Cecità etica e indifferenza morale, in “InCircolo. Rivista di Filosofia e Culture”, 18, maggio 2025, pp. 258-275 [ISSN 2531-4092].

the article explores the concept of ethical blindness, linking it to the experience of evil and the traditional idea of “moral conscience”. Drawing on insights from José Saramago’s Blindness and guided by reflections from Zygmunt Bauman and Albert Bandura, it demonstrates that no accusation of “blindness”, “disengagement”, “insensitivity” or “indifference” can be morally persuasive without reference to some form of ethical objectivity. Furthermore, a parallel is drawn with Saramago’s notion of “white blindness”, which refers to a kind of blinding light capable of making one “see” what one cannot see, despite the act of seeing. Through a brief phenomenology of certain forms of ethical blindness, therefore, the article examines how this can be traced in the classical tradition, particularly in Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, where the inability to distinguish between good and evil becomes a punishment for the damned souls. Finally, in line with Primo Levi’s theory, the concept of the “gray zone” is explored, in which the two opposing camps, those of the oppressors and the victims, blend and overlap, creating a space where evil drags the victims into a perverse middle ground, and where humanity faces its contradictions and shadows. In this perspective, the article highlights the importance of the educational dimension and how it can become the field in which the ability to orient oneself towards good and just actions is developed, which, as Aristotle teaches in his Nicomachean Ethics, become, through habit, the only true antidote to “blindness”.