In this essay I propose a possible correlation between two metaphorical devices conceptualized eighteen centuries apart: on one hand the allegory of the cave that opens the VII book of Plato’s The Republic, on the other hand the “paradigmatic figure” presented in the IX chapter of Nicholas of Cusa’s On Conjectures. The thesis I present is that both devices – even if in different and distant historical and philosophical contexts – mark a gradual detachment and estrangement from the conception of truth as one, absolute and static, that can be frontally and rationally conquered and that acts as foundation for both the field of the being and the field of knowledge (the purest light). By considering the euclidean geometric perspective theorized by Leon Battista Alberti in his De Pictura as a pictorical paradigm of the aforementioned alethic conception, I will observe the foundation of a meta-perspective scopic movement, guaranteed by an ancipital and dynamical truth, derived from the rediscovery of the umbral phenomenon. This movement – resulting from parallel process of anabasis e katabasis – is recognizable as a medium both in the platonic metaphor and the cusanian perspectival structure. In this way darkness regains dignity, and combined with light contributes to the active constitution of an ontological and gnoseological chiaroscuro, intended as the authentic fabric of an always moving real world, not only legitimized by reason anymore but also – and foremost – by intellect.
Paolo Piccirillo (2024). Oltre la sensibilità razionale. La medietas del chiaroscuro in Platone e Cusano. Bologna : Pendragon.
Oltre la sensibilità razionale. La medietas del chiaroscuro in Platone e Cusano
Paolo Piccirillo
2024
Abstract
In this essay I propose a possible correlation between two metaphorical devices conceptualized eighteen centuries apart: on one hand the allegory of the cave that opens the VII book of Plato’s The Republic, on the other hand the “paradigmatic figure” presented in the IX chapter of Nicholas of Cusa’s On Conjectures. The thesis I present is that both devices – even if in different and distant historical and philosophical contexts – mark a gradual detachment and estrangement from the conception of truth as one, absolute and static, that can be frontally and rationally conquered and that acts as foundation for both the field of the being and the field of knowledge (the purest light). By considering the euclidean geometric perspective theorized by Leon Battista Alberti in his De Pictura as a pictorical paradigm of the aforementioned alethic conception, I will observe the foundation of a meta-perspective scopic movement, guaranteed by an ancipital and dynamical truth, derived from the rediscovery of the umbral phenomenon. This movement – resulting from parallel process of anabasis e katabasis – is recognizable as a medium both in the platonic metaphor and the cusanian perspectival structure. In this way darkness regains dignity, and combined with light contributes to the active constitution of an ontological and gnoseological chiaroscuro, intended as the authentic fabric of an always moving real world, not only legitimized by reason anymore but also – and foremost – by intellect.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.