Vincenzo Ferro

Vincenzo Ferro holds a PhD in Philosophy. In 2025, he was awarded a doctorate in the Humanities from the University of Messina, with a thesis entitled Order and Disorder in War: Philosophical and Anthropological-Symbolic Research on the Thought of René Girard. He received a European academic education (Italy, Germany, France) and has presented his research at various international conferences and seminars, notably in Italy, Romania, and Mexico.

His research interests include:

• Ancient and modern mimetic and symbolic theories of violence (Plato, G. Dumézil, René Girard)
• Modern and contemporary German philosophy (G.W.F. Hegel, C. Clausewitz, C. Schmitt, H. Blumenberg)
• Anthropology of prehistoric and modern art (A. Warburg, L. Frobenius, C. Lévi-Strauss)
• Philology and anthropology (H. Usener, W. Burkert)

The project

Title: Philosophical Anthropology of Art: An Inquiry Based on René Girard’s Mimetic Theory and Hans Blumenberg’s Phenomenological Anthropology

"The research investigates the philosophical anthropology of art, engaging in dialogue with René Girard’s mimetic theory and Hans Blumenberg’s phenomenological anthropology. It seeks to shed light on the "anthropological character of the phenomenologist’s presuppositions" (Blumenberg), and to reformulate the phenomenon of art as “the spectacle of the archaic” (Girard). The aim is to understand speculative anthropology and metaphysical thought as strategies of world-making — or "mondiation" — in response to crises of differentiation between space-time, imagination, and mimetic desire.

Particular attention is given to the figure of the cave as a prototype of spatial consciousness and of the lifeworld (Lebenswelt), in dialogue with contemporary approaches to the aesthetics of prehistoric art."

Selective Bibliography

• Anacronia e post-storia in Roberto Calasso, in AA.VV., Anacronie. L’inattualità del contemporaneo, edited by V. Surace, Mimesis, Milan-Udine, 2022.
• Venture e sventure del mito: Nietzsche nell’interpretazione di René Girard, in Logoi, IX, 2022–23.
• Le radici del Politico: Carl Schmitt lettore di Clausewitz, in Peloro, 2025, forthcoming.