CFP: Trajectories and Transformations of Modern Subjectivity (Lessico di Etica Pubblica, 2025/2)

Trajectories and Transformations of Modern Subjectivity

(Lessico di Etica Pubblica, ISSN 2039-2206, XVI, n. 2, 2025)

Edited by Alessandro De Cesaris (University of Fribourg) and Antonio Lucci (University of Turin)

The question of the subject is one of the central nodes of modern philosophical thought, around which theoretical problems, ethical challenges, and political and social debates converge. The aim of this issue is to address some of these problems by showing how the question of subjectivity has developed, been deepened, and transformed from early modernity to the present.

Modern philosophy has closely linked the category of the subject to the question of the self. As is strikingly expressed in the famous Cartesian dictum, the subject is first and foremost conceived as that being capable of saying “I”. This also implicitly means that those entities unable to perform this operation are not subjects, or are diminished subjects: animals, objects, but also women, foreigners, children, and human beings forced into subordinate positions that prevent them from having a voice of their own. The non-subject does not say “I”, either because it is not capable of doing so, or because it is not allowed to.

In contemporary debates, this egological centering has increasingly been called into question, also thanks to the contribution of bodies of knowledge and disciplines that have developed new ways of analyzing and theorizing the meaning of subjectivity. On the one hand, the growing attention to differences and minorities has fostered a more sensitive perspective on the claims of “other” subjectivities—those forms of existence that the Western tradition had relegated to the background. On the other hand, the increasing interest in ecological issues and in the philosophy of technology has led to a renewed engagement with the fundamental question of subjectivity and its extension. Are machines subjects? And what kind of subjectivity can be attributed to animals and plants?

The theoretical problem is thus immediately connected to an ethical and political one: determining the meaning of subjectivity means drawing boundaries between inclusion and exclusion, deciding who deserves to be qualified as a subject. In this way, a history of minor and minoritarian, alternative forms of subjectivity emerges—forms that continue to struggle for recognition to this day.

Articles are welcome on the following topics (the list is not exhaustive and should not be interpreted as restrictive):

• Metaphysical issues related to the meaning of subjectivity.
• The problem of subjectivity in the history of philosophy, with particular reference to modern and contemporary philosophy.
• The relation between subjectivity and other key concepts of our tradition: person, individual, the human, etc.
• The relation between subjectivity, subjection, and subjectivation.
• The relation between subjectivity and technology.
• The problem of subjectivity in the human and social sciences.
• The analysis of specific forms of subjectivity, with particular reference to discriminated and minority subjectivities.
• The relation between human and non-human subjectivity.

Essays must be submitted by March 31st, 2026, to the following address: [email protected].

Contributions are accepted in Italian or English. Maximum length: 35,000 characters (including spaces and footnotes). Please include an abstract of no more than 150 words in both Italian and English. Articles must be submitted in an anonymized format, suitable for blind peer review. A second file should be attached to the same email containing the author’s name, email address, article title, and abstract.

Submissions must comply with the editorial guidelines available at: https://www.eticapubblica.it/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/LEP_Norme_redazionali.pdf. Authors are also invited to use the journal’s stylesheet, available at: https://www.eticapubblica.it/norme-editoriali/.