Prof. Dr. Adriano Fabris, co-director of the International Center of Studies on Contemporary Nihilism (CeNic), has published Ethics of Eating and Drinking. Food and Relations (Springer, 2024). The book discusses key ethical problems associated with the act of eating and drinking, arguing that food acts should be understood as relationships, that is, as a way in which man relates to others, and therefore these acts are linked to ethics.

The present edition is the English translation of the book originally published in Italian (Etica del mangiare. Cibo e relazione, Edizioni ETS, 2019), which has also been translated into Slovenian (Etika uživanja hrane, Inštitut Nove Revije, 2023) and soon into Spanish.

 

Teoria. Rivista di filosofia has published the second compendium of articles of the International Center of Studies on Contemporary Nihilism (CeNic) entitled War: Another Form of Nihilism? (Vol. 43, No. 2, 2023). The authors and their contributions to this volume are the following:

-Adriano Fabris (Università di Pisa, Italy): Premise: War: Another Form of Nihilism?

-Dean Komel (Univerza v Ljubljani, Slovenia): War of Nihilism

-Žarko Paić (Sveučilište u Zagrebu, Croatia): War, the Technosphere, and the Question of Evil. Three Paradigms of War

-Lúcio Jorge Hammes, Rogério José Schuck (Universidade Federal do Pampa / Universidade do Vale do Taquari, Brazil): Fundamentos para a paz: limites e possibiliades

-Werner Stegmaier (Universität Greifswald, Germany): Nihilismus in Zeiten des Krieges. Im Gespräch mit Nietzsche

-Fernando Gilabert Bello (Universidad de Málaga, Spain): Llenaremos de sal vuestros campos. Reflexiones en torno a la guerra y el nihilismo

-Rebeca Maldonado (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México): La nada como torsión y límite de la modernidad. Pensar desde la experiencia de la guerra el comienzo. Sobre los textos ontohistóricos de Heidegger del 41

-Gaetano Chiurazzi (Università degli studi di Torino, Italy): Doppia negazione: tra nichilismo e istituzione

-Alfredo Rocha de la Torre (Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia): Guerra y nihilismo: hacia un más allá de la razón

 

Within the framework of the 2nd Congress of the International Center of Studies on Contemporary Nihilism (CeNic) with the collaboration of the Inštitut Nove Revije -Zavod za humanistiko, the Italian Cultural Institute in Ljubljana and the Italian Embassy in Slovenia, the Slovenian translation of the book by Prof. Dr. Adriano Fabris (co-director of CeNic), Etica del mangiare [Etika uživanja hrane], was released. This translation of the book has been carried out by Jurij Verč and revised by Mira Miladinović Zalaznik, in addition to a foreword by Prof. Dr. Dean Komel (research fellow at CeNic). https://youtu.be/8F83yrBPLPQ

 

“Human Existence and Coexistence in the Epoch of Nihilism”.

The second congress of the International Centre of Studies on Contemporary Nihilism (CeNic), “Human Existence and Coexistence in the Epoch of Nihilism”, will be held from 28th to 30th November in Ljubljana (Slovenia). This event will reflect on the relationship between humanism and nihilism, framed by the problems of the contemporary world (scientific and technical progress, global social conditions or the violence of global dehumanization). Considering that the experience of nihilism predetermines different social crises, it is clear that the question of how man fulfils himself in his humanity has become problematic. All this leads to new questions about the value foundations on which human existence is based, communication, the relationship to common life, or an ethics that allows a new humanization. It becomes necessary, then, to confront the nihilistic challenge that pervades the contemporary world.

The speakers at this second congress are:
– Adriano Fabris: Transformations of the Idea of Humanity in the Age of Technological
Nihilism
– Alfredo Rocha de la Torre: Sprache und Nihilismus
– Dean Komel: Nihilismus und die unzeitgemäße Situation der Philosophie
– Damir Barbarić: Der Wille zum Nichts
– Dragan D. Prole: Nihilismus der Nivellierung
– Werner Stegmaier: Orientierung als Antwort auf den Nihilismus
– Žarko Paić: The Technosphere and Nihilism – Autopoiesis as the End of Metaphysics
– Veronica Neri: Image, AI and Informational Nihilism
– Susanna Lindberg: Wounded Thinking of the Wounded World
– Josef Estermann: Progress as Barbarism. Epistemic Violence and Philosophicide of the
West against Indigenous Cosmo-Spiritualities
– Chung-Chi YU: The Encountering of Cultural Difference
– Petar Bojanić: Moment of the Negative
– Ion Copoeru: Meaning, Autonomy and Interaction

 

Prof. Dr. Žarko Paić, research fellow at International Center of Studies on Contemporary Nihilism (CeNic), has published The Superfluity of the Human. Reflections on the Posthuman Condition (Schwabe 2023). The author argues that, concerning the progress and development of the techno-scientific mind in the application of artificial intelligence, the anthropological definition of man has not only become outdated and ineffective, but “man” itself has become superfluous. Taking into account philosophical perspectives on technological singularity, extropianism and the nexus between posthumanism and transhumanism, Paić considers the possibility of a new way of thinking about metaphysics within the labyrinth of language. These ideas are developed by critically confronting numerous approaches to this problem, from Heidegger, Severino, Anders, Deleuze, Simondon and Wiener.

 

Prof. Dr. Raúl Fornet-Betancourt, research fellow at International Center of Studies on Contemporary Nihilism (CeNic), has published De la soledad. Para una filosofía del buen trato con la soledad (Comares, 2023). The book is not defined as a treatise on loneliness, but as a “guide” to the appropriation and elucidation of the experience of loneliness in its different manifestations (existential motives such as love or grief, social motives such as migration or identity denial, among others). In this way, with the aim of pointing out ways of living with loneliness, different fields of encountering and dealing with this experience, which reveals other ways of being with oneself and in the world, are analyzed.

 

Prof. Dr. Carlos Másmela, research fellow at International Center of Studies on Contemporary Nihilism (CeNic), has published Del yo autista al yo poético. Una historia crítica del egocentrismo en la modernidad (Fénix, 2023). The writing takes as its starting point the centrality of the metaphysical structure of subjectivity in modern philosophy, which bases reality on the “self” and knowledge on the self-reflection that produces an understanding of itself. This grounding in the “self” disallows a ‘free’ relationship with the world, so the author investigates how this structure of subjectivity leads to an ‘autistic’ notion of the subject. In opposition to this “self” of modernity, Prof. Másmela proposes as a critical alternative the “poetic self”: the knowledge of the self that achieves a harmonious interaction with the world. This reflection, which draws on Novalis, Hölderlin, Hegel and Fichte, allows to think poetically the modern subjectivity.

 

Professors Dr. Jean-Luc Marion and Dr. Costantino Esposito, two of the most relevant figures in philosophy nowadays, have recently published two articles in the Italian newspaper L’Osservatore Romano discussing the experience of nihilism in the contemporary world. The analyses of these two important philosophers point out that nihilism is a current philosophical theme whose discussion can offer new horizons of thought.

Prof. Dr. Esposito is a research fellow at the International Centre of Studies on Contemporary Nihilism (CeNic) and has as one of its research areas, precisely, the phenomenon of contemporary nihilism.

Link to the article: https://www.osservatoreromano.va/it/pdfreader.html/quo/2023/05/QUO_2023_122_2805.pdf.htmldf.html

 

International Center of Studies on Contemporary Nihilism informs about the international journals edited by its researchers, with the aim of inviting professors and students interested in Philosophy to visit their website and get to know them in detail:

 Cuestiones de Filosofía. (Editor: Prof. Dr. Alfredo Rocha de la Torre)
https://revistas.uptc.edu.co/index.php/cuestiones_filosofia/index
 Phainomena. Journal of Phenomenology and Hermeneutics (Editor: Prof. Dr. Dean Komel)
http://www.phainomena.com/en/
 Quaestio. Anuario di storia della metafísica (Editor: Prof. Dr. Costantino Esposito)
https://www.quaestio.info/
 Signos (Editor: Prof. Dr. Rogerio Schuck)
http://www.univates.br/revistas/index.php/signos/index
 Teoria. Rivista di Filosofia fondata da Vittorio Sainati (Editor: Prof. Dr. Adriano Fabris)
http://www.rivistateoria.eu/
 Trópos. Rivista di ermeneutica e critica filosofica (Editores: Prof. Dr. Gaetano Chiurazzi / Prof. Dr. Gianni Vattimo)
https://troposonline.org/
 TVRĐA – Journal for theory, culture and visual arts (Editor: Prof. Dr. Žarko Paić)
https://tvrdja.com/

 

Prof. Dr. Costantino Esposito, research fellow at International Center of Studies on Contemporary Nihilism, has published O Nihilismo de nosso tempo: Uma crônica (Edições Loyola, 2023). This book was originally published in Italian (Carocci, 2021) and has been translated into Spanish (Ediciones Encuentro, 2021), Russian (Современный нигилизм. Хроника; Ripol Classic Éditions, Moscou 2022) and Portuguese for the present edition. In this work the author presents nihilism as an open question, that is, as a phenomenon that brings up different problematics that demand the urgency of thinking about a meaning for the different experiences of life. Nihilism is not conceived as an obstacle that leads to the loss of values and ideals, but as an opportunity for the search for meaning. In this way, the author, using philosophical, literary, cultural, aesthetic, cinematographic references and the analysis of social phenomena, analyses the ways in which the phenomenon of nihilism manifests itself in the contemporary world and allows us to rethink the meaning of man and the world.