Maurizio Ferraris (born 7 February 1956, in Turin) is an Italian continental philosopher and scholar, whose name is associated especially with the philosophical current named "new realism"—Ferraris wrote the Manifesto of New Realism in 2012, which was published by SUNY Press in 2014) -- which shares significant similarities with speculative realism and object oriented ontology. A pupil of Gianni Vattimo, and influenced by Jacques Derrida, Ferraris began as a theorist of hermeneutics before turning his attention to analytic philosophy. Over the years he has been able to create an effective synthesis between the two approaches, creating a new ontological realism that rejects Kant's schematism in the domain of cognition. Since 1995, Ferraris has been Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Literature and Philosophy at the University of Turin, where he also runs the LabOnt (Laboratory for Ontology). He studied in Turin, Paris and Heidelberg and has taught at major European Universities. He is the editor of the Rivista di Estetica and is a member of the editorial board of Critique and aut aut. From 1989 to 2010 Ferraris contributed regularly to the cultural supplement of the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 ORE. Since 2010 he has been writing for the cultural section of La Repubblica. His main areas of expertise are hermeneutics, aesthetics and ontology. Biography Ferraris graduated from philosophy at the University of Turin in 1979, under the guidance of Gianni Vattimo. In the early years of his career he divided his time between teaching, research and cultural journalism. From 1979 to 1988 he has been an editor, and then co-director, of Alfabeta, whose directive committee includes, among others, Antonio Porta, Nanni Balestrini, Maria Corti, Umberto Eco, Francesco Leonetti, Pier Aldo Rovatti and Paolo Volponi. In the early eighties he began his relationship with Derrida, who deeply marked his philosophical training. On the academic level, in 1984, after two years of teaching in Macerata (1982–83), he began to teach in Trieste, interspersing his didactic activities with a series of stays in Heidelberg. Here, after getting in contact with Gadamer, he started his studies in hermeneutics. In 1995, Ferraris was called in Turin, as a full Professor of Aesthetics, and later began teaching Metaphysics (Filosofia teoretica) in 1999. While working as a director of program (i.e. teacher) at the Collège international de philosophie from 1998 to 2004, in 1999 he founded the Laboratory for Ontology (LabOnt) and the Inter-University