Dall’oralità all’aforisma

Critica e pratica della scrittura nell’opera di Giorgio Colli

Abstract

Giorgio Colli (1917-1979) tackles the theme of writing in a critical and heterodox way. In his approach to the history of philosophy, Colli has a critical conception of writing that leads him to analyze its role in the transition from the era of scholars to the era of philosophers. Later, he adopted aphorism as an expressive solution through which to condense his theoretical system.

For Colli, writing is inferior to orality: the oral word has an immediacy and a vitality that writing cannot match. This critique of writing is connected with the idea of Wisdom in which orality has a central role. However, Colli does not deny the importance of writing, recognizing its mnemonic function: writing allows to fix ideas, making them accessible to future generations; it is a tool for the transmission of knowledge and philosophy itself. In this sense, Plato contributed with his writings to establish the basis for philosophy.

These premises and the influence of Nietzsche are the basis of the expressive solution that Colli adopts in Filosofia dell’espressione (1969) and Dopo Nietzsche (1974). The aphorism allows him to concentrate his thought and to emphasize the fundamental intuitions, without diluting them in long dissertations. An alternative to traditional philosophical prose, the aphorism declines the pre-Socratic fragment differently and is perfectly combined with the idea of a philosophy as the heir to ancient Wisdom.