L'agire del pensiero, il sapere dell'etica, il potere della filosofia

In my paper I intend to reflect on the way in which the concepts of «knowledge», «power», «acting» have not only been thematized in philosophy, but above all characterize the very exercise of it: that is, they are inherent in philosophical praxis as such. My discourse is divided into three parts and a conclusion. In the first part, I analyse the subordination of action and power to knowledge. This is the Greek utopia: the solution that Plato presents to respond with philosophical means to the injustice of Socrates’ death. In the second part, I discuss the subordination of knowledge and action to power. It is power, or rather the omnipotence of God, that constitutes the problem to be faced in the Middle Ages and in the Modern Age, from Descartes to Nietzsche’s Will to Power. In the third part, I analyse the subordination of knowledge and power to action. This is what happens in the technological age, where devices more or less endowed with an «artificial intelligence» act. But we human beings, too, subordinate ourselves to this model: today we learn (i. e. acquire knowledge) above all by doing. In the conclusion I intend to criticise these three models and find a way out that avoids the bad outcomes that they have caused in the history of thought and that I explained in the paper.