Meeting date: 2021-03-12 (Friday), 18.30, Accesss code: royuw3s (MS Teams Platform)

Several highly respected scholars have traced the history of the complex relationship between rationality and emotions, trying to place them in their historical context. Jon Elster presented a comprehensive account of the role of emotions in human behavior, based not only on psychology but also on literature and philosophy; for their part, Michel Foucault and Peter Sloterdijk spoke respectively of technologies of the Self and self-training. Finally, David Pearce presented a preliminary model for the biotechnological modification of the human emotional apparatus. Based on the work of all these authors, we will try to trace a profile of the techno-historical relationship between rationality and emotions, identifying the possible trajectory that led humans to use the former to try to progressively tame the latter, up to the most speculative scenarios of the near future.
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Bio

Roberto Manzocco was born and raised in Italy. A graduate of Philosophy and of Science Communication (International School of Advanced Studies in Trieste), he earned his PhD in History of Science at the University of Pisa, defending a thesis on Ludwig von Bertalanffy and General Systems Theory. Currently he is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology of the John Jay College for Criminal Justice, City University of New York. He has published five books, three in the field of so-called pop philosophy, and two on transhumanism; he also worked as science journalist, publishing in five years more than 2000 articles. Read more