Paolo Diego Bubbio (born 18 May 1974) is an Italian philosopher and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Western Sydney University. He is known for his research on post-Kantian philosophy, philosophical hermeneutics and philosophy of religion (in particular the notion of sacrifice). He is the editor of the "Contemporary Studies in Idealism" book series for Lexington Books.
Career
Bubbio was born in Turin, Piedmont. He studied philosophy at the University of Turin, where he attended the lectures of Gianni Vattimo and graduated with a Laurea Magistrale in 1997, with a thesis on René Girard and the philosophy of religion. He then obtained a doctorate in philosophical hermeneutics from the University of Turin in 2003, with a dissertation on the notion of sacrifice in contemporary philosophy. After his PhD, Bubbio worked as assegnista di ricerca (contract researcher) and as professore a contratto (adjunct professor) at the University of Turin. In 2003/2004, he was Research Fellow at Heythrop College (University of London), where he met René Girard, with whom he had a correspondence since 1997. In 2006, he moved to Australia, where he worked at The University of Sydney, first as University of Sydney Postdoctoral Fellow (2006-2009) and then as Australian Postdoctoral Fellow on an ARC-funded research project (with Paul Redding) on “The God of Hegel’s Post-Kantian Idealism” (2009-2012). From 2009 to 2011, he was co-director (with Paul Redding) of the “Religion and Post-Kantian Philosophy Research Cluster” at The University of Sydney. In 2011 he received an ARC Future Fellowship on a project entitled “The Quest for the I: Reaching a Better Understanding of the Self through Hegel and Heidegger” and joined the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western Sydney University, first as senior lecturer in philosophy and then as associate professor in philosophy.
Philosophy
Sacrifice and Perspectivism
Bubbio focuses on the notion of sacrifice and on the philosophical tradition of perspectivism, which he sees as inter-related. Building on his doctoral research, he wrote a series of articles centred on the distinction between two different meanings of “sacrifice”: sacrifice as “suppression” or “investment” (to give something up in order to get something back in exchange), and sacrifice as “withdrawal” or “relinquishment” – the latter also referred to as “kenotic sacrifice”, as it is representatively modelled on Christ’s act of renouncing his divine nature in the incarnation to become human. In Sacrifice in the Post-Kantian Tradition: Perspectivism, Intersubjectivity, and Recognition, Bubbio argues that kenotic sacrifice is the driving force (both historical and theoretical) of the tradition of perspectivism, considered as the tenet that no way of seeing the world can be taken as definitely true (and thus distinct from relativism, considered as the tenet that all perspectives are equally valid). Bubbio therefore analyses key thinkers in the Kantian and post-Kantian tradition (Kant, Solger, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche), and concludes that kenotic sacrifice is the move according to which one “withdraws” and relinquishes her pretension to absolute objectivity, in order to “make room” for other points of view – thus paving the way for the overcoming of the old metaphysical ideal of the “absolutely objective” point of view (or “God’s-eye view”). In this context, Hegel is regarded as playing a key role: Bubbio sees in Hegel’s philosophy an accomplished form of perspectivism, one that avoids the problems of more “extreme” forms of perspectivism, such as Nietzsche’s.