Silvia Benso - Böcker

The relation between the Greek and Judeo-Christian traditions is "the great problem" of Western philosophy, according to Emmanuel Levinas. In this book Brian Schroeder, Silvia Benso, and an international group of philosophers address the relationship between Levinas and the world of ancient thought. In addition to philosophy, themes touching on religion, mythology, metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, ethics, and politics are also explored. The volume as a whole provides a unified and extended discussion of how an engagement between Levinas and thinkers from the ancient tradition works to enrich understandings of both. This book opens new pathways in ancient and modern philosophical studies as it illuminates new interpretations of Levinas' ethics and his social and political philosophy.

Engages Levinas and Heidegger on the provocative issue of an ethics of things.Here's a book that dispels the traditional tendency of philosophy to ignore the alterity of things. Drawing on two major figures in the continental tradition-Levinas and Heidegger-author Silvia Benso engages them on the provocative issue of an ethics of things. She argues that Levinas advances an ethics without things, and Heidegger proffers a conception of things without ethics. Taking up their respective meditations on ethics and things precisely at the point where they abandon such themes, and exposing them to each other, Benso innovatively elaborates an ethical attitude toward things capable of celebrating their alterity-a demand rendered urgent and compelling by the contemporary environmental crisis. Creatively centered on a philosophical hermeneutics of tenderness, The Face of Things advances the everyday time of festivity as the novel dimension within which the alterity of things can be recognized, preserved, and celebrated.

Engages Levinas and Heidegger on the provocative issue of an ethics of things.Here's a book that dispels the traditional tendency of philosophy to ignore the alterity of things. Drawing on two major figures in the continental tradition-Levinas and Heidegger-author Silvia Benso engages them on the provocative issue of an ethics of things. She argues that Levinas advances an ethics without things, and Heidegger proffers a conception of things without ethics. Taking up their respective meditations on ethics and things precisely at the point where they abandon such themes, and exposing them to each other, Benso innovatively elaborates an ethical attitude toward things capable of celebrating their alterity-a demand rendered urgent and compelling by the contemporary environmental crisis. Creatively centered on a philosophical hermeneutics of tenderness, The Face of Things advances the everyday time of festivity as the novel dimension within which the alterity of things can be recognized, preserved, and celebrated.

Essays describe Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo's unique and radical hermeneutic philosophy.This is the first collection of essays in English that deals directly with the philosophy of Gianni Vattimo from a purely critical perspective, further establishing his rightful place in contemporary European philosophy. Vattimo, who first came to prominence as the translator of Gadamer's Truth and Method into Italian, is now considered to be more than a philosopher and prolific author. As a former member of the European Parliament (1999–2004), he is also a public intellectual. This book takes up his call to advance the crucial active and affirmative engagement with thinking and society. More than just interpretations of Vattimo's thinking, these essays are expressions of the new impetus given to hermeneutic philosophy by "weak thought," the term he coined for how we think now in the wake of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Gadamer. The development of Vattimo's thinking is reflected in the organization of the volume, divided into three main parts: Hermeneutics and Nihilism, Metaphysics and Religion, and Politics and Technology.

Essays describe Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo's unique and radical hermeneutic philosophy.This is the first collection of essays in English that deals directly with the philosophy of Gianni Vattimo from a purely critical perspective, further establishing his rightful place in contemporary European philosophy. Vattimo, who first came to prominence as the translator of Gadamer's Truth and Method into Italian, is now considered to be more than a philosopher and prolific author. As a former member of the European Parliament (1999–2004), he is also a public intellectual. This book takes up his call to advance the crucial active and affirmative engagement with thinking and society. More than just interpretations of Vattimo's thinking, these essays are expressions of the new impetus given to hermeneutic philosophy by "weak thought," the term he coined for how we think now in the wake of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Gadamer. The development of Vattimo's thinking is reflected in the organization of the volume, divided into three main parts: Hermeneutics and Nihilism, Metaphysics and Religion, and Politics and Technology.

Reconfigures classic aesthetic concepts in relation to the novelty introduced by virtual bodies.Arguing that the virtual body is something new-namely, an entity that from an ontological perspective has only recently entered the world-Roberto Diodato considers the implications of this kind of body for aesthetics. Virtual bodies insert themselves into the space opened up by the famous distinction in Aristotle's Physics between natural and artificial beings-they are both. They are beings that are simultaneously events; they are images that are at once internal and external; they are ontological hybrids that exist only in the interaction between logical-computational text and human bodies endowed with technological prostheses. Pursuing this line of thought, Diodato reconfigures classic aesthetic concepts such as mimesis, representation, the relation between illusion and reality, the nature of images and imagination, and the theory of sensory knowledge.

Reconfigures classic aesthetic concepts in relation to the novelty introduced by virtual bodies.Arguing that the virtual body is something new-namely, an entity that from an ontological perspective has only recently entered the world-Roberto Diodato considers the implications of this kind of body for aesthetics. Virtual bodies insert themselves into the space opened up by the famous distinction in Aristotle's Physics between natural and artificial beings-they are both. They are beings that are simultaneously events; they are images that are at once internal and external; they are ontological hybrids that exist only in the interaction between logical-computational text and human bodies endowed with technological prostheses. Pursuing this line of thought, Diodato reconfigures classic aesthetic concepts such as mimesis, representation, the relation between illusion and reality, the nature of images and imagination, and the theory of sensory knowledge.

A resolute defense of philosophy and hermeneutics against the threats of dogmatism and relativism.Luigi Pareyson (1918–1991) was one of the most important Italian philosophers to emerge after World War II and stands shoulder to shoulder with fellow hermeneutic thinkers Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur. The product of a well-developed theory of interpretation that stretches back to the late 1940s, his 1971 masterpiece Truth and Interpretation provides the historical impetus and theoretical framework for the questions of existence, art, and politics that would motivate his most famous students, Umberto Eco and Gianni Vattimo. In a time when the meaning of truth as an interpretation is challenged by the chaotic din of media on the one side and the violent force of absolute claims from science, religion, and political economy on the other, Pareyson's meditation on the value of thinking that is shaped by the traditions of philosophy and yet responds to contemporary demands remains timely and pressing more than forty years after its initial publication.

A resolute defense of philosophy and hermeneutics against the threats of dogmatism and relativism.Luigi Pareyson (1918–1991) was one of the most important Italian philosophers to emerge after World War II and stands shoulder to shoulder with fellow hermeneutic thinkers Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur. The product of a well-developed theory of interpretation that stretches back to the late 1940s, his 1971 masterpiece Truth and Interpretation provides the historical impetus and theoretical framework for the questions of existence, art, and politics that would motivate his most famous students, Umberto Eco and Gianni Vattimo. In a time when the meaning of truth as an interpretation is challenged by the chaotic din of media on the one side and the violent force of absolute claims from science, religion, and political economy on the other, Pareyson's meditation on the value of thinking that is shaped by the traditions of philosophy and yet responds to contemporary demands remains timely and pressing more than forty years after its initial publication.

Firsthand perspectives on the past, present, and future of contemporary Italian philosophy.Through conversations with twenty-three leading Italian philosophers representing a variety of scholarly concerns and methodologies, this volume offers an informal overview of the background, breadth, and distinctiveness of contemporary Italian philosophy as a tradition. The conversations begin with general questions addressing issues of provenance, domestic and foreign influences, and lineages. Next, each scholar discusses the main tenets, theoretical originality, and timeliness of their work. The interviews conclude with thoughts about what directions each philosopher sees the discipline heading in the future. Every conversation is a testimony to the differences that characterize each thinker as unique and that invigorate the Italian philosophical landscape as a whole. The individual replies differ widely in tone, focus, and style. What emerges is a broad, deep, lively, and even witty picture of the Italian philosophical landscape in the voices of its protagonists.

Firsthand perspectives on the past, present, and future of contemporary Italian philosophy.Through conversations with twenty-three leading Italian philosophers representing a variety of scholarly concerns and methodologies, this volume offers an informal overview of the background, breadth, and distinctiveness of contemporary Italian philosophy as a tradition. The conversations begin with general questions addressing issues of provenance, domestic and foreign influences, and lineages. Next, each scholar discusses the main tenets, theoretical originality, and timeliness of their work. The interviews conclude with thoughts about what directions each philosopher sees the discipline heading in the future. Every conversation is a testimony to the differences that characterize each thinker as unique and that invigorate the Italian philosophical landscape as a whole. The individual replies differ widely in tone, focus, and style. What emerges is a broad, deep, lively, and even witty picture of the Italian philosophical landscape in the voices of its protagonists.

Essays address the major themes of Pareyson's hermeneutic philosophy in the context of his existentialist approach to personhood.What if the inexhaustible were the only mode of self-revelation of truth? The question of the inexhaustibility of truth, and its relation to being and interpretation, is the challenge posed by the philosophy of the prominent Italian thinker Luigi Pareyson (1918–1991). Art, the interpretation of truth, and the theory of being as the ontology of both inexhaustibility and freedom constitute the main themes of Pareyson's distinctive form of philosophical hermeneutics, which develops also on the basis of another fundamental concept, that of personhood understood in the radically existentialist sense of the human being. In Thinking the Inexhaustible, Silvia Benso and Brian Schroeder bring together essays devoted to Pareyson's hermeneutic philosophy by important international scholars, including well-known Italian thinkers Umberto Eco and Gianni Vattimo, who were both students of Pareyson. Pareyson's philosophy of inexhaustibility unfolds in conversation with major figures in Western intellectual history-from Croce to Valéry, Dostoevsky, and Berdyaev; from Kant to Fichte, Hegel, and German romanticism; and from Pascal to Schelling, Kierkegaard, Marcel, Jaspers, and Heidegger.

Essays address the major themes of Pareyson's hermeneutic philosophy in the context of his existentialist approach to personhood.What if the inexhaustible were the only mode of self-revelation of truth? The question of the inexhaustibility of truth, and its relation to being and interpretation, is the challenge posed by the philosophy of the prominent Italian thinker Luigi Pareyson (1918–1991). Art, the interpretation of truth, and the theory of being as the ontology of both inexhaustibility and freedom constitute the main themes of Pareyson's distinctive form of philosophical hermeneutics, which develops also on the basis of another fundamental concept, that of personhood understood in the radically existentialist sense of the human being. In Thinking the Inexhaustible, Silvia Benso and Brian Schroeder bring together essays devoted to Pareyson's hermeneutic philosophy by important international scholars, including well-known Italian thinkers Umberto Eco and Gianni Vattimo, who were both students of Pareyson. Pareyson's philosophy of inexhaustibility unfolds in conversation with major figures in Western intellectual history-from Croce to Valéry, Dostoevsky, and Berdyaev; from Kant to Fichte, Hegel, and German romanticism; and from Pascal to Schelling, Kierkegaard, Marcel, Jaspers, and Heidegger.

Offers a dialogue about the future of the nature of the human, technology, metaphysical foundations, globalization, and social and political oppression.In order to create a greater dialogue between new and emerging Italian philosophy and established continental traditions of thought, Silvia Benso and Antonio Calcagno bring together the work of well-known figures in Italian philosophy such as Antonio Negri, Roberto Esposito, Remo Bodei, Gianni Vattimo, Massimo Cacciari, and Adriana Cavarero with important thinkers like Schelling, Hegel, Schmitt, Heidegger, Gadamer, Irigaray, Arendt, Deleuze, Guattari, Derrida, and Foucault. In Open Borders, Benso and Calcagno introduce to a larger English-speaking audience the thought of highly regarded late twentieth-century Italian philosophers who seek to redefine concepts such as freedom, interpretation, existence, woman, male-female relationships, realism, emotions, and aesthetics. The diverse contributors to this book often transgress and redefine the limits and insights of philosophy itself and bring to the fore a new body of thinking that offers new ways of self-understanding while deeply engaging the issues and questions of contemporary society.

Offers a dialogue about the future of the nature of the human, technology, metaphysical foundations, globalization, and social and political oppression.In order to create a greater dialogue between new and emerging Italian philosophy and established continental traditions of thought, Silvia Benso and Antonio Calcagno bring together the work of well-known figures in Italian philosophy such as Antonio Negri, Roberto Esposito, Remo Bodei, Gianni Vattimo, Massimo Cacciari, and Adriana Cavarero with important thinkers like Schelling, Hegel, Schmitt, Heidegger, Gadamer, Irigaray, Arendt, Deleuze, Guattari, Derrida, and Foucault. In Open Borders, Benso and Calcagno introduce to a larger English-speaking audience the thought of highly regarded late twentieth-century Italian philosophers who seek to redefine concepts such as freedom, interpretation, existence, woman, male-female relationships, realism, emotions, and aesthetics. The diverse contributors to this book often transgress and redefine the limits and insights of philosophy itself and bring to the fore a new body of thinking that offers new ways of self-understanding while deeply engaging the issues and questions of contemporary society.

A unique portrayal of the theoretical positions of eleven Italian women thinkers who share the practice of philosophy and extend philosophical work and interests beyond the realm of the discipline strictly defined.Gathering the contributions of eleven contemporary Italian women thinkers who share a philosophical practice, Contemporary Italian Women Philosophers embraces a general interrelationality, fluidity, and overlapping of concepts for a border-crossing that affects what it means to be subjects that are embodied and participants in the life of their communities, thereby shaping a sense of belonging. Common threads are revealed through the exploration of radically diverse themes (the body, subjectivity, power, freedom, equality, liberation, the emotions, symbolism and metaphors, maternity, reproduction, responsibility, the political, the economic) and approaches (autobiographical styles, personal narratives, rootedness in the everyday, advancement of relationality, empathic responsibility, passions, and commitment to the flourishing of the polis). In their differences, these previously unpublished essays give the reader a glimpse of the fecund and articulated philosophical work of women in the Italian context-a context which has not been and still is not always benign toward women's distinctive originality and creativity.

A unique portrayal of the theoretical positions of eleven Italian women thinkers who share the practice of philosophy and extend philosophical work and interests beyond the realm of the discipline strictly defined.Gathering the contributions of eleven contemporary Italian women thinkers who share a philosophical practice, Contemporary Italian Women Philosophers embraces a general interrelationality, fluidity, and overlapping of concepts for a border-crossing that affects what it means to be subjects that are embodied and participants in the life of their communities, thereby shaping a sense of belonging. Common threads are revealed through the exploration of radically diverse themes (the body, subjectivity, power, freedom, equality, liberation, the emotions, symbolism and metaphors, maternity, reproduction, responsibility, the political, the economic) and approaches (autobiographical styles, personal narratives, rootedness in the everyday, advancement of relationality, empathic responsibility, passions, and commitment to the flourishing of the polis). In their differences, these previously unpublished essays give the reader a glimpse of the fecund and articulated philosophical work of women in the Italian context-a context which has not been and still is not always benign toward women's distinctive originality and creativity.

Fourteen Italian philosophers reflect on how the global experience of vulnerability and precariousness—of which the Covid-19 pandemic is but one example—compels us to rethink life and collective living.This volume gathers fourteen contributions written by Italian philosophers within the context of the precariousness and vulnerability revealed by the Covid-19 pandemic. The pandemic compels us to rethink what is affected most by this global occurrence yet does not end with it-that is, life. Beyond the geographical, socio-political, and medical contexts in which the reflections originate, Rethinking Life is deeply utopian, presenting aspirations toward a different configuration of life and collective living centered on relational subjectivities, interconnectedness, interdependence, and, ultimately, solidarity. How does the pandemic-what it represents and exposes-call us to rethink our notion of life? How does an episode of morbidity affect a fuller understanding of life? Can such a hermeneutic shift be dared and sustained? The sobriety of the reflections yields elegant, incisive, and direct prose of profound effect and immediacy-and a captivating, lucid, and thought-provoking narrative.