New Book- Giovanni Maddalena, “The Philosophy of Gesture. Completing Pragmatists’ Incomplete Revolution”, McGill-Queen’s University Press

Siamo lieti di annunciare l’uscita del nuovo libro di Giovanni Maddalena, “The Philosophy of Gesture Completing Pragmatists’ Incomplete Revolution” (McGill-Queen’s University Press) con un’introduzione di Fernando Zalamea.

Overview

A revolutionary pragmatist account of creativity and synthetic reasoning that relies upon gesture, an action that carries on meaning.

In everyday reasoning – just as in science and art – knowledge is acquired
more by “doing” than with long analyses. What do we “do” when we dis-
cover something new? How can we define and explore the pattern of this
reasoning, traditionally called “synthetic”?
Following in the steps of classic pragmatists, especially C.S. Peirce,
Giovanni Maddalena’s Philosophy of Gesture revolutionizes the pattern of
synthesis through the ideas of change and continuity and proposes “gesture”
as a new tool for synthesis. Defining gesture as an action with a beginning
and an end that carries on a meaning, Maddalena explains that it is a dense
blending of all kinds of phenomena – feelings and vague ideas, actual ac-
tions, habits of actions – and of signs – icons, indexes, and symbols. When
the blending of phenomena and signs is densest, the gesture is “complete,”
and its power of introducing something new in knowledge is at its highest
level. Examples of complete gestures are religious liturgies, public and
private rites, public and private actions that establish an identity, artistic
performances, and hypothesizing experiments.
A departure from a traditional Kantian framework for understanding
the nature and function of reason, The Philosophy of Gesture proposes an
approach that is more attuned with our ordinary way of reasoning and of
apprehending new knowledge.