pointed out that this is a reductive interpretation. For him, the pathic does not indicate merely passive suffering, but, prior to that, experiencing something and therefore having an experience.23 Here and in what follows, I mean something even more specific by “pathos”: the experience of being touched by the world. The pathic is the original modality in which a personal singularity comes into contact with the world. Its effect is often described with metaphors that refer to the heart: something makes my heart beat quicker, it makes my heart miss a beat, it makes my heart burst with happiness. Or to breathing: that experience took my breath away. If I describe what happens to me when I have an experience of the pathic, I can discern three distinct phases: the shocking experience of being touched by the world, disorientation, and lastly metabolization. When I am touched by the world, I stop thinking about anything else. I stop, and my whole being is concentrated on this unexpected experience that takes my breath away and makes my heart beat quicker. The second phase is disorientation. I feel displaced. I rummage through my mental map, but I cannot find a solution. Lastly, in the metabolization of the experience of the pathic, I give form to my singularity. 4.5.2 On the Dual Modality of Being Touched by the World Feeling touched by the world is a truly unique experience, insofar as it transforms my order of the heart. To be touched by the world means to let myself be involved, to be impressed, or troubled. Indeed, I do not feel touched by something neutral, insignificant, banal, or that involves me only superficially. The only true experience is the one that touches my singularity. I am the sedimentation and the memory of the expressive pathways prompted by these experiences. The singularity is forged by the experiences that touch it. Not everything that I do or that happens to me is an experience. Drinking a coffee or driving the car does not normally leave a trace on my existence. Among thousands of discourses, certain words suddenly capture my attention: those 23

See Pathosophie (Weizsäcker 1956).

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words have touched me deeply. Everything was going on in the usual, humdrum way. Then something happens that transforms my way of feeling and seeing: it was a touching experience. Suddenly, something attracts my attention and strikes the chords of my feeling. Something that touches me does not leave me indifferent, but tugs on me, urging me to take a position. The uniqueness and originality of my singularity are rooted in the mode of assuming a position with respect to this being touched. Being touched draws a clear border between the indistinct and neutral mass of what happens to me as it slips alongside me, and the experience of my singularity.24 Experience touches the chords of my feeling at different levels. There are experiences that touch more deeply than others. They are experiences that open new doors and new pathways. It is only then that I am re-born along with the world. Indeed, it is here that experience deposits within feeling seeds of novelty that blossom in a ripening of feeling itself. The world touches me by traversing a wound that is comparable to a slash in Fontana’s paintings. Sometimes, when it tries to traverse this wound, it does not find not enough room, or else it encounters an alien body that wounds my existence. In this case, I can have the experience of feeling rejected by the world. This rejection also models my singularity, but by deforming it and making it monstrous. Therefore, it inverts the anthropogenetic process of openness to the world in the direction of closedness to the world. When this slash corresponds to the auroral void, by contrast, it makes me feel accepted and moves me. The experience that moves me is one that shines with its own light, a light that is not obscured by something else. It is the experience for which I will later inevitably feel nostalgia. Thus, the experience of being touched by the world can happen in the two modalities of feeling accepted or rejected. In the first case, my feeling touched is linked to the pathos of wonder, and makes me expand and flourish; in the second case, it is linked to the pathos of horror and it paralyzes and petrifies me.25 The first modality promotes the activity of emotion as an anthropogenetic laboratory, whereas the second inhibits it. 4.5.3 On the Distinctiveness of Being Moved Being touched by the world, in the sense of feeling accepted by the world, is a “touching” or even “moving” experience. In Italian, this particular experience is also indicated by the verbal form “emozionare” (to move) or the reflexive form 24 25

See § 3.7 Experience as the Result of the Non-Neutrality of Feeling. Cf. § 6.8 Being Touched by the World. The Thauma Between Horror and Wonder.

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“emozionarsi” (to be moved).26 This does not happen, in contrast, when I feel rejected by the world. If I pay attention to linguistic usage, at least in Italian, I would not say that horror “moves me” (mi emoziona) or is “moving” (emozionante). What I would say is that horror is shocking or paralyzing. The adjective “moving” (emozionante) and the verb “to move” (emozionare) imply a positive movement. It is as if Italian linguistic usage knew how to identify a specific category of emotions, already grasped at the level of common feeling, but not yet suitably thematized at a philosophical level. These are precisely the emotions that I experience when I feel touched by the world and feel accepted, hence those that refer to the pathos of wonder. Being moved expresses the breathing and the beating of the order of the heart. An order of the heart that is moved is an order of the heart that is alive. Not everything that touches is touching. I am moved when something touches a chord of my soul and makes it vibrate. In fact, this is a “being touched”, in the sense of a “con-tact”, of a resounding together that is a being reborn along with the other. In hate too, I am touched by something or someone, and this is certainly a movement that is not superficial, so much so that it can last in time and also have a very complex structure. Yet this is a different kind of touching, which does not make my heart beat faster as in the first case. Indeed, I might become intensely upset in hate, but I am not “moved”. What determines this different valence of being touched? What movement is implicit in being moved? The etymology of emotion – ex- (outside) and -movere (move) – can be misleading if this “moving outside” is understood in the sense of a subject who, as she expresses herself, makes a lived experience come out of herself so as to expand her own territories. At the outset, there is no decision by the subject, but a being touched by the world. That which moves a subject, that which moves (-movere) outside (ex-), is not a decision of the subject, but a being touched by the world. Thus, “being moved” is the consequence of being touched by the world, which pushes me outside the horizon of my little self’s mental map and positions me ex-centrically in the world. 4.5.4 Sublime and Exemplarity as the Two Modalities of Touching That Can Move a Person So, I am moved when I feel I am touched by the world, and feel I am accepted. But by whom or by what am I touched in these cases? The fingerprints of whoever touches me can be identified in the characteristics of this being touched, 26

In the Italian reflexive verb “emozionarsi”, the attention is placed on the effect aroused in the person who is moved. In the English “something moves me”, by contrast, the stress is placed on the fact that “something” moves me.

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hence it is useful to start from these traces. It is not feeling touched by a hand that tests the waters, hence it is not a touching that objectifies me. It is rather a touching that involves and infects me. Hence, it is not an autopoietic subject that touches me, but a world which, by living, involves me in its life and makes me co-exist with it. When I am moved, I have the experience of a shock that makes me fibrillate and resound. This is not a mechanical, passive, inert resounding. It is active: in this resounding, I express who I am. Every singularity has its own particular way of resounding with the value or disvalue of that which touches it. It resounds with its own timbre. By making the singularity resound, it removes it from the flow of indifference and enables it to position itself in a non-neutral world. This co-existing with the world can be experienced either in the impersonal form of the sublime of nature or in the personal form of exemplarity. In the first case, I feel that I exist together with nature, as when I am touched by the beauty of a sunset. In the second case, I feel that I exist together with a community. The former is the modality of primordial feeling, proper to the biosemiotic level. The latter traverses the community space. In both cases, when I am moved, an anthropogenetic dimension manifests itself, which has its guide in the hunger to be born. When I am moved, I receive a push, and feel that I cannot continue my birth while remaining inside the repetition of what I already am, but only by going outside myself, that is, by exposing myself in the encounter with the other and in openness to the world. Thanks to this new attunement, I do not assume form within my skin, but within the space offered by the sublime or by a community. To traverse the spaces of the sublime or the community corresponds to a genuine anthropogenetic restructuring of existence. 4.5.5 The Touching of the Lips and the Emotion of the Kiss It is not straightforward to connect being moved to the experience of touch. In particular, the touching of the hand is associated with the experience that enables one to objectify, that is, to “reach out one’s hand” and verify something that, until then, had only been supposed or can be deceptive. In some cases, however, the touching of the tactile sense can cause one to be moved. Perhaps the most emblematic case is represented by a kiss. If the other’s face and gaze are at the center of her visual expressivity, it is also true that intimate contact with that face is materialized into a kiss. More than in the meeting of gazes, contact with the beloved’s face is realized in a kiss. This might be why we close our eyes when we kiss: the emotion of fusion caused by contact of the lips prevails over the emotion aroused by the gaze.

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Ultimately, this is what Klimt also suggests in the painting The Kiss (1907– 1908),27 when he places a mouth to be kissed in the center of the beloved’s face. And she offers this mouth as if on the edge of a precipice, eyes closed, as if she were waiting to open them for the first time and to wake up. The mouth to kiss also becomes the ideal point of carnal contact with the beloved’s face in the sculpture by Canova, Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss (1788– 1793).28 Here, two bodies are depicted, encircling each other with their arms in a circle, with the intention of a kiss at its center, as if they were yearning to achieve a single point of contact in an absolute celebration of eroticism that leaves everything else in suspense, almost as if to frame the kiss itself. In both Klimt and Canova, the kiss becomes the first form of participation in which the lovers mutually encounter the pulsation of the other’s flesh, until they identify with and find enjoyment in it. It is in a kiss that my lips are reflected and come alive in those of the beloved. It is in a kiss that I discover the pure pleasure of feeling the intersection of desires in the beloved’s lips. When kissing her lips, it is her pleasure that I feel, and I am fed by that pleasure, not by my own. In that moment, I live in and through the enjoyment of her lips. 4.5.6 Disorientation and Self-Transcendence of the Little Self The second typical moment of the experience of the pathic corresponds to disorientation. When I experience something, the first tendency is to trace it back to what is already known, along tracks that have already been followed, corresponding to tried-and-tested answers and expressive schemas. As long as I follow this logic, the form of my singularity’s positioning in the world remains stable. In everyday life, I find answers that reflect what I already am. When faced by an unexpected event, I take a whole series of countermeasures to adapt my positioning as best I can. I can experience pain, disturbance, curiosity, fear, but there is no anthropogenesis. There is no rebirth. And this is because the order of the heart is not touched. On the contrary, being touched by the world makes one flinch, precisely because it touches the order of the heart, and hence is disorienting. What is disorienting is the shock of coming into contact with another, more intense rhythm. In a pathic emotion I go outside myself, but not like when I am “beside myself with rage” or “going out of my head”. Rather, this “going outside” 27 28

See e.g. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/Klimt_-_The_Kiss_%28 detail%29.jpg See e.g. https://www.harpersbazaar.com/it/lifestyle/arte/a43271060/amore-psiche-opera -antonio-canova/

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corresponds to an act of self-transcendence from the self-referential perspective of the little self and from its habit-bound schemas. It is the little self that loses control of the situation and starts to panic. From the point of view of the singularity, by contrast, there is nothing irrational in this disorientation, since the personal singularity does not “lose its own head” but only that of the little self: that is, it overcomes the orientation of the little self. I feel touched by the world. I experience that the compass of the little self no longer works. This disorientation works as a tabula rasa, as an epoche in which the subject’s certainties vanish. The problem is no longer keeping the situation under control or recovering the previous balance, but it rather becomes a crisis, Hokusai’s falling wave, in which one feels ground give way from beneath one’s feet. Instead of returning to the old balance, as the little self would try to do, I have the experience of the heart’s restlessness, namely, the lack of correspondence between my way of existing and my desire. The order of the heart then starts to fibrillate and urges me to set out toward the unknown. It is at that point that the two roads considered above, of the pathos of wonder and horror, go their separate ways. In the former, when I am moved a new expressive pathway of my singularity starts to assume form. Here, disorientation flows into openness to the world. By contrast, in the emotion of horror, I remain petrified. 4.5.7 Entering into Fibrillation as the Search for a New Existential Order In the disorientation that accompanies being moved, I note that the instrumental rationality of the little self, which had acted effectively until now, suddenly trips over something unexpected and falls apart, thwarting every strategy of resilience. It is not at all reason that enters into crisis, but only the certainties of that self-referential subject which a certain philosophy wrongly equates with reason. Hence, fibrillation is not an “irrational tremor”. This fibrillation must not be confused with an excitation that is completely internal to the subject itself. Indeed, an excitation involves me, but it does not touch me profoundly. It quickly vanishes, rapidly moving onto something else without leaving a sign, without interacting with my singularity’s formation process. Contrary to excitation, when I am moved, an irreversible movement takes place that leaves an indelible sign. Being touched by the world modifies the rhythm of the order of the heart forever and makes it go into fibrillation in search of my destination. It is not a disjointed movement, nor is it a subjective, out-of-control skid that must be “straightened out” as soon as possible. The term “fibrillation” might be a bit perplexing. In medicine, it indicates a pathological irregularity in the heartbeat, as in the case of atrial fibrillation. Here, in contrast, I mean it in a positive sense. This fibrillation represents the

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moment of transition in which the order of the heart is affected by the rhythm of the world. It is the tremor of a person who overcomes a way of living focused on the logic of the autopoietic subject and reconfigures the physiognomy of her own singularity by being born together with the world. Hence, in the case of being moved, the moment of disorientation represents the transition to a new connection with the world, in the form of existing-together. What moves me is touching for this very reason: it opens up to a new connection with the world. In this case, the dis-orientation is not a loss of contact with reality but is rather the consequence of a periagogic re-orientation that goes beyond the reality of the little self to turn toward Weltoffenheit. 4.5.8 I Am Moved, Therefore I Exist Ex-movere, in the sense of going outside the little self, opens up to a new way of having experience and existing. In philosophy, there has been much insistence on the difference between simple survival and existence. In this context, Schelling already traces the meaning of the term “existence” back to that of “ecstasy”. It is not an irrational or mystic ecstasy, but an ecstasy as the transition to an ex-centric form of existence, in the sense of “an ex-­sistence [Hinausgesetztseyn], an ex-position [Exponirt-seyn], a standing out [Hinausstehen], as it were, as the Latin Exstare expresses”.29 Being moved is the movement that propels ecstasy. It is the movement through which the singularity’s existence becomes ex-centric with respect to the autopoietic logic of the little self. The little self remains immersed in the low tide of conformist feeling. A feeling that is indispensable for the reproduction of social consensus, but which has a narcotic effect if extended to community spaces. Of course, even in this low tide of feeling I am. Nevertheless, I still do not yet exist. I only exist insofar as I metabolize that anonymous feeling, that fleeting excitation, into my feeling. At that point, it is no longer an amorphous and impersonal feeling, but a feeling that leaves a trace inside me. And it is only in this being-moved that I properly begin to exist. Until that moment I can say: I feel, therefore I am. From that moment on I will say: I am moved, therefore I exist. Since it is not autopoietic, the personal system exposes its own wounds, and it is through these fissures that it can be touched by the world, and can therefore still be moved. And this is precisely why it exists. By contrast, an autopoietic system is a system without wounds, perfectly protected inside its own immune system. Precisely for this reason, it has already finished being born, and cannot be moved. 29

Schelling, Philosophie der Mythologie, in SW XII, 56; Engl. transl. by Fakhoury (2020, 214).

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Only a person who has come into the world without having finished being born is hungry to be born, and only this hunger can provide the energies to transcend the perspective of the little self. This act of transcendence is the ecstasy that enables me to exist, that is, to be moved and to continue my birth in the sense of being born together with the world. 4.6

Personal Emotion as an Anthropogenetic Laboratory

4.6.1 Beyond Antifragility: The Myth of Hydra and Medusa Hemingway observed that “the world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills”.30 In reality, the world does not break everyone, but only those who open themselves to it. Nevertheless, in some cases, the breakage caused by contact with life has the effect of forging and transforming. And it is precisely in this case that some people then become strong in the very place where they had been broken. By contrast, the world inexorably kills those who do not open up to it, who remain enclosed within themselves and isolate themselves. The world breaks all those who expose themselves to the risk of being touched. In this touching, however, the autopoietic immune system shatters, and this guarantees that they are forged to existence. It breaks all those who are moved; yet this being moved enables them to be reborn, to feel the fullness of their lives, to breathe all the love that desire needs in order to germinate. Thus, they find themselves with something they did not have before. This point, which becomes stronger precisely in being broken, is somehow reminiscent of Taleb’s antifragility. Taleb laments the confusion between his concept of “antifragile” and that of “resilience”: “Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.”31 Nevertheless, despite Taleb’s clarifications, this boundary remains very ambiguous. The example that Taleb gives to highlight the difference is the myth of Hydra. When decapitated, the Hydra multiplies its heads, showing not only that it is invulnerable to attack, but that it even comes out of it strengthened. In this way, however, the Hydra ends up exemplifying an autopoietic system that does not transform and is not reborn in the face of crisis, but which always remains qualitatively self-identical. What characterizes it is not a transformation, but a multiplication of the identical. This is an excellent strategy to mobilize the energies of a little self grappling with a difficulty, but 30 31

Hemingway 1929, 258. Taleb 2012, 3.

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not for a personal singularity crashing down like Hokusai’s wave. Here, where life touches, it inexorably breaks: yet it does not break in order to multiply the identical, as in the example of Hydra. It breaks in order to forge and to transform. Being touched by the world implies a transformation that overcomes autopoietic logic: it is not a regeneration and multiplication of the same head, but making room for the birth of something new, which did not exist before. The difference between antifragility and the transformation induced by being touched by the world is the same as the difference between the myths of Hydra and of Medusa. Medusa is beheaded by Perseus – as admirably portrayed in Cellini’s statue – and in this decapitation the splatters of blood attack her snake-shaped hair and transform it into beautiful red corals. It is the mythological example of how it is possible to transform something inauspicious (Medusa caused the death of whoever looked at her) and evil (the snakes that constituted her hair) into something beautiful and precious (coral). It symbolizes the successful metabolic process of a negative experience. This is therefore an irreversible transformation, in the sense that afterwards we are no longer the same. For its part, the Hydra’s decapitation symbolizes the reproduction ad infinitum of the identical. Being touched by the world is not similar to Hydra’s decapitation, but it has the effect of the blood that transforms the snakes of Medusa’s hair into coral: it is not a reproduction that endlessly multiplies our identity, but rather something that forges and transforms us forever. 4.6.2 The “Chisels” of Personal Emotion and Exemplary Experience What happens in that feeling deeply touched by the world? Why does it have such an overwhelming effect? In these cases, feeling and experience are not epistemological processes that traverse me in a neutral and painless way. I am not faced by the bare cognitive given per se. This feeling deeply touched is a signal that this touching is acting at a different level than the epistemological one: it is acting like Medusa’s blood, it is forging my singularity. I am being touched by the hand of an artist who is molding and giving form to the clay with her fingers. This is the third moment of the pathic, in which the personal emotions metabolize the experience of being touched by the world into an anthropogenetic process that reconfigures the physiognomy of my singularity, thanks to a re-synchronization with the world. In this sense, personal emotions work like a veritable “anthropogenetic laboratory”. As soon as I feel touched, a new connection with the world flashes forth, and behold, the “chisels” of personal emotion immediately get to work to give form

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to the part of my existence that had not yet finished being born. This action of personal emotion concerns the deepest core of the personal singularity’s freedom. By metabolizing experience, the chisels of personal emotion sculpt the order of the heart. Every significant experience that touches me is metabolized into an additional piece in the puzzle of my physiognomy’s expressive process, or into the scar or trace of a disfigurement. Hence, to every significant experience corresponds a reconfiguration and enrichment of the singularity’s physiognomy. Yet the order of the heart also has a retroactive effect on the subsequent way of having experiences. The order of the heart selects the successful metabolization of an experience in order to orient the successive experience. Thus, an exemplary experience is elevated to the status of the schema of every possible further experience of the same kind. Exemplary experiences become habits that orient the future mode of having experiences. But they are habits that are sewn by the order of the heart. In sewing them, the order of the heart imprints its style on them, making the singularity responsible for the level of depth at which it metabolizes its experiences. The schema drawn from an exemplary experience not only dynamically predetermines further experience, but it reflects the physiognomy of the person who exercises it: thus, it acts at both the perceptual and cognitive level, and at the anthropogenetic one. Experiencing at this level does not mean representing or objectifying something, but transforming and singularizing oneself. The pangs of the hunger of need urge one to foresee events and seek to dominate the world. In contrast, the pangs of the hunger to be born do not set out to objectify and manipulate the external world, but urge one to find the space to continue one’s own birth. Conferring an anthropogenetic meaning upon the affective development of the person involves a radical rethinking of the very concept of feeling and emotion, which, from humoral dynamics of the inner sphere, rise up to the status of concrete forces that give form to the positioning in the world that characterizes the person. Feeling and emotions are not a secondary attribute or evanescent coloring of my subjectivity, but that which determines my singularity. 4.6.3 The Picture of Dorian Gray The pathic that touches leaves a mark. A memory. It makes an impression, as in a photographic film. The experience of being touched is a first-person experience that leaves a mark. But where does the stream of these experiences leave its own imprint? The passage of lived time is the stream of my first-person experience. Nothing has the expressive potentials of a human face, but such an experience is expressed in the face only for the brief lapse of time in which

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I live it, only to leave space, immediately afterwards, for something else. Of course, some faces may remain marked by a particularly intense experience, but even in this case, the face does not register with precision the entire stream of the experience. What the face actually records is the passage of the years. The face ages. What, instead of my face, records those traces of lived experience? Somewhere there must be a sort of “picture of Dorian Gray” which, instead of recording aging, preserves the traces of the experiences that have marked me, and hence the traces of lived time. But if not on my face, where are those traces preserved? Where is the memory of them fixed? These traces are fixed in the part of the emotional brain that expresses the order of the heart; and what transcribes them are the “chisels” of personal emotion. In fact, it is the order of the heart that is “touched” by experience, and on it experience etches its story. Every experience that touches me leaves an indelible trace on my order of the heart. The more intense the experience, the deeper the trace that it leaves. Every trace is an additional piece in the delineation of the physiognomy of my singularity. The face of my order of the heart is the secret face of my destination. It is the face of my singularity’s formation process. The order of the heart is a picture of Dorian Gray that registers the traces of experience in place of the human face. If we could see the face of a person’s order of the heart, we would be able to read on that face all the marks left by her most significant experiences. We would be able to get to know that person without secrets, since the core of her personal structure would be revealed in an immediate and transparent way. Contrary to the picture of Dorian Gray, however, the face of the order of the heart does not age. The person’s face ages in its place.

CHAPTER 5

The Care of Desire 5.1

Exercises of De-Constellation: From Destiny to Destination

5.1.1 The Leaky Jar. Desire and Need Being touched by the world rekindles desire. But the urge of desire is immensely different from the urge of need. The urge of desire is capable of opposing the urge of hunger, fatigue, and other forms of need for days on end. It follows its own autonomous, ex-centric logic. In this connection, I have always been struck by the image of the “leaky jar” that appears in Plato’s Gorgias. It is an image that is regarded with much suspicion insofar as, according to the critics, it serves to propose once again an ascetic and intellectualist vision of ethics, in which human beings, letting themselves be governed by their rational part, will have to train themselves to desire as little as possible, constantly purifying themselves from pleasure and all attachment to the body, which, indeed, is defined as the tomb or prison of the soul (Grg. 493a). While this criticism may be justified, at least in relation to Gorgias, it does not take away any of the image’s fertility and fascination. With this image, Plato describes a degeneration typical of human beings, and outlines a difference in nature between the logic of need and the logic that transpires in certain forms of human greed. Indeed, we can observe that in non-human animals, hunger and need encounter a physical limit in the capacity of the stomach and a containment of instinct, whereas in human beings there is a greed which, since it has no limit, experiences non-saturable forms. Thus, while in all non-human animals pleasure remains contained and regulated, in human beings it becomes detached from biological regulation, becoming the presupposition for unlimited enjoyment. Of course, it is once again a negative definition, an anthropology of human insatiability: the same one also found, for instance, in the famous fragment in which Democritus observes that “the animal needing something knows how much it needs, the man does not” (DK 68 B 198). However, the image of the leaky jar goes farther, insofar as it gives a metaphorical explanation of the reason for this difference. The leaky jar is aplestos (that which cannot be filled), while, by definition, the organic appetite is satiable, that is, fillable.

© Guido Cusinato, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004520202_007

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Modern philosophical anthropology returns to these topics through the categories of ex-centricity1 and excess.2 Insatiable needs are those which escape the self-regulation of biological functions. The non-human animal is depicted as a homeostatic system, that is, a “non-leaky” jar, which overflows when filled, thus signaling that it cannot be filled anymore. This is the case of the stomach which, once filled, signals to the animal that it is already full through the sensation of satiety. Following this homeostatic principle, need is self-regulated in non-human animals. A human being, in contrast, is a “leaky” jar, that is, specifically a jar in which the homeostatic mechanism that regulates need in animal life is broken. Hence, it may happen that human beings continue to eat even after they are full. At the end of a lavish meal, if I am offered a slice of delicious Black Forest cake, it is highly unlikely that I will decline. However, if I do eat it, it will not be because I am homeostatically driven by hunger, but out of pure enjoyment. It is a behavior that is human, all too human. I spoke above of the “breaking” and overcoming of the homeostatic mechanism that regulates need in the animal world. The breaching of this balance, or the hole in the jar, represents the “breaching” of the embankments of the instinctive system. However, in order for a human being to assume form, an additional principle must come into play after the embankments of instinct have been breached, thus paving the way to enjoyment. This additional principle is desire. What defines a human being is not the insatiability of the leaky jar – that is, enjoyment – but the metabolization of enjoyment into desire, and this is made possible by the positive logic of erotic ex-centricity. There is an exchange between the logic of enjoyment and that of desire. This does not happen between the logic of desire and that of need, which instead remain irreconcilable. Need represents the logic of the “non-leaky” jar: it starts out from a lack to obtain the filling of a void, which, once filled, becomes fullness, presence, and satiety. Human logic, inaugurated in erotic desire, is completely different. Desire does not ask for something that can fill it, as it does not stem from a lack or a void to be filled, but from a promising void. Desiring asks for what the promising void asks for: not something that “fills”, but the 1 The anthropological concept of ex-centricity is particularly central in Schelling (see, for example, Philosophie der Offenbarung, SW XIV, 309) and in Plessner 1981. 2 Bataille maintained that excess (surplus) and expenditure (dépense) are essential to human life. By “excess” he understood a surplus of energy that cannot be used according to the logic of productivity, whereas by “expenditure” he understood the waste of resources that derives from the unproductive use of such surplus of energy. Bataille saw in excess and in expenditure a potential source of violence and destruction. However, he also saw them as a possible source of creativity and innovation (see Bataille 1988).

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birth of a novelty that cannot be contained within the schemas of the existent. Precisely for this reason, if need fills, satisfies, and confirms, desire, for its part, questions and transforms. 5.1.2 From Destiny to Destination: De-Sire as De-Constellation What has desire become for us moderns? In modernity, desire avoids destiny to go in search of the destination of the singularity. While pathic emotion is still immersed in disorientation, desire has gone beyond it. It expresses the intentionality of the heart’s restlessness, which derails my existence from the tracks of convention to make room for a new beginning. It concerns an intentionality that orients human beings in the search for a vocation that is not already etched in a fixed destiny but is always ready to surprise as it comes to meet them. And it is in the search for this encounter that the singularity assumes form. Few terms have such a fascinating and controversial etymology as “desire”. The Latin verb “desiderare” derives from the particle “de-” and the noun “­sidera”, which is the plural of “sidus”, star. In desiring, it is as if we recognized that we are made of the same matter as the stars and were seeking to raise the whole of reality to the stars. But which stars? Now it is well-known that since antiquity a group of stars has assumed a very precise meaning: it is a constellation. Indeed, the ancients already connected the stars in the sky theoretically to form constellations, which were necessary not only to orient themselves when navigating at night, for example, but also to orient existence by means of the signs of the zodiac. The other question concerns the interpretation of the meaning of “de-”. This particle can indicate something being lost, as in the case of “to deform”. But it can also indicate the active action of destroying a construction or a structure, as in the terms de-construct, de-structure, or de-molish. In the first case, something positive – form – is lost; in the second, by contrast, I demolish a structure that has henceforth lost its usefulness. Therefore, depending on the interpretation of the particle “de-”, de-sire expresses two different meanings: (1) the emotion of nostalgia for the loss of the constellations, that is, the lack of fixed points of orientation; (2) the action of “de-constellating”, that is, actively destroying that constellation that, like a destiny, imprisons my current existence in the worries of daily routine. In the former case, the ancient conception of desire prevails, as nostalgia for an original unity and the aspiration to reunite with it. In the latter, by contrast, is already present, in embryonic form, the dissatisfaction of the modern individual, trapped by social customs in a constellation that has stripped her existence of meaning. This dissatisfaction translates into the action of “de-constructing”

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the old constellation – destiny – to set off in search of a new constellation, understood as destination. In the latter case, to desire (Latin de-siderare) indicates the action of “de-­ constellating”. The verb “to constellate” indicates the action of dotting the sky with stars until a constellation is formed. The opposite action of “de-­ constellating” therefore consists of canceling the constellation of my destiny, in order to look beyond it for the new constellation of my destination. When I desire, I puncture the gravitational field of my destiny in order to search behind it for my destination. In this case, I have no nostalgia for the constellation that had oriented my past existence. On the contrary, I am deeply dissatisfied with the constellation that orients my current existence, and this dissatisfaction incites me to take my distance from it in order to look for a new constellation that I cannot yet see. By overcoming the constellation that has oriented my existence, in reality I allow my existence to escape from the rails of fatalism. For the ancients, our destiny was already written in the stars. Indeed, when they looked up at the nocturnal sky dotted with splendid stars (Italian astri), they associated those wonderful luminous points with fixed and immobile entities, sculpted for all eternity, and on which the balance and destinies of the world depended. Yet there is an exception, and it is represented by the falling star. It represents a “dis-aster” that changes and once again questions the cosmic order, and hence our individual destiny as well. This is why, according to an old popular saying, we should express a desire when we see a falling star. Indeed, if we quickly introduce a deeply felt desire through this breach that has suddenly opened up, it has a possibility of being realized. The falling star of desire makes us derail from the fixity of our destiny, and thus allows us to seek our true destination, our vocation, which is tied to the fragment of truth hidden somewhere within us. The desire of the falling star says: the constellation of this destiny does not belong to me, my destination is elsewhere. Desire is thus a voluntary exile that institutes the time of existence: by falling outside the time of the fixed stars, one descends into temporality and into the becoming of the world. Desire is born in the gap between the openness of the auroral void and the poverty of the self-referential horizon of the little self. It does not aim at possession, filling, or satisfaction (it is always insufficient). To be faithful to one’s own desire does not mean remaining trapped in one’s own illusory, self-referential projection or carrying out something that is already given, but being reborn in the encounter with the other and inaugurating a new beginning that is not yet known because it is no longer under the old constellation. As such, the true ethical “ought-to-be” will come to coincide with faithfulness to one’s own desire.

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5.1.3 Desire Is Always Desire of the Other Desire is always desire of the other. What is often understood by this expression is that desire is the desire to be recognized by the other. This is a misleading interpretation. Desire is desire of the other, but for a different reason. In the other I do not seek recognition of what I am, for the simple reason that in desiring, it is I who am no longer content with what I am: I desire the other, therefore, I experience my lack of self-sufficiency; I desire the other, therefore, I am no longer interested in the recognition of what I already am, insofar as I am seeking something different. Desire does not ask for recognition from the other because it really does not know what to do with such recognition. Desire is the first to disavow and undermine what the little self fights to have recognized. In fact, desire asks the other for something infinitely more challenging than being recognized: it asks to be desired. And this is because it does not seek in the other a confirmation or recognition of what it already is, but an additional space in which to make something that does not yet exist be born. What desire seeks in the other is the source of the energy that makes one exist. In this sense, desire is never “perfectly disinterested”; indeed, it seeks the source of the energy that makes one exist ecstatically, that is, outside of one’s own little self. Germinative desire is in search of an alterity that can become a maternal womb. Desire is necessarily desire of the other, because it does not find room to continue to be born within the narrow confines of one’s own little self. This is why it flips the perspective and removes the ground from beneath the feet of one’s own little self, so as to lay bare its limits and lack of self-sufficiency. It desires the other because only in the other does it find the salvific space where it can continue to be born. In desiring, I do not aim to expand my boundaries, I do not pursue the reflections of my needs on the surface of external objects, but I make room for something that has not yet come to light: I open myself to the constellation of the not-yet-given. Desire has this particular aspect: it does not aim to take possession of something but determines a periagogic conversion of the gaze, beyond the self-referential perspective of its own being. Like a tower, the little self erects itself by taking care of its own social recognition and imitating a social model. This aspiration is not only legitimate, but necessary. However, the logic of the model, despite being crucial to understanding the constitutive process of the little self and of autopoietic systems, proves to be totally inadequate at the level of the personal singularity. The mistake is to confuse the little self’s aspiration for recognition, which takes place through imitation of a model, with the desire of the personal

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singularity, which discovers in the exemplarity or in the sublime an unexpected invitation to seek its vocation beyond its own social recognition. Desire is only the desire that originates from a personal singularity. When the singularity’s desire is bent to the logic of the little self – and is therefore traced back to the logic of the model – it becomes what Girard, with an ambiguous expression, calls “mimetic desire”, that is, a false desire. 5.1.4 Imitation of the Model and False Desire Driven by the hunger to be born, desire is the search for a new destination, that is, a new attunement with the whole through the spaces of the ­community. For its part, the little self limits itself to repeating a destiny that is already written in the spaces of the collectivity. By desiring, a person smashes the little self’s destiny, that is, the autopoietic closure of her immune system. Strictly speaking, destiny is the operative closure of an autopoietic system; while desire is what distinguishes a non-autopoietic system from an autopoietic system. This is why an autopoietic system is incapable of desire. At most, what an autopoietic system such as the little self can do is try to imitate or reproduce the other’s desire. The desire to imitate a model is not a “mimetic desire”. It is simply a false desire that falls back into the logic of the erection of the little self; hence, it is a desire that has regressed to the craving of the little self that follows the logic of the model and of the struggle for ­recognition. For its part, desire, by its very nature, cannot imitate. And if it does, then that means that it is no longer desire. This attempt cannot work, insofar as it deludes itself that it can silence the pangs of the hunger to be born by appropriating the prestigious objects that the model displays like totems. In this way, mimetic desire tries to fill the singularity’s existential void with the same logic by means of which the little self seeks to fill the voids of its own hunger for recognition: by pursuing wealth, honors, and pleasure. Once it has regressed to mimetic desire, the singularity mechanically repeats the model until it ontologically obliterates itself in that model. Imitation of desire is always the indication of a lack, or a condition of sterility. In contrast, the desiring singularity has no need to imitate the other’s desire, since it kindles its desire by rubbing its fragment of truth against that of the other. For the singularity, the other is not a model to be imitated, but an exemplarity that testifies to its own “hunger to be born”. The breach opened by the hunger to be born is in fact the vulnerability that we secretly admire in every exemplarity, the exposed wound of every work of art. It is this wound, not the prestigious objects displayed by the model, that desire really intends.

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5.1.5 The Singularization of Enjoyment: Beyond the Opposition between Enjoyment and Desire If desire and need are impermeable, the boundaries between desire and enjoyment are instead porous. And yet for a long time in philosophy, desire and enjoyment have been dualistically opposed. In the authoritarian morals of the past century, desire was regularly exalted, in that it was considered a bridge toward the transcendent, whereas enjoyment was repressed as something negative. By the end of the century, however, the perspective was reversed: compulsive enjoyment was often rendered absolute, so much so that every limit or obstacle was immediately branded as an unjustified act of repression, while desire was condemned as an anachronistic expression of a metaphysical nostalgia. If, in the age of authoritarian morality, enjoyment was repressed in order to absolutize desire, in liquid society desire is repressed in order to absolutize compulsive enjoyment. In this way, all that has been done is to replace a repressive moralism with a moralism of the opposite kind. The conformist hedonist and a hedonistic moralism also exist. The absolutization of compulsive enjoyment has nothing revolutionary about it, as it proves to be perfectly compatible with the logics of neoliberalism. What is revolutionary, however, is to singularize enjoyment. Standardized enjoyment, which is proposed by the entertainment industry, is an anonymous, that is, pornographic enjoyment. Singularized enjoyment, in contrast, is an enjoyment that no longer follows a ready-made, universal, and one-size-fits-all schema. The problem inherent in enjoyment is not that of repressing its presumed original negativity but of promoting its potential positivity. I singularize enjoyment, I make it my own, that is, I “humanize” it, insofar as – instead of letting it slip alongside me, without interacting with my existence, as if it were an amorphous material – I make it interact with my order of the heart. This interaction is impossible in compulsive enjoyment, since there is no temporal distance between need and satisfaction: as soon as the possibility of satisfaction appears, then I automatically satisfy myself, without, therefore, exercising the function of preference. But as has already been emphasized, the opposition is not between desire and enjoyment, but between desire and need. Desire and enjoyment are separated insofar as enjoyment assumes form through the logic of need, and this occurs insofar as the temporal distance between need and satisfaction is reduced. Or they are rigidly predetermined, as in pornographic enjoyment. Here the function of preference is limited to the initial phase when a type of satisfaction is chosen, but once this choice has been made, we are faced by a concluded, pre-packaged product, which exonerates us from any hermeneutic effort and guides us along a perfectly anonymous pathway.

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The singularization of enjoyment is possible only if one follows the opposite direction, if enjoyment is emancipated from the logic of need. If a temporal gap is created, a momentary postponement of satisfaction. In this case, the impulse is not immediately satisfied in pre-encoded and ready-made forms, and enjoyment can freely interact with the order of the heart. In momentary postponement, the logic of desire finds room to fertilize the logic of enjoyment. Finally, the singularity starts to ask itself what it really holds most dear, and begins to try out new expressive forms of enjoyment. It is in this gap, this postponement, that the erotic revolution is observed. In the former case, the passage from impulse to enjoyment was so rapid that there was no time to see by what means satisfaction was obtained; much less was it possible to exercise the function of preference. By contrast, in the latter case, thanks to the distance between impulse and enjoyment, the eye of eros sees the object of desire for the first time, whereas enjoyment had been completely blinded by compulsiveness. However, eroticism requires a hermeneutic effort, which is precisely what pornographic enjoyment makes it possible to avoid. But it is only thanks to this effort that I construct a new expressive pathway between impulse and enjoyment. Every singularity will build its own bridge between enjoyment and desire, that is, it will make anonymous enjoyment its own and metabolize it into its own enjoyment. In place of the predefined alternatives of pornographic enjoyment, there will be many expressive pathways of enjoyment singularized into desire. When this passage is not successful, instead of transforming into desire, enjoyment falls back into “compulsive enjoyment”. By offering forms of easily available, ready-made satisfaction, the cultural entertainment industry not only creates consensus, but orients individuals’ choices and “breeds” them. As a consequence of this “mediatic breeding of human beings”,3 the individual who compulsively enjoys reproduces the dominant logic in the social system. The metabolism of enjoyment into desire, for its part, is a form of producing dissent that opposes resistance and avoids the mediatic breeding of human beings. By singularizing enjoyment, I give form to my singularity and develop an alternative form of orientation. This is why, in liquid society, the mediatic breeding of human beings has continued to chip away at the space set aside for the dissent of desire, in favor of those set aside for the conformism of ­compulsive enjoyment.

3 On this concept, see § 3.4.12 Mediatic Breeding of Human Beings.

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The Seedling of Desire

5.2.1 Desire and the Call (or Vocation) I do not know whether all human beings feel or have felt a call.4 Or if they have understood what their vocation or destination is. The experience of desire is certainly much more widespread. In modern times, desire can be described as the search and the wait for this call. In the rest of the living world there is no desire, since this “call” is already present and defined at birth, and corresponds to destiny. Acorns, horses, eagles, or deer come into the world with the seal of an already predefined “call”. They do not need desire, because they are born inside a “call”, and after a short period of imprinting, they already have all the instructions that are useful for survival. There is no risk that they can leave their destiny behind and get lost. Rather, the personal singularity is born outside this call, and all its efforts consist in ferrying its existence from destiny to destination in such a way as to enter “inside” this call. Desire is what enables this passage to take place. There is nothing automatic or obvious about this passage, so much so one often gets lost. Sometimes only desire remains, without anyone calling. At other times, the call itself is misunderstood. Contrary to destiny, the call is a destination that is anxious to be born. This is why desire exists. Human beings are born without having finished being born, because the destination is not predetermined and already inscribed ­somewhere, but is shifted into the future. Destiny and destination do not ­coincide, and the time of desire is the product of this gap. And yet, the existence of desire indicates that the destination is already anxious to be born. Desire expresses the effort of my fragment of truth to emerge, and then to interact. The destination is the new constellation that is delineated in the interaction with the other fragments of truth, and which is perceived by desire as a call. Desire thus becomes responsible toward its own destination. This responsibility is at the basis of what could be called an ethics of the care of desire. Properly speaking, however, it is not an ethics of responsibility but of “co-responsibility”. Why is this turning point introduced by desire so important? Desire diffuses a new form of orientation. It does not stem from nostalgia for an original unity situated in the past, nor does it follow a fixed star placed in the future. In desire 4 Here I am referring to James Hillman: “Sooner or later something seems to call us onto a particular path. You may remember this ‘something’ as a signal moment in childhood when an urge out of nowhere, a fascination, a peculiar turn of events struck like an annunciation: This is what I must do, this is what I’ve got to have. This is who I am.” (Hillman 1996, 3).

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one does not aim to realize an ante res idea, nor is there a renewed proposal of some form of finalism. By contrast, it orients human beings in search of a vocation that is not already inscribed in a fixed destiny but comes upon them like a surprise. Inspiration does not repeat something already known, but is a trumpet call that makes me turn my head toward a new constellation that I had not noticed until then. And it is in proceeding in this new direction that my fragment of truth finds new opportunities for interaction, and my singularity assumes form. 5.2.2 The Plasticity and Incompleteness of the Order of the Heart Konrad Lorenz made a distinction between innate behavior, already present at birth, and learned behavior. Innate behavior is what allows a duckling that has just emerged from an egg shell to run, swim, filter mud with its beak, clean and grease its feathers. The duckling’s learned behavior, by contrast, is influenced by its first experiences and determined within quite a short time span of around 36 hours. After this, it becomes irreversible. This is the phenomenon of “imprinting”, which struck Lorenz when he was quite young: a duckling identifies its mother with the first living being that it meets once it has emerged from the egg. Successive experiences no longer manage to challenge imprinting, which therefore becomes an indelible brand. Consequently, in a short period of time, the duckling’s order of feeling assumes a definitive and irreversible form that can no longer be altered or integrated, except by some events linked to biological growth such as reaching sexual maturity. Human life is much more plastic. Before Goethe, the formation process (Bildung) of a living being had generally been understood as the ability to passively receive a form already present in the world of ideas, as clay receives a form from the idea of a vase. Goethe reverses this perspective, and places at the foundation of the process of the formation of life not the ability to receive form, but to generate it. Nature’s formation process is morphological, in the sense that it generates ever new forms. In this concept of plasticity, there is no longer any reference to the ability to passively receive a form, but to the ability to generate without recourse to preconstituted models. To plasticity – in the sense of the ability to receive a form – corresponds change (in the sense of adaptation, flexibility, or elasticity), while to plasticity – understood as the ability to generate form – corresponds transformation as an irreversible process. The plasticity of the human formation process has its own nucleus in desire. At birth, the order of feeling of the baby’s body schema (ordo carnis) is only partly active. Only later is the order of feeling of the little self (ordo socialis) stimulated by practices of emotional sharing with the mother, ignited, and,

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when the individual is about to reach maturity, the personal singularity’s order of feeling (ordo amoris) is also ignited. The first thing that catches the eye is that in human beings, the phenomenon of imprinting, and with it the concept of acquired behavior, changes radically. It is as if the phenomenon of imprinting became dynamic and were diluted throughout the entire arc of existence. The first experiences are no doubt important, in human beings, but subsequent ones can also have a decisive influence and modify the picture created by previous ones. This holds true for the personal singularity in particular. Desire ensures that existence does not become crystallized, and can continue to be constantly transformed. In certain cases, transformation can even be so deep that it becomes configured as a genuine periagogic conversion. This extreme plasticity of existence is a product of the order of the heart, and represents at the same time both an advantage and a risk. When faced by an existential change, the order of the heart is not always able to find a new positioning in the world suited to the new conditions of life. When this does not happen, then human existence falls into the various forms of psychopathology. 5.2.3 Birth and Neoteny: Protean Incompleteness In his De hominis dignitate (1496), Pico della Mirandola intuits that unlike other living beings, a human being comes into the world with an indeterminate and open nature. Having been created without a fixed and already ready-made nature, a human being discovers that she is protean and plastic.5 Pico della Mirandola’s concept of “protean” plasticity raises the problem of a process of formation that remains constitutively open in human beings. For it to remain open, however, there must be a force that keeps this process plastic. This force is desire. What shapes human beings is not the will of the little self, but a desire that grows and develops only in interaction with the other. This possibility of encountering the other would cease to exist with the rigidification of the process of formation that is capable of letting the interaction of fragments of truth continue. Desire aims to interact with the fragment of truth of the other, and, 5 “We have given you, Adam, no fixed seat or form of your own, no talent peculiar to you alone. This we have done so that whatever seat, whatever form, whatever talent you may judge desirable, these same may you have and possess according to your desire and judgment. Once defined, the nature of all other beings is constrained within the laws We have prescribed for them. But you, constrained by no limits, may determine your nature for yourself, according to your own free will, in whose hands We have placed you. […] We have made you neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, so that you may, as the free and extraordinary shaper of yourself, fashion yourself in whatever form you prefer” (Pico della Mirandola, Engl. Transl. 2012, 129).

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in this way, keeps the protean plasticity of the process open. Without desire, therefore, the process of formation is blocked. To claim that human beings come into the world without having finished being born, and that their characteristic is that of prolonging their birth outside the maternal womb, is to give a “neotenic” description of the human formation process.6 At the same time, it means shedding new light on the concept of neoteny. In fact, up to now the attention has been focused on the fetalization as a delay in growth. In reality, this delay conceals something more essential. In the human being, neoteny reveals a protean plasticity reminiscent of the state of stem cells. In other words, in the human being, the delay translates into a prolongation of birth, and is connected to the possibility of preserving this protean condition typical of stem cells. In human beings, the prolongation of birth outside the maternal womb is taken in charge by relations of care and enabled by emotional sharing practices, on the basis of those that develop between mother and newborn. Protean development does not proceed randomly in every direction, but follows the logic of these relations of care and these emotional sharing practices. Desire is a “neotenic principle” in that it postpones the rigidification of the order of the heart and keeps open, in the protean sense, the vitality of the fragment of truth. This is why the personal singularity remains an “uncompleted totality”, and in certain aspects a “stem-like totality”. Desire is what delays this completeness. In short, desire is that which renounces stabilizing in a fixed form the stem-cell-like condition of what is protean. 5.2.4 The Cultivation of Desire Desire does not yet exist at the moment of biological birth; nor does it subsequently come forth from the newborn baby, already completed, like a new Minerva who was born fully grown and fully armed from the head of Jupiter. Neither is it a wild seed that germinates by itself and develops on its own account. Rather, desire is ignited by a spark that, since the birth of humankind, has been transmitted from generation to generation for thousands of years, not by biological, but by cultural means. If this spark is not transmitted in the first twelve months of life, the newborn falls into a condition of affective deprivation such as the one described by Spitz. In addition, once the spark kindles desire, in subsequent years the desire must be cultivated in a slow, laborious process of emotional literacy, through relations of care and emotional sharing practices of the community. 6 On the concept of neoteny, cf. Gould 1977, 352–404.

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The personal singularity does not enter the world through biological birth, but through the birth that is ignited by this spark in the spaces of the community. It is from this birth that the uniqueness of every personal singularity assumes form. What is transmitted, therefore, is not desire, but the spark that ignites desire like a flame. This transmission only takes place in a maieutic way, through the testimony of the parents’ desire. Thanks to this desire, the child sees that it is possible to desire and reconstruct a horizon of meaning that goes beyond the self-referential and conformist horizon of the little self, a horizon of meaning that corresponds to the new constellation of its own hunger to be born. In this way, desire roots ethics in feeling, and permits a non-moralistic ­conception of value. While until not long ago the problem of the existence of values and disvalues could be mistaken for an abstract academic question or a private issue, now it has become part of the lived experience of the masses: but it does so as the experience of a disvalue, of the lack of a job, a horizon of meaning, or a future. The cultivation of desire can reverse this nihilist drift. The individual stripped of desire is the consequence of a society that closes the spaces of the community and openness to the future. Without desire, the process of atrophization of the personal singularity can only continue, until the engagement, hope, and dedication needed to build social bonds and a prospective for the future are replaced by the various forms of depression and eating disorders. Once desire has been killed, these forms of malaise expand until they absorb the future. A society only remains open as long as the community spaces in which the incitation of desire acts remain open. Without this incitement, every society ends up collapsing under the weight of its self-referential perspective, and becomes a closed society. In the narcissistic era, the question at the center of democracy is therefore the cultivation, or, to be more specific, the care of desire. 5.3

Care of Desire and Relations of Care

5.3.1 Cure and Care English, unlike Italian, makes an accurate distinction between “cure” and “care”.7 “Cure” is directed to ill or needy people and is mainly understood as an activity that aims to medicalize a pathology, or to compensate for a lack or a disability. In contrast, “care” evokes the act of “cultivating”, and includes all the 7 See for example Mayeroff 1990.

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activities that promote the flourishing of a person’s life. However, it must be pointed out right away that there are also hybrid areas; moreover, there is no one single cure or care, but different types of cures and cares. Until not long ago, social attention had remained focused on cure. Only in the last few decades – thanks to the feminist ethics of care8 – has the importance and centrality of care in any society been recognized. As observed by Joan Tronto, one of the most significant voices in the ethics of care, for a long time everything that had anything to do with care was relegated to the sidelines of society, so much so that even today, care-related activities are usually underpaid and reserved for women or marginalized categories. The same attempts to give a cultural dignity to care activities or to theorize a philosophy of care have long been regarded with suspicion, as if they were ideological expressions of a prepolitical withdrawal into the private sphere. These are prejudices that reflect a conception of politics according to which social transformations pass exclusively through the political collectivity rather than through the community. The basic idea is that economic means of production and the production of economic wealth represent the exclusive propulsive core of human societies. Here one fails to take into consideration that without practices of care, humankind would disappear. For example, if we restricted ourselves to looking after newborn babies exclusively in the sense of cure and not of care, they could not become individuals capable of walking, talking, or having a minimal social life, and human society would be destined for extinction. No human society could exist, because the transmission of the spark of desire from generation to generation would be interrupted, that spark that enables the leap toward symbolic thought. Hence, the future of every ­civilization depends on the quality of this care. Social transformation cannot do without a practice of transformation of the self, and this transformation is based on the care of desire. Hence, the care of desire deserves to be placed at the center of the cultural, social, and formative initiative, as it is the cornerstone of every social transformation. In order to transform the world, individuals must first transform themselves. Instead, human beings often want to transform the world, but without transforming themselves. Yet, in this way, the world experiences only violent telluric aftershocks, instead of transforming itself. The philosophical origin of the concept of “care” dates back to Plato’s Alcibiades I. For the Platonic Socrates, the fundamental characteristic of “proper care” (Alc. 1.128b) is not to medicalize a pathology or to compensate 8 I am referring for instance to Noddings 1995; Ruddick 1989; Tronto 1993; Groenhout 2004; Slote 2007; Pulcini 2012; Mortari 2022.

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for a lack, but to “make us better” (Alc. 1.128e). Moreover, the subject of the epimeleia heautou is not the self-referential little self, but the soul. In short, the Platonic Socrates does not describe an intimist self-care directed at the self-referential subject, but a care that is directed toward the soul (epimeleia tes psyches) with the goal of cultivating it to make it better. Furthermore, the social and political dimension of care is strongly emphasized by Plato, through the analogy between the tripartition of the soul and of the state, and between care of the soul and care of the state. Unfortunately, in successive interpreters, the richness and depth of these analyses was lost, so much so that the epimeleia heautou has often been interpreted in the sense of a reparative cure, or an intimist self-care (cura sui). Hence, it has been seen as the private and prepolitical activity of a “beautiful soul” that is disinterested in the world, a beautiful soul that devotes itself to the formation of its own self and the cultivation of its own passions and talents. In all these cases, the care of the Platonic Socrates is misunderstood as an activity of “cultural fitness”. In several cases, the same twentieth-century philosophies that had rediscovered the concept of care ended up favoring a self-referential vision of it. Even the path that leads Heidegger from self-care to shared care (Mitsorge) and care-directed-to-others (Fürsorge) is constellated with hesitations, doubts, and contradictions. This is why I prefer the expression “relations of care” to the term “care”. This enables one to avoid the possible misunderstandings of a solipsistic “self-care” right from the outset. Rethinking care in the sense of a relation of care not only implies social recognition of the other, but also respect or even a form of “reverence” (Ehrfurcht) for the mysterious and ineffable sacredness of the other. It is only by leaving behind the perspective of cura sui to move on to the perspective of relations of care that “taking care of” becomes a “caring for”. There is no “cure of desire”, only “care of desire”. The idea of a “cure” of desire – that is, the medicalization of something that is ill in itself – must be replaced by a “care” of desire, that is, of a cultivation of desire. 5.3.2 Contamination between Care and Cure If it is true that relations of care do not arise as compensation for a lack or medicalization of a pathology, it is also true that human existence inevitably centers around illness, the need for help, and suffering. This dimension is also central in care and cannot be relegated to cure. There is consequently a profound convergence between care and cure. A cure that does not reduce the patient to an “object to repair”, but has the capacity to grant attention, listening, and time to the other as a personal

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singularity is not only more effective, but also more humane and less stressful for health workers themselves. Of course, situations able to ensure person-­ centered care would enable us to better confront the growing phenomenon of burnout among so many health workers, who may have chosen this profession with a certain ideal of care in mind, but then find themselves confronted by a completely different reality when they start to work.9 This tension inevitably arises in the face of the limits and exhausting rhythms imposed by an exclusively medicalizing “cure” and “burns up” the patience, resistance, and self-­ esteem of even the most motivated workers. To avoid this, it is important that care and cure can interact virtuously, by considering the patient as a person. However, the danger is that this process of interaction may take place in the opposite direction. A “bad” cure offers the tools for a pharmacologization of reality, just as a “bad” care offers the tools for a mediatic breeding of human beings. By making these two degenerative processes converge, a dystopian care-cure emerges that is modeled on techniques that are being tested in intensive animal farming. The modern techniques of mediatic breeding of human beings, accompanied by an increasingly widespread use of psychotropic drugs, are heading precisely in this direction. 5.3.3 If I Only Take Care of Myself, Then for Whom Do I Exist? Introducing the concept of care of desire enables a radical rethinking of the philosophy of care. The singularity is not a solipsistic atom, nor an autopoietic system. It is the little self, not the singularity, that constructs a horizon of meaning through the narcissistic care of itself. A singularity only exists insofar as it exists for someone else. This leads to a very banal question that sometimes comes up: if I only take care of myself, then for whom do I exist? I myself exist only because someone else took care of me previously. I only exist because for thousands of years, the spark of humanity has been transmitted from generation to generation through the care of desire. If I do not take care of anyone, I interrupt this process, the very process that has given me life as a singularity. A self-referential self will never be touched by this doubt. But if I am a personal singularity, and I only live for myself, then why do I exist? As a singularity, am I really capable of rebuilding a horizon of meaning for my existence once I realize that I have no one to exist for? If I only take care of myself, there is no room for a care of desire, insofar as such care is constitutively directed toward the other. In this way, I block my own anthropogenetic process. But if I make room for the care of desire as openness to the world, then 9 On this point see for example Maslach 2003, 222.

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the initial question becomes even more radical: the “whom do I exist for?” – the other – becomes the world itself, and the care of desire becomes care of the world, that is, care of the biosphere. This might also be why many feel an original and deep instinct that drives them to take care of an animal or a plant, for instance. Why do I feel better after I have watered the plant on my window sill? A care that requires a sacrifice and an obliteration of the self without receiving absolutely nothing in return is problematic, just as it would be reductive to think of an absolutely self-giving, “disinterested” act. I take care of that plant because I do not want to see it die, and because seeing it flourish makes me feel better, more fertile. In this well-being in the face of its flourishing, it is my existence that is enriched. Behind the search for this well-being, there is not a self-giving act to be imposed by the will or the ought-to-be, nor some form of self-satisfaction of the little self; rather, there is a feeling of being connected to the whole. Feeling fertile is the most immediate and effective way to demonstrate to oneself the fact that one exists. Nevertheless, this well-being is not only the consequence of pleasant actions such as watering a sweet-smelling rose. There are various cases in which taking care can cause negative reactions such as disgust or nausea. And yet, even cleaning up revolting litter from the banks of a river can cause a form of well-being. In these cases, empathy is not sufficient to motivate relations of care; what is required is a motivation that emerges from the care of desire, and from the deepest core of generative emotions.10 5.3.4 The Anthropological Vulnerability of the Fragment of Truth The care of desire allows new light to be shed on the concept of autonomy and of vulnerability often referred to in philosophies of care. For example, Tronto notes that “[c]aring is by its very nature a challenge to the notion that individuals are entirely autonomous and self-supporting. To be in a situation where one needs care is to be in a position of some vulnerability”.11 This is a passage that must be read with some attention. If relations of care are directed toward vulnerability, as if it were a lack or a pathology, then one would regress into a medicalizing conception of care. In other words, care would once again be conceived of as a form of cure. In the care of desire, by contrast, vulnerability acquires an anthropogenetic meaning. My singularity is “vulnerable” because I can be touched by the world. I am not autonomous insofar as I am only a fragment of truth, that is, an 10 11

On the limits of empathy, cf. § 7.2.4 The Aporias of Empathy. Tronto 1993, 134.

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uncompleted totality, in the manner of a stem cell. Without this “stem-cell-like” property, characteristic of the personal center, my formation process would very quickly come to a halt. Vulnerability takes the place of pre-­established harmony. I am vulnerable insofar as I am a monad with windows. This vulnerability is what enables my fragment of truth to interact with that of others. In short, vulnerability is not a lack or a pathology, but a space of openness: it is the characteristic of the auroral void. Being “vulnerable” means that I have the good fortune that my fragment of truth is situated in the conditions to continue to interact with that of others. Without such vulnerability, that fragment of truth would remain walled up inside its own immune system, and would die. In itself, the fragment of truth has no meaning. A fragment of truth is not an “amputated truth” or a truth that yearns to find its missing half in order to become absolute. It is rather a fragment that becomes true only by interacting with other fragments of truth. Its horizon of meaning is only constituted through interaction with other fragments of truth. This vivifying interaction, enabled by vulnerability, also occurs in cases that have to do with illness, suffering, and pain, not in the sense of medicalization, but in the production of meaning. Sometimes, the fragment of truth that suffers most is the one that most intensely yearns to interact. 5.3.5 The Three Questions at the Center of a Care of Desire What I propose is to base the philosophy of relations of care on the care of desire. Some relations of care are directly influenced by the care of desire. With respect to this kind of relations of care, three crucial questions arise: (1) What is the aim of these relations of care?; (2) What are their presuppositions?; (3) What forces motivate and orient them? I have already developed the arguments to answer these three questions over the previous pages, so in what follows I will just restrict myself to a brief schematic synthesis. (1) It is no doubt correct to maintain that relations of care are aimed at the well-being and the flourishing of those that receive them, but this is still too generic. There are various problems behind this concept of well-being and flourishing. For some time, it has been well known that the psychological wellness of the members of a company has a notable impact on their productivity. Hence, it is important that a company take care of this aspect as well. This type of wellness, however, does not fall within the purview of philosophy. The philosophical counseling practices that give priority to a corporate type of wellness, based on the concept of resilience or antifragility, have more to do with the “psychology of work” than they do with philosophy. The relation of care that is involved in the care of desire is not even identical with the concept of mental wellness, nor does its end lie in therapeutic actions aimed at “repairing” an

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individual’s psychological balance. It does not refer to material or psychic wellness, but to well-being at the anthropogenetic level. The care of desire expresses the intentionality of the hunger to be born. The ultimate end of the care of desire is the birth of the singularity and to ensure the continuation of its birth. From this perspective, relations of care have a maieutic function: they help the other to continue her birth. The topic of ­giving birth does not obliterate the topics of illness and death. Of course, the singularity can be annihilated by illness or suffering, but even when it loses this battle it can find the strength to testify to its own way of confronting pain and death. In this testimony, too, the singularity can open a horizon of meaning and become maieutic; so much so that in certain cases the “how to die” can be an example and acquire a meaning that goes beyond the event of death. (2) What are the presuppositions and the motivations of the relations of care that are involved in the care of desire? It is surprising that, despite the fact that an epochal “emotional turn” has been witnessed in the last few decades, the connection between relations of care and emotions has remained blurred. Only more recently has this aspect begun to be considered, but only to focus almost exclusively on the concept of empathy. Empathy is a necessary but not sufficient condition. As we have already seen, a sadist must have a strong empathic ability in order to be able to enjoy the pain she causes her victims. Furthermore, empathy alone is not in a position to motivate relations of care in situations that arouse frustration, disgust, or nausea. The presuppositions of relations of care can be identified in the three characteristics of what I have indicated as the “generative condition” of the personal emotions:12 (a) The capacity to transcend the perspective of the little self. As Mayeroff also pointed out, in caring “the growth of the other is the center of my ­attention”,13 but in this taking care of the other’s growth my personal growth inevitably becomes involved as well.14 From the perspective of care of desire, this is not contradictory. Indeed, the presupposition of my personal realization is to leave behind the self-referential perspective of the little self in order to encounter the other’s fragment of truth. (b) Once I emerge from the perspective of my little self, I only manage to relate to the other’s fragment of truth if I look at the other with a gaze that is free of envy. (c) Finally, once I discover that the other singularity can offer me the space I need to continue my birth, it necessarily acquires a value of sacredness that goes beyond simple recognition to become respect. 12 13 14

See § 4.4.5 The Generative Condition of Personal Emotion. Mayeroff 1990, 39. Ibid., 40.

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(3) What forces orient these relations of care? The question of the orientation of human existence revolves around the “cultivation” and maturation of the emotions. The force that orients these relations of care toward the other is exemplarity, while that which orients them toward nature is constituted by the sublime.

CHAPTER 6

Philosophy as Exercise of Transformation 6.1

What Is a Philosophical Exercise of Transformation?

6.1.1 Cura Sui and Individualistic Withdrawal into the Private Sphere One of the most recurrent criticisms directed toward the philosophy of ­relations of care is that it represents an individualistic withdrawal into the pre-political sphere. As will be argued in the last chapter, it is precisely the contrary that is true, since today every project of social transformation necessarily goes through the recognition of the centrality of relations of care for the political sphere as well. These criticisms are fueled by the fact that, in many interpretations of spiritual exercises, insufficient attention is paid to the question of a self-­ transcendence of the self-referential perspective. In this case, spiritual ­exercises actually run the risk of becoming a cura sui of the little self. This problem was already raised by Hadot when he directs to Foucault the famous accusation that the latter interprets the cura sui as a kind of “aesthetics of existence”, in the sense of a form of “dandyism” in which the subject constructs itself as a work of art.1 It can be debated whether this position actually corresponds to an “intimist” vision of spiritual exercises, or whether Foucault has instead been misunderstood here. This problem certainly does not arise for Hadot, who is unequivocal on this point. There is an additional circumstance that may have fueled the suspicion of an inner withdrawal: in developing the concept of spiritual exercise, both Hadot and Foucault referred primarily back to the Hellenistic era. However, it is no simple matter to interpret philosophical exercises of the Hellenistic era. It is claimed, for example, that for Epictetus the sage, through spiritual exercises, aims at an autarchic withdrawal into the inner sphere, the only sphere in which it is possible to become truly free, while she escapes as far as possible the influences of the external world, where one is condemned to remain a slave. There are, however, some elements that encourage a less reductive interpretation of 1 “What I am afraid of is that, by focusing his interpretation too exclusively on the culture of the self, the care of the self, and conversion toward the self – more generally, by defining his ethical model as an aesthetics of existence M. Foucault is propounding a culture of the self which is too aesthetic. In other words, this may be a new form of Dandyism, late ­twentieth-century style” (Hadot 1995, 256). © Guido Cusinato, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004520202_008

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this thesis. For Epictetus, but also for Marcus Aurelius, the “withdrawal into the inner sphere” is indeed not an end in itself, but only a means to successfully escape those passions for honor, glory, and wealth (the same ones already condemned by Socrates) that dominate in social conformism. To use the famous image of Marcus Aurelius, the “inner citadel” is not to be constructed in order to separate oneself from the world, but to contain and counteract the conformist pressures of social recognition, so that the correct posture can be assumed to practice friendship. Epictetus does not tell people to “withdraw” or “escape”: quite the contrary, ethics – one of the three parts or disciplines of philosophy – is entirely concerned with our behavior in society, and for Epictetus, as for Marcus Aurelius, ethics means that all our actions should be for the benefit of the human community.2 Despite all this, however, some evident differences remain between the Socratic philosophical exercise and that of Marcus Aurelius. In the Platonic Socrates, at the center of philosophizing is the maieutic image of birthing, that is, a transformation which, as such, inaugurates an irreversible formative process. At the center of the philosophical practice of Marcus Aurelius, there is no feminine image of “birthing”, but the military one of the “inner citadel”. In my attempts to experiment with philosophical exercises of transformation, I found myself more in tune with the image of “birthing” than with that of a “citadel”. It is thus the Platonic Socrates who became my primary reference point. In the following chapters – after having underlined some differences in the Platonic Socrates’ way of doing philosophy with respect to that of the Hellenistic era – I will also take into consideration the positions of other philosophers in search of further hints and suggestions to bring the concept of “exercise of transformation” more closely into focus. 6.1.2 The Dialogic and Destabilizing Dimension of the Socratic “Care of the Soul” There are two central aspects of Socratic philosophical practice that are not developed in the spiritual exercises of the Hellenistic era: the dialogic dimension, and the ironic, destabilizing dimension.

2 According to Pierre Hadot, “[for] Marcus Aurelius, then, as for Epictetus, the goal of our actions must be the good of the human community, and the discipline of action will therefore have as its domain our relations with other people” (Hadot 1998, 185), and this is so since, “insofar as we are parts of the human race, we must (1) act in the service of the whole; (2) in our actions, respect the hierarchy of values which may exist between different types of action; and (3) love all human beings, since we are all the members of one single body” (Hadot 1998, 183). On the interpretation of Pierre Hadot, see Chase 2013.

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Spiritual exercises in the Hellenistic era do not develop in the marketplace, in contact with people. In contrast, the Socratic exercise is only possible within a dialogic and social context.3 The very precept of “know thyself!” is observed by Socrates by dialoguing in public places, at banquets, or in markets. Indeed, it is only through the therapeutic function of a dialogue that a soul can see itself reflected in another soul, and, thus, learn to know itself. Furthermore, the mission that the voice of daimonion entrusts to Socrates has an explicit political valence: it is comparable to the task of the gadfly that torments a noble horse (Athene) so that it does not grow lazy. The relevance of this political dimension is even more evident by Plato, who explicitly interweaves care of the soul with care of the polis. In Plato, such political conversion becomes a conversion of the entire city toward the model sketched in the Republic. As Hadot also underlines, philosophy of Plato “is fundamentally a theory of political conversion […]. If the philosophers govern the city, then the whole city will ‘convert’ towards the idea of the Good. After Plato, in the Stoic, Epicurean and Neoplatonist schools, it is less a matter of converting the city than of converting individuals”.4 The other aspect that is missing in the Hellenistic attempt to universalize spiritual exercises is the famous Socratic irony and its destabilizing dimension. The Socratic exercise does not aim at ataraxia (“absence of disorder” or “peace of mind”). It does not aim to reassure, console, or to reinforce. It aims to verify and call into question, so much so that such an action often has painful consequences. Alcibiades compares the effects of Socrates’ discourses to the bite of a viper to the heart: Well, something much more painful than a snake has bitten me in my most sensitive part – I mean my heart, or my soul, or whatever you want to call it, which has been struck and bitten by philosophical discourses, whose grip on young and eager souls is much more vicious than a viper’s and makes them do and say the most amazing things (Smp. 218a, transl. modified). Properly speaking, the exercise of Socrates is not even an “exercise” if one understands by the term an encoded practice to be repeated every time with the same schemas. Rather, it is an ironic technique based on elenchos, refutation, and intended to call into question rules, precepts, dominant opinions, and common sense. 3 See Stavru 2009. 4 Hadot 2020, 94–95.

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In synthesis, in the Socratic exercise, primary attention is not directed toward the defensive strategy to be adopted when faced with misfortune and vicissitudes of life, but toward purification (katharsis)5 through refutation (elenchos) so as to enable a generative activity, which Socrates identifies with eros and with the invitation to cultivate the seedling of one’s own soul. 6.1.3 The Critique of Communication as the Transfer of Information and as Rhetoric Any reflection on philosophical exercises cannot help but start out from a preliminary question: is it really possible to write about these topics? This is what Plato also asks himself with regard to the famous “critique of writing” that refers back to the famous myth of Thamus. Plato immediately puts us on guard against facile illusions: “those who think that they can leave written instructions for an art, as well as those who accept them, thinking that something clear or certain can derive from writing [ek grammaton], must be quite naive” (Phdr. 275c, transl. modified). Plato is convinced that the best way to learn is not through writing, but through dialogue and discussion. He maintains that writing will never be able to replace the kind of learning that occurs when two persons are engaged in a conversation about a topic. In fact, in a conversation, each one can call into question the ideas of the other and contribute to perfecting one’s own thought. Plato’s polemical target, however, is not writing per se, as is generally believed. Rather, Plato is interested in putting us on guard against two risks that are implicit in both written and oral communication: the risk of understanding communication as transmission of notions according to the image of “communicating vessels”, and that of using it as a tool for persuasion in order to impose oneself, as in the rhetoric of the sophists based on their ability as the wonder-makers (thaumatopoioi).6 It is evident that Socrates himself, when he professes not to know, acknowledges that he has no notions to transmit. Indeed, he conceives of philosophy not as a method for transferring information, but for knowing oneself and taking care of one’s own soul. With this regard, it is interesting to note that Plato also criticizes oral communication, if it is understood as a direct transfer of information. This is what happens for example in the Symposium, when Socrates is invited to take his place next to Agathon (Smp. 175d).

5 Here and what follows, by the term “katharsis” I refer not to Aristotle, but to Plato. See Cusinato 1999. 6 Cf. § 6.7.5 The Narcotizing Wonder and the Puppeteer (Thaumatopoios) of the Cave.

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How fine it would be, dear Agathon, if the foolish were filled with wisdom simply by touching the wise. If only wisdom were like water, which always flows from a full cup into an empty one when we connect them with a piece of yarn. (Smp. 175d, transl. modified) Upon closer inspection, as is pointed out in the passage quoted above from the Symposium, Plato’s critique is directed at a model of communication based on the “principle of communicating vessels”, and thus understood as the transfer of information from the fuller vessel to the emptier one. The model that Plato is looking at is instead that of a communication capable of writing in the soul. It is therefore misleading to think that Plato’s reference to the figure of the father (275d–e) serves him to harness the anarchic and democratic nature of writing, in the sense of putting the ‘Oedipal leash’ of the father back on the written words that have remained orphaned (Derrida).7 On the contrary, Plato’s intent is to found a new type of communication, a “germinative” communication that can remain written on the soul. This communication is germinative not only because what occurs in it is not a simple transfer of information, but also because it does not aim simply to win disputes and verbal contests and thus to persuade as in the rhetoric of sophists, but to seek truth. Thanks to it, a veritable birthing of the soul becomes possible. Indeed, it allows the interlocutor’s soul to generate its own form, thanks to the force of the exemplary testimony of the maieutic interlocutor (Socrates in the Platonic dialogues). This happens especially in relation to the dialogues around themes that are decisive for care of the soul, such as the just, the beautiful, and the good. Indeed, correct communication takes place “only [in] what is said for the sake of teaching [didaskomenois] and learning [matheseos]”: what is truly written in the soul concerning what is just, beautiful, and good can be clear, complete, and worth serious attention: Such discourses should be called the legitimate children [of those who utter them]. (Phdr. 278a, transl. modified) It is this kind of communication to which the Platonic dialogues aspire. In his dialogues, Plato uses writing not to directly transmit notions, or to arouse wonder and impress his reader, but rather as bait to attract the soul to truth. Upon closer examination, therefore, it turns out that Plato does not criticize writing per se, but the way in which it was often used, for example, in Greek literature, 7 See Derrida 1981.

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including tragedies and comedies, and particularly in the writings attributed to Homer. However, the criticism of this type of writing should not make us forget that his great adversary remains the oral rhetoric of sophists. 6.1.4 Writing in the Soul by Rubbing Together Two or More Fragments of Truth When Plato writes his dialogues, he experiments with a new type of communication. It is a germinative communication, since it aims to remain written in the soul of the reader. The characteristic of germinative communication is that it is a living discourse that is therefore capable of responding and defending itself all by itself. Indeed, if I question it, it resonates within me without any need for me to make its sender, that is, the person who wrote or uttered it, intervene again. “It is a discourse that is written down, with knowledge [episteme], in the soul of the listener; it can defend itself, and it knows for whom it should speak and for whom it should remain silent” (Phdr. 276a). The Tübingen School was perfectly right in arguing that the Platonic dialogues are not self-sufficient, since they point back to something else. What is missing from the text on paper, however, is not an “unwritten doctrine”, but rather a “doctrine written on the soul”. Therefore, that which serves to complete the reading of the Platonic dialogues is the feedback of what resonates in the soul of the reader. The Platonic writings are not treatises conceived to transmit doctrines, but theatrical stages suitable for re-creating a situation similar to that of maieutic dialogues of Socrates, where a living communication, capable of writing in the soul, flashes forth. But who writes on the soul? And how? Hadot reports that in Memorabilia of Xenophon, when Hippias insistently asked for the definition of justice, Socrates finally observed that what cannot be said by words can be attested by actions: “If I don’t reveal my views on justice in words, I do so by my conduct”.8 Ultimately, therefore, it is exemplary testimonies that write on the soul, not edifying exhortations and discourses to which the facts do not correspond. Only those who can testify to a particularly significant lived experience write on the soul. The word remains written in the soul, and can only respond if it has a testimony behind it. Plato condemns a way of writing and speaking that pretends to communicate a content directly, from sender to receiver, without the need to make it resonate within the soul of listeners or readers. The intent is to demonstrate 8 Hadot 1995, 155.

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that a communication that works according to the principle of communicating vessels is utterly inappropriate for philosophy, and must be replaced by a living, that is, a germinative communication. The true language of philosophy is the one that remains written in the soul, and which, when questioned, makes our soul resonate. For Plato, philosophy is not a science like the others, since this kind of knowledge cannot be transmitted automatically. Philosophical communication does not germinate on what is written on a piece of paper. Nor, as we have seen, is it transferred directly through the words Socrates utters when he sits down next to Agathon. The secret of philosophical communication is something else. It is not comparable to a transfer or a displacement of information, but to a sudden blaze of fire that is ignited thanks to the spark that is born in discussions “in good will and without envy” (Ep. VII, 344b). Indeed, There is no writing of mine about these matters, nor will there ever be one. For this knowledge is not something that can be put into words like other sciences; but after long-continued intercourse between teacher and pupil, in joint pursuit of the subject, suddenly, like light flashing forth when a fire is kindled, it is born in the soul and straightaway nourishes itself. (Ep. VII, 341c–d) In the optics of the fragments of truth, philosophy is born when two or more exemplary experiences are rubbed together against each other, through a maieutic dialogue, as if they were flints. Words serve only to bring experiences into contact, but not to replace them. If philosophy limits itself to rubbing together only words, then it becomes sophistry. In contrast, if words and concepts serve to rub experiences against each other, then these experiences leave their imprints on the soul: that is, they write on the soul. In conclusion, doing philo-sophia does not mean to expound a philosophical system, but to rub the testimony of one’s own experience against that of another person as if they were two flints, in the hope that the sparks produced may ignite a great fire. 6.1.5 Hadot and the Distinction between “Philosophy” and “Philosophical Discourse” The technique of writing on the soul through the testimony of a lived experience is also applicable to the distinction that Hadot sketches between “philosophy” and “philosophical discourse”. While contemporary philosophers write theories of justice, Socrates, as we have seen, made visible what he understood by justice through the testimony of his own conduct.

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Hadot sees the concrete example of practical philosophy – which in the modern era has been replaced by “philosophical discourse” – in the saying of Epictetus according to which “doing philosophy does not mean to do an exegesis of the discourses of Chrysippus, but to live in harmony with them”.9 This is, after all, one of the greatest outcomes of Hadot’s research: ancient philosophers, unlike today, were not philosophers insofar as they wrote about philosophy, but only insofar as they lived philosophically. Ancient philosophy is “a way of life”, “a mode of existing-in-the-world, which had to be practiced at each instant, and the goal of which was to transform the whole of the individual’s life”.10 Furthermore, philosophy is not born automatically, but presupposes an exercise of preparation, that is, a genuine conversion: philosophy did not consist in teaching an abstract theory – much less in the exegesis of texts – but rather in the art of living. It is a concrete attitude and determinate lifestyle, which engages the whole of existence. The philosophical act is not situated merely on the cognitive level, but on that of the self and of being. It is a progress which causes us to be more fully, and makes us better. It is a conversion which turns our entire life upside down, changing the life of the person who goes through it. It raises the individual from an inauthentic condition of life, darkened by unconsciousness and harassed by worry, to an authentic state of life, in which he attains self-­ consciousness, an exact vision of the world, inner peace, and freedom.11 Is it possible to track down echoes of this mode of doing philosophy as a way of transformation in modern and contemporary philosophy as well? In the following chapters, for reasons of space, I will limit myself to considering four exponents of modern philosophy: Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, and Schopenhauer. For each of them, I will pick out a piece of ‘food for thought’ so as to better illuminate one aspect of philosophical exercises of transformation. 6.1.6 Foucault and Hadot as Readers of Descartes An attempt to reread modern philosophy in light of spiritual exercises has already been made by Hadot, Foucault, and more recently by Horn, among 9 10

11

Manuel d’Épictète, § 49, my translation. “[P]hilosophy was a way of life. This is not only to say that it was a specific type of moral conduct; we can easily see the role played in the passage from Philo by the contemplation of nature. Rather, it means that philosophy was a mode of existing-in-the-world, which had to be practiced at each instant, and the goal of which was to transform the whole of the individual’s life” (Hadot 1995, 265). Ibid., 83.

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others.12 Particularly interesting is the debate over the interpretation of the role played by Descartes.13 In his L’herméneutique du sujet, Foucault maintains that for Descartes, unlike the ancients, the subject did not need to carry out any preparatory work on itself, since it was believed to be already ready to receive the truth. With Descartes, therefore, philosophy supposedly abandoned the theme of care of the subject, and hence that of spiritual exercises, in order to devote itself to the question of method.14 Hadot contests this interpretation. The historical moment when philosophy ceased to be “a work of the self on the self” cannot be traced back to Descartes, but to the “rupture [that] occurred in the Middle Ages”, “when philosophy becomes auxiliary to theology and when the spiritual exercises are integrated into Christian spirituality, becoming independent of the philosophical life”.15 According to Hadot, for Descartes as well, the subject needs to work on itself so as to make itself apt for knowledge of the truth. Indeed, without this spiritual exercise, the subject would not recognize evidence: “This clearly shows that for Descartes also, ‘evidence’ can only be recognized on the basis of a spiritual exercise”.16 It is therefore no coincidence if Descartes attributes a central importance to “meditation”, a typical concept of spiritual exercises.17 In support of Hadot’s thesis, a passage of the Discourse on the Method can also be quoted in which Descartes asserts that to conquer the philosophical perspective, “to make oneself used to seeing things from this angle”, it takes “long practice [exercice] and reiterated periods of meditation”.18 The theme of exercise also returns in The Passions of the Soul, where the moral problem is conceived in terms of an “exercise of virtue” for one’s own personal edification, since “the exercise of virtue is a supreme remedy against passions”.19

12 13 14 15 16 17

18 19

See Horn 1998. Hadot makes various references to the authors of modern and contemporary eras. In ­particular, he sees Descartes and Spinoza as representatives of a “philosophy conceived as the exercise of wisdom” (Hadot 1995, 232). See Foucault 2005, 14; Foucault 1994; and also, Foucault 1984. Hadot 2020, 231. Ibid., 232. “Descartes has written, precisely, Meditations, and this word is very important. Concerning these Meditations, Descartes advises his readers to dedicate a number of months, or at least a number of weeks, to ‘meditate’ the first and second meditations, in which he speaks of universal doubt, then of the nature of the mind” (Hadot 1995, 231). Descartes, Engl. transl. 2006, 23. “l’exercice de la vertu est un souverain remède contre les passions” (Les Passions de l’âme, art. 148; Descartes AT IX, 441).

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6.1.7 Descartes: Starting Out from the Testimony of One’s Own Personal Experience From the perspective of philosophical exercises of transformation, one of the most precious starting points offered by Descartes is the one that appears in the Discourse on the Method, when he points out that philosophy draws on personal experience, and not on abstract reflections or thought constructions, let alone the notions of which library books are full. Indeed, the objective of the Discourse on the Method is not to teach a universal method valid for everyone, but only to testify to his own personal experience: “So my aim here is not to teach the method that everyone must follow for the right conduct of his reason, but only to show in what way I have tried to conduct mine”.20 At the center of philosophizing is always a personal experience of transformation, which is usually not revealed. Descartes, however, is an exception. In fact, his concern is to provide his reader with the maximum possible number of tools in order to let her accede to this experience, which therefore becomes an exemplary testimony. By the “path” (voie) of “analysis”, Descartes understands a method that allows the reader to go back over, in the first person, the passages and the lines of reasoning he describes, as if she had gone through them by herself.21 Several pages of Descartes are devoted to recounting his own formative experience, in the sense of a Bildungsroman. Taken as a whole, these pages represent the testimony to a genuine exercise of transformation. Following the path of analysis, Descartes sows the seeds of his exemplary experience in his reader, with the invitation to let them germinate. His pages are to be meditated upon. In the Reply to the Second Objection, he gives some very precise advice: “I would wish readers to dwell on the matters contained in it, not simply for the short period of time required to read it, but for several months, or at least weeks, before they go on to the rest of the work”.22 It is illuminating to reread these words of Descartes in light of the pages of the Phaedrus in which Plato makes the destinies of philosophy dependent on a discourse that remains written on the soul. If Plato writes twice, on a page and on the soul of readers, then, in order to keep up with a philosophical work, it is not sufficient to read only the writing on paper; but what remains, as a reflex, written in one’s own soul, must also be considered. Writing on the soul, however, requires a slow process of sedimentation. Descartes also moves in this direction, and underlines the importance of letting what remains written in the soul germinate. In this way, he replaces the 20 21 22

Descartes, Engl. transl. 2006, 6. Descartes, Engl. transl. 2008, 99. Ibid., 87.

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Socratic dialogue, structured in short questions and answers, by an exercise of meditation in which, in order to make comprehensible what is written on the soul, a lapse of time is necessary, during which the words are left to ferment. Only at that point will the reader be able to “read” the resonance that has remained written on her own soul. In both cases, the result is a germinative writing, understood as living communication, in which a virtuous community between writer and reader comes to be created, similar to the one Plato spoke of in the Phaedrus. The invitation is to read a text of philosophy without the pretense of finding a solution already consigned to a piece of paper, so as to also read that which, of that text, is deposited in the soul. Similarly, whoever writes about philosophy is invited to meditate upon what her own personal experience has left written on her soul, and only afterwards to raise the problem of whether it is worthwhile for her to write on the piece of paper she has in front of her. 6.1.8 In a Well-Heated Room: The Philosophical Exercise of Descartes In the Discourse on Method, Descartes reconstructs the main phases of his formation process, until he comes to the crucial moment represented by the famous days, November 10 and 11, 1619, when he decides to retreat into a wellheated little room to meditate on his own situation. What happens in this room is well known. It is described not only in the Discourse on Method, but also in the Meditations and in the Principles of Philosophy. Unlike the syntheses that can be retrieved from Hellenistic spiritual exercises, in this precious autobiographical account, Descartes offers an integral description of a philosophical path of transformation, starting from the first phases. That Descartes cannot be considered a philosopher in the sense of “philosophical discourse” is also testified by the aversion with which he describes the philosophy he studied as a young man in the Jesuit college of La Flèche: “philosophy provides us with the means of speaking plausibly about anything and impressing those who are less well instructed”.23 Since I deemed anything that was no more than plausible to be tantamount to false, […]. […] as soon as I reached an age that allowed me to escape from the control of my teachers, I abandoned altogether the study of letters […] [and] decided to pursue only that knowledge which I might find in myself or in the great book of the world.24

23 24

Descartes, Engl. transl. 2006, 8. Descartes, Engl. transl. 2006, 10.

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But even the great book of the world cannot provide an answer to his questions: there is too much relativism that derives from the variety of customs and morals, and from the diversity of opinions. For this reason, “I took the decision one day to look into myself”. This is one of the central passages of the Discourse on the Method: after having spent several years studying the book of the world and trying to acquire some experience of life, I took the decision one day to look into myself and to use all my mental powers to choose the paths I should follow. In this it seemed to me that I have had much more success than if I had never left either my country or my books. At that time I was in Germany, where I had been called by the wars that have not yet come to an end there; as I was returning to the army from the coronation of the emperor,25 I was halted by the onset of winter in quarters where, having no diverting company and fortunately also no cares or emotional turmoil to trouble me, I spent the whole day shut up in a small room heated by a stove, in which I could converse with my own thoughts at leisure.26 Let us try to imagine the situation: on November 10, 1619, Descartes is in a German village, probably in Neuburg near Ulm. He has already learned many things from the “great book of the world”, and now feels ready to attempt a different avenue, this time to investigate within himself. He retreats in solitude into a room well heated by a ceramic stove that was typical of German regions. Unlike the fireplaces used at the time in France, this stove diffuses a constant, smokeless heat.27 And it is precisely there, while meditating in the warmth of this stove, that Descartes decides to devote his own existence to the search for truth, becoming, from a young swordsman, a philosopher. In the isolation of that well-heated room, Descartes lives an unforgettable philosophical experience. One of his biographers, Henri Gouhier, defines it as a “creative emotion”. Descartes is alone, in an empty room, without books. An empty room does not distract, and favors meditation. In that empty room – a metaphor for the auroral void – Descartes carries out an exercise of emptying with an intensity and radicality he had never experienced before. 25 26 27

Ferdinand II of Habsburg, crowned emperor in 1619, former king of Bohemia (1617) and Hungary (1618). The celebrations lasted from 20 July to 9 September 1619. Descartes, Engl. transl. 2006, 11–12. This type of stove is also appreciated by Montaigne, who observed that unlike the fireplaces in use in France, this stove spreads a constant, smokeless heat (see The Complete Essays of Montaigne: Book III, Chapter 8, in Montaigne 1958, 805).

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The different phases of an exercise of transformation are precisely described: the impact of the crisis, the need to make a clean slate and to call everything into question, the isolation, the emptying, and finally – at least according to what his biographer Adrien Baillet reports – the controversial intrusion of three dreams in which he receives the announcement of an “admirable science”.28 In this case, emptying, once taken to its extreme consequences, does not terminate in absolute skepticism. In fact, Descartes experiences that a new point of view can emerge from this exercise of emptying. 6.1.9 Spinoza: The Fatal Illness and the Conversion of Desire The experience described by Descartes had a profound impact on Spinoza. However, Spinoza adds something important with respect to the philosophical exercise of transformation described by Descartes: the themes of desire and of happiness. There is no doubt that Spinoza also is a philosopher capable of writing on the soul. In his pages, readers of Spinoza rediscover the questions that burn and agitate every existence, those that are born from the basic questions: What can I do with my existence? How can I overcome melancholy and the sadness of life? How can I achieve happiness? Spinoaz’s writings are ­captivating because his reader intuits that she can hunt down in them concrete and precious indications on how to transform her own existence for the better. In what follows, I will dwell particularly on the opening lines of the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, where echoes of the Cartesian experience can clearly be identified. Initially, the itinerary is similar. Here again, the typical phases of philosophical conversion are described: there is a profound crisis (these are the years following his excommunication, when Spinoza has been abandoned by all), the need for calling into question old certainties and one’s previous way of living. At a certain point, however, the itinerary diverges, in that the Cartesian search for an indubitable truth gives way to the search for happiness. As the title of the essay indicates, Spinoza describes a conversion of his own way of living obtained through an “emendation of the intellect”. However, this is not a conversion achieved through reasoning. The opening sentence: “After experience had taught me” clearly indicates that it was not abstract reasoning 28

This reference appears in a lost work, the Olympica, in which, as witnessed by Baillet, who together with Leibniz read the original text, Descartes asserts that on November 10, “full of enthusiasm”, he had intuited the “foundations of an admirable science” (“Cum plenus forem enthusiasmo et mirabilis scientiae fundamenta reperirem”) (Descartes AT X, 179). On the interpretation of this passage in the sense of a conversion, see Grafton 2000; Gouhier 1958, 91.

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but colliding with the “stumbling block” of experience that touched and modified his existence. This collision makes Spinoza aware that all the things he had encountered in everyday life until that moment – wealth, honor, and pleasure – are vain and useless, and “[the] mind is so distracted by these three that it cannot give the slightest thought to any other good”.29 Suddenly, all the motivations to which he had adhered seem to him unjustified and vain. In his inability to identify an alternative good, Spinoza sees himself: in the greatest danger, and […] forced to seek a remedy with all my strength, however uncertain it might be – like a man suffering from a fatal illness who, foreseeing certain death unless he employs a remedy, is forced to seek it, however uncertain, with all his strength. For all his hope lies there.30 The “fatal illness” plunges human existence into a lethargic situation that recalls the one condemned by Socrates when he invited his co-citizens not to squander their own existence by chasing after wealth and fame to the detriment of the care of the soul. The medication that Spinoza prescribes to cure us from this “fatal illness” can be identified in the rules for “the emendation of the intellect”. Unlike the regulae ad directionem ingenii (rules for the direction of the mind) identified by Descartes through reasoning in order to arrive at the truth, the rules of Spinoza are born from the stumbling block of experience and aim at happiness. In fact, the problem that torments Spinoza concerns the disorientation of desire, that is, the inability to distinguish false desires from those capable of promoting true happiness. In the Short Treatise on God, Man and His Well-Being, the ability to orient desire is attributed to an “emended” intellect: I desire what my intellect has previously recognized to be good. Indeed, Desire […] is that inclination which the mind has to­ward something it considers good. From this it follows that before our Desire extends externally to something, a decision has already taken place in us that such a thing is good.31

29 30 31

Spinoza, Engl. transl. 1985a, 8. Ibid., 9. Spinoza, Engl. transl. 1985b, 121, transl. modified.

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Consequently, the problem of the philosophical exercise boils down to an ­exercise of emending the intellect. In the Ethics, this position is turned on its head, and Spinoza comes to ­formulate one of his most revolutionary theses: From all this, then, it is clear that we neither strive for, nor will, neither want, nor desire anything because we judge it to be good; on the contrary, we judge something to be good because we strive for it, will it, want it, and desire it.32 If that is good which is desired, then it cannot be the intellect that establishes what is good, and consequently the emendation of the intellect is no longer the fulcrum of the philosophical exercise. Once Spinoza experiences the impotence of the intellect, the emendation of the intellect is no longer sufficient to guarantee bliss. At this point, it becomes necessary to traverse experience thanks to a conversion of desire. With respect to Descartes, a decisive novelty emerges: at the center of the philosophical exercise is no longer the intellect, but desire. It is important to underline that the conatus on which the ethics of Spinoza hinges is not, however, the conatus dedicated to compulsive enjoyment. Indeed, the compulsive conatus would lead one to squander existence once again in the obsessive search for wealth, honor, and pleasure, and this would lead back to the “fatal illness”. Nor is it the conatus of homo oeconomicus, later at the center of the Industrial Revolution, and today at the center of the ideology of neoliberalism. Above all, it is not the expression of a subject understood as an autonomous, self-sufficient substance, hence a self-referential or autopoietic conatus. It is rather a conatus desiderandi that looks beyond itself, as is demonstrated by the introduction of the concept of “external cause” with regard to the definition of love as “Joy with the accompanying idea of an external cause”.33 The introduction of the concept of “external cause” is by no means a false step by Spinoza. Nevertheless, this is a passage that causes problems for those interpretations of his philosophy that force the theory of conatus into the self-referential perspective of the exaltation of enjoyment. Spinoza’s pantheism is not a pantheism immanent to enjoyment. In the pantheistic immanentism of Spinoza, this cause is “external” only in reference to the conatus that attempts to absolutize itself and take the place of the love of God. Indeed, the desire of a singular 32 33

Spinoza, Ethics, III, P9, Schol./note, Engl. transl. 1985c, 500. Spinoza, Ethics, III, P13, Schol., Engl. transl. 1985c, 502.

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individual is nothing but an expression of God’s eternal love itself for that singular individual, so much so that the “Mind’s intellectual Love of God is the very Love of God by which God loves himself”.34 6.1.10 Kant: Philosophy as the Exercise of Autonomous Thought Kant also conceives of philosophy as an exercise, so much so that he equates “philosophizing” with an “exercise” for thinking autonomously.35 According to Kant, it is not possible to learn philosophy, “rather, […] we can at best only learn to philosophize”.36 Philosophical texts must not be read in search of notions to be learned, but as testimonies to a way of thinking. There is therefore no sense in a “notional” philosophy that merely chews on the thoughts of others. Indeed, “[my] philosophy must be grounded in myself, and not in the understanding of others”.37 Therefore, “the true philosopher, as one who thinks for himself, must […] make a free use of his reason on his own, not a slavishly imitative use”.38 Starting out from these premises, Kant provides some suggestions on how to teach philosophy. The true philosopher does not teach thoughts, but she rather teaches how to think.39 Such a way of doing philosophy “cannot […] be learned from books, but only through one’s own reflection and one’s own meditation”.40 This is a critical faculty that not only young people but also adult scholars often lack. Unfortunately, in such cases, philosophy inevitably degenerates to pedantry, and becomes a “scholastic concept” (Schulbegriff), that is, a mere “system of philosophical items of knowledge” (System der philosophischen Erkenntnisse).41 Kant’s invitation is therefore in favor of a philosophizing that is not limited to the passive reading of books and overcomes the

34 35 36 37 38 39

40 41

Spinoza, Ethics, V, P36, Engl. transl. 1985c, 612. See Kant, “Übung im Selbstdenken oder Philosophiren” (Kant AA IX, 26; Engl. transl. 1992, 539). Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B 865; Engl. transl. 1998, 694. “Meine Philosophie muß in mir selbst, und nicht in dem Verstand anderer gegründet seyn […]” (Kant AA XXIV, 53; Engl. transl. 1992, 38). “Der wahre Philosoph muss also als Selbstdenker einen freien und selbsteigenen, keinen sklavisch nachahmenden Gebrauch von seiner Vernunft machen” (Kant AA IX, 26; Engl. transl. 1992, 539). “[Der Schüler] soll nicht Gedanken, sondern denken lernen: man soll ihn nicht tragen, sondern leiten, wenn man will, daß er in Zukunft von sich selbst zu gehen geschickt sein soll” (Kant, Nachricht von der Einrichtung seiner Vorlesungen in dem Winterhalbenjahre von 1765–1766, in AA II, 306). Kant AA XXIV, 189; Engl. transl. 1992, 149. Kant AA IX, 23; Engl. transl. 1992, 537, transl. modified.

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tutelage of any “spiritual advisor”, in order to exercise the autonomy of one’s own critical faculty. 6.1.11 Schopenhauer: In Order to Write a Text of Philosophy, One Must Be Honest with Oneself With regard to Schopenhauer, I will dwell on some passages taken from Parerga and Paralipomena. Schopenhauer’s invitation is peremptory. I accept it at my own risk and peril: take this book you have in your hands and throw it out the window if its author is not honest and does not have anything worth communicating: there are two kinds of writers: those who write for the sake of the subject and those who write for the sake of writing. The former have had thoughts or experiences that seem to them worthy of communicating; the latter need money and that is why they write, for money. […] they write in order to fill up paper; […]. As soon as we notice it, we should throw the book away, for time is precious. At bottom […], an author cheats his reader as soon as he writes in order to fill up paper, because he alleges that he writes because he has something to communicate.42 Almost always, scholars of philosophy write by drawing only on the thoughts of others. In this case, the merchandise they offer is not originality, but erudition and, above all, the display of literary and stylistic virtuosity worthy of the best hermetic poetry. In contrast, very few are those who write by drawing directly on their own experience: Only among them will we find those who endure and become immortal. […] The only writer worth reading is the one who writes directly from the material in his own mind. But book makers, compendia writers and ordinary historians and so on take their material directly from books; from here it passes into their fingers without even having first undergone transit toll or inspection, let alone editing, in the head.43 In the chapter Thinking for Oneself, Schopenhauer gives a profound reinterpretation of the Kantian concept of the autonomy of thought. Indeed, the first spiritual advisor to be criticized is the one who is within ourselves. Indeed, without completing this step, one runs the risk of absolutizing the autonomy 42 43

Schopenhauer, Engl. transl. 2015, On Writing and Style, § 272. Ibid., § 273.

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of one’s own thought, and, in this way, of condemning not only communication understood as the notional transfer of information, already criticized by Plato, but also germinative communication, in which the other writes on my soul and ignites the spark of my thinking. In other words, the condemnation of the spiritual advisor cannot justify a withdrawal into an “autarchic” philosophizing. Kant asserts that true autonomous thinkers are those who are without spiritual advisors. For Schopenhauer, however, this is not yet sufficient. To write an honest text, not only must a true philosopher be able to do without a spiritual advisor, but she must not even offer herself as such. Indeed, only in this way can autonomous thinkers write honestly when confronted by their own conscience. In contrast, all other thinkers are only sophists who seek to seduce the reader in order to exhibit their own talent.44 The only honest way of writing philosophical text is therefore to come down from the lectern, doff the habit of mind of a spiritual advisor or of a professor of philosophy, in order to testify to the ideas that spring directly from one’s own experience. Only a person who starts out from the fundamental thoughts drawn from her own experience is speaking honestly to herself, from the only thoughts that have truth and life, for only they are quite properly and completely understood. Foreign thoughts that are read are the scraps of someone else’s meal, the discarded clothes of a visiting stranger.45 Thus, in Schopenhauer, the true contrast becomes the one between the “eye witness” of a thought born from one’s own experience, and the “bookish ­philosopher”, who speaks from hearsay. One must never trust the thoughts of others when they, in their turn, rely upon the thoughts borrowed from others, and hence gloss, quote, and confuse. In contrast, if one finds oneself in the presence of an original thought of another person, then the confrontation is not only possible, but becomes vital, since it offers an additional point of view on one’s own experience. To do philosophy in the first person does not mean, therefore, to withdraw into oneself or isolate oneself, but to make one’s own germinative thoughts, drawn directly from experience, emerge, in order to let them interact with those of the others, so that they can vivify each other. Indeed, such experiences are not mere subjective expressions, but various perspectives on the same objective rootedness. Hence, by rooting herself in her own fundamental 44 45

See Schopenhauer, Engl. transl. 2015, Thinking for Oneself, § 270. Ibid., § 259.

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experiences, a philosopher positions herself beyond subjectivism, in that she becomes an eyewitness of a certain point of view upon reality: someone who thinks for himself […] speaks from his own direct interpretation of the matter. This is why at bottom all who think for themselves are basically in agreement, and their difference arises only as one of standpoint; but where this does not change anything, they all say the same thing. For they are merely stating what they have objectively apprehended.46 What is the lesson that can be learned from Schopenhauer? First of all, the invitation not to chew on the thought of others, but to carry out an experimental philosophy, rooted in experience and based on germinative communication that remains written on the soul. From this perspective, in order to rethink an exercise of transformation today, it becomes important not only to know what the ancients wrote on spiritual exercises, but also to concretely try out these exercises on oneself in order to verify where they work, and where they do not. Thus, for example, if I want to talk about the exercises of Epicurus, I will not only have to know them, but also personally try out the “Principal Doctrines”. 6.2 Exercises of the Will and Exercises of Feeling in Philosophical Practices of Transformation 6.2.1 Exercise as Askesis When reading the manuals on the art of living, philosophical counseling, and, more generally, the search for spiritual wellness that are currently circulating, one can often note an overestimation of the role of the will with respect to feeling and, sometimes, the tendency to use the exercise of the will in order to contain, tame, or straighten out feelings. Of course, I can contain an emotion through the force of the will, but by this method I cannot correct or “straighten out” feeling, let alone give a meaning to my existence. This belief is problematic because, as I have already demonstrated, the ultimate source of the orientation of human existence comes from the order of feeling, and, precisely, from the order of the heart, hence from desire, and not from a will abstractly opposed to desire. By studying the case of Phineas Gage, Damasio demonstrates that, in decisions that concern our existence, it is not an abstract intellect, but the 46

Ibid., § 263.

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affective sphere that orientates them. If what ultimately orients existence is not the intellect but feeling, the idea that the intellect can autonomously “straighten out” feeling through the will must be called into question. This was, after all, one of the primary results of Spinoza’s Ethics. When speaking of a spiritual “exercise”, the primary reference point is the term “askesis”, which originally indicated not an ascetic activity of renunciation and detachment from the world, but the ability of athletes in carrying out a physical exercise. It would be a misunderstanding, however, to think that, just as an athlete in physical exercises gives form to her muscles through the ­repetition of specific movements, so a philosopher in spiritual exercises gives form to her soul thanks to the repetition of norms and rules that favor the sedimentation of a habit of feeling. In modernity, the idea of a “heroic”, self-sufficient subject that, through the will, molds its own affective sphere has gained ground: it is through the will that an athlete makes the effort to repeat a muscular movement that causes increasing pain, and again it is through the will that the modern subject forces its feeling to repeat specific acts in order to generate a habit. It should be pointed out that, according to an authoritative school of thought, there was no concept of subjective will in the ancient Greek world, at least prior to Aristotle, at any rate not in the way we understand it today.47 It is only in the modern era that a psychological conception of the will of the subject emerges. The risk of a simplification therefore lurks around the corner. Spiritual askesis in the Greek world remained within a very precise framework, according to which the concept of the good depended on the harmonization of one’s own will with the cosmic order. In the modern age, when this presupposition is called into question, the exercise of the will assumes a completely different significance, and runs the risk of sliding toward subjectivism or voluntarism, with consequences also in relation to the dualism between reason and emotions. In fact, it is one thing to use the will to make emotions conform to the cosmic order; it is another thing to contain emotions on the basis of the will of a subject detached from the cosmic order, as is the modern subject. In substance, the inability to recognize a function of orientation to the order of ­feeling – which was already present in the ancient concept of askesis – is not only not overcome in the modern era; it actually becomes even more problematic. This underestimation of orienting capacity of the order of feeling is already implicit in the comparison between muscular and spiritual exercises. Indeed, it is easy to hypothesize that, thanks to the subjective will, a movement can be impressed on feeling, just as it occurs with the muscle of one’s own arm. It is 47

See Otto 1956; Taylor 1989.

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precisely here, however, that the risk of a “psychologization” of philosophical exercises and of the concept of askesis emerges.48 Simplification consists in the fact of automatically projecting onto philosophical exercises the idea of a physical exercise as the muscular repetition of a specific movement through the effort of the will. The result would be that of a philosophical exercise understood as the repetition of norms and precepts so as to generate a habit that, in the modern era, is imposed on feeling through the subjective will. Furthermore, just as the final goal of the exercises of an athlete is the increase of her performance, so, in a similar way, some current forms of philosophical counseling set themselves the goal of improving the productivity of the subject, of restoring the balance that the subject has lost, or even of reaching specific goals in the sense of the wellness industry, which is done through the introduction of a “psychological” concept of habit. It is important to pick out an essential aspect that differentiates these forms of philosophical counseling from the Socratic tradition. Socratic practice of care of the soul does not aim to “adjust” or “repair” an individual in order to render them once again good performers and competitors according to the logic of business productivity. Nor does it aim to restore a lost balance. On the contrary, Socratic practice aims in the first place to call into question, to prod. Essentially, it makes a point of reawakening, not reassuring; of dehabituating, not habituating. Hence, it has nothing to do with the wellness industry or with the interminable proliferation of instruction manuals for becoming happy that fill the shelves of our bookshops today. In what follows, I propose an alternative interpretation of the philosophical exercise, which does not aim at the generation of a mental habit on the psychological level, but at an anthropogenetic positioning in the world. 6.2.2 Exercises as an Anthropogenetic Practice: “Peaks of Feeling” and “Dead Calm of Feeling” As has already been argued, human beings come into the world without having a completed form. This means that they are endowed with an enormous plasticity. The question at the basis of the human enigma is therefore not who a human being is, but rather what she can become. The anthropogenetic process does not imitate some previously fixed human essence, but is the result of the practices of emotional sharing. All of culture is an expression of this exceptional plasticity. 48

I am not referring here to the spiritual exercises of Pierre Hadot, but to those of the c­ urrent ‘self-help movements’ that limit themselves to giving lists of rules for containing anxiety and fear, achieving success, living longer, and even becoming happier.

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This fashioning action acts differently in the little self and in the personal singularity: while the little self is fashioned through the logic of the model, the personal singularity does not have predefined models, and instead follows the logic of exemplarity. Moreover, every personal singularity becomes what it is thanks to the acts it co-performs, hence not in a solipsistic dimension, but in an infinite process of co-formation oriented by the force of the exemplarity of others. The role of the will varies depending on whether it is referred to the little self or to the personal singularity. The little self becomes what it is through practices of repetition of norms, precepts, and social roles, often imposed through the effort of the will. In this way, the little self discovers and stabilizes its own potentialities in specific psychological habits and social behaviors. Yet this is a process of formation that remains within the “social placenta”, that is, without ever really stepping outside the cultural matrix of common sense. In contrast, this is what occurs in the formation process of the personal singularity where a birthing takes place that thrusts the individual outside social common sense, and brings to light the singularity’s ex-centricity. The logic is no longer self-referential, but generative, and the practices no longer assume the form of liturgical repetitions. What takes place are not identical repetitions, imposed on feeling by the will, but exercises of metabolization of feeling. The psychological habit as the fruit of the repetition of the identical – obtained through the effort of the will through which the little self is formed – is replaced by the process of anthropogenetic positioning of the personal singularity, from which an order of feeling oriented by desire emerges. The possibility of a practice that is not imposed on feeling by the will implies a transformation of the very concept of “thinking”. The thinking that remains within the common sense of the “social placenta” is only the repetition of a repetition, a ready-made thought that has already been masticated by common sense. In contrast, the true exercise of transformation refers to an experience of thinking that is rooted in the original lived experience of a personal singularity. It only takes place if one has the freedom to tap directly into the interaction of one’s own fragment of truth with that of others, that is, into that wellspring of one’s own experience that assumes a form that is unique and non-deducible in the whole universe. It is the uniqueness of such a pioneering experience that certifies its validity. This validity is verified to the extent that it produces transformation in an exemplary sense. It is only the rootedness in such a transformative “truth” that confers authoritativeness on philosophizing. Without the uniqueness of such a pioneer experience, there is no authoritativeness, but, if anything, authoritarian violence; there is no philosophizing, but “chattering” or “philosophical discourse”.

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Where should one search for the wellspring of this pioneering experience? Human feeling is not uniform, but is characterized by what might be called the “peaks of feeling” through which desire expresses itself. The maturation of feeling is a process that acts with the tenacity of a drop of water that sculpts a rock. It often continues its karstic stream, producing slow and silent transformations, but sometimes gushes suddenly to the surface, and materializes into a peak of feeling, that is, into a feeling that is so profound that it impresses a turning point upon a person’s existence, like a sudden illumination. Peaks of feeling do not concern a particularly impetuous or violent feeling, such as the one that is suddenly unleashed in rage. Rather, these are moments of extraordinary intensity in which one’s own existence appears in a new light. Whereas previously an individual could hardly see further than the end of her nose, now she experiences a sudden and unforeseen ability to penetrate, as far as the eye can see, into the affective dimension. It is somewhat like the new view that one can obtain by reaching the summit of a mountain, and which allows one to understand which direction one will have to follow even after one has come down to the valley. These peaks or summits of feeling offer the singularity the orientativity that it needs to realize itself. They explore virgin territories, and confer the necessary authority on every exemplary force. They are the ones that guide the turning points of affective orientation, to then hand over the helm once again to a slower metabolism of feeling. However, the intensity of a peak of feeling does not have the strength to preserve itself on its own, because it is constantly countered by the inertial resistance of the static and habit-bound old feeling. In other words, a peak of feeling has a limited duration; then it gradually fades away. At the outset, the force of the will is sufficient to compensate for the low tide of feeling, and to continue to proceed in the direction indicated by the peak of feeling. To do so, however, it must maintain contact with feeling. If feeling fades away completely, after a while, the will starts going round in circles. In this case, despite all the efforts of her will, the individual comes to find herself again in a situation of stagnation that is prolonged to infinity, without being resolved, like a sailboat with no wind, blocked by a sudden dead calm in the middle of the ocean. What allows one to get out of this dead calm is not an exercise of repetition imposed by the will, but the desire that is reignited by the force of exemplarity. 6.2.3 On Repetition The anthropogenetic nature of the philosophical exercise of transformation allows us to shed light on the difference between exercises of the will and exercises of feeling. Human beings are the only living form known to date that can trans-form itself through the exercise of feeling. The exercise of a function of

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feeling, intended to metabolize rage for example, is something very different from an exercise of repetition imposed from the outside upon feeling through the force of the will. If I impose a “correction” on feeling through the will without bearing in mind the dynamics of the affective world, I do not develop feeling, but repress it with the force of the will; hence, properly speaking, I do not exercise feeling, but only the will.49 If the objective of the exercise is to develop feeling, just as an athlete develops her musculature, the exercise of repetition imposed on feeling by the will obtains the inverse effect, since it prevents feeling from developing its own intentionality, and thus atrophies it. The feeling of the personal singularity does not develop when it is “straightened out” by the will, but rather when it is “cultivated” in the practices of emotional sharing oriented by exemplarity. This is not to throw doubt on the importance of repetition in every formative process. Several philosophers, such as Kierkegaard (1983) and Deleuze (1994), have already shed light on a creative aspect of repetition that I do not intend to underestimate here. An example of creative repetition is particularly evident in music, where repetitions of a theme may be accompanied by changes in tone, rhythm, harmony, or instrumentation that create effects of contrast, emphasis, surprise, or of development, so much so that it is difficult to conceive of a musical melody as “beautiful” without some form of repetition. What I am contesting here is only the idea that one can mold feeling with a mechanical and automatic repetition of identical movements of feeling that are imposed from the outside by the will. If, in contrast, an exercise of repetition starts out from the experience of feeling, then this exercise can create difference, and hence generate irreversible transformations. Referring back to Eastern culture, one can find this idea articulated in the Japanese concept of Shu Ha Ri, which is often translated as “to follow the form, to break the form, and to go beyond the form”. This concept was born in the field of sado, or the Way of Tea (commonly called “tea ceremony” in the West), but then it extended to describe the phases of apprenticeship and mastery in any art, skill, or discipline. The first stage – Shu, which means “to protect and obey” – is that of repetition and memorization. The pupil learns the basic techniques and movements of the art, and practices them many times, until they become second nature. This phase is essential for developing a base of skill and knowledge. The second phase – Ha, which means “to break and detach” – concerns 49

A characteristic that is almost always ignored is that feeling matures through experience. It is unlikely that feeling is capable of self-learning, self-acquiring, and self-correcting. Nevertheless, under certain conditions, it is capable of learning and acquiring through practices of emotional sharing, with the help of the reflective level and of exemplarity of others.

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mastery. The pupil begins to try out the techniques learned and to find new, innovative ways to apply them. This is a period of trial and error in which the pupil learns to find her own unique style. The third stage – Ri, which means “to leave or transcend” – concerns detachment, overcoming, and creativity. The student has reached a level of comprehension so as to be able to go beyond the simple repetition of the forms and techniques of this art. The goal is to express oneself in a truly unique way, in accordance with one’s own heart and mind, no longer bound by any rule or form. This does not mean, however, that one abandons the rules and forms altogether. Rather, the pupil is able to creatively use the rules and forms as a basis for her own unique expression. 6.2.4 Exercises of the Will and Exercises of Metabolization of Feeling What puzzles me is not so much the possibility of using repetition in a creative sense, but rather the idea of a repetition that is used for repressing feeling rather than cultivating it. Moreover, it must be borne in mind that the exercise of feeling does not consist in the repetition of the same, identical lived experience – in fact, lived experience can never be repeated identically – but in its metabolization. Even when I want to savor a lived experience, I do not repeat exactly what I felt at the beginning, but rather let it ripen and thus transform through emotional sharing, experience, and reasoning. In the attempt to straighten out feeling from the outside, I impose through the will the imitation of something that I have never felt, and which has never resonated within me. I faithfully repeat rules, norms, and precepts in the attempt to imitate something or someone. In this type of mechanical repetition, there is no trace of the Socratic dialogue or of the ability to write in the soul that causes a spark. But this is precisely what Schopenhauer contests as a bad way of doing philosophy. They are exercises that imitate a model, instead of letting themselves be ignited by an exemplarity. A completely different attempt is one in which I instead use the will and repetition in “support” of some tendencies of feeling. This is particularly common in the first phases of the spiritual exercises described by Hadot.50 The will also has a function in an exercise of transformation; however, it is not that of “correcting” emotions from the outside, but rather that of “maintaining” some tendencies 50

As Horn has pointed out, there are very different types of spiritual exercises in Hadot: (1) therapeutic, (2) sensitizing, (3) moral, (4) intellectual, and (5) what are properly called spiritual (see Horn 1998). As Chase notes, the first three types can be understood as preliminary “self-help” exercises, and refer to rules and to the will to promote and encourage some of our psychic and emotional tendencies, whereas in the last two ones the will plays a minor role (see Chase, in press).

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of maturation of feeling, for example, through practices of autosuggestion, or of keeping one’s own action coherent, as when I use the will to compensate for the waning of a “peak of feeling”. In this case, the will does not intervene to “straighten out” feeling through the imitation of something that one does not feel and thus to impose an extraneous direction, but, on the contrary, to save the perspective opened by the intentionality of a peak of feeling and of a lived experience that was initially felt with a particular intensity and then was about to fade away. Thanks to reason, from the perspective opened up by the peak of feeling, I deduce a series of consequences and translate them into intermediate goals, by identifying the most appropriate and effective acts to realize them. By doing so, the action of the will does not go against feeling, but becomes interwoven with the maturation process of feeling and makes it more coherent. There is, therefore, a substantial difference between the exercise of imitation and repetition that the will imposes upon feeling and the exercise of metabolization of feeling supported by the will. The latter always starts out from a peak of feeling effectively experienced in the first person, and thus from a periagoge that is already in act or has already come about. These are exercises of organization and maturation of feeling that cause the order of the heart of the personal singularity to emerge. The order is not imposed upon feeling from the outside, but emerges from feeling. The perspective changes radically: the order of the heart is not the result of a psychological habit obtained through imitation and repetition of the rules imposed through the will, but rather is the result of metabolization oriented by the exemplarity. Hence, the problem at the center of the exercise of transformation is not that of imitating a model, but, if anything, to find an exemplarity that may ignite a fragment of life within me, and which may know how to write in the soul. If feeling is not first felt, it cannot be repeated, not even in the form of imitation. To be repeated, it must first be felt. 6.2.5 Exercises of Purification from the Will of the Little Self Who, after all, is the subject that thinks it succeeds in “correcting” feeling through an autonomous act of the will? Here, we are still within a dualistic setting in which the myth of a pure subject – that is, a subject that is not contaminated by emotions, which thinks, reasons, and reflects without being influenced by them – survives. The term “pure” leads easily to a misunderstanding. Usually, “purification” concerns a process similar to that through which gold is separated from extraneous fragments. In these cases, “pure” becomes synonymous with “uncontaminated”. In philosophical exercises, the opposite is true: at the level of the singularity, pure is what is purified from its own egotism and self-referentiality in order to open itself to the contamination of the world. Pure is the water pot (mizusashi) reconstructed through the technique of

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kintsugi, that is, amalgamated with “kin”, or gold, which represents relations of care.51 Now, if purification does not concern the separation from what is other than oneself, but the detachment from the self-referential logic of the subject, then I cannot understand these exercises as exercises of the self-­referential will of the subject; on the contrary, they will be exercises of purification from the will of the subject. Of course, life disconcerts those who open themselves to it off guard, and fills them with wonder, but it disconcerts them in order to forge and transform them. By contrast, it kills whoever remains closed within the shell of her own will and of her own self-interpretation. At the origin of periagoge there is not only a hermeneutical factor, but, earlier still, the impact of a crisis or an annunciation that smashes the certainties of an existence into pieces. The philosophical exercise of transformation that I propose implies a Copernican revolution of the relationship between the subject and feeling. There is no subject that imposes a direction upon feeling by an arbitrary act of the will.52 Indeed, feeling is not a faculty of the subject; but rather, it is the subject that is the expression of a specific order of feeling,53 and it is this feeling that also motivates the will. If feeling were an inner property of the subject, then the exercise of feeling would be an intimist cura sui with an exclusively psychological relevance. In contrast, the subject is the result of anthropogenetic practices of emotional sharing. Therefore, the exercise of feeling is not psychological, but anthropogenetic. 6.3

Philosophical Exercises of Transformation

6.3.1 Becoming the “Eyewitness” to One’s Own Fragment of Truth Schopenhauer invites us to write with honesty only in relation to what we have been “eyewitnesses” to and have come to learn in the first person. Following 51 52

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See § 1.4.8 The Wound and the Scar: The Paintings of Fontana and the Art of Kintsugi. What I am trying to emphasize here is a freedom based on the maturity of feeling and of judgment. By contrast, what I contest is a freedom based on the arbitrary will of the little self. The idea of a freedom based on the arbitrariness of the will was already overcome by Schelling with his Freedom Essay (see Schelling 2006). This does not mean falling back into determinism. Our thoughts, feelings, acts, and decisions are not mere illusory epiphenomena that are already predetermined at the level of the laws of physics, as a certain reductionism hypothesizes. Similarly, reality, life, and history are not processes that carry out or repeat something that has already been written since the origin, but rather creative processes characterized by the continuous emergence of novelties. See § 4.1.5 Rethinking Individuation. What Comes First: The Individual or Individuation?

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this invitation means to start out from the lived experience rooted in one’s own fragment of truth. As I have already argued, it is precisely the uniqueness and originality of such experience that confers authoritativeness on the act of philosophizing. Access to such founding experience presupposes overcoming the subjective perspective of one’s own little self, but does not imply that some universal, hence impersonal truth is reached. Indeed, the perspective of the personal singularity is placed beyond the contrasts between relativism and absolutism, or individualism and universalism. The fragment of truth does not express a subjective truth. It is reductive to think that all that is true which turns out to be effective; or that all that is true which allows me to obtain what I want or increases my power. This is a very limited concept of truth, in that it is related to the little self’s will to power. It is an apparently cynical concept of truth, but, in reality, it reveals itself to be extremely naïve, since it isolates the singularity from the world and, in the long run, renders it a victim of its own resentment and incapable of existing. Quite different from this psychological relativism is the ontological perspectivism of the fragment of truth. Here, only that is true which transforms a person in the anthropogenetic sense, and increases openness to the world. Its validity depends on the value of its exemplarity, and on its ability to produce sparks when it rubs against other fragments of truth. In philosophical knowledge, only that is true which remains written in the soul. But something can remain written only in the soul of those who surpass the subjective and self-referential perspective of the little self, and only to the extent that it resonates within its own auroral void. In a philosophy as exercise of transformation, one cannot be an eyewitness to absolute, impersonal truths, but only to fragments of truth. There is no exemplarity of the impersonal. It is the model that pretends to testify to an impersonal universal. At the level of the singularity, there are no intuitions of concluded truths, but only experiences to be testified to and to be further elaborated in dialogic exercises, through the encounter with the experiences and fragments of truth of other persons. In Parerga and Paralipomena, Schopenhauer asserts that doing philosophy means to describe a city that one has really visited, and not just known through an account by others.54 With some hesitation, I will follow this invitation of Schopenhauer and place myself within the perspective of the “eyewitness” to a process of transformation. The pages that follow should therefore be read 54

“People who have spent their lives reading and have drawn their wisdom from books resemble those who have acquired precise information about a country from many travel descriptions” (Schopenhauer, Engl. transl. 2015, Thinking for Oneself, § 262).

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along with resonances they may evoke in their reader. If this does not happen, it is advisable to skip them. 6.3.2 Provisional Reflections on a Personal Pathway of Transformation If I turn back to my past, I remember with precision various experiences that have been decisive in setting in motion a process of transformation. Here, however, I will dwell on the one that has marked me more than any other. It all began by chance at the end of my adolescence. I had no intention of experimenting with a philosophical exercise of transformation. Actually, to tell the truth, I was completely unaware that it was possible to conceive of anything like an exercise in philosophy. Quite simply, I had entered into a crisis, and was in extreme need of listening to myself. I therefore decided to retreat into an isolated place to achieve clarity with myself. After a few days, I noted that my anguish deriving from remaining in solitude was becoming more and more unbearable, instead of diminishing. At the beginning, I thought of leaving, but, in the end, the curiosity typical of an adolescent prevailed, and I started to ask myself: What would have happened if I had remained in that condition? What was there to fear if I took that unease I felt growing by the hour to its ultimate consequences? Would I have been able to maintain control? And if not, how would I have reacted? Might I have panicked, and eventually have lost my mind? I was not trying to imitate Descartes, whom I had not yet read. I was rather following an instinct, an inner need. Moreover, in that period of time, an important relationship had just been broken off, and, although it was extremely painful to accept, I was free of emotional ties, obligations, engagements, and responsibilities. In short, I had all the necessary time at my disposal. Yet in the future? When would a similar opportunity have arisen again? Suddenly I realized that, if I had left that very day, I would have carried those nagging doubts with me for all the rest of my life, along with a profound insecurity. I therefore made the decision to go on to the bitter end, and to see what would have happened, in order to verify my limits and to see to what extent my will would allow me to control the situation. I felt this was a challenge I could not escape. Fear and curiosity coexisted. I decided to put myself to the test and conduct an “experiment” upon myself. The first thing I did was to cut off contact with the outside world. In addition, I began to control my diet, and also to schedule some periods of fasting. During the first days, it was hard to control my hunger, but then I had the sensation that the less I ate, the less I felt the need to eat. I also tried to keep my mind focused on my problem, practicing exercises of meditation and refraining from reading. The effect was not what I had hoped for, and, day after day, the tension increased more and more, until the growing dissatisfaction that was seething

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inside me started to degenerate into open despair. I felt I had reached my limit. I was not going mad; but I clearly perceived that I could not carry on any longer. I tried to reflect on what was happening to me, and to bring the situation into focus as objectively as possible. But the result was clear: my will had been defeated on all fronts, and the experiment had failed. I therefore decided to leave the next day. I went to bed in a state of complete resignation and defeat. I could touch with my hand my total non-self-sufficiency. That night, this state of mind produced inside me such a radical emptying as to make space for something completely unforeseen and unknown until that moment. Subsequently, I decided to call this experience “promising void”, or “auroral void”. To empty the mind does not mean to deny something precise. Usually, when I deny something, it is because I already have something else in my mind to replace it. In contrast, when I had the experience of that promising void, the situation was different: I remained in a state of anticipation, to see what would happen, but without knowing what was awaiting me, until, at a certain point, entirely unexpected, the feeling of wonder emerged at the fact of my existing here and now. A few years later, on a different occasion, I had the opposite experience, accompanied by the feeling of horror. It was only years later that I read, not without astonishment, the passages from Plato and Aristotle on the pathos of wonder as the gateway to philosophy, the pages on which Descartes described the days of November 10 and 11, 1619, and, finally, the reflections of Kierkegaard in Either/Or, which made philosophy start out from despair and not from doubt: Doubt is thought’s despair; despair is personality’s doubt. That is why I cling so firmly to the defining characteristic “to choose”; it is my watchword, the nerve in my life-view, and that I do have, even if I can in no way presume to have a system. Doubt is the inner movement in thought itself, and in my doubt I conduct myself as impersonally as possible. I assume that thought, when doubt is carried through, finds the absolute and rests therein; therefore, it rests therein not pursuant to a choice but pursuant to the same necessity pursuant to which it doubted, for doubt itself is a qualification of necessity, and likewise rest.55 Everything had been born by chance out of an adolescent challenge to myself, and then I remained waiting to see what would happen. Without knowing it, I had traversed the various stages of a philosophical exercise of 55

Kierkegaard, Engl. transl. 1987, 211–212.

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transformation: the impact of a profound crisis, capable of destabilizing and calling into question my way of seeing things; the demand for unplugging from the frenzy of doing, the luxury of finding the necessary time to meditate and of affording oneself, at least once in life, all the time necessary; a practice of isolation and of silence intended to create a void; despair – in my case, indeed, the decisive passage occurred not through Descartes’ doubt, but through Kierkegaard’s despair –; the renunciation of one’s own will,56 and, finally, the vertiginous experience of wonder. Through this experience, I realized that what I had not accepted of myself until that moment was precisely that ballast from which now I had finally freed myself. This ballast was none other than the adipose fullness of my egotism that had gradually usurped the promising void at the center of my existence – a void that, until that moment, had remained invisible. After this experience, for the first time in my life, I discovered that I was no longer afraid of solitude. Indeed, I was able to live my existence as something not to be taken for granted, that is, as a surprise. 6.3.3 Variations of the “Depth of Field” of Feeling Of course, over time I realized that what appeared to me at the time as a sudden periagoge, had in reality been prepared in some way: it was the result of a slow pathway of transformation. The effects of this periagoge also needed time to be materialized into a new way of seeing things. Nevertheless, there is something I noted right away. In photography, “depth of field” represents the area in which the objects of a picture are sharp, that is, brought into focus. This is an optical characteristic typical of visual phenomena, so much so that some individuals can bring into focus even objects at a great distance, while people suffering from myopia are instead able to bring into focus only objects situated close to them. One of the primary consequences of the experience I drew from the auroral void was to experience that the “depth of field” is not only an optical phenomenon, but also concerns the emotional sphere. I had the sensation that, until that moment, I had been myopic in the field of feeling. It is a sensation similar to what one has when one varies the diaphragm of a good camera: the “depth of field” of feeling varies significantly according to the circumstances and maturity of one’s own order of the heart. After that periagoge, not only did the perspective through which I saw things change, but I could also experience an 56

One can say that I used my subjective will to continue the experiment, even though I was tempted to interrupt it many times; but I used it up to a breaking point, and then, it was replaced by something else.

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amplification of the “depth of field” of emotions. If previously my order of the heart had been almost unusable – because it reflected back to me only unfocused images, so much so that it suited me to primarily trust the ­intellect –, from that moment on, the order of the heart became a precious ally of ­reason to orient my relations with others and my existence. 6.3.4 The Centrality of the Exercises of Emptying for Philosophy Exercises of emptying are the metabolization of a fall, and are experienced as a painful crisis. Such a fall can be caused by tripping over the stumbling block of experience, or by the action of a maieutic dialogue, such as that which leads the young Theaetetus to experience the pathos of wonder. In both cases, one observes a process of purification (katharsis): that is, a process of separation from one’s own little self by means of the refutation (elenchos) of one’s way of thinking, existing, and positioning oneself in the world. In these exercises, therefore, one does not separate oneself from the world, but rather from the familiar environment in which the little self is immersed. The successful outcome of exercises of emptying depends on the failure of the will of the little self, and of each of its projects intended to colonize the auroral void. Such a failure corresponds to an epoche of the ego that enables what has been invisible until then to be made visible. Something new can only emerge from the auroral void if it cannot be reduced to the foreseen, to the little self, to the known, to what is already classified. Otherwise, I only have experience of what I already am, and never encounter the singularity of the other. I only encounter it if I do not reduce it to the form my expectations or projects want to give it. Precisely for this reason, the form of the singularity always preserves an unknowable and unsettling side. In exercises of emptying, I do not isolate myself from all the passions, but only from the passions of the little self. This means that, in the exercise of emptying, I do not obliterate my feeling, but rather suspend my little self’s order of feeling and reposition myself in reference to the order of the heart of my singularity. I overcome the will to power of the little self to achieve a mode of feeling that is capable of welcoming reality. The Japanese philosopher Keiji Nishitani asserts that the presupposition for every true encounter with the other is the state of vacuity, muga = non-ego.57 At the end of the act of emptying, I find “nothing”. Here, by “nothing” I understand the non-ego. The emptying that reaches as far as the non-ego is the one that traverses the auroral void. Properly speaking, exercises of emptying are based 57

Nishitani 2004, 51.

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on horror at the saturation of one’s own promising void, a saturation caused by the adiposity of a hypertrophic, unlimited little self. In exercises of emptying, the terror of the void (horror vacui)58 gives way to the terror of saturation. At the origin of the process of emptying the little self, there is no restlessness of the heart, desire, or hunger to be born. This is because the restlessness of the heart, desire, and the hunger to be born do not belong to the little self, but only to the personal singularity. The little self has cravings, ambitions, and aims, but does not know desire. Therefore, what originates the process of emptying the little self is rather suffering and pain due to the traumatic impact of a crisis. The process of emptying enables the passage from the little self to the personal singularity, and concludes with the emergence of the auroral void. The restlessness of the heart, desire, and the hunger to be born point us back to the existence of the auroral void. Therefore, the auroral void is not the result of the restlessness of the heart, desire, and the hunger to be born, but of the process of emptying. In contrast, the restlessness of the heart, desire, and the hunger to be born are at the origin of the process of transformation. The little self, properly speaking, cannot transform itself, but can only change. For it, self-­transformation is possible only at the price of renouncing itself and dying. In such cases, first comes the violent impact of a crisis that motivates a process of emptying, and only subsequently a process of transformation. Quite different is the case of the personal singularity. At the center of the personal singularity is the auroral void, upon which the exemplarity can act by generating transformation. The exemplarity, however, generates transformation thanks to a positive experience. Consequently, the little self transforms itself only through a painful process of distancing itself from itself. In its case, therefore, transformation involves suffering. By contrast, the personal singularity can transform itself not only through pain and suffering, but also thanks to beauty that “puts on wings”, or to the dawns and announcements of something positive. Philosophy is an exercise of emptying, not filling. The generative moment is in emptying oneself in order to open oneself up to the new, while adipose saturation represents the passive, repetitive, and conformist moment. Saturation cannot be generative; at best, it proves to be satiating, in the sense that the entertainment industry can be so. Saturation follows the logic of the model or the exemplum,59 whereas emptying follows that of exemplarity. Only by stripping myself of the reference to my little self can I become the space for 58 59

Cf. § 6.6.3 Exercises of Emptying Not of Desires but of Cravings for Recognition. On the distinction between exemplum and exemplarity, see § 2.3.1 The Figure of Socrates Between Maieutic Testimony and Exemplum.

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welcoming and diffusing exemplarity. Only after such emptying does the dialogic exercise become constructive, and it is possible to rub the fragment of truth, from which my singularity springs forth, against that of the other, like two flints, so that they can ignite the spark at the basis of the dialogic exercise of friendship. The action of exemplarity acts like a flint that ignites my soul through friction. The goal of emptying is to make an original connection with the cosmos – a connection that would otherwise remain hidden – re-emerge from the auroral void. In origin, all things are linked. If I empty my mind, then this connection re-emerges, and extends itself to all things, conferring a new meaning on them once again. When I empty myself of egotic adiposity, I step out of the perspective of the little self, and reach a new level of attunement with the rest of the world. That which emerges from the auroral void is not a “fulfillment” (Erfüllung) of my intentionality in the sense of Husserl, but the reconnection with the world. Hence, it is the world itself that, thanks to the gap produced by the auroral void, enters inside me and touches me. At this point, it is no longer I who carries out the exercise of transformation, but rather it is the world that exercises itself in me. 6.3.5 Three Images to Begin with: Divesting Oneself in Order to Dress Oneself in Exemplarity Everything begins with an act of emptying understood as undressing oneself of the cravings or passions of the little self. There are three images that may help us to understand how this act of emptying is, in reality, an act of dressing oneself in exemplarity. The first image concerns the beauty of a face. In the Phaedo, Plato asserts that if someone were to say that something is beautiful by virtue of its color or other physical characteristics, she would be confused, since something is only beautiful if beauty is present in it. When something shines with beauty, in reality, it is not shining with the fullness of its own being, but insofar as it welcomes and makes room for something else. Were a person’s face beautiful in itself, it would be beautiful at all moments of the day; as it is, however, even the most beautiful face betrays now and then that it is merely a momentary space in which the intensity of something that goes beyond itself is reflected. Why do I experience unsettlement and restlessness when faced by the beauty of a woman’s face? Why do I feel a shock that redraws my horizon of meaning? Beauty is not a substance or an attribute that belongs, once and for all, to what is beautiful, but a drive that allows one to participate in a new dimension and open oneself to it. Under certain conditions, it makes one grow wings. This is precisely why the encounter with beauty is an event that upsets

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and hurts us. It is something so disruptive that it calls my old balances into question. When I encounter beauty, I feel the urge arise within me to redraw my life within a broader horizon. Therefore, the “hunger to be born” is always also the “hunger for beauty”. The second image is that of the rotating sword described by the Chinese monk Panshan Baoji (720–814, Banzan Hōshaku): Since this is a sword that rotates in the air, no question is raised as to whether it may reach the adversary or not. Besides, the circle it draws is an empty ring that leaves no trace. Nor can it happen that its blade may get broken.60 The sword of Banzan Hōshaku is so sharp that it moves in the air without meeting any resistance. Since this blade does not meet resistance, it is an invincible blade that cuts through the air, penetrating it as far as it desires. To the contrary, the search for recognition follows an oppositional logic that generates friction and makes room for resentment and envy. The effort to assert myself prevents my act from freely rotating in the air. The more the ­existence of the little self is excessively fortified, shielded, and swollen, the more the surface it offers to air resistance increases. If I do not separate myself from the adiposities of my ego, I will not be able to freely rotate in the air like a sharpened sword, but will be thrown back, like an umbrella carried away by the first gust of wind. The exercise of emptying is an exercise of “sharpening”. It makes the singularity sharpen like Banzan Hōshaku’s sword, and allows it to act without meeting resistance. Fanatical admiration for a charismatic leader is born when we are convinced that the leader is not acting out of self-interest, but in favor of the collectivity with which we identify. This, however, arouses hate for those who are not part of it. In contrast, an absolutely gratuitous act is different. If a person’s act is perceived as absolutely gratuitous and disinterested, not only with respect to her own little self but also to the group to which she belongs, then it succeeds in rotating in the air without meeting any resistance. These are acts that are extremely rare but are absolutely invincible. One of these acts is represented by the third image, in which Giotto portrays Saint Francis of Assisi in the act of giving his mantle to a poor man.

60

Suzuki 1968, 401, my translation.

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Figure 6.1 Giotto, St Francis Giving His Mantle to a Poor Man (1295) Giotto, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

This is an elegant gesture that confers on Saint Francis magnificence and authoritativeness. The paradox is that here, in reality, Giotto did not portray an act of undressing, but one of dressing: indeed, it becomes visible in this fresco that in the very act of doffing his mantle – which was the symbol of social status in the Middle Ages – Francis is dressing himself in exemplarity. In Francis’ exemplarity, an act of emptying that severs even the last secret bond with the little self’s craving for its own being becomes visible. In the short term, this act is experienced as a heresy, since it strips itself of the immunitary shield of common sense, and exposes itself to the violence of resentment. In the long term, however, in the face of the honesty of this movement, there is no obstacle, because its logic is not oppositional and disarms any

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immune system. Thanks to the fact that it doffs its own immunitary shield and exposes itself to vulnerability, it moves without meeting any resistance, at least from the other singularities. Just like the rotating sword, it cuts through the air, free to move in all directions because it has obliterated worries concerning the value and merit of its own little self. Since it does not ask for recognition, it does not arouse envy, but a reverential type of admiration that “wounds” without provoking resentment, and, precisely for this reason, penetrates more deeply. By doffing its own mantle, the exemplarity renounces proposing itself as a model of social success. An exemplarity – understood as a gesture, an image, an expression, an act, a phrase, or a work of art – springs forth in a disinterested way with respect to the merits that can derive from it to its author. It consists in a successful movement of emptying (Francis’ undressing) that allows it to become a welcoming space (beauty of Plato), and to move without any further obstacles (the rotating sword). If this movement is completed to the very end – and this happens in its purest form when it is involuntary – an absolutely irresistible and regenerating force emanates from it. This disinterested and involuntary character is often contrasted with the personal dimension and identified with the impersonal. In reality, this disinterest is obtained precisely thanks to the act of transcending the ego that originates the personal singularity. This latter is personal precisely because it does not reflect the whole Truth, but only a fragment of truth. The ontological status of the personal derives from its being a fragment. 6.3.6 The Different Phases of Exercises of Transformation In attempting to identify a possible trace of exercises of philosophical transformation, I will describe the various phases in the order in which I experienced them. A chapter devoted to a specific thematic block corresponds to each phase. The first chapter is devoted to the Platonic theme of purification (katharsis) and of refutation (elenchos) through the exercise of maieutic dialogue. Clearly, the Socratic dialogic exercise is at the center of exercises of transformation. However, since it has already been amply dealt with in the literature on philosophical practice and the art of living, I will limit myself to considering only a few of its aspects. The attempt is to reinterpret the exercise of “learning to die” as an exercise of “learning to live”. The second chapter concerns the emptying of egotism, understood as the pole of aggregation and the gravitational center of one’s own mortiferous, that is, deadly part. The third is devoted to the exercises of dis-tension. In the fourth, I consider the pathos of thauma as an experience of being touched by the world, in its dual sense of horror and of

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wonder. After the theme of wonder, I tackle that of annunciation, of eros, and, finally, of soliloquy and of meditation. This last phase is related to the moment of verification at the level of reflection and becoming aware, in the sense of hermeneutical exercises of self-interpretation and autobiographical exercises, for example. To this phase as well, I will only devote a brief mention, since it has already been widely investigated in the studies on this theme. Finally, in the last chapters, I will raise the problem of the connection between philosophical exercises and social transformation, by referring to three types of open community – family, community of friendship, and unlimited community – to which I will make the exercises of loving, friendship, and compassion correspond. 6.4  Katharsis: Rethinking the “Learning to Die” in the Sense of Ars Vivendi 6.4.1 Toward a Philosophy of Birth In a famous passage of the Gospels, Nicodemus interprets the invitation to be “born again” in the sense of returning into his own mother’s womb (Jn 3:1–21). Thus, Nicodemus does not comprehend that, besides the first birthing – the biological one of the flesh – for a Christian a further birthing is necessary in which she can be reborn in the dual significance implicit in the Greek term anothen: “again” and “from on high”. Indeed, the first biological birthing brings into the world a human being that is still uncompleted from the spiritual point of view, and hence in need of a second birthing. This second birthing corresponds to the idea of a “second creation”. If the first birthing, the biological one, is still connected to the events of the first creation, the second birthing, the spiritual one, involves a conversion of one’s own way of living, which remains inexplicable within the logic of the first creation, so much so that “the natural man does not accept (dechetai) the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him” (1 Cor. 2:14). This second birth has often been understood in the sense of amor mortis, and hence of a mortification of earthly existence. If, in contrast, the mortification is directed only toward egotism, so as to favor agapic attention to relations of care, then it is not a rebirth that is relegated to the otherworldly dimension, but a rebirth already here on this earth. In this way, the philosophy of amor mortis becomes a philosophy of birth. The interpretation of philosophy in the sense of an exercise of death finds one of its maximal expressions in the Platonic concept of “learning to die”, which a certain Cleombrotos interpreted as if the gateway into the world of

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philosophy were represented by physical death, and not by the good life.61 In favor of a philosophy of amor mortis, one may cite a passage from the Phaedo, in which one reads that only when we are dead will we be able to achieve true wisdom (phronesis) (Phd. 66e). And yet, Socrates is able to govern his own passions and to be virtuous, that is, to do philosophy, already here on this earth. Moreover, various scholars point out that in Plato, the concept of phronesis retains a dual significance, even in the Phaedo. There is not only the phronesis reserved for the contemplation of the world of ideas, but also a phronesis accessible to a philosopher already in the life of this world.62 It would be thus simplistic to assert that one can do philosophy and live virtuously only after physical death. A Platonist who interpreted the “learning to die” like Cleombrotos did would be equivalent to a Christian who, like Nicodemus, interprets the invitation to be “born again” in the sense of returning into the womb of her own mother. Upon more careful reading, it turns out that by “death”, in the Phaedo, an exercise of purification (katharsis) and of separation of the soul from the impulses of the body is understood. After all, every birth is always an act of separation: from the maternal womb, and then from the umbilical cord. The further course of life is also marked by separations: from the maternal breast, from the father’s hand, from home country, from customs, from certainties. Even the periagoge, as described in the Republic, is an act of separation: the movement of the head by which the prisoner in the Platonic cave turns herself around is equivalent to a separation from the dimension of doxa. In Plato, the exercise of death (katharsis) is really an exercise of separation from that which squanders existence, and which makes one neglect the care of the soul, by giving priority instead to things of lesser importance, such as the accumulation of wealth, honors, and power (see Ap. 36c). Only through this separation is it possible to gain that “greater correctness of gaze” (orthoteron blepoi) that allows one to devote one’s best energies to the care of the soul. In this way, “learning to die” can be reinterpreted in the sense of “learning to live”. 6.4.2 Purification from Simple Ignorance (Agnoia) and from Amathia Learning to die is an exercise of separation thanks to which I sculpt the form of my soul. But what do these chips from which I separate myself represent? 61 62

“For a man by the name of Cleombrotos, having studied Plato’s Phaedo and learned that the philosopher must train for death, but not having learned in what way, went up and hurled himself down from a wall” (cf. Ammonius 2020, 71). This is the conclusion to which, for example, Heinz J. Schaefer comes in his monograph devoted to the theme of phronesis in Plato (cf. Schaefer 1981, 194).

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In the Phaedo, Plato’s entire attention is still directed toward the purification from cravings of the body that are directed to the search for pleasure. Upon closer inspection, however, for Plato himself, it is not the body that is at the origin of this distortion, but ignorance. Indeed, it is out of ignorance that we place pleasures of the body before care of the soul. There is no doubt, at any rate, that in the Phaedo the concept of katharsis is still inserted within a dualistic perspective. This limit is overcome in the Sophist. Here, the exercises of purification of the body become the model for the exercises of purification of the soul. While the body can be purified through gymnastics (that purifies from ugliness and from deformity) and medicine (purification from illness) (Sph. 226e–227a, 228e), the soul can be purified through justice (purification from wickedness), by means of education (paideia, which allows purification from agnoia, or lack of knowledge), and finally through shame (purification from amathia, which is what makes the soul ugly and deformed) (Sph. 229d–230e). In these pages, three different forms of katharsis are introduced that are explicitly directed at the care of the soul. Of particular importance is the difference between purification from agnoia and purification from amathia. Indeed, there exists a very particular form of not knowing (agnoia): that is, not knowing with the pretense of knowing, “and it’s the only kind of ignorance (agnoia) that’s called amathia (Sph. 229c, transl. modified). In order to purify oneself from simple agnoia, paideia understood as education and learning is sufficient, while purification from amathia is much more problematic. In the Sophist, amathia is understood as the cause of the greatest ugliness or deformity of the soul. Because of this disorder, the amatheis (those who are suffering from this form of ignorance) fail to recognize the faults and ugliness of their soul: “Because what’s especially difficult about being ignorant [with the presumption of knowing] [amathia] is that you are content with yourself, even though you’re neither beautiful and good nor intelligent” (Smp. 204a; see also Lg. V, 732a–b). We will return to this concept later. 6.4.3 The Contrast between Amathia and Eroticism According to Socrates, not-knowing (agnoia) is not something to be condemned per se, since it is typical of the human condition. It can either degenerate into the “not knowing that has the presumption of knowing” (amathia), or, on the contrary, rise up to the Socratic “knowledge of not knowing” thanks to eroticism. Eroticism is compatible with agnoia, but incompatible with amathia. Indeed, while in agnoia it is still possible to become aware of one’s own “not knowing”, which can be translated into the erotic desire to know, amathia is a condition of self-satisfied ignorance that precludes philosophical practice, and

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prevents one from becoming ‘a lover of wisdom’.63 For these reasons, eroticism is absent not only in the gods, but also in the amatheis: indeed, “none of the gods loves wisdom or wants to become wise – for they are [already] wise – and no one else who is wise already loves wisdom; on the other hand, no one of those who are ignorant [with the pretense of knowing] [amatheis] will love wisdom either or want to become wise” (Smp. 204a, transl. modified). What must be condemned is therefore not not-knowing per se (agnoia), but only one particular form of it: amathia (Ap. 29b; Alc. 1.117c–118a). An individual who is suffering from agnoia can still realize that she does not know, and can reach the erotic situation of desiring to know. In contrast, whoever suffers from amathia remains closed within her own infatuation. Indeed, amathia represents a baneful type of ignorance, because it renders one incapable of evaluating correctly what is just, beautiful, and true (see Lg. V, 731e). Yet these are precisely the themes around which the dialogic exercises that allow one to take care of the soul revolve (Phdr. 278a). Therefore, amathia represents a serious illness of the soul, for it results in an axiological disorder that deceives me about the most relevant evaluations concerning human existence (see Prt. 358c).64 6.4.4 Infatuations: Amathia as Egotic Bias The exercise of katharsis can be interpreted as a process of emptying. On the contrary, the infatuation produced by amathia is the result of a process of filling. The technique of formation through “removing” (katharsis) is opposed to that of deformation through “filling” (amathia). While emptying leads to thauma of horror and of wonder, amathia blocks a person within the certainty of possessing an indubitable truth that excludes every doubt, question, or surprise. In amathia, everything becomes indisputable, dogmatic, and foreseeable. The exercise of emptying discovers a “fragment of truth” at the basis of my singularity. Yet this is merely a partial fragment that must be integrated, in the sense that it generates the spark of philosophy only if it is rubbed against the fragment of another singularity. Within the perspective of amathia, without the exercise of emptying, I confuse this fragment with a self-sufficient and 63

64

A direct link between eros and philosophy is established by Diotima in the Symposium when she affirms that eros is in an intermediate position between ignorance (amathia) and wisdom (sophia): “Eros is in love with what is beautiful [eros peri to kalon], and wisdom is extremely beautiful. It follows that Eros must be a philosopher [philosophon] and, as such, is in between being wise [sophou] and being ignorant [amathous]” (Smp. 204b, transl. modified). In a nutshell, amathia is an axiological disorder that brings about a transvaluation of all values, and hence a distortion of the relationship with reality.

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concluded truth, and conceive of my singularity as a “completed totality”. This is a genuine “egotic bias” that assumes the form of a dangerous infatuation. The closest condition to death is usually thought to be sleep. In reality, one can be extremely alive and creative while dreaming. Infatuations are infinitely closer to death than sleep. Breaking the enchantment of the egotist’s infatuation is equivalent to awakening that individual’s consciousness. These are awakenings of consciousness that can be compared – rather than to the reawakening from sleep – to veritable little resurrections, that is, to the passage from death to life. Besides, in my infatuation with the other, I am in reality often silently constructing the glorification of my ego. This process is not easy to unmask: those who live within the bubble of this enchantment have the impression that it is the other who has a distorted vision of reality; in infatuation, any criticism is perceived as an unjustified and undeserved hostile judgment, or as an empty pedagogical exhortation. Precisely for this reason, it is never theories, judgments, reasonings, moral preachings, or pedagogical admonitions that break the enchantment. The purification from amathia requires something much more radical: that is, the exercise of shame. But what shame? 6.4.5 Two Types of Shame: In Relation to Public Opinion (Aidomai) and in Relation to One’s Own Consciousness (Aischyne) In the classic distinction between shame culture and guilt culture, as already discussed by Bernard Williams in Shame and Necessity, the feeling of shame is supposedly subordinate to the conformist gaze of common sense, while only the feeling of guilt has the prestige of moving in the direction of authentic self-awareness and of moral autonomy. One might therefore think that Plato too, with his theory of the kathartic function of shame, fits into shame ­culture. In these discussions, however, the reference is to the concept of a shame that is born with regard to public opinion (aidomai), whereas in the Platonic dialogues a new concept of shame is introduced in its place: the shame one feels toward one’s own conscience (aischyne). In the Greek culture of the time, shame in the sense of aidomai was still dominant. By introducing the concept of shame in the sense of aischyne, the Platonic dialogues already situate themselves outside the traditional concept of “shame culture”. The particularity of aischyne is that it makes visible the deformities of a soul that is not taken care of. The exercise of aischyne is based on the method of refutation (elenchos): through a stringent sequence of short questions and answers, the aporias of the interlocutor’s thesis are made to emerge. Finding herself in a situation with no way out, the interlocutor ends up becoming

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aware of her own ignorance (Sph. 230b–d).65 This ‘gymnastics of the soul’ is protracted until the amatheis are brought to face the obscene and monstrous form of their own soul, so that they are ashamed and purify themselves from amathia, which makes their soul ready for transformation.66 This is the “principal and most important kind of” purification (Sph. 230d, transl. modified). Aischyne is a shame that does not act on the psychological level, but on the anthropogenetic one. Indeed, it orients the care of the soul and the process of formation of the singularity. When shame makes me see the deformities that derive from the lack of care, then I also see my limits, and become aware of “knowing that I do not know”. Once this step is accomplished, refutation separates the soul from its deformations,67 and in this way renders it a lover of the beautiful. 6.4.6 Axiological Dimension of Amathia What does the Stranger in the Sophist understand when he asserts that one does evil out of ignorance (Sph. 229c, for example; see also Euthd. 281c–e)? The significance of this assertion changes completely depending on whether ignorance here translates the Greek term agnoia or amathia. If evil derived from agnoia, it would be a simple ‘epistemological’ limit. In these passages, however, the Greek term used is that of amathia. This is therefore a much more radical limit, for amathia is not only an epistemological lack, but also entails a form of illusionism at the level of feeling and loving, and hence an axiological disorder as well. The axiological nature of this disorder, as we have already seen, is demonstrated by the fact that it results in the inability to distinguish the just, the good, and the beautiful (see Lg. V, 731e). Attention to the concept of amathia implies overcoming the famous thesis of Socratic intellectualism, as inaugurated by the Aristotelian reading of the Protagoras. The usual interpretation, according to which one does evil out of simple ignorance – in the sense of an epistemological lack of knowledge 65 66

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Furthermore, the Socratic method should be recalled through which Socrates aims not only to make his interlocutor aware of her own limits and her own not knowing, but also to let her give birth and experience the pathos of wonder (see Tht. 155c). It would be therefore reductive to assert that katharsis based on refutation (elenchos) is limited to freeing us from false opinions, since its most interesting result is that it brings us to distance ourselves from a counterproductive overestimation of ourselves, or literally, our “inflated and rigid opinions” about ourselves (Sph. 230c, transl. modified). In this way, katharsis assumes the character of an erotic paideia. Katharsis through elenchos shapes the image of the singularity by distancing it from the obscene images of the self. It sculpts the soul by freeing it from its own monstrous deformities. Therefore, this type of katharsis orients attempts of “giving birth in beauty” (Smp. 206b).

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(agnoia) – is incompatible with the Socratic thesis that the ultimate origin of evil lies in amathia. Indeed, if the origin of evil lies in amathia, then the problem of evil is not only epistemological in nature, but one must also consider the axiological problem inherent in amathia.68 If the origin of ignorance lies in amathia, purification from not-knowing (agnoia) or from epistemological ignorance alone is no longer a sufficient condition for being virtuous, but refutation by shame (understood as aischyne) will be necessary. Such refutation does not aim at a defeat or a humiliation of the interlocutor, perhaps in order to demonstrate one’s own superiority, but lays the foundation for purifying her from “inflated and rigid opinions about [herself]” (Sph. 230b, transl. modified), and for inducing her to adopt “an attitude of shame”, that is, of the awareness of her own limits. Without the spur of shame, it is not possible to cure the soul from amathia. Indeed, the soul […] won’t get any advantage from any learning that’s offered to it until someone, by refuting it, reduces it to an attitude of shame [eis aischynen katastesas] and, by removing the opinions that interfere with learning, manifests it as purified [katharon apophnei]. (Sph. 230c–d; transl. modified) The theme of purification re-emerges recurrently throughout the course of Western philosophy, from Platonic katharsis to Cartesian doubt, down to Husserlian epoche. The exercise of purification recalls the process by which, in antiquity, wheat was separated from the darnel (or ryegrass), and then from the chaff. At the end of this process, the darnel and the chaff were burnt: that is, they were made to die.69 The kathartic care of the soul consists in a similar exercise in which I separate the impurities of the soul and let them die. Only through such an exercise of purification, Platonically understood as separation – as the separation of what is good, with the goal of eliminating what is evil (see Sph. 227d) – is it possible to live according to virtue (arete) already on this earth. Up to now, however, this type of purification has been understood in a primarily epistemological sense. In contrast, with the thesis of purification by means of shame, Plato points to the primarily axiological dimension of this process.

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See § 3.4.5 The Non-Banality of Evil. In the Gospel of Matthew, there is the invitation to separate the darnel (cockle) from the wheat in order then to burn it (Matt. 13:24–30).

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6.5 The Black Sun of Egotism: Learning to Separate Oneself from One’s Own Mortiferous Part 6.5.1 The Greatest Evil of All: Egotism In order to understand what the true purpose of the exercises of purification in Plato is, it is useful to ask oneself what the greatest evil of all is for Plato. According to a widespread opinion, for Plato, the cause of all evils can be traced back to the body, and, in this regard, almost always the assertion of the Cratylus is quoted according to which the body is the prison of the soul. Upon more careful reading, it turns out that the question is more complex. Indeed, it is not asserted in the Cratylus that the body is the origin of evil, but rather that the origin of evil lies in the soul itself, and that this is precisely why the soul turns out to be imprisoned in the body “until the payment is paid” (Cra. 400c). It should not, therefore, be surprising if the later Plato does not point to the body as the origin of all evils. In a passage of exceptional importance from the Laws – a hitherto little explored and often misunderstood passage70 – Plato has the Athenian stranger say: The greatest of all the evils [kakon] is inborn in the souls of most human beings, and each of them, using indulgence to herself in this evil, does not contrive any way to flee it. You can get some idea of this evil from the saying that every human being by nature is ‘her own best friend’ [philos hautoi], and it is correct that this must be so. In truth, however, the cause of all errors [hamartematon] for everyone is always this excessive [sphodra] self-love [heauton philian]. Whoever loves is blinded with regard to what she loves (Lg. V, 731d–e; transl. modified). At least four theses are implicit in this passage: (1) the greatest evil of all is an excessive form of self-love; (2) in every human being, there is a natural and legitimate tendency to philautia; (3) in fact, however, this per se positive tendency often degenerates into an excessive and violent form; (4) the origin of all errors (hamartia) can be traced back to this excessive and violent form of philautia. It must be pointed out that in this passage, Plato does not criticize philautia, that is, legitimate self-love, as many interpreters of Plato still think today, but only an “excessive” form of this self-love, literally “sphodra heautou philia”. This is an important and indispensable specification. This excessive love for oneself, egotism, is a heresy that has been widespread in Western culture. In this 70

With regard to this passage, I refer the reader to Cusinato 2021.

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heresy, egotism is confused with love or friendship toward oneself. In reality, it does not represent a form of loving, but a form of blindness of loving: “whoever loves [in this manner] is blinded [typhloutai] with regard to what she loves” (Lg. V, 731e, modified) – hence, she does not love herself either. 6.5.2 Axiological Illusionism and Amathia as a Consequence of Excessive Philautia At Laws 731e, Plato identifies in the excessive self-love a specific pathology of the human soul: a veritable cancer that leads to a severe form of alienation. This excessive self-love gives rise to three different consequences, which are carefully listed in the lines that follow the previously quoted passage: 1. It causes a form of blindness, not only in an epistemological but also in an axiological sense, that translates into the inability to correctly distinguish the just, the good, and the beautiful: “so that she makes a bad judgment [kakos krinei] about the just [ta dikaia], the good [ta agatha], and the beautiful [ta kala]” (Lg. V, 731e–732a, transl. modified); 2. It leads to amathia, that is, to mistaking one’s own ignorance for knowledge, whence it derives that “we think we know everything when we are almost totally ignorant” (Lg. V, 732a); 3. After the diagnosis of the worst of evils, and of its two primary symptoms, Plato finally indicates the remedy, which consists in turning to the force of exemplarity: “every human being must avoid loving herself excessively [to sphodra philein hauton] and pursue [diokein] always [the example of] the one who is better than herself [ton d’heautou beltio]; and she mustn’t be put off by shame [aischynen] at the thought of abandoning that ‘best friend’” (Lg. V, 732b, transl. modified). Otherwise, in fact, “thanks to not leaving to others what we don’t know how to handle, we inevitably come to grief when we try to tackle it ourselves” (Lg. V, 732a–b). The importance of Laws 731e–732b derives from the fact that in all the other dialogues Plato had not explained the causes of amathia, but had limited himself to describing its effects. It is only in this passage, hence at the conclusion of his work, that he identifies the roots of amathia in excessive philautia (Lg. V, 731d–e). From this the blindness of the amatheis derives “with regard to what they love” (Lg. V, 731e), which renders them incapable of distinguishing “the just, the good, and the beautiful” (Lg. V, 731d–e). Hence, this is a problem at the axiological, not simply the epistemological level, and clarifies a key aspect: in amathia, I do not commit evil because I do not know in the sense that I do not have sufficient information to comprehend how things are, or because I have wrong or false information, or some other problem at the cognitive level. Rather, I commit evil because I am axiologically blinded by an excessive philautia that

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falsifies my perspective on reality. From the viewpoint of the quantity of knowledge, the amatheis are often full of erudition and notions, so much so that they seem to be wise. Their problem rather concerns the error (hamartia) of the perspective, which is in fact deviated in the wrong direction by amathia. 6.5.3 The Black Sun of Egotism and the Craving for Attachment to One’s Own Mortiferous Part It is not only the hunger to be born that acts in the singularity. The will of the mortiferous part acts as well. By the “mortiferous part”, I understand that part of the singularity that is suspended between the impossibility of being reborn and the will not to die. From the perspective of an ars vivendi, the exercise of purification consists in separating oneself from those parts that are already dead, or which, when confronted by a crisis, have been rigidified and have been crumpled up on themselves. Those are the parts of a singularity that remain behind in the process of transformation. After all, every process of transformation, every self-respecting expressive metabolism, has its waste that needs to be expelled. The hunger to be born is the desire that impels one to separate from one’s own mortiferous part in order to continue one’s birth and open oneself up to the world. The mortiferous part is constituted by the little self’s adiposity that fills the auroral void. This is why the exercise of emptying aims at untying the knots, intertwinings, and bonds of which the adipose tissues of the little self are woven. If the person’s existential momentum is successful, the will of the mortiferous parts becomes neutralized. If, however, the person’s existential momentum is blocked, these mortiferous parts do not remain inert, but become aggregated around egotism. In this way, the craving for attachment to one’s own mortiferous part condenses in the gravitational force of the “black sun” of egotism that acts as an organized form of resistance to transformation. It is a black sun that, crushed by its own gravitational force, is not able to emerge outside itself and to illuminate. This black sun loves itself so blindly and absolutely that it fails to separate itself from any part of the self, not even from its own mortiferous part. In this compulsive attachment to every part of the self, it ends up imploding into its own mortiferous part without realizing it. Egotism is not a disorder of the little self, but of the singularity. It has nothing to do with an excess or a defect of the operational closure of autopoietic systems. It is the result of a singularity that absolutizes its own fragment of truth, and regresses to the self-referential logic of the little self. 6.5.4 Egotic Bias: The Damnation of Egotism The mortiferous part is structured into a genuine egosphere, and follows the logic of egotic bias. When following this logic, the egotic singularity thinks that

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it is pursuing its own interests, but, in reality, it inflicts damage upon itself, since it isolates itself from the rest of the world instead of separating from its own mortiferous part. The result is that the egotic singularity no longer sees the world, but only the reflection of its own projection, and, in the end, it always encounters only itself. From the perspective of egotism, the existence of any good and value outside the self is experienced as a theft of one’s own being and as an injustice. All that shines out there in the world, outside one’s own self-­ referential horizon, obscures one’s own ego and becomes the source of hate, envy, and resentment. Gradually, all authentic relations and bonds are nullified. The damnation of egotism is precisely this: instead of joining and fusing with the overall rhythm of the real, egotism leads the singularity to identify itself with its own mortiferous part, until it imprisons existence within the little self’s egosphere. Damnation derives from the Latin damnum, from damage, loss, obliteration. The damned person is one who turns up for her appointment with death without that sensation of being “full of years”, or being “sated with days”, as described in the Old Testament.71 Damnation consists in seeing that one’s own energies, one’s own days, one’s own years are being obliterated. It is to become a King Midas in reverse, who transforms everything she touches not into gold, but into mud.72 This is what is ethically reproachable, the true ethical incorrectness with respect to existence. Damnation already awaits her here on this earth: it is a non-living that deludes itself that it is living, it is the sacrificing of one’s own days for a non-existent reality. 6.5.5 Purifying Oneself from Hate for the Enemy The attachment to one’s own mortiferous part, which condenses into egotism, is often expressed in resentment toward life and existence in general. Moreover, it makes one particularly vulnerable to hate. Hate is the poisonous stinger of one’s own mortiferous part. The exercises of purification from ­egotism therefore include the exercises of purification from hate. Authentic hate should not be confused with envy. While envy is directed toward the other qua little self, hate is directed toward the other qua singularity. Indeed, hate does not aim to strike the other’s social recognition; rather, it aims at the ontological core of her singularity. I hate the other because her existence endangers mine, and continually testifies to its failure. Whereas in 71 72

“Then Abraham breathed his last and died at a good old age, an old man and full of years; and he was gathered to his people” (Genesis 25:8). The damned is one who damages herself by throwing away her days that should be ­destined for life.

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envy I desire what the other has – her success, her friendships, the objects she possesses, and in short, her existence – in hate I do not desire to take something away from the other, but, much more radically, to destroy her. Hating someone means to desire, more or less consciously, her death. The phenomenology of hate sheds light on a logic that is inverse with respect to the logic of loving, but is just as powerful. By loving and hating, I modify the existence of the person who shares my feeling. The person ­positions itself in the world and assumes form through practices of emotional sharing at the level of feeling, of desiring, of preferring and postponing, and, above all, of hating and loving. When I love or hate, I increase or reduce not only the diaphragm of my openness to the world, but also that of the person who shares my love or hate. While envy is directed at the other’s little self, hate strikes the singularity of the other. To hate someone, I must know that person very well; in some cases, I must even have loved her. Hate, like loving, is not based on subjective illusions that can be traced back to introjection or projection, which are instead typical of envy. If it were, it would be limited to scratching only the surface. On the contrary, I hate someone effectively only if I am able to transcend my self-­ referential perspective and objectively perceive a possible degeneration of that person’s values. Indeed, hate is not based on the perception of a negative value that is already realized and evident to everyone. If that were all it was, actions of hate would be limited to the cognitive and psychological level. Instead, hate acts ontologically at the anthropogenetic level, since, once a possible tumorlike degeneration of a value is perceived, it offers a concrete space for the realization of this degeneration: starting from the perception of this possibility, hate stimulates the development of this tumor mass in the hated person. In this way, hate represents one of the most effective ways to make a singularity’s order of the heart degenerate. If I hate a person, I make a monstrous image flash before her gaze that was previously not even remotely imaginable, and her reactions to my hate will inevitably bring to realization that image which my hate had only anticipated. In this way, hate becomes the best ally of the mortiferous part of the hated person. The enemy who hates me is not raving; she sees in fact a real possibility that does not yet exist, but which may manifest itself under certain conditions. By hating, she has the ability to intuit my worst part, to influence my anthropogenetic process, and to cause the monstrous element hidden within me to emerge. The problem is that the sting of the poisonous stinger of hate also has a backlash in the hater: when I strike the other, I also poison my existence and make it die. To hate “effectively”, I must have deeply cultivated the action of this poison upon me. It is in this sense that the exhortation to love one’s own enemies in

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the Gospel of Luke must be reread. This passage is usually interpreted as an invitation to take care of the enemy. In reality, the direction must be reversed: it is an invitation to pay attention to what occurs in the hater because of hate. When I hate the enemy, I am also feeding my mortiferous part. To hate a person who hates me means making myself be involved in her hate, allowing her hate to put down roots and poison me. By responding to my enemy’s hate, I become exactly as “hateful” as I already am in her eyes. Instead of flourishing, I “birth” a monstrosity that I would never have been able to conceive on my own. The only remedy for this spiral is the one proposed by the evangelical maxim, which is not a naïve invitation to do good to your own enemies, but rather an antidote to the poisonous stinger of hate. Separation from one’s own mortiferous part, from egotism, from amathia, and from hate, concern the exercises of purification (katharsis) from a part of one’s own singularity. They are the exercises considered in the previous ­chapters. In the next chapters, I will take into consideration the exercises that concern the overcoming of the little self’s self-referential perspective, the one that directs my social life, and which often degenerates into the illusion that is at the basis of envy. I call the former “exercises of separation” (katharsis), and the latter “exercises of dis-tension”. Both are exercises of emptying, not of filling. 6.6 Dis-Tension of the Singularity: Overcoming the Perspective of the Little Self 6.6.1 Exercises of Dis-Tension: Embracing Every Experience Hadot attributes a great deal of importance to the distinction of two different types of spiritual exercises. The ones of the first type, which can be traced back to the Stoics, aim at a tension of the soul, whereas those of the second type traced back to the Epicureans aim at a dis-tension.73 In what follows, I propose to reread the distinction between tension and dis-tension through that between the little self and the singularity. Indeed, while the emotional structure of the little self is constructed around the tension (Anspannung) of the will, that of the singularity is characterized in the sense of a dis-tension (Entspannung) of the will that goes so far as to obliterate the will itself and achieves an attitude of paying attention and listening. This passage occurs only at the culmination of the exercises of separation (katharsis) described in the previous chapters. 73

See Hadot 1995, 59–70.

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Attempts to overcome the little self’s self-referential perspective that are characterized by a tension of the will can be identified in both Western and Eastern traditions. As regards the West, one can cite, for example, the knowledge of not knowing of the Socratic and Platonic tradition, the exercises of humility present in the Christian tradition, and those of detachment (Abgeschiedenheit) from the self that are found in the tradition of the Rhineland mystics (Meister Eckhart, Dietrich of Freiburg, Henry Suso, Johannes Tauler, etc.). In the Buddhist tradition, genuine techniques of non-resistance have been developed to purify oneself from cravings. Nirvana is the extinction or quenching of craving (raga). Here, I conceive of the concept of craving in a more limited sense, and identify it with everything that revolves around the struggle for social recognition typical of the little self. The subject’s will weaves together an infinite series of bonds and snares to dominate the world and entangle it in the subject’s own conceptual web. This web represents the causal nexus through which the subject objectifies reality. However, when the little self wants to take the place of the singularity, this web eventually becomes a threat that risks blocking the individual’s existence, so much so that the situation ends up resembling that of a victim uselessly writhing in the coils of a serpent. The more the individual resists with her own will, the tighter the grip of the “coils” of effective reality becomes. The more one’s own muscles rigidify and offer resistance to the coils, the more efficacious the action of crushing becomes. In contrast, Eastern techniques of non-resistance teach one to dis-tend oneself completely, and to adapt every part of oneself to the serpent’s coils, until one completely yields to them. Borrowing these techniques, the singularity will succeed in escaping the grip of these coils, and in slipping away with the same elegance with which a woman takes off a glove from her hand. In contrast, the little self that follows the strategies of the tension of the will is damned from the outset, since it will never be able to dis-tend itself and escape from these coils. An existence based exclusively on “tension” and “concentration” loses contact with primordial feeling, and disperses itself in daily concerns. By contrast, the singularity is saved when it discovers that it is only a fragment of truth and succeeds in re-synchronizing itself with the world. As a fragment of truth, it learns to embrace every sensation and every experience it traverses, to welcome everything that happens to it as an exercise of life. 6.6.2 Practicing Dis-Tension in the Exercise of Not Seeking The act of dis-tension that opens up to periagoge is a non-action. This is an apparently contradictory concept that recalls a maxim from Lao Tzu’s Tao Tê Ching, according to which superior virtue does not assert its own virtue,

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therefore it has virtue, while inferior virtue never gives up its own virtue, therefore it has no virtue; superior virtue is inactive and without any intention, while inferior virtue is active and has intentions.74 Exercises of dis-tension aim at suspending the will and the affective structure of my little self, with all the burden of pretenses, worries, and intentionalities that characterize it. They are exercises of not wanting, not seeking, not asking. They are exercises of not projecting or prefiguring anything. If I concentrate on the search for something, then I only see what I am seeking; I encounter only the copy of what is already foreseen. If I place myself in the attitude of non-search, then I open myself to the unforeseen of what I am not seeking. I renounce my will, and remain waiting to make it possible for the other and for life to expose and reveal themselves. I empty my mind of my intentions and remain in a receptive attitude. To remain within the “auroral void” means keeping silent to listen to its silence. This state of dis-tension and listening is not torpor. On the contrary, it is the overcoming of that lethargic condition in which my singularity finds itself when its existence is directed by the little self’s cravings and tensions. It is a condition of non-activity only from the perspective of the little self’s will. From the singularity’s point of view, by contrast, it corresponds to an activity of participation and re-synchronization with the rest of the world. 6.6.3 Exercises of Emptying Not of Desires, but of Cravings for Recognition The craving for recognition and desire follow two opposite logics. The exercise of dis-tension involves a purification from the craving for recognition, but not from desire. If horror vacui is dominant in Western culture, what is unsettling in Eastern culture is not the void, but fullness. The result is that, in Western culture, the fear of the void impels me to fill my existence with an infinite series of commitments, obligations, and roles that derive from the craving for recognition. This is precisely why great importance has been given to the struggle for recognition in Western culture: it is the most direct way of filling the social self’s horror vacui. The struggle for one’s own social recognition is fundamental to an individual’s psychic development and to the functioning of any society. Even social conflicts can be interpreted as a consequence of the struggle for recognition, which therefore has an essential function for social dynamics. Its logic is very effectively described by Hegel in the master-slave dialectic. Nevertheless, there

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See Tao Te Ching, ch. XXXVIII, Lao Tzu 2021, 156.

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is a limit beyond which this logic ends up compromising relations with the other. The logic of the singularity differs profoundly from the logic of recognition typical of the little self. A singularity does not know what to do with being recognized. A singularity does not aim at recognition, but at being desired by another singularity’s fragment of truth. It is true that, as a little self, I exist only to the extent that I struggle to be recognized. However, if, as a singularity, I do not exist to take care of someone else and to interact with her fragment of truth, then why do I exist? When I carry out the exercise of dis-tension, I renounce expanding my self-referential little self. I suspend the struggle for recognition, as well as the cura sui of the cravings of the little self, and turn to the cultivation of desire. This changes the perspective: what I now see in the other is not something to be conquered, but a generative space to be shared. As soon as I glimpse the other’s positivity, it is my entire existence that rejoices in it and expands, exactly as the little self was consumed with envy when faced with the good possessed by the other, stiffening and becoming increasingly sterile and resentful. To the extent that I transcend my self-referential perspective, I become capable of admiring the other without envy, and therefore of listening to her exemplarity. The other’s success in the struggle for recognition wounds my narcissism and arouses envy of my little self. If, in contrast, the other’s success concerns the act of self-transcendence, then this success can become a springboard for my own self-transcendence. 6.6.4 The Askance Gaze of the Envious and Her Poisonous Ray Etymologically, the term envy refers to the Latin verb in-videre, which means “to look askance”. This “looking askance” is a phenomenon of optical illusion typical of the emotional field, which recalls the erroneous gaze of amathia. It is an “inverse periagoge”, in which I direct a poisonous ray toward the other, instead of turning toward the world with an open-handed gesture. Envy has assumed a crucial power and virulence in the liquid society. Its force derives from the fact that it has become one of the parameters to which one has recourse in order to evaluate the meaningfulness and value of one’s own existence: I am envied; therefore I exist! In reality, it is only being loved, and certainly not being envied, that demonstrates that the singularity of my life is worthy of being lived. Whereas the perception of a negative value is at the basis of hate, at the basis of envy is an error in perspective: I confuse the symbols of success and of social recognition with those of the flourishing of an existence. The envious person deludes herself that it is possible to achieve personal realization through the

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shortcut of imitating a model, thus sparing herself the difficult pathway opened up by exemplarity. By doing so, however, she falls into a severe delusion, and remains completely defenseless in the face of anxiety caused by death. If I remain within the illusion that social success measures my personal realization, then I absolutize the value of social success. I direct all my energies toward social recognition, even those destined for the hunger to be born. In this way, if I obtain success, I delude myself that I have realized myself; if, in contrast, I fail, I feel like a victim of an injustice, since I have invested all my energies to no avail. Then I will begin looking askance at the other’s social success. The intensity of the poisonous ray that envy directs toward the other’s success is directly proportional to the energies invested in one’s own lack of success. If to this the conviction is added that the other has had success without deserving it, or without committing herself as thoroughly as I have done, then envy crosses over into resentment. In reality, the “injustice” at the basis of envy has been caused by myself: it consists in squandering all my best energies only on the struggle for social recognition. Rather than an injustice, it is the consequence of a falsified perspective. By contrast, at the basis of authentic resentment – the one described by Améry – there may be hate that derives from having suffered a profound injustice. 6.6.5 Being Free of Envy (Aphthonos) and Exemplarity To cast a deeper gaze on the phenomenon of envy, a reference to a passage from Plato may be useful. According to Plato, the Demiurge generated the cosmos because he is good, and the primary characteristic Plato attributes to this divine goodness is its “never becoming envious [phthonos]” (Ti. 29e, transl. modified). The divine Demiurge is the arche, the first testimony of an act that is carried out free of envy. If the momentum of eros culminates in making oneself similar to the divine (Tht. 176a-c),75 then philosophy is not only love for wisdom, but also love for acting without envy (aphthonos). Loving wisdom – that is, doing philosophy – and acting without envy are closely entwined. Indeed, the exercise of philosophical dialogue is a concrete example of envy-free behavior. Philosophy is based on sparks born from “envyless” discussions: Only when all of these things – names, definitions, and visual and other perceptions – have been rubbed against one another and tested, pupil 75

On this theme see also Armstrong 2004.

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and teacher asking and answering questions in good will and without envy [phthonon] – only then, when reason and knowledge are at the very extremity of human effort, can they illuminate the nature of any object (Ep. VII, 344b). Not only philosophy, but also exemplarity is closely connected to the logic that is implicit in envy-free acts. The mystery of exemplarity consists in the fact that in it I see something better and more beautiful outside myself without feeling envy, which is, in fact, a genuine miracle from the viewpoint of human psychology. Yet how is it possible for a being that is not a divinity to act without envy? The askance gaze of envy, which also has its roots in amathia, does not allow one to see the fragment of truth of exemplarity, since it confuses it with the social success of the model. Only a deeper feeling manages to correct the gaze from envy and to see that fragment. If this fragment is compatible with mine, the feeling of loving and of friendship is born. In this way, the correction of the gaze of envy inaugurates a selective activity: it separates the bonds that are reduced to hindrances and obligations from those that can become the space within which one’s own freedom assumes form. 6.7

Plato’s Three Concepts of Wonder

6.7.1 How Does One Become a Philosopher for Plato? It may seem banal to say, but understanding something and experiencing something are two profoundly different things. This is particularly true of a famous passage from the Theaetetus: “For it is typical of a philosopher to experience this pathos, to wonder [thaumazein]. Indeed, there is no other principle [arche] of philosophy than this” (Tht. 155d, transl. modified). Those who do philosophy often think that it is sufficient to comprehend the meaning of this passage in a philologically correct way; and that therefore everything is resolved on the level of interpretation. They rarely come to the conclusion that Plato is requiring here something much more demanding: not only to comprehend, but also to experience the pathos of wonder concretely. In other words, Plato is unveiling here nothing less than the conditions for becoming a philosopher: a “philosopher” is only someone who comes to learn the pathos of wonder in the first person, since there is “no other principle [arche] of philosophy than this”. Whoever does not complete this step is not a philosopher, at least not in the sense understood by Plato, and this for a very simple reason: it is only by being rooted in the lived experience of this pathos that one’s own philosophizing acquires authoritativeness and has something to say; it is only by

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experiencing the vertigo of this pathos that one adds to the autonomy of thinking, as is required by Kant, the originality of experience, on which Schopenhauer insists. Otherwise, it is not philosophy, but a discourse on something that is neither seen nor experienced in the first person. In developing his line of argument, the Platonic Socrates makes clear that there is a direct filial relationship between this pathos of wonder, which the young Theaetetus is experiencing, and philosophy, so much so that “the man [i.e. Hesiod] who made Iris the child of Thaumas [the god of wonder] was perhaps no bad genealogist” (Tht. 155d). Iris, who, according to Hesiod, has the task of transmitting to human beings the messages of the gods,76 represents the rainbow that brings earth and heaven into contact. Hence, she personifies the erotic mediation that is identified with philosophy in the Symposium (see Smp. 204b). Therefore, he who generates Iris, that is, Thaumas, generates philosophy. 6.7.2 The Different Relation between Wonder and Philosophy in Plato and Aristotle77 It is well known that this thesis of Plato was taken up by Aristotle. Alongside undoubted elements of continuity, however, it is also possible to detect an important difference. Among the elements of continuity, it is noteworthy that for both, philosophical wonder remains closely connected to a condition of being disconcerted and bewildered (aporein). However, whereas in Plato this disconcerting wonder continually generates philosophy and sustains it, like the beating of wings sustains a bird in flight – so much so that there is no philosophy without thauma –, for Aristotle, it represents only the propaedeutic moment, the initial incentive, which must then be abandoned, since, if it is true that “it is because of wondering at things that humans, both now and at first, began to do philosophy” (Arist. Metaph. 982b10), it is also true that, once philosophy has been reached, the acquisition of it [this knowledge (episteme)] […] must […] leave us in a condition contrary to the one in which we started our search. For everyone, as we said, starts by wondering at something’s being the way it is, just as people do at those marionettes that move on their own [automata], when they do not have a theoretical grasp of their cause, […] or at the incommensurability of the diagonal (for it seems a wonder to everyone that a more-than-minimal magnitude is not measurable). It is in the 76 77

See Hesiod, Theogonia, 265–266 and 780–784. On the concept of wonder in Plato and Aristotle, I merely refer the reader to: Hunzinger 2015; Nightingale 2004; Llewelyn 1988; Priestley 2014.

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contrary […] condition, however, that we must end up, as happens in those other cases too when people learn [the cause, added by Reeve]. For nothing would make a man who knows geometry wonder more than if the diagonal were to turn out to be commensurable (Arist. Metaph. 983a11–20, transl. Reeve; modified). To better comprehend the difference, it is useful to focus our attention on the concept of ignorance, while bearing in mind the difference between agnoia and amathia. According to Aristotle, the task of philosophical knowledge understood as episteme78 is that of overcoming the ignorance (agnoia) of causes79 that aroused wonder.80 Once these causes are identified, agnoia immediately ceases, and, along with it, wonder and bewilderment disappear. Thus, in Aristotle, aporein-wonder has only the task of providing the initial motivational drive to the search, but it must then be laid aside at the entrance door of the new science, or philosophy, to give way to the “opposite state of mind”, namely that of certainties proper to a philosophy that has become scientific knowledge. Ultimately, Aristotle’s perspective is epistemological, and consists in overcoming the initial condition of not-knowing (agnoein) by identifying the causes of the wonder. The philosophical wonder with which Plato comes to terms is different. First of all, it is a wonder that does not disappear through the identification of the causes, and thus eludes the will to epistemological domination. Indeed, the causes of the young Theaetetus’ wonder are the aporias (aporein) induced by Socrates’ maieutic method. It is Socrates who, through his maieutic method, “causes” Theaetetus’ wonder. As I will demonstrate in the following chapter, the link between maieutics and philosophy in the Theaetetus is not accidental, but constitutive. It is here that the different perspectives on the concept of wonder in Plato and Aristotle have their origin. For the Platonic Socrates, the objective is not to completely overcome not-knowing (agnoia) in order to arrive at philosophy as a wonder-free sophia, but rather to purify and immunize the young Theaetetus from the not-knowing that claims to know, that is, from the seductions of amathia, on which is based

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It should be pointed out that, in the Greek world, the knowledge of “episteme” does not correspond to the modern concept of scientific knowledge, since the term “scientific” implies features such as experimentation and repeatability, which were acquired only since Galileo’s time (see Chase 2022). See Metaph. 982b18–21, where Aristotle uses the verb agnoein in the sense of “to be ­ignorant of”. See Metaph. 983a14–15. On this point see Sallis 1995; Nightingale 2004; Priestley 2024.

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the immunitarian paradigm that is constructed by the ego to protect itself from the wound that the trauma of philosophical wonder inevitably produces. There is a “detail” that should not be neglected, and which leads us to think that in Plato and Aristotle the frontiers of philosophical wonder are drawn in different ways. This can be obtained from the passage already cited, in which Aristotle, when giving some concrete examples of what he understands by “­wonder”, also mentions the case of wonder that arises at the “marionettes that move on their own” (Metaph., 983a11, transl. modified). Plato too has in mind the case of the curiosity-wonder that may arise at the sight of these puppet shows, but he sharply distinguishes it from philosophical wonder.81 For Plato, in fact, the wonder that one may experience at the puppets moving on their own is a wonder that deceives, and which can easily become a tool of seduction used by amathia. Thus, identifying the causes of this wonder has not only an epistemological but also an ethical significance. This is why, again in the Theaetetus, the Platonic Socrates puts the young Theaetetus on guard against sophists, that is, against those who are affected by amathia, insofar as they do not know but claim to know. Indeed, they are “wonder-makers”: a wonder that enchants and seduces the minds of young philosophers. Of central importance to Plato is not only the analysis of the type of wonder that generates philosophy, but also the critique of the false wonder used by sophists and by bad teachers to seduce and subjugate more inexperienced and unprepared minds. Indeed, it is this false wonder that enchants the prisoners of the cave and thus fuels the great spectacle staged in the doxa of the everyday, the grand “Truman Show” in which we are all initially immersed. Plato’s philosophical wonder must therefore be distinguished both from wonder as an expression of the will to epistemological domination, and from the false wonder in the service of amathia that seduces young minds by its sleight of hand. Finally, there is a third type of wonder, which is mentioned in the Symposium with regard to the vision of the wonderful (thaumaston) that becomes possible at the apex of the ladder of eroticism. In what follows, I will study the significance of these three types of the Platonic wonder in more depth, beginning with philosophical wonder. 6.7.3 Maieutics: Philosophical Wonder and Birth Pangs One of the first things we learn about Socrates is that his method is maieutic, and yet, this juxtaposition of Socrates and maieutics is by no means to be taken for granted. Apart from the Theaetetus, this reference is not found in any 81

See § 6.7.5 Narcotizing Wonder and the Puppeteer (Thaumatopoios) of the Cave.

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other work by Plato. Hence, the maieutic Socrates is per definitionem only the Socrates of the Theaetetus; more precisely, it is the Socrates who, through his dialogue, leads the young Theaetetus to have the experience of the pathos of wonder as the arche of philosophy. Once he has realized that the young Theaetetus is having birth pangs, insofar as he is not empty but pregnant (Tht. 148e), Socrates decides to reveal to him that his art is similar to that of a midwife. A good midwife must know how to recognize when a woman is pregnant, and when she is not; furthermore, she must be able to decide when to let her give birth, and when it is instead preferable to induce an abortion (Tht. 149c–d). Analogously, Socrates exercises his maieutic art by verifying first whether the young man with whom he dialogues is truly pregnant (Tht. 151b), and subsequently whether it is worth helping him to give birth, or whether it is instead better to drop the matter, because he has only a false simulacrum (eidolon) in his womb (Tht. 150c). Since Theaetetus has something vital and true in his womb, Socrates decides to pursue the dialogue with this proposal: “So I want you to come to me as to one who is both the son of a midwife and himself skilled in the art; and try to answer the questions I shall ask you” (Tht. 151b–c). In the case of the soul’s birthing, the pains are due to the bewilderment (aporein) that is provoked by difficulties in answering Socrates’ questions. Indeed, Socrates exercises his maieutic art through questions that are able to arouse and alleviate birth pangs (Tht. 151a). This is why the pregnant young men who frequent Socrates “suffer the pains of labor, and are filled day and night with a state of bewilderment [aporias]”, like “women in child-birth” (Tht. 151a, transl. modified). The central passage occurs when the aporias to which Socrates’ questions lead leave Theaetetus with no way out. It is when confronted with these deadend aporias that Theaetetus finally surrenders, and confesses to being full of wonder (Tht. 155c). Therefore, the experience of philosophical wonder is possible only for a person who, like the young Theaetetus, is pregnant in her soul with something “fertile and true”, not with an eidolon (Tht. 150c, transl. modified), and who, with the help of a maieutic testimony, has the courage to break free from her moorings in order to leave the safe harbor of her own certainties and venture into the open sea, into a challenge full of risks and unforeseeable outcomes. This is why the Platonic Socrates sharply distinguishes wonder, understood as the arche of philosophy, from the simple curiosity one may have at a puppet show, and this is so insofar as philosophical wonder is the result of maieutic travail, not of sleight of hand. 6.7.4 Eros: The Vertiginous Thauma Philosophical wonder does not narcotize Theaetetus or reassure him; nor does it make him flee from the world to find refuge in a reassuring and consoling

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contemplation of ideas. However, it is not even a wonder that is limited to searching and questioning, insofar as, precisely because it is connected to birth pangs, it experiences the birth of something positive. A further, crucial characteristic of Platonic philosophical wonder thus emerges: its bond with the motivating force of eros. As we have already seen, Iris represents the rainbow, or better, the erotic function that mediates between earth and heaven, between ignorance and wisdom. At least for Plato, eroticism is not an anesthetic or a sleeping pill, but has the effect of reawakening one abruptly, as Socrates does when his action is compared to the sting of a gadfly or to the shock of a torpedo fish. There is a painting from 1811 by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, Morpheus and Iris, which may help us to better comprehend the significance of Iris-Eros. This is an Iris who is caught in the act of awakening the consciousness of Morpheus, the god of dreams. The erotic bridge evoked by Plato is therefore not a comfortable escape route from the horror of becoming, perhaps in order to find reassurances in contemplating a world of eternal ideas. Rather, it implies the trauma that makes us hesitate, destabilizes us, and eventually impels us to step out of the infatuation staged in the cave. It is a mediation that opens up to the new, and, to do so, it gets in the way of habits and severs previous bonds, in order to generate new and unexpected ones. This uprooting occurs under the impulse of eroticism, which uproots us from the soil and places us in an intermediate condition between the topos of ignorance (agnoia) and the topos of Olympus, where the gods endowed with wisdom (sophia) live. The erotic being is atopos: it is not stably rooted in the soil like earthly plants, but hangs in the air by its hair (Ti. 90a2-d7). Indeed, the kind of soul that is situated in human beings is one that resides in the top part of our bodies. It raises us up away from the earth and toward what is akin to us in heaven, as though we are plants grown not from the earth but from heaven. […] For it is from heaven, the place from which our souls were originally born, that the divine part suspends our head, i.e., our root, and so keeps our whole body erect. (Ti. 90a–b) Hence, human beings have the structure of beings that are not rooted in the soil, but in heaven, and they remain hung in the air by their heavenly roots. This explains not only the peculiarity of their erect position, but also why wonder and vertigo are linked: the erotic human being, as a “heavenly plant” hung in the air, has no ground beneath her feet, and hence constantly experiences vertigo. This is what Theaetetus asserts: “I am lost in wonder [thaumazo] what these things can mean; sometimes, to tell the truth, when I’m looking at them I suffer from vertigo [skotodinio]” (Tht. 155c, transl. modified).

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At the origin of Theaetetus’ wonder is a stumbling block that jolts him out of his rootedness, and out of the customs of his own certainties. However, stepping outside these certainties is full of pitfalls, and does not necessarily lead to philosophical wonder. 6.7.5 Narcotizing Wonder and the Puppeteer (Thaumatopoios) of the Cave In archaic and classical Greek literature, for instance in Herodotus, the distinction between positive wonder – an expression of the critical spirit – and negative wonder – a sign of stupefaction – was widespread.82 The reference to negative wonder is also present in Plato. If one continues reading the Theaetetus, one discovers that, for Socrates, there is not only the wonder associated with the travails of birth, such as the one just experienced by Theaetetus, but also a wonder that enchants and subjugates, like that which can be observed in uncritical discipleship under a bad teacher. If one of these teachers were to lay their hands on the young Theaetetus, Socrates warns, “[he] would keep on refuting you and not let you go till you had been struck with wonder [thaumasas] at his wisdom [sophian] […] and had got yourself thoroughly tied up by him” (Tht. 165d–e). This is the wonder that astonishes and enchants, and which is used by all false teachers: those who propose themselves to the pupil as a statue to be imitated and adored, that is, as a model, and not as a maieutic exemplarity. Socrates describes precisely to Theaetetus how such wonder works until it provokes an a-critical admiration in the pupil: false teachers exercise their own cleverness and virtuosity not in order to make their pupils give birth, but to seduce and tie them to themselves. The centrality of the theme of false wonder for Plato is demonstrated by the fact that it appears not only in the Theaetetus, but is also taken up in other dialogues, especially in the Republic and the Sophist. In the Republic, the seductive wonder, which is capable of capturing and imprisoning human beings through optical illusions, magicians’ tricks, and mirages, becomes an activity of deception intended to keep humanity imprisoned within doxa, as is in that great spectacle witnessed by the prisoners of the cave. The Greek term “thaumatopoios”, literally “thauma-maker”, is usually translated as “puppeteer”,83 “illusionist”, or “conjurer”. In the Republic, this term

82 83

See Hunzinger 2015; Priestley 2014. Descartes himself distinguishes wonder (admiration) from astonishment (étonnement): “l’étonnement est un excès d’admiration qui ne peut jamais être que mauvais” (Les Passions de l’âme, art. 73; Descartes AT 383). See, for example, the translation of the Republic 514 by G.M.A. Grube and C.D.C. Reeve in the Complete Works edited by J. M. Cooper.

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indicates one who produces a thauma intended to imprison people within the sphere of enchantment: Light is provided by a fire burning far above and behind them [the prisoners]. Also behind them, but on higher ground, there is a path stretching between them and the fire. Imagine that along this path a low wall has been built, like the screen in front of wonder-makers [thaumatopoiois] above which they show their wonders [thaumata]” (R. VII, 514b, transl. modified).84 In the cave, a spectacle (thauma) is staged that holds the prisoners bound and induces them to mistake the shadows projected on the cave for true ­reality. This narcotizing spectacle is a work of professionals, that is, of the “­thauma-makers” (thaumatopoioi). This is a very powerful image, which serves to describe the human condition. Indeed, when Glaucon objects that these prisoners are in a “strange” situation, Socrates retorts that, in reality, they “are like us” (R. VII, 515a). This means that our everyday life, our common sense, and, more generally, the first level of our knowledge, or doxa, is also nothing but a staging, a theatrical representation, or a very partial truth that turns out to be credible only because of the extraordinary seductive force of this wonder. And it is precisely this seductive wonder that usually orients human beings “so as to […] live the life that their own nature demands, puppets that they are, mostly, and hardly participating in a small part [smikra] of truth” (Lg. VII, 804b, transl. modified).85 It is a wonder that, by its seductive power, imprisons human beings within the great spectacle of the cave. The travail of philosophical wonder therefore represents the breaking of the enchantment produced by a wonder that is even more original, and in which we are immersed since birth: the narcotizing wonder that belongs to the doxa of everyday life.86 Plato distinguishes the “lovers of opinion” (philodoxoi, R. V, 480a), who live in a dream because they are under the effects of narcotizing wonder, from true philosophers, who are in “a wakened state” (R. V, 476c, see also R. V, 476a–d). On these bases one also comprehends Plato’s position with regard to art: art 84 85

86

See Gocer 1999; Hunzinger 2016. The theme of the puppet that is activated by the gods also appears in the Lg. I, 644d-e: “Let’s imagine that each of us living beings is a [wonderful] puppet [thauma] of the gods. Whether we have been constructed to serve as their plaything, or for some serious reason, is something beyond our ken”. There is therefore a pathos of thauma as arche of true philosophy, but also a pathos of thauma as arche of false philosophy: that is, the seductive wonder that makes us slaves of a false teacher.

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must be criticized, but only to the extent that it is based on narcotizing wonder. Indeed, Plato also finds the imitation of an imitation at the basis of narcotizing wonder in mimetic art: “And it is because they exploit this weakness in our nature that trompe l’oeil painting, conjuring [wonder-making] [thaumatopoiia], and other forms of trickery have powers that are little short of magical” (R. X, 602d). This thaumatopoiia, or this art of arousing wonder through works of art, which can only “deceive children and foolish people” (R. X, 598c), must be condemned, insofar as it plays a functional role in the strategies of seduction and manipulation of the thaumatopoioi. The theme of imitative art is also taken up in the Sophist. Here, eikon, understood as a verisimilar image of the original, which is able to transmit “the true proportions of beautiful things” (Sph. 235e, transl. modified), is distinguished from eidolon, which is instead an image that appears to be true, but is in reality false (Sph. 236b). Similarly, mimetic art is distinguished into two categories, depending on whether it produces eikones, that is, whether it imitates the real by faithfully reproducing accurate copies that respect proportions and colors (eikastike) (Sph. 235d–e), or whether, in contrast, it produces only eidola, that is, distorted images and mere phantoms (phantastike) (Sph. 236c). It is precisely this latter category that must be condemned, since it makes unlimited use of narcotizing wonder, in order to compensate for the lack of reality of its products. This distinction allows us to better specify the critique of the use of narcotizing wonder in philosophy. The protagonist of the dialogue on this theme is once again the young Theaetetus, but, this time, it is the Elean Stranger who puts him on guard against the charlatans of philosophy, the thaumatopoioi, who, by their rhetoric, engage in sleight-of-hand tricks and manipulate ideas as if they were simple puppets. Indeed, sophistic philosophers are conjurers who, by using their ability to make wonder, bring it about that something appears deformed with regard to what it is; thus, “when he shows his drawings from far away he’ll be able to fool the more mindless young children into thinking that he can actually produce anything he wants to” (Sph. 234b). It is interesting to note that we have here a Plato who does not devote himself to a select few who have had the good fortune to directly experience the pathos of thauma as the arche of philosophy, but who is rather concerned with the social and educational consequences that wonder-makers (thaumatopoioi) have on the rest of the population. 6.7.6 Thaumaston: The Third Type of Wonder in Plato Finally, there is the problem represented by the interpretation of the third type of wonder. In a famous passage of the Symposium, Diotima asserts that the person who has given form to her own existence thanks to the urge of eroticism, “who has been thus far guided in matters of Love, who has beheld beautiful

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things in the right order and correctly, is coming now to the goal of Loving: all of a sudden she will catch sight of something wonderful [thaumaston], [something] beautiful in its nature” (Smp. 210e, transl. modified). What kind of vision is this? Diotima is not speaking here of the wonder placed at the beginning of philosophy, but of a vision of the “wonderful” (thaumaston) that seems to be at the culmination of the erotic-philosophical pathway. The status of this “wonderful” remains widely debated. However, there are several reasons that lead one to think that even this moment, precisely because it occurs as a consequence of the erotic urge, is not entirely free of maieutic pains, and thus of aporetic bewilderments. It is evident, for example, that even outside the cave, the philosopher’s activity does not become purely contemplative, in terms of an Aristotelian theoria, understood as thaumaand a­ poria-free sophia. In fact, even outside the cave, the prisoner’s activity remains an exercise accompanied by maieutic pain, as can be seen from the fact that she must carry out a painful progressive exercise in order to habituate herself to seeing things in the sunlight. Finally, that this is not a mere contemplation at a distance, but rather an erotic contact, or better, a genuine erotic participation in the beautiful, can be inferred from the fact that Diotima is describing a motion of ascent, and not a static observation. In this regard, it is useful to recall the passage from the Phaedrus as well, in which it is asserted that, when someone sees beauty in this world, she grows wings by remembering true Beauty (Phdr. 249d). It is the painful growth of the wings that enables the ascent toward the beautiful. This ascent, then, is not characterized as a contemplation of something separate or distant, since it involves an erotic contact that fertilizes and transforms. And, once the wings have grown, the beholder of beauty herself becomes an angelos, that is, a harbinger who mediates between earth and heaven. 6.8 Being Touched by the World: The Thauma between Horror and Wonder 6.8.1 Schelling: Horror and Wonder at the Enigma of Existence The Greek term thauma is almost always translated as “wonder”. Originally, however, it had the dual significance of horror and wonder,87 so much so that “thaumatic” could mean the dual reaction of wonder and horror one had toward the monstrous. In the Odyssey, Polyphemus is defined as “monstrous” (peloros) (Hom. Od. 9, 428; 9, 257), thus capable of arousing fear and horror, 87

This proximity between wonder and the monstrous is implicit in the term “deinos”, ­ nderstood precisely as the “admirable monstrous”. See Vernant 1983. u

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but, at the same time, he is also “thaumatic” (thaum’ etetykto pelorion) (Hom. Od. 9, 190). Sophocles describes Philoctetes’ illness as something horrific and monstrous, which however simultaneously arouses wonder (Soph. Phil. 687– 691). In the Theogony, meanwhile, Hesiod describes a golden diadem on which “many designs [were contrived], highly wrought, a wonder to see (thauma idesthai), all the terrible monsters the land and the sea nourish” (Hes. Th. 581–582).88 A reference to the monstrous that arouses wonder can also be identified in the Phaedrus, when Socrates observes that the human being is a much more complex and wonderful being than the serpent Typhon, known for its “­marvellous” heads that emitted unsettling voices and sounds that were “wonderful to hear”.89 Finally, something simultaneously monstrous and wonderful is also present in the silenic Socrates himself, as praised by Alcibiades in the Symposium. In the modern era, it is Schelling who recovered this original duality. As Hadot notes in The Veil of Isis, Schelling “makes fun of the philosophers who have long bent everyone’s ears with their effusions on the harmony of the cosmos. In fact, in his view, the frightening and the terrible are the true substantial foundation of existence”.90 Schelling comes to this result through the thesis of the ecstasy of reason, which is not to be understood as a flight into mysticism, but, on the contrary, as the achievement of a rationality that is illuminated, since it is not self-­ referential. Thanks to ecstasy, reason overcomes the perspective of the subject, and has experience of that which precedes thought itself and reveals itself to be without ground (grundlos). Confronted by what reveals itself to be preceded by nothing, and hence without any presupposition, reason falls silent. It wavers, as if seized by the dizziness of someone who sees a chasm suddenly gaping beneath her feet. Groundlessness (Grundlosigkeit) is, in fact, an abyss (Abgrund). Philosophical thauma thus recovers its original duality, and becomes the pathos one experiences when faced by the abyss of existence: wonder at the fact of existing here and now, but, at the same time, horror mixed with the deepest disquiet (Unruhe) in the face of the groundlessness of existence. Suddenly, all the efforts of reason directed to seeking for meaning are shattered before an existence that has nothing behind it, and which is based on nothing. It is here, on the edge of this abyss, that Schelling’s negative philosophy terminates. Faced by the enigma of pure existence, the reason of negative 88 89 90

See Clay 1993. See Bollert 2010, 180. Hadot 2006, 303.

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philosophy finds itself powerless. Indeed, its conceptual tools turn out to be incapable of grasping reality, since they are still those of a philosophy of being, and not of a philosophy of existence. Compared to existence, however, being is a mere abstraction; it is nothing, a pure ornament: “being [Seyn] has no importance whatsoever, it is in any case only an accessory, a complement that is added to what Is”,91 where by “Is” Schelling understands existence grasped in its singularity. And it is this Is – that is, existence, not abstract being – that is the true starting point for positive philosophy. Confronted by the enigma of pure existence, the reason of negative philosophy is therefore driven to carry out a veritable salto mortale, or death-­ defying leap. The ecstasy of reason does not derive from abstract reasoning, but from the impact of existence: “That which barely, that which solely exists is precisely that through which everything that might spring from thought is struck down, that before which thought falls silent, before which reason itself bends”.92 And suddenly, reason stands speechless, “as if motionless, rigidified, quasi attonita [almost stunned]”.93 In this ecstasy, reason is seized by vertigo and wonder in the face of pure existence. Seized by vertigo at the edge of the abyss, the question that reason asks itself is: “why is there something? why is there not nothing?”.94 This is the question with which philosophy begins.95 One cannot answer this question with an abstract philosophy of being, but only with a philosophy of existence that starts out from the real (das Wirkliche).96 There is no sense in attempting to justify that which exists by means of being, as is often done; for being necessarily refers to the real: “the presupposition of philosophy is not an abstract thing [like being], but something undoubtedly real [such as that which exists]”.97

91 92

93 94 95 96 97

“Am Seyn liegt nichts, das Seyn ist auf jeden Fall nur ein Accessorium, ein Hinzukommendes dessen, was Ist” (Schelling, Philosophie der Mythologie, SW XII, 34; Engl. transl. Fakhoury 2020, 192). “Das bloß das nur Existirende ist gerade das, wodurch alles, was vom Denken herkommen möchte, niedergeschlagen wird, das, vor dem das Denken verstummt, vor dem die ­Vernunft selbst sich beugt” (Schelling, Philosophie der Offenbarung, SW XIII, 161, my ­translation). “wie regunglos, wie erstarrt, quasi attonita” (Schelling, Philosophie der Offenbarung, SW XIII, 165, my translation). “Gerade Er, der Mensch, treibt mich zur letzten verzweiflungsvollen Frage: warum ist überhaupt etwas? warum ist nicht nichts?” (Schelling, Philosophie der Offenbarung, SW XIII, 7, my translation). See Schelling, Philosophie der Offenbarung, SW XIII, 7–8. See ibid., 242. See ibid., 243, my translation.

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Finally, it should be noted that at the basis of this horror-wonder is not, as is often supposed, the dismay one can experience when faced by the fact that everything that exists is destined to fade away, sooner or later, into nothing. Indeed, this perspective corresponds to a typically Western way of thinking, which ultimately goes back to the metaphysics of creatio ex nihilo. Rather, the question that disturbs Schelling is the opposite one: why does something exist if it is groundless? Why does something exist if it is simpler not to exist? The perspective must be reversed: the fundamental question of philosophy does not arise before the horror at nothing, but rather as to the enigma of a groundless existence. True dismay does not derive from the fact that all that exists is destined to die, but from the fact that existence exists, but has no foundation. This is precisely what makes one – literally – lose the ground beneath one’s feet. This thauma smashes the sphere within which homo faber, or the subject erectum that rests on its pedestal, lives; and this is why, in order to live, the subject erectum – the little self – needs to neutralize this destabilizing thauma by means of the entertainment industry of the “wonder-makers” (thaumatopoioi). 6.8.2 The Thauma of Being Touched by the World and the Openness to Destination What arouses the pathos of thauma is not the fact that a “being in general” exists, but the concrete and enigmatic fact of existing here and now. This is a terrible, unsettling enigma, full of anguish. At the origin of thauma is not reasoning, but the experience of being touched in one’s own most personal dimension: it is as if the world suddenly became animated and pointed its forefinger in the direction of my singular consciousness. In the most extreme cases, in this being touched by the world, I can have the experience of feeling myself accepted, or, on the contrary, rejected by the entire universe. Of course, other living beings are exposed to the fierce struggle for survival, but they already have an answer, a scheme, a defense, and, above all, a preconstituted meaning. They remain constantly connected within their own environment, without having the experience of disconnection. But humans do not. When I am touched by the world, I perceive the vulnerability of my having come into the world without having finished being born – that I have entered into a universe without a pre-established meaning. I perceive the brute, bare, inexorable fact of an existing that, qua free, does not yet have a preconstituted significance, and which therefore remains groundless, abandoned, uprooted, without shelter, protection, or safety net. I perceive that I dwell in a new dimension of the universe that is being born with me, but which eludes the objectifying gaze of the little self.

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As long as I try to reduce the real to my categories, I remain within my little self’s self-referential perspective. As long as my posture is rigidified in the tension of the will and I try to objectify reality, I limit myself to looking at it from the outside and circumventing it. Precisely because I remain outside, I then reach out my hand to try to seize it. Yet there is a counter-intentionality that comes from the world, and which is characterized by ‘modesty’ (or by ‘shyness’): it only becomes visible if I step back. If, however, I reach out my hand to touch it, then it immediately retracts, as a snail’s antennae do when one brushes against them. The only way to come into contact with the reality that cannot be objectified is not to reach out my hand, but rather to retract it. Only when I stop asking questions or reaching out my hands to seize and touch the world do I give it the possibility to come forward and to touch me. Being touched by the world resembles a subterranean feeling that occurs in the twilight of consciousness, like the one we experience when half asleep. What is this experience? It is the sensation one feels when the subject’s self-­ referential consciousness is suspended and a connection with the world at the level of feeling is re-established. It is the rediscovery of one’s own rootedness in life. This experience reignites and vivifies a fragment of truth that – instead of absolutizing itself and considering itself to be completed – feels even more urgency to interact with other fragments, albeit not in the objectifying sense of seeking or questioning. Rather, the basic attitude, which accompanies this periagogic experience of transformation, is that of remaining in a patient state of waiting, typical of a person who remains within the perspective of the auroral void. If, in contrast, I return to seeking and questioning, then it means that I have already stepped out of the auroral void. Being touched by the world is not the consequence of a question; it does not correspond to an “explanation”. At this level, explanations that give philosophical answers are only prosaic fictions. Being touched by the world is not an answer that fills and silences the hunger to be born; on the contrary, it throws the perspective of my questions into crisis, and undermines my way of seeing things. When I am touched by the world, my certainties trip over the stumbling block of experience, and this impact is disquieting, because it makes me advance right to the threshold of the inexplicable mystery of a world that takes the initiative to step up to the existence of my singularity, here and now. Being touched by the world marks the passage from the “negative” to the “­positive” phase of the philosophical exercise of transformation. When I am touched by the world, I refocus all my attention on something that previously eluded me. Before, I passed by my existence without even noticing it. Now, by contrast, when I think about it, I feel wonder at the fact that I exist here and now.

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It is only starting from this disquiet of feeling myself touched by the world that desire is able to bring into focus the image of my destination, hitherto confused. At this point, it is no longer I as an individual, isolated subject who thinks, feels, and wants, but the little fragment of truth within me that begins to sparkle, that is, to think, feel, and desire through me. Ultimately, it is no longer I who does philosophy, but life that does it through me. The exercise of dis-tension consists in not offering resistance to the process thanks to which life expresses itself by causing a little fragment of truth to emerge within me. It is this feeling myself traversed by life that opens a horizon of value and meaning to my singularity. This feeling oneself touched by the world allows one to reach a “cosmic consciousness”98 that in antiquity was a prerogative of the sage, and which differs from the scientific knowledge of the universe that can be achieved by modern scientists.99 6.8.3 Thauma as Horror Being touched by the world can be the consequence of an unforeseen positive event; however, for many, far too many people, being touched by the world occurs in the devastating form of grief, abandonment, illness, or suffering. Here, there is only one true question that arises: why is this happening to me? The two moments of horror and wonder that are present in thauma follow complex dynamics. At the outset they remain indistinct, but then they take different directions. Horror is a despair that is prolonged to infinity, and petrifies like the gaze of Medusa. In the experience of horror-thauma, it is as if my mind began to go round in circles and was no longer able to emerge from suffering. My entire existence is concentrated on this horror and swallowed up by it. Horror-thauma tends to obsessively absorb all my attention, so much so that 98 99

I take up this concept of “cosmic consciousness” from Hadot (see Hadot 1995, 229, 255, 265, 266, 273). “The exercise of wisdom entails a cosmic dimension. Whereas the average person has lost touch with the world, and does not see the world qua world, but rather treats the world as a means of satisfying his desires, the sage never ceases to have the whole constantly present to mind. He thinks and acts within a cosmic perspective. He has the feeling of belonging to a whole which goes beyond the limits of his individuality. In antiquity, this cosmic consciousness was situated in a different perspective from that of the scientific knowledge of the universe that could be provided by, for instance, the science of astronomical phenomena. Scientific knowledge was objective and mathematical, whereas cosmic consciousness was the result of a spiritual exercise, which consisted in becoming aware of the place of one’s individual existence within the great current of the cosmos and the perspective of the whole, toti se inserens mundo, in the words of Seneca. This exercise was situated not in the absolute space of exact science, but in the lived experience of the concrete, living, and perceiving subject” (ibid., 273).

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the problem becomes that of not being consumed by the attention aroused by horror and not sinking into it completely. On the contrary, the experience of wonder-thauma, however intense it may be, is only momentary, and fades away quickly. In this case, the major difficulty derives from the extreme ease with which one becomes distracted. While horror is hypnotic, irresistible, and enduring, the density of wonder remains circumscribed within the moment. Therefore, while the exercise of horror-thauma will consist in suspending such hypnotic attention, the exercise of wonder-thauma has the opposite problem of prolonging an attention that is always on the verge of fleeing and vanishing. If at the apex of wonder I can come to feel that I am accepted and welcomed by the entire universe, at the apex of horror I remain petrified by feeling myself thrown into a universe absolutely devoid of meaning. It is the horror one feels at the regurgitation of nonsense, at the magmatic spray of the monstrous. It is the mode of reaction of an existence that, in this feeling oneself touched, becomes devitalized, deprived of meaning and force. The trauma of horror – in the form of illness, separation, grief, or a natural or historical catastrophe – can empty one’s own existence of meaning. It does so through the hard, unbearable experience of pain, which sometimes uproots one from the vital universe in which one has lived until that moment, and does not allow one to take any step forward, because there is no more space to take such a step. In these moments of despair, one feels deprived of a world, of a universe in which to live, so much so that it is not uncommon for the idea of suicide to arise. This idea comes to the surface precisely because one has already been torn from life, or better, from that universe that used to give life a meaning. One arrives at suicide when suicide seems to be something preferable compared to survival in the horror of a non-universe. Faced by horror, I discover two possibilities: to obliterate attachment to the self as the source of suffering, and thus to comprehend the impermanence and transience of all phenomena100; or to separate oneself from one’s own mortiferous part in order to attempt to be born for a second time. In the West, the first way has been taken primarily by Schopenhauer. Here, the philosophical exercise of emptying consists in a complete reset of the “will to live”, because it is through the will to live that pain acts, and sometimes the most effective solution in the face of horror is precisely that of resetting everything. An attempt to find a synthesis between these two ways could be to understand the obliteration of the will as the obliteration of the little self’s will, in order to leave space for the logic of singularity as a personal non-self. Indeed, 100 Cf. Rahula 1974, 51–66; Siderits 2007, 32–68.

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the singularity too has a particular form of noluntas: that is, loving as the capacity to welcome everything that happens, hence as the capacity to traverse even despair, anxiety, and horror.101 6.8.4 Wonder as a Traumatic Wound of the Veil of Everyday Self-Evidence In a world in which there are no more angeloi, that is, messengers of another dimension of the real, and in which we are immersed in a flat, one-dimensional reality, traumas are likely to remain the only way to breach the self-referential placenta of the ego and of the apparatus of comprehension and certainties on which the sense of everyday life is based. They are the only opening to a dimension of the real that transcends the known, and that discovers, beneath the surface of the obvious, something not foreseen, unexpected, and hence surprising. Horror-thauma and wonder-thauma are traumatic wounds of the veil of everyday self-evidence that can, in certain cases, open the subject to a wider and richer dimension of experience.102 In order to shed light on this passage, it is indispensable to give a better description of the relationship between evidence and thauma. At the origin of philosophical wonder, too, there is always a stumbling block, a questioning of something that was reputed to be evident. Wonder arises when the intellect’s mental map no longer succeeds in seizing, dominating, or comprehending what happens and comes to find itself at a dead end. That which had been taken for granted until that moment, and which appeared to be reassuring, suddenly becomes something unknown and deeply unsettling; and if I stop and think about this situation that is no longer familiar to me, I am feeling, to use the words of the young Theaetetus, “vertigo”. And yet, in the common way of thinking, if something is evident, then it does not need further attention. Since it is already known, it does not add any further information, nor does it produce novelties, and thus it is not even properly 101 As is known, Kierkegaard in his “The Concept of Anxiety” insists on the inevitability of coming up against anxiety when he observes: “this is an adventure that every human being must go through – to learn to be anxious in order that he may not perish either by never having been in anxiety or by succumbing in anxiety. Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate” (Kierkegaard, Engl. transl. 2013, 155). 102 This expression is not to be understood in the sense of the “veil of ignorance” that Rawls speaks of in A Theory of Justice (1971), but rather in the sense of an unconscious “veil of ignorance” that has the function of reassuring and hiding everything that is unsettling and unfamiliar. This veil of ignorance is a constitutive part of common sense and fulfills an important social function, since it allows us to navigate within our mental map, and thus to act inside a familiar environment in which everything is obvious and evident, but where the horizon of experience is much more limited and partial.

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perceived as a true experience. Hence, it becomes an irrelevant given that does not need to be taken into account, and which, as such, is not even recorded. Since it is evident, it immediately disappears from the radar of attention, and everything goes on exactly in the same way as before, automatically. If it does not attract attention, much less will it be able to arouse wonder. Indeed, in the common way of thinking, wonder does not arise at what is evident, but only at rare and extraordinary phenomena. The philosophical exercise of wonder consists in reversing this perspective, and in learning to see what is obvious with new eyes. A philosopher is not stupefied at a miracle, but carries out the miracle of wondering at what is taken for granted. Indeed, it is not the phenomenon she observes that is exceptional or extraordinary, but the perspective from which she looks at it. A philosopher trains herself in not knowing, in the sense of not anticipating what she sees, of not projecting onto the meadow, the rose, the street, and the gate that are in front of her the concepts of meadow, rose, street, and gate that she already has in mind. She does not grasp a phenomenon as a “type”, but the particular mode by which the phenomenon expresses itself as a “token”. Thus, what strikes her is not a miraculous event that defies all laws of physics, nor is it even an alien object. Rather, she wonders at the unusual mode in which something very banal takes initiative to manifest itself. This is why she is surprised at the unusual and singular form of a gate, which may have remained unobserved for years, at the end of the avenue in front of her house; or at that black branch that stood out like a menace against the yellow leaves during a walk in the autumn forest; or simply at the color of the sky, a person’s smile, the elegant gesture of a hand, or an old photograph rediscovered in a drawer. The exercise of wonder does not consist in obliterating everyday reality, but, on the contrary, in suspending the usual perspective of the little self, so as to look at a tree, the sky, or a face with the gaze of not-knowing, hence with care and attention, as if one were seeing them for the first time. This exercise can also be applied to oneself, until one learns to look at oneself with new eyes and brings about a gap, a critical distancing from one’s ­habit-bound self; until one comes to experience oneself as a surprise; until one comes to experience the pathos of wonder at oneself. It is only thanks to this distancing oneself from the habit-bound image I have of myself, of others, and of the world that I learn to wonder. 6.8.5 Learning to Wonder at the Supreme Evidence There are not only exercises of wonder at the beautiful, as described by Diotima in the Symposium, but also those intended to experience wonder at what is banal and evident, that is, to find beauty and wonder in the apparent banality

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of the everyday. Wonder is also born when something that initially appeared obvious and reasonable suddenly becomes inexplicable and strange. It is born, for example, when the young Theaetetus remains struck by the fact that what previously seemed to him evident suddenly no longer is so after Socrates’ questions (see Th. 162c-d). These exercises also require a long apprenticeship: after completing the exercises of emptying, one will first train oneself to look at something from different and unusual perspectives, and then to see something as if one saw it for the first time. Finally, by gradually shifting from what is not very evident to what is more and more evident, one will come to place one’s own attention on what is considered by everybody to be maximally evident, and hence absolutely taken for granted and banal. Philosophical wonder is born when this maximal evidence is experienced as the most flammable material. The thing that is maximally evident is also the one that is most important. Yet it is also that which remains invisible for the longest time. It is not a matter of experiencing something new, but of looking at exactly the same thing – something that has been before my eyes for a whole lifetime, and which therefore turns out to be maximally evident – as if I saw it for the first time. What is the most important thing that this morning, again, right after I woke up, I nevertheless did not think about, even for an instant? What is it that I never pay enough attention to, because I am always distracted by something else? The fact that it must be reflected upon, even only for an instant, means that somehow this evidence is not stably at the center of human existence. The maximal evidence, which remains invisible like the air I breathe, is represented by the fact that I exist here and now, along with the world. This is the supreme evidence that arouses philosophical wonder, the one that turns out to be maximally obvious and banal, so much so that anyone who dared to deny it would be deemed insane. This evidence is so compact and blunt that my attention cannot come to a stop on it but slips alongside it, no matter how often I try to bring it into focus. How, then, is it possible to experience wonder at such a banal fact as that of existing? And yet, it is in this passage that the act of birth and the baptism of philosophy as transformation is situated. If philosophy is an awakening, a rediscovering, a becoming aware of the fundamental fact, then philosophical fatigue derives from the extreme ease with which this experience is banalized and reiteratively brought to obviousness, until it once again falls into oblivion, as if there were a logic in this experience that human beings could never take stable possession of, and that is continually neutralized. Why is the exercise of wonder characterized by this extreme difficulty in concentrating itself on what is essential? Why am I continually torn away and distracted from the fundamental given fact, that of existing?

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Upon closer inspection, the supreme evidence proves to be such only from the perspective of a little self that attempts to reduce the world to its own reassuring mental map. When a human being learns to wonder at the fact of existing in the present instant, she exposes herself beyond immunitarian mechanisms, and learns to exist in the sense of being placed outside herself. Only in this condition of vulnerability, obtained thanks to the epoche of the ego, is it possible to experience this evidence as something surprising. Without this passage, even after this absolute obviousness has been identified and become an object of reflection, it will remain so blunt that thought will fail to ignite itself, no matter how often it slips alongside it. Thanks to the seduction of “wonder-makers” (thaumatopoioi), a genuine transvaluation of all values takes place, making what is worthy of wonder appear banal, and what is really banal appear wonderful. A philosopher is a person who deconstructs the little self’s gimmick that makes the fact of existing appear banal, and who places herself in the condition of being surprised at her own existence. This is why philosophical wonder is destabilizing: behind that “evidence”, behind that “banality”, there is in reality the apparatus on which the whole existence of the little self is based. Hence, the exercise of wonder presupposes the deconstruction of the apparatus on which the little self’s certainties – certainties that in many cases are produced by “­wonder-makers” (thaumatopoioi) – are based. Through philosophical wonder, the need for certainty and the will to power that are typical of the little self are replaced by a profoundly different emotional disposition, that is, by a feeling of appreciation and gratitude for life and the world. Breaking the enchantment releases the prisoner from doxa by making her suddenly experience what had previously seemed to be insignificant as surprising, and brings about the disconcerting apparition of a new dimension. The trauma that derives from the collapse of one’s own certainties can follow two different paths. If there is no impact of feeling oneself touched by the world, then it flows into seeking and questioning. If, in contrast, this impact takes place, then I immediately stop questioning and concentrate my entire being on this positive something that has deeply touched me. In this case, philosophical wonder is not exhausted in the negative movement, like the one that derives from the collapse of certainties, but takes a further, much more radical step that goes outside of the realm of abstract thinking, and which rather concerns a reason that knows how to come to terms with first-person experience. Why can the experience of this “I exist!” – that is, of something that was previously inert and insignificant – now wound me so deeply that it turns out to be disturbing and vertiginous? Why, when confronted by this experience, do I feel that the ground beneath my feet has pulled out from under me? Here,

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we are probably dealing with something similar to what occurs in practices of meditation, in mystical experiences, and in certain ecstatic forms of reconnection with primordial feeling of life. These experiences are very different, but they all have one element in common: the experience of an “ego-dissolution”. Without a complete epoche of the ego, without taking the exercise of emptying to its extreme consequences, there is no shock of philosophical wonder. This feeling oneself touched by the world causes certainties to waver, and lays bare the groundlessness of the presuppositions upon which I had lived until that moment. At this point, it is as if my entire being were inflamed and pervaded by a wave of positive energy that, as it flows in my veins, increases its own effect, until it flows into a genuine awakening in which horror and wonder are fused together into a feeling of profound respect, if not of veritable reverence, for the great mystery of existence. Plato and Schelling may not be entirely wrong in distinguishing the pathos of thauma, as the beginning of philosophy, from the experience of what is wonderful (thaumaston), or, to use Schelling’s terminology, from what is “absolutely worth wondering at” (“absolut Erstaunenswerthe[n]”).103 But how can one find the words to describe these two different experiences? In the former case, the moment of bewilderment due to the overcoming of and detachment from the little self prevails. In the latter, by contrast, one is already beyond the bewilderment caused by the overcoming of the little self. This time, the personal singularity has the experience of “being touched by the world” in the mode of being fertilized, which is therefore not the abstract contemplation of a separate ideal reality, but the concrete and “touching” experience of a transfusion of energies, of a contact that transforms. 6.8.6 Questioning or Exclamation? There is one aspect worth returning to: that of the fundamental question, or the Grundfrage of philosophy. From Leibniz104 to Schelling, down to Heidegger, once the non-banality of existing had been grasped, the question was inevitably raised: “why being, and not rather nothing?” Thus far, however, attention has been directed to the answer to be found, but not to the meaning and validity of the question itself. In some cases, however, doing philosophy does not mean answering a question, but calling the question itself into question. 103 Schelling, Philosophie der Offenbarung, SW XIV, 13, my translation. 104 “Ce principe posé, la première question que l’on a droit de faire, sera: Pourquoi il y a plutôt quelque chose que rien? Car le rien est plus simple et plus facile que quelque chose” (Leibniz 1996, 228).

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What is the logic that such a question follows? Of course, it cannot be the logic of an asking that objectifies, which would be followed by a filling of the auroral void. The problem is that if there is an experience of feeling oneself touched by the world, then there is no longer a questioning that seeks something of which one has not yet had any experience, since this reawakening “being-touched” is already the answer. It is not, however, an erudite answer, a prosaic answer, or an answer that fills the auroral void, but an answer that opens up to a new dimension of the real. The equivocation is that of understanding the experience of the pathos of philosophical wonder as an answer to the questionings of thought, whereas it is instead a concrete experience, like the one described in the Phaedrus when the metaphor of growing wings is used. Surprise therefore does not fade away in this “feeling-oneself-touched”. The true answer is thus the experience itself. It is an answer that remains to be understood, to be metabolized, as might be the case with a riddle, a puzzle, or a rebus, which is a question that is given to a question. By touching me, the world behaves like Socrates: it does not give an answer that remains within the optics of my question, but deconstructs the horizon of my very questioning, overrides it, and demonstrates its inadequacy, in order to relaunch the challenge with an even more demanding and disconcerting question. Faced by this experience, in short, it is not the philosopher who questions existence, but rather existence itself that questions the philosopher. Therefore, in the positive experience of being touched by the world, no question mark arises, as it does in the case of the Grundfrage. In order to comprehend this passage, it may be helpful to reflect on a scene, as depicted in The Supper at Emmaus by Tintoretto. In this famous painting, Tintoretto depicts the two disciples with open arms, as if in the act of asking for or seeking something important, but it is as if they did not realize that they are directing their attention in the wrong direction. Thus, they remain without an answer even though they have it next to them. In contrast, no one is paying attention to the figure at the center of the table. Even the boy offering him food on a tray is turning to him not because he has recognized him, but because he is fulfilling his own social role, that is, qua the little self. The figure at the center turns out to be completely irrelevant, as if it had become invisible in the midst of individuals who are all completely absorbed by something else that is apparently more important. In an exhibition, while I was observing this painting by Tintoretto, I had the distinct sensation that I was in a situation very similar to that of the two ­disciples. I was awaiting and searching for something, but I was searching in the wrong direction. I was sitting next to my existence, but did not see it

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Figure 6.2 Jacopo Tintoretto, The Supper at Emmaus (1542–1543) Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

because I was turned in another direction, toward something else. It is not easy to see our own existence. And yet, it is sitting next to us. But even if we see it, we start thinking about something else soon afterwards. We are not able to keep our attention focused on it, except for a brief instant. The supreme evidence is at the center of my existence, just as the figure at the center of the canvas of Emmaus, but no matter how often my attention passes alongside it, it remains invisible. A professional philosopher, who to be sure intuits its importance, still often assumes the questioning posture of the two disciples, because she is searching for it in the wrong direction, so much so that, when she does not find it, she continues seeking and questioning. This may also be what happens with the celebrated question that concludes Heidegger’s inaugural lecture at the University of Freiburg (1929) What is Metaphysics? “Why is there the existent [Seiende] in general, and not rather Nothing?” Those who remain within the optics of this question have not yet been touched by the world. If I ask a question and am in search of an answer, this is because I do not yet see. And I do not see, because, like the two disciples, I have

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turned in the wrong direction: in the absence of periagoge, my posture is still self-referential. Thus, the question “why is there the existent in general, and not rather Nothing?” transforms itself into the dead end of twentieth-century philosophy, since the questioning attitude that sustains it looks in the wrong direction. This question is not the fundamental question of philosophy as transformation, but, if anything, of the metaphysics of creatio ex nihilo. If, in contrast, in grasping existence outside the ego’s self-referential perspective, I feel the shock of being touched by the world, then I experience the fact of existing as an absolutely gratuitous surprise that transcends every principle of justification and ‘silences thought’,105 and this is so insofar as I suddenly experience the incredible fact that the existence of my singularity is absolutely without foundation. In this case, I stop questioning myself, and, seized by vertigo, I exclaim: “I exist!”. The question mark of the Grundfrage comes to be replaced by an exclamation point. Indeed, no questioning arises in fact from the shock of wonder at the supreme evidence, but, if anything, a gesture of a spontaneous act of gratitude. After I have reversed the self-referential perspective I had upon the world, it is as if the world itself became animated. What was previously an inert object now vivifies and reveals itself thanks to its own counter-intentionality. The gaze of wonder is capable of intercepting a counter-intentionality that starts out from the world, and which would otherwise remain invisible. It is, however, a counter-intentionality that escapes the principle of objectification, and which does not let itself be seized nor set forth fetishistically like a new Golden Calf. Here again, reference can be made to another scene of the Supper at Emmaus, this time represented by a painting by Rembrandt, to which I will return later with regard to the concept of illumination: as soon as the figure at the center of the table is recognized, it immediately escapes the objectifying gaze, and goes back to being invisible. 6.8.7 The Two Opposite Forms of Attention and the Exercise of Dis-Tension There is a very abrupt passage from inattention toward maximal evidence (which characterizes the little self’s perspective) to attention aroused by being touched by the world and accompanied by the pathos of wonder. Once I feel myself touched by the world and experience wonder at the fact of existing, all my attention is suddenly concentrated on the present instant. But this attention differs completely from the one that I can experience through the will of 105 I have in mind here the expression of Schelling: “das Denken verstummt” (Schelling Philosophie der Offenbarung, SW XIII, 161).

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the little self. The little self’s attention wants to objectify and dominate, while the personal singularity’s attention – an attention touched by the world – is an auroral attention, that is, an attention that places itself in a state of waiting for something that is not yet born and cannot be foreseen. The little self’s attention aims to “com-prehend” (to grasp together) the intended object, in the sense of seizing it. This type of attention presupposes distraction from the maximal evidence. In order to survive, the little self is forced to erect a cordon sanitaire around the experience of the maximal evidence. It renders this experience insignificant and banal, in order to remove it more easily. This immunitarian mechanism – the only psychological condition within which the little self can survive – needs a kind of practice of stupefaction. A very widespread one in our society is based on the ideology of “efficientism”, which, through a “machinery of attention”, channels all ­energies into increasing productivity, efficiency, and speed of what we do. Since this “machinery of attention” is extremely energy-consuming, it needs to be supported by a “machinery of distraction”, which produces gratification in the alienating form of the entertainment industry. Revealing the maximal evidence presupposes the deconstruction of this existential apparatus, on which the little self’s certainties and habits are based. The little self’s attention aims to objectify the world and encapsulate it inside the spider’s web of its own interests. In contrast, the attention that accompanies wonder moves in the opposite direction, and gradually severs the spider’s web of interests created by the existential apparatus of the little self, until it reveals the world and recovers a connection with the whole. This type of attention – the attention turned to the present instant that accompanies the shock of wonder – cannot be generated directly by the will, but arises only as a consequence of a solicitation that comes from the world itself. When I feel the shock of wonder, it has the effect of a trumpet blast that attracts my whole attention to the present instant. Without such solicitation, an exercise to artificially induce this attention through the will would be utterly useless. Indeed, the will can only influence an attention that is already there. The key aspect is that the attention to the present instant does not presuppose an effort of concentration or of “tension” of the little self, but, on the ­contrary, an exercise of “dis-tension” of the will of the little self. The latter distracts one from what is essential, and renders the maximal evidence banal. In contrast, the exercise of dis-tension frees the mind from distractions. From a minimalist perspective, it allows one to traverse the auroral void. This is where the exercise of the personal singularity comes in to focus attention on the essential. In a certain sense, this second type of concentration and attention is “captured” by the counter-intentionality of the object. Through this exercise, the attention that

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was previously focused on the priority order of one’s own little self, is redirected in a non-self-centered perspective. Once this step is completed, the singularity will come to experience herself as a surprise, seeing in the moment the possibility of a new beginning. This moment is understood as a new beginning of kairos. I exist; therefore, I wonder. I wonder; therefore, I am reborn. William James distinguishes voluntary attention in the sense of concentration imposed by the will from involuntary attention, in which it is not our will that imposes itself upon attention, but the object itself.106 An advertisement works to the extent that it captures involuntary attention. The same thing happens in social media through influencers. Yet there is also another type of involuntary attention that we have already talked about with regard to the exercise of attention of the personal singularity: the attention that is born thanks to waiting. In this case, it is not an influencer or an advertising message that imposes itself, but a passage occurs that makes the difference: something or someone becomes relevant because I devote time and attention to it, and place myself in a disposition of listening. In this case, the act of directing one’s attention does not mean intentionally objectifying something (voluntary attention) nor remaining captured by a stimulus that wants to influence us (involuntary attention paid to influencers); rather, it means devoting time and placing oneself in a state of listening. There is an attention that is captured on the fly by seductive objects, and an attention that works by waiting. The involuntary attention of advertising skips the passage of waiting. In waiting, I do not focus my attention on something through the will (voluntary attention), but I also avoid being distracted by advertising. Rather, I give time to the phenomenon, I wait for the phenomenon to manifest itself of its own accord. In this paying attention, that is, in this giving time, I animate the phenomenon, that is, I vivify it.

106 “There are two kinds of attention: voluntary attention and involuntary attention. Voluntary attention is that which requires effort, or which is forced because it lacks interest. Voluntary attention is what we use when we are at work and have constant interruptions, phone calls and noises that require attention. Involuntary attention is that which responds to stimuli that capture our attention without our conscious control. Involuntary attention is what we feel when we see something new, strange, beautiful or terrible. Voluntary attention is always accompanied by a feeling of tension or effort, while involuntary attention is accompanied by a feeling of ease or pleasure” (James 1890, Vol. 1, 402–403).

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Annunciations: Exercises for Being Born Along with the World

6.9.1 The Illumination in the “Supper at Emmaus” When I wonder at the maximal evidence, I discover that the intentionality is reversed: it is the world that illuminates me, not vice versa. The illuminated person is one who has completed the exercise of emptying and of dis-tension, and who, in the auroral void, disposes herself in an attitude of adhering to reality, no longer asking for or seeking anything. At this point, it is the world itself that comes to meet her and illuminates her with its own counter-intentionality, understood as a “reversed intentionality”, which no longer starts out from the subject, but from the world. This light opens the eyes, in the sense that it makes the illuminated person see that dimension of reality that had previously remained invisible from the perspective of the objectifying gaze. There are different types of illumination. There is for example insight, in the sense of the “Aha!” or “Eureka” moment (Karl Bühler’s Aha-Erlebnis) in which we suddenly grasp the solution to a problem that has plagued us for a long time. The illumination of counter-intentionality is different, in that it has the effect of an unexpected trumpet blast that destabilizes: it does not offer a solution to a problem we had set ourselves, but rather creates a new problem, since it makes us turn our head, in the sense of the periagoge, toward a new, unforeseen direction.

Figure 6.3 Matthias Stom, The Supper at Emmaus (1633–1639) Matthias Stom, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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At this point, it may be useful to refer to two other depictions of the Supper at Emmaus, those by Matthias Stom (ca. 1600 – after 1652) and by the young Rembrandt. Stom seizes the moment in which Jesus attracts attention to himself and suddenly becomes recognizable in the very act of breaking the bread (Luke, 24, 30). The act of breaking the bread, which is portrayed here, symbolizes the overcoming of the tribal logic that dictates the rules for partitioning prey and the passage to a new type of logic marked by solidarity, which I will consider in the last chapter with regard to “generative sharing”. It is only in light of this new logic that the counter-intentionality that comes from the world becomes visible. In the absence of this logic, the maximal evidence goes back to being invisible. This is what the young Rembrandt’s painting, The Supper at Emmaus (1629), communicates. This painting represents one of the most interesting interpretations of the concept of illumination. Indeed, in the moment in which the disciple opens his eyes and recognizes Jesus, all the light of the painting focuses on the disciple

Figure 6.4 Rembrandt, The Supper at Emmaus (ca. 1628) Rembrandt, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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himself, thus making him an “illuminated”, while only a shadowy silhouette remains of Jesus. In this way, Rembrandt gives an unusual reinterpretation of the verse: “Then their eyes were opened and they knew Him; and He vanished from their sight” (Luke 24, 13 ff.). What remains in the shadows in his painting is, in fact, only the side close to those who are looking at the canvas, not the side seen by the illuminated person (the disciple). The maximal evidence once again becomes unrecognizable only to those who continue to look at it from the objectifying perspective of the little self, but not from the perspective of the illuminated person, who has meanwhile carried out a periagoge and had the experience of the logic that is present in generative sharing. 6.9.2 An Existence Studded with Invisible Little Annunciations Illumination is ultimately an annunciation. “Annunciation” may seem to be an excessively demanding term, but it seems to me to be the most apt in the end. The term “annunciation” usually makes us think of something grandiose, such as the image of the Archangel Gabriel in the famous Cestello Annunciation (ca. 1489–90) by Botticelli. We will see that this is indeed a very powerful and fertile image, but here I understand by annunciation something less dazzling. Whoever expects an annunciation directly from the Archangel Gabriel not only risks being disappointed, but in the meantime many little annunciations that could be decisive for her existence will certainly elude her. These are not annunciations of an evident, absolute truth, but little annunciations that would be at any rate sufficient to reawaken her own fragment of truth. Initially, these annunciations may often seem insignificant. At other times, they arouse a negative reaction on the spot, of anger or rage at words that, although true, have wounded us. In order to germinate, these words need to remain for years in darkness and silence, as if to be purified from the inappropriate gesture and the intentionality that had accompanied them, until they are established so deeply that they are completely detached from the ­contingencies with which they had initially been associated. Or else, they may be premature words (or gestures) that unsettle me at the time because they find me unprepared, and that therefore remain protected in the subsoil of consciousness, to come to the surface only when I am ready to metabolize them. A word, a gesture, a photograph, a piece of writing, or an encounter – perhaps not even noted at the time – is suddenly reanimated, even years later. Protected by obscurity, they had in fact continued to act, with the slowness of a drop of water that hollows out a stone, by means of little impulses that

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make a certain experience or a certain episode of life significant. When added together, they form the wave that gives a direction to the singularity’s destination. These are little annunciations which, at times, are followed by little resurrections. 6.9.3 Angels and Annunciations of Birth An announcement is something that does not fit into my projects or depend on my will. Rather, it destabilizes me, like an arrow coming from outside that strikes deeply. In Greek mythology, the bearer of annunciations is the winged messenger, the angelos. One of these angels is Iris, who, in Plato’s Theaetetus, represents the rainbow that brings earth and heaven into contact, as we have already seen. In the Christian tradition, for its part, the most famous angelos is the Archangel Gabriel, with whom the annunciation narrated in the Gospel of Luke is associated. Both for the Greeks and for the Christian tradition, the angelos is the medium between different levels of reality. Today, however, we live immersed in a society in which the annunciation, that is, the medium of the angelos, has been replaced by mass media and social media. The risk is that in these new “media” there may no longer be angeloi, that is, messengers who come from outside our existential bias and our ego-sphere. In addition, the annunciation of the Archangel Gabriel acquires a particular significance in the Christian tradition: for it does not limit itself to revealing (aletheia) something, but rather announces the birth of something. It is also interesting to observe the posture of this annunciation. In the Cavalcanti Annunciation by Donatello (around 1430–40), the Archangel Gabriel does not impose the message from on high, in an authoritarian way.107 Despite the gold decorations and the sumptuous clothing, the relief has a sober, hardly triumphant style: the Archangel is down on his knees, and seems almost to hesitate in front of Mary. Donatello’s idea also reappears in the Annunciation by Lorenzo di Credi (around 1480–85), but without adding anything particularly new. There is, however, another work in which Donatello’s idea is developed and further explored: the Cestello Annunciation by Botticelli. Here, we find Mary, who, with her face and the color and the style of her hair, is somewhat reminiscent of the celebrated Birth of Venus. Here, however, the carefree atmosphere has given way to a different awareness. It is as if this 107 See e.g. https://www.stile24.wp24.it/donatello/2017/09/08/annunciazione-cavalcanti / or https://michelangelobuonarrotietornato.com/2016/12/13/donatello-oggi-come-550 -anni-fa/

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Figure 6.5 Sandro Botticelli, Cestello Annunciation (1489–1490) Sandro Botticelli, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

painting were the testimony to an annunciation and to a periagoge experienced by Botticelli himself: the secret and the memory of that experience guide him in the interpretation of this celebrated episode of the Gospel. Now, the matrix of this periagoge seems to be able to revive in those who observe the canvas. Upon closer inspection, the force of this depiction derives from the fact that it becomes an image that transforms. It is the image of an annunciation that itself becomes an annunciation. As in Donatello’s relief, the Archangel is on his knees, while Mary is not seated in a stable position, but is standing. However, the atmosphere is different. Drawn away from reading the book on the lectern, Mary appears reluctant. She loses her balance, and carries out a kind of “spiral twisting” around herself, as if, in the grip of vertigo, she felt the ground was taken out from beneath her feet, and was searching for a new posture. Although she maintains her composure,

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Figure 6.6 T itian, Annunciation (ca. 1535) Titian, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

the twisting movement – a genuine periagoge – seems uncontrolled. While in Donatello the Archangel is hesitant, almost as if sharing Mary’s bewilderment, here he is instead perfectly balanced, and actually guides Mary’s bewilderment with his firm and self-assured gaze. Mary’s elegant turning-around lets one perceive her dramatic efforts to cope with the announcement. Even the movement of her hands and arms communicates this bewilderment. Yet the caring angel comes to the rescue: with the raised fingers of his right hand, he indicates precisely the right tuning (Stimmung) needed to plunge into a new destination (Bestimmung), to which the offering of the white lily seems to be reserved. The contrast between the image of stability and orientation transmitted by the raised fingers of the angel who has just alighted, and the loss of balance that accompanies Mary’s inner turmoil, is evident. In many depictions, by contrast, Mary maintains a stable posture, even when she expresses surprise, as in the Annunciation by Leonardo (ca. 1472– 1475). One thinks of Titian’s Annunciation (ca. 1540), where a triumphant angel imposes himself from on high, with authoritarian forefinger, and towers over a kneeling, submissive Mary (who is perhaps all the more stably anchored in herself for this very reason), who welcomes the announcement with her arms folded. Here there is no vertigo, no twisting, no loss of balance. There is no periagoge: everything is already completed and accepted with obedient serenity.

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In Botticelli’s painting, the usual direction of the annunciation is reversed: it does not orientate from on high, in an “authoritarian” way (model), but from below, in an “authoritative” way (exemplarity). It is precisely because it does not impose itself from on high, but thanks to a movement of lowering – that is, of emptying – that the annunciation becomes exemplary and produces a movement of periagogic conversion. By contrast, when it dominates from on high, as in Titian, it proposes the logic of the model once again, and ends up leaving the individual secluded in the diving bell of her own self-referentiality, without the possibility of flourishing and generating something beyond herself. From the perspective of a philosophy of birth, there is always an annunciation behind every “birthing of the soul”, and such an annunciation always comes from an exemplarity. In the experiences of loving, crisis, feeling that the ground has been pulled out from under my feet, failure, or pain at the passing of a loved one or at the absence of the beloved, I experience my lack of self-­ sufficiency. Human beings are capable of loving only because they come into the world without having finished being born. Being born assumes an anthropogenetic significance here: the pangs of the hunger to be born hurt, precisely because they make me experience that this birth cannot take place within my self-referential limits; for as long as I remain within these limits, I cannot continue my birth, but only repeat myself. I overcome repetition and hence I am reborn only if I find a point of support outside myself to implement the periagogic turn of self-transcendence. It is exemplarity that represents such an Archimedean point. Annunciations remain written in the soul. A sentence that was understood, but nevertheless did not remain written in the soul, would not be an “annunciation” but mere “information”. An annunciation is a germinative communication that is not imposed through the will, but comes from below, from the emotional sphere, and this is precisely why it is able to interact effectively with the order of feeling. 6.10 Some Considerations on Exercises of Transformation on the Reflective Level 6.10.1 Soliloquy as Verification of the Exercise of Transformation on the Reflective Level The last phase of exercises of transformation is that in which the verification on the reflective level becomes preponderant. With regard to these exercises, for instance those that are dialogic, autobiographical and narrative, I will limit myself to some general considerations, not because they are not essential,

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but because they have already been widely dealt with in the current literature. One exception, however, is an exercise that has often been neglected and misunderstood: the soliloquy, on which it is appropriate to dwell before we proceed. A soliloquy consists in the dialogue between fragments of a personal singularity that are transforming themselves at different velocities. The exercise of soliloquy is the attempt to coordinate them. This happens insofar as the process of the continuation of birth, typical of human beings, occurs in a discontinuous and fragmentary way. Little annunciations do not fecundate the entire soul, but only fragments of the soul, which, depending on how they have been fecundated, will transform themselves in different ways and at different velocities. Many of these seeds, as we have already seen, even remain inactive for long periods of time. Yet there is a hunger that precedes my being, and which comes from the future. When this hunger makes me feel the split and non-­coincidence between my existence and my desire, then these seeds will suddenly sprout, however they happen to have been sown, since they have somehow found in me the apt soil in which to put down roots. Soliloquy, autobiographical writing, and maieutic dialogue allow one to cultivate their growth and to integrate it with that of the other fragments. The fact that the singularity cannot be objectified nor foreseen means that it is not transparent even to itself. This opacity makes the soliloquy a particularly complex exercise, to the extent that it makes this exercise similar to a “slow” or “cold” (though no less significant) form of metabolization. Here, the basic schema is represented by a dialogue that unfolds inside a singularity, between the part that has already completed the periagoge, and the part that has not yet completed it: it is a dialogue between the fragments of the singularity that have gone further in the process of transformation, and those that have instead remained further behind, and which may even be opposed to undertaking this pathway. This exercise allows one to pass the process of transformation through the sieve of reason, to verify it, and to undertake corrective and improving actions, by acting retroactively on the process itself. Soliloquies, confessions, inner dialogues, and the autobiographical writing of a diary are the forms of this “slow metabolization” that develops not only on the hermeneutical but also on the anthropogenetic level. In fact, these exercises of self-interpretation succeed in modifying the singularity’s anthropogenetic transformation process and granting it greater coherence. 6.10.2 Dialogic Exercises and Practices of Autobiographical Narrative In the dialogue Theaetetus, the Platonic Socrates shows concretely what a maieutic dialogic exercise consists in. By constantly questioning, he leads the young Theaetetus to doubt what he had previously considered to be evident,

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and causes the pathos of wonder to arise in him. There is no doubt that ­dialogic-maieutic exercises are one of the most powerful forms through which the influence of exemplarity becomes explicit. These practices have contributed to calling into question the ideological assumption, often dominant not only in psychology, according to which the self is the original instance on which relations are based: that is, the idea that what exist originally are individuals who are isolated and precede relations. In the previous chapters I have already contested the idea that there is a monadic individual at the origin of human psychic development. The individual is something posterior, in that it emerges and assumes form only in emotional sharing, in relations, in maieutic dialogue, and in hermeneutical practices of autobiography or narrative. The hermeneutical, narrative, and autobiographical moments are thus decisive for identifying the center that is capable of unifying the dispersion and fragmentariness of an individual. An individual always lives inside a story and a narrative, that is, inside a self-interpretation that is continually re-actualized. The personal singularity itself is able to identify the promising void and the fragment of truth at the basis of its own existence only thanks to an effort of self-interpretation and of dialogue with other singularities. Only through a narrative is it possible to reconstruct a physiognomy of the individual and of the singularity. 6.10.3 Toward Rethinking Exercises of Transformation and the Question of the Method The way in which these themes are dealt with, however, presents various limits. In the different treatises on the art of living and on spiritual exercises, the focus is primarily on this final phase, while the preceding ones are often neglected. In this way, the themes that are treated are those related to achieving awareness, examination of the conscience, self-analysis, or to self-narration, to the point of identifying precise pathways and methodologies based, for example, on autobiographical practices and exercises of writing. Moreover, in the ­current literature, such as Sloterdijk (2012) and Nussbaum (2011), an explicit distinction between the little self and the personal non-self is missing. Problems arise when this hermeneutical and narrative moment, which is crucial per se, is not interwoven with the act of self-transcendence. In this case, it runs the risk of becoming a practice of individual or collective autosuggestion. This is what happens to the retired civil servant of Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, who, despite all the exercises of self-awareness, fails to transform himself and remains only a “vigorously aware mouse”. What this “vigorously aware mouse” lacks is certainly not awareness, but rather an act

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of self-transcendence out of the self-referential perspective of the little self, and, beyond that, the ability to translate that awareness into the concrete co-­ performance of an act.108 If the phase of emptying, that is, the epoche of the ego that allows one to overcome the perspective of the little self, is not addressed, then these treatises are reduced to instruction manuals for achieving wellness and happiness. However, a practice of spiritual exercises that lacks an authentic act of self-transcendence risks falling back into the logic of social recognition, and being reduced to a practice of spiritual self-promotion or even to “spiritual exhibitionism”.109 A further problematic aspect concerns the use of concepts. There is talk of the art of living, exercises of reflection, of meditation, of thought, or of exercises to remain concentrated on the present. However, these concepts are often received a-critically, in their most obvious and ingenuous meaning. For example, instead of asking oneself what “thinking” or “meditating” means, one a-critically accepts what academic philosophy understands by these terms. The problem is that academic philosophy has thought about these concepts from a perspective that differs from that of exercises of transformation. Moreover, in doing so, one often ends up pigeonholing these exercises into rigid conceptual categories and predefined spaces, as if it were not also possible to practice these exercises in relations of care, in loving someone, in volunteering, in poetry, in practices of Zen meditation, in traveling, or perhaps in mountaineering. In the exercises of transformation I have described so far, the mode of meditating, thinking, and reflecting is rethought within the optics of the auroral void. This is a meditating, thinking, and reflecting that has overcome the perspective of the little self, and which has been reawakened by the wonder at the maximal evidence. Hence, it is a thinking rooted in feeling, which is not intellectualistic, but experiential. In short, it is a generative thinking. Among the themes at the center of spiritual exercises and of the art of living, that of “method” certainly stands out. In this case, too, it should be first clarified what is understood by “method”. If by a method one understands a fixed set of rules, a precise protocol to be respected, or an instruction manual, then there is no method for exercises of transformation. Of course, at the 108 See § 1.5.8 How Co-Performing an Act Differs from Performing an Action. 109 “The spiritual exhibitionist is someone who is more interested in his or her own spiritual progress than in the spiritual growth of others. The spiritual exhibitionist is always trying to show off, to impress others with his or her insights and experiences. But the spiritual exhibitionist is never really growing, because he or she is always looking outside for ­validation” (Nouwen 1972, 45).

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outset there may still be a phase of apprenticeship in which imitation of a model also plays a crucial role, but then it is best to forget about it, to break free from the moorings. Otherwise, everything will be exhausted in mere repetition, servility, and plagiarism: precisely the way of doing philosophy that Schopenhauer condemned. The exercise of transformation lacks a predetermined method. Trans­ formation takes place when I deviate from the pre-established pathway and become sensitive to the influence of a teacher or, more generally, of an exemplarity. It is the maieutic and unforeseeable force of exemplarity, not the method, that produces transformation. Or rather, the method of the exercise of transformation is exemplarity itself. Rather than a prescriptive method based on the logic of the model, precise phases characterized by techniques and practices that follow the maieutic logic of exemplarity can be identified in exercises of transformation. This is what I have tried to describe in the previous pages when I analyzed the primary techniques and practices of the various phases of exercises of transformation: removing the superfluous, emptying oneself, detaching oneself from the little self, concentrating oneself on the essential, disposing oneself to make room for the promising void, training oneself to feel wonder, etc. In short, they are testimonies to pathways of transformation that can only be comprehended starting from one’s own fragment of truth, with an eye to what such testimonies leave written on one’s own soul. In following this pathway of self-transcendence and of the passage from the little self to the personal non-self, it is almost always indispensable to find a good teacher. However, as the Japanese concept of Shu Ha Ri emphasizes, a good pupil is one who eventually goes beyond the teacher.110 In this regard, perhaps the most effective metaphor of the teacher is that which is suggested by Wittgenstein111 in the penultimate proposition of the Tractatus, with the image of a ladder: My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly. (Tractatus 6.54) 110 Cf. § 6.2.3 On Repetition. 111 An attempt to reread Wittgenstein in the optics of spiritual exercises can be found in Hadot (2019).

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In the Japanese model of Shu Ha Ri and in Wittgenstein’s metaphor of the ladder, a similar concept can be identified. In the former, it is suggested that there is a process of learning that involves following a teacher, but, in the end, the pupil must go beyond the teacher and become her own teacher. In Wittgenstein’s metaphor of the ladder, one asserts that, in the end, we must leave behind our comprehension of the world based on language. We must learn from language, but we must not become too attached to it. Ultimately, we must throw away the ladder and experience the world directly. Similarly, in the last phases of spiritual exercises, the teacher becomes a ladder that comes to be overcome, and only then does one become touched by the world. Therefore, there is no predetermined method to be imitated in the last phases of exercises of spiritual transformation: the method itself, followed until that moment, becomes abandoned like a ladder. What remains is only a pathway dictated by the dynamics of one’s own fragment of truth under the impulse of other testimonies. This is a pathway that requires constancy, discipline, and dedication, but also the ability to creatively deviate from tracks and to break with customs, schemes, and rules. It is only where there is no longer the presence of the fragment of truth or the inspiration of an exemplarity that formal rules become prioritized. Generative thought is a thought vivified by rubbing one’s own fragment of truth against that of the other. The little self, by contrast, is outside this presence. If it is eloquent and erudite, then it can disguise itself as an illuminated sage and talk for hours about that presence, but in reality it is merely limiting itself to circumventing it. In this case, it diffuses an empty erudition that rotates around itself to infinity, and rattles off teachings, perhaps skilfully exerting leverage over mechanisms of seduction, as in the cases of the leaders of sects. These seductive leaders are never teachers, or “ladders”, that is, testimonies of self-transcendence and of the knowledge of not knowing, but only models that standardize and demand obedience.

CHAPTER 7

Generative Goods and Open Community: The New Axis of Social Transformation 7.1 The Failure of Social Transformation in the Era of Narcissism and the Concept of Happiness 7.1.1 The Apocalypse of Egotism In our epoch, there is often talk of a crisis of values and of orientation that throws doubt not only on the myth of progress, but also on the value of science and the capacity for survival of democracy itself. We inhale this crisis in the uncertainty about the present, and even more in that which concerns the future. At a mass level, it reawakens a profound restlessness that is capable of polarizing the dynamics of emotions in the public sphere in the direction of phenomena of tribal regression, accompanied by the dynamics typical of envy, resentment, and hate. It is a crisis of rationality that requires a qualitative leap in the way we understand social transformation, and also in the way we practice politics. Whence does this epochal crisis draw its origin? In the age of narcissism, the alienation consists in revolving around the inessential, in having an order of priority that does not correspond to our own authentic desire. At the origin of this alienation is the ideology that orients our way of producing and consuming. Yet it is no simple matter to identify the ultimate principle of this ideology. One has the impression that it is often opportunistically given a convenient name in order to avoid or defer the difficult process of self-transcendence of the little self. This is where the original alienation of our existence begins: that is, when we do not come to terms with our existence and abdicate our craft of living. In this way, this principle often remains well camouflaged behind its innumerable masks of comfort. It is not enough just to point the forefinger outwards, against the others or society. If one removes these different masks with which this principle disguises itself, then one discovers that at the root of all these masks there is, above all, the narcissistic infatuation of egotism. This is a logic that acts even inside myself. It follows from this that it is not possible to transform society if I have not first overcome this narcissistic phase and transformed myself. In the age of triumphant narcissism, social transformation and anthropogenetic transformation are interwoven. From this perspective, the spaces for a social transformation are those traced by the generative axes of the © Guido Cusinato, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004520202_009

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community. It is only these axes, not those of the collectivity, that can reorient the emotions that act in the public sphere – empathy, compassion, solidarity, anger, outrage, etc. – beyond the self-referential perspective and beyond the dynamics of envy, resentment, and hate. The global crisis we are traversing can be the occasion for bringing about a cultural turning point capable of making what is essential emerge once again, and of recovering a connection with the rest of the biosphere. Without this periagoge, the absolutization of the subject will continue until it makes us lose contact with reality. At that point, the apocalypse of egotism would be inevitable. Upon closer inspection, in past centuries, traditional metaphysics and theology have devoted themselves to the task of obliterating the World, instead of suspending the ego. The result is that in no era has the idol of our own ego enjoyed so much space as in the current one. In the course of the twentieth century, the idol of the ego has been reinforced to such an extent as to bring about the extinction of onto-theology itself, and its replacement by the current onto-egology. This new ideological faith, the monotheism of the ego, is bringing to completion the obliteration of the World. After the death of God comes the death of the World. Conceiving of reality exclusively from the viewpoint of the self-sufficient subject means to silence reality, to rigidify it in a dimension of convenience that plays a functional role for the domination of the subject. In order to broaden the perception of reality, a containment of the ego is indispensable. At that point, it will be the world itself that animates and expresses itself. In the age of narcissism, by contrast, one observes an opposite process of expansion of the ego, which is resulting in a progressive dissolution of the world. A project of social transformation that does not consider this general framework risks being myopic and inadequate. This is why the attempts at a social transformation that refer back to the social struggles of the last century become effective only if they raise the bar and set themselves the problem of transforming not only the relations of production, but also the forma mentis of human beings. This transformation cannot be delegated to science and technology, as hypothesized by certain currents of transhumanism, since it also involves the anthropogenetic dimension and therefore requires an evolution of feeling and of thinking toward a new mentality that is no longer ego-centered. In the philosophical and political debates of recent decades, the theme of transformation that is both individual and social has been primarily dealt with from the self-referential perspective of the little self. Yet, if there is no periagoge, if there is no passage from the little self to the personal non-self, the exercise of individual transformation is reduced to an intimist cura sui of the

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little self, while social transformation is neutralized by the industries of wellness and entertainment. 7.1.2 The Limits of Transformation Understood as Individual Acrobatics of the Sovereign Subject I begin by considering the exercises of individual transformation. In relation to this theme, Foucault, Sloterdijk, Anders, and Nussbaum are certainly to be counted among the most significant voices of recent decades. However, there is a precise limit that all these authors have in common. Foucault is interested in identifying formation processes of the subjectivity that are alternative to those originated by the dispositifs of power. To achieve this objective, he proposes a care of the self understood as a set of practices designed to obtain self-mastery (enkrateia) through the government of passions. Only in this way does the subject become “maître de soi”, and learn to make good use of its own pleasures and desires. The urgency to identify ascetic techniques of constitution of the subject is also at the center of Sloterdijk’s works. In the last “sphere”, in which we live today, every spiritual demand for verticality and every aspiration for happiness has been once again absorbed into the fitness and entertainment industries: “The beneficial deserts are abandoned, the monasteries empty out, vacationers replace monks, and holidays replace the flight from the world”.1 As an alternative to these false askeses, Sloterdijk proposes the inauguration of new “anthropotechniques” based on what is supposedly the constitutive dimension of human beings: the “acrobatic” tendency to elevate oneself. The monk is succeeded by the acrobat, or the mountaineer who climbs to the summit. The objective of Sloterdijk’s acrobatic exercise is to break with the inertia of one’s own passions, habits, and opinions. Upon closer inspection, however, the subject does not transform itself in these acrobatics, but rather limits itself to clambering up, thereby displaying extraordinary skills in balancing acts. It is true that the idea of verticality is recovered, but it is still the verticality of the sovereign subject that erects and raises itself, not the one represented by Hokusai’s wave, in which the personal singularity assumes form in the crisis and in the vertigo of the fall. The acrobatic subject is ultimately still a subject that is master of itself, and develops techniques of self-control. There is change, but no transformation, as is explicitly suggested, after all, by the very title of Sloterdijk’s text, which does not exhort one to transform but rather to change one’s own life: You Must “Change” [ändern] Your Life. 1 Sloterdijk 2013, 437, transl. modified.

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In sum, Foucault’s process of subjectivization, like Sloterdijk’s acrobatic askesis, theorize a conversion that allows one to detach oneself from one’s own habits and prejudices and to escape the domination of one’s own passions, which, in Sloterdijk for example, leads to recovering control over the thymotic passions. In both Foucault and Sloterdijk, these ascetic techniques follow the classical postulate, of Stoic origin, that implies the control of passions by the sovereign subject. Therefore, at the center of these exercises there is once again the sovereign subject that governs, from on high, its own emotional life. With regard to the relationship with emotional life, a different approach can be identified in Anders. Here, unlike in Foucault and Sloterdijk, the exercise of transformation occurs thanks to the growth and extension of the emotional sphere. For Anders, man is “antiquated”2 precisely because emotional life is characterized by an inertial logic that has difficulty keeping pace with the development of technology. The contradiction of contemporary humanity is blatantly expressed in a growing gap between the development of technology and the uncertain proceeding of feeling, so much so that an atrophization of feeling often corresponds to an increase in technical skills. And yet, human beings have an enormous potential in themselves, precisely in feeling. Indeed, Anders’ thesis is based on the idea that human feeling is plastic, and that destinies of humanity depend precisely on the growth of this feeling. For Anders, in fact, the end of ethics is the inversion of the atrophization of feeling. Therefore, the exercise of transformation in Anders is no longer based on the domination of passions, but rather on the promotion of new feelings that can meet the challenges imposed by the development of technology. Nevertheless, even in Anders, this felicitous intuition is not accompanied by calling the autonomous, self-centered subject into question. Nussbaum also grasps the importance of emotions for any process of transformation, but remains within a self-referential perspective that lacks periagoge, in which one does not comprehend whether transformation refers to the little self or to the personal singularity. All this risks making her concept of “cultivation of emotions” slide toward a form of cura sui like that of the Hegelian beautiful soul devoted to cultivating itself by taking lessons in writing, poetry, and painting. Whereas Foucault and Sloterdijk still remain within the optics of the domination of passions, Anders theorizes a development of feeling, and Nussbaum the cultivation of emotions. What does not change in all four cases, however, is the basic perspective, which refers only to an individual feeling: what is still 2 See Anders 1956; Anders 1980.

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missing is a theory of “emotional sharing”, and consequently a periagoge that allows one to move from the perspective of individual feeling to the sharing of feeling. In these authors, therefore, the motivations for transformation are once again sought in the projectuality and initiative of the individual subject. Hence the need to go beyond these attempts. 7.1.3 Spiritual Narcissism and the Wellness and Fitness Industries In current Western societies, the major obstacle to social transformation is the culture of narcissism. Undertaking a spiritual path is a delicate process, full of pitfalls. Thus, I can easily delude myself that I am progressing on the spiritual way, and that I am perhaps becoming an “illuminated” person, whereas in reality I am simply reinforcing and expanding only my vanity, that is, the adipose development of my little self. As we have already observed, the indispensable presupposition for the exercise of transformation is the overcoming of the little self, by emptying it from egotism and the elimination of what is not essential. Without this passage, any exercise of transformation inevitably degenerates into a solipsistic cura sui that favors spiritual narcissism based on the illusion of pseudo-transcendence. In this spiritual narcissism, Socratic reflection on the good life is replaced by what has assumed the aspect of a genuine “industry of happiness” that promises a life under the banner of fitness and wellness, and offers courses and methods for obtaining an ideal target weight, improving sleep quality, reducing anxiety and stress, acquiring greater self-confidence, improving relations with others, or increasing creativity. All these are therapies intended to “repair” the little self and to make it efficient and high-performing once again. This is a distorted vision of spirituality, in that it proposes once again the logics of the social model, instead of following the logics of exemplarity, and does not grasp the essential aspect of the problem: that is, the passage from the little self to the personal singularity. Yet why are these themes so important? One may think that the mode of interpreting and conceiving of happiness represents an irrelevant topic for social structures and political struggles, since it seems to concern only the so-called “superstructure” (Überbau), and not the “relations of production” (Struktur). This may have been true in past eras. On the contrary, as I demonstrate in what follows, in the age of narcissism, the theme of happiness also has direct and very concrete repercussions for the social and economic organization of society. 7.1.4 The Myth of Homo Oeconomicus and Rational Choice In past decades, also due to the hesitations of philosophy about the themes at the center of human existence, concepts such as happiness and the good life

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have often been reread and measured on the basis of the only “objective” criterion left: the increase of the capacities of production and consumption. The void left by the “Grand Narratives” criticized by Lyotard has been rapidly filled by cynicism and the ideology of homo oeconomicus, that is, by the thesis that individuals make rational choices on the basis of exclusively egoistic motives. This is a reductive and unilateral conception that is incapable of explaining, for example, the logic of most of the relations of care that are often established between mother and newborn, or the unsuspected altruistic behavior of which humans are at times capable precisely in the most tragic and difficult moments. However, even if we had had a terrible mother and had never had experiences of altruism, the second presupposition of the thesis of homo oeconomicus would remain to be proven: the thesis of rational action. From this point of view, it would be enough to observe one kind of human behavior, which is certainly not marginal, since it is widespread at a mass level, like that of baseball or football fans, for us to begin to raise justified doubts about the validity of this thesis. Indeed, there is nothing scientifically “rational” about getting agitated, gesticulating, or shouting for a point or a goal scored, preserving like a relic a ball touched or signed by one’s favorite player, following one’s team to away games at great expense, or about the unwavering faith with which one defends it. Such behavior calls to mind, if anything, the “rationality” and rituals of homo religiosus. Moreover, we have already seen that in the two phases of re-enchantment, the “rationality” of Weberian disenchantment has been replaced by the logic of the “magic system” practiced in the rituals of mass consumption, where products are bought on the basis of the “wonder” and of the excitation they can arouse. In sum, from both the point of view of egoism and that of rational action, the thesis of homo oeconomicus thus proposes a caricatural image of human beings. And yet, until a few decades ago, this thesis was widely accepted, to the point of becoming the principal ideological presupposition of our way of producing and consuming. It is telling that the most relevant critical reflections on the legitimacy of this vision were not born in the domain of philosophy, but in that of economics. In a famous article of 1977, Amartya Sen, referring to this conception, observed that “[the] purely economic man is […] close to being a social moron. Economic theory has been much preoccupied with this rational fool decked in the glory of his one all-purpose preference ordering. To make room for the different concepts related to his behavior we need a more elaborate structure”.3 3 Sen 1977.

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This model of the “rational fool” proves to be lacking empirical verification, and, despite its failure to account for multiple types of human behavior, it has become the primary paradigm of modernity that has actually molded and formatted our mode of producing and consuming. Hence, this is not a psychological or theoretical but a practical and concrete question: the consequences of this lifestyle have been the withdrawal of enormous resources from future generations and the progressive destruction of the biosphere. 7.1.5 Happiness or Gratification? It is impressive how almost everything essentially revolves around the interpretation of a single, apparently innocent word: happiness. The ideology of homo oeconomicus launches a lethal message: happiness consists in possessing goods to be flaunted like trophies and resources to be consumed; and those who think the opposite have not understood life. It follows from this presupposition that the ultimate meaning of politics and social struggles is that of reclaiming one’s own right, as an individual and as a collectivity, to the maximal possession of consumer goods. The end result is a political struggle that becomes corporative and obtusely short-sighted with respect to the future. If this creed becomes the propulsive core around which Western (but not only Western) societies assume form, if it becomes the existential objective of billions of people, then the consequences are catastrophic, both at the social and the ecological level. If the good life and happiness consist in the possession and consumption of resources, then the salvation of humanity is achieved in consumption, and hence, by means of the “machinery of attention”, all the energies of humanity will have to be religiously concentrated in a single direction: toward the increase of the rhythms of production of consumer goods that have a functional role in the “machinery of distraction” of the industry of “happiness”. The organization of social production that follows this logic has precise impacts and costs in terms of not only environmental but also social pollution (conflicts, violence etc.). It is an ideology that acts like a powerful social poison on a par with resentment and envy, exacerbating competition and bringing about psychological burnout: for one person who flaunts her own success, there is at least one other who falls victim to depression. Yet, is this truly happiness? If we want to confront the topic of social transformation and ask ourselves the question of where we want to go and how we want to transform society, then it is fundamental to take this question seriously. To think that happiness consists in possessions and social recognition means to fall into a misunderstanding, for this is not happiness, but only the gratification of the little self. This is not to deny or even to undervalue the right to

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gratification, but to realize that it is not gratification that is a precondition for a process of social transformation. If the existence of individuals and of society is exclusively oriented in the sense of the gratification of the little self, there is no social transformation, but only conformist adaptation and consumerism. Without a periagoge capable of confronting these questions from a non-self-­ referential perspective, everything is reduced to a collective infatuation, or an alienation that replaces happiness with the industry of entertainment. The generative axis of the community allows one to conceive this question no longer in terms of gratification, possession, or recognition, but in terms of happiness, of openness to the world, and of the increase of relations of care. These are all experiences that essentially flow together into the generative act of making one’s own fragment of truth interact with that of others, in order to be born along with the world. This is what becomes the ultimate meaning of happiness and of existence, if one passes through the intermediary of the spaces of the community. 7.1.6 Happiness and Minimalism In the age of narcissism, social transformation needs to integrate the just struggle for the extension of rights, and indignation over inequalities and injustice, with a periagoge that leads to focusing one’s own energies on what is essential, without dispersing oneself in what is secondary. This is why the interpretation of the concept of happiness assumes a central importance: the order of priorities through which individuals orient their own existences and determine the mode of consuming, producing, and existing at the social level depends on its interpretation. The problem is to identify the criteria for establishing the orders of priority of a “philosophical minimalism”, rethought under the motto “less is more”. Just as in the case of the “promising void”, social transformation does not occur by filling an existence with consumption, but, on the contrary, by removing what is unessential in order to make room for what is important. Happiness is not obtained through increasing the possession of consumer goods or through recognition, but, on the contrary, by removing what distracts and narcotizes, in order to concentrate on what matters most for oneself. I am not happy when I consume more, or when I obtain social recognition. This emotion has other names: it is pride, a sense of wellness, satisfaction, or gratification. Rather, I am happy when I share the hunger to be born with someone who is close to me; when, through relations of care, I feel life flourishing or pain relieved. I am happy when I feel myself accepted by the cosmos. But this is not a naïve happiness, insofar as it must come to terms with the tragic

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dimension of existence. Bliss and despair are interwoven, and mark the rhythm of an existence, like in a melody. The essential was probably already grasped in the fragment of Heraclitus in which it is asserted: “Listening not to me but to the logos, it is wise to agree that all things are one” (DK 22 B 50). If happiness is the recovery of this connection with the All, then the happy life demands the extreme minimalism that is implicit in the epoche of the ego: renouncing oneself, that is, renouncing everything that is ego-referred. Life is happy in an “afterlife” that is such with respect to one’s own egotism, that is, with respect to one’s own mortiferous part. It is in such an – entirely earthly – “afterlife” that time, having stripped itself of the illusions of the ego, gains the eternity of the moment. As long as I instead continue uttering the terrible word “I”, I remain separated, that is, unhappy. This happiness does not emerge in the spaces of the collectivity, but thanks to the generative axes of the community that are represented by the force of exemplarity. In the spaces of the collectivity, the breaches that spontaneously open up in this direction are systematically neutralized. The culture that teaches us to cultivate these moments of contact with the world is dying out. It is as if we no longer knew how to open these doors. Perhaps we do not even see them, or if we do, we are afraid of them. As soon as we are without obligations or remain on our own, we automatically tend to grab a remote or our cell phone, under the impulse of the “machinery of distraction”. In reorienting the concept of happiness, the generative axis of the community enables a rethinking of the social mode of producing and consuming, and thus sets social transformation in motion once again. Without this periagoge, there is no transformation, but only the expansion of the entertainment and wellness industries, that is, the alienation of the singularity within the perspective of the little self. It would not be correct, however, to convey the idea that social transformation has an indiscriminate degrowth as its precondition. In anticipation of the concept of “generative goods”, which I will explain in the last chapter, social transformation presupposes a drastic degrowth of the consumption of goods that play a functional role for the entertainment industry, and, at the same time, a drastic increase of the production of “generative goods”. It is by this question – about which it is wise not to be optimistic – that the capacity for survival of democratic societies will be verified, not only in the West. Indeed, without the impulse of the open community, two other logics would eventually prevail: the logic of “panem et circenses”, tapping into the resources of the market, and the logic of authoritarian repression, which draws on the resources of the state.

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The Reorientation of Emotions in the Public Sphere

7.2.1 The Neutralization of Social Struggles in the Age of Narcissism The open community makes available an alternative logic to those of “panem et circenses” and of repression; that is, it offers the space for a third way capable of compensating for the imbalances that are present in the logics of the state and the market, and of keeping open a perspective of democratic transformation. In the open community, practices of emotional sharing that are marked by solidarity and oriented by exemplarity are possible, and they enable a reorientation of emotions in the public sphere, beyond a self-referential perspective. In the age of nihilistic narcissism,4 if this passage is missing, traditional attempts at social transformation turn out to be incapable of undermining the logic on which consumer society and the entertainment industry are based. Social inequalities persist, and in some cases become aggravated, but the conflict inevitably shifts from the terrain of rights to that of consumption. In this way, the conviction spreads that obtaining more rights is equivalent to achieving more purchasing power or capacity for consumption, perhaps in the sense of “panem et circenses”. The result is politics understood as the management of power, the administration of that which exists, and corporatism in favor of the most influential lobbies and the best-organized collectivities. This has not always been the case. The factors that have led to this result are manifold. In the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, inequalities were so evident and rights so reduced that emotions such as compassion and mercy were still able to act as powerful engines of social transformation. But the propulsive force of these emotions did not survive the end of poverty and of the state of need, and the birth of consumer society. Faced by the collapse of ideologies, the eclipse of the myth of progress, and the emergence of consumerist society, the politics that has exclusive recourse to the logics of the self-referential collectivity reveals itself incapable of laying the groundwork for a new type of society. No one doubts the importance of social struggles that are born from outrage at injustice and inequalities. The problem is that, in the age of narcissism, the claims and demands that are born from these social struggles do not always have an emancipative value, nor do they always have acceptable long-term consequences for future generations and the environment. Instead of pointing to a different, more conscious way of consuming, capable of taking charge of the interests of future generations and the ecological problem as well, these struggles increasingly 4 Cf. § 3.4.1 Narcissism as the Sad Legacy of Nihilism.

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often follow two other pathways. In the first one, they sell off outrage and neutralize anger in the demand for more purchasing power or access to consumer goods. In the second one, outrage and anger degenerate into violent dynamics of resentment, hate, and fear. A perspective of social transformation opens up only if one raises the bar and calls into question the real ideological presuppositions on which the ­current production system of Western society is based. This is the decisive question. These presuppositions are those already identified with regard to homo oeconomicus. Without bursting the bubble of this new narrative, there is no transformation. A project of social transformation requires a wide-ranging vision: that is, a vision of existence that I do not hesitate to define as “philosophical”, which is alternative to the ideology of homo oeconomicus. In addition, it requires an ability to call into question not only the mode of production, but, even before that, that of consuming. Imposing a drastic transformation of the organization of social production on the market by means of direct state intervention is very problematic. What is more realistic and effective is to attempt to transform the market indirectly, by beginning to modify our own way of thinking and consuming. For example, since the industry of intensive farming is one of the primary causes of ecological pollution, each of us can have a concrete impact on the ecological problem if, as of today, we begin to significantly reduce our consumption of meat and fish and no longer buy products of animal origin that come from intensive farming. Another concrete example is represented by minimalist movements of “less is more”. They also have a greater influence on the process of social transformation than other forms of struggle, insofar as they inaugurate a concrete way of living that no longer has the gratification of consumption at its center. 7.2.2 The Reorientation of Emotions beyond a Self-Referential Perspective Emotions are not static; they are alive and plastic. They grow and also have their seasons, and in this growth the logics they follow change. The problem, then, is not that of “photographing” some of their positive or negative ­functions in the public sphere, of determining whether, for example, compassion in itself fulfills a function of inhibition (Arendt) or of promotion (Nussbaum), but rather that of understanding through what pathways and dynamics emotions promote or inhibit social transformation. In other words, the problem is not the distinction between allegedly “positive” and “negative” emotions, but the possibility of keeping spaces of maturation open, so that emotions can fulfill an emancipative function in the public sphere. This function is fulfilled

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by practices of emotional sharing oriented by exemplarity that take place within open communities. Through these practices, emotions grow until they become germinative emotions, which overcome the logic of envy and the self-­ referential perspective circumscribed to the spatial and temporal horizon of the here and now. If they remain within a self-referential perspective, even the so-called “­positive” emotions – such as loving, sympathy, and compassion – can inhibit and obstruct an ethical act. In the same way, the emotions considered “negative”, such as rage and outrage, and more generally the thymotic emotions analyzed by Sloterdijk, can also have a positive function in social emancipation and in the struggle against injustice, if they are metabolized in a non-self-­referential perspective. From an ethical point of view, therefore, the decisive question does not concern the emotion per se, but the logic that that emotion follows. Indeed, as we have already demonstrated in the previous chapters, what is ethical is not feeling something, but the way in which that feeling is metabolized. What, then, are the motivations that can lead to an overcoming of what Hobbes called the “passion for utility” (acquisitive passion) and “passion for glory” (passion of the “self”)?5 The motivations for transcending this logic in the struggle for recognition are often sought in empathy, compassion, or sympathy. In the following pages, I will demonstrate that, without traversing the spaces of the community, these motivations remain abstract or focused exclusively on the present and on something or someone that is close at hand. To go beyond this perspective, an ethical leap, or a veritable epoche of the ego, is necessary. Only at that point does it become possible to achieve an attitude of reverential respect for the sacredness of nature, of care for the world, and of attention to future generations as well. 7.2.3 From the Struggle for One’s Own Recognition to Respect for the Other There can be no doubt about the centrality of the struggle for recognition to the constitution of both individuals and society. However, this struggle always runs the risk of remaining within a self-referential optics of the reinforcement of one’s own self or of the group to which one belongs, and does not have in itself any antidotes to prevent the exclusion or discrimination against those who are outside the boundaries of reciprocal recognition. This problem is admitted by Ricœur himself when, in his last writings, he proposes the passage from a “reciprocal” recognition to an “unbalanced” recognition with regard to otherness.6 For Ricœur, however, such “unbalancing” only 5 On this aspect of the thought of Hobbes, see Pulcini 2012. 6 See Ricœur 2005.

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becomes possible by introducing the concepts of Platonic eros, Aristotelian philia, and the biblical agape, all of which are concepts that are in no case deducible from or implicit in that of recognition. It is easy to deduce from this that without these concepts, recognition alone is not sufficient to ground ethics. In fact, something essential is missing in reciprocal recognition: that is, reverence (Ehrfurcht) for the core of the sacredness of the other, or, at least, Kant’s respect (Achtung), in which the thesis of one, equal ontological dignity of all human beings is implicit. Indeed, only on these bases is it possible to comprehend the categorical imperative expressed in the form: “act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means”.7 It is this imperative that traces the ethical leap in Kant. The problem is to verify whether it is also possible to trace and identify “material” motivations that emerge from feeling for this ethical leap. 7.2.4 The Aporias of Empathy In its essential phenomenological significance, empathy is the capacity to comprehend the lived experiences of the other as the lived experiences of the other. However, this significance is often unduly extended and laden with excessive expectations. The result we have before our eyes is a trendy and inflated term. The major problems arise when the boundaries of empathy are excessively extended to the superior level. The current tendency is to confuse empathy, that is, feeling what the other is feeling, with sympathy, which also implies feeling-together in the sense of consensus with what the other is feeling. This is the false step that characterizes various philosophies of empathy: “feeling” what the other is feeling and “feeling together” the same thing do not always coincide, due to the simple fact that feeling – fortunately – also implies dissent. I can directly catch the expression of the other’s happiness in her smile, but I do not necessarily have to share it. In other words, I can feel what the other is expressing, while living it in a different or even opposite way, so much so that in some cases I can even find joy in the other’s unhappiness or become sad at her happiness and envy it. The consequences of this confusion between feeling of empathy and feeling-together of sympathy are catastrophic. Indeed, it is naïve to think that feeling empathy automatically results in altruism, or that it is even sufficient to found an ethical act. As we have already emphasized, empathy is without doubt an indispensable presupposition, but 7 Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Engl. transl. 1997, 38.

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is nevertheless not yet sufficient to ground ethics. This is demonstrated in an evident way by a sadistic person: in order to find enjoyment in the sufferings she inflicts upon her victim, unlike a brute person, she must possess extremely refined gifts of empathy. The phenomenon of sadism is an example of empathy that lacks respect for the other. Like recognition, therefore, empathy alone is not sufficient to motivate the ethical leap toward overcoming Hobbesian passions of the ego for utility and glory. 7.2.5 Compassion and the Ethics of Sympathy As long as compassion remains within the perspective of the little self, it is a feeling very similar to pity and altruism. Its openness to the other thus remains limited to the present, and to those who are close to us. In contrast, by developing along the generative axes of the open community, and hence thanks to practices of emotional sharing, its effectiveness is extended beyond the circle of those who are closest to us, to radiate forth to all living beings and to the entire cosmos. Cosmic compassion is not only a sharing of suffering, but much more: it is a sharing of responsibility. More precisely, it is a co-responsibility for future sufferings. If a person’s order of the heart assumes form through exemplarity, then the person is not characterized by self-responsibility (Selbstverantwortung), but by co-responsibility (Mitverantwortung), and this in the sense of an amplification, not an obliteration, of one’s own responsibility. If a fragment of truth acts in me, then, along with that “truth”, a vocation – that is, a co-­responsibility – has somehow been assigned to me. However small or incomplete that fragment may be, when it interacts with other fragments, it sets an interminable, unforeseeable series of consequences in motion. Therefore, the series of effects that these acts can originate by interacting with the generative axes of the community is infinite. Consequently, the horizon of such co-­responsibility is infinitely amplified toward the future, so much so that every singularity shares many more faults and merits than one could ever imagine. Therefore, through its acts, each singularity can favor or obstruct the process of ethical advancement. If we are not simple, passive spectators of a cosmic spectacle, then there is an individual responsibility, however infinitesimal, with respect to the future. In this sense, I do not feel compassion because I am sharing the other’s current suffering; on the contrary, I suffer because I feel I am feeling co-responsibility for the prolongation of that suffering and for the possible future repetition of that event, that is, because I perceive that I am somehow co-responsible for those who in the future will suffer injustice or will not be in conditions that allow them to face illness or pain. Hans Jonas’ perspective must therefore be

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reversed: what moves an ethical action is not the principle of responsibility, but a given fact rooted in feeling, which translates itself into a co-responsibility for the future. It is such com-passion, understood as cosmic love, that in the long run provides the final vector of the process of social transformation. Cosmic compassion, however, is already on the ethical level. The same problem also arises for the reflections developed by Hume and Scheler on the phenomenon of sympathy: the ethical leap has already been completed, and hence one is, so to speak, already on the other bank of the river. Yet how does this passage come about? From this point of view, it is useful to recall the distinction sketched by Hume between an “immediate” sympathy, directed to persons who are close to us, and a sympathy that is “mediated” by evaluation and by the reflexive dimension.8 Through the reflexive dimension, sympathy is also extended to more distant persons. Only this “reflexive” or “extended” sympathy is at the origin of moral sentiments, since it allows one to choose, among passions and behaviors, those ethically oriented toward the good of humanity. A similar distinction can be identified in Scheler, between the ability to feel what the other is feeling (Nachfühlung) that lacks any ethical value, and sympathy (Mitgefühl) that is understood in the sense of Hume’s extended sympathy, which, for its part, already has an ethical value. What I propose is to integrate the ethics of sympathy with the theory of exemplarity. An individual goes beyond what Hobbes called “passion for utility” (acquisitive passion) and “passion for glory” (passion of the “self”) when she realizes that it is possible to continue her own birth only in the maieutic space that the other offers to her: not just any other, but the other qua exemplarity. In this case, I carry out an ethical act, driven not by the ought-to-be, but by the pangs of my hunger to be born that seek nourishment in exemplarity. 7.2.6 Exemplarity and Emotional Sharing as the Key to the Problem In recent years, noteworthy steps forward have been taken to shed light on the rootedness of ethics in emotions, but then a great deal of effort was expended trying to find an effective selective criterion for understanding when and how an emotion motivates an ethical act. This criterion cannot be identified without interaction between the emotional and the reflexive levels. On the one hand, the intentionality of emotions alone is clearly insufficient to found ethics, since it requires both a process of maturation through interaction with exemplarity of another, and a verification on the reflexive level; on the other hand, if one remains exclusively on the reflexive level, one does not go beyond 8 See Taylor 2015; Baier 2016.

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a purely formal ethics. In the former case, one remains blocked at the level of an arbitrary and subjective choice; in the latter, one stops at general principles from which it is possible, at best, to deduce imperatives or exhortations which, in order to be effective, must make the will intervene, but which have no bite in themselves, and are incapable of impelling one concretely toward an ethical act, starting out from feeling. In this way, one falls back into the aporias typical of a voluntaristic ethics. Such a situation of stagnation makes it particularly problematic to evaluate the function of emotions in the public sphere. The picture changes if one considers the question from the perspective of exemplarity: it is in fact exemplarity that serves as a bridge, and brings the intentionality of emotions and the scrutiny of reason on the reflexive level into contact. Indeed, the success of exemplarity, measured concretely by its ability to carry out transformation in an anthropogenetic sense, provides a practical criterion for discrimination and orientation that can be verified both on the level of feeling and on the reflexive level. Of course, exemplarity can also act at the unconscious level, without the help of the reflexive level, but in this case it remains at a pre-ethical level. Until now, one of the primary obstacles to considering the question of the ethical criterion has been that of reducing feeling to the little self’s individualistic perspective. What I propose is instead to rethink the question by starting out not from an individual or solipsistic feeling, but from practices of ­emotional sharing that are oriented by the force of exemplarity. The relevance of this passage is demonstrated by the fact that what generates transformation, that is, anthropogenesis and social ontology, are practices of emotional sharing, not an activity of solipsistic feeling. It is only thanks to emotional sharing that the birth and development of an order of feeling in dialogue with reason and the reflexive level is possible; only thanks to emotional sharing is it possible to “dilate” feeling and let it grow, so as to make a person carry out ethical periagoge that allows her to abandon the “erective” and self-referential posture that is typical of the little self. This is what makes the difference with regard to the proposals of Foucault, Anders, Sloterdijk, and Nussbaum, where the concept of “emotional sharing” is missing and one deludes oneself that the problem can be confronted by remaining firmly within the perspective of the subject’s individual feeling. Contrary to these authors, from the perspective of an emotional sharing guided by exemplarity, transformation no longer occurs through an individual or voluntaristic askesis, nor even in the sense of a cultivation of emotions devoid of periagoge, but thanks to interaction of one’s own fragment of truth with that of the other. There is no longer voluntarism, since sharing emotions means to expose oneself to the risk of an encounter with the other, an encounter that

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inaugurates unforeseeable dynamics that elude the projectuality of the will. It no longer means molding or straightening out emotions through the will, but letting oneself be transformed by letting oneself be touched by the world. There is emptying in askesis, but not so much in order to land at the intimist dimension of the little self, but rather to recover a connection with the All. Left alone in their immediacy, emotions – even the most promising ones – run the constant risk of degenerating into, or at least running aground on, a simple ascertainment, on pure feeling, without then finding the force to be translated into a motivational drive. In such a standstill, what dies out is the action of maieutic exemplarity. Without this impulse, an emotion – for instance compassion – is blocked in itself, without succeeding in motivating the co-performance of an ethical act. The ethical criterion does not become explicit by applying the reflexive verification of reason to solipsistic feeling, but to practices of emotional sharing that are oriented by exemplarity. To sum up, in consumer society, as long as empathy, compassion, outrage, sympathy etc. remain confined within the spaces of the collectivity, they fail to provide sufficient motivations to overcome the self-referential and corporative perspective of those who could be defined as the new “philistines”. The action of these emotions in the public sphere can, however, be reoriented thanks to practices of emotional sharing made possible by exemplarity. Indeed, it is only by developing along the generative axes of open communities that social struggles succeed in extending their own horizon, to the point of including the themes of deep ecology and the interests of future generations. In the age of narcissism, by contrast, a social transformation whose exclusive precondition is the collectivity is doomed to failure. Today, therefore, the problem of social transformation is closely interwoven with that of extending social struggles from the collectivity to the community. It is therefore appropriate to analyze more closely the concept of community before we proceed in the search for material motivations of ethics. 7.3

What Does an Open Community Share?

7.3.1 Collectivity and Community A collectivity is born when a group of individuals concur, united, to achieve a specific goal. In the spaces of the collectivity, a logic of cooperation and of solidarity emerges that allows its members to make a qualitative leap with respect to the logic of mere individual self-preservation. However, this logic remains circumscribed only to the members of the same collectivity, unless further factors intervene. Hence, this is an autopoietic logic that constantly

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risks returning to its tribal origins: the members of a tribe have in common faith in the same totem; in order to enter and become part of a tribe, a rite of initiation is foreseen that serves to extend the protection of the totem to the new member; such protection entails a series of taboos, which originally included the prohibition of killing and eating those who are protected by the totem of one’s own village. In the case of an open community, there is also a rite of initiation, the epoche of the ego, but it does not follow a tribal logic. Indeed, in the epoche of the ego, one carries out an act of transcending immunitarian logic. It follows from this that a community, like the personal system, is not an autopoietic system either. To be precise, a community is open only to personal systems, but remains closed to autopoietic systems. Whereas a collectivity obtains a reinforcement through an activity aimed at the realization of a project, a community assumes form only by emptying itself of the self-referential logic. This does not mean that a community is uprooted from traditions, or obliterates cultural differences. On the contrary, a community represents the maximum possible form of valorizing its rootedness in traditions and cultural differentiations, but this result is obtained when it moves from the conflictual logic of tribal identity, which points toward standardization, to that of generative sharing, which aims to valorize differences according to the principle of the “polarization of differences” or the enhancement of differences.9 7.3.2 The Epoche of the Ego as the Foundation of the Open Community What does a community share? A community does not share a project, like a collectivity; rather, it shares the hunger to be born, through which its members transcend their own little self. Indeed, the hunger to be born does not operate according to the logic of domination, projection, or of the achievement of an objective, but transcends the little self in order to be reborn in the encounter with the other. It thus becomes a space of transformation thanks to formative sharing (co-formation), that is, by assuming form together with another singularity. In this way, a process of sharing one’s own process of emptying gets underway, in which different personal singularities practice the periagoge of the heart and of the mind and make their own fragments of truth interact, to the point of weaving their own existence together with that of the other. In sum, a collectivity aims at realizing a project, expanding itself, and conquering,

9 See § 7.4.7 Singularity and Polarization of Differences.

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and thus asserts itself thanks to a logic of filling; on the contrary, a community arises in sharing the act of removing and emptying. The idea of a community that shares the act of emptying and not filling is very ancient, so much so that it is also present in a passage of the New Testament (Philippians 2: 3). This is not just any passage, but the one that founds the Christian idea of community by distinguishing it from the logics of religious sects. One might expect that Paul of Tarsus’ answer to the question: “What is shared by a community?”, would tend toward an operation directed at the realization of an essence, a project, or the acquisition of something.10 Paul, by contrast, maintains something profoundly different: that which is shared in a community is the act of emptying oneself of one’s own egotism. A community exists to the extent that this act is shared, that is, renewed reciprocally by all its members, without exception. Paul designates this act with a term that is central to Christianity: humilitas: “Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but, in humility, let each of you [allelous, reciprocally] esteem others better than herself” (Philippians 2:3). The invitation is to follow a person who is ahead, who is ­better, but not in the sense of the model that seduces, but in the sense of the testimony of exemplarity. What exemplarity testifies to is precisely the detachment from one’s own self in the act of humility. When reread from the perspective of a philosophy as an exercise of transformation, the invitation contained in this passage becomes that of refraining from operating according to the logic of social recognition, or pursuing those goods that squander existence by overloading it with useless burdens or obligations. Rather, let each of us be stripped of the passions of the subject, of vanity, of the “itch for talk” about our own name.11 And, once emptied of this adipose egocentric saturation, once the excessive love for our own ego has been “humiliated”, let us be guided not by those who have more social success, but by those testimonies which, among those that are closer to us, excel the most in this very act of overcoming their own little self.12 10 11 12

See Nancy 1991. Cf. Hadot 1995, 81. That this is a controversial question is testified by the fact that at the center of this passage is a term that was often omitted in various translations of the Bible: the term “allelous” (“reciprocally”, in the sense of “each of you”). In English editions of the Bible, this term was present in the King James Version (1611), while in subsequent translations – such as the New American Bible (1970), the New International Version (1978), and the New Revised Standard Version (1989) – it was usually omitted. In the New Revised Standard Version (1989), for instance, this passage becomes: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves”. Without this term, Paul’s

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Humility, understood in this way, is an act of obliteration directed only at one’s own mortiferous part: it is the act of emptying oneself of one’s own egotic saturation, so as to propitiate the birth from on high, as described in the episode of Nicodemus. By humiliating oneself, that is, by stepping out of one’s own egocentric bubble, each person offers the other the space in which to be reborn. In Paul’s invitation, this occurs in a circular act that is to be carried out within a community, so that, by becoming a shared act, it can multiply its power to infinity. The goal is to place openness to the other above the closure of one’s own ego, and this reciprocally (allelous), so that it becomes possible for those who have carried out the same deed along with us to participate in a process of shared rebirth. This reciprocity extends to all members of the community, without exception, hence also to the charismatic leader. If, in contrast, the charismatic leader exempts herself from this act, then the community becomes closed, and assumes the forms of a sect (tribal, religious, political, ideological etc.), in which the act of humilitas of various members comes to play a functional role in the cult of the leader’s personality. Paul is aware of this drift. Indeed, not only does he not admit any exceptions for the charismatic leader, but he even bases the charisma of the leader precisely on humilitas: charismatic are those who arouse admiration by virtue of their ability to perform the bracketing of their own egotism in an exemplary way. In the Christian community, the true charismatic leaders are only those who refer back to the founding example of humilitas: “Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied Himself […]. He humbled Himself” (Philippians 2: 5–8). The condition of being the son of God does not obliterate the act of humility, but, on the contrary, founds it, since his becoming man represents the exemplary act of humilitas. Historically, to be sure, Paul’s invitation has often been misrepresented and skewed in the sense of a closed community, where the act of humility becomes a-critical submission to constituted authority. However, its original meaning was different, as we have seen. What is shared in the community described by Paul is in fact not an activity that aims at expansion, possession, and hence at filling, as in the case of a collectivity, but rather an act of emptying, that is, a removing that becomes a giving. invitation could be misunderstood in the sense of a sect guided by a model, and not in the sense of a community guided by an exemplarity. This term confers a particular significance upon the invitation, directed to considering “others better than [oneself]”. Since this is a reciprocal and hence circular act, no one in the community is actually inferior to others. Hence, it is not an invitation to nullify oneself as a personal singularity. Rather, it is an invitation to become aware that one is not a completed totality, that one is not enclosed within one’s own self-sufficiency.

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7.3.3 Uncompleted Community and the Phenomenon of the Tragic From the perspective of the generative axis of the community, the good life and happiness derive from interaction of fragments of truth. This might give rise to the suspicion that behind this thesis there is an attempt to then put these fragments back together into a “completed totality”. A community would thus aim at becoming an oasis of perfection, in contrast to the imperfection of the rest of the world. A community understood in this way contradicts the very concept of the open community. First of all, rubbing fragments of truth against each other is often fruitless. Indeed, the very logic of rubbing is somewhat complex. One can compare one’s own fragment of truth to a musical instrument: in order to rub two fragments of truth in the right way, one needs to know how to make them “sound”; otherwise, instead of a melody, only annoying noise is produced. This is why each fragment of truth also needs pauses in which it isolates itself from the others in order to listen to itself once again and to meditate: like muddy water needs time to let the residue settle and return to being limpid, fragments of truth also need pauses for solitude and isolation, in order to discern their own harmony from the background noise. Once clarity is obtained, however, one may realize that there are truths and harmonies that cannot coexist at the same moment, which oblige the singularity to make a choice. This happens not only when individuals rub their own fragment without having completed an adequate exercise of emptying, but also when they encounter a fragment that is not compatible with their own at that moment. Indeed, finding compatible fragments is not a matter of course. The interaction of fragments of truth, therefore, does not come to put them back together into a harmonious perfection, nor into a Hegelian synthesis. On the contrary, it often flows into an either-or between perspectives that are irreconcilable, although equally valid. At the basis of this is the phenomenon of the tragic, that is, the fact that in the ethical world, values may coexist that are equally valid, but conflict with each other. Therefore, the interaction of these fragments of truth is not concluded by achieving a completed and tension-free community, but continues ad infinitum. Where everything is “pure harmony”, there is not the tragic, but neither is there interaction between fragments of truth. 7.3.4 The Ontological Foundation of the Person: Incompleteness and Fragment of Truth From the little self’s point of view, incompleteness is certainly a limit and a defect to be overcome, a lack to be filled by means of possession, recognition, and reinforcement. Indeed, the little self aims at a self-sufficient “completed

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totality”. On the contrary, from the point of view of the personal singularity, incompleteness is something infinitely precious: it is the condition for coming into contact with other fragments of truth, for sharing one’s own hunger to be born, and hence for saving oneself. From this perspective, incompleteness is the engine of the open community. If the singularity were completed, then it would have no hunger to be born; hence, it would have no need to open itself up, to dialogue with a friend, to love, or to share experiences, but would remain isolated within the diving bell of its own solipsistic self-sufficiency and its own immunitarian apparatus. The personal singularity exists only thanks to the fact that it is the expression of a fragment of truth, rather than of the entire truth. Precisely because I express only a fragment and not the whole, I have a singular physiognomy. The existence of the fragment of truth has two relevant consequences: first and foremost, it founds the person ontologically, in that the person is the unique and irreducible perspective of a specific fragment of truth; secondly, it represents an enrichment rather than an impoverishment, since, thanks to the fact that I express only one fragment, I am fortunate that I can open myself to others and share other fragments of truth. The perspective must be reversed. What is essential is not to crystallize the truth into a single, concluded definition, but to let oneself be transformed by truth, to participate in the process originated by truth. In this sense, to agree does not mean to think in the same way, but to find a tile that fits with one’s own fragment of truth and originates transformation. The logic of the fragment of truth does not aim to render one’s own fragment complete or to absolutize it, but rather to share the truth contained in it. In ethics, there are no concluded truths, but living truths that can be shared, and, in this way, expand themselves, enrich themselves further, and reveal further ramifications. It is usually thought that our constitutive elements – those that define us as singularities – belong exclusively to us. This is still a solipsistic perspective. The uniqueness of the singularity does not consist in a substance, but, on the contrary, in the partial perspective of a fragment of truth. What distinguishes me is not a monadic nucleus guarded in transcendental subjectivity, but the unique set of sharings that arise from the fragment of truth that constitutes me. What is essential lies in the incompleteness of the fragment of truth that emerges from the depths of the soul through the auroral void. Non-human animals are completed. The little self can attempt to become so. Only the personal singularity is hungry for being born, and hence constitutively uncompleted. It is precisely this incompleteness that transforms the concept of neoteny and makes anthropogenesis possible.

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7.4 Generative Sharing as Material Motivation for Social Transformation 7.4.1 In Search of a Material Motivation of Ethics Let me try to take stock of the situation. It has already been widely argued that today a project of social transformation requires an ethical leap in order to extend our own horizon of solidarity beyond those who are close to us, and thus to attain the perspective of deep ecology. There are certainly ­motivations that are capable of promoting the overcoming of what Hobbes called passions of the self for utility and glory, without appealing to a coercive apparatus. The primary candidates in this direction usually refer to the ought-to-be (Kant) and the principle of responsibility (Jonas). The problem I set myself, however, is to determine whether there are also motivations that are able to promote this passage without appealing to an ideal principle – hence, material motivations that emerge from practices of sharing of feeling. In this direction, one can consider empathy and reciprocal recognition, or – as I will do in the following subsection – what the American developmental and comparative psychologist Michael Tomasello calls “cooperative communication”. Finally, one can refer to compassion, and to the ethics of sympathy of Hume and Scheler. In each of these candidates, one can identify legitimate motives with which one can readily agree. Reciprocal recognition and empathy, for example, ­certainly represent an indispensable presupposition of the social dimension, so much so that without them it would be impossible to overcome the conception of a solipsistically self-centered individual. In the age of narcissism, however, as I have already demonstrated, they alone are not sufficient to motivate an ethical leap toward the other riverbank. It remains therefore to consider “cooperative communication”, compassion, and the ethics of sympathy. 7.4.2 Tomasello’s Cooperative Communication and Compassion of the Personal Singularity According to Tomasello, at the origin of the difference between human and non-human animals are practices of shared intentionality based on a cooperative type of logic.13 By analyzing the cognitive and cultural processes that distinguish human children from great apes, Tomasello comes to the conclusion that in human children around the age of twelve months, a form of shared intentionality emerges that has no equivalent in the rest of the animal 13

See Tomasello 2014, 3–6.

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world. This shared intentionality presupposes not only the skills in imperative pointing (pointing to request help) and expressive pointing (pointing to share attitudes), which we share with chimpanzees, but also the ability, typical of human beings, at pointing to something in order to offer help.14 Accordingly, the uniqueness of human cognition derives from the fact that cultural-ontogenetic development, based primarily on a cooperative-social logic, prevails over biological-phylogenetic development based on a primarily competitive-individualistic logic. According to Tomasello, Great apes are all about cognition for competition. Human beings, in contrast, are all about (or mostly about) cooperation. […] in the current hypothesis, it was these more complex forms of cooperative sociality that acted as the selective pressures that transformed great ape individual intentionality and thinking into human shared intentionality and thinking.15 This reconstruction by Tomasello seems to underestimate the role and ­importance of competitive logic in human society itself. Actually, one could object that it is precisely in human beings that the most extreme forms of cruelty and violence can be identified. Furthermore, it underestimates the importance of cooperative logic in bonobos.16 Yet, if there are also forms of cooperation in bonobos, then “cooperative communication”, which is identified in human beings by Tomasello, represents only a particularly advanced stage of a logic that is already present also in the animal world. In fact, upon closer inspection, such “cooperative communication” remains within the ­limits of the self-referential logic of the collectivity; that is, it represents ­something profoundly different from the feeling of compassion that characterizes the personal singularity. In other words, Tomasello’s “cooperative ­communication” – on a par with empathy and the struggle for recognition – does not yet have any ethical valence, but remains on the moral level, and plays a functional role in the autopoiesis of a social system. Therefore, it too is unable to provide the motivation for the ethical leap. Cosmic compassion and the ethics of sympathy of Hume and Scheler, for their part, have the opposite problem, since they already find themselves, so to speak, on the other side of the river, that is, on the ethical level; however, it still remains to explain how they got there. In the previous chapters, I proposed to integrate the ethics of sympathy with a theory of exemplarity that is capable 14 15 16

Tomasello 2008, 34–41. Tomasello 2014, 31. See de Waal 2013.

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of orienting practices of emotional sharing that are characterized by solidarity and are possible in the space of an open community. One might object to me, and rightly so, that in this way I too have so far placed myself on the other bank of the river, on the ethical one, without having first clarified whether there is any material motivation for traversing it. In what follows, I demonstrate that there is such a motivation, and that it must be traced back to the sharing practices of a particular type of goods, that is, “generative goods”, whose sharing contributes positively to the growth and transformation of other singularities, and to the achievement of the objectives that are relevant from a social, cultural, or environmental point of view. Sharing generative goods is, for example, at the basis of relations of care – from those with respect to one’s own children, a partner, a friend, to those directed toward the whole planet in which we live –, of volunteer activities, and, more generally, of every generative type of activity that favors interaction of fragments of truth and increases openness to the world. Finally, I apply this thesis to the concepts of community and singularity: community and singularity assume form and their own unmistakable physiognomy to the extent that, thanks to the force of exemplarity, they share generative goods through practices of emotional sharing marked by solidarity. 7.4.3 Consumer Goods and Generative Goods The approach to generative goods follows a logic that differs considerably from that reserved for consumer goods. By “consumer goods” I understand a broader genre of goods than “final goods”, that is, those that are produced to satisfy an individual need. Under certain conditions, I also include natural resources, insofar as the concept of “unlimited natural resources” is becoming increasingly problematic.17 By “consumer goods” I understand goods that are apt to satisfy a need that has two fundamental characteristics: (1) they are goods whose availability decreases with consumption. For example, the more a castaway consumes the water contained in her canteen, the less remains available for the others; (2) the part that is consumed is transformed into something that has a lower or even negative value, and which today we tend to catalog under the concept of waste or refuse. On the contrary, by generative goods I understand goods whose availability and value increase more the more they are “consumed”. They are somewhat 17

It should be noted for the record that it is not correct to assert that water is an unlimited resource. Indeed, it is a resource that must be regenerated in order to be made available for human use again, and this process is currently proceeding at a velocity that is lower than that of the growth of the need for it of the world’s population.

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like the miracle of the multiplication of loaves and fishes. The result is that, while in the former case my consumption withdraws these resources from others and produces pollution, in the latter my “consumption” serves as a ­trailblazer for the “consumption” of others, and generates additional wealth without causing pollution. What has been said, however, is still imprecise, since the term “consumption” is inappropriate in relation to generative goods. In fact, a generative good is neither divided nor consumed, but rather metabolized, and it is in this metabolization – which can be shared – that the answer to the problem lies. Here, I understand by “metabolism” a form of “expressive metabolism”, to which I have already referred in the previous chapters when I distinguished three types of hunger: the hunger of the stomach, the hunger of the ego (for possession and recognition), and the hunger to be born. Sharing the metabolization of a generative good is related to the hunger to be born. To shed light on the metabolism of generative goods, I make a clear distinction between the concept of consumption and that of sharing. Consumption can occur in an individual form, or in the form of collective partitioning of a good among members of the same group. In both cases, the oppositional and conflictual logic does not change, in that it withdraws the availability of a good from all other potential consumers. A typical example of this logic can be identified in the consumption of material resources such as petroleum. The more petroleum a nation consumes, the less remains available for the other nations. Evidently, by following this logic, it is easy to quickly come to disputes, often even military ones, in order to take possession of the good in question. Were there only this logic, there would be no ethics, and no form of open community would be possible. Yet there is also a different type of logic: generative sharing. I define “generative sharing” as sharing the metabolization of a generative good. A friend, who is an expert and devotee of Paul Cézanne, invites me to go to an exhibition with her. As we pause in front of various paintings by this artist, she describes them to me with enthusiasm. While I listen to her, I realize that she is opening my eyes and makes me see things that I would never see otherwise. It is as if this friend of mine were “eating” these paintings: practically having a “banquet” before my eyes. In this case, however, the hunger that impels her is the hunger to be born. The logic of generative sharing emerges in this metabolism: the more she “eats” these paintings, the more she makes them accessible also to me, who knew Cézanne only superficially. This is not partitioning, but sharing: the painting is an indivisible good, and if it were torn into pieces to be partitioned, it would be destroyed. If, while viewing one of the depictions of Mont Sainte-Victoire, this friend of mine feels something particular and talks to me about it, she will not take

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something away from me, but, on the contrary, she will enrich me. The metabolism of that painting does not consume it, nor does it withdraw something from other potential admirers of this work; but, on the contrary, it contributes to multiplying its value ad infinitum. As a result, thanks to the act of generative sharing, the more this type of good is metabolized, the more its availability increases, and the more its value multiplies. The phenomenology of generative sharing causes the emergence of some precise characteristics. In the case of a consumer good, the major effort consists in producing or procuring the good itself, while its consumption – almost always – does not present difficulties and turns out to be even satisfying or convenient. For a hungry person, the work to be done consists in the activity that allows her to buy bread, while the activity of eating bread will turn out to be pleasant. With regard to a generative good, however, the opposite occurs. The Critique of Pure Reason is a generative good. The major effort does not consist in the activity carried out to buy the text, but in metabolizing it, that is, in comprehending it. In addition, while the ability to consume food is immediate – a newborn is already able to digest milk – the ability to metabolize the Critique of Pure Reason presupposes a specific competence that one acquires only through a long and arduous apprenticeship. It is precisely this difficulty that explains the phenomenon of exemplarity: a person who manages to delve better into the effort of metabolizing Kant’s Critique can fulfill the function of a precursor for those who are stumped after reading the first lines. In other words, in order to begin to comprehend a book of philosophy, read poems, or admire paintings, it is almost always necessary to traverse the mediation of an exemplarity, that is, to become infected by the passion of a person who is close to us, and who has been successful in metabolizing that good. The second characteristic is that the consumption of consumer goods brings pleasure decreasingly, until it rapidly achieves a form of satiation or saturation; whereas the metabolization of a generative good is almost always arduous at the beginning and brings pleasure only gradually, and this occurs increasingly, without necessarily reaching a form of saturation. If I eat food to fill my stomach, after a while I will no longer be hungry. If I feed instead my hunger to be born, I will never be sated. 7.4.4 Generative Goods and Fragments of Truth Yet there is an even deeper ontological root of generative goods. Generative goods are those goods that incorporate a fragment of truth. Therefore, the metabolization of these goods is equivalent to rubbing together more fragments of truth against each other. A fragment of truth can be embodied not

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only in a person, but also in the expressive form of a work of art, or in a book. This is what occurs in the above mentioned example of a friend who shares her own emotions and reflections in front of a painting by Cézanne. By rubbing against each other the fragment of truth of the exemplarity (the friend) and of the generative good (the painting), the value of the good, instead of being “consumed”, is shared and multiplied to infinity. Each of us is the expression of a fragment of truth, and it is in our interest to cultivate it and not to let it die. What these fragments of truth ultimately are is hard to say. Perhaps they are the remnants of an ancient divinity that has retreated from the world, or traces of a dimension of the universe that we do not yet know. Certainly, they are the point of departure around which, with the help of an exemplarity, the horizon of meaning of an existence is to be constructed: that is, that horizon that we do not find already preconstituted at the moment of our biological birth. A fragment of truth can only survive if it is vivified in dialogue with other fragments of truth, thanks to the sharing of generative goods. The community is the only space in which this can happen. Hence, this is where the material motivation for completing the leap from the morality of the collectivity to the ethics of the community must be identified. This leap is motivated by the hunger to be born, and is necessary for allowing the tiny flame of one’s own fragment of truth to grow and develop. There is no recourse to a commandment or to a moralistic exhortation in this motivation; nor is there an implicit invitation to make a sacrifice, or to go against one’s own interests and become an “altruist”. I am “materially” motivated to carry out the ethical leap, since only through this generative sharing can I continue to be born, that is, to exist. The possibility of sharing a generative good – a work of art, a musical motif, a poem, a journey etc. – is a given fact that can be experienced by anyone, and, under certain conditions, it constitutes a material motivation that is sufficient to overcome the logic of passions for utility and for glory of the self. In the absence of this material motivation, ethics would not be possible, since overcoming the passions for utility and for glory would be based only on a moralistic exhortation. In sum, the material motivation at the basis of the ethical leap can be traced back to the pangs of the hunger to be born that impel us in the direction of generative sharing. Without generative sharing, I can magnify my little self, but cannot continue my birth as a singularity. 7.4.5 Extension of the Logic of Generative Goods to the Sharing of Consumer Goods Another experience of generative sharing, however, is even more frequent. If we are forced to go to a restaurant alone for dinner, we will probably regret the

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fact that we cannot share that meal with a friend. Eating that same dish with a good friend would have made us happier. In this case, however, I have to do with the sharing of a consumer good, that is, food. As we have already seen, consumer goods are originally divided and partitioned according to an oppositional logic. How can we explain the possibility of extending the logic that is present in generative sharing to consumer goods as well? Generative sharing is inaugurated by relations of care between mothers and newborns: this is where the logic of generative sharing has begun to be extended to consumer goods, up to the act of sharing food. It is an act that is anthropologically distinguished from a simple partitioning of food. The consumption of food, for example of bread, is generally oppositional and exclusionary; however, it is possible to break bread and share it in solidarity with those in need, and hence to apply the logic of generative sharing to a consumer good. Upon closer inspection, the opposite can also be observed: it is possible, for example, to get into an argument with a friend over the interpretation of a painting, and thus to apply an oppositional and conflictual logic to the metabolization of a generative good. The ethical turn occurs when exemplarity is able to extend the logic of sharing, originally born with regard to a generative good, to a consumer good as well. This ethical turn coincides with the anthropogenetic turn. This is how, at a certain point in their history, human beings, instead of leaping upon a piece of food thrown to them on the ground by the head of the clan, devised the act of sharing it, that is, the exercise of generative sharing of consumer goods. It is through this exercise that human beings are born, in the proper sense of the term. This act is not psychological, but anthropogenetic. It represents not an evolution, but a revolution. In the exercise of generative sharing of a consumer good, the original anthropogenetic act is implicitly repeated, which, by raising us from the level at which we throw ourselves upon our food, gave form to our humanity. This exercise requires effort because it implies a self-transcendence and a detachment from the little self. Once a human being has had the anthropogenetic experience of generative sharing, she becomes sensitive to every case in which someone else succeeds in exporting this new logic to consumer goods as well. Since this passage is not to be taken for granted, every successful effort in this direction is immediately received as a testimony to an ethically relevant fact. The anthropogenetic exercises through which human beings have given form to their own existence over the course of millennia, going beyond the abyss of primordial formlessness, have largely consisted in extending the logic of generative sharing to consumer

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goods through practices of emotional sharing that are at the basis of various forms of community. Relations of care are oriented not by the will, empathy, or the struggle for recognition, but by the force of exemplarity.18 It is the force of exemplarity that allows one to overcome the passions of the ego and to carry out the ethical leap. It remained to be understood, however, whether there really is a concrete, rational motivation at the basis of ethics, or whether everything is reduced to a moralistic exhortation or an ought-to-be. In the preceding pages I have demonstrated that there is such a material motivation, and that it can be identified in sharing the logic of generative goods. 7.4.6 Philosophical Dialogue and the Exercise of Friendship If philosophical dialogue is the result of a formal interaction between abstract concepts, then it does not remain written in the soul, and becomes an empty discourse that is limited to impressing and stupefying: it is the discourse of the “wonder-makers” (thaumatopoioi). When, by contrast, it is born from rubbing two fragments of truth against each other, it originates a sharing of thinking and feeling that often flows into the exercise of friendship. Philo-sophy is the compound of “to befriend” (philein) and wisdom (sophia). Rather than a solipsistic love for wisdom, it points to the exercise of friendship directed toward the search for wisdom. In any case, the exercise of friendship represents one of the primary sources of happiness. The spark that ignites philosophical discourse presupposes this friendship toward wisdom. In the Seventh Letter, Plato observes that philosophical wisdom “is born in the soul” “after long-continued intercourse between teacher and pupil, in joint pursuit of the subject, suddenly, like light flashing forth when a fire is kindled” (Ep. VII, 341c–d). In a similar vein, Plutarch observes that “the mind does not require filling like a vessel, but rather, like wood, it only requires kindling to instill in it an impulse of the search and an ardent desire for the truth” (Plut. De Recta 48c, transl. modified). Well, this spark is unleashed by rubbing one’s own fragment of truth against that of the other, “after long-continued intercourse between teacher and pupil, in joint pursuit of the subject”. Each singularity is the expression of a fragment of truth. Yet it is not the fragment of some apodictic truth, pure and already distilled, but a truth that must be distilled and purified, by separating it from poisonous waste and from falsehoods. This is a singular truth, insofar as it represents one point of view 18

Cf. § 5.3.5 The Three Issues at the Center of a Care of Desire.

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on the unique and irreplaceable universe. Other points of view do not obliterate it; on the contrary, it is a truth that assumes form and becomes clear only when it interacts with other fragments of truth. The miracle is that different fragments of truth, by letting themselves interact in an adequate mode, cause an even higher truth to emerge, and this in an infinite process. This process of purification and integration occurs thanks to a maieutic dialogue. By maieutic dialogue I understand a dialogue between persons who have carried out the periagoge. Between individuals who lack periagoge, the relation with the other is inevitably doomed to fail. What is essential, however, is not in the relation per se, but in that which makes it possible, that is, incompleteness. Relation is a consequence of the incompleteness of the fragment of truth. “Truth” becomes “fragment of truth”, in order to allow relations to exist. In this way, incompleteness transforms the incommunicability between two individuals who are already completed into dialogues in which something essential occurs on the anthropogenetic level. Accepting and recognizing the value of one’s own incompleteness predisposes one to solidarity, just as aiming at completeness predisposes one to closure and to conflict. Hence, what must be placed at the center of philosophy is not the “truth” of one’s own fragment, but the hunger to be born that impels a singularity to share its own fragment of truth. In order to confirm one’s own truth, however, this process needs to be prolonged to infinity. 7.4.7 The Singularity and the Polarization of Differences In exemplarity, the dialogue with otherness no longer sets out to conquer or contend for “territories”, but follows the logic of generative sharing. Moreover, in generative sharing, one does not aim at a utopian disappearance of conflict, but to shift from the logic of destructive conflict, between self-referential points of view that tend to absolutize themselves, to the logic of ontological perspectivism, between personal singularities that are irreducible to each other, but are never self-sufficient. What in past centuries has traditionally been understood as a “spiritual” factor is none other than that which, in every oppositional conflict, makes possible a shift toward generative sharing. In generative sharing there is a movement that is typical of exemplarity, which produces polarization. By polarization one normally understands a process of standardization in which all differences are traced back to two opposite poles; yet, in reality, it is possible to understand by polarization every process in which one observes a concentration of properties toward an arbitrary number of points, which are called poles. The Polarization of singularities foresees an infinite number of poles. In this sense, the process of individuation of the personal singularity is a process of polarization that allows the singularity to

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distinguish itself from all others, and to emerge from the impersonal subsoil of life, by acquiring its unique and unmistakable physiognomy.19 Once it has been realized that each singularity represents one point of view that is unique and irreplaceable, but uncompleted, it follows from this that every significant step forward in its process of individuation will represent a step forward in the process of renewal of the living community of which that singularity is part. This implies the principle of co-responsibility. Indeed, each transformation of the singularity will in turn be diffused in rays that contribute to reawakening other exemplary acts in further singularities, in an infinite process with unforeseeable outcomes. The polarization of singularities does not flow into relativism, insofar as it corresponds to the ontological perspectivism of fragments of truth. The turning point comes when one recognizes the ontological irreducibility of the perspective of each singularity, hence distinguishing it from subjectivism: each singularity represents a unique and irreplaceable perspective, in that it can pick out one aspect of openness to the world that otherwise remains inaccessible to all other singularities; each singularity is able to advance more than all the others in at least one point of experience; each singularity explores in its expressive pathway some territories that no one else had ever explored up to that moment. This is why every singularity, no matter how limited and deficient it may be, always has the seed of a surprise in itself. This means that in order to advance in openness to the world, the cooperation of all singularities is needed. In advancing further in openness to the world, extending the horizon of meaning, and in discovering new territories of experience, the singularity behaves like an explorer or a pioneer. Consequently, each singularity turns out to be irreplaceable, in that it represents the only springboard for achieving specific exemplary experiences. At the same time, each exemplarity, qua uncompleted, needs to integrate the result obtained with that of other singularities; and this in the optics of generative sharing, in that what only this singularity can achieve is not withdrawn from other singularities but, on the contrary, is offered to them. Hence, no singularity can arrogate to itself the right to resume within itself or to synthesize the uniqueness of the perspective of other singularities. Rather, each of them will contribute, albeit to a different degree, to bringing about the overall physiognomy of what we understand by “openness 19

By the expression “impersonal subsoil of life”, I intend to emphasize the hidden and invisible nature of the original foundation in which all living forms are rooted. It is like the subsoil of a plant: that is, the layer of soil that lies beneath the topsoil, which provides nourishment and sustenance to the plant. The impersonal subsoil of life is the source of all life, as well as that of the personal singularity.

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to the world”. In this way, the increase of openness to the world is possible only through a movement of generative sharing between all singularities. Because there is no accumulation of results, this does not translate into a leveling out, but rather into a further differentiation: by sharing the result achieved by another singularity, I do not cumulate it (in the sense of adding it to mine, just as it is), but I relive and reconquer it as I progress in my process of polarization, and this inevitably translates into further singularization. At the same time, there is a further level with respect to that of the personal singularity. Indeed, the totality of the fragments of truth represents something more than a simple sum of the singular personal fragments of truth.

Bibliographical Abbreviations AA = I. Kant. Gesammelte Schriften. Akademie-Ausgabe. Berlin: De Gruyter (1900ff.). AT = R. Descartes, Oeuvres de Descartes (C. Adam & P. Tannery, Eds.). Paris: Vrin/CNRS, 1964–1976. Conf. = Augustine. Confessions (C.J.-B. Hammond, Transl.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. CP = C. S. Peirce, Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (C. Hartshorne & P. Weiss, Eds.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931–1958. De Recta = Plutarch. On Listening to Lectures. In F.C. Babbitt (Transl.), Plutarch. Moralia (pp. 201–235). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927. DK = Diels, H., & Kranz, W. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Weidmannsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1951–1952; Eng. transl. in K. Freeman. Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers: A Complete Translation of the Fragments in Diels’ Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983. GW = M. Scheler. Gesammelte Werke (M. Scheler Scheu & M.S. Frings, Eds.). Bern: ­Francke Verlag/Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1954–1997. KSA = F. Nietzsche. Kritische Studienausgabe (G. Colli & M. Montinari, Eds.). Berlin: De Gruyter, 1988. HUA = E. Husserl. Husserliana (R. Bernet, U. Melle et al., Eds.). Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff/Berlin: Springer, 1950ff. Letters = L. A. Seneca, Letters on Ethics to Lucilius (M. Graver & A.A. Long, Transl.). Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2015. Med. = Marcus Aurelius. The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus (A.S.L. ­Farquharson, Ed. & Transl.). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1944. Metaph. = Aristotle. Metaphysics (C.D.C. Reeve, Transl.). Indianapolis: Hackett ­Publishing Company, 2016. NE = Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics (T. Irwin, Transl.). Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2019. Phil. = Sophocles. Philoctetes (S.L. Schein, Ed. & Transl.). Cambridge: Cambridge ­University Press, 2013. Plut. Vit. Alex. = Plutarch. The Parallel Lives. The Life of Alexander (F.C. Babbitt, Transl.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1919. SW = F. W. J. Schelling, Sämmtliche Werke (K.F.A. Schelling, Ed.). Stuttgart: J.G. Cotta, 1856–1861. Th. = Hesiod. Theogony. Works and Days. Testimonia (G.W. Most, Transl.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.

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Plato Alc. 1, 2 = Alcibiades 1, 2. Transl. by. D.S. Hutchinson. In Plato, Complete Works (J.M. ­Cooper et al., Ed.). Indianapolis: Hackett 1997. Ap. = Apology. Transl. by G.M.A. Grube. In Complete Works, cit. Cra. = Cratylus. Transl. by C.D.C. Reeve. In Complete Works, cit. Ep. = Letters. Transl. by G.R. Morrow. In Complete Works, cit. Euthd. = Euthydemus. Transl. by R.K. Sprague. In Complete Works, cit. Grg. = Gorgias. Transl. by D.J. Zeyl. In Complete Works, cit. Ion = Ion. Transl. by P. Woodruff. In Complete Works, cit. Lg. = Laws. Transl. by T.J. Saunders. In Complete Works, cit. Men. = Meno. Transl. by G.M.A. Grube. In Complete Works, cit. Phd. = Phaedo. Transl. by G.M.A. Grube. In Complete Works, cit. Phdr. = Phaedrus. Transl. by. A. Nehamas and P. Woodruff. In Complete Works, cit. Plt.= Statesman [Politicus]. Transl. by C.J. Rowe. In Complete Works, cit. Prm. = Parmenides. Transl. by M.L. Gill and P. Ryan. In Complete Works, cit. Prt. = Protagoras. Transl. by S. Lombardo and K. Bell. In Complete Works, cit. R. = Republic. Transl. by G.M.A. Grube, rev. C.D.C. Reeve. In Complete Works, cit. Sph. = Sophist. Transl. by H.N. Fowler. In Plato, Theaetetus. Sophist, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1921. Smp. = Symposium. Transl. by A. Nehamas and P. Woodruff. In Complete Works, cit. Tht. = Theaetetus. Transl. by H.N. Fowler. In Plato, Theaetetus. Sophist, cit. Ti. = Timaeus. Transl. by D.J. Zeyl. In Complete Works, cit.

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Index Act

and action 7, 58 as the cell of the person 7, 54, 55 co-performance of an act 58, 60, 61, 87, 311, 330 exemplary acts 56, 57, 345 of self-transcendence 5, 40, 41, 47, 54, 60, 80, 102, 105, 180, 181, 196, 274, 310, 311 Action and social role 55, 58 performance of an action 58, 60, 61 Affective deprivation 24, 30, 58, 85, 97, 213 Affective illiteracy 80, 144 Affective layers 15, 79, 181 Affective maturation 14, 64 Affordances 127–130 and expressivity  129, 130 Agnoia (ignorance as not knowing) 143, 260, 261, 264, 265, 278, 281 purification from agnoia 261 Alienation 4, 267, 314, 321, 322 Alsberg, P. 25–27 Amathia (ignorance as not knowing with the pretense of knowing) 143, 261, 262, 264–268, 271, 274, 276, 278, 279 as cause of deformity of the soul 261 as conseguence of excessive philautia 267 as egotic bias 263, 268 axiological dimension of amathia 122, 123, 264, 265 purification from amathia 261, 263 Améry, J. 187, 188, 275 Anders, G. 316, 317, 329 Angels 6, 305 angelos as messenger 285, 305 Archangel Gabriel 304, 305 as annunciations of birth 305 Annunciations Cestello annunciation 10, 304–306 little annunciations 304, 305 Anorexia 23, 24 Anthropogenesis 7, 13, 14, 29, 30, 31, 33, 63, 64, 78, 86, 128, 195, 329, 335 and epigenetics 25, 27, 28

as process of formation that characterizes human beings 7 culture as great incubator of anthropogenesis 12 Anthropogenetic birth and human enigma 95 Anthropogenetic laboratory 192, 198, 199 Aporein and philosophical wonder 277, 278, 280 Arendt, H. 90, 142, 143, 324 Aristotle 8, 156, 225, 241, 251, 277–279 Askesis 240–242, 317, 329, 330 Ataraxia 224 Atopos 83, 281 Attention and evidence 300 auroral attention 300 involuntary attention 301 little self’s attention 300 machinery of attention 300, 320 to the present instant 299, 300 voluntary attention 301 Attunement affect attunement 29, 95, 97 and unipathy 59 connection with the world 20, 197, 199, 255, 289 second level of attunement 59, 60, 90 vital attunement 117 Augustine 18 Auroral void 1, 19–23, 25, 34, 38, 41, 42, 44, 46–49, 54, 57–60, 76, 84, 86, 92, 100, 153, 154, 178, 183, 192, 205, 219, 233, 249, 251–255, 268, 273, 289, 297, 300, 302, 311, 335 Axiological blindness 142–144 Bataille, G. 50, 203 Baudrillard, J. 74 Bauman, Z. 39, 75, 133, 145, 146, 148 Beauty as drive that allows one to participate in a new dimension 255 generation in beauty 21, 100, 101, 155, 264 hunger for beauty 256 in Japanese culture 49

362 Being touched by the world 12, 47–49, 58, 180, 191–193, 195–197, 199, 202, 218, 258, 288–290, 295–300, 313, 330 See  Pathic; See  Thauma Benasayag, M. 183, 184 Benjamin, W. 104 Bergson, H. 18, 20, 66, 89, 90, 112, 125, 128, 160 Bildung 2, 7, 68, 71, 184, 211 Biosemiotics 59, 66, 112–114, 116, 117, 120, 126, 129, 138, 172, 176, 178 Biosphere 4, 8, 114, 116, 125, 129, 160, 163, 168, 169, 171, 172, 176, 218, 315, 320 Birth and neoteny 212 biological birth 11, 29, 33, 95, 97, 213, 214, 341 continuation of birth along with the world 166, 192, 294, 302, 321 Blombos Cave 96 Body body emotions 176, 180 body schema 8, 121, 122, 160, 168, 169, 176, 211 embodied phantasy 122 living body (Leib) 112, 118, 121, 122, 127, 129, 141, 157, 159, 161, 168–170, 173, 176, 178 Bolk, L. 25 Botticelli 10, 304–306, 308 Brentano, F. 123, 124, 141, 152, 158, 163 Canova, A. 195 Care and cure 214, 216, 217 of desire 10, 144, 183, 202, 210, 214–220, 343 of the soul 216, 224, 226, 235, 242, 260–262, 264, 265 relations of care 8–10, 12, 20, 24, 29, 33, 40, 49, 77, 78, 97, 183, 190, 213, 216, 218–222, 248, 259, 311, 319, 321, 338, 342 Cézanne, P. 104, 339, 341 Cleombrotos 259, 260 Climacus’s Ladder 71–73, 140 Co-formation 45, 57, 58, 60, 180, 243, 331 Common feeling See  Feeling Communication as transfer of information 225, 226, 239 capable of writing in the soul 226, 227

index germinative communication 227, 228, 239, 240, 308 Community distincion between community and collectivity 149, 330 generative axis of the community 321, 322, 334 open community 42–44, 59–61, 66, 87, 259, 314, 322, 323, 327, 330, 331, 334, 335, 338, 339 uncompleted community 334 unlimited community 43, 87, 259 Compassion 259, 315, 323–325, 327, 328, 330, 336, 337 Co-responsibility 183, 210, 327, 328, 345 Craft of living 63, 314 Cura sui 66, 216, 222, 248, 274, 315, 317, 318 Daimon (Hillman) 10 Daimonion, voice of the (Socrates) 3, 4, 10, 224 Damasio, A. 120, 146, 176, 240 Darwin, C. 156 Death of God 14, 74, 77, 315 Deep ecology 76, 90, 330, 336 Deleuze, G. 97, 160, 245 Democracy 150, 151, 189, 214, 314 Dennett, D. 163 Derrida, J. 226 Descartes 229–236, 250–252, 282 Desertification of the real 71, 74, 75 Desert of the real 74, 360 Desire and de-Constellation 202, 204, 205 and enjoyment 98, 208, 209 and need 202, 208 and search for our destination 204, 205 care of desire See  Care conversion of desire 234, 236 cultivation of desire 15, 134, 214, 216, 274 desire and call 210 ignition of desire 97 mimetic desire as false desire 207 of the other 206 seedling of desire 210 De Sousa, R. 146 Despair 88, 251, 252, 290–292, 322 Destination 4, 10, 87, 93, 100, 101, 109, 153, 196, 201, 205, 207, 210, 290, 305, 307 Destiny 4, 10, 15, 63, 155, 204, 205, 207, 210, 211

index Detachment from the little self 1, 3–5, 92, 179, 241, 246, 248, 272, 296, 332, 342 Dilthey, W. 118 Diogenes of Sinope 14 Diotima 98, 262, 284, 285, 293 Disgust 5, 22–24, 122, 176, 186, 218, 220 Disorientation 19, 134, 180, 191, 195–197, 204, 235 Donatello 305, 306 Dorian Gray 200, 201 Dostoevsky, F. 108, 310 Duchamp, M. 103 Eating disorders 23, 24 Economic deregulation 134 Egotism 20, 22, 46, 247, 252, 258, 259, 267–269, 271, 314, 315, 318, 322, 332, 333 as excessive philautia 266 black sun of egotism 22, 266, 268 gravitational force of egotism 22, 258, 268 Eichmann, A. 142–144 Eidolon 280, 284 Eikasia 68 Ekmann, P. 156 Elenchos 2, 224, 225, 253, 258, 263, 264 Emergentism epistemological emergentism 51, 52, 53 ontological emergentism 51, 53 Emotion and landscape of experience 179 and processes of individuation 175, 176 basic emotions 156, 170, 173, 177 body emotions See  Body emotional competence 11 emotional illiteracy 11, 144, 149 emotional irrationalism 144, 146 emotional regression 79, 80, 151 emotional turn 146, 147, 220 personal emotions 176, 178, 179, 190, 198–201, 220 social emotions 177 to be moved (emozionarsi) 193, 194, 198 Emotional sharing 7–10, 12, 13, 15, 26, 29, 31, 33, 77, 78, 87, 95, 97, 122, 140, 147, 149, 152, 163, 175–179, 183, 211, 213, 242, 245, 246, 248, 270, 310, 318, 323, 325, 327–330, 338, 343 Empathy 39, 147, 183, 218, 220, 315, 325–327, 330, 336, 337, 343

363 aporias of empathy 326 Enactivism 23, 28, 111, 120, 122–124, 127–129, 131, 164, 170–173, 176, 180, 181, 183 Enchantment 76, 79, 80, 134, 145, 146, 150, 154, 155, 263, 283, 295, 319 Enjoyment compulsive enjoyment 134, 147, 208, 209, 236 pornographic enjoyment 208, 209 ready-made enjoyment 70, 76, 77, 79, 145, 146 singularization of enjoyment 98, 208, 209 Enkrateia 316 Entertainment industry 70, 77, 134, 208, 209, 254, 288, 300, 322, 323 Environment (Umwelt) 4, 6, 8, 13, 28, 39, 51, 52, 55, 60, 70, 82, 96, 110–112, 114, 117–122, 129, 138, 162, 168, 169, 171, 176–178, 180, 253, 288, 292, 323 Envy 79, 83, 93, 94, 122, 140, 145, 148, 177, 183, 186, 190, 220, 228, 256, 258, 269, 270, 271, 274–276, 314, 315, 320, 325, 326 being free of envy (aphthonos) 190, 275 Epictetus 222, 223, 229 Epicurus 240 Epigenetics 28, 29, 114, 128 and plasticity of life 27 Epimeleia heautou 66, 216 See  Cura sui Epimeleia tes psyches 216 Epistrophe 64–67 Epoche of the ego 253, 295, 296, 311, 322, 325, 331 Eros 98, 155, 209, 225, 259, 262, 275, 281, 326 erotic revolution 209 Esprit de finesse 144 Esprit géométrique 144 Ethical deregulation 134 Ethical indifferentism 82, 137, 142–144 Ethical leap 325–328, 336, 337, 341, 343 Ethics of sympathy 327, 328, 336, 337 Evidence maximal evidence (what seems absolutely most evident) 294, 299, 300, 302–304, 311 self-evidence 70, 292 supreme evidence (related to existing here and now) 293, 295, 298, 299. See  Wonder

364 Evil banality of evil 142, 265 origin of evil 143, 265, 266 the greatest evil 266 Ex-centricity 41, 58, 86, 116, 126, 143, 197, 202, 203, 243 Excessive philautia 266, 267 as cause of axiological blindness 143, 267 Excessive self-love 267 See  excessive philautia Excitation, momentary 145, 146 Exemplarity acts 255 and counter-exemplarity 5, 88, 89, 108 as maieutic testimony 9, 83–86, 105, 106, 108, 109, 254, 280 auroral exemplarity 83, 87, 88 exemplary experience 199, 200, 228, 231, 345 extended exemplarity 45, 102, 128, 160 main figures in which exemplarity can be exercised 95 of others 9, 243, 245 there is no exemplarity of the impersonal 249 Exemplum 83–85, 90, 101, 254 Exercises dialogic exercises 249, 255, 309 of death 259, 260 of dis-tension 258, 271, 272, 273, 274, 290, 299, 300, 302 of emptying 4, 19, 39, 233, 234, 253, 254, 256, 262, 268, 273, 291, 296, 302, 334 of feeling 155, 156, 185, 240, 244, 246, 248 of friendship 255, 343 of the will 240, 241, 244, 246 of transformation 11, 13, 14, 16, 29, 63, 66, 85, 222, 223, 229, 231, 234, 240, 243, 244, 246–250, 252, 255, 258, 289, 308, 310–312, 317, 318, 332 of wonder 291, 293–295 spiritual exercises 65, 222, 223, 224, 229, 230, 232, 240, 241, 242, 246, 271, 310, 311, 312, 313 Existence abyss of existence 286 and ecstasy 197, 198 emotions that give form to existence 168 enigma of existence 285 ex-centric form of existence 197

index groundless existence 286, 288 plasticity of existence 212 pure existence 286, 287 Existential bias (as ideology) 68, 71, 78–80, 148, 149, 305 Existential void 20, 21, 142, 147, 207 Experience as the result of the non-neutrality of feeling 162, 192 feeling is what gives form to my experience 166 formative experience 231 lived experience (Erlebnis) 118, 119, 131–133, 163, 165, 166, 174, 193, 201, 214, 227, 228, 243, 246, 247, 249, 276, 290 of reality and expressive interaction  116, 117 of self-transcendence 133 of the auroral void 1, 102, 192 of the sublime 89, 102 of transformation 133, 231, 289 pioneering experience 243, 244 qualitative experience 163–166 Expressive pathway 5, 7, 9, 55, 57, 88, 94, 99, 101–104, 115, 118, 119, 125, 126, 128, 130, 132, 160, 167, 178, 191, 196, 209, 345 Expressivity 126, 127 and life 113, 116 basic expressivity 125 biological expressivity 113, 114 inorganic expressivity 113 principle of expressivity 86, 95, 110, 118–120 Fatal illness 234–236 Father and exemplarity 97, 98 and model 97, 98 Feeling common feeling 8, 13, 80, 132, 149, 151, 152, 175, 178, 181, 193 cultivation of feeling 140, 144 dead calm of feeling 22, 182, 242, 244 deceptions of feeling 151 depth of field of feeling 252, 253 disorder of feeling 117, 152 feeling-together 175, 181, 326 intentionality of feeling 153, 157, 158

365

index Feeling (cont.) maturation of feeling 95, 152, 163, 244, 247 meta-feeling 41, 162, 168 myth of immediate feeling 71, 80, 151, 163 non-neutrality of feeling 162, 164, 165, 166 oceanic feeling 65, 66, 75, 89 order of feeling 10, 12, 16, 41, 110, 113, 149, 152, 158, 162–164, 176, 182, 211, 212, 240, 241, 243, 248, 253, 308, 329 peaks of feeling 182, 242, 244 plasticity of feeling 11, 15, 16, 163 primordial feeling 8, 89, 95, 110, 112, 113, 115–117, 120, 123, 125, 127–129, 159–161, 163, 164, 166, 168, 171, 172, 194, 272, 296 Fibrillation, entering into 196 Fitness industries 318 Flourishing 99, 100, 105, 215, 218, 219, 271, 274, 308, 321 Fontana, L. 47–49, 57, 61, 192, 248 Foucault, M. 66, 67, 90, 222, 229, 230, 316, 317, 329 Fragment of truth 4, 5, 10, 14, 42–45, 153, 154, 175, 179, 205, 207, 210–213, 218–220, 227, 228, 243, 249, 255, 258, 262, 268, 272, 274, 276, 289, 290, 304, 310, 312, 313, 321, 327, 329, 331, 334, 335, 338, 340, 341, 343–346 Francis of Assisi 256, 257 Frankl, V. 6, 41, 42 Freedom 134, 139, 146, 152, 169, 190, 200, 229, 243, 248, 276 Friedmann, G. 21 Fundamental question of philosophy 288, 296, 299 See  Grundfrage Gebsattel, V.E. 22 Gehlen, A. 25, 27 Generative goods See  Goods Gibson, J.J. 127, 129, 130 Giotto 256, 257 Girard, R. 71, 93, 207 Goethe, J.W. 7, 211 Goffman, E. 41 Goleman, D. 146, 185 Good life 14, 134, 260, 318, 320, 334

Goods consumer goods 320, 321, 324, 338, 340–343 generative goods 314, 322, 338–341, 343 Gould, S.J. 213 Grundfrage questioning or exclamation? 296, 297, 299 Guattari, F. 97 Hadot, P. 13, 21, 63–66, 75, 89, 90, 222–224, 227–230, 242, 246, 271, 286, 290, 312, 332 Happiness 17, 89, 153–155, 169, 177, 191, 234, 235, 311, 316, 318, 320–322, 326, 334, 343 Hate and envy 269 for the enemy 269–271 poisonous stinger of one’s own mortiferous part 269–271 Heart’s restlessness 17, 18, 21, 63, 80, 87, 88, 196, 204 Hegel, G.W.F. 43, 103, 178, 186, 273, 317, 334 Heidegger, M. 68, 134, 135, 157, 216, 296, 298 Hemingway, E. 198 Heraclitus 322 Hillman, J. 10, 210 Hoess, R. 143 Hokusai’s wave 10, 82, 140, 199, 316 Hominization 25–27, 96 Homo oeconomicus 134, 236, 318–320, 324 Horror, pathos of 18, 19, 21, 39, 135, 147, 192, 193, 196, 251, 254, 258, 273, 281, 285, 288, 290–292, 296 Horror vacui 19, 21, 39, 254, 273 Hume, D. 34, 35, 137, 328, 336, 337, 360 bundle of perceptions 34–37, 40 Humility 35, 183, 185, 272, 332, 333 Hunger to be born 17, 20–25, 54, 60, 61, 63, 64, 77, 79, 80, 87, 93, 97, 100, 101, 109, 122, 128, 129, 131, 153, 155, 161, 175, 178, 181–183, 194, 200, 207, 214, 220, 254, 256, 268, 275, 289, 308, 321, 328, 331, 335, 339–341, 344 Husserl, E. 44, 46, 52, 141, 157, 158, 163, 255, 265 Idol 154, 155, 315

366 Idolatry 139, 155 Immunitarian logic 4, 27, 43, 59, 60, 175, 279, 295, 300, 331, 335 Impersonal root of life 116 Impersonal subsoil of life 345 Imprinting 12, 210–212 Incompleteness (as a positive good) 4, 5, 18, 20, 21, 40, 42, 43, 59, 87, 104, 334, 335, 344 Individuation, three processes of 175, 176 Infatuation 94, 98, 99, 106, 141, 152–154, 190, 262, 263, 281, 314, 321 Influencer (as social model) 5, 78, 79, 92, 148, 301 Intensive animal farming 75, 217 Intentionality autopoietic intentionality 61 collective intentionality 60, 61 community intentionality 61, 62 counter-intentionality 46, 61, 62, 163, 175, 289, 299, 300, 302, 303 of consciousness 46 of feeling See  Feeling shared intentionality 336, 337 Itard, J. 31–33 Jablonka, E. 28, 120 James, W. 10, 210, 301, 332 Jaspers, K. 90 Judgment (Urteil) 110, 111, 123, 124, 137–139, 141, 152, 155, 212, 248, 263, 267 Jung, C.G. 3 Kant, I. 8, 17, 71, 73, 74, 77, 89, 105, 110–113, 121, 129, 140, 229, 237–239, 277, 326, 336, 340, 354 spiritual advisor 73, 238, 239 state of minority 73, 77 Katharsis 225, 253, 258, 260–262, 264, 265, 271 Kepler, J. 41 Kierkegaard, S. 245, 251, 252, 292 Kintsugi 47–49, 87, 248 Kiss 194, 195 Klimt, G. 195 Koffka, K. 130 Kolnai, A. 22 Kurzweil, R. 15 Lacroix, M. 80 Ladder of Wittgenstein 312, 313

index Lasch, C. 75, 76, 145 LeDoux, J. 146 Leibniz, G.W. 234, 296 Life interaction with the expressive level of life 8, 112, 113, 115, 116, 117, 119, 120, 125, 127, 128, 131, 160, 163, 164, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 175 See Biosemiotic original connection with life through primordial feeling 117, 168, 296 See Attunement Liquid society 39, 74–79, 81, 98, 133, 134, 145–150, 208, 209, 274 Lorenz, K. 12, 211 Love 21, 22, 83, 99, 100, 122, 153–155, 178, 189, 190, 198, 223, 236, 237, 262, 266, 267, 270, 275, 328, 332, 335, 343 Lucilius 84 Luhmann, N. 53, 57, 60 Lyotard, J.F. 319 Machinery of distraction 300, 320, 322 Maieutics 83, 278, 279 maieutic dialogue 2, 4, 227, 228, 253, 258, 309, 310, 344 maieutic testimony See Exemplarity Marcus Aurelius 46, 223 Material motivation for social transformation 336 of ethics 179, 336 Maternal womb 5, 206, 213, 260 Maturana, H.R. 50, 60 Mayeroff, M. 214, 220 Mediatic breeding of human beings 71, 77, 140, 144, 150, 151, 209, 217 Meinong, A. 158 Meister Eckhart 272 Metabolism 50, 52, 53, 172 anabolism 51, 52, 57 as a new category for the personal system 50 catabolism 51, 52, 57, 74 expressive metabolism 170, 172, 173 non-autopoietic metabolism 50, 183 Metabolization and emergentism 52 and exemplarity 247 of a generative good 339, 340, 342 of emotions 183 of enjoyment into desire 203 of experience 189, 200

367

index Metabolization (cont.) of feeling 243, 246, 247 of hate 145, 189, 190 of the narcissistic wound 29 of the passions 149 of the pathic 191 Metanoia 64–67 Model 5, 9, 10, 29, 73, 78, 82–85, 90–94, 98, 101, 105–109, 124, 141, 145, 149, 175, 180, 206, 207, 222, 224, 226, 243, 246, 247, 249, 254, 258, 261, 275, 276, 282, 308, 312, 313, 318, 320, 332, 333 Monstrous 192, 264, 270, 285, 286, 291 Mood 55, 157–159, 181, 190 Moon (film) 36 Moral self (Hume) 34, 35 Morin, E. 25, 76, 133 Mortiferous part 266, 268–271, 291, 322, 333 Mother and affect attunement 29 and affective deprivation 24, 30 and anthropogenesis 30 and exemplarity 95 and reletions of care 97 as mediation between the newborn and the world 95 mother’s smile 30, 95, 100, 177 Muga (non-ego) as presupposition for every true encounter with the other 253 Munch, E. 132 Myth of Er 10 Myth of Hydra 198, 199 Myth of Medusa 198, 199, 290 Myth of Thamus 225 Myth of the androgyne 98, 153 Nagel, T. 120 Narcissism 133, 183, 274, 314, 323 age of narcissism 14, 71, 314, 315, 318, 321, 323, 330, 336 and the sad legacy of nihilism 133 culture of narcissism 3, 137, 318 spiritual narcissism 318 Narrative identity 37, 40, 78, 79 Nausea 165, 186, 218, 220 Neoteny 25–27, 213, 335 Nicodemus 259, 260, 333 Nietzsche, F. 14, 66, 71, 74, 135, 150, 187 Nihilism 133, 137, 149 nihilistic relativism 137, 141 Nishitani, K. 253

Nussbaum, M. 123, 124, 139, 310, 316, 317, 324, 329 Ontological perspectivism of the fragment of truth 171, 249, 344, 345 Order of the heart 41, 54–57, 93, 128, 148, 154, 155, 159, 163, 165, 166, 173, 178–183, 191, 193, 195–197, 200, 201, 208, 209, 212, 213, 240, 247, 252, 253, 270, 327 as principium individuationis of the personal singularity 180 plasticity and incompleteness of the 211 Ordo amoris 127, 128, 130, 157, 176, 212 See Order of the heart Ordo carnis 127, 176, 211 Ordo naturalis 127 Ordo socialis 127, 128, 131, 176, 211 Orientation 14, 15, 57, 63, 64, 71, 77, 78, 88, 90, 91, 103, 134, 135, 137, 140–142, 144, 146, 148–151, 181, 182, 196, 197, 204, 209, 210, 221, 240, 241, 244, 307, 314, 329 Parfit, D. 36–38, 40 Parker, A. 115, 116 Pascal, B. 144, 145, 157 Pathic, the 191, 195, 199, 200, 204 Pathos 2, 47, 191–193, 196, 251, 253, 258, 264, 276, 277, 280, 283, 284, 286, 288, 293, 296, 297, 299, 310 Peirce, C.S. 43, 130 Perception of value 123, 124, 141 See Valueception Periagogic conversion 1, 13, 67, 161, 179, 206, 212, 308 Personal non-self See  Personal singularity Personal singularity 4, 5, 8–10, 12, 13, 15, 35, 37–39, 41–47, 54, 56, 61, 62, 71, 93, 95, 100, 102, 132, 151, 159, 161, 163, 165, 166, 169, 170, 173–176, 178, 179, 181, 182, 189, 191, 196, 199, 200, 206, 207, 210, 212–214, 217, 243, 245, 247, 249, 254, 258, 296, 300, 301, 309, 310, 316–318, 333, 335, 337, 344–346 personal non-self 4, 44–46, 50, 57, 59, 86, 173, 176–178, 291, 310, 312, 315 Personal system (as non-autopoietic system) 6, 50, 53–55, 57–60, 175, 197, 331 Philosophical anthropology 25, 27, 203 Philosophical conversion 64, 66, 234

368 Philosophical discourse 13, 63, 77, 84, 224, 228, 229, 232, 243, 343 Philosophical minimalism 321 Philosophy of being 287 Philosophy of birth 259, 308 Philosophy of existence 287 Phronesis 260 Pico della Mirandola 212 Plants 129, 160, 168, 281 Plasticity 7, 10, 11, 15, 16, 26, 28, 29, 51, 163, 211, 212, 242 and irreversible process of transformation 7 and reversible process of change 7 protean plasticity 213 Plato 1, 2, 10, 25, 50, 64, 66–70, 74, 82–84, 89, 90, 101, 190, 202, 215, 216, 223–228, 231, 232, 239, 251, 255, 258–261, 263, 265–267, 272, 275–284, 296, 305, 309, 326, 343, 348 Plessner, H. 25, 41, 129, 203 Plutarch 14, 83, 343 Polarization of differences 331, 344 of singularities 344, 345 Portmann, A. 25, 116 Positioning in the world 37, 157–159, 164, 165, 168, 182, 195, 200, 212, 242, 253 Precursor 57, 100, 101, 340 Primordial feeling See Feeling Principium individuationis 155, 180, 181 Prometheus 25 Promising void 1, 19, 44, 155, 203, 251, 252, 254, 310, 312, 321 See Auroral void Putnam, H. 135, 137 Putrefaction 22, 23, 24 Reality desertified reality 74, 79 different levels of reality 114, 127, 305 incomplete reality 70 pharmacologization of reality 217 virtual reality 39, 117, 118 Rebirth 42, 49, 64, 66, 184, 195, 259, 333 Recognition craving for recognition 273 reciprocal recognition 325, 326, 336

index struggle for recognition 39, 180, 207, 273, 274, 325, 337, 343 Re-enchantment emotional re-enchantment 71, 75–77, 79, 80 first phase of re-enchantment 145, 147, 148 of the world 76, 145 second phase of re-enchantment  145–148, 151 Relations of care See Care Rembrandt, H. 299, 303, 304 Repentance 9, 37, 38, 44, 64, 178, 183, 185 Repetition creative repetition 9, 245 mechanical repetition 246 Representation (Vorstellung) 81, 110, 111, 123–125, 127–129, 141, 158, 160, 283 Resentment 24, 79, 93, 94, 140, 145, 148, 159, 177, 183, 186–188, 249, 256–258, 269, 275, 314, 315, 320, 324 Respect for the other 325, 327 Reverence for life (Ehrfurcht) 161, 216, 296, 326 Ricœur, P. 37, 40, 325, 357 Sacredness of nature 75, 161, 325 Scheler, M. 25, 27, 59, 90, 93, 105, 106, 113, 116, 117, 120–122, 124, 141, 157, 158, 160, 171, 172, 328, 336, 337 Schelling, F.W.J. 20, 41, 168, 184, 197, 203, 248, 285–288, 296, 299 ecstasy of reason 286, 287 Schmitt, C. 134–138 Schopenhauer, A. 229, 238–240, 246, 248, 249, 277, 291, 312 Schweitzer, A. 161 Searle, J.R. 34, 35, 60 Self-transcendence expressive path of self-transcendence 5, 6, 45, 46, 86, 90, 102, 132 See Detachment from the little self Sen, A. 319 Seneca 83, 84, 290 Sensation See Body Shame 263 as aidomai 263 as aischyne 263–265

369

index Shu Ha Ri 245, 312, 313 Shyness 289 Sloterdijk, P. 9, 10, 96, 150, 310, 316, 317, 325, 329 Social ontology 78, 178, 329 Social placenta 243 Socrates 2, 5, 13, 21, 83–85, 89, 90, 101, 143, 150, 174, 215, 216, 223–228, 235, 254, 260, 261, 264, 277–283, 286, 294, 297, 309 Solidarity 175, 179, 303, 315, 323, 330, 336, 338, 342, 344 Solid society 148 Soliloquy 259, 309 Spinoza, B. 75, 183, 184, 229, 230, 234–237, 241, 359 Spitz, R. 24, 30, 31, 58, 85, 95, 97, 213 Springboard for further expressive pathways 9, 86, 102, 103, 128 Stern, D. 29, 95, 127, 129 Stom, M. 302, 303 Stumbling block of experience 2, 235, 253, 289 Stumpf, C. 55 Sublime 89, 90, 175, 193, 194, 207, 221 Supper at Emmaus 297–299, 302, 303 Taleb, N.N. 198 Tattersall, I. 95, 96 Taylor, C. 76, 145, 181, 241, 328 Teacher (as exemplarity) inner teacher 101 maieutic teacher 2, 101, 313 model teacher 101, 285, 313 Thauma and being touched by the word 288 as horror 262, 285, 286 as the arche of philosophy 284 as wonder 262, 285, 286 dual significance of thauma 285 Thauma-maker (thaumatopoios, thaumatopoioi)  225, 282–284, 288, 295, 343 The Matrix (film) 68–70, 74 The Truman Show (film) 68–70 Tintoretto 297, 298 Tomasello, M. 336, 337 cooperative communication 336 Totem 91, 94, 207, 331 Tribal logic 303, 331 Tronto, J. 215, 218

Uexküll, J. 110, 111, 112, 120, 121, 138, 140, 171, 177 Unipathy 59, 116, 171 Value fact-value-distinction 134 what is a value? 140 Valueception 122–125, 127, 128, 140, 142, 158, 160, 189 Van Gogh, V. 55, 56 Varela, F. 50, 51, 60, 120, 122 Vital relevance 112, 126, 130, 171 Vocation 3, 10, 93, 204, 205, 207, 210, 211, 327 Vulnerability 46, 49, 80, 207, 218, 219, 258, 288, 295 Weber, M. polytheism of values 135 Weber’s disenchantment 74–77, 133, 134, 139, 319 Wertfreiheit 139 Weil, S. 3, 4 Weitting on the soul 227, 228, 231 Weizsäcker, V. 191 Wellness industries 318 Williams, B. 76, 263 Wisdom 21, 83, 85, 226, 230, 249, 260, 262, 275, 281, 282, 290, 343 Wittgenstein, L. 312, 313 Wonder and thaumaston 284 in Plato and Aristotle 277 narcotizing wonder 2, 225, 279, 282–284 philosophical wonder 277–283, 292, 294–297 three concepts of wonder in Plato 276 Work of art (as form of extended exemplarity) 42, 45, 88, 95, 102–105, 109, 132, 133, 160, 207, 222, 258, 341 Wound 29, 46–49, 175, 188, 192, 207, 279, 295 Writing on the soul 226–228, 231, 232, 234, 240, 246, 247, 249, 266, 308, 343 Xenophon 227 Zagzebski, L. 105–109 Zambrano, M. 20, 90 Žižek, S. 74 Züchtung (Nietzsche) 71, 150

29 mm

PWL 4

success or social recognition, but in a “fragment of truth”, hidden somewhere inside each of us, which reveals itself only if we detach ourselves from our ego and its certainties. It is not, therefore, a matter of ��nding yet another philosophical theory of the meaning of existence, but rather of shedding light on the conditions under which such meaning can emerge. The author shows us that the ultimate source of our existential orientation lies in the a�fective sphere, and that the current crisis of orientation is derived from the atrophy of the process of a�fective maturation on a large scale, and from a lack of knowledge and experience about which techniques are best to reactivate it. We are like glowworms that had once unlearned how to illuminate and have since begun to hover around the magic lantern of the ascetic ideal, already criticized by Nietzsche, and then around neon advertising signs. We are glowworms that have forgotten that we have within our own a�fective structure a precious source of orientation. The basic thesis is that this source of orientation can be reactivated through the care of desire and practices of emotional sharing. GUIDO CUSINATO is Full Professor of Philosophy at the University of Verona. He conceives of philosophy as an exercise of transformation and has developed an original theory of “personal singularity” based on the concepts of “order of feeling” and “emotional sharing”. Among his most important publications are Katharsis (Napoli 1999); Person und Selbsttranszendenz. Ekstase und Epoché des Ego als Individuationsprozesse bei Schelling und Scheler (Würburg 2014); and Biosemiotica e psicopatologia dell’ordo amoris (Milano 2018).

Periagoge

remove: “Why?” The underlying thesis is that the answer must not be sought in

Theory of Singularity and Philosophy as an Exercise of Transformation

that the narcissistic culture in which we are immersed systematically tends to

Guido Cusinato

This book returns to the question at the center of our existence, a question

P H I L O S O P H Y A S A WAY O F L I F E T E X T S A N D S T U D I E S

Periagoge TH EO RY O F S I N G U L A R I TY A N D P H I LO S O P H Y A S A N E X E RC I S E O F TR A N S FO R M ATI O N

G U I DO C U S I NATO PHILOSOPHY AS A WAY OF LIFE Texts and Studies, 4 9 789004 515635

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Translated by R I E S H I B U YA A N D K A R E N W H I TTL E