Combining scientific research and teaching, connecting two segments of Italian public education—high schools and universities—for a meeting and exchange with other countries on philosophical topics: this is the goal of the "G. Vico" Philosophy Prize, scheduled for February 14th to 16th at the Department of Humanities at the University of Naples Federico II.
Four hundred students are competing for the 1668th edition of the Prize dedicated to the Neapolitan philosopher Giambattista Vico (1744-2023), which this year is part of Naples, city of philosophers: knowledge and practices of civil life (February-June 2014), a project planned and financed by the Campania Region (POC 2020-XNUMX) through Scabec, created by the Quidra cultural association of Naples in agreement with the Department of Humanistic Studies of the University of Naples Federico II, in agreement with the Institute for the history of modern philosophical and scientific thought of the National Research Council (ISPF-CNR), the Center for Italian philosophy and the Italian Philosophical Society (SFI).
The presentation of the project, this morning in the Sala Vico of the Girolamini Library and Monumental Complex, in Naples, was attended by Pantaleone Annunziata, sole director of Scabec, Antonella Cucciniello, director of the Girolamini Library and Monumental Complex, Rosario Diana, president of the Quidra Association, Fabrizio Lomonaco, president of the “Giambattista Vico” Philosophical Prize.
The project, explains a note, "which is divided into three phases, combines philosophical study with educational and research interventions on modern thought, capable of offering moments of critical reflection on our "practical" actions, in the noblest sense of the reasons for praxis within the polis, to rearticulate a contemporary man's experience made up of actions and ideas, of facts to be translated into ideas and ideas to be concretized into facts".
During the first phase, on February 14 and 15, scholars from the universities participating in the Prize will hold a series of lessons that will allow candidates to take a written test (February 16), which consists of writing a short commentary on a passage from a work selected and drawn at random on the day of the test (anonymously with a sealed envelope). “Vico 'orator' in the University of Naples, “The young Vico of Oration III”, “Humanism and Machiavellianism in De ratione”, “Nature, care, protection: for a semantics of political care”: these are some of the topics covered during the lessons.
The award ceremony for the first two students will be held in Naples in April, live-streamed for schools and universities outside the region: the winners will be awarded with the publication of their writings and with participation in the International Conference on Modern Philosophy scheduled for May 18-20 at the Complutense University of Madrid, in which scholars from the Universities of Padua, Piedmont-Orientale, Cologne (Germany), Uberlândia (Brazil), Wittenberg (Halle-Germany), Sevilla (Spain), Lugano (Switzerland) will speak. The last phase of the project includes, between the end of May and the beginning of June, a stage transposition of La città del sole by Tommaso Campanella in a Neapolitan theater, to celebrate the four hundred years since the publication of the work.
This theatrical work – edited by Rosario Diana, senior researcher in Philosophy at the Ispf-Cnr-Institute for the History of Modern Philosophical and Scientific Thought of the National Research Council -, which will be linked to a seminar on Campanellian thought held by Manuel Bertolini (researcher in Philosophy at the Ispf-Cnr), is part of an Ispf-Cnr research line entitled “Humanistic knowledge and languages of the arts”, of which Rosario Diana is the scientific director. A volume will also be published with monographic studies on modern philosophy from Grotius to Vico and the Proceedings of the international conference.
Sponsored by MIUR Campania, the initiative recognizes teachers of participating schools a 25-hour training on the SOFIA platform, as per agreements with the “Tilgher” Institute of Ercolano (Naples), and is supported by an international scientific committee composed of professors Fabrizio Lomonaco (president), Emidio Spinelli (SFI – University of Rome “La Sapienza”), Marco Carmello (Complutense University of Madrid), Sertorio de Amorim e Silva Neto (University of Uberlândia-Brazil), Romana Bassi (University of Padua) Stefania Sini (University of Eastern Piedmont-Vercelli).
"Scabec ," Annunziata emphasized, " immediately supported this project, and we are particularly pleased to begin this journey with philosophers today. At a time when we need to enhance our cultural heritage and bring it to the forefront, we cannot help but do so through philosophy."
Lomonaco underlined how this is "an important event that is renewed by addressing university and high school students from all over Italy, and which involves scholars and experts on Vico from all over the world".
Finally, Cucciniello remarked that "there could not have been a more appropriate place to launch this project. A regular visitor to the Library and a lover of Southern Italian scholarship, it was Vico who convinced the Oratorians of Naples to purchase the collection of Giuseppe Valletta, a scholar and jurist who preserved an extraordinary collection of books in his house-museum. A collection that, without Vico's intercession, we would have lost."
