Tragic praise of the reflection. on the anthropological nostalgy of identity

Abstract

One’s reflection has always generated uneasiness and suspicion. Seeing and recognizing ourselves places us, from the very beginning, in a direct relationship to our true scope and our caducity. Liquid time, in which the iconicity of our nature is constantly projected onto impossible spaces of virtuality, seems to require the counterpoint of a tragic praise of reflection. This paper aims to trace some arguments that may serve as a reminder of the critical importance of reflection for the construction of human identity. We will do it from a hermeneutic-narrative perspective, in dialogue with some emblematic stories in which making death invisible has never been pretended. We will try to bring to light again the tragic tension involved in the contradictory nature of life and to vindicate those essential extremes that seem to have been forgotten today in the epochal ecstasy of the hollow selfie