CONTRIBUTI / 13 / Matteo Angelo Mollisi
Memory, Alphabet, the Western. Ethics and Genealogical Policies from Eric Havelock
The aim of this paper is to provide a contribution to a philosophical genealogy of the Western ‘consciousness’ starting out from E. Havelock’s theories about the introduction of phonetic alphabet in ancient Greece’s oral culture as the main constitutive principle of the «Greek mind» and thus of the whole form of life, both individual and social, which has been characterising our civilization. After analysing this thesis, we will refer to two contemporary philosophical perspectives – Carlo Sini’s «thought of the practices» and Bernard Stiegler’s «pharmacology» – in order to argue that Havelock’s contribute should encourage an approach that discovers the roots of the human in his concrete ‘lifeworld’ and more specifically in the mnemotechnical devices which shape his cultural identity, and which consequently have to be considered the real stake of an ethical and political praxis capable of facing both the revelation of our centuries-old history’s ‘limit’ and the more recent technological transformations.
