Italo Testa

Deliberative politics should start from an adequate and differentiated image of our dialogical practices and their normative structures; the ideals that we eventually propose for deliberative politics should be tested against this background. In this article I will argue that equal respect, understood as respect a priori conferred on persons, is not and should not be counted as a constitutive normative ground of public discourse. Furthermore, requiring such respect, even if it might facilitate dialogue, could have negative effects and lead to fallacious paths of thought –as seems to happen on matters of deep disagreement such as the Colorado Fundamentalist/Gay HIV issue I discuss in paragraph 6. I will put forward this argument from the standpoint of argumentation or discourse theory, drawing consequences for dialogical theories of politics. Basing my argument on a pluralistic notion of public discourse – understood as a mixed discourse of persuasion, information-seeking and negotiation – I will argue that respect is a dynamic, situational phenomenon, and that the norm of equal respect for persons is contextually contingent in political deliberation: equal respect should be considered as a potential outcome, a discursive achievement – which I understand as a second order consensus achieved dynamically on a provisional basis – rather than as an universal condition for dialogue.

Hegel's philosophy aims at responding to the questions raised by modern scepticism concerning the accessibility of the external world, of other minds, and of one's own mind. A key-role in Hegel's argumentative strategy against modern scepticism is played here by Hegel's theory of recognition. Recognition mediates the constitution of individual self-consciousness and intersubjectivity: self-knowledge is not logically independent of the awareness of other minds. At the same time, recognition institutes the possibility of objective reference to the world. In this way, in Hegel the theory of recognition furnishes a unitary response to the threefold sceptical issue of the accessibility of the external world, of other minds, and of one's own mind. The reference to a common world of public objects is thus possible only thanks to the mediation of recognitive capacities that are naturally possessed and socially articulated, which make possible the triangulation between self, world and others.

Abstract. Focusing on part one of Tales of the Mighty Dead and on its relation to the afterword to Between Saying and Doing, I illustrate what reconstructive methodology is and argue that theoretical thinking is one of its instances. I then show that the historical understanding involved in telling the story of a philosophical tradition is another case of reconstruction: one that deepens our understanding of the retrospective character of reconstruction itself, adding something new to our conception of rationality. I then explore a further instance of reconstructive rationality, that is what Brandom calls “reconstructive metaphysics”, i.e. a reconstructive theory whose aspiration is global rather than local. Finally, I argue that Brandom’s reconstructive metaphysics is basically a pragmatist metaphysics

Introductory essay to the collection "I that is We, We that is I" (ed. by Italo Testa and Luigi Ruggiu, Brill Books, 2016). In this book an international group of philosophers explore the many facets of Hegel’s formula which expresses the recognitive and social structures of human life. The book offers a guiding thread for the reconstruction of crucial motifs of contemporary thought such as the socio-ontological paradigm; the action-theoretical model in moral and social philosophy; the question of naturalism; and the reassessment of the relevance of work and power for our understanding of human life. This collection addresses the shortcomings of Kantian and constructivist normative approaches to social practices and practical rationality it involves. It sheds new light on Hegel’s take on metaphysics and puts into question some presuppositions of the post-metaphysical interpretative paradigm

Je vais reconstruire quelques aspects de la genèse naturelle de la conscience dans les écrits hégéliens d’Iéna, avec le but de montrer que cette reconstruction est essentielle pour comprendre la genèse des capacités fondamentales qui sont présupposées par l’interaction de la reconnaissance. En particulier, je vais défendre la thèse suivante: Hegel a jeté une base pour une Naturphilosophie de la reconnaissance, en esquissant une sorte d'histoire naturelle de l’évolution de la relation consciente à soi-même, relation qui commence par le soi organique étant doué des capacités communicatives qui lui permettent d’interagir avec l’environnement et avec ses semblables. Avant touts, je vais suivre le fil rouge qui mène de la Differenzschrift aux leçons de philosophie de la nature et de philosophie de l’esprit dispensées par Hegel à Iéna pendant le semestre d’été deu 1803 et le semestre d’hiver du 1803-4 et qui seront le sujet principale de ma reconstruction interprétative. Cette reconstruction s’articule en cinq phases. Dans une première partie, j’aborderai la question de la reconnaissance naturelle a partir du problème de la différentiation et de l’interaction sexuelle. Dans une deuxième partie, je parlerai de la conception hégélienne du soi organique proto-intentionnel et de sa structure proprioceptive et communicative. Dans une troisième partie, j’aborderai le sujet de la structure pratique de la Begierde (de l’appétit) en tant que forme d’intentionnalité pratique et des formes d’interactions conflictuelles proto-recognitives qui surgissent de cette intentionnalité. Dans une quatrième partie je vais m’occuper de la question de la voix animale comme acte expressive expressif qui manifeste l’aspiration par l’être naturel à voir reconnue sa propre individualité.Dans une cinquième partie je vais analyser la forme de reconnaissance qui se manifeste avec la génération du fils et qui constitue la matrice naturelle de la raison en tant que première forme d’objectivation. Après avoir esquissé les aspects défectueuxifs des formes naturelles de la reconnaissance, j’avancerai enfine vais finalement avancer la thèse à laquelle ma reconstruction aboutit : les formes de conscience spirituelle réflexive qui se déploient dans l’esprit présupposent la conscience reconnaissante préréflexive et sont des réorganisations plus complexes de ses structures fondamentales.

TABLE OF CONTENTS I. La rinascita novecentesca 1. Chaïm Perelman: la nuova retorica 2. Stephen Toulmin: la pratica logica e l’uso degli argomenti 3. Ragionamento e linguaggio: la logica naturale di Jean-Blaise Grize II. La logica informale 1. Informale vs. formale? 2. Il concetto di argomento 3. La ripresa della teoria di Paul Grice 4. La ricostruzione degli argomenti 5. La valutazione degli argomenti: le fallacie 6. Il network problem III. Dialogo e dialettica 1. La logica dialogica di Paul Lorenzen 2. Charles L. Hamblin e i sistemi dialettici 3. Else Barth e la dialettica formale 4. Jaakko Hintikka: logica interrogativa e teoria dei giochi IV. Pragmatica e dialettica 1. La Pragma-Dialectics di van Eemeren e Grootendorst: un ideale filosofico della razionalità 2. Ricostruzione e valutazione degli argomenti 3. L’analisi delle fallacie 4. Fallacie e biases: tra argomentazione e psicologia V. Intersoggettività e impegni dialogici 1. La New Dialectic e il ragionamento interpersonale: Douglas Walton ed Erik Krabbe 2. Contesti dialogici e commitment store 3. Teoria delle fallacie e presumptive reasoning 4. La fondazione della Informal Logic 5. Argomentazione, informatica e scienza cognitiva VI. Razionalità e fondazione 1. Razionalità discorsiva: la pragmatica universale di Jürgen Habermas 2. Razionalità inferenziale e semantica: la pragmatica normativa di Robert B. Brandom 3. La pragmatica trascendentale di Karl O. Apel 4. Modelli di razionalità 5. Fondazione o giustificazione VII. Argomentazione e pratiche sociali 1. Ragionamento pratico 2. Etiche del discorso 3. Diritto e politiche dell’argomentazione.

In this article I argue that contemporary critical theory needs the conceptual tools of social ontology in order to make its own ontological commitments explicit and strengthen its interdisciplinary approach. On the other hand, contemporary analytic social ontology needs critical theory in order to be able to focus on the role that social change, power, and historicity play in the constitution of social facts, and to see the shortcomings of an agential and intentionalist approach to social facts. My thesis is strengthened by a historical reconstruction of the presence of two different approaches in the original program of the family of critical theory apparently most hostile to social ontology, (the Frankfurt School), namely Horkheimer’s program of a critical social philosophy which includes a social ontology, and Adorno’s negative attitude towards it, epitomized by the paradoxical notion of “ontology of the false state”. Adorno’s negative attitude was later inherited by Habermas and Honneth, whose work I show to be nevertheless deeply laden with ontological commitments. I then argue that, if one accepts the socio-ontological redefinition of critical theory, then the post-metaphysical paradigm adopted by Habermas should be revised and a certain conception of the linguistic turn in the understanding of social action abandoned. On the side of contemporary social ontology, the impulse coming from critical theory should allow us to distinguish between forms of ‘traditional social ontology’, that simply apply ready-made general metaphysical concepts to social reality, and a ‘critical social ontology’, oriented to socializing ontology and critically transforming metaphysical categories.

Paper given at the 20th Biennial Meeting of the Hegel Society of America, University of South Carolina, October 24-26, 2008 forthcoming in the Conference Proceedings, "Essays on Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit", SUNY Press The local problem of the soul-body relation can be grasped only against the global background of the relation between Nature and Spirit. This relates to Hegel's naturalism: the idea that there is one single reality - living reality - and different levels of description of it. This implies, moreover, that it is possible to ascribe some form of naturality also to the social body of institutionalized ethical life. Hegel’s position can thus be characterised as a kind of aristotelian social naturalism: this, at bottom, is the combined meaning of the Hegelian theses that soul is the substance of Spirit, and habit its universal form.