Alessandro Ferrara

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Alessandro Ferrara
Alessandro Ferrara, Dublin 2013.jpg
Alessandro Ferrara in Dublin, 2013
Born1953 (age 67–68)
Trieste, Italy
NationalityItalian
OccupationPhilosopher

Alessandro Ferrara (born 1953 in Trieste) is an Italian philosopher, currently professor of political philosophy at the University of Rome Tor Vergata and former president of the Italian Association for Political Philosophy. He also teaches legal theory at Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome.

Studies[]

Ferrara graduated in philosophy in Italy (1975) and later, as a Harkness Fellow, received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (1984). He conducted post-doctoral research in Munich and Frankfurt with Jürgen Habermas as a Von Humboldt Fellow and later at Berkeley again (1989), leading to the publication of his first book, Modernity and Authenticity.

Academic life[]

Assistant professor in sociology at the University of Rome "La Sapienza" between 1984 and 1998, then associate professor in sociology at the University of Parma between 1998 and 2002, since 2002 Ferrara is professor of political philosophy at the University of Rome "Tor Vergata".

Since 1991 he has been a director of the yearly conference on Philosophy and Social Science, initially held within the Interuniversity Centre of Dubrovnik, but since 1993 relocated to Prague, under the auspices of the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Science.

Since 1990 he has been a founder and up to 2019 a director of the Seminario di Teoria Critica, which used to meet yearly in Gallarate and since 2008 takes place in Cortona, in Italy.

Since 2007 he is on the executive committee of the Istanbul Seminars on religion and politics, held at Bilgi University in Istanbul under the auspices of the Association Reset – Dialogues of Civilizations, and since 2017 relocated at Ca'Foscari University, in Venice.

Ferrara serves as co-editor (with David Rasmussen) of the series Philosophy and Politics – Critical Explorations (Springer), and editorial consultant for a number of journals including Constellations, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Krisis, Balsa de la Medusa, Studies in Social & Political Thought, Berlin Journal of Critical Theory, and Symposion: Theoretical and Applied Inquiries in Philosophy and Social Sciences.

He has taught and lectured in various capacities in a number of universities and institutions, including Boston College, Harvard University, Columbia University, Rice University, Cardozo Law School, Yale University, New School for Social Research, University College London (UCL), Oxford University, the Chinese Academy of Social Science in Beijing, Sapienza University of Rome, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Bilgi University and Sehir University in Istanbul, the National University of Singapore, and the Universities of California (at Berkeley), Paris – Sorbonne, Madrid, Chicago, Potsdam, Amsterdam, Mexico City, Exeter, Manchester, Johannesburg, Rio de Janeiro, London, Exeter, Dublin, Belfast, Coimbra, Lisbon, Frankfurt, Copenhagen, Berne, Bordeaux, Barcelona, Kraków, Lyon III, Tilburg, Luxembourg, Mumbai, Indore, Porto Alegre, Campo Grande, Catholic University of Chile in Santiago.

Research[]

Ferrara's work revolves around an account of normativity centered on authenticity and exemplarity, which incorporates a reconstructed version of Kant's "reflective judgment". The theory of exemplary normativity aims to represent an alternative both to proceduralist or neo-transcendental approaches to validity and to anti-normative, radical contextualism.

In Reflective Authenticity exemplary normativity is first outlined and in Justice and Judgment is developed in the direction of a political-philosophical notion of justice.

In The Force of the Example the paradigm of exemplary normativity (and of judgment) is discussed in relation to the contemporary philosophical horizon and is used for reconciling context-transcending normativity and our pluralistic intuitions. Drawing on Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment but also on Arendt, Rawls, Dworkin, and Habermas, Ferrara outlines a view of exemplary validity designed for today's dilemmas, showing how this notion – for long thought to belong in the domain of aesthetics – can be applied to central issues in political philosophy, including public reason, human rights, radical evil, sovereignty, republicanism and liberalism and religion in the public sphere.

In The Democratic Horizon. Hyperpluralism and the Renewal of Political Liberalism, Ferrara argues that Rawls's “political liberalism” – the best available paradigm for understanding what a complex democratic society free of oppression could look like – needs to be updated in order to improve its traction in a historical context different from the original one. Four adjustments – conjectural arguments, an enriched notion of the democratic ethos, a decentering of it in several local varieties, as well as the remedial model of a multivariate democratic polity – are suggested in order to enable political liberalism to meet the challenge of hyperpluralism. The aesthetic sources of normativity investigated in Ferrara's earlier work — exemplarity, judgment, the normativity of identity, and the imagination — are called on to supplement the conceptual resources of a revisited political liberalism.

Books authored[]

  • with Frank I. Michelman, Legitimation by Constitution: A Dialogue on Political Liberalism, Oxford, Oxford University Press (Series: Constitutional Theory), 2021 forthcoming
  • Rousseau and Critical Theory, Boston-Leiden, Brill, 2017
  • The Democratic Horizon. Hyperpluralism and the Renewal of Political Liberalism, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2014 (transl. into Spanish)
   Symposia on the book: 
    a. “Liberalism between Politics and Epistemology: A Discussion of Alessandro Ferrara’s The Democratic Horizon: Hyperpluralism and 
        the Renewal of Political Liberalism”, in Political Studies, 2016, pp. 1-23, (articles by M.Ivkovic, J.Loncar, S.Prodanovic, 
        B.Simeunovic, reply by A.Ferrara); http://journals.sagepub.com/action/doSearch?SeriesKey=pswa&AllField=ferrara&
    b. “Democracy in the Age of Hyperpluralism. Special Section on Alessandro Ferrara’s The Democratic Horizon: Hyperpluralism and the 
        renewal of political liberalism”, in Philosophy and Social Criticism, 2016, Vol. 42 (7), pp. 635–706 (articles by D.Rasmussen, 
        F.Michelman, S.Benhabib, S.K.White, W.Scheuerman, A.S.Laden, reply by A.Ferrara); http://journals.sagepub.com/toc/pscb/42/7
    c. “The Prospect for Liberal-Democracy in Troubled Times. A Symposium on Alessandro Ferrara’s The Democratic Horizon”, the supplementary volume 
        of Jura Gentium. Journal of Philosophy of International Law and Global Politics (2017), Vol. XIV, n. 1, edited by 
        L.Marchettoni, pp. 1-132 (articles by D.Owen, M.Festenstein, L.Baccelli, D.A.García, M.Solinas, L.Marchettoni, I.Testa, 
        reply by A.Ferrara) http://www.juragentium.org/Centro_Jura_Gentium/la_Rivista_files/JG_2017_1.pdf
    d. “Le sfide della democrazia e il liberalismo politico”, Comments on A.Ferrara, The Democratic Horizon, in Notizie di Politeia, XXXIII, 
        126, 2017, pp. 165-183 (articles by E.Biale, V.Ottonelli, M.Santambrogio, reply by A.Ferrara.
  • The Force of the Example. Explorations in the Paradigm of Judgment, New York, Columbia University Press, 2008 (transl. into Italian and Spanish)
   Symposia on the book: 
      a.  “Review Symposium on The Force of the Example” in Political Studies, 2009, pp. 1-16 (articles by D.Castiglione, J.Richardson, 
          A.Schaap, C.Wagner, reply by A.Ferrara).  
      b.  “Validità esemplare, estetica e politica. Discutendo La forza dell'esempio di A.Ferrara” numero monografico di Jura Gentium. 
          Journal of Philosophy of International Law and Global Politics, edited by L.Marchettoni (articles by L.Baccelli, C.Bottici, 
          L.Cortella, F.Crespi, E.Galeotti, T.Griffero, L.Marchettoni, M.Rosati, D.Santoro, reply by A.Ferrara)
  • Justice and Judgment. The Rise and the Prospect of the Judgment Model in Contemporary Political Philosophy, London, Sage, 1999 (transl. into Italian)
  • Reflective Authenticity. Rethinking the Project of Modernity, London and New York, Routledge, 1998 (transl. into Italian and Spanish)
   Symposium on the book:
    a.  “Symposium on Reflective Authenticity” in Philosophy and Social Criticism, 2004, 30, 1, pp. 5-24 (articles by Ch.Larmore, A.Honneth, 
        reply by A.Ferrara).
  • Modernity and Authenticity. A Study of the Social and Ethical Thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1993 (transl. into Italian)

Edited volumes[]

  • with D.Rasmussen e V.Kaul, Communities and the Individual: Beyond the Liberal-Communitarian Divide, special issue of Philosophy and Social Criticism, 2021, Vol. 47, 4
  • with D.Rasmussen e V.Kaul, Sources of Democracy: Citizenship, Social Cohesion and Ethical Values, special issue of Philosophy and Social Criticism, 2020, Vol. 46, 5
  • with D.Rasmussen e V.Kaul, Fountainheads of Toleration – Forms of Pluralism in Empires, Republics, Democracies, special issue of Philosophy and Social Criticism, 2019, Vol. 45, 2
  • with D.Rasmussen e V.Kaul, The Populist Upsurge and the Decline of Diversity Capital, special issue of Philosophy and Social Criticism, 2018, Vol. 44, 4
  • A.Ferrara (ed.), Prague: 25 Years of Critical Theory, special issue of Philosophy and Social Criticism, 2017, Vol. 43, 3, pp. 235–372.

Recent articles and book chapters[]

  • “Unconventional Adaptation and the Authenticity of a Constitution”, in R.Albert, Revolutionary Constitutionalism. Law, Legitimacy, Power (Oxford: Hart, 2020), 155-177.
  • “Debating exemplarity: The 'communis' in sensus communis“, in a special section with Lois McNay on "Exemplarity and Normativity: A Debate“, Philosophy and Social Criticism, 2019, Vol. 45,2, pp.146–158.
  • “Deconstructing the deconstruction of the law: Reflections on Menke's «Law and violence»”, in D.Owen (ed.), Law and Violence. Christoph Menke in Dialogue, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2018, pp. 112–136.
  • “Can political liberalism help us rescue «the people» from populism?“, in Philosophy and Social Criticism, 2018, Vol. 44,4, pp. 463–477.
  • “Exemplarity in the public realm”, in Law & Literature, 2017, pp. 1–13
  • “Expanding the framework of political liberalism”, in D.Dankowski and A.Krzynowek-Arndt (eds.), After Rawls, Krakow, Akademia Ignatium/Wam, 2016, pp. 125–46.
  • “Constitution and context: Reflections on Bruce Ackerman's The Civil Rights Revolution”, Jerusalem Review of Legal Studies, 2016, pp. 1–12.

References[]

External links[]

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