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Editoriale

2023-11-25T10:58:15+00:00

Thinking Beyond Boundaries: Towards the XXV World Congress of Philosophy

2024-05-07T12:42:47+00:00

In medio stat virtus. The Justification of Punishment between Deontology and Utilitarianism

2024-05-07T12:43:50+00:00

In this paper, we aim to defend the claim that psychologically and normatively plausible justificatory theories of punishment are those that virtuously merge deontological (notably retributivist) and consequentialist (utilitarian) elements. In many ordinary cases, such alternative views readily converge – in practice, if not in principle – when it comes to determining whether, and to what extent, a given culprit ought to be punished. Punishing the offender may indeed often subserve both retributivist and utilitarian ends at once – say, respectively, restoring justice by punishing those who deserve to be punished and maximizing the general utility. In the paper, however, we will present a case study displaying the tension occurring when retributivist and utilitarian views point to different punishing behaviors. Especially in such cases, but also in principle, subscribing to utilitarian views might appear to be the best option. Utilitarianism, indeed, is often described as both more humane and more in line with an empirically sound understanding of human action. At the same time, utilitarian views – be they understood in their “act” or “rule” version – can be challenged by worrisome objections, among which there are the risks of scapegoating and exaggerating punishment. To avoid such excesses, we will argue that mixed theories of punishment, merging retributivist and utilitarian criteria, are to be preferred.

Senza limiti e confini. Metamorfosi delle barriere in epoca digitale

2024-05-07T12:45:13+00:00

After a terminological clarification of concepts of “boundary” and “limit”, this essay analyzes the transformations that the meaning of these concepts undergoes in contemporary thought. It seems today that boundaries must be overcome, that all barriers must collapse, and that limits no longer exist. An insight into this situation is offered with reference to the experience of the “metaverse”. Faced with this situation, a rethinking of the notions of ‘limit’ and ‘boundary’ is proposed, and it is shown how from an ethical point of view the ambiguities by which these concepts are characterized can be addressed.

Oltre la filosofia e il nichilismo: verso una prassi postumana

2024-05-07T12:45:29+00:00

This dialogue between Francesca Ferrando and Manuela Macelloni highlights how posthumanism shifts the hermeneutical possibilities of the human condition, leading to new life practices. Posthumanism is currently emerging as a praxis. What are these practices? What are the generative possibilities that posthumanism offers to us? Can we think of presents and futures beyond the nihilistic trajectories of the Anthropocene?

Ricostruzione urbana postbellica e terapia della memoria

2024-05-07T12:45:42+00:00

When the violence of war has overflowed bodies and destroyed cities, histories and traditions, it ends up erasing the recognizable features of cities for entire generations. For this reason, whenever devastated realities can finally be rebuilt in times of peace, it would be right for urban planners and architects to ask themselves the ethical question of how to heal interrupted lives and humiliated traditions through the architectural gesture. The alternative to the enemy’s ‘uberticidal’ plans aimed at destroying identities and belongings passes through a process of reconstruction. Certainly, this implies the question of whether building means erasing any sign of barbarism or maintaining an uninterrupted thread with what has happened, for this reason the architectural gesture has an ethical value in soothing inter-ethnic hatred and enmity. An exemplary case is the city of Sarajevo and its reconstruction.

Filosofia e musica tra eccedenza e mancanza

2024-05-07T12:45:54+00:00

The ancient relationship between philosophy and music has given rise to a plurality of interpretations, which have emphasized their affinity or divergence, their equality or dissimilarity, in the latter case involving categories such as ‘overflow ‘ or ‘absence’ with regard to the semantics or asemanticity of sound language with respect to verbal language. This essay recalls its main declinations, dwelling, in particular, on the debate that has been animated also in Italy since the second half of the last century and has developed, albeit with alternating phases, up to the present day. The perspective assumed is that of a feeling and thinking ‘with music’ and not only ‘about music’, creating an autonomous space of ‘crossing’ that neither ‘solves’ nor subordinates one of the two terms.

Varcare soglie, attraversare confini

2024-05-07T12:46:04+00:00

Every boundary has an intrinsic duplicity: on the one hand, it separates, blocks, closes, conceals from view, prevents one from moving forward without a difference being perceived; on the other hand, it offers a limit, and thus a form, to one or more dimensions of the human – territorial, expressive, linguistic, legal. Without borders there would be the indistinct, the formless. The border, as we know, separates and at the same time connects, distinguishes and at the same time binds, unites. The border is a blocking zone, and a place of passage: invisible, inextensive, and yet effective. Thinking of the border as a value and not as a limiting element that constrains and inhibits implies a transformation of one’s outlook and attitude: by highlighting the phenomena of cultural interference – economic, political, philosophical, literary, biological – one can grasp cultures precisely as places of identity, never neutral, where one always lives, thinks, and changes. Only by placing oneself at the margins and examining the fluid movement of boundaries, onecan place oneself at the centre of questions and changes themselves stimulating an intercultural transformation of the critical attitude that invests philosophical thought.

Las mil caras de la identidad: identidad narrativa y reconocimiento

2024-05-07T12:46:15+00:00

The matter of identity is an interdisciplinary issue, which means that no single approach to the question can be made as the topic has been addressed in many different ways: i.e. culturally, socially, digitally, and genetically. Identity could also be approached from a gender standpoint and, by all means, from a philosophical stance, which I shall be looking at. More specifically, I will take up a few of the most innovative contributions developed by Paul Ricœur from a hermeneutical angle, when he presents the concepts of narrative identity and the sameness-ipseity dichotomy.

Oltre i confini di Atene: le scuole di filosofia alla fine del mondo antico

2024-05-07T12:46:26+00:00

This article focuses on philosophical schools at the end of the ancient Greco-Roman world. Under the Roman Empire, philosophy was not confined to Athens, but covered the whole Mediterranean world, especially in the East. Examples of this situation include the biography of Plotinus and the Neo-Platonist philosophical schools. A further interesting aspect of Late Antiquity is the role acquired by women in philosophical schools. Philosophy transgressed the (both geographic and cultural) boundaries of Athens and this process ensured the transmission of Greek philosophy to subsequent eras.

Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries: Alcmaeon of Croton between physics, medicine and philosophy

2024-05-07T12:46:37+00:00

In recent decades, there has been a growing need to adopt a new approach to knowledge characterized by the broadest possible inter- and trans-disciplinary perspective, capable of responding to the rapid and complex changes in society, and the multidimensional nature of the problems and issues that run through it. Nevertheless transdisciplinarity is not really a product of the 20th century: this holistic approach that aims to hold all scientific knowledge together, that aspires to exist at once between, across and beyond different disciplines, has characterized our culture since antiquity. If we wished to search for the earliest example of transdisciplinary science, we should perhaps turn to the figure of Alcmaeon of Croton, an ‘experimental researcher’ who carried out his research across the fields of physics, medicine (neurophysiology), and philosophy (epistemology). For the concept of health as the isonomy of opposing forces, the study of the senses contained in the head, and encephalocentrism, he is regarded as fundamental to the development of Hippocratic medicine, an ante litteram neuroscientist, and a scientist truly across boundaries.

Modelli di organizzazione del sapere oltre i confini disciplinari: il multiprospettivismo di Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

2024-05-07T12:46:48+00:00

In the paper I present the model of knowledge organization, defined as multiperspective, proposed by the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. I concentrate on the 21st chapter of the Nouveaux Essais dedicated to the Division of Sciences, and the Leibniz’s writings on General Science. I discuss the Leibnizian vision of a relational knowledge based on a critical review of the traditional organization of sciences and research approaches (self-referential and closed). Leibniz’s proposal transcends disciplinary territorial boundaries, he designs a complex and cooperative model in which theoretical and practical knowledge are combined. Leibniz worked tirelessly throughout his life to a concrete plan to reform and develop science for the public good; a model that can still be a source of inspiration today.

Sconfinamenti di genere. Judith Butler e la critica alla psicoanalisi lacaniana

2024-05-07T12:46:57+00:00

Starting from the deconstruction of the essentialist conceptions of identity and the binary male/female, heterosexuality/homosexuality relationships, Judith Butler has come to question also the presumed naturalness of ‘compulsory heterosexuality’, questioning the perfect match between biological sex, gender identity and heterosexual orientation. Starting from Butler’s perspective, we intend to deepen the problematic relationship with psychoanalysis, in particular with the crucial phase constituted by the Oedipus complex, which presupposes the incest taboo. Confronting Lacan and his elaboration of the Law of Symbolic, which regulates identity and sexual orientation through the Oedipus interdicts, functioning in reference to the heterosexual paradigm, Butler intends to question its immutable character and the Phallus as the privileged signifier of the symbolic order.

Corrispondenze di ‘opacità’ fra scienza ed etica. Incursioni speculative interdisciplinari verso una svolta epistemologica della complessità

2024-05-07T12:47:10+00:00

Reflection on ‘quanta’ in the 20th century showed a world impossible to analyze from isolated elements, existing independently and without the observer and his/her consciousness. This suggested the assumption of a ‘broad sense of cognition’. The inductive-deductive method would historically overshadow ‘abduction’, an expression of invention, creation and intentionally contradictory thinking, open to lateral, less obvious and probable approaches. The need to redefine rationality has allowed the irruption of ambiguity, undecidability, incompleteness, contradiction and uncertainty in doing science, bringing it closer to the ‘opaque’ speculative figures of Lévinas’ ‘faces’, Ricœur’s ‘integral self’, Jonas’ attention to ‘Responsibility’ towards future generations, Morin’s urgency to ‘understand the human condition’ in its unprecedented ‘complexity’.

Misure e confini porosi: la comparsa dell’altro o dell’altra

2024-05-07T12:47:21+00:00

The idea of limit is fundamental in the classical world. However, as shown in his The Nicomachean Ethics, according to Aristotle the ‘measure’ refers to people, to situations. Then, to upset measures, limits and proportions there is the ‘Other’. The otherness seen as something often ‘incomprehensible’ to the eye, using Karl Jaspers’s words. Ethically speaking, even the idea of freedom should be combined with the one of responsibility, in a kind of loop relationship where they both limit each other. Nevertheless, as claimed by Luigi Pareyson, freedom has ontologically ‘no limits’. All things considered, it is in the ‘tension’ that rides between limit and ‘trespass’, in the ‘porosity’ of boundaries that the moral, cognitive, affective, volitional and aesthetical life of each man or woman and of each culture feeds itself, together with the organization of different disciplinary fields.

L’enigma della soglia

2024-05-07T12:47:32+00:00

The essay aims to consider Karl Jaspers’ conception of boundary situations on the basis of their peculiar spatiality. The very terminology that Jaspers uses allows for this kind of analysis. Indeed, to be in a situation implies for existence (Dasein) to be situated within a topographical order and it is always spatial metaphors to describe boundary situations. And it is always a spatial image that Jaspers uses to represent the space of the ‘leap’ from existence immanent to the topographical order to a possible Existenz that crosses it: that of an ‘enigmatic threshold’. An attempt is then made to trace in other thinkers (Derrida, Foucault, Benjamin) a conception of the threshold as a non-topographical spatiality that would allow one to conceive, simultaneously and at the same time, here and beyond, immanence and transcendence, real and possible, being a citizen and being a foreigner. It emerges that the meaning of threshold takes on different and sometimes substantial nuances depending on the language (Seuil, Schwelle, Threshold).

Monoteismi in mare aperto. Il Mediterraneo tra confini identitari e orizzonti chiusi

2024-05-07T12:47:42+00:00

The essay aims to explore, in a kind of geophilosophical journey, the different cultural stratifications of the Mediterranean, including the three religions of the Book: Judaism, Christianity and Islam, capable of drawing an evocative symbolic code. Whatever the origin of the religions, after the settlement of a rich polytheism, Judaism came to impose itself in the Middle Eastern strip, six thousand years before the birth of Christ, proposing a strict monotheism and an articulate worldview. In its footsteps followed Christianity and then in 600 A.D. Islamism, historical religions set on the shores of the Mediterranean, mute and mobile spectator of the three different revelations of a God who is complicit with the world and its troubled histories. Almost evoking, in the symbolic interweaving of sea waves and historical experiences, the need to overcome rigid and closed identities in order to gain that openness of gaze, which only the sea can evoke.

Memoria, storia, oblio: ebraismo e filosofia

2024-05-07T12:47:51+00:00

Il percorso filosofico-politico di Hannah Arendt. Dall’amor mundi in Agostino alla teoria del giudizio in Kant

2024-05-07T12:48:03+00:00

In her first work, The Concept of Love in Augustine, Hannah Arendt highlights, within the transcendental bond that is Christian love, the plural relationship that joins men with each other and with the world. She then starts from Augustine’s dilectio proximi to outline her personal conception of amor mundi. With these premises, she recovers the fundamental role of political action, and identifies in it the path through which respond to the request for an authentic and unitary dimension of man. The modern age has obscured the true meaning of moral action, inserting in the minds of masses the belief that law and morality are the same thing. In this way, most of Nazis blindly followed orders and were unable to examine them from the ethical point of view of respect for humanity. Arendt searches through judgement for a possible reconciliation between theoria and praxis. She takes as her model Kant’s aesthetic judgement, which is not based on eternal and universal truths of the intellect, but offers space for the search for meaning and significance, for discussion, confrontation and freedom of thought. The right to judge is therefore absolutely inalienable, because only by constantly judging can man make sense of the world and share it with other human beings. Therefore, one cannot ignore an ethical meaning of thinking, the activity in which thought and word remain inseparably united and characterize the way of life in which truly human qualities can manifest themselves.

Redenzione e conoscenza nel concetto di immagine dialettica di Walter Benjamin

2024-05-07T12:48:15+00:00

The epistemological structure of the ‘concept of history’, which Benjamin presents in a monadic dialectical image, is characterized by a temporal dimension neither linear nor progressive, but intensive and ideal, messianic, in which the cognitive concept coincides with the ideal (of the good, of justice), which is characterized by totality and eternity. Here emerges the link between the transcedent, ideal theological setting, secretly active in the immanence of redemption, and the immanent setting of the political. In fact, the redeemed past summons into present time, for a fugitive moment, the messianic time of the fulfilment of the Kingdom of God, thus providing the occasion and direction for praxis, for revolutionary action, messianically and theologically motivated, striving for the construction of a society without classes.

Ripensare la teodicea. In discussione con Marco Ivaldo a proposito di un libro recente sul male

2024-05-07T12:48:25+00:00

The paper focuses on the suggestions to rethink theodicy that can be drawn from the discussion of evil offered by the great philosophers of German criticism and idealism: Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. It does this by following Marco Ivaldo’s exposition in his recent book On Evil. Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and accompanying this exposition with own suggestions and reflections. In Kant and Fichte, a reinterpretation in a moral key of the problem of evil dominates, but one that invests the communitarian dimension as a possible response. Here a reconsideration of the highest good may offer a possibility of understanding the ransom of physical evil seemingly overlooked. In Schelling and Hegel, evil appears to be rendered functional to good, in a view that in Schelling, however, emphasizes the dramatic character of the choice for good or evil, and in Hegel presents aspects that allow for an approximation to the moral reinterpretations of transcendental philosophy.

Il femminile nei processi di individuazione attraverso i simboli arcaici, gli archetipi e il mito

2024-05-07T12:48:34+00:00

The path of analysis and exploration of the myth unfolds, in this work, along three lines that characterize the research and aim to rediscover in narratives, as in investigations, the fundamental role that the feminine has assumed over the centuries. Starting from the civilizations of Ancient Europe. The philosopher-archaeologist Gimbutas brings us the signs that matrilineal societies have left. We cannot talk about myth without referring to its archetypal value and the impact that every archaic narrative has maintained. Especially when in the first decades of the 20th century Jung and his faithful collaborators found its roots and revitalized and deepened them. Finally, the inner journey of awareness and understanding of the role that each individual has and plays in the destiny that passes through his existence, finds, in the chorality and symbolic myth of Antigone (Brezzi), the realization and universality of the dialogue with his own past.

La morte del cogito. Tra Benjamin e Freud

2024-05-07T12:48:44+00:00

This essay aims to investigate the Benjamin’s ontology through a comparison with Freud’s thought, particularly in the wider context of the destruction of the Ego. In the fragment Capitalism as religion Walter Benjamin defines Sigmund Freud as one of the high priest of the capitalist cult. Starting from the interpretation of this fragment, we will show their conflict and analogy around the process of the development of subject, characterized by a series of forgotten experiences. The principle that underlies the essay is that the relationship between Walter Benjamin and Sigmund Freud breaks the imaginary of the cogito, in order to open up the idea of historical subject as depository of political power and collective imaginary.

Intentionality as a shadow of desire. The Role of Drive in the Constitution of Husserl’s Concept of Intentionality

2024-05-07T12:48:52+00:00

Although there are many reflections and studies on Husserlian intentionality, the textual investigations aimed at recording the presence of an instinctual root in the first formulations of this concept (1887-1893) are meagre and negligible. Apart from episodic investigations and circumstantial findings, the most advanced research has been offered by Jocelyn Benoist, who, in Intentionality and drive (The Bounds of Intentionality), suggests an examination of texts prior to 1894. The scope of the article is therefore to work on the writings of the period 1887-1893 and to extend the Benoist repertoire through the inclusion of unexamined texts.

Gefühle. Quellen der Lebendigkeit

2024-05-07T12:49:02+00:00

The essay sheds light on the importance of emotions in human life. Different emotional phenomena are identified – bodily sensations, atmospheres, moods and emotions – with special emphasis on the area of emotions. Emotions are pointedly directed towards specific objects or events. They contain cognitive elements, such as desires, beliefs, fact based or value judgments, which are connected with an intensive corporeal experience and thus prove to be deeply anchored in the personality. In addition, some general structural features of emotional experience are shown, which are shaped in different ways culturally and socially as well as individually and biographically. Based on this the ambivalence of emotional experience and the difficulties of understanding others are discussed. In view of a forward-looking philosophical practice that is about self-formation and sympathetic understanding, the necessity for critical self-distancing combined with the cultivation of compassion comes into focus.

La memoria ha un futuro. Pratiche filosofiche con l’Anfim nei licei

2024-05-07T12:49:13+00:00

Based on a recent experience of practical philosophy carried out with high school students, I analyze the relationship between history and memory. Focusing on the continuing process of questioning past in order to build future, I investigate the challenge to accomplish it, through a participatory workflow. In this term philosophy, in its practical meaning, may implement a collective self-reflection of the entire community on its goals and values. The article analyzes the potential consequences this self-questioning attitude may generate, defining them as radical democracy and awareness of establishing relations based on cooperation rather than competition, as a positive achievement for social life. A further consideration is dedicated to the different aspects characterizing the climate of the practical philosopher community, included the collective work of setting, developing and evaluating the entire process realized together with the students. The hope is that new generations may learn citizenship as a collective construction practice.

Oltre il confine delle categorie filosofiche tradizionali: Merleau-Ponty e la letteratura in un percorso didattico interdisciplinare

2024-05-07T12:49:21+00:00

In the 20th century Phenomenology tries to redefine the relation man-world in view of experience and perception; in these areas some traditional categories of philosophy, often structured dichotomously, such as subject/object, sensitive world/idea, phenomenon/being, are called into question. Within this framework, after the culminating phase of Phenomenology of Perception in 1945, the Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s thought evolves toward the search of a new ontology: all of this happens in ‘The visible and the invisible’where, reading Proust, he is led to create new words and expressions in philosophy, like ‘sensitive ideas’ and ‘meat’. The topic lends itself for an interdisciplinary teaching unit about philosophy and literature for learners.

Note intorno a Gerardo Cunico, L’umanità in comune. Cultura, libertà, solidarietà

2024-05-07T12:49:31+00:00

La descrizione delle qualità muliebri in Plutarco

2024-05-07T12:49:40+00:00

Anna Maria Rossi, Linguaggio mistico e soggetto femminile. La forza della metafora in Chiara Lubich e nella letteratura mistica del primo ‘900, Città nuova, Roma 2022, pp. 344

2023-11-27T15:33:13+00:00

Angela Ales Bello (a cura di), Edmund Husserl, la preghiera e il divino. Scritti etico-religiosi, Studium, Roma 2022, pp. 192

2023-11-25T18:00:16+00:00