For me, an Italian philosopher is a bearded man with a pipe who mixes Marx with Saint Francis (from a pop-intellectualist Eco, of course).
Well, let's say that "Eco" and philosopher in the same phrase in an affermative way is breaking the principle of non-contradiction to my ears. He was, as someone put it, a cultured and shallow rhetor.
"Recent" Italian philosophers of interest would be the late Emanule Severino, the phenomenologist Vincenzo Costa, Andrea Zhok, the matematician Paolo Zellini, Massimo Cacciari and others.
Satre was also on this line. Many say that he vulgarized phenomenology, and there is a lot of truth in this. However, I personally consider his approach to be much better because for him Husserl always aimed at idealism, and perhaps even a form of spirituality.
BTW - your nick comes from Alisadir Mcintyre, yes?
Well, i do aim at spirituality. But at a form of it that can't ignore concrete, hard reality, but passes through it. As for idealism, since language and conscience are trascendental to our being in the world a form of at least "methodological idealism" is unavoidable to me from a gnoseological perspective; if that extends to metaphysics it remains to be seen, but i reckon possible a "realist idealism". Metodologically i find phenomenology to be most interesting and useful.
The phenomenologist Sartre bears some interest, yes, but as a "whole" philosopher i dislike and disagree both with him and his nihilism. But i also think that a positive thought must be developed through a dialectical struggle with the negative, hence one must study such philosopher as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Leopardi also.
Of course, my nick come from MacIntyre. i owe my interest in philosophy to him.
Personally, I see people as conservative beings who are forced by the world to change. That's why they are so conservative. Some individuals and some cultures value change more, we can see it with our own eyes, but I don't think it negates our conservative nature (culture itself assumes certain patterns).
I agree to a point. And about this, one of the better books of Bauman, "Memories of class" explore the potential of struggle that has the reality or perception of losing identity and status through change.
