My research focuses on German classical philosophy – Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling – as well as on the philosophy of the “crisis of culture” between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with particular attention to the social and cultural transformations within the Mitteleuropean context. Alongside this line of inquiry, I pursue research in Italian thought, focusing especially on Giambattista Vico, Giacomo Leopardi, and Francesco De Sanctis. The central aim of my research is to move beyond an ontological framework in order to foreground, at the epistemological level, the significance of artistic and symbolic forms.
I studied under Massimo Cacciari, Emanuele Severino, Vincenzo Vitiello, and Roberto Esposito. I completed my undergraduate thesis, entitled “Impossible System”, as a comparative study of Hegel and Kant. My doctoral dissertation was devoted to Giambattista Vico.
I served as Lecturer in Theoretical Philosophy (2011–2016), Associate Professor in Aesthetics (2016–2018), Associate Professor in Theoretical Philosophy (2018–2020), Full Professor in Theoretical Philosophy (2020–2022), and Full Professor in Aesthetics (2022–present). I am Director of the Research Center of Metaphysics and Philosophy of Arts (DIAPOREIN), member of the European Research Center of History and Theory of the Image (ICONE), board member of the PhD Course in Philosophy at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, and Associated Editor of Aisthesis. Pratiche, linguaggi e saperi dell’estetico.
My research addresses the problem of foundation and its crisis between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, investigating transformations in the epistemological, ontological, and socio-cultural categories of the Western tradition. Building on Hegel’s speculative legacy, I analyze the processes of dissolution and reconfiguration of foundation in Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin, placing them in dialogue with the literary work of Robert Musil.
My approach combines theoretical analysis with sustained attention to aesthetics, employing artistic – particularly visual and literary – forms as epistemological resources for clarifying developments and tensions within scientific research. Artistic forms are thus understood not merely as objects of study, but as conceptual devices capable of rendering visible shifts in paradigms of rationality. Special emphasis is placed on socio-cultural dynamics, understood as rituals and symbolic forms in the wake of the “death of God,” as well as on the transformations and metamorphoses of mass culture. The aim is to provide a genealogical analysis of contemporary social phenomena in which aesthetics and epistemology are structurally intertwined.
I work closely with students and have supervised around ten PhD candidates and approximately one hundred MA and BA theses. Main authors: Plato, Aristotle, Giambattista Vico, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Georg Simmel, Walter Benjamin, Max Weber, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Alexandre Kojève. Main research topics: the concepts of the tragic and the comic; the notions of mimesis and technics; the theme of the death of art; literary theory; philosophical anthropology; the museum as a cultural institution; and the concepts of symbol and mythology.
Selected Publications
- F. Valagussa, Lo sguardo di Vico, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, Roma 2024.
- F. Valagussa, Arte di governo, Castelvecchi, Roma 2022.
- Valagussa, Forma e imitazione. Come le idee si fanno mondo, il Mulino, Bologna 2020.
- F. Valagussa, Logos and its Feignings. Will to Power, Groundlessnee and the Decorum of Civilisations, in “Filosofia”, 70 (2025), pp. 43-54. https://ojs.unito.it/index.php/filosofia/article/view/13153
- F. Valagussa, The Mind and the Map. Kant and the Image of Reality, in “Aisthesis”, 18, (2024), pp. 103-116. https://mimesisjournals.com/ojs/index.php/aisthesis/article/view/4808
- F. Valagussa, The Metaphysics of Liberalism. On two Figures in Rawl’s Thought, in “Quaderni di Scienza politica”, 31, (2025), pp. 251-264. https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.48271/114606
Recent Courses in RLL
- ITAL 24726 The Italian Art: Inventing New Ways to See the World (Spring 2026)
- ITAL 25126/35126 Homer, with a Thousand Faces. A Cultural History of the Homeric Epics between Italy and Germany (Spring 2026)