Il dono del filosofo. Sul gesto originario della filosofia

“In the trial that would lead to his death sentence, Socrates—the proto-philosopher—presents himself to the Athenian people as ‘a gift from the god’ to the city. Ever since, a common thread has seemed to link philosophy to the act of giving—to the ambiguous and ambivalent gesture of the gift. Indeed, the classic question, ‘What is philosophy?’ resonates with another—one posed from Seneca to Mauss, and on to Derrida, spanning from antiquity to the present day: ‘What is a gift?’ If utility is the idol of our age, then the philosophical gesture stands as the quintessential anti-idolatrous, iconoclastic act; it interrupts the circuit of self-interest and the desire for accumulation—a circuit that also encompasses the knowledge produced by the sciences and the very theories that, despite their varying styles and conceptual tools, have all been labeled ‘philosophy.’ By examining the stylized silhouette of the act of giving, we can uncover—beyond the specific meanings or truth-claims of various philosophies—a decisive discontinuity: the original purpose of philosophy itself. This purpose is not the conquest of reality—that form of dominion promised by scientific discovery, the formidable practical applications of technology, or the ideological frameworks into which philosophical systems are so often reduced when viewed in their collective impact—but rather the suspension of reality’s absolutism. It is the fracturing and weakening of the very powers that secure reality’s grip and, in fact, constitute it as such.”