Dossier Ferraris
Maurizio Ferraris
Full Professor, University of Turin, Department of Philosophy
Director, Center for Theoretical and Applied Ontology (CTAO)
Via Sant'Ottavio, 20, 10124, Turin, Italy
+39.011.670.37.38, Fax. +39.011.812.45.43
[email protected]
CURRICULUM VITAE
Born in Turin, Italy, February 7th 1956
Education and Academic Positions
1979, B.A. in philosophy (laurea), cum laude, University of Turin.
1980-1984, Chief of Seminar, University of Turin.
1982 Grant for abroad specialization (Paris), Ministry of Public Instruction
1982-1984, Professorship in Aesthetics, University of Macerata.
1984, Diplôme d’études approfondies, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris.
1985 (Fall) Visiting scholar (Yale University, University of California at Los Angeles, New York University,
University of Colorado, Boulder), United States Information Agency.
1988 Grant “Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst”, University of Heidelberg.
1989 (Fall), Chief of Seminar, Collège International de Philosophie, Paris.
1984-1988, Professorship in Aesthetics, University of Trieste.
1988-1995, Associate professor in Aesthetics, University of Trieste.
1990 (Fall) Visiting Professor, Colorado College.
1994-1996 Scholarship at Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, University of Heidelberg.
1995-1999, Tenured Professor of Aesthetics, University of Turin.
1998-2003, Professor at large, Collège International de Philosophie, Paris
1999-, Full professor of Theoretical Philosophy, University of Turin.
1999 (September), Visiting Professor, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
2000 (Spring), Visiting Professor, University of Montpellier.
2001-02 Visiting Scholar, Institut Jean Nicod, Paris.
2002 (May), Visiting Professor, Indianapolis University, Athens.
2003 (September), Visiting Professor, Istituto Tecnologico de Monterrey.
2004 (Spring), Visiting Professor, University of Leipzig.
2006 (Fall), Fellow, Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America, New York.
2007 (February), Visiting Professor, University of California at Santa Barbara.
2007 (March), Visiting Professor, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris.
2008 (February), Visiting Professor, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris.
Books
(2012) Bentornata Realtà. Il nuovo realismo in discussione, Torino, Einaudi, pp. 234;
(2012) Documentality. Why it is necessary to leave traces, New York, Fordham University Press, pp. 400;
(2012) Lasciar tracce: documentalità e architettura, Milano, Mimesis, pp. 96;
(2012) Manifesto del Nuovo Realismo, Roma-Bari, Laterza, pp. 160;
(2011) Anima e iPad, Parma, Guanda, pp. 192;
(2011) Filosofia per dame, Parma, Guanda, pp. 208;
(2011) Estetica Razionale (new edition), Milano, Raffaello Cortina, pp. 678.
(2010) Ricostruire la decostruzione. Cinque saggi a partire da Jacques Derrida, Milano, Bompiani, pp. 128;
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Dossier Ferraris
(2009) Documentalità. Perché è necessario lasciar tracce, Roma-Bari, Laterza, pp. XV-429;
(2009) Piangere e ridere davvero. Feuilleton, Genova, il melangolo, pp. 100;
(2009) Una Ikea di università. Alla prova dei fatti, new extended edition, Milano, Raffaello Cortina, pp. 161;
(2008) Storia dell'ontologia (with other authors), Milano, Bompiani, pp. 826, 2nd edition 2009;
(2008) Il tunnel delle multe. Ontologia degli oggetti quotidiani, Torino, Einaudi, pp. 284;
(2007) La Fidanzata Automatica, Milano, Bompiani, pp. 204;
(2007) Sans Papier. Ontologia dell'attualità, Roma, Castelvecchi, pp. 233;
(2006) Babbo Natale, Gesù Adulto. In cosa crede chi crede?, Milano, Bompiani, pp. 151;
(2006) Jackie Derrida. Ritratto a memoria, Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, pp. 120; Spanish translation Jackie
Derrida. Retrato de memoria, Bogotá, Siglo del Hombre, 2007;
(2005) Dove sei? Ontologia del telefonino, Milano, Bompiani, pp. 294, 2nd edition 2006; French translation by
Pierre-Emmanuel Dauzat, T'es où? Ontologie du téléphone mobile, Paris, Albin Michel, pp. 312, 2006; new
edition in “Letture di filosofia” collection, introduction by Umberto Eco, Milano, Il Sole 24 ore, pp. 350, 2007;
Spanish translation by Carmen Revilla Guzmán, ¿Dónde estás? Ontología del teléfono móvil, Barcelona,
Marbot, 2008, pp. 320; Romanian translation by Teodora Pavel, Alo? Unde eşti? Mic tratat despre telefonul
mobil, Bucureşti, RAO, pp. 336, 2008; Hungarian translation by Judit Gál, Hol vagy? A mobiltelefon
ontológiája, Budapest, Európa, 2008, Serbian translation by Ivo Kara-Pešić, Gde si? Ontologija mobilnog
telefona, Fedon, Beograd, 2011 pp. 448; forthcoming translation in Korean (Hyunsil), turkish (Periferi Kitap),
english (Fordham University Press, USA).
(2004) Goodbye Kant!, Milano, Bompiani, pp. 154, 5th edition 2006; Spanish translation Goodbye, Kant! Qué
queda hoy de la Critica de la razón pura, Madrid, Losada, pp. 205, 2007; French translation by Jean-Pierre
Cometti Goodbye, Kant! Ce qu’il reste aujourd'hui de la Critique de la raison pure, preface by P. Engel, Paris,
Editions de l’éclat, pp. 176, 2009; Serbian translation by Ivo Kara- Pešić, Goodbye Kant! Šta ostaje danas od
Kritike čistog uma, Paideia, Beograd, 2010;
(2003) Ontologia, Napoli, Guida, pp. 168, 2nd edition 2008;
(2003) Introduzione a Derrida, Roma-Bari, Laterza, pp. 161, 3nd edition 2008; Spanish translation Introducción
a Derrida, Buenos Aires-Madrid, Amorrortu editores, pp. 186, 2006;
(2001) L’altra estetica, Torino, Einaudi (with other authors), pp. 351;
(2001) Il mondo esterno, Milano, Bompiani, pp. 210;
(2001) Experimentelle Ästhetik, Vienna, Turia und Kant, pp. 170;
(2001) Una ikea di università, Milano, Cortina, pp. 117;
(2000) Nietzsche y el nihilismo, Madrid, Akal, pp. 87;
(1999) La filosofia del Novecento, Pavia, Ibis (with other authors), pp. 176;
(1999) Nietzsche, Roma-Bari, Laterza (with other authors), pp. 422, 2nd edition 2004;
(1998) L’ermeneutica, Roma-Bari, Laterza, pp. 130, 2a edizione 2003; Mexican translation La hermenéutica,
Ciudad de México, Taurus Mexicana, 2000; Spanish translation by Lázaro Sanz, La Hermenéutica, Madrid,
Ediciones Cristiandad, 2004;
(1998) Honoris causa a Derrida, Torino, Rosenberg & Sellier, pp. 106;
(1997) Estetica razionale, Milano, Cortina, pp. 648;
(1997) Il gusto del segreto, with J. Derrida, Roma-Bari, Laterza, pp. 181; English translation, A Taste for the
Secret, London, Blackwell, 2001; Portuguese translation, O Gosto do Segredo, Lisboa, Fim de Século, 2006;
(1996) Estetica, Turin, Utet; (with other authors), pp. 114;
(1996) L’immaginazione, Bologna, il Mulino. pp. 157; Spanish translation by F. Campillo Garcia, La
Imaginación, Madrid, Visor, 1998; Turkish translation by Firat Genç, İmgelem, Ankara, Dost, 2008, pp. 143;
(1994) Analogon rationis, Milano, Pratica filosofica, pp. 150;
(1992) Storia della volontà di potenza, in Friedrich Nietzsche, La volontà di potenza, Milano, Bompiani, pp.
563-688, “Corriere della Sera” special edition 2009;
(1992) Mimica. Lutto e autobiografia da Agostino a Heidegger, Milano, Bompiani, pp. 150; Spanish translation,
Luto y Autobiografía, Mexico City, Taurus, 2000;
(1991) La filosofia e lo spirito vivente, Roma-Bari, Laterza, pp. 280;
(1990) Postille a Derrida, Torino, Rosenberg & Sellier, pp. 308;
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Dossier Ferraris
(1990) Cronistoria di una svolta, in Martin Heidegger, La svolta, Genova, il Melangolo (translation and
conclusion: pp. 35-115);
(1989) Nietzsche e la filosofia del Novecento, Milano, Bompiani; 2nd edition 1999, pp. 170; new edition, with a
new introduction 2009.
(1988) Storia dell’ermeneutica, Milano, Bompiani, 9th edition, with a new introduction, 2008, pp. 528; english
translation, History of Hermeneutics, New Jersey, Humanities Press, 1996; Spanish translation, Historia de la
Hermeneutica, Madrid, Akal, 2001 and Mexico City, Siglo XXI, 2002;
(1987) Ermeneutica di Proust, Milano, Guerini e associati, pp. 124;
(1986) Aspetti dell’ermeneutica del Novecento, in Il pensiero ermeneutico. Testi e materiali, Genova, Marietti,
pp. 209-277;
(1984) La svolta testuale. Il decostruzionismo in Derrida, Lyotard, gli “Yale Critics”, Pavia, Cluep, pp. 145; 2nd
edition, Milano, Unicopli, 1986; partial Spanish translation in M. Asensi (ed.), Teoría literaria y deconstrucción,
Madrid, Arco / Libros, 1990;
(1983) Tracce. Nichilismo moderno postmoderno, Milano, Multhipla, pp. 174; 2nd edition with a new
introduction, Milano, Mimesis, 2006, pp. 173;
(1981) Differenze. La filosofia francese dopo lo strutturalismo, Milano, Multhipla, pp. 228, 2nd edition with a
new introduction, Milano, Edizioni AlboVersorio, 2007, pp. 158.
Prizes
1990 “Claretta” award for cultural collaboration between Italy and France.
2004 Research award, Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung.
2005 “Valitutti” award.
2006 “Castiglioncello” Philosophical award.
2007 “Ringrose” award, University of Berkeley.
2008 “Viaggio a Siracusa” Philosophical award.
Service
1996 – Editor in chief of Rivista di Estetica.
1997-2001 Director of Department of Philosophy, University of Turin.
1998-2003 Directeur de programme, Collège International de Philosophie.
2001- Director of LabOnt, University of Turin.
2001- Director of CTAO, University of Turin.
2002-2004 National coordinator of the Italian Research Ministry Programme “Intellectual property: property of
objects, properties of ideas”.
2004 – Director of the series “Ontologia”.
2004-2006 National coordinator of the Italian Research Ministry Programme “Ontological Canon, an integrative
approach to knowledge organization”.
2006-2008 National coordinator of the Italian Research Ministry Programme “Documentality – Ontologies and
technologies for citizenship and democracy”.
2008 – Member of the directory board of Critique.
2008 – Advisory editor of Monist.
International lectures
Argentina.
1987, 14/11 “La condicion del postmoderno”, University of Rosario.
1987, 18/11 “Postmoderno y Arquitectura”, Bienal internacional de arquitectura, Buenos Aires.
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Dossier Ferraris
Austria
1999, 20/05 “Experimentelle Aesthetik”, University of Vienna
2004, 12/08 “Causality and Unamendableness”, Kirchberg a/W., International Wittgenstein Symposium.
2006, 12/08 “Documentality Or why nothing social exists beyond the text”, ibidem.
2007, 8/08 “Sans Papier. Or: how change our documents (and social identity) in digital age” ibidem.
Belgium
1993, 7/12 “Critique du jugement, § 59”, University of Liège.
1995, 24/07 “L’esprit et la trace” University of Louvain-La-Neuve.
2008, 9/10 “Ontology and documents”, Bruxelles, Electronic archiving and Document Management in the
European Commission.
Canada
1984, 16/08 “Herméneutique et écriture”, University of Montréal.
Colombia
2007, 24/04 “Jackie Derrida”, Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango, Bogotà.
2007, 25/04 “Ontología del celular” University Javeriana, Bogotà.
2007, 27/04 “Ontología del celular” University of Cartagena.
Croatia
1986, 24-27/03 “Postmodern and the Deconstruction of Modern”, University of Zagabria.
France
1985, 13/12 “De la décision qui fonde un état », Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou.
1987, 29/05 “Sur Lyotard”, Paris, Faculté de Philosophie du Centre-Sèvres.
1990, 31/03 “Monument pour l’existentialisme”, Grenoble, Centre National d’art contemporaine.
1990, 6/12 “La deconstruction et les lettres”, Royaumont, International conference in honor of Derrida.
1991,15/03 “Platon et l’écriture”, University of Nice.
1992, 15/07 “La soeur parapluie”, Centre culturel de Cerisy la Salle.
1995, 15/10 “La réligion”, Paris, Istituto italiano di cultura.
1999, 16/06 “La phénoménologie et le Messie”, Paris, Collège International de philosophie.
2004, 2/12 “Heidegger et nous”, University of Strasbourg.
2006, 12/01 “Objets sociaux”, Paris, Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales.
2006, 10/02 “Objets sociaux et textualisme faible”, University of Aix-Marseille.
2007, 6/12 “Ontologie du portable”, Paris, Istituto Italiano di Cultura.
2008, 7/02 “Documentalité”, Paris, Institut Jean Nicod.
2008, 12/12 “Pleurer et rire vraiment”, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale.
Germany
1989, 12/10 “Akademische Reden”, Schelling-Gesellschaft, Leonberg.
1994, 17/12 “Aesthetics and Reality”, University of Magdeburg.
2004, 26/06 “Ontology and Epistemology”, University of Leipzig.
2004, 6/09 “Kant Heute”, University of Heidelberg.
2005, 18/01 “Social Objects”, Universität des Saarlandes.
2007, 18/06 “Mobile Ontologie” University of Hannover.
Greece
2002, 20/05 “Aesthetics and Ontology”, University of Athens.
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Dossier Ferraris
Hungary
2005, 27/05 “Where are you? Mobile ontology”, Budapest, Academy of sciences.
2009, 05/11 “Derrida’s Ghosts”, Pécs University
Mexico
1999, 20/09 “Ontologia y Deconstruction”, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
2002, 29/04 Videoconference with Jacques Derrida, Istituto Tecnologico de Monterrey
2003, 29/08 “Despues la deconstruccion que?”, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
2007, 2-4/05 “Sans papier. Documentality and Social Ontology”, Universidad Ibero-Americana, Mexico City.
Spain
1987, 19/02 “Hermeneutica y Deconstruction”, University of Valencia.
1990, 2/05 “Derrida y la deconstruction”, University of Murcia.
1990, 4/07 “Etica y hermeneutica”, Madrid, Instituto Universitario Ortega y Gasset.
1993, 4/11 “Antropologia y ontologia del arte”, Madrid, Universidad Complutense,.
1994, 12/12 “Hermeneutica y Literatura”, Universidad de la Laguna, Canarie.
2007, 16/03 “Ontologia movil”, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.
2007, 21/09 “La explosion de la escritura”. University of Córdoba
2009, 21/02, “Politicas del movil”, Poeticas i politicas de la deconstrucción: entorno a Jacques Derrida,
MACBA-Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona
2009, 01/05, "Sans papier. Ontology of actuality", Murcia, Estrella Levante Music Festival
Switzerland
1983, 21/4 “Les périodiques de culture in Italie” Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Bossey (Geneva).
1993, 1/04 “Nietzsche e la nazione tedesca”, Lugano, Società filosofica della Svizzera Italiana.
2004, 21 e 28/01 “Physique Naïve”, University of Geneva.
2008, 15/05 “Littérature et vérité”, University of Geneva.
2009, 25/10, “Una Ikea di Università”, Lugano Istituto Universitario Federale per la Formazione Professionale
Turkey
1994, 28/04 “L’Europe entre l’esprit et le climat”, Istanbul, Marmara Üniversitesi.
United Kingdom
1987, 2/06 “Ermeneutica e secolarizzazione”, London, Istituto italiano di cultura.
1998, 27/11 “Derrida’s Reading of Husserl”, University of Warwick.
United States of America
1985, 12/11 “Postmodern”, University of California at Los Angeles.
1985, 21/11 “Deconstruction”, Yale University.
1990, 10/12 “Heidegger and Derrida”, University of California at Irvine.
1997, 18/11 “Rational Aesthetics”, Columbia University, New York.
1999, 10/10 “The Perception of Causality”, New York University.
2006, 7/10 “Ontology and Documentality”, Italian Academy, New York.
2006, 6/11 “The invention of God”, New York, Istituto Italiano di Cultura
2007, 21/02 “Mobile Ontology”, University of California at Santa Barbara
2007, 23/02 “Mobile Ontology”, Berkeley University
2007, 26/02 ”Post-modern twenty years later”, University of California at Los Angeles.
Impact
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Dossier Ferraris
Studies
(2006) A. Ferrarin, (ed.), Congedarsi da Kant? Interventi sul Goodbye Kant di Ferraris, Pisa, Edizioni ETS, pp.
162 [ISBN: 88-467-1502-0] [http://www.edizioniets.com/anteprime/Ferraris_88-467-1502-0]
(2009) C. Esposito and P. Porro, “Ontologia, metafisica, storia dell’ontologia”, in Esposito-Porro (eds),
Filosofia, Roma-Bari, Laterza, pp. 690-695.
(2009), “Ferraris”, in D. Antiseri and S. Tagliagambe, eds., Filosofi italiani contemporanei, Milan, Bompiani, pp.
226-235 (English translation adjoined to CV, supplement1).
Citations in Google Scholar: 897 (28 november 2011).
Reviews (Last 6 Years), full texts at http://www.labont.it/ferraris/
Anima e iPad, 08.08.2011, Il Giornale di Brescia, 20.08.2011, Tuttolibri Supplemento de La Stampa;
09.09.2011, Left, S. Maggiorelli; 28.09.2011, Europa; 01.10.2011, Flair, di M. de Pas e L. Donini; 06/10/2011,
La Repubblica, V. Magrelli; 06/10/2011, GQ.Com, C. Arnese; 07/10/2011, Il Fatto Quotidiano, M. Filoni;
09/10/2011, La Stampa, F. Rigatelli; 13/10/2011, Il Riformista, C. Ocone; 14/10/2011, Il Centro, C. Tatasciore;
16/10/2011, Corriere della sera, E. Boncinelli; 16/10/2011, Il sole 24 ore, A. Li Vigni; 18/10/2011, Il Mattino, C.
Ocone; 01/11/2011, Il Corriere della Sera, Roma, M. Andreetti; 11/11/2011, La Stampa, J. Iacoboni;
16/11/2011, La voce repubblicana, F. Bernardini; 18/11/2011, Corriere della Sera, C. Formenti.
Filosofia per dame, 30/01/2011, Il sole 24 ore, S. Morini; 01/02/2011, La Repubblica, M. Ferraris; 03/02/2011,
Metro; 04/02/2011, Il venerdì de La Repubblica, L. Crinò; 04/02/2011, Torinosette, supplemento de La
Stampa; 08/02/2011, La Repubblica, V. Schiavazzi; 09/02/2011, La Repubblica edizione di Torino;
09/02/2011, La Stampa Torino; 10/02/2011, La Stampa, M. Gramellini; Donna moderna, V. Colavecchio;
11/02/2011, Europa; 22/02/2011, La Repubblica, Napoli, C. De Seta; 02/03/2011, Vanity Fair, S. Bombino;
23/02/2011, Liberal, G. Desiderio; 10/03/2011, Panorama, S. Tomasi; 10/03/2011, Il Corriere della Sera;
22/04/2011, Il Mattino, S. Santirosi; 09.09.2011, Left, S. Maggiorelli.
Ricostruire la Decostruzione, 30/08/2010, Famiglia Cristiana, P. Perazzolo; 02/09/2010, Scalfari vs Baricco;
02/09/2010, Repubblica.it; 05/09/2010, Festival della mente; 01/10/2010, La nuova provincia; 03/10/2010, Il
Sole 24 Ore, R. Bodei; 08/10/2010 Il Mattino, C. Ocone; novembre-dicembre 2010, Reset, C. Ocone;
11/10/2010, Il recensore.com; 26/03/2011, Il Manifesto, S. Catucci.
Documentalità, 07/11/2009, Il Secolo XIX; 08/11/2009 Il Sole 24 Ore; 12/11/2009 Europa, G.Cocconi;
14/11/2009, Il Mattino, C. Ocone; 14/11/2009, Il Tempo, R. Zinzocchi; 25/11/2009, L'Eco di Bergamo, G. Brotti;
29/11/2009, La Stampa, G. Vattimo; 03/12/2009, Nuova Provincia E. Brizio; 06/12/2009, Il Sole 24 Ore, R.
Bodei;12/12/2009, Avvenire, F. Tomatis.
Piangere e ridere davvero, 18/05/2009, La Stampa, M. Assalto; 20/05/2009, Pagina Tre E. Brizio; 08/06/2009,
Il Secolo XIX, G. Galletta; 03/07/2009, Corriere del Trentino, C. Gelmi; 09/07/2009, Phenomenology Lab, L.M.
Zanet; 16/07/2009, Avvenire, A. Lavazza; 20/07/2009, Affariitaliani.it, L. M. Zanet; 23/08/2009, Famiglia
Cristiana, L. Bosio; 20/09/2009 Il Recensore, D. Guzzeloni.
Il tunnel delle multe. 04/2008, Class, M. Gregoretti; 13/04/2008, Il Sole 24 Ore, A. Massarenti; 22/04/2008,
Radio Svizzera, Rete 2. F. Rigotti; 26/04/2008, La regione ticino, F. Rigotti; 30/04/2008, Panorama, P.
Chessa; 01/05/2008, Il Venerdì di Repubblica, M. Cicala; 11/05/2008, Il Giornale, D. Abbiati; 14/06/2008, La
Stampa, M. Assalto; 26-27/06/2008, Il Giornale di Vicenza, S. Girlanda; 07/09/2008, Il Giornale, P. Bianchi;
2008, Reset, C. Ocone.
La fidanzata automatica. 02/11/2007, Left-Avvenimenti, S. Maggiorelli; 08/11/2007, ReF - Recensioni
Filosofiche, F. Rigotti; 18/11/2007, Il Sole 24 Ore, A. Li Vigni; 20-21-22/11/2007, Melog (Radio 24) G. Nicoletti;
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Dossier Ferraris
12/2007, Diogene Filosofare Oggi, M. Maistrini; 2008, Epistemologia, C. Barbero; 2008, Rivista di Estetica, E.
Terrone; 01/2008, la Rivista dei Libri, M. Nacci; 01/2008, Polemos, U. Morelli e L. Mori; 05/01/2008, L’Arena
di Verona, G.L. Verzellesi; 30/01/2008, Il Domenicale, R. Fassa; 14/02/2008 l’Adige, C. Cucco.
Sans papier. 19/04/2007, La Stampa, S. Czernik; 30/04/2007, La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno, G. Dato;
05/2007, In altri Termini, S. del Vecchio; 10/05/2007, La Stampa, M. Baudino; 20/05/2007, Bresciaoggi P.
Zolet; 24/05/2007, Il Manifesto, N. Bruno; 26/05/2007, La Stampa, M. Belpoliti; 01/06/2007, La Gazzetta del
Mezzogiorno, M.P. Porcelli; 30/06/2007, Corriere del Mezzogiorno, E. Mansueto; 09/07/2007, Il Messaggero,
R. Simone; 05/08/2007, La Sicilia, R. Fai; 11/09/2007, Corriere di Bologna, A. Rinaldi; 09/01/2008, La
Repubblica, L. Montanari; 09/01/2008, L’Unità, R. Cassigoli.
Babbo Natale, Gesù adulto. 02/11/2006, Il Mattino, C. Ocone; 08/11/2006, Pratica filosofica, M. Maistrini;
10/11/2006, Il Foglio, C. Langone; 10/11/2006, L’Avvenire, R. Malpelo; 20/11/2006, La Stampa, M. Baudino;
21/11/2006, Il Giornale, M. Introvigne; 25/11/2006, L’Avvenire, M. Schoepflin; 12/2006, Altri Termini, S.
Coccoluto; 12/2006, Nouvel Observateur, P. Engel; 01/12/2006, Il Venerdi di Repubblica, C. Augias;
03/12/2006, L’Avvenire, F. Carminati; 03/12/2006, Il Manifesto, R. De Monticelli; 17/12/2006, Liberazione, E.
Castellana; 23/12/2006, Il Riformista, G. Bonanni; 25/12/2006 Rescogitans, P. Perconti, S. Morini, A. Voltolini;
26/12/2006, Panorama, P. Chessa; 29/12/2006; UUAR, R. Carcano; 30/12/2006 La Repubblica, F. Volpi;
01/2007, L’indice, M. Turchetto; 05/01/2007, Parvapolis, M. Cascio; 06/01/2007, Corriere della Sera. G.
Giorello; 11/01/2007; Panorama, S. Petrignani; 14/01/2007, Portale Acli Lombardia, L. Maglio; 15/01/2007; La
Lente, C. Talenti; 21/02/2007, La Repubblica, G. Romegnoli; 05/2007, La Rivista dei Libri, A. Voltolini.
Jackie Derrida. 05-08/2006 Antologia Viesseux, A. Sartini; 05/05/2006, Turin Sette, A. Massarenti; 08/06/2006,
Panorama, P. Chessa; 24/06/2006, Il Manifesto, M. Pacioni; 05/09/2006, Il Riformista, C. Ocone; 11/2006,
Reset, n.38, A. Lanni; 27/10/2006, ReF - Recensione Filosofiche, M. Maistrini; 10/04/2007 , L’Unità, R.
Cassigoli; 11/04/2007, Il Corriere di Firenze, L. Franco; 11/04/2007, La Repubblica, A. Benedetti.
Dove sei? Ontologia del telefonino. 28/08/2005, L’Avvenire, F. Tomatis; 31/08/2005, La Stampa, R. Rizzo;
01/09/2005, L’Espresso, U. Eco; 01/09/2005, Vanity Fair, E. Brocardo; 04/09/2005, Messaggero Veneto, U.
Curi; 08/09/2005, La Repubblica Radio, E. Assante; 09/09/2005, Turin Sette, G. Ormezzano; 10/09/2005,
Specchio, A. Elkann; 11/09/2005, L’Eco di Bergamo, L. Amiguet; 13/09/2005, Il Mattino, C Ocone; 15/09/2005,
Il Giornale, D. Abbiati; 15/09/2005, L’Espresso, U. Eco; 16/09/2005, La Provincia di Como, M. Cambiaghi;
17/09/2005, Specchio, P. Bianucci; 21/09/2005, Il Manifesto, D. Padoan; 21/09/2005, Il Manifesto, P. Marocco;
26/09/2005, FERPI E. Di Pasqua; 28/09/2005, Zeusnews P. L. Tolardo; 28/09/2005, Newsgroup it.arti.cinema,
M. Benedikt; 28/09/2005, Kommunikations Forum, N. Schou; 30/09/2005, L’Unità, B. Sebaste; 10/2005,
Motortravel, M. Meneghelli; 08/10/2005, La Repubblica, E. Berselli; 10/10/2005, L’Arena, M. Mattei;
13/10/2005, Il Giornale, L. Canali; 15/10/2005, L’Eco di Bergamo, M. Mataluno; 17/10/2005, Il Tempo, A.
Salarelli; 21/10/2005, Scienze Della Comunicazione.Com, M. Giuliano; 23/10/2005, Stilos, P. Marocco;
27/10/2005 (e successivi interventi), L’estinto, I. Silvestro; 30/10/2005, Bol.it, A. Barbera; 31/10/2005, Il
Messaggero, S. Vacchi; 31/10/2005, Mentelocale, B. Scapolo; 10/11/2005, La Stampa, P. Bianucci;
11/11/2005, La Repubblica, V. Schiavazzi; 19/11/2005, Vita, S. De Carli; 21/11/2005, Il Tirreno, D. Fiesoli;
12/2005, Il Ponte, LXI, n. 12, C. Bordoni; 10/12/2005, La Stampa, F. Peiretti; 27/12/2005, La Mescolanza, C.
Lanza; 29/12/2005, Giudizio Universale, R. Bassetti; 17/02/2006, ReF - Recensioni Filosofiche, M. Maistrini;
24/03/2006, Café Letterario, I. Balzani; 05/2006, L’Indice, P. Di Lucia; 05/2006, Iride, R. Casati; 10/2006
Phronesis, S.I. D’Agostino; 26/10/2006, Libération, R. Maggiori; 01/11/2006, Le Figaro, S. Lapaque; 2007,
Revue Philosophique, P. Engel; 27/05/2007, Carte allineate, R. Bertoni; 25/01/2008, Europa, L. Faenzi; 2007,
Critique, F. Nef.
Goodbye Kant! A. Ferrarin, (a c. di), Congedarsi da Kant? Interventi sul Goodbye Kant di Ferraris, Pisa, ETS,
2006, pp. 162. V. Costa, Il Manifesto, 5/11 2004; D. Rosvaldi, 14/11 2004; C. Zeni, Corriere dell’Umbria,
24/11 2004; B. Sebaste, L’Unità, 7/12 2004; A. Gnoli, La Repubblica, 7/12 2004; S. Fallica, La Sicilia, 16/12
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2004; D. Marconi, Il Sole 24 Ore, 19/12 2004; A. Pagnini, Il Sole 24 Ore, 19/12 2004; P. Odifreddi, L’Espresso,
26/12 2004; F. D’Agostini, Tuttolibri, 8/01 2005; E. Cantoni, Gazzetta del Sud, 11/01 2005; C. Ocone, Il
Mattino, 25/01 2005; B. Torresin, La Repubblica, 4/02 2005; A. Messina, Dove,/02 2005; G. Giorello, Corriere
della Sera – Magazine, 10/02 2005; V. D’Amora, vulgo.net, 2004; P. Godani, Rivista di estetica, 2005; C. A.
Viano, L’indice, 2005; C. Augias, il Venerdì, 26/08 2005; O. Meo, Epistemologia, No. 2, Vol. 29, LuglioDicembre 2006; F. Tampoia, REF, 28/10 2007; F. Nef, “Critique”, 2006.
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Supplement One.
A presentation of Ferraris’ Philosophy
From D. Antiseri and S. Tagliagambe, eds., Filosofi italiani contemporanei, Milan, Bompiani 2009, pp. 226235.
Hermeneutics: spirit and letter
Ferraris graduated in Philosophy at the Univeristy of Turin in 1979, with Gianni Vattimo as his graduation
dissertation supervisor. His first interests were directed to French post-structuralist philosophy: Gilles Deleuze,
Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard and especially Jacques Derrida. These studies led to
the publication of three books Differenze. La filosofia francese dopo lo strutturalismo (1981); Tracce.
Nichilismo moderno postmoderno (1983); e La svolta testuale. Il decostruzionismo in Derrida, Lyotard, gli
“Yale Critics” (1984).
In these early years Ferraris dedicated himself to the double roles of cultural journalist and of academic
teacher and researcher. From 1979 to 1988, he was an editor and, later, codirector of Alfabeta, on whose
editorial board sat, among others, Antonio Porta, Nanni Balestrini, Maria Corti, Umberto Eco, Francesco
Leonetti, Pier Aldo Rovatti and Paolo Volponi. In 1981, he began his relation with Derrida, which grew into
friendship, as related and analysed in Jackie Derrida. Ritratto a memoria (2006). Ferraris wrote other books on
the French philosopher: Postille a Derrida (1990), Honoris causa a Derrida (1998) Introduzione a Derrida
(2003), as well as the book of conversations, Il gusto del segreto (1997).
On the academic side, after two years of teaching in Macerata (1982-3), Ferraris took up a post at Trieste in
1984 and began a series of stays in Heidelberg where, in touch with Gadamer, he undertook a study of
hermeneutics, and carried out researches that led to the publication of Aspetti dell’ermeneutica del Novecento,
in Il pensiero ermeneutico. Testi e materiali (1986); Ermeneutica di Proust (1987); Nietzsche e la filosofia del
Novecento (1989), and, most importantly, Storia dell’ermeneutica (1988).
In his encounter with hermeneutics, Ferraris brought to light how post-structuralism constitutes a critique of the
Romantic and idealistic heritage that underlies the Heideggerian and Gadamerian traditions. To claim, as
Heidegger did, that science does not think, or, as Gadamer did, that the experience of truth is essentially
extra-methodical is, in the end, to place oneself above the rules in a posture that leads to dogmatism, when it
does not go so far as totalitarianism. And does the call to dialogue as the fusion of horizons really have any
modest use or does it not, more seriously, present a contradiction: what sort of dialogue can there be when we
have done without rules? Won’t it rather lead to the pretence of dialogue, to a mere appearance that hides a
monologue and even to bullying?
Against this background, Ferraris sought to articulate Derrida’s criticisms of hermeneutics, placing them in a
broader context. Specifically, the appeal to the spirit over against the letter, and the fusional and vitalistic
paradigm that hermeneutics inherits from idealiam and, more generally, from Christianity appear highly
problematic. Starting from these considerations, Ferraris developed a critique of Heidegger that may be
summarised as follows: the problem of Heidegger’s membership of the Nazi party (which Victor Farias’ book
on the subject had made a hot topic in the late 1980s) should not be regarded as a merely accidental matter,
but reveals a substantial feature of Heideggerian philosophy which, with its definition of truth as the upshot of a
decision and as a historical opening, rather than as conformity of the proposition to the thing, leads to a
philosophical justification of the authority principle.
Thus, the opposition between spirit and letter carries with it moral and political consequences: sometimes
philosophers, as well as ordinary folk, downgrade the letter (norms, rules) relative to the spririt, regarding the
former as a mere form and the latter as the vital and authentic element. But it is precisely in the letter – in
inscriptions, in documents and in laws – that the limits to the abuse of office and the will to power can be
established: these are ties that, in civil life, are provided by the laws, and in the sciences, by methodical rules
and procedures, in such a way that, to claim that science does not think (as Heidegger did) is not so very
different from claiming that the political leader is above the law.
The realist turn
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These conclusions called for a turn away from hermeneutics. The critique of Heidegger set out in Cronistoria di
una svolta (a long postface to Heidegger’s short Die Kehre which Ferraris translated into Italian in 1991)
required an overhaul of the whole historical and conceptual framework of radical hermeneutics, with particular
attention to the ethical and political implications. In the same spirit of historiographical revision, Ferraris,
together with Pietro Kobau, made a fresh Italian translation of The Will to Power, to which he added a long
postface Storia della volontà di potenza, in which he argued that Nietzsche’s morally unacceptable views are
not (as is popularly supposed) the upshot of interpolations, but express the very core of his thought. From a
more strictly theoretical perspective, the critique of hermeneutical vitalism was then set out in detail in La
filosofia e lo spirito vivente (1991), which elaborates the opposition between letter and spirit, viewed as the
underlying paradigm common to philosophical and religious reflection from Platonism and Christianity down to
German Idealism.
As a point of theory, Ferraris’ realist turn represented a move from hermeneutic relativism to a realist
objectivism: where radical hermeneutics regards objectivity and reality as sources of violence and abuse of
power, they are, as a matter of fact – and precisely as a consequence of the spirit-letter opposition to which we
have referred – our only defence against arbitrariness. This principle holds in the moral and practical realm
above all because it rests on the theoretical foundation of the recognition of a sphere of reality independent of
interpretations, of conceptual schemes, of reformulations and of possible linguistic manipulations. At this point,
there began to emerge in Ferraris’ thought a distinction between ontology (what there is) and epistemology
(what we know about what there is), which would be fully developed after 2000. These views are set out in
summary in L’ermeneutica (1998) and more fully in terms of a critique of culture in Una ikea di università
(2001). At the same time, the critical re-reading of the historigraphical background of radical hermeneutics was
being carried forward in particular in the analysis offered in the collaborative volume Nietzsche (1999), which
seeks to relocate Nietzsche’s thought in its historical context, above all in relation to the sciences.
Aesthetics and naïve physics
Viewed more positively, the realist turn took Ferraris in the direction of a reconsideration of the relations
between sensible experience and conceptual schemes. Starting in 1993, this development took two forms. On
the one hand, there was the study of Kant’s philosophy viewed as thought about forms, and hence in
opposition to the theoretical vitalism (which had in the meantime also become a sort of media populism). On
the other, he reconsidered the nature of aesthetics as a realm of perception and passivity, in a way that
twentieth-century philosophy, with its overriding preoccupation with the analysis of language and of conceptual
schemes, had largely ignored.
While the Kantian studies would see the light only at the end of the decade, right from the early 1990s, Ferraris
recognised the ontological centrality of aesthetics, above all as the site of a theory of experience in many ways
similar to the ‘naïve physics’ theorised by the great Trieste perceptologist Paolo Bozzi. How does reality
present itself to us? In the first instance, as something that we encounter through the senses, and whose
effective data are not up for correction. This reality, which is offered to us first of all in sensation makes up the
true object of aesthetics, which is thus returned to its etymological sense of aisthesis. This notion is worked out
in books such as Analogon rationis (1994), Estetica (1996, in collaboration with other authors),
L’immaginazione (1996), Experimentelle Ästhetik (2001), and above all in Estetica razionale (1997), where
Ferraris proposed aesthetics not as a philosophy of art, but as an ontology of sensible experience, which in
turn led to a renewal of the debate within the discipline in two basic directions.
In the first place, there was the attempt to make aesthetics interact with philosophy as a whole, bringing it out
of its isolation as an academic specialism limited to the philosophy of art and often devoted solely to literary
works. To avoid this regionalisation, Ferraris’ innovative proposal was to make a direct link between aesthetics
and ontology. This had two fundamental consequences. On the one hand, it inserted the data of aesthetics as
a whole into the general scheme of philosophical discussion. On the other, it reopened the debate about the
ontology of art, namely that regarding the kinds of entities that are calle d’works of art’.
Nevertheless – and here we come to the second underlying motive for the reconsideration of aesthetics that
Ferraris proposed in the 1990s – the reference to ontology also called for a re-evalutaion of the sensible
moment in aesthetic experience and of the reference to aisthesis that, especially in the twentieth century, had
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gone under the guise of an incoherent relic or a mere terminological inexactitude. Aesthetics can raise the
question of the artwork only when once it has an account of the world of perception in which those works have
their justification and their ontological foundation.
Critical ontology and unemendability
In 1995, Ferraris was appointed Full Professor of Aesthetics at the University of Turin and, in 1999, moved to
the Chair of Theoretical Philosophy. From 1998 to 2004 he was Programme Director of the Collège Internation
de Philosophie, and in 2001 founded the Laboratory for Ontology (Labont) and the Interuniversity Centre for
Theoretical and Applied Ontology (Ctao). These latter are research groups that aim to provide a broader
disciplinary basis for the realism defended on the appeal to aesthetics, and to open philosophy up to practial
applicability.
The theoretical development of this viewpoint, which has earnt the title of ‘critical ontology’, is set out in Il
mondo esterno (2001), where Ferraris provides the underlying bases of his theory, and which was followed by
the slim volume Ontologia (2003) and the monumental collaborative Storia dell’ontologia (2008). The most
general proposal at the basis of Ferraris’ view is to provide a full philosophical articularion of the notion of
‘naïve physics’. Bozzi had stressed how the world of everyday life is in large measure unaffected by more
sophisticated conceptual schemes. Starting from this observation, Ferraris aimed to furnish a critical
examination of the confusion between science and experience, over against the distinction between
epistemology (the sphere of what is known) and ontology (the sphere of what is), based in the first instance on
the unemendable nature of what is relative to what is known.
It was at this point that the study of Kant of the preceding decade came into play: the confusion between
science and experience derives ultimately from the ‘transcendental fallacy’ that Ferraris presented in Il mondo
esterno and set at the centre of the analysis in Goodbye Kant! Cosa resta oggi della Critica della ragion pura
(2004). The basic claim is that Kant shared with empiricism that idea that science is nothing but a specialised
and codified form of experience; given that the empiricists regarded the certainty of science as threatened by
the uncertainty of experience, Kant proposed to overturn the viewpoint and to found experience beginning with
science, and specifically with mathematical physics. In this way, not only did scientific knowledge of the world
but also everyday experience came to depend on conceptual schemes.
For this reason, Ferraris saw the need to reaffirm, in anti-Kantian terms, the difference between ontology as a
theory of experience and epistemology as a theory of science. While it is clear that, for me to able to say that
water is H2O, I have to have theories, conceptual schemes and a language, it is just not true that I need that
apparatus to drink a glass of water, to remark that water is wet or that it is transparent. This second kind of
experience is much less conditioned by conceptual schemes than is the case in scientific enquiry, from which
it follows that the Kantian claim that intuitions without concepts are blind is hard to apply to ordinary
experience.
More positively, if we seek the characteristic feature of the autonomy of ordinary experience relative to
scientific elaborations, we shall find it in a certain impermeability to conceptual schemes. For instance, the
mere appeal to conceptual schemes is insufficient to correct optical illusions. Thus we have knowledge that
has little to do with ontology: I can be perfectly aware that I am seeing an optical illusion, but this awareness
does not allow me to correct for it. It is for precisely this reason that the notion of ‘unemendability’ – which
Ferraris coined in Mondo esterno – underlies the claim for the independence of the real world relative to
conceptual schemes. While epistemology has an essentially active, linguistic and deliberative function and
aims at the emendation and refinement of concepts, ontology presents itself as a theory of experience which,
at its most basic level, can do without language and concepts, fully passive and in an unemendable mode. To
return to the earlier example, I may either know or not know that water is H2O, but it will wet me in either case,
and I cannot dry myself just by thinking that, on their own, neither hydrogen nor oxygen is wet.
Social objects and weak textualism
Once the distinction between ontology and epistemology is recognised and established, there then opens up a
way to rehabilitate the transcendental philosophy in a different sphere from that for which it was originally
invented, namely, rather than as applied to natural objects, but instead applied to social objects. This is the
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thesis Ferraris proposed in Dove sei? Ontologia del telefonino (2005) and articulated in a series of writings in
Pop Philosophy (which aim to bring academic culture into touch with popular culture) such as Babbo Natale,
Gesù adulto. In cosa crede chi crede (2006), Sans Papier. Ontologia dell’attualità (2007), La fidanzata
automatica (2007) and Il tunnel delle multe. Ontologia degli oggetti quotidiani (2008).
The underlying idea is that a claim like ‘intuitions without concepts are blind’, which we have seen to be hard to
apply to the natural world, turns out to explain splendidly our relations with the social world, which is made up
of objects, such as money, roles and institutions, that exist only because we believe that they do.
To get to this thought, it is not enough to distinguish ontology from epistemology, but we must also distinguish
within ontology, considered as a theory of objects, among three families: natural objects, which exist in space
and time independently of subjects; social objects, which exist in space and time and are dependent on
subjects; and ideal objects, which exist outside space and time independently of subjects. With this in place, it
becomes impossible to claim, as postmodernists do, that natural reality is constructed by scientists’ theories.
And it also become very hard to affirm, as some less extreme philosophers have affirmed, that, without
conceptual schemes, we have no relations with the physical world, for we would be forgetting that, unlike
social objects, natural ones exist independently of subjects and hence of conceptual schemes.
As we have seen, social objects necessarily depend on subjects and it is in this light that Ferraris formulated
the constitutive law of social objects: Object = Inscribed Act. Social objects are social acts, such that they
require at least two persons, and are characterised by being written, on a piece of paper, on a computer file or,
as memories, in the heads of persons. The theory proposed may be called ‘weak textualism’ because it takes
it that inscriptions are decisive in the construction of social reality, but, unlike the ‘strong textualism’ of the
postmodernists, denies that inscriptions are constitutive of reality in general. Weak textualism is weak in that it
dilutes Derrida’s thesis that ‘there is nothing outside the text’, transforming it into the claim ‘there is nothing
social outside the text’.
Icnology and documentality
As regards the prospects for his research, Ferraris is completing a volume entitled Documentalità. Ontologia
degli oggetti sociali [published in October 2009 by Laterza, Rome-Bari], which aims to offer a systematic
overview of his enterprise. The basic claim is that the law Object = Inscribed Act is most fully realised in
documents, in such a way that ‘documentality’ comes to define the very essence of social reality, considered
both statically and genetically. Not only do social objects inherently consist in inscriptions (both in the literal
sense and in the extended sense of ‘archiscript’: memory, rituality and tradition), but the very meanings and
intentions present in the social world derive from the sedimentation and re-elaboration of written traces.
Against the background of this elaboration of the notion of documentality, Ferraris revives the concept, already
proposed in Estetica razionale, of ‘icnology’, etymologically the study of traces. In line with his studies of the
early 1990s, the idea is that it is an error to suppose something like a spirit behind the letters that make up
social reality and, a fortiori, institutional reality. These realities grow and feed themselves on a system of
inscriptions that permit acts to become fixed and to contribute to the creation of social meanings and ties. A
human being who had no language, habits or memory, which is to say who was deprived of inscriptions and
documents, would hardly be able to cultivate social intentions, sentiments or aspirations. This priority of the
letter over the spirit, like that of technique over meaning, is particularly clear in the case of artworks, but it
obviously holds for the constitution of social roles and relationships, of emotional frameworks and of selfknowledge. In this scheme, imitation can be pinpointed as the central notion for the formation of meanings
within social reality. As Ferraris showed in his earlier book Mimica. Lutto e autobiografia da Agostino a
Heidegger (1992), the iteration of letters lies at the origin of the spirit or, to put the point more plainly,
technique and mimesis, considered as the possibility of copying, govern the formulation not only of the
relations and structures, but also of the meanings that subjects ascribe to inscriptions.
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Supplement two.
Umberto Eco’s Recommendation Letter for Italian Academy
Elisabetta Assi, Assistant Director
The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America
1161 Amsterdam Avenue, 6th Floor
Columbia University
New York, NY 10027
email: [email protected]
25 November 2005
Dear Dr. Assi,
I am very glad to write this letter of recommendation for a scholar I have known and appreciated for a quarter
of a century.
I have known Maurizio Ferraris since 1979, when he started working as an editor for the cultural review
“Alfabeta”, of which I was at the time co-director with a numerous group of Milanese intellectuals. I had then
the opportunity to value his culture and theoretical versatility. What struck me most was the way that, even
though he was dealing at the time with deconstructionism, Ferraris was able to come to grips with the issues in
this field with unusual unexcitability and clearness of argumentation. That is why I have often quoted, cited and
used in my own books his first works on French and American decostructionism.
On the basis of these considerations, it was I who, after having introduced him to my publisher, Bompiani,
suggested to Ferraris to write an introduction to hermeneutics. That ‘introduction’, originally conceived as a
short volume, turned into the extensive History of Hermeneutics (1988) and is to date the most complete
overview of the theme on the international scene. A broad and still continuing collaboration between Ferraris
and the publisher Bompiani has yielded many successful books: I am pleased to have been instrumental in
such a beneficial encounter.
Our meeting at “Alfabeta” was the startingpoint of a more properly scientific acquaintance as well. I have
invited Ferraris to lecture in Bologna within my courses and seminars on various occasions since the
beginning of the eighties – that is to say for more then two decades, his most recent conference in Bologna
being in February 2005. This time he was invited on behalf of the activities of the Scuola Superiore di Studi
Umanistici (of which I am the president) in a symposium inspired by his book Goodbye Kant! I have also had
the chance to meet him many times in various other places: Urbino (Summer Conferences of the International
Center for Semiotics and Linguistics), New York (a couple of Seminars organized by Columbia University at
the end of the nineties) and – very recently – at Piano di Sorrento, last September, during the Annual
Conference of the Italian Society for Analytic Philosophy.
As to his philosophical profile, Ferraris began as a promoter of a very open hermeneutics, and of the
endlessness of interpretation, along the main lines of the school of Turin (where I too studied under the
supervision of Luigi Pareyson during the fifties). During the seventies, Ferraris was supervised by Gianni
Vattimo, and, from the start, set out to avoid the possible irrationalistic and relativistic upshots of such a
position.
The effort to avoid these consequences is already well attested in his first writings from the eighties, in
particular in an essay entitled “Ageing of the School of Suspicion” (“Invecchiamento della scuola del
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sospetto”), which was published in an important book edited in 1983 by Gianni Vattimo and Pier Aldo Rovatti,
Weak Thought, to which I too contributed with the essay “The Anti-Porphyry”. I recall that it was Ferraris who
set himself to convince me to participate in that cultural operation; as much as I remember – if I may switch to
a personal level – that in October 1999 he introduced me at a dinner to Jacques Derrida, his other
philosophical master (along with Vattimo). He was and remains convinced that, at the end of the day, our two
positions – namely Derrida’s intelligent decostrutionism and my semiotic rationalism (see for instance my 1979
book The Limits of Interpretation) – can be reconciled. And in this spirit I accepted the invitation from Ferraris,
who had in the meanwhile succeeded Vattimo in the chief coordination of the Review of Aesthetics (Rivista di
Estetica), to join the directorial committee of that journal.
From a philosophical point of view, “bridging” – so to speak – is one of the many traits of the work of Ferraris.
Bridges between hermeneutics and semiotics, to start with, and then between continentals and analytics – as
it is attested by the foundation, around the year 2000, of the Centre for Theoretical and Applied Ontology
(CTAO) at the University of Turin. Nonetheless, this does not mean that Ferraris is not able, when necessary,
to take clear-cut and characteristuc theoretical positions. In particular, I am thinking of the refusal of the
relativistic outcomes of hermeneutics. Rational Aesthetics (1997) is a clear and wide-ranging demonstration of
this. The book appeared at the same time as my Kant and the platypus (1997), and the two books contained
many converging points, in particular the reevaluation of the role of sensory experience in philosophy. I
emphasised these points of agreement in a dialog with Ferraris and Diego Marconi – “Lo schema del cane”
(“Dog’s schema”), in Rivista di Estetica, 8, 1998: 3-27 – and also in various personal communications with
Ferraris.
So much for the chronology, as it were, of my acquaintance with Ferraris and the evaluations I can express
about him and his work. As for the present: I am acquainted with the research program on social objects
presented by Ferraris. I think it is original and innovative, and I believe the fellowship at the Italian Academy
would be a favorable and precious chance for Ferraris to give full shape to the important theories on these
matters that he has been developing throughout his entire philosophical career. I will not add more words to
the many I have already written, I hope that my approval and praise for the research which Ferraris has
already carried out may be deduced from the review of his last book that I published in the Espresso, for 15th
October of this year – which I attach here in its entirety:
“Last week I hinted at Maurizio Ferraris’ book – Where are you? Ontology of the Mobile Phone (Bompiani) –
which shows how mobiles are radically changing our way of living and they have thereby become
‘philosophically interesting’ objects. From the moment that the mobile took on the function of palm organizer
and small computer connected to the Web, it has turned into an instrument that is ever more concerned with
writing and reading rather than with oral communication. The mobile itself has thus become an all-pervasive
instrument of recording – and we can see how, to an ally of Derrida, words such as writing, recording, and
‘inscription’ may ring a bell.
The first hundred pages, on the “anthropology” of the mobile, are exciting for the non-specialist reader too.
There is a substantial difference between speaking on the phone and speaking on the mobile. On the phone
you could ask if somebody was there, whereas on the mobile (setting aside cases of theft) you always know
who is going to answer you, and if s/he is there (and this changes the ‘privacy’ situation). Still, the landline
allowed us to know where the person who answered was, whilst now there is always the problem of knowing
where the person I have called is (by the way, if s/he answers ‘I’m behind you’, but subscribes to a foreign
provider, her/his answer will have travelled half way round the world). However, even if I do not know where
the person who is answering me is, the company knows where both of us are – thus, our ability to stop other
individuals knowing our whereabouts carries with it the total transparency for Big Brother (Orwell’s, not the TV
show).
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We may go over some pessimistic considerations (paradoxical, hence reliable ones) about the new ‘homo
cellularis’. For instance, the very dynamics of face-to-face interaction between Tom and Dick changes; it is no
longer a relationship between two guys, since the dialog may be interrupted by Harry’s inserting himself, and
in turn the interaction may falter, or even be terminated. Hence the dominant instrument of communication (my
always being present to others as much as the others are to me) becomes at the same time the instrument of
disconnection (Tom is connected to everyone but Dick). Among the optimistic reflections I like the reference to
Zhivago’s tragedy: Zhivago sees again Lara after many years (recall the film’s final scene?), he is unable to
get off the tram and reach her, and he dies. Had both of them had a mobile, would we have had a happy
ending? Ferraris’ analysis oscillates between the possibilities opened up to us by the mobile and the
castrations it subjects us to. First and foremost among the latter is the loss of solitude, the condemnation to a
constant presence of the present. Not every transformation amounts to an emancipation.
After the first third of the book Ferraris shifts from the mobile to a discussion of themes that have increasinly
interested him in recent last years – among which the controversy against his initial masters, Heidegger,
Gadamer and Vattimo, against philosophical post-modernism, against the idea that there are no facts but only
interpretations, up to a full defense of knowledge as ‘adæquatio’ i.e. (pace Rorty) as a ‘mirror of nature’.
Obviously, all that has to be taken with a pinch of salt, and it is a pity I cannot here pursue step by step the
foundation of a sort of realism that Ferraris calls ‘weak textualism’.
How come you get from the mobile to the problem of Truth? Via a distinction among physical objects (such as
a chair or Mount Everest), ideal objects (such as Pythagoras’ Theorem) and social objects (such as the Italian
Constitution or the duty to pay for your drinks in the pub). The first two kinds of objects exist independently of
our decisions, whereas the third becomes, so to speak, operative only after a recording or an inscription.
Bearing in mind that Ferraris tries to account also for a ‘natural’ way to ground those social recordings, it is
here that the mobile comes into its own as the absolute tool of every recording act.
It would be very interesting to discuss many passages of the book. For instance, the pages dedicated to the
difference between recording (recordings are such things as a bank statements, laws, or any list of personal
data) and communication. Ferraris’ ideas on recording are exceedingly interesting, while his ideas on
communication have always been somewhat generic (to use against him a metaphor from an earlier pamphlet
of his, they look as if they have been bought at Ikea). But this is not the place for a deep philosophical
discussion.
Some readers might ask if reflection on the mobile was really necessary to reach conclusions that could have
been reached starting from considerations about the concept of writing and ‘signature’. For sure, the
philosopher may draw an entire metaphysics by starting with a reflection on a worm, but, then again, probably
the most interesting aspect of the book is not that the mobile has allowed Ferraris to develop an ontology, but
rather that his ontology has allowed him to understand and to help us understand the mobile.”
Yours sincerely,
Umberto Eco
Full Professor of Semiotics
President of the Scuola Superiore di Studi Umanistici
University of Bologna.
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Supplement three.
Barry Smith’s Nomination of Maurizio Ferraris for a Humboldt Research Award
Barry Smith
Wolfgang Paul-Preisträger der Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung
Leipzig, 10 December 2003
Abbagnano, Eco, Vattimo, Ferraris
There have been three generations of internationally prominent thinkers in Italian philosophy since the second
world war. The leading figure of the first generation was Nicola Abbagnano of Turin, and of the second
generation Umberto Eco and Gianni Vattimo, also both from Turin. The leading figure of the current
generation, and Vattimo’s successor in Turin, is Maurizio Ferraris, who was already in 1988 described by
L’Espresso (counterpart of Der Spiegel) as a child prodigy of Italian philosophy. Like Eco and Vattimo, Ferraris
made his philosophical reputation initially through his association with postmodernism and hermeneutics and,
more generally, with the main traditions of French philosophy. Thus for a long time he has been closely allied
with, and co-authored works with, Derrida and Lyotard.
In 1993-95 Ferraris was a Humboldt Fellow, working with Hans-Georg Gadamer and Reiner Wiehl in
Heidelberg. During this period he experienced a transformation, one might almost say Kehre, in his
philosophical thinking, which led him to reject what he saw as certain relativistic implications of the
hermeneutic approach and to embrace rather a doctrine of philosophical realism that is nowadays most
characteristic of Anglo-Saxon analytic philosophy.
In recent years Ferraris has begun to use his influence as the leading contemporary philosopher in Italy to
initiate a transformation of Italy’s institutions of academic philosophy. This transformation is designed to
establish a new level of professionalism and also broader international and interdisciplinary interactions with
analytically minded philosophers not only in Continental Europe but also in the English-speaking world. The
University of Turin, with its 80,000 students, continues to play a central role in this transformation. In 2000
Ferraris initiated the project of a Centro interuniversitario di Ontologia Teorica e Applicata which now involves
the universities of Turin, Vercelli, Bergamo, Verona, Trieste and Paris IV together with the Ecole des Hautes
Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. The key to this endeavor is that philosophy should cease to be an
inward-looking activity focusing primarily on its own history, and become recognized instead as a discipline
with genuine results of its own, results which can applied beyond philosophy, including in other fields of
scientific inquiry. His Centro includes correspondingly departments not only of philosophy but also of
psychology (in Verona and Trieste), cognitive science (in Turin and Paris) and law (in Turin, Vercelli and
Trieste). The Centro’s goal is to create an intellectual forum in which philosophers and scientists can interact in
ways designed to demonstrate the practical applicability of philosophy. It includes common doctoral programs,
student and faculty exchanges and common research projects for instance on the ontological foundations of
the law of intellectual property, and is collaborating with aTurin-based EU-sponsored project to establish a
common core of European law.
The Scientific Achievements of Maurizio Ferraris
Ferraris is not merely a successful and ambitious philosophico-scientific entrepreneur; he is also a prominent
public figure in Italian cultural and intellectual debates, and a brilliant and prolific scientist and scholar in his
own right.
He is the author of some twenty books, translated into a number of different languages, including one book coauthored with Jacques Derrida, one of the most influential thinkers of our age:
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(2003) Ontologia, Naples: Guida, pp. 168 (anthology)
(2003) Introduzione a Derrida, Rome-Bari: Laterza, pp. 161
(2001) Una ikea di università, Milan: Cortina, pp. 117
(2001) Il mondo esterno, Milan: Bompiani, pp. 210
(2000) Experimentelle Ästhetik, Wien: Turia und Kant
(2000) Nietzsche y el nihilismo, Madrid: Akal, pp. 87
(1998) L’ermeneutica, Rome-Bari, pp. 130:, Laterza; Spanish translation, La Hermeneutica, Mexico City:
Taurus, 2000
(1998) Honoris causa a Derrida, Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, pp. 106
(1997) Estetica razionale, Milan: Cortina, pp. 648
(1997) Il gusto del segreto, Rome-Bari: Laterza, pp. 181; English translation, A Taste for the Secret, Oxford:
Blackwell, 2001 (with Jacques Derrida)
(1996) L’immaginazione, Bologna: Il Mulino; Spanish translation, La Imaginacion, Madrid: Visor, 1999
(1996) Estetica, Turin: Tea (with S. Givone and F. Vercellone), pp. 114
(1994), Analogon rationis, Milan, Pratica filosofica, pp. 150
(1992) Mimica. Lutto e autobiografia da Agostino a Heidegger, Milan, Bompiani, pp. 150; Spanish translation,
Luto y Autobiografia, Mexico City: Taurus, 2000
(1991) La filosofia e lo spirito vivente, Rome-Bari: Laterza, pp. 280
(1990) Postille a Derrida, Turin, Rosenberg & Sellier, pp. 308
(1989) Nietzsche e la filosofia del Novecento, Milan, Bompiani; 2nd edition 1999, pp. 170
(1988) Storia dell’ermeneutica, Milan, Bompiani, pp. 484; 8th edition 1998; English translation, History of
Hermeneutics, New Jersey, Humanities Press 1996; Spanish translation, Historia de la Hermeneutica, Mexico
City, Siglo XXI, and Barcelona, Paidos, 2001
(1987) Ermeneutica di Proust, Milan: Guerini e associati, pp. 124
(1984) La svolta testuale. Il decostruzionismo in Derrida, Lyotard, gli ‘Yale Critics’, Pavia: Cluep, pp. 145; 2nd
edition, Milan: Unicopli 1986
(1983) Tracce. Nichilismo moderno postmoderno, Milan: Multhipla, pp. 174
(1981) Differenze. La filosofia francese dopo lo strutturalismo, Milan: Multhipla, pp. 228
He is also the author of more than 500 articles and reviews. Since 1989, he has regularly contributed reviews
and articles on scientific and cultural matters to the highly reputed literary supplement of the newspaper Il Sole
24 ore. (A selection of the most recent contributions can be found at:
http://lgxserver.uniba.it/lei/rassegna/ferraris.htm.) The influence of Ferraris can be seen in the fact that there
are more than 20,000 entries devoted to his work on Google.
He has served as visiting professor in numerous universities and colleges in Europe (France, Germany,
Greece, England, Switzerland) as well as in the United State and Latin America, including:
1985, Visiting scholar (Yale: http://www.yale.edu/, University of California at Los Angeles:
http://www.calstatela.edu/, New York University: http://www.nyu.edu/, University of Colorado, Boulder:
http://www.colorado.edu/)
1988, Visiting scholar, University of Heidelberg (http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/).
1989 (Fall), Research Fellow at the Collège International de Philosophie (http://www.ciphilo.asso.fr/default.asp), Paris
1990 (Fall), Maytag Professor for Comparative Literature, Colorado College, U.S.A.
(http://www.coloradocollege.edu/index.cfm)
1993-1995, Humboldt Fellow, Philosophisches Seminar, University of Heidelberg (http://www.uniheidelberg.de/)
1999 (Fall), Visiting Professor, Unam, Mexico City (http://www.unam.mx/)
2000 (Spring), Visiting Professor, Université de Montpellier (http://www.univ-montp2.fr/)
2002 (Spring) and 2003 (Fall), Visiting Professor, Instituto Tecnologico de Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico
(http://www.mty.itesm.mx/principal.html)
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2002 (Spring), Visiting Professor, Indianapolis University
The result of his research as Humboldt scholar in Heidelberg University between 1993 and 1995 isthe
monumental book Estetica razionale (Milan: Cortina 1997, 648 pp.)
Research Activity
Maurizio Ferraris’ research activity has been focused on three areas:
1. Hermeneutics,
2. Aesthetics
3. Ontology:
1. His book History of Hermeneutics was first published in Italian in 1988. It is now in its 8th edition and was
translated into English in 1996. It constitutes the first comprehensive study of the historical development of
hermeneutics and is an important and timely contribution to philosophy. The breadth of scholarship is revealed
in this work as astonishing. Not only does the author discuss thinkers such as Plato, Vico, Dilthey, Nietzsche,
Heidegger, Gadamer, Habermas, and Derrida, but he also considers works outside the contemporary canon,
including writings of Reformation philosophers such as Flacius Illyricus and of German Enlightenment scholars
such as Chladenius, Meier, Reimarus, as well as contemporary theoreticians. The first two chapters trace the
history of the art of interpretation from its origins in Greece to the nineteenth century. In the following three
chapters Ferraris examines Heidegger’s universalization of the domain of interpretation, the development of
Heideggerian philosophical hermeneutics in the work of Gadamer and Derrida, and the relation between
hermeneutics and the human sciences. This definitive history has proved itself invaluable to philosophers and
to scholars in disciplines as diverse as literary, cultural and religious studies, history, and the social sciences.
2. Ferraris’ studies in aesthetics (above all Estetica razionale, Milan, 1997 and Experimentelle Ästhetik,
Vienna, 2000) have contributed to transforming aesthetics from a narrowly conceived philosophical study of art
and the beautiful to a much broader discipline embracing all aspects of aesthetic reality, including also
anthropological aspects. Ferraris argues that aesthetic science should be considered as a part of the study of
human cognition and practice, and he shows through the study of different art forms (especially literature) why
a new psychology of the faculties of the mind needs to be developed. Aesthetic cognition is ubiquitous in our
everyday experience, but it did not thus far receive attention for example from those involved in building
computer-based simulations of cognitive processes.
3. Currently, Ferraris is the coordinator of a research project funded by the Italian Ministry of Scientific
Research focusing on the ontology of intellectual property. In this project Ferraris applies the results of his
historical researches (set forth in his anthology Ontologia, Naples, 2003) to the theoretical analysis of social
objects, including not only texts and works of art but also software and other artifacts. Ferraris argues that the
crisis of the law of copyright has an essentially historical cause.
The many new types of objects arising with the advance of the new digital media can be dealt with in an
adequate way from the legal point of view only when they have been analyzed and understood ontologically.
Current theories rest on a central dichotomy between ideas (non-protectable) and their expressions
(protectable). Ferraris shows that this dichotomy is no longer sustainable in a world of digital artifacts. His
hypothesis is that the right way to proceed is through the development of an ontology of intellectual products.
The problems in our legal treatment of such objects turn in part on the fact that our intuitions concerning
property in material entities still determine our treatment of property in non-material entities. The usual
approach to intellectual property rests on the idea of a supposed natural relationship between a subject and
his products – analogous to the ‘mixing of labour’ relationship involved in the case of material products. At the
same time intellectual products are viewed as being in some sense internal, that is, as entities which belong to
their creators in the way in which thoughts or feelings do – so that they are marked by the Cartesian feature of
privileged access. Nowadays, however, intellectual products are in many cases the work of whole teams of
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separate authors, no one of whom is in the position to apprehend the whole. Ferraris studies the ontological
features of intellectual property via the analysis of the structures and types of non-material objects in general
are part of a new foundation for the ontology of law that is more closely allied to sciences such as cultural
anthropology, ecology or legal studies that to physics or psychology, and it also draws on many of the insights
of traditional metaphysics. The results of Ferraris’ work are currently being used in the EU-funded ontologybased project, centered in Turin, that designed to establish a UNIFORM TERMINOLOGY FOR EUROPEAN
PRIVATE LAW (see http://www.dsg.unito.it/ut/).
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Supplement Four
Robert MAGGIORI, Libération 26 octobre 2006, compte-rendu de
Maurizio Ferraris T'es où ? Ontologie du téléphone portable Traduit de l'italien par Pierre-Emmanuel Dauzat,
préfacé par Umberto Eco. Albin Michel.
Autrefois, on devait se creuser la cervelle pour trouve les causes des inquiétudes sociales, du sentiment d
solitude ou de désarroi. Aujourd'hui, c'est plus facile «Il existe une façon très simple de se sentir seul au
monde, coupé de tout, même en pleine ville, c'est d'oublier son mobile à la maison.» Chacun en a fait
l'expérience : portable volé, perdu ou introuvable (au fond du sac), carte SIM bloquée, batterie épuisée, «pas
de ligne» et voilà que la Terre ne tourne plus, qu'arrivent les crises d'hystérie, la panique et l'angoisse, on se
trouve désorienté, stupide, annihilé, on ne peut plus appeler au secours, on ne peut plus savoir si la Juventus
a gagné, s'il y a eu un attentat, si le restaurant est ouvert, s'il fera beau demain, si le CAC 40 est en baisse, on
ne peut plus faire un don pour le Téléthon, ni voter pour le candidat de la Star Ac', on n'a plus d'amis, plus
d'enfants, plus de parents, on a tout perdu, les lettres d'amour qu'on a envoyées, les mots secs de rupture
qu'on a reçus, l'adresse du psy et de la propriétaire, le numéro de SOS Plomberie, on n'a plus rien, plus de
machine à écrire, plus d'ordinateur, d'Internet, d'e-mail, d'agenda, plus de calculette, plus de radio, plus de
lecteur Mp3, de dictaphone, de carte de paiement, de lampe de poche, de mémo vocal, de réveil, de
chronomètre, plus de jeux (plus de Snake !), plus de caméra, plus de photos, ni de grand-mère, ni du petit, ni
du chien, on est nu comme un ver.
D'austères penseurs souriraient : quelle drôle de bête que l'homme, qui, «maître et possesseur de la nature»,
devient l'esclave d'un petit outil technique censé servir à téléphoner, juste. Mais pas tous. Dès 1989, la
derridienne Avital Ronell (voir Libération du 28 septembre 2006), dans Telephone Book (1), importait dans le
champ philosophique cette étrange machine à «déstabiliser les identités» . Et, aujourd'hui, Maurizio Ferraris,
professeur de philosophie théorétique à l'université de Turin, un proche également de Jacques Derrida, élève
définitivement le portable au rang d'objet théorique, dans un livre d'une grande intelligence, écrit dans la
langue de tous les jours (la seconde partie est plus spécialisée, cependant), irrévérencieux et allègre : T'es où
? Ontologie du téléphone mobile .
Ce n'est pas du point de vue psychologique, sociologique ou technologique que Ferraris étudie le portable.
Son approche ne vise ni à valoriser en technophile les possibilités immenses qu'il ouvre, ni à dénoncer en
technophobe, comme l'écrit Umberto Eco, «les castrations auxquelles il nous soumet, avant toute chose la
perte de la solitude, de la réflexion silencieuse sur nous-mêmes, et la condamnation à une présence
constante du présent» . Jadis, on disait : «Je suis bien chez les Heidegger ? Je voudrais parler à Martin...» Et,
de Martin, on savait l'absence ou la présence : s'il était là, il ne pouvait être que là où on l'appelait. Le
téléphone fixe fixait les identités et les histoires (une heure du matin et elle n'est pas chez elle ? Aïe aïe aïe...),
l'activité sociale et la géographie. Le mobile les rend mobiles, indéterminées, fantasmatiques : je suis partout
et nulle part, dans le train, en Jordanie, dix mètres derrière toi, dans l'ascenseur, à Rome... Sont ainsi apparus
les «where-are-you ?-mails», c'est-à-dire des SMS essentiellement des mères à leurs enfants dont l' unique
contenu est la question «T'es où ?» .
Question «abyssale» au demeurant, puisqu'elle ne peut recevoir qu'une seule réponse absolument vraie, mais
indécidable : «je-suis-au-téléphone», je suis un être u-topique, un non-lieu qui échappe à la géographie des
frontières, des montagnes et des rivières, qui se détermine par la géométrie invisible des «lignes»
apparaissant ou disparaissant dans les champs magnétiques, et que seul peut localiser le Big Brother des
compagnies téléphoniques (ou, le cas échéant, la police). A localisation mobile, identité mobile ou délocalisation de l'identité. Le portable change le rapport au temps, à l'espace, à soi, aux autres et au monde. Il
est donc de ces objets qui échappent à la science comme à la technologie, à la psychologie comme à
l'économie, et qui exigent une ontologie, apte à dire non comment il fonctionne, ni ce qu'il permet, ni en quoi il
modifie les comportements, mais ce qu'il est . Multifonctionnel, est-il candidat au statut d' «instrument absolu»,
qui, d'Anaxagore à Hegel, était celui de la main, comme l'indiquent et le curieux anglicisme par lequel on le
désigne en allemand, Handy, et le nom qu'il porte en Thaïlande (mue tue) ou en Finlande (kanny), signifiant
«extension de la main» ? L'ontologie que propose Maurizio Ferraris est une ontologie sociale, appliquée à
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l'étude d'objets qui nous entourent et qui constituent la réalité sociale. Mais c'est quoi, un objet ? Simplifiant la
taxinomie du philosophe autrichien Alexius Meinong, Ferraris distingue les objets physiques, qui existent dans
l'espace et dans le temps (les montagnes, les chaises, les tabernacles, etc.), les objets idéaux, qui existent
hors de l'espace et du temps (un nombre, une relation, un théorème) et les objets sociaux, qui n'existent pas
en tant que tels dans l'espace mais subsistent en tant que traces, inscriptions, enregistrements sur un support
matériel ou l'esprit des gens, et acquièrent ainsi une durée dans le temps. Promesses, engagements, paris,
baptêmes, funérailles, pactes, mariages, divorces, etc. : voilà des objets sociaux, lesquels ne sont que par
«les actes qui les instituent et qui les inscrivent» . Rien ne serait saisissable de la réalité sociale si on ne
tentait pas de savoir comment se construisent ces objets sociaux : aussi l'ontologue doit-il se faire
«épigraphiste», analyser les inscriptions et les enregistrements qui les rendent possibles et les font apparaître.
Et le portable dans tout cela ?
Aux yeux de Ferraris, le telefonino, ou mobile phone, est un objet «transcendantal», au sens où il fournit le
maximum de conditions de possibilité à la construction des objets sociaux. Réunissant (déjà) les
fonctionnalités du téléphone, de la radio, du cinéma, du magnétophone, de la télévision, de l'e-mail, du fax, du
Web, de l'archivage, du pistage, etc., intégrant (bientôt) celles de la carte Vitale, de la carte d'identité, du
passeport ou du permis de conduire, il est l'outil d'inscription et d'enregistrement par excellence. Aussi
reprend-il le flambeau qui, durant des siècles dans l'histoire de l'humanité, a été porté par l' écriture, et le hisse
même plus haut puisqu'il porte en lui tous les outils et toutes les formes d'écriture. Si on pense comme
Ferraris que l'écriture a moins à voir avec la communication qu'avec l'enregistrement, le portable, malgré les
apparences, est une machine à écrire, qui réévalue «la plus ancienne et lointaine des ressources techniques,
la possibilité de laisser des traces puis d'enregistrer par écrit», sous forme de texte, d'archive, d'idéogrammes,
de pictogrammes, de smileys ou d'émoticons («l'essence de l'écriture, c'est-à-dire l'écriture la plus éloignée de
la voix qui se puisse imaginer»).
Dès lors (oyez ! oyez ! et envoyez des textos !), on peut entendre la «grande nouvelle» qu'annonce le
philosophe italien : on avait prophétisé le triomphe de la voix, du son, de l'image, et de la télévision, mais c'est
l'écriture qui, tout en en restant le passé, est l'avenir de la société. Doit-on alors croire, selon le mot de
Derrida, que «rien n'existe hors du texte» ? Défendant un «textualisme faible», Maurizio Ferraris est plus
prudent : «Hors du texte existe tout un monde, mais sans inscription il n'est point de monde social.» C'est vrai,
tout ce qui «se passe» (fête d'anniversaire ou concert, connerie entre potes ou voyage, agression ou torture...)
ne se passe réellement que si une trace enregistrée en demeure dans la mémoire d'un portable.
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Maurizio Ferraris
LIST OF RECENT PUBLICATIONS
Books
(2012) Bentornata Realtà. Il nuovo realismo in discussione, Torino, Einaudi, pp. 234;
(2012) Documentality. Why it is necessary to leave traces, New York, Fordham University Press, pp. 400;
(2012) Lasciar tracce: documentalità e architettura, Milano, Mimesis, pp. 96;
(2012) Manifesto del Nuovo Realismo, Roma-Bari, Laterza, pp. 160;
(2011) Anima e iPad, Parma, Guanda, pp. 192;
(2011) Filosofia per dame, Parma, Guanda, pp. 208;
(2011) Estetica Razionale (new edition), Milano, Raffaello Cortina, pp. 678;
(2010) Ricostruire la decostruzione. Cinque saggi a partire da Jacques Derrida, Milano, Bompiani, pp. 128;
(2009) Documentalità. Perché è necessario lasciar tracce, Roma-Bari, Laterza, pp. XV-429;
(2009) Piangere e ridere davvero. Feuilleton, Genova, il Melangolo, pp. 100;
(2009) Una Ikea di università. Alla prova dei fatti, new extended edition, Milano, Raffaello Cortina, pp. 161;
(2009) Nietzsche e la filosofia del Novecento, 3rd edition with a new introduction, pp. 170, Milano, Bompiani
(2008) Storia dell'ontologia (Ed.), Milano, Bompiani, pp. 826, 2nd edition 2009;
(2008) Il tunnel delle multe. Ontologia degli oggetti quotidiani, Torino, Einaudi, pp. 284;
(2008) Storia dell’ermeneutica, 10th edition with a new introduction, pp. 528, Milano, Bompiani
(2007) La Fidanzata Automatica, Milano, Bompiani, pp. 204;
(2007) Sans Papier. Ontologia dell'attualità, Roma, Castelvecchi, pp. 233;
(2007) Differenze. La filosofia francese dopo lo strutturalismo, 2nd edition with a new introduction, Milano,
Edizioni AlboVersorio, 2007, pp. 158.
(2006) Babbo Natale, Gesù Adulto. In cosa crede chi crede?, Milano, Bompiani, pp. 151;
(2006) Jackie Derrida. Ritratto a memoria, Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, pp. 120; Spanish translation Jackie
Derrida. Retrato de memoria, Bogotá, Siglo del Hombre, 2007;
(2006) Tracce. Nichilismo moderno postmoderno, 2nd edition with a new introduction, Milano, Mimesis, 2006,
pp. 173;
(2005) Dove sei? Ontologia del telefonino, Milano, Bompiani, pp. 294, 2nd edition 2006; French translation by
Pierre-Emmanuel Dauzat, T'es où? Ontologie du téléphone mobile, Paris, Albin Michel, pp. 312, 2006; new
edition in “Letture di filosofia” collection, introduction by Umberto Eco, Milano, Il Sole 24 ore, pp. 350, 2007;
Spanish translation by Carmen Revilla Guzmán, ¿Dónde estás? Ontología del teléfono móvil, Barcelona,
Marbot, 2008, pp. 320; Romanian translation by Teodora Pavel, Alo? Unde eşti? Mic tratat despre telefonul
mobil, Bucureşti, RAO, pp. 336, 2008; Hungarian translation by Judit Gál, Hol vagy? A mobiltelefon
ontológiája, Budapest, Európa, 2008, Serbian translation by Ivo Kara-Pešić, Gde si? Ontologija mobilnog
telefona, Fedon, Beograd, 2011 pp. 448; forthcoming translation in Korean (Hyunsil), turkish (Periferi Kitap),
english (Fordham University Press, USA).
Articles
(forthcoming 2012), New realism: reality as unamendableness, “Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale”;
(2012) Art as document, A. Arbo, M. Le Du, S. Plaud (Eds.), Wittgenstein and Aesthetics: Perspectives and
Debates, Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt a. M.: 183-193;
(2012), Sistema dell’iper-realismo trascendentale, introduzione a M. Gabriel, Il senso dell’esistenza. Per un
nuovo realismo ontologico, Carocci: 9-17;
(2012), Intenzionalità e documentalità, “Rivista di estetica”, n.s. 49 (1/2011): 161-182;
(2012) with C. A. Viano, Le debolezze del pensiero debole, “Micromega”, 3/2012: 221-230;
(2012), Filosofia globalizzata, Iride, 66, XXV: 403-410;
(2012), Perspectives of documentality, “Phenomenology and Mind”, 2, 2012: 34-40;
(2012), Le mie quattro piccole grandi ‘incertezze’ sulla certezza, in “Quaderni della sussidiarietà”, 12: 34-36.
(2012), Barlumi di storia, in Pierre Casè, Misteri del sopportego, Milano, Skira: 27-29.
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(2012) “Manifesto del nuovo realismo”, in Alternative per il socialismo, 21: 129-136.
(2012) “La terra promessa di Adami/Adami’s Promised Land”, in Adami, Milano, Tega: 9-25.
(2012) “Dal postmoderno al realismo”, in L. Taddio (Ed.), Quale filosofia per il partito democratico, Milano,
Mimesis: 105-126;
(2012) “Risposte ai miei critici”, Rivista di estetica, n.s., 50 (2/2012): 391-409.
(2012) “Reality as Unemendability”, in L. Cataldi Madonna (Ed.), Naturalistische Hermeneutik: Zum Stand der
Debatte, Königshausen & Neumann 2012: 111-127;
(2011) “Kant and Social Objects”, in Kant und die Aufklaerung, a c. di L. Cataldi Madonna e P. Rumore,
Hildesheim - Zuerich - New York, Georg Olms Verlag, pp. 229-237;
(2011) “Nuovo realismo”, in Rivista di estetica, n. 48 (3/2011), Torino, Rosenberg & Sellier, pp. 69-94;
(2011) “Intellettuali inorganici”, in Terza Cultura. Idee per un futuro sostenibile, a c. di N. Vassallo e V.
Lingiardi, Milano, Il Saggiatore, pp. 113-115;
(2011) “Nuovo Realismo FAQ”, in Nóema – Numero 2, anno 2011, http://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/noema;
(2011) “Breve storia del nichilismo”, in Continenti Filosofici. La filosofia analitica e le altre tradizioni, a c. di M.
De Caro, S. Poggi, Roma, Carocci, 2011, pp. 185-206;
(2011) “Breve storia del dionisiaco”, in Poli-femo. Nuova serie di «Lingua e Letteratura», Immaginario, Napoli,
Liguori, pp. 11-22;
(2011) “Doppia firma. Ontologia del mobile movie”, con Enrico Terrone, Bianco e nero, 568, 2010, pp. 18-27.
(2011) “Tre sceneggiate per Nietzsche”, in Imago 2. Studi di cinema e media, anno I, n. 2, 2010, pp. 13-23;
(2011) “Automi spirituali”, in Critica della ragione e forme dell’esperienza. Studi in onore di Massimo Barale,
Pisa, ETS 2011, pp. 399-414;
(2011) “Le rivelazioni della tecnica”, Kainos, 6, 2011, pp. 45-58;
(2011) “Documentality, or Europe”, in Europe in the Emerging World Order. Searching for a New Paradigm, a
c. di J. Babich, P. Bojanic e G. Pudar, Belgrado, Institute for Philosophy e Social Theory 2011, pp. 93-127;
(2011) “Indiana James”, in New Pespectives in Pragmatism and Analytic Philosophy, a c. di R. M. Calcaterra,
Amsterdam-New York, Rodopi 2011, pp. 45-59;
(2011) “Anima e iPad”, in La passione del pensare. In dialogo con Umberto Curi, a c. di B. Giacomini, F.
Grigenti e L. Sanò, Milan, Mimesis 2011, pp. 523-526;
(2011) “In the understanding of the existing state of affairs, its negation is included”, in Sociological realism,
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(2011) “Estetica come aisthesis”, in Dopo l’estetica, a c. di L. Russo, Palermo, Centro internazionale studi di
estetica 2011, pp. 103-117;
(2010) “Adieu, adieu, adieu. Remember me”, Rivista di estetica, n.s., n. 45, pp. 135-137;
(2010) “Facciamo finta”, Link. Idee per la televisione, annuario, 2010, pp. 173-179;
(2010) “L'Avvenire della memoria”, Notariato, anno XVI, 3/2010, pp. 239-243;
(2010) “Chi è lo sciocco in blu?”, in Divenire di Gillo Dorfles, a c. di M. Carboni, Roma, Castelvecchi 2010, pp.
69-80;
(2010) “Che cosa nasconde Mr. Hyde?”, prefazione a C. Barbero, Chi ha paura di Mr. Hyde? Oggetti fittizi,
emozioni reali, Gênes, il Melangolo 2010, pp. 9-14.
(2010) “Vedere e pensare”, postfazione a La memoria e la visione, a c. di M. Finazzer Flory, Milan, Rizzoli
2010, pp. 153-155.
(2010) “Spettri di Derrida”, in Annali. Fondazione europea del disegno, vol. V, Gênes, il Melangolo 2010, pp.
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(2010) “E se l’animale testimoniasse?” Iride, 59, aprile 2010, pp. 215-220;
(2010) “Da Torino a Röcken. Friedrich Nietzsche”, in I viaggi dei filosofi, a c. di Maria Bettetini e di Stefano
Poggi, Milan, Cortina 2010, pp. 219-239;
(2010) “You’re the Automaton”, with Ernesto Paolozzi, The arrow and the circle, 1, 2010, pp. 13-49;
(2010) “Che cosa c’è e che cos’è”, con Achille Varzi, in Id., Il mondo messo a fuoco, Bari-Rome, Laterza 2010,
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(2010) “Where are you? Mobile ontology”, in Ontología de la distancia. Filosofías de la comunicación en la era
telemática, a c. di Gabriel Aranzueque, Madrid, Abada 2010, pp. 55-73;
(2010) “Scrittura, archiscrittura, pensiero”, Rivista di estetica, n. s. 44 (2/2010), pp. 45-60;
(2010) "Social ontology and documentality", in Riccardo Pozzo / Marco Sgarbi (Hg.) Eine Typologie der
Formen der Begriffsgeschichte, Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte, Sonderheft 7 (Jg. 2010), pp. 133-148;
(2009) “Nespolo tra Warhol e Rilke”, in Ugo Nespolo, Novantiqua, a c. di B. Paolozzi Strozzi, Florence, Giunti
2009, pp. 27-35;
(2009) “Atti iscritti”, in Lexia. rivista di semiotica, 03/04 2009, pp. 203-215;
(2009) “Lo spirito dei laici”, in La laicità vista dai laici, a c. di E. D’Orazio, Milan, Università Bocconi Editore
2009, pp. 125 – 146;
(2009) “Documentalità e ontologia sociale”, in Quaestio 9/2009, Origini e sviluppi dell’ontologia, a c. di
Costantino Esposito con la coll. Di Marco Lamanna, Turnhout e Bari, Brepols-Pagina 2009, pp. 389-406;
(2009) “«Mundaneum»”, in Biografie di oggetti/Storie di cose, a c. di A. Burtscher, D. Lupo, A. Mattozzi, P.
Volonté, Milan, Bruno Mondadori 2009, pp. 45-53;
(2009) “Autopresentazione”, in D. Antiseri e S. Tagliagambe, Filosofi italiani contemporanei, Milan, Bompiani
2009, pp. 226-235;
(2009) "Documentality, or Europe", The Monist, april 2009, vol, 92, n. 2, pp. 286-314;
(2009) “The Artworld and the World of works of art”, in E. Carafoli, G.A. Danieli, G.O.Longo (Eds) The Two
Cultures: Shared Problems, Milan, Springer 2009 pp. 265-286;
(2008) “Science of Recording”, in Herbert Hrachovec, Alois Pichler (Eds.) Philosophy of the Information
Society, Proceedings of the 30th International Ludwig Wittgenstein-Symposium in Kirchberg 2007,
Frankfurt/M, Ontos Verlag, pp. 110-123;
(2008) “Wo bist Du? Mobile Ontologie”, in M. Buchert, K. Zillich (Eds) In Bewegung. Architektur und Kunst, a c.
di, Leibniz Universität Hannover, pp. 40-50;
(2008) “Idioms”, in Encyclopaideia. Journal of phenomenology and education, 23, XII, pp. 45-63;
(2007) “Documentality Or why nothing social exists beyond the text, Christian Kanzian, Edmund Runggaldier
(Eds.) Cultures. Conflict - Analysis – Dialogue, Proceedings of the 29th International Ludwig WittgensteinSymposium in Kirchberg, Austria, Publications of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society. New Series 3, pp.
385-401;
(2007) “The Philosopher Son”, The European Legacy, Vol. 12, No. 4, pp. 409–418;
(2007) “Jacques Derrida’s Writing and Difference”, in Topoi, 26, pp. 279-286;
(2006) “Where are you? Mobile ontology”, in K. Nyíri, Ed., Mobile Understanding. The Epistemology of
Ubiquitous Communication, Vienna, Passagen Verlag, pp. 41-52;
(2006) “Causality and Unamendableness”, in Gestalt Theory, vol. 28, n. 4 (december), pp. 401-407;
(2005) “Diversity of Social Objects. Outlines of a Theory”, in Human Diversity and the Law, Eds. M. Bussani e
M. Graziadei, Brussels-Berne-Athens, Stämpfli-Bruyland-Sakkoulas, pp. 135-178;
(2005) “Metzger, Kant, and the Perception of Causality”, in J. C. Marek and M. E. Reicher (Eds) Erfahrung und
Analysis, Akten des 27. Iternationalen Wittgenstein-Symposiums, 8-14 August 2004, Wien 2005, pp. 297-309.
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