Este trabajo tiene un doble objetivo. En primer lugar, presentar dos paradigmas elaborados por Roberto Esposito y por Eligio Resta para pensar (con) otra racionalidad jurídica: derecho impersonal y derecho viviente. En segundo lugar, situar la genealogía de ambos paradigmas en las reflexiones suscitadas en el primer cuarto del siglo XX con Simone Weil y el debate Hans Kelsen-Eugen Ehrlich. La idea principal es plantear una singularidad jurídica en el interior de la Italian Theory.

El propósito del presente artículo es abordar la siguiente pregunta: ¿cuál es la relación entre la noción de víctima y la violencia que se ejerce sobre su cuerpo? Para estudiar esta pregunta se parte de los estudios de Giorgio Agamben y Roberto Esposito para proponer un marco hermenéutico que permita ofrecer una nueva comprensión de la condición de víctima ejemplificada en dos contextos: los campos de concentración nazis (con base en los testimonios recopilados por Primo Levi) y el conflicto (...) armado en Colombia (con base en los testimonios recogidos por el Centro de Memoria Histórica). Entre los resultados más interesantes que se encuentran en esta reflexión cabe destacar el rol del lenguaje en el despojo de la calidad de persona de la víctima y la ideología subyacente a todo proceso de victimización que se materializa en el cuerpo de la víctima. (shrink)

Pensar en el cine como ocasión y potencia del pensamiento significa en efecto, en primer lugar, sustraer la imagen contemporánea del dominio de los estudios especializados y, en segundo lugar, pensar a partir de aquello que el cine crea (como recordaba Deleuze): esto es, las imágenes mismas. El cine redescubre su potencia a través de sus propias formas. Entrevistas de la revista italiana Fata Morgana con: Jacques Rancière, Roberto Esposito, Jean-luc Nancy, Slavoj Zizek, Julia Kristeva, Werner Herzog, Raúl Ruiz, (...) Yervant Gianikian, Ángela Ricci Lucchi, Edgar Reitz, Paul Schraoer, Georges Didi-Huberman, Jean-Louis Comolli, Nuccio Ordine. (shrink)

We explore the issue of spacetime emergence in quantum gravity, by articulating several levels at which this can be intended. These levels correspond to the reconstruction moves that are needed to recover the classical and continuum notion of space and time, which are progressively lost in a progressively deeper sense in the more fundamental quantum gravity description. They can also be understood as successive steps in a process of widening of the perspective, revealing new details and new questions at each (...) step. Each level carries indeed new technical issues and opportunities, and raises new conceptual issues. This deepens the scope of the debate on the nature of spacetime, both philosophically and physically. (shrink)

Cosmopolitics, the concept of a world politics based on shared democratic values, is in an increasingly fragile state.

Lowe claims that having knowledge of the essence of an object is a precondition for thinking about it. Lowe supports this claim with roughly the following argument: you cannot think about something unless you know what you are thinking about; and to know what it is that you are thinking about just is to know its essence. I will argue that this line of reasoning fails because of an equivocation in the expression ‘what a thing is’, which can be used (...) to indicate the essence of the thing but also, more commonly, some description of that thing which is useful in the context to identify it. I will then consider some possible variations of the argument, both in its premises and in its conclusion, and I will argue that they either fail to produce a sound argument or they weaken the conclusion too much to preserve the philosophical interest of the result. (shrink)

A groundbreaking examination of Michel Foucault's history of truth. Many blame Michel Foucault for our post-truth and conspiracy-laden society. In this provocative work, Daniele Lorenzini argues that such criticism fundamentally misunderstands the philosopher’s project. Foucault did not question truth itself but what Lorenzini calls “the force of truth,” or how some truth claims are given the power to govern our conduct while others are not. This interest, Lorenzini shows, drove Foucault to articulate a new ethics and politics of truth-telling (...) precisely in order to evade the threat of relativism. The Force of Truth explores this neglected dimension of Foucault’s project by putting his writings on regimes of truth and parrhesia in conversation with early analytic philosophy and by drawing out the “possibilizing” elements of Foucault’s genealogies that remain vital for practicing critique today. (shrink)

In this paper, we present a number of problems for intellectualism about knowledge-how, and in particular for the version of the view developed by Stanley & Williamson 2001. Their argument draws on the alleged uniformity of 'know how'-and 'know wh'-ascriptions. We offer a series of considerations to the effect that this assimilation is problematic. Firstly, in contrast to 'know wh'-ascriptions, 'know how'-ascriptions with known negative answers are false. Secondly, knowledge-how obeys closure principles whose counterparts fail for knowledge-wh and knowledge-that. Thirdly, (...) as opposed to knowledge-wh and knowledge-that, knowledge-how is inferentially isolated from further knowledge-that. We close by providing some evidence against the further reduction of knowledge-wh to knowledge-that, which is presupposed by the intellectualist theory under discussion. (shrink)

This paper shows the role of ὀνοματοποιεῖν in Neoplatonism and how this practice is ruled by an onto-logical canon. While ὀνοματοποιεῖν itself means the making of a brand new name, its usage is manifold. As Aristotle explains in Rh. III 2, poets take advantage of ὀνοματοποιεῖν to catch the undefined and give it a recognisable image, by means of a metaphorical name. In science, this practice, codified by Aristotle, is twofold: ὀνοματοποιεῖν meant both to re-semanticize words wellknown and to create (...) names ex novo for things not discovered or studied yet. After analysing ὀνοματοποιεῖν’s recurrence in Aristotle, I illustrate that, according to Neoplatonic Commentators, impositio can be, both natural and technical, only of things in actuality, having a solid consistency. Intermediates between contraries, presumed relatives and powers as qualities are nameless – as Philoponus notices in his In Categorias – since they haven’t an independent status and aren’t definable. This bond between the original rhetorical practice and the ontological perspective, sketched in Int. 1, was strengthened by Alexander, who filled Aristotle’s gaps, stating that names signify things’ being, i.e. the form acquired in actuality. (shrink)

We discuss the hints for the disappearance of continuum space and time at microscopic scale. These include arguments for a discrete nature of them or for a fundamental non-locality, in a quantum theory of gravity. We discuss how these ideas are realized in specific quantum gravity approaches. Turning then the problem around, we consider the emergence of continuum space and time from the collective behaviour of discrete, pre-geometric atoms of quantum space, and for understanding spacetime as a kind of “condensate”, (...) and we present the case for this emergence process being the result of a phase transition, dubbed “geometrogenesis”. We discuss some conceptual issues of this scenario and of the idea of emergent spacetime in general. As a concrete example, we outline the GFT framework for quantum gravity, and illustrate a tentative procedure for the emergence of spacetime in this framework. Last, we re-examine the conceptual issues raised by the emergent spacetime scenario in light of this concrete example. (shrink)

We argue for enlarging the traditional view of quantum gravity, based on ‘quantizing GR’, to include explicitly the non-spatiotemporal nature of the fundamental building blocks suggested by several modern quantum gravity approaches, and to focus more on the issue of the emergence of continuum spacetime and geometry from their collective dynamics. We also discuss some recent developments in quantum gravity research, aiming at realising these ideas, in the context of group field theory, random tensor models, simplicial quantum gravity, loop quantum (...) gravity, spin foam models. (shrink)

Among the various experiments in ‘new governance’, the model of Responsible Research and Innovation is emerging in the European landscape as quite promising. Up to now, there have been two versions of RRI: a socio-empirical version which tends to underline the role of democratic processes aimed at identifying values on which governance needs to be anchored and a normative version which stresses the role of EU goals as ‘normative anchor points’ of both governance strategies and policy making. Both versions are (...) unsatisfactory. The first since it suggests movable anchorage which could clash with prefixed values, such as individual rights. The second since it does not safeguard fundamental rights in the process of balancing ‘anchor points’. This result is counterintuitive because it exposes governance to the risk of facing adverse court decisions in the defense of individual rights, thus losing its anticipative attitude. In order to avoid this outcome, the paper argues that it is only through better integration between the system of human rights and that of EU fundamental rights that the anticipative feature of RRI can be preserved. (shrink)

In this paper, I take issue with the idea that Michel Foucault might be considered a theorist of epistemic injustice, and argue that his philosophical premises are incompatible with Miranda Fricker’s. Their main disagreement rests upon their divergent ways of conceiving the relationship between reason and power, giving rise to the contrasting forms of normativity that characterize their critical projects. This disagreement can be helpfully clarified by addressing the different use they make of the genealogical method. While Fricker’s genealogy of (...) Testimonial Justice aims to ground her claim that reason and power can be neatly pulled apart, thus avoiding the reductionist and relativist conclusions entailed by Foucault’s genealogies, I argue that Foucault’s mature, overlooked definition of genealogy is based on a sophisticated distinction between games and regimes of truth, and is thus not vulnerable to these criticisms. Consequently, Foucault’s genealogical inquiries prove helpful for understanding issues that normally fall under the umbrella of epistemic injustice in a new light, while also allowing us to avoid some of the main objections that threaten Fricker’s project. (shrink)

Expectations play a central role in understanding scientific and technological changes. Future-oriented representations are also central with regard to nanotechnologies as they can guide policy activities, provide structures and legitimation, attract different interests, focus policy-makers’ attention and foster investments for research. However, the emphasis on future scenarios tends to underrate the complexity of the challenges of the present market of nanotechnologies by flattening them under the needs and promises of scientific research. This is particularly apparent if we consider the viewpoint (...) of the regulator who faces two different ranges of problems with regard to the market and research and is expected, simultaneously, to manage two different types of regulatory instruments, pursuing at the same time the same goals. Instead, by favoring only the future scenarios, the regulator runs the risk of abruptly shifting from more flexible and elastic tools to forms of hard legislation, wasting, thus, the resources of the soft-regulation, in particular those of self-regulation. By referring primarily to the European context, human rights, also thanks to their normative structure of principles, can help in strengthening both the legislation needed for regulating the present market and the soft instruments needed for steering research and for fostering the stakeholders’ participation without sacrificing the coherence of the regulatory response. (shrink)

In a recent blog post, Joshua Clover rightly notices the swift emergence of a new panoply of “genres of the quarantine.”1 It should not come as a surprise that one of them centers on Michel Foucault’s notion of biopolitics, asking whether or not it is still appropriate to describe the situation that we are currently experiencing. Neither should it come as a surprise that, in virtually all of the contributions that make use of the concept of biopolitics to address the (...) current coronavirus pandemic, the same bunch of rather vague ideas are mentioned over and over again, while other—no doubt more interesting—Foucauldian insights tend to be ignored. In what follows, I discuss two of these insights, and I conclude with some methodological remarks on the issue of what it may mean to “respond” to the current “crisis.”. (shrink)

Selon Wittgenstein, nos énoncés spontanés ne sont pas des descriptions, mais des expressions qui ont plus d�affinité avec le comportement qu�avec le langage descriptif. Il s�agit donc d�une nouvelle espèce d�acte de langage (speech-act): plutôt que la consécration des mots en performatifs par convention, les énoncés spontanés sont des actes par leur spontanéité même. Le langage acquiert ainsi une nouvelle dimension: celle du réflexe. À l�encontre de Peter Hacker, je tente ici de montrer que cela rend poreuse la ligne de (...) démarcation entre les catégories du langage et de l�action, et permet la dissolution du problème corps-esprit. (shrink)

Notwithstanding the EU endorsement, so far Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is discussed as regards its definition, its features and its conceptual core: innovation and responsibility. This conceptual indeterminacy is a source of disagreements at the political level, giving rise to a plurality of outcomes and versions upheld within the same model of governance. Following a Charles Taylor’s suggestion, this conceptual opening of the RRI model can be explained by the existence of plural, clashing moral frameworks: discourse ethics, Aristotelian ethics, (...) care ethics, dignitarian ethics, rights-based moralities etc. Given the diffusion in the RRI literature of references to care ethics and its justification of participation and responsibility, I will compare the conceptual premises of this philosophical line with those of ethics of rights, which have been criticised by advocates of care ethics. I will argue that public engagement based on only needs cannot lead to responsible outcomes since it produces however the exclusion of some needs, covered instead by rights. In order for participation to be effective, rights or an alliance between the two perspectives is required. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the appropriate answer to the question of the form contemporary neoliberalism gives our lives rests on Michel Foucault’s definition of neoliberalism as a particular art of governing human beings. I claim that Foucault’s definition consists in three components: neoliberalism as a set of technologies structuring the ‘milieu’ of individuals in order to obtain specific effects from their behavior; neoliberalism as a governmental rationality transforming individual freedom into the very instrument through which individuals are directed; (...) and neoliberalism as a set of political strategies that constitute a specific, and eminently governable, form of subjectivity. I conclude by emphasising the importance that Foucault’s work on neoliberalism as well as the ancient ‘ethics of the care of the self’ still holds for us today. (shrink)

The discussion on mathematical explanation has inherited the same sense of dissatisfaction that philosophers of science expressed, in the context of scientific explanation, towards the deductive-nomological model. This model is regarded as unable to cover cases of bona fide mathematical explanations and, furthermore, it is largely ignored in the relevant literature. Surprisingly, the reasons for this ostracism are not sufficiently manifest. In this paper I explore a possible extension of the model to the case of mathematical explanations and I claim (...) that there are at least two reasons to judge the deductive-nomological picture of explanation as inadequate in that context. (shrink)

With a foreword by Jean-Luc Nancy -/- Philosophy and the Patience of Film presents a comparative study of the work of Jean-Luc Nancy and Stanley Cavell. It discusses the effect of their philosophical engagement with film, and proposes that the interaction between philosophy and film produces a power of patience capable of turning our negation of the world into a relation with it. -/- Through detailed readings of cinematic works ranging from Hollywood classics to contemporary Iranian cinema, this book describes (...) the interaction between film and philosophy as a productive friction from which the concept of patience emerges as a demand for thinking. -/- Daniele Rugo explains how Nancy and Cavell’s relationship with film demands the surrendering of philosophical mastery, and that it is precisely this act in view of the world that brings Cavell and Nancy to the study of film. While clarifying the nature of their engagement with film this book suggests that film does not represent the world, but ‘realizes’ it. This realization provides a scene of instruction for philosophy. (shrink)

The beliefs involved in the placebo effect are often assumed to be self-fulfilling, that is, the truth of these beliefs would merely require the patient to hold them. Such a view is commonly shared in epistemology. Many epistemologists focused, in fact, on the self-fulfilling nature of these beliefs, which have been investigated because they raise some important counterexamples to Nozick’s “tracking theory of knowledge.” We challenge the self-fulfilling nature of placebo-based beliefs in multi-agent contexts, analyzing their deep epistemological nature and (...) the role of higher-order beliefs involved in the placebo effect. (shrink)

This paper explores the intertwining of uncertainty and values. We consider an important but underexplored field of fundamental uncertainty and values in decision-making. Some proposed methodologies to deal with fundamental uncertainty have included potential surprise theory, scenario planning and hypothetical retrospection. We focus on the principle of uncertainty transduction in hypothetical retrospection as an illustrative case of how values interact with fundamental uncertainty. We show that while uncertainty transduction appears intuitive in decision contexts it nevertheless fails in important ranges of (...) strategic game-theoretic cases. The methodological reasons behind the failure are then examined. (shrink)

Normative powers like promising allow agents to effect changes to their reasons, permissions and rights by the means of communicative actions whose function is to effect just those changes. An attractive view of the normativity of such powers combines a non-reductive account of their bindingness with a value-based grounding story of why we have them. This value-based view of normative powers however invites a charge of wishful thinking: Is it not bad reasoning to think that we have a given power (...) because it would be good? In this article, I offer a defence of the value-based view of normative powers against this surprisingly under-discussed objection. First, I clarify the challenge by distinguishing between two components of normative powers, which I call the material and normative components, respectively. Secondly, I defend the form of normative explanation involved, showing that it is needed to give convincing value-based explanations for other important normative phenomena, especially rights of autonomy. (shrink)

Edited by Nieves Zúñiga García-Falces. In 15 years, the international community has been blamed for resorting too easily to the use of force on some occasions (Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo), and also it has been blamed for intervening too late or not at all in other crises (Rwanda, Bosnia and today Sudan and Congo). Even today, one of the most contested questions of international politics is the legitimacy for the use of force. David Chandler, Professor of International Relations at the University (...) of Westminster (UK) and Daniele Archibugi, a research director at National Research Council (Italy) and Professor at Birkbeck College (University of London), discuss about the use of force, how the theory and practice of warfare and humanitarian intervention have evolved in the contemporary world and the international responsibility of states. In his Empire in Denial: The Politics of State-building (Pluto Press), David Chandler has forcefully argued that Western interventions are destablizing exercises of power without responsibility. Daniele Archibugi has been equally critical of these armed interventions, although in his The Global Commonwealth of Citizens. Toward Cosmopolitan Democracy (Princeton University Press), he urges for a cosmopolitan responsibility based on non-violence and inclusion. (Published: 19 May 2009) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2009, pp. 155-169. DOI: 10.3402/egp.v2i2.1974. (shrink)

In this article I try to solve an hermeneutical problem concerning some lines (2,7–24) of the Commentary to the Categories of John Philoponus. There, the commentator would seem committing an error, stating that Heraclitus was a disciple of Pyrrho by the expression «ὁ δὲ μαθητὴς αὐτοῦ Ἡράκλειτος (2,15)». I will present the edition of the text made by Busse with its translation and exegesis and, then, I will compare the passage in Philoponus with similar ones in other Neoplatonic commentators to (...) the Categories. Hence, I will show how the speech of Philoponus is, contrary to what was previously thought, complete and efficient and I will try to propose possible solutions for the text. (shrink)

The paper describes a decidable class of verification problems expressed in first order timed logic. To specify programs we useState Machines. It is known that Abstract State Machines and first order timed logic are two very powerful formalisms apt to represent verification problems for timed distributed systems. However, the general verification problem represented in this way is undecidable. Prior, some decidable classes of verification problems were described in semantical properties that are in their turn undecidable. The decidable class of the (...) present paper is described in syntactical terms. Though it admits no functions, only predicates, it is of practical interest and we give an example illustrating possible applications. (shrink)

In the context of the crisis of the European culture of the XVI century with the displacement of its cultural evidence towards modernity and its questioning of authority, the Conciliate of Trento, that has profoundly marked the profile of roman Catholicism is analyzed. The complexity of the prop..

Le ton préremptoire de Nietzsche lorsqu'il condescend à parler d'autres penseurs et le style provocateur dans lequel il mesure son propre génie ont rendu ses critiques timides; on le menage comme s'il allait se lever pour écraser son interlocuteur sous les invectives. Tout en assurant qu'il est inimitable et n'a point fait école, ses grands commentateurs se veulent d'abord ses disciples. Us entretiennent un nuage de sacralité autour de textes dont il devient difficile d'aborder l'analyse. Nietzsche a le droit de (...) se contredire, de se tromper sur l'étymologie, d'ignorer la recherche historique érudite de son temps, de ne jamais citer dans le texte les auteurs qu'il attaque, de malmener telle ou telle théorie scientifique: sa hauteur de vue sauve tout. Mais à quel titre les ceuvres de Nietzsche pourraient-elles sérieusement échapper à un regard rigoureux, visant un objet linguistique precis, daté et done assignable dans une tradition? Suffit-il que Nietzsche ait renié d'avance toute interprétation et souhaité de rester incompris? Cela ne paraît ni nécessaire, ni suffisant. (shrink)

Résumé La plupart des œuvres de Sophie Calle – reproduites dans des livres ou présentées aux cimaises des musées – s’offre comme le dépôt d’expériences vécues qui se trouvent précisément réglées par des contraintes arbitraires, ostensiblement formulées. La gratuité même des protocoles élus rapproche la démarche de l’artiste française du jeu. Le recours à la contrainte a pour conséquence effective de réintroduire la surprise et l’imprévu au sein de la vie quotidienne ; il induit une attention accrue au concours des (...) circonstances – comme à son impact sur la suite des événements, dès lors que celle-ci s’inscrit dans une forme de narrativité potentielle. (shrink)

Le présent travail se concentre sur les propriétés sémantico-syntaxiques du nom fait à l’exclusion, par conséquent, de ses usages énonciatifs, qui devraient constituer un volet complémentaire de la présente étude. La première partie du texte refait un bref historique de la définition des NSS et ajoute un nouvel argument à ceux de Adler pour appuyer l’idée que ces noms ne participent d’aucune « hiérarchie-être ». La seconde propose une répartition des NSS en trois sous-classes sur la base de critères syntaxiques, (...) qui font apparaître que toutes les structures spécificationnelles ne sont pas identiques, en dépit des apparences. Fait et les noms de « faits qualifiés » constituent une de ces sous-classes. Mais il est montré dans la troisième partie que fait occupe même dans sa propre sous-classe une position tout à fait unique. (shrink)

Professeure d’histoire à l’université de Wisconsin (États-Unis), Mary Louise Roberts est l’auteure du classique Civilization without Sexes : reconstructing gender in Postwar France, 1917-1927, paru en 1994. Passant du premier au deuxième après-guerre, elle livre aujourd’hui une analyse de la sexualité des GIs dans la France libérée de 1944 où elle s’attache à démontrer le caractère profondément politique de leur vie sexuelle (p. 11). Car pour elle, loin d’être une affaire privée, celle-ci a é...

In this paper, I argue that a serious philosophical investigation of the domain of the perlocutionary is both possible and desirable, and I show that it possesses a distinctively moral dimension that has so far been overlooked. I start, in Section II, by offering an original characterisation of the distinction between the illocutionary and the perlocutionary derived from the degree of predictability and stability that differentiates their respective effects. In Section III, I argue that, in order to grasp the specificity (...) of the perlocutionary, we must focus on the total speech situation, which I define as conversation. Then, in Section IV, I show that an investigation of the domain of the perlocutionary requires us to draw a conceptual distinction between recognition and acknowledgment. This distinction proves to be crucial, because the success of perlocutions normally depends on something more than what Austin calls the ‘securing of uptake’: the reciprocity condition for illocutions needs to be supplemented, in the case of perlocutions, with an analysis of what I call the ‘grammar of acknowledgment.’ Lastly, in Section V, I elaborate the notion of ‘perlocutionary responsibility,’ a specific form of moral responsibility for the consequences of utterances that are not (entirely) predictable. (shrink)

One of the recurrent criticisms of the project of cosmopolitan democracy has been that it has not examined the political, economic and social agents that might have an interest in pursuing this programme. This criticism is addressed directly in this article. It shows that there are a variety of paths that, in their own right, could lead to more democratic global governance, and that there are a diversity of political, economic and social agents that have an interest in the pursuit (...) of these. Cosmopolitan democracy is an open-ended project that aims to increase the accountability, transparency and legitimacy of global governance, and the battery of agents and initiatives outlined highlight the direction and politics required to make it possible. (shrink)