The 1830s and 1840s are the formative years of modern public health in Britain, when the poor law bureaucrat Edwin Chadwick conceived his vision of public health through public works and began the campaign for the construction of the kinds of water and sewerage works that ultimately became the standard components of urban infrastructure throughout the developed world. This book first explores that vision and campaign against the backdrop of the great "condition-of-England" questions of the period, of what rights and (...) expectations working people could justifiably have in regard to political participation, food, shelter and conditions of work. It examines the ways Chadwick's sanitarianism fit the political needs of the much-hated Poor Law Commission and of Whig and Tory governments, each seeking some antidote to revolutionary Charitism. It then reviews the Chadwickians' efforts to solve the host of problems they met in trying to implement the sanitary idea: of what responsibilities central and local units of government, and private contractors, were to have; of how townspeople could be persuaded to embark on untried public technologies; of where the new public health experts were to come from; and of how elegant technical designs were to be fitted to the unique social, political and geographic circumstances of individual towns. Rejecting the view that Chadwick's program was a simple response to an obvious urban problem Professor Hamlin argues that at the time a "public health" focusing narrowly on sanitary public works represented a retreat of public medicine from involvement with the great social issues of the Industrial Revolution. In exploring the views of medical men who were critical of Chadwick, Hamlin suggests the parameters of a public health that might have been, in which concern for health and well-being becomes the foundation of a public medicine that is a principal guarantor of social justice. This book offers modern public heatlh professionals elements of a forgotten professional heritage that might be useful in responding to the bewildering range of health problems we now confront. (shrink)

According to the doctrine set out in Book X of the Republic, art is for Plato three degrees far from truth. This doctrine is based on the representative character of art: in his productions, the artist takes sensible things and not the ideas as his model, and ignores the use of the objects that the craftsman produces. In the essay The Origin of the Work of Art, Heidegger completely reverses this Platonic hierarchy. The essay seems to be an indirect response (...) to Plato, as it discusses exactly the distinctions Plato draws, between natural object, object of use and work of art. The work of art – even when it imitates an object of use, as in the case of van Gogh’s painting of a pair of shoes – is for Heidegger the “setting-itself-to-work of truth”, because it shows the primarily ontological character of every work: its fabrication, that is, its historical being. The truth of the work of art lies in its historical character, and the work of art is the happening of truth because, more than any other object, its essence consists precisely in showing the temporal character as the essence of every object, even the natural ones. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to analyse a passage of the pseudoepigraphic Carmen de resurrectione which relates to insipientes, interpreted as those who do not accept that the rational observation of nature proves the existence of a unique creator God. Such a refusal is believed to make them worthy of eternal damnation. The resulting concept of sapientia involves both ratio and voluntas; it is also connected with gnoseology and soteriology. A similar concept can be found in the Aquitanian poetry (...) of the fifth century and in the theology of the so-called Semipelagians. This similarity calls into question the traditional dating and the supposed area of origin of the Carmen. (shrink)

Humans make decisions about social information efficiently, despite – or perhaps because of – the sheer scale of data available. Of these various signals, sex cues are vitally important, yet understanding whether participants perceive them as static or dynamic is unknown. The present study addressed the related question of how expertise impinges on sex judgements. Participants were asked to target female and male exemplars from a set of own- or other-race hand images. Data show: that the own-race sex categorisation advantage (...) observed previously using face stimuli can occur in relation to hands, and sensitivity of Asian participants, but not Caucasian participants, is dynamic relative to how many fe/males there are in a set. Implications of these findings are discussed as further evidence that there exists a pan-stimulus sex processor, and as fresh evidence that human sex perception can change probabilistically. (shrink)

This is my first professional philosophical essay. I wrote "The twofold meaning of being" in 1996 when I was a student of Nunzio Incardona at University of Palermo (Italy) and before my degree thesis, "The difference in Aristotle’s Metaphysics". It still waits to be published.

Gaetano Rametta,Roberto Formisano | : Le présent essai tente de dégager les structures fondamentales de la philosophie de la religion de Fichte après 1800. Une attention particulière est accordée à l’Initiation à la vie bienheureuse et à la Doctrine de l’État. La connaissance théorique, la version johannique de la chrétienté, ainsi qu’une nouvelle conception de l’État sont interprétées ici comme autant de visages différents d’un système philosophique strictement interconnecté. Dans sa période berlinoise, Fichte n’a plus conçu le sujet comme (...) le premier principe de sa Doctrine de la science, mais plutôt comme l’« image » transcendantale au travers de laquelle s’écoule le flot d’une vie indivisée et spirituellement transfigurée. | : The present essay tries to show the fundamental structures of Fichte’s philosophy of religion after 1800. Particular attention is focused on the Introduction to a Blessed Life and the Theory of the State. Theoretical knowledge, John’s version of Christianity, and a new concept of the State are here interpreted as different faces of a strictly interconnected philosophical system. In his Berliner period, Fichte did not conceive the Subject any more as the “first principle” of his Doctrine of science, but rather as the transcendental “image” through which flows the stream of an undivided and spiritually transfigured Life. (shrink)

In this text, I connect the concept of existence worked out by Heidegger with the concepts of radical understanding. Under this concept I mean the idea that existence is the radical content of every understanding. The fact that according to Heidegger existence is understanding is then explained through their common structure: existence is possibility as well as understanding is directed prominently to possibility. But, as it is shown through wider references to ancient as well as to some contemporary discussions, possibility (...) introduces in the structure of existence a certain incommensurability: that is why existence can never be reduced to a positive, actual reality, but is always “something more” than actuality. (shrink)

La complessa, profonda e articolata costruzione filosofica di Michel Henry (1922-2002), sviluppata nell’arco di più di quaranta anni, è interamente dominata dalla passione per la verità e dalla fedeltà alla ricerca. Per comprenderla a fondo è necessaria una solida conoscenza della tradizione filosofica e fenomenologica a lui precedente, che tenga conto non solo del pensiero di Heidegger e Husserl ma anche — tra gli altri — di Cartesio, Kant, Hegel, Merleau-Ponty e Sartre. Sulla base di una at...

: I shall discuss the relationship between the interventionist theory of causation and free action. Interventionist accounts of causation define causation on the basis of “intervention”. These theories can be reductive, if they explain causes on the basis of free human interventions, or non-reductive, if they consider causes and interventions as two inter-defined concepts, where interventions are regarded as explicitly not human. I will show that the dilemma between reductive and non-reductive interventionist theories of causality can be overcome in favour (...) of reductive accounts, with regard to what causation is in an anthropological sense, and with regard to the causal explanation of phenomena. Non-reductive accounts, explaining causes based on interventions and defining interventions as special causes create a dangerous explanatory circularity between cause and intervention and are not able to give a general and explanatory idea of causation. Reductive interventionist theories, by contrast, do not suffer from this circularity. Keywords: Causation; Free Action; Experiment; Interventionist Theory of Causality; Anthropomorphism L’azione libera e le teorie interventiste della causalità Riassunto: Intendo discutere il rapporto tra la teoria interventista della causalità e l’azione libera. Gli approcci interventisti alla causalità definiscono la causazione sulla base dell’“intervento”. Queste teorie possono essere riduttive, se spiegano le cause in base all’intervento umano come libero intervento umano, oppure non-riduttive, se considerano cause e interventi come due concetti inter-definiti, dove gli interventi sono considerati come esplicitamente non umani. Intendo mostrare che il dilemma tra teorie interventista della causalità di tipo riduttivo e non-riduttivo può essere superato in favore degli approcci riduttivi, con riferimento a ciò che la causazione è in senso antropologico e con riferimento alla spiegazione causale dei fenomeni. Gli approcci non-riduttivi, spiegando le cause sulla base di interventi e definendo gli interventi come cause speciali, creano una perniciosa circolarità esplicativa tra cause e interventi e non sono in grado di dare un’idea generale ed esplicativa della causazione. Le teorie interventiste riduttive, al contrario, non soffrono di questa circolarità. Keywords: Causazione; Azione libera; esperimento; Teoria interventista della causalità; Antropomorfismo. (shrink)

La critique kierkegaardienne de Hegel est‑elle si facile à désamorcer? Si l’on accepte de répondre aux véritables questions posées par l’auteur, sans les faire passer au préalable par la machine conceptuelle hégélienne, ce qui se dessine est un nouvel ordre problématique où il devient difficile de réduire Kierkegaard à un moment du système hégélien : moment nécessaire, certes, mais aussi dépassable. Nous avons choisi d’éclaircir ce nouvel ordre problématique et de le faire rétroagir sur la philosophie hégélienne. La fonction d’autorialité (...) du texte philosophique, l’histoire, le temps : voici les champs qui se retrouveront bouleversés par la pensée kierkegaardienne du fait absolu de la foi. C’est l’amour du paradoxe qui s’opposera en définitive à Hegel, tel le moteur qui pousse la pensée philosophique à prendre véritablement en compte la singularité. (shrink)

Il CRED, Centro di ricerca per l’estetica del diritto, ha sede presso il Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza ed Economia dell’Università Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria.

This paper provides a synthesis and translation of Le strutture speculative della dottrina della scienza; Il pensiero di J.G. Fichte negli anni 1801–1807 (Genova: Pantograf, 1995) by Gaetano Rametta. The 1807 Wissenschaftslehre offers important insight into Fichte’s mittlere Phase (1801–1807). Fichte’s text and Rametta’s work on it remain untranslated into English; this translation, the notes to which offer a running commentary and defi nitions of key terms, intends to make the former known through the latter. Rametta focuses on Fichte’s (...) analysis of vision, and the vision of vision. In his middle-period and later work, Fichte developed this theme far past the early Jena-period doctrine thereof, as treated by Dieter Henrich. Within this thematic context, Rametta also discusses the proof-structure of the 1807 WL, the distinction between Wahrheitslehre and Phänomenologie, and the concept of Weisheit or “wisdom.” The article concludes with a treatment of the significance of Fichte’s later philosophy for the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

La traduction n’est pas seulement un problème linguistique mais aussi, et d’abord, un problème d’ordre éthique et politique. Chez les Grecs les présupposés linguistiques de la communauté font de la traduc­tion une opération visant à mettre en évidence les équivalences ou les synonymies, qui sont les fondements de toute conception universaliste du langage. Certaines théories contemporaines de la traduction – notamment celles de Benjamin et d’Ortega y Gasset – permettent en revanche d’en­tendre le processus traductif d’une manière différente : comme (...) un pro­cessus historique de déploiement des différences qui, dans leur totalité, recomposent la langue pure, chez Benjamin ; ou comme un processus où les déséquivalences et l’incommensurabilité entre les langues viennent au premier plan, favorisant l’ouverture vers l’autre et l’étranger, chez Ortega y Gasset. Une telle conception de la traduction nous permet de penser une ontologie différente, dans laquelle le concept de dynamis occupe une posi­tion centrale. (shrink)

Kant’s critical project has been understood as a description of the functioning of knowledge. Such an understanding of the first Critique seems however limited, especially if we consider Kant’s frequent use of political analogies. These analogies suggest another reading in which Kant’s critical project emerges as an attempt to overcome a state of nature in reason through the institution of a legal state in and by reason itself. Seen in this perspective, Kant’s critical metaphysics can be considered revolutionary, because it (...) assumes the issues of the two revolutions of modernity, the political and the scientific one: from the former, Kant adopts the conviction that a conflict can be settled only through the separation and reciprocal limitation of powers, as theorized by Locke and Montesquieu - and thus neither by force nor by the establishment of an absolute power; from the latter, he acquires a model of proof, which is based, not on description, but on the elaboration of an explicative hypothesis. The Critique of Pure Reason, then, is not a mere treatise of epistemology or of descriptive metaphysics, but the attempt of setting up a policy of reason at the service of peace and civil communal life. (shrink)

Introduzione.--Federico Enrico Jacobi.--Carlo Leonardo Reinhold.--Enesidemo (Graziadio Ernesto Schulze).--Sigismondo Beck.--Salomone Maimon.--Conclusione.

This essay emphasizes how Vico was one of the modern philosophers to set himself the goal to reconstruct the history of the primitive world. Differently from several authors who preceded him and also other contemporary thinkers, the Neapolitan philosopher showed that the world of the origin wasn’t idyllic, but it was affected by fear, anguish and basic needs. What mainly characterizes Vico, however, is the fact that he represented the primitive world not as a unitary and fixed block, but as (...) a world made of different historical phases and of class and social conflicts. As there were no written documents, Vico elaborated a reconstruction of history, basing it on a new and revolutionary theory of myths which, being based on creativity induced by fantasy, are called “universali fantastici”. (shrink)

Dans la dernière phase de sa vie et de ses recherches, Michel Henry a fait dialoguer sa propre phénoménologie de la vie avec le kérygme et la pensée chrétienne, estimant que, depuis ses origines, le christianisme a vécu la révélation de Dieu non pas comme une connaissance mais comme une vie, la Vie même de Dieu dans laquelle les hommes sont invités à entrer, une vie qui configure les êtres humains à partir de la perspective trinitaire comme des fils dans (...) le Fils, relisant ainsi le christianisme en philosophe, ou comme une archi-phénoménologie. Grâce à la visée philosophique, les principes fondamentaux du christianisme peuvent avoir une nouvelle explicitation rationnelle, et la pensée chrétienne en tant que telle, agissant comme un prisme interprétatif, contribue à jeter un éclairage différent sur les principes généraux et les stratégies opérationnelles de la phénoménologie. De cette façon, on acquiert deux lieux forces, qui amènent Henry à mettre en évidence, d’une part, la connotation phénoménologique du premier et d’autre part, mais simultanément, à défendre le droit et l’importance de l’attention au phénomène chrétien par l’investigation philosophique. Parmi les nombreux thèmes pris en considération par Henry, pour cet essai, nous avons choisi d’analyser la relation Trinité-humanité et le concept de vérité du christianisme, que Henry oppose à la vérité du monde. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to argue that, in order for the debate in Computing and philosophy to move forward with respect to its current state, the advances of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence of the last decades must be taken into account. Computational reflection, one of these advances, is presented in detail and its philosophical implications are discussed, in contrast with old-fashioned views of computational systems such as those presented by Lucas’ papers on Minds and Machines.

Ma quei 500 cittadini che un complicato sorteggio aveva autorizzato a prendere posto sulle scalee del dikasterion non potevano essere in condizione di comprendere se quelle elevate a carico di Socrate davvero cogliessero il suo comportamento e la realtàche lo riguardava o invece fossero imputazioni speciose e strumentali. Non potevano intendere la discrasia tra i fatti attribuiti e una realtà fattuale vagamente somigliante ai medesimi, ovvero tra i suoi giovanili interessi naturalistici, il daimonion e l'amore per il filosofico dialeghestai. Non (...) potevano capire che nell'animo dell'Ateniese non c'era affatto un nuovo credo religioso né la smania di introdurlo in città, se mai il bisogno di una più consapevole religiosità accompagnato da una tensione sincera verso il vero e il giusto. Bisogni di spiritualità che difficilmente potevano trovare in delle menti - specie quelle dei meno giovani - ferme alle tradizioni, ai riti sacerdotali, alla sacralità degli oracoli, alla parola degli indovini, alle processioni, ai sacrifici votivi, e non ancora pronte a recepire la bellezza del pensare libero e l'urgenza etica di sottoporre a verifica ogni asserto di rilievo"--Page 2 of cover. (shrink)