|
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. |
For whatever reason,
I don’t spend a lot of time hanging out at the Italian
Institute for Philosophical Studies (