The book documents. Why do I need to leave traces (Laterza 2009) Maurizio Ferraris exhibits essentially a social ontology, that is a philosophical theory about "social objects" or a theory of the social world. (It starts like this: "In this book I talk about social objects, that is, things like money and works of art, marriage, divorce and joint custody, the years in prison and mortgages, the cost of oil and tax codes, the Nuremberg Tribunal and the Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, and again the economic crisis, research projects, lectures, graduations, students, monsignors, recruitment, elections, revolutions, redundancies, unions, parliaments, corporations, restaurants, gaming, lawyers, war, humanitarian missions, taxes, weekend, medieval knights and the knights of the Republic. ")
I state that this is not a real review (even if the will tag it as such in this blog) because I did not here the claim or to summarize the text or to give a comprehensive critical guide. I will limit myself to a critical survey on a specific point, looking at the text in the perspective of a passionate reader for many years been interested in philosophy and ultimately to the ontology as the key area of \u200b\u200bphilosophy and dense problems.
Ferraris in fact framed his social ontology in an ontology: the first part of the book is titled Catalog the world and is a kind of ontology in miniature, in which Ferraris track the coordinates of its setting in the ontological (but we could also say Ferraris here that simply exposes the foundations of his philosophy). Taking advantage of the summary
Ferraris as does the final Epilogue we can say that the philosophy of Ferraris is a system of realistic descriptive metaphysics, using the catalog model, and for which the world is the totality of individuals. Everyone is "exemplary" can apply as a principle of classification is as part of a class (but the classes do not pre-exist individuals). The samples (individuals) are divided into subjects and objects. Subjects representations, not objects. The objects are divided into three classes: natural, ideal, social. "Natural objects are in space and time, regardless of subject, ideal objects are out of space and time, regardless of subject, social objects are in space and time depending on the subject." Also, people "are also a kind of natural objects (I am a sub-category), as biological entities, and (if included in a company) are also social objects ".
In the first part of the book, immediately after declaring his tripartite division of natural objects, ideals and social Ferraris writes "On the space-time is needed clarification. E 'for ease of expression which says that the natural and social objects are in space and time, and ideal objects are out of space and time. This formulation has a taste a bit 'Kant, and suggests the existence of two pure forms of intuition and, most recently, the absorption of objects into subjects, as is the case in Kant. To be precise we should therefore say that natural and social objects are space-time, while they are not ideal, but I suspect that would be less clear, so I limit myself to this observation, for the avoidance of doubt. "(p. 32)
The fact remains that this is not clear whether Ferraris for the space and time, or spacetime are objects or not, and if so, whether natural or ideal. If items are not what they are, in metaphysical framework outlined by Ferraris? On page 8
Ferraris writes: "If, as I said, the world is the totality of individuals and their relationships, meaning that all the specimens, space and time are two pure forms of intuition, but, Leibniz, the order of coexistence and succession of individuals. "
Ferraris would therefore, like Leibniz, a Related about the nature of space and time (for the distinction between substantive and reports in relation to the problem of the nature of space and time reference in this blog space and time ). So space and time are Ferraris relations. But what are the reports for Ferraris? In the part dedicated to the ideal objects writes: "The reports are ideal relations that exist between objects, ideals and not: (...) ideal objects are spurious, because they depend on states of affairs, and are not easy, precisely because they relate to states of affairs ".
We can then maybe (that is, if we played well his thoughts), conclude that space and time are ideal objects for Ferraris. But then we are in the strange situation in which space and time, as ideal objects are not spatiotemporal.
Also there is another problem, I would say more substantial: Ferraris uses the notion of "spacetime" to draw a fundamental distinction between natural objects and social ideals on the one hand and other objects, use practice time and space to define what are ideal objects, saying that they are out of space, but at the same place in spacetime of ideal objects.
Newton wrote "the space has its own mode of existence, that does not fit, or as the substance, nor that of accidents "(refer again to my post mentioned above, in particular to ' Depth 1 contained therein). The space and time or spacetime (according to current terminology in the theory of relativity) are certainly highly problematic concepts on which today hardly a philosopher may investigate without confronting the contemporary physics. Speaking of natural objects Ferraris says honestly: "There is no more. What I talk so little about natural objects depends entirely expected from the fact that I did not name a lot from. I'm not a physicist or a biologist (...)". I do not mean certainly to blame for not having Ferraris interested in physics, but I notice that space and time play an important role in setting its ontological notions such as general reference ontology to define areas and does not correspond to this important reflection on how to place these concepts in his catalog of the world, almost as if space and time were not just something that needs to be cataloged.
For those interested in a true review the text to refer to Ferraris to Stefano Vaselli in Aphex No 2
