Maurizio Ferraris has been working for many years on the role of writing and documents, carefully describing their phenomenology and their underpinning social ontology. He writes, reconsidering Derrida’s theory, that “there is nothing social outside the text,” suggesting that all elements of social reality are contextualized. Ferraris proposes that social objects be primarily understood not in terms of intentionality or interpretation, but documentality or inscription – social acts are recorded, stored, referenced, used. Ferraris’ latest book Doc-humanity discusses the past and present in order to consider the future that awaits us, a future that is much happier and far more human than the nihilists of modernity ever thought possible. In response to the question “Who are we?,” Ferraris analyzes the World Wide Web before it even existed, tracing a new vision of man as a being not alienated, but revealed by technology, from the first piece of chipped flint to the cell phone. Taking up the question “Where do we come from?,” he paints a vast metaphysical fresco that illuminates the powers of recording and documentation, which have hitherto been hidden but have become apparent since the advent of the Web. And finally, throwing down the question “Where are we going?,” Ferraris presents a world that awaits us: one not in decline, but of progress. We can imagine humans without the Web (such as ourselves until a few decades ago), but not the Web without humans. The book asks – and provisionally answers – the daunting question of who will pay for such a desirable future, one seemingly within reach?

Participants of the seminar: Marko Konjović, Miloš Ćipranič, Aleksandar Ostojić, Aleksandar Fatić, Mark Losoncz, Nataša Schmelz, Ana Lipij, Ivan Nišavić, Milan Urošević

Maurizio Ferraris teaches Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Turin and is President of Labont (Laboratory of Ontology). He also heads the Institute of Advanced Studies ‘Scienza Nuova’, dedicated to Umberto Eco, which unites the University with the Polytechnic of Turin in dealing with the design of a sustainable future, both from a cultural and political point of view. Founder of ‘new realism’, over the course of his extensive career, he has developed a new way of thinking about and studying at least four fields: hermeneutics, aesthetics, ontology, and the philosophy of technology.