Paolo Diego Bubbio

The interdisciplinary French-American thinker René Girard (1923-2015) has been one of the towering figures of the humanities in the last half-century. The title of René Girard's first book offered his own thesis in summary form: romantic lie and novelistic truth [mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque]. And yet, for a thinker whose career began by an engagement with literature, it came as a shock to some that, in La Conversion de l'art, Girard asserted that the novel may be an “outmoded” form for revealing humans to themselves. However, Girard never specified what, if anything, might take the place of the novel. This collection of essays is one attempt at answering this question, by offering a series of analyses of films that aims to test mimetic theory in an area in which relatively little has so far been offered. Does it make any sense to talk of vérité filmique? In addition, Mimetic Theory and Film is a response to the widespread objection that there is no viable “Girardian aesthetics.” One of the main questions that this collection considers is: can we develop a genre-specific mimetic analysis (of film), and are we able to develop anything approaching a “Girardian aesthetic”? Each of the contributors addresses these questions through the analysis of a film.

In this article, we argue that in the Jena period (1801–1803) Schelling and Hegel both rejected the conception of God as coinciding with the moral order, which they attribute to Fichte; such coincidence, in their view, turned God into a transcendent and merely moral Being. In an effort to demonstrate their distance from Fichte's view, we contend, Schelling and Hegel advocated for a metaphysical (rather than merely moral) and immanent (rather than transcendent) understanding of God, conceived in its inextricable relation with nature and self-consciousness. We conclude by demonstrating that the cooperation between Schelling and Hegel in the Jena period led them to develop an analogous conception of immanence—which already foreshadows, however, the different directions that Schelling and Hegel take in their mature works.

In this review, Hegel responds to criticisms leveled against his philosophy by the anonymous author of Ueber die Hegelsche Lehre, oder: absolutes Wissen und moderner Pantheismus (1829). Frustrated by his interlocutor’s apparent inability to coherently interpret his work, Hegel scathingly attempts to discredit the character of the text in focus and its author’s critical capacity. He does so by showcasing examples of misrepresentation and misunderstanding in the author’s writing. Hegel contests the increasingly common charge of “pantheism” being leveled against him at that time, wielded here by the anonymous author in a fairly unoriginal comparison between Hegel’s “doctrine” and Spinoza’s system. This review gives insight into the character of early theological responses to Hegel, and highlights Hegel’s polemical tendencies.

In this 2017 conversation, Gianni Vattimo discusses with Paolo Diego Bubbio the core themes of his own philosophical journey. Vattimo first comments on the legacy of his mentor Luigi Pareyson and on the differences between Pareyson’s conception of the relation between truth and interpretation and his own. Vattimo and Bubbio then elaborate on the return to Hegel and the possibility of a “hermeneuticized” Hegelianism. The participants also discuss Vattimo’s view of religion and the role that the Christian notion of caritas plays in his “weak hermeneutics.” Finally, Vattimo comments on his recent political writings and on his view of a “hermeneutic communism,” arguing that revolution is possible only as a collective inner transformation. Vattimo concludes by mentioning his recent essays, collected under the title Being and Its Surroundings, in which he presents the radical thesis of Heidegger’s philosophy as a new form of theology.

Vattimo argues that the core of Gadamer’s hermeneutics resides in the identification of interpreting with changing the world, and analyzes the ontological turn in hermeneutics in light of such identification. Vattimo advocates for a radical reading of Gadamer’s claim “Being, which can be understood, is language” and maintains that hermeneutics requires a profound revolution in ontology, overcoming the idea of Being as a given object “out there”. In light of the dialogue that Gadamer’s Truth and Method establishes with Heidegger’s Being and Time, Vattimo concludes that hermeneutic ontology has its core in the identification of reality with the history of effects; not as a descriptive proposition, but as the meaning of Being in whose horizon hermeneutics interprets the experience of the world. A coherent philosophy of interpretation, conceived as a call to transform the objective reality of things “out there” into truth, namely into language and project, actually changes the world.

The publication of the revised edition of Jeff Malpas’s Place and Experience in 2018 gives the opportunity to reconsider this book (originally published in 1999) and the debates that it originally sparked. In this article, I focus on Malpas’s characterization of space as subjective, allocentric, and objective and I approach them in conjunction with other notions and considerations that, I suggest, are useful to expand and complement Malpas’s central theses. I approach the concept of subjective space in conjunction with the notion of coenaesthesis and with Heidegger’s notion of mineness (Jemeinigkeit); the concept of allocentric space by addressing Malpas’s critique of Nagel’s notion of detachment; and the concept of objective space through a discussion of the issue of perspective in light of Merleau-Ponty’s critique of Leibniz’s notion of ‘géométral’ (geometrized projection). These analyses pave the way for a discussion of some possible normative implications of the conception of place and subjectivity that emerges from Malpas’s Place and Experience against the background of Heidegger’s thought, and particularly in relation to Heidegger’s notion of dwelling (Wohnen).

The author argues that one of the “circles” that constitute Hegel’s philosophical system, as it is displayed in the Encyclopedia, is the circle between the I and the spirit. Specifically, the author focuses on the emergence of spirit as a self and an I, and on the encounter of the I with nature. The author also argues that absolute spirit maintains fundamental intersubjective and perspectival features that are proper to the I, and that grasping the circular movement between the I and the spirit in the context of Hegel’s discussion of absolute Geist is also relevant to appreciating how normative categories of social thought can be challenged and altered through Geist’s ability to achieve critical distance by overcoming subject/object distinctions.

This book offers new critical perspectives on the relationship between the notions of speculation, logic and reality in Hegel's thought as basis for his philosophical account of nature, history, spirit and human experience. The systematic functions of logic and pure thought are explored in their concrete forms and processual progression from subjective spirit to philosophy of right, society, the notion of habit, the idea of work, art, religion and science. Engaging the relation between the Logic and its realisations, this book shows the internal tension that inhabits Hegel's philosophy at the intersection of logical speculation and concrete analysis. The investigation of this tension allows for a hermeneutical approach that demystifies the common view of Hegel's idealism as a form of abstract thought, while allowing for a new assessment of the importance of speculation for a concrete understanding of the world.

_ Source: _Volume 48, Issue 2, pp 175 - 196 This article provides an analysis of the development of the notions of “self” and “nature” through three stages of Heidegger’s thought. The main contention is that Heidegger’s conceptions of the self and nature are indissolubly connected to each other, and that such connection appears through three concerns that represent important elements of continuity: 1) the “irreducibility of the self,” conceived in a non-subjectivist way; 2) the recovery of a non-objectivist “originary” account of nature; 3) the overall commitment to the overcoming of the polarization between subject and object. I argue that there is a parallelism in the way self and nature are addressed in each of the three phases; and that the transformations of the notions are functional to the project of addressing the concerns mentioned earlier. I conclude by addressing the “violence of nature,” which remains a “blind spot” in the philosophy of the later Heidegger.

The aim of the paper is to clarify the theoretical core of Solger's thought, the foundation for his aesthetics. I first analyze Solger's dialectic of double negation. Secondly I focus on Solger's gnoseology, which is orientated toward grasping the equilibrium between the Infinite (God) and the finite (world) consisting in this double negation. Lastly I investigate the notion of sacrifice, connecting it with Solger's ironic dialectic and showing its relevance to a complete understanding of his thought.

In this paper, I investigate the relations between the notion of the I and the conception of World history in Hegel’s philosophy. First, I address Hegel’s account of the I by reconstructing its phenomenological and logical development from consciousness to self-consciousness through recognition with the other and arguing that the project of the Philosophy of Right is normative, as it provides an account of the logical process of affirmation of the I as the normative source of the realm of objective spirit. I then argue for an account of World history as the self-conscious development and liberation of the I in time and objectivity, and I consider Hegel’s philosophy of history in light of the Philosophy of Right as the historical emergence of the I through the forms of objective spirit in history. Finally, I focus on two of the allegedly most problematic issues related to Hegel’s conception of World history: the nature and very possibility of an ‘intersubjective consciousness’ and the notion of ‘World spirit’. I conclude by outlining how the conception of World history, if reconstructed in light of Hegel’s conception of the I, can have previously unnoticed political implications.

This paper addresses the role of the notion of sacrifice in Kant’s theoretical philosophy, practical philosophy, and in his account of religion. First, I argue that kenotic sacrifice, or sacrifice as ‘withdrawal’, plays a hidden and yet important role in the development of Kant’s transcendental philosophy. Second, I focus on Kant’s practical philosophy, arguing that the notion of sacrifice that is both implied and explicitly analyzed by Kant is mainly suppressive sacrifice. However, Kant’s account is fundamentally ambiguous, as sometimes the kenotic meaning of sacrifice seems to resurface, especially in the context of Kant’s discussion of the happiness of others as an end in itself. Because religious notions are regarded by Kant as necessary transitional forms (Darstellungen) to be used to make moral ideas applicable to the world, I then scrutinize Kant’s view of sacrifice as an improper symbol, and I analyze Kant’s arguments for such a dismissal and discuss the subject matter in recent literature. Finally, I examine the role of sacrifice in Kant’s account of Christ as the prototype of pure moral disposition. I conclude by arguing that Kant indeed grasped the importance of including kenotic dynamics in practical philosophy but was somehow unable or unwilling to integrate it into the formal grounding of his ethics. This tension, however, effectively provides an entry point for features that can be found in the post-Kantians.

It may seem strange to connect the ontological argument for God‟s existence with René Girard‟s thought. My first aim is to clarify this connection.In order to do so, we must first suggest three distinct hermeneutical approaches to Girard. Ifwe take an internal, literal approach, we find that Girard writes nothing about theontological proof. Nevertheless, he does cite Anselm. If we take an internal, nonliteral approach to Girard, we can try to deduce what he might have thought about the ontological proof on the basis of his mimetic theory, thereby extending his thought while remaining within his theory. If we take a critical approach, we can interpret Girard from an external perspective and critically analyze analogies between the ontological proof and his mimetic theory on the assumption that there is no a priori reason why there cannot be a relationship between an argument and a thinker, even without that thinker‟s awareness and in spite of his intentions.

In this paper I rely on recent literature that emphasises the importance of recognition in Hegel's philosophy in order to apply the recognition-theoretic approach to the notion of sacrifice in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Firstly, I conduct a preliminary analysis by examining the general meaning of sacrifice as a form of determinate negation. Secondly, I focus on two phenomenological moments (the struggle between?faith? and?pure insight?, and the cult) in order to answer the question,?Is a real (effective and unselfish) sacrifice possible?? Finally, I argue that sacrifice should be considered as a Darstellung, and I explain the twofold connection between sacrifice and recognition. I conclude that there is no sacrifice without recognition, and the process of recognition is intrinsically sacrificial.

The Relationship of Philosophy to Religion Today is a collection of texts authored by philosophers with an interest in contemporary philosophy of religion, its merits and its limitations. The collection has been stimulated by such questions as: "What ought philosophy of religion be?" and "How ought philosophy relate to religion today?" In pursuing such questions, the editors have asked the contributors to offer their insights and reflections on issues that they see as important to contemporary philosophy of religion, with the goal of producing a collection of texts offering the reader a variety of perspectives without privileging any particular philosophical, religious or irreligious orientation. The book covers such themes as the relationship between religion and modernity, faith in keeping with reason, contemplation, the merits and limitations of the atheism, and the relationship between philosophy, religion and politics.

This paper covers the theme of the death of God considered from a Hegelian standpoint. For Aristotle, the image of God as ‘thought thinking itself’ was an image of the knowledge aspired to in philosophy. With the notion of God becoming man and his insistence on the icon of the Cross, Hegel challenged the Aristotelian goal of philosophy as immutable knowledge of an ‘ultimate’ reality. Hegel viewed the crisis of normativity as strictly linked to the conception of the self. It is Nietzsche who is best known for alluding to the full significance of this image for modern life, but Hegel’s thought on the complex relations of philosophy and religion in the modern world can be regarded as an attempt to think through this same historical phenomenon. In this paper, I focus on the philosophical relevance of Hegel’s notion of the death of God. I argue that unpacking the significance of the ‘truths’ presented symbolically in modern Christianity is crucial in unders..

In this article, I draw upon the ‘post-Kantian’ reading of Hegel to examine the consequences Hegel’s idea of God has on his metaphysics. In particular, I apply Hegel’s ‘recognition-theoretic’ approach to his theology. Within the context of this analysis, I focus especially on the incarnation and sacrifice of Christ. First, I argue that Hegel’s philosophy of religion employs a distinctive notion of sacrifice (kenotic sacrifice). Here, sacrifice is conceived as a giving up something of oneself to ‘make room’ for the other. Second, I argue that the idea of kenotic sacrifice plays a fundamental role in Hegel’s account of Christ. Third, I conclude by sketching some of the consequences of Hegel’s idea of a God who renounces his own divinity for an idealistically conceived metaphysics. My main thesis is that the notion of incarnation is conceived by Hegel as the expression of a spirit that advances only insofar as it is willing to withdraw and make room for the other. A kenotic reading of the Hegelian notion of the incarnation is also useful in terms of a clarification of the dispute between ‘left Hegelians’ and ‘right Hegelians’ concerning the status of the idea of God in Hegel’s philosophy.

René Girard’s mimetic theory has significantly influenced the fields of comparative literature and cultural studies, as well as sociological anthropology and philosophy. Nevertheless, I argue that a somewhat different line of interpretation, an interdisciplinary one, has not been sufficiently investigated. This involves an interpretation which focuses on the vicissitudes of the mimetic and “victimage” circle not (or not only) in sociological terms, but by analysing their articulation on the level of knowledge. The sociological and epistemological perspectives do not exclude each other, but can be integrated. The main aim of this paper is to clarify this articulation, and to show that integration between these two perspectives is possible only by bringing into play a real ‘literary aesthetics’. The notion of literary aesthetics needs to be considered in both the common and the etymological sense, as a theory of feeling and of experiencing. In doing so, I firstly cover in brief the main stages of Girard’s thought in the light of this perspective, to then focus on the relationship between literary aesthetics and knowledge. Finally I argue that this picture, if seriously considered, could lead to a mystical outcome, and will discuss the possible alternatives to that outcome.