Simone Aldo Santamato

In this paper, I offer a phenomenological meditation on Sarah Kane’s theatre, exploring mental illness as illness of existential being. To do so, I bring into dialogue personal lived experience and phenomenological psychopathology, depicting a particular form of literarian articulation of experiences that I define 'theatre of Erlebnisse'. The aim is not to construct a systematic philosophical interpretation of Kane’s work as though it were a theoretical edifice, but rather to navigate its tensions through phenomenological tools that seek to contemplate the complexity of its interwoven dimensions of psychopathology, literature, and aesthetic outrage.

In this paper, my aim is to understand the contemporary epistemic relationship between phenomenology and psychology, paying special attention to the phenomenological implications of the psychometric discipline. Retracing the historical and conceptual steps that define the relationship between phenomenology and psychology—paying particular attention to Husserl’s The Crisis (1936)—I then attempt to grasp the current state of the interplay between these two disciplines, ultimately putting forward a preliminary proposal for a phenomenological psychometrics. This proposal aims to integrate both the experimental and statistical dimensions of modern psychology and the eidetic-reductive requirements of transcendental phenomenology. To do so, I engage with Neil Bolton (1986) and Dominique Maria Debats (1996), focusing in particular on the latter's formulation of the Life Regard Index (LRI).

This paper is an expanded version of my presentation at the PRIN-PNRR International Conference “ATMOS and PEA: Atmospheres of Objects, Places and Events” (University of Genoa, November 2024). It investigates the relation between emotional atmospheres and personal subjectivity by articulating a theoretical bridge between Husserlian phenomenology and Tonino Griffero's atmospherology. First, I explore Husserl’s theory of emotion, which I refer to as conjunctivism, where emotional atmospheres emerge from the subject’s intentional and motivational stratifications. Then, I turn to Tonino Griffero’s approach, referring to it as disjunctivism, which conceptualizes atmospheres as quasi-objective affective powers spatialized in the world independently from the subject's constitution. In the final section, I problematize the normative implications of this externalist theory arguing instead for a correlationist paradigm, which reframes dissonance not as error, but as a site of subjective affirmation.

This paper presents a phenomenological analysis of shame in social networks. Initially, I examine Sartre’s (1956) account of the look and shame along with Dolezal’s (2017) reinterpretation. I then explore how shame is negotiated in online interactions arguing that, in social networking systems (SNSs), shame is banned. Since subjects are constantly visible when posting content, they tend to share material that minimizes the risk of shame’s thunderstruck. Yet, this shameless self-presentation raises complex phenomenological intricacies regarding personal identity and self-identification: in SNSs individuals strive for self-completion in posts, attempting to solve their otherwise irresolvable self-individuation process.

In this paper, I try understanding what Husserlian transcendental phenomenology and Ricoeurian hermeneutical narrative identity can say to each other: are these two approaches – as suggested so far – opposite, or can they dialogue in some way? Is there something as a transcendental phenomenology of the (narrative) existence? I inquiry this topic by tackling B. Zannoni's "I miei stupidi intenti" (Sellerio, 2021), a novel about the flow of existence, where we can see all of its fractures, dilemmas, and rearticulations.

In this rebuttal to the interventions by Francesetti (2025) and Griffero (2025), Santamato (2025) on the one hand clarifies his positions regarding atmospherology and the emotional externalism that paradigmatically constitutes it, and on the other he acknowledges some of the criticisms. This response is structured in two parts: in the first part, the discussion on emotional externalism is revisited, reaffirming Santamato’s (2025) positions through an anti-critique of the anti-critique (Griffero, 2025); in the second part, while addressing some of the criticisms directed at an atmospherological psychiatry, the discourse on an atmospherological clinical practice is revisited and expanded.

The fundamental points of the atmospherologically oriented phenomenological psychology are identified and discussed: if phenomenology sees the symptom within subjectivity, atmospherology shifts the emphasis of emotions outward. Atmospheres capture us so deeply that they direct our agency and our perception of places, objects and situations: in psychiatry it would be possible to organize a diagnostic criterion where the psychopathogenic agents are reconstructed following the emotional atmospheres grasped by the patient-person. The article problematizes the theoretical base of this concept, arguing that the personhood of the patient-person, in an externalizing theory of emotions, is lost. In a psychiatric instance, this is problematic as the aim of reconstructing one’s atmospherical emotions collides with emotions being all-out: it is at least paradoxical or conflicting to believe that one’s psychopathogenic atmospheres are clinically detectable if emotions are poured into air. Finally, it is supported the idea that, while preserving the possibility of having an atmospherological diagnosis, a deeper analysis of its theoretical preconditions is needed.

In this paper, I review Ariemma's latest work "I piedi del mondo. Come le Nike hanno rivoluzionato l'immaginario globale", ed. Luiss University Press, 2024. In my review, I try using the book's content as an occasion for deepening further in the methodology of pop-philosophy: what do we mean when we assert we are doing pop-philosophy, and from which theoretical structure do we argue? Finally, i develop some ideas for a phenomenological contextualization of the pop-philosophy: if this discipline works with the mass objects that constitute our immediate everyday life, I see phenomenology as a conceivable declination of pop-philosophy because of its interest of returning to the things themselves.

A pretending-to-be paper, a logbook with some notes for a future, more elaborate, interpretation of one of the most complex and stratified cinemas out there. 8 1/2 by Fellini has been read, seen and enjoyed in many different ways, yet I believe there is something else that dwells within it and that awaits to be theoretically explored. Nevertheless, this is the path that, in the future, I would like to develop: 8 1/2 accounts for the incessant and contradictory flow of existence, and the subject's desperate attempt to bring order to it; but perhaps the answer is to let the confused roller roll its way, accepting the incomprehensible vortex of existence.

In this paper we will read the Ellen West case through a precise perspective: under Binswanger's Daseinanalyse and E. Straus's phenomenological psychiatry, it is possible to conceive Ellen's illness as the pathology of an era. The freezing of Ellen's existence, in fact, would come from a substantial incompatibility with the existential context (They) she was thrown. The article therefore wants to shed light on this dynamic, finally arguing that, probably, the only possible cure was to intimately re-signify Ellen West's world.

Philosophy battles with some recurring themes, one of which, maybe the most one, is the complicated relation between identity and otherness. It is a match that struggles to get to the gong: the net that binds the self and the other looks more like a tangle hard to unroll. So, we don’t have the claim to settle it down, but we would like to present some strategies useful to loosen it. We will follow a precise trajectory: we will consider the philosophies of Heidegger and Nancy trying to understand what is about of identity and otherness in their philosophical frameworks. Of course, we don’t want to set sail on a historical trip: our interest is to catch the theoretical suggestions of these philosophies, knowing that they can advise us with prolific thoughts. We’ll basically have two tools: Heidegger’s Being and Time and Nancy’s Being Singular Plural. Even if those two theoretical poles are notoriously opposites, our idea is that a comparative analysis incentivizes important conclusions. Between all that otherness is an unmissable chance of expansion for the subjectivity and, because of this, their relation must be cultivated in the healthiest way.

My review of Ariemma's "Filosofia del gaming. Da Talete alla PlayStation", published by Tlon (ISBN: 979-1255540021) in 2023, not only wants to point the structure of the book but even expose the urgency of a philosophical analysis of the videogame. Thanks to Ariemma's suggestions, videogames can be argued to be experience virtualizers or "Nietzschean machines". Even further, I try to develop a so called "videogame transcendentalism", where kantism can join the debate by extending the subject transcendental structure into the videogame frontiers.

Can a videogame tell us something about what it means to be human? Or even further, what is human as such? Yoko Taro's NieR: Automata tries to answer these questions with the astonishing characteristic of the videogames: the immersion. Thanks to a coherent coincidence between playing subjectivity and virtuality given by the joypad, videogames can deeply investigate the subject about moral, ethical and existential questions. My aim in the paper is to explain what is about of the human in Taro's work thanks to Heideggerian's view on technology.

What does it mean to watch someone in social networks? This work tries to draw up an analysis of the identity in social networks thanks to Sartre's thesis on the look. What can phenomenology say about the identity condition in the virtual sociality? In the paper I argue that if the phenomenological gaze freezes the identity in an act, deposing its transcendence, the virtual one irremediably coagulates it in a social post, an interpretation that outlines a first trajectory towards a phenomenologically grounded investigation of virtual identity.

Faust is one of the most famous literary character: reshaped in different ways throughout the centuries, my goal here is to reformulate its figure with the tools of Kantian transcendentalism. This reinterpretation brings home the possibility to investigate in a new way the transhumanist logic: if Faust is a character that desperately wants to overcome in a trascendental way its condition for a more complete perspective of things, transhumanists can be seen as Fausts and, therefore, logical transcendentalists.

In this article, I aim to piece together an important part of the historical aspects of the concept of compassion in order to have a new view of the poles of subjectivity and otherness: how they interact with each other and in which ways the compassion can develop new ideas against the contemporary individualism. From Homer to Nietzsche and Lipovetsky, the compassion has seen important reshapings: recollecting these pieces is one of the keys we could need to investigate the actual human condition.