Papers by Emma Lavinia Bon
Pantheism and Ecology Cosmological, Philosophical, and Theological Perspectives, Dec 31, 2023
In this chapter, we discuss metaphysical issues activated by ecological
discourse, in order to c... more In this chapter, we discuss metaphysical issues activated by ecological
discourse, in order to coherently outline a speculative philosophy which rejects both
holism and reductionism. In doing so, we will shed new light on classic concepts of
Latin pantheism, such as locus, habitus, and ipseity, which are helpful to frame the
God-world chiasm as a process of “making place,” free of any negative movement.
The chapter is articulated on two levels: individual and cosmological. In the first
section, we consider the notions of living and psychological individuality, arguing
that the problem of alterity may be faced from a perspective of primitive, displaced
unity. Nonetheless, we should consider the fabric of all beings as an ecology of
ideas, developing the analogy between ecological networks and the mental process.
In the second section, we explore the same analogy in the light of the pantheistic
concept of God as cosmogony: their mutual immanence, just as that of the self and
the otherness, appears to be an in locu genetic act, employing a logic of complicatio
and explicatio. Finally, we argue that a correct representation of the problem may
avoid the vicious dissonances of rigid dualities, implying the possibility of turning
them into virtuous resonances.
La filosofia e l'universale Un approccio interculturale, Tropos. Rivista di ermeneutica e critica filosofica, 2022
The purpose of this contribution is to investigate the relationship between the universal and the... more The purpose of this contribution is to investigate the relationship between the universal and the particular from a metaphysical point of view, through the original notion of symbolic mirroring which we will therefore try to develop and elaborate. Thus, it will be shown that: 1) the connection between the universal and the particular is in itself symbolic; 2) the notion of non-duality is fruitful in clarifying the symbolic mechanism at the center of the discussion; 3) the symbol, unlike the sign, requires a mystical crossing. We will develop and argue these theses through a reference to Benjamin on a linguistic level, to Cusano, Eriugena and Indian Kashmir Shaivism on an ontological level, with particular attention to the notions of nonaliud and advaita as forms of non-duality.
Scenari. Rivista di estetica e metafisica, 2023
The purpose of this article is to investigate the plexus between writing and thinking. This goal ... more The purpose of this article is to investigate the plexus between writing and thinking. This goal is pursued through a comparison between the calligraphic practice of Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitarō and Jacques Derrida’s conception of écriture. Although there are some significant dif- ferences between the approaches of the two philosophers, both agree in showing how thought is produced inseparably from the bodies that express it and the written signs that convey it. The aesthetic dimension is thus inseparable from the theoretical, like the two edges of différance. The Nishidian notions of kōiteki chokkan 行為的直観 (active intuition) and narikiru 成り切る (knowing by becoming) will thus be explored through dialogue with Derridean notions of différance and écriture.
Wittgenstein e la cultura austriaca, Scenari, n. 16, 2022
The purpose of this contribution is to deepen the relationship between
language and the unspeakab... more The purpose of this contribution is to deepen the relationship between
language and the unspeakable by intertwining a literary work – Hermann
Broch’s Der Tod des Vergil – and a philosophical work – Ludwig Witt-
genstein’s Tractatus logico-philosophicus. In the first case, the unspeakable
is identified with the very core of the real, with the genetic process of
the world that incessantly evades the linguistic representations and the
significant structures aimed at expressing it. In the second case, although
world and language share the same structure, and therefore language can
express the facts of the world, what escapes the sayable is the condi-
tion of possibility of this structure, the ‘logical form’ that is common
to both. For both Wittgenstein and Broch, language is incessantly con-
fronted with something that remains unsignifiable, but which, insofar as
that which exceeds the signified – the world or logical form – is at the
same time the condition of possibility of signification, is exposed in every
phrase: the work then becomes an image of the unspeakable that shows
itself, reflecting it on its surface.
Books by Emma Lavinia Bon
Jaca Book, 2023
Uno scritto notevole sia per la conoscenza dell’opera di Panikkar – l’autrice spazia tra i volumi... more Uno scritto notevole sia per la conoscenza dell’opera di Panikkar – l’autrice spazia tra i volumi dell’Opera Omnia di Raimon Panikkar riuscendo a darci una visione di uno stesso tema nelle sue molteplici riprese – sia per la precisione con la quale costruisce e ricostruisce il confronto di Panikkar con “il mito occidentale” nella sua multiforme immagine e nelle “storie” che l’hanno innervato. Il mito, come orizzonte inesauribile ad ogni tentativo di spiegazione concettuale, nella sua versione occidentale e moderna, in questo testo viene avvicinato per approssimazioni incalzanti così da farne il contesto vivo degli scritti e dell’azione di Panikkar: lo sfondo incarnato delle sue e delle nostre domande di senso. Il presente volume ha ricevuto il premio internazionale Raimon Panikkar Prize 2022 per la lingua italiana, organizzato dalla Fundació Vivarium Raimon Panikkar in collaborazione con le case editrici: Jaca Book, Milano; Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York; Herder Editorial, Barcellona. Premio consegnato all’autrice presso l’Università di Girona il 7 ottobre 2022.
Talks by Emma Lavinia Bon
25th World Congress of Philosophy, “Philosophy across Boundaries”, Rome, La Sapienza University, 2024
The Continuous Dimension of Mind between Kashmir Shaivism and Western Theology Unlike the Vedanti... more The Continuous Dimension of Mind between Kashmir Shaivism and Western Theology Unlike the Vedantic tradition, Kashmir Shaivism regards phenomenal manifestation as absolutely real. This is because the Absolute (Shiva) is conceived as pure Consciousness, whose intimate nature is that of a dynamic vibration (spanda). Complicating and explicating itself, Consciousness produces all the manifest and determined forms in a noetic continuum. The conception of the mind as continuous with the determined forms finds some interesting counterparts in Western philosophy, starting with Aristotle's De anima and in some leading authors of Renaissance Neoplatonism. In De mente, Cusanus states that when God's mind thinks, it also concretely produces its own object of thought, which is the mind itself in its determined forms. From the standpoint of the singular mens, Ficino states that every mind can conjoin with God. In this sense, the comparison between Kashmir Shaivism and some authors of Western Theology can shed new light on the question of the noetic continuum between the cosmic Consciousness and the singular mens.
First International Symposium on Buddhism & Neoplatonism, 2024
Cittaprakṛti, mens and Enlightenment between Tathāgatagarbha Doctrine and Renaissance Neoplatonis... more Cittaprakṛti, mens and Enlightenment between Tathāgatagarbha Doctrine and Renaissance Neoplatonism ἡ ψυχὴ τὰ ὄντα πὼς ἐστὶ πάντα [The soul is in a sense all things] Aristotle, De anima «Omnes mentium species possunt coniungi deo»; «Sarvasattvās tathāgatagarbhāḥ». These two statements, the first being the title of a chapter in Marsilio Ficino's Theologia Platonica (XVIII, 8), the second being a crucial statement in the tathāgatagarbha literature, seem to insist on the same fundamental idea. Developing the crucial Neoplatonic theme of the unio mystica of the soul with God, the Italian Renaissance philosopher argues in his works that each singular mens, being the most excellent part of the soul, is also part of a supreme and divine mens, and therefore can free itself from the darkness that shades it to unite with the latter's pure light. The capacity of the mens to rejoin the divine is grounded in the absolute presence of the divine in the mens itself, thus in the soul. God, in fact, penetrates everything (deus omnia penetrat), has the property of pervasiveness: every point on the "line" of time intersects it, as it is omnipresent and eternal; every point on the surface of space intersects it, as it is ubiquitous and extended to the last edge of reality. Consequently, the unio mystica of the soul with God implies the spatiotemporal amplification of the mens itself. In God, the mens is everywhere at the same time. In some texts of the tathāgatagarbha literature, notably in the Ratnagotravibhāga(-vyākhyā), the relation between the Buddhahood (buddhatva) and the single sentient being (sattva) is "structured" in a similar way. The "cause" (hetu) of enlightenment (bodhi) lies in the tathāgatagarbha's capacity of being enlightened (i.e. in its being "bodhya"). This is because the "nature" of the Tathāgata (tathāgatadhātu) is all-pervading (sarvatraga), and thus provides the purity of the nature of the mind (cittaprakṛti) of living beings. In other words, the all-pervasiveness of the "principle" makes possible for the mind to be purified from the defilements that obstruct enlightenment. The Tathāgata, the Ratna. states, reaches up to the limit of space and lasts as long as the extreme limit of the world. The pervasiveness of the tathāgatadhātu-or, in the Neoplatonic sense, that of God or the One-is the very root of enlightenment. Understanding the actual "structure" of pervasiveness itself-what pervades what and how-is therefore crucial in order to define the conditions of the non-dual awareness of the Tathāgata-or the conditions of the unio mystica. Unlike the Prajñāpāramitā, while affirming the vacuity of the defilements that "cover" the garbha, the Ratna. affirms the astiva, and thus aśūnya, character of the garbha itself. While this facilitates comparison with the Neoplatonic doctrines based on the principle of the immortality of the soul-defined as a pure form-and the eternity of the mind, the function and definition of the tathāgatagarbha and the Neoplatonic definition of the soul are not, however, identifiable. For while the former plays a fundamentally "soteriological" role, the latter becomes in Neoplatonism the pivot of an entire philosophy of Nature. In line with the doctrine expounded by Plato in the Timaeus, the world itself-and, as Ficino states, even the elements and celestial bodies-possesses a soul. In Giordano Bruno's system, the soul of the world (anima mundi) is at the center of a pantheistic and immanentist cosmology. Nevertheless, exploring some possibilities for dialogue between the two doctrines may help to understand more deeply the role of pervasiveness in relation to the freeing of the mind from that which prevents it from shining in unity with the uncreated light of its principle.
Annual SACP Conference , 2023
This contribution focuses on the concept of non-duality from a theological and cosmological point... more This contribution focuses on the concept of non-duality from a theological and cosmological point of view. This concept will be outlined through a comparison between the concept of advaita, as employed in tantric Kashmir Shaivism, and that of non-aliud employed by Nicholas of Cusa (De non-aliud). The significance of the notion of non-duality that will emerge from this comparison is twofold: on the one hand, it allows us not to deny the reality and the ontological consistency of the world; on the other hand, it allows not to radically separate God and the cosmos. Non-duality is neither a flat monism (as in some currents of Vedānta) nor a dualism, but the constitutive oscillation between the principle and its infinite permutations. In order to develop this idea and to show how the notion of non-aliud and that of advaita can count as homeomorphic equivalents (Panikkar) in their respective contexts of application, it will be necessary to dwell on some crucial concepts: that of locus and that of coincidentia oppositorum proposed by Cusanus; the notion of spanda (vibration), and the polarity between prakāśa (light) and vimarśa (reflex awareness) in Kashmir Shaivism. Finally, it will be shown how the concept of non-duality also allows us to define, in a meta-comparative sense, the possibility and fruitfulness of comparison between different philosophical traditions.
Conference Presentations by Emma Lavinia Bon
Edited Books / Journals by Emma Lavinia Bon
tropós. Rivista di ermeneutica e critica filosofica – vol. 14 (2022), n. 1, 2022
This double issue of Trópos, of which we present here the first part, is entirely dedicated to th... more This double issue of Trópos, of which we present here the first part, is entirely dedicated to the concept of "universal," its historical genealogy, its theoretical performance, and its fruitfulness in a philosophical scenario that, today more than ever, invites us to question ourselves on this issue from a global and intercultural perspective. Indeed, contemporary philosophical debate witnesses an unprecedented opening of horizons: philosophy can no longer ignore – or even deny – the poignancy and relevance of other forms of thought, other cultures, languages, traditions, and places of sense-making. The categories of Western philosophy meet their Other: to what extent can they still be said, assuming this is possible, to be "universal"? The contributions collected in this issue measure themselves against this horizon of questions, exploring their multiple resonances.
Emma Lavinia Bon graduated in Philosophical Sciences from the University of Padua with a thesis on Jacques Derrida and is currently a doctoral student in theoretical philosophy at the University of Eastern Piedmont. She has done research in Germany at Stiftung Universität Hildesheim and at Université Paris I - Pantheon Sorbonne. Her lines of research mainly intersect contemporary philosophy of French and German areas and intercultural philosophy.
Francesca Greco graduated in Philosophical Sciences from the University of Catania, did research at the University of Heidelberg and is currently a member of the research project "Geschichten der Philosophie in globaler Perspektive" and a doctoral student at the University of Hildesheim (Germany). Her lines of research range from cross-cultural philosophy to metaphysics and (me)ontology with a focus on issues of negativity and nothingness.
Tropos. Rivista di ermeneutica e critica filosofica – vol. 14 (2022), n. 2, 2022
This double issue of Trópos, of which we present here the first part, is entirely dedicated to th... more This double issue of Trópos, of which we present here the first part, is entirely dedicated to the concept of "universal," its historical genealogy, its theoretical performance, and its fruitfulness in a philosophical scenario that, today more than ever, invites us to question ourselves on this issue from a global and intercultural perspective. Indeed, contemporary philosophical debate witnesses an unprecedented opening of horizons: philosophy can no longer ignore – or even deny – the poignancy and relevance of other forms of thought, other cultures, languages, traditions, and places of sense-making. The categories of Western philosophy meet their Other: to what extent can they still be said, assuming this is possible, to be "universal"? The contributions collected in this issue measure themselves against this horizon of questions, exploring their multiple resonances.
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Papers by Emma Lavinia Bon
discourse, in order to coherently outline a speculative philosophy which rejects both
holism and reductionism. In doing so, we will shed new light on classic concepts of
Latin pantheism, such as locus, habitus, and ipseity, which are helpful to frame the
God-world chiasm as a process of “making place,” free of any negative movement.
The chapter is articulated on two levels: individual and cosmological. In the first
section, we consider the notions of living and psychological individuality, arguing
that the problem of alterity may be faced from a perspective of primitive, displaced
unity. Nonetheless, we should consider the fabric of all beings as an ecology of
ideas, developing the analogy between ecological networks and the mental process.
In the second section, we explore the same analogy in the light of the pantheistic
concept of God as cosmogony: their mutual immanence, just as that of the self and
the otherness, appears to be an in locu genetic act, employing a logic of complicatio
and explicatio. Finally, we argue that a correct representation of the problem may
avoid the vicious dissonances of rigid dualities, implying the possibility of turning
them into virtuous resonances.
language and the unspeakable by intertwining a literary work – Hermann
Broch’s Der Tod des Vergil – and a philosophical work – Ludwig Witt-
genstein’s Tractatus logico-philosophicus. In the first case, the unspeakable
is identified with the very core of the real, with the genetic process of
the world that incessantly evades the linguistic representations and the
significant structures aimed at expressing it. In the second case, although
world and language share the same structure, and therefore language can
express the facts of the world, what escapes the sayable is the condi-
tion of possibility of this structure, the ‘logical form’ that is common
to both. For both Wittgenstein and Broch, language is incessantly con-
fronted with something that remains unsignifiable, but which, insofar as
that which exceeds the signified – the world or logical form – is at the
same time the condition of possibility of signification, is exposed in every
phrase: the work then becomes an image of the unspeakable that shows
itself, reflecting it on its surface.
Books by Emma Lavinia Bon
Talks by Emma Lavinia Bon
Conference Presentations by Emma Lavinia Bon
Edited Books / Journals by Emma Lavinia Bon
Emma Lavinia Bon graduated in Philosophical Sciences from the University of Padua with a thesis on Jacques Derrida and is currently a doctoral student in theoretical philosophy at the University of Eastern Piedmont. She has done research in Germany at Stiftung Universität Hildesheim and at Université Paris I - Pantheon Sorbonne. Her lines of research mainly intersect contemporary philosophy of French and German areas and intercultural philosophy.
Francesca Greco graduated in Philosophical Sciences from the University of Catania, did research at the University of Heidelberg and is currently a member of the research project "Geschichten der Philosophie in globaler Perspektive" and a doctoral student at the University of Hildesheim (Germany). Her lines of research range from cross-cultural philosophy to metaphysics and (me)ontology with a focus on issues of negativity and nothingness.
discourse, in order to coherently outline a speculative philosophy which rejects both
holism and reductionism. In doing so, we will shed new light on classic concepts of
Latin pantheism, such as locus, habitus, and ipseity, which are helpful to frame the
God-world chiasm as a process of “making place,” free of any negative movement.
The chapter is articulated on two levels: individual and cosmological. In the first
section, we consider the notions of living and psychological individuality, arguing
that the problem of alterity may be faced from a perspective of primitive, displaced
unity. Nonetheless, we should consider the fabric of all beings as an ecology of
ideas, developing the analogy between ecological networks and the mental process.
In the second section, we explore the same analogy in the light of the pantheistic
concept of God as cosmogony: their mutual immanence, just as that of the self and
the otherness, appears to be an in locu genetic act, employing a logic of complicatio
and explicatio. Finally, we argue that a correct representation of the problem may
avoid the vicious dissonances of rigid dualities, implying the possibility of turning
them into virtuous resonances.
language and the unspeakable by intertwining a literary work – Hermann
Broch’s Der Tod des Vergil – and a philosophical work – Ludwig Witt-
genstein’s Tractatus logico-philosophicus. In the first case, the unspeakable
is identified with the very core of the real, with the genetic process of
the world that incessantly evades the linguistic representations and the
significant structures aimed at expressing it. In the second case, although
world and language share the same structure, and therefore language can
express the facts of the world, what escapes the sayable is the condi-
tion of possibility of this structure, the ‘logical form’ that is common
to both. For both Wittgenstein and Broch, language is incessantly con-
fronted with something that remains unsignifiable, but which, insofar as
that which exceeds the signified – the world or logical form – is at the
same time the condition of possibility of signification, is exposed in every
phrase: the work then becomes an image of the unspeakable that shows
itself, reflecting it on its surface.
Emma Lavinia Bon graduated in Philosophical Sciences from the University of Padua with a thesis on Jacques Derrida and is currently a doctoral student in theoretical philosophy at the University of Eastern Piedmont. She has done research in Germany at Stiftung Universität Hildesheim and at Université Paris I - Pantheon Sorbonne. Her lines of research mainly intersect contemporary philosophy of French and German areas and intercultural philosophy.
Francesca Greco graduated in Philosophical Sciences from the University of Catania, did research at the University of Heidelberg and is currently a member of the research project "Geschichten der Philosophie in globaler Perspektive" and a doctoral student at the University of Hildesheim (Germany). Her lines of research range from cross-cultural philosophy to metaphysics and (me)ontology with a focus on issues of negativity and nothingness.