Un flauto e tre bambini. Verità, guerra e consenso / A flute and three children. Truth, war and consensus

  • Franco Lo Piparo
Keywords: Truth, language, war, Aristotle, Wittgenstein

Abstract

Why do human beings usually make violence in the name of Truth? The answer is not easy. We try to give some insights for a satisfactory answer. We start by giving an operational definition of the word “truth”, with the help of Aristotle and Wittgenstein. The analysis of a philosophical anecdote by Sen – about three children who want to justify the exclusive possession of a single flute by using rational arguments – brings out the warlike vocation of truth. Finally, we introduce the concept of “rhetorical truth” and we use the last Wittgenstein’s thesis on the inevitable fideistic foundation of rational reasoning.

References

CROCE, Benedetto (1932), Storia d’Europa nel secolo decimonono, Adelphi, Mila-no.

LO PIPARO, Franco (2014), Il professor Gramsci e Wittgenstein. Il linguaggio e il potere, Donzelli, Roma.

SEN, Amartya (2009), The Idea of Justice, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA).

MILL, John Stuart (1859), On Liberty (Saggio sulla libertà, tr. it. Il Saggiatore, Mi-lano 1981).

TARSKI, Alfred (1936), The concept of truth in formalized languages, in A. TAR-SKI (ed.), Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics, Hackett, Indianapolis 1983, pp. 152-278.

WITTGENSTEIN, Ludwig (1953), Philosophische Untersuchungen, Blackwell, Ox-ford (Ricerche filosofiche, tr. it. di Renzo Piovesan e Mario Trinchero, a cura di Mario Trinchero, Torino, Einaudi 1967).

WITTGENSTEIN, Ludwig (1969), Über Gewißheit, Blackwell, Oxford (Della Cer-tezza, tr. it. di Mario Trinchero, Torino, Einaudi, 1999).

WITTGENSTEIN, Ludwig (1980), Vermischte Bemerkungen, edito da G.H. von Wright, Suhrkamp, Francoforte sul Meno, 1977 (Pensieri Diversi, tr. it., Adelphi, Milano 1980).

How to Cite
Lo Piparo, F. (1) “Un flauto e tre bambini. Verità, guerra e consenso / A flute and three children. Truth, war and consensus”, Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio, 00. Available at: http://rifl.unical.it/index.php/rifl/article/view/384 (Accessed: 29March2024).
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Articoli