Aesthetics and Rhetoric (Italian debate)

Estetica e retorica (dibattito italiano); Fr. Esthétique et rhétorique (débat italien); Ger. Ästhetik und Rhetorik (Italienische Debatte); Esp. Estética y retórica (debate italiano). Rhetoric has received various definitions throughout its history, from Greek and Roman Antiquity (principally thanks to Aristotle, Cicero and Quintilian) to contemporary times, through different contexts in the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Modern Age. Here we can define rhetoric in general as that art or science of speech which implies certain strategies to gain consent from, persuade or move one’s audience. Since its revival in the second half of the 20th century, chiefly due to Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1958), which conceived of rhetoric as a theory of argumentation in opposition both to irrationalism and violence and to demonstrative and dogmatic reason, rhetoric has played an interesting role in aesthetics studies. In Italy, in particular, the aesthetic relevance of rhetoric is due not only to the international debate on this discipline, but also to the significant impulse which the latter received from the Italian phenomenological school inspired by Antonio Banfi. It is useful to recall the distinction drawn by Emilio Mattioli between two fields of aesthetic studies that draw upon rhetoric: hermeneutic ontology (Gadamer, Ricœur, Ernesto Grassi) and the critical phenomenology of Jauss, Anceschi, Barilli, Curi, and Bagni, originally springing from the Milan school (Banfi, Morpurgo-Tagliabue and Formaggio; see Mattioli 1986, Bollino 2012). Here we can underline two domains, which are sometimes interconnected: on the one hand, the theoretical implications of the rhetorical origins of certain aesthetic concepts; on the other, aesthetic reflection on forms of critical reason encompassing experience, circumstances and feelings.