Abstract

The paper discusses a number of contemporary proposals to organise philosophical thought around a «centre», maintaining that such proposals represent a choice, which, while resting on historical analysis, still displays clear «voluntaristic» features. The paper deals, in particular, with the Utopian idea according to which anything that is human deserves recollection, as anything human is equally worthy and meaningful, maintains its own autonomous significance, and is, in this respect, «central»; the hypothesis according to which the universe is made of coexisting, incompatible objects, and is therefore «chaotic» – a chaos that the human mind is called upon to organise and «name», as happens for instance through poetic intervention, which strives for giving the objects their «true» name, thus reconnecting the objects to their real essence; finally, the idea to make our own human finitude to the centre of our reflection: once thinkers eschew the guidance of an external authority, contingency becomes the pole of a dialectical relationship with our own world, rather than representing something to simply overcome