Deborah De Rosa

The aim of the paper is to investigate the text of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s conference The Film and the New Psychology, in order to deepen his choice of the seventh art as a paradigm for an idea of phenomenology based on the principle that every consciousness is, to a certain degree, perceptual consciousness. This paper aims to show how the reflection of the French philosopher gives cinema the status of a paradigm of the Gestalt phenomenon, highlighting its ability to restore visibility to expression and perception, through the – technical and artistic – reconstruction of the structure of behavior in its exteriority.

The paper proposes a reflection on mathematical beauty, considering the possibility of aesthetic qualities for formal language. Through a concise overview of the way this question is understood by some famous scientists and mathematicians, we turn our attention to Gian-Carlo Rota’s theoretical proposal: his reflections as a mathematician and philosopher offer a perspective, of phenomenological matrix, fruitful for looking at the question. Rota’s contribution allows us to focus on the role of competence, acquired through effort, sedimentation and habit of repetition, in cultivating the potential to recognise the aesthetic quality of formal language. Finally, we draw on some contributions from Gestalt theory, closely connected to twentieth-century phenomenology for chronological and conceptual reasons, applying the idea of gestalt wholeness to the mathematical product and proposing some reflections that may help to clarify some of the dynamics underlying the attribution of qualities of beauty to formulas or the detection of its lack.