El presente trabajo propone un estudio de los dos poemarios de la poeta salvadoreña Tania Pleitez Vela, Nostalgia del presente (2014) y Preguerra (2017). Las dos colecciones comparten una poética de la memoria que adquiere rasgos diferentes que se van a analizar. Se aprecia que, de la imposibilidad de asumir el pasado y de nombrar el dolor, se llega al reconocimiento de una pertenencia. Así que en Nostalgia del presente (2014) se perfila el dolido proceso de la rememoración, a través (...) de un yo lirico desamparado e inquieto, mientras que en Preguerra (2017) una voz más ponderada y reflexiva transmite la narración de la memoria. (shrink)

El artículo propone el estudio de tres cuentos de tres escritoras centroamericanas: “Correr desnuda” de Jessica Isla, “Muñeca rota” de María del Carmen Pérez Cuadra y “Yo, cocodrilo” de Jacinta Escudos, que comparten la tematización de la huida. Partiendo de la idea del “desempoderamiento” político en la literatura centroamericana, del supuesto cinismo de la narrativa de las últimas décadas, la intención de la investigación es indagar en el posible potencial disruptivo dela fuga en un contexto local y global, supuestamente definido (...) por la impotencia y la resignación. La fuga se considera una acción negativa que, en lugar de abordar directamente las situaciones de opresión, actúa indirectamente, a través de la desobediencia y se asocia a la potencialidad de los cuerpos y a un devenir disconforme. (shrink)

Edmund Husserl often characterizes essences and eidetic laws in normative terms. Many of his statements to this effect are however highly puzzling as they appear at odds with Husserl’s general understanding of normativity. In this paper I focus on this puzzle and I argue that we can reconcile most of the apparent tensions between these two dimensions of Husserl’s philosophical thought. In the first part of the paper, drawing on the contemporary literature on kinds of norms, I focus on Husserl’s (...) work on the varieties of normativity. I submit that, on his view, essences and eidetic laws are never intrinsically normative, and that not all essences and not all corresponding eidetic laws can function as norms for their instances. Crucially, however, I argue that, according to Husserl, essences and eidetic laws can function as norms for a range of the subject’s acts. In the second part of the paper I further examine this thesis, thus explaining in what sense Husserl thinks that essences and eidetic laws can have this function. I show that formal eidetic laws can engender deontic and evaluative norms for correct or rational judgments, evaluations, desires, and acts of the will. I also contend that material essences and material eidetic laws also have a normative function for judgments. I conclude that this shows how Husserl’s view makes room for norms that are not context-dependent or subjectively grounded. (shrink)

The Italian code of medical deontology recently approved stipulates that physicians have the duty to inform the patient of each unwanted event and its causes, and to identify, report and evaluate adverse events and errors. Thus the obligation to supply information continues to widen, in some way extending beyond the doctor-patient relationship to become an essential tool for improving the quality of professional services.

Cronoca della terza edizione del Pavia Graduate Conference in Political Philosophy, Università di Pavia, 15-16 settembre 2005.

Christianity is a complex phenomenon, especially during the initial period. The use of the plural “Christianities” in historiography aims to emphasize this complexity. This paper offers some examples to highlight the different ways of life, the manifold interpretations of Jesus, the diverse organizations of churches and of worship during the first two centuries. The paper goes on to discuss the concept of Christianity and proposes a definition deriving from the impact of Jesus on believers. This impact led to his veneration, (...) whether in an exclusive sense or not, but always in a decisive manner, given that, as the eschatological envoy, Jesus is the cause of salvation. (shrink)

The Aristotelian origin of Fausto Sozzini's philosophy is proposed.

One of the many drastic changes caused by Covid-19 was the quick implementation of distance learning which represented a great technological challenge to many teachers and students. In fact, Italy ranks 24th amongst the 27-EU member countries in digital competitiveness which testifies to the significant delays and gaps in basic digital skills amongst the population. Based on the difficulties encountered in organizing distance learning, we assumed that teachers' perceived stress increased. Given that transversal skills can be associated with this relationship, (...) we hypothesized that among these skills, self-efficacy mediated the relationship between the difficulties in organizing distance learning and perceived stress. Since we targeted teachers from Italy and other European countries, we also hypothesized that this mediator effect would be different for both samples. Our sample was composed of a total of 366 primary/middle school teachers of which 86% female. After doing a mediation analyses with Process, Hayes' Model 4, we confirmed H1 but not H2: resulting in a partial mediation effect of self-efficacy for each individual group of teachers. Since difficulties of distance learning can affect the perception of stress, we believe that the promotion of transversal skills, such as self-efficacy, can better equip teachers when facing stressful situations. (shrink)

Can the quality of gender+ equality policies be defined in ways that apply across different policy contexts and different policy moments? In light of different scholarly debates and empirical material from gender violence policy debates especially in Southern and Central Eastern Europe, this article discusses dilemmas around defining the quality of gender+ equality policies. It proposes a two-dimensional model. The first dimension links quality to procedural aspects: empowerment of women’s rights advocates at different stages of the policy process, and transformation (...) with reference to prevailing contextual legacies. The second dimension is more substantive, and includes genderedness, intersectionality and the structurally transformative focus of policies. The article illustrates how within the framework set by these criteria, the quality of gender equality policies is constructed through policy debates in ways that are dependent on the different discursive, institutional and structural factors specific to various policy contexts. (shrink)

The corruption of public officials and institutions is generally regarded as wrong. But in what exactly does this form of corruption consist and what kind of wrong does it imply? This article aims to take stock of the current philosophical discussion of the different senses in which political corruption is wrong in a general sense, beyond the specific negative legal, economic, and social costs it may happen to have in specific circumstances. Political corruption is usually presented as a pathology of (...) the public order. Therefore, the senses in which political corruption has been presented as wrong have varied depending on the normative theory of the public order that is presupposed. In this article, we offer a critical presentation of two major interpretations of the wrongfulness of political corruption that draw respectively on a neo-republican and a liberal account of the public order. Finally, we show how the analytical distinction between these approaches has important normative implications for the identification of relevant cases of political corruption. (shrink)

This essay undertakes a reexamination of the notion of the receptacle/chōra in Plato's Timaeus, asking what its value may be to feminists seeking to understand the topology of the feminine in Western philosophy. As the source of cosmic motion as well as a restless figurality, labile and polyvocal, the receptacle/chōra offers a fecund zone of destabilization that allows for an immanent critique of ancient metaphysics. Engaging with Derridean, Irigarayan, and Kristevan analyses, Bianchi explores whether receptacle/chōra can exceed its reduction to (...) the maternal-feminine, and remain answerable to contemporary theoretical concerns. (shrink)

Is the corrupt behaviour of public officials a politically relevant kind of wrong only when it causes the malfunctioning of institutions? We challenge recent institutionalist approaches to political corruption by showing a sense in which the individual corrupt behaviour of certain public officials is wrong not only as a breach of personal morality but in inherently politically salient terms. To show this sense, we focus on a specific instance of individual corrupt behaviour on the part of public officials entrusted with (...) the power to implement public rules in a liberal democracy. Although not necessarily unlawful, their behaviour is politically wrong qua corrupt when it contradicts surreptitiously the requirement of public justification that undergirds the public order. Then, we distinguish this form of corruption as surreptitious action from such unlawful but publicly justifiable kinds of political misbehaviour as civil disobedience. (shrink)

Analyzes Aristotle's natural philosophy and metaphysics from a feminist, deconstructive, psychoanalytic perspective, showing that Aristotelian teleology relies on the disparagement of chance and the feminine simultaneously and finding resources therein for contemporary feminist thought.

"This book discusses political corruption and anticorruption as a matter of a public ethics of office. It shows how political corruption is the Trojan horse that undermines public institutions from within via the interrelated action of the officeholders. Even well-designed and legitimate institutions may go off track if the officeholders fail to uphold by their conduct a public ethics of office accountability. Most current discussions of what political corruption is and why it is wrong have concentrated either on explaining and (...) assessing it as a matter of an individual's corrupt character and motives or as a dysfunction of institutional procedures. The book investigates the common normative root of these two manifestations of political corruption as a relationally wrongful practice that consists in an unaccountable use of the power of office by the officeholders in public institutions. From this perspective, political corruption is an internal enemy of public institutions that can only be opposed by mobilizing the officeholders to engage in answerability practices. In this way, officeholders are responsible for working together to maintain an interactively just institutional system"--. (shrink)

Drawing attention to the vexed relationship between feminist theory and philosophy, Is Feminist Philosophy Philosophy? demonstrates the spectrum of significant work being done at this contested boundary. The volume offers clear statements by seventeen distinguished scholars as well as a full range of philosophical approaches; it also presents feminist philosophers in conversation both as feminists and as philosophers, making the book accessible to a wide audience. -/- Table of Contents -/- Opening plenary: Drucilla Cornell, Jacques Derrida, and Teresa Brennan — (...) Discussion / Teresa Brennan ... et al. — Women, identity, and philosophy / Marjorie C. Miller — The personal is philosophical, or teaching a life and living the truth: philosophical pedagogy at the boundaries of self / Ruth Ginzberg — Musing as a feminist and as a philosopher on a postfeminist era / Patricia S. Mann — Essence against identity / Teresa Brennan — Feminist interpretations of social and political thought / Virginia Held — Mothers, citizenship, and independence: a critique of pure family values / Iris Marion Young — Domestic abuse and Locke's liberal (mis)treatment of family / Matthew R. Silliman — Marx, Irigaray, and the politics of reproduction / Alys Eve Weinbaum — The very idea of feminist epistemology / Lynn Hankinson Nelson — Can there be a feminist logic? / Marjorie Hass — Feminism and mental representation: analytic philosophy, cultural studies, and narrow content / David Golumbia — Replies to Hass and Columbia / Nickolas Pappas — Leaping ahead: feminist theory without metaphysics / Leslie A. MacAvoy — Philosophy abandons women: gender, orality, and some literate pre-Socratics / Cornelia A. Tsakiridou. (shrink)

The corruption of public officials and institutions is generally regarded as wrong. But in what exactly does this form of corruption consist and what kind of wrong does it imply? Recent proponents of the “institutionalist approach” to political corruption have concentrated on those occasions when incentive structures distract institutions from their essential purpose and weaken public trust. The corruption of individual public officials has been less relevant to their work, except for when it leads to the erosion of the functioning (...) of institutions. From this perspective, a clear emphasis has been put on the consequences of corruption. In contrast, I argue that political corruption, whether individual or institutional, can be more fundamentally understood as a form of political injustice in which someone has violated the logic of mutual accountability that undergirds all relations of justice in rights-based systems. In this sense, political corruption occurs when public officials use their entrusted power of office for the pursuit of an agenda whose rationale may not be vindicated as coherent with the terms of their mandate. By focusing on the inherent qualities of corrupt political relations, I lay out a novel relational and deontological understanding of the inherent wrongness of political corruption as a form of unaccountable action. (shrink)

Breast cancer treatments have multiple adverse effects, including concerns about body appearance and function that are experienced by most patients. Altered body image negatively affects mental health, social, and relationship functioning. While the relationship with a partner is critical for patients’ psychological wellbeing and partners can promote positive body image, limited research has investigated individual and relational factors affecting the experience of both. This cross-sectional study aimed at exploring rates of body image concerns among breast cancer patients, and identifying dyadic (...) profiles among participating dyads. Couples composed by patients who had undergone surgery and their romantic partners were recruited from the Breast Unit of a hospital in northern Italy. Both partners completed measures of personality characteristics, psychological distress, coping flexibility, dyadic coping, and closeness. Body image and adjustment to cancer measures were completed by patients only. K-mean cluster analyses identified 2-cluster solution among patients and partners, respectively. “Active patients” reported low rates of body image concerns, anxious preoccupation, negative dyadic coping, and self-oriented stress communication, compared to “worried patients”. “Comfortable partners” reported lower anxiety and depression, self-oriented negative dyadic coping and closeness than “uncomfortable partners”. Three different dyadic profiles emerged: functional, dysfunctional, and ambivalent. Significant variations by anxiety, depression, and delegating dyadic coping existed. Results indicate there are groups of couples at greater risk for impaired psychological distress and body image concerns, which should be addressed in the context of dyadic psychosocial interventions. (shrink)

Mersenne presented Descartes with a series of objections to the Meditations. A careful analysis of these objections can throw light on the theological context in which those criticisms were grounded. Mersenne’s objections reproduce theses already advanced in the Quaestiones celeberrimae in Genesim. In this work, in which he intended to refute Vanini, Mersenne used some proofs of the existence of God derived from the Jesuit Lessius, and already used by Vanini himself. These same proofs, together with others developed by Mersenne, (...) were then taken up by the free thinker Pierre Petit. A reconstruction of the origin of the arguments used by Mersenne can provide important elements to evaluate the interweaving of apologetic and heterodox literature in the first half of the 17seventeenth century and to discuss Leo Strauss’s proposal to “read between the lines.”. (shrink)

The Cartesian dualism requires a type of knowledge appropriate to a mind separate from the body. This type of knowledge is present in angelic knowledge as opposed to beatific knowledge in the works of Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus. The beatific knowledge is the type of knowledge chosed by Malebranche and Spinoza.

In the essay Spinoza Dies, the Author imagines Spinoza's reflections in the hours preceding his death and uses them to present the philosopher's theories on life, death, suicide and eternity of the mind. These theories require a concept of identity able to answer questions on the essence of life and death, the identity of the dying and of the surviving individual. While some interpreters deny that the eternal mind can be a personal one, the Author argues in complete contrast that (...) the mind truly achieves a personal identity only in the dimension of eternity. (shrink)

Hobbes refers to a state of "mere nature" to describe the condition of man without political organisation. The origin of this notion is identified in the theory of pure nature discussed by Suarez and its implications are shown.

C'est en puisant dans les ressources de la pensee medievale que la philosophie moderne a elabore ses propres theories de la connaissance, a la fois inedites et empruntees. La connaissance des anges et celle des bienheureux constituent deux modeles qui ont preside au destin de la philosophie au XVIIe siecle. Le choix de l'un ou de l'autre de ces modeles, le choix de l'un contre l'autre, engage le fait de determiner dans quelle mesure un esprit fini doit par ticiper au (...) divin pour acceder a la verite, notamment a la connaissance vraie de l'infini. Ni ange ni bienheureux, a quelle connaissance l'homme aura-t-il acces? Dans cet ouvrage, Emanuela Scribano interroge la philosophie moderne a partir de choix fondamentaux qui delimitent le lieu propre du savoir humain. (shrink)

While Eros has a central philosophical function in the dialogues of Plato, it all but disappears as a philosophical term in the thought of Aristotle, and is replaced by the more rational and reciprocal relation of friendship, φιλία. This essay asks what becomes of Eros in Aristotle’s thinking, whether as deity, natural or cosmic force, or mode of human relation. Drawing on the ancient epithet of Eros, Ἔρως λυσιµελής, unbinder of limbs, Aristotle’s usages of both ἔρως and λύσις (loosening, unbinding), (...) respectively are traced in their ambivalence for his fundamentally organismic philosophy, insofar as they disturb the organism’s ontological integrity. With the assistance of Kristeva’s notion of the abject, it is argued that while Aristotle’s overt stance is a polemic against eros, his principal metaphysical innovations – the recasting of ἀρχή as divine τέλος, and the separation of material and moving causes – are solutions (λύσεις) to aporias that may involve a traversal of the sublime that is also irreducibly corporeal and erotic. (shrink)

Riassunto: Le immagini mentali sono parte delle intenzioni comunicative veicolate negli scambi verbali, e dunque del significato inteso dal parlante? Questioni simili sono state dibattute con riferimento al paradigma dell’ embodiment. Qui intendiamo muoverci su un terreno differente: il dominio dei gesti, con particolare riferimento a quelli rappresentativi, caratterizzati dallo stretto rapporto con le rappresentazioni senso-motorie delle azioni. La linea argomentativa sarà dunque bipartita. Innanzitutto, intendiamo mostrare che i gesti contribuiscono a determinare l’intenzione comunicativa, come è evidente in casi nei (...) quali il parlante si impegna in modo manifesto a renderli salienti – ma qui sarà anche importante l’osservazione che l’intenzione comunicativa non va identificata con una preliminare pianificazione cosciente. In secondo luogo, argomenteremo che il contributo dei gesti all’intenzione comunicativa è genuinamente imagistic, non proposizionale. In particolare, esamineremo due argomenti solitamente presentati come a favore dell’ipotesi proposizionale: che le immagini non possono essere parte dell’intenzione comunicativa, rispettivamente, perché non portano un contenuto giudicabile in termini di vero/falso, e perché non consentono di effettuare inferenze. Vedremo che entrambe le argomentazioni sono discutibili. Parole chiave: Intenzione comunicativa; Gesti rappresentativi; Imagery; Significato del parlante Co-verbal Gestures and Mental Images: The Borders of Communicative Intentions: Do mental images form part of a speaker’s communicative intention? This and similar questions have usually been addressed within the framework of embodied cognition. Here, instead, we want to address the question from a different point of view, examining representational gestures, which are characterised by their strong relationship to sensory-motor representations. For this reason, our argument takes two directions. First, we show that representational gestures can form part of a speaker’s communicative intention as, for example, when the speaker overtly makes them salient. However, it is important to point out that being part of a communicative intention is not equivalent to being consciously planned. Secondly, we will argue that the meaning carried by gestures is actually imagistic, and not propositional. To this end, we provide a detailed discussion of two arguments favouring the propositional hypothesis: that images cannot be part of the speaker’s communicative intention because their content is not truth-conditional and because they do not allow us to make inferences. We will show that both these arguments are debatable. Keywords: Communicative Intentions; Representational Gestures; Imagery; Speaker’s Meaning. (shrink)

The paper articulates a new understanding of individual responsibility focused on exercises of agency in reason-giving rather than intentional actions or attitudes towards others. Looking at how agents make sense of their actions, we identify a distinctive but underexplored space for assessing individual responsibility within collective actions. As a case in point, we concentrate on reason-giving for one's own involvement in systemic corruption. We characterize systemic corruption in terms of its public ‘unavowability’ and focus on the redescriptions to which corrupt (...) agents typically resort to vindicate their actions. Through a multidimensional approach to reason-giving, we show that the individual rationalisations these redescriptions point to are necessarily less-than-successful since they keep thedifferent categories of reasons involved in making sense of one’s own conduct misaligned. We argue that this involves a kind of tainted reasoning at the interface between epistemic vice and epistemic disadvantage. We then consider such test cases as self-deception, wilful ignorance, and actions on ‘autopilot’ to show that tainted reasoning is constitutive of systemic corruption, not merely caused by it. On this ground, we expound a new view of responsibility centred on reason-giving as the epistemic core which all responsibility assessments track. To demonstrate the interest of this view, we compare it with existing alternatives revolving around the ideas of accountability and attributability. We conclude by showing how our understanding of responsibility can shed new light on the analysis and normative assessment of an agent’s responsible ignorance. (shrink)

Whilst legitimacy is often thought to concern the processes through which coercive decisions are made in society, justice has been standardly viewed as a ‘substantial’ matter concerning the moral justification of the terms of social cooperation. Accordingly, theorization about procedures may seem appropriate for the former but not for the latter. To defend proceduralism as a relevant approach to justice, I distinguish three questions: (1) Who is entitled to exercise coercive power? (2) On what terms should the participants to a (...) scheme of cooperation interact? (3) How should the costs and benefits produced by cooperation be distributed? Legitimacy concerns (1), whereas justice applies to (2) and (3). Although the appropriateness of proceduralism is debatable in relation to (3), it seems well equipped to address the justice-related question in (2). And it does so by focusing on the inherent moral acceptability of the way in which persons are treated by the procedures through which they interact. (shrink)

In Italy in recent years, an exponential increase in the frequency of medical malpractice claims relating to the issue of informed consent has substantially altered not only medical ethics, but medical practice as well. Total or partial lack of consent has become the cornerstone of many malpractice lawsuits, and continues to be one of the primary cudgels against defendant physicians in Italian courtrooms. Physicians have responded to the rising number of claims with an increase in ‘defensive medicine’ and a prevailing (...) preoccupation with the purely formal aspects of consent. The result is a plethora of consent forms, believed to be a guarantee of ‘informed consent’, as well as a growing reliance on informed consent as a shield against judicial action brought by the patient. Physicians ‘inform’ patients without really sharing information, often delegating the task of communication to other professionals who are not doctors. Italian judges always condemn the physician when information to the patient has been inadequate, thus leading insurance companies to consider the lack of valid informed consent as the total responsibility of the physician and/or the hospital. It is necessary to change tack, to remove this idea of consent which permeates the defensive culture of medical practice. Italian physicians need to be trained, first of all, to become aware that information and consent are two distinct processes, albeit closely connected. Valid communication demands a higher level of professionalism from physicians. (shrink)

Whistleblowing (WB) is the practice of reporting immoral or illegal behavior by members of a legitimate organization with privileged access to information concerning an alleged wrongdoing within that organization. A common critique of WB draws on its supposed consequence of generating a climate of mutual distrust. This wariness is heightened in the case of external WB, which may lead to weakening public trust in an organization by diminishing its credibility. Accordingly, even the defenders of WB have presented it as an (...) individual conscientious extrema ratio; the justification of WB as a dutiful practice has lost plausibility. Contrary to this view, we present WB as a specific instance of institutional and individual moral duties of public accountability in nonideal conditions. WB is thus justified as a dutiful corrective practice within a general normative theory of institutions because it qualifies the individual and institutional moral demands attached to rule-governed institutional roles. (shrink)

This article offers a conceptual framework for discussing the role of envy within processes of transitional justice. Transitional justice importantly includes the transformation of intergroup dynamics of interaction in the aftermath of societal conflicts and upheavals. Such transformation aims to realise “interactive” justice in transitional justice by reshaping belief and value systems, and by moulding emotional responses between the involved parties. A nuanced understanding of the emotions at play in intergroup antagonistic dynamics of interaction is thus essential to transitional justice. (...) Among the many emotions that we could address in such scenarios, we target envy. Envy, in its various forms, features prominently in many societal conflicts and upheavals, and has, therefore, the potential to undermine or, conversely, support just intergroup interactions. However, the ambivalent role of this emotion has been scantly analysed in the philosophical literature on transitional justice. We make a start on filling this lacuna by developing a conceptual framework which is necessary to appreciate how envy and its varieties are epistemically and practically relevant to realising interactive justice in transitional justice processes. (shrink)

This essay undertakes a reexamination of the notion of the receptacle/chōra in Plato's Timaeus, asking what its value may be to feminists seeking to understand the topology of the feminine in Western philosophy. As the source of cosmic motion as well as a restless figurality, labile and polyvocal, the receptacle/chōra offers a fecund zone of destabilization that allows for an immanent critique of ancient metaphysics. Engaging with Derridean, Irigarayan, and Kristevan analyses, Bianchi explores whether receptacle/chōra can exceed its reduction to (...) the maternal-feminine, and remain answerable to contemporary theoretical concerns. (shrink)

The Guide offers some ideas concerning readings, topics, and seminar prompts for a philosophy course on political corruption.

This article contributes to the debate concerning the identification of politically relevant cases of corruption in a democracy by sketching the basic traits of an original liberal theory of institutional corruption. We define this form of corruption as a deviation with respect to the role entrusted to people occupying certain institutional positions, which are crucial for the implementation of public rules, for private gain. In order to illustrate the damages that corrupt behaviour makes to liberal democratic institutions, we discuss the (...) case of health care professionals’ abuse of their right to conscientious objection to abortion services. We show that the conscience clause can be instrumentally abused to sabotage democratically established public rules and thus exert undue private influence on their implementation. In this sense, from a liberal democratic perspective, institutional corruption is problematic because it is disruptive of such fundamental liberal ideals as the impartiality of public institutions and citizens’ political equality. (shrink)