La tendance dominante de la philosophie moderne donne un sens aux grandes révolutions européennes du dernier demi-millénaire. Il est impossible de comprendre le fond de cette philosophie, si ce n'est à la lumière des revendications d'une liberté toujours plus étendue. Par ces révolutions, des monarchies héritées du Moyen Âge ont été balayées et l'autorité spirituelle de l'Église compromise. L'appel révolutionnaire à la liberté chrétienne de Luther, à la liberté de conscience de Cromwell, à la liberté politique de Robespierre, à la (...) liberté du besoin de Lénine, à la liberté face à la vérité du relativisme de nos jours, s'est révélé plus convaincant que le rappel de la liberté comme responsabilité, de la vérité qui nous rend libres (Jean, 8, 32). La surenchère dans la revendication d'une liberté toujours plus grande s'étend actuellement à la sphère des mœurs. Ce livre se limite à la critique intellectuelle et morale de la ligne aujourd'hui dominante, avec cet interrogatif : « Pourrons-nous vivre ce que nous prépare l'extraordinaire poussée de liberté qui, jusqu'à maintenant, s'est révélée gagnante, utile, crédible? ». (shrink)

CHAPTER Structure and function In physical systems made by a large number of basic constituents one can observe collective properties which find their ...

Mahamudra and Atiyoga are particular forms of Buddhist spirituality: Mahamudra, the `Great Seal', is considered by Tibetan teachers to be the essence of both the short path and the final instructions that conclude the gradual common and esoteric paths of Buddhist doctrines; Atiyoga or `Extreme Union' represents the Buddhist Dzogchen or `Great Completeness' doctrine. This volume comprises the translations, commentaries on and transliterations of some ancient Tibetan texts, authored by Buddhist mystics and Tantric teachers of Mahamudra and Atiyoga. The first (...) two texts are ascribed to Tilopa (928-1009). They are 'Advice on the Great Seal' (Phyag rgya chen po'i man ngag) and "The Treasury of Hymns" (Do ha mdzod). The third text is entitled 'The Introduction to Awareness - Natural Liberation through Seeing Nakedly' (Rig pa ngo sprod gcer mthong rang grol). Its author is Padmasambhava, the legendary Buddhist guru hailing from an ancient Indian kingdom known as Uddiyana. (shrink)

Non-compensatory aggregation rules are applied in a variety of problems such as voting theory, multi-criteria analysis, composite indicators, web ranking algorithms and so on. A major open problem is the fact that non-compensability implies the analytical cost of loosing all available information about intensity of preference, i.e. if some variables are measured on interval or ratio scales, they have to be treated as measured on an ordinal scale. Here this problem has been tackled in its most general formulation, that is (...) when mixed measurement scales (interval, ratio and ordinal) are used and both stochastic and fuzzy uncertainties are present. Objectives of this article are first to present a comprehensive review of useful solutions already proposed in the literature and second to advance the state of the art mainly in the theoretical guarantee that weights have the meaning of importance coefficients and they can be summarized in a voting matrix. This is a key result for using non-compensatory Condorcet consistent rules. A proof on the probability of existence of ties in the voting matrix is also developed. (shrink)

This work suggests how much human sciences can learn from a booklet almost all cultures know, The Little Prince. It stimulates to read them in their anthropological aspects of behavior facing alterity, highlighting its value without proposing it as educational element to homogenize the different. The reflection is thus focused on the demolishing and lasting effects of European culture during its colonization of American and African people. The contribution ends with Ferraioli and De Vitoria's considerations on a society based on (...) the axiom of the free circulation of men and goods, and the legitimization of thinking given by natural law. (shrink)

Nel 2012 la Casa editrice Tilgher ha cessato la sua attività. E’ un evento grave, che dà a pensare - di là da quel che comporta per il Giornale di Metafisica, la sua storia e la sua tradizione - perché non dovuto a una scelta ma, in gran parte, alla difficoltà di far fronte alla condizione di estremo disaggio in cui versano attualmente l’editoria scientifica e, più in generale, la cultura e la ricerca. Anche questo disagio è specchio della più (...) ampia crisi, non solo economica ma anche istituzionale ed etica, che ha investito il nostro paese, l’Europa, e il mondo; abbastanza pervasiva e profonda. Abbastanza significativa del nostro tempo da interpellare per proprio conto la comunità di ricerca di quanti, fra coloro che hanno interesse alla metafisica e ai suoi temi, frequentano a vario livello l’attività della Rivista. ... (shrink)

In this paper, we provide an overview of research highlighting the relation between cultural processes, social norms, and food choices, discussing the implication of these findings for the promotion of more sustainable lifestyles. Our aim is to outline how environmental psychological research on urban affordances, through the specific concepts of restorative environments and walkability, could complement these findings to better understand human health, wellbeing and quality of life. We highlight how social norms and cultural processes are linked to food choices, (...) and we discuss the possible health-related outcomes of cultural differences in food practices, their relation to acculturation and globalization processes. We also discuss the concepts of restorative environments and walkability as positive urban affordances, and their relation to human well being, and the possibile link with cultural process and sustainable lifestyles. Finally, we outline issues for future research and areas for policy making and interventions on the links between cultural processes, healthy and sustainable food consumption and urban affordances, for the pursuit of public health, wellbeing and environmental sustainability. (shrink)

In this article the author reflects on some of the most recent instances of the hybridization of identities, brought about by movements of migration in the more general context of globalization. New situations triggered by the epoch-making historical developments of the world we live in require us to modify our notion of individual identity, which is no longer seen as a fundamental and self-referential essence of the individual, but rather as the product of a number of relational variables, many of (...) which arise from processes of ethnic amalgamation and cultural blending. In this new historical condition, one that old styles of thought are no longer able to grasp, the notion of memory is paramount. Memory, as Said has indicated, is connected to Vico’s concept of “invention” as “finding again,” that is, as an incessant process of the remembrance and the discovery of stories that are lived, leading to a “re-creation” and reconfiguration of one’s roots. This article, however, does not simply formulate, articulate and discuss the problem, but also raises the question of its genealogy, locating this in Vico’s distinction between the topical and the critical, that is connected with the triad of memory-imagination-ingenuity, and in certain philosophical positions – such as that of Dilthey, which is specifically acknowledged here – that involve an instance of hybridism, interpreted as a relationship between biological-natural and psychological subjectivity on one hand and historical-cultural identity on the other. (shrink)