Ethical Code

University of Genoa, Italy

Marco Damonte has obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Theology at the Facoltà di Teologia dell’Italia Settentrionale (2002) and a PhD in Philosophy at Università degli Studi di Genova (2008). Currently, he does research work in History of Philosophy at Università degli Studi di Genova where he teach Tendencies of Contemporary Thought. He has authored three essays and about fifty papers published in journals or in collections of essays that concern contemporary thinking. He especially researches in epistemology, particularly addressing the problem of intentionality (Wittgenstein, Tommaso e la cura dell’intenzionalità, MEF, Firenze 2009; From Justification to Warrant, towards Virtue Epistemology, «Epistemologia», 34 (2011), pp. 5-28) as well as analytic philosophy of religion, conducting inquiries into its epistemological aspects (Una nuova teologia naturale. La proposta degli epistemologi riformati e dei tomisti wittgensteiniani, Carocci, Roma 2011). He has investigated the public role of religion (M. Damonte, Confrontation Between Civilization, Religions and Professions of Faith, «Études Maritainiennes / Maritain Studies», 25 (2009), pp. 46-57) and the philosophy of prayer (Homo organs. Antropologia della preghiera, Fondazione Centro Studi Campostrini, Verona 2014). The results of his research have been discussed at various international conventions, above all Europe-wide, thanks to The European Society for Philosophy of Religion’s biennial conventions. He has recently proposed a new approach to natural theology (Towards a New Natural Theology: Between Reformed Epistemology and Wittgensteinian Thomism, in S.T. Kołodziejczyk, J. Salamon (eds.), Knowledge, Action, Pluralism, Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2013, pp. 113-134); for this reason, he was also called upon to study the Mediaeval sources of analytic philosophy of religion.

In the studies on Wittgenstein, the house he designed and planned in Kundmanngasse for his sister Margarete between 1926 and 1928, is considered an exemplification of his thought. The aim of this paper is to reverse this approach, appreciating Wittgenstein’s experience as an architect as one of the decisive moment of his philosophical development. In order to do so, I will take the secondary literature on this theme into consideration, showing that Kundmanngasse House cannot be understood only as a representation of the philosophy of the Tractatus, nor as an anticipation of Philosophical Investigations. To value Wittgenstein as an architect I refer to his reflections contained in Culture and Value and I linger over two aspects: (1) the difference between his building and the cultural setting of that period, dominated, in architecture, by the modernism of Adolf Loos; (2) the role he has in designing the house’s interiors and finishing. I conclude the best way to approach Wittgenstein’s attempt in architecture is not to regard Kundmanngasse House as a building which represents the so called “first” or “second” Wittgenstein’s thought, but as a cultural test able to influence his conception of language (“language as use” and the notion of “following a rule”) and to support, on the one hand, the passage from the view “outside and above” language to the view “within” language and, on the other, the passage from a descriptive theory of meaning to a performative one.

Keywords: Wittgenstein, Kundmanngasse House, language as use, performatory language, following a rule

Università degli Studi di Perugia

This text focuses on some aspects of Giorgio Manganelli’s narrative production examined from an interpretation perspective that places the theme of spatiality at the center of attention. Through a series of cross-references to the studies of Bachelard, Genette and Matoré, our analyzes will try to show the way in which the Milanese writer works fictional space in his texts. We thus come to highlight some principles of topopoetics which we then compare with some theses developed by Jean-Jacques Wunenburger in an essay of 2017. In this way, re-reading texts such as La riga bianca, Nuovo Commento, Sconclusione through this critical scheme, we can propose a small Manganellian topo-analysis treatise. Here Abbot’s «miniaturistic Platonism» coexists with a rich sample of figures and topological structures, where the dysphoric dimension in which they take shape and form always ends up transforming itself into a formidable reflection on the possibilities of literature.

Keywords: Giorgio Manganelli, Gaston Bachelard, Topo-analysis, Sur-spatialisation, Hypertopia.

Université Jean-Moulin Lyon 3, France

Università di Bologna

Michela Sganga ha conseguito nel 2015 la laurea triennale in Filosofia presso l’Università di Bologna con una tesi in Filosofia Teoretica intitolata Heidegger e il ritorno a Kant: il Dasein come radicalizzazione del trascendentale kantiano, e nel 2018 la laurea magistrale in Scienze Filosofiche, sempre presso l’Università di Bologna, con una tesi in Filosofia Teoretica intitolata La krisis fra vita e senso e la psichiatria come scienza dell’uomo: per una comprensione fenomenologico-trascendentale della genesi dell’esperienza schizofrenica. I suoi interessi vertono principalmente sulla fenomenologia di Husserl e Heidegger, la psicopatologia fenomenologica, la Daseinsanalyse di Ludwig Binswanger e la sua ricezione in Italia.

The present contributions aims to investigate the importance of Edmund Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology in latest Binswanger’s works, especially considering his phenomenological studies about schizophrenia. Indeed, the interest in a deeper comprehension of schizophrenic experience leads Binswanger to integrate both static and genetic phenomenology into Daseinsanalytic method, in order to achieve a wider sight on schizophrenic psychoses and their development. Due to genetic phenomenology Husserl focuses on the two main conscience structures – intentionality and temporality – dealing with constitution of the experience as a whole. What emerges behind experience itself is the rich background of passive synthesis and the typical aproblematic feature of living the common world.

Keywords: Binswanger; Daseinsanalyse; Husserl; Schizophrenia; Temporality.

Università di Udine

Luca Taddio è stato docente a contratto di Estetica presso l’Università di Udine, Trieste e Ferrara. Si occupa in particolare di filosofia della percezione e di teoria dell’immagine. Ha pubblicato i seguenti libri: Spazi immaginali (2004), Fenomenologia eretica (2011), L’affermazione dell’architettura (con Damiano Cantone, 2011), Global Revolution (2012), I due misteri (2012), Verso un nuovo realismo (2013). 

This essay aims to tackle the meaning of the concept of illusions in relation to the following terms: “appearance” and “deception of the senses”. We intend to examine some cases of illusion in order to show how the idea of “deceiving of the senses” is already a judgment on an experience: the senses themselves do not deceive indeed. Deception implies an epistemological position regarding reality. The same can be said of the relationship between appearance and reality: the appearance of illusions, compared to reality, is an epistemological question - and not an ontological one. Illusions are part of the reality and hence they convey a sense of it.Keywords: illusion, ontology, perception, Gestalt, “form of life”.

debt and morality, the relationship between debts and duties in particular, and the philosophy of debt in general, have been largely neglected in the discipline’s debate. This paper intends to be a first attempt to fill this research gap by addressing two fundamental questions, namely, what does it mean to think of moral duties as monetary debts? And, if we think of moral duties as debts, is this desirable? I will develop an answer by looking at how Kant and Nietzsche have discussed debt in relation to different types of obligations—individual and collective, private and political. Both Kant and Nietzsche broadly argue that debts must be understood as essential moral duties, and see debt-repayment as the quintssential moral ought, but this leads to diverging positions with regard to the desirability of conceptualizing duties as debts. On the ground that the creditor-debtor relationship is unjust, Nietzsche rejects all morality. While on the assumption that repaying one’s debts is a categorical imperative, Kant fails to question the injustices linked to debt-repayment.

Keywords: debt, philosophy of debt, moral duties, Kant, Nietzsche.

Floriana Ferro è assegnista di ricerca in Storia della Filosofia presso l’Università di Udine e docente di Filosofia e Storia nei licei. È stata Visiting Scholar a Stanford e Chercheuse Libre all’Université Paris I. I suoi articoli e recensioni, in lingua italiana e inglese, sono stati pubblicati sulle riviste Nordicum-Mediterraneum, Soglie, Quaderni leif, Forum. La sua monografia Alterità e Infinito è stata pubblicata da Aracne nel 2014. È membro della Società Filosofica Italiana e della redazione dei Quaderni leif. Si interessa di fenomenologia, etica generale e applicata, antichistica, letteratura italiana e internazionale. Ha pubblicato anche un romanzo filosofico, Il viaggio di Sofia (Il Filo, 2007) e due raccolte di poesie, Danza di equinozi (A&B, 2011) e Il ventre della Terra (Armando Siciliano, 2017). La prima è stata tradotta e pubblicata in lingua inglese con il titolo Dance of the Equinox (Smokestack, 2016).

Università di Padova

Insegna Storia della Filosofia buddhista presso l’Università degli Studi di Padova. Studiosa delle tradizioni intellettuali sudasiatiche e dei rapporti tra le filosofie occidentali e quelle indiane, è autrice di monografie e saggi critici sull’opera di Nāgārjuna e di lavori di filosofia interculturale. Tra le sue monografie: Pensare l’India (2012); Nāgārjuna. Logica, dialettica e soteriologia (2012); Introduzione all’estetica indiana. Arte e liberazione del sé (2009).

IUSVE di Venezia e Verona

È docente aggiunto di Estetica e Antropologia filosofica presso lo IUSVE di Venezia e Verona. La sua ricerca si concentra sulla filosofia contemporanea. Tra le varie pubblicazioni, La passione della purezza. Simone Weil e Cristina Campo (2005), Ti temo vicina, ti amo lontana. Nietzsche, il femminile e le donne (2011) e Il punto cieco. Note su L’occhio e lo spirito di Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2013), oltre a Estetica e comunicazione. Piccolo manuale non soltanto per graphic designer (2016).

Università di Padova

Giovanni Gurisatti insegna Storia della filosofia moderna e contemporanea presso il Dipartimento FISPPA dell’Università degli Studi di Padova. I suoi interessi estetici si concentrano sul pensiero tedesco del Novecento, con particolare riferimento all’opera di Heidegger e di Benjamin, cui ha dedicato vari studi e la monografia: Costellazioni. Storia, arte e tecnica in Walter Benjamin (Quodlibet 2010). Anche in Scacco alla realtà. Estetica e dialettica della derealizzazione mediatica (Quodlibet 2012), Benjamin svolge un ruolo centrale per la sua originale collocazione nella discussione novecentesca sul rapporto tra tecnologie della comunicazione e trasformazioni sociali. Riferimenti alla filosofia di Heidegger sono presenti nella sua ultima monografia, L’animale che dunque non sono. Filosofia pratica e pratica della filosofia come est-etica dell’esistenza (2016).

Inside of the correspondence between Jacob Taubes and Carl Schmitt (Adelphi 2018) Benjamin’s character and work play a fundamental role in the theological-political interpretation that Taubes is giving of it. In his writings, aiming to promote the “scandalous” relationship between Schmitt and Benjamin, Taubes moved with intellectual courage, but his strategy was not safe from vices and presented shoves and gaps. In order to clarify these aspects it’s useful to retrace the relationship that, in Benjamin, intertwines theology and aesthetics, focused on the mystic-apocalyptic idea of “Messianic Nihilism”, that lays at the basis not only of the peculiar political inspiration of his work, but also of his conception of art and history.

Keywords: Political Theology, Nihilism, Messianism, Allegory, Technique

Università di Padova

Insegna Storia della Filosofia buddhista presso l’Università degli Studi di Padova. Studiosa delle tradizioni intellettuali sudasiatiche e dei rapporti tra le filosofie occidentali e quelle indiane, è autrice di monografie e saggi critici sull’opera di Nāgārjuna e di lavori di filosofia interculturale. Tra le sue monografie: Pensare l’India (2012); Nāgārjuna. Logica, dialettica e soteriologia (2012); Introduzione all’estetica indiana. Arte e liberazione del sé (2009).

First of all the essay aims to shed light on the fact that Adorno’s entire aesthetic “discourse” refers to the dimension of transcendence. Its second purpose is to illustrate the way in which this is manifested in the inherent logic of the work of art.
In the first part of the text, therefore, an attempt is made to clarify the role that the dialectic’s “negative” plays in Adorno’s conception of art, in order to show how this negativity becomes, in the work of art, the crucial device of an immanent transcendence in the work of art itself, in the name of utopia. In the second part the contribution turns back to the analysis that Adorno reserves for Beckett’s Endgame, an analysis that will allow us to grasp the meaning of the immanent transcendence of the negative utopia of art “on the field” of Beckett’s work.

Keywords: Aesthetics; Theology; Transcendence, Negative Dialectics, Utopia

IUSVE di Venezia e Verona

È docente aggiunto di Estetica e Antropologia filosofica presso lo IUSVE di Venezia e Verona. La sua ricerca si concentra sulla filosofia contemporanea. Tra le varie pubblicazioni, La passione della purezza. Simone Weil e Cristina Campo (2005), Ti temo vicina, ti amo lontana. Nietzsche, il femminile e le donne (2011) e Il punto cieco. Note su L’occhio e lo spirito di Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2013), oltre a Estetica e comunicazione. Piccolo manuale non soltanto per graphic designer (2016).

This contribution seeks to reinterpret the philosophy of Simone Weil (1909-1943) from an aesthetic-theological perspective, going beyond the stereotypes that often framed her thought in rigid and insufficient attributions, which risk to conceal the actual richness of the issues at stake and their heuristic power.
In this way, Simone Weil’s proposal, which is placed at the center of a strong and unitary thought, with an absolutely unique style, appears to have no bearing on the sense of belonging to religious beliefs or philosophical doctrines, but rather it seeks for a way in this world. There is an existential coherence that leads her to combine Plato’s philosophy with materialism, renewed through mysticism, in order to save the “world of phenomena” from within, also thanks to the transformation made possible by beauty.
On this path, both theoretical and practical, Simone Weil intertwines Gnostic tradition, Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism in a very original way, always taking care to make them speak differently, in the name of their ability to detect the beauty of the world.

Keywords: Aesthetics; theology; Eastern Philosophies; Gnosticism; Beauty.

Università di Napoli

Fabio Tesorone ha conseguito laurea triennale con lode in filosofia presso l’università Federico II di Napoli nel 2017, con una tesi dal titolo “La Différance, la Scrittura e la Tecnica nel pensiero di Jacques Derrida”, sotto la supervisione di Riccardo de Biase. Nel 2017 ha condotto un periodo di studio presso la Albert-Ludwig Universität di Freiburg.
Ha poi conseguito la laurea magistrale in Scienze Filosofiche nel 2019, sempre alla Federico II di Napoli, con una tesi dal titolo: “Jacques Derrida e l’automatismo del vivente” con Ciro Felice Papparo e Francesco Vitale.

The intent of this work is to lead an examination of some Derridian texts, between the late ‘70s and early ‘90s in order to isolate the speech on the Messianic and show how it is the link between three different thematic macro-areas: religion, technique and politics.
The following paper has its background in the wider problem of the living-being, which has been addressed by Derridean researchers over the last ten years, having in mind as reference the seminar La vie la mort held in 1975.
We will take into consideration some moments of the comparison with thinkers such as Benjamin and Marx, because it is within their texts that Derrida glimpses the trace of a “mechanism of spectral contamination”. A law of contamination, understood as the spectral return of death to life, is exorcised by these authors with a reference to eschatology and messianic. However, the attempt to think the future as totally different and Life as radically immune from Death, constitutes the danger of the return of the identical, that is, the danger of an arch-teleology of sacrifice and redemption, of destiny and races. Will it be possible to avoid falling into the abyss of the metaphysical tradition while preserving that subtle messianic eschatology that grants the possibility of a future to-come?
This is the attempt that we recognize in Derrida’s work of those years, which is substantiated above all through an original reading of Nietzsche’s work. From my perspective, some of Nietzschean passages will allow Derrida to understand the messianic in a non-metaphysical dimension and will help him to formulate those concepts of a democracy to-come, decision and justice that constitute the legacy of Derrida’s political philosophy.

Keywords: Deconstruction; Messianism; Contamination; Democracy to come; Nietzsche.