





















































Editorial I – Transitions: New and Different Perspectives


Elementa
Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology 
and Empirical Perspectives

2 
(2022) 

1-2

Transitions

Edited by Tommaso Sgarro

First Section

Tommaso Sgarro
Editorial I – Transitions: New and Different Perspectives 9

Tommaso Sgarro
The Human “Historicity” as a Permanent Transition 13 
in the Philosophy of Ignacio Ellacuría

Luis Roca Jusmet
François Jullien: The Double Transit of Human Life 27

Jordi Riba Miralles
The Event, beyond the Permanent Crisis 37

Alessia Franco
For an Epistemology of Transition: Paul B. Preciado, 51 
Psychoanalysis and the Regime of Sexual Difference

Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives – 2 (2022) 1-2 
https://www.ledonline.it/elementa - Online ISSN 2785-4426 - Print ISSN 2785-4558

5

https://www.ledonline.it/elementa 


Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives

Second Section

Tommaso Sgarro
Editorial II – Governing Transitions 67

Pierpaolo Limone - Maria Grazia Simone
Becoming Support Teachers at the University of Foggia 71 
During the Pandemic. An Exploratory Survey

Francesca Finestrone
Music: For a Sustainable Community and the Promotion 85 
of Well-being

Gennaro Balzano - Vito Balzano
Educating for Transition in Work Contexts 101

Giuseppina Maria Patrizia Surace
The Future We Want: The Transition to Adulthood 111 
of Unaccompanied Minors

Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives – 2 (2022) 1-2 
https://www.ledonline.it/elementa - Online ISSN 2785-4426 - Print ISSN 2785-4558

6

https://www.ledonline.it/elementa 


Editorial I

Transitions: 
New and Different Perspectives
Tommaso Sgarro
Università degli Studi di Foggia (Italy)

doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/elementa-2022-0102-edit
 tommaso.sgarro@unifg.it

“But ultimately you should at least remember that this is a century of tran-
sition. / Tristan: Oh, what conclusions do you draw from this? All centu-
ries, more or less, have been and will be transitional, because human socie-
ty never stands still, nor will there ever come a century in which there is a 
condition destined to last”. Giacomo Leopardi wrote these words in 1832, 
in Dialogo di Tristano e di un amico, included at the conclusion of the 1834 
Florentine edition of the Operette morali, devoting a quick critique to the 
all-Nineteenth-Century idea that he wanted the Nineteenth Century to 
be a “century of transition”, marked by contradictions that would never-
theless be resolved and find their fulfillment in the affirmation of human 
progress. It is precisely the idea of progress (which holds within itself that 
of transition to a new and better era) that Leopardi rejects; the protago-
nist is not history itself but human nature, which equal in all eras, would 
make each era identical to the other. That of “transition” would thus be a 
“naïve” idea, given by the illusion of the present, the time that everyone 
lives, which by its movement gives us the idea of a more overall ordered 
and oriented movement of history toward something that is beyond the 
human itself. Indeed, the problem of transition brings with it in modernity 
the problem of “where”, of the horizon, since speaking of transition always 
indicates an indefinite intermediate condition from one state to another. 
If, then, for Leopardi, transition is the meaning of History itself in relation 
to man, for Hegel it has a definite function in History: “Long periods may 
perhaps elapse before an old ethical form can be superseded by the new; 
the epochs of philosophy fall in these periods of transition”. Transition is 

Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives – 2 (2022) 1-2 
https://www.ledonline.it/elementa - Online ISSN 2785-4426 - Print ISSN 2785-4558

9

https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/elementa-2022-0102-edit
mailto:tommaso.sgarro@unifg.it
https://www.ledonline.it/elementa 


Tommaso Sgarro

thus a necessary moment for the affirmation of universal reason, which 
manifests itself in the form of ethics and is shown through the affirmation 
of a new philosophy. If in Leopardi the need for a permanent form of 
transition of an existential nature is attested, for Hegel the nature of transi-
tion is logical, necessary, and posed by the demands internal to history 
itself. It is no coincidence that the term has had its own importance in the 
construction of historiographical categories conditioned precisely by the 
Hegelian interpretation of History, as if in history there is a kind of general 
transition from one civilization to another, during which new social forms, 
customs, new cultural, literary, and artistic conceptions and productions 
mature. For Marx, who starts precisely from Hegel’s logic, transition is the 
indispensable historical characterization of socialism as a preparatory phase 
for the establishment of communist society, showing how important this 
term was within the 19th Century.

Today the word has left the “safe” (admittedly no longer too safe) 
field of the philosophy of History, to return to great use in specific ethical 
issues. Thus, we speak of energy transition when we talk about the need 
to abandon the old forms of energy production and invest in renewable 
energy, in order to protect the planet; of ecological transition when we talk 
about the reshaping of the production system towards a circular economy, 
no longer based on the consumption cycle, but aiming at a more sustain-
able agriculture to protect human health (in Italy they have even established 
a Ministry of Ecological Transition, whose goal is to hold together these 
ethical-productive demands). While a use of the word unshackled from 
any historical-ideological superstructure has ensured its “new fortune”, this 
use has mostly been done uncritically, without a precise awareness of the 
implications the term carries. In order not to make a trivially à la page use 
of it, it is necessary to put on the agenda not a conceptual re-founding of 
it (useless to anachronistic), but a careful phenomenological observation 
that allows us to grasp new nuances and different perspectives from those 
of the past.

The goal of the present volume of the journal Elementa. Intersections 
between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives, is by all means 
ambitious, and treads impervious ground. The operation is facilitated, 
however, by the precise awareness, that the main objective is to go and 
retrieve new senses of the term firstly within new and little-practiced intel-
lectual contexts, and secondly in the field of practice. It is this reason why, 
within this philosophical “first half ”, the operation focuses on the transi-
tion of the term, from the “old” terrain of history to that of human “histo-
ricity” within the first essay, which I proposed, The Human “Historicity” 

Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives – 2 (2022) 1-2 
https://www.ledonline.it/elementa - Online ISSN 2785-4426 - Print ISSN 2785-4558

10

https://www.ledonline.it/elementa 


Editorial I – Transitions: New and Different Perspectives

as a Permanent Transition in the Philosophy of Ignacio Ellacuría. Through 
Ellacuría’s analysis of the philosophy of historical reality, a new key emerges 
that makes transition the dynamic needed to read History no longer from 
the standpoint of ideology, as much as idealism, but as the place of praxis, 
of the realization of human possibilities that are characterized within a 
constant dialogue between man and the socio-historical reality to which 
he belongs. A first indispensable step to relocate the theme of transition 
within the human-history relationship, however, abandoning – however – 
the paradigms of the most rigid and obsolete Hegelism. This also means 
overcoming the reading entirely internal to Western culture of the lemma 
“transition” based on the oppositional and conflicting nature of the two 
states (the one of departure and the final one) within which the “state of 
transition” would be located.

With Luis Roca Jusmet’s essay, François Jullien: The Double Transit 
of Human Life, in fact, through a comparison with Chinese culture, a 
comparison that can no longer be procrastinated even from a cultural point 
of view given the transformations in economic and social relations with the 
East caused by economic globalization, it is highlighted how nature, and 
the very human life that is part of it, are processes that cannot necessarily 
be formulated in terms of continuity (as is the case with the West) but as 
“transit”. Through the reconstruction of Jullien’s work, the author leads the 
reader to the knowledge of elements of thought that are absent in Western 
culture and, nevertheless, useful in understanding the challenges imposed 
by the new use of the term transition with respect to ecological challenges. 
Rethinking transition means, then, rethinking the political practices that 
result from it and, at the same time, rethinking politics itself (ecological 
transition practices, after all, involve a political paradigm shift).

Jordi Riba Miralles, in his The Event, beyond the Permanent Crisis, 
through comparing the work of Jean-Marie Guyau and that of Alain 
Badiou, and delving into the ideas of “permanent crisis” and “event”, ques-
tions precisely the rethinking of the nexus between history and the transfor-
mation of political reality. At a time like today’s, it must be understood that 
the problem is not overcoming the crisis itself, but rather understanding 
the political event to which it opens: in this respect, the permanent crisis 
is nothing more than the political dimension of the permanent transition 
of human reality.

Closing out the overview is Alessia Franco’s essay, For an Epistemology of 
Transition: Paul Preciado, Psychoanalysis and the Regime of Sexual Difference, 
confirming how the recalibration of the new meaning that accompanies 

Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives – 2 (2022) 1-2 
https://www.ledonline.it/elementa - Online ISSN 2785-4426 - Print ISSN 2785-4558

11

https://www.ledonline.it/elementa 


Tommaso Sgarro

the term “transition” has more to do no longer with universal and general 
contexts, but with the human, considered no longer under the meaning 
of the old concept of nature, but on that of the practices within which it 
shows itself. This becomes visible when we analyze the theme of the body in 
relation to that of transition, so as to overcome the old oppositional logics 
on which the Western way of thinking has been held. In this sense, Paul B. 
Preciado’s epistemology of transition, which is the focus of Franco’s essay, 
aims to go beyond the epistemological regime of sexual difference based on 
heterobinarism, placing the topic of the body in transition no longer under 
the mere lens of psychoanalysis but from a philosophical perspective.

Copyright (©) 2022 Tommaso Sgarro 
Editorial format and graphical layout: copyright (©) LED Edizioni Universitarie

 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 
 Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

How to cite this paper:
Sgarro, T. (2022). Editorial I – Transitions: New and different perspectives. Elementa. 
Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives, 2(1-2), 9-12. doi: 
https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/elem-2022-0102-edit

Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives – 2 (2022) 1-2 
https://www.ledonline.it/elementa - Online ISSN 2785-4426 - Print ISSN 2785-4558

12

https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/elem-2022-0102-edit
https://www.ledonline.it/elementa 

	Sommario.pdf
	First Section
	Editorial I
	Transitions:
New and Different Perspectives

	The Human “Historicity”
as a Permanent Transition
in the Philosophy of Ignacio Ellacuría
	François Jullien: The Double Transit
of Human Life
	The Event, beyond the Permanent Crisis
	For an Epistemology of Transition:
Paul B. Preciado, Psychoanalysis
and the Regime of Sexual Difference

	Second Section
	Editorial II
	Governing Transitions

	Becoming Support Teachers
at the University of Foggia
During the Pandemic *
	Music: For a Sustainable Community and the Promotion of Well-being
	Educating for Transition in Work Contexts
	The Future We Want:
The Transition to Adulthood
of Unaccompanied Minors
	An Exploratory Survey



