ESPERIRE MIMETICO E RAZIONALITÀ NEL MODELLO ADORNIANO DI RAPPORTO MENTE-MONDO.

The essay reconstructs the cognitive and rational role of mimesis in Adorno’s model of knowledge as “differentiation”. It puts forward an interpretation of the ability of “thinking through constellations”, and of language to “grasp the thing”, that points out how far this proposal is from “the old realism of objective representation (der alte Abbildrealismus)”. It also aims to make explicit how Adorno’s model of knowledge can really account for some recent neurophysiological achievements concerning the mimetic level of the mind-world relationship and how it contributes to a convincing interpretation, rationalist but anti-intellettualist, of some of their epistemic implications. In this way the essay aims to probe Adorno’s contribution to a paradigmatic change in the conception of the mind-world relationship and argues against the interpretation that, from Wellmer to Habermas, tried to relegate Adorno’s thought within the limits of the subject-centered paradigm of the philosophy of consciousness that he himself criticized.