La scrittura autobiografica: problematicità ed inganni. Tracce per una maieutica

Abstract

The paper highlights the complexity of setting out to write one’s history. Autobiography is a philosophical genre that requires a willingness to discuss one’s past and present, and it requires serious and lengthy self-reflective and self-critical work, as well as a moral confrontation with the dimension of time lived. The text is divided into four parts and an epilogue: the first is a critical introduction; the second illustrates the maieutic nature and philosophical implications of the autobiographical genre; the third highlights the impossibility of writing the “perfect” autobiography. The final section, in addition to being devoted to the notion of “autobiographical time,” invites the reader to get involved, surrender to the current of memories, and experience the generative effects of this approach to existence, which discovers how the autobiographical process is comparable to the beginning of a “second life” under the banner of a philosophical initiation.