This contribution bears witness to a path of semiotic-hermeneutic research aimed at addressing the notion of Event as firstness, in Peirce’s sense, and as retraction, in Heidegger’s sense. The ‘difference’ proper to the event is thought of starting from the concepts of ‘detachment’ and ‘rebound’ that allow us to think of its retroflexion and novelty, sameness and diversity at the same time, according to the ever-repeating figures of the Ancestor and the Infant. Truth itself must be thought of in this radical ambiguity, which nonetheless constitutes its irreducible life.

The 16th and 17th centuries were a period of profound political, institutional, and doctrinal upheaval, largely sparked by the Protestant Reformation. Within this cultural and religious context, Francisco Suarez emerged as one of the most influential figures in Catholic thought. While scholarly interest in Suarez’s work has a well-established history, more recent studies have introduced different and previously unexplored perspectives on certain aspects of his thought. This paper aims to analyze key elements of Suarez’s metaphysics in light of these recent contributions, placing his work within its original doctrinal framework and assessing its enduring legacy in history of philosophy. Metaphysical themes – such as the object of metaphysics, the concept of being, the distinction between being and essence, the theory of transcendentals, the problem of individuation – are examined in relation to the medieval tradition that shaped Suarez’s thought, the doctrinal context of Second Scholasticism, and their subsequent reception, particularly in works of some notable 20th-century authors.

This study traces the fundamental stages of Benedetto Croce’s moral thought, focusing on the concept of ‘ethical-utility’ (etico-utile). In his texts, Croce understands utility as inseparable from morality. Moral action is good precisely because it is first and foremost useful. He distinguishes between a merely personal utility (which is the basis of all economic and moral action) and a utility that may develop into universal-utility (ethical- utility). Compared to the economic individual who aims at private profit, the moral person would instead tend to privilege the profit that concerns the ‘greater number’, going so far as to make his own individual interest coincide with interest in the universal good. The pursuit of common utility thus seems to be the distinctive attitude of morality (and also of politics). This utility, in favour of the interest of the community does not mean altruism; rather, the moral act requires to be put before any personal interest and the interest of others, in order to favour, ultimately, only that of the Spirit. This concept of ‘ethical-utility’, theorised by the Neapolitan thinker, seems to have been materialised in the only political-legislative act, promoted by Croce himself: the law for the protection of the Italian landscape heritage (no. 778 of 11 May 1922). Croce’s law is in fact characterised by a defence of the national cultural and environmental heritage motivated precisely by the concept of the latter’s ‘public interest’.

Starting with two enigmatic statements from the Thor Seminar (1969): ‘With the Ereignis, it is no longer Greek at all’; ‘One of the best ways to access the Ereignis would be to look into the essence of the Gestell’ (the enframing, the device, the whole constellation of the Stellen, Bestellen), this contribution critically examines the interpretations/translations of the Ereignis in terms of an event. While Heidegger still thinks of the Ereignis in terms of the ‘destinical sending’ (Geschick, Schicken), this, far from being inscribed in a temporal dimension, opens up a space of joined relationships (the Ereignis understood as Verhaltnis aller Verhaltnisse) brought together in the crossing (Vierung, in the sense of the crossing of ogives) which holds and maintains together the agreement of the Four: Earth - Heaven, Mortals - Immortals). This explains how the Ge-Stell can be seen as the (photographic) negative of the Ereignis.

The treatise The Event, albeit in an esoteric tone, points to “the trails and paths of the enduring” [Austrag] of the difference. Here Heidegger asserts that the event is itself “beyng as the relation [Verhaltnis]”, as the “inaugural between” [Zwischen], overcoming the onto-theo-logical metaphysics, which thinks of beyng as the stable foundation of being. In the third section, which is titled The Difference [Der Unterschied], Heidegger highlights that the difference does not separate being as the supersensory world from beings as the sensory world; it is not the ontological difference [Differenz], which is “objectified” [vergegenstandlicht] in Being and Time, rather it traverses within beyng itself. Beyng is essentially difference, from which separations arise. Nevertheless, in his view, ontological difference, or rather the differentiation [Unterschiedung], remains an inevitable step to reach the inceptual thinking, i.e., the fundamental question of beyng as Unterschied. Such thinking is de-founding [Ent-stiften] toward the enduring of the difference as well as the saying of the event is a gainsaying [Ab-sage], as the thinkers must often speak in the mode of denial. Although the difference is unexperienceable for “metaphysical humanity”, Heidegger believes that there must be possible an experience of beyng itself, i.e., an experience of the difference, even if for a “transformed humanity”, which bear the pain of enduring. The difference appropriates “now and then” and the event dispropriates [enteignet], causing human being to experience his “dependence” and the “consignment” [Uber-eignung] in which his “self-arrogation” [Sich-zu-eigen] is grounded. Unfortunately, in Heidegger’s Denkweg the thought of difference remains a broken path, which other thinkers will tread. However, by asserting that at the origin there is no stable ground, but the movement of differentiation, by asserting that the ‘not’ is co-essential to beyng, or otherness to the self, Heidegger opens another beginning for the thinking.

Giorgio Buccellati, A Critique of Archaeological Reason: Structural, Digital and Philosophical Aspects of the Excavated Record, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2017

According to modern categorizations, the commentaries on the Holy Scriptures by Albert the Great are not philosophical works and therefore they have received minimal attention in the field of Albertine studies. Super Matthaeum, for example, is one of the least studied in existing research. As a result, the complexity of the relationships between biblical interpretation and the philosophical and theological disciplines are surprising to the researcher used to seeing in Albert a kind of two-headed Janus – either the natural philosopher or the metaphysician, either the natural scientist or the theologian. Albert himself provided occasion for such a dichotomous view. He often held that theologica non conveniunt cum philosophicis in principiis. Nevertheless, some studies have already documented the clear presence of the “philosophical” Albert alongside Albert the “theologian” and “biblical interpreter.” The present contribution offers a particular case study by analyzing Albert’s exegesis of the words in somnis in his commentary on Matthew’s Gospel. This is a long passage in which the Dominican master makes extensive use of philosophical theories on divination through dreams, which he had already presented in De somno et vigilia. According to Albert’s exegesis, the visio prophetalis experienced by Joseph in Matthew’s Gospel is the same kind experienced by Socrates, the first prophet, and the natural philosopher described in De somno et vigilia.

Late ancient and early medieval narratives often depict dreaming as a vertical and hierarchical process of influence that has its starting point in a higher entity and ends with the human being. This model of explanation seems to take a more horizontal approach with the advent of a new natural philosophy and medical works from Arabic milieu that put the psychosomatic processes of the human being into perspective. The general purpose of this paper is to assess to which extent Albert the Great’s consideration of dreams can be taken as an example of this turning point. Specifically, it tries to show how his dream theory is articulated in De homine. The main hypothesis is that the Dominican friar advocated a materialistic account of dreams, in which the process of dream formation is explain as a flux of bodiness caused by a change in the thermal behavior of the body.

The thesis of a “metaphysical” Kant has been repeatedly affirmed by historiographic research and is now a given. Contrary to what is often assumed, however, Kant’s relationship to metaphysics should be interpreted as the search for an unconditioned outside ontology. Kant realises the inevitable correlation between foundation and limit. “Absolute position”, “a priori synthesis”, “fact of reason” and “highest good in the world” are four expressions that highlight the repetition of this correlation and the impossibility of placing an unconditioned in Kant’s passage from ontology to criticism, ethics and history.

Analytic metaphysics displays a meta-metaphysical pattern: A shift toward a foundational conception of the aims and methods of metaphysical enquiry and away from a pragmatic understanding of foundational questions of metaphysics. Pragmatism looms large in Carnap’s and Quine’s metaphysics, across the differences between ontological pluralism and antirealism and extensionalist ontological realism. The two philosophers share the pairing of a deflationary take on ontology and a pragmatist rendering of foundational issues. In particular, Quine complements his quantification-based ontology, which denies ontological pluralism, with a pragmatic understanding of cognitive and explanatory significance. This pattern is traceable in Lewis’s modal realism. A different line in analytic meta-metaphysics is characterized by easing of pragmatist commitments and redefining the object of enquiry, from what there is to what is fundamental. I give and discuss examples of this different theoretical line and illustrate their contribution to the ineludible task of a philosophical revision of pragmatism.