Paolo Parrini - Biography#
Paolo Parrini has taught since 1969 at the Florence University, where he
served as Full Professor from 1983 until 2011 when he anticipated his retirement
for devoting himself entirely to research. His scientific publications
are about 220.
His research addresses epistemology, ontology, hermeneutics, and metaphilosophy.
Because of his strong historical interests he also worked on the history
of epistemology and the methodological aspects of philosophical historiography.
In his 1976 book, Linguaggio e teoria, Parrini proposed the idea of the
relativized (or contexualized) a priori arguing its synthetic and not only
analytic character against Carnap and the linguistic turn in philosophy.
In the subsequent years he developed this idea in two main directions.
At an historical level, he gave a new interpretation of Logical Positivism
and its relations with Kant’s philosophy and the conventionalistic tradition.
Afterwards he broadened such an interpretation by studying in depth the
relations between Neo-Empiricism and Husserl’s phenomenology which he considers
an autonomous ‘fourth way’ in addition to the three ‘ways’ of the famous
1929 Davos meeting. At a systematic level, in the first half of the Nineties
Parrini proposed a renewed conception of the ideals of the 'esprit positif'
(empiricism, moderate epistemic relativism, anti-metaphysical objectivism)
and a liberalised view of rationality. The core of this position is an
explicative re-interpretation of truth as a primitive concept that works
as a purely formal, or empty, regulative ideal. Afterwards he tried to
show that such a ‘positive philosophy’ can possibly favour the overcoming
of the analytic/continental divide.
In the last years Parrini dealt with the metaphilosophical issues concerning
the nature and aims of philosophy and the reasons of its current crisis.
He is presently working at a book on values and the theory of judgement.
In the last years Parrini's philosophical positions have been presented
and recognised in international publications dedicated to eminent figures
in the Italian philosophy of 20th Century; see, in particular,:
- 1. Viva Voce. Conversations with Italian Philosophers, ed. by S. Benso, Suny Press, Albany, 2017, pp. 185-199,
- 2. Phenomenology in Italy, ed. by F. Buogiorno, V. Costa, R. Lanfredini, Springer, 2020, ch. 12, "Phenomenology, Empiricism, and Constructivism in Paolo Parrini’s Positive Philosophy" by A. Pace Giannotta, pp. 161-178.
