Giovanni Giorgini is Full Professor of History of Political Thought in the Department of Political and Social
Sciences of the University of Bologna. He is also Life Member of
Clare Hall College, Cambridge, where he was previously a
Fellow.
Giovanni Giorgini has been Visiting Professor in the Department of Politics, Princeton University; the Committee
on Social Thought at the University of Chicago; in the Philosophy
Department at the University of Pittsburgh; Visiting Scholar at
Cambridge University, the University of Wisconsin at Madison and
Columbia University in New York, where he has also been a Fellow of
the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America and Adjunct Professor of Political Science. He has taught
at the IMT-Alti Studi in Lucca, the Free University of Bolzano and
the Dickinson College, Bologna centre.
Giorgini is member and Past
President of the Collegium Politicum (a network of
international scholars working on ancient political thought) and of
the scientific board of Società Libera, an association for
the promotion of liberal ideals that awards the International
Liberty Prize. He is also member of the Renaissance Society of
America, of the European Society for the History of Political
Thought, of the Società Italiana di Filosofia Politica [Italian
Society of Political Philosophers] and of the Associazione Italiana
Storici delle Dottrine Politiche [Italian Association of Historians
of Political Thought]. Giorgini is member of the scientific board
of Il Pensiero Politico (Florence: Olschki) and a member of
the board of directors of Filosofia Politica (Bologna: Il
Mulino) and “Etica & Politica” (online journal).
Giorgini received his degree in Philosophy at the University of
Bologna under the supervision of Nicola Matteucci and then received
a scholarship from the Istituto Italiano Studi Storici in Naples,
where he did graduate studies under the supervision of Marcello
Gigante and Ettore Lepore. He received a Ph.D in History of
Political Thought and Institutions from the University of Turin
under the supervision of Nicola Matteucci and Lucio Bertelli and
went on to do post-graduate research at Cambridge University
with a scholarship from the Italian National Council for
Research.
Giorgini's area of specialization is ancient Greek philosophy
and its revival in contemporary political theory. He is mostly
interested in conceptual history, the history of ideas and the ways
in which institutions represent and embody political ideals: the
relationship between politics and ‘vision' and how the study of
classics may help creating political vision. His current interests
are the use of classical political thought by Machiavelli,
relativism ancient and modern and the strategies devised to tackle
it. Finally, Giorgini is also currently working on the
philosophical foundations of decision theory, especially in its
political implications.
Giorgini is the author of three books: La città e il tiranno.
Il concetto di tirannide nella Grecia del VII-IV secolo a.C.
(Giuffrè, 1993), an examination of the evolution of the concept of
tyranny in ancient Greece; Liberalismi eretici (Edizioni
Goliardiche, 1999), a critical interpretation of some contemporary
political philosophers, such as Stuart Hampshire, Leo Strauss,
Martha Nussbaum, Michael Oakeshott, Alasdair MacIntyre; I doni
di Pandora. Filosofia, politica e storia nella Grecia
antica (Bonomo, 2002), an exploration of some
philosophical-political themes and classical authors, such as
Protagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, Xenophon, conducted in a
conceptual history perspective. He has also published a
translation, with notes and introduction, of Plato's
Politicus (Rizzoli, 2005), numerous essays in English and
Italian on learned journals, translations and entries in
encyclopaedias. In 2017 he edited (with Elena Irrera),The Roots of Respect. A Historic-Philosophical Itinerary, Berlin-Boston, De Gruyter, an examination of the notion of 'respect' in the history of political thought. In 2021 he edited (with Dino Piovan) The Brill Companion to the Reception of Athenian Democracy.
