Alberto Andronico

Alberto Andronico is Professor of Philosophy of Law at the University of Catania. He is co-director of the journal “Théorie et critique de la régulation sociale” and of the “Anthropologie de la liberté” series (Mimesis, Milan-Udine). He is the author of five monographs, numerous contributions to collective works and articles published in the most prestigious journals in the field of legal philosophy.

The project

Title: Keeping the void: a study of the foundations of law

"Hell exists, but it's empty. Okay, it seems von Balthasar never said that. At least not in those terms, which he didn't even like. But that's not what I want to talk about: neither hell nor von Balthasar. The theme of my project is different. And it concerns legal science in a much more prosaic sense. Without getting into the merits of delicate theological questions, indeed, I would simply like to try to suggest that what has been said about hell, by whomever, can be upheld for the foundation of law: it's there, of course, but it's empty. At least, that's the hypothesis I'd like to try and articulate, by examining the figure of emptiness (and silence) on three levels. The first is that of tragedy, through a rereading of the famous confrontation between Antigone and Creon in Sophocles' Antigone. The second is war, through a rereading of the 1932 correspondence between Einstein and Freud. The third, more specifically, concerns the theory of law itself, through a rereading of the confrontation between Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt as seen through the eyes of Jacques Derrida."

Hosting institution: École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS)

Selective Bibliography

• Protect Me From What I Want. Cinque lezioni sul carteggio tra Einstein e Freud, Libreria Editrice Torre, Catania, 2023
• Giudicare senza criteri. Derrida lettore di (Lyotard e) Kafka, in G. Rossi, D. Velo Dalbrenta, C. Pedrazza Gorlero (a cura di), L’arte di giudicare. Percorsi ed esperienze tra letteratura, arti e diritto, ESI, Napoli 2022, pp. 51-74. 
• Out of Measure. A reading of Sophocles’ Antigone, in “Philosophica”, Ghent University, 93, 2022, pp. 29-57;
• Un’ennesima parola di plastica. La legittimazione del potere nell’epoca della governance, “Ragion Pratica” 1/22, pp. 555-570;
• Pedagogy of Governance: Social Regulation Beyond the Legislative Rationality, in J. Cremades, C. Hermida (eds.), Encyclopedia of Contemporary Constitutionalism, Springer, Cham 2022, pp. 1-15,