Sartre and Nizan, politique of words The aim of this article is to discuss and compare the main points of Nizan’s and Sartre’s views of committed literature. Discarding the claim to be objective and neutral, Nizan states that to abstain is to make a choice. Therefore, he critiques the intellectuals to be guilty of an abdication of responsibility. In his writings Nizan posed some questions, which became crucial for the postwar debates on the engagement of the intellectual. These questions constitute (...) a central aspect of Sartre’s writings after World War II, where Sartre criticizes writers who had not taken a stance against oppression and delineates the axes of a theory of committed literature. As a result of the comparative analysis between the two authors, it is shown that Sartre articulates an important point that Nizan have missed, namely that there is a praxis, which is specific to literature and that we should part from it in order to understand commitment. Thus, at the difference of Nizan, Sartre points out that the liberating dimension of literary criticism should not be too quickly confused with armed criticism. (shrink)

Animal Suffering: Philosophy and Culture explores the multifaceted moral meanings allocated to non-human suffering in contemporary Western culture.

--- abstract is not requested by the Editor.

L’arte contemporanea è caleidoscopica: può catapultarci in ambienti complessi o minimali richiedendo la nostra attiva partecipazione, ancorarsi a luoghi particolari, porci di fronte a opere apparentemente indistinguibili da oggetti ed eventi della vita quotidiana, appropriarsi illegalmente degli spazi pubblici, e così via. Questo volume muove dalla premessa che uno dei compiti della filosofia dell’arte sia prestare attenzione a specifiche pratiche artistiche e a teorie sull’arte avanzate in altri ambiti di ricerca, per poi organizzare in maniera perspicua la molteplicità dei dati (...) raccolti. I filosofi possono così costruire teorie quanto più generali possibile per cercare di spiegare ciò che emerge da tali dati. Le ricerche qui presentate si concentrano su alcuni fenomeni, accuratamente scelti nell’ampio panorama dell’arte contemporanea: l’installation art e i suoi rapporti con l’installazione espositiva, l’arte sito-specifica e la sua appartenenza alla più ampia tradizione dell’arte situata, il ruolo delle idee nell’arte concettuale e il carattere sovversivo della street art. Sfruttando l’efficacia esplicativa del concetto di medium artistico, nonché della individuazione di forme e generi d’arte, le analisi qui presentate indagano le ragioni per cui in queste pratiche artistiche sono centrali l’esperienza dello spazio, l’interazione fra opere e pubblico, i luoghi d’installazione delle opere e gli oggetti come portatori di significati. (shrink)

This article deals with various responses to the phenomenon of Orientalism. Since the publication of Edward Said s book _Orientalism_, there has been an ongoing discussion about the influence of Orientalism on contemporary social sciences in the East. In the West, Orientalism was an original theory, but in the East its acceptance was tantamount to an assimilation of foreign point of view on social reality. I argue that it is a symptom of provincialism among scientists from the East. Even though (...) most of them tried to overcome Orientalism, they used the same categories and methodology. In this sense they repeated its mistakes and misunderstandings. This article analyzes different attempts of overcoming Orientalism and shows why they are provincial. (shrink)

The re-use of publicly available (personal) data for originally unanticipated purposes has become common practice. Without such secondary uses, the development of many AI systems like large language models (LLMs) and ChatGPT would not even have been possible. This chapter addresses the ethical implications of such secondary processing, with a particular focus on data protection and privacy issues. Legal and ethical evaluations of secondary processing of publicly available personal data diverge considerably both among scholars and the general public. While some (...) of these uses are met with opposition and criticism, others are quite unanimously viewed as unproblematic. Often, proponents and opponents of such practices invoke the same ethical and legal standards for their opposite conclusions. This state of affairs shows that other considerations besides the public availability of data must play a role. It calls for a theoretical clarification of the additional criteria that should guide decisions about the (legally informed) ethical acceptability of re-processing practices. In order to make a contribution towards this goal, the present chapter maps the ongoing debate and systematises the existing contributions around three lines of argument: a consent-centred position, an approach that focuses on the distinction between data and information, and finally a line of argument that focuses on the contextual norms that govern the flows of information. The chapter further relates these arguments to three underlying conceptions of privacy and data protection: rights-based, structural and contextual, and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of each position in the light of concrete examples. It concludes by arguing for a mixed approach that combines core elements of the structural and contextual approaches. The chapter aims to contribute to existing research in the fields of data, AI and research ethics, and to reconnect the debate with ethical and legal scholarship on privacy and data protection. In doing so, it aims to make a theoretical contribution towards refining existing conceptions of privacy and data protection in order to make them more fit to ‘drive our digital world’ as far as the use of publicly available data is concerned. (shrink)

This paper, written in honor of the “800 years from the birth of Bonaventure”, underlines the affinity of the philosophy and the theology of Bonaventure, General Ministry of the Franciscan Order, with the perspective of Dietrich von Hildebrand, father of the realist phaenomenology. It is delineated a curious correlation between the two authors that have been able to generate a real revolution of love. The epistemic structure and the ontology of Bonaventure are caracterized by a structural unity that through an (...) itinerarium lead to the visio Dei. On the other hand von Hildebrand in What is philoso­phy? construes a strong epistemology in which the “evidence” and the “experience” of external realities play a fundamental role in reaching the perfect knowledge. A return to God is encouraged by two philosophers through the search and the veri cation of the phamenological facts that constitute and characterize the human being. (shrink)

Details goverment, private, and international response to the policy recommendations of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission.

Before 1800 nothing was irrelevant. So argues Elisa Tamarkin's sweeping cultural history of a key shift in consciousness: the arrival, around 1800, of "relevance" as the means to grasp how something previously disregarded becomes important and interesting. At a time when so much makes claims to attention every day, how does one decide what is most valuable right now? This is not only a contemporary problem. For Ralph Waldo Emerson, the question for the nineteenth century was how, in the (...) immensity and "succession" of objects, anything becomes a proper object of experience. How that question was finally defined as one of relevance is the story of Apropos of Nothing. Relevance, Tamarkin shows, was primarily an Anglo-American concept. It engaged major intellectual figures, centrally the pragmatists-William James, Alain Locke, and John Dewey-and before them thinkers including Emerson and Alfred North Whitehead. Most of all, relevance was a problem for the worlds of art, literature, education, and criticism. These were fascinated by how old, boring, distant, or unfamiliar things get taken in; how they are admitted as meaningful; how they come home to us like the ludicrous raven comes to Edgar Allan Poe's student in the middle of the night in some obscure connection with himself. Many nineteenth-century American artists saw their paintings as pragmatic works that make relevance-that suggest versions of events that feel apropos of our world the moment we see them. (Tamarkin's book is richly illustrated, in color, with works by Winslow Homer, Abbott Handerson Thayer, Edgar Degas, and others.) Relevance remains a conundrum, especially for the humanities. It obliges us to say why we admit Poe's poem-or, say, a line of Emerson's-is interesting enough to study it, to dedicate ourselves to understanding it, to affirming that this effort is, in Emerson's words, "relevant to me and mine, to nature, and the hour that now passes.". (shrink)

This work is an investigation into the analytical debate on pictorial representation and the theory of pictorial art. My main concern are a critical exposition of the questions raised by the idea that it is resemblance to depicted objects that explains pictorial representation and the investigation of the phenomenon of abstract painting from an analytical point of view in relation to the debate on depiction. The first part is dedicated to a survey of the analytical debate on depiction, with special (...) attention to the fortunes and misfortunes of the resemblance theory of depiction. In the first chapter I give an outline of the main contemporary theories on offer, contextualised within an historical background that stretches from Plato to Descartes. I have decided to focus on the theory of resemblance more than on other approaches on depiction, because much of my research is dedicated to an analysis and implementation of one of the theories that have recently sought to re-discover the resemblance paradigm, although with certain important modifications. Namely, the second chapter is dedicated to the exposition of John Hyman’s basic resemblance theory of depiction, to the elucidation of its presuppositions and to the discussion of some criticisms and objections that the theory has raised. The third and the fourth chapter are dedicated to the implementation of Hyman’s theory in relation to the phenomenon of abstract painting. There are two peculiarities about Hyman’s theory: first, it is in counter-tendency in comparison with all the other accounts of depiction on offer, in that it does not need to conceive of pictorial representation as of representation of particulars or kinds of objects that we can easily identify. Second, it is a theory that gives art a prominent role: Hyman illustrates his claims with many examples taken from the history of figurative art. The second part of my work is inspired by the idea that the basic resemblance theory can be applied to abstract paintings as well. Developing an analysis of abstract painting from an analytical point of view is a task that very few authors have tried to accomplish so far – as far as I am aware. However, it is evident that the task abstract painters have set themselves is interestingly akin to the task philosophers try to accomplish when arguing about depiction. It is widely agreed that one of the main topics of contemporary art is art itself and that one of the main topics of abstract painting is the art of painting itself, the art of producing pictures, the exploration of its limits and its conventions. With these considerations in mind, I have sought to sketch my proposal for a basic resemblance theory of abstract painting, critically engaging with philosophers such as Richard Wollheim, Kendall Walton, Lambert Wiesing and with art-critics and historians such as Clement Greenberg and Ernst Gombrich. (shrink)

Che cosa vediamo quando vediamo un’immagine? Con Arte e illusione, pubblicato nel 1960, Ernst H. Gombrich è stato il primo a indagare a fondo l’effetto che hanno su di noi le immagini figurative. Alla sua indagine, concepita nell’ambito della storia delle arti pittoriche, si sono successivamente affiancati molti studi in vari contesti di ricerca, dalla psicologia della visione all’estetica analitica, dalla semiotica ai visual studies. Questo studio si concentra su quei nuclei teorici della proposta di Gombrich che suscitano l’interesse dei (...) filosofi e sulla fortuna di alcune idee di Gombrich, specialmente nel dibattito di area analitica. (shrink)

Focussing on some claims by Richard Wollheim and Clement Greenberg, I investigate how the concepts of depicted figure, background of a pictorial scene and ground of a picture are relevant for an understanding of the relation between figurative and abstract pictures, especially when it comes to considering whether abstract pictures can be said to represent pictorially.

La grande domanda che inevitabilmente solleva l’opera Ethics di Dietrich von Hildebrand, allievo di Edmund Husserl e tra i fondatori della fenomenologia realista, è se sia necessario un fondamento della morale. Un testo curioso, uscito originariamente con il titolo Christian Ethics per la David McKay nel 1953. Un’edizione fortunata che vide diverse ristampe sino a quella della Franciscan Herald Press ribattezzata, per volere dell’autore, con il titolo Ethics. Il presente volume offre un’analisi dettagliata dell’opera, ripercorrendone i temi principali: valore, libertà, (...) relativismo, virtù. In appendice la critica di Josef Seifert all’etica hildebrandiana e il saggio dell’autore in prima traduzione italiana “La detronizzazione della verità”. (shrink)

As a technique of social control based on the collection of information, surveillance has been a central instrument of any administrative power since the modern era. Surveillance, however, can be carried out in different ways and these can provide important information on the basic features of a particular political system. Indeed, the introduction of surveillance measures has an impact on key relationships of a political system, such as liberty and security, autonomy and authority. When a political system is, like the (...) European Union (EU), in a dynamic and build-up phase, by analysing its surveillance practices one can even discern the trajectories of its developments. The paper analyses two surveillance measures in the EU: the Schengen Information System (SIS) and the Directive 2006/24/EC on data retention. It puts forth the argument that the reference to security as a value enables the EU to compensate its legitimacy deficiencies and to develop into a power system characterised by a more supranational structure than before. (shrink)

Chapter 1: The Rise of Anthropocene Theory: Politics, ontology and the feedback loop of Western humanism -- Chapter 2: Repoliticising Ecology: Indigenous knowledge in the Anthropocene -- Chapter 3: Tell the truth in the face of the extinction: Exceptionalism and depoliticization in Anthropocene activism -- Chapter 4: Rights of nature and Indigenous Threshold Politics -- Chapter 5: Acting, Resisting, Surviving: Indigenous Agency Beyond the 'End Times' -- Epilogue Anthropocene Afterlives.

Wittgenstein’s remarks on “seeing-as” have influenced several scholars working on depiction. They have especially inspired those who think that in order to understand depiction we should understand the specific kind of visual experience depictions arouse in the viewer (e.g. Gombrich [1960], Wollheim [1968; 1987]). In this paper I would like to go a different way. My hypothesis is that certain of Wittgenstein’s claims both in the Tractatus and in his later writings resonate well within the context of an objective resemblance (...) account of depiction (Hyman, 2006). (shrink)