In order to outline and reconstruct the complex of individuation in Remo Bodei’s thought, first of all it will be necessary to point out the modern genesis of the attention to res singulares, which debunks the prejudice of the ineffability of the individual in the name of the cognitive passion, the amor intellectualis that enhances the singularity of the things and people it sets as its object; and to retrace its opposite counterpoint in the conformative drive to shape individuals with politics and virtue through the paradoxical despotism of freedom (2). Then, it will be useful to define the antinomic thrust that between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries generates, on the one hand, the development and safeguarding of individuality and, on the other hand, its dissolution into appearance and nihilistic emptiness. Up to the oscillation between the “I” and the “We” in twentieth-century developments and the possible return to an individualism of differences (3). In a further deepening, it will be appropriate to go back to the origins of the research project to redefine the strategies of individuation, starting from the dialectic as a tool and a procedure for the building, enrichment and socialization of individuality, and to then describe its crisis and the questioning of its capability to build a superior form of dealing with reality through exposure to the negative and the return to a heightened self, the very idea of development through contradictions (4). For the purpose of exploring the next step of Bodei’s research, it will be convenient to retrace the pyramidal model of construction of the individual from its formulation in the age of Goethe to its reduction in surface in the multiple self of the late twentieth-century. A process that passes through the statement that the transformation of substance into subject has now become impossible and that the contrast between life and forms produces a deposit of knowledge external and independent from the subjective and individual consciousness in structural and continuous delay on it (5). On the basis of this survey of the entire process, it will be possible to return to the problematic core of Destini and identify some fundamental theoretical keys or patterns of analogy that constitute the tools for understanding the current consequences of these transformations. In this way, the following schemes will be examined: the condensation or approximation by juxtaposition of different selves; the self-consciousness as a barycenter or place of re-statement and re-formulation of the many experiences and thoughts of the self; the heterochronic and heterotopic dimension of lives that involves both the coexistence of real and imagined spaces and times and the coexistence of singular experience (through the body and the intimate sense) and shared social and cultural experience of thoughts, memories, affections and perceptions (6). The conlusion of the essay will finally attempt to define some developments of the same themes in parallel or subsequent works by Bodei himself and to propose some open questions about the research he has transmitted as a legacy to those who remain (7).
Personal Destinies: on Genesis and Crisis of Individuality
Andrea Borsari
2024
Abstract
In order to outline and reconstruct the complex of individuation in Remo Bodei’s thought, first of all it will be necessary to point out the modern genesis of the attention to res singulares, which debunks the prejudice of the ineffability of the individual in the name of the cognitive passion, the amor intellectualis that enhances the singularity of the things and people it sets as its object; and to retrace its opposite counterpoint in the conformative drive to shape individuals with politics and virtue through the paradoxical despotism of freedom (2). Then, it will be useful to define the antinomic thrust that between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries generates, on the one hand, the development and safeguarding of individuality and, on the other hand, its dissolution into appearance and nihilistic emptiness. Up to the oscillation between the “I” and the “We” in twentieth-century developments and the possible return to an individualism of differences (3). In a further deepening, it will be appropriate to go back to the origins of the research project to redefine the strategies of individuation, starting from the dialectic as a tool and a procedure for the building, enrichment and socialization of individuality, and to then describe its crisis and the questioning of its capability to build a superior form of dealing with reality through exposure to the negative and the return to a heightened self, the very idea of development through contradictions (4). For the purpose of exploring the next step of Bodei’s research, it will be convenient to retrace the pyramidal model of construction of the individual from its formulation in the age of Goethe to its reduction in surface in the multiple self of the late twentieth-century. A process that passes through the statement that the transformation of substance into subject has now become impossible and that the contrast between life and forms produces a deposit of knowledge external and independent from the subjective and individual consciousness in structural and continuous delay on it (5). On the basis of this survey of the entire process, it will be possible to return to the problematic core of Destini and identify some fundamental theoretical keys or patterns of analogy that constitute the tools for understanding the current consequences of these transformations. In this way, the following schemes will be examined: the condensation or approximation by juxtaposition of different selves; the self-consciousness as a barycenter or place of re-statement and re-formulation of the many experiences and thoughts of the self; the heterochronic and heterotopic dimension of lives that involves both the coexistence of real and imagined spaces and times and the coexistence of singular experience (through the body and the intimate sense) and shared social and cultural experience of thoughts, memories, affections and perceptions (6). The conlusion of the essay will finally attempt to define some developments of the same themes in parallel or subsequent works by Bodei himself and to propose some open questions about the research he has transmitted as a legacy to those who remain (7).I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
