Professor Matteo Vincenzo d’Alfonso, from the University of Ferrara, Italy, will be at UFMG as a guest of the FUNDEP/IEAT Chairs program.

On August 19th, starting at 2:30 pm, he will be in the Carangola Auditorium of the UFMG School of Philosophy and Human Sciences (Fafich) to deliver the Grand Lecture “What is rationality? Some models, from the Enlightenment to the present times,” which will also be the inaugural lecture of the UFMG Philosophy Department. The lecture will be in English. Participation in the event will result in certificates upon registration via the Even3 platform.

The conference will address the claim, originally made in economics, that rationality should be defined exclusively as a set of traceable behaviors, formalized in the Rational Choice Theory (RCT) decision-making model. According to this model, only this individual way of acting can be defined as rational. At the conference, Professor Matteo d’Alfonso intends to explore how questions about this model are being discussed in philosophy. “We intend to discuss both how the RCT paradigm truly permeates the discourse on rationality in the different spheres of social organization addressed by economic disciplines and to highlight the problems this model leaves unsolved, since it transfers phenomena that the model cannot explain to the sphere of the non-rational or irrational,” Matteo d’Alfonso emphasizes.

Finally, he intends to reflect on whether the philosophical tradition referring to transcendental philosophy – inaugurated by the German philosophers Immanuel Kant (1787) and Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1797) – may not support a model of rationality capable of integrating TCR, including it in a broader definition, that is, one that goes beyond it.

As part of the chair’s activities, Professor Matteo d’Alfonso will also be responsible for two academic activities open to the participation of postgraduate students in Philosophy and other interested parties.

From August 11th to 14th, the professor will teach the 15-hour minicourse “What is rationality? A comparative approach between economical and philosophical understanding of Rational Action.” Classes will take place in rooms 4094 and 3017 at Fafich. The course is offered by the UFMG Philosophy graduate program.

On August 13th, he will deliver the lecture “The Evil of the World: Arthur Schopenhauer in the Post-Kantian Constellation” at 11:10 a.m. in the Bicalho auditorium at Fafich. Both the lecture and the short course will be taught in English and will include certificates of participation.

About the professor

Matteo Vincenzo d’Alfonso is a full professor of History of Philosophy at the University of Ferrara. He is coordinator of the joint PhD program “Transcendental Philosophy and Reflective Society” between the University of Ferrara (UNIFE) and the Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná (PUC-PR). A specialist in the thought of Fichte and Schopenhauer, for some years he has dedicated his research to reflecting on the development of the concepts of reason and rationality between the 19th and 20th centuries in dialogue with the sociological and economic sciences. He is editor of the journal Fichte-Studien. Beiträge zur Systematik der Transzendentalphilosophie. From 2018 to 2022 he was president of the Internationale Johann-Gottlieb-Fichte-Gesellschaft. He has worked as a visiting professor at prestigious universities and research centers in Germany, and in Brazil as a fellow of the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), Humboldt, Capes and Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme (FMSH). He is the author of the monographs: Vom Wissen zur Weisheit. Fichtes Wissenschaftslehre 2011 (Amsterdam-New York: Rodopi, 2005) and Il Male nel mondo. Schopenhauer nella costellazione post-kantiana (Milano: Mimesis, 2017).