The Soul and the Time of Boredom: Symptom, Sin, or Revelation?

Lecture: The Soul and the Time of Boredom: Symptom, Sin, or Revelation?

Lecturer: Fabio Merlini (Eranos Foundation, Ascona / SFUVET, Lugano)

Date: Friday, December 11, 2026, 6:30 p.m.

Place: Monte Verità (Ascona), Auditorium

Cycle: Eranos-Jung Lectures 20265 - Guided by the Daimon. James Hillman's (1926-2011) Legacy on the Hundredth Anniversary of his Birth

Language: Italian

Moderator: Sandro Rusconi (Eranos Foundation, Ascona)

Followed by discussion with the audience and aperitif

The video recording of the conference will be viewable on the official YouTube channel of the Eranos Foundation.

Lecture Presentation

Lecturer' Bio-bibliography

Fabio Merlini, Regional Director of the Swiss Federal University for Vocational Education and Training (SFUVET) in Lugano, Switlerland, serves since 2010 as the President of the Eranos Foundation. From 2012 to 2019, he has served as President of the Cultural Commission of the Canton of Ticino. In 1998, he was nominated privat-docent at the Université de Lausanne, Switzerland, where he taught Philosophy of Culture. Subsequently, from 1999 to 2003, he taught Systemic Philosophy and was appointed Professor of Epistemology of the Human Sciences at the Université de Lausanne. In 2003, he was nominated adjunct Professor of Communication Ethics at the Università degli Studi dell’Insubria in Varese, Italy, where he taught until 2011. From 1996 to 2000, he co-directed the “Groupe de Recherche sur l’Ontologie de l’Histoire” at the Hussler Archives of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, whose seminar works, Après la fin de l’histoire (1998), Historicité et spatialité (2001), and Une histoire de l’avenir (2004), were published by J. Vrin. His publications include La comunicazione interrotta. Etica e politica nel tempo della “rete” (2004), L’efficienza insignificante. Saggio sul disorientamento (2009, translated into French as L’époque de la performance insignifiante. Réflexions sur la vie désorientée, 2011), Schizotopies : Essai sur l’espace de la mobilisation (2013, then translated into Italian as Ubicumque. Saggio sul tempo e lo spazio della mobilitazione, 2015), L’architettura inefficiente (with L. Snozzi, 2014, also translated into French as L’architecture inefficiente, 2016), Catastrofi dell’immediatezza (with S. Tagliagambe, for the series "I saggi di Eranos", Vol. 3, 2016), and Triste esthétique. Essais sur les catastrophes de l’immédiateté (2018, published also in Italian as L’estetica triste. Seduzione e ipocrisia dell'innovazione, 2019). His most recent book is entitled Ritornare in sé. L’interiorità smarrita e l’infinita distrazione (2022). He also served as editor of the volumes Nuove tecnologie e nuove sensibilità. Comunicazione, identità, formazione (2005), Identità e alterità. Tredici esercizi di comprensione (with E. Boldrini, 2006), Per una cultura della formazione al lavoro. Studi e analisi sulla crisi dell’identità professionale (with L. Bonoli, 2010), and Semi ad usum praesentis. Un incontro sul pensiero di Jean-Jacques Rousseau (2013). He is co-author of the Cahier de l’Herne dedicated to Friedrich Nietzsche on the 100th anniversary of his death (2000) and of the miscellaneous volume La philosophie au risque de la promesse (2004), along with J. Derrida, P. Ricoeur, M. Crépon, and other authors. For the “Eranos Classics” series, he co-edited the original edition of Carl Gustav Jung’s Rebirth. Text and Notes of the Lecture held at Eranos in 1939 (with R. Bernardini, 2020). Among his poetry works, we mention here Filo di perle. Poesie liriche in tre tempi (2015). He is a Faculty Member of the Institute of Analytical Psychology and Psychotherapy (IPAP), Postgraduate School of Psychotherapy (Ivrea).

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In 2026, the Eranos Foundation intends to honor a figure who has brought prestige to the history of its meetings. This figure is the American psychologist James Hillman (1926-2011), whose 100th birthday is being celebrated this year. A highly regarded speaker at the famous Eranos Tagungen on several occasions, his innovative and courageous thinking contributed to the cultural renewal of analytical psychology, developing Jung's intuition of archetypes in unexpected directions and decisively returning the psyche to its imaginal role—more than a terrain to be interpreted, a horizon to be recognized and inhabited. This year, as we did last year with Carl Gustav Jung on the 150th anniversary of his birth, we do not intend to study Hillman analytically, but rather to be inspired by some of his most disruptive perspectives, allowing them to interact with the issues that concern us most today. The result will therefore be a very free and open dialogue with relevant aspects of his thinking, with the aim of shedding light on the current situation. Each speaker will thus be inspired as they see fit by a style of thinking that has taken psychology beyond the strictly clinical dimension, making it a heuristic tool for better understanding society and individuals. This is the lesson we will try to take advantage of.