A unique portrayal of the theoretical positions of eleven Italian women thinkers who share the practice of philosophy and extend philosophical work and interests beyond the realm of the discipline strictly defined.

Gathering the contributions of eleven contemporary Italian women thinkers who share a philosophical practice, Contemporary Italian Women Philosophers embraces a general interrelationality, fluidity, and overlapping of concepts for a border-crossing that affects what it means to be subjects that are embodied and participants in the life of their communities, thereby shaping a sense of belonging. Common threads are revealed through the exploration of radically diverse themes (the body, subjectivity, power, freedom, equality, liberation, the emotions, symbolism and metaphors, maternity, reproduction, responsibility, the political, the economic) and approaches (autobiographical styles, personal narratives, rootedness in the everyday, advancement of relationality, empathic responsibility, passions, and commitment to the flourishing of the polis). In their differences, these previously unpublished essays give the reader a glimpse of the fecund and articulated philosophical work of women in the Italian context—a context which has not been and still is not always benign toward women's distinctive originality and creativity.

Adriana Cavarero has been, and continues to be, one of the most innovative and influential voices in Italian political and feminist thought of the last forty years. Known widely for her challenges to the male-dominated canon of political philosophy (and philosophy more broadly construed), Cavarero has offered provocative accounts of what constitutes the political, with an emphasis on embodiment, singularity, and relationality. Political Bodies gathers some of today’s most prominent and well-established theorists, along with emerging scholars, to contribute their insights, questions, and concerns about Cavarero's political philosophy and to put her work in conversation with other feminist thinkers, political theorists, queer theorists, and thinkers of race and coloniality. A new essay by Adriana Cavarero herself closes out the volume. Political Bodies ventures beyond the familiar boundaries of Cavarero's own writing and is a testament to the generative encounters that her philosophy makes possible.

This book frames the mission of the Continental Philosophy and History of Thought series at Lexington Books. International leading scholars contribute essays that explore and redefine the relationship between received arguments in contemporary Continental philosophy and various influential figures and arguments in the history of thought. By bringing Continental philosophy and the histories of thought into dialogue, editors Christian Lotz and Antonio Calcagno broaden the standard canon of what is considered Continental philosophy by including important yet understudied figures and arguments in the tradition; the chapters also deepen and contextualize significant movements and debate in the field by showing their rich historical underpinnings, thereby establishing new viewpoints in specific constituent subfields of philosophy. Reading Continental Philosophy and the History of Thought shows the growing richness of Continental philosophy via unexplored rethinking of the history of thought. The contributors expand Continental philosophy with and through the recovery of important historical developments, figures, and lines of thought.

Hannah Arendt and Simone Weil were two of the most compelling political thinkers of the 20th century who, despite having similar life-experiences, developed radically distinct political philosophies. This unique dialogue between the writings of Arendt and Weil highlights Arendt's secular humanism, her emphasis on heroic action, and her rejection of the moral approach to politics, contrasted starkly with Weil's religious approach, her faith in the power of divine Goodness, and her other-centric ethic of suffering and affliction. The writings here respect the profound differences between Arendt and Weil whilst pulling out the shared preoccupations of power, violence, freedom, resistance, responsibility, attention, aesthetics, and vulnerability. Without shying away from exploring the more difficult concepts in these philosophers' works, Hannah Arendt and Simone Weil also aims to pull out the relevance of their writings for contemporary issues.

Representations of violence have subliminal contagious effects, but what kind of unconscious captures this imperceptible affective dynamic in the digital age? In volume two of a Janus-faced diagnostic of the cathartic and contagious effects of (new) media violence, Nidesh Lawtoo traces a genealogy of a long-neglected, embodied, relational, and highly mimetic unconscious that, well before the discovery of mirror neurons, posited mirroring reactions as a via regia to a phantom ego. Rather than being the product of a solipsistic discovery, the unconscious turns out to have haunted philosophers, psychologists, and artists for a long time. This book proposes a genealogy of untimely philosophical physicians that goes from Plato to Nietzsche, Bernheim to Féré, Freud to Bataille, Arendt to Girard, affect theory to the neurosciences. In their company, Lawtoo promotes the transdisciplinary field of mimetic studies by reevaluating the unconscious actions and reactions of homo mimeticus. As a new theory of mimesis emerges, Violence and the Mimetic Unconscious offers a searching diagnosis as to why the pathos of (new) media violence—from film to video games, police murders to the storming of the U.S Capitol—continues to cast a material shadow on the present and future.

Imitation is, perhaps more than ever, constitutive of human originality. Many things have changed since the emergence of an original species called Homo sapiens, but in the digital age humans remain mimetic creatures: from the development of consciousness to education, aesthetics to politics, mirror neurons to brain plasticity, digital simulations to emotional contagion, (new) fascist insurrections to viral contagion, we are unconsciously formed, deformed, and transformed by the all too human tendency to imitate—for both good and ill. Crossing disciplines as diverse as philosophy, aesthetics, and politics, Homo Mimeticus proposes a new theory of one of the most influential concepts in western thought (mimesis) to confront some of the hypermimetic challenges of the present and future. Written in an accessible yet rigorous style, Homo Mimeticus appeals to both a specialized and general readership. It can be used in courses of modern and contemporary philosophy, aesthetics, political theory, literary criticism/theory, media studies, and new mimetic studies.

It is tempting to affirm that on and about November 2022 (post)human character changed. The revolution in A.I. simulations certainly calls for an updated of the ancient realization that humans are imitative animals, or homo mimeticus. But the mimetic turn in posthuman studies is not limited to A.I.: from simulation to identification, affective contagion to viral mimesis, robotics to hypermimesis, the essays collected in this volume articulate the multiple facets of homo mimeticus 2.0. Challenging rationalist accounts of autonomous originality internal to the history of Homo sapiens, this volume argues from different—artistic, philosophical, technological—perspectives that the all too human tendency to imitate is, paradoxically, central to our ongoing process of becoming posthuman.

Elena Pulcini (1950–2021), an internationally renowned philosopher of care, was at the forefront of thinking and creating a new ethical framework to respond efficaciously to problems that affect individuals at a global level. This translation of Pulcini's last work addresses perhaps the two fundamental questions for our times—namely, "Why care for others when we are not bound by personal relationships?" and "Why commit to justice even when it does not personally affect us?" By focusing on passions such as indignation, fear, compassion, resentment, and love, Pulcini offers an alternative ethical perspective in which justice and care intertwine to supplement and balance each other. Together, care and justice are proven capable of addressing the challenge of the "other," distant in space (the outsider, the marginalized, and the migrant) and time (future generations). In the end, Pulcini proposes a form of moral education that nurtures and develops desirable moral sentiments for a more just world at the interpersonal, social, political, economic, and environmental levels, thereby providing an alternative social, global model to current individual-focused, rights-based, purely rationalist ethical systems.

List of members in v. 1- .