Silvia Caprioglio Panizza

My interests involve studying and teaching, and grappling with, various questions that fall broadly within the sphere of ethics. The problems include what ethical discourse is really about, the reality of moral facts, how we can find out about them, how we are motivated (or fail to be) to act and think and feel in certain ways, and how we can settle radical moral disagreement, if we can. These reflections are grounded through many particular problems and situations; currently, the application that I am particularly concerned with is the question of how we as humans live - and should live - with other animals. More broadly, I am interested in how to think of our place (as individuals, as humans, as animals) in the rest of the natural world, at a time of substantial external changes.

I joined UCD in 2019 to teach courses in Moral Philosophy, all of which I find extremely exciting. Moral theory, applied ethics, and philosophy of literature among them.

My other ethical interests include the moral outlook developed in literary fiction, the importance of language, and mysticism. In terms of the last one, I work on Simone Weil's striking ideas. As for literature, I studied English (BA) and Comparative Literature (MA) at the University of Genoa, where I also started teaching courses in translation and in contemporary Anglo-American literature. I love writing poetry and short fiction as a method of exploration.

I gained my doctorate from the University of East Anglia in 2016 with a thesis on the role of attention in morality, drawing on Iris Murdoch , examined by Prof Catherine Rowett and Prof Sophie Grace Chappell. I think there is still much to say about how we direct and deepen our attention and the moral significance of that.