John Henry Newman. Identità, alterità, persona by Michele Marchetto (review)

During the recent Gailliot Award ceremony, Fr. John T. Ford, recipient and distinguished scholar, pointed out how scholarship in Newman studies tends to be reduced to works published in English. In spite of that – he continued – the amount and quality of dissertations, monographs, and articles, produced in the non-English speaking world, are simply too massive to be ignored.

In this perspective, the Newman Studies Journal solicited me to offer a review of this essay, published in Italy by Carocci Editore, and titled John Henry Newman. Identità, alterità, persona. The author, Michele Marchetto, is Professor of Philosophical Anthropology and Philosophy of Education at the Istituto Universitario Salesiano di Venezia (IUSVE). Having published two monographs on Newman (the first one is Un presentimento della verità. Il relativismo e John Henry Newman, Rubettino, 2010), and edited in Italian two very important collections of his writings (Scritti filosofici, Bompiani 2005, and Scritti sull'Universita, Bompiani 2008), he is considered one of the greatest Newman scholars in Italy.

With this latest work, Marchetto intends to achieve a well-defined, two-fold goal: presenting Newman's philosophy as personalist stance, and, by means of it, consider a major issue of the contemporary age, "the dissolution of the self and its claims to unity" (p. 13). Although connected, these research objectives pertain to areas of study marked by very different, vast, and complex challenges. However, the author chooses to not deal with these distinct issues in separate sections of the book. On the contrary, the essay explores them in an intertwined and integrated fashion, thus offering not only a brief though comprehensive look at two critical questions of our time, but also some significant interpretive insights. As the objectives announced in the introduction clearly demonstrate, the intrinsic pragmatic rationale for this work is the potential of Newman studies to enlighten and criticize the ongoing crisis of the subject.

Mainly drawing on The Philosophical Notebook, but also, considerably, the Grammar and many other writings, Marchetto is able to think of the distinctive characteristics of Newman's reflection in comparison with virtually all the major streams of Western intellectual history, engaging them in an ideal conversation.

The juxtaposition of quite different lines of thought and types of reference is sometimes unquestionable, e.g. Joseph Butler (pp. 33-4), and Edith Stein (p. 41), and sometimes bold, e.g. Max Weber (p. 16), and Johann Wolfgang Goethe (p. 82). The final result is a useful, concise introduction to Newman's personalism intended for both the general academic audience, and – because by examining Newman's concept of person it cuts across several important areas of philosophical inquiry – the more specialized group of Newman scholars, who may find in it valuable suggestions for new avenues of research. The cost of this broad and compendiary approach is, inevitably, a lack of depth. The author, however, manages to weave together very skillfully the different themes and viewpoints involved as he progresses through the chapters.

The first two, titled "'Myself and my Creator'" and "Grammatica del riconoscimento: l'io come persona" ("A grammar of recognition: the self as person"), are devoted to present the theoretical background of Marchetto's discourse on person, which is precisely Newman's own path to a personalist philosophy. They prepare the ground for reading and understanding the subsequent chapters, which are more analytical and interpretive. These five sections explore with great attention the concept of person as employed by Newman in its main dimensions and contents, i.e. the phenomenological understanding of the subject (Ch. 3: "Person and phenomenology"); the essence of the person as relationship (Ch. 4: "Person and relationship"); the dialectic between the absolute and general principles on the one hand, and the singularity and variability of the individual on the other hand (Ch. 5: "The person between egotism and development); the role of the hermeneutic process in the connotation of the person as narrative identity (Ch. 6: "Person and hermeneutic"); the articulation of immanence and transcendence in the context of...