Intersezioni | 2021 | N. 1

Charles Sorel’s Science universelle is one of the most relevant examples of 17th century encyclopedism. At the heart of the work is the reorganization of knowledge in its confrontation with the philosophy of the novatores, the heterogeneous group of
authors united above all by the need to overcome Aristotelian philosophy. The use of the definition novatores within the philosophical production of the 17th century has recently attracted the attention of several scholars. Particularly interesting in
this regard is Sorel’s description of this category of philosophers in his work, most probably influenced by the philosophy of Tommaso Campanella, which the author came to know in France.

In 1865 German writer Anna Vivanti-Lindau, mother of the more renowned Annie Vivanti, travelled to the Mediterranean on a three-month trip. Once back in her London home, she wrote an account of her experience, giving rise to a A Journey to Crete, Constantinople, Naples and Florence. Three Months Abroad. The present contribution aims to draw the Journey out of the oblivion to which it has so far been assigned, making it the subject of a monograph for the first time, with a twofold purpose: to shed light on a figure forgotten by history, albeit considerably grounded in the European culture of the second half of the nineteenth century; and to provide a new insight into the history of travel in the

The article aims at demonstrating that Borges, by affirming that «each writer creates his precursors», was rather influenced by Bergson’s reflection on the retrograde movement of the true and on the pre-eminence of the effect over the cause, than
by T.S. Eliot’s article Tradition and the Individual Talent – to which the essay Kafka y sus precursores explicitly refers. In order to prove that, we start from a peculiar slip of the Argentine writer in the conference El tiempo, where he ascribes to the French psychiatrist Hippolyte Bernheim a Bergsonian argument. On this basis, we then explore the relationship among Bergson, Eliot and Borges.

The historian of religion and ideas Hans-Joachim Schoeps (1909-1980) was an extraordinary exponent of the sincere aspiration of a lot of Jewish intellectuality and bourgeoisie to merge into the German national community, on an equal footing with the Christian majority. He and his family experienced the tragic failure of this epochal project. Yet, he did not want to give up and, even after World War II, he fought in defense of his identity as a politically conservative Prussian Jew. His almost unhidden homosexuality constitutes a further trait of the apparent contradictory nature of his figure. His intelligent fidelity to the practice of the late nineteenth-century Geistesgeschichte signaled him also in the academic field as an irreducible opponent of the changed spirit of the time.

This article deals with the relationship between music and language in the light of Italian composer Luciano Berio’s reflection on music as a «language of languages ». Berio’s refusal to consider the possibility of a «meta-music» is interpreted through a comparison with the thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose Tractatus logico-philosophicus was appreciated by Berio for «its evident concreteness». Berio’s «language of languages» is nor a meta-language in respect to other languages or semiotic systems, nor it implies to consider «music» as a species of the superordinate genus «language». The hypothesis developed in the article is that the place occupied by the «language of languages» for Berio, in Tractatus is occupied by logic, that is, such a nonlinguistic and formal apparatus that allows language to exist.

After an introductory section concerning the controversial issue of Vico’s place in the history of philosophy, the article aims at describing the current state of the inquiries on Vico’s thought. Some recurrent themes emerge from the studies of the last decade: scholars have focused on the comparison with the seventeenth-century philosophers, concentrating on the political and juridical perspective of Vico’s thought. Another major reason for interest is the role of imagination and memory in cognitive processes, no longer seen as antithetical to reason, but as the basis of an original theory of the image.

The authors examine Freud’s clinical cases dedicated to Emmy von N. and The Rat Man in a philological perspective. They start with the analysis of the notes taken by Freud during the treatments and then they focus on the way in which the notes were used in the final drafting of the clinical cases. They observe that Freud’s clinical writings disregarded the philological adherence of the notes and that the author considered them as a simple trace to be reworked from a formal and also substantial point of view. The lack of coincidences between the notes and the published texts must not be considered as an error or a stretch. It needs to be intended as a legitimate and acceptable variation with the purpose of introducing some significant openings in the meaning and new possible interpretations.