2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

M R . PALOMAR
will make clear, hopefully, why game and play seem to be summoned so often in this age
of the end of philosophy, and why, I believe, it is incumbent upon us to answer their perhaps
misplaced call.
The first section will briefly introduce the novel and its particular way of addressing
philosophy’s concerns. Then, the section called “Mr. Palomar’s checkmates” corresponds,
roughly, to the first two chapters: it explain why philosophy has to reach an end if human
existence is to gain any significance. In other words, the section presents, on the basis of
Calvino’s short proses, the existential import of the end of philosophy—it claims to answer
the question: why does it matter to us that philosophy be achieved?
The next section, “The world of Candrakirti,” illustrates one possible, and I believe
very common, solution to the problem of the end of philosophy in our postmodern era. It is
the combinatorial view, as I call it, that interprets the world as a a game, sometimes a cos-
mic game, sometimes a power game. The content of this section corresponds, approximate-
ly, to the last three chapters ( IV-VI)
of the book , i.e. to the chapters in which I explore the
solutions provided by Artificial Intelligence and Structuralism, the two disciplines that, I
believe, have better probed the depths of the combinatorial view and have provided a fine
articulation of the formal concept of game that underlies it.
The last, very brief section, “The irreparable light of dawn,” is a pointer to what, with
a bit of luck, I hope I will be working on next. It illustrates the reasons why, I believe, Spiel,
both under the guises of game and of play, cannot represent a solution to the existential
abyss that the philosophical end opens up before, or rather under, us. What may lie on the
bottomless surface of that
1. Mr. Palomar
Ab-grund,
however, I will not try to tell here.
A few years ago, in a conference devoted to Italo Calvino’s work, Giorgio Agamben
pointed out that the existence of the unrepresentable, the implications of quantum physics,
Heisenberg’s indeterminacy principle etc. are issues so commonly debated in the present
intellectual discussions that they have become utterly meaningless. He went on to affirm
3