The 10th Multilateral Kant-Colloquium: "The Space of Feelings: Kant and His Legacy" (Parma/Ferrara, 28-31 August 2023)

Mimesis, 2020

Endoxa. Prospettive sul presente, 7, 35, 2022

This short article aims to reflect on the problem of "distance" in conceiving moral and legal obligations. Moving from the debate between the Scottish moralists Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith, on the one side, and Immanuel Kant on the other, I will try to draw some implications from the interaction of sense/sentiment and the moral law. In the conclusion, I will contend that a universalistic approach to the theme of moral and legal obligation is not, to closer inspection, incompatibile with the variety of circumstances one might encounter, if we assume that its meaning lies in the commitment demanded by the categorical imperative.

We can "speak of space, extended beings, and so on, only from the human standpoint". So writes Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason at the conclusion of his (metaphysical and transcendental) exposition of the concept of space, emphasising that space and the relations that take place in it obtain "objective" meaning only when considered in accordance with the "laws of their conjunction". Yet in nature, according to its a priori form, phenomena are treated without distinction of any kind, constituting, as Scaravelli wrote, a sensible texture that is "everywhere identical and perfectly isotropic". Moreover, on the basis of transcendental principles of nature alone, what is different about individual phenomena cannot be justified. In the Critique of Pure Reason, this further dimension of knowledge was perceived as a problem and the question therefore remained open: how do we refer to the space in which sense objects find their place when we are not engaged in perceiving them in precise relations, as prescribed by the laws of the intellect to the transcendental synhypothesis of the imagination? What are the qualities of the representation of external objects when the human standpoint is not concerned with their cognitive presentation in an objective and analytically predetermined world? The aim of my paper is to shed light on these questions in order to investigate the representational modes of the external sense in those cases in which the cognitive presentation of external objects in an objective and analytically predetermined world is not at stake, but the mere conformity to subjective purposes of external intuitions. My proposal, in short, is to move out of the domain of nature in general and into the territory of particular experience, and explore what in spatial representation is simply subjective.

Che cosa significa l’espressione “mente ermeneutica”? In che senso una mente può essere “ermeneutica”? Cosa ha a che fare l’ermeneutica con l’idealismo trascendentale kantiano? Quale ruolo ha il modello della mente kantiano nei diversi approcci contemporanei della filosofia della mente?

Aesthetica Preprint, 2013

Lebenswelt: Aesthetics and Philosophy of Experience, 2019

Is Deleuze really in debt to Kant? If so, in which feature of Deleuze's thought can it be traced? The Deleuzian idea of philosophy meant as a creative process for constructing concepts may be deeply rooted in Kant's thought. In his lectures on Kant held at Vincennes in 1978, he acknowledged that Kant first attributed the act of thinking a new absolute meaning: the power to create concepts and no longer a vague meaning to create images or to remember. According to Deleuze the originality of Kant's philosophy lies in creating new words and giving them a new meaning. Although Deleuze had dedicated Kant a significant study in 1963 and four lectures at Vincennes, he did not fully admit to being influenced by Kant, not even in What is Philosophy? , the last monography he wrote with Felix Guattari.

Congedarsi da Kant? Interventi sul «Goodbye Kant» di Ferraris,, 2006

The paper discusses the book of Maurizio Ferraris "Goodbye Kant" (2004) and his criticism of transcendental philosophy in general. The question of idealism and the related issue of the relationship between intuition and concepts receive particular attention in this context. [the text is the last proof and contains some minor typos]

2019

1. Presentazione della quarta via La quarta via secondo San Tommaso d'Aquino, "si prende dai gradi che si riscontrano nelle cose. È un fatto che nelle cose si trova il maggiore e il minore bene, vero, nobile e altre simili perfezioni" 2. Così ci sono cose più o meno buone, belle, nobili… Ci sono insomma diversi gradi di perfezione nell'ordine ontologico e questo è un fatto comprovato dall'esperienza sensibile ordinaria. "Ma maggiore e minore si attribuiscono a diverse cose in base al fatto che esse si accostano a qualcosa che è al massimo grado; così, è maggiormente caldo ciò che maggiormente si accosta al massimamente caldo." 3 Quindi se noi siamo in grado di percepire e di distinguere i diversi gradi di perfezione, ci deve essere qualche cosa che possiede una certa qualità nel grado sommo in modo tale che possiamo dire che i diversi gradi in questa qualità si avviccinano più o meno a quella cosa che li possiede in grado supremo. Così per esempio, ciò che chiamiamo più caldo è ciò che maggiormente si accosta al sommamente caldo (il fuoco) che non lo sia ciò che chiamiamo meno caldo. Quando diciamo che le cose sono diversamente calde, poniamo implicitamente il fuoco come analogatum princeps 4 che ci permette poi di dire che tale cosa è più o 1 Pontificia Università della Santa Croce 2 T. D'AQUINO, Summa theologiae, I, q.2,a.3. 3 Ibid. 4 Mi riferisco qua ad una analogia di attribuzione.