Filosofia delle cose ultime. Da Walter Benjamin a Wall-E

Philosophy cannot ignore the current condition of the world, suffocated by waste, by an humiliating and pervasive reality, which is capable of haunting the human imagination with nightmares featuring “rats and paranoia”. Merchandise on the verge of disposal, the unlimited technical possibilities of manipulation of reality, and the hellish landscape offered by urban landfills in the consumer society, all join in a wicked pact, which might turn the earth into an immense Gomorrah of concrete, ruins and waste. To follow the eccentricities of the connection between commodities and waste is a detective-like job, which encompasses multiple realms of knowledge: from literature to the language of advertising, from philosophy to fiction, from poetry to fashion. In the guise of a Sherlock Holmes of forgotten things, one has to follow a line of thinking that encompasses the world of shopping according to Sophie Kinsella, the world-famous motion picture hero Wall-E – the garbage-collector Pixar robot, left alone in a desert world – the appalling Legend of the Great Inquisitor by Dostoevskij, the voyeuristic paintings of Hopper's “window rooms”, Philip K. Dick's novels– which anticipate a world-scale Terzigno– the sale strategies devised by Steve Jobs, the charismatic Apple guru. To employ the wastes of the productive process as the basis for a rethinking of the glittering consumer world requires a dramatic change in one's frame of mind. To devote oneself to philosophy in a world more and more resembling a giant dumpster is the job of ragman, of a flâneur treading on the ruins of history. Today's dumpsters are, after all, the unexpected places where the remnants of human aspirations to salvation can still be found, despite the faith in a progress that fills the world with waste and the obscenity of an irresponsible consumerism that causes serious ecological damage. Because a respectable society leaves nothing behind, neither people nor waste and material refuse.