There are few problems to which legal philosophers have devoted more attention than the relationship between morality and law, or, said in different terms, between the “good” and the “obligatory”. One might think that all that should and could be said about it has already been uttered or written. Nevertheless philosophy — and legal philosophy is no exception — is just this: rethinking old problems which are in fact always new,1 and for which no definitive solution is given — nor (...) is possible, I would add — and which need a permanent effort of reassessment. There is no reason for disappointment or despair in this endless work. It is neither pointless nor irrelevant. (shrink)

The term “scientism” is used in a variety of ways with both negative and positive connotations. I suggest that some of these uses are inappropriate, as they aim simply at dismissing without argument an approach that a particular author does not like. However, there are legitimate negative uses of the term, which I explore by way of an analogy with the term “pseudoscience.” I discuss these issues by way of a recent specific example provided by a controversy in the field (...) of bioethics concerning the value, or lack thereof, of homeopathy. I then frame the debate about scientism within the broader context of C.P. Snow’s famous essay on the “two cultures.”. (shrink)

El presente artículo de revisión analiza las convergencias y diferencias entre el pensamiento complejo y laecología de saberes con el propósito de explorar posibilidades de complementación y sinergias en el marco de una epistemología crítica. Para tal efecto se ha realizado una revisión bibliográfica apoyada por los métodos deductivo y hermenéutico. Para la caracterización del pensamiento complejo se ha revisado la obra de Edgar Morin y otros autores como Boaventura de Sousa Santos. De la revisión se concluye que tanto el (...) pensamiento complejo como la ecología de saberes tienen similitudes pues comparten en mayor o menor medida los principios de sistemas organizados, dialogicidad, recursividad y retroactividad. Además, son explícitos en superar la distinción sujeto-objeto para pasar a una relación sujeto-sujeto. Ambas propuestas constituyen alternativas al pensamiento científico hegemónico y ponen el valor el pluralismo cognitivo y la justicia cognitiva. La principal diferencia es que la ecología de saberes tiene una apuesta más explícita por los conocimientos de los movimientos sociales en sus luchas de resistencia frente a las diversas formas del colonialismo vigente, que tienen correlato con un sistema económico que privilegia el mercado a la vida. En tal sentido es posible reconocer en la ecología de saberes un carácter más político. Ambas propuestas, aunque con diferencia de grados, se erigen como alternativas transformadoras de la realidad social. (shrink)

Este trabajo estudia críticamente seis posibles límites a la apropiación privada, individual, unilateral y desigual en el estado de naturaleza descripto por John Locke. I) la restricción expresada bajo la forma de dejar suficiente y tan bueno en común para otros; II) la prohibición del desperdicio de los frutos perecederos; III) asociada a esta segunda condición pero aplicada a la tierra, la prohibición de cercar tierra cuyos frutos se desperdicie; IV) la limitación propuesta por Macpherson, según la cual es una (...) condición de la apropiación mezclar el propio trabajo de modo personal con el objeto; V) el principio de caridad como derecho del necesitado a los medios de subsistencia; VI) la limitación que advierte Simmons, según la cual es posible derivar del principio de caridad un derecho al auto-gobierno, esto es, a no ser esclavizado a cambio de brindar, como es el deber del propietario al necesitado, los medios de subsistencia. (shrink)

Provided that traditional jus ad bellum principles are fulfilled, military humanitarian intervention to stop large scale violations of human rights (such as genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes) is widely regarded as morally permissible. In cases of “supreme humanitarian emergency”, not only are the victims morally permitted to rebel, but other states are also permitted to militarily intervene. Things are different if the human rights violations in question fall short of supreme humanitarian emergency. Because of the importance of respecting (...) political self‐determination, in cases of “ordinary oppression”, we normally think that rebellion might be permissible, but not military humanitarian intervention. Thus, according to the received view, the conditions for the permissibility of intervention coincide with the conditions for the permissibility of revolution in cases of supreme humanitarian emergency, but not in cases of ordinary oppression. In cases of ordinary oppression there is an asymmetry between the conditions for the permissibility of revolution and intervention (call this the Asymmetry View). Should we accept the Asymmetry View? I answer this question by outlining an account of political self‐determination and by illustrating the complex role that this notion should play in discussing the morality of revolution and intervention. (shrink)

In this article I criticize a theory of political obligation recently put forward by Christopher Wellman. Wellman's “samaritan theory” grounds both state legitimacy and political obligation in a natural duty to help people in need when this can be done at no unreasonable cost. I argue that this view is not able to account for some important features of the relation between state and citizens that Wellman himself seems to value. My conclusion is that the samaritan theory can only be (...) accepted if we are ready to give up either the traditional notion of political obligation as a prima facie duty valid for every citizen, or the current view of the relationships that should exist between states, citizens and foreigners (the view according to which states should have special concerns for their own citizens). (shrink)

Written between 1978 and 2006, these essays engagingly address the most hidden tradition in European political thought: the unpolitical.

The meta-semiotic ideology that underpins most contemporary semiotics seems at odds with the one that underlies the attempt at planning and creating a new language. Semiotics, as well as modern linguistics, has increasingly evolved into a substantially descriptive endeavor, excluding any consistent normative purpose. Faithful to the epistemology of Ferdinand de Saussure, semiotics does not primarily aim at either pointing at some supposed flaws of such or such language or at proposing some new linguistic forms meant to fix them. The (...) article analyses linguistic utopias from the perspective of present-day semiotics. (shrink)

The traditional interpretation of Eleatism has it that Melissus was a disciple of Parmenides and that Parmenides believed in the timeless eternity of Being. It seems, on the contrary, that Melissus acknowledged the reality of time by conceiving eternity as infinite time. Failing to justify this particular divergence from Parmenides’ approach, certain authors held that it was necessary to reinterpret the Melissan eternity as a form of infinite timelessness. This paper attempts to demonstrate that this reading is groundless and that (...) if the traditional interpretation is questioned then one should reconsider the assumptions and but not. (shrink)

Does philosophy make progress? Is it difference from science? Why?

L’articolo è l’estratto di un più ampio lavoro ancora in corso. Come Michel Foucault e Pierre Hadot, ognuno dalla propria postazione storico-teorica, ci hanno ricordato, la filosofia antica, ed in particolare quella ellenistica con i cinici e gli stoici, non era solo un discorso ma una concreta pratica di vita, un comportamento esistenziale proposto come modello per tutti coloro che intendevano raggiungere l’arete. Il testimone di questa “arte della vita” −è la tesi di fondo di questo contributo− non è stato (...) però storicamente raccolto dalla filosofia moderna −impersonale, tecnicistica, professionalizzata− ma dall’ètimo stesso delle correnti più significative delle arti moderno-contemporanee, impegnate non a produrre l’“opera d’arte” nel senso classico-tradizonale del termine, ma a proporre pratiche e modelli di vita creativi. L’esempio che qui abbiamo trascelto riguarda la pedagogia teatrale del famoso regista polacco Jerzy Grotowski. (shrink)

This paper presents an original use of Twitter to interpret and rewrite the poems of Francesco Petrarca's Rerum vulgarium fragmenta implemented within the Oregon Petrarch Open Book OPOB). This activity was partially inspired by the idea of Twitterature developed by Alexander Aciman and Emmett Rensin; we believe with them that our digital time should develop new and more functional ways of addressing literary texts but at the same time we are convinced that the "burdensome duty of hours spent reading" cannot (...) be eliminated. On the contrary, the new ways of reading in the digital era as we envisage them are the result and consequence of broader and deeper reading activities. We conceived the project of writing 366 tweets, out of the 366 poems that make the last form of Petrarca’s Rvf, as the result of different philological activities, from reading the texts in the original language to consulting manuscripts, translations and intersemiotic renderings of the texts. Before writing the 140 characters that make one tweet we also elaborated paraphrases, summaries and keywords related to the individual poems. Students created the first version of the tweets during the 2011 UO seminar on Re-reading Petrarca’s Rvf in the Digtal Era. The second version was elaborated in the context of a seminar on the same topic during Winter 2014. This paper presents the two versions of the Twitter Edition of Petrarca's Rvf now available in the OPOB and focuses on the philology connected to the latest edition that provided an English translation of the original tweets written in Italian. The actual Italian and English 366 tweets are published in the Appendix to the article. (shrink)

The title does not refer to the application of knowledge through faculty engagement in community-based research, teaching and service – something that is usually understood as community-engaged scholarship. The change of paradigm referred to in the title should be understood within the broader framework of the general transformation of our participatory or convergence culture in the age of social and “spreadable” media. As the Web 2.0 evolves toward the Web 3.0, or the semantic web, community-engaged scholarship remains one of the (...) most crucial components of this larger and more pervasive phenomenon and this also refers to the "academic community" at large. What is at stake is not only the transformation of the procedures of scholarly research and learning but also and more importantly the transformation of its goals: traditionally based on the individual researcher and author, knowledge work, or the scholarly mode of production, is increasingly overhauled into a collective, collaborative enterprise, on a much larger scale. Moreover, the general move from discursive to graphic-algorithmic forms of data visualization and interpretation, has eventful consequences for critical thinking: as humanists engaged with a potentially radical transformation of the community we belong to, our most daunting task is how to transpose traditional scholarly practices onto the new platform, envisioning new goals and outputs for our traditional tasks. (shrink)

Trialogus de possest -- De anima -- Toccare il Dio.

Una riflessione, talvolta discutibile, su un problema centrale nello studio della storia, sul modo cioè di comprendere la sensibilità di uomini del passato, cercando di accostarla alla sensibilità di uomini nostri contemporanei. Si considera, come caso esemplare e particolarmente difficile, la riflessione di Agostino sul tema della grazia e della predestinazione. Ogni trasposizione di dottrine anche lungo la linea del tempo storico è certamente un tradimento delle intenzioni originali dell’autore, ma un tradimento necessario per sperare di capirlo. L’intreccio di tesi (...) su predestinazione, grazia, destino e carattere può aiutare, ma solo a condizione di essere consapevoli che si tratta comunque di analogie che mai riescono a chiarire completamente, ma possono aiutare. A reflection, sometimes questionable, on a central problem in the study of history, that is, on how to understand the sensibility of men of the past, trying to approach it to the sensibility of our contemporary men. We investigate, as an exemplary and particularly difficult case, Augustine's reflection on the subject of grace and predestination. Any transposition of doctrines even along the historical timeline is certainly a betrayal of the author's original intentions, but a necessary betrayal to hope to understand him. The interweaving of theses on predestination, grace, destiny, and character can help, but only on the condition of being aware that these are nevertheless analogies that never succeed in fully clarifying, but can help. (shrink)

La tarda antichità fu un periodo di profondi cambiamenti che coinvolse l’Europa, il mediterraneo e il cosiddetto Vicino Oriente, dal IV-V al VII-VIII secolo. Questo paradigma è ormai ampiamente utilizzato negli studi islamici, dagli studi coranici, dove Angelika Neuwirth ha ampiamente scritto sul tema delle basi bibliche della rivelazione coranica come manifestazione dello scritturalismo tardo antico, agli studi storici relativi al Corano e all’Arabia preislamica, come nel libro di Aziz al-Azmeh _The Emergence of Islam in Late Antiquity_, che riprende il (...) filone di studi instaurato da Julius Wellhausen e Toufic Fahd. Sono pienamente d’accordo con la necessità di inserire l’Islam, la sua nascita e il suo sviluppo storico, religioso e filosofico nel contesto della tarda antichità, ma è necessario sottolineare quali temi hanno fatto dell’Islam una nuova religione rispetto al giudaismo e al cristianesimo. Questo è il tema del presente articolo che si articola nei seguenti momenti: 1) una breve rassegna critica della letteratura sulla tarda antichità; 2) il rapporto tra gli imperi – romano, bizantino e sasanide – della tarda antichità e il trionfo del monoteismo; 3) il concetto di _hanifiyya_. La conclusione è che il messaggio coranico trasmesso da Maometto ha diviso la storia in due parti: prima e dopo la venuta della _verità_. Late Antiquity describes a period of profound transformations that involved Europe, the Mediterranean world and the so-called Near East, from IV-V to VII-VIII centuries. This paradigm has now become widely used in Islamic studies, from Qurʾānic studies, where Angelika Neuwirth has extensively published in the past on the subject of the biblical underpinnings of the Qurʾānic revelation as a manifestation of late antique scripturalism, to historical studies related to the Qurʾān and pre-Islamic Arabia, as in Aziz al-Azmeh’s book _The Emergence of Islam in Late Antiquity_, which takes up the trend of scholarship established by Julius Wellhausen and Toufic Fahd. I completely agree with the need to put Islam and its historical, religious, philosophical birth and development in the context of the Late Antiquity, but what is at stake is to emphasize which themes made Islam a new religion with respect to Judaism and Christianity. This is the focus of the present paper which deals with: 1) a brief critical survey of the literature on Late Antiquity; 2) the relationship between the empires – Roman, Byzantine and Sasanid – of Late Antiquity and the triumph of monotheism; 3) the concept of _hanifiyya_. The conclusion is that the Qurʾānic message conveyed by Muhammad broke the history into two parts: before and after the coming of _truth_. (shrink)

While universalism is rooted in the very ideology of Islam and is grounded in the Qur’an, especially through the concepts of fiṭra, amr and rūḥ, cosmopolitanism is an essential characteristic of classical Muslim empires: both the Caliphate-Imamate and empires, like the Ottoman or the Mughal ones, were a melting pot of races, languages and customs. The Caliphate-Imamate was by nature supranational and for centuries there was no idea of the nation in Islam. Contemporary nationalism, local or global, have represented a (...) disrupting more than a unifying force and have produced many failed states. In the present situation of crisis of the Muslim world, Puritanism and blind adherence to past tradition have paved the way for the revival of intolerance. Conservative or even extremist Islamist movements have assumed the deformed perspective of retrospective utopia, convinced that it is sufficient to reproduce the conditions of the Prophet’s time to solve all problems of Muslim societies. Hence, the Islamic state and Caliphate’s issues must be re-discussed from new perspectives, by recovering the potentials of universalism and cosmopolitanism in the tradition. It is central today the role of civil society, wherein Islamic universalism and cosmopolitanism could find their natural space, and the same goes for the role of citizenship. Reform requires a re-consideration of classical Islamic juridical and political thought patterns, which this chapter aims to do by, first, focalizing certain paradigms and concepts, and by, second, problematizing the modern meanings given to these paradigms and concepts. At the closure, I contend that it is in civil society that traditional meanings of universalism and cosmopolitanism can flourish again for functional political thought and praxis. (shrink)

A proper reflection about the music in the masses era can develop itself only if it’s interwoven with the media totalitarianism which seems to be the fate of our times. Beyond the ideology and the fashion of “contamination” that leeds towards a levelling of values, it’s much better to sharpen instead the real difference between the distinct practices of listening, without academic prejudices but also without misleading homologations. Neither puritanisms nor false transgressions: classical music and pop music must be received (...) iuxta propria principia , each of them along its own specific language. (shrink)

I try to revive, and possibly reconcile, a debate started a few years ago, about the relative roles of a bare cosmological constant and of a vacuum energy, by taking the attitude to try to get the most from the physics now available as established. I notice that the bare cosmological constant of the Einstein equations, which is there ever since GR emerged, is actually constrained (if not measured) indirectly combining the effective cosmological constant observed now, as given by ΛCDM (...) Precision Cosmology, with the cumulative vacuum contribution of the particles of the Standard Model, SM. This comes out when the vacuum energy is regularized, as given by many Authors, still within well established Quantum Field Theory, QFT, but without violating Lorentz invariance. The fine tuning, implied by the compensation to a small positive value of the two large contributions, could be seen as offered by Nature, which provides one more fundamental constant, the bare Lambda. The possibility is then discussed of constraining (measuring) directly such a bare cosmological constant by the features of primordial gravitational wave signals coming from epoch’s precedent to the creation of particles. I comment on possibilities that would be lethal, that is if the vacuum does not gravitate. This last issue is often raised, and I discuss the current situation about. Finally a hint is briefly discussed for a possible “bare Lambda inflation” process. (shrink)