La misericordia «impensabile»

Abstract

Philosophy has never been really interested in “mercy”, a word which is almost absent in the West philosophical vocabulary. The thesis of this essay is that this has happened because philosophy has considered mercy as an unthinkable issue, insofar as it implies the “concrete-living”, which is characterized by “polar oppositions” that philosophy tends to consider as alternatives. Thus, philosophy transfers the concern for the concrete-living to a mercy recognized as extraneous to its own concerns. It follows that thinking philosophically mercy can favour a change of paradigm in philosophy.