Europe Kidnapped: Spanish Voices on Citizenship and Exile Exile and migration are once more central issues in the contemporary European predicament. This short article intends to discuss these questions elaborating on the ideas of two Spanish authors, a novelist, Max Aub, and a philosopher, María Zambrano, both marked by the tragic events of civil war and forced expatriation. Exile and migration in their existential perspective are meant as a prologue to the vindication of citizenship.

Populism, the Kingdom of Shadows, and the Challenge to Liberal Democracy Populism is a somehow intractable notion, since its reference is much too wide, comprising phenomena that are indeed in conflict between them, and moreover blurred, by being often used in an instrumental, polemical way. Such intractability is then radicalized through the two alternative approaches to populism, one that is more or less neutral, rooting in the political science tradition, and a second one, fully normative, though fed by political realism, (...) founding as it does on a specific political theory and project. In the article an alternative view is proposed, that of populism as the politics that is congruent with the increasing role played by ‘screens’, icons, and images in social relationships and indeed in political representation. In this way populism is approached as the specific way politics is done within the context of a digitalized société du spectacle. (shrink)

Borges pronuncia giudizi molto severi su Agostino, considerato soprattutto come il pensatore della grazia e della predestinazione. Il pensiero agostiniano viene irrigidito in formule che ne fanno il campione di un preteso realismo medievale. Ma Borges è più vicino di quanto non creda ad Agostino che in realtà sa perfettamente che un senso alla vita dell’uomo viene non dalla impossibile conquista della felicità, ma dalla sua incessante ricerca.

L'apertura alla dimensione religiosa nel "Kant" di Martinetti e il percorso teorico di Dal Pra fra trascendenza e immanenza. Un ipotetico punto di incontro sul terreno della prassi e della scelta etica.

La letteratura cerca di dare un ordine al disordine della vita e della storia. Per questo succede che un personaggio immaginario come Robin Hood risulti troppo amante della libertà e del disordine per essere solamente letterario, e così generazioni di studiosi ne hanno cercato tracce nelle vicende reali della storia inglese. La tradizione delle ballate popolari ha invaso il teatro e la letteratura donando all'immaginario collettivo di tutta Europa l'illusione di poter progettare il disordine. _ Literature tries to give order (...) to the disorder of life and history. This is why it happens that a fictional character like Robin Hood is too lover of freedom and disorder to be merely literary, and so generations of scholars have sought traces of him in the real events of English history. The tradition of folk ballads has invaded theatre and literature, giving the collective imagination throughout Europe the illusion that disorder can be planned. _. (shrink)

A critical re-examination of the history of the concepts of space (including spacetime of general relativity and relativistic quantum field theory) reveals a basic ontological elusiveness of spatial extension, while, at the same time, highlighting the fact that its epistemic primacy seems to be unavoidably imposed on us (as stated by A.Einstein “giving up the extensional continuum … is like to breathe in airless space”). On the other hand, Planck’s discovery of the atomization of action leads to the fundamental recognition (...) of an ontology of non-spatial, abstract entities (Quine) for the quantum level of reality (QT), as distinguished from the necessarily spatio-temporal, experimental revelations (measurements). The elementary quantum act (measured by Planck’s constant) has neither duration nor extension, and any genuinely quantum process literally does not belong in the Raum and time of our experience. As Heisenberg stresses: “Während also die klassische Physik ein objectives Geschehen in Raum and Zeit zum Gegenstand hat, für dessen Existenz seine Beobachtung völlig irrelevant war, behandelt die Quantentheorie Vorgänge, die sozusagen nur in den Momenten der Beobachtung als raumzeitliche Phänomene aufleuchten, und über die in der zwischenzeit anschaulische physikalische Aussagen sinloss sind”. An admittedly speculative, hazardous conjecture is then advanced concerning the relation of such quantum ontology with the role of the pre-phenomenal continuum (Husserl) in the perception of macroscopically distinguishable objects in the Raum and time of our experience. Although rather venturesome, it brings together important philosophical issues. Coherently with recent general results in works on the foundations of QT, it is assumed that the linearity of quantum dynamical evolution does not apply to the central nervous system of living beings at a certain level of the evolutionary ramification and at the pre-conscious stage of subjectivity. Accordingly, corresponding to the onset of a non-linear dynamic evolution, a ‘primary spatial’ reduction is ‘continually’ taking place, thereby constituting the neural precondition for the experience of distinguishable macroscopic objects in the continuous spatial extension. While preventing the theoretically possible quantum superpositions of macroscopic objects from being perceivable by living beings, the ‘primary reduction’ has no effect on the standard processes concerning quantum level entities involved in laboratory man-made experiments. In this connection, an experimental check which might falsify the conjecture is briefly discussed. The approach suggested here, if sound, leads to a naturalization of that part of Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetics than can survive the Euclidean catastrophe. According to such naturalized transcendentalism, “space can well be transcendental without the axioms being so”, in agreement with a well-known statement by Boltzman. Finally, as far as QT is concerned, the conjecture entails that a scheme for quantum measurement of the von Neumann type cannot even ‘leave the ground’, vindicating Bohr’s viewpoint. A quantum theory of measurement, in a proper sense, turns out to be unnecessary and in fact impossible. (shrink)

For a long time, Parmenides has been considered the first real metaphysician in history, a theorist of a disembodied being, unreachable by the scientific knowledge of the world. In his Eleatic Lectures, Giovanni Cerri goes back to his renown interpretation of Parmenides as a scientist fully aware of the epistemological foundations of knowledge, and capable of foreshadowing the ultimate outcome of the evolution of science, that is, the discovery of being as a single homogeneous body. Cerri also shows that the (...) works of two other thinkers who were trained in the heart of the school of Elea itself support his interpretation: on the one hand Zeno, with his arguments against plurality; on the other hand Leucippus, the inventor of atomism. Ten scholars have been called to discuss this broad interpretation of a crucial page in the history of thought. Cerri replies to each of them in the final pages of the volume, engaging in a dense dialogue. (shrink)

Christiansen & Chater (C&C) have taken the interactionist approach to linguistic universals to an extreme, adopting the metaphor of language as an organism. This metaphor adds no insights to five decades of analyzing language universals as the result of interaction of linguistically unique and general cognitive systems. This metaphor is also based on an outmoded view of classical Darwinian evolution and has no clear basis in biology or cognition.

Riassunto: In una prospettiva naturalistica, lo studio della religione presenta subito un punto problematico: se essa è così diffusa, tanto da apparire un tratto inscritto nella natura umana, ciò significa che la religione comporta dei vantaggi adattivi o, quantomeno, significa che essa non comporta svantaggi tali da ostacolare la sopravvivenza di chi la pratica. Nel primo caso, si tratta di individuare la possibile funzione della religione, ovvero una qualche utilità che ne giustificherebbe il suo permanere nella storia umana. Alla luce (...) di un modello antropologico che vede l’identità soggettiva segnata da una fragilità ontologica, in questo articolo offriremo una particolare versione della tesi che assegna alla religione, quale byproduct, una funzione positiva, ipotizzando quella che potrebbe essere una sua utilità nella difesa dell’unità dell’autocoscienza. Sarà dunque sulla religione quale insieme di tecniche difensive del self che concentreremo la nostra indagine. Parole chiave : Ernesto De Martino; Naturalismo darwiniano; Meccanismi di difesa; Identità soggettiva; Religione Religion as a Defensive Technique for Subjective Identity: From a naturalistic perspective, the study of religion immediately leads to a problematic point: if religion is so widespread, to the extent that it seems to be a trait inscribed in human nature, then it should have adaptive advantages or, at the very least, it should not have disadvantages that would stand in the way of the survival of those who practice religion. In the former case, we need to understand the function of religion, viz. a utility it confers that may justify its persistence across human history. Against the backdrop of an anthropological model that considers subjectivity identity to be characterized by ontological fragility, this article will offer a special version of the claim that religion, viewed as a byproduct, has a positive function: we will make the hypothesis that it contributes to the defense of the unity of self-consciousness. Thus our focus will be on religion construed as a repertoire of strategies designed to protect the self. Keywords: Ernesto De Martino; Darwinian Naturalism; Defense Mechanisms; Subjective Identity; Religion. (shrink)

Si esamina, nell'esperienza giuridica, lo stato di eccezione nel senso più generale, come fenomeno straordinario, eventuale, ma che, una volta verificatosi, non possa rimanere giuridicamente ignorato né inspiegabile, analogamente al concetto del miracolo in teologia. Lo stato di eccezione non può essere neppure limitato alle sole condizioni di necessità; non può essere affrontato e risolto con le sole argomentazioni inerenti lo stato di costrizione, che rappresenta solo un aspetto della sua casistica, comprendente anche fattispecie create dall'esclusivo e libero esercizio della (...) volontà di chi provoca o determina lo stesso stato di eccezione. Per analizzare le caratteristiche del ragionamento giuridico nello stato di eccezione, si esaminano due casi. Il primo caso riguarda la cospirazione, il secondo caso di eccezione è la definizione giuridica dei diritti umani. (shrink)

This issue of Itinera aims to address the connections between architecture and the performing arts in its various aspects and from multiple points of view. The growing emphasis on the performative character of artistic practices, namely, their ability to involve spectators directly and pervasively (Dixon 2007), imbues the relationship between architecture, the performing arts, and the spectator’s experience. The sharing of the scenic space by spectators and performers is essential for the co-production of a common energy which operates as a (...) “transforming force” and thereby opens up the shared experience of discovering oneself and the other as a union of the body and the mind (Fischer-Lichte 2004). (shrink)

Decision-making assisted by algorithms developed by machine learning is increasingly determining our lives. Unfortunately, full opacity about the process is the norm. Would transparency contribute to restoring accountability for such systems as is often maintained? Several objections to full transparency are examined: the loss of privacy when datasets become public, the perverse effects of disclosure of the very algorithms themselves, the potential loss of companies’ competitive edge, and the limited gains in answerability to be expected since sophisticated algorithms usually are (...) inherently opaque. It is concluded that, at least presently, full transparency for oversight bodies alone is the only feasible option; extending it to the public at large is normally not advisable. Moreover, it is argued that algorithmic decisions preferably should become more understandable; to that effect, the models of machine learning to be employed should either be interpreted ex post or be interpretable by design ex ante. (shrink)