Dehumanization and Human Fragility

About the Book

When the trade center collapsed in New York, I was sitting at my desk at the newspaper La Provincia di Como, in Italy. If I cannot forget that day, it is not only because that major event shuttered me, but in reason of the cognitive limits that I could experiment. For the first time in my professional career, I realized that a further theoretical step was asked in order to throw light on evildoing. This philosophical investigation is aimed at exploring the loss of humanity from a phenomenological perspective integrated with a metaphysical approach. It collects and develops a decade of theoretical researches, mainly published in Italy, focused on the anthropological aspects of global terrorism from which I moved further to explore human fragility. Despair, sloth, and the pain of traumas are explored in part II of the investigation that ends with the story of Etty Hillesum, the Dutch intellectual who was able to flourish in the midst of the Nazi’s hell.

About the Author

Primavera Fisogni (1963), Italian philosopher and journalist, is currently editor in chief at La Provincia daily newspaper. She was educated at the Catholic University of Milan where she graduated in classics and in theoretical philosophy; she took PhD in metaphysics at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, directed by Spanish scholar Lluis Clavell. Her essays are mainly aimed at the premoral origin of evildoing (Terroristi. La persona nell’agire eversivo, 2004; L’inaridimento dei terroristi, 2009) and are focused on the dynamics of dialogue (Incontro al dialogo. La sfida dell’intesa nei tempi della crisi, 2006). As a feminist thinker, she explores theoretical arguments for the female priesthood in the Catholic Church (A Love Life in a Sexless Condition. The Role of Chastity in the Catholic Church, 2011). She was awarded, as a reporter, in 2002 and 2009. As philosopher, she won the prize Leggere Donna (2005) for her investigations about terrorism.