Gianluca Garelli

Abstract

The initial chapters of the Phenomenology of Spirit (sense certainty and perception) set a sort of recurring refrain, at various levels and in different places of Hegel’s text. The essay focuses the returning combination sense / perception in the pages about Christianity (chapter VII, on Religion). In a sort of commentary of St. John’s Gospel (20) and Epistles (I), Hegel considers the act of wahrnehmen as an essential part in the general process of ‘spiritualizing’ the truth. This issue is still alive in the current aesthetic reflection, thanks to such authors as Jean-Luc Nancy and Glenn Most. In this perspective, Hegel’s opposition to the so-called «myth of the given» (W. Sellars) is no longer an exclusive possession of the recent epistemological debate (e.g. the interpretations of Pittsburgh scholars, in particular John McDowell and Robert Brandom). The relationship between aisthesis and logos is thus returning to the theological background of Hegel’s difficult statement: «Die Sprache aber ist […] das wahrhaftere”.

Gianluca Garelli (Torino 1969) studied philosophy and history in Torino, Bologna, Heidelberg and Berlin (AvHumboldt-Fellowship, 2009-2010). Since 2005 he is research fellow and teacher (history of aesthetics) at the University of Florence. Among his books: La teleologia secondo Kant (1999), Storia dell’estetica moderna e contemporanea (with F. Vercellone e A. Bertinetto, 2003), Il cosmo dell’ingiustizia (2005), Letture kantiane. L’apparente e il contingente (2006), Lo spirito in figura (2010), Il tragico (with C. Gentili, 2010), and an Italian edition of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (2008).