Massimo Donà
After graduating in 1981 under Emanuele Severino at the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy of the University of Venice, he began publishing various essays for journals and collective volumes, participating in several conferences and seminars in various Italian cities throughout the 1980s.
Starting from the late 1980s, he collaborated with Massimo Cacciari at the Chair of Aesthetics at IUAV (Venice) and coordinated the seminars of the Italian Institute for Philosophical Studies in Venice for several years. Also beginning in the late 1980s, he started his collaboration with the architecture journal Anfione-Zeto, where he still directs the “Theorein” column today.
During those same years, he founded the journal Paradosso with Massimo Cacciari and Romano Gasparotti. In the 1990s, he taught Aesthetics at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice until becoming a Full Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University in Milan. He is also the curator, along with Romano Gasparotti, of the posthumous work of Andrea Emo.
He has written several essays and articles for various types of journals, weeklies, and newspapers. His extensive scholarly output focuses on the themes of ontology, aesthetics, and the philosophy of music.
– Philosophy of Photography: The Wonders of an Unsuspected “Lens”, Silvana Editoriale, Cinisello Balsamo (Milan) 2025.
– A Certain Idea of the Idea, Inschibboleth, Rome 2025.
– The Philosophy of Lucio Battisti, Mimesis, Milan-Udine 2025.
– It is an Enigma, This: The Philosophy of Moby Dick, ETS Edizioni, Pisa 2024.
– Three Women, Three Mysteries: Tiziano Vecellio and the Aporias of Perfection, Mimesis, Milan-Udine 2024.
– What Does Not Remain of God: With Jean-Luc Marion, in Proximity to an “Unthinkable” Elsewhere, Inschibboleth, Rome 2024.
– Of Ghosts, Spells, and Destiny: Emanuele Severino, the Last Calligrapher of Truth, Inschibboleth, Milan 2023
– The Philosophy of the Rolling Stones, Mimesis, Milan 2023
– Philosophy of Paper, Baldini & Castoldi, Milan 2022
– The Philosophy of J.W. Goethe, Bompiani, Milan 2022
– Knowing the Flavor: Philosophy of Food and Wine, Pisa 2021
– Cinematocracy, Mimesis, Milan 2021.
– Apology for the Immediate: Evolian Paths, Inschibboleth, Rome 2020.
– The Unrepeatable: The Paradox of Dada, Castelvecchi, Rome 2020.
– Here and There: Ariosto and the Philosophy of Orlando Furioso, La nave di Teseo, Milan 2020.
– Of a Deceptive Beauty: The “Things” of Art, Bompiani, Milan 2018.
– In the Beginning: Philosophia sive Theologia. Theological and Trinitarian Meditations, Mimesis, Milan 2017.
– Theomorphic: A System of Aesthetics, Bompiani, Milan 2015.
– Philosophy of Error, Bompiani, Milan 2012.
– The Time of Truth, Mimesis, Milan 2010.
– Knowing the Flavor: Philosophy of Food and Wine, ETS, Pisa 2021.
– A Single Vision: The Philosophy of Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Bompiani, Milan 2022.
– As Incomprehensible As Stone. In Giddy Proximity: Andrea Emo and Anselm Kiefer, in Anselm Kiefer, “Palazzo Ducale, Venice (“These writings, when they are burned, will finally give off a little light”, Andrea Emo), Marsilio Arte, Venice 2022
– Philosophy of Paper, Baldini+Castoldi, Milan 2022.
Phénoménologies de l’abstraction. Kandinsky, Malévitch, Soulages, (with Andrea Bellantone), Hermann Éditeurs, Paris 2022
From an Unfathomable Abyss: The “Cry” of Art, in “DDOT”, n. 4, “The Cry_Words/2. Art, the Cosmopolis, the Crucifix”, Città Nuova, Rome 2022.
– Lessons in Metaphysics, in “Itinerari cartesiani”, edited by Alberto De Vita, Orthotes Editrice, Naples-Salerno 2022.
– Of Ghosts, Spells, and Destiny: Emanuele Severino, the Last Calligrapher of Truth, Inschibboleth, Rome 2023.
– The Philosophy of the Rolling Stones, Mimesis, Milan-Udine 2023.
– Wine and True Reality: The Drawings of Fantasy, Between Lightness and Mobility, in “TEORIA” (Food and Philosophy), XLII/2022 (Third series XVII/I), Edizioni ETS, Pisa 2023.
– The Aporia of the Foundation, Mimesis, Milan 2008.
– Philosophy of Music, Bompiani, Milan 2006.
– On Negation, Bompiani, Milan 2004.
– On the Absolute: For a Reinterpretation of Hegelian Idealism, Einaudi, Turin 1992.
