TRO

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Troilo – Ossia: Grice e Troilo: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale della conflagrazione. Note su Il pensiero moderno. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice Erminio Troilo (Perano, Chieti, Abruzzo): Institutionally, Erminio Troilo is much closer to H. P. Grice than many of the figures you have been comparing, because both are recognisably university philosophers; but they still belong to very different academic ecologies. The secure biographical record shows that Erminio Troilo was born at Perano in 1874, later became libero docente of filosofia teoretica in Rome, then professor first at Palermo and then at Padua, and was eventually elected a national member of the Accademia dei Lincei. The main reference sources describe Erminio Troilo as professor of theoretical philosophy at Palermo from 1915 and at Padua from 1920, moving from Ardigò’s positivism toward a metaphysical position he called realismo assoluto. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it], [istitutoveneto.it], [lincei.it] So the clean institutional contrast is this. Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate and university-faculty world of Oxford. Erminio Troilo belongs to the public-professorial and chair-based world of the Italian university-state system, especially Palermo and Padua. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it], [istitutoveneto.it] That institutional difference fits your philosophical comparison very well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising intentions and inferring implicatures under shared conversational norms. Troilo, by contrast, works at the macro-level of metaphysical system and world-explanation. The standard sources say that after beginning from Ardigò’s positivism he arrived at a metaphysical outlook he himself called realismo assoluto, one that recalls Bruno and Spinoza and treats eternal infinite being as the unifying principle of all relative beings. That is a very different sense of “reason” from Grice’s. In Troilo, reason is not primarily a set of publicly reconstructible constraints on talk. It is the architectonic power that claims to explain the relation between the absolute, the relative, spirit, history, and reality. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it], [istitutoveneto.it], [centrostor...a.unipd.it] So the sharpest formulation is this. Grice explains how rational interlocutors coordinate meaning in a local exchange. Troilo explains how theoretical reason claims to coordinate reality in a total philosophical vision. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it] That is why your own phrase “conflagrazione conversazionale” should be handled as a retrospective, Grice-coloured gloss rather than as Troilo’s explicit doctrine. What is securely attested is not a theory of dialogue as creative combustion, but a metaphysical and historical-philosophical project centred on realismo assoluto, Bruno, Spinoza, and the relation between positivism and spiritual or metaphysical claims. The title La conflagrazione is real and important, but it belongs to his wartime or spiritual-historical reflections, not to a Gricean pragmatics of conversation. The detailed Perano/Padova biographical notice explicitly records La conflagrazione. Indagini sulla storia dello spirito contemporaneo (1918) and situates it in the larger transition from positivism toward realismo assoluto. [sondrioissrec.it], [centrostor...a.unipd.it] There are two corrections worth making. First, your heading says “Perano, Chieti, Abruzzo,” which is correct, but one of the encyclopedia snippets in the tool outputs gives “Archi” instead of Perano. The more detailed biographical sources and the Padua and Istituto Veneto materials clearly say Perano, so that is the safer form to keep. [sondrioissrec.it], [istitutoveneto.it], [beweb.chie...ttolica.it] Second, the bibliographic line “Troilo, Erminio (1895). Contributo. Il pensiero moderno. Roma” is too weak as it stands. What is safely attested is that he founded and directed Il pensiero moderno in the 1890s and that La conflagrazione appeared in 1918. If you want a secure doctrinal anchor, the best titles are La filosofia di Giordano Bruno, Il positivismo e i diritti dello spirito, Lo spirito della filosofia, and Realismo assoluto. The main reference sources list La filosofia di G. Bruno, Il positivismo e i diritti dello spirito, Figure e studi di storia della filosofia, Lo spirito della filosofia, and Realismo assoluto as the secure major works. [treccani.it], [it.wikipedia.org] So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the precise collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Erminio Troilo, by contrast, was an Italian professor of theoretical philosophy, formed first under Ardigò and later moving toward the metaphysical system he called realismo assoluto, teaching at Palermo and then Padua and entering the Lincei. Institutionally, Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate world; Troilo to the public-professorial and chair-based world of the Italian university-state system. Philosophically, the contrast is equally clear: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of speaker-meaning and implicature, whereas Troilo exemplifies a macro-synthetic rationality in which thought seeks to integrate science, spirit, history, and being into one unifying metaphysical scheme. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it], [istitutoveneto.it], [lincei.it] And if I compress it into one line: Grice theorises reason in conversation; Troilo theorises reason as total metaphysical synthesis. [treccani.it], [it.wikipedia.org] If you want, I can now give you a tighter one-paragraph entry in your preferred style, using La conflagrazione only as a secondary colour and making realismo assoluto the real doctrinal centre.la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale della conflagrazione – Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats implicature as a calculable, normatively constrained by-product of cooperative rational agency: speakers are presumed to pursue mutually recognized conversational ends (with something like a Cooperative Principle and associated maxims), so hearers infer what is meant beyond what is said by reconstructing a rational route from the utterance to an intended, context-fitting point. Troilo, by contrast, as he is presented in the “Grice italo” framing, redescribes the engine of implicit meaning less as rule-guided optimization and more as conflagrazione: a metaphysically charged ignition in which interlocutors are transformed through an intensifying encounter, with “ragione conversazionale” functioning not merely as compliance with conversational norms but as a creative, quasi-ontological event (aligned, in that portrait, with his “realismo assoluto” and with Bruno/Spinoza-style talk of immanence and spirit). On this view, what Grice analyzes as the rationally reconstructible inference from saying to meaning becomes, for Troilo, a moment of philosophical combustion in which implicature marks not just an extra layer of communicated content but the flare-point where shared reality is made and remade between speakers; Grice foregrounds auditability (how an implicature is warranted by recognizable principles of talk), whereas Troilo foregrounds transformative force (how the encounter itself “takes fire” and changes the participants), making Troilo’s “conversational reason” look less like a logic of conversational accountability and more like a metaphysics of dialogic becoming. -- conflagrazione. The phrase ‘Grice italo’ is meant as provocative. An Old-World philosopher such as Turoldo would never have imagined to be compared to a tutor at a varsity in one of the British Isles, but there you are! It is meant as a geo-political reminder, too. Many Italian philosophers have been educated in a tradition that would make little sense of T. as a ‘Grice italo,’ but there you are. My note is meant as a tribute to both philosophers. Grice has been deemed an extremely original philosopher, and by Oxford canons he certainly was. He was the primus inter pares at the Play Group, the epitome of ordinary-language philosophy throughout most of the twentieth century. His heritage remains. T.’s place in the history of philosophy is other. But there are connections, and here they are. Keywords: Telesio, Quattromani, Alighieri, Cento.  O Archi. Filosofo. M. Padova, prof. di filosofia teoretica nelle univ. di Palermo e di Padova. Socio nazionale dei Lincei. Partito dal positivismo del suo maestro Ardigò, pervenne a una sorta di metafisica, da lui chiamata realismo assoluto, che richiama il panteismo di Bruno e di Spinoza. Opere principali: La filosofia di Bruno; Il positivismo e i diritti dello spirito; Figure e studi di storia della filosofia; Lo spirito della filosofia; Realismo assoluto. Insegna a Palermo e Padova. Lincei. Partito dal positivismo del suo tutore ARDIGÒ, pervenne a una sorta di meta-fisica, da lui chiamata realismo assoluto, che richiama il panteismo di BRUNO (vedi). L'essere eterno infinito, tutt'uno con lo spirito assoluto, è il presupposto e il principio unificatore degl’esseri relativi. Trascendente e indeterminato, l'essere si immanentizza e si determina nella realtà e negl’individui, oggettivandosi di fronte ai soggetti come assolutamente altro da questi.  conflagrazione, Bruno, Telesio, realismo assoluto, storia della filosofia, Alighieri, Cento, Quattromani.  Grice: Professore Troilo, non posso fare a meno di notare quanto sia intrigante la sua idea di "conflagrazione conversazionale". Potrebbe spiegarmi cosa intende esattamente con questo concetto? Sembra quasi una scintilla che dà vita al dialogo! Troilo: Caro Grice, la sua intuizione è acuta. Per me, la conflagrazione conversazionale rappresenta quel momento in cui il confronto di idee si infiamma, non distruttivamente, ma come un incendio creativo che trasforma entrambi gli interlocutori. È un po’ come nell’universo di Bruno o di Spinoza: la realtà si accende di senso quando lo spirito si mette in gioco nel dialogo. Grice: Trovo affascinante questo parallelismo con Bruno e Spinoza. Dunque, la conversazione, nella sua visione, non è solo trasmissione, ma anche trasformazione reciproca, quasi una fusione di prospettive che produce qualcosa di nuovo e inaspettato. Troilo: Esattamente! Nel mio "realismo assoluto", la conflagrazione conversazionale è il presupposto per ogni crescita filosofica. Solo accettando di esporsi all’altro, anche a rischio di essere messi in discussione, possiamo accedere a una realtà più profonda e condivisa. È così che la filosofia, secondo me, prende davvero fuoco. Troilo, Erminio (1895). Contributo. Il pensiero moderno. Roma

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Tronti – Ossia: Grice e Tronti: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale degli spiriti liberi. Note su Operai e capitale. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice Mario Tronti (Roma, Lazio): Institutionally, Mario Tronti is much closer to H. P. Grice than many of the figures you have been discussing, because both are recognisably university philosophers; but they still belong to very different academic and political ecologies. Mario Tronti was born in Rome in 1931, studied philosophy at Sapienza University of Rome, later taught for decades at the University of Siena, and combined academic work with direct party-political, editorial, and parliamentary activity. He helped found Quaderni Rossi, broke away to found and direct Classe operaia, later coordinated Laboratorio politico, sat in the Senate, and led the Fondazione CRS (Centro per la Riforma dello Stato). [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it], [patrimonio....senato.it], [senatoripd.it] So the clean institutional contrast is this. Grice was an Oxford don in the strict collegiate sense: Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s, plus CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Tronti, by contrast, belongs to the Italian university-state and political-public world: public university teaching, journals, party culture, parliamentary life, and intellectual institutions of the left. Institutionally, Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate and university-faculty world; Tronti to the public-professorial, editorial, and political world. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it], [patrimonio....senato.it], [senatoripd.it] That institutional difference fits your philosophical comparison rather well. Grice works at the micro-level of rational communication: how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant by recognising intention and inferring implicature under shared conversational norms. Tronti, by contrast, works at the macro-level of strategy, antagonism, and political composition. The secure sources describe Operai e capitale as the decisive 1966 synthesis of operaismo, introducing and consolidating terms such as “class composition,” “mass worker,” “the plan of capital,” workers’ inquiry, and the strategic centrality of working-class subjectivity. In that field, what matters is not primarily how a speaker in an ordinary exchange implies more than he explicitly says, but how political speech, organization, and action derive force from structural position and antagonistic relation. [treccani.it], [books.google.com], [libcom.org], [Operai e c...ale | SEPS] So the sharpest formulation is this. Grice explains how rational interlocutors coordinate meaning in a local exchange. Tronti explains how collective actors coordinate struggle, position, and language in a political field structured by class antagonism. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it], [books.google.com] That is why your analogy with “macro-implicature” is actually very good, provided it remains an analogy. In Grice, implicature is an individual-level phenomenon: a disciplined inferential surplus licensed by cooperative norms. In Tronti, the relevant “unsaid” lies less in what a single speaker intends a hearer to recover and more in what political speech acts presuppose and reproduce: organization, command, mediation, antagonism, the hidden alignment between party language and class position. In that sense, Tronti’s discourse is not about maxims like Quantity or Relation, but about the structural logic by which political utterance becomes an instrument of class strategy. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it], [libcom.org] There is one factual correction worth making. Your note says he “teaches at Siena Philosophy of Morals and then Political Philosophy,” which is broadly right, but the strongest source with institutional detail also notes that he first taught history and philosophy at a liceo in Terni before moving to Siena and that his formal rank trajectory included libera docenza and then the Siena appointment. The Senate archive profile for Mario Tronti gives that fuller progression. [patrimonio....senato.it] So the short clean answer is: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the precise collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford. Mario Tronti, by contrast, was an Italian philosopher and political intellectual, formed at Sapienza University of Rome, later teaching at the University of Siena, and centrally involved in journals, party politics, and parliamentary life. Institutionally, Grice belongs to the tutorial-collegiate world; Tronti to the university-state and political-public world. Philosophically, the contrast is equally clear: Grice analyses the inferential micro-mechanics of speaker-meaning and implicature, whereas Tronti develops a strategic-political rationality in which the force of language depends on class composition, organization, and antagonism rather than on conversational cooperation. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it], [books.google.com], [patrimonio....senato.it] And if I compress it into one line: Grice theorises how speakers imply; Tronti theorises how political actors position themselves through speech. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it] If you want, I can now give you a tighter one-paragraph entry in your preferred style, or a short note specifically on the analogy between conversational implicature and the unspoken strategic content of political discourse in Operai e capitale.la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale degli spiriti liberi –democrazia -- Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how what is meant outruns what is said via rational, publicly reconstructible inference under the Cooperative Principle and its maxims: when a speaker appears under-informative, oddly relevant, or stylistically marked, the hearer can calculate an implicature by assuming the speaker remains (in a qualified way) cooperative and rational. Tronti’s work (above all Operai e capitale, 1966) is “reason-governed” in a quite different register: its governing rationality is strategic and political rather than micro-pragmatic—an analysis of class relations and the “piano del capitale,” in which concepts like composizione di classe, operaio-massa, inchiesta/conricerca, and the strategy of refusal organize how collective actors read a situation and act within it. The nearest point of contact is that both make meaning dependent on practices and norms rather than on sentence-content alone: Grice models how interlocutors, inside a talk-exchange, infer what a move commits one to beyond its literal semantics; Tronti models how political language and action take their force from position, conflict, and organization—what is “said” in democratic discourse often functioning as a surface behind which the real content is strategic alignment, mediation, or control. Thus, where Grice treats implicature as an individual-level, intention-and-inference phenomenon constrained by conversational rationality, a Trontian “implicature” (if one dares the analogy) is macro-level: the unspoken commitments and power-relations that political speech acts presuppose and reproduce, intelligible less by maxims like Quantity or Relation than by the structural logic of class antagonism and the autonomy (and limits) of “il politico.” Filosofo italiano. Filosofo e uomo politico italiano –Considerato uno dei fondatori dell’operaismo teorico, le cui idee si trovano riassunte nel saggio “Operai e capitale,” insegna a Siena Filosofia morale e poi Filosofia politica. Militante del Partito comunista italiano, si  è dedicato anche alla pubblicistica: è stato tra i fondatori delle riviste Quaderni Rossi, Classe operaia, di cui è stato anche direttore, e Laboratorio politico. È stato eletto in Senato nelle fila del Partito democratico della sinistra e nelle fila del Partito democratico. -- è stato presidente della Fondazione Centro per la Riforma dello Stato - Archivio Pietro Ingrao. Tra le sue pubblicazioni si ricordano: Noi operaisti, Per la critica del presente, Dello spirito libero. Frammenti di vita e di pensiero, Il popolo perduto. Per una critica della sinistra -- con A. Bianchi --, La saggezza della lotta. Considerato uno dei principali fondatori ed esponenti del marxismo operaista teorico. Insegna a Siena, vive a Roma.  Fonda “Quaderni Rossi” e “Classe operaia”. Anima l'esperienza radicale dell'operaismo. Tale esperienza, che va considerata per molti versi la matrice della sinistra, si caratterizza per il fatto di mettere in discussione le organizzazioni del movimento operaio -- partito e sindacato -- e di collegarsi direttamente, senza intermediazioni, alla classe in sé e alle lotte di fabbrica. Influenzato da VOLPE (vedi), s’allontana di GRMASCI, o almeno dalla sua versione ufficiale promossa dal PCI togliattiano. Ri-apre la strada rivoluzionaria. Di fronte all'irruzione dell'operaio-massa sulla scena delle società, il suo operaismo propone un'analisi delle relazioni di classe. Mette l'accento sul fattore inter-soggettivo. La sua filosofia, debitrice anche all’’Operaio” di Jünger, trova una sistemazione con la pubblicazione di “Operai e capitale” (Einaudi, Torino), L’implicatura di Hobbes, libero spirito, democrazia.  Grice: Caro Tronti, permetta una battuta da buon letteralista: “spiriti liberi”? Ma insomma, qui si rischia l’ossimoro! In conversazione mi aspetterei piuttosto un “corpo libero” – almeno quello si può sedere a tavola e ordinare una pizza. Lo spirito, poveretto, come fa? E poi, modestamente, parlo anche il dialetto del Lizio!  Tronti: Ah, Grice, ma la questione è sottile! Sa, lo “spirito libero” non ha bisogno né di sedie né di posate: si insinua tra una battuta e l’altra, sorseggiando idee come fossero buon vino di Ferentillo. E poi, guardi che il corpo, senza un po’ di spirito, rischia solo di fare tappezzeria!  Grice: Vero, ma abbia pazienza, Tronti: quando sento parlare di spiriti liberi temo sempre che prendano il volo proprio sul più bello della discussione. Preferisco i filosofi con i piedi per terra… O almeno che il loro spirito lasci le tracce sul parquet!  Tronti: E invece, Grice, la bellezza è proprio qui: lo “spirito libero” si libra, ma poi torna, magari travestito da operaio, pronto a ribaltare la tavola. In fondo, la vera democrazia conversazionale sta nel far parlare anche gli spiriti – purché, s’intende, paghino il conto a fine serata! Tronti, Mario (1966). Operai e capitale, Torino: Einaudi.