Coming to the Self. Figures of an Endless Quest

Lecture: Coming to the Self. Figures of an Endless Quest

Lecturer: Fabio Merlini (Eranos Foundation, Ascona / SUFFP, Lugano)

Date: Friday, December 13, 2024, 6:30 p.m.

Place: Monte Verità (Ascona), Auditorium and Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89757553214

Cycle: Eranos-Jung Lectures 2024 - The Great Worksites of Contemporaneity. Looks at the Knots of the Present

Language: Italian

Moderator: Sandro Rusconi (Eranos Foundation, Ascona / SUFFP, Lugano)

Followed by discussion with the audience and aperitif

The video recording of the conference will be viewable on the official YouTube channel of the Eranos Foundation.

Lecture Presentation

The locution indicates the successful outcome of a process of clarification. Where there would be a caput to which one would turn, following a path oriented toward understanding that “being self” which is always also an enigma (who am I?), by reason of an opacity whose grip on what we are, can and desire to be (“this is not me”) is, however, most evident and sometimes even ruthless. So: a caput to which to head with the goal (desire, illusion, necessity) of resolving it so that we can resolve ourselves into it. Common language unconsciously retains a tinge of this process as much as to describe an exemplary character it speaks of “resolved person” and, conversely, of “unresolved person” to define those who do not seem able to establish between themselves and the world relationships capable of their own balance. Just as we say “coming to terms with a problem” to indicate the nonlinear and unworkable path, often a “puzzle,” that results in its solution, in the finally conquered ability to stand up to it; the same is also true for that non-transparent roil that each of us is with respect to ourselves. In both cases, by measuring ourselves against it, we move closer to something that occupies and worries, that disturbs, that invalidates, more or less silently. We know, however, that in the correspondence between this necessary will to amend oneself and its possibility lies the only margin of freedom we are allowed.

Lecturer' Bio-bibliography

Fabio Merlini, Regional Director of the Swiss Federal University for Vocational Education and Training (SFUVET) in Lugano, Switlerland, serves since 2010 as the President of the Eranos Foundation. From 2012 to 2019, he has served as President of the Cultural Commission of the Canton of Ticino. In 1998, he was nominated privat-docent at the Université de Lausanne, Switzerland, where he taught Philosophy of Culture. Subsequently, from 1999 to 2003, he taught Systemic Philosophy and was appointed Professor of Epistemology of the Human Sciences at the Université de Lausanne. In 2003, he was nominated adjunct Professor of Communication Ethics at the Università degli Studi dell’Insubria in Varese, Italy, where he taught until 2011. From 1996 to 2000, he co-directed the “Groupe de Recherche sur l’Ontologie de l’Histoire” at the Hussler Archives of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, whose seminar works, Après la fin de l’histoire (1998), Historicité et spatialité (2001), and Une histoire de l’avenir (2004), were published by J. Vrin. His publications include La comunicazione interrotta. Etica e politica nel tempo della “rete” (2004), L’efficienza insignificante. Saggio sul disorientamento (2009, translated into French as L’époque de la performance insignifiante. Réflexions sur la vie désorientée, 2011), Schizotopies : Essai sur l’espace de la mobilisation (2013, then translated into Italian as Ubicumque. Saggio sul tempo e lo spazio della mobilitazione, 2015), L’architettura inefficiente (with L. Snozzi, 2014, also translated into French as L’architecture inefficiente, 2016), Catastrofi dell’immediatezza (with S. Tagliagambe, for the series "I saggi di Eranos", Vol. 3, 2016), and Triste esthétique. Essais sur les catastrophes de l’immédiateté (2018, published also in Italian as L’estetica triste. Seduzione e ipocrisia dell'innovazione, 2019). His most recent book is entitled Ritornare in sé. L’interiorità smarrita e l’infinita distrazione (2022). He also served as editor of the volumes Nuove tecnologie e nuove sensibilità. Comunicazione, identità, formazione (2005), Identità e alterità. Tredici esercizi di comprensione (with E. Boldrini, 2006), Per una cultura della formazione al lavoro. Studi e analisi sulla crisi dell’identità professionale (with L. Bonoli, 2010), and Semi ad usum praesentis. Un incontro sul pensiero di Jean-Jacques Rousseau (2013). He is co-author of the Cahier de l’Herne dedicated to Friedrich Nietzsche on the 100th anniversary of his death (2000) and of the miscellaneous volume La philosophie au risque de la promesse (2004), along with J. Derrida, P. Ricoeur, M. Crépon, and other authors. For the “Eranos Classics” series, he co-edited the original edition of Carl Gustav Jung’s Rebirth. Text and Notes of the Lecture held at Eranos in 1939 (with R. Bernardini, 2020). Among his poetry works, we mention here Filo di perle. Poesie liriche in tre tempi (2015). He is a Faculty Member of the Institute of Analytical Psychology and Psychotherapy (IPAP), Postgraduate School of Psychotherapy (Ivrea).