by Luca Gasparri
Title: "Filosofia dell'illusione. Lineamenti di glottologia e di critica concettuale" [= "Philosophy of... more
Title: "Filosofia dell'illusione. Lineamenti di glottologia e di critica concettuale" [= "Philosophy of Illusion. Linguistic, Historical and Theoretical Outlines"]
With a foreword by A. Tagliapietra. Publisher: Mimesis (Milan, 2010). Paperback: 300 pages.
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By definition, the idea of illusion has to do with the concept of error and that of appearance, with the fields of truth ad rationality and with those of deception and imagination. Yet the notion of illusion does not seem to be reducible to any of the terms and concepts belonging to the heterogeneous family of meanings to which it is most commonly coupled in ordinary language. What then is an illusion? How did the word ‘illusion’ rise and develop to its present form? What role did the idea of illusion play in the history of philosophy? Is it possible to propose a neutral theory of the concept of illusion based on the intent of isolating it from the semantics of adjacent categories such as “delusion” and “error”? Through a detailed historical and philosophical itinerary, the book tries to answer these questions. First, it examines the current use of the word ‘illusion’ and traces its complex linguistic history. Second, it investigates the fundamental features of the various ways in which modern and contemporary philosophy have contributed to the elucidation of the concept of illusion. Third, by taking into account some of the most significant works in recent theoretical and experimental literature on cognitive and perceptual distortions, it outlines a theory of the idea of illusion aiming to identify its prototypical denominators and the pragmatic constants of its philosophically sophisticated uses.
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