Leonardo Caffo, the author of numerous books, is an Italian essayist and philosopher based at the Polytechnic of Turin, where he currently teaches ontology of design in the Faculty of Architecture. His primary research is in animal studies, and as such, it is no wonder that Caffo’s latest literary venture is into posthumanism.
Fragile Umanità (literally “Fragile Humanity”), like Caffo’s other works, is written entirely in Italian with no English translations currently available. However, given its content, conciseness, and philosophical rigor, this would be a worthwhile project for academic translators to tackle.
The book, as is stated in the opening lines of the Introduction, was written in the Department of Anatomy of one of the institutions to which Caffo belongs. An initially strange place for a philosopher to find himself seeking inspiration, but arguably the perfect location—as Caffo argues—to develop the concept of the “posthuman.” The primary aim of this...