L'esperienza ermeneutica del verbum in corde. Heidegger, Gadamer e Ricoeur interpreti di Agostino.

The classical concept of inner word – as Augustinian verbum in corde in particular – had a certain impact on philosophical hermeneutics. Gadamer has vaguely treated it in the third part of Truth and Method and Jean Grondin has gone deeper into the subject. In the analytic context, the inner word concerns especially the debate about the linguistic structure of thought. On the continental scene instead, it refers to the hermeneutical circle and its possibility to be not vicious. According to Grondin, Gadamer had the intention, rehabilitating the concept, to defend hermeneutics’ ambitions to universality. More generally, the Augustinian verbum in corde is the adequate paradigm for hermeneutics’ ontological vehemence. On the one hand, this study agrees with Grondin’s hypothesis. Traces of the concept are found in Heidegger, Gadamer and Ricœur, i.e. along the main axes of the ontological hermeneutics. On the other hand, however, the verbum in corde is not defined here as the sign of the dialogue always existing behind any sentence, as Grondin does. According to Augustine’s De Trinitate and a protestant tradition after it, the verbum in corde is understood here as the sign of the donum dei, God’s – or Being’s – monologue always persisting behind any (good) human speech act. The concept of inner word works in this essay as critical pivot for the hermeneutical pretentions of truth as unveiling. The aim is to denounce the limits of a philosophical tradition that does not really believe in its own effectiveness and that privileges a passive and renunciative attitude in front of its duties.