Faculty of Philosophy

The aim of this paper is to understand whether Theory-Theory of mind (TTom) can be considered the one and only source of our understanding of others or not. I support the idea that TTom cannot have such a role and that it can be played only by basic empathy - a sui generis perception.
in this paper, i challenge TTom as basic, i then consider the notion of “empathy” and I provide a very narrow definition of low-level empathy, that I compare to Scheler’s account on affective phenomena.

http://www.fupress.net/index.php/pam/article/view/19593

In this paper I will try to provide some arguments against a broad definition of “empathy”. Firstly, I will deal with attempts to define empathy as an umbrella concept. Then, I will try to point out the four main elements which contribute to the confusion that researchers in both the social and political as well as the scientific and philosophical domains face when dealing with empathy. In order to resolve this confusion, I suggest applying David Marr’s distinction to the field of empathy. Instead of providing an umbrella definition for empathy, which tries to account for all the data coming from different disciplines, I believe understanding that there are different levels of explanations and that different disciplines can contribute to each of them will provide a more detailed and less confused definition of empathy.

This work has two distinct aims. The first is that of defining the terms "empathy" and "sympathy" in a univocal way in order to underline the difference between them. This has to be achieved by means of a dialogue between the results of neuroscience, developmental psychology, and other types of empirical data on the one hand, and philosophy on the other. Much of the misconception regarding these terms has to do with the fact that they have been used by these different traditions without due interaction and dialogue between them. The second aim regards the possibility of interpreting the concepts, as they are defined here, as providing some elements for the centenarian "is/ought question". Do the two concepts show the passage between a description of how we are ("is") and a prescription of how we should be ("ought ")? The answer to this last issue is twofold, since I will need to introduce between these two levels a metaethical one.

In "Naturalism and Constructivism in Metaethics", Edited by Sofia Bonicalzi, Leonardo Caffo and Mattia Sorgon, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2014.

La riflessione filosofica di Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929) con il suo capolavoro - Der Stern der Erlösung - costituisce un nodo essenziale nella storia del pensiero dell'Occidente, poiché segna il ritorno dell'ebraismo nel dibattito filosofico europeo. In netta contrapposizione al pensiero della totalità che, per Rosenzweig, trova in Hegel la sua massima espressione, "La Stella della redenzione" pone in questione alla radice i fondamenti del pensiero filosofico: il concetto di tempo e quello di comunità. Come la sospensione di ogni attività nel riposo dello shabbàt diventa il richiamo e l'invito all'esperienza di un tempo "altro" (quello stesso tempo dell'ebraismo che Hegel aveva ridotto a mera vuotezza), allo stesso modo, l'esistenza meta-storica del popolo ebraico diventa la traccia di una sradicatezza che si sottrae all'orizzonte del politico. Di contro alla concezione hegeliana di comunità, che fa del mondo l'autentico regno del cristianesimo storico, l'ebraismo diventa così il paradigma di una forma profondamente diversa di abitare il mondo - una modalità contraddistinta dal proprio carattere "residuale" e "sottrattivo": un resto. Questo libro intende interrogarsi sul senso e sulla possibilità di un simile abitare: con Rosenzweig, ma anche oltre.