Russo Maria Professore AssociatoPhilosophyPHIL-03/A - Filosofia Morale

Maria Russo is Associate Professor of Moral Philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy, Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, where she is Director of the European Centre for Social Ethics (ECSE) and a member of the Philosophy and Business Unit. She is Co-editor of Studi Sartriani (Fascia A, M-FIL/01) and of the interuniversity research centre PHILM – Philosophy and Cinema (Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele and Università degli Studi di Verona), whose scientific journal she also co-edits. She is a member of the Scientific Board of the Sartriana series (Christian Marinotti Edizioni) and tutor of the Master's Programme in Science and Health Communication. 

She obtained the Italian National Scientific Qualification (ASN) for Full Professor in Moral Philosophy (M-FIL/03) in March 2025. She previously held positions as Associate Researcher (RTD-B, 2022–2025) and Assistant Researcher (RTD-A, 2019–2022) at the same institution, Visiting Fellow at the University of the West of England (Bristol, 2020–2023), and Research Fellow at the International Research Centre for European Culture and Politics (IRCECP). She holds a PhD in Philosophy and Mind Sciences from Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, with a dissertation on the relationship between ethics and history in Sartre's ethics of authenticity. 

She is a member of the Centre for Public Ethics (CeSEP), of the Italian Society for Moral Philosophy (SIFM), and of the editorial boards of Giornale Critico di Storia delle Idee, Phenomenology and Mind, and Filosofia Morale/Moral Philosophy. She serves as peer reviewer for international journals including Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, Philosophy & Social Criticism, Sartre Studies International, and Journal of Social Philosophy, as well as for Routledge. 

Areas of Specialization 

Existentialism; Ethics and Critical Theory of Media; Philosophy of Film. 

Areas of Competence 

Normative Ethics; Twentieth-Century Moral Philosophy; Philosophy of History; Communication Ethics; Philosophy of Cinema; Critical Theory. 

Selected Publications 

Monographs 

Sartre. Vita di un filosofo radicale, Carocci, Rome 2024. 

Per un Esistenzialismo Critico. Il rapporto tra etica e storia nella morale dell'autenticità di Jean-Paul Sartre, Mimesis, Milan 2018. 

Libertà in situazione. La finitezza umana in Kant e Sartre, Bruno Mondadori, Milan 2014. 

La dialettica della libertà in Nietzsche e Dostoevskij, Il Prato, Padua 2014. 

Articles (selection) 

"Beyond the Dark Sides of the Web: For an Ethical Model of Digital Solidarity", Critical Horizons, 25(1), 2024. 

"Fraternity-without-Terror: A Sartrean Account of Political Solidarity" (with F. Tava), The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 54(3), 2023. 

"From Jean-Paul Sartre to Critical Existentialism: Notes for an Existentialist Ethical Theory", Sartre Studies International, 28(1), 2022. 

"The normative bond between Kantian Autonomy and Sartrean Authenticity: A Critical Existentialist Perspective", European Journal of Philosophy, 29(1), 2021. 

"Does the city of ends correspond to a classless society? A new idea of democracy in Sartre's Hope Now", Sartre Studies International, 25(1), 2019. 

"Counter-violence and Islamic Terrorism. Is liberation without freedom possible?", Sartre Studies International, 23(1), 2017.