Papers by Matteo Santarelli
Anticipazione per la rivista "Le parole e le cose" di un articolo pubblicato nel n. 80 della riv... more Anticipazione per la rivista "Le parole e le cose" di un articolo pubblicato nel n. 80 della rivista “La società degli individui”, dedicato nella sezione monografica a “Musica, critica, politicizzazione”, a cura di Matteo Santarelli.
In this article I discuss the relationship between politicization and vagueness. Ap¬parently, the vagueness of a song seems to hinder its political reading. My hypothesis is that this can only happen if we adopt a very limited and polarized idea of politicization pro-cesses. If, on the other hand, we think of politicization as something to do with openness of meaning and articulation, a vague song can be endowed with a powerful political force. In this article, I will present this thesis through various references to pop songs of the past decades.
European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, 2024
This article presents a reconstruction of Dewey’s anthropology of interests. In particular, it ai... more This article presents a reconstruction of Dewey’s anthropology of interests. In particular, it aims to show the originality of Dewey's choice to place the concept of interest at the center of his understanding of human beings. This is manifested in three distinctive moves made by Dewey: (1) the critique of the reduction of human interests to self-interest; (2) the rejection of the concept of disinterestedness; and (3) the central role of both interests and values in understanding the nature of human action and experience. In the final part of the article, I will identify some problems that the Deweyan theory of interests and values fails to resolve, leaving them open for further discussion.
Gestures. Approaches, Uses, and Developments., 2024
This chapter deals with the importance of gestures in psychoanalysis. To that end, I will adopt a... more This chapter deals with the importance of gestures in psychoanalysis. To that end, I will adopt a pragmatic and semiotic approach to the philosophy of psychoanalysis, drawing theoretical resources from pragmatism, specifically from Giovanni Maddalena's theory of gesture. In this way, I will attempt to offer an alternative to an overly intellectualized understanding of psychoanalysis by highlighting the importance of incomplete gestures in psychoanalytic practice and theory. By leaning on Jonathan Lear's interpretation, I will highlight the pragmatic dimension of transference, understood as a complete mixture of complete and incomplete gestures. In the final part of the chapter, I will briefly speculate about the relation between completeness and vague gestures.
Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 2024
The aim of this essay is to develop an original interpretative hypothesis concerning problematic ... more The aim of this essay is to develop an original interpretative hypothesis concerning problematic aspects of Georege Herbert Mead's social theory of the Self in the light of Carl Gustav Jung's analytical psychology. First of all, we will try to unveil a link between the Meadian component of the Self defined I and the dimension of the unconscious. Discussion of this connection will open to the hypothesis that the Meadian I can be understood as both an instinctive, unconscious and nonpre‐ social component of the Self. We will support this interpretative hypothesis by establishing a dialogue with two of the central concepts of Jung's analytical psychology, namely, the collective unconscious and the archetype. As we shall see, the main point of contact between the two theories lies in the identification of a common non‐pre‐social declination of the instinctive and unconscious assumptions of the conscious Self. More narrowly, we will try to explore this hypothesis by arguing for an interpretative affinity between the Jungian archetype and the Meadian social nature of instincts. Along these lines, we will propose a functionalist approach to the interpretation of the instinctive dimension of archetypes, according to which archetypes function instinctively. Our hypothesis of convergence between Mead and Jung with regard to the social nature of instincts and the archetype will lead us to sketch a peculiar and innovative social conception of the unconscious.
Introduzione al volume "Gli esercizi di Freud. Patologie e terapie della realtà" (Ets, 2024).
Pragmatism Today, 2023
This paper is a contribution to the discussion on the relationship between pragmatism and psychoa... more This paper is a contribution to the discussion on the relationship between pragmatism and psychoanalysis. Specifically, I will contribute to the discussion by focusing on the concept of sex. Classical pragmatists-e.g., Dewey and Mead-criticize Freudian psychoanalysis for its exaggerated focus on sex. Yet, their criticisms lack a thorough discussion of what sex exactly means, according to Freud. In this paper, I would like to focus on Freud's idea of sex as a drive in order to shed light on some important and hitherto partially neglected convergences and divergences between pragmatism and psychoanalysis.
Journal of Interdisciplinary History of Ideas, 2023
An essay-reviews on Rosolino, Countervailing Powers: The Political Economy
of Market, Before and ... more An essay-reviews on Rosolino, Countervailing Powers: The Political Economy
of Market, Before and After Adam Smith, Palgrave Macmillan 2020; Glory M.
Liu’s Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of
American Capitalism, Princeton UP 2022.
European Journal of Pragmatism and Psychoanalysis, 2023
Introduction to the symposium on pragmatism and psychoanalysis published in the European Journal ... more Introduction to the symposium on pragmatism and psychoanalysis published in the European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy (XV-2).
This is the pre-editorial version of the paper appeared in the Transactions of the Charles S. Pei... more This is the pre-editorial version of the paper appeared in the Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 59 (2): 127–166 https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/article/906859
Inquiry, 2022
In this paper, I argue that positions from the historical tradition of pragmatism can offer insig... more In this paper, I argue that positions from the historical tradition of pragmatism can offer insights into the role that values play in ameliorative projects. By focusing on Sally Haslanger's ameliorative project regarding gender, I will try to show how the Deweyan idea of circuit provides a convincing understanding of the mutual interplay between values and conceptual revision within ameliorative approaches. I propose to understand this circuit as a process of articulation, through which our understanding of an initially vague value becomes more detailed and fine-grained. To this end, I will focus on a specific aspect of Haslanger's recent intellectual production, namely the idea that ameliorative projects are inspired and organized by partially indeterminate values. In the final part of the paper, I will discuss a potential moral and political pitfall associated with ameliorative projects-i.e., the proliferation of cultural bubbles which are mutually exclusive and unable to communicate among themselves. This discussion addresses a further challenge for implementation, which is connected to the field of values, and not merely to the domain of concepts.
The notion of politicization has been often assimilated to that of partisanship, especially in po... more The notion of politicization has been often assimilated to that of partisanship, especially in political and social sciences. However, these accounts underestimate more fine-grained, and yet pivotal, aspects at stake in processes of politicization. In addition, they overlook cognitive mechanisms underlying politicizing practices. Here, we propose an integrated approach to politicization relying on recent insights from both social and political sciences, as well as cognitive science. We outline two key facets of politicization, that we call partial indetermination and contestability, and we show how these can be accounted for by appealing to recent literature in cognitive science concerned with abstract conceptual knowledge. We suggest that politicizing a concept often implies making its more abstract components more salient, hence legitimating its contestable character. Finally, we provide preliminary suggestions to test our proposal, using the concept of gender as case study.
Constellations, 2020
Should we consider the Yellow Vests, the Indignados Movement, or the Movimento delle Sardine to b... more Should we consider the Yellow Vests, the Indignados Movement, or the Movimento delle Sardine to be purely populist movements? Are there alternative models of explanation that encompass features specific to the emergence and development of these movements? And should we look to left-wing populism as the source of much-needed democratic renewal in times of political and social regression? Or can we find alternatives to populism that represent a more promising base for the future of democracy? This paper aims to address these questions by providing a prag-matist, John Dewey-based answer, as an alternative to Ernesto Laclau's populist approach to the emergence of what the latter calls "popular identities." 1 We base our response on a mutual dialogue made possible by socio-ontological premises common to the two authors-more specifically, by the central role played by the notion of "articulation" in each approach. For both Dewey and Laclau, articulation represents a fundamental dimension of the political that points to the "ontological openness" of the social world. However, their individual conceptions of the notion differ widely. Although Laclau talks of "rhetoric" in reference to the paradigmatic set of linguistic, quasi-automatic mechanisms at the source of the political constitution of popular identities, Dewey understands this process as the enactment of specific forms of "social inquiry." Each approach represents a different understanding of the articulative dimension of politics and thereby of the practices involved in popular struggles. 2 Based on the discussion of this central difference between the two models, we will also argue that Dewey's understanding of political articulation is superior to Laclau's in two senses. From a normative standpoint, it is a model of political practice that is more adequate to satisfy the democratic ideal self-determination. From a political perspective, it tends to promote democracy and democratization and seems to be better prepared to counteract the risks of authoritarianism and manipulation. Furthermore, a Dewey-based account contains an as-yet unexplored descriptive potential that challenges populism's current aspiration to fully account for the formation of popular identities. Based on these three considerations, we will propose an approach to the emergence of popular identities
(Draft – please do not cite. Forthcoming in John Dewey’s Ethical Theory: The 1932 Ethics, ed. R. ... more (Draft – please do not cite. Forthcoming in John Dewey’s Ethical Theory: The 1932 Ethics, ed. R. Frega and S. Levine, Routledge Press.)
In Dewey's work, references to the concept of interest are numerous and significant. They cover different disciplines-psychology, pedagogy, social and political philosophy, theory of evaluation, aesthetics-and they appear at important passages in some of his most crucial texts, such as Democracy and Education and The Public and its Problems. However, secondary literature has not devoted specific studies to the subject. ii There are probably two reasons for this omission. First, finding a unified and unequivocal conception of interest in Dewey seems problematic, given the variety of disciplinary fields in which he uses the term. Second, Dewey is never mentioned in the historical and philosophical accounts of the concept of interest. iii This article aims to partially fill this gap by discussing the theory of interest developed by John Dewey in the 1932 revised version of Ethics. Specifically, we intend to show how in this text Dewey reorganizes and re-elaborates the conceptualizations he proposed in his previous work in the domains of psychology, pedagogy and moral theory. These contributions will be briefly summarized in the first section of the paper. In the second part, Ethics will be analyzed. We will attempt to show how Dewey's theory of interest is based on two precise theoretical bets: He conceives the close link between interest and self without reliance on the paradigm of self-interest; he develops a pragmatic understanding of interest. This reconstruction will be organized around three separate but interrelated definitions of interest: psychological, moral and political.
Concepts, habitudes et le pragmatisme mal entendu. Une lecture des Principles of Psychology à partir de Durkheim
Revue philosophique de la France et de l'étranger, 2022
La critique de la philosophie de William James qu’Émile Durkheim développe dans Pragmatisme et so... more La critique de la philosophie de William James qu’Émile Durkheim développe dans Pragmatisme et sociologie est examinée selon deux aspects : 1) le désaccord entre James et Durkheim sur le problème des concepts et de la conceptualisation ; 2) l’échec presque total de Durkheim à considérer le thème le plus proprement sociologique du travail de James : sa théorie de l’habit (ou habitude). Dans les deux cas, référence est faite au rôle joué (et parfois non joué) dans la critique de Durkheim par les Principles of Psychology. Malgré l’influence du contexte historique et les malentendus qui en découlent, la réception du pragmatisme par Durkheim touche ainsi parfois des nerfs sensibles de la philosophie et de la psychologie de James.
Lo Sguardo - Rivista di Filosofia , 2020
This paper aims at discussing the pragmatist contributions to the understanding of the dark side ... more This paper aims at discussing the pragmatist contributions to the understanding of the dark side of habits, i.e., those features of habits which tend to hinder the intelligent reconstruction of our relations with ourselves, with others, and with the world. My hypothesis is that pragmatists provided interesting insights into these problematic aspects of habits. The structure of this paper aims at developing and discussing this hypothesis. In section 1, I will present Dewey's theory of habits as an attempt to integrate James' and Peirce's contributions to the topic. In section 2, I will discuss the complicated relation between pragmatism and the unconscious, by analyzing Peirce's (2.1) and Dewey's (2.2) contributions to this subject. In section 3, I will discuss a second element of complication in the mainstream representation of pragmatist's theory of habits: inertia. Specifically, I will try to show how Dewey was fully aware of the role that stiffened habits play in political and social crises and conflicts. In the conclusions, I will summarize the results of the discussions.
SocietàMutamentoPolitica 12(24): 61-72. , 2021
This article aims to show how the ideas of pragmatists can dialogue with some approaches in the d... more This article aims to show how the ideas of pragmatists can dialogue with some approaches in the domain of sociology of emotions, integrating some possible shortcomings on the theoretical level. Differently from Arlie Hochschild’s dramaturgical approach and Randal Collins’ ritual approach to emotions, the pragmatists’ nonreductionist
naturalism, which advocates the thesis of the continuity between organic
and social, nature and culture, offers a solid conceptual framework to support a theory of emotions alternative to constructivism. The thesis of the pragmatists is that there is no pure, pre-social level of emotions, precisely because emotions are themselves the tools of social interaction, through which conducts regulate each other in a cooperative
and/or conflictual sense. John Dewey’s and George Herbert Mead’s approach to emotions therefore allows us to address the question of the ways in which the social dimension of the human environment affects the configuration of emotions. Moreover, their approach helps us to abandon the dichotomy between feeling and expressing that
seems to plague much of the sociology of emotions.
Come nascono i valori Quodlibet Studio Quodlibet Studio Antropologia e filosofia Nei dibattiti po... more Come nascono i valori Quodlibet Studio Quodlibet Studio Antropologia e filosofia Nei dibattiti politici, mediatici e accademici si parla spesso di valori. Eppure, una questione rimane spesso senza risposta: come nasce un valore? Come emerge e come si costituisce qualcosa che è importante per noi, e a partire da cui valutiamo persone, cose, eventi, situazioni della nostra vita? In Come nascono i valori, Hans Joas presenta una risposta originale a tale interrogativo: i valori nascono da esperienze individuali e sociali che scuotono e mettono in discussione i limiti della nostra identità. Nei dieci capitoli che compongono il volume, Joas sviluppa la sua proposta attraverso una retrospettiva storica e concettuale che va da Nietzsche a Habermas, passando per la filosofia tedesca del primo '900, il pragmatismo americano e il postmoderno. A cura di Matteo Santarelli Hans Joas (1948) è un filosofo, sociologo e teorico sociale tedesco. Attualmente è Ernst-Troeltsch-Honorarprofessor presso la facoltà di teologia dell'Università Humboldt di Berlino e Professore di sociologia e filosofia sociale presso l'Università di Chicago. I suoi volumi sul pragmatismo, la teoria sociale dell'azione, la guerra e la sociologia della religione sono stati tradotti in numerose lingue. È stato recentemente insignito del premio per la ricerca Max Planck e del Prix Paul Ricoeur. Tra le sue opere tradotte in italiano:
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Papers by Matteo Santarelli
In this article I discuss the relationship between politicization and vagueness. Ap¬parently, the vagueness of a song seems to hinder its political reading. My hypothesis is that this can only happen if we adopt a very limited and polarized idea of politicization pro-cesses. If, on the other hand, we think of politicization as something to do with openness of meaning and articulation, a vague song can be endowed with a powerful political force. In this article, I will present this thesis through various references to pop songs of the past decades.
of Market, Before and After Adam Smith, Palgrave Macmillan 2020; Glory M.
Liu’s Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of
American Capitalism, Princeton UP 2022.
In Dewey's work, references to the concept of interest are numerous and significant. They cover different disciplines-psychology, pedagogy, social and political philosophy, theory of evaluation, aesthetics-and they appear at important passages in some of his most crucial texts, such as Democracy and Education and The Public and its Problems. However, secondary literature has not devoted specific studies to the subject. ii There are probably two reasons for this omission. First, finding a unified and unequivocal conception of interest in Dewey seems problematic, given the variety of disciplinary fields in which he uses the term. Second, Dewey is never mentioned in the historical and philosophical accounts of the concept of interest. iii This article aims to partially fill this gap by discussing the theory of interest developed by John Dewey in the 1932 revised version of Ethics. Specifically, we intend to show how in this text Dewey reorganizes and re-elaborates the conceptualizations he proposed in his previous work in the domains of psychology, pedagogy and moral theory. These contributions will be briefly summarized in the first section of the paper. In the second part, Ethics will be analyzed. We will attempt to show how Dewey's theory of interest is based on two precise theoretical bets: He conceives the close link between interest and self without reliance on the paradigm of self-interest; he develops a pragmatic understanding of interest. This reconstruction will be organized around three separate but interrelated definitions of interest: psychological, moral and political.
naturalism, which advocates the thesis of the continuity between organic
and social, nature and culture, offers a solid conceptual framework to support a theory of emotions alternative to constructivism. The thesis of the pragmatists is that there is no pure, pre-social level of emotions, precisely because emotions are themselves the tools of social interaction, through which conducts regulate each other in a cooperative
and/or conflictual sense. John Dewey’s and George Herbert Mead’s approach to emotions therefore allows us to address the question of the ways in which the social dimension of the human environment affects the configuration of emotions. Moreover, their approach helps us to abandon the dichotomy between feeling and expressing that
seems to plague much of the sociology of emotions.