Rethinking Life
Italian Philosophy in Precarious Times
Published on 2. January 2023
Book
Paperback/Softback
250 pages
978-1-4384-8816-5 (ISBN)
Description
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.
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.
Reviews / Votes
"This volume represents the best that philosophy has to offer the contemporary world: deeply probing, reflective responses to a world in crisis. The reader will find in these essays precisely the kind of original thought and sensitivity to present and future uncertainty demanded by a global pandemic. Most impressively, they will find a refusal to flee the vulnerability that is our human condition." - Diane Enns, Ryerson University"An extraordinary, timely, provocative, and engrossing volume. Benso collects an exceptional range of Italian voices, all of whom are rooted in their own cultural points of reference yet widely conversant with global thought in a Continental idiom, as they confront philosophically an experience with which we are all grappling." - Jason M. Wirth, Seattle University
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Albany, NY
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
US School Grade: College Graduate Student and over
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 16 mm
Weight
415 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4384-8816-5 (9781438488165)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
07/2022
1st Edition
State University of New York Press
from
€84.99
Available for download
Person
Silvia Benso is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She is the author and editor of many books, including coeditor (with Elvira Roncalli) of Contemporary Italian Women Philosophers: Stretching the Art of Thinking, also published by SUNY Press.
Content
Acknowledgments
Epidemics, Precariousness, and Vulnerability: Introductory Remarks toward a Rethinking of Life
Silvia Benso
Part I: Confronting Disaster
1. Cassandra's Details: Coronavirus and the Course of Globalization
Luisa Bonesio
2. Improvising Self-Expression in the Time of a Contingency that Has Eliminated Contingency
Alessandro Bertinetto
3. Out of the Choir: Bodies Inclined on the Playboy
Lorenzo Bernini
4. Metaphor as Illness? Life, War, and a Linguistic Pharmakon
Alberto Martinengo
Part II: Vulnerability, Care, and Responsibility
5. "The Lungs that We All Are": Rethinking Life in the Times of a Pandemic
Olivia Guaraldo
6. Necropolitics, Care, and the Common
Elia Zaru
7. Lacking Beings
Luca Illetterati
8. Vulnerable Existences
Caterina Resta
9. Life and Useless Suffering: Responsibility for Others and the Impossible Theodicy
Rita Fulco
Part III: Rethinking Life
10. Greek Zen: Living Starting from the Origin
Alessandra Cislaghi
11. Life and the "Black Swan"
Enrica Lisciani-Petrini
12. What Finitude Does Not Say: Rethinking Life beyond Nihilism
Roberto Mancini
13. Writing Life: Biography, Autobiography, and the Remainder
Claudia Baracchi
14. With the Finitude of Life beyond the Phenomenon: Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, and a Metaphysics of the Finite
Ugo Perone
Contributors
Index
Epidemics, Precariousness, and Vulnerability: Introductory Remarks toward a Rethinking of Life
Silvia Benso
Part I: Confronting Disaster
1. Cassandra's Details: Coronavirus and the Course of Globalization
Luisa Bonesio
2. Improvising Self-Expression in the Time of a Contingency that Has Eliminated Contingency
Alessandro Bertinetto
3. Out of the Choir: Bodies Inclined on the Playboy
Lorenzo Bernini
4. Metaphor as Illness? Life, War, and a Linguistic Pharmakon
Alberto Martinengo
Part II: Vulnerability, Care, and Responsibility
5. "The Lungs that We All Are": Rethinking Life in the Times of a Pandemic
Olivia Guaraldo
6. Necropolitics, Care, and the Common
Elia Zaru
7. Lacking Beings
Luca Illetterati
8. Vulnerable Existences
Caterina Resta
9. Life and Useless Suffering: Responsibility for Others and the Impossible Theodicy
Rita Fulco
Part III: Rethinking Life
10. Greek Zen: Living Starting from the Origin
Alessandra Cislaghi
11. Life and the "Black Swan"
Enrica Lisciani-Petrini
12. What Finitude Does Not Say: Rethinking Life beyond Nihilism
Roberto Mancini
13. Writing Life: Biography, Autobiography, and the Remainder
Claudia Baracchi
14. With the Finitude of Life beyond the Phenomenon: Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, and a Metaphysics of the Finite
Ugo Perone
Contributors
Index