Italo Testa

In this paper I tackle the normative re-appropriation of the legacy of Charles Taylor's expressivist understanding of Hegel's theory of action. I argue that a normative understanding of Hegel's expressivist notion of agency by interpreters such as Robert Pippin, Terry Pinkard, Michael Quante and Robert Brandom, has been obtained at the price of losing sight of the principle of embodiment and of its relevance for our and Hegel's understanding of social action. I aim at relocating Hegel's notion of expressive embodiment at the core of his explanation of action. Rather than following Taylor's hermeneutical reconstruction of the principle of embodiment, I try to reconstruct it by putting at its core the notion of habit formation with the help of conceptual tools taken from contemporary embodied cognition approaches. I first discuss theAnthropologyand argue that habit, understood as a sensorimotor embodied life form, is not only an enabling condition for agency, but in fact an ontological constitutive condition for all its levels of manifestation. According to this reading, the Hegelian approach to embodiment offers a model that not only assigns to habit a positive constitutive role in the formation of human mindedness, but also overcomes the dualism between habitual motor routine and intentional activities. If we approach Hegel's understanding of agency from this vantage point, we can gain a perspective which allows us to appreciate a naturalist strand of Hegel's expressivism about action and to free it from certain basic anti-naturalistic assumptions of contemporary normative expressivist interpretations of Hegel on social action.

: 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 Tsuin-Chen, but also gives us further arguments to appreciate the centrality of this question to the development of Dewey’s philosophical project during this period. In particular, I will argue that a comparative reading of the lecture notes and of the Lectures in China allows us to appreciate the central role dominant patterns play for Dewey’s understanding of social groupings as embodying habitual patterns of action and the way habit formation shapes and gives content to the interests that groups identify with and are identified by in social practices. Secondly, I will argue that such a comparative reading allows us to appreciate how in the lecture series Dewey has developed the notion of dominant patterns into a theory of social domination which is basically described in terms of habitualized recognitive relations. Hence, the discovery of the lecture notes is also very helpful in deepening our understanding of the Deweyan approach to the question of social recognition – and in particular of the dynamics of institutional recognition and its ideological function – and how it relates to habitualized patterns of dominant-subservient relations. domination, habits, social philosophy, struggle for recognition, conflict, groups, hegemony, power, institutionalization

My aim in this paper is to bring into focus the concept of self-consciousness showing the reciprocal connection between the notions of recognition and second nature. The very evolution of Hegel's thought from the writings of his youth to those of his maturity reveals a strict connection between these notions. This reading will be justified through an articulate interpretation of the "Self-consciousness" section of the Phenomenology and then through an interpretation of the systematic connection between this text and the section of the Encyclopedia in which Hegel develops the theory of second nature as habit.

In this paper I analyze recognition as a kind of power. I analyze the notion of power in the general sense as some sort of causal capacity, and introduce the distinction between the active power of doing something and the passive power of undergoing something. Such a distinction is needed in order to capture some central features of the phenomenon of recognition, and in particular the way that ‘being recognized’ and ‘recognizing’ are intertwined. I then argue in favor of both the conceptual and genetic priority of the passive power of being recognized over the active power of recognizing. Furthermore, I introduce the notion of ‘attractor’ of recognition as a way to analyze some relevant features of the phenomenon of ‘being-recognized’. My approach to recognition as some kind of power, should here offer some tools not only to bridge the gap between the theory of recognition and the theory of power, but also to get the passive side of both power and recognition right. This could provide a more plausible and phenomenologically adequate understanding of both, and be useful to help capture and read anew within a recognitive grounding of critical theory some aspects of the contemporary debate on biopolitics.

The Critical Naturalism Manifesto is a common platform put forward as a basis for broad discussions around the problems faced by critical theory today. We are living in a time, e.g. a pandemic time, when present-day challenges exert immense pressure on social critique. This means that models of social critique should not be discussed from the point of view of their normative justification or political effects alone, but also with reference to their ability to tackle contemporary problematic issues (like the dismantlement of the welfare state, the environmental catastrophe, and the sanitary crisis). With this manifesto, we invite varying practices of philosophical, artistic and scientific social critique to take seriously the enormous challenges our societies face with regard to inner and outer nature. We first identity eleven theses of critical naturalism which contemporary critical theory should take into consideration. We then identify the historical crises and catastrophes that critical naturalism seeks to respond to, dispelling the prejudices against naturalism in contemporary critical thought, and considering alternative answers to these questions such as social constructivism, accelerationism, xenofeminism, flat ontologism, and monist world ecology. By sketching the notions of nature and naturalism, we anchor critical naturalism in the history of materialism and critical theory, understood initially as that of the Frankfurt School, but expanded and enriched by other approaches to social critique. Finally, we sketch models and projects of critical naturalism, which are exemplary fragments of varying ways to practice naturalist social critique.

ABSTRACT In this paper, I analyse Rahel Jaeggi’s socio-ontological account of forms of life. I show that her framework is a two-sided one, since it involves an understanding of forms of life both as inert bundles of practices and as having a normative structure. Here I argue that this approach is based on an a priori argument which assumes normativity as the condition of intelligibility of social criticism. I show that the intimate tension between these two sides is reflected in the socio-ontological model of the constitution of social phenomena, which on the one side is understood in terms of habituation and materialization, and on the other side in terms of constitution through norms. The second side in the end prevails and leads to some sort of normative essentialism which involves a prescriptive meta-theoretical understanding of normativity combined with a socio-ontological model of constitutive rules. I then analyse two arguments that Jaeggi offers in support of her assumption that normative constitution is the deep structure of social practices. I name these the functional-teleological argument, and the crisis developmental argument, and argue that neither succeeds in proving that practices are not normatively underdetermined.

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 lectures notes for the Lecture Series on Social and Political Philosophy.1 I will show that the way the notion of “dominant patterns” is dealt with in the text of the lectures 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 Tsuin-Chen,2 but also gives us further arguments to appreciate the centrality of this question to the development of Dewey’s philosophical project during this period. In particular, I will argue that a comparative...

This book evaluates how the pragmatist notion of habit can influence current debates at the crossroads between philosophy, cognitive sciences, neurosciences, and social theory. It deals with the different aspects of the pragmatic turn involved in 4E cognitive science and traces back the roots of such a pragmatic turn to both classical and contemporary pragmatism. Written by renowned philosophers, cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, and social theorists, this volume fills the need for an interdisciplinary account of the role of 'habit'. Researchers interested in the philosophy of mind, cognitive science, neuroscience, psychology, social theory, and social ontology will need this book to fully understand the pragmatist turn in current research on mind, action and society.

My research takes as its guiding thread the statement from Hegel's lectures on the philosophy of spirit of 1805-06, that «cognition is recognition[Erkennen ist Anerkennen]». In this perspective I delineate, first, the consequences of this position for Hegel's epistemology, in particular with reference to the question of skepticism. Then, I show in what sense the recognitive conception of knowledge makes it possible for Hegel to comprehend unitarily, on one hand, cognition as exercise of natural capacities and cognition as exercise of normative capacities socially articulated, and,on the other hand, theoretical self-consciousness and practical self-consciousness. The gnoseological importance of this solution can be comprehended only if we reconstruct the evolution of Hegel's thought in that span of time in which he most directly tackles the issue of skepsis: that is, from 1797 - the beginning of his Frankfurt period - when he began to occupy himself with gnoseological questions, until the end of his stay in Jena,which begins in 1801 and concludes in 1807 with the writing of the Phenomenology. The analysis of the development of the Hegelian theory of knowledge - worked out in the first part of my study - is dealt with in the context of a reconstruction of the historico-argumentative constellation within which it matured. The constellation of importance for our analysis is represented by the skeptical crisis - triggered by authors such as Schulze, Maimonand Platner - that invested the post-Kantian galaxy, within which the idealist solutions to the problem of cognition matured. Through the analysis of journals and authors with whom Hegel came directly or indirectly into contact - from Platner to Reinhold, Jacobi, Fichte and Schelling, to Hölderlin and Sinclair, concluding with Zeender, Krug, Bouterwek and Werneburg, and among the journals Fülleborn's Beiträge and Niethammer's Journal in particular - it is possible to map the various solutions proposed for the skeptical problem andsee how it is in relation to this problem that the conceptions of self-consciousness evolve and the very concept of "interpersonality" - "intersubjectivity" - emerges for the first time. At the same time, pursuing my objective of broadening the investigation of the phenomenon of recognition, which in my view is not reducible to the field of practical philosophy, I proposea fresh reconstruction of the lexical and conceptual evolution of the various terms -Erkennen, Wiedererkennen, Recognition, Anerkennen - through which the various modalities of the phenomenon of recognition were indicated in the philosophical tradition to which Hegel refers: recognition of objects as perceptive reidentification; reminiscence on the level of theory of memory; recognition of subjects as self-recognition (apperception) and attribution to others of intentionality; logical recognition as recognition of the validity of a proposition; moral recognition, where "recognizing" generally means approving, accepting(more specifically, someone may be "recognized" as an autonomous subject and as a unique,genuine individuality). I focus in particular on the theory of memory as «recognitio» in Wolff and in his school, on the conception of «reconnaissance» in Bonnet, on Kantian«Recognition» and on the theory of «Anerkennen» in Ernst Platner. This investigation serves, on the one hand, to show how the phenomenon of recognition is central for a comprehension of the structure both of the lower and of the higher cognitive faculties. This ought to allow us to understand in what sense Hegel, taking intersubjective recognition as hisleading phenomenon, attempts to reunite the various meanings of recognition within a theory of knowledge on the basis of which «cognition is recognition». On the other hand, my conceptual and lexicographic investigation also serves to bring to light - in a new way with respect to the studies on Anerkennung - a hitherto unknown problematic constellation and the input of certain authors, such as Werneburg and Platner, whose conceptions may haveinfluenced Hegel's approach.The second part and the third of my study - a reconstruction of the pre- phenomenological Jena writings dealing with «Anerkennung» - dwells on the theme of the notion of natural recognition, whose centrality for the Hegelian conception of recognition has not yet been adequately grasped. This reconstruction of the theory of natural recognition gives due weight to the influence of Schelling on Hegel's understanding of «Anerkennung» -while the critical literature has generally concentrated on Fichte. Analyzing the conception of the animal organism developed in particular in the lectures on the philosophy of nature of 1803-04 brings to light how Hegel already individuates the recognitive phenomenon at the level of sexual reproduction: it is from here that he posits the natural prerequisites for the development of consciousness of self. The category of natural recognition will present itself anew in Hegel's analysis of the social ontology of the human world in the philosophy of spirit, where it concerns sexual love, reproduction and child raising: natural recognition is, then, that on the basis of which Hegel develops his theory that cognition is recognition.Recognition, as a «middle» of spirit, is a cognitive phenomenon that is primitive with respectto linguistically structured human intersubjectivity; it is, properly, that cognitive structure which is necessarily presupposed by a self-conscious subjectivity that expresses itself linguistically: linguistic intersubjectivity expresses various modes of recognition, but notevery form of recognition is linguistic. The evolutional theory of cognition as recognition is in fact designed to show how increasingly complex recognitive relations emerge from a basic level of natural interactions to take on a linguistically mediated and universal structure. Withthe notion of spiritual recognition Hegel indicates just that ensemble of normative relations that constitute the infrastructure of action and thus mediate the formation of socially articulated self-conscious knowing of self. In the lectures on the philosophy of spirit of 1803-04 and of 1805-06 Hegel thus reconstructs the recognitive structure of the social institutions of right, of labor, and of exchange, showing that, within a politically structured community,dyadic (I-you) interactions are mediated by the universal viewpoint of the "we" incarnated in institutions that can be recognized by citizens as their own and by which citizens can be recognized.

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 Benja­min, e connesso con le nozioni di ‘caducità’ e ‘allegoria’, si rivela così de­cisivo per comprendere il senso dialettico della storia naturale. In his writings of the early thirties Adorno intends to overcome the an­tithesis between nature and history without falling into a foundationalist model of conciliation. Through a criticism of the reprise in contemporary philosophy of nature’s mythical meanings, as origin and in­variant , Adorno wants to retrieve the polysemous character of nature’s experience and its paradoxical relation with history. The concept of ‘second nature’, as read through Lukács and Benjamin, and connected with the notions of ‘caducity’ and ‘allegory’, reveals itself to be decisive in understanding the dialectical meaning of natural history

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, the master-servant figure in the Phenomenology of Spirit is analyzed against the background of Hegel’s ontology of life as an embodied process. It is therefore argued that the theme of this figure is the question of domination in general, understood as a social relationship of subjection that can take on different historical configurations. Domination is understood as a relationship of disparity of status between dominant and dominated subjects. Therefore, domination would have an intersubjective aspect, as constituted by asymmetric relations of recognition, and a material one, as this disparity in recognitive status enacts the extraction of physical and symbolic resources from subordinated subjects.