Susan Sontag’s essays on the vast topic of photography – mainly On Photography and Regarding the Pain of Others – are significant pieces of her philosophical thought, but also shed light on the importance that political activism had in Sontag’s life, at least since the start of the Vietnam War. In the two essays, both the theoretical and the practical frameworks are outlined in detail by the American philosopher, who significantly highlights the strict bonds that tie them together. Among these threads, the experience of travel occupies a very important space, because it allows Sontag to challenge her ideas and – at the same time – put into practice her thoughts. In this sense, the present article will analyse both the ontological and the aesthetical dimensions on one side and the political and ethical ones on the other of On photography and Regarding the pain of others and will point out as well how specific travels – to Hanoi for the former work and to Sarajevo for the latter – helped Sontag shape some of the ideas she expresses in these essays, mainly regarding war photography.

Much of contemporary animal ethics can be read as a reaction to its rationalistic roots, trying to correct for an epistemically impoverished picture of moral cognition. This “affective turn” in animal ethics which seeks to take seriously the role of affective cognition in moral deliberation has been very fruitful but it has also resulted in a tendency to take affective intuitions as evidence against alienating, demanding or repulsive conclusions from traditional, principle-based universalist ethics. I argue that this is a mistake. Rather than elevating our affects to the position of evidence, taking their role in moral cognition seriously should actually make us more scrupulous in their use, not less. If moral cognition inescapably involves the use of feelings and emotions, I argue, then we must be especially careful to keep our feelings and emotions free from biases and fallacies. This will involve more intense alienation from and reevaluation of our affective intuition, not less.

The power of photography, its strength and its limits, were the subject of Susan Sontag's (1933-2004) attention mainly thanks to her two famous contributions on the subject: On Photography, published in 1977 as a collation of previously published texts in the “New York Review of Books”, and Regarding the Pain of Others published in 2003, shortly before the untimely death of the American writer and activist. The essays on photography that Susan Sontag left us have marked decades of visual culture, both in Italy and abroad, of discussions and reflections on the capacity of this medium to shape consciousness, modify perceptions, and condition information. And while it is true that the theme of the voyeurism of the photographic gaze was explored in depth in the 2003 essay on the experience of the brutal trauma of the fruition of war through images, it is above all the 1977 essay that is still considered a point of reference for a new way of reading and thinking about photography, placed in transversal and dynamic dialogue with other disciplines, first and foremost cinema. This contribution aims to return to rereading the origins of the theme of photographic voyeurism in Susan Sontag's thought, then declining it in her reading of Diane Arbus' poetics as a complex, fascinating, controversial case study.

This creative critical essay initiates from the writer’s existential question about the use of pronouns as expression of one’s own identity. Susan Sontag’s Under the Sign of Saturn and Primarily Women (original Dutch title: Voornamelijk Vrouwen) by the renowned Dutch novelist and philosopher Connie Palmen, are the essay books that guide her through the quest for one’s own voice. As Sontag’s writings on theory are brought into dialogue with Palmen’s autotheoretical personal essays to gain new insights into the styles of both, the question of pronouns and identity is explored through the contribution to knowledge and self-knowledge from these two major sorts of essay writing.

This paper, building on Susan Sontag’s seminal works Illness as Metaphor (1978) and AIDS and Its Metaphors (1989), aims to offer a framework for reflecting on the meaning of illness and its metaphorical representations, particularly in the aftermath of the covid-19 pandemic. Sontag’s insights into how illness is often depicted using war metaphors – casting disease as an enemy to be fought – remain highly relevant today. The paper seeks to update these reflections by exploring how the same metaphorical language was employed during the recent pandemic. The objective is to critically examine how the limitations of war-based metaphors fail to capture the full complexity of the phenomena we have experienced. Moreover, it argues for a shift towards a new vocabulary centered on concepts like vulnerability and care, which better express the nuances of collective and individual experiences of illness. This shift in perspective compels us to rethink the metaphors that structure our understanding of illness, advocating for a move away from militaristic language that frames disease in terms of conquest and control, embracing a framework that foregrounds interconnectedness and common vulnerability.

Susan Sontag’s interest in visual research, documented by numerous essays, is closely linked to the central role that the author has recognized in the photographic gaze, in understanding a series of cognitive and social processes in modern capitalist societies. Her approach has highlighted, over a period ranging from the early Seventies to the early 2000s, a series of effects of construction and deconstruction in the formation of common sense, linking them to the settlement of forms of social intimacy with the photographic medium. Sontag’s long-standing interest in the history of photography, and in the evolution of consumer practices related to this medium, testifies to the political engine of her research: recognizing the principles of construction of social reality between representation, power of fiction and information overload, developing a critical understanding of capitalist society through the traffic of images that innervates it.

Presentazione

This article examines the tension between political obligation and personal loyalty in the context of exile, drawing on the theories of Judith Shklar and utilizing Hisham Matar’s literary work, My Friends (2023), as a primary analytical framework. Through an interdisciplinary investigation that interweaves political philosophy, history, and literature, the work examines how exile compels individuals to confront complex moral dilemmas, thereby questioning their relationships with the state, the community, and themselves. The examples presented in the essay provide a contemporary, narrative perspective on the fragmented identity of exile. The essay highlights how Shklar’s thought, centred on the relationship between rationality and affectivity, offers crucial tools for interpreting the ethical and political challenges that characterize the experience of exile. At the same time, Matar’s work enriches this analysis, highlighting the personal and psychological implications of these dynamics. In conclusion, the article proposes that exile not only represents a condition of loss but also an opportunity to question the meaning of identity, loyalty and belonging in a globalized and fragmented world.

This essay aims to interpret Ernst Jünger’s book Der Waldgang through the conceptual contraposition between exile and dwelling. It analyses the idea of Waldgang as an act of exile carried out by an individual in relation to the menaces produced by the power in the contemporary era, which exile individuals from their existence. The exile of the Waldgang is considered in its essential link to the «metaphysical power of humankind». The implications of the Waldgang for the human action and politics are taken into consideration to show how Jünger recognizes in it a way for the mankind to dwell anew in the world.

In Heidegger’s reading of Kant, the transcendental imagination takes on a fundamental role. Imagination comes forth as the common root of both sensibility and understanding, carrying out its function by opening the intellect to sensibility. It can carry out this task insofar as it is temporality; within this horizon, Kantian synthesis is rethought as a temporal ecstatic synthesis. Imagination is thus taken up as the primordial ground of all transcendental elements, thereby pointing to an original unity of spontaneity and receptivity. As a result of this perspective, the transcendental imagination cannot be pinned down to either sensibility or understanding; it stands as a faculty without a homeland, Heimatlos, a faculty in exodus.