Suchergebnisse

Sommario: La scienza intesa in senso galileiano ha una vocazione eminentemente operativa: essa, infatti, non ha come obiettivo l'indagine sul "che cosa" degli enti, sul loro essere-in-sé, ma s'interessa solamente del come, attraverso di essi, sia possibile raggiungere un determinato risultato pratico. La verità delle cose, allora, per la scienza galileiana, si riduce alla contingenza degli eventi e dei rapporti di causa-effetto; l'esperienza, per tanto, non rappresenta l'oggetto di un'indagine speculativa, come la natura delle cose non rappresenta la regola e il criterio oggettivamente proprio del modo di rapportarsi a esse. L'essere e l'essere-in-sé del dato, quindi, per l'approccio scientifico-galileiano, altro non sono che il contesto sul quale operare in qualunque modo e attraverso il quale perseguire qualsiasi finalità. Un siffatto approccio applicato al diritto, allora, porta a negare ogni valore e ogni dignità epistemologica all'essere in sé dello ius e al suo fondamento nel principio della giustizia: lo studio del diritto, infatti, inteso come scienza galileiana, si riduce all'analisi delle prescrizioni positive e all'elaborazione delle tecniche legislative più idonee a raggiungere qualunque scopo venga ritenuto, dal detentore storico del potere, meritevole di essere perseguito. ; Abstract: Science, in the Galilean sense, is s an operative knowledge: in fact, its investigation's objective is not the "what" of the entities are, but is only the "how" it is possible to reach a certain practical result. The truth of things, then, for Galilean science, is reduced to the contingency of events and of cause-effect relationships; the experience, therefore, does not represent the object of a speculative investigation, and the nature of things does not represent the rule and the criterion of relating to them. This approach applied to law, then, denies any value and epistemological dignity to the ius and to the law foundation in the principle of justice: the study of law, in fact, in the Galilean science, is reduced to analysis of the positive prescriptions and the development of the legislative techniques.

La tesi tratta il pensiero politico filosofico di Aldous Huxley, letto attraverso i romanzi distopici Brave New World (1932) ed Ape and Essence (1948), e attraverso l'utopia Island (1962), ma anche attraverso la vasta produzione saggistica dell'autore.

State sovereignty is meant to enhance nationalism conceived as a way of fostering pre-modern values. This article deepens a different understanding of sovereignty, linked to democratic participation in the political as well as in the economic order. Such an understanding is developed as a reaction to the neoliberal essence of the European Union, unable to ensure social justice as a prerequisite of peace.

Lying between the grammarians` and rhetors` domains, Aesop`s fables were known and employed in the Western and Eastern educational environments mainly for their intrinsically moral essence. Once having explored the literary and grammatical texts concerning the educational role of fables, the book is focussed on the direct witnesses of Latin and bilingual Latin-Greek fables (III-IV AD) coming from the Eastern school environments.

This essay aims at clarifying the essence of mystical experience in the main universal religions. To this effect, the author investigates the notion of 'detachment' and, from this, conducts a comparative analysis of the modes of detachment actually experimented in some religions as well as in philosophic practice. This is verified through an identification of the specific, paradoxical logic which is typical of any mystic attitude. The essay then aims at a more rigorous characterization of mystic experience, by differentiating it from the realm of ethics and by showing the likely consequences of a mystical approach to politics.

Heidegger's philosophy has been interpreted as an absolute historicism, unable to point to a unhistorical standpoint from which history can be judged upon. K. Löwith, for instance, has indicated that the cause of this difficulty is to be found in the conception of time: whereas, in Greek thought, time was considered only as a manifestation of the essence, in modern thought time has the tendency to become the essence itself, as that which fulfills itself in time, up to Heidegger's identification of being and event. What is interesting in my critique is that the conception of time is strictly interwoven with a specific way of conceiving justice and, broadly speaking, ethics. In Plato's philosophy, justice as measure corresponds to a cyclical and even retrogressive conception of time, the one enounced in the myth of Chronos, in the Politikos. The modern conception of time, spiritualistic and biologistic, is instead cyclical and irreversible, cumulative: its most significant expression is Hegelianism. The existential conception of time, instead, is neither cyclical nor cumulative. By commenting on Heidegger's Anaximander's Saying, I wish to show the possibility of conceiving temporality as disjunction (injustice) and only as such capable of producing justice – which I understand as a new possibility of meaning that does not exclude, but carries within itself, emancipation. An ethics of the present developed on the basis of this conception of time – which Heidegger has not completely endorsed – would then be an ethics which accepts as its own ground the discontinuous, yet inventive, dimension of time.

On 21 Nov 2003 the University of Pavia held a seminar on "Lorenzago di Cadore's plan for Constitutional Reform." The seminar was sponsored by the departments of Political & Judicial Studies, Statistics, & Applied Economics. Under the direction of professors Pietro Giuseppe Grasso & Pietro Vincenzo Aimo, the seminar offered an opportunity to analyze the contents of the proposed reform. This paper focuses on the proposed amendments to the Constitution & particularly on the modification of the Judicial System. Starting point of this analysis is the essence of the current majority system. Ending point is the review of the repercussions on the tutelage of political minorities. M. Williamson

An examination of Chpt 27 of the Second Book of John Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanding (Of Identity & Diversity) traces arguments concerning the issue of identity to Locke's rejection of the Cartesian doctrine of thought as the essence of the mind. For Locke, the "I" is not only a thinking thing, defined only by perception or conscience, but also a thing capable of pleasing or hurting, & thus concerned with itself & of its own present & past actions. Responsibility is defined in the context of an individual as a human. The responsible human being is conscious & preoccupied with personal happiness &, thus, the consequences of personal actions. J. Sadler

The contribution offers targeted readings of texts by Herbert G. Wells (The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau) and also of twentieth-century texts such as Ape and Essence by Aldouls Huxley and The irritable planet by Paolo Volponi. The subject of the study is the relationship, significant from the point of view of the history of fantastic literature, between the biological and scientific instance and the ethical one. If in Wells the political and social message stops in the face of insurmountable aporias and instead proceeds towards a biological idea of human evolution (following Darwin and Thomas Huxley), the twentieth-century dystopian literature of the post-bomb depletes of actual curiosity scientific investigation and turns towards an ethical reflection which again has its center on man and his commitments towards the future. ; Il contributo propone letture mirate di testi di Herbert G. Wells (The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau) e inoltre di testi novecenteschi quali Ape and Essence di Aldouls Huxley e Il pianeta irritabile di Paolo Volponi. Oggetto dello studio è il rapporto, significativo sotto il profilo della storia della letteratura fantastica, fra l'istanza biologica e scientifica e quella etica. Se in Wells il messaggio politico e sociale si arresta di fronte a insormontabili aporie e procede invece verso un'idea biologica dell'evoluzione umana (sulla scorta di Darwin e Thomas Huxley), la letteratura distopica novecentesca del dopo-bomba depaupera di curiosità effettive l'indagine scientifica e volge verso una riflessione etica che ha nuovamente il suo centro sull'uomo e sui suoi impegni nei confronti del futuro.

Joppolo's anti-fascist political stance is paradoxical to say the least. His "provocative irony" is a systematic political stance attitude that led him to stay clear of any radical positions and to argue in favor of artists' and intellectuals' detachment from the political life. Joppolo's work, especially his plays, defends the necessity of simple action, carried out in the "everyday life humility". As the writer develops his reflection, mathematical and artistic creativity eclipses the socio-political axis. These reflections climax into two concepts: the social fantastic, already theorized by Mac Orlan, and the abhumanism, imagined by both J. and Audiberti, promoted as an overarching principle, both the essence and substrate of Joppolo's ethics. In the end, the complex evolution of his thinking crystallizes in abhumanism understood as the synthetic blend of communism, ecumenical Christianity and existentialism. ; Joppolo's anti-fascist political stance is paradoxical to say the least. His "provocative irony" is a systematic political stance attitude that led him to stay clear of any radical positions and to argue in favor of artists' and intellectuals' detachment from the political life. Joppolo's work, especially his plays, defends the necessity of simple action, carried out in the "everyday life humility". As the writer develops his reflection, mathematical and artistic creativity eclipses the socio-political axis. These reflections climax into two concepts: the social fantastic, already theorized by Mac Orlan, and the abhumanism, imagined by both J. and Audiberti, promoted as an overarching principle, both the essence and substrate of Joppolo's ethics. In the end, the complex evolution of his thinking crystallizes in abhumanism understood as the synthetic blend of communism, ecumenical Christianity and existentialism.

The Italian newspaper "La Repubblica" once called him "the most private politician in Tuscany," and perhaps never was there such a fitting definition. In the era of "political posturing", when the appearance was worth more than the essence, the understatement characterising Guido Sacconi's not-so-short activity is even more surprising. A serious person, yet not an aloof one. This becomes easily understandable when reading this ironic reconstruction of politics 'as seen from the inside', made up of people in the flesh, with many strengths and flaws, who are mercilessly and tastefully described in these pages. In these same pages, Sacconi also has some bones to pick, which he must have collected during his career. Therefore, in a psychoanalytic key, Guido shows the Puer inside of him to those who have always seen him as a senex.

This paper explores the ways in which the presence of monstrous figures challenges etymologically 'correct' naming in Hesiod's Theogony. By examining the section on the Cyclopes and Hundred-Handers (139-153), the catalogue of monsters (270-336), and the Typhonomachy (820-880), I argue that the Theogony's monstrous characters call into question the poet's ability to encapsulate adequately and clearly the hybrid essence of these beings by using a single, 'correct' name. Etymological 'correctness' increasingly recedes, the names of monsters sometimes capture only part of the nature of these characters, while some characters bear only generic names or no name at all. With the defeat of Typhoeus etymological 'correctness' returns to the narrative, thereby suggesting that Zeus's victory has both a political and a linguistic/cognitive effect.

In this paper it is argued that lynching should be considered at the same time as the extreme of political violence and as the metaphysical foundation of social community. A historical and genealogical analysis of lynching should be integrated with a philosophical investigation to identify the essence of this peculiar political violence. In the first paragraph, the focus is on the relation between violence and law. In the second paragraph, this relation is applied to a case study, namely the lynching of black men in the Southern states. In the third part, the analysis deals with the political metaphysics of lynching through a Hobbesian approach. In the conclusions, I argue that this metaphysical framework is still working nowadays in different contexts such as social networks and media.