Abstract

Highlighting a few "loci classici" of the debate on the commons, this article claims for a social and philosophical approach to them. It especially focuses on the so called "relational goods" as the source for a deep rethinking of contemporary anthropology. Commons actually help in reframing the whole grammar of passions and reasons accounting for human conduct in the globalized era. Drawing on Rifkin's The Empathic Civilization, the essay considers the commons as a crucial site to imagine and practice the shift from homo oeconomicus to homo empaticus.