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230Workplace democracy—The recent debatePhilosophy Compass 14 (4). 2019.The article reviews the recent debate about workplace democracy. It first presents and critically discusses arguments in favor of democratizing the firm that are based on the analogy with states, meaningful work, the avoidance of unjustified hierarchies, and beneficial effects on political democracy. The second part presents and critically discusses arguments against workplace democracy that are based on considerations of efficiency, the difficulties of a transition towards democratic firms, and…Read more
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21Reflexive cooperation between fraternity and social involvementPhilosophy and Social Criticism 45 (6): 673-682. 2019.This article explores Axel Honneth’s long-standing philosophical interest for solidarity in the larger context of contemporary theories of democracy. It identifies three models to which Honneth res...
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2Forme del pensiero attivo : etica e costruzione concettuale nel pensiero di Gilles DeleuzeUniversità degli studi di Bologna, Dipartimento de filosofia. 2000.
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19The Practice-based Approach to Normativity of Frederick L. WillTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 48 (4): 483-511. 2012.There is... something both intellectually and socially unresponsive in the appeal to self-evidence upon controverted issues. Over the last two decades philosophers have focused increasingly on the role of society and practices in shaping practical normativity.3 Contemporary moral and political philosophy remains fundamentally committed to individualistic and causal approaches to normativity, but a contrary trend has taken root—at least since Wittgenstein’s insights regarding the role of context,…Read more
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26From Judgment to Rationality: Dewey's Epistemology of PracticeTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 46 (4): 591-610. 2010.The question of rationality and of its role in human agency has been at the core of pragmatist concerns since the beginning of this movement. While Peirce framed the horizon of a new understanding of human reason through the idea of inquiry as aiming at belief-fixation and James stressed the individualistic drives that move individuals to action, it is in Dewey’s writing that we find the deepest understanding of the naturalistic and normative traits of rationality considered as the qualifying at…Read more
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4IntroductionEuropean Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 7 (2). 2015.In this Issue of the European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy we publish for the first time the text of the Lectures in Social and Political Philosophy that John Dewey delivered in China in 1919. Dewey’s manuscript was considered lost and the only existing publication of the Lectures is based on a transcription made in Chinese while Dewey was delivering his lectures. The critical edition of Dewey’s text is accompanied by three interpretative articles: an essay of Roberto Gronda...
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32Firms as coalitions of democratic cultures: towards an organizational theory of workplace democracyCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 27 (3): 405-428. 2024.The theory of the firm initially developed by Ronald Coase has made explicit the political nature of firms by putting hierarchy at the heart of the economic process. Theories of workplace democracy articulate this intuition in the normative terms of the conditions under which this political power can be legitimate. This paper presents an organizational theory of workplace democracy, and contends that the democratization of firms requires that we take their organizational dimension explicitly int…Read more
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11A Tale of Two Social PhilosophiesJournal of Speculative Philosophy 31 (2): 260-272. 2017.ABSTRACT Although less known than his theory of democracy, John Dewey's social philosophy provides an articulate and original perspective on political life based on pragmatist intuitions. Dewey's struggle with social philosophy spanned more than four decades of his intellectual life. This article provides an overview of the main themes that characterize it and shows that two distinct projects animate Dewey's social philosophy. One is closer to the British reformist social philosophy of Jeremy Be…Read more
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6“Some Stages of Logical Thought”: From Native Certainties to Acquired DoubtsIn Julie Brumberg-Chaumont & Claude Rosental (eds.), Logical Skills: Social-Historical Perspectives, Springer Verlag. pp. 75-87. 2021.This chapter explores some basic tenets of pragmatist philosophy of logic to inquire into its fruitfulness to understand diverse patterns of thinking. Reference will be made to C. S. Peirce theory of reasoning as developed in his famous paper “The Fixation of Belief” and to John Dewey’s mature logic of inquiry. The different phases of Dewey’s philosophy of logic are examined in turn. It will be contended that Dewey completes the process of naturalization of thinking begun by Peirce, developing a…Read more
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1Reply to CommentsContemporary Pragmatism 18 (3): 325-333. 2021.These are the replies to critics on my book Pragmatism and the wide view of democracy.
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37Solidarity as Social InvolvementMoral Philosophy and Politics 8 (2): 179-208. 2021.This paper reclaims the concept of solidarity for democratic theory. It does this by proposing a theory of solidarity as social involvement that is construed through the integration of three better known conceptions of solidarity that have played an influential role in the political thought of the last two centuries. The paper begins by explaining why solidarity should receive more sustained attention from political theorists with an interest in democracy, and proceeds by presenting two indispen…Read more
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24The fourth stage of social democracyTheory and Society 50 (3): 489-513. 2021.This article examines the political crisis of social-democratic parties in Western Europe in light of its impact on the social-democratic emancipatory project, and asks whether the first calls the second into question. It begins by defining social democracy as an emancipatory project, and identifies three major historical phases that correspond to three distinct conceptions of the project. “Social-democratic dilemmas” section examines recent literature in comparative welfare state economics, pol…Read more
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13John Dewey’s Ethical Theory: The 1932 Ethics (edited book)Routledge. 2020.This book provides a wide-ranging, systematic, and comprehensive approach to the moral philosophy of John Dewey, one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century. It does so by focusing on his greatest achievement in this field: the Ethics he jointly published with James Hayden Tufts in 1908 and then republished in a heavily revised version in 1932. The essays in this volume are divided into two distinct parts. The first features essays that provide a running commentary on the chapters…Read more
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35Employee Involvement and Workplace DemocracyBusiness Ethics Quarterly 31 (3): 360-385. 2021.The article aims to bridge divides between political theory and management and organization studies in theorizing workplace democracy. To achieve this aim, the article begins by introducing a new definition of democracy which, it is contended, is better suited than mainstream accounts to highlight the democratizing potential of employee involvement. It then defines employee involvement as an offshoot of early twentieth-century humanistic psychologies, from which it inherits an emancipatory ambit…Read more
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10ForewordEuropean Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 1 (1): 1-1. 2009.Together with the members and promoters of the Associazione Culturale Pragma, we very pleased to celebrate the third anniversary of its foundation with the launching of a new journal devoted to the study of American philosophy, the European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy. It is, in fact, a particularly important achievement which comes to strengthen our confidence in the positive relationships among a wide international group of academics and scholars that already produced a nu...
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15José Medina, The Epistemology of ResistanceEuropean Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 5 (1). 2013.The new book from José Medina offers an inspiring exploration of how the recent discussions of “epistemic ignorance” can be put to work to unveil and denounce new forms of oppression. José Medina accomplish this task by combining four different tradition: American pragmatism, Wittgenstein, Foucault, and feminist and race studies. This original blend of different traditions gives the book its distinctive flavor and accounts for its originality. One way to read this text is to see it as a book...
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6IntroductionEuropean Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 6 (1). 2014.The symposium “Peirce in the World” is a homage that EJPAP wants to pay to the Centenary of the death of the great American thinker Charles S. Peirce, one of the founding fathers of pragmatism. The idea of the symposium stems from observing that Peirce studies are nowadays spread out all over the world, and the scholarship that comes from outside the US is becoming more and more important in breadth and depth. This phenomenon is possibly the greatest change that happened to Peirce scholarship...
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14IntroductionEuropean Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 7 (1). 2015.The present boosting interest for pragmatism and pragmatist approaches within the social sciences has developed somewhat confusedly in the absence of a shared conception of what a pragmatist outlook might imply for both theory and method. To overcome this failing, numerous analytical approaches have been devised over the course of the last two decades which either directly reclaim a pragmatist ascendancy or indirectly acknowledge a pragmatist influence, particularly at the methodological leve...
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19Interview with Richard J. BernsteinEuropean Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 6 (1). 2014.Roberto Frega & Giovanni Maddelena – Can you recollect what the situation was concerning the study of pragmatism when you were in college? Richard J. Bernstein – I was an undergraduate at the University of Chicago from 1949 to 1951. At the time the “Hutchins College” was an unusual institution. The entire curriculum was fixed and it was organized around reading many of the great books of the Western tradition. From the time I arrived, I was reading Plato, Aristotle, Galileo, Darwin, Herodotus...Read more
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10Replies to critics, European Journal of Pragmatism and American PhilosophiesEuropean Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 12 (1). 2020.First of all, I warmly thank Matteo Santarelli for having put the symposia together, and Matthew Festenstein, Torjus Midtgarden, and Ed Quish for having accepted his invitation. Once a book is published one has the tendency to let it behind and jump to a new project. Yet this is the time when critical distance finally comes, and one sees better the blind spots and limitations of one’s own project. To that extent, engaging with alerted and critical readers is the best opportunity one has to gr...
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35Democracy and the limits of political realismCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 23 (4): 468-494. 2020.
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21Pragmatism and the Wide View of DemocracySpringer Verlag. 2019.The aim of this book is to provide a fresh, wider, and more compelling account of democracy than the one we usually find in conventional contemporary political theory. Telling the story of democracy as a broad societal project rather than as merely a political regime, Frega delivers an account more in tune with our everyday experience and ordinary intuitions, bringing back into political theory the notion that democracy denotes first and foremost a form of society, and only secondarily a specifi…Read more
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50Democratic Patterns of Interaction as a Norm for the WorkplaceJournal of Social Philosophy 51 (1): 27-53. 2019.Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.
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46The Social Ontology of DemocracyJournal of Social Ontology 4 (2): 157-185. 2018.This paper offers an account of the social foundations of a theory of democracy. It purports to show that a social ontology of democracy is the necessary counterpart of a political theory of democracy. It notably contends that decisions concerning basic social ontological assumptions are relevant not only for empirical research, but bear a significant impact also on normative theorizing. The paper then explains why interactionist rather than substantialist social ontologies provide the most prom…Read more
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25Democracy and the limits of political realismCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 1-28. 2018.
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15The wide view of democracyThesis Eleven 140 (1): 3-21. 2017.This article compares the theories of democracy of John Dewey and Claude Lefort, identifying some common themes in their otherwise radically different philosophical outlooks. In so doing, it attempts to analyze the philosophical implications of a ‘democracy first’ approach to politics. It then explains in what sense Dewey’s idea of ‘democracy as a way of life’ and Claude Lefort’s conception of ‘democracy as a form of society’ provide the cornerstone of an original and so far insufficiently explo…Read more
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33The normativity of democracyEuropean Journal of Political Theory 18 (3): 371-392. 2017.The aim of this paper is to advance our understanding of the normative grammar of the concept of democracy by distinguishing two levels at which a political concept may play a normative function, a...
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20John Dewey's Social and Political Philosophy in the China Lectures: IntroductionTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 53 (1): 3. 2017.In 1919–1920 John Dewey visited China, where he extensively lectured. Was had been initially planned as a short trip became a long-lasting experience of social and cultural discovery that lasted nearly two years1. Dewey’s arrival in China coincided with the ouburst of the May 4th Revolution, a nationwide student movement aimed at democratizing Chinese politics and society. Dewey’s Lectuers have to be seen in the context of this context, particularly as several leaders of the May 4th movement had…Read more
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15Equal Accessibility to All: Habermas, Pragmatism, and the Place of Religious Beliefs in a Post‐Secular SocietyConstellations 19 (2): 267-287. 2012.This paper explores the epistemological impact of the idea of post-secularism on the concept of public reason. It does so by examining a strand of the Rawls-Habermas debate on the role of religious beliefs within public reason. The paper identifies a difficulty in the liberal solution that depends upon the unwillingness to challenge the proviso-like conception of public reason and contends that this difficulty is overcome neither by Habermas’ “institutional” version of proviso nor by Cristina La…Read more
University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
Department for Teaching and Research in Philosophy (UFR10)
PhD, 2004
Areas of Specialization
Social and Political Philosophy |
20th Century Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Action |
Social and Political Philosophy |