Felice Cimatti

Philosopher and anthropologist Ernesto De Martino's notion of "crisis of presence" can be understood both as a fearsome and risky condition to be overcome as soon as possible (through the cultural device of the ritual) but, also and above all, as a condition in which human individuality vacillates; in such existential vacillation the seemingly impossible experience of the sacred opens up. Indeed, the sacred can only show itself where the self-reliance of the subject comes into crisis, and in the void that opens up something appears that goes beyond, to the point of risking overwhelming, subjectivity. This paper then discusses how the notion of "crisis of presence" can be used to develop a theory of the fundamental human experience of the sacred.

n Clarice Lispector’s novel The Passion according to G.H., the narrator ventures, hesitantly at first and then dizzyingly, beyond herself, beyond her own humanity. It all begins, and therefore ends, with an encounter with a cockroach. G.H. discovers in the insect a way of escape, that is, she discovers for herself a possibility of being in the
world that had always been there, but which she had never allowed herself to imagine. The cockroach is a mistake,
as it was never meant to be encountered, but it is also an opportunity. G.H. finds something of herself in the cockroach, and thus finds that the cockroach is not out there: the cockroach is inside, has always been inside. At the end
of the novel G.H. will find herself neither outside nor inside. She has herself become a porous surface, between
human and insect, between inside and outside, between thought and mouth. The cockroach is an exemplary case
of an experience that always arises from an error, from an encounter with the real.

Ferdinand de Saussure discovered that language does exist by itself. Language is not a means of communication, quite the contrary; communication can exist because previously there is language. In this paper, the subordinate position of the speaker is analyzed in respect to the autonomous language device. The possibility of a way out from such a condition is examined, using the Lacanian theorization about the concept of the "real".

This paper proposes an extension of existing embodied views of cognition in order to account for the linguistic experience and its complexity. We claim that embodied views should be extended in order to consider not only language grounding but the social and normative aspects of language as well. Motor resonance mechanisms based on mirror neurons are a necessary but not sufficient component of this. We will argue that words cannot be conceived of as mere signals of something but also as tools that allows us to operate in the world. On this basis, we formulate a theoretical proposal that addresses one of the critical problems embodied views face: the problem of the so called "abstract concepts". Our proposal extends embodied views assuming two simultaneous cognitive sources for word meanings; an individual one, the embodied individual experience, and a socially embodied one. While for words having a concrete referent labels are "attached" to concepts formed on the...

In the Seminar XI. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (1964), Jacques Lacan switched from the previous exclusive attention to language toward a 'philosophy' more and more centered about the primacy of the Real. In particular, in March 4th 1964 lesson, Lacan presents the famous anti-humanistic example of the 'look' of a sardine can». In this paper, I will try to show how Baudrillard late insistence on the subject less object derives from such a Lacanian 'realistic turn'. *** «In definitiva, però, bisogna sempre tenere presente che la realtà della quale possiamo parlare non è mai la realtà 'in sé', ma è una realtà filtrata dalla nostra conoscenza o persino, in molti casi, da noi configurata. Se a quest'ultima formulazione si obietta che dopo tutto c'è un mondo oggettivo, completamente indipendente da noi e dal nostro pensiero, che procede o può procedere senza il nostro apporto e al quale in realtà ci riferiamo con la ricerca, a que...

The paper focuses on concepts and words referring to odors and to objects that have an odor. We argue that odors are an interesting object of study since they are evanescent, and since odor words do not refer to concrete and manipulable objects, but to scents evoked by objects. A second reason why odors are interesting is that some languages, as the Western ones, lack a specific odor lexicon, comparable in richness and variety to the color lexicon, and that performance on odors naming is typically worse than performance in color naming. In this work we discuss three main issues. First, we illustrate literature showing that, even if odor words do not have concrete referents, many languages encode them quite easily: the case of odors suggests that word meaning cannot be exhausted by the relationship with a referent, and highlights the importance of the social sharing of meaning. Second, we have discussed the peculiar status of odor concepts and words. Given their ambiguous status, the...

Cognitive scientists frequently (and implicitly) seem to assume that the more evolutionary proximity there is between an animal and Homo sapiens, the more its (brain/)mind and behaviour will be similar to ours. For example, while it is very common to read scientific papers that compare non-human primate behaviours, in particular chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes and Pan paniscus), to human behaviours, it is very rare, in contrast, to read a scientific paper on human mind that refers to insect cognition data. In this paper we try to challenge this unnoticed anthropocentric (and primatecentric) bias, which prevent us to see deep similarities across the cognitive abilities of living beings. The basic idea of this paper is that a «core» cognitive system exists which is widespread among animals, including humans. What differentiates human mind from other minds is language.

Four experiments (E1–E2–E3–E4) investigated whether different acquisition modalities lead to the emergence of differences typically found between concrete and abstract words, as argued by the words as tools (WAT) proposal. To mimic the acquisition of concrete and abstract concepts, participants either manipulated novel objects or observed groups of objects interacting in novel ways (Training 1). In TEST 1 participants decided whether two elements belonged to the same category. Later they read the category labels (Training 2); ...

This paper proposes an extension of existing embodied views of cognition in order to account for the linguistic experience and its complexity. We claim that embodied views should be extended in order to consider not only language grounding but the social and normative aspects of language as well. Motor resonance mechanisms based on mirror neurons are a necessary but not sufficient component of this. We will argue that words cannot be conceived of as mere signals of something but also as tools that allows us to ...

Dieci Tesi sull'arte teatrale di Romeo Castellucci antinomie.it/index.php/2022/12/02/dieci-tesi-sullarte-teatrale-di-romeo-castellucci/ Cronopio porta anche nelle librerie italiane uno dei contributi maggiori-forse in assoluto il maggiore-alla fortuna critica del lavoro di Romeo Castellucci e della Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, La disciplina dell'errore, una raccolta di scritti e conversazioni pubblicata nel 2014 da Jean-Louis Perrier (212 pp., € 18) e che nell'edizione italiana, curata da Alice Guareschi, è arricchita dal contributo di Felice Cimatti: lo proponiamo ai nostri lettori per la cortesia dell'autore e dell'editore.

Any theory of language-ancient or contemporary, philosophical or cognitive-faces the same problem, i.e. how to reconcile the unequivocally corporeal character of the speakers and the world they speak of with the somewhat 'incorporeal' character of the meanings of linguistic expressions. It is for this reason, for example, that directreference theories of language seek to eliminate the Fregean notion of 'sense' (Sinn) from semantics. What is at stake is a completely corporeal account of language. However, such an attempt clashes with the fact that the vast majority of linguistic expressions do not refer either to any objects in the world or to the pre-scientific intuition that words have an autonomous 'meaning' (that is, that the 'sense' of a word does not coincide with the referent, Bedeutung). To solve such a problem, the Stoics introduced in their theory of language the notion of lekton, i.e. what is 'said' or is 'sayable'. Even if the lekton is, properly speaking, incorporeal, at the same time it is the corporeal product of what human speakers do when they utter a verbal utterance. In this paper I propose to compare the notion of lekton to the similar notion of 'use' (Gebrauch), much debated in Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. This paper does not theorise a direct philological connection between the Stoic notion of lekton and the notion of linguistic 'use' in Wittgenstein (even if this cannot be excluded either). Instead, the idea is that when one wants to propose an adequate theory of language, one cannot but introduce a notion such as that of lekton or 'use'. Keywords Stoicism. Wittgenstein. Lekton. Meaning as use. Pragmatics. Summary 1. The Place of 'Meaning' in a World of Corporeal Entities.-2. The 'Meaning' of Meaning.-3. From Semantics to Pragmatics.-4. Conclusion: The Life of Signs.

Le nourrisson produit des sons d'abord de maniere involontaire, puis il emet des sons paralinguistiques volontaires et semble reconnaitre des intentions (ex: il ouvre la bouche quand sa mere lui dit ouvre la bouche) alors meme que sa comprehension des enonces est encore tres approximative. Ainsi, depuis le debut de son experience prelinguistique, l'enfant se fie aux mots. Avant meme d'etre en mesure de penser qu'il veut parler, il assume le fait que les mots ont un sens. L'A. adopte une hypothese evolutionniste pour montrer que ce sentiment de confiance permet d'attribuer a l'enfant des intentions et d'expliquer comment il est possible d'apprendre a associer des etiquettes verbales ou gestuelles aux objets

ll XXXV congresso dell' AISS (Associazione Italiana di Studi Semiotici) dal titolo “Destini del sacro. Discorso religioso e semiotica delle culture”, e organizzato in collaborazione con la Facolta di Scienze della Comunicazione dell’Universita di Reggio Emilia. I differenti studiosi, molti di fama internazionale, si sono riuniti intorno ad un tema, quello del “sacro”, che in semiotica non e riconducibile immediatamente ad un’area di indagine dai contorni netti o a specifiche tecniche di analisi. Definire questa area, confrontare le diverse prospettive teoriche e le indagini testuali, e stato uno degli obiettivi del convegno. Cosa permette di definire “sacro” un testo? Quali sono le valenze semantiche che il termine “sacro” assume nelle diverse culture? E possibile pensare la sacralita come effetto di senso?

"In Rosroe Wittgenstein is still remembered as the man who talked to the birds."(Portraits of Wittgenstein, vol. IV, p. 36)1. Kinds of "Naturalism"Although the issue of Wittgensteinian naturalism is quite controversial (Strawson, 1985; Hilmy, 1989; Wolgast, 1994; Das, 1998; Haines, 2000; de Lara, 2003; Dromm, 2008; Tripodi, 2009; Coliva, 2010; McGinn, 2010; Hertzberg, 2011; Kenny, 2011; Moyal-Sharrock, 2013), in this paper I will maintain that Wittengenstein's description of human language is fully naturalistic. Therefore my argumentative strategy will not to demonstrate that Wittgenstein enlisted to some form of explicit "naturalism," rather I will try to show how Wittgenstein was in fact a sort of naturalistic philosopher when he actually described linguistic phenomena. In particular, his naturalism is apparent in the contrastive comparison he frequently makes between human and animal behavior and language. Wittgenstein is a philosopher who is part of that naturalistic vein that - from Aristotle to Merleau-Ponty - cannot consider philosophy without taking into account the basic bodily experiences of Homo sapiens as an animal (albeit an animal with quite peculiar characteristics).As well known (Rosenberg, 1996; Stroud, 2009; Ritchie, 2014), it is a very difficult task to exactly establish what "naturalism" is; an even more difficult task is to know if Wittgenstein can be considered a naturalistic philosopher (Moyal-Sharrock, 2004; Kenny, 2011; Searle, 2011). Despite these difficulties, I will try to elaborate a tentative and operative concept of naturalism that I will use in this paper. Firstly, naturalism does not mean materialism, that is, the thesis that only material entities exist. For example, an oral language exists, even if it is not the same sort of thing as an apple or a cat (i.e., a description of the material aspects of a language does not capture what make them linguistic entities; Williams, 2011). Epistemologically, this means that it is not the case that only an entity which can be explained by a natural science - like physics or biology - can be considered natural (Searle, 2011). That is, a naturalistic approach does not assume the same stance as "hard" sciences. More controversially, a description of a phenomenon can be considered naturalistic even if it cannot be formulated in evolutionary terms.This is an important point to remember if one wants to understand Wittgenstein's remarks that human language is a "natural" phenomenon, in contrast with an emphasis on evolutionary explanations of human mind (Pinker, 2002). For example, Wittgenstein, in order to delineate the basic characteristic of human language, quite frequently makes reference to animal behavior (Frongia, 1995; Angel Garcia, 2013; Moyal-Sharrock, 2013); at the same time, he never seems interested in evolutionary explanations of human language. That is, he does not search animal behavior for any precursor of human behavior. Wittgenstein does not seem to distrust evolutionary explanations because he believes that that evolutionary biology is not a science. His point is that evolutionary explanations frequently involve anthropocentrism (Gordon, 1992; Chomsky, 2007) and conceptual confusion which prevent us from seeing the differences between Homo sapiens' language and all other animals' languages. At the same time, and in sharp contrast with many others philosophers, Wittgenstein describes human language and behavior in a very crude and simple way, because there is nothing special in human language (Ferretti, 2007). For Wittgenstein a "naturalistic" stance mainly means to look for differences more than similarities. This is a point frequently misunderstood: biology is not the science of similarities between forms of life, rather it is the science of similarities and differences between them (Mayr, 1976). Therefore, Wittgenstein naturalism is neither epistemological nor properly philosophical; moreover, Wittgenstein is a naturalistic philosopher when he describes human language in the same way an ethologist looks at animal behavior. …

We propose to define a psychological hypothesis for the word “me” that designates, for each human being, his or her personal interior Ego. Every human being is naturally an Ego – it is a question of learning the particular linguistic sound (or the particular sign gesture in a sign language) in which it is named in one’s mother tongue. In fact, it is not important, for our analysis, that the Ego be innate or developed gradually through experience. The important point in the psychological hypothesis is that the Ego is an entity (psychological and internal, to be exact) of one kind, while the word “me” is an entity of a different kind. The second hypothesis, which we will call the externalist hypothesis, responds affirmatively to question a), and maintains that “me” indicates a certain individual body, that of the person who is using the word “me”. A possible advantage of this last hypothesis is that in it one is not obliged to admit the existence of presumed and invisible psychologica...

En partant du postulat mentaliste selon lequel le langage est structure par notre perception du monde, l'A. montre comment la distinction entre figure et fond constitue un des modeles essentiels de l'organisation syntaxique et cognitive des langues naturelles et de l'organisation de notre pensee. Ainsi nous parlons du monde de la facon dont nous l'apprehendons visuellement, tactilement... Toutefois notre habilite a articuler les informations exterieures provenant de l'espace perceptible resulte essentiellement de notre perception visuelle : elle permet, d'une part, d'isoler les entites, de les identifier (figure) et, d'autre part, de les positionner dans l'espace et de leur attribuer une action et/ou des informations qui les specifient (fond). Plus fondamentalement, l'A. explique comment l'articulation figure-fond determine la structuration de differentes activites mentales et linguistiques telles que : la memoire, les textes narratifs ref...

The human is an animal that refers to itself as an “I”. According to Descartes, the subject is an axiom, and everything else follows from this primordial certainty. This is a dualism: to postulate an I as separate from the natural world. Prodi rejects this dualism. The challenge of Prodi is to find a naturalistically way to explain how human subjectivity can emerge from the world of things; that is, from biosemiotic complementarity to the I. For Prodi, following Vygotsky’s hypothesis, the “I” qua self-conscious psychological entity, is inseparable from the pronoun “I”, i.e. the discursive capacity to refer to oneself. Human consciousness is therefore the capacity to pay attention to oneself by means of language.

L'A. se demande comment definir un objet et si cette question peut etre posee comme un probleme semiologique ou linguistique. Selon lui, pour comprendre la notion humaine d'objet il est necessaire de regarder du cote du langage, les frontieres entre langage et monde ou entre signe et objet n'etant pas totalement hermetiques. S'opposant a l'idee selon laquelle le langage est independant de notre facon de percevoir le monde et la nature en invoquant la notion d'attention dans la perception, il defend alors une position qui ne se situe pas dans le schema classique idealisme vs. realisme qu'il pense depasse.

espanolEl “monstruo” en Frankenstein de Shelley es un cuerpo forzado a convertirse en humano por si mismo, sin la ayuda de otros seres humanos. Este proceso esta condenado al fracaso, porque no hay humanidad sin socialidad. El caso del “monstruo” es confrontado con otros dos casos parecidos: la estatua de Condillac en Traite des sensations y el “lenguaje privado” en Wittgenstein en Investigaciones Filosoficas. Lo que al “monstruo” le falta es un espejo externo, social y linguistico, donde poder reconocerse a si mismo como ser humano. La "criatura" es todavia demasiado humana para sobrellevar su nueva condicion post-humana. En este articulo se analizan las principales consecuencias teoricas de tal estado hibrido. En concreto, este trabajo finaliza con la propuesta del concepto provisional "comunidad post-humana".  EnglishThe “monster” in Shelley’s Frankenstein is a body forced to become human by itself, without any help from other human beings. This process neces...

... PSICOLOGIA DELL'APPARENZA Quodlibet, Macerata, 2007 Felice Cimatti Nel saggio Il volto e la parola. Psicologia dell'apparenza, Felice Cimatti si propone un obiettivo preciso: immaginare una scienza (non esplicativa) che sfugga alla contrapposizione tra ...

In this paper I try to reply to the comments and objections raised from the target book of this symposium, Filosofia dell’animalita (FdA). In particular, I will try to make more clear and explicit FdA thesis and to better elucidate their theoretical consequences.

This volume provides an overview of contemporary Italian philosophy from the perspective of animality. Its rationale rests on two main premises: the great topicality of both Italian contemporary philosophy (the so-called “Italian Theory”) and of the animal question (the so-called “animal turn” in the humanities and the social sciences) in the contemporary philosophical panorama. The volume not only intersects these two axes, illuminating Italian Theory through the animal question, but also proposes an original thesis: that the animal question is a central and founding issue of contemporary Italian philosophy. It combines historical-descriptive chapters with analyses of the theme in several philosophical branches, such as biopolitics, Posthumanism, Marxism, Feminism, Antispeciesism and Theology, and with original contributions by renowned authors of contemporary Italian (animal) philosophy. The volume is both historical-descriptive and speculative and is intended for a broad academic...

According to the extended mind thesis, the human mind is not limited by the boundaries of the body. In this paper, we propose a description of human emotions based on two distinct theories, not usually considered together: Vygotsky's historical-cultural psychology and Chomsky's theory of language. Together these two perspectives allow us to construct a global theory of extended mind that considers emotions to be artificial entities that have a specific "biological" goal and are external to the body. In the last short section, this model will be applied to the case of "artistic" human affect.

A «psychotic ferocity». Wittgenstein and Lacan
In  this  paper,  I shall analyse  the  relationship  between  Lacan  and  Wittgenstein.  The  passages  in  the  (published  and
unpublished) Seminars are discussed where Lacan explicitly quotes Wittgenstein. What Lacan finds in the Tractatus is:
a) a consistent  description of the logical system of language; b) a precise analysis of the place of an autonomous subject
(or,  better,  lack  thereof)  in  the  system  of  language.  This  is  consonant  with  Lacan’s  representation  of  the  grip  of
language on the body. Wittgenstein thinks that a way of breaking free of language lies in what he calls the “Mystical”.
In this paper I claim that Lacan's conception of psychoanalysis begins where Wittgenstein said one must stop by passing
over in silence (Tractatus, § 7). From this point of view, one can interpret Lacan’s work as an attempt to imagine the
shape of proposition 8 of the Tractatus.

Explores the Deleuzian idea of becoming animal
Proposes a philosophical concept of animality that applies to both human and nonhuman living beings
Draws the first fully detailed cartography of the complex field of animality as it appears in continental philosophy, literary studies, environmental humanities, anthropocene studies, feminist studies, posthumanism, and critical animal studies
Covers two points that have never before been addressed: the deep connection between the question of the lack of animality in human beings and language; and the connection between post-humanism and human animality
Explores the problem of animality in psychoanalysis, in particular in the work of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan and Jacques-Alain Miller
Comments on some of the most important scientists and philosophers who dealt with the theme of animality: von Uexküll, Heidegger, Derrida, Deleuze & Guattari and Agamben
The animality of human beings is completely unknown. Being human means to be something other than an animal, to not be an animal. Felice Cimatti, with reference to the work of Gilles Deleuze, explores what human animality looks like. He shows that becoming animal means to stop thinking of humanity as the reference point of nature and the world. It means that our value as humans has the very same value as a cloud, a rock or a spider.

Drawing on a wide range of texts – from philosophical ethology to classical texts, and from continental philosophy to literature – Cimatti creates a dialogue with Flaubert, Derrida, Temple Grandin, Heidegger as well as Malaparte and Landolfi – as part of this intriguing discussion about our humanity – and our unknown animality.

Literary Case Studies
Franz Kafka: 'The Wish to be a Red Indian' and 'A Report to an Academy'
Temple Grandin: Animals in Translation: The Woman Who Thinks Like a Cow
Curzio Malaparte: Kaputt
D. H. Lawrence: 'St Mawr' and 'The Man Who Died'
Gustave Flaubert: 'La légende de saint-Julien l'Hospitalier'
Romeo Castellucci's theatre

È possibile una vita senza ricordi? Perché abbiamo così paura di dimenticare? Che succede quando alla nostra mente si forma un ricordo? Nonostante l’analogia con la «memoria» del computer porti a pensare il contrario, la memoria ci sfugge completamente. Forse per questo temiamo l’oblio, perché sappiamo che è l’oblio la verità della memoria. È tra questi due estremi del ricordo e dell’oblio che oscilliamo continuamente: fra un tenace attaccamento ai ricordi e il desiderio inconfessato di liberarci del loro peso. Con l’aiuto della filosofia, delle neuroscienze e dell’etologia, il libro delinea una mappa del campo mnemonico, un campo attraversato dalle due linee di forza del dimenticare e del ricordare, lungo le quali si costruisce il nostro difficile rapporto con il tempo.