TY - JOUR AU - Vitali Rosati, Francesco PY - 2022/12/31 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - The World as Communication. Language and Cosmos in Florensky JF - Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio JA - RIFL VL - 16 IS - 2 SE - Articles DO - 10.4396/20221205 UR - http://rifl.unical.it/index.php/rifl/article/view/731 SP - AB - This paper aims to clarify the link between Pavel Florensky’s philosophy of language and his metaphysics of the ikona, by focusing on the theoretical issues of communication. It will nevertheless introduce the historical background and the general features of Florensky’s thought. The identity between names and ideas, as stated in fundamental works such as Mysl i jazyk (Thought and Language) or Ob imeni Bozem (The name of God), shall be read as an attempt to reassess the knowability of being. There is no such thing, Florensky argues, as a conventional or exterior sign, an arbitrary construction depending upon a subject: all beings ultimately reveal what they are, as they are what they reveal. Likewise, in his essays on aesthetics, Florensky strongly highlighted the ontological status of symbolic images as a paradigm of the peculiar symmetry between intelligible sensibility and incarnated meaning. In its immediate concreteness, the materiality of the world shows nothing but its transparency, a window to its own knowledge and purpose. Hence, both words and icons shall be interpreted as particular modes of this self-revelation. ER -