Topics in contemporary public philosophy

Four lessons that seek to show the breadth of philosophy, developing a theme of aesthetics, one of ethics, one of political philosophy and one of philosophy of society and which intend to stimulate discussion with the people present at the meetings.
Giorgio Bertolotti (2027, date to be defined): Epistemology. Truth, Post-Truth, Knowledge. This lecture will examine the status of truth in the so-called post-truth era, which some believe we have entered, and the status of knowledge in light of AI systems and their outputs.
Marco Vanzulli (date to be defined):  Society. The Gift as a Social Fact. A Marxist Critique of Prevalent
Gift Theories: Understood by anthropology as a phenomenon situated between ethics, politics, and economics and studied in archaic societies, the exchange of gifts, the gift, is a social phenomenon whose study has enjoyed a certain success, even a certain vogue, starting with Marcel Mauss’s Essai sur le don. Through a critique of the most widespread interpretations of this phenomenon, we will attempt to grasp its theoretical significance and reframe its value in light of a Marxist analysis. In the background, another concept stands out as essential to understanding historical societies: that of work.
Vittorio Morfino (date to be defined): Politics: The marxist tradition against the grain
The classes will explore the concept of “plural temporality” within the Marxist tradition, counterposing it to the linear, stadial, and progressive view of history. Physics will be used as a starting point to introduce the idea of a multiplicity of coexisting times, in a second step analyzing how this plurality emerges as a symptom of inadequacy in Marx’s own thinking (e.g., in The Eighteenth Brumaire or in the letters on the Russian rural commune) and in later authors such as Bloch (with the concept of “non- contemporaneity”), Gramsci (with his analysis of “stratified” common sense), and Althusser (with the concept of “differential temporality”). The goal is to deconstruct a deterministic philosophy of history in order to think about the complexity, contingency, and intertwining of historical times, thus opening up new spaces for emancipatory political action.
Claudia Baracchi (date to be defined): “Art and the Bringing Forth of a World”
The lecture addresses the phenomenon of human creativity, particularly artistic creation, as a way in which the human primordially marks, indeed “signs,” its physical environment, turning it into a world—inaugurating the world as humanly inhabited. In this sense art (visual, plastic, performative, musical, literary…), broadly taken as cultural formation, can be seen as quintessentially architectonic, even in its trans-human and post-human orientations. The lecture considers as well the ambiguities inherent in human inventiveness from the “fine arts” to technology. A shared aesthetic experience is also proposed.