Foreword

As the French say, “le hazard fait bien les choses”. More than a year and a half ago, when we decided to invite Francesca Brencio as guest editor of this issue’s Philosophical Question – “From the object body to the embodied mind” – we could not even imagine how relevant this topic was bound to become. Indeed, in the past months the world’s fate has forced each and every one of us, willingly or unwillingly and not without distress, to realize how our bodies are (social, political, aesthetic) objects of course, but most of all the ‘there’ where (or, that) our mind is. The pandemic crisis also contributed to put back our body – ill, threatened, to protect, constrained in its movements, masked up or reduced to an icon on a screen – at the very centre of the stage, not just as a need and but also as a problem. It is perhaps because of this fate that looms over our days since more than a year – and that we all share, together – that many of the essays collected in this issue seem to unfold a common thread on our condition of embodied minds or minded bodies.
For a more detailed overview of the section La Questione Filosofica let us refer to Professor Brencio’s introduction. The section features not only essays by Giulia Andreini, Valeria Bizzari, Andrea Calandrelli and Alessandra Nicolini, Antonio Di Chiro, Giulio Galimberti, Elvira Gravina, Paolo Peloso with Rossana Borsi and Giuseppina Romeo, Kevin Stevenson, and John Sykes, but also an Italian translation of Thomas Fuchs’s article The Circularity of the Embodied Mind (also by Francesca Brencio).
The many and crucial relations between bodies and minds lie at the centre of the essays collected in the section Laboratorio as well. Here, Silvia Zanelli focuses her attention on Deleuze and his deconstruction of the notion of subject, Marco Casiraghi inquires into Lacan’s thought by reflecting on two paradigms of visual objectification, Monica Gorza addresses Nancy’s ideas on the political body, and Domenico Dodaro critically assesses Gehlen’s claims on homination.
The third section, Cultures, hosts a fascinating essay on the Armenian tradition by Alberto Peratoner, who presents a detailed account of its multifarious richness and characterises it as an equally identitary and cosmopolitan culture.
Intersection, our fourth section, features two writings that, as many of those collected in the first section, focus on phenomenology and psychopathology. Susy Ferrarello deals with the Ulysses’s Syndrome, a group of pathologies linked to the experience of leaving one’s own country, that becomes even more tangible and problematic under traumatic circumstances. Raffaele Vanacore, Gilberto Di Petta, and Danilo Tittarelli explore phenomenology as a framework to help connect with psychiatric patients and overcome their isolation. Finally, as a third and last contribution, Matteo Bianchi offers a non-romantic reading of Mozart’s Don Giovanni where the theme of the constitution of human subjectivity plays a prominent role.
In the fifth section, Controversies, Rocco Ronchi, Alberto Biuso, Francesco Totaro, and Luigi Vero Tarca discuss Emanuele Severino’s works by sharing their thoughts on Dario Sacchi’s claim according to which Severino’s philosophy lacks a phenomenology of becoming, which is however necessary to buttress his neoparmenidean ontology.
Let’s turn now to the last sections of this issue. In Philosophical Practices, Sara De Carlo intelligently assesses the controversial experience of distance learning, while in Corrispondence Lorenzo Serini offers a lively account of what it means to study and work as a philosopher in the UK by writing on his experience at the University of Warwick. In Reviews and Events Renato Boccali reviews Ritmografie by Silvano Facioni, André Velasquez discusses A che punto siamo? L’epidemia come politica by Giorgio Agamben, and Cristina Zaltieri writes on Amice Colende. Temi, storia e linguaggio nell’epistolario spinoziano, edited by Marta Libertà De Bastiani and Sandra Manzi-Manzi.
Furthermore, Sara Fumagalli reports on the Festival di Filosofia di Modena and Ana Lucia Montoya Jaramillo on a two-day conference organised by the Fonds Ricoeur of Paris revolving around Ricoeur’s philosophy of the will. Perfect timing! As a matter of fact, InCircolo issue 12’s Philosophical Question will be dedicated to no other than French philosopher.
The issue closes with a Special Contribution where our Gianni Trimarchi considers the work of Ugo Fabietti, whose recent departure has deprived the Italian anthropological community of one of its most insightful voice.