Martina Becchimanzi

The Festivalfilosofia‘s XV edition has been promoted by the Consorzio per il Festival/filosofia, whose associates are the town of Modena, Carpi and Sassuolo, Provincia di Modena, Collegio San Carlo Foundation, Cassa di Risparmio di Modena e di Carpi.

From the 18th to the 20th of September 200 events took place, in 40 different places between squares and courtyards of the three towns.

Every year, masterful lessons alternate to creative performances, conversations and exhibitions, in three stimulating days at half September. With more than 200.000 presences, of which 90.000 were for the Masterful Lessons, the event reveals a remarkable and constant growth of the turnout compare to the 30.000 presences of 2001.

The Bodei Scientific Committee president explained that To inherit is the key word of this year program, connected to the need to point out how much the generational turnover is not just about receiving, but would start a process of cultural transmission and relationships between the generations. We’re living today in a broken time: « the past has lost its consequences, the future is wrapped up in uncertainty, the present seems to dominate».

During the masterful lesson titled Becoming Adults, History of Philosophy professor emeritus Curi, analyzed that aspect of becoming adults which is the result of a «daily fight we do to get out of being subordinate», giving as example some characters’ stories and the way they faced the process of emancipation. Oedipus, comes to kill his father as a way of transition. Jesus takes the opposite road and put himself to the total obedience, pushed to the border of emptying.

Curi unties the question given by the contrast between Oedipus’ patricide and Christian obedience, by introducing a third character, Bartleby – the Melville scribe, who answered «I would prefer not to» when was asked to do a different work from the usual.

Could we simply answer no when we’re asked to become adults?

Zagrebelsky, president of the Italian Republic Constitutional Court, whose masterful lesson titled Generational Pact started mentioning Bobbio: «in civilized societies, the fast mutation has overturned the relationship between who knows and who doesn’t».

« We’re living today a daily nihilistic race in search of velocity, efficiency, and innovation, towards a destination that gets further away proportionally to the acceleration». Who doesn’t produce doesn’t exist; who is old, slow and tired cannot have rights. But human rights as whole shouldn’t depend on man’s age; he mentioned Michele Murgia’s Accabadora and The songs of Narayama by Shichiro Fukazawa, examples where socially inefficient people are taken away from society, with it shows how, even if today we cannot propose such theories, practice proposes the same results, sliding towards a particular form of antropofagia.

The blind current convenience makes us lose sight of the future generations rights, that are our human rights as well.

Adolescence, theme of Galimberti’s lesson, yet Philosophy of the history professor and psychanalyst of Jung training. During adolescence sexuality appears and subverts the world vision, asking for a radical reformulation. But before the 20 years of age the frontal lobes, place of rationality, are not completely ripe. Adolescents are forced to change their own vision of the world without rationality support.

Galimberti refers to the child’s first three years of life, during which the cognitive and emotional maps form up, they‘ll filter the world knowledge, identity starts to form, which is above all acknowledgement. The child questions himself, understands and internalizes the principle of randomness, he meets significant adults (teachers) who the parents would better defend always, also because, «the Italian primary school is one of the best in the world, then progressively gets worse, till reaching University which is a disaster». During Junior Secondary School begins the own body revisualization, the social comparison, one goes from joy to pain till feeling situations of discomfort and intolerance. The adolescent is subverted without knowing it. It would be essential bring up to feelings, so to avoid psycho-apathy situations where it’s not possible recognize the right and record differences with the wrong. About it, the best education instrument is literature, through which we can learn joy, pain, desperation and, Galimberti adds: «To fill up schools with computers is a disaster; there’s still time to specialize. School should train men and women first of all. Adolescents would be less scared if they knew their pains evolution through literature».

Nowadays society doesn’t promise a future and the future doesn’t act back as incentive; the young doze off, look for anesthesia, they don’t want to feel their social insignificance every day.

But if it’s true that the future doesn’t await the young, they must take it « because a society that can work without the young is destined to fail».

The lesson about the classics is a regular appointment, with lessons dedicated to Plato and Aristotle’s work, Nietzsche and Primo Levi.

The program is rich of exhibitions and collateral events: the retrospective Riprese, dedicated to the famous artist from Modena Carlo Mattioli at Palazzo Ducale of Sassuolo; The history mannequin at Manifattura Tabacchi di Modena, with international works which go from formal art to representative art, they belong to private collections in the Emilia area. Interesting is also the exhibition about Testaments of the great Italians, from Cavour to Pirandello.

Essential is the creative field. Among the people who came on the stages of Modena, Carpi and Sassuolo, we can mention: Bottura e Niola, Lella Costa, Chiara Gamberale e Paolo Di Paolo, Valerio Massimo Manfredi, Neri Marcorè, Moni Ovadia, Arrigo Sacchi, Niccolò Fabi, Danilo Rea.

It all absolutely free and studded with a little philosophical books markets and stalls offering gadgets.

Cultural festivals satisfy the need of sense in a world where media offer intellectual fast-food. The Festivalfilosofia does not mean to have educational purpose, it represents «a soul supplement».

According to Plutarch, there’s a place where words said in winter will defreeze in summer with the heat. The festivalfilosofia defreezes the thoughts.

The appointment is with the Festivalfilosofia 2016 Agonismo.

The scientific director Michelina Borsari points out: «We’ll discuss about the contemporary competitiveness conjugation, the forms of internal and social athletic, from the research of the body’s constant improvement, till the team and sport dimension. We’ll point the attention on how it is just democracy to turn the antagonist into the adversary, assimilating it in the political game».