Razionalità ed ‘espressività’ nei comportamenti umani. La prospettiva socio-antropologica di A.M. Di Nola

This article is focused on a sociological interpretation of some selected works of famous Italian anthropologist AM Di Nola. Obviously Di Nola’s works are related to anthropological analysis of human behaviors but, in our view, they also contain descriptions of social behaviors; of their individualistic motivations and their close relationships with group dynamics. Our aim is to describe and analyze these behaviors using methodological instruments such as weberian heuristic category of ‘social action’. We want analyze the content (active or passive) and the deep nature of action (its rationality). From this point of view, we consider an active behavior as a proactive action; in other words, we are going to consider a way to act in order to overcome fear of mysterious and unknown social word. At contrary, we assume that a passive behavior is above all an omission. In the latter case we utilize the concept of adaptive action for explain the reasons of human submission to an external decision. In addition, we argue that there are two main forms of rationality : value rationality (for example, hubris sin) and instrumental rationality (for example, magical practices to gain gods favors). At contrary, irrationality could appear as a form of rationalization, for justify negative and dramatic events (…..); as an affective behavior (for example, Satanism and its emphasis on primal strength of men; finally, as fatalistic attitude (for example, in religion, subjective perception of own creatural dependency).