Questioni di filosofia dello stile

The interdisciplinary nature and the long and multifaceted history of the concept of style make it impossible to give an overall picture of its multiple meanings. Even taking into account the theoretical and methodological debates about style and the relationship between form and content (or syntax and semantics) in linguistics, aesthetics, and art history (from Aristotle to Jakobson and Hjelmslev; from Riegl to Wölfflin and Panofsky), my book deals mainly with some logic and cognitive problems in the attempt to refine the concept and to justify its use in the present epoch, characterized by the multiverse of new media and the related polymorphism of artistic codes. The main theme of my work is the fundamental distinction between the normative and the descriptive interpretation of the concept of style, which still continue to intersect and overlap in current opinion and theoretical reflections. By treating this problem, I have also the opportunity to discuss the philosophical positions that have revised, with various degrees of refinement and historical awareness, the ancient theme of "unity in variety": from Kant to Weber, Wittgenstein, Putnam, Rosch, Goodman, and Wollheim.