Dal logos all'eikon. Sulla “vita che si è resa visibile” nel cristianesimo

The idea that the classical Greek was a civilization of the image and the Judeo-Christian a civilization of the word and the ‘book’ has become commonplace. Indeed, this is not exactly true. More precisely, it must be said that the classical Greek civilization was a civilization of the logos, to which both eikon and rhesis and lexis were dependent, while the Christian one, in this different from the Judaic one, was a civilization of the typos, of the figure. Namely, a type of image completely sui generis with respect to the Greek eikon. A type of image has largely changed the hierarchy of relations between logos and eikon of the classical era and opened up the way to the future modern civilization of the image, for which the visual studies have in recent decades been proposed as a privileged place of reflection and a sounding board. In this sense, the article discusses some of the reasons why the ‘iconic turn’ of modernity should be linked with the transformations to which early Christian culture subjected the concept of eikon, more closely than the current visual culture does.