Roberto Farneti
Biographic Data
| ID | 4194572 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Roberto Farneti |
| GIVEN NAMES | Roberto |
| FAMILY NAME | Farneti |
| SIGNATURE | FARNETI R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Free University of Bozen-Bolzano |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6511-8144 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 20 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 14 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Prefigurative Democracy and Cultural Co‐Production
This article advances a normative conception of political culture that resists its conventional treatment as a sociological fact. Instead, it proposes to understand culture as a generative field of norm production. Bridging normative political theory and cultural sociology, the argument demonstrates that culture, far from being a secondary reflection of political structures, performs constitutive work in shaping democratic imagination. Drawing on…
Facts and Norms in Democratization
The literature on democratization uses measures of either ethnic fractionalization or polarization in empirical analyses on the causes of democratic regress; some authors have argued that either of the two complicates democratization. This article detects a conceptual puzzle in this use of the two concepts: when we shift the attention from fractionalization to polarization we are not simply moving along a continuum but rather making an epistemic …
Bipolarity redux
This article challenges the theorem of non-polarity in international relations theory by employing ‘mimetic theory’, a notion associated with the French anthropologist René Girard. The article argues that non-polarity is a distorted visual effect that conceals the actual polar configurations in global politics. So-called ‘new wars’ are seemingly asymmetrical and are said to mobilize fronts ‘on the basis of identity’. However, on closer inspection…
Cleavage lines in global politics
This article revisits the ‘heuristic value of the left–right dichotomy’ for understanding global politics. For a little less than two centuries, the main left–right cleavage centred on class issues. Class remained the spur of political mobilization until the late 1970s, when a mechanism of polarization focused more on identity issues emerged. In international politics, talk of identity becomes especially heated in the discourse that opposes East …
The immunitary turn in current talk on biopolitics
Hobbes's paradox redux
The article focuses on a paradox that Carl Schmitt either detects or perhaps fabricates in Hobbes's text, concerning the possibility of deducing viable normative arrangements from psychological facts. The paradox concerns a difficulty in the ‘attribution of accountability’ to individuals in principle ignorant of the clues required to engage proficiently in normative tasks. This ‘attribution of accountability’ was seen by both the early Schmitt (i…
Naturalizing Humanity
In his literary masterwork, the Decameron , Boccaccio undertakes a thorough examination of human values along the lines he had drawn in his history of the origins of the gods, the Genealogie deorum gentilium libri , on the assumption that values, in a world emptied of the gods, retain a similarly normative and aggregating function. To Boccaccio both gods and values are transient items in a moral ontology that acknowledges only one set of perennia…
A Mimetic Perspective on Conflict Resolution
Current theories of international justice and conflict resolution seem to rest on the assumption that discord among humans can, in principle, be settled by means of a fair allocation of a limited set of available goods. The assumption, in turn, is grounded in the idea (supported by John Rawls) that peoples of genuinely democratic and liberal societies "have nothing to go to war about," once their basic needs are satisfied and their fundamental in…
Antigone's Claim
Antigone's Claim: A Conversation With Judith Butler Pierpaolo Antonello (bio) and Roberto Farneti (bio) This conversation was held in Pordenone, Italy, in September 2008, during a major cultural event that takes place every year. What follows is an expanded version of our conversation, including a few questions she received from the public and a few more questions that Judith Butler kindly took from us after the event. As she writes on contempora…
The Horror of Self-Reflection
The Horror of Self-Reflection: The Concealment of Violence in a “Self-Conscious and Critical Society” Roberto Farneti (bio) If one looks at recent developments, the repeated appearance of such themes as self-knowledge and reflexivity in the agendas of political philosophers suggests that some long neglected problems are gradually receiving attention.i The nexus between the mental and the political has suffered considerable neglect by philosophers…
Life and politics after humanity
A number of academic disciplines are seeking to rearticulate the distinction between the natural and the normative by rethinking the position humans occupy within nature. This article surveys this interdisciplinary debate in which the possibility of understanding humans as normative beings is often called into question. The aim of this survey is to identify the stakes involved in such debates and to reveal the underlying policy dimension of curre…
A Political Theology of the Empty Tomb
This article argues a case against the theory of the sacred put forward by the French anthropologist Rene Girard. In particular, Girard seems to have obliterated one of the tenets of Christian theology, namely, the doctrine of Christ's ascension, in accord with his critical reading of Paul's letter to the Hebrews, which contains a rare emphasis on Christ's departure from the world. This article adopts a 'neo-Hobbesian' perspective in understandin…
Philosophy and the Practice of Freedom
This is an interview with Oxford‐based philosopher Joseph Raz. The interview explores the turn towards theoretical ethics that characterises Raz’s most recent work. The author of the interview is a political philosopher and the format of the questions sets the tone of the interview. The discussion of such topics as autonomy, liberal neutrality, critique of Rawls, etc. is conducted within the general framework of Raz’s conception of political theo…
Of Humans and Other Portentous Beings
Cleavage lines in global politics
This article revisits the ‘heuristic value of the left–right dichotomy’ for understanding global politics. For a little less than two centuries, the main left–right cleavage centred on class issues. Class remained the spur of political mobilization until the late 1970s, when a mechanism of polarization focused more on identity issues emerged. In international politics, talk of identity becomes especially heated in the discourse that opposes East …
A Mimetic Perspective on Conflict Resolution
Current theories of international justice and conflict resolution seem to rest on the assumption that discord among humans can, in principle, be settled by means of a fair allocation of a limited set of available goods. The assumption, in turn, is grounded in the idea (supported by John Rawls) that peoples of genuinely democratic and liberal societies "have nothing to go to war about," once their basic needs are satisfied and their fundamental in…
Antigone's Claim
Antigone's Claim: A Conversation With Judith Butler Pierpaolo Antonello (bio) and Roberto Farneti (bio) This conversation was held in Pordenone, Italy, in September 2008, during a major cultural event that takes place every year. What follows is an expanded version of our conversation, including a few questions she received from the public and a few more questions that Judith Butler kindly took from us after the event. As she writes on contempora…
Bipolarity redux
This article challenges the theorem of non-polarity in international relations theory by employing ‘mimetic theory’, a notion associated with the French anthropologist René Girard. The article argues that non-polarity is a distorted visual effect that conceals the actual polar configurations in global politics. So-called ‘new wars’ are seemingly asymmetrical and are said to mobilize fronts ‘on the basis of identity’. However, on closer inspection…
The immunitary turn in current talk on biopolitics
Philosophy and the Practice of Freedom
This is an interview with Oxford‐based philosopher Joseph Raz. The interview explores the turn towards theoretical ethics that characterises Raz’s most recent work. The author of the interview is a political philosopher and the format of the questions sets the tone of the interview. The discussion of such topics as autonomy, liberal neutrality, critique of Rawls, etc. is conducted within the general framework of Raz’s conception of political theo…
Of Humans and Other Portentous Beings
Philosophy and the Practice of Freedom
This is an interview with Oxford‐based philosopher Joseph Raz. The interview explores the turn towards theoretical ethics that characterises Raz’s most recent work. The author of the interview is a political philosopher and the format of the questions sets the tone of the interview. The discussion of such topics as autonomy, liberal neutrality, critique of Rawls, etc. is conducted within the general framework of Raz’s conception of political theo…
Of Humans and Other Portentous Beings
The Horror of Self-Reflection
The Horror of Self-Reflection: The Concealment of Violence in a “Self-Conscious and Critical Society” Roberto Farneti (bio) If one looks at recent developments, the repeated appearance of such themes as self-knowledge and reflexivity in the agendas of political philosophers suggests that some long neglected problems are gradually receiving attention.i The nexus between the mental and the political has suffered considerable neglect by philosophers…
Life and politics after humanity
A number of academic disciplines are seeking to rearticulate the distinction between the natural and the normative by rethinking the position humans occupy within nature. This article surveys this interdisciplinary debate in which the possibility of understanding humans as normative beings is often called into question. The aim of this survey is to identify the stakes involved in such debates and to reveal the underlying policy dimension of curre…
A Political Theology of the Empty Tomb
This article argues a case against the theory of the sacred put forward by the French anthropologist Rene Girard. In particular, Girard seems to have obliterated one of the tenets of Christian theology, namely, the doctrine of Christ's ascension, in accord with his critical reading of Paul's letter to the Hebrews, which contains a rare emphasis on Christ's departure from the world. This article adopts a 'neo-Hobbesian' perspective in understandin…
Naturalizing Humanity
In his literary masterwork, the Decameron , Boccaccio undertakes a thorough examination of human values along the lines he had drawn in his history of the origins of the gods, the Genealogie deorum gentilium libri , on the assumption that values, in a world emptied of the gods, retain a similarly normative and aggregating function. To Boccaccio both gods and values are transient items in a moral ontology that acknowledges only one set of perennia…
A Mimetic Perspective on Conflict Resolution
Current theories of international justice and conflict resolution seem to rest on the assumption that discord among humans can, in principle, be settled by means of a fair allocation of a limited set of available goods. The assumption, in turn, is grounded in the idea (supported by John Rawls) that peoples of genuinely democratic and liberal societies "have nothing to go to war about," once their basic needs are satisfied and their fundamental in…
Antigone's Claim
Antigone's Claim: A Conversation With Judith Butler Pierpaolo Antonello (bio) and Roberto Farneti (bio) This conversation was held in Pordenone, Italy, in September 2008, during a major cultural event that takes place every year. What follows is an expanded version of our conversation, including a few questions she received from the public and a few more questions that Judith Butler kindly took from us after the event. As she writes on contempora…
Hobbes's paradox redux
The article focuses on a paradox that Carl Schmitt either detects or perhaps fabricates in Hobbes's text, concerning the possibility of deducing viable normative arrangements from psychological facts. The paradox concerns a difficulty in the ‘attribution of accountability’ to individuals in principle ignorant of the clues required to engage proficiently in normative tasks. This ‘attribution of accountability’ was seen by both the early Schmitt (i…
The immunitary turn in current talk on biopolitics
Cleavage lines in global politics
This article revisits the ‘heuristic value of the left–right dichotomy’ for understanding global politics. For a little less than two centuries, the main left–right cleavage centred on class issues. Class remained the spur of political mobilization until the late 1970s, when a mechanism of polarization focused more on identity issues emerged. In international politics, talk of identity becomes especially heated in the discourse that opposes East …
Bipolarity redux
This article challenges the theorem of non-polarity in international relations theory by employing ‘mimetic theory’, a notion associated with the French anthropologist René Girard. The article argues that non-polarity is a distorted visual effect that conceals the actual polar configurations in global politics. So-called ‘new wars’ are seemingly asymmetrical and are said to mobilize fronts ‘on the basis of identity’. However, on closer inspection…
Facts and Norms in Democratization
The literature on democratization uses measures of either ethnic fractionalization or polarization in empirical analyses on the causes of democratic regress; some authors have argued that either of the two complicates democratization. This article detects a conceptual puzzle in this use of the two concepts: when we shift the attention from fractionalization to polarization we are not simply moving along a continuum but rather making an epistemic …
Prefigurative Democracy and Cultural Co‐Production
This article advances a normative conception of political culture that resists its conventional treatment as a sociological fact. Instead, it proposes to understand culture as a generative field of norm production. Bridging normative political theory and cultural sociology, the argument demonstrates that culture, far from being a secondary reflection of political structures, performs constitutive work in shaping democratic imagination. Drawing on…
Law (12 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Political science (12 works) · Politics (12 works) · Law (11 works) · Philosophy (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Epistemology (10 works) · Normative (6 works) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (5 works)