CFP: Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio: Philosophy of language and philosophical anthropology

Philosophy of language and philosophical anthropology - Vol. 7, N. 2 (July 2013)

edited by Marco Mazzeo

Philosophical anthropology is a theoretical paradigm which emerged in the twentieth century but with explicit references to eighteenth- and seventeenth-century authors such as Herder and Kant, Schopenhauer and Schelling. Its main aim is to understand the nature of human beings in non- reductionist terms, which means to avoid reducing the biology of the sapiens to its cultural, institutional and symbolic forms while resisting  the hermeneutic  temptation of dissolving our lives in a play of linguistic and interpretive forms. Its main representatives traditionally include a small number of philosophers (Scheler, Gehlen, Plessner as well as Jonas, Anders, Blumenberg and Tugendhat) and heterodox biologists (Bolk, Uexküll, Portmann, Buijtendijk, von Weizsächer).

The present issue of the journal intends to favour the encounter between the paradigm of philosophical anthropology and philosophy of language. Although this has often been seen as a missed encounter, philosophical anthropology seems to be the ideal interlocutor of philosophy of language being an explicitly multidisciplinary line of research open to “biology and linguistics, to ethology and psychology” (Gehlen). Moreover, many of its authors, such as Uexküll, for instance, have offered food for thought about linguistic theorizations of human biological condition and discussions about its symbolic Umwelt (environment), while some ideas such as the insistence on neoteny or the persistence of juvenile traits in the biological structure of the sapiens have been reworked by the most thoughtful and innovative Darwinists of the previous century, S.J. Gould (Ontogeny and Phylogeny, 1977). Language is a crucial question for Gehlen, who devotes hundreds of pages to the origins of language in human sensibility or to the relation between symbol and institution, while Plessner finds in weeping and laughter the key to access the nature of the species and Scheler individuates a specific trait of being human animals in the capacity of saying “no”.

However, all these sparks have not succeeded in lighting up a connection, a confrontation, or even provoking a clash. This occasion thus represents a double opportunity. It offers philosophy of language the chance to avoid the risk of being immobilized in an impolitic form of knowledge, and of believing that the problem of institutions only concerns the constitutionalist and not, for instance, the relation between language and anthropology. At the same time, it also offers philosophical anthropology the opportunity to get back to the heart of a wider theoretical debate, proposing theses still waiting to be tested, questioned and re-elaborated from a bio-linguistic perspective.

We thus welcome discussions on the following issues:

• the linguistic ideas of the protagonists of philosophical anthropology: historical reconstruction and critical–theoretical analysis;
• Human nature between biology and culture: discussion, also polemic, of the main notions of philosophical anthropology such as that of exoneration, scarcity of instincts and excess of drives (Gehlen), eccentricity (Plessner), the pair environment/world (Uexküll, Scheler, Heidegger, Gehlen), a non-spiritualist, non-mentalist notion of  Geist, etc.;
• Language and political institutions: the relation with the political dimension of the anthropos(the ritual dimension, the pair friend/foe, the institution of totems and taboos, etc);
• Synaesthesia and common sensory as antecedent, following or analogous to verbal language (think of the line of thought inaugurated by Herder but also to Plessner’s Philosophical Anthropology of the Senses);
• disciplinary triangulations among philosophy of language, philosophical anthropology and psychoanalysis, evolutionary biology, aesthetics, cultural anthropology, etc. on key concepts such as instinct, drive, form, the interweaving of phylogenesis and ontogenesis.

Manuscripts should have a theoretical focus. Papers from the following areas are accepted: philosophy of language, linguistics, rhetoric, semiotics, history of philosophy, philosophy of law, moral philosophy, anthropology, sociology, psychology and neuroscience.

Submissions may be in Italian, English, French, German, Spanish and Russian. All submissions must be prepared for blind review. The author's name, the institutional affiliation and the title’s paper must be placed in a separate file. 

Papers must be sent as Microsoft Word file (.doc or .rtf) to: [email protected]

Instructions for authors:

Max length:
40000 characters (including spaces) for articles (including the references) and reviews;
20000 characters (including spaces) for interviews;
10000 characters (including spaces) for specific paper review.

Submission deadline: April 30, 2013
Notification of acceptance: May, 2013

Issue publication: July 31, 2013