La Metafisica in questione. Orientamenti metafisici del Novecento a confronto

As part of the PRAGMATEIA philosophy workshop, and more specifically the history of metaphysical thought, the Faculty of Philosophy is launching a series of three lectures in which, through a critical comparison with classical authors of contemporary philosophy, three different “metaphysical orientations” of the twentieth century will be discussed, found respectively in phenomenology, the transcendental Thomism of Louvain, and analytical thought. In fact, beyond the repeated “proclamations” that accompany metaphysics in its historical unfolding, decreeing now its crisis, now its fulfilment, now its end, now its definitive overcoming, the radical nature of the metaphysical question continues to impose itself on reflection, allowing itself to be expressed in different forms and ways. With the help of three experts in Husserl’s phenomenology, Maréchal’s philosophy, and contemporary analytical thought, metaphysics will be taken up and discussed as a “question in itself”.

Mario De Caro, (Roma Tre University )
Analytic Philosophy and the Return of Metaphysics?

In the analytical sphere, metaphysics experienced a period of decline around the mid-twentieth century, when it was attacked by proponents of logical positivism, ordinary language philosophy, Wittgenstein’s philosophy (in its various phases) and various versions of philosophical naturalism. In recent decades, however, the analytical field has seen a vigorous resurgence of interest in more strictly metaphysical themes, such as time, modal categories, causality, free will, consciousness, and a whole galaxy of notions taken from classical metaphysics, including those of property, dependence, identity, and persistence. Finally, two widely discussed general themes are so-called “metametaphysics” and the controversial relationship between metaphysics and science.