Nel Tesoro del Duomo di Monza si conservano tre celebri dittici eburnei relativi alla dotazione di suppellettili liturgiche di Berengario del Friuli (inizi X secolo): il dittico di Stilicone e quello del Poeta e della Musa, entrambi tardo antichi; il dittico di re Davide e san Gregorio Magno, di datazione e lettura più controverse (VI secolo ed età carolingia). Primo editore dei pezzi è Anton Francesco Gori nel secondo volume del Thesaurus veterum diptychorum consularium et ecclesiasticorum (1759), corredato di tre (...) tavole di Andrea Scacciati. Pur non avendo mai visionato i manufatti, l’erudito fiorentino dedica ad essi un’ampia disamina critica basandosi essenzialmente sugli acquerelli del pittore Girolamo Ferroni, reclutato dal marchese milanese e prezioso intermediario Alessandro Teodoro Trivulzio. Nel 1794 il padre della storiografia monzese, il canonico Anton Francesco Frisi, risolve di rieditare i dittici in apertura del terzo tomo delle sue Memorie storiche di Monza e sua corte. Consigliato da quel don Carlo Trivulzio erudito e proprietario di un ricco nucleo di avori antichi, supportato dalle modeste incisioni di Giulio Cesare Bianchi, offre una rilettura che puntualizza ed emenda in parte quanto scritto dal Gori, condita da una vena polemica contro «chi non ha esaminati personalmente i Monumenti, sui quali ragiona». Sullo sfondo del contesto culturale dell’epoca e delle personalità che vi presero parte, con l’ausilio della documentazione divisa tra la Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana di Milano, l’Archivio della Fondazione Trivulzio e la Biblioteca Marucelliana di Firenze, il contributo intende proporre una ricostruzione degli avvenimenti con attenzione al rapporto tra originale (i dittici monzesi) e copia (disegni e incisioni che ne scaturirono). (shrink)

Analyzing the reception of Nietzsche’s work in the years following World War I is a delicate and important task, one that Nietzsche nella Rivoluzione conservatrice seeks to accomplish by focusing on the so-called Conservative Revolutionary movement and the prominent intellectuals who orbited it. The book is a rich summary of the eponymous congress held in Bologna, promoted by the University of Bologna and the Fondazione Gramsci Emilia-Romagna, and it contains fifteen essays from both young and established scholars, including the (...) editors of the volume, preceded by a short yet informative introduction. “Conservative Revolutionary” is an almost paradoxical expression, chosen by... (shrink)

This article argues for a new interpretation of the realist claim that politics is autonomous from morality and involves specific political values. First, this article defends an original normative source: functional normativity. Second, it advocates a substantive functional standard: political institutions ought to be assessed by their capacity to select and implement collective decisions. Drawing from the ‘etiological account’ in philosophy of biology, I will argue that functions yield normative standards, which are independent from morality. For example, a ‘good heart’ (...) is one that pumps blood well, and a good army is one that it is effective at exerting military force. I then interpret realism’s naturalistic conception of politics as an etiological function of social groups: namely making binding collective decisions under persistent disagreement. I conclude that political institutions should be evaluated realistically by how well they perform this task. Finally, I assess trade-offs between this functional political normativity and other moral values. I conclude that justice, fairness, freedom and equality remain obviously important concerns, but only once the basic political function is secured. (shrink)

Introduction to the monographic section on contemporary analytic metaphysics.

Is reality three-dimensional and becoming real (Presentism), or is reality four-dimensional and becoming illusory (Eternalism)? Both options raise difficulties. I argue that we do not need to be trapped by this dilemma. There is a third possibility: reality has a more complex temporal structure than either of these two naive options. Fundamental becoming is real, but local and unoriented. A notion of present is well defined, but only locally and in the context of approximations.

In this article the author will discuss Franz Brentano’s theory of intentionality and the ontological status of the intentional object specifically with respect to symbolic presentations. The role and function of intentionality are compared to the process of semeiosis. Several interesting parallels can be found between fundamental problems in the interpretation of the Brentanian notion of intentionality and issues in semiotics. In particular, the author focuses on the theory of Charles W. Morris and attempts to apply core notions of his (...) semiotics to clarify Brentano’s ambiguous account of intentional reference, the role of signs in symbolic presentations and how this relates to outer perception. (shrink)

This monograph addresses the question of the increasing irrelevance of philosophy, which has seen scientists as well as philosophers concluding that philosophy is dead and has dissolved into the sciences. It seeks to answer the question of whether or not philosophy can still be fruitful and what kind of philosophy can be such. The author argues that from its very beginning philosophy has focused on knowledge and methods for acquiring knowledge. This view, however, has generally been abandoned in the last (...) century with the belief that, unlike the sciences, philosophy makes no observations or experiments and requires only thought. Thus, in order for philosophy to once again be relevant, it needs to return to its roots and focus on knowledge as well as methods for acquiring knowledge. Accordingly, this book deals with several questions about knowledge that are essential to this view of philosophy, including mathematical knowledge. Coverage examines such issues as the nature of knowledge; plausibility and common sense; knowledge as problem solving; modeling scientific knowledge; mathematical objects, definitions, diagrams; mathematics and reality; and more. This monograph presents a new approach to philosophy, epistemology, and the philosophy of mathematics. It will appeal to graduate students and researchers with interests in the role of knowledge, the analytic method, models of science, and mathematics and reality. (shrink)

In this paper I unpack a realistic conception of politics by tightly defining its constitutive features: conflict and order. A conflict emerges when an actor is disposed to impose his/her views against the resistance of others. Conflicts are more problematic than moralists realize because they emerge unilaterally, are potentially violent, impermeable to content-based reason, and unavoidable. Order is then defined as an institutional framework that provides binding collective decisions. Order is deemed necessary because individuals need to cooperate to survive, but (...) groups cannot spontaneously secure collective decisions and are prone to conflicts. Particularly, the fact that potentially violent conflicts emerge unilaterally means that order requires coercion. I conclude that mischaracterizing conflict and order leads to undesirable normative principles, and that this criticism can be leveraged not only against Rawlsian liberals who moralize conflicts away, but also against some agonists who underestimate the need for order and some communitarians who underplay both circumstances. (shrink)

In the past century the received view of definition in mathematics has been the stipulative conception, according to which a definition merely stipulates the meaning of a term in other terms which are supposed to be already well known. The stipulative conception has been so absolutely dominant and accepted as unproblematic that the nature of definition has not been much discussed, yet it is inadequate. This paper examines its shortcomings and proposes an alternative, the heuristic conception.

The concept of social capital has become more important in understanding contemporary economic development in the era of globalization. This concept, however, requires a theoretical framework that could help to distinguish between forms of social capital with positive effects on local development and other forms that may have negative consequences. This article argues that in order to understand this difference, two conditions are crucial. First, social capital has to be considered in terms of social relations and social networks, rather than (...) in terms of culture and civicness. The second condition is that the interaction between social capital and other institutions, especially political institutions, has to be carefully analysed. Therefore, this article points to the crucial role of political factors - of the `embedded autonomy' of political action - in favouring a positive role of social capital in local economic development. (shrink)

In the paper we investigate typed axiomatizations of the truth predicate in which the axioms of truth come with a built-in, minimal and self-sufficient machinery to talk about syntactic aspects of an arbitrary base theory. Expanding previous works of the author and building on recent works of Albert Visser and Richard Heck, we give a precise characterization of these systems by investigating the strict relationships occurring between them, arithmetized model constructions in weak arithmetical systems and suitable set existence axioms. The (...) framework considered will give rise to some methodological remarks on the construction of truth theories and provide us with a privileged point of view to analyze the notion of truth arising from compositional principles in a typed setting. (shrink)

First published in 1997, this volume addressed the growing preoccupation of scientists at the time had in environmental phenomena, such as global warming, ozone layer depletion, acid rains, fresh water and ocean pollution, desertification, deforestation and the loss of bio-diversity. The crucial and pressing nature of these issues spawned says the author a new wave of research in environmental economics. The volume provides broad surveys of the developments in the economics of the environment and reports on the developing set of (...) environmental problems, analytical tools and economic policies. The importance of the developing approach was that environmental problems are no longer isolated from all other economic dimensions. Throughout the volume they are analysed in an open, generally non-competitive economy with transnational or global externalities. The first part deals with the relationship between the environment, economic growth and technological innovation. The second part analyses the optimal design of environmental taxation, while the third part considers the international dimension of environmental policy. (shrink)

In this paper I respond to Marcus William Hunt’s argument that vegan parents have pro tanto reasons for not raising their children on a vegan diet because such a diet is potentially harmful to children’s physical and social well-being. In my rebuttal, first I show that in practice all vegan diets, with the exception of wacky diets, are beneficial to children’s well-being ; and that all animal-based diets are potentially unhealthful. Second, I show that vegan children are no more socially (...) outcast than any other group. In other words, veganism does not harm the lives of children. Having considered several studies, I show that the moral reasons that vegan parents may have for raising their children on a vegan diet significantly outweigh the reasons for raising their children on an animal-based diet. Thus, I conclude that parents have a moral obligation to raise their children on a vegan diet. (shrink)

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 5, Page 869-885, September 2022.

An ecosystem is like Kantian totality: it cannot be reduced to object of knowledge, since each element of it is internal to the contingent correlation which sustains it. Its accidental metamorphoses create worlds of sense which are infinitely on the way.

One way to study and understand the notion of truth is to examine principles that we are willing to associate with truth, often because they conform to a pre-theoretical or to a semi-formal characterization of this concept. In comparing different collections of such principles, one requires formally precise notions of inter-theoretic reduction that are also adequate to compare these conceptual aspects. In this work I study possible ways to make precise the relation of conceptual equivalence between notions of truth associated (...) with collections of principles of truth. In doing so, I will consider refinements and strengthenings of the notion of relative truth-definability proposed by Fujimoto (2010): in particular I employ suitable variants of notions of equivalence of theories considered in Visser (2006) and Friedman & Visser (2014) to show that there are better candidates than mutual truth-definability for the role of sufficient condition for conceptual equivalence between the semantic notions associated with the theories. In the concluding part of the paper, I extend the techniques introduced in the first and show that there is a precise sense in which ramified truth (either disquotational or compositional) does not correspond to iterations of comprehension. (shrink)

La investigación presente analizará las semejanzas y relaciones encontradas entre los planteamientos de Edmund Husserl y Simone Weil respecto al fenómeno religioso de la idolatría. Para ello, señalaremos en primer lugar el tratamiento que la religión podría tener dentro del marco fenomenológico husserliano; posteriormente, nos enfocaremos en el análisis de una de las publicaciones póstumas de autoría weiliana. Respecto al filósofo austríaco, se recurrirá a textos de distintos períodos de su obra, por lo que implícitamente se contemplará una continuación entre (...) sus denominados análisis estáticos y los genéticos. (shrink)

La presente investigación busca generar un diálogo entre la filosofía de las ciencias de Susan Haack y la teoría queer de Judith Butler. Para ello, recorreremos primero los hitos más importantes del feminismo y, en un segundo momento, veremos cómo estos desembocaron en la teoría queer. Luego, tomaremos como hilo conductor el problema del cuerpo y de la evidencia objetiva para analizar, en un tercer momento, la postura butleriana y, en un cuarto momento, la haackiana. Como sección conclusiva, pondremos ambas (...) posturas en diálogo considerando sus planteamientos en un caso concreto: la intersexualidad. (shrink)

This article reflects on the value of training of health care professionals that find themselves in variously changing and complex settings, and who find themselves interacting with themes, problems and practices related to mental health. Starting from some reflections that emerged with operators involved in a professional training course within a specific research-intervention project, the contribution questions how a renewed “pedagogy of care” can help these professionals to better understand the nature and the constitutive factors of the process of signification (...) and re-signification of the experience of psychiatric illness, especially when one comes into contact with subjects involved in forced migratory experiences. (shrink)

Diano's Form and Event has long been known in Europe as a major work not only for classical studies but even more for contemporary philosophy, anticipating the work of Deleuze, Badiou, Esposito, and Agamben. It now appears in English for the first time, with a substantial Introduction that situates the book in the genealogy of modern political philosophy.

With his talk of the ”death of God“, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche presented a diagnosis of the future that is both problematic and highly topical. Although this had been the subject of exhaustive discussion in connection with the resulting practical problem of the loss of values, its relevance for the status and selfunderstanding of the theoretical sciences has not been broached. 17 contributions from well-known scholars approach the subject by highlighting the connection between the specific nature of modern science and (...) the non-involvement of theology. (shrink)

Choice can be defined in thermodynamical terms, and shown to have a thermodynamic cost: choosing between a binary alternative at temperature T dissipates an energy $$E\ge kT\ln 2$$.

The project of growing meat artificially represents for some the next best thing to humanity. If successful, it could be the solution to several problems, such as feeding a growing global population while reducing the environmental impact of raising animals for food and, of course, reducing the amount and degree of animal cruelty and suffering that is involved in animal farming. In this paper, I argue that the issue of the morality of such a project has been framed only in (...) terms of the best consequences for the environment, animals, and humans, or in terms of deontic principles. I argue that to appreciate how deep and difficult this issue is, it is necessary to consider it in terms of a virtue-oriented approach. Such an approach will reveal aspects that are not apparent, not contemplated by typical approaches, but are essential to our understanding of the morality of lab-grown meat. As I argue, evaluating the issue from a virtue-oriented perspective suggests that the project of in vitro meat should not be supported because it stems from unvirtuous motivations. (shrink)

Questions concerning the proof-theoretic strength of classical versus nonclassical theories of truth have received some attention recently. A particularly convenient case study concerns classical and nonclassical axiomatizations of fixed-point semantics. It is known that nonclassical axiomatizations in four- or three-valued logics are substantially weaker than their classical counterparts. In this paper we consider the addition of a suitable conditional to First-Degree Entailment—a logic recently studied by Hannes Leitgeb under the label HYPE. We show in particular that, by formulating the theory (...) PKF over HYPE, one obtains a theory that is sound with respect to fixed-point models, while being proof-theoretically on a par with its classical counterpart KF. Moreover, we establish that also its schematic extension—in the sense of Feferman—is as strong as the schematic extension of KF, thus matching the strength of predicative analysis. (shrink)

The philosophy of mathematics of the last few decades is commonly distinguished into mainstream and maverick, to which a ‘third way’ has been recently added, the philosophy of mathematical practice. In this paper the limitations of these trends in the philosophy of mathematics are pointed out, and it is argued that they are due to the fact that all of them are based on a top-down approach, that is, an approach which explains the nature of mathematics in terms of some (...) general unproven assumption. As an alternative, a bottom-up approach is proposed, which explains the nature of mathematics in terms of the activity of real individuals and interactions between them. This involves distinguishing between mathematics as a discipline and the mathematics embodied in organisms as a result of biological evolution, which however, while being distinguished, are not opposed. Moreover, it requires a view of mathematical proof, mathematical definition and mathematical objects which is alternative to the top-down approach. (shrink)

The existence of a close connection between results on axiomatic truth and the analysis of truth-theoretic deflationism is nowadays widely recognized. The first attempt to make such link precise can be traced back to the so-called conservativeness argument due to Leon Horsten, Stewart Shapiro and Jeffrey Ketland: by employing standard Gödelian phenomena, they concluded that deflationism is untenable as any adequate theory of truth leads to consequences that were not achievable by the base theory alone. In the paper I highlight, (...) as Shapiro and Ketland, the irreducible nature of truth axioms with respect to their base theories. But, I argue, this does not immediately delineate a notion of truth playing a substantial role in philosophical or scientific explanations. I first offer a refinement of Hartry Field’s reaction to the conservativeness argument by distinguishing between metatheoretic and object-theoretic consequences of the theory of truth and address some possible rejoinders. In the resulting picture, truth is an irreducible tool for metatheoretic ascent. How robust is this characterizaton? I test it by considering: a recent example, due to Leon Horsten, of the alleged explanatory role played by the truth predicate in the derivation of Fitch’s paradox; an essential weakening of theories of truth analyzed in the first part of the paper. (shrink)