Carlo Crosato

This article approaches the concept of progress through the methodological perspective of conceptual history (Begriffsgeschichte). Drawing on Koselleck’s dual interest in the methodological premises of conceptual history and the theory of the semantics of historical time that emerges from them, it first traces the shifts that characterize his engagement with the concept of progress. From the observation of the ways in which this concept came to impose itself, it then distils important insights into the philosophical and political orientation required for the study of modernity, understood, beyond Koselleck, as an age of concepts. Finally, it opens several lines of inquiry into the contemporary relevance of the Koselleckian concept of progress in relation to current challenges.

Hobbes’ natural law theory has been discussed far and wide. Some interpreters ended up defining Hobbes as a natural law theorist, some others as a legal positivist. In this paper, I analyse the work of two important scholars, Howard Warrender and Norberto Bobbio, whose insights have stimulated an interesting debate about Hobbes’ political theory. Warrender gives God a central function in Hobbes’ political science. On his account, God is a lawmaker, his will is the source of a universal obligation, and civil order is necessary to give force to the natural law that is the expression of divine will. In Bobbio’s interpretation, Hobbes is the first legal positivist of Modern age, as natural law is only ever given content by the sovereign’s will. Finally, I ask which is natural law and God’s function in Hobbes’ political thought, questioning some contemporary scholars in order to clarify Hobbes’ modernity.

Luciano Floridi proposes to reconceive philosophy as a constructive practice committed to facing the issues of the present and to dismantle and assemble the categories of contemporary thought. Introducing this symposium, I aim to explore what I consider to be the inherent risks of a philosophy conceived in this manner. To put it briefly, such a philosophy appears to be both consumed in the plots of contemporary times and over-committed towards formulating evermore effective and useful answers, each time aiming to somehow transcend itself and to critically portray the specific context in which it arises. Can informational philosophy criticize the present epoch and open new ways of emancipation, or is it too functionally dependent on the actual processes it examines hindering a critical point of view?