Al posto del posto. Dialettiche e semiotica della soggettività nella Chāndogya Upaniṣad

In the Place of the Place. Dialectics and Semiotics of Subjectivity in Chāndogya Upaniṣad · This paper is dedicated to the analysis of a section of the ancient Chāndogya Upaniṣad devoted to ontological and epistemological problems. In it, immersed in an atmosphere of Socratic dialogue, the learned Nārada and the acute Sanatkumāra are debating around thorny themes. Through in- tricate word games, these two dialoguers are challenging the rocky and hypostatic representations of things and of themselves. The mood of their dialogue is pungent, shakes the common sense, attacks and counteracts the strength of cognitive habits, aiming to remove from their ordinary lo- cations stereotyped ‘figures’ and ‘subjects’. An ambitious dialogue, since it aimed at clarifying the factual condition of the experience. Returning to dialogue with ancient works such as this Upaniṣad is a profitable activity, since it can assist to review the many prejudicial assumptions and dogmatic persuasions that afflict, still today, philosophical practices: a practice too often obsessed with ‘meta-physical’ dilemmas while forgetting the pragmatics of the ‘meta-phorical’, which, instead, is the only practice able to carve and fix the limits of the ‘place’ in which the ‘things’ of the sensible experiences must be re-placed.