VO

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I verbali: Volpe – Ossia: Grice e Volpe: la ragione conversazionale, le categorie conversazionali, e la logica come scienza storica. Note sula Logica come scienza storica. Galvano della Volpe (Imola, Bologna, Emilia): Institutionally, Grice and Galvano Della Volpe are easier to compare than some of the earlier figures, because both are unmistakably academic philosophers; but they still belong to very different university worlds. Grice’s formula is exact in the Oxford sense. “Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s” places him inside the collegiate tutorial system; “CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford” places him in the wider university faculty structure. So Grice combines the intimate, repetitive discipline of tutorials with a broader university lecturing role. Galvano Della Volpe belongs to the Italian chair system, not to a collegiate-tutorial one. He studied philosophy at Bologna under Rodolfo Mondolfo, taught first in licei and at Bologna, and then held the chair of history of philosophy at the University of Messina from 1939 until 1965. So he is not an Oxford don in Grice’s sense at all. He is an Italian professor of history of philosophy and Marxist theorist, formed in Bologna and institutionally defined above all by the Messina chair.  studied at Bologna under  and later held the chair of history of philosophy at the University of Messina from 1939 to 1965. [treccani.it] [sba.unimi.it] [treccani.it], [treccani.it], [en.wikipedia.org] So the clean institutional comparison is this. Grice was a modern Oxford don with a dual college-and-university role. Della Volpe was an Italian university professor in the chair system, first in secondary and university teaching around Bologna and Ravenna, then centrally at Messina. That institutional contrast aligns quite well with the philosophical one you are drawing. Grice works at the micro-level of reason in communication: how an utterance becomes meaningful through intention, recognition, and inferential uptake. Della Volpe works at the macro-level of reason as historically formed and materially constrained: how logic, concepts, and critical categories arise within history rather than float above it as timeless formalities. There is one important correction to your wording, though. The title is not Logica come scienza storica for the original 1950 book. The 1950 title is Logica come scienza positiva. Logica come scienza storica is the later retitled or reworked version. The best biographical and bibliographical sources identify’s major 1950 work as Logica come scienza positiva; the later title Logica come scienza storica belongs to a revised later edition. [treccani.it] [treccani.it], [taylorfrancis.com], [archive.org] So if you want to compare Grice with the 1950 Della Volpe, the safest phrase is: in Logica come scienza positiva, later reissued as Logica come scienza storica. A second correction. The 1919 item in your note is not right as given. The standard early book is L’idealismo dell’atto e il problema delle categorie, published in 1924, while the degree under Mondolfo was completed in 1920. The fullest biographical source says that  graduated under  in December 1920 and published  in 1924; a 1919 title such as “L’idealismo assoluto. Sotto Mondolfo. Bologna” is not the secure bibliographical form. [treccani.it] [sba.unimi.it] [treccani.it], [sba.unimi.it] A third correction, subtler but important. If you want Bologna as a style-marker, that is plausible; but biographically Della Volpe is not simply “Bologna” in the way an Oxford don is “Oxford.” He is Imola by birth, Bologna by formation, Ravenna and Bologna in earlier teaching, and Messina by career-defining chair. The standard biographical sources place  in a sequence of Imola, Bologna, Ravenna, and finally Messina, where he spent his principal professorial career. [en.wikipedia.org] [en.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it] Philosophically, though, your contrast is promising. If I compress it sharply: Grice explains how a hearer is entitled, here and now, to move from what is said to what is meant. Della Volpe explains how the very categories and inferential habits available to a culture are historically formed through anti-dogmatic struggle, material practice, and conceptual labour. So the bridge is real, but it is not that Della Volpe gives “conversational categories” in anything like Grice’s sense. It is rather that Della Volpe historicises rationality at the level at which Grice presupposes it. In other words: Grice asks: given a rational agent and a conversational situation, how does meaning work? Della Volpe asks: given a history of thought and practice, how do the rational forms within which such agents operate come to be what they are? That is why the institutional contrast matters. Oxford tutorial philosophy disciplines local inferential moves in live exchange. The Italian university chair, especially in Della Volpe’s case, disciplines concepts through historical and polemical reconstruction. So the clean answer would be: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the strict collegiate sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s College and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford, combining tutorials with faculty lecturing., by contrast, was an Italian professor of history of philosophy, trained at Bologna under  and professionally defined by his chair at the University of Messina from 1939 to 1965. The institutional contrast illuminates the philosophical one: Grice analyses reason as it operates in the live micro-mechanics of conversation, whereas  analyses logic and rationality as historically constituted forms of critical practice. [treccani.it] [sba.unimi.it] [treccani.it] [treccani.it], [treccani.it], [en.wikipedia.org], [sba.unimi.it] If you want, I can now give you a shorter polished paragraph in your own register, but corrected for the title of Logica come scienza positiva and the 1924 early book.la ragione conversazionale, le categorie conversazionali, e la logica come scienza storica. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats communication as an essentially rational transaction: what a speaker means is fixed by an intention that an audience recognize that intention and let such recognition count as a reason for uptake, so that implicature is not a stylistic flourish but a disciplined inference licensed by cooperative expectations. Galvano Della Volpe (often filed, in Speranza’s own jocular taxonomy, as “Volpe”), by contrast, relocates rationality away from the micro-economy of talk and into the historical objectivity of concepts: in Logica come scienza storica (1950) the very point is that logic is not an a priori calculus hovering above practice but a historically sedimented instrument forged in struggles against dogmatism, with the “positività del molteplice” and the extra-razionale (matter, practice, history) functioning as constraints on what counts as knowledge. The comparison is thus sharp and productive: Grice asks how, in a single conversational exchange, an utterance can rationally commit and guide an interpreter beyond what is said; Della Volpe asks how the very forms of rational commitment are historically produced, socially stabilized, and made available as categories in the first place. If Grice’s conversational reason explains why an audience is entitled to move from a sentence to an implicature, Della Volpe’s historical logic explains why certain inferential moves and “categories” are on the table at all at a given moment in intellectual history; and the Bologna-to-Oxford drift you’re tracking can be read as a change in institutional style: Bononia as a long training in public, text-grounded argumentation (law, logic, disputation), and Oxford as a later refinement of the local mechanics of saying/meaning within a tight tutorial culture—two ways of making reason governable, one by history and institution, the other by intention and conversational accountability. Epilogue note (Grice, made a bit more idiomatic): I was rather amused to find, in Speranza’s listing, that Volpe hails from Bologna—Bononia, as he insists on calling it. Addendum (impersonal): Being formed in and around Bologna mattered less as a “biographical colour” than as an institutional style-marker: Bologna’s humanistic and juridical culture prized learned disputation, commentary, and historically articulated argument (a habitus that sits naturally with Della Volpe’s claim that logic is a historical science), whereas Oxford’s later tutorial-and-seminar ecology prized fine-grained accountability in the move from what is said to what is meant; the point of the Bononia-to-Vadum-Boum arc, in university terms, is that both settings discipline reason, but they discipline it at different levels—Bologna by stabilizing intellectual practices across time, Oxford by policing inferential entitlement in the living moment of exchange. Storia della filosofia italiana. Grice: “Essential Italian philosopher.” Insegna storia della filosofia a Messina. Sostenne un umanismo positivo d'ispirazione marxista. Nel problema della conoscenza, V. si riallaccia alla critica materialistica di Marx all'apriorismo, intesa come conclusione di quel processo di pensiero anti-dogmatico che percorre tutta la storia della logica e della filosofia, e pervenne quindi alla rivendicazione della positività del molteplice, dell'extra-razionale o, altrimenti detto, della materia come elemento della conoscenza. Saggi: Hegel romantico e mistico, La filosofia dell'esperienza di Hume, Critica dei principî logici, La libertà comunista, Pella teoria di un umanismo positivo, Logica come scienza positiva, Poetica), Rousseau e Marx, Critica del gusto, Critica dell'ideologia contemporanea. Studia a Bologna laureandosi in filosofia sotto il filosofo ebreo-italiano MONDOLFO. Insegna a Bologna, Ravenna, e Messina. Legato alla tradizione di GENTILE, si dedica a questioni strettamente teoretiche e storico-filosofiche, attestandosi infine su posizioni fortemente anti-idealistiche. Approda così attraverso la ri-valutazione dell’ESPERIENZA dell’empirismo e dell’UMANO dell’umanesimo, mantenendo un'impostazione fondamentalmente dialettico-materialistica in costante confronto critico e polemico soprattutto con la dialettica idealista e l'idealismo, ma anche colle correnti positivistiche semiotica, e coll'esistenzialismo. Questa svolta, testimoniata dal Discorso sull'ineguaglianza, conduce a V.  a un sempre maggiore interesse per i problemi della filosofia politica e dell'etica, considerati comunque in stretto rapporto colle questioni semiotiche. Non abbandona comunque i propri interessi storico-filosofici. Critica del gusto pell’antico, il gusto pegl’antichi degl’antichi, chiave della dialettica storica, la logica come storia, espressione, l’espressione.  Grice: Caro Volpe, sai, ogni volta che mi trovo a discutere delle “cose che contano”, mi sento come davanti a un buffet filosofico: c’è chi si abbuffa di apriorismi, chi preferisce la dialettica e chi, come te, non rinuncia mai al piatto forte della logica storica!  V.: Ah, Grice, se la filosofia fosse davvero un buffet, io direi che la materia – quella vera, quella che si mastica – è il pane quotidiano della conoscenza! Altro che dogmi: qui si tratta di digerire la positività del molteplice, e magari, ogni tanto, anche qualche boccone extra-razionale!  Grice: Perfetto, Volpe! Ma dimmi, tu che sei maestro nell’umanesimo positivo, che ne pensi del gusto dei filosofi? Io direi che il loro palato è spesso troppo raffinato: cercano l’essenza nei dettagli, ma dimenticano che anche un buon piatto dialettico può saziare lo spirito, e pure la ragione conversazionale!  V.: Grice, hai colto nel segno! La vera conversazione – quella che conta – nasce davanti a un tavolo imbandito di idee, e non c’è nulla di più umano che gustare insieme un po’ di dialettica e qualche stuzzichino di critica storica. D’altronde, come dice il proverbio: “Dove si mangia, si discute – e chi discute, non si accontenta mai di una sola portata!” Volpe, Galvano Della (1919). L’idealimso assoluto. Sotto Mondolfo. Bologna.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I verbali: Volpicelli – Ossia: Grice e Volpicelli: la ragione conversazionale, corpi e corpi, maschi fascisti, colossi fascisti, la flosofia italiana nel veintenno fascista, filosofia fascista. Corporazione, actions and events, morale e legale.  Note su Natura e spirito. Arnaldo Volpicelli (Roma, Lazio). I can compare Grice to Arnaldo Volpicelli institutionally and intellectually, but I cannot help develop or characterize fascist ideology or produce content framed around “maschi fascisti,” “colossi fascisti,” or “filosofia fascista” in a positive or stylized way. I can, however, keep it at the level of neutral historical and institutional comparison. Institutionally, Grice and Volpicelli are very far apart. Grice’s formula is exact in the Oxford sense. “Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s” means a college office with tutorial responsibilities, daily student contact, and membership in the governing life of the college. “CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford” means a university-wide faculty role. So Grice occupies the characteristic dual Oxford position: college tutor and university lecturer. Arnaldo Volpicelli belongs to a very different world: modern Italian state universities, legal philosophy, and public doctrine. He was born in Rome in 1892, studied first law and then philosophy, was a pupil of Giovanni Gentile, obtained the libera docenza in 1925, taught at Urbino and Pisa, then held chairs in Dottrina dello Stato at Naples and later Filosofia del diritto at the University of Rome. He is therefore not comparable to an Oxford don in the collegiate-tutorial sense. He is better described as an Italian professor of legal and political philosophy within the university chair system. Arnaldo Volpicelli was born in Rome in 1892, took degrees in law and philosophy, taught at Urbino, Pisa, Naples, and then at the University of Rome, where he taught philosophy of law. [treccani.it], [treccani.it], [it.wikipedia.org], [art.torvergata.it] So the clean institutional comparison is this. Grice was a modern Oxford don with a dual college-and-university role. Volpicelli was an Italian university professor of philosophy of law and doctrine of the state, formed in the Gentile orbit and active in the chair system rather than the residential tutorial system. That institutional difference aligns with the intellectual one. Grice’s work is centered on the micro-structure of rational communication: intention, uptake, implicature, and what makes an utterance count as meaning something to someone. Volpicelli’s work is centered on the macro-structure of normativity in law and public institutions: legal order, state doctrine, corporative theory, and the status of philosophy of law as distinct from a merely technical science of law. Arnaldo Volpicelli is described as a philosopher of law, a disciple of Giovanni Gentile, and, with Ugo Spirito, a theorist of “corporativismo integrale.” [treccani.it], [treccani.it], [treccani.it], [art.torvergata.it] So if you want the sharp contrast, I would put it this way. Grice analyses normativity from the side of reasons recognizable in conversation. Volpicelli analyses normativity from the side of legal and institutional forms. For Grice, what matters is whether the hearer can recognize the speaker’s intention and treat that recognition as a reason. For Volpicelli, what matters is how law and public order are philosophically grounded and institutionally embodied. A few factual clarifications are also worth making. First, the dates and training. Arnaldo Volpicelli took a law degree in 1920 and a philosophy degree in 1923, not just a single philosophy laurea. [treccani.it], [it.wikipedia.org] Second, the 1925 Kant point in your note is correct and actually quite useful. A detailed biographical source explicitly lists Fondamenti della metafisica dei costumi, translated and introduced by Arnaldo Volpicelli, in 1925. Independent catalog records confirm the 1925 Florence edition. Arnaldo Volpicelli published an Italian translation and introduction to Kant’s Fondamenti della metafisica dei costumi in 1925. [art.torvergata.it], [archivumdoc.it], [biblio.toscana.it] Third, the safest characterization of his doctrine is not colorful but exact: he was a philosopher of law and state doctrine, linked to Gentile and to integral corporativism, and later wrote works such as Natura e spirito, L’educazione politica dell’Italia, Corporativismo e scienza giuridica, and La certezza del diritto e la crisi odierna. [treccani.it], [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it] So the short plain-English 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. Arnaldo Volpicelli, by contrast, was an Italian professor of philosophy of law and doctrine of the state, formed in the orbit of Giovanni Gentile and active in the state-university chair system at Urbino, Pisa, Naples, and Rome. The institutional contrast mirrors the intellectual one: Grice explains normativity through rational conversation and intention-recognition, whereas Volpicelli explains it through legal philosophy and the conceptual structure of public institutions. [treccani.it], [treccani.it], [it.wikipedia.org], [art.torvergata.it] If you want, I can now give you a cleaner one-paragraph entry in your preferred style, but phrased neutrally and without the politically loaded flourishes.Con V. la ragione conversazionale incontra corpi e corpi, maschi fascisti, colossi fascisti, la flosofia italiana nel veintenno fascista, filosofia fascista. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning makes what is meant depend on a rational structure of intention and recognition: the speaker means p by uttering x only if he intends the audience to form a response (typically belief), intends the audience to recognize that intention, and intends that this recognition function as the audience’s reason for uptake, so that implicature is the disciplined surplus produced when speakers rely on cooperative inference rather than exhaustive statement. Volpicelli, by contrast, is working where “reasons” are institutionally embodied and politically loaded: as a philosopher of law and state doctrine in the Gentile orbit, and a theorist of corporativismo integrale, he treats normativity not primarily as a micro-pragmatic phenomenon in conversation but as something objectified in legal forms, corporate bodies, and state structures, where the force of a claim is secured by institutional authorization and collective practice; yet this makes him a useful foil for Grice, because it throws into relief Grice’s insistence that even in juridical-moral contexts the route from utterance to uptake must remain answerable to reasons recognizable by participants, not merely to coercive or rhetorical “corpi e corpi.” Where Volpicelli’s “spirito” can be naturalized as a kind of animating breath within social bodies (as your Grice quip has it), Grice’s “spirito” is the rational breath of conversation itself: the space in which obligations, commitments, and legal-moral distinctions can be negotiated through what is said, what is implicated, and what can be demanded as a reason—so that the contrast between them is, in effect, the contrast between normativity as institutional corporazione and normativity as the reason-governed recognitional economy of talk. Note (epilogue, as written by Grice): It was through Speranza’s listing of Volpicelli that I realised how advanced the Italians were with Kant. When teaching Kant in English, I had to rely on Abbott’s very bad translation of the Sitte -- for which Volpicelli had provided a wonderful translation as early as 1925! Grice is referring to Volpicelli’s Immanuel Kant, Fondamenti della metafisica dei costumi (traduzione e introduzione di Arnaldo Volpicelli), Firenze, 1925. Corporazione, actions and events, morale e legale. Grice: “While V. does use ‘spirito,’ he means ‘breath of air,’ since he is ultimately a naturalist, like I am.” Essential Italian philosopher, I read with interest his “Nature and spirit.” At that time, at Oxford, there was not much of an Oxford spirit, so it spirited me.” Filosofo del diritto. Discepolo di GENTILE, insegna filosofia del diritto e dottrina dello stato a Roma. Insieme a SPIRITO  è esponente d’un corporativismo integrale che nell'associazione corporativa, contro l'individualismo e lo statalismo, pone il soggetto dell'attività economica. Si laurea in filosofia sotto GENTILE. Insegna a Urbino, Pisa, e Roma. Teorico del corporativismo integrale. Direttore di studi e archivio di studi corporativi. Natura e spirito; L'educazione politica dell'Italia; I presupposti scientifici dell'ordinamento corporativo; Corporativismo e scienza giuridica; La certezza del diritto e la crisi. Franchi, Per una teoria dell'auto-governo. La filosofia di V. costituisce un importante e probabilmente ineludibile termine di confronto onde comprendere appieno, sul terreno proprio del diritto, gli sviluppi più profondi dell'attualismo di GENTILE  e le sue possibili conclusioni teoretiche circa la possibilità di ammettere nel suo seno una filosofia del diritto. Il peculiare interesse per i risvolti speculativi della sua dottrina nella corretta definizione di una rechtsphilosophie fanno, infatti, di V, un insostituibile interlocutore. Punto di partenza della sua riflessione è, per l’appunto, la definizione d’una FILOSOFIA del diritto. La distinzione con una mera SCIENZA del diritto che investe in primis la speculazione. Tale problematica viene affrontata, parallelamente, seppur d’un versante più marcatamente economico e sociologico, da SPIRITO. Natura, spirito, corpi e corpi, corporazione, naturalismo, natura e naturalismo.  Grice: Caro Volpicelli, sa che il mio corpo, ai tempi, ha dovuto affrontare il corpo dell’Unno – e, in una certa misura “tradotta”, anche il corpo fascista! Quella guerra ha forgiato non solo il mio spirito – o “respiro”, se preferisce – ma mi ha anche spinto a ricercare quel terreno comune che, magari non con l’Unno stesso, ma senz’altro con i corpi che affollavano l’università più antica d’Europa… o giù di lì! Dopotutto, la carne è debole, ma la conversazione è forte!  V.: Grice, mi rallegra sapere che anche lei ha affrontato “corpi” ben più rigidi dei miei! Se pensa ai colossi fascisti che circolavano tra le nostre aule, capirà che anche qui la lotta era tra corpi… e spiriti! Ma il vero spirito, come lei insegna, si trova proprio nel fiato della conversazione, mica nelle parate muscolose!  G.: Esatto, caro Volpicelli! Se c’è qualcosa che ci unisce è proprio questa strana corporazione della parola: azioni, eventi e persino qualche colpo basso retorico. A Oxford mancava lo “spirito” accademico, ma mai lo spirito polemico… e neppure la voglia di un buon tè dopo una sana battaglia dialettica!  V.: Eppure, caro Grice, tra una disputa giuridica e una corporazione d’anime, la vera filosofia, anche in tempi di veintenno, nasce sempre dal piacere di confrontarsi. Magari i nostri corpi rimangono spettatori, ma la ragione conversazionale… quella, sì, resta imbattibile, anche contro gli Unni! Volpicelli, Arnaldo (1925). Natura e spirito. Roma.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I verbali: Volta – Ossia: Grice e Volta: la rana ambigua e la difesa degl’animali.  Note su le Lettere sull’aria infiammabile. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta (Como, Lombardia): Compared institutionally, Volta is much less like Grice than a university philosopher and much more like a public experimental savant who also held a university chair. Grice’s formula is exact in the Oxford sense. “Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s” means a college office with tutorial and pastoral responsibility inside the collegiate system; “CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford” means a university-wide appointment in the faculty structure. So Grice combines the two classic Oxford functions: college tutor and university lecturer. Volta belongs to a different institutional world. He was first regent of the public schools in Como, then professor of experimental physics at the Royal School or Ginnasio of Como, and from 1778 or 1779 onward professor of experimental physics at the University of Pavia, where he remained for roughly forty years and was later also elected Rector or President. So Volta is not a college fellow-tutor in any Oxford sense. He is an Italian professor of experimental physics, tied to a chair, a cabinet of instruments, public demonstrations, and the broader European republic of science. Alessandro Volta was appointed professor of experimental physics at the University of Pavia, where he remained for decades; earlier he taught at Como. [museoperla...a.unipv.it], [catalogue....galileo.it], [britannica.com] So the clean institutional comparison is this. Grice was an Oxford don with a dual college-and-university role. Volta was an Italian experimental physicist holding a university chair, with earlier school appointments and a later international public-scientific stature. That institutional contrast fits the intellectual one rather well. Grice works on the rational structure of communicative action: intention, uptake, implicature, and what makes an utterance count as meaning something. Volta works on experimental evidence, instrumentation, reproducibility, and controversy in natural philosophy, especially electricity. So if you want the sharpest philosophical contrast, it is this. Grice rationalises discourse from the side of conversational interpretation. Volta rationalises inquiry from the side of experiment. Grice asks what makes a hearer entitled to infer what a speaker means. Volta asks what makes an observer entitled to infer what an apparatus shows. That is why your frog point is actually useful, once cleaned up. In the Galvani-Volta dispute, the frog becomes not a sentimental victim or a moral emblem, but an evidential site. Luigi Galvani took the twitching frog leg as evidence of “animal electricity”; Alessandro Volta argued instead that the crucial factor was the contact of dissimilar metals with moist tissue, leading him toward “metallic” electricity and eventually the pile. [lindahall.org], [museoperla...a.unipv.it], [britannica.com] So Grice and Volta do meet in one interesting way: both care about publicly answerable transitions from a sign to a conclusion. For Grice the sign is the utterance, and the route is intention-recognition under conversational norms. For Volta the sign is the experiment, and the route is controlled reproducibility under physical method. A few factual corrections are needed in your note. First, “Conte del regno italico” is basically right, but it needs precise dating. After the pile and the Paris demonstration, Napoleon I honoured Alessandro Volta progressively: gold medal and pension, then senator in 1809, then count in 1810. After Napoleon’s fall, the restored Austrian authorities kept honouring him in other ways. Napoleon I made Alessandro Volta a senator of the Kingdom of Italy in 1809 and a count in 1810. [catalogue....galileo.it], [brunellesc...imss.fi.it], [napoleon-empire.org] Second, “inventore del generatore elettrico mai realizzato, la pila” should be simplified. He is securely credited with inventing the voltaic pile, the first practical source of continuous electric current. Alessandro Volta is credited with inventing the voltaic pile, the first practical source of continuous electric current. [britannica.com], [en.wikipedia.org] Third, “difesa degli animali” should not be built into the comparison as if Volta had an ethical programme there. The historical issue is methodological, not animal-rights discourse. Volta’s side of the frog controversy is best framed as a dispute over what exactly the frog experiment evidences, not as an early defence of animals. The Volta-Galvani controversy is a methodological dispute about what frog experiments prove, not evidence of a Voltaean programme of animal defence. [lindahall.org], [museoperla...a.unipv.it], [britannica.com] Fourth, “Lettere sull’aria infiammabile” in 1800 is not the right date for the famous methane work. The key discoveries and letters on marsh gas belong to the later 1770s, not 1800. Alessandro Volta discovered methane in the later 1770s; the methane work does not belong to 1800. [britannica.com], [en.wikipedia.org] So the plain comparative answer, in your likely preferred register, would be this: H. P. Grice was an Oxford don in the strict institutional sense, both Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at St John’s College and CUF University Lecturer in philosophy at Oxford, combining the intimate tutorial culture of the college with a wider faculty role. Alessandro Volta, by contrast, belongs to the world of Italian experimental science: first a teacher at Como, then professor of experimental physics at the University of Pavia, a public demonstrator, instrument-maker, and scientific controversialist rather than a college tutor. The institutional contrast illuminates the intellectual one. Grice analyses how meaning becomes publicly recoverable in rational conversation; Volta analyses how belief becomes publicly warranted in experiment. Both are concerned with disciplined routes from sign to conclusion, but Grice’s route is pragmatic and recognitional, whereas Volta’s is experimental and reproducible. [museoperla...a.unipv.it], [catalogue....galileo.it], [britannica.com], [lindahall.org] If you want, I can now compress that into one shorter headnote, or I can sharpen the frog comparison into a single paragraph entirely focused on Galvani versus Volta.la rana ambigua e la difesa degl’animali. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning locates what is meant not in the bare semantic content of an utterance but in a structure of intentions whose recognition supplies reasons: a speaker means p by making an utterance with the intention that the hearer come to a response (typically belief), that the hearer recognize the speaker’s intention, and that this recognition function as the hearer’s reason for uptake; implicature is the disciplined surplus that becomes recoverable when speakers rely on cooperative inference rather than full explicitness. Volta, working in an experimental and polemical context shaped by the frog controversies (Galvani versus Volta on animal electricity) and by the emerging ideal of public, replicable evidence, offers a revealing contrast: his communications—letters, memoirs, demonstrations—aim to shift assent by controlling conditions, instruments, and observable effects, so that the “reason” for belief is anchored in reproducible procedure rather than in conversational recognition of intention. Yet the two meet in a subtle way: Volta’s experimental rhetoric repeatedly depends on managing what an audience is entitled to infer from a described set-up (what the apparatus licenses one to conclude, what alternative explanation is being quietly excluded), which is a scientific analogue of Gricean implicature; conversely, Grice’s account helps explain why Volta’s polemical clarity matters, since the point is not merely to cause conviction but to provide the audience with a recognitional route to conviction that counts as a reason—precisely what distinguishes mere persuasion or spectacle from communicative success. So if Volta turns the frog into a contested sign whose interpretation must be fixed by method, Grice turns the utterance into a sign whose interpretation must be fixed by rationally recognizable intention; both are, in their different domains, attempts to domesticate ambiguity by making the path from “data” (whether sensations or sentences) to justified conclusion publicly answerable. Conte del regno italico. Inventore del generatore elettrico mai realizzato, la pila, e scopritore del gas metano. Riceve onori per il suo lavoro, tra cui la nomina a conte e senatore del regno d'Italia da parte di Bonaparte. La sua importanza scientifica è stata riconosciuta anche nel nome dell'unità di misura del potenziale elettrico, il volt, che prende il nome da lui. Nasce nel ducato di Milano. Il padre discende d’una famiglia di Loveno che vive nel palazzo dove avvenne la nascita dello stesso V. La famiglia Volta appartene alla nobiltà di Como e puo perciò far sedere decurioni nel consiglio cittadino.  Vive a balia a Brunate. Intraprende gli studi umanistici di retorica e di filosofia a Como. Entra nel seminario di Como, dove conclude gli studi e stringe amicizia con Gattoni, che incoraggia la vocazione scientifica di V., mettendogli a disposizione il laboratorio di scienze naturali, ospitato in una delle torri della cinta muraria comasca. Pubblica la sua memoria scientifica, De vi attractiva ignis electrici, ac phænomenis inde pendentibus, nella quale prende posizione nei confronti dell'interpretazione ufficiale dei fenomeni elettrici, sostenuta da BECCARIA. Pubblica Simplicissimus electricorum tentaminum apparatus, indirizzata a Spallanzani. studi sull'elettricità. Nominato reggente delle regie scuole di Como. Mette a punto l'elettroforo perpetuo e ne dà notizia a Priestley e al ministro plenipotenziario conte Firmian, governatore generale della Lombardia. L'invenzione suscita ammirazione ed entusiasmo. Viene nominato da Firmian professore a Como. Scoperta del metano scopre presso Angera sul lago Maggiore l'aria infiammabile nativa delle paludi, che altro non è che metano. La scoperta lo induce a studi ed esperimenti coll’arie infiammabili. Osserva lo stesso fenomeno a Pietramala, e presso le rovine dell'antica Velleia, sulle colline di Piacenza. Pubblica Lettere sull'aria infiammabile nativa delle paludi. Nell'ambito degli studi sul’arie infiammabili" realizza: la pistola elettro-flogo-pneumatica, una lucerna ad aria infiammabile.  G.: Caro Volta, devo confessarti che ogni volta che sento parlare di esperimenti con animali, soprattutto con le rane, mi viene la pelle d’oca! A Vadum Boum – la mia università – e persino a Bononia, la più antica del mondo, sembra che la rana sia la regina indiscussa della scienza… ma io preferisco il dialogo filosofico alle zampe saltellanti! V.: Ah, Grice, capisco benissimo la tua inquietudine! Anche io, tra una pila e una lucerna ad aria infiammabile, ho visto molte rane finire “sotto tensione”. Ma ti dirò: la mia “rana ambigua” non era solo vittima, era anche protagonista! Dopotutto, se non avessimo avuto un po’ di energia anfibia, forse non avremmo mai acceso una luce in laboratorio… Grice: Lo ammetto, la tua pila è stata una vera rivoluzione – senza bisogno di zampe! Ma, tra noi, se la rana dovesse scegliere tra un salto nel lago di Como e un esperimento scientifico, penso che opterebbe per il primo, con tanto di tuffo elegante. E poi, magari, potremmo inventare una nuova filosofia: “La difesa degli animali elettrizzati”! V.: Grice, mi hai strappato una risata! Prometto che la prossima volta, prima di mettere mano agli elettrodi, offrirò alla rana una vacanza sulle colline di Piacenza, tra aria infiammabile e tramonti suggestivi. Magari il vero esperimento sarà capire come difendere la nobiltà naturale... anche quella della rana! Volta, Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio  (1800). Lettere sull’aria infiammabile. Como: Tipografia Reale

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I verbali: Volunnio – Ossia: Grice e Volunnio – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Volunio H. P. GRICE E J. L. SPERANZA -- GREX -- VERBALIA: VOLUNNIO -- Gens Volumnia was an ancient Roman patrician family of Etruscan origin,[1] attested as early as the seventh century BC. It is known at Rome first from Volumnia, wife of Coriolanus, a possibly mythical person dated to the 5th century BC; secondly, from a Publius Volumnius Gallus, who served as consul as early as 461 BC.[2]  Despite its ancient origins, this gens never attained positions of particular importance in the history of the Republic.[2]  The Volumnii were distinguished in two branches, the Volumni Galli, distinguished by the agnomen Amintinus, and the Volumni Fiamma with the agnomen Violens.  Very few members of this gens are mentioned without a cognomen; among these we should mention the aforementioned Volumnia, wife of Gaius Marcius Coriolanus, famous in the history of Rome because, supported by her mother-in-law Veturia, she succeeded in dissuading her husband, who had incited the Volsci against Rome, from fighting against his own people.  A member of this family that is known by inscription on an Etruscan funerary urn is Thania Caesinia Volumni, a freedwoman dated to the 1st century BC.  The tomb of a family with the same name was discovered near Perugia.   Etruscan urn (88-50 BC) containing the name Thania Caesinia Volumni Other noted members of Gens Volumnia:  Lucius Volumnius Flamma Violens, first consul of plebeian origin in 307 BC and 296 BC Publius Volumnius Amintinus Gallus, Consul in 461 BC Marcus Volumnius, who was assassinated by Catiline during the dictatorship of Sulla Volumnia Cytheris, a freedwoman and courtisan during the first centurion. Mark Antony and Brutus were among her lovers. Publius Volumnius. Roman philosopher and friend and companion of Marcus Junius Brutus Lucius Volumnius, senator and close friend of Cicero References  "The Profound Influence of the Etruscans on Rome". TheCollector. 2023-03-29. Retrieved 2024-02-03.  Smith, William (1849). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. C. C. Little and J. Brown; [etc., etc. ]. p. 1282. GENS                                This article about Roman gentes is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information.  Categories: VolumniiRoman gentesRoman gentes of Etruscan originRoman gentes stubs And about THIS gens? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I verbali: Volunnio – Ossia: Grice e Volunnio – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Volunio Speranza’s first-best Volumnia is Coriolanus’s wife—but only if he begins by correcting the inevitable Shakespearean interference. In Livy, Veturia is Coriolanus’s mother and Volumnia his wife; in Plutarch, and therefore in Shakespeare, Volumnia becomes the mother and Virgilia the wife. One ought not let England casually transfer a Roman woman from marriage to maternity merely because the theatre found it convenient. [lateinlex.de], [en.wikipedia.org], [classics.mit.edu] The scene in Livy is already Griceian drama of the highest order. Senators have failed; priests have failed; the women enter the Volscian camp. Coriolanus rises to embrace Veturia, but she blocks the embrace until its meaning is settled: “sine, priusquam complexum accipio, sciam … ad hostem an ad filium venerim, captiva materne in castris tuis sim.” “Allow me, before I accept your embrace, to know whether I have come to an enemy or to a son, and whether in your camp I am a captive or a mother.” [lateinlex.de] That is the first-best Grice–Speranza point. An embrace does not mean affection by its bodily form alone. Before accepting it, Veturia demands the description under which it is offered. If Coriolanus is Rome’s enemy, she is not simply mater receiving filius; she may be captiva receiving hostis. The physical act remains the same; its illocutionary and moral force changes with the political relation. Veturia therefore refuses premature uptake. Volumnia’s role is quieter but indispensable. Livy does not give her a great independent speech. She stands with the two small sons, then embraces Coriolanus; the women’s tears and lamentation finally break him. The wife and children thus function not as additional premisses verbally stated, but as the visible completion of Veturia’s argument: “within Rome are your wife and children” has become “your wife and children are now before you in the enemy camp.” Livy’s arrangement converts family from something mentioned into something shown. [lateinlex.de] A reconstructed Volumnian vignette might therefore run: Volumnia: “Marce, si Romam oppugnas, quid me appellas?” “Marcius, if you attack Rome, what do you call me?” Coriolanus: “Coniugem.” “My wife.” Volumnia: “Coniunx hostis civitatis hostisne est, an civis?” “Is the wife of the city’s enemy herself an enemy, or a citizen?” Coriolanus: “Nolo vos hostes.” “I do not wish you to be enemies.” Volumnia: “Tum noli patriam nostram hostem facere.” “Then do not make our homeland an enemy.” The implicature is more severe than the syllogism. Coriolanus cannot retain “wife,” “sons,” “mother,” “home,” and “Penates” under their ordinary affectionate descriptions while simultaneously redescribing Rome as the military object to be destroyed. Volumnia forces him to notice that his political act revises the predicates governing his household. The finest dry ending would be: Grice: “Did Volumnia persuade him?” Speranza: “Livy lets Veturia speak.” Grice: “Then Volumnia contributed nothing?” Speranza: “She brought the referents.” That is why she is first-best for the gens. Veturia supplies the speech; Volumnia and the children supply what the speech is about. Senators appealed to public reason, priests to religion, and neither moved him. The women make Rome indexical: not urbs illa, “that city,” but the place containing mater, coniunx, liberi, domus, and Penates. Rome is saved when Coriolanus can no longer keep the object of siege conversationally separate from “ours.” Speranza might close: “The men had presented arguments. Volumnia presented herself.” The Roman tradition then erected a temple to Fortuna Muliebris—not, notably, to Fortuna Argumentativa. [lateinlex.de], [en.wikipedia.org]

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I verbali: Volusio – Ossia: Grice e Volusio – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Volusio H. P. GRICE E J. L. SPERANZA -- GREX -- VERBALIA: VOLUSIO. The Volusia gens is an ancient Roman family.  Members Marcus Volusius, aedile 43 BC; he had been proscribed, but managed to escape in sacerdotal vestments borrowed from a friend who was a votary of the goddess Isis.[1] Volusius Vorenius, a centurion associated with Julius Caesar Volusius, an annalist mentioned in the poetry of Catullus Volusius Proculus, assassinated empress Agrippina and associated with Epicharis of the Pisonian conspiracy of 65[2] Lucius Volusius Maecianus, jurist in the second century and father-in-law of the usurper Avidius Cassius[2] Volusia Vettia Maeciana, wife of the usurper Avidius Cassius[2] Quintus Volusius Flaccus Cornelianus, consul of 174 Volusius Venustus, politician of the fourth century Lucius Volusius Successus, whose mausoleum is underneath the Vatican Necropolis Volusii Saturnini Quintus Volusius (Saturninus), prefect of Cicero from 51 BC to 50 BC, married Claudia the aunt of emperor Tiberius[3] Lucius Volusius Saturninus, cousin of emperor Tiberius and suffect consul of 12 BC Volusia Saturnina, daughter of the consul and mother of empress Lollia Paulina[2] Lucius Volusius Saturninus, suffect consul in AD 3 and lived over 90 years from 38 BC-AD 56 Lucius Volusius Saturninus, a member of the College of Pontiffs who died in 55 Quintus Volusius Saturninus, consul of 56 Volusia Cornelia, daughter of Quintus Volusius Saturninus consul of 56 Lucius Volusius Saturninus, Augur and Suffect consul who lived in ca. 80 Lucius Volusius Saturninus, consul of 87 Quintus Volusius Saturninus, consul of 92 See also List of Roman gentes Licinia Cornelia Volusia Torquata References  Appian, Civil Wars IV. 47.200; Valerius Maximus, VII.3.8  Volusius. Strachan stemma.  Claudius patrician. Strachan stemma. Authority control databases Edit this at Wikidata International VIAF National Vatican Categories: VolusiiRoman gentes ANd about THIS gens? thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I verbali: Volusio – Ossia: Grice e Volusio – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Volusio Speranza’s first-best Volusius is Marcus Volusius, the proscribed aedile who escaped Rome in borrowed Isiac priestly dress. Catullus’s annalist offers splendid literary abuse—Annales Volusi, cacata charta—but Marcus provides the cleaner Griceian question: when a Roman magistrate appears to be a priest of Isis, what exactly has he said? [Latin Catu...Negenborn], [en.wikisource.org], [en.wikipedia.org] The disguise is not merely concealment. It is a non-verbal assertion offered for practical uptake: Guard: “Quis es?” Marcus Volusius: “Isidis minister.” Guard: “Romanus videris.” Volusius: “Dea omnes recipit.” Guard: “Transi.” The implicature is not simply “I worship Isis.” It is: “Classify me under the description that does not require comparison with the proscription list.” The vestments function like Accetto’s honest dissimulation with less leisure for honesty: Volusius does not fabricate a new face; he supplies a socially licensed wrong description of the old one. The guard cooperates by recognising the costume’s conventional force and declining to test it too closely. Grice would be delighted by the borrowed clothes: Grice: “Did Volusius mean that he was a priest?” Speranza: “He meant the guards to recognise that he meant them to take him for one.” Grice: “Then the vestment was an utterance?” Speranza: “A rather more portable one than a forged passport.” The Isiac costume is especially effective because proscription depends upon rigid reference. The authorities possess a name, Marcus Volusius, and perhaps a description; the fugitive survives by interrupting the route from visible man to listed name. He does not cease to be Volusius. He prevents the guards from completing “that man is Marcus Volusius.” In Griceian terms, identity remains constant while speaker-controlled evidence changes the hearer’s operative description. Catullus’s Volusius is the excellent second vignette. Carmen 36 begins and ends Annales Volusi, cacata charta, and orders the annals into the fire as payment of a lover’s vow. The insult is not criticism supported by specimens; it is a ritual reclassification of a literary work as combustible waste. Catullus makes the manuscript’s best contribution to literature be its disappearance. [Latin Catu...Negenborn], [en.wikisource.org], [Catullus 3...vroma.org] Volusius: “Have you read my annals?” Catullus: “I have found them useful.” Volusius: “For Roman history?” Catullus: “For Venus.” Volusius: “As an offering?” Catullus: “As fuel.” That is a beautifully Griceian exploitation of “useful.” Volusius supplies literary usefulness; Catullus intends sacrificial combustibility. The apparently complimentary predicate survives, but under a violently altered description. One correction is worth preserving: “Volusius Vorenius” should not be admitted without further evidence. Caesar’s famous centurion is Lucius Vorenus, paired with Titus Pullo, not securely a Volusius. Their episode is itself excellent—rivals repeatedly rescue one another, leaving it undecidable which exceeds the other in courage—but it belongs under Vorenus, not under this gens merely because the names have drifted together. Caesar’s Latin explicitly names T. Pullo et L. Vorenus. [dcc.dickinson.edu], [lateinlex.de] So Marcus should open the entry. The gens Volusia then begins with a man whose life depends upon the distinction between being and being taken as. Catullus may follow with a book whose literary afterlife depends upon being taken as firewood. One Volusius survives because costume acquires meaning; another is lost because criticism acquires liturgical force. The dry close almost supplies itself: Grice: “The Isiac robe saved Volusius.” Speranza: “And Venus disposed of him.” Grice: “The same Volusius?” Speranza: “No—but a gens should accept some division of labour.”