Rivista semestrale per un'etica dell'inclusione
Copyright (c) 2025 Maddalena Mazzocut-Mis https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Taking Our Feelings Towards Animals Seriously
Much of contemporary animal ethics can be read as a reaction to its rationalistic roots, trying to correct for an epistemically impoverished picture of moral cognition. This “affective turn” in animal ethics which seeks to take seriously the role of affective cognition in moral deliberation has been very fruitful but it has also resulted in a tendency to take affective intuitions as evidence against alienating, demanding or repulsive conclusions from traditional, principle-based universalist ethics. I argue that this is a mistake. Rather than elevating our affects to the position of evidence, taking their role in moral cognition seriously should actually make us more scrupulous in their use, not less. If moral cognition inescapably involves the use of feelings and emotions, I argue, then we must be especially careful to keep our feelings and emotions free from biases and fallacies. This will involve more intense alienation from and reevaluation of our affective intuition, not less.
Copyright (c) 2025 Konstantin Eckl https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Susan Sontag e il voyeurismo fotografico
The power of photography, its strength and its limits, were the subject of Susan Sontag's (1933-2004) attention mainly thanks to her two famous contributions on the subject: On Photography, published in 1977 as a collation of previously published texts in the “New York Review of Books”, and Regarding the Pain of Others published in 2003, shortly before the untimely death of the American writer and activist. The essays on photography that Susan Sontag left us have marked decades of visual culture, both in Italy and abroad, of discussions and reflections on the capacity of this medium to shape consciousness, modify perceptions, and condition information. And while it is true that the theme of the voyeurism of the photographic gaze was explored in depth in the 2003 essay on the experience of the brutal trauma of the fruition of war through images, it is above all the 1977 essay that is still considered a point of reference for a new way of reading and thinking about photography, placed in transversal and dynamic dialogue with other disciplines, first and foremost cinema. This contribution aims to return to rereading the origins of the theme of photographic voyeurism in Susan Sontag's thought, then declining it in her reading of Diane Arbus' poetics as a complex, fascinating, controversial case study.
Copyright (c) 2025 Federica Muzzarelli https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Susan Sontag between Theory and Autotheory
This creative critical essay initiates from the writer’s existential question about the use of pronouns as expression of one’s own identity. Susan Sontag’s Under the Sign of Saturn and Primarily Women (original Dutch title: Voornamelijk Vrouwen) by the renowned Dutch novelist and philosopher Connie Palmen, are the essay books that guide her through the quest for one’s own voice. As Sontag’s writings on theory are brought into dialogue with Palmen’s autotheoretical personal essays to gain new insights into the styles of both, the question of pronouns and identity is explored through the contribution to knowledge and self-knowledge from these two major sorts of essay writing.
Copyright (c) 2025 Sylvia Solakidi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This paper, building on Susan Sontag’s seminal works Illness as Metaphor (1978) and AIDS and Its Metaphors (1989), aims to offer a framework for reflecting on the meaning of illness and its metaphorical representations, particularly in the aftermath of the covid-19 pandemic. Sontag’s insights into how illness is often depicted using war metaphors – casting disease as an enemy to be fought – remain highly relevant today. The paper seeks to update these reflections by exploring how the same metaphorical language was employed during the recent pandemic. The objective is to critically examine how the limitations of war-based metaphors fail to capture the full complexity of the phenomena we have experienced. Moreover, it argues for a shift towards a new vocabulary centered on concepts like vulnerability and care, which better express the nuances of collective and individual experiences of illness. This shift in perspective compels us to rethink the metaphors that structure our understanding of illness, advocating for a move away from militaristic language that frames disease in terms of conquest and control, embracing a framework that foregrounds interconnectedness and common vulnerability. The third section will instead be dedicated to analyzing how the defensive strategies Sontag identified have also proven relevant to the recent COVID-19 pandemic, particularly within the Italian context. This will allow for a critique, as in Sontag’s time, of the metaphorization of illness and an exploration of whether other approaches may be possible. In particular, I will focus, albeit briefly, on how the language of the Ethics of Care can help us reflect on these situations and assess whether new and equally practical solutions are possible when addressing illness, both individual and collective.
Copyright (c) 2025 Claudia Manzione https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This essay aims to interpret Ernst Jünger’s book Der Waldgang through the conceptual contraposition between exile and dwelling. It analyses the idea of Waldgang as an act of exile carried out by an individual in relation to the menaces produced by the power in the contemporary era, which exile individuals from their existence. The exile of the Waldgang is considered in its essential link to the «metaphysical power of humankind». The implications of the Waldgang for the human action and politics are taken into consideration to show how Jünger recognizes in it a way for the mankind to dwell anew in the world.
Copyright (c) 2025 Balthazar https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Per la critica della violenza fotografica
Susan Sontag’s interest in visual research, documented by numerous essays, is closely linked to the central role that the author has recognized in the photographic gaze, in understanding a series of cognitive and social processes in modern capitalist societies. Her approach has highlighted, over a period ranging from the early Seventies to the early 2000s, a series of effects of construction and deconstruction in the formation of common sense, linking them to the settlement of forms of social intimacy with the photographic medium. Sontag’s long-standing interest in the history of photography, and in the evolution of consumer practices related to this medium, testifies to the political engine of her research: recognizing the principles of construction of social reality between representation, power of fiction and information overload, developing a critical understanding of capitalist society through the traffic of images that innervates it.
Copyright (c) 2025 Daniele Garritano https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This article examines the tension between political obligation and personal loyalty in the context of exile, drawing on the theories of Judith Shklar and utilizing Hisham Matar’s literary work, My Friends (2023), as a primary analytical framework. Through an interdisciplinary investigation that interweaves political philosophy, history, and literature, the work examines how exile compels individuals to confront complex moral dilemmas, thereby questioning their relationships with the state, the community, and themselves. The examples presented in the essay provide a contemporary, narrative perspective on the fragmented identity of exile. The essay highlights how Shklar’s thought, centred on the relationship between rationality and affectivity, offers crucial tools for interpreting the ethical and political challenges that characterize the experience of exile. At the same time, Matar’s work enriches this analysis, highlighting the personal and psychological implications of these dynamics. In conclusion, the article proposes that exile not only represents a condition of loss but also an opportunity to question the meaning of identity, loyalty and belonging in a globalized and fragmented world.
Susan Sontag’s essays on the vast topic of photography – mainly On Photography and Regarding the Pain of Others – are significant pieces of her philosophical thought, but also shed light on the importance that political activism had in Sontag’s life, at least since the start of the Vietnam War. In the two essays, both the theoretical and the practical frameworks are outlined in detail by the American philosopher, who significantly highlights the strict bonds that tie them together. Among these threads, the experience of travel occupies a very important space, because it allows Sontag to challenge her ideas and – at the same time – put into practice her thoughts. In this sense, the present article will analyse both the ontological and the aesthetical dimensions on one side and the political and ethical ones on the other of On photography and Regarding the pain of others and will point out as well how specific travels – to Hanoi for the former work and to Sarajevo for the latter – helped Sontag shape some of the ideas she expresses in these essays, mainly regarding war photography.
Copyright (c) 2025 Pietro Di Cesare https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
L’immaginazione trascendentale: una facoltà in esilio
In Heidegger’s reading of Kant, the transcendental imagination takes on a fundamental role. Imagination comes forth as the common root of both sensibility and understanding, carrying out its function by opening the intellect to sensibility. It can carry out this task insofar as it is temporality; within this horizon, Kantian synthesis is rethought as a temporal ecstatic synthesis. Imagination is thus taken up as the primordial ground of all transcendental elements, thereby pointing to an original unity of spontaneity and receptivity. As a result of this perspective, the transcendental imagination cannot be pinned down to either sensibility or understanding; it stands as a faculty without a homeland, Heimatlos, a faculty in exodus.
«En ese límite entre la vida y la muerte»
María Zambrano, a 20th-century Spanish philosopher and writer, engaged with the figure of Antigone across multiple contexts; in fact, the Sophoclean figure emerges as a recurring motif in her work, reinterpreted in accordance with her poetic vision and philosophical inquiry. This contribution aims to reconstruct the philosophical reflection developed by María Zambrano around the condition of exile, using Antigone as a central symbolic reference. Through a symbolic and poetic elaboration of this tragic character, Zambrano progressively develops a conception of exile that transcends its strictly historical dimension, gradually acquiring an anthropological and literary significance, in line with the interpretative categories proposed by José Luis Abellán. From this perspective, her work offers a genuine phenomenology of exile, where the biographical experience is interwoven with a broader ontological and philosophical meditation.
Vivere da esiliati: l’esperienza della filosofia
The purpose of this article is to examine the exile of philosophy’s original, more poetic dimension. The central thesis is that philosophy, which was born from poetic roots, has gradually distanced itself from them, forgetting this foundational aspect and embracing only its scientific, methodical, and systematic form as legitimate. This work will therefore explore the reasons behind the marginalization of poetic philosophy and argue for its recovery.
Tra filosofia politica e diritto naturale
In the political context established with the Peace of Westphalia (1648) and characterized by the Seven Years' War (1756-1763), the Swiss jurist and diplomat Emer de Vattel (1714-1767), considered among the founders of modern international law, in his main work entitled Droit des Gens (1758) dedicates some important reflections on the theme of exile. From the perspective represented by natural law and jus gentium, Vattel analyzes the contents, limits and legal assumptions of the concept of exile, highlighting two focal aspects: the citizen’s right to leave his country and the right to live somewhere. Linked to the concepts of citizenship, sovereignty and freedom, exile is conceived as a person's right, rather than a self-condemnation, in which form it is associated with passive resistance. Voluntary or due to a sovereign act, the right of exile translates into the right of asylum with important consequences in terms of relations between States.
De la convenientia latine à la convenance française du XVIIe siècle
The idea of convenientia was already conceptualised and exploited as a key notion in aesthetic reflection in classical Latin culture. But the term also belongs to other lexical domains, notably that of ethics, in which it has been originally adopted to indicate the form of a duty in relation to an order that transcends the subject. In this article, we explore the vicissitudes of this notion in French philosophy at a crucial linguistic and cultural turning point, the seventeenth century, when Latin was dethroned by the vernacular languages. Against this background of instability in the philosophical lexicon, we will focus on two authors who recovered and “adapted” the Latin concept of convenientia, contributing to redefine its meaning and value as convenance in French-language philosophy: Pierre-Sylvain Régis (1632-1707) and Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715). The adoption of a comparative approach between these two authors, who were almost perfect contemporaries and whose works stand in the same Cartesian tradition, has a double advantage: it allows to grasp the particularity of the interpretations of the two authors while offering a “sample” that testifies to the echo and the role assigned to the notion of convenance in French philosophy at the end of the seventeenth century. The result of the reworking of this concept, particularly by Régis, leads to a rapprochement between the “ethical” and “aesthetic” meanings of convenance.
Copyright (c) 2024 Balthazar https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
A recurring aspect of Kafka’s “anti-heroes” is hesitation, remaining stuck on the threshold, waiting in vain to be able to gain access. This is highlighted in an exemplary way by the parable that contains the meaning of the Trial, Before the Law: the countryman waits his whole life to be able to cross the door guarded by the guardian. The other parable of Hasidic inspiration, A Message from the Emperor, also presents a similar situation, albeit inverted: the message sent by the dying emperor cannot reach the “individual”, who nevertheless awaits it confidently, the continuity of the path does not allow the messenger to reach the goal. In this impossibility of having access – to the Law, to the Truth, to existence, to birth or death, as in the case of the hunter Gracchus – we can read the condition of the foreigner of the Jew Kafka, the sense of exclusion from life developed by the authoritarian paternal upbringing, his refusal of a “normal” life – that of a public official and a husband. Many Kafkaesque characters thus live in a liminal situation, prisoners of the transition: the protagonist of The Castle waits in vain for his request to be accepted, he exhausts himself in an incessant questioning, in an interpretative effort which is a replica, in language and thought, of the inability to move and overcome obstacles.
I personaggi dei due romanzi di Brianna Carafa alla luce del disagio mentale: protagonisti e personaggi che stravolgono le regole della società in cui vivono e con il loro modo di vivere evidenziano la frantumazione dell’io. Personaggi e protagonisti che grazie alla loro condizione sociale evitano la reclusione in un ospedale psichiatrico scontando nella società la loro non conformità alle sue norme. In Brianna Carafa’s two novels, the characters are portrayed in the light of mental distress. The protagonists and other characters disrupt the societal rules and, through their way of life, highlight the fragmentation of the self. These characters, due to their social standing, avoid confinement in mental hospitals by demonstrating their non-conformity within society.
Benjamin was perhaps Kafka’s most congenial critic, and he was among the first to understand the scope and value of the challenge posed by his entire literary oeuvre. In one of his notes, written in the 1930s, Benjamin placed Baudelaire and Kafka side by side, pointing to the former as a key figure in the literature of the xix century and the latter as that of the xxcentury. The article seeks to show how the main themes of Benjamin’s thought find the ground for elaboration and unraveling in the confrontation with Kafka’s work, opening up a perspective that interweaves the force of criticism with the sometimes visionary view of the most current aesthetic tensions.
In this essay, we focus mainly on Intervista (1987), a film set on the set of a film based on Kafka’s Amerika. Here Fellini seems to identify himself with Kafka, not for the purpose of portraying the Prague writer’s novel, deemed already «too visual», but on the contrary to talk about himself, about his own sentimental upbringing during his adolescence and his own way of filmmaking. The game of mirroring is complex and does not stop at the autobiographical level: it allows us to grasp the meaning of Fellini’s cinema, which is to grasp reality through the imagination, as Milan Kundera wrote. If we focus on the late Fellini, we can say that cinema is image and words are superfluous. Words tell, while the image shows. Words are tied to ideologies, to grand narratives, while the image is as free as the language of dreams, which Fellini is inspired by referring to Jung. Therefore, the Fellini film image is by no means a verisimilar representation; rather, it is a meta-image that uses kafkaesque poetics to speaks, with ironic levity, about the fate of cinema in the modern world, in which nightmare blends with reality, as the unfinished project Il viaggio di G. Mastorna shows.
The different conceptions of apperception elaborated by Brod and Kafka are compared by pointing out that Brod focuses on the intellectual or conceptual interpretation of the concept and Kafka on the aesthetical one since it seems to be the major difference between the two. This also involves the modern conception of the new and the traditional one of the differences between form and content. Relating Kafka’s notes on aesthetics to his first and contemporary tale, Description of a Battle, it becomes clear that there is no self-consciousness, identity, liberty, or experience of the world. Apperception, for Kafka, is an aesthetic movement, and the new depends on the relationship between the artwork and its fruition. This makes the new of an artwork the consequence of a dynamic relationship linked to imagination and reflection more than of rational thought. This also means that totality in a work of art is necessary but impossible to obtain. For Kafka the difference between self-consciousness and the world has been eliminated. Thus, the new becomes the return of the same; in the modern world, the chock and the chock is perception. This is also the moment of redemption in Kafka’s writings, the moment in which the content musically transcends the form. It’s a total suspension of time, the redemption, and it appears in Kafka only in the form of a gesture, which has been lost by the world. A gesture, a name, the totality of experience, the redemption – this may be possible only by acting in a way that forces the angels to work.
In Kafka or about exactness I propose to read In der Strafkolonie as a description of the way in which Kafka’s texts work on the reader: elusive meanings, impossible to fully understand, are imprinted on his/her body and become, as the experience continues (if one enters in Kafka’s textual machine), a sort of scheme engraved on and/or under his/her skin, the background that guides the experience of things, of oneself, of the world. An operative habitus, a sort of transcendental structure – but corporeal, quasi-physical. Kafka’s word marks our corporeal ego thanks to its exactness: not the exactness of words and languages of sciences, naturally, but a different one, analogous, I don’t know if identical, to that of poetry.
My writing focuses on one of Kafka’s most stimulating stories: Ein Bericht für eine Akademie, from 1922. It traces the path of an animal (the monkey Peter the Red) who, once captured, is forced to find an escape route by becoming man. However, it is not certain that the transition to human life is a gain for him, nor that the animal dimension is preferable. The message that Kafka leaves us is that it is important to remember, not to forget what you think you have emancipated from (from your past, from your animal dimension), and not to forget that you have forgotten; because in an oblivion that knows how to recognize and denounce itself there is a possible hope. It’s about not forgetting the worst that happened, of course. But oblivion is not only oblivion of the worst, but also “of the best”. In the forgotten, removed animal dimension, there is not only the worst of the bestiality from which we have freed ourselves, but also the best of a possibility of redemption, in a credible freedom.
Quale biopolitica per l'Homo Natura di Nietzsche?
La controversa figura dell'homo natura è recentemente stata al centro del dibattito negli studi nietzscheani. La discussione a propostio del carattere biopolitico del pensiero di Nietzsche ha assunto l'homo natura come un concetto fondamentale per determinare la classificazione della filosofia politica dell'autore. Nel presente articolo varie letture dell'homo natura verrano presentate e valutate. La tesi di fondo di questo contributo è che questa figura nietzscheana è meglio compresa se interpretata primariamente in un senso "etico", inteso come una modalità di esistenza e di comportamento. La dimensione politica è solo una conseguenza di questa postura "etica" e sfugge a una facile classificazione biopolitica. Viene inoltre sostenuto che l'homo natura ampli il discorso biopolitico invece che prenderne parte come una delle sue figure (come per esempio fanno l'homo oeconomicus di Michel Foucault o l'homo sacer di Giorgio Agamben) attraverso l'esplicito superamento del carattere antropocentrico che risiede al cuore della biopolitica. Se questo contributo ha ragione, allora in relazione a quale interpretazione dell'homo natura si favorisca siamo lasciati con una differente categorizzazione della filosofia politica nietzscheana. Quindi, l'homo natura fa presente un groviglio di questioni che devono essere affrontate se si vuole essere in grado di cogliere pienamente la filosofia pratica di Nietzsche.
L’articolo analizza e commenta una celebre frase che segna il saggio che Walter Benjamin dedicò a Kafka nel 1934 per il decimo anniversario della sua morte: notando come la distorsione sia il segno distintivo della scrittura kafkiana, Benjamin ne sceglie a emblema l’«omino gobbo» di una celebre filastrocca tedesca, concludendo però che esso «svanirà quando verrà il Messia, di cui un gran rabbino ha detto che non intende mutare il mondo con la violenza, ma solo aggiustarlo di pochissimo». Nella forma di questa scomparsa e di questo «aggiustamento» sta il senso della proposta messianica di Kafka: consiste esso in un raddrizzamento della gobba? O se no, che forma prenderà la redenzione?
The opinion of Friedrich Nietzsche on the theme of subjectivity is well-known: the subject does not exist; it is merely the theoretical hypostatization of a phantom. In Nietzsche's works the subject appears to be something transitory and destined to disappear, as nothing more than a ripple in the vast ocean of the will to power. However, can the question truly be considered closed? In this paper, I will demonstrate the opposite, showing how it is possible to still provide some Nietzschean positive notion of the subject. Initially, a brief excursus will be necessary to outline the main scientific sources employed by Nietzsche in developing his concept of the individual. Secondly, I will focus on certain aspects of the works of two authors who are very different from each other, although akin in spirit, with the aim of making it more evident how one can speak of the individual in Nietzsche's philosophy. These two authors are Baruch Spinoza and Thomas Pradeu. Through Deleuze's famous lectures on Spinoza, I will show how it is possible to postulate an understanding of individuality that is not entirely fixed and monolithic, adopting the concepts of Bauplan, ratio, and strategy. I deemed it important to also dedicate attention to Pradeu for at least two reasons. Firstly, because the theme of Immunology, to which he devoted his most important works, is strictly related to the issues of defining the borders of the individual: a good immune system can work only if there is an individual to protect, opposed to every other external body, understood as enemies. Secondly, because Pradeu too argues that an individual - while maintaining its unity - is never something rigid. Finally, I highlight why it is crucial to speak of the Nietzschean individual. The theme of the individual is pivotal in Nietzsche’s Moral Philosophy: the only possible way to think of an Ethics “beyond Good and Evil” is the path of understanding Ethics as Ethology - to use a Deleuzian term. An Ethics of this kind – focusing on bodily joy to the point that it can even be defined as medical in its nature – can only find its keystone precisely in the question upon what is a body – which in turn is dependent on the question upon what is an individual.
Introduzione al numero doppio dedicato al tema dell'empatia.
"Tra scienza, emozioni e coscienza: breve viaggio lungo la storia dell’empatia" di Tiziana Plebani.
This study looks into H. P. Lovecraft’s masterful craft of cosmic horror, examining his adept fusion of Christian cosmological elements with subversion and mockery, while concurrently forging a unique cosmic framework. Lovecraft subtly weaves Christian themes into his mythos, introducing his eldritch terrors, deities reminiscent of Christian demonology. These entities, residing in abyssal depths, bear distinctly demonic attributes, highlighting the profound influence of Christian cosmology. The enigmatic entity Dagon, rooted in biblical mythology, is a focal point. Its appearances correlate with catastrophic consequences and the underworld, subverting Christian narratives and invoking a sense of dread through an alternative lens. Lovecraft strategically manipulates Christian celebrations, such as May-Eve and All-Hallows, challenging their significance and intensifying readers’ religious discomfort. Lovecraft’s cosmic framework is non-anthropocentric, portraying an indifferent universe inhabited by ancient cosmic entities beyond human comprehension. However, he alludes to an impending chaos, drawing subtle parallels with the biblical Apocalypse. Lovecraft’s narratives interweave Christian cosmology, subversion, and mockery, challenging religious frameworks while invoking terror and fascination, providing a rich tapestry for scholarly analysis in cosmic horror literature.
Questo articolo si propone di interrogare il rapporto di Paul Ricoeur con la psicoanalisi, e in particolare il suo allontanamento da Freud. Il pensiero freudiano per Ricoeur rimarrebbe vittima di quella "cultura della colpa" che egli pretende di decostruire. Ricoeur si rivolge, da un certo punto in poi del suo itinerario filosofico, non più alla teoria ma all'esperienza psicoanalitica e alla relazione di transfert, soprattutto per quanto riguarda il lavoro del lutto e della melanconia. A partire da questo cambio di passo, muovendoci verso quella che il filosofo chiama "cultura della compassione", ci siamo proposti di interrogare altri stili analitici, in primo luogo quello di Sandor Ferenczi, chiedendo a noi stessi e a Ricoeur quale ruolo possano ricoprire le risorse affettive della bontà, della compassione e del riconoscimento reciproco all'interno di un trattamento analitico con pazienti vittime di traumi infantili.
«Colline come elefanti bianchi» di E. Hemingway
Di fronte a «Colline come elefanti bianchi» di E. Hemingway, non si può non essere incuriositi dal compito interpretativo richiesto al lettore: l'autore omette informazioni fondamentali, minacciando la comprensione della scena descritta nel testo. Questo articolo si interroga, quindi, su cosa significhi interpretare questo testo, discutendo l'idea pervasiva che interpretare coincida sempre con la risposta alla domanda "cosa voleva dire l'autore?". Sviluppando criticamente questo punto, affermerò quindi che un racconto come quello di Hemingway non solo determina un nuovo e più pregnante concetto di "interpretazione", ma coincide anche con la richiesta di un particolare coinvolgimento narrativo del lettore nel racconto stesso.
Possono le narrazioni, in prosa, in versi o per la scena teatrale, di Ágota Kristóf creare un immaginario condivisibile? Investighiamo, in questo contributo, fino a che punto il gioco d’azzardo con le carte, o le corde, dei personaggi di Ágota Kristóf possa riguardare tutti noi.