Maurizio Ferraris (b. 1956) is Full Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Turin and is the president of Labont (Center for Ontology). He is also the director of “Scienza Nuova”, an institute of advanced studies – dedicated to Umberto Eco and uniting the University and the Polytechnic of Turin – aimed at planning a sustainable future, both from a cultural and from a political point of view. 

Ferraris studied philosophy at the University of Turin under the supervision of Gianni Vattimo and at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, under the supervision of Jacques Derrida. He has been awarded of many grants and awards, and claimed doctor honoris causa three times (International Institute for Hermeneutics, Warsaw; University of Pécs; Universidad De Flores, Buenos Aires).

He has been visiting professor in many international universities, such as Harvard, Oxford, Munich, Paris, and Bonn. 

Ferraris is advisory member of the Center for Advanced Studies of South East Europe (Rijeka) and of the Internationales Zentrum Für Philosophie NRW. He is doctor honoris causa in Humanities at the University of Flores (Buenos Aires) and at Univesity of Pécs. He has been Fellow of Käte-Hamburger Kolleg “Recht als Kultur” (Bonn) and Fellow of the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America (Columbia University, New York) and of the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung. He has also been Directeur d’études of the Collège International de Philosophie and Visiting Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris) as well as other European and American Universities. He is the Director of ‘Rivista di Estetica’, and member of the committee of ‘Critique’, of ‘Círculo Hermenéutico editorial’ and of the ‘Revue francophone d’esthétique’.

He published more than sixty books translated into several languages. Among his books that have appeared in English we quote: History of Hermeneutics (Humanities Press, 1996); A Taste for the Secret (with Jacques Derrida – Blackwell, 2001); Documentality or Why it is Necessary to Leave Traces (Fordham UP, 2012); Goodbye Kant! (SUNY UP, 2013); Where Are You? An Ontology of the Cell Phone (Fordham UP, 2014); Manifesto of New Realism (SUNY UP, 2014); Introduction to New Realism (Bloomsbury, 2014); Positive Realism (Zer0 Books, 2015); Learning to Live: Six Essays on Marcel Proust (Brill, 2020); Doc-humanity (2022, Mohr Siebeck) and Hysteresis (forthcoming, University of Edimburgh Press).

Founder of “New Realism”, in his long career he has determined a new course of thought and studies in at least four areas: hermeneutics, aesthetics, ontology, and the philosophy of technology.