La durezza del "patico" : Aldo Masullo interprete di Heidegger

This paper aims at exploring Aldo Masullo’s interpretation of Heidegger’s conception of affectivity. On the one hand, the Italian philosopher gives Heidegger credit for having discovered the affective constitution of subjectivity in contrast to the logic characterization of the subject typical of Kant’s and Husserl’s approaches. On the other hand, Masullo criticizes Heidegger for not radically considering the factuality of affectivity, its corporeal dimension and its irreducibility to the cognitive sphere. In the first part, the paper examines Masullo’s ambivalent assessment of Heidegger’s account as well as the author’s original understanding of the «pathic», i.e. affective, dimension. In the second part we measure the extent to which Masullo’s critique of Heidegger is legitimate, by focusing, in particular, on Heidegger’s early notion of the «pre-wordly» (Vorweltliches) and the way this differs from the experience of what is meaningful.