Antonio Tari
Marcantonio Tari[1] (4 July 1809 – 15 March 1884) was an Italian philosopher, writer and music critic.
Contents
Biography
From a family originally from Terelle, in Frusinate, he was born in a seventeenth-century building not far from Villa Santa Maria Maggiore, today's Santa Maria Capua Vetere, also in the Terra di Lavoro, the son of Giuseppe Tari, an employee who was passing through, and Anna Cossa. He had three brothers, Benedetto, Vincenzo and Achille, and a sister, Teresita. His birthplace (known as Palazzo Mazzocchi, and archaeologist Alessio Simmaco Mazzocchi birthplace[2]), was located in the then Strada della Croce, today's Via Mazzocchi, and is now seriously degraded.
He studied at Monte Cassino, where he met Silvio Spaventa. In 1830, Tari moved to Naples where he graduated in law and began the profession of lawyer.[3]
Soon, however, the lawyer preferred philosophy, literature and music, joining his friend Spaventa, Giambattista Ajello, Francesco de Sanctis and other liberal thinkers of the time and collaborating with various literary newspapers in Naples. In 1861, he was elected deputy for the electoral college of San Germano, but refused the mandate to devote himself to teaching. In fact, the same year he had entered by competition in the Royal University of Naples, becoming the first professor of aesthetics in Italy, in the same period in which Francesco de Sanctis, Luigi Settembrini, Silvio Spaventa and Giovanni Bovio were teaching. There he taught for over twenty years, until his death.
He devoted himself to various branches of philosophy and language sciences, also translating, for the publishing house Detken, works by foreign authors not well known at the time as Léon Brothier (1803–1870)[4], Sigismond Zaborowski-Moindron (1851–1928)[5] and Eugène Noël (1816–1899)[6]; translations published between 1881 and 1885.
His aesthetic system, variously criticized, in particular for the lack of originality, was characterized by a lively expression, with rich and sometimes colorful examples, which also made it famous and very popular university lectures. Significant part of his philosophical studies was published posthumously.
The "jester of God"
Benedetto Croce, in the critical essays of the Letteratura della Nuova Italia, defined Tari as "jester of God", that is to say, to resume the words of Croce himself, the "happy jester of philosophy". The Abruzzese thinker explained, in this regard, that Tari never had enemies, being able to make himself well liked by both friends and opponents, who "took arm in arm, and took them for a walk with him, enjoying contradicting them and feeling contradicted."
As if to endorse the above definition, Croce also pointed out that Tari's bizarre genius "made him find pleasure in the most disparate and comical combinations and connections: of the sublime phrase with the playful, of the solemn memory with the salacious anecdote, of the Latin or German language with the Neapolitan vernacular. He speaks in jargon, but in jargon that is quintessentially cultural and an extravagant mixture of genial elements".[7]
About Tari's work Manual of Aesthetics (unpublished), Croce said:
Philosopher by profession and man of encyclopedic doctrine, despite all his philosophical expertise, his endless doctrine and his much acumen, Tari was above all a bizarre artist. His metaphysical conception did not allow him a truly logical treatment of the problems. But his personality, vibrant with emotion in front of the works of art, overflowing with enthusiasm, endowed with goodness and nobility of feeling, inspired pages that are of a species very rare in our literature.
Music and aesthetics
The playful essence mixed, mingling, with an acute criticism, which was addressed to all fields in which aesthetics was substantiated and, in particular, to one of the "arts" to which Tari was most attracted: music.
Between the serious and the facetious, in fact, the philosopher, after having published in 1879 an interesting critical study on Serietà e ludo, composed a musical essay, complete with notes, with the emblematic title of Lezioni di estetica generale.
This address led him to deal, writing in 1883, also on the famous Beethoven's pastoral.
Works
- Estetica ideale (1863)
- Ente spirito e reale. Confessioni filosofiche (1872)
- Opera, melodramma, dramma: nota critica (1878)
- Serietà e ludo: saggio critico (1879)
- Beethoven e la sua sinfonia pastorale. Saggio critico (1883)
- Lezioni di estetica generale (1884)
- Saggi di critica (1886; preface by R. Cotugno)
- Saggi di estetica e metafisica (1910; edited by B. Croce)
- Estetica esistenziale (1987; edited by M. Leotta)
- L'estetica reale (2003; edited by F. Solitario)
Notes
- ↑ Savorelli, Alessandro (2019). "Tari, Antonio." In: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Vol. 95.
- ↑ Perconte Licatese, A. (2001). Alessio Simmaco Mazzocchi. Santa Maria Capua Vetere: Ed. Spartaco.
- ↑ Perconte Licatese, A. (1983). Santa Maria di Capua. Storia e monumenti della città di Santa Maria Capua Vetere, Vol. II. Curti: Tip. Stampa Sud.
- ↑ Storia popolare della filosofia. Napoli: Detken (1881).
- ↑ Origine del linguaggio. Napoli: Detken (1882).
- ↑ Voltaire e Rousseau. Napoli: Detken (1885).
- ↑ Croce, Benedetto (1967). La Letteratura della Nuova Italia. Saggi Critici, Vol. I. Laterza: Bari, pp. 403-409.
References
- Massimo Leotta, La filosofia di Antonio Tari, Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici, Napoli 1983.
- Francesco Solitario, Antonio Tari nella "Critica" di Benedetto Croce. Contributo per un recupero, Prometheus, Milano 1998.
- Francesco Solitario (a cura di), L'Estetica di Antonio Tari e la cultura filosofica meridionale del suo tempo, Prometheus, Milano 2007.
