•  269
    In this essay I first set out the advantages the " multivariate democratic polity " framework proposed by Ferrara offers in comparison to other more consensus-based notions of democratic legitimacy. Secondly, I highlight some ambiguities concerning the meta-theoretical status of this frame, since it is not clear whether it consists of an adaptive realistic description, or otherwise is a normative argument. Thirdly, I cast some doubts on the compatibility between the multivariate frame and the " …Read more
  •  362
    In this contribution I outline some ideas on what the pragmatist model of habit ontology could offer us as regards the appreciation of the constitutive role that imagery plays for social action and cognition. Accordingly, a Deweyan understanding of habit would allow for an understanding of imagery in terms of embodied cognition rather than in representational terms. I first underline the motor character of imagery, and the role its embodiment in habit plays for the anticipation of action. Second…Read more
  •  512
    Dewey, Second Nature, Social Criticism, and the Hegelian Heritage
    European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 9 (1): 1-23. 2017.
    Dewey’s notion of second nature is strictly connected with that of habit. I reconstruct the Hegelian heritage of this model and argue that habit qua second nature is understood by Dewey as a something which encompasses both the subjective and the objective dimension – individual dispositions and features of the objective natural and social environment.. Secondly, the notion of habit qua second nature is used by Dewey both in a descriptive and in a critical sense and is as such a dialectical conc…Read more
  • L’uguaglianza Opaca
    la Società Degli Individui 24 155-162. 2005.
  •  953
    The paper proposes a reconstruction of some fragments of Hegel’s Jena manuscripts concerning the natural genesis of recognitive spiritual consciousness. On this basis it will be argued that recognition has a foothold in nature. As a consequence, recognition should not be understood as a bootstrapping process, that is, as a self-positing and self-justifying normative social phenomenon, intelligible within itself and independently of anything external to it.
  •  19
    Discussione su "Il dolore dell'indeterminato" di Axel Honneth
    with Sergio Dellavalle and Robert Pippin
    Iride: Filosofia e Discussione Pubblica 16 (3): 609-624. 2003.
  •  6
  • Ragione ed espressione
    la Società Degli Individui 21 145-146. 2004.
  •  70
    Brandom's Reconstructive Rationality. Some Pragmatist Themes
    Towards an Analytic Pragmatism. Workshop on Bob Brandom's Recent Philosophy of Language. 2009.
    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…Read more
  •  1883
    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 …Read more
  • La genèse naturelle de la conscience et la reconnaissance
    In Buée Jean-Michel & Renault Emmanuel (eds.), Hegel à Iéna, Ens Éditions. pp. 143-156. 2015.
    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 …Read more
  •  737
    The meaning of Enlightenment for the young Hegel (1785-1800) is closely related to the historical and theoretical moment in which skepticism became a constitutive aspect of his dialectical conception of philosophy. In this light the paper shows that the problem of skepticism understood as self-reflection of epistemological and social critique is deeply linked in the young Hegel’s writings with the archeology of the very idea of the dialectics of enlightenment.
  •  610
    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…Read more
  •  24
    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 Lor…Read more
  •  2249
    Paper given at the 20th Biennial Meeting of the Hegel Society of America, University of South Carolina, October 24-26, 2008 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…Read more
  • Anatomia dell’io Un dialogo su lirica e soggettività
    with Durs Grünbein
    la Società Degli Individui 25 99-124. 2006.
  •  1719
    Second Nature and Recognition: Hegel and the Social Space
    Critical Horizons 10 (3): 341-370. 2009.
    In this article I intend to show the strict relation between the notions of “second nature” and “recognition”. To do so I begin with a problem (circularity) proper to the theory of Hegelian and post- Hegelian Anerkennung. The solution strategy I propose is signifi cant also in terms of bringing into focus the problems connected with a notion of “space of reasons” that stems from the Hegelian concept of “Spirit”. I thus broach the notion of “second nature” as a bridgeconcept that can play a key r…Read more
  • In Horae canonicae W. H. Auden ha messo a tema la dimensione mi­metica della condizione umana. Il saggio ricostruisce in tal senso l’an­tropologia negativa di Auden, prendendo le mosse dall’analisi del desi­de­rio di riconoscimento quale elemento centrale dell’identità storica. Attra­ver­so una lettura dei motivi della folla e del doppio, e sullo sfondo del poe­ma The Age of Anxiety e della produzione saggistica di Auden, si mo­stra che la «routine della lode e del biasimo» innesca meccanismi im…Read more
  •  1897
    Ragione e relazione: la fenomenologia di Hegel come tropologia
    Giornale di Metafisica 25 (2): 371-392. 2003.
    This article deals with the question of skepticism within Hegel's Phenomenology. The article reconstructs the role played by the tropes of ancient skepticism in Hegel's criticism of foundationalism and monological thinking. Furthermore, the skeptical method applied by Hegel is read as a sort of negative dialectics that is constitutive of a relational theory of rationality, and which culminates in his conception of the Absolute Knowing as speculative tropology.
  •  545
    In this paper, making reference to Robert Brandom's philosophical proposal - and against the background of Brandom's debate with Jürgen Habermas - I shall endeavor, first, to define the relation between recognition and normativity and then between recognition and criticism; in the final part of the paper I shall suggest a perspective that approaches recognition in terms of capacities. On this basis I attempt to see the critical attitude as something that is founded more on individual potentials …Read more
  •  17
    Idealismo e normatività. Robert Brandom e la ricezione americana di Hegel
    Iride: Filosofia e Discussione Pubblica 15 (2): 297-316. 2002.
  • Dopo la natura
    la Società Degli Individui 28 5-8. 2007.
  •  13
    I mondi di Guido Mazzoni
    with Adriano Bugliani
    Iride: Filosofia e Discussione Pubblica 24 (1): 191-198. 2011.
  •  706
    In this paper I will argue that critical theory needs to make its socio-ontological commitments explicit, whilst on the other hand I will posit that contemporary social ontology needs to amend its formalistic approach by embodying a critical theory perspective. In the first part of my paper I will discuss how the question was posed in Horkheimer’s essays of the 1930s, which leave open two options: (1) a constructive inclusion of social ontology within social philosophy, or else (2) a program of …Read more
  •  31
    Negli scritti dei primi anni trenta Adorno si propone di superare l’antitesi fra natura e storia senza ricadere in un modello fondativo di conciliazione. Attraverso una critica della ripresa nella filosofia contemporanea dell’ac­cezione mitica della natura come origine e come invariante , Adorno intende recuperare il carattere polisemico dell’esperien­za della natura e del suo intreccio paradossale con la storia. Il concetto di ‘seconda natura’, ripreso attraverso il confronto con Lukács e con B…Read more
  •  80
    "Life and Action in Ethics and Politics", Book Symposium on Michael Thompson's "Life and Action" (edited book)
    Philosophy and Public Issues, Supplementary Volume (2015), Luiss University Press. 2015.
    Book Symposium on Michael Thompson's "Life and Action" (downlodable here: http://fqp.luiss.it/category/numero/ns-supplementary-volume-2015-life-and-action) Table of Contents: Paolo Costa, "Where does our understanding of life come from? The riddle about recognizing living things" Constantine Sandis, "He buttered the toast while baking a fresh loaf" Matteo Bianchin, "Intentions and Intentionality" Arto Laitinen, "Practices as ‘actual’ sources of goodness of actions" Italo Testa, "Some consequenc…Read more
  •  66
    : In this paper I will focus on the notion of “dominant patterns”, as revealed by the recently discovered typescript of what we can assume to be Dewey’s fragmentary and incomplete preliminary lecture notes for the Lecture Series on Social and Political Philosophy. I will show that the way the notion of “dominant patterns” is dealt with in the text of the lecture notes is not only consistent with the conceptual content of the whole series of the Lectures in China as published by R. W. Clopton and…Read more