Un “mistero incomprensibile”: il problema mente-corpo nella filosofia dello spirito di Hegel

The essay aims to analyze the relationship between mind and body in the Hegel’s philosophy of subjective spirit. Through a rapid reconstruction of the influences of emerging empirical sciences, such as biology with his vitalist positions, physiognomy and phrenology, the essay aims to highlight not only the role that in the structure of Hegel’s view assumes the teleological vision derived from Aristotle, mediated by third Kantian critique, but also the epistemological significance of the Hegelian methodological attitude. Hegel rejects the attempts to bring back the relationship mind-body to a dualistic view, and proposes a dialectic solution that goes beyond the rigidity of an attitude which is crushed both from a naturalist perspective as well as from an anti-naturalist one. This methodological approach may still offer an interesting contribution to the contemporary debate

Autobiographies in Confinement

If self-structure is intrinsically narrative, the possibility of retelling one's own story not only contributes to confirming one's identity but also to repositioning the individual in rational deliberations and in the relationship with the self, with the environment, with social norms ( 1). Beginning from the reflections of the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, and through the use of some recent phenomenological analyses which highlight the embodied dimension of the mind, this essay intends to show how the dimensions of history and the body interact in the narrative process of the self (2); such analysis is therefore exemplified in reference to the function of time (3) in order to point out certain limits of the possibility of a retelling of one’s self in a condition of confinement (4). Keywords: storytelling, self-orientation, body, time, prison.Se la struttura del sé è intrinsecamente narrativa, la possibilità di rinarrare la propria storia contribuisce non solo a confermare la propria identità ma anche al riposizionamento del soggetto nelle deliberazioni razionali e nel rapporto con se stesso, con l’ambiente, con le norme sociali (1). Muovendo dalle riflessioni del neuroscienziato Antonio Damasio e servendosi di alcune recenti analisi della fenomenologia che mettono in evidenza la dimensione incarnata della mente, il saggio intende mostrare l’interazione della dimensione storica e di quella corporea nel processo di narrazione del sé(2); tale analisi viene quindi esemplificata nel riferimento alla funzione del tempo (3), per cercare di mostrare alcuni limiti della possibilità di una rinarrazione del proprio sé in condizione di reclusione (4). Parole chiave: narrazione, orientamento del sé, corpo, tempo, carcere