Diversamente sofisti: doppiopetto e canottiera

Editoriale italiano

Abstract

For this issue of SpazioFilosofico, we have chosen the theme “Sophists” because when it comes to marking the urgency of a rethinking, such a theme seems to us to be more precise than the subject “Truth.”

Nowadays relativism is cornered, whereas pragmatism rages in many different forms. Sophistry has been both, though, and for this reason it has been deemed dangerous. Our goal is better to understand whether there exist alternatives that go beyond the choice between facts that overwhelm reason and reasons that quibble in the absence of gravity and responsibility due to the decline of both truth and lies.

The victim of such an equal fight between facts without interpretations and interpretations without facts might be truth itself. Sophistic in different manners, the two parties find themselves together in their judging the question of truth as forever archived, if by truth we understand something else than mere correspondence (in this box there are 1000 beans). Whether in the form of saying good-bye to it or in that of taking possession of it, the exclusion of truth is the shared ground on which most of the contemporary debate unfolds.