Maurizio Maria Malimpensa

This paper investigates the philosophical vision underlying some of the works of the Romantic writer Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (1776-1822), attempting to show how it is expressed in an exemplary way through the fairy-tale conception of the world, suspended between the horrific and the fantastic. A threefold movement is identified as proper to the Hoffmannian experience of reality: the estrangement of reality is for the protagonist the condition of the possibility of unveiling the fairy forces that lurk beneath the mundane textures of everyday reality; access to such an underworld inhabited by irrational forces can either lead to the loss of connection with the real world and the destruction of the individual, or allow a return to it in which the person and the world around him are transfigured and redeemed from the mortification to which the limited and intellectualistic understanding of reality condemns no less than visionary madness. In this way, Hoffmann’s vision is placed by right in the process of dismissing the principle of contradiction as the supreme principle in which the deepest meaning of transcendental philosophy consists.

This essay aims to investigate the presence of the figure of Mary of Nazareth within Fichte’s theological and philosophical reflection. Indeed, through the reading of a youthful sermon that German philosopher dedicates to the Holy Virgin, it is also possible to find in later works of a philosophical nature an influence of meditation on the meaning of the Incarnation in the elaboration of concepts fundamental to Fichte’s philosophical system, such as those of will and bliss. Indeed, in precisely such a mature text as The Way Towards the Blessed Life it is possible to see these concepts united in the moving description of the Mother of God, seen as an ideal of supersensible beauty and an example of religious life.

My essay aims to examine some characteristic features of the historiographical method of École des Annales and microstoria italiana. I intend to show how these historiographical directions are based on a philosophical consideration of the historical object. Through this analysis I wanted to show by difference how philosophy should be understood as historical knowledge and as a genealogical interrogation of the transcendental presupposition of knowledge. Indeed, starting from the Hegelian legacy, it is necessary to question the relationship between philosophy and history and the historicity of philosophical knowledge itself. However, this does not translate into mere historicism, but requires rethinking philosophical practice itself, historical practice and consequently also the history of philosophy. In the “exception case”, such as to falsify the historical reconstruction, is traced the richness offered by the legacy of the historiographical tradition of microhistory.

The article explores Friedrich Schlegel's attempt to develop a transcendental philosophical system between 1800 and 1801, within a context dominated by interpretations of Kantian criticism. Although Schlegel's project was overshadowed by the success of other philosophers like Schelling and Hegel, it offers valuable insights for the post-Kantian debate. The author analyzes Schlegel's approach to philosophy as an "infinite experiment," grounded in a dynamic balance between skepticism and enthusiasm. Central to this view is the idea of philosophy as a self-reflective activity, which does not aspire to absolute truth but evolves in a continuous cycle of relative truths. The essay delves into Schlegel's conception of philosophy as a dialectical and allegorical method, where thought and the natural world are united in a process of symbolic production. It argues that this vision anticipates key themes in contemporary thought and re-evaluates philosophy as an existential exercise.

This article aims to investigate the constitutive connection between philosophy and poetry in Novalis' thought. Through the analysis of the complex relationship between these two terms (only partly superimposable on the relationship between reason and feeling), an attempt is made to show the awareness with which the author grappled with the fundamental speculative questions of his time, providing his own peculiar solution to them, still entirely worthy of study and deepening for the light it manages to shed on the meaning of human existence.

This introduction aims to schematically outline the fundamental features of a history of transcendental logic and transcendental philosophy, an area yet to be exhaustively explored. The immediate objective is to identify the primary characteristics that can serve as a guide for interpret- ing the present issue. Through a concise overview, we explore the significant stages of this history, commencing with the works of its founders such as Kant, Fichte, and Hegel, subsequently delving into the neocriticist movement and its ramifications, culminating in the reflections of Husserl and Heidegger. In this process, it becomes evident how transcendental philosophy consistently redefines the relationship between subject and knowledge, raising crucial questions about the nature of the processes that determine its acquisition. However, it is important to emphasize that this preliminary outline represents merely a starting point. A comprehensive treatment of transcendental philosophy necessitates a thorough and detailed analysis of each phase and its philosophical and historical im- plications. The aim of this work, therefore, is to provide an overview that can stimulate further re- flections and inquiries from interested readers.

The present article aims to enucleate the salient features of Pantaleo Carabellese’s critical ontologism in order to suggest the relevance of relating it with the tradition of thought of transcen- dental philosophy. In particular, the intrascendibility of consciousness, hardcore immanentism and the conception of philosophy as effort are interpreted as clear markers of the Italian thinker’s prox- imity to that deep development of transcendental philosophy that is instituted by Fichte’s Wissen- schaftslehre.

This essay explores the Augustinian legacy in J. G. Fichte’s The Vocation of Man (Die Bestimmung des Menschen, 1800). Rather than attempting to establish a direct textual dependence, it identifies a shared speculative pattern that becomes particularly evident in the work’s progression through doubt, knowledge, and faith. Read against the background of Augustine’s thought, this progression can be understood as a movement of conversion in which the search for truth cannot be fulfilled by theoretical knowledge alone, but requires the involvement of will, desire, and practical reason. Particular attention is devoted to Fichte’s critique of both naturalistic determinism and the self-sufficiency of knowledge, as well as to the role of faith in grounding freedom and the reality of moral action. The comparison ultimately brings to light a deeper affinity between Augustine and Fichte: the vocation of the human being is fulfilled not in the possession of truth as an object of knowledge, but in a practical and transformative relation to its transcendent source, in which freedom, love, and the orientation towards the Absolute converge.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate a specific conceptual figure in Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo, the self-feeling. In order to introduce the analysis of it, we went through the elements that precede its deduction in the Fichtian lectures so that its conceptual radicality can be understood. These are the concept of a goal, feeling and intuition. Through the exposition of the radical meaning expressed in that concept, it becomes clear how the Fichtian system reworks in an original way the problem of apperception, which in so many ways can be considered the very key concept of modern philosophy.

My essay is aimed to provide the main lines of an analysis of Dostoyevsky's The Double that highlights its remarkable philosophical value. It consists in a radical critique of the outcomes of a certain vein of modernity in determining the fundamental features of human experience. Preluding Notes from the Underground and the late masterpieces, The Double also shows through its tragic epilogue how the only possibility to break the cage of solipsism and alienation to which modern conscience is condemned consists in a radical experience of Christianity, through which the subject is opened to otherness. Tragedy still remains the proper character of this experience, but it is not something passively suffered, but rather acted out, since Dostoyevsky's conception of Christianity does not consist in a simple consolation from the evil of the world, but in a path that makes the one who runs through it able to face it.

The aim of this essay is to bring out the theoretical philosophy of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and its link with the current debate. Without making a translation of his metaphoric language, which is an essential feature of his tradition, into a formal or more prosaic language, we tried to point the aporetic side of his thought out, in order to see how deep it goes. If we are not wrong, it will be clear that we must attribute to him a wider consciousness of the speculative problems of the last five centuries’ philosophy, not simply by regarding him as a forerunner of some other philosopher, but a specific and still valid position to deal with.

The aim of this paper is to show how Fichte considers the very meaning of Christian religion through the expression of his content which is given by the Prologue of the Gospel of St. John. It appears that the extraordinary relation that involves the Father and the Son – which is the same which takes place between the Absolute and the Science in the scientific expositions of the latest Fichtian philosophy – needs to be regarded by her concrete exhibition in the singularity of Jesus. Then it is possible to make a distinction between what is historical and what is metaphysical in his Revelation. This gap cannot be filled by deleting it or by subsuming the first in the latter, since it is what secures the possibility itself of Christian revelation. The vision of the Trinity which can be suggested by Fichtian writings is hanged to this comprehension of the second Person, so that the building of a Christology is the great character of the reflection about Christianity offered by Fichte.

This essay examines Emanuele Severino’s early conception of music as “antiphilosophy” in La coscienza. Pensieri per un’antifilosofia (1948). Rather than opposing philosophy through a merely irrational or anti-rational discourse, Severino seeks an activity capable of expressing non-reason without thereby reducing it to the conceptual order it negates. The essay reconstructs his identification of this activity with music, understood not as an art among others but as the manifestation of consciousness prior to its articulation as self-consciousness. Particular attention is devoted to rhythm and temporality, through which musical expression emerges as a non-representational and intrinsically dynamic form of experience. On this basis, the essay explores the complex relation between philosophy and antiphilosophy, reason and non-reason, showing how their opposition ultimately points back to a common origin in intuition and to an irreducible interplay between consciousness and self-consciousness.

The aim of our analysis of the theme of transcendental immagination, as it is presented in the Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre by Fichte, is a comprehension of the most important theoretical problems which are involved in it. By doing that, we try to make a comparison between it and the Doctrine of principles, with which the whole book starts. It results an impressive meaningfulness of this text, that often is removed for the benefit of greater simplicity, but losing the most interesting side of the author’s account. At last, we point out a possible relationship between the theme of the immagination and the metaphor.

This essay examines the relationship between subjectivity and willing in Fichte and Schopenhauer, challenging the widespread interpretation of modern subjectivity as a self-transparent and self-sufficient principle. Through a comparative reading of Schopenhauer’s On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason and Fichte’s System of Ethics, it shows how both thinkers conceive the subject only within the irreducible relation between subject and object, while locating in willing a more originary dimension of self-consciousness. Despite their profound systematic differences, Fichte and Schopenhauer thus converge on the paradoxical idea that the subject can grasp itself only as willing, and that its identity with itself remains ultimately irreducible to objective knowledge. The primacy of willing thereby emerges as a key to understanding the dynamic and non-self-transparent character of modern subjectivity.

The aim of this essay is, through an analysis of the Gioachino Rossini’s comic operas, to present an interpretation of the very philosophical meaning of the happy ending we can find in them. It results that this happy ending takes the shape of a “fortunate deception”, able to spring from the dialectical mechanism that inhabit and gives the structures to the plot of the whole comedy. This mechanism, which we qualify as “absolute deception”, is what lets the happy ending be really produced into the opera, not to be reduced to a bare element dependent by the stylistic conventions historically defined. Thus, we propose a reading key that, in principle, allows us to work out a comprehension of the comedy and of the happy ending that is actually alternative to the traditional meaning we are used to give them and that is possible only through a philosophically careful analysis of their fundamental aspects.

This paper examines the role of feeling in Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo(1796/1799), highlighting its significance in response to Kant’s accusation of mere logicism and, as a result, of solipsism against Fichte’s philosophical system. The analysis contends that Kant’s objections misinterpret Fichte’s position, rooted in a doctrine of feelings, which is pivotal for understanding the relationship between the mind and the world. By demonstrating how feeling provides the anchoring of our representations in reality and the key to the relation between ideal and empirical realms, the paper argues that Fichte’s framework offers a solution to a crucial aspect of pure apperception left unresolved by Kant. That is what Fichteachieves through the concepts of a “system of sensibility” and “feeling of self”. Moreover, Fichte’s theory of feelings, in its connection with the other fundamental concept of “strive”, is aimed to provide the objective validity of the ideas of God, right, and morality.

The aim of the present paper is to show Novalis’ complete belonging to the history of transcendental philosophy by bringing out the connection between his conception of poetry and the issue of transcendental imagination in Kant and Fichte. Given that solving this problem is the main issue around which Novalisian thought is structured, an attempt is made to consider the writing style adopted by the author as necessary to fulfill this task, and not as an arbitrary rhetorical choice. The connection between poetry and philosophy is then explored in the practical role it has to play among human beings, namely, that of revealing the meaning of the whole reality as a manifestation of the absolute. Thus, life itself is properly displayed by the singular existences as absolute creativity, such as that of poetical creations.