My PhD research project is concerned with the investigation of the concept of freedom in Jeanne Hersch. My PhD thesis, which I am going to defend in late Spring 2021, is an introduction to Jeanne Hersch’s philosophical path, drawing the conclusion that “being is doing-with”. During my PhD, I was visiting PhD student at the University of Zurich (UZH) from September 2018 to June 2019. On this occasion, I studied all the documents kept in “Nachlass J. Hersch” (Zurich Zentralbibliothek). Previously, I deepened the role of the Ideal in Kierkegaard’s “Diary” and the “Tragedy of action” in different interpretations of Sophocle’s “Antigone” (Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Zambrano, Ricoeur, Nussbaum). More generally, my research is interested in reasonable foundations of the human that go beyond logic. In this regard, I wrote some papers about what Karl Jaspers would define possible forms of a-logical reason. My PhD thesis should become the first introduction to Jeanne Hersch in English (its publication is a work in progress), while my future research should try to go deeper in her thought, developing projects or research on her relationship with her main references (at least Kant, Bergson and Jaspers) and her contribution in non-philosophical fields. In the immediate future, I would focus my research on pre-Critical Kant’s attitude and Herschian interpretation in the courses on Kant kept at “Nachlass J. Hersch”. I would also bring forth the dialogue between Eastern Philosophies and Contemporary Feminist Philosophy, because I think that women philosophers’ sensibility could introduce Western Philosophies to Eastern thought.

Personal Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/piergiacomo-severini-phdstudent/

Contact: severini.piergiacomo@gmail.com