Our time and the words to express it: demonic, Dionysian, dis-human

Doctoral Program in Philosophy, Epistemology, and Human Sciences

University of Cagliari, Department of Education, Psychology, and Philosophy

Seminar title: Our Time and the Words to Express It: Demonic, Dionysian, Dishuman

Number of hours: 2

Teachers (e-mail and relevant subject area(s)):

Prof. Fiorinda Li Vigni (Italian Institute of Germanic Studies) fiorinda.livigni@gmail.com 14/GSPS-01 Political Philosophy / PHIL-05/A History of Philosophy;
Prof. Gabriella Baptist (UniCa) baptist@unica.it 11/PHIL-03 Moral Philosophy

Short bio/bibliography:

Fiorinda Li Vigni (PhD in Philosophy, Sapienza University of Rome, National Qualification as Associate Professor in Political Philosophy and History of Philosophy) collaborates with the Italian Institute of Germanic Studies, after having served as a researcher and general secretary of the Italian Institute for Philosophical Studies in Naples. Her research and publications focus on questions and problems in classical German philosophy and ancient philosophy. She currently studies the demonic and Dionysian in twentieth-century philosophy.
Gabriella Baptist teaches subjects in the field of moral philosophy in the philosophical and pedagogical areas at the University of Cagliari. Research areas: classical German philosophy, phenomenology, hermeneutics, deconstruction.

Delivery Method: In-person and online

Meeting schedule: April 15, 2026, 8:30-10:00 AM

Room and/or Link: Room 2A (link: https://qr.codes/FB5rhK)

Language: Italian

Preliminary knowledge required: None

Brief course description:

The idea is to place philosophy at the forefront of our perception of our time, based on three distinct yet interconnected interpretations. The emotional tone marked by the loss of self and the world can be considered one of the hallmarks of contemporaneity, a consequence of the sense that our world has once again become powerfully inhabited by destructive impulses, deaf to any reason that seeks to assert itself through arguments, by forces that we might conventionally define as demonic. It is the perception of the waning of the pretense of being able to rationally guide the history we construct day by day, in a scenario where the twentieth-century prospects of emancipation appear to have faded, in an era marked by our exclusive reliance on the blind dynamics of economics and technology, by the increase in conflict on the international scene, by the weakening of antibodies against policies of exploitation, marginalization, and ethnic violence; finally, by the resurgence of an ancient question about the relationship between humanity and technology, which the acceleration of ongoing technological revolutions and the environmental crisis imbue with unprecedented poignancy.

The Dionysian is the second of the proposed interpretations: it emphasizes the disruptive (and therefore also calamitous) power of forces once again beyond our control, which nevertheless represent the hidden and repressed source of life, of our passions, of our actions, of our living immersed and often unaware in a world larger and more complex than that constructed by man, by his techniques and his civil rules. (The theme of life, that of intoxication, of illusion, of transformation). Finally, the inhuman refers to a twofold set of problems. The first concerns the perpetuation, the worsening of all practices of dehumanization linked to the exploitation and annihilation of other human beings, in various forms—those handed down to us by history and those that our time is “inventing”; The second concerns the fact that our world is becoming dehumanized, making more and more room for machines (intelligent or otherwise), but also the fact that the great transformations underway are challenging the anthropocentric paradigm, leading to the development of a trans- or post-human point of view.

References:

Paul Tillich, The Demonic: A Contribution to an Interpretation of the Meaning of History, ETS, Pisa 2018
Gerhard Ritter, The Demonic Face of Power, Pgreco, Milan 2022
Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny, in Selected Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. IX, Bollati Boringhieri, Turin 1979, pp. 79-114.
Thomas Mann, “Freud’s Position in the History of the Modern Spirit” (1929), in Nobility of the Spirit and Other Essays, I Meridiani paperback, Mondadori 2015, pp. 1349-1375; “Freud and the Future” (1936), ibid., pp. 1378-1404.
Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, Einaudi, Turin 2007.

Final rating: No