Utopie e intenzionalità utopica.Osare la cura del possibile

The text proposes a categorial distinction between Utopia and utopian in- tentionality. We label utopias the configurations of unprecedented worlds, liv- ing in other times or other places, which are characterized by their own, very different contents. When we speak about utopian intentionality, we are instead thinking about the consciousness attitude which recurs in these prefigurations. It is permeated by a dynamic aimed at putting reality in motion towards a pos- sible good world, that, at present, does not exist. Thanks to the reflections of Karl Mannheim, Paul Ricoeur and Virgilio Mel- chiorre above all, the paper takes specifically into account the utopian inten- tionality; considering that it is essential for human beings to maintain a very human way of relating to the world they transform and with which they try to familiarize themselves. Despite the awareness about many critical remarks – such as the recent ones by Zygmunt Bauman, Paolo Prodi and Massimo Cac- ciari – this intentionality is considered intrinsic to every proposal and every practice for better places and times, that wants to offer itself as a dynamic of openness and overcoming. It must be guarded, of course, in its pathologies, which can suffer both excess and defect: it can then be lost in repetitive fixation or magical anticipation. The paper therefore, goes in search of the conditions of possibility of the utopian intentionality. It recognizes them, first of all, in a relationship to what is real, that shows a revealing ability far beyond ordinary reference. At the same time, it is noted, they move in a horizon of positive completeness which, while remaining indeterminate in itself, offers itself as determinable in a multiple way in the forms of reality. Unlike heterotopia, utopian intentionality not only detects alternatives to what is given, but it works actively in the interpretative articulation of the pos- sibility of overcoming negativities. While refusing progressive continuity me- chanics, it wants to go beyond the lacerations of time, beyond the closure of what has been – which lacks the tension to change, but also beyond the adhe- sion to pure instantaneity, and beyond the escape that recognizes only what is desired. Utopian intentionality offers itself as the capacity to cultivate care for the possible good.