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The
Italian Institute for Philosophical Studies The institute was founded in 1975 in Naples
by Gerardo Marotta and others.
At first, it was under the auspices of the Accademia dei Lincei (known in
English as The Lincean Academy), the prestigious organization founded
in 1603 in Rome, at the beginnings of modern science. (The Institute is
thus part of a long tradition in Naples that even boasts a predecessor
to the Accademia dei Lincei: the Academia Secretorum
of Giambattista della Porta). In 1983, the Institute moved into the
18th-century Palazzo
Serra di Cassano (entrance, photo, above). At its heart, of
course, is the library,
the nucleus of which is more than 100,000 volumes that were collected
over some thirty years
of patient searching throughout Europe. The beautiful premises are
sufficiently upscale for “philosophical studies.” (I know, I know—you
don’t need upscale. Someone famous and philosophical once said
that all you really need is a teacher, a disciple and a log to sit on.
But “upscale” is still nice.) The Palazzo
Serra di Cassano is one of
the most remarkable buildings in Naples and because of the Institute
attracts the attention of scholars throughout the world. Over the years, the premises have hosted seminars with modern philosophers Hans-Georg Gadamer and Karl Popper and scientists such as Rita Levi Montalcini, Carlo Rubbia, Steven Weinberg, Sheldon Glashow and Ilya Prigogine, all Nobel Prize winners. The institute seems to be open all the time, at least during the long academic year (from September through late July) and is usually crawling with graduate students, researchers and just ordinary people interested in one or more of the items on the very active seminar schedule or in simply browsing in some of the publications of the Institute. Their current webpage displays a wide range
of material on a long list of philosophers, from Socrates and Plato to
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche as well as a complete list of seminars to be
held in the coming months. There is obviously some overlap with another
institute in Naples, the one for Historical Studies founded
by Benedetto Croce in 1946. I see, for
example, an upcoming
presentation of a recent—and what looks to be interesting—book entitled
The Hamilton Letters, The
Naples Dispatches of Sir William Hamilton. The Institute
provides student and researcher exchanges with many foreign
universities and since 1980 has had its own School of Graduate Studies.
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For whatever reason, I
don’t spend a lot of time hanging out at the
Italian Institute for Philosophical Studies (