Nationalism and patriotism are two of the most powerful forces shaping world history. In this paperback edition of a highly successful, wide-ranging study, Maurizio Viroli shows exactly why patriotism is a political virtue and nationalism a political vice.

Sex robots are already a reality: in this provocative text, Maurizio Balistreri explores the fascinating world of future sex, exploring the ethical questions raised by the existence of a sex robot industry.

Niccolò Machiavelli is one of most influential modern political thinkers. His works, above all The prince, The discourses on Livy, The Florentine histories, and The art of war, are still passionately discussed in the intellectual community. Against the trite commonplace that Machiavelli was a teacher of evil who justified political immorality, Maurizio Viroli shows, on the basis of a rigorous study of his texts, that Machiavaelli taught instead the best way to attain true glory through political action.

This book studies a central but hitherto neglected aspect of Rousseau's political thought: the concept of social order and its implications for the ideal society which he envisages. The antithesis between order and disorder is a fundamental theme in Rousseau's work, and the author takes it as the basis for this study. In contrast with a widely held interpretation of Rousseau's philosophy, Professor Viroli argues that natural and political order are by no means the same for Rousseau. He explores the (...) differences and interrelations between the different types of order which Rousseau describes, and shows how the philosopher constructed his final doctrine of the just society, which can be based only on every citizen's voluntary and knowing acceptance of the social contract and on the promotion of virtue above ambition. The author also shows the extent of Rousseau's debt to the republican tradition, and above all to Machiavelli, and revises the image of Rousseau as a disciple of the natural-law school. (shrink)

The article Thinking embodiment with genetics: epigenetics and postgenomic biology in embodied cognition and enactivism, written by Maurizio Meloni and Jack Reynolds, was originally published electronically on the publisher’s internet portal on 18 June 2020 without open access. With the author’ decision to opt for Open Choice the copyright of the article changed on 6 November 2020 to ©The Author 2020 and the article is forthwith distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution.

Realitism: the postmodern attack on reality -- Realism: things that have existed since the beginning of the world -- Reconstruction: why criticism starts from reality -- Emancipation: unexamined life has no value.

The paper is mostly limited to an analysis of the main theses advanced by Engelhardt in his great book After God, compared with those elaborated in the first edition of The Foundation of Bioethics. The first part is devoted to a summary of Engelhardt’s proposals, and two of them are criticized in the second part. In particular, Engelhardt is doubtful that a morality after God is possible, while I argue that it is going to be produced and possibly will be (...) more adequate than traditional morality. In the same line, Engelhardt holds that without God everything is meaningless, while I argue that meanings are instilled by humans in our projects, and that even in our forthcoming post-history age people will continue to have meaningful ethical actions. (shrink)

The Italian philosopher Maurizio Lazzarato reveals the underpinnings of contemporary subjectivity in the aesthetics and politics of mass media. This book discloses the conceptual groundwork of Lazzarato's thought as a whole for a time when his writings have become increasingly influential.

In this paper I address the conflict of interest (CoI) issue from a legal point of view at a European level. We will see that the regulatory framework that exists in Europe does state the need for the independence of ethics committee involved in authorisation of research and clinical trials. We will see that CoI is an element that has to be closely monitored at National and International level. Therefore, Member States and Newly Associated States do have to address CoI (...) in the authorisation process of research and clinical protocols of biomedicine. (shrink)

In this book, Esposito presents a historiography of organicist and holistic thought through an examination of the work of leading biologists from Britain and America. He shows how this work relates to earlier Romantic tradition and sets it within the wider context of the history and philosophy of the life sciences.

An analysis of how capitalism today produces subjectivity like any other “good,” and what would allow us to escape its hold. “Capital is a semiotic operator”: this assertion by Félix Guattari is at the heart of Maurizio Lazzarato's Signs and Machines, which asks us to leave behind the logocentrism that still informs so many critical theories. Lazzarato calls instead for a new theory capable of explaining how signs function in the economy, in power apparatuses, and in the production of (...) subjectivity. Moving beyond the dualism of signifier and signified, Signs and Machines shows how signs act as “sign-operators” that enter directly into material flows and into the functioning of machines. Money, the stock market, price differentials, algorithms, and scientific equations and formulas constitute semiotic “motors” that make capitalism's social and technical machines run, bypassing representation and consciousness to produce social subjections and semiotic enslavements. Lazzarato contrasts Deleuze and Guattari's complex semiotics with the political theories of Jacques Rancière, Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, Paolo Virno, and Judith Butler, for whom language and the public space it opens still play a fundamental role. Lazzarato asks: What are the conditions necessary for political and existential rupture at a time when the production of subjectivity represents the primary and perhaps most important work of capitalism? What are the specific tools required to undo the industrial mass production of subjectivity undertaken by business and the state? What types of organization must we construct for a process of subjectivation that would allow us to escape the hold of social subjection and machinic enslavement? In addressing these questions, Signs and Machines takes on a task that is today more urgent than ever. (shrink)

In this paper I deal with ethical implications arising from animal biotechnology. I analyse some general questions surrounding the production of transgenic animals through a specific case study: the oncomouse. In particular, I explore ethical factors involved in the production of oncomice. This is because biologists genetically modify animals’ germ cells and refuse to modify human germ cells. I will underline how the international community has thus far justified this ‘ethical difference’.

There is a growing body of scholarship that is addressing the ethics, in particular, the bioethics of space travel and colonisation. Naturally, a variety of perspectives concerning the ethical issues and moral permissibility of different technological strategies for confronting the rigours of space travel and colonisation have emerged in the debate. Approaches ranging from genetically enhancing human astronauts to modifying the environments of planets to make them hospitable have been proposed as methods. This paper takes a look at a critique (...) of human bioenhancement proposed by Mirko Garasic who argues that the bioenhancement of human astronauts is not only functional but necessary and thus morally permissible. However, he further claims that the bioethical arguments proposed for the context of space do not apply to the context of Earth. This paper forwards three arguments for how Garasic’s views are philosophically dubious: (1) when he examines our responsibility towards future generations he refers to a moral principle (which we will call the principle of mere survival) which, besides being vague, is not morally acceptable; (2) the idea that human bioenhancement is not natural is not only debatable but morally irrelevant; and (3) it is not true that the situations that may arise in space travel cannot occur on Earth. We conclude that not only is the (bio)enhancement of humans on Earth permissible but perhaps even necessary in certain circumstances. (shrink)

Maurizio Ferraris explores how, through the reading of Proust's _In Search of Lost Time_, one can explore memory, art, and society, using the book as a guide for living life.

Current debates about patriotism and nationalism have so far failed adequately to take into account the historical meaning of republican patriotism. For classical and modern republican theorists, love of country is a charitable love of the republic and of its citizens. It is an attachment to the political values of republican liberty and to the culture based upon them. As such, it is a theoretical alternative to both civic and ethnic nationalism, and it is not at all confined within the (...) bygone experience of city‐states. (shrink)

In this paper, we analyse the most important documents establishing the criteria for the treatment and exclusion of COVID-19 patients, especially in regard to the giving of respiratory support, in Italy and Spain. These documents reflect a tension that stems from limited healthcare resources which are insufficient to save lives that, under normal conditions, could have been saved, or at least could have received the best possible treatment. First, we analyse the healthcare systems of these two countries before the spread (...) of the virus, both of which have seen decreases in the number of intensive care beds and have been marked by financial cuts during the last ten years. It is a fact that a greater number of people, especially those over 70 years of age, have been left without respiratory support treatment, and therefore, there have been a greater number of deaths. It is also a fact that there has been a higher infection rate among healthcare professionals due to the delay in the management of protective measures and the inability to provide adequate care for those in nursing homes, as recognised by WHO. In the context of this health emergency, healthcare professionals have suffered a real ‘moral distress’ because, knowing first-hand the causes of the limitation of resources, they have had to put triage protocols into practice. Finally, we set forth a series of concrete ethical proposals with which to face the successive waves of COVID-19 infection, as well as other future pandemics. (shrink)

As space travel and intentions to colonise other planets are becoming the norm in public debate and scholarship, we must also confront the technical and survival challenges that emerge from these hostile environments. This paper aims to evaluate the various arguments proposed to meet the challenges of human space travel and extraterrestrial planetary colonisation. In particular, two primary solutions have been present in the literature as the most straightforward solutions to the rigours of extraterrestrial survival and flourishing: (1) geoengineering, where (...) the environment is modified to become hospitable to its inhabitants, and (2) human (bio)enhancement where the genetic heritage of humans is modified to make them more resilient to the difficulties they may encounter as well as to permit them to thrive in non-terrestrial environments. Both positions have strong arguments supporting them but also severe philosophical and practical drawbacks when exposed to different circumstances. This paper aims to show that a principled stance where one position is accepted wholesale necessarily comes at the opportunity cost of the other where the other might be better suited, practically and morally. This paper concludes that case-by-case evaluations of the solutions to space travel and extraterrestrial colonisation are necessary to ensure moral congruency and the survival and flourishing of astronauts now and into the future. (shrink)

In this paper I deal with ethical factors surrounding germline gene therapy. Such implications include intergenerational responsibility, human dignity, moral status of embryos and so on. I will explore the relevance of the above mentioned issues to discuss the ethical implication of human germline gene therapy (HGLT). We will see that most of arguments claimed by bioethicists do not provide valid reason to oppose HGLT. I will propose an alternative view, based on personal identity issues, to discuss the ethics of (...) human inheritable gene modification. (shrink)

Sex robots are already a reality: in this provocative text, Maurizio Balistreri explores the fascinating world of future sex, exploring the ethical questions raised by the existence of a sex robot industry.

In recent years, the persuasion that Niccolò Machiavelli was a cynical, irreligious devious, ambitious, deceitful, and misogynous man has been gaining remarkable consensus among scholars. The most...

In this interview, Maurizio Lazzarato revisits his interest in the work of Gabriel Tarde . He then reflects upon recent uses of the couple biopower/biopolitics, as well as upon the place of the “common” in the theory of the Multitude. He concludes by sketching some of the political implications of the philosophy of difference, which invites us to recognize and unleash the productive powers of variation and experimentation.

This paper aims to argue for the thesis that it is not a priori morally justified that the first phase of space colonisation is based on sexual reproduction. We ground this position on the argument that, at least in the first colonisation settlements, those born in space may not have a good chance of having a good life. This problem does not depend on the fact that life on another planet would have to deal with issues such as solar radiation (...) or with the decrease or entire absence of the force of gravity. These issues could plausibly be addressed given that the planets or settlements we will feasibly colonise could be completely transformed through geoengineering processes. Likewise, the ability of humans to live in space could be enhanced through genetic modification interventions. Even if, however, the problems concerning survival in space were solved, we think that, at least in the first period of colonisation of space or other planets, giving birth to children in space could be a morally irresponsible choice since we argue, the life we ​​could give them might not be good enough. We contend that this is the case since when we decide to have a baby. We argue that it is not morally right to be content that our children have a minimally sufficient life worth living; before we give birth to children in space, we should make sure we can give them a reasonable chance of having a good life. This principle applies both on Earth - at least where you can choose - and for space travel. (shrink)

The authors analyze deficiencies and perils of the European Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine , in particular the concept of human rights as given by natural law and the Conventions stand on germline therapy and its refutation of therapeutic enhancement.

Introduction to New Realism provides an overview of the movement of contemporary thought named New Realism, by its creator and most celebrated practitioner, Maurizio Ferraris. Sharing significant concerns and features with Speculative Realism and Object Oriented Ontology, New Realism can be said to be one of the most prescient philosophical positions today. Its desire to overcome the postmodern antirealism of Kantian origin, and to reassert the importance of truth and objectivity in the name of a new Enlightenment, has had (...) an enormous resonance both in Europe and in the US. Introduction to New Realism is the first volume dedicated to exposing this continental movement to an anglophone audience.Featuring a foreword by the eminent contemporary philosopher and leading exponent of Speculative Realism, Iain Hamilton Grant, the book begins by tracing the genesis of New Realism, and outlining its central theoretical tenets, before opening onto three distinct sections. The first, 'Negativity', is a critique of the postmodern idea that the world is constructed by our conceptual schemas, all the more so as we have entered the age of digitality and virtuality. The second thesis, 'positivity', proposes the fundamental ontological assertion of New Realism, namely that not only are there parts of reality that are independent of thought, but these parts are also able to act causally over thought and the human world. The third thesis, 'normativity,' applies New Realism to the sphere of the social world. Finally, an afterword written by two young scholars explains in more detail the relationship between New Realism and other forms of contemporary realism. (shrink)

Perhaps the most relevant aspect of the ongoing philosophical transformation is the splitting of binomial speculation-idealism. Indeed, one can be both realist and speculative. The paper aims to show it through a definition of negative, positive, and speculative Realism and emphasises the speculative concept of hysteresis, i.e. the survival of effects to their own causes. Indeed, it is the fundamental principle at the basis of what exists (ontology), what we do (technology), what we know (epistemology), and finally of teleology (that (...) is, of the interruption which, by putting an end to a process, simultaneously assigns a purpose to it). (shrink)

We propose a mentalistic and nativist view of human early mental and social life and of the ontogeny of mindreading. We define the mental state of sharedness as the primitive, one-sided capability to take one's own mental states as mutually known to an i nteractant. We argue that this capability is an innate feature of the human mind, which the child uses to make a subjective sense of the world and of her actions. We argue that the child takes all (...) of her mental states as shared with her caregivers. This a llows her to interact with her caregivers in a mentalistic way from the very beginning and provides the grounds on which the later maturation of mindreading will build. As the latter process occurs, the child begins to understand the mental world in terms of differences between the mental states of different agents; subjectively, this also corresponds to the birth of privateness. ? (shrink)

The debtor-creditor relation, which is at the heart of this book, sharpens mechanisms of exploitation and domination indiscriminately, since, in it, there is no distinction between workers and the unemployed, consumers and producers, working and non-working populations, between retirees and welfare recipients. They are all "debtors," guilty and responsible in the eyes of capital, which has become the Great, the Universal, Creditor.--from The Making of the Indebted Man Debt -- both public debt and private debt Has become a major concern (...) of economic and political leaders. In The Making of the Indebted Man, Maurizio Lazzarato shows that, far from being a threat to the capitalist economy, debt lies at the very core of the neoliberal project. Through a reading of Karl Marx's lesser-known youthful writings on John Mill, and a rereading of writings by Friedrich Nietzsche, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Michel Foucault, Lazzarato demonstrates that debt is above all a political construction, and that the creditor/debtor relation is the fundamental social relation of Western societies.Debt cannot be reduced to a simple economic mechanism, for it is also a technique of "public safety" through which individual and collective subjectivities are governed and controlled. Its aim is to minimize the uncertainty of the time and behavior of the governed. We are forever sinking further into debt to the State, to private insurance, and, on a more general level, to corporations. To insure that we honor our debts, we are at once encouraged and compelled to become the "entrepreneurs" of our lives, of our "human capital." In this way, our entire material, psychological, and affective horizon is upended and reconfigured. How do we extricate ourselves from this impossible situation? How do we escape the neoliberal condition of the indebted man? Lazzarato argues that we will have to recognize that there is no simple technical, economic, or financial solution. We must instead radically challenge the fundamental social relation structuring capitalism: the system of debt. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Our Original Barbarism":Man vs. Nature in Thomas Jefferson's Moral ExperienceMaurizio ValsaniaJefferson, perhaps more than any other early democratic theorist, recognized that the development of social institutions and government could not be left to chance or to the "Laws of Nature."1One of the most fundamental fact about Thomas Jefferson—maybe the fundamental fact about Thomas Jefferson—is that he was a white man, and a landholding white man at that. Scholars of (...) ethnicity in the last thirty years have spent an enormous amount of time analyzing what it has meant to be Indian, or African American, or Mexican American, or Asian American, but scholars of "mainstream" history have spent almost no time analyzing what it means to be "white"; whiteness, on the contrary, simply remains the norm by which the difference of the non whites is gauged. We are just beginning our exploration of whiteness, as a culturally and politically constructed phenomenon.2This paper presents Thomas Jefferson's moral attitudes from a particular point of view.3 The thesis I defend can be stated in a very schematic way. (1) In order to secure the new-born Republic the American "leader," according to [End Page 627] Jefferson, must struggle against enemies, against circumstances but mainly against nature. Nature is perhaps the most powerful symbol of the disorder white Americans have to conquer. (2) This struggle against nature reveals a deep ethical commitment. White men are praiseworthy to the extent that they keep fighting against disorder, nature, and circumstances. (3) Jefferson's optimism, or better, "meliorism," was aimed at promoting moral behavior, i.e., to incite his alter egos to struggle against adverse conditions. As to whether or not he was confident about the course of American history, I have staked no claims in this paper.4 (4) Jefferson's case for the struggle against nature is ethically coherent and leads to some interesting reflections on Jefferson's ideas about human nature and white Americans in particular.The notion of "human nature" in this paper refers to white Americans, namely, to the moral character, temperament, and ambitions of those leaders whose main burden, in Jefferson's opinion, should be to construct nineteenth-century America. This examination takes for granted that Jefferson neither worked out a systematic theory of human nature nor elaborated a specific theory of the essence of white Americans.5 Nevertheless, it is too much to say that Jefferson "did not work out his ideas in a logical way."6 His anthropological views were fairly coherent even though very difficult to disentangle. Jefferson, for instance, was neither an optimist nor a pessimist. Furthermore, he was not satisfied with a philosophical, simply "general," and a priori definition of a universal human nature. Jefferson placed human beings outside a metaphysical frame of reference. He placed them "within the sphere of nature, and in so doing [he] was a true exponent of the Enlightenment."7 Humans are merged into geographical, social, religious, economic, in short positive contexts and conditions. They appear as conditioned beings. On the other hand Jefferson was not exclusively involved in the examination of a physical or a posteriori anthropology in which humans are considered solely in the unique particularity of their races and habits.8Thomas Jefferson stood in the middle between the quest for a philosophical theory of human nature and a scientific examination of it. One thing is clear: he was not content with sweeping statements. Merle Curti noted, for example, "Jefferson's feelings about human nature's plasticity."9 This sense of "plasticity" suggests Jefferson's realism and complexity of vision. A philosopher and an [End Page 628] anthropologist, Jefferson was neither satisfied by a general definition nor by an optimistic portrait of human nature. He was against idealization, in particular when white Americans are at stake. Thus, this paper considers the terms in which Jefferson "questioned the cheery view of human nature that some enlightened thinkers celebrated."10 Must white Americans be celebrated? Must nature be celebrated?I. Thomas Jefferson was a strong supporter of social improvement. His involvement in educational, agrarian, commercial, scientific, geographic, and political projects shows several instances of his being an Enlightenment modernizer who... (shrink)

The employment of digital technology in recent instances of artwork replication raises important questions about the perceptual and ontological distinction between original and copy, for the latter is purported to be even more authentic than an original that has undergone alterations. Such instances challenge not only Benjamin’s claim about the loss of aura but also Goodman’s distinction between autographic and allographic arts. The article proposes to rethink the original/copy dualism from the perspective of the cult image. In the devotional traditions (...) of Graeco-Roman polytheism as well as Christianity and Buddhism, cult images are approached not as representations, but as animated entities endowed with thaumaturgic powers that can be ritually transferred onto copies. From this perspective, replication is not about reproducing more or less faithfully the original, but engendering a double as effective as the original. Finally, the bearing of this perspective on contemporary works of art is considered. (shrink)

This book presents a critical examination of Machiavelli's thought, combining an accessible, historically-informed account of his work with a reassessment of his central ideas and arguments. Viroli challenges the accepted interpretations of Machiavelli's work, insisting that his republicanism was based not on a commitment to virtue, greatness, and expansion, but to the ideal of civic life protected by the shield of fair laws. His detailed study of how Machiavelli composed The Prince offers a number of new interpretations and he further (...) contends that the most challenging--and underestimated--aspect of Machiavelli's thought is his philosophy of life, in particular his conceptions of love, women, irony, God, and the human condition. (shrink)

The modern family has developed in its configuration, assuming different features from the traditional family typical of the first part of last century. The typologies of family that currently exist are several and include households with a single parent, others with more than two parents, others with two different ethnicities within them, and so on. Irrespective of its structure, however, each family can be accepted as valid if fulfills the development tasks of all its members. In particular is the coexistence (...) of clearly identifiable functions and roles that can ensure children a peaceful growth. (shrink)