Marcelo Dascal

Pierluigi Barrotta

This collective volume focuses on two closely connected issues whose common denominator is the embattled notion of the subject. The first concerns the controversies on the nature of the subject and related notions, such as the concepts of ‘I’ and ‘self’. From both theoretical and historical viewpoints, several of the contributors show how different and incompatible perspectives on the subject can help us understand today’s world, its habits, style, power relations, and attitudes. For this purpose, use is made of insights in a broad range of disciplines, such as sociology, psychoanalysis, pragmatics, intellectual history, and anthropology. This interdisciplinary approach helps to clarify the multifaceted character of the subject and the role it plays nowadays as well as over the centuries. The second issue concerns the subject in inter-personal as well as in intra-personal controversies. The enquiry here focuses on the ways in which different aspects of the subject and subjective differences affect the conduct, content, and rationality of controversies with others as well as within oneself on a variety of topics. Among such aspects, the contributors analyse the subject’s emotions, cognitive states, argumentative practices, and individual and collective identity. The interaction between the two issues, the controversies on the subject and the subject of controversies, sheds new light on the debate on modernity and its alleged crisis.

Controversies and Subjectivity

Giuseppe Longo

Massimo Negrotti

quale futuro?

Scienza, tecnologia e valori morali

Nell’Ottocento era comune considerare il bello, il buono e il vero come i valori costitutivi della scienza. Oggi si sta facendo strada la tesi che i fatti e i valori siano connessi e che la bellezza sia una proprietà richiesta dagli scienziati per accettare una teoria. In termini più generali si afferma che il bello, il buono e il vero sono tutti elementi essenziali per comprendere le attività che caratterizzano la scienza. Si tratta di questioni importanti culturalmente e politicamente. Capirle sino in fondo significa comprendere la natura della scienza e il suo ruolo nel mondo d’oggi.

Il bello, il buono, il vero

Scienza e valori

Emma Bond

Anna Laura Lepschy

This book explores the different ways in which psychoanalysis has been connected to various fields of Italian culture, such as literary criticism, philosophy and art history, as well as discussing scholars who have used psychoanalytical methods in their work. The areas discussed include: the city of Trieste, in chapters devoted to the author Italo Svevo and the artist Arturo Nathan; psychoanalytic interpretations of women terrorists during the anni di piombo; the relationships between the Freudian concept of the subconscious and language in philosophical research in Italy; and a personal reflection by a practising analyst who passes from literary texts to her own clinical experience. The volume closes with a chapter by Giorgio Pressburger, a writer who uses Freud as his Virgil in a narrative of his descent into a modern hell. The volume contains contributions in both English and Italian.

Freud and Italian Culture

Pierluigi Barrotta

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