CFP: Lo Sguardo 43 - History of Ideas and Philosophy in Umberto Eco. From Inventories to Networks

Lo Sguardo is a peer-reviewed and diamond open-access journal of Philosophy. It is indexed by:

• Elsevier SCOPUS
• Clarivate Web Of Science
• Philosopher’s Index
• ERIHPLUS
• MLA Bibliography 

Lo Sguardo is ranked as an "A Class" journal by the Italian Agency for the Evaluation of Research and University (ANVUR), for the areas 11/C3 and 11/C5 (Moral Philosophy, History of Philosophy)

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Umberto Eco’s position on the history of thought cannot be identified in the possibility of working out a definitive solution to metaphysical problems – raised by different ontological commitments. Rather, it consists in the very idea that patterns of thought reflect a general tendency of culture toward those processes in which – instead of an unambiguous and necessary sequence of events – a field of probability is established as such. An ambiguity of situation, such as to stimulate operative or interpretative choices that are different from time to time. Hence the need to open up the scope of the sources, in order to draw on for one’s research and project beyond philological historicism; albeit with the awareness of coming by training from (and thus drawing on) a traditional and, so to speak, static heritage.

For Umberto Eco, the task of the intellectual who, even if cast in his time, stands before history, is to record in what ways praxes produce structures, metaphors, models, methodologies, interpretive categories that have common characteristics and properties based on the general agreement. Or do not have them, and which ones are the dominant ones, and why.

According to a historicist reading that Eco himself, albeit in a critical vein, sometimes seems to adopt, the historian should not harbor modeling ambitions from a methodological standpoint; rather, he should make use of the distance that separates him from the occurrence of facts to try to determine their value with respect to the socio-political and cultural structures of the era he investigates. For this to happen, one must first of all abandon all metaphysical pretensions, which place head to an illusory, e.g., historicist and idealist unity of knowledge. Instead, one must delve into a history of the patterns of culture that goes hand in hand with the methodology and concepts of a material history of ideas that is always variable in relation to the changing point of view of an observer who is also an interpreter. And while it is difficult to say whether one interpretation is better than another, it is always possible to recognize untenable interpretations from a historical perspective as well.

How can this lesson of Eco be enforced in the direction of open models, including those of historical-philosophical knowing? This is the dialogue with the past of the history of thought that this issue of Lo Sguardo, devoted to Eco’s reflection-and, at the same time, to Eco’s lesson-wants to address.

The main themes in the issue will be:

• Redundancy in the history of philosophy.
• Use of the past, historiographical interpretations.
• The history of ideas as the history of models of knowledge representation.
• Metaphors as heuristics in the history of philosophical and scientific thought.
• Historiographic categories and encyclopedias in the history of philosophy: scores, inventories, categories and outfits for selecting knowledge over the long term.
• Ruptures and translation rules in historical-philosophical paradigm shifts.
• Critique of historicism and direct filiation of philosophical arguments in history.

ACCEPTED LANGUAGES: ITALIAN, ENGLISH, FRENCH, SPANISH

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION (COMPLETE ARTICLES): 01/02/2026

Procedure: Submit the article, complete in its entirety and edited according to the editorial guidelines of the journal, through the OJS editorial platform of Lo Sguardo by selecting the appropriate call under “Section”:

https://editorial.losguardo.net/ojs/index.php/LS/about/submissions

Submissions will be subjected to double-blind peer review. The entire submission and selection process of submissions will take place through the platform.

Riccardo Fedriga, Cristina Marras
[email protected] | [email protected]