Abstract
This essay presents the main points of Giovanni Piana’s interpretation of phenomenology as a “doctrine of experience” aimed at conceptual clarification. It shows how genetic-constitutive analyses become crucial in this interpretation and therefore how phenomenology comes to be close to its empiricist ancestors (except for its anti-psychologism) and how far from authors like Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. Moreover, the essay highlights that such a “doctrine of experience” deliberately assumes only the “analytic” parts of the tasks that Husserl assigned to philosophy, while refusing the ideological (i.e. the ethical-foundational) ones. Finally, some details are given of the applications of such a devoted-to-analysis-phenomenology to musical experience, one of the fields in which Giovanni Piana’s work has been more influential on the Italian philosophical culture.
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Notes
- 1.
Piana, Giovanni. 1996. Die Idee eines phänomenologischen Strukturalismus. In: Phänomenologie in Italien, ed. R. Cristin, 113–119. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. 114. (Author’s translation can be found at http://www.filosofia.unimi.it/piana/index.php).
- 2.
Ibid.
- 3.
In this sense, the term is clearly unrelated to structuralism understood as a cultural movement of the last century (see ibid., 113).
- 4.
Piana, Giovanni. 1979. Elementi di una dottrina dell’esperienza. Milan: Il Saggiatore. 10. (Author’s italics).
- 5.
This division into four parts corresponds to the titles of the four chapters of his fundamental theoretical work (see Piana, Elementi di una dottrina dell’esperienza).
- 6.
“The word ‘structure’ refers to the idea of a skeleton, of an internal system, of internal constitution, in short, to the idea of a characteristic form which, in my opinion, directly indicates the goal of phenomenological research”. Piana, Die Idee eines phänomenologischen Strukturalismus, 113.
- 7.
Ibid.
- 8.
Thus, at the beginning of the chapter on imagination in his fundamental work, before starting the analysis, Piana observes: “(…) with differentiating characteristics we do not mean certain qualities of imaginative content: if this were the case (…) the introspective method would still impose itself as the only means for such a description. For us, determining a characteristic means, instead, to determine a difference. To do this, no introspection is evidently necessary, no reflective act (…). How does an imaginative object behave with respect to an object of perception?” Piana, Elementi di una dottrina dell’esperienza, 109–110.
- 9.
Piana, Die Idee eines phänomenologischen Strukturalismus, 113–114.
- 10.
Ibid., 117.
- 11.
Ibid., 116.
- 12.
Piana, Elementi di una dottrina dell’esperienza, 12.
- 13.
Ibid. (Author’s italics).
- 14.
“In general, I believe that we must make a much deeper distinction than usual between theoretical and ideological aspects, and that proper identification of the ideological framework can only be achieved through a genuine understanding of the actual theoretical dimension. But I also believe that where there is an enrichment of meaning that the theoretical core of the problem cannot sustain, on this point, the ideological moment is introduced whose identification, is, in turn, essential for a deeper understanding.” Ibid.
- 15.
These stances also imply the claim of a difference with respect to the philosophy of Enzo Paci: “The ethical dimension of the idea of phenomenology as a philosophy of subjectivity, which had already been raised by Husserl, becomes clearly prevalent in Paci. The proposal for a concrete analysis of experience was thus relegated to the background, and it is certainly possible to affirm that the idea of achieving a ‘doctrine of experience’ remains completely unrelated to Paci’s philosophical programme.” Piana, Die Idee eines phänomenologischen Strukturalismus, 115.
- 16.
“It should also be noted that the theme of constitution, which is undoubtedly one of the richest motives of phenomenological thought, is in fact an empirical imprint.” Ibid., 112.
- 17.
The claim of affinity with classical empiricism in Piana’s works is also a way to propose a conception of philosophy as a discipline not prone to oracular tones: “(…) and nevertheless noting the importance of the role that the empiricist tradition has always played for Husserl is also the mark of a theoretical point of view: adherence to a concept of philosophy, to an intellectual attitude, which is not enamoured of a flow of words, empty rhetoric, not even those truths that in an effort to be too ‘profound’ are often profoundly incomprehensible.” Ibid.
- 18.
“The simplicity of which we speak will not be understood as assumption, nor as determination relative to a context that makes it intelligible. The simplicity proposed in Tractatus is a simplicity in itself. Therefore, apparently, an unsolvable puzzle.” Piana, Giovanni. 1973. Interpretazione del Tractatus di Wittgenstein. Milan: Il Saggiatore. 14–15.
- 19.
It is the section significantly entitled “The transition to the point of view of the game” (see ibid., 147–198).
- 20.
Piana, Die Idee eines phänomenologischen Strukturalismus, 117.
- 21.
Clearly, these choices imply a dissociation of phenomenological structuralism from Heidegger’s philosophy. Thus, Piana observes that the meaning of the empiricist tradition for phenomenology “(…) was generally neglected by Italian studies, especially in the most recent interpretations which show the general tendency to develop issues originating in phenomenology in such a way as to make them finally converge in a Heideggerian horizon, in compliance with a conformism which unfortunately is widespread not only in Italy.” Ibid., 116.
- 22.
These topics do not by any means exhaust Piana’s interests. On the contrary, Piana is a versatile philosopher, able to devote in-depth research to issues ranging from the philosophy of mathematics to Greek music theory, or the philosophy of painting, etc. This wealth and variety of interests can be seen in his archive, which contains the texts of almost all works by Piana including several unpublished ones (available at http://www.filosofia.unimi.it/piana/). A complete bibliography of Piana’s works can be found at: http://www.filosofia.unimi.it/piana/index.php/bibliografia.
- 23.
Piana, Die Idee eines phänomenologischen Strukturalismus, 115.
- 24.
In this regard, the treatment of mathematical concepts is emblematic (in reference to Husserl’s Philosophy of Arithmetic): see the fourth chapter of Piana, Elementi di una dottrina dell’esperienza, 183–198.
- 25.
“But if someone shows me a glass, points his finger at it and says, now you know!—in reality I don’t even know what should I know. Yet I see the glass.” Ibid., 16.
- 26.
Ibid., 143.
- 27.
See ibid., 137ff.
- 28.
Ibid., 142.
- 29.
Ibid., 155.
- 30.
The main work, but not the only one, dedicated to this topic is: Piana, Giovanni. 1991. Filosofia della musica. Milan: Guerini.
- 31.
For more detailed information, see: Miraglia, Roberto. 2004. Fenomenologia della musica: una breve storia. In: Fenomenologia applicata: esempi di analisi descrittiva, ed. R. Lanfredini, 219–233. Milan: Guerini.
- 32.
See Schoenberg, Arnold. 2010, Theory of Harmony. Berkeley, CA: UC Press. Piana’s considerations can be found in Piana, Filosofia della musica, 37–38.
- 33.
It is difficult to sum up this set of theories using citations as we have attempted to do here, insofar as was possible. These specific topics are addressed by Piana in Filosofia della musica, 5–70 and 297–345.
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Miraglia, R. (2020). Giovanni Piana and the Doctrine of Experience. In: Buongiorno, F., Costa, V., Lanfredini, R. (eds) Phenomenology in Italy. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 106. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25397-4_11
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