Culture, politics and religions

The History of modern and contemporary ideas in Europe, the Mediterranean and the East line of research focuses on historic-philosophical, religious and political-social interactions in cultural transfers between Europe, the Mediterranean and the East, from the Renaissance up to Vico and through to contemporary historiography.

The reciprocal legacies offer a special vantage point: philosophical works, religious creeds, artistic, scientific and economic experiences, medical, anthropological and geographical journals, the transfer and translation of knowledge, intellectual and material history, the migration of objects, goods, bodies and ideas, hinges between plural and diverse cultures. These contaminations emerge in the interpretations of philosophers, readers and translators, channelled through printers, collectors, merchants and other agents.

By employing diversified tools and methods, historical-critical approaches of a comparative and constellatory nature, the line of research analyses the shaping of the constituent structures and the development of thought from the early modern age to the contemporary world through essays and research of a thematic character and online archives. The crossing of these materials makes it possible to identify and fully understand the dynamically-connected networks between sources, writers, readers and cultural transformation in Europe, the Mediterranean and the various contexts of the East. The research develops along both synchronic and diachronic lines, pursuing the most significant conceptual shifts. Texts and translations, commercial connections, religious practices, emotional poetics, literary and artistic genres are subject to analysis, interpretation and publication.

The research addresses numerous crucial topics that it intends to probe with stimulating curiosity: theological and political models, tolerance and otherness, travel literature, the manifold identities of Europe, its cultural contaminations and socio-environmental and political migrations. What image did modern Europe have of the ‘other’: the Jew, the Turk, the Oriental? What knowledge did it and does it have of the Jewish-Arabic world, of Indian or Chinese culture, of the scientific knowledge and the philosophical, social and religious reflections that impact our present more than in the past? This is a wide-ranging study that aims to shine the spotlight on the connection between the pivotal issues of scientific and philosophical thought over the long modern age, and that society and our present is now addressing, such as the impact of Artificial Intelligence on the major themes of philosophy, ethics and history: memory, responsibility, awareness, emotions and beliefs.

The line of research also aims to experiment new narrative and interpretative paradigms as a result of the extensive production of articles, monographs, publications, workshops and conventions that embody the attentive and ongoing outcomes of the studies performed.