Alessandro Volpe

Questo volume affronta la sfida di ripensare l’etica oltre i confini della sua tradizione teorica, proponendo una prospettiva critica radicata nelle pratiche sociali effettive e nelle relazioni di potere che le strutturano. L’etica critica qui delineata non si limita a valutare comportamenti o a risolvere dilemmi astratti, ma si propone come strumento di emancipazione: un’indagine normativa sulle condizioni che ostacolano la piena realizzazione dell’essere umano, nelle sue molteplici forme di vita. A differenza dell’etica applicata, che tende ad assumere come neutre o immutabili le dinamiche sociali esistenti, l’etica critica smaschera le logiche di dominio sottese a tali dinamiche, ponendosi come leva per il cambiamento. Attraverso analisi che spaziano dall’intelligenza artificiale alla crisi ecologica, dal lavoro alle disuguaglianze di genere, il volume offre strumenti teorici e pratici per interpretare criticamente il presente e contribuire alla sua trasformazione.

Google DeepMind has developed a system called the Habermas Machine in honour of Jürgen Habermas and his theory of deliberation. The system seeks to facilitate deliberation and assist individuals in finding common ground on controversial issues. This system, based on large language models, has been tested on groups in the United Kingdom, engaging more than 5,700 participants divided into groups. The study reported that participants preferred the AI-mediated group statements, considering them clearer, more informative and less biased than those generated by human facilitators. In light of Habermas’s discourse theory and theory of deliberation in general, this paper aims to briefly raise some constructive remarks on this machine developed by DeepMind. Artificial intelligence can effectively be beneficial for deliberation. However, an artificial intelligence generator of consensus might bring about some theoretical and practical issues, concerning the very nature of the agreement, moral inclusivity and, more broadly, its implicit rationality. Rather than being just theoretical, these issues involve the concrete future relationship between practical autonomy and artificial intelligence.

ABSTRACT In times of crisis, interpersonal and group solidarity often emerge as people face critical challenges that threaten their survival. However, it remains unclear whether spontaneous solidarity practices are enough to effectively face such crisis situations. In this paper, we argue that to be fully effective, solidarity must be deployed through all its political tiers, from interpersonal and group relationships to institutional and legal normativity. We contend that solidarity relations can only reach an enduring goal if they solidify into stable principles that can be acknowledged and enacted at the institutional level. Through an examination of recent literature and concrete case studies, the paper investigates the linkages and mutual dependencies between the various levels of solidarity developed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. This analysis may allow us to answer the question of whether a “Multilevel European Solidarity” is a realistic goal, and what is required to achieve it.

This essay engages with some theoretical issues emerging from Amy Allen’s book The End of Progress: Decolonizing the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory. It begins by situating Allen’s work within the broader relationship between critical theory and progress, a relationship traditionally carried on by the practice of self-criticism – an immanent and reflexive endeavour that seeks to expose internal odds, paradoxes and pitfalls of concepts and transform them from the inside. Drawing on post-colonial studies and Foucauldian genealogy, Allen’s book contributes to and enriches such distinctive feature of critical theory in its engagement with the language of progress and development. However, this essay attempts to raise two main critical remarks/open questions regarding Allen’s pars construens, specifically her claim for a negativistic meta-normative contextualism and the dismissal of backward-looking progress. Whilst Allen’s explicit intention is to avoid delivering an “abstract negation of modern morality”, her normative solutions, in both instances, risks being overly one-sided and undetermined, and eventually preserving little of that inheritance. The guiding idea of such critical analysis is the advocacy of self-criticism as an immanent task and discourse ethics as the framework for an emancipative dialogue with the subalterns and colonised subjects.

The value of solidarity, which implies mutual concern and support, is often conveyed in our everyday moral and political language. But what is its conceptual relationship with justice? Influential positions in this debate may argue for the opposition between the two concepts: justice is impartial and universal, while solidarity is partial and limited. The present paper aims to shortly explore a range of theories that may exemplify possible answers to this position, from communitarian and realist views, which ultimately confirm the opposition, to political solidarities, which claim an instrumental need for solidarity as a reaction to injustices. Special attention will be paid to Habermas’s compatibilist account of solidarity as the “reverse side” of justice. The paper contends that a compelling answer should preserve the difference between the two spheres and the essential features of solidarity by also sketching a concept of solidarity as a social duty arising from our moral interdependence.