philosophy professor from texas tech university tells florence newspaper his experience in the city of the most important italian humanists, writers and philosophers - the florence newspaper

Philosophy Professor from Texas Tech University tells Florence Newspaper his experience in the city of the most important Italian humanists, writers and philosophers

Florence Newspaper has interviewed Costica Bradatan, Assistant Professor in the Honors College at Texas Tech University, who is in Florence completing a research for his work in progress Philosophy as an Art of Dying.

FN: Professor Bradatan, we understand this is your first encounter with Italy. What are your general impressions?

CB: Yes, this is my first encounter with Italy. And, as it happened, the first face of Italy, out of its many, that I saw on the occasion of my first encounter with it is Florence – a most fortunate coincidence, I should say. I like Italy immensely. Here I felt at home right away. I don’t know, there is something in the air, something subtle, not so easy to put into words, that makes this place very appealing to me. It is not just the glorious past – which literally overwhelms you – but also a certain mildness you read on people’s faces, a sweetness you unfailingly detect in their gestures, in their talking to one another, in their smiling to one another, that comes to fascinate you while you are here. It is the fundamental openness of this place, its incredibly free and playful spirit, that makes Italy a very friendly land, a place where you just want to be, where you want to come back again and again.

FN: In what way do you feel intellectually stimulated by Italian culture?

CB: In a fundamental sense, Italy has started changing me long before my first trip to Italy. After all, Italy is an important part of who we are, isn’t it? As someone who was brought up in Europe (Romania –ndr-), I owe to Italy a number of things that played a major role in my intellectual formation: a perception of the visible world that is shaped by the artistic vision and sensibility of some of the Italian masters; a definition of what it means to be human that is structured, in an essential way, by the insights of a number of Italian writers and philosophers: Dante, Petrarca, the Renaissance humanists, Machiavelli, Giambattista Vico, etc; a strong drive toward an artistic transfiguration of the world – actually, a sophisticated art of philosophizing in images – which is what one finds in the Italian neo-realism, as well as in Fellini, Pasolini, Gillo Pontecorvo, and so on. I cannot really imagine how Europe – the European mind – would look like in the absence of its Italian component.
On the other hand, the book project that I am working on right now has much to do with Italy: in this book I view Giordano Bruno as an exemplary case of that class of martyr philosophers who, for various reasons, find themselves – or, rather, put themselves - in limit-situations where they cannot use words anymore, but have to use their own bodies, their dying flesh, to express themselves. In cases like this, we can see how philosophy comes to transcend itself: it is not an academic preoccupation anymore, but a gesture, a performance, a performing art – the “art of dying.” In other words, in this book I seek to show that Bruno burning on stake – just as Socrates taking the poison or Edith Stein walking into the gas chamber – is a highly meaningful, if radical and unusual, form of doing philosophy.

FN: How about your Florentine contacts, personal and academic institutions, libraries...

CB: Thanks to a couple of very generous Florentine friends, Gabriela Dragnea-Horvath and Petru Ladislau Horvath, I have been introduced to some of the secrets of the Tuscan life, culture and music, as well as to very fine people in Florence. That’s how I have discovered a couple of Florentine philosophers, with whom I had very fruitful and enlightening conversations. Prof. Maria Moneti has showed a flattering interest in my project, and helped me with the bibliography – for which I am very grateful.
Then, Prof. Sergio Givone – with whom I have discovered that I share strong research interests in Dostoevsky as a philosopher – has offered me priceless advice and encouragement. I am also grateful to Prof. Mario Labate, Direttore dell'Istituto di Studi Umanistici (Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane), housed in Palazzo Strozzi, for the outstanding hospitality that he, along with his team, showed me there, as well as to Prof. Andrea Cantini, Direttore del Dipartimento di Filosofia (Università degli Studi di Firenze), for various forms of institutional support. I have been really fortunate to know these scholars while I have been in Florence.

FN: Is Italy included in your future projects?

CB: Definitely. I plan on coming back here, both to Florence and to other places in Italy, for research and teaching (I intend to bring some of my US students here at some point). I find Florence a very stimulating place, in terms of its people, architecture, monuments, but also in terms of – how shall I put it? – the general atmosphere, in terms of the special environment in which you find yourself here.
For someone like me, interested in the history of European philosophy and in European studies in general, Florence is, so to speak, the “promised land”: the city is a goldmine from the point of view of the scholarly resources, libraries, museums one finds here, but it is also an ongoing spectacle, a sophisticated microcosm, a most interesting historical project. It is the meeting point of some of the most fascinating contrasts.
For example, here you can sample an authentic cosmopolitan spirit and, at the same time, some very distinct local flavors. The urban landscape is made up of the most unexpected combinations: rich-looking Japanese tourists, eternally caught up in the business of photographing everything, alongside with humble East-European immigrants walking aimlessly – involuntary tourists they are; carefree American students forever surrounded by the same Gypsy beggars; the most advanced technology put to work in ancient settings; an intimidatingly rich past side by side with the insecurities of the present. Linguistically, the city of Florence is a most formidable contemporary tower of Babel: here you can hear all the tongues of the earth, all the dialects, all the accents. The internet cafes in Florence must look – or rather sound! – very much like the interpreters’ rooms at the UN.

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