CONTRIBUTI / 11 / Giacomo Pezzano
Tendencies to being. Dispositionalism between anthropology, ontology and echology
The article discusses some fundamental traits of contemporary dispositionalism, on an anthropological and ontological level. I start claiming that the current relevance of dispositionalism also depends on the fact that we are immersed in a sort of ‘dispositionalist atmosphere’, in a double sense: we are experiencing a power oriented towards ‘capacitation’ and not coercion; we are living the diffusion of the implicit ideal of hidden potential, connected to a vision of the human being as potential (§ 0). Then, I define such a potential nature as generic, and describe its three main characteristics, in order to point out their wider conceptual consequences. starting with the recognition that any power is both particular and plastic at the same time: openness; habituability; historicity (§ 1). This allows me to highlight the basic task that every dispositionalist perspective has to fulfil today: to move in a perspective which is at once neo-Aristotelian and post-Darwinian (§ 2). Afterward, I dwell on analytical dispositionalist ontologies, presenting three key aspects of the dispositions, and discussing their implications: a) potentiality; b) independence; c) directionality (§ 3). Finally, I examine the continental context, focusing on the position of G. Deleuze, in order to contribute to a ‘mutual enlightenment’ between dispositionalism and deleuzism, and to the construction of a genuine non-fixist and non-substantialist worldview: I not only explain that Deleuze would be a pandispositionalist tending towards structuralism in the contemporary spectrum, describing his position with respect to points a), b) and c), but I also show that his perspective allows to pinpoint at least two other relevant issues, such as d) duration and e) echology (§ 4)
