BackgroundMedia have increasingly reported on the difficulties associated with end-of-life decision-making in patients with Disorders of Consciousness (DOC), contextualizing such dilemma in detailed accounts of the patient’s life. Two of the first stories debated in the scientific community were those related to the cases of two women, one American, the other Italian, who captured attention of millions of people in the first years of this third millennium.MethodsMuch has been written about the challenges of surrogate decision-making for patients in DOC, but (...) less has been written comparing these challenges across legal systems and cultures. In our paper, we propose a systematic analysis of the final legal documents written by the American and Italian Courts in relation to the two cases, developing our discussion around three areas: the level of certainty/reliability of diagnosis and prognosis, the reconstruction of self-expression, time of illness and time of care. They are examples of the typical issues discussed by legal authors and allow us to understand the link and the difference between the legal and ethical perspectives.ResultsThe legal approach to the two cases has some common elements: the need to be certain about the diagnosis and prognosis and the fact that the clinical criteria are necessary in determining the most appropriate treatments, although these criteria are not sufficient unless they are supplemented by the patient’s will. The issue of relations takes on importance both from a legal and an ethical point of view, but from two different perspectives. While ethics safeguards relationships by guaranteeing their differences and makes them reconcilable, law safeguards relationships by guaranteeing the cold forms of respect, equality, impartiality, symmetry, reciprocity, and irreversibility. In this perspective, the link between the time of care and the decision of the family members assumes importance.ConclusionsThe most interesting point that emerges from our analysis is the issue of relationships and how they affect decisions, both from a legal and ethical point of view. For this reason, during the patients’ hospitalization, it is necessary to identify ways in which they might give their opinion about the moral issues underlying their choices. (shrink)

Quasi al termine della seconda guerra mondiale, alcuni ufficiali tedeschi diedero l’ordine di abbattere le storiche torri di San Gimignano; tutto pareva ormai deciso, quando un gruppo di civili riuscì con successo a ritardare l’esecuzione fino all’arrivo delle truppe alleate. Grazie a quei civili, le torri di San Gimignano sono ancora ben visibili a tutti, meta ogni anno di numerosi turisti; ma che cosa dire della possibilità che oggi esistessero soltanto le loro macerie? Esse rientrano in quella classe (...) di cose che chiamerò oggetti possibili, ovvero sono oggetti che avrebbero potuto esistere, ma per un qualche motivo non sono esistiti. Proprio di essi parlerò nelle prossime pagine, cercando di capire quale sia il loro statuto ontologico e in quale modo possiamo parlarne usando le espressioni del nostro linguaggio.1 Come vedremo, ci sono varie teorie che spiegano cos’è un oggetto possibile, tra loro anche molto diverse. Compito di ciascuna è quello di motivare e, se necessario, rendere plausibile una scelta filosofica. Quindi, ogni teoria degli oggetti possibili, attribuirà loro un preciso statuto ontologico e provvederà una semantica delle espressioni del linguaggio naturale sulla possibilità. Nelle poche pagine che seguono però, non scenderò nei dettagli di tutte le teorie della possibilità; piuttosto, ne considererò una particolarmente controversa e singolare: quella sostenuta da David K. Lewis. (shrink)

Baker claims to provide an example of mathematical explanation of an empirical phenomenon which leads to ontological commitment to mathematical objects. This is meant to show that the positing of mathematical entities is necessary for satisfactory scientific explanations and thus that the application of mathematics to science can be used, at least in some cases, to support mathematical realism. In this paper I show that the example of explanation Baker considers can actually be given without postulating mathematical objects and thus (...) cannot be used by the mathematical realist. I also show that, despite this, mathematics keeps playing an important methodological role in the explanation and does not reduce to a merely computational or descriptive framework. (shrink)

During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy, practitioners had to make tragic decisions regarding the allocation of scarce resources in the ICU. The Italian debate has paid a lot of attention to identifying the specific regulatory criteria for the allocation of resources in the ICU; in this paper, however, we argue that deciding such criteria is not enough for the implementation of fair and transparent allocative decisions. In this respect, we discuss three ethical issues: (a) in the (...) Italian context, the treating physician, rather than a separate committee, was generally the one responsible for the allocation decision; (b) although many allocative guidelines have supported moral equivalence between withholding and withdrawing treatments, some health professionals have continued to consider it a morally problematic aspect; and (c) the health workers who have had to make the aforementioned decisions or even only worked in ICU during the pandemic often experienced moral distress. We conclude by arguing that, even if these problems are not directly related to the above-mentioned issues of distributive justice, they can nevertheless directly affect the quality and ethics of the implementation of allocative criteria, regardless of those chosen. (shrink)

Prologue : narratocracy and the contours of political life -- From nomos to nomad : Kant, Deleuze, and Rancière on sensation -- The piazza, the edicola, and the noise of the utterance -- Machiavelli's theory of sensation and Florence's vita festiva -- The viewing subject : Caravaggio, Bacon, and the ring -- "You're eating too fast!" slow food's ethos of convivium -- Epilogue : "the photographs tell it all" : on an ethics of appearance.

Set-theoretic potentialism is one of the most lively trends in the philosophy of mathematics. Modal accounts of sets have been developed in two different ways. The first, initiated by Charles Parsons, focuses on sets as objects. The second, dating back to Hilary Putnam and Geoffrey Hellman, investigates set-theoretic structures. The paper identifies two strands of open issues, technical and conceptual, to clarify these two different, yet often conflated, views and categorize the potentialist approaches that have emerged in the contemporary debate. (...) The final outcome is a taxonomy that should help researchers navigate the rich landscape of modal set theories. (shrink)

This book rethinks procreative responsibility considering the continuous development of Assisted Reproductive Technologies. It presents a person-affecting moral argument, highlighting that the potential availability of future Assisted Reproductive Technologies brings out new procreative obligations. Traditionally, Assisted Reproductive Technologies are understood as practices aimed at extending the procreative freedom of prospective parents. However, some scholars argue that they also give rise to new moral constraints. This book builds on this viewpoint by presenting a person-affecting perspective on the impact of current and (...) future Assisted Reproductive Technologies on procreative responsibility, with a specific focus on reproductive Genome Editing and ectogenesis. The author shows that this perspective is defensible both from a consequences-based person-affecting perspective and from a person-affecting account that considers morally relevant intuitions and attitudes. -/- . (shrink)

The notion of maximal greatness is arguably part of the very concept of God: something greater than God is not even possible. But how should we understand this notion? The aim of this paper is to provide a Śaivist answer to this question by analyzing the form of theism advocated in the Pratyabhijñā tradition. First, I extract a model of divine greatness, the Hierarchical Model, from Nagasawa’s work "Maximal God". According to the Hierarchical Model, God is that than which nothing (...) could be greater by virtue of being better suited than all other beings in relation to certain great-making properties (§1). I then offer an analysis of the form of theism advocated in the Pratyabhijñā tradition by discussing passages from the works of Somānanda, the founder of the Pratyabhijñā school, and of Utpaladeva, the most prominent of Somānanda’s disciples. I argue that the Pratyabhijñā theist cannot account for divine greatness in terms of the Hierarchical Model. My argument is that the Hierarchical Model requires a comparison between God and other beings that cannot be made with the Pratyabhijñā God (§2). Finally, I develop an original alternative model, the Unlimited Nature Model, that accounts for God’s maximal greatness in a way that suits Pratyabhijñā’s theism. According to the Unlimited Nature Model, the nature of all ordinary beings is metaphysically limited as a result of realizing only a small portion of the potential of what could be, and God is maximally great because only he has a completely unlimited nature (§3). (shrink)

My claim in this article is that the thesis that Buddhism has no God, insofar as it is taken to apply to Buddhism universally, is false. I defend this claim by interpreting a central text in East-Asian Buddhism – The Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna – through the lenses of perfect being theology (PBT), a research programme in philosophy of religion that attempts to provide a description of God through a two-step process: (1) defining God in terms of maximal greatness; (...) (2) inferring the properties or attributes that God must have in virtue of satisfying the definition. My argument comprises two steps. First, I argue that, since PBT is a method for providing a description of God starting from a definition of God, any text that contains a PBT ipso facto contains a notion of God. Second, I argue through textual evidence that The Awakening articulates a PBT, concluding that it contains a notion of God. Since the method of PBT leaves open what descriptions are to be inferred, my argument allows me to conclude that a text contains a notion of God without previously committing to any particular conception of the divine, which makes it particularly versatile and powerful. (shrink)

This paper offers an original interpretation of the Daodejing 道德經 as containing a distinctive account of creation. In my reading, the Daodejing envisions the creation of the cosmos by Dao (1) as a movement from the absence of phenomenal forms to phenomenal forms and (2) as a movement from nothingness to existence. I interpret creation as a unique metaphysical operation that explains how (1) and (2) are possible. The paper is organized into two sections. First, I introduce the distinctions between (...) the lack and presence of phenomenal forms (§1.1) and between nothingness and existence (§1.2), using them to map the distinction between Dao and the created world. Then, I propose my account of the Daodejing’s metaphysics of creation (§2.1) and elaborate on its connection with the previously drawn distinctions while answering a potential objection (§2.2). I conclude with some considerations about the connections between the Daodejing’s view of creation and its soteriology. (shrink)

Believing in free will may arise from a biological need for control. People induced to disbelieve in free will show impulsive and antisocial tendencies, suggesting a reduction of the willingness to exert self-control. We investigated whether undermining free will affects two aspects of self-control: intentional inhibition and perceived self-control. We exposed participants either to anti-free will or to neutral messages. The two groups then performed a task that required self-control to inhibit a prepotent response. No-free will participants showed less intentional (...) inhibitions than controls, suggesting a reduction of self-control. We assessed perceived self-control by asking participants whether the response resulted from a deliberate intention or from an impulsive reaction. Perceived self-control was lower in the no-free will group than in control group. Our findings show that undermining free will can degrade self-control and provide insights into how disbelieving in free will leads to antisocial tendencies. (shrink)

The development of AI tools, such as large language models and speech emotion and facial expression recognition systems, has raised new ethical concerns about AI’s impact on human relationships. While much of the debate has focused on human-AI relationships, less attention has been devoted to another class of ethical issues, which arise when AI mediates human-to-human relationships. This paper opens the debate on these issues by analyzing the case of romantic relationships, particularly those in which one partner uses AI tools, (...) such as ChatGPT, to resolve a conflict and apologize. After reviewing some possible, non-exhaustive, explanations for the moral wrongness of using AI tools in such cases, I introduce the notion of second-person authenticity: a form of authenticity that is assessed by the other person in the relationship (e.g., a partner). I then argue that at least some actions within romantic relationships should respect a standard of authentic conduct since the value of such actions depends on who actually performs them and not only on the quality of the outcome produced. Therefore, using AI tools in such circumstances may prevent agents from meeting this standard. I conclude by suggesting that the proposed theoretical framework could also apply to other human-to-human relationships, such as the doctor-patient relationship, when these are mediated by AI; I offer some preliminary reflections on such applications. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 30.2 (2000) 113-126 [Access article in PDF] Dissenting Words:A Conversation with Jacques Rancière 1 Davide Panagia:In your writings you highlight the political efficacy of words. In The Names of History, for instance, this emphasis is discussed most vividly in terms of what you refer to as an "excess of words" that marks the rise of democratic movements in the seventeenth century. Similarly, in On The Shores of (...) Politics, you begin your discussion with an excursus on the end of politics as the end of the promise. Finally, in Dis-agreement you speak of "the part of those who have no-part" as voicing a "wrong" for the sake of equality.In each of these instances, however, your treatment of words (and language more generally) is very different from those thinkers of the "linguistic turn" in political philosophy who expound on an ethics of deliberation as the first virtue of modern democracies. For that matter, your approach is quite different from those thinkers who focus on the aporias of language as such.Could you discuss this thematic of the proliferation of words in your thinking about democratic politics?Would it be fair to characterize your research on and exposition of democratic thinking as a "poetics of politics"?Rancière's Reply:In order to address your question adequately, it would be wise to enlarge the sense of "linguistic turn" you invoke. In its most generally accepted sense, the linguistic turn in philosophy consists in ascribing to linguistic processes certain phenomena and specifiable modes of relating objects attributed, in a previous instance, either to factual processes or lines of thought. This approach is not limited to the two figures you invoke in your question. The linguistic turn also has two stages of development that, from my experience, have been more noticeable in France than in the United States. The first phase, then, emerged with Lévi-Strauss and his structural approach to social relations founded on a linguistic model of relationality, subsequently reprised in Lacan's psychoanalytic notion that "the unconscious is structured like a language" that, in its turn, conjoins the energetic mental processes Freud discusses to linguistic practices. The primacy of "the linguistic" thus granted language all the properties of the Freudian unconscious [End Page 113] along with those of a Marxist notion of infrastructure. The Saussurian opposition between langue and parole provided a privileged status to a linguistic model whose role was that of a general law that unconsciously structures the behavior of individuals and societies. It is on the basis of these parameters that the structuralist moment of the linguistic turn was constituted. At one and the same time, the analysis of speech acts became first and foremost a "symptomatic" analysis of those procedures of misrecognition that linguistically structured both the behavior of individuals and social relations. When we "read" Le Capital with Althusser, the interpretive and methodological schema for linguistic phenomena operated like a kind of "policing of the enunciated": that is, a search for those unsuccessful (i.e., inadequate) modes of expression that exemplify such symptomatic procedures of misrecognition.The second phase of the linguistic turn constituted itself more ambiguously. For those who shared intellectual experiences similar to my own, this version involved a critique of the langue/infrastructure model; that is, a further and more favorable consideration of the value of the political and the linguistic games therein that, according to the Althusserian/Marxist model (and, indeed, with structuralism more generally), were to be treated as ideological artifacts. In a very real sense, it all began with the May '68 assertion that "we are all German Jews"--an entirely ideological statement, the validity of which, if analyzed at the level of its content, one finds to rest entirely on the capacity to overturn the political relationship between the order of designations and that of events by emphasizing the gap that separates subject and predicate. From there, an entire field of understanding speech acts as political gestures opened up: a field that reconfigured the division between words and things while rearranging the distinction between legitimate... (shrink)

What is knowledge? What should knowledge be like? Call an epistemological project that sets out to answer the first question ‘descriptive’ and a project that sets out to answer the second question ‘normative’. If the answers to these two questions don’t coincide—if what knowledge should be like differs from what knowledge is like—there is room for a third project we call ‘revisionary’. A revisionary project starts by arguing that what knowledge should be differs from what knowledge is. It then proposes (...) that we revise our account of knowledge accordingly. Our aim in this paper was to develop a methodology for revisionary projects in epistemology. Put roughly, the thought is that we start by looking at the various things that we expect knowledge to do for us. Once we have a list of the various things we expect knowledge to do for us we have a ‘job description’; a list of tasks we need done, and that we expect knowledge to perform. With the job description in hand, we can ask what knowledge would hav.. (shrink)

Nel 1881, per i tipi dell’editore Brigola di Milano, vedeva la luce Macchiette parigine, un compendio di profili biografici che lo scrittore siciliano Emanuele Navarro della Miraglia (1838-1919) dedicava a eminenti personalità della cultura letteraria e artistica francese di metà Ottocento.Francesista, a lungo residente a Parigi (1864-1872), in contatto a Milano con gli ambienti della scapigliatura lombarda (1872-1882) e da ultimo professore di Lingua e letteratura francese presso l’Istituto superiore di magistero femminile di Roma (1883-1913), Navarro della Miraglia includeva fra (...) le sue “macchiette” anche due ritratti d’artisti dedicati rispettivamente a Gustave Courbet e a Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux.Questo contributo si propone di definire il contesto e le ricadute di una lettura non allineata alla tempestiva e più “ortodossa” discussione della lezione di Courbet promossa da Diego Martelli presso i macchiaioli toscani, a beneficio di una geografia culturale diversamente articolata fra le aperture cosmopolite del naturalismo meridionale e le frange più avanzate della scapigliatura lombarda. Allo stesso modo il resoconto dell’atelier di Carpeaux è riconsiderato alla luce del coevo dibattito sulla scultura monumentale e delle ricerche in corso a Milano su un modellato più mosso e nervoso. (shrink)

Peano's axiomatizations of geometry are abstract and non-intuitive in character, whereas Peano stresses his appeal to concrete spatial intuition in the choice of the axioms. This poses the problem of understanding the interrelationship between abstraction and intuition in his geometrical works. In this article I argue that axiomatization is, for Peano, a methodology to restructure geometry and isolate its organizing principles. The restructuring produces a more abstract presentation of geometry, which does not contradict its intuitive content but only puts it (...) into a particular form. (shrink)

In _The Poetics of Political Thinking_ Davide Panagia focuses on the role that aesthetic sensibilities play in theorists’ evaluations of political arguments. Examining works by thinkers from Thomas Hobbes to Jacques Rancière, Panagia shows how each one invokes aesthetic concepts and devices, such as metaphor, mimesis, imagination, beauty, and the sublime. He argues that it is important to recognize and acknowledge these poetic forms of representation because they provide evaluative standards that theorists use in appraising the value of ideas—ideas (...) about justice, politics, and democratic life. An investigation into the intertwined histories of aesthetic and political accounts of representation—such as Panagia presents here—sheds light on how modes of poetic thinking delimit the questions of unity and diversity that continue to animate contemporary political theory. Panagia not only illuminates the structure of much contemporary political theory but also shows why understanding the poetics of political thinking is vital to contemporary society. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze’s critique of negation and his privileging of paradox as the source of political thought, Panagia suggests that a non-teleological concept of difference might generate insight into pressing questions about foreignness and citizenship. Turning to the liberal/poststructural debate that dominates contemporary political theory, he compares John Rawls’s concept of justice to Rancière’s ideas about political disagreement in order to demonstrate how, despite their differences, both thinkers comprehend aesthetic and moral reasoning as part and parcel of political writing. Considering the writings of William Hazlitt and Jürgen Habermas, he describes how the essay has become the exemplary genre of what is considered rational political argument. _The Poetics of Political Thinking_ is a compelling reappraisal of the role of representation within political thought. (shrink)

ABSTRACT A belief is correct if and only if the believed proposition is true. Some philosophers argued that from this standard of correctness it is possible to derive the statement of a norm, a claim about what a subject ought to do. Many formulations of the standard in terms of an ‘ought’-claim have been suggested, but all resulted affected by some problem. My aim in this article is to suggest a new formulation of the standard in ‘ought’-terms based on an (...) analysis of the relations occurring between the notions of correctness and ‘ought’. My suggested formulation is that, for any subject S and proposition p, according to the standard of correctness, given that S believes that p, it ought to be that p. (shrink)

Davide Panagia’s Impressions of Hume: Cinematic Thinking and the Politics of Discontinuity is volume fifteen of Modernity and Political Thought, the Rowman & Littlefield series in contemporary political theory.

In a recent paper (Okasha, Mind 120:83–115, 2011), Samir Okasha uses Arrow’s theorem to raise a challenge for the rationality of theory choice. He argues that, as soon as one accepts the plausibility of the assumptions leading to Arrow’s theorem, one is compelled to conclude that there are no adequate theory choice algorithms. Okasha offers a partial way out of this predicament by diagnosing the source of Arrow’s theorem and using his diagnosis to deploy an approach that circumvents it. In (...) this paper I explain why, although Okasha is right to emphasise that Arrow’s result is the effect of an informational problem, he is not right to locate this problem at the level of the informational input of a theory choice rule. Once the informational problem is correctly located, Arrow’s theorem may be dismissed as a problem. (shrink)

The concept of authority crosses many social sciences, but there is a lack of common taxonomy and definitions on this topic. The aims of this review are: to define the basic characteristics of the authority relationship, reaching a definition suitable for the different domains of social psychology and social sciences; to bridge the gap between individual and societal levels of explanation concerning the authority relationship, by proposing an interpretation within the framework of social representations. The authority relationship can be conceived (...) as a negotiation of meanings and it is closely linked to shared value orientation and the attribution of meanings negotiated within a society. We assume that the authority relationship is socially constructed and represents both a shared representation of society and a normative principle of social life. A multidisciplinary approach is adopted, crossing definitions and studies provided in sociology, political science, law and social psychology. (shrink)

According to intentionalism, the phenomenal character of experience is one and the same as the intentional content of experience. This view has a problem with moods (anxiety, depression, elation, irritation, gloominess, grumpiness, etc.). Mood experiences certainly have phenomenal character, but do not exhibit directedness, i.e., do not appear intentional. Standardly, intentionalists have re-described moods’ undirectedness in terms of directedness towards everything or the whole world (e.g., Crane, 1998; Seager, 1999). This move offers the intentionalist a way out, but is quite (...) unsatisfying. More recently, Angela Mendelovici (2013a, b) has suggested something that looks more interesting and promising: instead of re-describing moods’ phenomenology, she accepts its undirectedness at face value and tries to explain it in intentionalist terms. In this paper, I focus on and criticize Mendelovici’s proposal. As I will show, despite its prima facie virtues, the view is poorly motivated. For, contrary to what Mendelovici argues, introspection does not support her proposal—arguably, it provides some evidence against it. So, the problem that intentionalism has with moods is not solved, but is still there. (shrink)

Recently some epistemologists have approached the question whether epistemic justification comes in degrees from a linguistic perspective. Drawing insights from linguistic analyses of gradable adjectives, they investigate whether epistemic occurrences of ‘justified’ are gradable and if yes what type of gradability they involve. These authors conclude that the adjective passes standard tests for gradability, but they classify it as belonging to different categories: as either an absolute or a relative gradable adjective. The aim of this paper is to further clarify (...) the question of what kind of gradability is instantiated by epistemic uses of ‘justified’, and to investigate the consequences that this may have on epistemological theorizing. In particular, we challenge the alleged evidence provided by Siscoe (2021: 517–59) for the relative gradability of ‘justified’ and we provide positive arguments for the claim that ‘justified’ is a specific kind of absolute gradable adjective (a totally closed scale absolute with default minimal reading). We consider some important philosophical implications of these results. We also argue that the scale type of ‘justified’ is ordinal, and we consider which other properties typically associated to justification possess a similar type of scale. We argue that several popular contemporary models of graded justification, such as probabilistic and reliabilist accounts and various kinds of Lockean views, do not fit well with our results about the gradability of ‘justified’. Linguistic data rather favour normalcy and plausibility accounts of graded justification. (shrink)

Il neotrascendentalismo di Giovanni Emanuele Barié - Giovanni Emanuele Barié, appointed Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at Milan University in 1937, is one of the most neglected figures in Italian philosophy of the last century. An exponent of late Italian idealism, it could be argued that only through his work, alongside that of others like Bernardino Varisco, Pantaleo Carabellese and Vito Fazio Allmayer, was Italian idealism able to reach full theoretical maturity. Born in Milan in 1894, before going to university, Barié (...) displayed great courage on the battlefield during the first world war. On his return, he first studied Law and then took a second degree in Philosophy under Piero Martinetti. In 1933, his La spiritualità dell’essere e Leibniz enabled him to obtain a university teaching post, first in Genoa, later in Rome and, finally, in Milan in the chair previously occupied by his mentor. The first period of Barié’s work is characterized by a re-evaluation of the Kantian a priori against the reductionist perspective of contemporary thought. Books like La posizione gnoseologica della matematica and Oltre la Critica belong to this stage in his life. From 1933, Barié started on an interpretation of Hegel with the intention of toning down the transcendental aspects of Kant’s and Martinetti’s thought. His most important writings from this period are L’io trascendentale and his last work Il concetto trascendentale , which came out in the same year the philosopher committed suicide. (shrink)

In this article I want to explore some questions that arise from the work of Stanley Cavell. My purpose is to examine lines of connections between Cavell's readings of Wittgenstein (specifically his notions of 'criteria', 'aspect blindness' and 'primitive reaction', with special reference to the philosophical problem of 'other minds') and Shakespeare, on the one side, and a certain dimension of the ethical, on the other. Although Cavell has rarely offered explicit remarks on the issue of morality, and is normally (...) not considered a moral philosopher, it is my contention that it is possible to elicit what we could call an implied ethics from his philosophical view. This ethical outlook is not to be confused with a theory, but is rather a turn or bent that emerges especially by understanding the place of acknowledgment and ethical responsiveness in our practical life. Key Words: acknowledgment • Cavell • ethics • skepticism • Wittgenstein. (shrink)

This article describes the creation of a lightweight ontology of European Union (EU) criminal procedural rights in judicial cooperation. The ontology is intended to help legal practitioners understand the precise contextual meaning of terms as well as helping to inform the creation of a rule ontology of criminal procedural rights in judicial cooperation. In particular, we started from the problem that directives sometimes do not contain articles dedicated to definitions. This issue provided us with an opportunity to explore a phenomenon (...) typically neglected in the construction of domain-specific legal ontologies. Whether classical definitions are present or absent, laws and legal sources in general are typically peppered with a number of hidden definitions (in the sense that they are not clearly marked out as such) as well as incomplete definitions, which may nevertheless help legal practitioners (and legal reasoning systems) to reason on the basis of analogy or teleology. In this article we describe the theoretical basis for building an analogical lightweight ontology in the framework of an EU project called _CrossJustice_. We present our methodology for collecting the data, extracting the data fields and creating the ontology with WebProtégé, followed by our conclusions and ideas for future work. (shrink)

Cet article a déjà paru dans Maria do Carmo Ribeiro & Arnaldo Sousa Mello, Evolucão da paisagem urbana cidade e periferia, Braga, Centro de Investigação Transdisciplinar « Cultura, Espaço e Memória » – Instituto de Estudos Medievais – Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2014, pp.175-204. Il est disponible en ligne sur la base des Archives ouvertes. Nous remercions Hélène Noizet et Davide Gherdevich de nous avoir autorisé à le republier ici. Comme la plupart des villes, Paris connaît une dynamique - (...) Géographie – Nouvel article. (shrink)

This book proposes a new theoretical framework to move beyond the traditional tenets of modern international relations theory to investigate European integration and shed light on current events. -/- Based on contemporary analyses, Hegel’s political philosophy, and the fundamental role of historical interpretation, this book addresses the institutional dynamics as well as the discursive practices behind both the Eastern enlargement and the current critical situation. Looking back in particular at European integration in one of its most significant events, namely the (...) enlargement of the European Union to include former Socialist countries, it offers a unique conceptualisation of the nature and limits of European integration and for understanding the current crisis between Brussels and the Visegrád countries, 30 years since the revolutions of 1989. -/- This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of European integration, European politics and history, and political theory and philosophy. (shrink)

In September 2019, the European Parliament adopted a resolution that sparked controversy due to its equation of Nazism and Communism. The document made the USSR jointly responsible for the outbreak of the Second World War and accused the Russian government of whitewashing communist crimes and glorifying the Soviet totalitarian regime. This article presents the resolution as the latest expression of a broader discursive process that started with the accession process of the Central and Eastern European countries. To support this hypothesis, (...) I examine the genealogy of the resolution, namely the documents that originally outlined the stances expressed by the latter, as well as the debates at the EU Parliament that preceded its adoption. This analysis highlights in particular two fundamental tendencies, i.e. the entanglement of history and memory characterising the recent discourse on European integration and the frequent identification of the Central and Eastern European member states as victims. In the final paragraphs, I suggest that the construction of a shared ‘historical memory’ may represent a legitimising framework for the implementation of specific sets of political and economic ideas, but I also note that processes such as the one described in the article may ultimately damage the cohesion among the member states and the ability of the EU institutions to address relevant internal and external issues. (shrink)

The article is aimed at pointing out the correctness of the basic assumptions of Maurizio Ferraris’ documental theory of social reality, illustrating the results of a case study research. The theoretical analysis leads to an argument that shows that only the reference to the role of writing (and to a broad and diversified conception of Documentality) makes it possible to clarify the phenomenon of social and historical iteration of intellectual heritage. This latter represents an intangible heritage which is neither part (...) of the external perceivable world, nor of a conjectural platonic reality, since – though possessing abstract essence – it stems from a specific point in time. (shrink)

Institutions are committed to a constant work aimed at classifying cultural heritages, in order to preserve selected objects from decay or disappearing. In this domain of policy, a significant role is played by architecture and by the preservation of the architectural heritage of cities. How is it possible, however, to determine the value in the field of architectural heritages? What are the criteria for evaluation and the degree of objectivity these classifications are based upon? Is architectural worth immanent to objects (...) or does it reside outside them? These are fundamental questions for the science of preservation and the legislation on cultural heritages. By closely examining a controversial case occurred in the European Union, e.g. England, the paper tackles analytically some of these issues, and it exploits also concepts borrowed from social ontology and ontology of art. (shrink)

Monads, mirrors and minds. Mathematical thinking and “imago Dei” in the work of Nicholas of Cusa. This article introduces Nicholas of Cusa monadic vision of reality: the world acquires sense and value as contraction Dei, that is the ability of God’s infinite power to concentrate, individualise and actualise itself in each and every created thing by the infinite divine power. In the universal explicatio Dei the human mens has an exclusive and privileged role: it is not mere explication, but living (...) imago Dei. The mind is defined by Nicholas of Cusa on the base of the ability to give mensura, dimension of everything: the mind measures as numerates. However our mind numerates and knows, measuring, everything on the base of a Mathematics that originates things which is the one of divine mind. The human mind is image of God’s one inasmuch this one creates everything on the base of divine Mathematics while the human mind knows everything on the base of the Mathematics generated by itself. (shrink)

The article is about a theme in part neglected in part controversial of the interpretation of sources of Nicholas of Cusa thought: the platonic work and more specifically the dialogue Parmenides. The author examines the whole Cusanus’ work, annotations to platonic work included. In particular the article underlines a platonic presence in Nicholas of Cusa thought, directly come from the reading of Parmenides. Later the author focalizes his attention on Nicholas of Cusa dialogue de non aliud, getting to argue the (...) thesis that Cusanus had directly known different platonic dialogues and in specific the Parmenides and he deeply understood it, however he followed mostly Proclus’ interpretation of dialogue and platonic thought. In the second part, the article reconstructs the critics that Nicholas of Cusa moves to Plato, specifically when he ascribes to God a way of acting by necessity and not beeing able to catch the trinity of the One. The author proves philologically and speculatively how Nicholas of Cusa elaborates his own conception of the One by a critique dialogue with Plato and Proclus’ positions, making an original afterthought of the neoplatonic tradition. The core of Nicholas of Cusa conception is the idea of the One or God as freedom, freedom thought as the essence, not a mere divine attribute. Nicholas of Cusa elaborates his own freedom of the One conception by a double dimension: related to both world’s creation and trinitarian genesis of Himself. In the Nicholas of Cusa vision, Trinity and freedom contribute to define the essence itself of the One, even though Cusanus does not never forget the Deus absconditus is transcendent than itself Deus revelatus. Accord to Cusanus God as infinite is beyond One itself and Trinity itself. (shrink)