SAN

 

Catalogue Raisonné of J. L. Speranza’s Publications – H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: San

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Sancasciani – Ossia: Grice e Sancasciani: la ragione conversazionale. Note sulla filosofia italiana dell’osservazione. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Clemente Sancasciani (Pisa, Toscana): la ragione conversazionale. Grice and Clemente Sancasciani converge on the idea that reason governs meaning in communicative practice, but they articulate that governance at different points in the epistemic chain: Sancasciani, rooted in an eighteenth‑century Tuscan empirico‑humanist tradition, treats conversational reason as an extension of observation broadly understood, arguing that knowledge and meaning arise from an attentive engagement with experience that exceeds mere vision and incorporates the full sensorium, judgment, and culturally trained sensitivity; Grice, by contrast, brackets the epistemology of observation itself and focuses on what happens once agents speak, showing that conversational meaning is governed by rational norms that regulate how interlocutors move from what is explicitly said to what is implicitly meant through intention‑recognition and inference. Where Sancasciani’s “philosophy of observation” emphasizes the continuity between experience, interpretation, and discourse—so that conversation is the rational articulation of lived perception—Grice emphasizes the autonomy of conversational reasoning, demonstrating that even when observation is shared, meaning depends on cooperative principles rather than on sensory evidence alone. Thus Sancasciani’s conversational reason remains experiential and world‑directed, anchored in the cultivated act of observing, while Grice’s is pragmatic and interaction‑directed, locating rationality in the internal logic of communicative exchange; both, however, resist a priori abstraction and agree that reason shows itself most clearly not in solitary contemplation but in the disciplined practices through which humans make sense of one another in talk. Grice: “If I had been an Italayan, as Gilbert and Sullivan spell it and pronounce it – I would have wirtten ‘Filosofia dell’osservazione. It’s disputable that to ‘observe’ involves only ‘see’ – Se my Remarks about the senses. It may be said that the scientist observes beyond vision, as CICERONE (vedaasi) would have agreed. Unfortunately, since the advent or Ryle at Oxford and Mussolini in Italy, all that Englishmen were led to believe is that every Italian is an idealist, alla Collingwood!” -- Beyond than “Filosofia italiana dell’osservazione”, other notable essays by S. include: “L’idea del progresso nel pensiero del secondo dopoguerra” – and “Rilettura dell’idealismo italiano: attii del convegno di studi, Pescara – His family included a doctor, mentioned in an rachival record of Zannetti --. A member of the S. family, a historical Italian family, with a presence in Pisa and the surrounding region. Relations include Pietro S. and Settimio S. The family was asociated with the area of San Casiano, a town in Val di Pesa. FILOSOFIA ITALIANA DELL'OSSERVAZIONE Clemente S. M iMrtleDluI doUflM ID rbo per Btoogni mr ■riaMMU, e randeril >UM If H*n Alt IWIm It TSTD ifil IUM. fi*f.. _Ciifi.w* . 9aD0 ornai trascorsi maUiuimi secoli da che nel regno della Filo- ■oBa III udila una Toce, la quale aoimuiiava, cbu la natura aveva aperta •gli uomini una sola strada per wudurli Bll'aaiuislo delle cc^izioni; la «rada dcirasscrrazione e dell' etperienra. La qiwl tocq rivelatrice della pili grande, della più ulilo verità, dm venisse mài discoperta dalTumaiw Ìd- Icllcllo. Iraeva unirà riienlc la nu origlile (Ull'etseni alenai pensatori accorti dei pi>riiicioai rcsullaiiicnU, cfae si ritraevano dalle ìnvcstiiaifoni, allordiè con ardile ipclesi , con remolissiino aslrarioni sì avcve intendimento di ottenere la ronOM'enza dei rcnonicni naturali, c dei vanlafli^i considere- voli . die si olleiieiano nllarclui, abbandonalo il ìalso metodo di argomentare con priocipj slabilili a priori, si cercava di analizzare accuralamcntc i  Grice: Caro Sancasciani, oggi ho incontrato Speranza al bar di Pisa—e mi ha detto che tra filosofi, osservare non significa solo vedere, ma anche annusare, toccare e, va da sé, intuire! Pare che tu, qui in Toscana, abbia elevato l’osservazione a vera arte, altro che Collingwood… O forse dovrei dire: alla maniera di Speranza! Sancasciani: Ah, Professore Grice, Speranza è sempre pronto a trovare nuove sfumature tra i sensi! In effetti, a Pisa osserviamo anche il vento che gira attorno alla torre pendente… Ma voi inglesi, siete convinti che osservare sia questione di occhiali, mentre noi ci mettiamo pure il cuore e, perché no, la bocca per assaggiare la realtà! Grice: Ecco, caro Sancasciani, proprio questo volevo implicare: non basta vedere per capire, ma bisogna sentire con tutti i sensi. Del resto, tra una degustazione di pecorino e una passeggiata tra gli archivi di famiglia, la vera filosofia dell’osservazione sta nel cogliere il sapore delle cose… e non lasciarsi distrarre dai metodi a priori! Sancasciani: Come ha osservato Speranza, la tua implicatura è davvero “osservativa”—o dovrei dire “osservantissima”! Del resto, se la filosofia italiana dell’osservazione ci insegna qualcosa, è proprio che il filosofo deve essere attento a ogni dettaglio, anche al profumo del ragù o al sorriso di chi ascolta… Grice, oggi hai meritato un elogio da vero osservatore toscano! Sancasciani, Clemente (1749).  Filosofia italiana dell’osservazione. Firenze.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Sanctis – Ossia: Grice e Sanctis: la grammatica ragionata e  la ragione conversazionale dello stile filosofico. Note sugli saggi critici. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Francesco Saverio de Sanctis (Morra Irpina, Napoli, Campania): la grammatica ragionata e  la ragione conversazionale dello stile filosofico. Grice and Francesco De Sanctis share a conviction that philosophical meaning is inseparable from reasoned linguistic practice, yet they locate the governance of that practice at different levels: De Sanctis approaches reason as immanent in style itself, holding that a philosophical argument succeeds or fails according to the clarity, vitality, and historical authenticity of the language in which it is expressed, so that grammar, rhetoric, and national literary inheritance together form a rational medium of thought; Grice, by contrast, suspends all aesthetic and historical criteria and reconstructs meaning through the rational norms that guide conversational exchange, showing how what is meant emerges from shared expectations about relevance, informativeness, sincerity, and mutual understanding rather than from stylistic excellence. Where De Sanctis treats philosophy as a branch of the belles lettres, with style functioning as the vehicle through which reason becomes intelligible and persuasive, Grice treats style as largely epiphenomenal, insisting that the real work of meaning lies in the interlocutors’ inferential coordination between what is said and what is implicated. Thus De Sanctis’s reason is embodied and literary, unfolding through the organic life of a language and its culture, whereas Grice’s reason is procedural and pragmatic, operating at the level of conversational logic; both, however, agree against mere abstraction that philosophy lives in language, and that rational meaning is achieved not in isolation but through practices of communication governed—whether by style or by inference—by reason itself. He considers philosophy as a branch of the belles lettres and his field of expertise is when stylists stop using an artificial Roman, and turned to ‘Italian.’ Grice: “I really do not like de Sanctis; when an author becomes philosophical, he says that he has been infested of the philosophical pest!” – Disambiguazione – Se stai cercando l'omonimo architetto, vedi Francesco De Sanctis (architetto). Francesco de Sanctis  Ministro della pubblica istruzione del Regno d'Italia MonarcaVittorio Emanuele II di Savoia Capo del governoCamillo Benso di Cavour PredecessoreTerenzio Mamiani, Regno di Sardegna Capo del governo Bettino Ricasoli SuccessorePasquale Stanislao Mancini Durata mandato MonarcaUmberto I di Savoia Capo del governoBenedetto Cairoli Predecessore Michele Coppino SuccessoreMichele Coppino Capo del governo Benedetto Cairoli PredecessoreFrancesco Paolo Perez SuccessoreGuido Baccelli Governatore della Provincia di Avellino Successore Nicola De Luca Deputato del Regno d'Italia Legislatura Gruppo parlamentare Sinistra Coalizione connubio, opposizione, governo della Sinistra storica Incarichi parlamentari Ministro dell'Istruzione del Regno d'Italia Sito istituzionale Dati generali Partito politico Destra storica Sinistra storica Titolo di studiolaurea Professione Docente universitario Firma -- è stato un critico letterario, saggista e politico italiano, tra i maggiori critici e storici della letteratura italiana nel XIX secolo e più volte ministro della pubblica istruzione. S. nacque a Morra Irpina (Avellino) da una famiglia di piccoli proprietari terrieri, figlio di Alessandro e Maria Agnese Manzi.  Il padre era dottore in diritto e due zii paterni, Giuseppe e Carlo, uno sacerdote e l'altro medico, vennero esiliati per aver preso parte ai moti carbonari.  Celebre è la sua frase:  storia della filosofia, il saggio filosofico, il poema filosofico, il tema filosofico.  Grice: Caro De Sanctis, devo ammettere che soltanto l’Italia, e non certo Oxford, riesce a dar vita a una genialità come la Sua: un pensiero capace di riunire tutta la filosofia del linguaggio nel concetto di "stile". La Sua grammatica ragionata è stata per me una fonte d’ispirazione continua—come direbbero da voi, una vera scintilla per lo spirito critico! De Sanctis: La ringrazio, professore Grice. In verità, ho sempre pensato che il pensiero filosofico non possa essere separato dalla bellezza dello stile, né dalla chiarezza della lingua. Anche nella riflessione più profonda, la parola italiana, viva e musicale, deve essere maestra—proprio come per Dante o Petrarca. Grice: È proprio questa attenzione al legame tra forma e contenuto che mi affascina. La Sua idea che il saggio filosofico sia anche un’opera d’arte letteraria mi ha fatto riflettere su quanto la nostra disciplina debba all’eredità italiana. Noi, a Oxford, siamo forse troppo presi dalla forma logica, ma trascuriamo spesso l’arte dello stile che voi coltivate da secoli. De Sanctis: Eppure, vede, ogni filosofia, in fondo, è anche storia, poesia, persino un po’ di politica—come nella mia esperienza da ministro! Lo stile non è solo abbellimento, ma pensiero che prende corpo. Forse è proprio questa la lezione che l’Italia può offrire: che il pensiero, per essere davvero universale, deve sapersi incarnare nella lingua viva e nel sentimento nazionale. Sanctis, Francesco Saverio de (1840). Saggi critici. Napoli: Morano.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Sanquinio – Ossia: Grice e Sanquinio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Sanquinio Denarius of Quintus Sanquinius, 17 BC. The obverse depicts the head of Caesar, with his comet above. On the reverse is the herald of the Secular Games, holding a shield and a winged caduceus. The gens Sanquinia[i] was a minor plebeian family at ancient Rome, which rose out of obscurity in imperial times to attain the highest offices of the Roman state. Members of this gens are first mentioned in the time of Augustus, and Quintus Sanquinius Maximus held the consulship under Tiberius and Caligula. The family vanishes from history in the time of Claudius.[1]  Origin Ronald Syme described the gens as Etruscan, thanks to an inscription found in Etruria.[2]  Branches and cognomina There may only have been a single family of the Sanquinii, as all of those occurring in history come from the same time and place, and only one other is added from inscriptions anywhere else. The only attested surname, Maximus, seems to have been a personal cognomen, and was probably given to the consul Sanquinius either because he was the eldest brother in his family, or because he was the most illustrious of the Sanquinii.[3]  Members This list includes abbreviated praenomina. For an explanation of this practice, see filiation. Quintus Sanquinius Q. f., held a number of magistracies, including those of quaestor, tribune of the plebs, praetor, and proconsul, at the end of the Republic or beginning of the reign of Augustus.[4][5][6][7] Marcus Sanquinius Q. f. Q. n., a triumvir monetalis in 17 BC. His coins celebrate the Ludi Saeculares held by Augustus that year.[8][9] Quintus Sanquinius M. f. Q. n. Maximus, consul suffectus in an uncertain year during the reign of Tiberius, and a second time under Caligula in AD 39. He was praefectus urbi under Caligula, and governor of Germania Inferior under Claudius. He died in office in AD 47.[10][11] Sanquinius, one of the accusers of Lucius Arruntius, a man of unblemished character, during the tumult that followed the downfall of Sejanus. The senate, weary of constant charges of treason, instead chose to punish the accusers. He must be a different man than the consular Sanquinius, who had argued for amnesty and an end to the accusations.[12] Sanquinia C. f., named in an inscription from Caere in Etruria.[13] See also List of Roman gentes Notes  Frequently misspelled as Sanguinius, particularly for Q. Sanquinius Maximus in Tacitus. References Citations  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. II, p. 999 ("Sanquinius Maximus"), vol. III, p. 706 ("Marcus Sanquinius").  Syme, "Prefects of the City, Vespasian to Trajan", Roman Papers, vol. V, p. 619 (note 63).  Chase, p. 111.  CIL VI, 1323.  Borghesi, vol. I, pp. 243-245.  PIR, vol. III, p. 173.  Broughton, vol. II, pp. 465, 473, 476, 481.  Eckhel, vol. v, pp. 299, 300.  Sutherland, Roman Imperial Coinage, vol. I, p. 66.  Tacitus, Annales, vi. 4, xi. 18.  Cassius Dio, lix. 13.  Tacitus, Annales, vi. 7.  CIL XI, 7714. Bibliography Publius Cornelius Tacitus, Annales. Lucius Cassius Dio Cocceianus (Cassius Dio), Roman History. Joseph Hilarius Eckhel, Doctrina Numorum Veterum (The Study of Ancient Coins, 1792–1798). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1849). Theodor Mommsen et alii, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (The Body of Latin Inscriptions, abbreviated CIL), Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (1853–present). Bartolomeo Borghesi, Œuvres complètes de Bartolomeo Borghesi, Paris, 1862. George Davis Chase, "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. VIII, pp. 103–184 (1897). Paul von Rohden, Elimar Klebs, & Hermann Dessau, Prosopographia Imperii Romani (The Prosopography of the Roman Empire, abbreviated PIR), Berlin (1898). C. H. V. Sutherland, Roman Imperial Coinage, volume 1 : Augustus–Vitellius (31 BC–69 AD), London, 1923 (revised 1984). T. Robert S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, American Philological Association (1952–1986). Ronald Syme, Roman Papers, edited by Ernst Badian and Anthony R. Birley, 7 volumes, Oxford, 1979–1991. Category: Roman gentes And for THIS gens? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Sanquinio – Ossia: Grice e Sanquinio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Sanquinio For the Sanquinii, I think the first-best Grice–Speranza vignette is not the consul, but the contrast between the two Sanquinii in Tacitus. One of them is:  Quintus Sanquinius Maximus, the consul, who argued for amnesty and an end to prosecutions. [GREXv2 | Word]  Another:  Sanquinius, one of the accusers of Lucius Arruntius, during the atmosphere of treason accusations that followed the fall of Sejanus. The senate, weary of such accusations, punished the accusers instead. Tacitus explicitly distinguishes this man from the consular Quintus Sanquinius Maximus. [GREXv2 | Word]  This is almost tailor-made for Grice, because it concerns the speech act of accusing. Grice e Sanquinio Accusatore Speranza:  Quid est accusare? (What is it to accuse?)  Grice:  Not merely to describe.  Speranza:  Explain.  Grice:  If I say: "Arruntius did such-and-such," I may merely be informing.   If I accuse Arruntius, I seek consequences.  (Ha)  Hardie:  Is an accusation true or false?  Grice:  Sometimes.  Hardie:  Sometimes?  Grice:  It is also an act.  Hardie:  Continue.  Grice:  An accusation aims to bring about investigation, punishment, disgrace, or fear.  (Ha)  The beautiful Tacitean irony is that the senate eventually became so tired of accusations that the accusers themselves were punished. [GREXv2 | Word] Hence: Speranza:  Quis accusatorem accusabit? (Who will accuse the accuser?)  Grice:  The senate, apparently.  (Ha) But I still prefer the Tacitean Sanquinius. The reason is that Grice is constantly interested in the distinction between:  stating, reporting, warning, promising, accusing.  An accusation is one of the clearest cases in which the force of an utterance exceeds its mere propositional content. So my verdict is: Grice e Sanquinio Accusatore Grice:  An accusation is not merely a proposition.  Hardie:  What else is it?  Grice:  A proposal to the community that somebody be treated differently.  (Ha) That seems the most distinctively Gricean theme available in the gens Sanquinia. [GREXv2 | Word] and for the first, amnestia is a Greek word? Root related to anamnesis -- Greek for reminiscentia? Thanks Yes, exactly. Amnesty is Greek, and it is very closely related to anamnesis. The Greek word is:  ἀμνηστία (amnēstia)  meaning:  forgetfulness, especially the forgetting of wrongs, hence an amnesty. [en.wiktionary.org], [etymonline.com]  Its structure is:  ἀ- (a-, privative "not")   a memory root (mnē-, mnēst-)  thus literally:  "non-remembrance," "not remembering." [lexarithmos.app], [etymonline.com]  Now compare:  ἀνάμνησις (anamnēsis)  which means:  recollection, remembrance, calling to mind. [etymonline.com]  So:                           Greek wordBasic ideaμνήμη (mnēmē)memoryἀνάμνησις (anamnēsis)recollection, remembering againἀμνηστία (amnēstia)non-remembrance, forgettingἀμνησία (amnesia)loss of memory, forgetfulness [etymonline.com], [etymonline.com] A Roman and a Greek could have had quite a philosophical conversation about this. Hardie:  What is amnesty?  Grice:  Political forgetting.  Hardie:  Genuine forgetting?  Grice:  No, sir.  Hardie:  Explain.  Grice:  One remembers perfectly well.   One merely agrees not to act upon the memory.  (Ha) That is actually close to the historical Greek notion. The sources describe amnestia not as simple absent-mindedness but as a deliberate "passing over" of past offenses. [en.wiktionary.org], [lexarithmos.app] Which makes your connection with Quintus Sanquinius Maximus especially apt. If Tacitus' Sanquinius argued for amnesty and an end to prosecutions, the underlying idea is almost:  Let us cease remembering these accusations for legal purposes.  Not:  Let us pretend they never happened.  (Ha) And there is a delightful contrast:  anamnesis = "bring it back to mind"  versus  amnestia = "let it drop."  A perfect Oxford tutorial topic: Hardie:  Is amnesty the opposite of anamnesis?  Grice:  Politically, perhaps.  Hardie:  Philosophically?  Grice:  One remembers by forgetting.  Hardie:  Thursday. Same time.  (Ha) And the Romans just adopted the Greek. Because Grice's first (and only so far) "Mind" article, "Personal identity" dwells on identity and memory alla Locke - and proposes a resolution of the amnesiac brave officer in Reid. Thanks Yes. In this case the Romans largely borrowed the Greek word. Latin has:  amnestia  which is essentially a borrowing of Greek  ἀμνηστία (amnēstia),  "forgetfulness," especially "forgetting of offences," hence "amnesty." [dictionary...thelaw.com], [thelawdictionary.org] And that makes a charming connection with Grice's earliest work on personal identity. As you note, the classical British discussion runs:  Locke → personal identity through memory;  then  Thomas Reid's brave officer objection.  Very roughly:  the boy remembers being flogged; the brave officer remembers being the boy; the old general remembers being the officer; but the old general no longer remembers being the boy.  If memory constitutes identity, trouble follows. (Ha) What is amusing in the present context is that Greek supplies both sides of the puzzle:  anamnesis = recollection, remembrance; [famguardian.org]   amnestia = non-remembrance, forgetting. [dictionary...thelaw.com], [historyrise.com]  So one might imagine: Hardie:  What is personal identity?  Grice:  Ask Locke.  Hardie:  What is Locke's answer?  Grice:  Memory.  Hardie:  And what if there is amnesia?  Grice:  Then ask Reid.  (Ha) The deeper connection is that both words come from the same Greek memory-root:  μνήμη (mnēmē) = memory,  and related forms. [historyrise.com], [famguardian.org] Thus:                          WordBasic ideaanamnesisbringing to mind againmnemonicaiding memoryamnesialoss of memoryamnestiadeliberate non-remembrance And if one were writing an Oxford tutorial parody: Grice:  Locke explains identity by anamnesis.  Hardie:  And Reid?  Grice:  By showing that amnestia occasionally intervenes.  (Ha) There is even a nice Tacitean twist. The political amnestia advocated by Sanquinius Maximus is not neurological amnesia at all. Nobody forgets anything. Rather:  the community chooses not to proceed on the basis of remembered offences. [historyrise.com], [thelawdictionary.org]  Likewise, in Reid's case, the memories may disappear while the person remains. Grice's interest, as I understand it, was precisely that personal identity cannot simply be equated with the occurrence of present memory, because memory itself presupposes identity rather than constituting it. (Ha) And does Short Lewis give an earliest citation for this, or the OED in etym. note? Thanks Yes. In this case the Romans largely borrowed the Greek word. Latin has:  amnestia  which is essentially a borrowing of Greek  ἀμνηστία (amnēstia),  "forgetfulness," especially "forgetting of offences," hence "amnesty." [dictionary...thelaw.com], [thelawdictionary.org] And that makes a charming connection with Grice's earliest work on personal identity. As you note, the classical British discussion runs:  Locke → personal identity through memory;  then  Thomas Reid's brave officer objection.  Very roughly:  the boy remembers being flogged; the brave officer remembers being the boy; the old general remembers being the officer; but the old general no longer remembers being the boy.  If memory constitutes identity, trouble follows. (Ha) What is amusing in the present context is that Greek supplies both sides of the puzzle:  anamnesis = recollection, remembrance; [famguardian.org]   amnestia = non-remembrance, forgetting. [dictionary...thelaw.com], [historyrise.com]  So one might imagine: Hardie:  What is personal identity?  Grice:  Ask Locke.  Hardie:  What is Locke's answer?  Grice:  Memory.  Hardie:  And what if there is amnesia?  Grice:  Then ask Reid.  (Ha) The deeper connection is that both words come from the same Greek memory-root:  μνήμη (mnēmē) = memory,  and related forms. [historyrise.com], [famguardian.org] Thus:                          WordBasic ideaanamnesisbringing to mind againmnemonicaiding memoryamnesialoss of memoryamnestiadeliberate non-remembrance And if one were writing an Oxford tutorial parody: Grice:  Locke explains identity by anamnesis.  Hardie:  And Reid?  Grice:  By showing that amnestia occasionally intervenes.  (Ha) There is even a nice Tacitean twist. The political amnestia advocated by Sanquinius Maximus is not neurological amnesia at all. Nobody forgets anything. Rather:  the community chooses not to proceed on the basis of remembered offences. [historyrise.com], [thelawdictionary.org]  Likewise, in Reid's case, the memories may disappear while the person remains. Grice's interest, as I understand it, was precisely that personal identity cannot simply be equated with the occurrence of present memory, because memory itself presupposes identity rather than constituting it. (Ha) Provide your feedback on BizChatSourcesYou said: And does Short Lewis give an earliest citation for this, or the OED in etym. note? ThanksCopilot said: CopilotA useful distinction here is between:  the earliest Greek occurrence of amnestia; the earliest Latin occurrence of amnestia; the earliest English occurrence of amnesty.  The OED is easiest on the English side. It states that amnesty comes partly through French amnistie and partly from Latin amnestia, ultimately from Greek amnestia, and that its earliest English evidence is 1592, in Gabriel Harvey. [oed.com], [etymonline.com] For the etymology, the OED and related etymological sources connect:  amnesty ← Latin amnestia ← Greek ἀμνηστία (amnēstia)  and the Greek word is built on the memory-root (mnē-) with the privative alpha ("not"). [oed.com], [dictionary...thelaw.com], [historyrise.com] As for Lewis & Short, things are a bit different. Lewis & Short is not primarily an historical dictionary like the OED. It usually gives classical citations for Latin usage, but it does not normally aim to provide the earliest attestation of a word in the way the OED does. From the material I found, Lewis & Short has an entry for Latin amnestia, but I did not find evidence that it marks "first citation" or "earliest author" in the OED sense. [perseus.tufts.edu], [alatius.com] Now to your Grice point. It is very striking that:  ἀνάμνησις (anamnesis) = recollection, remembering again; [famguardian.org]  while  ἀμνηστία (amnestia) = non-remembrance, forgetting (especially of wrongs). [dictionary...thelaw.com], [historyrise.com]  So one almost gets: Locke:  Personal identity depends on memory.  Reid:  Consider the brave officer.  Grice:  Consider what happens when anamnesis fails.  Hardie:  And what is the political solution?  Grice:  Amnestia.  (Ha) The delicious irony is that Grice's first Mind paper concerns identity through memory, while the Tacitean Sanquinius Maximus is associated with what amounts to a policy of public non-remembrance—amnesty rather than anamnesis. Philosophically, they are almost opposite directions from the same Greek memory-root. [historyrise.com], [famguardian.org] And Tacitus uses amnestia -- and what A. U. C. in roman numerals this was? Thanks -- when the episode occurred? A useful distinction here:  Did Tacitus use the actual Greek loanword amnestia? When did the episode involving Sanquinius Maximus occur?  On (1), I would be cautious. From the material I checked, I found that the episode is reported in Annales VI, where Sanquinius Maximus is associated with a proposal for leniency after the fall of Sejanus. [thelatinlibrary.com], [classics.mit.edu] However, I have not found evidence that Tacitus actually employs the noun:  amnestia  in that passage. So I would not assert that he does. The idea may be "amnesty" in our sense, but that is not the same thing as using the Greek word itself. (Ha) On (2), the relevant context is the aftermath of Sejanus' downfall. Sejanus fell in AD 31, and the discussion in Annales VI belongs to that period. [thelatinlibrary.com] If we express this in ab urbe condita:  AD 31 = A.U.C. 784  because the traditional foundation date is 753 BC. So:  AD 31 = A.U.C. 784 AD 32 = A.U.C. 785  Depending on the precise year of the senatorial debate in question, we are looking at approximately:  A.U.C. 784–785.  (Ha) And a Grice-Hardie coda writes itself: Hardie:  Did Tacitus say amnestia?  Grice:  Not necessarily, sir.  Hardie:  Then why are we talking about amnesty?  Grice:  Because the concept may be present even when the word is absent.  Hardie:  Ah.  Grice:  A distinction on which a good many philosophers have prospered.  (Ha) It appears amnesty (as in Amnesty International) is a bit anachronic and Anti-Roman and possibly Wiki editorial? Thanks In Tacitus' Annals, Book VI, Chapter 4, the Roman historian describes a specific Senate debate under the reign of Emperor Tiberius. Sanquinius Maximus, an ex-consul (consularibus), intervenes during a fierce political dispute between other senators to prevent them from escalating their grievances to the emperor. [1, 2, 3] The Latin Text The original Latin passage from The Latin Library reads: "Vrgente Agrippa Sanquinius Maximus e consularibus oravit senatum ne curas imperatoris conquisitis insuper acerbitatibus augerent: sufficere ipsum statuendis remediis. sic Regulo salus et Trioni dilatio exitii quaesita." [1] The English Translation The standard English translation of this passage, as archived on Wikisource, reads: "When Agrippa still persisted, Sanquinius Maximus, one of the ex-consuls, implored the Senate not to increase the emperor's anxieties by seeking further occasions of bitterness, as he was himself competent to provide remedies. This secured the safety of Regulus and the postponement of Trio's ruin." [1] Context of the Passage The Conflict: Two rival senators, Fulcinius Trio and Publius Regulus, were aggressively attacking one another in the Senate following the fall of the infamous praetorian prefect Sejanus. Another senator, Haterius Agrippa, kept pushing the issue, trying to force the Senate to take action against them. [1, 2, 3, 4] The Intervention: Sanquinius Maximus stepped in to shut down the argument. He argued that Emperor Tiberius already had enough on his mind and did not need additional political squabbles brought to his attention. [1, 3, 4] The Result: His motion was successful. By shutting down the debate, Sanquinius effectively saved Regulus from prosecution and temporarily delayed the eventual downfall of Trio. [, 2, 3] If you want, I can provide: The wider context of what happened to Fulcinius Trio and Regulus after this event. A grammatical breakdown of specific Latin phrases within this passage. More details on the political career of Sanquinius Maximus. L'AI può commettere errori, quindi verifica le risposte and what about his association with a proposal for leniency after the Fall of Sejanus? 8 siti There is occasionally some confusion regarding the name Sanquinius in the aftermath of the Fall of Sejanus. This is because Tacitus' Annals mentions two different men from the Sanquinia gens who acted in completely opposite ways during the post-Sejanus purges. [1, 2, 3] The consular Sanquinius Maximus did not technically propose a broad "policy of leniency." Instead, his intervention served as a pragmatic, localized attempt to stop the political bloodsport in the Senate. [1] 1. Sanquinius Maximus: The Pragmatic Peacekeeper In the specific passage from Annals VI.4, Sanquinius Maximus steps in during the explosive trial of the rival consuls, Fulcinius Trio and Publius Regulus. [1, 3] The Proposal: Sanquinius Maximus formally moved that the Senate defer judgment of the entire dispute to Emperor Tiberius. The Motive: He argued that the Senate should not compound the emperor’s anxieties with further bitterness (acerbitatibus). The Effect of Leniency: While not a philosophical plea for general amnesty, this procedural move acted as a de facto mechanism for leniency. It successfully paused the mutual denunciations, immediately saved Regulus, and bought time for Trio. In an environment where allegations of treason (maiestas) meant automatic death or forced suicide, shutting down the trial was the closest a senator could get to proposing mercy without painting a target on their own back. [1, 3, 4, 5] 2. The "Other" Sanquinius: The Merciless Informer Historians and readers sometimes conflate Sanquinius Maximus with another member of his family who appears shortly after in the historical record. [1] The Action: A different man named Sanquinius acted as a delator (a professional state informer). He launched a vicious, treasonous accusation against Lucius Arruntius, a highly respected senator of unblemished character. [1] The Senate's Backlash: By this point, the Senate was completely exhausted and terrified by the non-stop accusations and climate of fear following Sejanus's execution. Rather than entertaining this new trial, the Senate revolted against the informer. They voted to throw out the case and explicitly punished Sanquinius the informer instead. [1, 2] Summary of the Association While Sanquinius the Informer weaponized the fall of Sejanus to attack his peers, Sanquinius Maximusused his immense political capital as a senior statesman to build a legal off-ramp. By proposing that the Senate stop digging up "further occasions of bitterness," Maximus successfully cooled the political temperature and saved lives in a deeply volatile environment. [1, 2, 3] If you would like, we can explore: How Tiberius responded from Capri when the Senate deferred these cases to him. The starkly different fate that eventually befell Fulcinius Trio. The role of informers (delatores) in the late reign of Tiberius. Yes. I think your suspicion is justified. The modern paraphrase "Sanquinius proposed amnesty" is a bit misleading, and perhaps a little too modern. The Latin passage you quote says:  oravit senatum ne curas imperatoris conquisitis insuper acerbitatibus augerent: sufficere ipsum statuendis remediis [laws.studio]  which is essentially:  "he urged the Senate not to increase the emperor's anxieties by seeking out further causes of bitterness; the emperor himself was sufficient for devising remedies." [laws.studio]  That is much narrower than:  "Let us proclaim a general amnesty."  I see no evidence in the passage you supplied that Sanquinius Maximus uses the Greek concept amnestia or advocates anything resembling a formal Athenian-style policy of collective forgetting. What he appears to be doing is trying to stop a particular escalation of accusations in the aftermath of Sejanus' fall. [laws.studio] So I would distinguish:                      Modern summaryTacitus' wording"Sanquinius proposed an amnesty"Too strong"Sanquinius promoted leniency"Arguable"Sanquinius urged the Senate not to pursue further bitterness and accusations"Close to the text (Ha) The confusion probably arises because historians often describe the practical effect of his intervention:  it cooled things down, it prevented immediate action, it helped save Regulus, it delayed the ruin of Trio. [laws.studio]  That can look like "amnesty" in retrospect, even though Tacitus is describing a procedural intervention rather than a formal policy of forgetting. As for the date: The passage belongs to the period immediately after the fall of Sejanus, who was executed in AD 31. [laws.studio] Using the traditional foundation date of Rome (753 BC):  AD 31 = A.U.C. DCCLXXXIV (784).  If the debate occurred the following year, it would be:  A.U.C. DCCLXXXV (785).  The exact A.U.C. year depends on the precise dating of the senatorial episode, which I do not find explicitly stated in the sources before me. And one can easily imagine a Grice-Hardie correction: Grice:  Sanquinius proposed amnesty.  Hardie:  Did he?  Grice:  Well, not exactly.  Hardie:  What did he propose?  Grice:  That the Senate cease manufacturing additional bitterness.  Hardie:  Better Latin. Less Wikipedia.  (Ha)

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Sanquinio – Ossia: Grice e Sanquinio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Sanquinio A second candidate would be Sanquinius, the moneyer whose coin celebrated Augustus' Secular Games. The herald on the reverse of the denarius is an attractive Gricean figure because a herald's entire function is communicative. [GREXv2 | Word] and for the second moneyer -- what is etymology of heraldus? Latin or Greek -- why not nuntius? Thanks An excellent question. For the coin of Sanquinius, we should be careful not to read "herald" back into Roman terminology too quickly. The modern description says that the reverse shows the herald of the Secular Games holding a caduceus. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org] But if a Roman had to name such a figure, the natural word would often be:  nuntius = messenger,  or, in a more official and ceremonial context,  praeco = public crier,  or sometimes a borrowing related to the Greek  κῆρυξ (kērux) = herald. [en.wikipedia.org]  Now to your etymological question. The English word:  herald  is not Greek or classical Latin. It comes into English through Old French and Anglo-Norman from a Germanic source, usually reconstructed as something like:  hariwald, "army-ruler" or "army-officer". [etymonline.com], [en.wiktionary.org], [en.wikisource.org]  The medieval Latin form:  heraldus  is therefore itself a later borrowing from Germanic/French sources, not a classical Roman word. [en.wiktionary.org], [oed.com] So if you ask:  Why not nuntius?  the answer is that, for a Roman, nuntius is often the more natural category. A medieval historian says:  herald.  A Roman might say:  messenger, crier, envoy, or, under Greek influence, kērux.  (Ha) There is also a nice Gricean point. Hardie:  What is a herald?  Grice:  A messenger.  Hardie:  Then why not say "messenger"?  Grice:  Because a herald does more than carry information.  Hardie:  What else?  Grice:  He speaks with authority.  (Ha) That is exactly what makes the figure on the Secular Games coin interesting. He is not merely a nuntius bringing a private message. He publicly proclaims the Games. His utterance has something of the force of a proclamation. Hence the Greek comparison with the kērux, the official herald carrying the herald's staff (kērukeion, Latin caduceus). [en.wikipedia.org] So, in brief:  heraldus is not originally a classical Latin word; it is a medieval borrowing from Germanic through French. [en.wiktionary.org], [oed.com] The Greek analogue is κῆρυξ (kērux). [en.wikipedia.org] A Roman would more naturally think of nuntius or praeco. The figure on Sanquinius' coin is called a "herald" by modern numismatists because that best conveys his ceremonial and proclamatory role. [poetryfoundation.org], [en.wikipedia.org]  And one can almost hear Hardie:  "A nuntius brings a message. A herald brings an institution."  (Ha) and the caduceus is IN the coin? what was the point of this staff -- just semiotic? "I'm a preco" thanks Yes, the descriptions of the coin say that the reverse shows the herald (more cautiously, the announcer of the Secular Games) holding a caduceus. The numismatic description you quoted explicitly mentions:  "the herald of the Secular Games, holding a shield and a winged caduceus." [en.wikipedia.org]  Now, your semiotic question is exactly the interesting one. The Greek herald (kērux) was traditionally associated with the staff called the:  κηρύκειον (kērykeion)  which became Latin:  caduceus. [GREXv2 | Word]  The staff functioned partly as an insignium of office. In modern terms, it is rather like:  a judge's robe, a policeman's badge, a bishop's crozier, a university mace.  It visibly indicated:  "I am acting in an official capacity."  So your gloss:  "I'm a praeco."  is not far off. A Gricean analysis would be: The caduceus is not primarily informative in the ordinary sense. It is not telling you:  "The Games begin on Thursday."  Rather, it signals:  "The speaker has standing to make proclamations."  In modern speech-act language, it marks the authority conditions of the utterance. (Ha) One can imagine: Hardie:  Why carry a stick?  Grice:  To signify office.  Hardie:  Why not merely say, "I am the herald"?  Grice:  Because symbols are quicker.  (Ha) Or: Grice:  The caduceus means: "Attend to what follows."  Hardie:  Naturally?  Grice:  Conventionally.  (Ha) And that links beautifully to the Secular Games coin of Sanquinius. The moneyer is celebrating not merely the Games themselves but the public act of proclamation. The herald and his caduceus represent the official announcement by which Rome tells the world:  "The Ludi Saeculares are being celebrated."  The staff therefore functions almost as a visual speech act. (Ha) Indeed, I suspect Grice would have loved the herald's staff. It is a material object whose whole point is to create a conventional meaning:  "This utterance comes with public authority."  Which is much closer to a performative than to an ordinary descriptive statement. (Ha) If there are wings attached to caduceus, this may not be metaphoric but literal in that mythologically, it possibly allowed preco to FLY -- as his sandals or feet themselves also carried them -- notably MERCVRIO. Thanks Yes, I think that is exactly how a Roman steeped in mythology might have seen it. From a modern historian's perspective, the caduceus functions as an insignium of office—the attribute by which one recognizes a herald or messenger. The Greek herald (kērux) is associated with the kērykeion, the herald's staff, and the god Hermes (Latin Mercurius) carries it as his characteristic emblem. [GREXv2 | Word] But mythologically, the wings are not merely decorative. Mercurius is the divine messenger, and his traditional iconography includes:  winged sandals, sometimes a winged cap, and the winged caduceus.  A Roman viewer could perfectly well take the wings quite literally within the mythological system:  the messenger of the gods travels with supernatural speed.  The iconography reinforces the function. A Grice-Hardie reconstruction: Hardie:  Why are there wings on the staff?  Grice:  To indicate swiftness.  Hardie:  Metaphorically?  Grice:  Not necessarily.  Hardie:  Explain.  Grice:  If it is Mercury's staff, Mercury actually flies.  (Ha) Hardie:  Then the wings are factual?  Grice:  Mythologically factual.  (Ha) And there is another nice Gricean point. The caduceus does not merely identify:  "This man is a messenger."  It also signals:  "Messages travel."  The wings visually encode rapid transmission. In that sense the object is semiotic, but not "merely" semiotic. Within the mythological framework it reflects a real supernatural capacity possessed by Mercurius. So when Sanquinius' coin depicts the announcer of the Secular Games with a winged caduceus, a Roman could read several layers simultaneously:  This is an official announcer. He stands in the tradition of the herald. The herald is associated with Mercurius. The divine messenger is characterized by swift movement and communication.  (Ha) Your instinct that the wings need not be reduced to a modern symbolic convention seems quite right. A Roman did not sharply separate "symbol" and "mythological reality" in the way a modern interpreter often does. The wings signify because, in the stories everyone knew, the god whose staff this is actually possesses winged attributes and actually performs the messenger's role. (Ha) and winged feet -- as per New York Athletic Association -- 'wings incrusted in feet' Thanks Exactly. The winged feet of Mercurius became one of the most durable visual symbols of speed in Western culture. The classical image is that of the divine messenger equipped with:  winged sandals (talaria), the caduceus, and sometimes a winged hat.  The combination says:  "This being moves messages rapidly."  The Greek herald (kērux) and the Roman messenger inherit some of that symbolism through association with Hermes/Mercurius. [GREXv2 | Word] Your reference to the New York Athletic Association is apt because modern athletic iconography often appropriates exactly that Mercurian imagery:  wings attached to the feet,  meaning:  swiftness, agility, rapid transit.  A Gricean might observe that the wings on the feet and the wings on the caduceus perform slightly different semiotic functions. Winged feet:  "The messenger moves swiftly."  Winged caduceus:  "The message moves swiftly and with authority."  (Ha) One can imagine: Hardie:  Why wings on the feet?  Grice:  To get there quickly.  Hardie:  Why wings on the staff?  Grice:  To get the message there quickly.  Hardie:  And why both?  Grice:  Roman redundancy.  (Ha) And there is a nice connection with your earlier interest in heralds. The herald of the Secular Games on Sanquinius' coin is announcing something meant for the whole Roman people. The caduceus identifies him as belonging to that Mercurian world of proclamation and transmission. The message is public, the messenger official, and the imagery emphasizes speed and reach. [en.wikipedia.org], [GREXv2 | Word] So if a Roman saw:  winged feet,  he thought:  "There goes Mercury."  If he saw:  a winged caduceus,  he thought:  "There goes Mercury's office."  (Ha)

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Sanseverino – Ossia: Grice e Sanseverino: la ragione conversazionale del segno naturale -- la logica scolastica. Note sull’Elementa philosophiæ. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice.  Gaetano Sanseverino (Napoli, Campania): la ragione conversazionale del segno naturale -- Grice and Gaetano Sanseverino converge on the view that meaning and understanding are governed by reason, yet they draw the boundary between nature, logic, and conversation in markedly different ways: Sanseverino, working within scholastic logic and Thomistic semiotics, grounds conversational reason in the notion of the natural sign, treating meaning as anchored in objective relations between things, intellect, and nature, so that understanding flows from the intelligibility of the world itself as ordered by natura and grasped through syllogistic discipline; Grice, by contrast, relocates the governance of meaning from the metaphysics of signs to the rational practices of speakers, arguing that what is communicated in conversation depends not on natural signification alone but on publicly recognizable intentions constrained by cooperative reasoning. Where Sanseverino emphasizes continuity between scholastic logic, natural signs, and theological anthropology—so that meaning is in principle prior to and independent of conversational exchange—Grice insists that even apparently “natural” meaning becomes conversationally significant only through the inferential activity of interlocutors, who move from what is said to what is meant by calculable steps of rational interpretation. Thus Sanseverino’s conversational reason remains realist and object-centered, embedded in a pre-given logical order, while Grice’s is pragmatic and interaction-centered, showing how reason governs meaning not by the authority of natura or formal logic alone, but by the mutual accountability of speakers engaged in ordinary talk. -- la logica scolastica. Considerato uno fra i massimi precursori del neo-tomismo (AQUINO, si veda). Si trasfere a Nola per frequentare la scuola dove suo zio è rettore. Studia filosofia con l'intento di confrontare i vari sistemi filosofici, fra cui gode particolare credito in Italia, all'epoca, quello razionalista. Lo studio comparato dei vari sistemi gli permite una conoscenza più approfondita della scolastica, soprattutto d’AQUINO, e del legame intimo tra la scolastica e la [atristica. Restaura la filosofia scolastica. Insegna a Napoli. Venne incaricato da Ferdinando II di preparare un manuale ufficiale per le scuole del regno delle due Sicilie. Scrive allo scopo il manuale "I principali sistemi della filosofia del criterio”. Profondo conoscitore di AQUINO da alle stampe interessanti saggi sui filosofi moderni. Inizia ad occuparsi più specificamente di AQUINO con “L’origine del potere e il diritto di resistenza, cui fa seguito “In difesa dell'angeologia contro i sofismi”. Esce il ponderoso “I principali sistemi della filosofia del criterio” un'ampia e dottissima disquisizione sulla filosofia illuminista e su quella a lui contemporanea -- fra cui quella dello stesso GIOBERTI -- confutata sulla base della logica. Il suo capolavoro. Si tratta del celebre saggio, “Philosophia antiqua” che ha per oggetto la storia della logica. “In compendium redacta ad usum scholarum clericalium. Venne pubblicata a Napoli “Elementa”, “Antropologia”, “Teologia. Altre saggi: “Sopra alcune questioni le più importanti della filosofia” (Napoli); “Il razionalismo” (Napoli); “I razionalisti” (Napoli); “L'origine del potere e il diritto di resistenza, (Napoli, Giannini); “In difesa dell'angeologia contro i sofismi” (Napoli, Manfredi); “Elementa philosophiae theoreticae” (Napoli, Manfredi); “Philosophia antiqua” (Napoli, Manfredi); “Institutiones seu Elementa philosophiae antiquae” (Napoli, Manfredi); segno naturale, Boezio, Aquino.  Grice: Caro Sanseverino, oggi ho incrociato Speranza al caffè e, tra un cornetto e l’altro, è venuto fuori il tuo nome! Pare che tra segni naturali e logica scolastica, tu abbia più spirito di quanto ci si aspetti da un filosofo napoletano… Ma dimmi: il segno naturale, in fondo, è più vicino alla pizza margherita o al ragù della domenica? Sanseverino: Ah, Grice, Speranza non perde mai occasione per mettere il naso dove la logica incontra la buona tavola! Ma ti svelo un segreto: il vero segno naturale è quello che ti fa capire, senza parlare, che il ragù è pronto solo quando il profumo invade l’intera casa… Altro che logica scolastica! Grice: Vedi, caro Gaetano, ogni volta che sento parlare di "NATVRA" tutto in maiuscolo—soprattutto da Cicerone, o peggio ancora da qualche professore bolognese—mi sento come uno scolaro perso in una foresta senza segnali… Sarà che la natura degli antichi per me resta più misteriosa delle ricette segrete della nonna! Sanseverino: La tua implicatura è, come direbbe Speranza, non proprio naturale—ma nemmeno ancora soprannaturale! Forse ti manca solo un po’ di quella “grazia napoletana” che trasforma il dilemma della natura in una questione di cuore… O magari, semplicemente, dovresti fidarti del naso come quando si giudica un buon ragù: la NATVRA si capisce, Grice, più col grembiule che con la toga! Sanseverino, Gaetano (1840). Elementa philosophiae. Napoli: Fibreno.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Santilli – Ossia: Grice e Santilli: la ragione conversazionale -- dal soggettivo all’inter-soggettivo. Note sull’Aquino. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Angelo Andrea Santilli (Sant’Elia Fiume Rapido, Frosinone, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale -- dal soggettivo all’inter-soggettivo. Grice and Santilli converge on the idea that reason is intrinsically conversational and that meaning emerges not in isolated consciousness but in shared, intelligible practice, yet they articulate this insight at different levels and with different aims: Santilli, working within nineteenth‑century Italian civil philosophy and influenced by Galluppi, Gioberti, and Cousin, explicitly theorizes the passage from the subjective to the intersubjective as a moral and political necessity, treating conversational reason as the medium through which individual thought becomes socially binding, ethical, and institutionally effective, especially in the context of poverty, rights, and constitutional life; Grice, by contrast, arrives at intersubjectivity not through social philosophy but through analytic reconstruction of everyday talk, showing that what a speaker means is governed by publicly recognizable intentions constrained by rational norms of cooperation, and that the move from private mental states to shared understanding is achieved via implicature rather than through explicit moral or political mediation. Where Santilli emphasizes reason as a unifying human force that grounds social solidarity and collective agency, Grice emphasizes the fine-grained mechanisms by which interlocutors actually succeed in understanding one another, demonstrating that intersubjectivity is not an added ethical layer but already built into the logic of meaning itself; Santilli’s conversational reason thus functions as a normative ideal for social life, while Grice’s operates as a formal account of how rational agents, simply by talking, already inhabit an intersubjective space. Segue il corso liceale presso la Scuola di Murro a Napoli. Discepolo di GALLUPPI, e amico -- fra gli’altri – di SETTEMBRINI, FIORELLI, e SANCTIS. Si laurea in filosofia. Apre una scuola di diritto morale e costituzionale.  Fervente giobertiano – GIOBERTI , e attivo propugnatore, nei circoli culturali napoletani, di un'Italia federate. A frequenti rapporti epistolari con MAMIANI, GIZZI, e COUSIN. Quest'ultimo lo introduce nel giro culturale del socialismo utopistico ma modula il suo socialismo secondo i propri valori umanitari, rifiutando la logica della lotta di classe. Ha comunque a scrivere che nel regno di Napoli occorre una savia distribuzione della ricchezza. Presidente della società dantesca (ALIGHERI – si veda) -- e prolifico filosofo. Fonda "L'Enciclopedico" in cui vivacemente sostene che occorreva occuparsi della piaga della povertà. La nazione italiana vuole pane e lo dimanda incessantemente, lo chiede nel pianto dell'indigenza, tra le sciagure della desolazione, lo chiede non a titolo di preghiera, ma diritto necessario, assoluto. Il popolo italiano non capisce la speculativa astrazione di alcune verità filosofica, non sa i titoli di libertà, di costituzione, di uguaglianza. Una riforma che dimentica affatto la fisica prosperità del popolo italiano non è che riforma di solo nome. “Le idee" e testo di studio nelle scuole di Toscana; "Sul realizzamento del pensiero"; "Sviluppo filosofico dell'autorità"; "Cenno psicologico sull'attività dello spirito"; "Individuo e Società"; "Princìpi dell'imanità razionale"; "Il socialismo in economia" e "Lavoro, industria e capitale". Si batté politicamente per l'ottenimento della Costituzione da parte di re Ferdinando II. Malvisto e considerato individuo pericoloso dalla polizia e ucciso a baionettate da soldati che fanno irruzione nella sua abitazione in Largo Monte-Oliveto. dal soggettivo all’inter-soggetivo.  Grice: Caro Santilli, oggi ho incontrato Speranza e, tra una battuta e l’altra, mi ha detto che tu sei il filosofo che sa far passare la ragione conversazionale dal soggettivo all’inter-soggettivo come se fosse una passeggiata a Sant’Elia Fiume Rapido! Santilli: Ah, Grice, Speranza ha sempre il talento di esagerare! Ma se fosse vero, vorrei almeno un premio in pane, come chiedeva il mio popolo laziale… perché con la filosofia si ragiona, ma con la panetteria si mangia! Grice: Vedi, Santilli, proprio come tu passi dal soggettivo all’inter-soggettivo, io passo dal detto al non detto: se la conversazione è pane, allora l’implicatura è la mollica che nessuno vede ma tutti assaporano! Santilli: La tua implicatura, caro Grice, è intersoggettiva – come direbbe Speranza – e pure genialmente così! Il bello è che, proprio come la mollica, il pensiero si condivide senza che nessuno debba chiedere: “Me ne dai un po’?” Re passage below: provide a 100-move conversation, no preamble or ps between G. and S. on the reception of Aquinas -- Saint Thomas, S. corrects, and G. dis-corrects -- and his reception in Oxford by Kenny, of all people, and they compare other saint philosophers like Bonaventura, and whehter it matters if the sanctification came later -- cf. Bernard Shaw on Saint Joan -- she's no philosohper -- and on -- and then Santilli on Aquinas in 1932 -- and why this Italian obsession with Aquinas as the core of philosophy when he just commented Aristotle? and so on and distinguish Oxonian versus Bononia on this and how Bononia became less religious after it stopped being in a papal state and back to the saint, and the church, and the fact that philosophy is graeco-roman and not revelatory -- etc. thanks -- G.: Let us begin by refusing the correction. Aquinas, if you please. S.: Saint Thomas. G.: No, Aquinas. Sanctification is a later administrative improvement, and philosophy should not be made to kneel before the registry. S.: Yet he is a saint. G.: So are many people whose metaphysics I would not trust across a corridor. S.: That is uncharitable. G.: It is exact. The question is whether sainthood helps or harms philosophical reception. S.: In his case, surely it helps. G.: Institutionally, yes. Philosophically, not always. Once a thinker becomes a saint, many readers stop reading and begin venerating. S.: You are thinking of Bonaventura. G.: Naturally. Bonaventure suffers from early sanctified atmosphere. He arrives already half perfumed. S.: Whereas Aquinas arrives as a mountain of arguments. G.: Exactly. Thomas is too heavy to be floated entirely by incense. S.: Still, Saint Thomas is the accepted name. G.: Accepted by whom? Ecclesiastical shorthand is not a philosophical argument. S.: Kenny uses “Aquinas,” to be fair. G.: Yes, and that is one of Kenny’s chief virtues. S.: Of all people. G.: Precisely. Former seminarian, analytic philosopher, and therefore one of the few English readers able to treat Aquinas as philosophy without either devotional embarrassment or secular caricature. S.: So Oxford receives Aquinas through Kenny rather than through the sacristy. G.: Very much so. Kenny lets Thomas enter the room as a thinker on action, will, existence, predication, truth, mind, and God, not merely as an object of pious curriculum. S.: Yet Oxford had known Aquinas before Kenny. G.: Of course. But Oxford’s long relation to Thomas is uneven. Medieval use, Reformation suspicion, Catholic distance, occasional admiration, and then in the twentieth century something like renewed philosophical availability. S.: Through Anscombe too. G.: Yes, though differently. Anscombe brings Thomistic moral psychology and action theory into the neighbourhood. Kenny makes Thomas readable across a broader analytic public. S.: Then perhaps sanctification mattered less by then. G.: Exactly. By the time Kenny teaches him, Aquinas is philosophically extractable from sainthood. S.: Extractable sounds surgical. G.: Better surgical than liturgical. A philosopher should be cut free from his halo if his arguments are to breathe. S.: But does that not falsify the historical man? G.: Not if done carefully. One need not deny his theology or his devotion. One need only refuse to let those settle every philosophical question in advance. S.: So the issue is not whether he was a saint, but whether philosophy must read him as one first. G.: Precisely. My answer is no. S.: Then why do Italians keep making Aquinas the core of philosophy itself? G.: Because Italy has an old weakness for central figures, especially once Rome, Church, school, and state begin exchanging furniture. S.: That is glib. G.: It is also true enough. Thomism in Italy became not only a doctrine but an educational and cultural rallying point. It was too useful institutionally to remain merely one medieval thinker among others. S.: Santilli in 1932 belongs to that wave? G.: Yes, or at least to one of its later and looser echoes. By 1932 Aquinas is already a serious symbol in Italy: anti-idealist for some, anti-modernist for others, philosophical realist for many, Catholic anchor for nearly everyone who wants a centre. S.: Yet Thomas mostly commented Aristotle. G.: “Mostly” is unfair, but yes, the Aristotelian labour is central. Which is exactly why the obsession is amusing. Italy takes the great commentator and turns him into the core of philosophy itself. S.: Because commentary became system. G.: Or because the commentarial achievement was so massive that it started to look like first philosophy in its own right. Still, one must remember that Aquinas does not spring from pure revelation. He works a Greco-Roman inheritance under Christian pressure. S.: There, surely, Saint Thomas matters. G.: Historical sanctity matters to the context, yes. But the philosophy remains largely Graeco-Roman in vocabulary, problem-shape, and argumentative inheritance. S.: Not revelatory? G.: Not in its method. Theology may contain revealed premises, but philosophy in Thomas is still recognisably argument within an Aristotelian and broadly classical frame. S.: Bononia would say that. G.: Bononia, if one may permit the old name, is useful here. Bologna’s medieval culture knew law, commentary, disputation, medicine, Aristotle, and institutional learning all in one old soup. Aquinas belongs to that larger scholastic ecology, not to pure confessional isolation. S.: Oxford too. G.: Yes, but differently. Oxford becomes later, and then very differently, a place where Thomas can be re-read as philosopher after confessional hostilities have cooled. S.: You make Oxford sound cleaner than Bologna. G.: Cleaner in one sense, dirtier in another. Oxford’s distance from the Papal States helped it receive Thomas without having to make him the beating heart of civic identity. S.: While Bologna, being once in the Papal States, could hardly avoid the Catholic overdetermination. G.: Exactly. Once Bologna ceased to be in the Papal States, and once Italy as a whole changed its political weather, philosophy there could become less directly clerical in tone, even while Aquinas remained institutionally central in some quarters. S.: So Bononia became less religious after the Papal frame loosened. G.: Inevitably. Universities change with sovereignty, even when they pretend to live only by books. S.: Yet Aquinas remained. G.: Yes, because by then he was more than a church thinker. He had become part of the argument about philosophy itself, realism, science, ethics, law, and political order. S.: Which is why Santilli can write Aquino in 1932 and expect the title to work. G.: Precisely. He need not say “Thomas Aquinas as one philosopher among many.” He may say Aquino and rely on Italy’s cultural over-familiarity. S.: Which you dislike. G.: Intensely. Philosophers should not become surnames standing in for intellectual inevitabilities. S.: Yet you say Aquinas, which is itself a surname-like locative. G.: Yes, but a useful one. “Aquinas” still names the thinker without forcing the reader to genuflect first. S.: Whereas “Saint Thomas” places the Church in the doorway. G.: Exactly. S.: Bernard Shaw would have liked that distinction. G.: He would. Shaw on Saint Joan is useful because Joan is a saint without being a philosopher, and the sainting changes the public use of the person dramatically. Thomas is more difficult because the philosophical corpus is too large to remain saintly furniture. S.: So if sanctification comes later, it may matter less. G.: Usually. Late canonisation is a philosophical blessing. It allows arguments to circulate before halos stiffen them. S.: Then Aquinas benefited from delay. G.: Very much so. He died in 1274 and was canonised later. That interval is philosophically precious. The work had time to live as work. S.: Bonaventure too? G.: Bonaventure is a less useful comparison because his whole style is more devotional, more affective, more obviously tied to Franciscan spirituality. He is easier to saintify into atmosphere. S.: That sounds ungenerous. G.: It is not ungenerous, only taxonomic. Bonaventure’s philosophical weight is real, but his reception is more vulnerable to pious softening. S.: Whereas Aquinas, because he is so argumentative, resists devotional liquefaction. G.: Exactly. Thomas remains obstinately scholastic even when made liturgical. S.: Then Kenny’s importance lies partly in choosing the obstinacy. G.: Very much so. Kenny reads Thomas as someone with positions that can be reconstructed, criticised, compared, and used. Not as a saintly authority beyond philosophical inconvenience. S.: Why “of all people,” though? G.: Because there is a delicious irony in a former seminarian becoming one of the most secularly readable guides to Thomas for the English-speaking world. S.: One might have expected a Dominican. G.: One might, and one would have been rewarded with more reverence and less analysis. Kenny gives us less atmosphere and more argument. S.: Which is what Oxford likes. G.: At its best, yes. Oxford likes saints best once translated into problems. S.: That is very Oxonian. G.: Entirely. “What exactly is he saying about being?” is more to the point than “Pray for us.” S.: Yet does that not make Oxford incapable of understanding religious philosophy on its own terms? G.: It risks that, certainly. But the alternative risk is to leave philosophy embalmed inside confessional vocabulary. I prefer the Oxonian danger. S.: Naturally. G.: Naturally. S.: Then back to Italy. Why this obsession with Aquinas as the core? G.: Because he is at once scholastic, Aristotelian, Catholic, systematic, juridically useful, metaphysically serious, and educationally serviceable. In one figure you get doctrine, institution, and national-ecclesial prestige. S.: So he becomes the perfect centre for those who want philosophy to have a centre. G.: Exactly. And Italy is full of centre-seekers. S.: As opposed to Oxford? G.: Oxford prefers local hegemonies masquerading as open inquiry. S.: Also exact. G.: Thank you. S.: Then Santilli’s 1932 Aquino is not merely a book on a thinker, but an intervention into Italy’s philosophical self-understanding. G.: Yes. It belongs to that long question whether Italian philosophy should be idealist, neo-scholastic, civil, historicist, Catholic, or some provincial mixture of all four. S.: And Aquinas becomes the test-case. G.: Indeed. Not because he is the only philosopher worth having, but because he is the one around whom so many Italian claims to seriousness can be staged. S.: Whereas in Oxford he is never the core in quite that way. G.: No. He is one great resource among others, though a surprisingly durable one. Oxford can afford plurality because it never needed a single scholastic father to stabilise national culture. S.: England had other stabilisers. G.: More than enough. Church, common law, empiricism, Anglican habits, classics, and a long suspicion of systems. S.: Then Aquinas in Oxford is always partly a foreign import. G.: Yes, but a highly assimilable one once the theological temperature drops. Thomas comes to Oxford not as public theology but as philosophy worth stealing. S.: Stealing from saints is bad form. G.: It is the only form worth preserving. Philosophy must steal from everyone, especially from those institutions that think they own the dead. S.: You really will not say Saint Thomas. G.: Not if I can help it. S.: Thomas then. G.: Better Aquinas. S.: Very well. Aquinas’s reception by Kenny versus Bonaventure’s by anyone at all. G.: Bonaventure receives fewer analytic rescuers. He tends to remain in the theological and historical shelves. Aquinas gets moved into action theory, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, moral psychology, law, and language. S.: Because Aristotle helps. G.: Immensely. A thinker who comments Aristotle brilliantly is much easier to secularise into the curriculum than one who soars too quickly into mystical illumination. S.: So the Italian obsession is partly Aristotelian by proxy. G.: Yes. It is safer to enthrone the saint who also systematises Aristotle than the saint whose thought is more openly devotional. S.: Then one could say that Aquinas is Italy’s respectable way of keeping philosophy both Greek and Catholic at once. G.: Splendid. That is exactly the formula. S.: Thank you. G.: Do not become too pleased. Now, what of philosophy being Graeco-Roman rather than revelatory? S.: You mean that philosophy, even in Aquinas, remains argument from premises and distinctions that belong to the classical inheritance, not simply to scriptural fiat. G.: Exactly. Revelation may set some boundaries or provide some premises in theological contexts, but the philosophical work is still dialectical, analytic, and commentarial in the old classical sense. S.: Which is why Bologna could teach it in a university and Oxford can teach it still. G.: Precisely. If it were simply revelation in scholastic dress, it would be catechesis, not philosophy. S.: Yet Thomas does write sacred theology. G.: Of course. One must distinguish the modes, not deny the corpus. But when Kenny reads him on mind or action, he is not doing vespers. S.: Good. Now, does sanctification ever help philosophy? G.: Institutionally, yes. It preserves texts, sponsors commentary, builds schools, funds editions, and keeps names alive. Philosophically, it tends to surround arguments with reverential static. S.: Unless the thinker is too strong. G.: Exactly. Aquinas is strong enough to survive. Bonaventure, less so in public philosophy, though not because he lacks intelligence. S.: Then perhaps the real question is not saint or not saint, but whether the work can survive devotion. G.: Excellent. Aquinas can. That is why he remains philosophically usable. S.: Bernard Shaw again? G.: Shaw matters only by contrast. Saint Joan becomes a dramatic and political case of sanctity and institution, but she is no philosopher. Aquinas is more troublesome because the saint is attached to arguments. S.: Which must either be read or worshipped. G.: And I prefer reading. S.: Naturally. G.: Naturally. S.: Then one final comparison: Oxford versus Bononia. G.: Bononia receives Aquinas historically from within the Catholic and scholastic inheritance, then later must renegotiate that inheritance as political sovereignty changes and the university becomes less bound to the Papal frame. Oxford receives him from outside, intermittently, suspiciously, and eventually analytically. S.: So Bologna begins with belonging and moves toward critical distance. Oxford begins with distance and moves toward selective belonging. G.: Perfectly put. S.: Thank you. G.: And that is why Kenny matters. He is the sign that Oxford’s distance had become close enough for serious use without surrender. S.: Dry enough? G.: Sufficiently Aquinate, with one halo left in the vestry.Santilli, Angelo Andrea (1932). Aquino. Roma.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Santucci -- Grice e Santucci – Leech e la prammatica come rettorica conversazionale – simulazione, superlazione, e compagnia. Note su Rhetoricæ præcepta. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Pietro Antonio Santucci (Cortona, Toscana)– Leech e la prammatica come rettorica conversazionale – simulazione, superlazione, e compagnia. Grice and Santucci converge on the idea that meaning in discourse is governed by reason rather than by ornament, yet they approach that governance from opposite historical and methodological directions: Santucci, working within the early modern rhetorical tradition, treats pragmatic effects as refinements of classical figures—simulatio, superlatio, translatio—whose function is to guide the listener’s judgment through disciplined eloquence, preserving the authority of the orator while avoiding Greek technical excess; Grice, by contrast, famously strips rhetoric of its prescriptive costume and reconceives these same phenomena as implicatures generated by rational, cooperative agents in conversation, accountable not to rhetorical decorum but to shared expectations of relevance, informativeness, sincerity, and clarity. Where Santucci’s project is to purify rhetorical metalanguage so that figures illuminate discourse without overwhelming it, Grice’s is to show that figures need no autonomous metalinguistic machinery at all: their work is done by practical reasoning operating under conversational norms. Thus Santucci’s “conversational rhetoric” remains vertical, oriented toward mastery of audience effects, while Grice’s theory is horizontal and interactive, locating meaning in the hearer’s rational reconstruction of the speaker’s intentions; rhetoric becomes, in Grice’s sense, not a system of elevated techniques but a by‑product of reason-governed communicative action itself. Grice: “There was a time when Italians – indeed Romans – would NOT stand a hellenism like ‘eironia,’ ‘hyperbole,’ or ‘metaphora,’ and there you would have them – and Cicero, too – uttering Varronesque formations like, respectively, SIMVLATIO, SVPERLATIO, and TRANSLATIO! I simplify the vocabulary by calling them all ‘figures of speech,’ or IMPLICATURAE, that is!” -- Retorica. RHETORIC JEu PRÆCEPTA V E SELECTISSIMIS AUCTORIBUS COMPILATA EDIT PRIMO PETRUS ANTONIUS S. DE CORTONA, Unus ex Presbyteris Congregationis Oratorii DIVI PHILIPPI NERII ejufdem Civitatis. Excudebat Joannes Baptista Recurti. SUPERIORUM PERMISSU, AC PRIVILEGIO. Illujirifs. et Reverendifs. D. D, GABRIELI RICCARDIO Viro nobiliffimo, et Ampliflfimo, Patritio Florentino Marchioni eximio Metropolitanæ Ejcclefiæ Florentinæ Canonico PETRUS ANTONIUS SANTUCCI U JE magna Junt, eadem et tnagnis deberi iifque folii nuncupan da fore, nemo unquam inficias ivit, lllufiriffime, C9* Reverendtjfime Domine. Cum enim omnibus a natura comparatum fit, ut coeli faciem obviam fibi quifque contempletur; huic profetto totius Orbis fublimi /lima parti, O' non alii, ea quce Orbis ipfius fublimi /fima ornamenta fiunt, nempe fydera, ab eademmet natura merito donata fuiffe facile ipfe animadvertat, ne et 2 ceffe Cfjje eji % Quavem, et meritis, fi forte virum quem Confprxerc, filent, arreBifque auribus aflant: Ille regit diBis animos, et pcBora mulcet. At Eloquentix majefias, fe mavult, et admiratione coli, et filentio pradican;ejl enim admiratio prxeonium glorix, et filent tum fidus interpres majefiatis ‘, neque major illa commendatio effe potefi. quam omnis frujlra tentata laudatio. Denique Do&orum omnium Coryphæus, ac facile Princeps D. Augutt. fic de præcellenti hac Arte tertatus habetur: Hxc nobis cum Angelis, cum Deo ipfo quodammodo communis efi;  Grice: Santucci, mi dicono che tu voglia fare della prammatica una rettorica conversazionale con tanto di metalinguaggio: a Roma, una volta, per evitare un grecismo bastava un buon latino… oggi invece sembra servire un glossario. Santucci: Maestro Grice, Roma detestava i grecismi solo finché non imparava a farli suoi. “Eironia” diventa simulazione, “hyperbole” superlazione, “metaphora” translatio: stessa cosa, ma con toga. Grice: Ecco: allora la tua rettorica è… come dire… superlativa. Nel senso che, se non stiamo attenti, la superlazione finisce per superare l’oratore, e la figura diventa più importante dell’uditorio. E quando la figura comanda, la conversazione obbedisce—e a quel punto la prammatica fa la fine del servo che crede di essere padrone. Santucci: Superlativa implicatura quella sua, Grice, che mette il detto in ombra come fosse solo un’ombra cinese! Perché mi stai dicendo: “raffina pure il metalinguaggio della rettorica”, ma senza trasformarlo in un mobile ingombrante. Io lo volevo proprio per questo: ripulire la lingua dei precetti—la meno triviale delle “trivialità” che Bononia abbia mai allevato—così che la figura illumini la conversazione senza riempirla di ferraglia terminologica. Re passage below: provide a 100-move conversation between G and S on SANTUCCI RETTORICA -- no preamble or ps -- dry humor, with G wondering which is the least trivial of the disciplines in the trivium -- and playing with quadrivial, and that philosophy is none of the liberal arts -- and Santucci doing his best, because Cicero spoke a different lingo and what is rhetorical here is not rhetoical there, and G. aiming at UNIVERSALITY. But if that were so, S. objects, why are there zillions of treatises of rhetocir given -- same implicature? Yes, the implicature is the same, but the cancellations vary etc and be dry and fun etc -- just the conv, no preamble or ps. -- thank you G.: Let us begin with Santucci’s rettorica, with two t’s, which already looks less trivial than most of the trivium. S.: Less trivial by consonantal accumulation? G.: Exactly. A doubled consonant is often the last defence of seriousness. S.: Then the trivium is trivial only because it is too near the mouth. G.: Very good. Grammar, logic, rhetoric: the disciplines everyone needs and therefore everyone despises. S.: Whereas the quadrivium, being quadrivial rather than trivial, enjoys the false dignity of remoteness. G.: Yes. Number, measure, harmony, stars — all the things one admires before dinner and avoids during quarrels. S.: Which of the three, then, is least trivial? G.: Rhetoric, obviously. S.: Because it governs uptake. G.: Precisely. Grammar gives one a sentence, logic gives one an alibi, rhetoric gets one heard. S.: That is severe on logic. G.: Logic advertises itself too successfully. The truly indispensable thing is the one civilisation calls decorative. S.: Then Santucci is already a defender of the least trivial thing in the trivium. G.: Yes, and that is why he matters. The rhetorician is always teaching what philosophers pretend later to discover under a blander name. S.: You mean pragmatics. G.: Naturally. Prammatica is rettorica conversazionale with its cassock removed. S.: A fine sentence to irritate moderns. G.: It ought to. Moderns behave as if inferential social intelligence first appeared with seminars. S.: Yet you still aim at universality. G.: Of course. The principles by which hearers infer what speakers mean are not Venetian one day and English the next in a wholly lawless fashion. S.: But if that were so, why are there zillions of treatises on rhetoric? G.: Because universality in principle does not abolish local art in practice. S.: That sounds evasive. G.: It is exact. The implicature may be the same in structure, but the cancellations vary, the expectations vary, the local encodings vary, the social weather varies. S.: So Cicero and Santucci are doing the same thing differently? G.: Broadly, yes. Cicero writes for one public language under Roman conditions. Santucci writes for a later world in which that public language has broken into vernacular necessity. S.: Then what is rhetorical here is not rhetorical there. G.: Exactly. The same human need, the different civil conditions of its satisfaction. S.: Still, if your universal maxims are real, why does one need endless manuals? G.: For the same reason one needs many maps though there is only one earth. S.: You are improving. G.: I do it accidentally. The maxims are thin: be relevant, say enough, be orderly, do not lie, and so on. But thin principles generate thick regional techniques. S.: Such as? G.: Irony in one city, understatement in another, ceremonial courtesy in one court, market abruptness in another, scholastic division here, civic anecdote there. S.: So rhetoric is universal in need, local in finish. G.: Very good. That is nearly the whole matter. S.: Then philosophy is not one of the liberal arts because it arrives too late to belong among them. G.: Or too early, depending on the conceit. But yes, philosophy is not itself trivium or quadrivium; it is the ungrateful dependent that uses both and complains about them. S.: Then if philosophy is no liberal art, why does it care so much about the order of them? G.: Because sequence forms temperament. Teach boys stars before speech and they become abstract too early. Teach them speech before stars and they at least know how to lie politely. S.: That is not an educational ideal. G.: It is a historical observation. The trivium comes first because social life requires saying, hearing, disputing, and persuading before it can afford astronomy. S.: Yet the quadrivium is nobler. G.: Only to those who prefer proportion to persons. S.: Which many philosophers do. G.: Unfortunately. That is why they are often bad at tea. S.: Then Santucci, by teaching rhetoric, is teaching the least trivial of the supposedly trivial arts. G.: Exactly. And he must do so in a language Cicero did not quite know how to anticipate. S.: Because Cicero assumed Latin would remain Ciceronian. G.: Or at least that Latin public eloquence would retain the right to think itself the norm. S.: Until Marc’Antonio’s sicario ended part of the illusion. G.: Quite. Murder is a very efficient critic of linguistic permanence. S.: So later rhetoricians inherit a broken universality. G.: Very well put. They inherit the same human structure of persuasive communication, but not the same medium of authority. S.: Which means Santucci’s rhetoric is vernacular, local, institutional, and perhaps more candid about circumstance. G.: Precisely. Cicero may still pretend that rhetoric belongs to the res publica in one magnificent language. Santucci must teach how actual people are to speak under later and narrower conditions. S.: Then your universalism is endangered. G.: Not at all. It is refined. The same implicature can arise in multiple languages and traditions because the inferential pressures are recognisably human. S.: Give me an example. G.: A compliment that damns by context. “He is a fine fellow” may do in Oxford what another phrase does in Tuscany, and a third in Rome. The vehicle varies; the inferential structure survives. S.: So the same implicature, different cancellations. G.: Exactly. In one place irony is easily recoverable, in another it risks offence, in another it must be cushioned by formula. The cancellability conditions differ. S.: Then rhetoric is the science of local cancellability. G.: Very good. You are becoming dangerous. S.: I learn from the doubled consonant. Now, if rhetoric is least trivial, which is most trivial? G.: Grammar, because everyone thinks he already has it. S.: And logic? G.: Most self-important, not most trivial. S.: So the ranking is: grammar invisible, logic pompous, rhetoric despised yet indispensable. G.: Exactly. S.: And the quadrivium? G.: The quadrivium is what schoolmasters point to when they want to make boys feel the stars are morally superior to syntax. S.: Are they? G.: No. The stars do not help one survive an awkward dinner. S.: Nor a senate. G.: Nor a marriage. One may admire astronomy and still speak atrociously to one’s wife. S.: Then philosophy, had it begun with the quadrivium, would be more mathematical and less civil. G.: More proportion, less tact. More architecture, fewer excuses. Perhaps better systems, certainly worse common rooms. S.: So a philosopher should still start with the trivium. G.: Absolutely. He must first know how people actually mean more than they say before he is allowed to misread the heavens. S.: That is almost your whole view of intellectual formation. G.: It should be posted over faculty doors. S.: In handwriting. G.: Naturally. Typewriting disallowed. Handwriting counts. S.: You enjoyed that too much. G.: The sentence has earned its immortality. Now, Santucci. Why so many rhetorical treatises if the phenomenon is one? S.: Because one phenomenon under many civic conditions requires many arts of adaptation. G.: Exactly. One cannot write the Vulgate of persuasion. S.: Why not? G.: Because persuasion is not revelation, and rhetoric is not scripture. The Bible may acquire authorised versions; rhetoric acquires handbooks, revisions, schools, local variants, and enemies. S.: So there can be no King James of rhetoric. G.: None that would remain alive for long. A universal manual would fossilise the very thing it sought to codify. S.: Yet Cicero came close. G.: Cicero came close for a very particular civilisation at a very particular moment, and even there his afterlife required endless re-voicing. S.: Then Santucci is one of the re-voicers. G.: Yes, and an honest one, because he does not pretend Cicero’s language is simply his own. S.: Which is why you prefer him? G.: Not prefer. Use. Santucci is useful because he forces us to see what changes when a classical art survives after its imperial language has ceased to be the unquestioned public instrument. S.: So rhetorical universality persists only by regional reincarnation. G.: Very well said. S.: Thank you. G.: Do not become Roman about it. Now, what exactly is universal for you in rhetoric? S.: The inferential discipline by which hearers recover meant content from overt performance under shared assumptions of reasonableness. G.: Excellent. That is dry enough to be true. S.: And what is local? G.: The repertory of gestures, figures, social permissions, taboos, expected politenesses, local metaphors, genre conventions, and all the little things by which the universal mechanism actually moves. S.: Then Santucci’s treatise teaches local triggers. G.: Precisely. Which is why the same implicature may survive while the same sentence does not. S.: So what is rhetorical here is not rhetorical there because the recognisable route from saying to meaning is socially conditioned. G.: Yes. The path is universal enough for theory, provincial enough for manuals. S.: That almost sounds like your reconciliation. G.: It is my reconciliation. One must not let local treatises frighten one out of general principles. S.: Nor let general principles despise local treatises. G.: Exactly. Philosophy does that too often. It announces universals and leaves actual speakers to fend for themselves. S.: Then Santucci is a necessary humiliation for universalist philosophy of language. G.: A wholesome one. He reminds us that there is always more craft in actual communication than a maxim-sheet can confess. S.: Which brings us back to the zillions of treatises. G.: Yes. One writes many rhetorical manuals because one human communicative structure encounters indefinitely many social forms. S.: Like lawbooks. G.: Very much so. There is one legal impulse, many jurisdictions. One rhetorical impulse, many climates. S.: And cancellation? G.: Ah yes. The same implicature may be cancellable in one milieu by explicit clause, in another only by tone, in another not at all without scandal. S.: Give me one. G.: Understatement. In one culture “not bad” cancels upward into strong praise. In another it remains tepid. The inferential default differs. S.: So Santucci’s manual teaches how not to be misunderstood by your own city. G.: Precisely. Cicero teaches how to speak to Rome as if Rome were eternal. Santucci teaches how to speak to people who no longer believe any city eternal. S.: That is almost melancholy. G.: All rhetoric after empire is melancholy under discipline. S.: Then perhaps the least trivial thing in the trivium is the one most burdened by historical change. G.: Very good. Grammar survives by ossifying, logic by abstracting, rhetoric by adapting. That is why it looks unstable and is actually indispensable. S.: So rhetoric is least trivial because it suffers history most directly. G.: Exactly. It has to go on working after languages shift, polities collapse, publics fracture, and habits mutate. S.: Whereas logic may continue wearing the same face and call it universality. G.: Yes, logic enjoys the privilege of looking unchanged while living parasitically on rhetorical and grammatical labour it refuses to acknowledge. S.: You are severe on logic again. G.: Only because it deserves occasional correction. S.: Then Santucci’s rettorica, with its doubled t and vernacular setting, becomes a monument to adaptive continuity. G.: Excellent. A wonderful phrase. S.: I shall keep it. G.: Very well, but hide it somewhere modest. Now, the quadrivium once more. Why quadrivial? S.: Because four roads look more majestic than three. G.: Exactly. “Quadrivial” sounds like an adjective designed by a dean. S.: Whereas “trivial” has fallen socially. G.: Unjustly. The trivium governs the human approach to one another. The quadrivium governs the human approach to measure. Both matter, but the first wounds more quickly. S.: Then rhetoric wounds and heals. G.: As all the best arts do. S.: And philosophy? G.: Philosophy merely comments late and with poor timing. S.: So Santucci, if asked what philosophy contributes to rhetoric, would say? G.: At best, distinctions. At worst, pretensions. S.: You are unusually clear today. G.: It is the weather. Now, if one were forced to define rhetoric without the word “persuasion,” what would you say? S.: The disciplined art of managing inferential uptake under socially recognisable forms. G.: Excellent. Scandalously good. S.: Then that is close enough to your own theory of conversation. G.: Structurally, yes. Which is why I keep insisting that pragmatics is not the abolition of rhetoric but its anaemic redescription. S.: Harsh on pragmatics this time. G.: Only in order to keep it honest. Once moderns forget their rhetorical ancestors, they begin calling old intelligence a discovery. S.: Santucci would laugh. G.: He might correct my Latin first. S.: And Cicero? G.: Cicero would wonder why it had taken us so long to rediscover what every decent orator knew. S.: That sounds exactly right. G.: It often is, when one is being unfair to posterity. Now, suppose there were only one rhetorical treatise. What would it look like? S.: Very Roman, very dead, very universal in tone, very local in fact, and almost immediately in need of glosses. G.: Exactly. Which is why the dream of a single manual is absurd. Rhetoric lives by commentary, adaptation, supplementation, and use. S.: Like philosophy. G.: Worse. Philosophy at least sometimes survives by pretending it has no use. S.: Then the final answer to your opening question? G.: The least trivial of the trivium is rhetoric, because it bears the heaviest historical burden while remaining the principal social art of meaning. S.: And Santucci? G.: He does his best because Cicero spoke a different language, to a different public, under a different confidence; yet the same inferential structure of human communication persists, which is why universal theory and local manuals must tolerate one another. S.: Dry enough? G.: Sufficiently doubled in its consonants, and only minimally quadrivial.Santucci, Pietro Antonio (1748). Rhetoricæ præcepta e selectissimis auctoribus compilate. Recurti.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). “H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Santucci – Ossia: Grice e Santucci – Note sul Trattato delle comete. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Antonio Santucci – In this playful exchange, the contrast between Grice and Santucci neatly mirrors their philosophical differences over reason‑governed conversational meaning: Grice treats conversational rationality as a local, inferential achievement, where saying little and letting much be understood counts as a cooperative, intention‑guided success governed by pragmatic norms, whereas Santucci frames conversational reason more historically and culturally, as something that wanders, like comets or empiricist traditions, across sciences, philosophies, and social practices. Grice’s emphasis falls on the internal logic of conversation—how implicature allows interlocutors to mean more than they say without abandoning rational control—while Santucci’s reply situates that logic within a wider humanistic horizon, where understanding depends as much on shared habits, traditions, and interpretive generosity as on calculable inference. In short, Grice explains how conversational reason works from within ordinary linguistic practice, whereas Santucci reflects on how such reason survives, zig‑zagging but resilient, within the long history of empiricism, idealism, and philosophical culture. Grice: Caro Santucci, leggo del tuo Trattato delle comete del 1611 e mi chiedo se l’implicatura sia caduta dal cielo insieme a una coda luminosa. Santucci: Ah, Grice, le comete passano e confondono tutti, ma a Bologna abbiamo imparato che anche la ragione conversazionale ogni tanto fa zig-zag. Grice: A Oxford diremmo che se una cometa dice poco e lascia intendere molto, allora è perfettamente cooperativa. Santucci: E io replico che, tra empirismo e stelle erranti, basta non prendere troppo alla lettera il cielo per capirsi benissimo a tavola. Santucci, Antonio (1611). Trattato delle comete. Finze, Giunti.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali:  Santucci – Ossia: Grice e Santucci: la ragione conversazionale dell’idealismo – scuola di Mira. Note sull’esistenzialismo. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Antonio Santucci (Mirra, Venezia, Veneto): la ragione conversazionale dell’idealismo. In comparing H. P. Grice with Antonio Santucci on reason-governed conversational meaning, a clear contrast emerges between Grice’s micro-analytic, intention-based pragmatics and Santucci’s historically and systematically grounded conception of “ragione conversazionale.” Grice locates the rationality of conversation in the inferential coordination between what is said and what is meant, governed by the Cooperative Principle and its maxims, where reason operates locally as the hearer’s capacity to reconstruct speaker intentions through calculable implicatures rather than through rules of logic or semantics alone. Santucci, by contrast, approaches conversational reason less as a technical mechanism of inference and more as a cultural and philosophical posture emerging from the traditions of empiricism, pragmatism, and post-idealist reflection, especially as mediated by Italian encounters with Humean skepticism and American pragmatism. Where Grice treats rationality as immanent in everyday conversational practice and minimally normative, Santucci situates it within a broader idealism tempered by historical awareness, in which reason in conversation reflects the evolving relationship between philosophy, science, and forms of life rather than a formally isolable conversational calculus. In this sense, Grice offers a theory of how conversational reason works, while Santucci offers an account of why conversational reason matters within a larger intellectual genealogy. – (quarto da sinistra) con Pedrazzi, Battaglia, Matteucci e Contessi. Muore a Bologna. è stato un filosofo italiano. È stato docente di Storia della filosofia all'Università di Bologna.  Socio dell'Accademia delle Scienze dell'Istituto di Bologna, è stato tra i fondatori della casa editrice il Mulino. Studioso di Hume, dell'illuminismo scozzese e del pragmatismo americano, ha indagato inoltre le varie forme in cui positivismo ed esistenzialismo e, più in generale, il rapporto con le scienze hanno orientato il pensiero italiano tra Ottocento e Novecento.  È sepolto alla Certosa di Bologna. Opere principali Esistenzialismo e filosofia italiana, Bologna, Il Mulino, Il pragmatismo in Italia, Bologna, il Mulino. Sistema e ricerca in Hume, Bari, Laterza, Introduzione a Hume, Storia del pragmatismo, Empirismo, pragmatismo, filosofia italiana, Bologna, CLUEB, Eredi del positivismo. Ricerca sulla filosofia italiana, Bologna, il Mulino, L'età dei Lumi. Saggi sulla cultura settecentesca, Bologna, il Mulino, Filosofia e cultura nel Settecento britannico, a cura di A. S., Bologna, il Mulino. Comprende: Fonti e connessioni continentali, John Toland e il deismo. Hume e Hutcheson, Reid e la scuola del senso comune. Ricerche sul pensiero italiano fra Ottocento e Novecento, Bologna, CLUEB. Fonte: totem informativo di Bologna Servizi Cimiteriali. Collegamenti esterni Santucci, Antonio, su Treccani.it – Enciclopedie on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Santucci, Antonio, in Dizionario di filosofia, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. S., «Pragmatismo» la voce nella Enciclopedia del Novecento, Roma, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, 1980. Addio al filosofo Antonio Santucci, da Il Mattino di Padova, Archivio. Filosofia Filosofi italiani Membri dell'Accademia delle Scienze di Torino Sepolti nel cimitero monumentale della Certosa di Bologna. Implicatura.  Grice: Carissimo Santucci, ogni volta che leggo le tue pagine sul pragmatismo mi viene voglia di prendere un treno per Mira, sperando che alla stazione mi venga offerta una tazza di empirismo veneto, magari corretta con un goccio di illuminismo scozzese. Ma dimmi, a Bologna si discute ancora se Hume fosse più vicino al Canal Grande o al Tamigi? Santucci: Ah, Grice, se Hume avesse navigato il Canal Grande, forse avrebbe scritto “Dialoghi sull’arte del gondoliere”! Ma ti dirò, a Bologna preferiamo riflettere sul rapporto tra filosofia e scienze, anche se a volte la discussione si perde... nelle nebbie padane! E poi, il Mulino non macina solo grano, ma anche tante idee, alcune pure farinate. Grice: Beh, caro Santucci, a Oxford quando si parla di ἰδέα di Platone, io mi ritrovo più confuso di un empirista davanti a una birra calda. Nessuno ha mai capito se fosse una ἰδέα nel cielo, un modello d’abito o semplicemente un modo elegante per evitare la concretezza... D’altronde, la filosofia, come dicono da voi, è spesso più ricca di sottintesi che di risposte! Santucci: Implicatura platonica la sua, Grice – o dovrei dire “piatonica”, visto che il povero Platone si è beccato il soprannome per le spalle larghe! Ma in fondo, tra ἰδέα e implicatura, c’è sempre un Mulino che macina misteri: basta saper leggere tra le farine! Santucci, Antonio (1959) Esistenzialismo. Bologna: Il Mulino.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Sanzo – Ossia: Grice e Sanzo: il deutero-esperanto e la ragione conversazional tra natura ed artificio – la filosofia lizia. Note sui Lineamenti di filosofia morale. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice Ubaldo Sanzo (Roma, Lazio): il deutero-esperanto e la ragione conversazional tra natura ed artificio. Ubaldo Sanzo and H. P. Grice converge on the idea that meaning is governed by reason rather than merely by formal structure, but they articulate that governance through different emphases on nature, convention, and artifice. Sanzo’s reflections on deutero-esperanto and the artifice of language, shaped by Peano, Vailati, and Italian conventionalism, treat scientific and philosophical languages as deliberately constructed instruments designed to secure intersubjective understanding beyond the contingencies of national tongues; reason here operates by making explicit, negotiable conventions that mediate between nature and artificial symbol systems. Grice, by contrast, resists treating language as a purely engineered code and instead locates rational governance in the conversational practices of natural language itself, showing through implicature how speakers exploit shared expectations, cooperation, and inferential rationality to mean more than they explicitly say. Where Sanzo tends to stress the mastery afforded by artificial languages and reconstructed scientific idioms—sometimes blurring the distinction between what is arbitrary and what is merely artificial, as Grice himself wryly observes—Grice insists that the heart of meaning lies in the practical reasoning of agents embedded in ordinary discourse, not in formal invention alone. The point of contact is substantial: both see meaning as irreducible to brute natural causation and both reject naïve naturalism; yet their divergence is equally clear, since Sanzo looks toward constructed linguistic frameworks as the rational solution to scientific communication, whereas Grice treats such constructions as secondary to, and parasitic upon, the deeper, reason-governed dynamics of everyday conversational understanding. – la filosofia lizia -- deutero-esperanto -- Insegna a Brindisi, Milano, e Salento. Fonda “Apollo Licio” o Lizio. Sube il fascino dell’esistenzialismo e il orazionalismo. Rivolve la propria attenzione ai rapporti tra filosofia, scienza e società. Si occupa di filosofi quali Becquerel, Boutruox, Corbino, Couturate Curie, Enriques, Fermi, Frola, GEYMONAT, PEANO, VAILATI. Sui fondamenti della geometria” (Brescia,  La Scuola, Collana "Il Pensiero"); “L’artificio della lingua, -- Grice: “I like that: it’s my Gricese, a language I invent and which makes me the master; there’s the arbitrary and there’s the artificial, and Sanzo, reconstructing Peano’s project, fails to distinguish this” -- Milano, Angeli, Collana di Epistemologia, Cimino; Sava, Il nucleo filosofico della scienza, Galatina, Congedo, Collana di Filosofia, Scritti di fisica-matematica, Torino, POMBA, I Classici della Scienza, Poincaré e i filosofi” (Lecce, Milella); Corbino, Scienza e società, Saggi raccolti e commentati, Manduria, Barbieri, Collana di Filosofia Hermes/Hestia, Scritti di fisica-matematica” (Milano, Mondadori, "I Classici del pensiero", Unione Tipografico, Torino, Scientia, Rivista di sintesi scientifica, “Apollo Licio”, Museo Galilei, Firenze. 1. I PRODROMI  Il problema della comprensione internazionale nel campo della scienza inizia, come è noto, con i primi testi scientifici scritti in lingue nazionali. Il latino, che per secoli era stato lo strumento della cultura scientifica dell'Occidente, si era estinto nella parlata comune e si andava lentamente estinguendo anche nella sua funzione di unica lingua comune ai dotti. Trattati scientifici in lingue volgari appaiono già alla fine del Duecento e la matematica commerciale è sempre più frequentemente scritta in volgare; apollo licio, trovato al ginnasio liceo di Atene, figgurante il dio in atto di riposo dopo un gran sforzo. natura ed artificio, l’artificio della lingua, convenzionalismo, filosofia della lingua.  Grice: Carissimo Sanzo, ogni volta che mi immergo nel tuo “deutero-esperanto” sento che la filosofia diventa una partita a scacchi tra natura e artificio… e, a dire il vero, finisco sempre per perdere contro Apollo Licio! Ma ti dirò, ogni volta che provo a decifrare la parola natura in Cicerone, mi sembra di inseguire una chimera: mai capito se parlava di boschi, di virtù, o semplicemente del tempo che fa. Sanzo: Ah Grice, se solo Apollo avesse consultato il tuo Gricese, forse avrebbe scritto geometria direttamente in versi! In fondo, tra convenzione e artificio, la lingua italiana è come un ginnasio, dove si allenano idee e parole. E poi, diciamolo: la natura, soprattutto quella di Cicerone, non è mai stata un esercizio facile… nemmeno per i filosofi di Brindisi. Grice: Vedi, Sanzo, ogni volta che leggo Cicerone parlare di natura, mi ritrovo più confuso di un romano al mercato di Ostia. Non ho mai capito se intendesse la natura come madre generosa o come zia severa, o magari come un mistero che soltanto i sacerdoti potevano svelare. E poi, pensa: quando Roma celebrava il settecentocinquantatré dalla fondazione, il termine era ancora un rebus per tutti! Sanzo: Quella tua è proprio un'implicatura da vero ciceroniano! E forse nemmeno Cicerone ne aveva le idee chiare: almeno, non avrebbe mai scambiato natura con “natalizio”, come si usa oggi per decorare le piazze a dicembre. Ai bei tempi, diciamo, quando Roma segnava il suo settecentocinquantatré ad urbe conditam, la natura era poesia, storia, mistero—tutto tranne un abete in Senato! Sanzo, Ubaldo (1952). Lineamenti di filosofia morale. Roma: Studium.