The Current Significance of Carlo Sini’s Notion of Subject: A Contribution to the Debate between Postmodernism and New Realism

This paper aims to contribute to the current debate between New Realism and Postmodernism, by appealing to the philosophy of Carlo Sini and specifically to his notion of the subject. To this end, the paper pursues two main goals. Firstly, we expound the notion of the subject as developed in Carlo Sini’s philosophy: in particular, we illustrate the form that the subject assumes in this philosopher’s thought of practices, which is a sort of hermeneutical pragmatism. The second goal is to assess the significance of Sini’s notion of the subject in the debate between New Realism and Postmodernism. More specifically, according to the thesis here argued, we can recognise, in the philosophy developed by Sini, a unique form of the relationship between the subject and reality, which neither reduces the latter to a mere product of the former, nor raises it to something absolute.