Paolo HERITIER

The research program into dogmatic anthropology aims at defining, in an aesthetic and anthropological sense, the notion of man facing the emergence of the field of neurosciences and robotics: in order to show how, after a ‘pictorial turn’ that follow a ‘linguistic turn’ in contemporary philosophy and moving toward an ‘affective turn’, it would be possible to recuperate the dogmatic and anthropological nature of the aesthetic in society, moving from the theory of law and a new reading of Vico’s “Scienza Nuova”.

Starting from the challenges of contemporary cognitive science and robotics one could pursue the idea (coming from Vico’s priciple of verum factum convertuntur, applied however in a new domain) that man can know the robot from inside and totally because he has designed and built it in advance. This research perspective focuses the theme of a redefinition of the current social science methodology - guilty of removing anthropology from the scientific knowledge recognized today - moving toward a new ‘Scienza Nuova’ from an aesthetic history of human image as philosophical foundations of law in the society of the spectacle: from Roman Imperator to Medieval Pope; from Hobbesian Leviathan to dictator’s political bodies and capitalism’s media and marketing bodies to current scientistic brain’s neuroimage and robotic bodies. Robotics and neurosciences seem to have aesthetic and dogmatic anthropological features that must be critically analyzed.

Paolo Héritier graduated in Law at Turin University and in Theology at Milan Theological Faculty. He is Professor in Philosophy of law at Turin University. Visiting Professor at Sciences Politiques in Paris and at Cardozo Law School in New York, he is director of a series (Antropologia della libertà; Tôb. Antropologia ed estetica giuridica) and a review (Teoria critica della regolazione sociale, DIREL-ISLL Papers in Law and Humanities). He is also a member of the Scientific Committee for Research Centers on Law and Literature (ISLL), communication theory (CIRCE) and rhetoric (CERMEG) and director of the Center of Law, Religion and Literature (DIREL). His research focuses on Epistemology of Economics, Network and Complexity Theory, Law and Film, Political Theology and Philosophical Anthropology.He is currently working on the interplay between Legal Aesthetics, Neurosciences and Law and Humanities, focusing on the complex relationship between “The Two Cultures” starting from Giambattista Vico’s thought.

HERITIER, Paolo.  L’immagine analogica del robot nelle neuroscienze normative, in P. SEQUERI, ed. La tecnica e il senso,  Milano: Glossa, pp. 193-230.

HERITIER, Paolo. Law and Image: Toward a Theory of Nomograms. in A. WAGNER, R.K. SHERWIN, Law, Culture and Visual Studies, Dordrecht London, Boston: Springer,  2014, pp. 25-48,

HERITIER, Paolo. La dignità disabile. Estetica giuridica del dono e dello scambio,  Dehoniane, Bologna 2014, 140 p.

HERITIER, Paolo. From Text to Image: The Sacred Foundation of Western Institutional Order. Legal-Semiotic Perspectives, in International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 26/1, 2013, pp. 163-190.

HERITIER, Paolo.  Estetica giuridica. Vol. 1. Primi elementi. Dalla Globalizzazione alla Secolarizzazione, 209 p; Vol. 2. A partire da Legendre. Il fondamento finzionale del diritto positivo, Torino: Giappichelli, 2012,164 p.