Spazio Filosofico

Le idee, le riforme, l’alternativa

2024-06-17T10:34:15+02:00

Are alternatives planned or do they simply happen? Are they a one-way street or do they provide a really significant space (and which one?) for freedom of thought and for different spiritual and ideal orientations? Is an alternative really such or is it simply a development? What is the relation between the concepts of “alternative” and “novelty”? What is or what would be a real novelty? What is, above all, the role of ideas, political-religious conceptions, worldviews, and cultural “identities” in designing/producing an alternative? Or is there simply no alternative on the horizon (perhaps because novelty has already happened, and it does not depend/has not depended on our freedom)? Have “ideas” become a simple ornament, a bow that embellishes the dress of capitalist society, an ornament to which people attribute great importance (to the point of war or intolerance) but that in reality counts for nothing? In short: Which is the alternative, if any?

Ideas, Reforms, and the Alternative

2024-06-17T10:34:13+02:00

I paradossi dell’alternativa nella società morfogenetica. Le altre modernità e il futuro non-sociale

2024-06-17T10:34:10+02:00

To discuss, after the end of twentieth-century utopias, the possibility and meaning of the idea of “the alternative” within the social and political realm entails the necessity to understand opportunities and limits inherent in the structural and cultural conditions of the global society. This essay introduces three theoretical insights and proposes them as fundamental axes for the analysis of the problem. The contemporary society can be described as morphogenetic and without an outside in the process of undergoing radical transformations concerning its profound symbolic nature; such transformations can be noted through the category of axiality, which is tied to the distinction between immanence and transcendence. The thesis of this essay is that the abovementioned conceptual framework uncovers some paradoxes at the heart of the global society, most notably, its complex mixture of opening and closure. The framework also facilitates analyzing emerging phenomena within such a context and helps identifying those that can still be considered “alternatives.” This enables escaping the unilateralism of the new grand narratives and thinking of other possible paths of development that are void of grandeur and alternative to the current, strong tendencies that lead to the ascent of illiberal democracies and liberal post-democracies, to a renewed absolutization of Realpolitik, and to the construction of a post-social future.

L’alternativa nel mondo mediatizzato: tra visibilità e segreto

2024-06-17T10:34:07+02:00

In this essay, I address the theme of the alternative starting from the question of whether alternatives are still possible in the time of the mediatized life world. Today, in a world where everything is a sign, to be truly such, an alternative should escape the logic of signs. Yet, as soon as an alternative appears in the mediatized life world, it appears always and necessarily as a sign, as a simulacrum of the alternative. Every sign must nevertheless be decoded and the decoding always ignites an alternative that works in secrecy, in that which does not appear and is not inserted in the world of sign references.

Per una critica al maschilismo. Critica della violenza nei rapporti di genere

2024-06-17T10:34:05+02:00

The essay highlights how, in the system of inter-human relations, qualitative alternatives open up when one exits the logic of power and conforms instead to the dynamics of relational harmonization. Within this context, the node of men-women relations remains crucial. The multiple forms of violence upon women indicate that the causes of the problem are structural and not contingent. The author proposes that one of such causes is men’s inability to accept the createdness of the human condition according to which everyone is a gift entrusted to him or herself and must learn to love in a non-destructive manner. This inability is not the outcome of ontological or biological factors but rather depends on the kind of culture in which the identity process of male individuals takes place. To heal the orientation of such a process means to open up an alternative of mutual welcome among genders.

Che cos'è un'alternativa?

2024-06-17T10:34:03+02:00

Through annotations and comments, this essay advances the definition of “the alternative” as follows. In a political sense, the alternative is the wager that if one intervenes at the right moment and in the right way, reality will unfold the way it should (could) by virtue of its profound dynamism, which however current and future hostile forces oppose unless the organized political action of favorable forces turns out to be effective. In a political sense, alternatives are polarized in small-scale alternatives (temporary, tactical alternatives) and large-scale alternatives (systemic, strategic alternatives).

La rivoluzione come scienza-donna: una fragile eccezione nel deserto delle alternative

2024-06-17T10:34:01+02:00

The essay introduces the reader to the most remarkable features and achievements of the confederal movement in Northern Syria understood as an exceptional example of an effort to outline an alternative way for society in the current century. After an introductory summary of the current outcomes of concepts such as “revolution,” “reform,” “left,” and “right”, especially after 1989, the text focuses on the major projects led by the Tev Dem movement in Western Kurdistan and Northern Syria in terms of economic reforms, building up grassroots local institutions, and the creation of a political space for women’s autonomy and assertiveness. The institutions of the current, unrecognized Democratic Federation of Northern Syria are analyzed in their political functions and mutual relations; they are considered as a reformist regional project that is based on a critical and pragmatic reconsideration of socialist goals, methods, and principles and breaks away from historical materialism and Marxism in general. The essay concludes by sketching an introductory overview of the philosophy of history and the ethics of the movement and explaining the roots of the revolutionary theory of Jineoljî (Woman-Science) outlined by Northern Syria’s Women Congress and others.

Systemic “Alternatives”: On Ordoliberal Rule in Europe and the Corruption of the Left

2024-06-17T10:33:59+02:00

This essay is an attempt at assembling readers in an ambitious and perhaps even problematic undertaking, namely that of critiquing systemic, pro-capitalist alternatives, without proposing in detail any alternative, whether systemic or anti-systemic/anti-capitalist. It starts by defining the concept of “alternative” via a debate within the Italian Left; then, it moves on to examine Keynesianism and ordoliberalism – a peculiar form of neo-liberalism – as two systemic alternatives, the first applying mostly to Anglo-American contexts and the latter to German-Austrian ones. The focus is on how Germany, by having the strongest economy in Europe, managed to transplant its own ordoliberal model of capitalism in the EC/EU via the Treaties, binding all EU members to an ordoliberal economic/normative constitution – the so-called acquis communautaire. By combining historical and theoretical narratives, we also explain how the social democratic, pro-Keynesian European Left has been corrupted by ordoliberalism adopting all of its major policy tenets, the result being loss of legitimacy in times of crisis and the rise of the xenophobic, extreme Right. We conclude by arguing that a genuine anti-systemic alternative must start from home, by way of regaining, among others, what Antonio Gramsci used to call “popular-national”.

Das Konzept der Alternative bei Benjamin, Horkheimer und Adorno

2024-06-17T10:33:57+02:00

What distinguishes important philosophers is that their thoughts are still worthy of close study in different times and under changed circumstances. My essay begins by exploring the meaning and etymology of the term “alternative” (section 1). The article focuses in particular on the concept of alternative in the context of the Frankfurt School. I restrict myself primarily to remarks by Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer, and Theodor W. Adorno (sections 2 to 4). Benjamin and Horkheimer had to deal with disappointments about ostensible alternatives whose potential they overestimated over a long period of time, but which did not hold water. Among the abovementioned philosophers, Adorno is the one who argues most emphatically for the indispensability of alternatives to the status quo.
Horkheimer, who since 1930 was the director of the Institute for Social Research, substantiates that the work of the institute aims to launch a new type of social science, interdisciplinary and oriented toward the most advanced forms of knowledge. In his essay "Traditional and Critical Theory” (1937), Horkheimer still formulates such political and scientific political claims, which then are no longer maintained in the same way in the Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944/1947). In the 1950s and 1960s, Horkheimer regards science and politics as separate spheres with an irresolvable tension between them. Since the 1950s, Horkheimer no longer relies on fundamental alternatives to the status quo, but rather on preserving the in his view threatened remnants of European culture. Horkheimer is a skillful organizer of large scale scientific projects, whereas Adorno is a philosopher for whom searching and finding alternatives belongs to the core area of philosophical and political thinking. Adorno's model of a radical critique transforms alternatives dialectically. His critique of the pseudo-natural forms of culture, of authoritarian mentalities and attitudes is continued by, for example, Alfred Schmidt, Oskar Negt, Alexander Kluge, and Helmut Dahmer.

Sfondamento e anticipazione: figure dell’alternativa in Jaspers e in Bloch

2024-06-17T10:33:55+02:00

Nowadays walls, barriers, separation strategies seem to multiply. The article explores the theme of the regenerative power of philosophy in its orientation toward “breaking through” barriers of closed cultures and ideologies. The category of Durchbruch proposed by Karl Jaspers and the idea of thinking as the power to overcome boundaries, as proposed by Ernst Bloch, are taken up and updated in light of the main closures typical of the global world. These closures are identified in order to show, on the contrary, the crucial need for philosophical contributions of an ethical, hermeneutic, and existential nature.