Giacomo Marramao

Giacomo Marramao
Born	1946 Catanzaro, Italy
Nationality	Italian
Alma mater	University of Florence

Giacomo Marramao (Catanzaro, Italy 1946) is an Italian philosopher who teaches Theoretical Philosophy and Political Philosophy at the University of Rome III in Rome, Italy.

Education

Marramao studied at the University of Florence where he graduated in philosophy under Eugenio Garin's guidance in 1969, and he was Fellow Scholar on behalf of the Italian CNR and the Humboldt Foundation at the Goethe University Frankfurt (1971–1975).

Early career

Between 1976 and 1995, he was professor of Philosophy of politics and of History of Political Doctrines at Naples Eastern University.

He was a visiting professor at various European and American universities: Paris (Sorbonne, Nanterre), Berlin (Freie Universität), London (Warburg Institute), Vienna, Madrid (Complutense), Barcelona, Santander, Oviedo, Murcia, Granada, Maiorca, New York (Columbia University), Mexico City (Unam), Buenos Aires (Uba), Rosario, Cordoba, Rio de Janeiro (Universidade Federal), San Paolo (Unesp).

At the beginning of the 1980s he was co-founder of influential magazines such as Laboratorio politico and Il Centaur, now defunct.

Current activities

He is now professor of Theoretical and Political Philosophy at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the University of Rome III, member of the Collège International de Philosophie of Paris, professor honoris causa at the University of Bucharest and Visiting Professor of Political Theory in Paris (Sciences Po.). He is co-editor of Iride - a magazine of public philosophy - and director of the Fondazione Basso in Rome. Many of his books have been translated into foreign languages, such as Kairos: Towards an Ontology of Due Time and the English version of Passaggio a Occidente. Awards: in 2005, the Presidency of the French Republic has awarded him with the "Palmes Académiques". In 2009, he received the International Price of Philosophy "Karl-Otto Apel".

Works

In his book Marxism and Revisionism in Italy (1971) he regards Gentile's thought as the philosophical keystone of Italian Marxism. He is the author of The Politician and Transformations (1979) and Power and Secularization (1985). He has been one of the most important re-discoverers of Carl Schmitt's thought and of decisionism.

In 2006 a collection of essays was published to celebrate his 60th birthday (Figure del conflitto, Valter Casini Editore, Roma), with international contributions by, among others: Remo Bodei, Massimo Cacciari, Franco Rella, Manfred Frank, Jean L. Cohen, Adriana Cavarero, Homi Bhabha, Antonio Negri, Rüdiger Bubner, Axel Honneth, Marc Augè, Manuel Cruz, Jorge E. Dotti, and Salvador Giner.

Philosophical stance

Starting from the study of Italian and European Marxism (Marxism and Revisionism in Italy, 1971; Austro-Marxism and left wing Socialism between the two Wars, 1977), Marramao has analysed the political categories of modernity suggesting – on the same wavelength as the Frankfurt School (The political and its transformations, 1979) and Max Weber (The disenchanted order, 1985)– an innovative symbolic-genealogical reconstruction of them. According to this view, which recovers Karl Löwith's historical-philosophical hypothesis, in modern forms of social organizations there are settled meanings deriving from a process of secularization of religious contents – that is, the re-proposal of the Christian symbolic horizon inside a worldly dimension. In particular, secularization finds its centre in a process of "temporalization of history" thanks to which the categories of time (that translate Christian eschatology into a generic opening to the future: progress, revolution, liberation, etc.) gain an increasing centrality in the political representations of Modernity.

Based on these reflections, also exposed in After the Leviathan, 1995; Westward passage. Philosophy and globalization, 2003 and The Passion of the Present, 2008, a clear thematization of the philosophical problem of time has grown up. In opposition to Henri Bergson's and Martin Heidegger's views, which delineate with different shades a pure form of temporality, more original than its representations and spatializations, Marramao declares that the link time-space is inseparable and, also connecting to contemporary Physics, he asserts that the structure of Time possesses an aporetic and impure profile, compared to which the dimension of space is the formal reference necessary to think its paradoxes (Minima temporalia, 1990; Kairos: Towards an Ontology of Due Time, 1992).

Notes

Storia della filosofia, vol. 14: Filosofi italiani contemporanei, Bompiani, Milano, 2008, pp. 328–339 (ISBN 9788845264474); AAVV, Enciclopedia di filosofia, Garzanti libri, Milano, 2004; Benso S., Marramao’s Kairós: The Space of “Our” Time in the Time of Cosmic Disorientation, in “Human Studies”, anno 2008, n. 31; A. Baird, History and Kairos, in “History and Theory”, Vol. 50, Issue 1, pp. 120–128; AA.VV., Figure del conflitto. Studi in onore di Giacomo Marramao, a cura di A. Martinengo, Valter Casini Editore, Roma, 2006.

Bibliography

• "Theory of the Crisis and the Problem of Constitution". Telos 26 (Winter 1975-76). New York: Telos Press.
• Il politico e le trasformazioni, De Donato, Bari 1979 (Isbn: CL 0703575) – Spanish translation, Lo político y las transformaciones, Siglo XXI, México City 1982 (Isbn = 968231092X); Portoguese translation, O Político e as transformaçoes, Officina de Livros, Belo Horizonte 1990 (ISBN 056086357)
• Potere e secolarizzazione [I ed. 1983], new edited and extended edition, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2005 (ISBN 8833915824) – German translation, Macht und Säkularisierung, Verlag Neue Kritik, Frankfurt am Main 1989 (ISBN 3801502074); Spanish translation, Poder y secularización, Península, Barcelona 1989 (ISBN 9788429729238); Portoguese translation, Poder e secularização, Unesp, São Paulo 1995 (ISBN 8571390843)
• Minima temporalia. Tempo, spazio, esperienza [I ed. 1990], new edited and extended edition, Sossella, Roma 2005 (ISBN 8887995850) – German translation, Minima temporalia. Zeit, Raum, Erfahrung, Passagen Verlag, Wien 1992 (ISBN 3900767823); Spanish translation, Minima temporalia. Tiempo, esplico, experiencia, Gedisa, Barcelona 2009 (ISBN 9788497841863), Barcelona
• Kairós. Apologia del tempo debito [I ed. 1992], new edition. Laterza, Roma-Bari 2005 (ISBN 884204122X) – English translation, edited, Kairós: Towards an Ontology of Due Time, The Davies Group Publishers, Aurora (CO) 2006 (ISBN 1888570377), Spanish translation, Kairos. Apologia del timpo oportuno, Gedisa, Barcelona 2008 (ISBN 9788497842259)
• Cielo e terra, Laterza, Roma-Bari 1994 (ISBN 8842043621) – Spanish translation, Cielo y tierra, Paidós, Barcelona-Buenos Aires-México 1998 (ISBN 8449305152); Portoguese translation, Céu e terra, Unesp, São Paulo 1997 (ISBN 8571391122); German translation, Die Säkularisierung der westlichen Welt, Insel, Frankfurt am Main 1996 (ISBN 3458342591); French translation, Ciel et terre, Bayard, Paris 2006 (ISBN 2227473754)
• Dopo il Leviatano. Individuo e comunità [I ed. 1995], nuova ed. riveduta e ampliata, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2000 (ISBN 8833912590)
• Passaggio a Occidente. Filosofia e globalizzazione, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2003 (ISBN 8833912566) – Spanish translation, Pasaje a Occidente, Katz Editores, Buenos Aires 2006 (ISBN 9871283318); English translation, The Western Passage, Verso, London-New York (forthcoming).
• La passione del presente, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2008 (ISBN 978883318327).
• La pasión del presente, Gedisa, Barcelona 2011 (ISBN 978-84-9784-350-8);
• Contro il potere. Filosofia e scrittura, Bompiani, Milano 2011 (ISBN 9788845267383).