Lucio CORTELLA

Lucio Cortella is Professor Emeritus of History of Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage at Ca' Foscari University in Venice.

Born in Venice in 1953, he graduated in philosophy at the University of Venice in March 1977 and received a postgraduate degree in philosophy at the University of Padua in 1979. After continuing his studies in Germany at the University of Frankfurt, in which he actively participated in the seminars of Apel, Habermas, and Bubner, he became Assistant Professor at Venice University in 1983, lectured on History of Modern and Contemporary Philosophy from 1991, and was promoted in 2002 to Full Professor for History of Philosophy (until 2023).

He was Director of the Department of Philosophy and Science Theory (2003-2008), Doctorate Coordinator (2003-2009), Fellow of the University Senate (2006-2009) and member of the Advisory Board of Ca' Foscari University (2010-2014). From 2017 to 2023 he was Vice Director of the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage and since 2020 Director (presently President) of the Center for Critical and Political Theory at the same Department.

In 1990 he was part of the original group of Italian scholars who constituted the «Seminario di Teoria Critica» (STC), an annual meeting of political and social philosophy (initially based in Gallarate, then in Cortona, Pisa and currently at the University of Parma), in which the most important exponents of critical theory (including Habermas, Apel, Wellmer, Honneth, Brunkhorst, Rosa, Forst) participated over the years. In order to consolidate and extend this experience, that group founded in 2014 the «Società Italiana di Teoria Critica» (Italian Society of Critical Theory), of which Cortella assumed the presidency from the beginning until 2023. In 1998 he also organized a «Seminario di Teoria Critica» at Ca' Foscari University (together with Alessandro Bellan and Italo Testa), which differs from the national one for its particular attention to Hegelian philosophy, dialectics and its transformation within the coordinates of 20th century linguistic turn: characterizing itself as a free research structure, that Venetian seminar saw the participation of a large number of scholars from many other universities, and became a place of training and discussion for Ph.D. students and young researchers (refounded and renamed in 2016 as «Seminario di Teoria Critica e Politica», has become - starting from 2020 - the current Center for Critical and Political Theory).

He visited several German universities (Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Berlin), and currently collaborates with researchers from those institutions. He is member of the advisory board of many journals: «Annuario di Filosofia», «Annuario di Etica», «Politica & società», «Ateneo Veneto - Rivista di Scienze, Lettere e Arti», «Philosophia - Rivista della Società Italiana di Storia della Filosofia», and is director of the Mimesis publishing series on «Teoria Critica». Since 2021 he has been a corresponding member of the «Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere, Arti».

His research focuses on Hegel and 20th century philosophy, and is particularly concerned with critical theory, dialectics, hermeneutics, practical philosophy, theories of rationality, and modernity. His studies mainly focus on a new interpretation of Hegelian thought, as well as on the renewal of Frankfurt Critical Theory (from Adorno and Horkheimer to Habermas and Honneth), and on the formulation of a normative theory of recognition.