CONFERENCE - CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Towards the History of a Heterodox Tradition in Analytic Philosophy:
Transformative, Humanistic, Conversational
Vita-Salute San Raffaele University
Milan, March 20th – 21st , 2025


Keynote Speakers:
Adrian William Moore (University of Oxford)
Naoko Saito (University of Kyoto)

Organizers:
Sarin Marchetti (Sapienza University of Rome), Raffaele Ariano (Vita-Salute San Raffaele University of Milan), Paolo Tripodi (University of Turin).

Organizing institutions:
Department of Philosophy of Sapienza University of Rome
Department of Philosophy of Vita-Salute San Raffaele University of Milan
Department of Philosophy of the University of Turin

Funding:
PRIN 2002 – Next Generation EU, Ministero dell’Università e delle Ricerca, Italia Domani
Website: https://sites.google.com/uniroma1.it/prin2022/home?authuser=0

Description:
A widespread impression is shared among scholars that a heterodox tradition can be found within contemporary analytic philosophy. It is reasonable to assume that such a tradition – characterized by family resemblances rather than by necessary and jointly sufficient conditions – exists and is well recognizable. However, its exact contours and nature are a matter of debate. This tradition is often identified either by providing an open and incomplete list of authors – among them Cavell, Williams, Rorty, Bernstein, Margolis, Diamond, Murdoch, McDowell, MacIntyre, Wollheim, Brandom, Conant, the “later” Putnam, Foot, Winch, Midgley, Hampshire, Nussbaum, Mulhall, Shusterman, Price – or by concocting such labels as post-analytic philosophy, perfectionism, Wittgensteinian philosophy, post-Sellarsian thought, and philosophy as a humanistic discipline.
The present conference, organized in the context of a PRIN 2022 research project, originates from the conviction that, though useful, such labels do not allow one to write a comprehensive history of the heterodox tradition or to distinguish it from both the analytic mainstream and non-analytic or continental traditions. The conference is intended as a moment of reflection on the interpretative keys and methodological tools necessary to make such a history possible, as well as on significant case studies offered both by individual philosophers and wider currents of thought.

In a preliminary fashion, we propose as interpretative keys three main intertwined features that characterize the tradition under investigation:
a) Transformative Analysis: Philosophy is a distinctive kind of therapeutic activity, which does not consist in providing a reductive or connective analysis of concepts in the abstract, but rather aims at concretely transforming the subject engaged in the philosophical investigation.
b) Humanistic Style: The writing style has a genuine philosophical import and is no mere ornament. Form matters for philosophical content, as it does for other humanistic disciplines, in the measure in which the text addresses and challenges the reader rather than merely conveying a neutral message.
c) Conversational Stance: Conversations are constitutive of philosophical activity in at least two senses: philosophy involves personal dialogues rather than impersonal truths, and it constructs itself through the exchange with other disciplines (such as art criticism, literary criticism, film studies, psychoanalysis, and the cognitive sciences) and with non-analytic philosophical traditions (most notably pragmatism, hermeneutics, existentialism, post-structuralism, feminism, Hegelianism, and Marxism).

The call for proposals encourages a variety of approaches and contributions on these and other sub-topics, addressing scholars in the fields of history of philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, political theory, philosophy of language, film studies, comparative literature, North American studies, gender studies, intellectual history, history of ideas, and digital humanities.
After the conference, we will also explore the possibility of composing a collection of essays.

Please send your proposals (max. 300 words) and a short bio (max. 150 words) to heterodoxconference@gmail.com by November 1st, 2024. We will share the results of the selection process by November 15th.