Sadly, philosopher Paolo Virno is dead on November 7th. His reflections on nature, human condition, and language touch on questions of scientific interest as well, thus opening up a potential dialogue with perspectives beyond philosophical ones. For this reason, on September 29, 2023, Correlazioni, when it was still just a Facebook page, published a video of Paolo Virno's speech at Philosophy Festival of that year, entitled To Have or to Be? Language as Possession and Not Identity. Correlazioni.eu is now republishing Professor Virno's speech, with the brief introduction of the article written two years ago.
«When I attended Professor V. Gallese's university course on the neuroscientific basis of aesthetic experience, I was impressed by certain empirical studies. For example, when faced with a study that highlighted the activation of motor neurons in the brain of a macaque monkey engaged in observing an object, even in the absence of any motor actions on the part of the animal, such as grasping the observed object (see A. Murata, L. Fadiga, L. Fogassi, V. Gallese, V. Raos, G. Rizzolatti, Object representation in the ventral premotor cortex (area F5) of the monkey, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9325390/). So? What was happening? The researchers argue that the three-dimensional properties of an object can activate, in the macaque brain, and in humans, the motor pattern needed to interact with the object itself, such as the pattern needed to grasp it, regardless of whether grasping actually occurs. Thus, even in my astonished student mind, the possible neurobiological correlate of what is called "potential" was emerging. What other empirical studies, in addition to the one cited, propose. And if a philosophical reflection, such as that of Professor Paolo Virno, supports the idea that humankind is also significantly founded on its potential, does this philosophical idea not find, today, through cognitive neuroscience, a biological correlate? In the lecture given at the 2023 Philosophy Festival, Professor Virno speaks to us of potential, of humankind's distance from things, states, and experiences of our lives, of non-coincidence, of non-identification with them, as "anthropogenic" conditions. He does so based on speculation surrounding the auxiliary verb "have" whose role in the definition of human being the philosopher attributes a fundamental character that other reflections from various disciplinary fields recognize rather in the verb "to be." The distance, the non-identification of man with the things, states, and experiences of his life—the distance and non-identification that the auxiliary verb "have" suggests—would also be the possibility of self-awareness, the possibility of experiencing experience, which man lives through verbal language in particular; and, we might add, through the various languages of the arts. And at the conclusion of a lesson that guides us through the possible relationships between nature, the human condition, and language, Virno finally projects these relationships onto the level of relationality and sociality, proposing a conception of the role of friendship in human life that gives it a special "epiphanic" character.»
Link: Paolo Virno at the 2023 Philosophy Festival: To Have or to Be?
