Tava, Francesco

A Red Thread Between Milan and Prague. Guido Neri´s Interpretation of Kosík´s Dialectics of the Concrete

e-mail: frtava@hotmail.it

The aim of this presentation consists in showing the tight bond between Karel Kosík and the Italian philosopher Guido Neri. The philosophy of Neri, whose grounds were both Husserlian phenomenology and Marxism, was deeply influenced by the thought of Kosík, who became a friend

of him after Neri’s stay in Prague, in the early 1960s.(1) Thanks to his cooperation within “aut-aut” and “Il filo rosso” (“The Red Thread”, a philosophical journal he founded in 1963), Neri decisively contributed to spread Kosík’s work in Italy. In a book entitledAporie della realizzazione [Aporias of the Realization](2) Neri sketched a compelling critique of the Dialectics of the Concrete, underlining its philosophical importance as so as the remarkable political role this work played in the years preceding the Prague Spring.With this paper I would like to examine Neri’s analysis of Kosík’s work. In order to reach this goal I will refer both to Neri’s published output and to the copious unpublished material that can be consulted in the Guido Neri Fund, recently established at the University of Milan.(3)

1 A collection of essays dedicated by Neri to Czech history and philosophy can be found in G.D. Neri, Il sensibile, la storia, l’arte. Scritti 1957-2001 (Verona: Ombre Corte, 2003).

2 G.D. Neri, Aporie della realizzazione (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1980).

3 “Fondo Guido Davide Neri”, Università degli Studi di Milano, Dipartimento di Filosofia. See http://gea.lib.unimi.it/GeaWeb/