(courtesy to rivista Kritika, che in origine aveva pubblicato questo articolo)
A Venezia, presso il Palazzo Fortuny, è stata ospitata dal 1 Settembre al 19 Novembre la mostra personale dal titolo Tutte le cose emergono dal nulla, con le fotografie di Franco Vimercati. Sempre egli inquadra certi oggetti, d’uso quotidiano. Riconosciamo soprattutto i vasi, le caffettiere, i calici, le sveglie. La mostra di Venezia è stata curata da John Eskenazi ed Elio Grazioli.
Non tutte le stelle del firmamento appaiono all’occhio dell’osservatore uguali.
Nello sfondo scuro della notte se ne possono vedere di tremolanti e di fisse, di rossicce, giallognole, bianche e di azzurrine. Alcune sembrano partecipare perfettamente ad un disegno, ma è un inganno, perché è la proiezione che arriva a chi sta con il naso all’insù a farle apparire sapientemente integrate in una costellazione. Alcuni pensano che si muovano, ma quel moto è talmente lento da essere irrilevante. Si potrebbe pensare che talune brillino meno di talaltre, ma si cade nell’ennesimo imbroglio di questi corpi celesti, poiché quella che pare brillare meno, in realtà, è solo più distante, e il suo scintillio è sempre proprio, come un piccolo sole, non è mai uno scintillio riflesso.
In una recente conversazione siamo finiti a parlare dei movimenti di estrema destra attivi in Italia nel XX secolo. Essi erano costituiti da una compagine relativamente eterogenea di persone sparse in diverse organizzazioni più o meno ufficiali. La conversazione verteva sulla mia personale difficoltà a comprendere la natura concettuale e politica di questi movimenti e persone.
La conversione di Pavel Florenskij è stato il momento decisivo che ha fatto da spartiacque nella sua vita. Al tempo stesso, essa fu un giudizio decisivo sul modello di razionalità che ha dominato in Occidente lungo l’intera epoca moderna. Messa infatti a tacere la millenaria esperienza religiosa, le promesse del razionalismo hanno infine lasciato l’uomo disilluso e in balìa dei suoi dubbi, vittima di un tragico sdoppiamento esistenziale. Il coraggio di riattivare l’esperienza pregna di meraviglia che ha segnato la sua infanzia, la decisione di incamminarsi nuovamente sul sentiero dell’esperienza religiosa, porterà invece Florenskij a esiti tanto inaspettati quanto ricchi. Un nuovo modo di esercitare la ragione nella sua rinnovata poliedricità, la novità di una conoscenza del reale capace di non censurare nulla e, infine, il riannodarsi di antichi fili che legano la nostra esperienza al vissuto di ogni homo religiosus sono allora gli stupendi frutti della visione del mondo florenskijana. Oltre l’opportunità di una crescita personale, riflettere su questo complesso percorso offre anche l’occasione, lungo tutto il libro, di far “dialogare” Florenskij con altri grandi pensatori come Guardini, Eliade o Pareyson, lasciando emergere come la sua sia indubbiamente una delle voci più sorprendenti del panorama culturale del Novecento. Prefazione di Lubomir Zak.
Facial recognition is a technological way of identifying a person’s face, usually for authentication purposes. Facial recognition systems use face measurements and calculations to authorize access. The technology compares the characteristics of an individual’s face with the information gathered in a database.
A Venezia, per la Biennale d’Arte Contemporanea, era visitabile il Padiglione Internazionale dell’Asia Centrale. Commissionato dallo HIVOS (Istituto Umanistico per lo Sviluppo della Cooperazione), il suo allestimento ha coinvolto la “bella cornice” del Palazzo Malipiero. Il Padiglione “dell’Asia Centrale” precisamente era stato curato da due artisti, trasferitisi in Norvegia: Ayatgali Tuleubek (kazaco) e Tiago Bom (portoghese). Le cinque repubbliche ex-sovietiche dell’Asia Centrale (ergo il Turkmenistan, il Kirghizistan, l’Uzbekistan, il Kazakistan ed il Tagikistan) attraversano un periodo di fermento politico. Il caratteristico “miraggio” dell’occidentalizzazione si scontra con la necessità d’una giustizia sociale. Qualcosa da percepire dentro una conflittualità “invernale”.
“And now something completely different,” would have said Monty Phyton Flying Circus. Probably something completely unheard of by our intelligence readers. However, for those who follow Scuola Filosofica, Tolkien is not a new entry, as it’s not Claudio A. Testi. But as many of you know, I love anecdotes (and I’m just 34!). Everything started in 2013 when I was waiting to get a PhD candidacy. A frantic activity was undergoing. I filled tons of papers for the beloved Italian bureaucracy every day (something I would have recommended to Sauron or Saruman!). Meanwhile, to stay up and in good (mind) health, I read The Lord of the Rings for my second time. The first one was during those years in which Jackson’s movies were a revolution for the special effects and overall commitment to a grandiose project (I think he was one of the first, in recent times, who reconsidered movies for cinema theaters to be divided into several chapters). Then, my father bet with me that I was unable to read all the trilogy in one month. Actually, I read it in less time, and I won my prize. Anyway, during 2013 I had the chance to start systematically working on my war studies and philosophy of war (it is from there that intelligence came up, but that was two years later). As SF was already fully operative, I decided to write something I esteemed crazy to be beyond any imagination (and hopefully be extensively read), an “Analytic philosophy of The Lord of the Rings.” It turned to be an entire enquiring on the issue. It is sufficiently long to be a book. Where did I land with it? Anywhere, specifically. I mean, it is read but not as I imagined. Did I make any money out of it? It is completely free! However, life is always unpredictable and this doesn’t mean is bad. As many times in my life, I start with a project, and after it, I ask myself if other people can be interested in it. That’s how I met Claudio. Indeed, I found (with my personal awe) that many other people studied Tolkien philosophically. Now a PhD in philosophy, Claudio wasn’t just one among many. He was (and is) one of the leading scholars on Tolkien studies in Italy and even abroad. So, I sent him my text, and he quickly replied (something already astonishing in certain contexts and countries). From that moment on, we developed a warm intellectual friendship. Claudio Testi is a first-class scholar on Tolkien and Thomas Aquinas and formal logic. His books are very carefully written. At the same time, Claudio is also a relentless organizer of talks, conferences, and public discussions. I met him several times in Bologna and Modena, where I was kindly invited by him and Marco Prati (who I take the chance to greets) for presenting my research on the philosophy of war, which were very warmly received with a lengthy Q&A. I can only invite all the readers to discover Claudio’s work. Please feel free to look at the Tomistic Institute, centered in Modena but influential at a national level. Without further ados, it is then with my distinct pleasure to publish the interview on Scuola Filosofica – for those who don’t know it yet; it is one of the leading cultural blogs in Italy. In the name of Scuola Filosofica Team, our readers, and myself, Giangiuseppe Pili, Claudio: thank you!
1# How would you present yourself to the readers and Philosophical School (Scuola Filosofica)?
[I believe] one tries to improve the world he lives in both materially and culturally.
I am an entrepreneur and the director of a commercial company with 40 employees. I try to improve materially and socially the environment in which I operate through concrete responsible actions. Meanwhile, as an intellectual, I know that knowledge for knowledge’s sake is human beings’ greatest activity. As it is useless, it is really free. For this reason, along with other friends, I founded Philosophical Institute of Tomistic Studies (in 1988) [Istituto Filosofico di Studi Tomistici] and the Italian Association of Tolkien Studies (in 2014) [Associazione Italiana per gli Studi Tolkeniani], in which I hold executive positions.
As our readers know, one of the missions of Intelligence & Interview is to bolster the debate on intelligence and security services all around the world. This is particularly true in Europe, in which we are inside the same community, but there is still no unified intelligence. For this simple reason, I believe it would be imperative to know more about each country and each institutional and historical experience. The diversity of European history should be a strength in a world in which the challenges are so global, whether we like it or not. Since I started studying philosophy during secondary school, I had the chance to dive into the Dutch philosophers, historians, and Dutch history. Since then, I deeply appreciated such a great country, which was and is at the forefront of all human thought, science, and art. (And they had always had great chess players as well!) For this reason, moving to the present, I had the pleasure to discover how different European intelligence services are, and this interview will bring you to a better understanding of Dutch intelligence directly from a practitioner with a scientific background. Paul Abels is Professor by special appointment in Governance of Intelligence and Security Services at Leiden University. It is a real honor for me. Without further ados, it is then with my distinct pleasure to publish the interview on Scuola Filosofica – for those who don’t know it yet; it is one of the leading cultural blogs in Italy. In the name of Scuola Filosofica Team, our readers, and myself, Giangiuseppe Pili, Paul: thank you!
1. Professor Paul Abels, let’s start from the basics. How would you like to present yourself to the International readers and Philosophical School (Scuola Filosofica)?
I am what you could call a practitioner with scientific background and affinity. I studied history, wrote a PhD on ‘radical reformation in the 16th century’, worked as a journalist and during the last 37 years first as an intelligence producer at the Dutch Intelligence and Security Service and after that as an intelligence consumer, being head of the analysis department of the office of the National Coordinator on Counter-Terrorism and Security (NCTV). In 2017 I became a policy adviser in the same office and started for one day a week as a special professor on the subject of Governance of Intelligence and Security Services at the University of Leiden.
Tommaso d’Aquino, Pavel Florenskij ed Emanuele Severino, pur avendo nella contraddizione un nucleo speculativo comune, non si erano mai incontrati al medesimo crocevia. Infatti, per quanto il pensiero tomista e quello severiniano si sono rivolti da subito attenzioni e critiche reciproche, l’interesse di questi due filoni per il filosofo russo è praticamente nullo.
