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)

David Estlund and Massimo Renzo argue that, given the right background conditions, combatants are obligated to obey orders to fight in unjust wars, a thesis they put forward even as they recognize that this involves committing serious moral wrongs. Their views, then, fall between traditionalism and revisionism in the theory of just war. We argue that both Estlund and Renzo fail to adequately distinguish between binding and nonbinding serious morally wrong orders, that their views are incompatible with their assumed fact‐relative (...) understanding of morality, and that they fail to establish that combatants are obligated to obey orders to fight in unjust wars. We conclude that just as untenable as these two middle‐ground positions is the traditionalist view. (shrink)

Catholic theologians after Trent saw the Protestant teaching about the remnants of original sin in the justified as one of the ‘chief ’ errors of Protestant soteriology. Martin Luther, John Calvin, Martin Chemnitz, and many Protestant theologians believed that a view of concupiscence as sinful, strictly speaking, did away with any reliance on good works. This conviction also clarified the Christian’s dependence on the imputed righteousness of Christ. Catholic theologians condemned this position as detracting from the work of Christ who (...) takes away the sins of the world. The rejection of this teaching—and the affirmation of Trent’s statement that original sin is taken away and that the justified at baptism is without stain or ‘immaculate’ before God—is essential for understanding Catholic opposition to Protestant soteriology. Two Spanish Dominican Thomists, Domingo de Soto and Bartolomé de Medina, rejected the Protestant teaching on imputation in part because of its connection with the view on the remnants of original sin in the justified. Adrian and Peter van Walenburch, brothers who served as auxiliary bishops of Cologne in the second half of the seventeenth century, argued that the Protestants of their time now agreed with the Catholic Church on a number of soteriological points. They also drew upon some of their post–Tridentine predecessors to offer a Catholic account of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. Nonetheless, the issue of sin in the justified remained a point of serious controversy. (shrink)

Luigi Pareyson’s concept of formativity is one of his most relevant and original concepts. In this paper I will give a short exposition of this concept in Pareyson’s Estetica and try to show how it can account, better as other object-, subject-, target- oriented theories, even of some features of contemporary art. The very relevant innovation that we can find in this concept is the shift from a concept of art as poiesis—as it is in Aristotle, namely, as a production (...) of an object—to the concept of art as praxis, that is, as an activity which involves the entire doing of the artist. As a doing that invents the form of doing, formativity appears as a kind of schematism that operates, not only without concept, as it is in Kant’s Critique of Judgement, but even without object. The thesis here suggested is that formativity can be understood as a transcendentalism of invention. (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)

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)

In this article I introduce the notion of crucial evidence and I use it to shed light on an ongoing scholarly controversy in Hobbes studies, namely whether Hobbes holds a prudential or a deontological theory of contractual obligation. Even though there is important evidence for both readings, I argue that there is crucial evidence for interpreting Hobbes’s account in a deontological fashion.

The paper discusses the relationship between time and understanding in Heidegger’s phenomenological-ontological hermeneutics. Even thanks to an innovative concept of understanding as an open and projecting dimension, Heidegger can reach the qualitative, dynamic and differential concept of time, which is the basis of the Daseinsanalyse in Sein und Zeit. Only if comprehension is meant as a primary phenomenon can time be thought as an ecstatic disclosedness, i.e. an original, ontologically inderivative, unprogrammable non-functionalistic and essential temporality, which always involves and concerns (...) us. (shrink)

Yitzhak Benbaji argues that those combatants who have agreed to blindly obey their superiors and who are ordered to fight in unjust wars are released from their duty to deliberate about the merits of the acts that they are ordered to perform. This is because their agreements result in the combatants’ permissible lack of a necessary capacity for moral responsibility. Thus, the combatants are not morally responsible for their wrongful acts—their moral responsibility is “transferred” to their superiors. We argue, first, (...) that Benbaji’s own reasoning suggests that the agreements entered into between the combatants and their superiors are not binding and, second, that even if such agreements are binding, those combatants who obey their orders to fight are nevertheless morally responsible for their wrongful acts. Thus, Benbaji has failed to show that the combatants are permitted to act as ordered. By critically examining Benbaji’s view, then, we defend the revisionist position that just and unjust combatants are morally unequal. (shrink)

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)

This book offers a new and original hypothesis on the origin of modal ontology, whose roots can be traced back to the mathematical debate about incommensurable magnitudes, which forms the implicit background for Plato’s later dialogues and culminates in the definition of being as dynamis in the Sophist. Incommensurable magnitudes – also called dynameis by Theaetetus – are presented as the solution to the problem of non-being and serve as the cornerstone for a philosophy of difference and becoming. This shift (...) also marks the passage to another form of rationality – one not of the measure, but of the mediation. The book argues that the ontology and the rationality which arise out of the discovery of incommensurable constitutes a thread that runs through the entire history of philosophy, one that leads to Kantian transcendentalism and to the philosophies derived from it, such as Hegelianism and philosophical hermeneutics. Readers discover an insightful exchange with some of the most important issues in philosophy, newly reconsidered from the point of view of an ontology of the incommensurable. These issues include the infinite, the continuum, existence, and difference. This text appeals to students and researchers in the fields of ancient philosophy, German idealism, philosophical hermeneutics and the history of mathematics. (shrink)

John Locke says that a victim is permitted to kill a Conditional Threat in self-defense. Yet, David Rodin argues that killing is disproportionate to the harm averted and is therefore impermissible. But Rodin mischaracterizes the situation faced by a Conditional Threat victim as analyzed by Locke. In this article, I aim to provide a more satisfactory reading of Locke on self-defense against Conditional Threats, particularly of the thesis that killing involves a proportionate response to the harm averted. In addition to (...) this, I also aim to further elaborate and defend Locke's view. First, I show that a Conditional Threat deprives his victim of her freedom to act as she thinks fit, without having to depend on the Conditional Threat's arbitrary will. Second, I argue that an interest in not being deprived of one's freedom to act as one thinks fit, without having to depend on another person's arbitrary will, by a conditional threat of deadly harm, is of sufficient value to make killing a proportionate act, especially if the person is highly morally culpable. If killing also meets the necessity condition of justified self-defense (admittedly, a big “if”), it follows that Locke, not Rodin, holds the correct view. (shrink)

The author introduces the notions of crucial argument and crucial evidence in the philosophy of intellectual history (broadly construed, including the history of political thought). He will use these concepts and take sides in an important controversy in Hobbes studies, namely whether Hobbes holds a prudential or a deontological theory of contractual obligation. Though there is textual evidence for both readings, he will argue that there is especially relevant evidence - crucial evidence - for interpreting Hobbes's account in a deontological (...) fashion. (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 defensa gadameriana del carácter extra-metódico de la verdad de las ciencias humanas, teorizada en Verdad y método, no es el simple rechazo del método; ella nace de la conciencia de que hay verdades que no pueden ser reducibles a las condiciones del método, porque se refieren a una dimensión ontológica que no se refiere a la repetitividad y a la conmensurabilidad. Tales aspectos de lo real son los acontecimientos contingentes, accidentales, aquellos que definimos como propiamente históricos. En este texto (...) me propongo poner a la luz esta dimensión ontológica, que en Aristóteles está en particular en aquella de la praxis, de la acción humana, buscando mostrar que la necesidad de su tematización está estrechamente ligada a las discusiones lógicas y ontológicas que atravesaron el pensamiento griego después del descubrimiento de las grandezas inconmensurables. La ontología de la praxis es una ontología que toma en consideración aquella “irracionalidad” constituida a partir de lo contingente y lo accidental, a la que corresponde una forma de racionalidad que no es más conmensuradora sino mediadora, representada por la phrónesis Gadamer’s vindication of the extra-methodical feature of truth in the human sciences put forward in Truth and Method does not mean a mere refusal of method: rather, it arises from the awareness that there are truths which are not reducible to the conditions of repeatability and commensurability set up by methodical thinking. In fact, the truths of the human sciences refer to the ontological dimension of the contingent and the accidental, i.e. to the dimension of the historical. In this essay I aim at highlighting this ontological dimension, which for Aristotle is eminently that of the praxis and of human action. I will show that such an ontology is a consequence of the logical and ontological discussions which crisscrossed Greek thought after the discovery of the incommensurable magnitudes. The ontology of praxis is an ontology which takes into account the “irrationality” represented by the contingent, the accidental, to which a new form of rationality corresponds: that of phrónesis. Phrónesis is in fact not a commensurative but a mediative rationality. (shrink)

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

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 will argue for the similarity between some aspects of Aristotle’s doctrine of causes and a particular kind of interventionist theory of causality. The interventionist account hypothesizes that there is a connection between causation and human intervention: the idea of a causal relation between two events is generated by the reflection of human beings on their own operating. This view is remindful of the Aristotelian concept of αἴτιον, which is linked to the figure of the αἴτιος, the person who is (...) responsible of an action. Aristotle conceives of the efficient cause as the active element which, in the φύσις, gives rise to movement and imposes the form, in analogy with the active element that in τέχνη operates the production: the craftsman. This analogy suggests that Aristotle conceives of the causation on the basis of the human ability to modify the environment with aims. Within the debate on the manipulative theory the classical accounts worked out by Collingwood, Gasking and von Wright have been recently criticized by Woodward. von Wright’s reductive account explains causation on the basis of human free action, while Woodward regards this reduction as a dangerous move which makes causal explanations too much anthropomorphic. I will show that Aristotle’s doctrine of causes is more similar to von Wright’s account and that the Aristotelian analysis of becoming supports von Wright’s reductive interventionism against Woodward’s criticism. Furthermore, I will draw a comparison between interventionism and dispositionalism, where the latter is another contemporary account of causation that claims Aristotelian roots. (shrink)

v. 1. Teorica dei governi e governo parlamentare -- v. 2. Elementi di scienza politica.

En el presente trabajo sostengo que los argumentos específicos desarrollados por John Rawls para justificar la adopción de un estándar de bienes sociales primarios no logran su cometido. En primer lugar, presento y critico los argumentos rawlsianos relacionados con intuiciones antidiscriminatorias y con el hecho del pluralismo razonable. Asimismo, caracterizo y critico las ideas rawlsianas concernientes al alcance del concepto de equidad, así como el argumento de los gustos caros y de la responsabilidad por los fines. Estimo que ellos no (...) logran justificar el distribuendum recursivista de bienes sociales primarios. En cambio, entiendo que tales consideraciones brindan apoyo a un estándar bienestarista. Ello se debe a que un estándar welfarista enfrenta exitosamente las dificultades que Rawls menciona para favorecer el estándar recursivista de bienes sociales primarios. In the present paper I argue that the specific arguments developed by John Rawls to justify the standard of social primary goods do not succeed. In the first place I develop and criticize the Rawlsian arguments grounded in antidiscriminatory intuitions and the fact of reasonable pluralism. I also characterize and criticize Rawls's ideas concerning the scope of the concept of fairness as well as his argument concerning extensive tastes and responsibility for ends. I believe that they do not justify a resourcist distribuendum. On the contrary, I argue that such considerations support a welfarist standard. The reason is that a welfarist standard successfully deals with the difficulties Rawls mentions in favoring the resourcist standard of social primary goods. (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.

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 Head of Janus: Hermeneutics and Deconstruction in Gadamer and Derrida between Agreement and Disagreement. The paper aims to discuss the complexity of the relationship between Gadamer’s Hermeneutics and Derrida’s Deconstruction in order to remove the usual opposition between these two thinkers and their philosophical perspectives. It is possible to build a collaboration against every idealistic and subjectivist foundation moving from the hermeneutic-deconstructive interaction between the concepts of identity and difference, understanding and sense, writing and reading etc. Only in this (...) way can the so-called improbable debate become an un-interrupted dialogue: the distance ceases to be an insuperable obstacle and becomes an openness of sense. (shrink)