Rita Fulco

_Focuses on key aspects of Robert Esposito's thought and explores the ways in which some major contemporary thinkers have been crucial interlocutors in their elaboration._ _Political Ontology, Community, and Institutions_ offers a broad view of the current philosophical dialogue in Italy, both in relation to Robert Esposito's own thought and with respect to major issues and authors of crucial philosophical relevance. From his earliest works, Esposito questions the crisis of politics and why thought is unable to convincingly respond to it. He does so by distancing himself not only from political theology but also from those paradigms-destituent and constituent-that have lost nowadays much of their analytical and propositional capacity. However, his proposal is not only critical. Esposito's thought relates to our present through the creation of new categories-among the most recent, those of "instituting thought" and "common immunity"-capable of opening a breach in an apparently increasingly closed horizon. Therefore, dealing with his thought means, first of all, dealing with our present. This is the main goal of this volume, which focuses on Esposito's dialogue with major contemporary thinkers. Also included is an unpublished interview with Esposito conducted by the editors.

_Aims to rethink Europe under the sign of openness and hospitality, starting from the Mediterranean—the sea that is so important for the history of the entire West—a sea of differences with a deep unitary root conceived as a paradigm for rethinking new and original forms of social and political coexistence._ The essays collected here outline a geophilosophy of the Mediterranean-a sea of great importance in the history of Europe and the wider West. Conceived from a geophilosophical perspective, the Mediterranean is a sea surrounded by lands-that is, a "pluriverse" of different cultures and religions, which have often become entangled in conflicts. Nevertheless, they have also demonstrated a remarkable capacity for coexistence, as exemplified by multilingual, multiethnic, and multireligious Sicily during the reign of Roger II of Hauteville. Throughout its millennia-long history, the Mediterranean has consistently displayed a profoundly unified configuration despite its inherent diversity. Its distinctive blend of singularity and plurality can serve as a paradigm for rethinking new forms of social and political coexistence, not only for Europe, which draws its origin from this sea, but also for a new global order.

The aim of this article is to relate the concept of 'force' to that of 'spiritual education'. Starting from it, we can better understand the link, fundamental for Simone Weil also in the political sphere, between immanence and transcendence. The predominance of force over immanence seems, indeed, to decree the impossibility of a 'just' politics. Weil shows that awareness of the predominance of force in this world is a first and indispensable step towards justice. This explains the centrality that Weil attaches to the education of attention, particularly for those who are to assume governmental roles. Reflection on politics and justice thus assumes, in the last years of Weil's life, the role of an 'otherwise than power', effective on two levels: firstly, as a reflection on power and the forms of government to be given to France liberated from the Nazis; secondly, as a project of true spiritual education for those who will be called to govern at any level.

What I propose is to explicit the relationship between two dimensions, which, in my opinion, are inseparable from any discourse about vulnerability. On the one hand, the horizon of politics and institutions, the horizon of practice; on the other, that relative to the definition of the ‘humanity of the human’, the theoretical horizon. To talk about the ‘politics of vulnerability’, we need to understand what is meant by vulnerability and the dimensions it implies. In this particular case, I want to discuss two philosophers who found a way to keep these two dimensions together, namely, Judith ButlerButler, Judithand Simone WeilWeil, Simone. The thesis I would like to arrive at could be articulated in the following points: (1) vulnerability is ‘constitutive’ of the humanity of the human; (2) vulnerability also stems from certain discourses of power; (3) to accept vulnerability as the common trait of humanity can be the basis upon which to construct a nonviolent or least violent possible coexistence; (4) in order to arrive at this, the philosophical and political problems to be addressed are ‘attention for’ and ‘recognition’ of vulnerability, and this implies circumstances where vulnerability is not obvious or is not recognised as such.

The aim of my article is to relate Roberto Esposito’s reflections on Europe to his more recent proposal of instituent thought. I will try to do so by focusing on three theoretical cornerstones of Esposito’s thought: the first concerns the evidence of a link between Europe, philosophy and politics. The second is deconstructive: it highlights the inadequacy of the answers of the most important contemporary ontological-political paradigms to the European crisis, as well as the impossibility of interpreting this crisis through theoretical-political categories such as sovereignty. The third relates more directly to the proposal of a new political ontology, which Esposito defines as instituent thought. Esposito’s discussion of political theology is the central theoretical nucleus of this study. This discussion will focus, in particular, on the category of negation, from which any political ontology that is based on pure affirmativeness or absolute negation is criticized. In his opinion, philosophical theories developed on the basis of these assumptions have proved to be incomplete or ineffective in relation to the current European and global philosophical and political crisis. Esposito therefore perceives the urgent need to propose a line of thought that is neither negatively destituent, nor affirmatively constituent, but instituent, capable of thinking about order through conflict. Provided that we do not think of the institution statically–in a conservative sense–but dynamically, as constant instituting in which conflict can become an instrument of a politics increasingly inspired by justice.

This essay aims to demonstrate that the concepts of conflict and prophecy play a key role in the thought of Mario Tronti and Sergio Quinzio – even though they are interpreted in a different way. Tronti describes them as “extreme think- ing and careful acting”, remaining “within and against” the mainstream sociopolitical system. Quinzio, instead, interprets conflict and prophecy as spes contra spem, “hoping against hope” ; hence, he observes the present lucidly, remaining tenaciously faithful to the promise of the Second Coming of Christ. Tronti, rethinking some fundamental aspects of the Quinzio’s reflections, connects clearly the Marxian conception of the world, on the one hand, with the theological-political one, and, on the other hand, with the messianic one; in this way, it reveals itself as a resource of meaning, from which even today we can draw.