L'amico di Amleto (sulla metamorfosi della Bildung)

Moving from both David Foster Wallace’s and Alessandro Baricco’s literary diagnosis about the changing of classic experience paradigm for contemporary human beings, the paper suggests a reconsideration of our traditional notion of Bildung. According to our philosophical heritage, the very meaning of experience – that is, the chance of developing an authentic “subjectivity” – depends on a deep comprehension of the relationship between individual and collective culture that always defines our being in the world. But the world surrounding us features increasingly fast changes. Evidence suggests for instance that we are facing an unprecedented shift in the cultural transmission of tradition, memory, and their sense (let’s think for instance about the increasing role of the new media in building our personality and determine our process of imaging the world). How can culture still try to protect that simple interval on the continuous and relentless line of time that we still try to call “experience”, and therefore defend its very role in shaping our subjectivity?