Tonino Griffero

Tonino Griffero (Asti, 1958) is an Italian philosopher and currently Professor of Aesthetics at the University of Rome Tor Vergata.

He studied at the University of Turin (where he graduated in Philosophy under Gianni Vattimo's guidance in 1982) with a work on E. D. Hirsch's hermeneutics. Later he received his Ph.D from the University of Bologna (1992) and conducted post-doctoral research in Heidelberg as Humboldt-Fellow (1998–1999). He has been a Researcher of philosophy at the University of Vercelli (1994–1999), then since 1999 an Associate Professor in Aesthetics at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. Since 2002 he is Full Professor of Aesthetics in the same University. He has been (since 2007) the founder and Director of Sensibilia-Colloquium on Perception and Experience. He is Director of following editorial series: "Oltre lo sguardo. Itinerari di Filosofia" (Armando Editore, Rome), "Percezioni. Estetica & Fenomenologia" (Christian Marinotti, Milan), "Sensibilia" (Mimesis, Milan).

1.Hermeneutics

Starting from researches on history of hermeneutics, methodic hermeneutics, the problem of author’s intention, the canon of perfection of work, etc., the first work is on Emilio Betti(Interpretare. La teoria di Emilio Betti e il suo contesto, Rosemberg & Sellier, Turin 1988) that is not only author of a legal hermeneutics, but the leading exponent of methodic hermeneutics in the twentieth century. His great work (1955) concerns the conditions, the manner and the scope of understanding (in humanities) the inner world of another living subjectivity. Being in contrast with the trend to resolve the encounter with the texts in an ever new and arbitrary attribution of meaning, Betti claims a relative objectivity of meaning, attainable through the application of methods that are not tied to natural sciences.

The second field of research are the hermeneutic investigations of Eduard Spranger (Spirito e forme di vita. La filosofia della cultura di Eduard Spranger, Franco Angeli, Milan 1990) a “classic” author of pedagogy and psychology as Geisteswissenschaften. His philosophical biography shows a thinker who keeps his distance from both positivism and the irrationalistic outcome of existentialism and radical historicism. Through several key problems (philosophy of life, personal values and stylization of forms of life, cultural, ethical and religious primacy of conscience), the neo-humanism of Spranger seeks an a-priori normative spiritual cosmos, that, although it is reflected in historically changing perspectives, ensures the structural homology between the individual and comprehensive structures of social world.

2.Schelling and aesthetics of German idealism

The first work in this new field of research focuses the “first” Schelling (Senso e immagine. Simbolo e mito nel primo Schelling Guerini, Milan 1994, that seeks a kind of “golden age” in which the natural and spiritual world are and tell their meaning without breaks or allegorical references, through a narrative style, that is not yet forced to choose between sense and image, and so is really "symbolic" (as identity of finite and infinite, image and meaning, being and meaning), but also through a philosophy of identity whose meaning is an aesthetic and political utopia.

The second work Cosmo Arte Natura. Itinerari schellinghiani CUEM, Milan 1995, focuses the ambivalent face, philosophical-esoteric and aesthetic-exoteric, which governs the first real-idealism of Schelling (1792–1809). On the one hand, he reinterprets the concept of Fichte's philosophy as a history of self-consciousness, the inescapable role of the unconscious and the access to the absolute by intuition, and on the second, he proposes a exemplarism based on a ontological and aesthetic universe, fights again the “bad infinity” of the Modern as well as the related philosophical split between scientific and folk consciousness

The general aestheticization of individual and social that characterizes the "postmodern condition" seems to confer a renewed topicality to aesthetics of German idealism. The third book L'estetica di Schelling Laterza, Rome-Bari 1996) reconstructs the entire aesthetics of Schelling showing her evolution and transformation from the juvenile system of identity to the more mature and disenchanted system.

3.Transitive imagination

The belief in the power of mental influence on someone at a distance, the fear of pregnant women with desires to produce on the skin of his son a skin lesion, and finally the fear of the Evil Eye ability of some individuals, have something in common: the ancient notion of magic "transitive imagination". Of this curious "belief", that a particularly strong fantasy would be able to act at a distance, changing the external reality, the book (Immagini attive. Breve storia dell'immaginazione transitiva Le Monnier, Florence 2003), reconstructs (briefly) the "history": the convergence of neo-Platonism and Arab medicine until the dispute over power of imagination of the eighteenth century, through Boehme's theosophy and paracelsian philosophy. This marginal ontology, in contrast with Christian-Platonic-Cartesian dualism, provides a privileged perspective on the conflict of paradigms that is the basis of the pre-modern epistemology

4.Spiritual body: moving from German Idealism backwards

Schelling's theme of "spiritual corporeality" attests to the value of a theosophical tradition which was well known to him (the speculative Swabian Pietism), especially of the "mysticism of nature" of the prelate of Murrhardt, Friedrich Christoph Oetinger (1702–1782). (Spiritual) body is the "ultimate goal of the works of God": this Oetinger’s thesis, that bypasses the one-sidedness of materialism and idealism, is the focus of Schelling’s real-idealism as kind of Christian philosophy (from the "glorious body", through the alchemical search of the "philosopher's stone" until the natural and aesthetic symbolism and nineteenth-century spiritualism). Oetinger and Schelling seek to overturn every spiritualistic spectrality (old, i.e. gnosis and docetism, and modern, i.e. Descartes). This book (Oetinger e Schelling). Teosofia e realismo biblico alle origini dell'idealismo tedesco, Segrate-Milan 2000, wants to check the influence of Oetinger on the development of Schelling's thought .

The concept of the spiritual body (Il corpo spirituale. Ontologie “sottili” da Paolo di Tarso a Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, Mimesis, Milan 2006) has been a real regulative ideal of many pre-modern knowledge (not just esoteric) and of every “subtle” ontology: from eschatological Christian's resurrected body, through various metaphysics of intemediate bodies (the Neoplatonic ochema, the body of the Eucharist and Mary, the astral body of Paracelsus, the "spirit" of the medical philosophy, the physical and mystical imponderable matters, the alchemical quintessence, etc.) until the organic conception of Geistleiblichkeit of Christoph Friedrich Oetinger’s pansophia. The result is a ilic pluralism, a stratified ontology full of epistemological and soteriological expectations: an authentic revenant of Western thought that in the spiritual body has sought the condition of possibility not only of psychosomatic interaction but also of salvation (even pre-eschatological) of all things.

5.Aesthetics and phenomenology of atmospheres

His current research includes phenomenology of body and perception and aesthetics of atmospheres (Atmosferologia. estetica degli spazi emozionali, Laterza, Rome-Bari 2010), a category that could be fruitful to design and account for those unintentional processes of human experience that some philosophers, psychopathists and (neo)phenomenologists like Hubertus Tellenbach, Hermann Schmitz, Gernot Böhme, Michael Hauskeller, Juergen Hasse (among others) name “atmospheric perceptions”. The expression “atmosphere”, usually meant to indicate something indeterminate, is for Griffero part of a situation in which meaning is dissolved in chaotic manifoldness, and sensing an atmosphere is a function of the lived body (Leib) as opposed to phenomena that are mediated by the senses. The atmospheric perception allows us to transcend the boundaries of the context we inhabit, in other words to bring together (bodily and affective) universalism and (cultural-idosyncratic) pluralism. In fact, in some contexts (philosophical, aesthetics, political, architectonic, pedagogical and so on) it seems that many things if not everything depend on the atmosphere in which something occurs: we talk for example about atmosphere of mutual understanding, of shared and well known insecurity, of fear and intimidation, and so on. Thus, with atmosphere we mean a special place that is occupied by an emotional (lived) space, by (in Heidegger’s terms) the state (Befindlichkeit) or mood (Stimmung) connected with it. The experiential or experienced space, that is not the same thing as the physical, objectively understood space as a place where we are located as physical bodies, is a horizon (an aura) that only arises when we enter it in a bodily form, because the body is a point where the spatial perspective as well as its atmosphere open up. As embodied beings, we are affected by the atmosphere created by the things around us, by a self-unfolding (ekstasis) of things, persons and places. Whereas Heidegger’s moods always presuppose a subjective response, we see atmospheres (in this provocative, anti-subjective sense) not as internal feelings of an individual or metaphors but as pre-subjective feelings, as spatially extended emotions. Therefore we do not create a space and its atmosphere in our own minds, as it emerges inevitably in connection with a situation, in our bodily connection with the world, above all with other people, as a phenomenon between people. So we can say that we are affected also by the atmospheric effect of something: it radiates an atmosphere and suggests to us a (this) judgement, and what’s important is that this atmosphere can be described adequately not only in the first person, i.e. is not present solely for the person who feels it only as long as he is aware of it. We must assume that intersubjectivity is grounded not only in (epistemic) objectivity, but in the quasi-objectivity of atmospheres as quasi-things: a quasi-objectivity that is demonstrated by the fact that we can communicate about atmospheres in language and that they can be experienced as surprising, and, on occasions, in contrast to one’s own mood: an example is when, in a cheerful mood, I enter a community in mourning and its atmosphere can transform my mood to the point of tears. Working out the situational and atmospheric nature of significances, we could put aside the problematic dichotomy subjectivism/objectivism and single out the atmospheres as proper object of our first-impression-life, as comparative mind-independent emotional qualities that confront us with a synaesthetical "affordance". So this quasi-objectivity of atmosphere gives proof of our existential and oecological passivity, namely of the fact that we are not (emotionally too) "master in our own house", providing a valuable perspective from which to reconsider the necessary attunement to the circumambient atmospheric meaning (or rather significance) of valid examples and ideas.

Books

  • Interpretare. La teoria di Emilio Betti e il suo contesto, prefazione di F. Moiso, Rosenberg & Sellier, Turin 1988, ISBN 88-7011-319-1;
  • Spirito e forme di vita. La filosofia della cultura di Eduard Spranger, Franco Angeli, Milan 1990, ISBN 88-204-6387-3;
  • Senso e immagine. Simbolo e mito nel primo Schelling, Guerini, Milan 1994, ISBN 88-8107-001-4;
  • Cosmo Arte Natura. Itinerari schellinghiani, Cuem, Milan 1995;
  • L'estetica di Schelling, Laterza, Rome-Bari 1996, ISBN 88-420-5033-4;
  • Oetinger e Schelling. Teosofia e realismo biblico alle origini dell'idealismo tedesco, Nike, Segrate-Milan 2000, ISBN 88-87004-17-X;
  • Immagini attive. Breve storia dell’immaginazione transitiva, Le Monnier, Florence 2003, ISBN 88-00-86071-0;
  • Il corpo spirituale. Ontologie “sottili” da Paolo di Tarso a Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, Mimesis, Milan 2006, ISBN 978-88-8483-413-3;
  • Storia dell’estetica moderna, Edizioni Nuova Cultura, Rome 2008, ISBN 978-88-6134-163-0;
  • Atmosferologia. Estetica degli spazi emozionali, Laterza, Rome-Bari 2010, ISBN 978-88-420-9392-3.

Some of his recent essays

  • Mathesis universalis. Costruzionismo e metodo assoluto in Schelling, «Rivista di estetica», XXXVI, (1996) 1-2, pp. 103–136.
  • Teoria dell'interpretazione, in M. Ferraris (ed.), Nietzsche. Etica, politica, filologia, musica, teoria dell'interpretazione, ontologia, Laterza, Rome-Bari 1999, pp. 145–198, 329-336.
  • I sensi di Adamo. Appunti estetico-teosofici sulla corporeità spirituale, «Rivista di estetica», IXL (1999), 12, pp. 119–225.
  • Immagini contagiose. Malattia e cure magnetiche nella philosophia per ignem di Johann Baptist van Helmont, «Rivista di estetica», 15 (3/2000), XL, pp. 19–45.
  • Corpi spirituali, in M. Ferraris-P. Kobau (ed.), L'altra estetica, Einaudi, Turin 2001, pp. 147–205.
  • Clef de voûte et chef-d'œuvre. Esthetique et philosophie de l'art dans le Système de l'idéalisme transcendental, in A. Roux-M. Vetö (ed.), Schelling et l'élan du Système de l'idéalisme transcendental, L'Harmattan, Paris-Montreal-Budapest-Turin 2001, pp. 153–174.
  • La Tinktur come corpo spirituale: l'estetica teosofica di Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, «Rivista di estetica», 18 (3/2001), XLI, pp. 54–69.
  • Essere senza poter essere. Spunti ontologici nell’ultimo Schelling, «Rivista di estetica», 22, XLIII (2003), 71-84.
  • Dal sentire al (credere di) sapere. Gadamer e i paradossi del senso comune, in Michele Gardini-Giovanni Matteucci (ed.), Gadamer: bilanci e prospettive, Quodlibet, Macerata 2004, pp. 47–73.
  • “Wie die Alten sagen…”. Bemerkungen zum Verhältnis von Schelling zu Oetinger, in R. Adolphi/J. Jantzen (hg.), Das Antike Denken in der Philosophie Schellings, Frommann-Holzboog, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 2004, pp. 497–519.
  • Immagini con o senza cartiglio. Dall’emblema all’ermeneutica pittorica di Ernst Gombrich, in R. Bösel-M. G. Di Monte-M. Di Monte-S. Ebert-Schifferer (ed.), L’arte e i linguaggi della percezione. L’eredità di Sir Ernst H. Gombrich, Electa, Milan 2004, pp. 17–33.
  • Uguale eppure diverso. Il «corpo spirituale»: problemi ontologici e identitari, «Rivista di estetica», 27 (3), XLIV (2004), pp. 49–115.
  • Corpi e atmosfere: il “punto di vista” delle cose, in A. Somaini (ed.), Il luogo dello spettatore. Forme dello sguardo nella cultura delle immagini, Vita & Pensiero, Milan 2005, pp. 283–317.
  • Figuren, Symbolik und Emblematik in Oetingers „signatura rerum“, in S. Holtz-G. Betsch-E. Zwink (hg.), Mathesis, Naturphilosophie und Arkanwissenschaft im Umkreis Friedrich Christoph Oetingers (1702–1782), Steiner, Stuttgart 2005, pp. 231–249.
  • Un «segreto pubblico». Schelling e l’idea di proprietà intellettuale, in F. Viganò (ed.), La natura osservata e compresa. Saggi in memoria di Francesco Moiso, Guerini e Associati 2005, Milan, pp. 54–86.
  • Paesaggi e atmosfere. Ontologia ed esperienza estetica della natura, «Rivista di estetica», Paesaggio (ed. by M. Di Monte), XLV (2005), 29, pp. 7–40.
  • Apologia del “terziario”: estetica e ontologia delle atmosfere, «Nuova civiltà delle macchine», XXIII, 1, 2005 (Grammatiche del senso comune), pp. 49–68.
  • Zentralerkenntnis, in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, hg. von J. Ritter-K. Gründer-G. Gabriel, Schwabe, Basel, Band 12 (2005), coll. 1291-1292.
  • Quasi-cose che spariscono e ritornano, senza che però si possa domandare dove siano state nel frattempo. Appunti per un’estetica-ontologia delle atmosfere,«Rivista di estetica», 33, XLVI (2006), pp. 45–68.
  • Nessuno la può giudicare. Riflessioni sull’esperienza dell’atmosferico, in S. Chiodo-P. Valore (ed.), Questioni di metafisica contemporanea, Il Castoro, Milan 2007, pp. 80–112.
  • Quasi-cose. Dalla situazione affettiva alle atmosfere, «Tropos», I (2008), (L’apertura del presente. Sull’ontologia ermeneutica di Gianni Vattimo, ed. by L. Bagetto), pp. 75–92.
  • Il potere (a distanza) delle immagini, in T. Griffero e M. Di Monte (ed.), Potere delle immagini? (Sensibilia 1-2007), Mimesis, Milan 2008, pp. 71–108.
  • Le intuizioni senza concetti non sono cieche. L'immagine come "ideazione qualitativa" in Erich Rothacker, in G. Matteucci (ed.), Antropologie dell'immagine (Discipline filosofiche, XVIII, 2, 2008), Quodlibet, Macerata, pp. 47–63.
  • Afferrarsi per il codino? Münchhausen e l'esemplarità dell'esempio, 2009
  • Atmosfericità. “Prima impressione” e spazi emozionali, «Aisthesis», 1 (2009), pp. 49–66
  • La (irresistibile?) “carriera” dell’immagine, in G. Boehm, La svolta iconica, ed. by M. G. Di Monte e M. Di Monte, Meltemi, Rome 2009, pp. 277–295.
  • La materia sottile e i suoi paradossi. Note sulla corporeità spirituale, «Sanctorum», 6, 2009, pp. 136–147.
  • Vincoli situazionali, in M. Di Monte e M. Rotili (ed.), Vincoli/Constraints (Sensibilia 2-2008), Mimesis, Milan 2009, pp. 199–227
  • Ritual as compensation for human deficit and counterpart of a hyper-idealized image of inwardness, «Philosophy & Social Criticism», 36, 1, (2010), pp. 53–56.
  • Atmosfere: non metafore ma quasi-cose, in E. Gagliasso-G. Frezza (ed.), Metafore del vivente. Linguaggi e ricerca scientifica tra filosofia, bios e psiche, Angeli, Milan 2010.
  • "Rapire l'anima a una cosa". Schapiro tra intenzione e perfezione, in L. Bortolotti, C. Cieri Via, M. Di Monte, M. G. Di Monte (ed.), Meyer Schapiro e i metodi della storia dell'arte, Mimesis, Milan-Udine 2010, pp. 209–230.
  • Ragione concreta e coinvolgimento dogmatico, introd. to E. Rothacker, L'uomo tra dogma e storia. Non tutto è relativo, ed. by T. Griffero, Armando, Rome 2010, pp. 7–26.
  • Dal bello all'atmosferico: un'estetica "dal punto di vista pragmatico", introd. to G. Böhme, Atmosfere, estasi, messe in scena. L'estetica come teoria generale della percezione, ed. by. T. Griffero, Christian Marinotti Edizioni, Milan 2010, pp. 5–33.

For a full bibliography Sensibilia

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