Tuesday, June 25, 2024

WHAT IS A SUCCESSFUL DAY?

 


This what a successful day looks like to me. I wake up, I dress up like a Sargent painting, I walk with hat and cane to the center of town, I order an Americano coffee and I smoke very slowly a couple small Montechristo while reading thirteen century Franciscan theology.







Friday, April 12, 2024

THE PULPIT

 


Dear friends, the lecture that I gave on Jakob Boehme for the philosophy conference of the Biennale filmed by Tao Ruspoli is now public. From now on when I am invited to give a philosophy lecture I will arrive with my own pulpit. You can see the lecture at the following link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VvoZ7yS_kSY








Wednesday, January 3, 2024

HEGEL THE CAMEL

 This is my new friend. His name is Hegel the Camel, we meditate together in the Saharan Desert the beautiful thoughts on Buddhism of Hegel in the Lessons on Philosophy of History. The camel is a post-metaphysical animal, he meditates more with his body than with his mind: all camels are natural phenomenologists but the reverse is not true. My new elegant has even allowed me to smoke a fat cigar. Thank you dear friend.








Monday, December 25, 2023

A PHILOSOPHICAL CHRISTMAS


 


Merry Christmas to all! I got this absolute treasure for the bibliophile and the epistemophiliac that I unapologetically am. This is the lectures on Malebranche that Maurice Merleau-Ponty gave at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris in 1947-1948. We are able to read this because a student kept his notes that are published here. This is special to me because Malebranche is my favorite philosopher/theologian. When I was reading Malebranche I was surprised about how his theory of the union of the body and the soul was breaking so clearly with the platonism of Descartes who drastically separates both and also how this union announces the phenomenology of flesh of Merleau-Ponty. I was enchanted to discover through this book that the reason why I could not dissociate the two authors is because the second studied extensively the first. I continue to believe that Malebranche is revolutionary because his research implies that the manifestation of the sacred is more of a matter of states than a matter of belief. Which raises 3 questions still 3 centuries later if the religious emotion is grounded on states: 1 in what order these states manifest themselves for the sacred to actualize it self? 2 do the believer and the secularist can have a full contact with the sacred ? 3 is what we call the phenomenon of revelation a modification of those states?

 Merry philosophical Christmas dear Friends! ❤️



Friday, December 15, 2023

NEW INTERVIEW OF THE DIRECTOR OF THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART OF SICILY

Beautiful interview today of the Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Sicily who acquired my triptych. Giuseppina is a remarkable woman and disciple of Jean Clair the former director of the Picasso Museum in Paris. They both fought all their life to restore the lost alliance between meaning and art. Click on the link for the full article below.

 https://www.arte.go.it/un-museo-nel-monastero-di-clausura-intervista-a-giuseppina-napoli-direttrice-del-macs-di-catania/









Friday, December 1, 2023

SARAH KOFMAN

 Sarah Kofman was one of the greatest Nietzsche scholars in the nineties and she was also my professor. As I was recently reading Gianni Vattimo who is one of the meaningful philosopher of our age and himself a great Nietzsche scholar, I noticed that he quotes Sarah Kofman often. I was pleased to see that 30 years latter her voice still counts for the great thinkers. Her books are still published in English even though she was French 30 years latter.She decided to take her life the 15 October 1994 purposely on the 150 anniversary of the birth of Nietzsche. We waited for her a little too long on this cold Parisian morning of October 16 1994. Read her books: Nietzsche and the Philosophical Scene, Nietzsche and Metaphor, Explosion 1 and Explosion 2. She was an extraordinary philosopher.







Tuesday, November 14, 2023

ELSEWHERE

 The place in which new theologies are fabricated, in which the sacred is resculpted and in which art dares to be one with meaning. You need only a chair to reimagine the world.




Friday, June 2, 2023

CAN GOD BE FOUND IN IMMANENCE?






 


Extraordinary time at Oxford University where I was invited to a private lecture exploring the frontier between theology and phenomenology. The symposium on Truth and Contemplation was beautifully organized by researchers and fellows from the Faculty of Theology and Religion of Oxford. When a researcher starts with opening remarks that are both in English and in Sanskrit you know you have arrived in Oxford. After a powerful opening by Mark Wrathall ( our times authority on Heidegger read his book The Heidegger Lexicon ) with fascinating remarks on the De-godding of the world (Engotterung) Professor Kevin Hart who was honored for his life time work ( read his excellent Poetry and Revelation 2017 ) and Father Jean-Yves Lacoste one of the foremost theologian of our times ( who wrote Experience and the Absolute 2004 and the Phenomenality of God 2008 ) both started their lectures and a discussion followed. Professor Kevin Hart summarized brilliantly the question that  reunited us on this day: this fundamental question is can God be found in immanence. I was moved to be introduced by the Fellow Lecturer of the Faculty of Theology and Religion as one who bridges aesthetics with theology. All my life I have been haunted by this question and will carry on trying to respond with sculptures, lectures, symbols and mystical gates. At the diner that followed the presence of camaraderie, collegiality and excellence never left the room. It was one of these days in which you feel perfectly at home in the world. On the question: is phenomenological reduction a method or an art Jean-Yves Lacoste concluded with great humor and great depth saying ‘’we need as much description as possible and as little prescription as possible’’ to keep the pre-epistemic truth in its purity.