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This paper discusses possible forms of loss or weakness of the ability to interact with others and the ways in which this arises. In particular, in the context of socio-affective knowledge and related failures, it focuses on certain deficits that primarily involve the body. The article aims to show that the “destiny” of our inner drives and our lives—the specific solutions to which they are forced in their vicissitudes—is less “blind” than it appears, leaving (albeit minimal) margins of escape, also because it has a relational connotation. Starting from Bernhard Waldenfels’s recent work on the relationship between phenomenology and psychoanalysis, in which this question is addressed from a phenomenological-responsive point of view, this article reflects on the problem by establishing a comparison between Waldenfels’s philosophy and Max Scheler’s phenomenology of values. Beyond the differences that their approaches to the problem of relational deficits present, Waldenfels and Scheler can be put in fruitful dialogue with each other, starting from their common interest in Freudian psychoanalysis. Within this framework, it is possible to evaluate, adopting Scheler’s point of view, both a methodological aspect and a psychological presupposition of Freud’s ontogenesis of sympathy and love: associationism. From this perspective, Freud reveals himself in part as an heir to British empiricism. I will argue that, with and beyond Freud, the human being is not reducible to a mere sum of blind sensations or blind drives and that for both at least certain forms of inability to interact with others are derivative—deformations of normal responsivity and aberrations of normal pulsional-(relational) life—rather than originary phenomena.

Materiali di Estetica. Terza serie, N. 8.1 (2021): Filosofia e architettura. Esperienze del Novecento

The issue of the nature of happiness or well-being and that of the role that it plays in the meaningful life of people are widely debated today, not only in the theoretical ambit, but also in the empirical one. Most philosophers and psychologists, above all in the Anglophone community, privilege, from this point of view, the traditional paradigms of hedonism or eudemonism. After having expounded my perplexities regarding these models, I present a positive-phenomenological account of happiness. From this perspective, the stratification of the affective life of a person, in conformity with the type of experiences experienced, is respected. In addition, the reciprocity connection between the good quality of a life and the good quality of others’ lives becomes understandable here. Happiness, which a good person “carries on her/his shoulder”, as Scheler says, reveals itself as the feeling through which she/he implicitly experiences her/his own moral value., Materiali di Estetica. Terza serie, N. 7.3 (2020): Dino Formaggio

In this paper I would like to describe, even if in broad terms, certain ways, more or less adequate, in which it is possible to experience our own or others’ subjectivity and to acquire from it, in less unhappy cases, a more or less deep knowledge. In particular, I present an ecological model of the Self, which is capable of constituting, in the specific “sense” in which it manifests itself – the self-sense, the sense of our own embodied and embedded being – a fundamental presupposition of an eventual self-knowledge and knowledge of others. The self-sense or sense of our own living bodyness, evident, for example, in feeling good or bad in one’s own body, in the hunger or in the pain, in the attunement (or non-attunement) of the subject involved with its own environment and with other animals (human and non-human), points out, in other words, in the contextual perspective that is outlined, the minimal form that can assume self-knowledge and knowledge of others. In an indirect route, that is to say, turned towards the recognition of possible failures and pathologies of self-knowledge and knowledge of others, of “unhappy knowledge” so to speak, I uncover the role that self-sense and its eventual failure play in the possible conquest or failure of second-order self-knowledge and knowledge of others (social cognition, personal and interpersonal knowledge). Above all, I turn my attention to axiological-affective self-deceptions and to delusions and affective “blindness”, suggesting a possible alternative route, or at least an integrative route, in comparison with standard theories of self-deception and delusion, essentially characterized in a propositional sense. I show in the end the formative and transformative power of art, its expressive and material dimension and its therapeutic relevance or dis-illusory, absolutely antithetical, as such, to anaesthetizing or simply protective (of a would-be equilibrium of one’s own self) and adaptive power that certain self-deceptions can have., Thaumàzein | Rivista di Filosofia, Vol 4 (2016): Vol. 5 (2017) - Volume doppio: Filosofia della nascita

In this paper I provide an ecological, Schelerian-based description of the aesthetic experience that, without being exhaustive, may account for its complexity, perspective character and stratifications. Aesthetic enjoyment, aesthetic object and the creative process of the artistic type are all specific and necessary moments of an experience – an aesthetic experience – shared by different experiential “individuals”, who also contribute to its formation process. The content of this experience grows and develops in conformity with its own laws, like a living being so to speak, able, as such, to turn its own gaze to the others’ gaze at the same time as they turn to it. In other words, I will deal with the dynamics of the artist’s interactions with the spectator, of those of the spectator with the artist and of those of both with the work of art, which, created by the artist, or rather, “brought to light” by the artist, becomes an object– a quasi-sujet in Dufrennian terms – unique to the spectator. In this context, I will try to rehabilitate the axiological virtues of beauty, not in the sense of a metaphysics of beauty, but in a sense nearer to our experiences of “seeing something in a new light”., Aisthesis. Pratiche, linguaggi e saperi dell’estetico, Vol. 11 No. 1 (2018): Mind, Nature and Beauty in the Medieval Philosophy

As fascinating as it is insidious, the question of self-knowledge goes on tormenting, as a kind of Silenus, philosophers of every period. Without any pretence of exhausting the subject, I would like to briefly stress some ���ecological virtues��� of the Schelerian view of self-knowledge. In the face of other models of self-knowledge, which do not provide an adequate account of our bodily experience and of its role in the process of formation of our psycho-physical identity ��� I am referring, for example, to the ���constitutive��� view ��� Scheler���s model of self-knowledge, understood from an ecological viewpoint, provides a good elucidation in terms of the vital relevance of specific feelings, such as bodily feelings of shame or feelings of well-being, that contribute to our self-sense and to our being, more or less, openly oriented towards a set of value-qualities of our environment. Scheler���s model of self-knowledge also provides a good elucidation, in terms of ���mortal��� relevance, of specific feelings, such as resentment or spite, that involve instead our closedness to our environment and sometimes the withering away or death of our self-sense., Thaum��zein | Rivista di Filosofia, Vol 3 (2015): Max Scheler and the Emotional Turn

Desire and reality. Notes on the ���power of will��� and ���weakness of will��� according to Scheler My aim in this paper is to provide a phenomenological contribution to contemporary philosophical research on practical reason and emotions. Within this frame, I focus my attention on Scheler���s value realism, showing its relevance, both affective and cognitive, and its theoretical refinement, which enable it to avoid the narrow limits of a flat descriptivism and those that deontologism and consequentialism have traditionally ordered ethics to respect. So Scheler���s pioneering non-formal ethics of values can enter into lively dialogue with the most sophisticated current versions of axiological realism. In particular, I point out the role that wish, or desire in general, plays in Schelerian value realism and the importance that affective-conative life has, from this perspective, for the process of formation of the person. The problem at hand requires, therefore, elucidation, first, of the Schelerian concept (and quality) of value, to grasp the meaning of this peculiar kind of realism and to clear the ground of any potential prejudices or misunderstandings about it. The specific traits of Scheler���s value realism can be synthesized in four points, which are presented and discussed in detail: ��� Values are facts, that is to say, values are not mere interpretations. ��� They are non-independent of our mind. ��� They are irreducible to non-value data. ��� They motivate the individual that makes lived experience of them. In its programmatic lines, however, this realism shares with the major part of cognitivist value models the claim to a true axiological knowledge, distinguishing itself, precisely for this reason, from other philosophical approaches to values, for example, emotivism or prescriptivism. Secondly, the inquiry is about desire. What is the ontological status of a desire? How do desires form themselves? In what measure do they affect our lives? Are our most secret desires or aspirations susceptible to moral judgement? These issues are confronted in the section of the paper dedicated specifically to investigating our emotions and passions, our dreams and fantasies. In this context, ���desire��� as wish is distinguished from ���desire��� as mere appetite or lust, precisely because it is individualized and less tightly bound to a generic species instinct. Wish is analyzed in its value structure and through a close comparison with conation and willing. A rather effective Schelerian example ��� the example of ���a will that is not a power���, so to speak, or of the so-called will of a paralyzed person that will come to the rescue of a drowning person, when in actual fact he cannot will it ��� allows me to focus on a central phenomenon in Scheler���s reflection on the emotive and volitive life of persons: the ���quasi-Nietzschean��� phenomenon of the ���power of will��� [Willensmacht] and the ���weakness of will��� [Willensohnmacht]. It is a question of a being-able-to-do or of a not-being-able-to-do, a fundamental experience for understanding well the sense that wish has in this value realism. My hypothesis on the nature of desire, that is, the ���hypothesis of the plasticity of desire���, formulated in these pages, discloses the genuine aspiration of desire, the desire for reality, and its ontological consistency, the reality of desire. In a certain sense, desire belies the traditional interpretation that renders it a mere lack (of reality)., Thaum��zein | Rivista di Filosofia, Vol 2 (2014): Etica e Passioni