Corso di laurea in Filosofia

Disruptive Affective Habits

(Discussant: Gregorio Tenti, University of Genoa)

With the concept of disruptive affective habits, I focus on those affective dispositions to disrupt (1) and being disrupted (2). Disruption has been one of the key aims of the avant-garde. It has been conceived as a force that can break habits. By focusing on disruptive affective habits, I offer an alternative view: aesthetic transformation through affective disruption is not simply a break of habits because the breaking of habits can be a habit by itself (1) and it requires the audience’s openness to be disrupted (2). So, aesthetic transformation through affective disruption is a matter of negotiating new transactions with an unfamiliar environment. There is habit-change here, but it does not result in the elimination of habits. Instead, it is a matter of making new habits.

(Discussant: Gioia Laura Iannilli, University of Bologna)

My theory of “expansive habits” sees habits as a central level of description when it comes to the experiences that different media and cultural artifacts afford (i.e., pictures, film, and architecture). I will briefly discuss how such a view is supported by theories in 4E cognition and can be developed further in case one subscribes to recent predictive processing accounts of the brain (Fingerhut 2020, 2021). Given the Humboldt-Kolleg’s focus on aesthetics, I will address whether aesthetic appreciation of cultural artifacts as art might relate to either the violation of a habit or its consummatory experience. In closing, I will assess whether such an evaluative relation would count as an occurrence of an “aesthetic habit.”

Alessandra Beccarisi (Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung; University of Foggia)

(Discussant: Paolo Furia, University of Turin)

The early modern age saw an increasing use of mechanical models in order to explain sense perception, imagination, emotions, memory, and habit. René Descartes and Pierre Gassendi tried to innovate music theory in the light of such models. Thus, the bodily mechanism of habits accounts for the skill in playing music, singing, and dancing, but also – to a certain extent – for the perception of beauty and the shaping of taste.

(Discussant: Francesca Perotto, University of Genoa)

In what ways, if any, is habit responsible for the internalization of cultural patterns of understanding and behavior? In this presentation, I will explore some of the most widespread theses that regard habit as a mechanism that facilitates the incorporation of styles of behavior, including habitual styles of perception. Such a view, which I call the ‘incorporation thesis’, is typically developed in connection to Merleau-Ponty’s account of body schema. By reconsidering the motivational role of habit in Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology, I draw attention to three key features of habit: context-sensitivity, associative recognition, and retention. Taken together, these aspects reveal the limits of the incorporation thesis and the need to distinguish between incorporation and sedimentation to better illustrate the dynamic relation between habit and belief.

(Discussant: Francesca Perotto, University of Genoa)

The continental philosophical and analytical traditions share a fundamental assumption: the belief that the expressive habit of philosophical thought consists in written verbal language – hence that doing philosophy essentially means producing texts. I will argue that it is possible and opportune to try to change this habit, discussing some infra-philosophical as well as extra-philosophical current debates and phenomena. The aim is to begin to pave the way for the development of a new philosophical habit which allows us to make concepts even without words. 

ADAM ANDRZEJEWSKI is a philosopher and an Assistant Professor from the University of Warsaw. His research is focused on analytic aesthetics and philosophy of art, everyday aesthetics and theory of popular culture. He has published articles in Estetika, The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics, Rivista di estetica, Studi di estetica, Contemporary Aesthetics, The Journal of Somaesthetics or Brill Research Perspectives in Art and Law. He is the Associate Editor of Popular Inquiry: The Journal of the Aesthetics of Kitsch, Camp and Mass Culture, as well as the Treasurer of the European Society of Aesthetics.

EMANUELE ARIELLI is  Professor  of  Philosophy  and  Aesthetics  at  IUAV  University,  Departments of Architecture and Arts, Venice, Italy. His research interests include aesthetics, art theory, cognitive science, and philosophy of mind. Arielli most recent books are the open-access book Artificial Aesthetics with Lev Manovich (2021-2022), The Aesthetics  and  Multimodality  of  Style  (with  M.  Siefkes,  2018) and Idee Virali (with P. Bottazzini, 2018). For a full publications list, see https://iuav.academia.edu/EmanueleArielli.

EVA BACKHAUS studied Philosophy, Biology, Literature and Psychology at Goethe-University Frankfurt. Her dissertation (2022) investigates the relationship between perception and action with a focus on material and cultural entanglement (supervisors: Prof. Martin Seel and Prof. Alva Noë). Until recently she was part of a DFG-Project on imagination at the JLU-Gießen. Currently she works at the FU Berlin in the SFB »Intervenierende Künste«.

ALESSANDRA BECCARISI is associate professor of History of Medieval Philosophy and, since 2014, qualified as full grade Professor of History of Medieval Philosophy. She has had teaching assignments abroad, notably in Brazil, Argentina, Germany. She has been a board member of the Società Italiana per lo Studio della filosofia medieval (SISPM), the Société nternational de la philosophie médiévale (SIEPM), the Mediävistischen Arbeitskreis of Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, and the Associazione Italiana Alexander von Humboldt. Her scientific production consists of six volumes (among which a monograph on Meister Eckhart and an extensive essay on Meister Eckhart and Albertus Magnus) and forty articles.

ALESSANDRO BERTINETTO is professor of philosophy at the University of Turin. He was researcher in Aesthetics at the University of Udine and Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the FU Berlin; he has been visiting scholar at the universities of Madrid (Complutense and Autónoma), Murcia, Toulouse, Kanazawa, Luxembourg, FU Berlin, Valencia and Belo Horizonte. He was member of the Executive Committee of the European Society for Aesthetics (2012-2018) and is Coordinator of ART - Aesthetics Research Torino: www.art.unito.it. Recent books Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Improvisation in the Arts (ed., with M. Ruta), Routledge 2021; Estetica dell’improvvisazione, il Mulino 2021 (eng. trans. Aesthetics of Improvisation: Fink/Brill, 2022).

GEORG W. BERTRAM, professor of philosophy (theoretical philosophy with specializations in aesthetics and philosophy of language) at Freie Universität Berlin (since 2007). Since 2021 speaker of the Research Training Group (Graduiertenkolleg) "Normativity, Critique, Change", funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. 2002 until 2007 assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Hildesheim. 1997 doctoral dissertation in philosophy at the Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen. 2004 habilitation in philosophy at the University of Hildesheim. 2004 research scholar at the department of philosophy, University of Pittsburgh (with John McDowell). Guest professorships in Vienna (2006), Torino (2015, 2021), Roma (Roma Tre, 2015) and Milano (IULM, 2017).

LAURA CANDIOTTO is Associate Professor in Philosophy at the Center for Ethics of the University of Pardubice, Czech Republic. She is also a Research Fellow of the Intercontinental Academia on “Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence” by UBIAS. She was Alexander von Humboldt Senior Research Fellow at the Free University of Berlin in 2019-2021. Her research focuses on the epistemic role of emotions at the criss-cross of social epistemology and the ethics of knowing. Among her publications: The Value of Emotions for Knowledge (Palgrave 2019), “Epistemic Emotions and Co-Inquiry” (Topoi 2022); “Affective Scaffoldings as Habits” (with R. Dreon, Frontiers in Psychology, 2021).

GAETANO CHIURAZZI is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Torino (Italy). He studied and worked as research fellow in the Universities of Torino, Berlin, Heidelberg, Paris, Oxford, and Warsaw.

ROBERTA DREON teaches Aesthetics at Ca’ Foscari University, Venice. She is an expert in Classical Pragmatism, especially John Dewey’s thought, and in contemporary aesthetics. Her last work, Human Landscapes. Contributions to a Pragmatist Anthropology (SUNY 2022), focuses on sensibility, habits, and the intertwining of experience and language in the human world. Among her previous works, Out of the Ivory Tower. John Dewey’s Inclusive Aesthetics, Today, appeared both in Italian (Marietti 2022) and in French (Questions Théoriques 2017).

JÖRG FINGERHUT is currently Deputy Professor of Philosophy of Mind at LMU Munich (2021-22). In his ongoing projects he explores theoretically and experimentally the impact art, cultural artifacts (pictures, film, architecture), and urban design have on the brain-body nexus and the mind. He is PI at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) and scientific co-coordinator of the EU-H2020 Project ARTIS (Art and Research on Transformations of Individuals and Societies, 2020-25). He was a member of the „Functions of Consciousness“ research group at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of the Sciences and Humanities and “Art & Neuroscience Postdoctoral Fellow“ at Columbia University, New York.

PAOLO FURIA currently works as a postdoc researcher at the Department of Humanities of the University of Turin (Italy). He has been working as postdoc at the University of Turin since November 2017 and co-organizes the Aesthetics Research Turin cycle of Seminars. He is a member of the Italian Society of Aesthetics, the Interuniversity Center of Morphology, the Centro Studi Luigi Pareyson and the Society for Ricoeur Studies. Paolo Furia participated in international conferences and seminars in Berlin, Paris, Palermo, Rome, Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, Leuven, Ljubljana and was a member of project teams in Paris (Ehess and Paris Nanterre).

VITTORIO GALLESE is Professor of Psychobiology at the University of Parma, Italy, Adjunct Senior Research Scholar at the Dept. of Art History and Archeology, Columbia University, New York, USA, and Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Philosophy of the School of Advanced Study of the University of London. Cognitive neuroscientist, his research focuses on the relation between the sensory-motor system and social cognition by investigating the neurobiological grounding of intersubjectivity, psychopathology, language and aesthetics. He is the author of more than 300 scientific publications and three books.

GIANLUCA GARELLI (Turin, 1969) is full professor for the History of Philosophy at Florence University. Beyond an Italian edition of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (2008), one can list among his recent books La questione della bellezza (2016); Sogni di spiriti immondi. Storia e critica della ragione onirica (2021), both published in Turin by Einaudi.

GIULIANO GASPARRI's research focuses primarily on the history of philosophy and other aspects of intellectual history in the early modern period. He has written mainly on Cartesianism, philosophical lexicography, book censorship, and most recently on the work of Pierre Gassendi. He is currently associate professor in history of philosophy at the University of Enna “Kore”.

LISA GIOMBINI is currently a Research Fellow in Aesthetics at Roma Tre University (Italy), and Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Hertfordshire (UK). She is a member of many philosophical associations, including the Italian Society for Aesthetics (SIE), the European Society of Aesthetics (ESA), and the International Association for Aesthetics (IAA). She is also an editorial board member of several scientific journals such as Aesthetica Preprint, Espes, and Popular Inquiry, as well as of the book series ‘Transcultural Aesthetics’ (Brill). Besides a long-term interest in the philosophy of music, Lisa’s current research focuses on art conservation and the ethics of cultural heritage.

TONINO GRIFFERO is Full Professor of Aesthetics (University of Rome “Tor Vergata”). Recent books: Atmospheres. Aesthetics of Emotional Spaces, Routledge 2014; Quasi-Things. The Paradigm of Atmospheres, Suny 2017; Places, Affordances, Atmospheres. A Pathic Aesthetics, Routledge 2019; The Atmospheric “We”. Moods and Collective Feelings, Mimesis International 2021. Co-editor of Atmosphere/Atmospheres. Testing a New Paradigm (with G. Moretti), Mimesis International 2018; Psychopathology and Atmospheres. Neither Inside nor Outside (with G. Francesetti), Cambridge Scholar 2019 and Atmosphere and Aesthetics. A Plural Perspective (with M. Tedeschini), Palgrave Macmillan 2019.

ARTO HAAPALA received his Ph.D. in Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London, and his M.A. in Aesthetics at the University of Helsinki. He has been Professor of Aesthetics at the University of Helsinki since 1995. His publications include What Is a Work of Literature? (1988), The End of Art and Beyond (ed. with Jerrold Levinson and Veikko Rantala, 1997), City as a Cultural Metaphor: Studies in Urban Aesthetics (ed. 1998); Interpretation and Its Boundaries (ed. with Ossi Naukkarinen, 1999), Aesthetic Experience and the Ethical Dimension: Essays on Moral Problems in Aesthetics (ed. with Oiva Kuisma, 2003), Paradokseja paratiiseissa: näkökulmia urbaanin luonnon kysymyksiin (Paradoxes in Paradises: Issues in Urban Nature, ed. with Mia Kunnaskari, 2008). Ympäristö, estetiikka ja hyvinvointi (Environment, Aesthetics, and Well-Being, ed. with Kalle Puolakka and Tarja Rannisto, 2015). In 2010 he founded a journal entitled Aesthetic Pathways together with Gerald Cipriani, and the journal was relaunched in 2014 under the title Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology (Routledge: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rfap20).

GIOIA LAURA IANNILLI is Senior Assistant Professor of Aesthetics and Adjunct Professor of Aesthetics respectively at the University of Bologna and at Politecnico di Milano. She is a member of the executive committee of the Italian Society of Aesthetics and the secretary of the Experience Research Society. She serves in the editorial boards of several scientific journals and book series. Her areas of research are Experience Design, Everyday, Environmental, and Pragmatist Aesthetics, problem-setting and problem solving processes. On these topics she has published essays, book chapters, entries, and monographs. Her latest book is The Aesthetics of Experience Design. A Philosophical Essay (2020). 

ELISA MAGRÌ is an assistant professor of philosophy at Boston College. Her research areas include Hegel's philosophy and contemporary phenomenology. She is the author of Hegel e la genesi del concetto. Autoriferimento, memoria, incarnazione (Verifiche, Trento 2017) and co-editor of several collections dedicated to Hegel and contemporary phenomenology as well as to the concepts of empathy and intersubjectivity in the phenomenological tradition.

GIOVANNI MATTEUCCI is Full Professor of Aesthetics at the University of Bologna. His main publications are the following volumes: Filosofia ed estetica del senso (Pisa 2005), Il sapere estetico come prassi antropologica (Pisa 2010), L'artificio estetico (Milano 2012), Il sensibile rimosso (Milano 2015), Philosophical Perspectives on Fashion (London 2016, ed. with Stefano Marino), Estetica della moda (Milano 2019), Estetica e natura umana (Roma 2019). He edited the Italian translation of classical works of contemporary aesthetics: Adorno, Ästhetische Theorie (Torino 2009, with Fabrizio Desideri), Dewey, Art as Experience (Palermo 2007), Langer, Problems of Art (Palermo 2013), Wollheim, Art and Its Objects (Milano 2013), Berleant, The Aesthetic Field (Milano-Udine 2021). His research concerns the structures of aisthesis with reference to sense and form and the problems of the aestheticization. He is Editor in Chief of “Studi di estetica”. 

FRANCESCA MONATERI (1994) is a PhD candidate in philosophy at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. She is editor of “Almanacco di Filosofia Politica” and of “Itinera. Rivista di filosofia e teoria delle arti”. At the center of her studies are the relationships between aesthetics and politics. She has published contributions for various publishers and journals including Edinburgh University Press, De Gruyter and Springer, as well as “Filosofia politica”, “Studi di Estetica”, and the “Annuario filosofico”.

FRANCESCA PEROTTO has studied at Turin’s University and at the Scuola di Studi Superiori “Ferdinando Rossi”. She is currently a PhD student of the “Northwestern Italian Philosophy Consortium” (FINO). Her research project, on the edge between philosophy and art theory, concerns the aesthetics of the virtual. She is interested mainly in Gilles Deleuze and the aesthetics of immanence, Peter Sloterdijk and morphology, multi-species ecology.

GIACOMO PEZZANO is a postdoctoral researcher, Department of Philosophy and Educational Sciences at the University of Turin. His current main research topics are the rise of the ontologies of the ICT, the problem of the visual expression of conceptual thought, and the debate on the different forms of realism (on which he is finishing a book). His latest books are Filosofia delle relazioni (2019, with Laura Candiotto), and Ereditare (2020).

LEONARDO PIETROPAOLO is a MA graduate in Philosophy at the University of Turin with a thesis about the concepts of authenticity and style in aesthetics. He is also interested in the concept of “death of art”, to which he dedicated his BA thesis. He is currently a student at CAMPO, the course for curatorial studies promoted by Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo.

MARIAGRAZIA PORTERA is a Researcher in Aesthetics at the Department of Literatures and Philosophy, University of Florence (IT), after being a post-doctoral fellow in Germany, the UK, and Croatia. Her research interests lie in the History of modern and contemporary aesthetics, Evolutionary Biology, Charles Darwin’s aesthetics, and the Environmental Humanities. Among her latest publications, “La bellezza è un’abitudine. Come si sviluppa l’estetico” (Carocci 2020); the paper “Babies rule! Niches, scaffoldings and the development of an aesthetic capacity in humans” (BJA, 2020); the paper “Who’s afraid of epigenetics? Habits, instincts and Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory” (HPLS, 2021). 

FRANCESCA RAIMONDI is assistant professor for philosophy at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf. She works at the intersection of aesthetics, political philosophy and critical social theory with a special focus on ways of embodiment in modern societies and art. She recently published together with Martina Dobbe the volume Seriality and Repetition: revisited.

GREGORIO TENTI is a PhD student at the Northwestern Italian Philosophy Consortium. His research interests include romantic and idealistic aesthetics, environmental aesthetics and philosophy of nature. In 2020 he published Estetica e morfologia in Gilbert Simondon (Mimesis).

ITALO TESTA is Associate Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Parma. His research interests include German Classical Philosophy, Critical Theory, Pragmatism, Embodied Cognition, and Social Ontology. Among his books: La natura del riconoscimento (Mimesis, 2010), Hegel critico e scettico (Padova 2002). He has edited the collections I that is We, and We that is I (Brill, 2016) and Habits. Pragmatist Approaches from Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, and Social Theory (Cambridge University Press, 2020). He's chief editor of the poetry journal L'Ulisse, and of the lit-blog www.leparoleelecose.it. Among his books of poetry and literary essays: quattro (Oèdipus, 2021); Teoria delle rotonde (Valigie Rosse, 2020); L'indifferenza naturale (Marcos y Marcos, 2018); La divisione della gioia (Transeuropa, 2010).

ROBERT T. VALGENTI is currently Visiting Researcher in Applied Philosophy at the University of Turin. He was Professor of Philosophy at Lebanon Valley College from 2006-2020.  His research interests include the philosophy of food, contemporary Italian philosophy, hermeneutics, biopolitics, and aesthetics. Recent publications include studies on the geophilosophy of terroir (2022), artistic improvisation (2021), the philosophy of food (2019), the aesthetics of Luigi Pareyson (2018), the philosophy of Gianni Vattimo (2017), and the philosophy of comedy (2016). He is the translator of several books in Italian: Luigi Pareyson, Truth and Interpretation (2013); Gianni Vattimo, Of Reality (2017); Gaetano Chiurazzi The Experience of Truth (2017) and Dynamis: Ontology of the Incommensurable (2021); and Alessandro Bertinetto, Aesthetics of Improvisation (2022). He currently serves as a desk editor for the food studies journal Gastronomica. 

FEDERICO VERCELLONE is Full Professor of Aesthetics at the University of Turin. His latest publications are: Simboli della fine (il Mulino 2018), Glossary of Morphology (co-edited with S. Tedesco, Springer 2020), L’archetipo cieco (Rosenberg & Sellier 2021), Bilddenken und Morphologie (co-edited with L. Follesa, De Gruyter 2021) and L’età illegittima. Estetica e politica (Raffaello Cortina 2022, forthcoming). He is president and founder of the CIM (Centro Interuniversitario di Morfologia “Francesco Moiso”) and member of the Executive Committee of IAA (International Association for Aesthetics). His research interests include hermeneutics, philosophical morphology, image theory and the intertwinement of aesthetics and political theology.

LILJA WALLISER is a Research Associate at the Philosophy Department at Free University Berlin. Her dissertation focuses on Hegel's understanding of language and alienation. She has also been a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University. Before her PhD, she studied Philosophy, Classics, and Romance Studies in Freiburg.

GIORGIO FIORINI: double bass
Double bassist and electric bassist, he made his debut as a musician in the 1990s. Specializing in jazz and blues and in free improvisation contexts, he plays in a variety of musical fields, from classical music to rock. He has collaborated with Giampaolo Casati, Maurizio Brunod, Massimo Barbiero, Loris Deval, Cris Collins, Emanuele Cisi, Gianni Denitto Diego Borotti, Slep, Sangoma Everet, Fabrizio Bosso, Furio Di Castri, Federico Sirianni, Luigi Tempera, Andrea Scagliarini, Slep and many others. He performs at numerous international festivals including Manuche International Jazz Festival, Jazz&Other in Bolzano, Open Jazz Festival in Pavone, Torino Jazz Festival, Euro Jazz Festival in Ivrea, Caserta Blues Festival, Cross Roads Blues, Torrita Blues... He holds a diploma in jazz double bass from the Turin Conservatory of Music.

MAURIZIO BRUNOD: guitar
A "transversal" and eclectic musician (guitarist and composer), he collaborates with many ensembles and soloists of different backgrounds moving from Latin music to jazz, from electronic music to avant-garde music and with a marked aptitude for guitar solo. His influences range from classical, to jazz, from ethnic to progressive rock. His discography now numbers 52 titles, 6 of them for guitar solo.
For years among the best guitarists in referendums such as Musica Jazz's "top jazz" and JazzIt's "jazz it Awards," he has numerous distinguished collaborations with jazz and Latin world musicians such as Enrico Rava, MIroslav Vitous, Ralph Towner and others. He is co-founder with Massimo Barbiero, of the historic ensemble Enten Eller (Brunod-Mandarini-Maier-Barbiero) one of the longest-lived ensembles in the European jazz scene: Thirty years of history and 13 albums made.

MASSIMO BARBIERO: drums & percussion
Born in Ivrea in 1963, he studied drums and percussion. He followed stages with international musicians; continued his studies with vibraphone and marimba materializing previous interests in classical and contemporary music. He founded projects such as Enten Eller, Odwalla and many projects in different formations up to solo performance with which he recorded several CDs. He plays and records with the quartet Dac'Corda, with Carlo Actis Dato, Don Moye, Elton Dean, Harry Beckett, Hamid Drake, Mino Cinelu, Tim Berne, Markus Stockhausen, Alexander Balanescu, Maria Pia De Vito, Billy Cobham, Antonello Salis, Giancarlo Schiaffini, C. Cojaniz, Javier Girotto, Baba Sissoko etc. He has recorded over 60 CDs and DVDs and 6 books have been published about him. He has participated in the most important national and European festivals.