In everyday reasoning – just as in science and art – knowledge is acquired more by “doing” than with long analyses. What do we “do” when we know something new? How can we define and explore the pattern of this reasoning, traditionally called “synthetic”? Following the steps of classic pragmatists, Giovanni Maddalena’s Philosophy of Gesture revolutionizes the pattern of synthesis through the ideas of change and continuity and proposes “gesture” as the tool of our capacity for synthesis. Defining gesture as an action with a beginning and an end that carries on a meaning, Maddalena suggests that one can study this kind of action by using C.S. Peirce’s phenomenological and semiotic classifications. A gesture, Maddalena explains, is a dense blending of all kinds of phenomena – feelings and vague ideas, actual actions, habits of actions – and of signs – icons, indexes, and symbols. When the blending of phenomena and signs is densest, the gesture is “complete,” and its power of introducing something new in knowledge is at its highest level. However, incomplete gestures, still meaningful, can be detected following the same structure. Clear examples of complete gestures are liturgies in every religion, public and private rites, public and private actions that establish an identity, artistic performances, and hypothesizing experiments. A departure from a traditional Kantian framework for understanding the nature and function of reason, The Philosophy of Gesture describes the way in which the unity of theory and practice can become actual and effective, illuminating the patterns of memory and creativity in any field.

The Philosophy of Gesture

MADDALENA, Giovanni
2015-01-01

Abstract

In everyday reasoning – just as in science and art – knowledge is acquired more by “doing” than with long analyses. What do we “do” when we know something new? How can we define and explore the pattern of this reasoning, traditionally called “synthetic”? Following the steps of classic pragmatists, Giovanni Maddalena’s Philosophy of Gesture revolutionizes the pattern of synthesis through the ideas of change and continuity and proposes “gesture” as the tool of our capacity for synthesis. Defining gesture as an action with a beginning and an end that carries on a meaning, Maddalena suggests that one can study this kind of action by using C.S. Peirce’s phenomenological and semiotic classifications. A gesture, Maddalena explains, is a dense blending of all kinds of phenomena – feelings and vague ideas, actual actions, habits of actions – and of signs – icons, indexes, and symbols. When the blending of phenomena and signs is densest, the gesture is “complete,” and its power of introducing something new in knowledge is at its highest level. However, incomplete gestures, still meaningful, can be detected following the same structure. Clear examples of complete gestures are liturgies in every religion, public and private rites, public and private actions that establish an identity, artistic performances, and hypothesizing experiments. A departure from a traditional Kantian framework for understanding the nature and function of reason, The Philosophy of Gesture describes the way in which the unity of theory and practice can become actual and effective, illuminating the patterns of memory and creativity in any field.
2015
978-0-7735-4612-7
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11695/47201
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