Conversazioni di Gianni Vattimo con Francesco Barone, Remo Bodei, Italo Mancini, Vittorio Mathieu, Mario Perniola, Pier Aldo Rovatti, Emanuele Severino e Carlo Sini.

Il tema dell'anima come dimensione interna e come essenza dell'io, come campo di battaglia in cui costantemente vengono alla luce i suoi innumerevoli conflitti interni, tra forze o energie che si combattono tra di loro in un continuo scontro, in una lotta che si risolve a vantaggio di chi esercita un maggior dominio o potere, costituiscono, nel loro complesso, il panorama in cui si muove la riflessione: da una parte, la ragione (a cui spetta il comando), dall'altra, le svariate passioni, (...) i desideri disordinati (che tendono, invece, al pieno controllo dell'anima) legati al riconoscimento pubblico, all'autoaffermazione (ambizione, fama, onore, potere, ricchezza) assieme ai piaceri insaziabili (del cibo, del bere, dei sensi). L’esito finale di questa costante lotta non è mai scontato, in quanto il vincitore non è sempre lo stesso. Spesso, infatti, i sensi (contro ogni razionalità, contro ogni ragione) sembrano trascinarci in ogni direzione e da ciò risulta chiaro che, in molte occasioni, non è affatto la ragione ad avere il potere e il comando sulla nostra anima e sulla nostra condotta di vita, come invece dovrebbe. Dalla riflessione sulle dinamiche di questo conflitto all'interno di ogni individuo, conflitto che si estende all'esterno, fino a rispecchiarsi in egual modo nella città, si approda ad un programma di ricostruzione dell'armonia dell'anima e della città, dell'individuo e della comunità, dell'"interno" e dell'"esterno", dando forma ad una giusta, ordinata e armonica gerarchia di comando che conduce, in ultimo, al loro pieno benessere, e quindi alla loro felicità. (shrink)

Translators’ Abstract: In this introduction to his Italian translation of Reiner Schürmann’s, Gianni Carchia offers a short yet incisive interpretation of the compelling originality of Schürmann’s reading of Heidegger. Carchia points out that, contrary to much Heidegger literature, Schürmann insists on a three-tiered temporal difference rather than on a simple dichotomy between beings and being as the driver of the deconstruction of metaphysics, and it is only through this distinction that the an-archic as the evental and ahistorical origin of (...) being comes into view. What this displacement affords is a certain historicization of Heideggerian philosophy that brings out the anarchic, polymorphous, and protean nature of being and restores to acting its spontaneity and innocence. Observing that this anti-humanist naturalization of an-archy may indeed be closer to Eugen Fink’s cosmology, which grants autonomy to the extra-human, than to Heidegger’s history of Dasein, which confines us to “the prison of the human,” Carchia locates the contribution of Schürmann’s work in its deconstruction of the Idealist remnant in Heidegger. (shrink)

The first book-length philosophical study on the Presocratic influences in Plotinus’ Enneads.

Gianni Vattimo reexamines the roots of modernism and postmodernism in Nietzsche, Benjamin, and Heidegger. Exploring the links between concepts of nihilism and destiny in nineteenth-century humanism, Vattimo follows these trends in aesthetic and scientific theory from Benjamin to Bloch, Ricoeur, and Kuhn.

The ethical problem of privacy lies at the core of computer ethics and cyber ethics discussions. The extensive use of personal data in digital networks poses a serious threat to the user’s right of privacy not only at the level of a user’s data integrity and security but also at the level of a user’s identity and freedom. In normative ethical theory the need for an informational self-deterministic approach of privacy is stressed with greater emphasis on the control over personal (...) data. However, scant attention has been paid on a virtue ethics approach of information privacy. Plotinus’ discussion of self-determination is related to ethical virtue, human freedom and intellectual autonomy. The Plotinian virtue ethics approach of self-determination is not primarily related to the sphere of moral action, but to the quality of the self prior to moral practice. In this paper, it is argued that the problem of information privacy should be reconsidered in the light of Plotinus’ virtue ethics and his notion of self-determination. (shrink)

Questo volume raccoglie per la prima volta gli scritti filosofici e politici di Gianni Vattimo, presentati da Gaetano Chiurazzi con una introduzione di Antonio Gnoli, e ripercorre la traiettoria del suo pensiero, dalle riflessioni sui grandi maestri del Novecento alle nuove prospettive dell'ermeneutica filosofica e del pensiero debole--Front flap of jacket.

Through an exchange that is both intimate and enlightening, Vattimo and Girard share their unparalleled insight into the relationships among religion, modernity, and the role of Christianity, especially as it exists in our multicultural ...

We show that modal logics characterized by a class of frames satisfying the insertion property are suitable for Reiter's default logic. We refine the canonical fix point construction defined by Marek, Schwarz and Truszczyński for Reiter's default logic and thus we addrress a new paradigm for nonmonotonic logic. In fact, differently from the construction defined by these authors. we show that suitable modal logics for such a construction must indeed contain K D4. When reflexivity is added to the modal logic (...) used for the fix point construction then we come to the Marek Schwarz and Truszczyński framework for Reiter's default logic. Our framework, in fact, is appropriate also to the family of modal logics in between S4 and S4f. If, instead, reflexivity is dropped, then we show that a new family of modal logics is gained, namely the modal logics in between KD4 and KD4Z. The upper bound can be extended to the modal logic KD4LZ whenever the propositional language taken into account is finite. (shrink)

It is well known that interval orders are particularly interesting in decision theory, since they are reflexive, complete and nontransitive binary relations which may be fully represented by means of two real-valued functions. In this paper, we discuss the existence of a pair of nonnegative, positively homogeneous and semicontinuous real-valued functionals representing an interval order on a real cone in a topological vector space. We recover as a particular case a result concerning the existence of a nonnegative, positively homogeneous and (...) continuous utility functional for a complete preorder on a real cone in a topological vector space. (shrink)

In lines 9, 5-6 Turner [=9, 9-10 Burn]) of Nicetas of Remesiana’s De uigiliis seruorum Dei the Author suggests reading, in accordance with the majority of relevant manuscripts and with the passage as a whole, ne cruditatem ructantes et crapulam, against the text established by the pamphlet’s most recent editor on the sole basis of codex R. The re-use in the passage of a locus of Cyprian supports the restitutio textus and is a significant example of the imitational method employed (...) by Nicetas. (shrink)

A free linguistic writing in which lexemes unexpectedly means something, symbolically.

Having lost much of its political clout and theoretical power, communism no longer represents an appealing alternative to capitalism. In its original Marxist formulation, communism promised an ideal of development, but only through a logic of war, and while a number of reformist governments still promote this ideology, their legitimacy has steadily declined since the fall of the Berlin wall. Separating communism from its metaphysical foundations, which include an abiding faith in the immutable laws of history and an almost holy (...) conception of the proletariat, Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala recast Marx's theories at a time when capitalism's metaphysical moorings--in technology, empire, and industrialization--are buckling. While Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri call for a return of the revolutionary left, Vattimo and Zabala fear this would lead only to more violence and failed political policy. Instead, they adopt an antifoundationalist stance drawn from the hermeneutic thought of Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, and Richard Rorty. Hermeneutic communism leaves aside the ideal of development and the general call for revolution; it relies on interpretation rather than truth and proves more flexible in different contexts. Hermeneutic communism motivates a resistance to capitalism's inequalities yet intervenes against violence and authoritarianism by emphasizing the interpretative nature of truth. Paralleling Vattimo and Zabala's well-known work on the weakening of religion, _Hermeneutic Communism_ realizes the fully transformational, politically effective potential of Marxist thought. (shrink)

The aim of this critical note is to discuss Heraclitus' use of analogy as a pattern of thought not only with argumentative value but also ontological and epistemological status. Heraclitus' analogy is of two kinds and is expressed in the use of the adverbs ὥσπερ ("as") and ὅκωσπερ ("just as"). The first is used as an explanatory device, while the second denotes the ontological homogeneity of logos. Analogy reveals not only the inherent opposition of logos in each single thing, but (...) also the interdependent common interrelation between things. (shrink)