Angelo Caranfa

Background

Angelo Caranfa was born on the 24th of May, 1942 in Rotello, Campobasso, Italy. He is the son of Ermete Ugolino Caranfa and Filomena Caranfa. His family immigrated to the United States in 1957.

Education

Angelo Caranfa graduated from Brockton High School in 1962. Later, he attended Stonehill College, where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1966. Also, he studied at Boston College, where he earned a Master of Arts degree in Political Philosophy in 1971. A year later, he obtained a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Florence in Italy. Besides, he got a Master of Library and Information Science degree from Simmons College in 1987.

Career

Angelo Caranfa began his career as a teacher at Bishop Stang High School in North Dartmouth, Massachusetts, where he served from 1966 to 1969. After that, he took the post of a teacher at Archbishop Williams High School in Braintree, Massachusetts, where he worked until 1971. Also, he was a teacher at St. Columbkille High School in Brighton, Massachusetts, between 1974 and 1975.

In 1975, Angelo accepted the post of an adjunct professor of philosophy at Newbury Junior College in Boston. From 1976 to 1978, he was an adjunct professor at Boston State College in Boston. Then, he accepted the position of an adjunct professor of philosophy at Stonehill College in North Easton, Massachusetts, where he served until 1985, and again from 1990 to 2002. In 1985-1987, he was an adjunct professor at Bridgewater State College (present-day Bridgewater State University) in Bridgewater.

As an author, Angelo Caranfa wrote Machiavelli Rethought: A Critique of Strauss's Machiavelli in 1978. He was co-editor with Francis R. Genreau of Western Heritage: Man's Encounter with Himself and the World: A Journey for Meaning, that came out in 1984. He also wrote Claudel: Beauty and Grace (1989), Proust (1990), and Camille Claudel: A Sculpture of Interior Solitude (1999). Additionally, he is a contributor of articles to periodicals.

Achievements

• Angelo Caranfa is particularly known as the author of books on the aesthetic of the twentieth-century French thought, as well as a contributor of articles to periodicals on the pedagogical value of teaching and learning. He has been listed as a noteworthy Philosophy educator by Marquis Who's Who.

Works

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  • Machiavelli Rethought: A Critique of Strauss' Machiavelli 1978
  • Claudel: Beauty and Grace 1989
  • Proust: The Creative Silence 1990
  • Camille Claudel: A Sculpture of Interior Solitude 1999

Views

The major purpose of Angelo Caranfa's works on the aesthetic of the twentieth-century French thought is to clarify the exquisite tension between thought and feeling that underlies literature, poetry, painting, sculpture, music, and even philosophy of the time. The works proceed to compare certain figures with others so as to reveal their particular aesthetic tendency or sensibility. Behind this contrast lies the difference between two opposing views, both metaphysical and artistic, of silence.

On the one hand, there is an understanding of silence of that which grants all things their creative origin as resourced to an infinite sea of being which is actual, but not immediately apprehensible within the direct experience. On the other hand, there is an understanding of silence as originative actuality and creative origin, but, as unlimited potentiality dissipating within indeterminacy towards nothingness. From the first arises the notion that the word or language carries meaning, and from the second arises resolute mutism incapable of expressing the paradoxes of existence. The former is the central theme of Claudel: Beauty and Grace, and of Camille Claudel: A Sculpture of Interior Solitude: the latter is the connecting thread of Proust: The Creative Silence.

Most of the articles in various periodicals reflect the pedagogical value that flows from his writings: that teaching and learning are intrinsically connected with art as the language of silence that places people on the way to self-understanding and to becoming totally and fully human.

Quotations: "Ultimately, my reason for writing derives from my inner desire to instruct myself on the feelings of the heart, which we tend to destroy when we give them up to the noise of the world, but which become a source of joy and of creativity when we nourish them in our own inner solitude. Living in the silence of the thoughts and of the words or images of others is what enriches and transforms me as a person. Self-transformation is the end towards which I direct my writing."

"This is what I want to convey to aspiring writers and indeed to students. Writing must emanate from the primordial and silent word embodied in all words in order to transport the soul of the reader or listener on the way to self-transformation. Writing is not the noise of the mouth and not the sound of our voices, says Paul Claudel, but a song of the heart and a canticle of internal joy, proclaiming and praising the ineffable, the beauty and the grace that shine in the world and in us."

Membership

Angelo Caranfa is a member of the Modern Language Association and the American Psychological Association.

Connections

There is no information about Angelo Caranfa's private life.

Father:

Ermete Ugolino Caranfa

Mother:

Filomena Caranfa