Sebastiano Maffettone

Currently dean of Political science and Professor of Political philosophy at t Luiss University of Rome.
The great influence from the work of an American philosopher from Harvard, John Rawls, whose main work, A Theory of Justice – a book that more than other changed political philosophy of the 20th century – , Maffettone translated from English to Italian, defined the focus on the philosophical problems that were to become the permanent themes of his life-long research.
Since then, he never put aside Rawls’ work and theoretical model, which by no doubt was the most deepest source of philosophical education, and taught Rawls to generations of Italian and foreign students.
Maffettone obtained his post-degree specialization in the United Kingdom, first in Oxford, then at the London School of Economics (LSE), where he had the opportunity to attend the courses taught by professors Karl Popper, Ernst Gellner (who supervised his Masters thesis on “Habermas and Rawls”), and Amartya Sen, of whom he later became a friend and a collaborator. Amartya Sen represented since then a source of inspiration for his studies in ethics and economics. Between the 1980s and the 1990s, Maffettone had an intense academic life, accompanied by his role as research director in projects sponsored by MIUR, CNR, and the EU. After his initial period in Naples, he taught Political Philosophy in Turin for three years (1982-84) in the same Faculty of Political Science where until the year before Norberto Bobbio, considered by many the founder of the discipline in Italy, had his chair. From 1985 to 1998, Maffettone was professor in Palermo and became full professor of Political Philosophy, collaborating with professors as Giuseppe Barbaccia, Francesco Viola, and Piero Violente in the “Department of Politics, Law, and Society”, and he was one of the founders of the new Faculty of Political Science in Palermo. At the same time, he was in charge of a postgraduate course at Suor Orsola Benincasa in Naples, in which many prestigious foreign scholars were visiting professors. Students of these courses were younger scholars such as Carla Bagnoli, Luca Ferrero, and Michele Mangini. From 1998 on Maffettone has taught at LUISS- Guido Carli University in Rome, where he also had the chance to work with renowned colleagues in similar fields including Dario Antiseri, Massimo Baldini and Luciano Pellicani. In this period he also worked with the group directed by Eugenio Lecaldano in the neighboring Villa Mirafiori where the Faculty of Philosophy of “La Sapienza” is located. Since Maffettone transferred to LUISS, he has directed the Center of Research and Studies on Human Rights (CERSDU), previously founded by Paolo Ungari.

Selected publications