Alessandro Ferrara (b. 1953, 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 graduated in Philosophy in Italy (1975) and later, as a Harkness Fellow, received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (1984). He has 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. He has been an Assistant Professor in Sociology at the University of Rome "La Sapienza" between 1984 and 1998, then an Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Parma between 1998 and 2002, and since 2002 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 part of the regular activities of the Interuniversity Centre of Dubrovnik, but since 1993 relocated in Prague, under the auspices of the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Science and later also of Charles University. Since 1990 he has been a founder and a Co-Director of the Seminario di Teoria Critica, which meets yearly in Gallarate Italy. And 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. He serves as editorial consultant on the board of a number of journals including Constellations, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Krisis, Balsa de la Medusa, Iris and The European Journal of Philosophy, and on the Advisory Board of the series New Directions in Critical Theory at Columbia University Press. He has taught and lectured in various capacities in a number of universities and institutions, including Harvard University, Columbia University, Rice University, Cardozo Law School, Yale University, New School for Social Research, the Chinese Academy of Social Science in Beijing, and the Universities of California, Madrid, Chicago, Potsdam, Amsterdam, Mexico City, Exeter, Manchester, Johannesburg, Rio de Janeiro, London, Exeter, Dublin, Belfast.
He has authored:
Modernity and Authenticity. A Study of the Social and Ethical Thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1993 (transl. into Italian)
Reflective Authenticity. Rethinking the Project of Modernity, London and New York, Routledge, 1998 (transl. into Italian and Spanish)
Justice and Judgment. The Rise and the Prospect of the Judgment Model in Contemporary Political Philosophy, London, Sage, 1999 (transl. into Italian)
The Force of the Example. Explorations in the Paradigm of Judgment, New York, Columbia University Press, 2008 (transl. into Italian and Spanish)
He has edited:
The Uses of Judgment, special issue of Philosophy and Social Criticism, Vol. 34, 1-2, 2008.
Ritual and/or Sincerity, special issue of Philosophy and Social Criticism, Vol. 36, 1, 2010.
with D.Rasmussen and V.Kaul, Postsecularism and Multicultural Jurisdictions, special issue of Philosophy and Social Criticism, vol. 36, 3-4, 2010
His research revolves around the formulation of an authenticity- and judgment-based account of normative validity, which by way of incorporating a post-metaphysically reconstructed version of the normativity of Kant's "reflective judgment", could be immune to anti-foundationalist objections and yet represent a viable alternative to the formalism of standard proceduralist accounts of normative validity. In Reflective Authenticity this conception of normativity is outlined in general and in Justice and Judgment is developed in the direction of a political-philosophical notion of justice. In Force of the Example the paradigm of judgment is further articulated and situated within the contemporary philosophical horizon. One of the important issues confronting moral and political philosophers is the question of justification. During the 20th century, the view that assertions and norms are valid insofar as they respond to principles independent of all local and temporal contexts came under attack from two perspectives: the partiality of translation and the intersubjective constitution of the self, understood as responsive to recognition. Defenses of universalism have by and large taken the form of a thinning out of substantive universalism into various forms of proceduralism. In Force of the Example, instead, Ferrara tries an entirely different strategy for showing how the particularity of context can be transcended without contradicting our pluralistic intuitions: a strategy centered on the exemplary universalism of judgment. Whereas exemplarity has for long been thought to belong in the domain of aesthetics, this book explores the other uses to which it can be put in our philosophical predicament, especially in the field of politics. Drawing on Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment but also on Arendt, Rawls, Dworkin and Habermas, he outlines a view of exemplary validity designed for today's dilemmas, showing how it can be applied to central philosophical issues, including public reason, human rights, radical evil, sovereignty, republicanism and liberalism and religion in the public sphere.
His current research includes four main foci of interest: the distinction of speculative and deliberative reason and the different role played by judgment in each; rethinking the separation of religion and politics in a post-secular society as well as the justification of tolerance and pluralism; the case for multicultural jurisdictions; the contribution of the judgment paradigm to the justification of human rights and the solving of problems connected with their enforcement.
Some of his recent articles include:
"Politics at its Best: Reasons that Move the Imagination", in C.Bottici and B.Challand (eds.), The Politics of Imagination, London, Birkbeck Law Press, 2011, pp. 38-54.
"Das Gold im Gestein. Verdinglichung und Anerkennung", in R.Forst, M.Hartmann, R.Jaeggi, M. Saar (eds.), Sozialphilosophie und Kritik, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 2009, pp. 40–63.
"Authenticity Without a True Self", in Ph.Vannini, J.P.Williams (eds.), Authenticity in Culture, Self, and Society, Farnham, Ashgate, 2009, pp. 21–36.
"Reflexive Pluralism", in Postsecularism and multicultural jurisdictions, in Philosophy and Social Criticism, 2010, vol. 36, n. 3-4, pp. 353–64.
"Mediating or Merely Juxtaposing Ritual and Sincerity?", in Philosophy and Social Criticism, 2010, vol. 36, 1, pp. 41–44.
"The Separation of Religion and Politics in a Post-secular Society", in Philosophy and Social Criticism, 2009, vol. 35, 1-2, pp. 77–92.
"最佳状态的政治：推动想象的诸理由" (“Politics and the Imagination”), in World Philosophy, 2009, n. 1, pp. 60–71.
"Europe as a “'special area for human hope'", in Constellations, 14:3, 2007, pp. 315–331.