Career
Under the influence of Maurice Blanchot and Jean-Luc Nancy he has published many essays on philosophy, as well as literature. He has written two books with Jean-Luc Nancy: the first on the subject of the nude, [2] the second on the iconography of the writer. [3] More recently, he has focused on the ontological state of the image, the deconstruction of the museum in postmodernity, and the question of art and/or in time. [4] [5] In 2011 he theorized the aesthetics of "Arte Essenziale", which manifested itself in the show held at Collezione Maramotti (Reggio Emilia, Italy) and at Frankfurter Kunstverein (Germany). [6] Eugenio Viola writes of Ferrari, "In a time when many continue to lament what they see as the inexorable decline of theory’s role in criticism, "Arte essenziale" (Essential Art), curated by philosopher Federico Ferrari, does its part to placate concerns with an exploration of the ties that link artistic practice and philosophical speculation. The show focuses on the Wesen, or essence, of a work of art—a notion that has always been inextricably linked with a search for the new." [7]
His works address quite diverse questions concerning the problems of bioethics and euthanasia, the political theory of community under the influence of the works of Maurice Blanchot, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Giorgio Agamben, the status of the museum in the postmodern era, and the question of art in relation to time.
Subsequently, following the reflection of Maurice Blanchot and Jean-Luc Nancy, he initially undertook research into the problem of a social bond precariously balanced between communal experience and the atomized societies of the globalized world. He then developed a collaboration with Jean-Luc Nancy, which led, between 2000 and 2021, to the co-writing of four works: Nus sommes. La peau des images (We Are Naked. The Skin of Images), Iconographie de l'auteur (Iconography of the Author), La fin des fins (The End of Ends), and Extase (Ecstasy).
Starting from the late 1990s, his research field increasingly focused on the themes of the image and art, notably with a deconstructive approach to the museum institution (Lo spazio critico - The Critical Space) and the system of art and image production (Il re è nudo - The Emperor is Naked). The entirety of his work appears to aim at creating foci that, while not fully succeeding in eradicating the weeds of capitalism, exhibit signs of lively 'aristocratic' and 'anarchic' contestation. Where aristocracy means awareness, responsibility, freedom, sharing, an ethic of doing, the project (future?) of art. And anarchy, for its part, real contestation (critical and theoretical), an indispensable voice on the destiny of a world to be reconquered and, gradually, decontaminated. The methodological approach thus seems to combine aspects of deconstruction with elements of the anarcho-individualist tradition, in an attempt to denounce and subvert the mystifying production processes of late capitalism. More specifically, the reflection on the image seems to be configured, as Marco Belpoliti wrote, "as a long reflection on the gaze, on that particular type of gaze that we can define as 'heuristic': one that wants to go beyond the manifest visibility of things to reach the hidden visibility."
In his writings L'Anarca (The Anarchist) and Oscillazioni (Oscillations), the aristocratic element – with certain anachoretic aspects – seems to radicalize in a direct confrontation with nihilistic thought and its postmodern masks, pushing, on the one hand, towards an exile from the present in search of an absolute principle or anti-principle (the influence of the figure of Cristina Campo, explicitly mentioned by the author in an interview, is evident in this respect) and, on the other hand, towards an autobiographical thought whose clarity borders on violence and whose violence has an imperious disregard for compromises, a tension towards the absolute. In this way, the Italian thinker, while taking up themes addressed by Heidegger and Jünger, indeed being "in tune with what Jünger asserts, seems to transcend the 'humanist' boundaries proper to the German's worldview. He becomes the bearer of the essential need to rethink nothingness without falling into Eastern mysticism, placing himself on the path inaugurated by Klages and a few others (among whom, in the Italian context, Andrea Emo can be counted, whose legacy Ferrari, in certain respects, seems to take up).
