Limit and Creation. Towards an Ethic of Self-Limitation in the Digital Era

Aim of this article is to analyse the relationship between creativity, freedom and future in contemporary society. The main focus is on the notion of creativity in our digital era. Common sense understands creativity as a concept implying something new, something original that did not exist before. And yet in our society the constant overflow of news, products and contents doesn’t surprise anymore, is no longer connected to a truly creative act. The complete lack of limits seems to be our society’s own limit, since newness is not experienced anymore as something really new. The solution to this situation is a new ethic of self-limitation that reshapes our idea of creativity and bases it on different criteria. The first part of the article is an analysis of hypermodern society. Hypermodernity is defined through three features: quantity as a qualitative element, override of distance, sublation of perspective. Unlike postmodern society, hypermodernity defines itself positively on the basis of some technological and social results that are experienced as improvements. In the second part of the article the paradox of hypermodern society is discussed: despite its obsession for newness, despite the huge spread of creative jobs and the passion for future, newness seems to be something given an usual, being creative means conforming to given standards, and future is almost completely implemented into present. In the last part of the article I argue that a solution to this situation is an ethic of selflimitation, in which a rediscovery of limit leads to a new concept of creativity no longer based on quantitative increment, but rather on the ideas of qualitative selection, objective distance, personal perspective. According to this view, being creative is no longer a matter of content, but rather of form. I will also argue that the aesthetics of Oulipo, a French literary movement of the Sixties, already expressed this stance in a very similar situation

Ipercomunità. Innovazioni tecnologiche e nuove forme del legame sociale

Obiettivo del saggio è definire la nozione di “ipercomunità” e giustificarne l’uso nel dibattito sul legame comunitario al fine di individuare le forme che questo legame assume – o sembra assumere – alla luce delle più recenti scoperte tecnologiche. L’analisi parte dalla nozione di “ipermodernità” come sfondo a partire dal quale fondare e pensare l’idea dell’ipercomunità. Quantità eccedente, superamento della prospettiva e superamento della distanza vengono individuate come caratteristiche essenziali tanto del contesto ipermoderno – ricavato a partire dalle analisi di diversi pensatori contemporanei appartenenti a diverse aree disciplinari – quanto della nozione di “ipercomunità”. L’utilizzo di questa categoria appare giustificato non solo empiricamente, ma anche ontologicamente; l’ipercomunità appare come un nuovo ente sociale, che al tempo stesso riconfigura il modo in cui oggi si danno le comunità tradizionali

Le estensioni dell'individuo. Seconda natura e mondo delle cose

Il concetto di “seconda natura” è stato largamente utilizzato nella storia del pensiero per indicare lo statuto metafisico dell’essere umano in quanto agente razionale e membro di una comunità. L’obiettivo di questo saggio è di analizzare il modo in cui il concetto di “seconda natura” è stato adoperato in questo senso all'interno di una ben precisa linea di pensiero (in particolare da autori come Aristotele, Hegel e McDowell), e di mostrare che il riferimento alla dimensione intersoggettiva non è sufficiente a descrivere in modo adeguato il modo d’essere dell’uomo, e che un’ulteriore e necessaria dimensione da tenere in considerazione è quella del rapporto tra essere umano e oggetti artificiali, sotto forma di oggetti tecnici o merci. La nozione di “seconda natura” sembra lo strumento teorico perfetto al fine di affrontare questa relazione, come l’antropologia e la teoria dei media del XX secolo hanno ampiamente dimostrato

Matematizzazione e contingenza. Il problema dello statuto delle leggi di natura nel pensiero di Quentin Meillassoux

Our ability to find nature’s necessary laws has traditionally been based on the possibility to express natural beings’ properties in mathematical terms. In his groundbreaking book After finitude, Quentin Meillassoux turns this assumption upside down, arguing that we can prove the absoluteness of mathematical (quantifiable) properties thanks to the absolute contingency of natural laws – contingency that can be proved as well. On this basis Meillassoux tries to reconnect philosophical thought with hard sciences, and to escape from the “ptolemaic revolution” he sees in Kant’s transcendental turn. Aim of this paper is to give account of Meillassoux’s philosophical attempt starting from his first book and up to his latest papers. My thesis is that Meillassoux endorses a very one‐sided interpretation of modern science, and that his attempt to reintroduce the distinction between primary and secondary qualities on the basis of his “principle of factuality” is – at least at the moment – still inconclusive

Il dato come esperienza religiosa. Note sulla condizione spirituale delle società ipermoderne

The paper investigates the relationship between ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) and religion. The focus is not how religions and religious life has changed thanks to technological evolution, but rather how it is possible to interpret our relationship to technology as a kind of religious experience. The paper starts from the notion of “hypermodernity” and tries to offer a comprehensive theoretical frame in order to interpret the changes occurred in Western societies after the so-called “fourth revolution”. According to this frame, technology has had a pivotal role in the cultural changes that led to our present condition. ICTs are the source for a vast variety of shared beliefs, hopes and fears; they are at the core of the present world-view of Western societies. Starting from this interpretation, the paper offers a brief analysis of some myths connected to ICTs, and develops an attempt to understand their function in the social and cultural context

Quale etica per il digitale? Note sulle condizioni formali dell’agire pratico nelle nuove società ipertecnologiche

Il saggio offre un’analisi delle diverse modalità con cui, nel dibattito contemporaneo, si affronta il nesso tra tecnologia ed etica. Più che sui problemi etici specifici, dunque, il saggio si concentra sui diversi modi di concepire il ruolo della filosofia, e in particolare della filosofia pratica, di fronte alla cosiddetta svolta digitale. Nel testo vengono individuate tre impostazioni principali: impostazione strumentale, impostazione critica e impostazione trascendentale. L’ultimo approccio viene ritenuto il più adatto, e viene identificato con una più generale impostazione mediologica del discorso filosofico relativo alla tecnologia. La tesi di fondo del saggio è che la filosofia non possa applicare principi etici e metodologie analitico- critiche alla tecnologia, senza tenere conto del modo in cui l’evoluzione tecnologica della società riconfigura le categorie assiologiche e i modelli d’agire, l’apparato valoriale attivo a livello sociale ma anche strutture profonde alla base del discorso morale, come la nozione stessa di “soggetto” o di “decisione”

Philosophy and Mediation. A Manifesto

The current condition of philosophy as a discipline is quite problematic, in particular if we consider its relationship to other human sciences and to other disciplines in general. The philosophical debate appears fragmented, and philosophy itself has lost any specific role in the present scientific landscape. This situation determines a sort of “identity crisis”, whose main consequence is the coexistence of antinomical views about philosophy in the contemporary scientific and public discourse. Starting from this context, the paper aims at providing a description of philosophy as “theory of mediation”. This description does not want to be ‘original’, but rather tries to emphasize an element that is always been rooted in the very essence of philosophy, but that has also often been neglected. Philosophy has always pointed out the necessity to think the in-between of things, their relation and the passage from one to another, rather than just offering a taxonomy or a factual description of the world. In order to prove this point, the paper offers an analysis of some classical texts, in particular of some fragments by Heraclitus and of a passage taken from Hegel’s early writings. A view that rethinks philosophy as “mediology” allows a rehabilitation of philosophy as a specific discipline and as a systematic enterprise, at the same time providing a new framework for the understanding of the relationship between philosophy and other sciences

Contingenza della necessità e necessità della contingenza Ragione, sistema e libertà in Meillassoux e Hegel

Aim of this paper is to investigate contingency and totality as the ontological conditions of possibility of improvisation. Through a critical analysis of Quentin Meillassoux's argument about the necessity of contingency and the impossibility of totality, I will try to show that Hegel's logic is actually able to show some limits of Meillassoux's theory, and to prove that totality is also necessary in order to properly think improvisation