Isabella ADINOLFI

Isabella Adinolfi conducts research and teaching activities in the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Since 2015, she has been an Associate Professor in the academic field (SSD) PHIL-03/A – Moral Philosophy (formerly M-FIL/03). In 2020, she obtained the National Scientific Qualification for Full Professorship in the same field, with an excellent evaluation.

Trained within the continental philosophical tradition, she works at the intersection of moral philosophy, religious thought, and literature, with particular attention to figures and experiences that, in modernity, have explored the relationship between freedom and evil, and between responsibility and transcendence.

Her research has focused especially on authors such as Pascal, Kierkegaard, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Weil, and Hillesum, approached not only from a historical-philosophical perspective, but as interlocutors capable of challenging the fundamental categories of contemporary ethics.

She has served as director – initially alone and subsequently with Roberto Garaventa (University of Chieti-Pescara) – of «NotaBene. Quaderni di Studi kierkegaardiani», the yearbook of the Italian Society for Kierkegaard Studies (S.I.S.K.), whose scientific board includes leading international scholars of the Danish philosopher. Since 2014, she has been a member of the international scientific committee of the Hillesum Studies Series, published by Apeiron, and since 2021, a member of the editorial board of the philosophy journal «Thaumàzein» (ANVUR A-ranked). 

Several of her major monographs have been published by the Italian publisher il melangolo: «Le ragioni della virtù» (2008); «Etty Hillesum. La fortezza inespugnabile» (2011); «Studi sull’interpretazione kierkegaardiana del cristianesimo» (2012), and «Il segreto di Abramo. Una lettura mistica di “Timore e tremore” » (2018). These works offer an original and non-reductive interpretation of modern and contemporary Christianity, attentive to its ethical, existential, and spiritual dimensions. More recently, together with Giorgio Brianese, she authored «“Il paradiso sulla terra”. La religione di Dostoevskij e Tolstoj», in which philosophical inquiry engages with great Russian literature. 

Alongside her monographic work, she has edited numerous collective volumes, including: «“Io nel pensier mi fingo”. Seminario leopardiano a quattro voci» (2016), with Luigi Blasucci, Rolando Damiani, and Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo; «L’anti-Babele. Sulla mistica degli antichi e dei moderni» (2017), with Giancarlo Gaeta and Andreina Lavagetto; «Preghiera di donne» (2021), again with Giancarlo Gaeta; «Gloria di Dio e gloria degli uomini nelle tradizioni cristiane. Problemi e rappresentazioni» (2022), with Giuseppe Fulvio Maurilio Accardi and Davide Dainese; «La natura nel pensiero femminile del Novecento», with Lucetta Scaraffia; and «Philosophy and Literature» Volume 13, Issue 2 (2025) of the journal «Thaumàzein», with Roberto Celada Ballanti. 

Some of her most recent works – «Preghiera di donne», «La natura nel pensiero femminile del Novecento» and «Necessità e Bene. Intorno al pensiero di Simone Weil» aim to highlight women’s thought and to integrate it more fully into contemporary philosophical debate. Her articles have appeared in national and international scholarly journals, addressing, among other topics, the relationship between reason and imagination, religious thought and the crises of the present, and philosophy and literature. 

A member of national and international research networks and scholarly societies –including the Italian Society for Kierkegaard Studies and the Etty Hillesum Research Centre – she actively participates in contemporary cultural debate, maintaining an independent and critical stance. 

A distinctive feature of her work is the ability to combine conceptual rigour with hermeneutic sensitivity, restoring to moral philosophy its original vocation: to question the meaning of human action, considering the fractures and possibilities of our time. 

She has contributed to the cultural pages of Il Manifesto (Alias), L’indice dei libri del mese, L’ospite ingrato (online journal of the Franco Fortini Research Centre), Esodo, Il Regno, SettimanaNews, and Pangea.