Since March 2020, many countries throughout the world have been in lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In Italy, the quarantine began on March 9, 2020, and containment measures were partially reduced only on May 4, 2020. The quarantine experience has a significant psychological impact at all ages but can have it above all on adolescents who cannot go to school, play sports, and meet friends. In this scenario, this study aimed to provide a general overview of the perceived (...) risk related to COVID-19 and the psychological experience of quarantine in a large sample of Italian adolescents. 978 adolescents (males = 339; females = 639) living in 13 Italian regions and attending upper secondary school (age range: 13–20, M = 16.57, SD = 1.20), responded to an internet-based questionnaire about perceived health risk related to COVID-19, knowledge and information on measures to control the pandemic, beliefs and opinions on stage two of the quarantine, and psychological experiences related to quarantine. 31.1% of the participants lived in "red zones," which are places where the government has imposed stricter measures of containment due to exponential and uncontrolled growth in contagion cases compared to other areas in Italy. According to our results, Italian adolescents had a low perception of risk of COVID-19. Perceived comparative susceptibility and perceived seriousness were also very low. However, they were aware of the restriction measures necessary to contain the spread of the virus, and they agreed with the limitations imposed by the government. Females and adolescents living in a “red zone” showed more significant psychological negative feelings about the quarantine experience. However, no significant differences were found about the regions where the teenagers of our sample live and the other variables related to the COVID-19 experience. This is very interesting data, leading us to hypothesize that the participants' negative feelings may be more related to the adolescent period than to the pandemic itself. (shrink)

Articles; chiefly on Islamic ethics and conveying non Muslims for Islam.

--- 2. Peraḳim 3-4 -- 3. Peraḳim 5-6 --.

_A compelling understanding of equality and difference in public life._.

Creativity and aesthetic experience, according to Indic tradition; a study.

The work of Pere Alberch is crucial to study the early stages of evo-devo. In particular, it illustrates very persuasively why developmental systems have so much to say about the course of evolutionary change. In addition to an important empirical work, he elaborated a stimulating framework of theoretical ideas on biological form, morphological variation, and how developmental processes establish possible evolutionary paths previous to the action of natural selection. In this framework, the study of development and evolution are related through (...) the notion of possible morphologies. In his view, the morphology of organisms shows internal coherence and structure, emergent from complex non linear interactions among parts and with the environment. (shrink)

Is love essential to ethical life, or merely a supplement? In Kant’s view, respect and love, as duties, are in tension with each other because love involves drawing closer and respect involves drawing away. By contrast, Irigaray says that love and respect do not conflict because love as passion must also involve distancing and we have a responsibility to love. I argue that love, understood as passion and based on respect, is essential to ethics.

My paper considers the role of wonder and admiration in times of crisis. I argue that wonder should be understood in René Descartes’ (1649/1989) sense, as a response to something unfamiliar that is based on the object, rather than our judgements about it. In contrast, in admiration, we must judge the objects as admirable, that they have some valuable traits. In ordinary times, it may be immoral acts that stand out as unfamiliar and so provoke wonder. However, I will focus (...) on the importance of wonder in times of crisis, to recognise the unfamiliar, when many or most are treating the immoral as normal, as Hannah Arendt (2003) describes it. Then admiration is the response that can enable us to take the unfamiliar as valuable moral exemplars and to emulate them. Nevertheless, I will argue, contra Linda Zagzebski (2015) that we can admire a person, action, or character trait without necessarily being motivated to emulate them. Also, I contend that we can have ambivalent feelings mixed with our admiration and still be moved to emulate others. The complexity of the relation between these three emotions and attitudes—wonder, admiration, and emulation—means that while they can contribute to resistance to immorality in times of crisis, they are untrustworthy in myriad ways. (shrink)

Sanskrit text presenting spiritual, ethical and political life in contemporary society; based on Hindu scripture.

To elucidate the tensions in the relation between ethics and politics, I construct a dialogue between Kant, who argues that they can be made compatible, and Derrida, who claims to go beyond Kant and his idea of duty. For Derrida, ethics makes unconditional demands and politics guides our responses to possible effects of our decisions. Derrida argues that in politics there must be a negotiation of the non-negotiable call of ethical responsibility. I argue that Derrida's unconditional ethics cannot be read (...) in precisely Kantian terms because his `impossible reals' can be destructive. Moreover, Derrida expands the reach of ethics beyond Kant by making all ethical demands unconditional or perfect, yet he does not articulate a politics that would enable us to respond to these demands. We need to take account of these difficulties in theorizing how ethics should constrain politics and how politics can provide the conditions for ethics. (shrink)

Premiere traduction francaise etablie sur l'edition critique du texte latin, cet ouvrage rend accessible a un plus large public la Summa de anima de Jean de la Rochelle qui revet un triple interet. Elle offre d'abord une presentation magistrale de l'enseignement portant sur l'ame dans les annees 1230-1235 a Paris. Elle permet de la sorte d'evaluer l'etat de la reflexion sur l'ame a l'oree de du travail de reinterpretation de l'aristotelisme tel que le vehiculait la tradition greco-arabe par Albert le (...) Grand et Thomas d'Aquin. Elle constitue enfin une tentative, emanant d'un des premiers maitres en theologie franciscains, d'integration de la philosophie greco-arabe (notamment celle d'Avicenne, qui rencontre ici le Pseudo-Augustin, Augustin, Jean Damascene et Philippe le Chancelier) a la reflexion theologique. Ce texte prepare ainsi les grandes syntheses des Sommes posterieures au premier rang desquelles figure evidemment la Summa fratris Alexandri qui incorpore, au livre II, des chapitres entiers. (shrink)

Critical study of the philosophical suktas of R̥gveda, Hindu canonical work.

Philosophical discussions on beauty have a long history. The discussions manifest the ambiguity of the concept; meanings of beauty and its role as an explanatory power of diverse tangible and intangible phenomena vary between disciplines and theoretical points of view. What is the essence of beauty? The notions of beauty comprises opposing qualities by being simultaneously a timeless idea penetrating all cultures and a profoundly historical concept, whose focuses, definitions, and contents change in the process of time and vary between (...) different cultural contexts. The significance of beauty for man is undeniable: it is a driving force in cultural production and creative thinking and a source of diverse emotions ranging from exhilaration to religious devoutness. Philosophies of Beauty on the Move investigates the essence of beauty by exploring its ontological and epistemological terms of existence in order to understand the paradoxes of beauty. (shrink)