Announcements

  • CALL FOR PAPERS 2022

    2021-09-02

    CALL FOR PAPERS 2022

    RETHINKING EMPATHY BETWEEN ETHICS AND AESTHETICS

    The concept of empathy was born in the field of aesthetics thanks to the historian and philosopher of art Robert Vischer: in 1873, he used the term Einfühlung for the first time, in order to indicate the tendency of an observer to project his own emotional states onto the observed object. The first author to transfer the concept of “empathy” to the level of intersubjective relationship was Theodor Lipps, who replaced the concept of projection with that of “emotional participation” made possible by a sort of “internal imitation” (innere Nachahmung) of the movements of the other. Among the first to grasp the ambiguity of the concept of empathy was Husserl, who, despite calling it “obscure, and a downright tormenting enigma”, paid great attention to it, as can be seen above all from the manuscripts of his work. Subsequently, the concept of empathy was extensively investigated in the phenomenological field, especially by Moritz Geiger, Edith Stein or Max Scheler. They always maintained the need of recognizing the radical otherness of the other in the relationship, avoiding the risks associated with the confusion of experiences, which can become indistinction or even “unipathy”. But Einfühlung, which has become a central concept in explaining the paradoxical relationship with the alter, still risks to remain suspended between the problems associated with emotional contagion and those of a cognitive and intellectual process, such as that required by the analogy theories. It is, therefore, a long tour that, passing through analogical inference, reduces the impact with otherness, resulting in an introspective thrust, only to be bent subsequently outwardly. This also opens up a further problematic area concerning the constellation of concepts of empathic experience, along the theoretical axis that goes from the proto-phenomenological analyses of the young Jaspers to the existential anthropoanalysis of Ludwig Binswanger. During the twentieth century, philosophical thought has variously taken up and modulated Lipps’ fruitful intuition and the debate on empathy has developed to produce a real “empathic turn” which, also thanks to the discovery of “mirror neurons”, has largely influenced contemporary aesthetic reflection. The concept of “embodied simulation”, one of the cornerstones of these researches, radicalizing Lipps’ intuition, in fact, presents itself as a further critique of analogical inference, in favor of immediate involvement. Today, the debate on empathy and on the relationship between empathy and aesthetic experience, on the one hand, and between empathy and ethics, on the other, is one of the most heated, also thanks to its involving different but contiguous areas of reflection (cf. for example the relation identity-diversity, individual-community, subjectivation-otherness, art-emotion, reality and fiction, aesthetic creation and enjoyment, expressiveness and technique). Thus, two theoretical lines can be identified. The first, which we could define as “naturalistic-reductionist”, believes that the totality of empathic experience can be explained through neurological mechanisms, which would thus become the foundation of both aesthetic and ethical experience. The second, on the other hand, more exquisitely “philosophical”, while recognizing the importance of a scientific investigation that allows us to understand our immediate relationship with the object (also understood as the other self), claims the role of philosophical reflection in understanding of the pathic, cognitive and reflexive processes that allow us to enter into a relationship with the other.

    “Bollettino Filosofico” indicates as possible themes:

    • History of the concept of empathy
    • Empathy and the world of aisthesis
    • Empathy and emotional contagion
    • Naturalistic approach and transcendental approach to empathy
    • Empathy and phenomenology
    • Empathy, psychoanalysis and neurosciences
    • Affective and cognitive paths of empathy
    • Empathy and theory of arts
    • Empathy and anthropoanalysis of existence
    • Empathy in the face of ethics

    The journal publishes articles in several languages – Italian, English, Spanish, German and French – and submits them to a procedure of peer review. The papers must be no longer than 50.000 characters, including spaces and notes, they must include a list of 5 keywords and an abstract in English (no longer than 900 characters, including spaces), and they must respect the following Authors’ Guidelines: http://www.bollettinofilosofico.unina.it/index.php/bolfilos/about/submissions

    The submissions must be addressed to the Director (pio.colonnello@unical.it) and to the Editorial staff (bollettinofilosofico@gmail.com).

    Since all articles will be double-blind peer reviewed, they must be submitted in two copies, one of which must be anonymous, with no personal references, followed by a separate file containing the personal data of the authors, a short bio-bibliographical note and the affiliation.

    The deadline for the submission is 30th April 2022. The issue XXXVII/2022 of the journal will be published by December 2022.

    Read more about CALL FOR PAPERS 2022

  • CALL FOR PAPERS 2021

    2020-09-01

    DECONSTRUCTION AND PSYCHOANALYSIS. FROM DERRIDA ONWARDS

    In the multifaceted and jagged scene of the second half of the twentieth century, in which almost all fields of knowledge experienced the fruitfulness and the drift of contamination between disciplinary areas, methodological procedures and objects of investigation, Derrida’s paradigm of “deconstruction” had particular resonance. Already from the first appearance of the philosopher’s works, telluric movements of small or great intensity have shaken the consolidated rigidity of disciplines such as anthropology, linguistics, literary criticism, and history of philosophy. In fact, the readings of Derrida aimed at tracing the genesis of the concepts that have supported various forms of knowledge, and tried to show how the whole architecture of these concepts was less solid or grounded than tradition had believed. Husserl’s phenomenological project, as well as the rethinking of the question of being and its oblivion, and, at the same time, the overstepping (Überwindung) of metaphysics theorized by Heidegger, constitute the ground in which what would soon be called “deconstruction” would germinate, a term which, among other things, was coined in reference to the Heideggerian Destruktion, albeit with the intent of destabilizing the conceptual structures of the onto-theological tradition, instead of aiming at recovering an original and forgotten sense of being. Slowly, but inexorably, categorical sagging, textual cracks, cracks that affected the history of metaphysics, linguistic theories, but also biology or architecture began to appear as the epistemological foundations of forms of knowledge were put to the test and questioned from oblique perspectives. The terrain of psychoanalysis, which, in the same period, was experiencing in France a “return to Freud” hypothesized by Jacques Lacan, would immediately become a place of confrontation not without controversy that still today, more than fifty years after their first appearance, feed debates and theoretical pathways. “Deconstruction” and psychoanalysis, therefore, can be considered as the poles of a voltaic arc that continues to generate questions on the subject’s constitution, on his relationship with the world, on what is considered real, and on the temporalities in which the social bond coalesces. Once the heated disputes are over and the passions of the Derridean and Lacanian moments have come to an end, it will first be a question of reconsidering the terms of the questions which, in any case, have not lost the character of urgency both in the philosophical and in the psychoanalytic; in recognizing the specificity of paths to each of these areas, it will therefore be necessary to relaunch questions that arise (or perhaps come together) in the broader question of the meaning and destiny not only of disciplines and knowledge but, above all, of those who make themselves spokespersons and agonists. “Bollettino Filosofico” suggests some possible themes:

    • the debate between deconstruction and psychoanalysis
    • the statutes of the subject at the proof of deconstruction and psychoanalysis
    • history of the deconstructionist paradigm
    • phenomenology and deconstruction
    • the psychoanalysis of deconstruction and the deconstruction of psychoanalysis
    • the new languages ​​of knowledge starting with deconstruction
    • Hermeneutics and deconstruction
    • psychoanalysis and epistemological challenges

    The journal publishes articles in several languages – Italian, English, Spanish, German and French – and submits them to a procedure of peer review. The papers must be no longer than 50.000 characters, including spaces and notes, they must include a list of 5 keywords and an abstract in English (no longer than 900 characters, including spaces), and they must respect the following Authors’ Guidelines: http://www.bollettinofilosofico.unina.it/index.php/bolfilos/about/submissions

    The submissions must be addressed to the Director (pio.colonnello@unical.it) and to the Editorial staff (bollettinofilosofico@gmail.com).

    Since all articles will be double-blind peer reviewed, they must be submitted in two copies, one of which must be anonymous, with no personal references, followed by a separate file containing the personal data of the authors, a short bio-bibliographical note and the affiliation.

    The deadline for the submission is 30 April 2021. The issue XXXVI/2021 of the journal will be published by December 2021.

    Read more about CALL FOR PAPERS 2021