This essay proposes that the only publication of the Accademia del Cimento, referred to as Saggi,Footnote11 Accademia del Cimento, Saggi di naturali esperienze fatte nell’ Accademia del Cimento sotto la protezione del serenissimo principe Leopoldo di Toscana e descritte dal segretario di essa Accademia (Firenze: Per Giuseppe Cocchini, 1667). had as one of its main goals the celebration of the House of Medici’s paternity of cutting-edge experiments and instruments during the reign of Grand Duke Ferdinando II. These included Ferdinando (...) II’s thermometers and hygrometers, Torricelli’s experiment and barometer, and Galileo’s pendulum as a clock-regulator. It seems that this agenda went unnoticed, not at the time of its initial circulation, but rather in modern historiography. Christiaan Huygens’s challenged invention of the pendulum clock provides a case study to explore the agenda of this publication and the problem of defining an invention in seventeenth-century Europe. This paper presents for the first time the document that attests to when the first specimen of Huygens’s clock arrived in Florence, disproving the previously believed date of September 1657. The paper argues that over the last two centuries, this error has made the Medici narratives of this dispute appear inconsistent and marginalized them. In light of this new find, they must be reconsidered. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: The Portrait of a Miniature Giant PAUL BAROLSKY There was a time when the art of the sixteenth -century Florentine painter Agnolo Bronzino was reviled for its aesthetic excesses. Writing in his classic “The Cicerone: An Art Guide to Painting in Italy,” the great nineteenth -century scholar Jacob Burckhardt wrote that “as an historical painter,” Bronzino must “be placed among the Mannerists,” a judgement equivalent to placing him (...) in an art historical hell. But, Burckhardt added, “as a portrait painter, he is inferior to none of his contemporaries, not even the Venetians.” Given the fact that among the Venetians, Titian is one of the great portrait painters, this is astonishingly high praise. Nowadays, it is not uncommon for art historians, appreciating Mannerism, to celebrate the elegance and preciosity of Bronzino’s exquisite portraits. Of all Bronzino’s portraits, that of the dwarf Morgante is one of the most beguiling. It is distinctive in so many ways. This picture is the subject of a remarkable book by the Israeli art historian Sefy Hendler, Gracious and Beautiful Monster : The Literary Universe of Bronzino’s Nano Morgante, which is an exceptional piece of scholarship. Different aspects of his book have influenced various scholars who have written about the picture and who have fruitfully exploited its various details. What needs to be appreciated, however, is the way in which this book brings out the extraordinary synthetic character of Bronzino’s strange painting and the diarion 28.3 winter 2021 Sefy Hendler, Gracious and Beautiful Monster: The Literary Universe of Bronzino’s Nano Morgante, Maschietto Editore, 2016. 158 the portrait of a miniature giant versity of ways in which it belongs to the courtly culture in which it was painted. The beauty of Hendler’s seemingly all-encompassing book is that it tells a fascinating and highly entertaining story with admirable brevity in just over seventy pages. Hendler, who packs a great deal of deeply absorbing information and insight into his slim and learned volume, is sensitive to the sentiment of Peter Whiffle’s well-known dictum: “You cannot begin not to tell until you know more than you are willing to impart.” Hendler’s exquisitely concise story concerns a favorite dwarf of Duke Cosimo de’ Medici, one Braccio di Bartolo in Poggio di Fornione, who flourished at the ducal court in the middle years of the sixteenth-century. Bronzino painted the dwarf for the Duke in 1552. His sometime rival, Giorgio Vasari, painter, architect, and biographer, described the picture as “beautiful and marvelous” in his Lives of the artists. The painting is double-sided, featuring a frontal view of the naked dwarf on the recto of the canvas (fig. 1) and a rear view of the dwarf, similarly exposed on the verso (fig. 2), where the dwarf’s backside dominates the composition. (We might well observe here that Bronzino specialized lasciviously in painting the culo (witness the coy Cupid in his famous Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time). It is therefore not surprising that the anatomical backside rendered over and over again in Italian Renaissance art, with all its connotations, sexual and otherwise, has recently been the subject of a considerable body of scholarship. Hendler, himself writing on various writers of the period, offers little hints into the psycho-sexual dimension of Bronzino’s picture. Its depiction of so many birds leads inevitably to a consideration of the word “bird” in its sexual dimension. Enough said. If Morgante’s posterior is manifest on the verso, the recto of the painting has its own special interest. A butterfly flies by the dwarf directly and conveniently in front of his genitals—a coy if not teasing gesture of decorum. The portrait once hung in the Palazzo Vecchio, which had become a ducal residence. In recent years it has moved around quite a bit, settling in the Galleria Palatina of the Palazzo Pitti, once a ducal residence. Vasari’s description of the picture is not without a certain iro- Paul Barolsky 159 ny, since the beautiful form of the painting as painting stands in opposition to the less than beautiful dwarf. The writer Anton Francesco Grazzini captured this paradox in his poem on the occasion of the death... (shrink)

Around 1900 the relation between religion and sexuality became a favorite subject of art. Munich was the place where some of the most relevant works of art where produced at this time. In 1905 the opera “Salome” was composed by the Munichborn Richard Strauß, based on Oscar Wilde’s drama and dealing with the relation between sexual love, religion and death. In quite a different way Oscar Panizza’s “Liebeskonzil” is concerned with the same topic. Here it is not the decadent (...) class='Hi'>court of Herodes with John the Baptist as religious prophet and Salome falling in deadly love with him but the oversexualized Vatican at the time of Alexander Borgia punished by God with the syphilis. Religion and sexuality also form the background of the Wedekind’s unfinished “Ella”, an early stage of the development of his famous “Lulu”, and they play a central role in Thomas Mann’s novel “Gladius Dei”, a byproduct of his drama “Fiorenza”. Here sexuality and art are represented by the Florentine court of Lorenzo de’ Medici whereas the friar Savonarola is the representative of the religious opposition. (shrink)

Court D. Lewis, author of Repentance and the Right to Forgiveness, presents a rights-based theory of ethics grounded in eirenéism, a needs-based theory of rights (inspired by Nicholas Wolterstorff) that seeks peaceful flourishing for all moral agents. This approach creates a moral relationship between victims and wrongdoers such that wrongdoers owe victims compensatory obligations. However, one further result is that wrongdoers may be owed forgiveness by victims. This leads to the “repugnant implication” that victims may be wrongdoers who do (...) not forgive. Author Lewis addresses the “repugnant implication” by showing that victims are obligated to work toward forgiveness, if not forgiveness itself. Critic Gregory L. Bock argues that victims are not the only ones who can forgive, that the personal dimensions of forgiveness are overlooked, and that the force of the “repugnancy implication” may be questioned. Instead of rights-based eirenéism, Bock supports a virtue ethics framework. Instead of rights-based eirenéism, Bock encourages virtue ethics. Critic David Boersema raises questions about the binding nature of relationships, the dependency of flourishing upon forgiveness, and the nature of needs or rights. Boersema also questions the wisdom of a rights-based approach to forgiveness. Critic Jennifer Kling asks whether a rights-based approach is necessary to ground obligations to meet the needs of others: why not an ethics of care? If a rights-based approach is taken, perhaps a wrongdoer is obligated to not make forgiveness a life good. By disengaging this obligation, we avoid constraining a victim’s work toward forgiveness, especially when the wrongdoing is oppressive. Author Lewis responds to these objections. (shrink)

This book provides a variety of diverse perspectives related to the ethics of anger, some more analytical in nature, others focused on practical issues, some in defense of anger, and others arguing against its necessity. This book is an essential resource for scholars who want to reflect critically on the place of anger in contemporary life.

Quel lien y a-t-il entre le style, qui exprime un rapport au monde, et la théologie qui engage un rapport à Dieu ? Ce lien a été très fort dans le passé. À travers Augustin et le Pseudo-Denys, la pensée néoplatonicienne transmet au Moyen Âge le thème de la lumière intelligible. L’univers médiéval s’appréhende comme un cosmos transfiguré par la lumière de Dieu qui s’irradie sur toutes choses. Les Sommes théologiques baignent dans ce même symbolisme lumineux. Cependant, la pensée scolastique, (...) sous l’influence de l’aristotélisme, prend une orientation divergente : le réalisme tend à séculariser la nature ; la clarté ne vient plus d'en haut, mais d'en bas, de l’objet : l’esthétique se détache du discours théologique, l'allégorie se libère du symbole en direction de l'imaginaire. Quel sens reconnaître à un tel cheminement marqué au sceau de notre modernité ? Un champ esthétique, devenu ainsi autonome, ne risque-t-il pas de se retrouver exclusivement voué aux jeux formels d’une fiction pure sur fond de néant de sens ? Non, car l'imaginaire exerce une « fonction métaphorique » et « ontologique » , qui ouvre vers un supplément de sens. Le style est une structure individualisante qui rend sensible, dans l’art, le jaillissement d'une vérité du monde qui se répète dans les diverses productions esthétiques d'une même aire culturelle. Un style peut donc être un « lieu théologique » porteur d'un certain rapport au sacré, au même titre que « trace séculière » de formes spirituelles les plus diverses. D’où l’éminente leçon de « L'art sacré » contemporain, attentif aux affinités, techniques et défis de la modernité et, partant, promis aux rencontres œcuméniques les plus enrichissantes.What connection is there between style that expresses a relationship with the world, and theology that engages a relationship with God ? This connection was very strong in the past. From Augustine and the Pseudo-Dionysius, Neoplatonic thought transmitted to the Middle Ages the theme of intelligible light. The medieval universe is understood as a cosmos transfigured by God’s light irradiating all things. Theological Summas bathe in the same luminous symbolism. Under Aristotelian influence, Scholastic thought, however, takes a divergent orientation : realism tends to secularize nature ; clarity does net come from on high, but below, from the object ; the aesthetic detaches itself from the theological discourse, allegory frees itself from the symbol in the direction of the imaginary. What meaning can be seen in such a path that is marked with the seal of our modernity ? Does not the aesthetic field, that has become autonomous, take the risk of finding itself exclusively dedicated to formal games of pure fiction on a background of meaninglessness ? No, for the imaginary exercises a « metaphorical » and « ontological » function that opens towards an increase of meaning. The style is a individualizing structure that renders sensitive, in art, the breaking out of a truth of the world that repeats itself in the diverse aesthetic productions of a same cultural space. A style can, therefore, be a « theological site » carrying a certain rapport to the sacred, and at the same time that « secular pathway » of the most diverse spiritual forms. From there comes the eminent lesson of contemporary « Sacred Art », attentive to the affinities, techniques, and challenges of modernity, and consequently, engaged to most enriching ecumenical encounters. (shrink)

Volume II of Vernon Press’s series on the Philosophy of Forgiveness offers several challenging and provocative chapters that seek to push the conversation in new directions and dimensions. Volume I, Explorations of Forgiveness: Personal, Relational, and Religious, began the task of creating a consistent multi-dimensional account of forgiveness, and Volume II’s New Dimensions of Forgiveness continues this goal by presenting a set of chapters that delve into several deep conceptual and metaphysical features of forgiveness. New Dimensions of Forgiveness creates a (...) theoretical framework for understanding the many nuanced features of forgiveness, namely, third-party forgiveness, forgiveness as an aesthetic process, the role of resentment in warranting forgiveness, the moral status of self-forgiveness, epistemic trust, forgiveness’s influence on the moral status of persons, forgiveness in time, the status of Substance and Subject within a Hegelian framework, Jacques Derrida’s “impossible” forgiveness, and the use of imaginative “magic” to become a maximal forgiver. Readers will be challenged to question and come to terms with many oft-overlooked, yet important philosophical dimensions of forgiveness. (shrink)

There is evidence of persistent inequalities in household financial protection of health and drugs spending in Latin America. Despite the expansion of coverage, strong inequalities persist in access to health and family spending on drugs in the region. Out-of-pocket spending in medicines is regressive in greater need for affordable medicines.

Au terme d'une longue recherche en quête du sens de l'art et de son mystère au coeur de nos vies, ce bref essai voudrait revenir sur le point central de jointure entre apparence et apparition qu'on peut désigner sous l'expression de manifestation esthétique. Interrogation ultime que soulève tout grand créateur d'une oeuvre d'art digne de ce nom, à savoir porteuse d'un contenu de vérité authentique. Ainsi du doute de Cézanne hanté au dire de Merleau-Ponty par le soupçon de l'échec de (...) la peinture à conjurer l'illusion des images - ou encore de l'angoisse de Schoenberg à la poursuite d'une musique qui soit espérance messianique (ce que J S Bach déjà avait poursuivi au sommet toute sa vie). Question éminemment philosophique méditée depuis toujours par les plus grands penseurs. Ainsi, au confluent du néo-platonisme et du christianisme, la lecture augustinienne de Plotin ; en plein âge baroque, l'analyse kantienne décisive du sublime au principe de l'imagination esthétique, et, à l'aurore de notre modernité du XXe siècle, l'invocation de Walter Benjamin à "l'aura, l'unique apparaître d'un lointain". (shrink)

1 Introduction I don't know ... I don't belong to any group. ... I never was a socialist. I never was a communist. ... I never wanted anything of that kind. ...

L’étude du sexe et des sexualités à l’époque romaine « sort du placard », alors que les universitaires explorent de nouveaux sujets au-delà des dynamiques entre sexe et genre plus traditionnellement étudiées. Un-Roman sex offre de nouvelles manières d’étudier le sexe, le genre et les sexualités en explorant à la fois les relations entre personnes de même sexe et les rapports de pouvoir genrés, et en replaçant le sexe au cœur de la vie quotidienne des provinces romaines. Cet ouvrage collectif...

This essay examines why some introductory ethics students are averse to any sort of moral requirement. It provides a series of descriptions and techniques to help teachers recognize, diagnose, and engage such students. After discussing the nature of student aversions to moral obligations, I discuss three causes and several ways to engage each: 1) Student Relativism; 2) student fears and misunderstandings of obligations; and 3) the phenomenon of what I call fetishized liberty, which leads to the “liberty paradox”—where students actively (...) fight for liberties, yet actively give up or fail to use the ones they currently have. (shrink)

This book develops a rights-based theory of justice that maintains that genuine repentance creates a right to be forgiven. Examining the nature of rights and theological conceptions of forgiveness, the author shows why such a right is nonrepugnant and produces the most just state of affairs for victims and wrongdoers.

Islam has come to be associated with hatred and terrorism, which has resulted in many thinking that Islam (and all Muslims) are fundamentally violent. Chaiwat Satha-Anand’s collection of revised essays featured in Nonviolence and Islamic Imperatives attempts to undermine such a narrative and reframe Islam in terms of peace and nonviolence. To achieve this goal, Satha-Anand argues that Islam’s core values require nonviolence and supports his argument by providing examples from the Prophet Muhammad and contemporary Muslims.

William Irwin gives readers a deeply moving and insightful work into human relationships, our connection to others, the nature of reality, the pursuit of flourishing, and human nature in general. Little Siddhartha centers on three generations of family and explores how they respond to the pressures of life, their place in the world, and the fractured relationships that result. Starting with the younger Siddhartha’s mantra of “Eat, drink, and be merry,” and ending with a concerted chant of “Om,” Irwin weaves (...) a tale that explores the spiritual recesses of human existence, calling on readers to understand, forgive, and most importantly, to listen. (shrink)

Is it possible for the Modern State to function without violence? How is violence ingrained in national identities, and how do the borders that supposedly “protect” nations actually foster unconscious biases, the anger and hatred of “others,” and the racism and ethnocentrism of shootings, mass murders, and other atrocities? Eddy M. Souffrant and the contributing authors of A Future without Borders? provide insights into how to answer these and other questions.

Dario Martinelli examines the nature of songs of social protest (SSPs) in Give Peace a Chant: Popular Music, Politics and Social Protest and provides readers with a book that is engaging, provoking, and enjoyable. Martinelli’s research is thorough, astute, and structured in a way that is both rigorous and accessible. Combining typology with several case studies, Martinelli achieves his stated goal of showing how context, song lyrics, and the music itself are organic and equally important elements that constitute SSPs.

Odtworzenie założeń antropologicznych filozofii historii i wolności ludzkiej Merleau-Ponty'ego możliwe jest jedynie w konfrontacji z myślą Husserla i stanowiskami strukturalistycznymi. Merleau-Ponty polemizuje z francuską orientacją neokantowską. Orientacja ta tak określa podstawową kategorię a priori, iż pojawia się na jej gruncie nieprzezwyciężalny dualizm ja transcendentalnego i ja empirycznego, ja myślącego i obiektu myśli. Krytykując neokantyzm, Merleau-Ponty znajduje się pod silnym wpływem Husserla. Husserl proponuje nowe spojrzenie na "temat transcendentalności", głębsze od Kantowskiego. Kant nie potrafił przezwyciężyć "kryzysu nauki europejskiej" interpretując Galileuszowską wizję (...) matematyzacji natury Jako aprioryczną strukturę podmiotu ludzkiego. Nie udało się odsłonić duchowych źródeł nowożytnego traktowania natury, jego sensu dla człowieka. Brak również u autora "Krytyki czystego rozumu" obecności problematyki bezwzględnego pierwszeństwa prerefleksyjnego kontaktu z bytem. Husserl uwyraźnia potrzebę skonstruowania bardziej radykalnej, tj. bliższej realnych źródeł ludzkiego istnienia, wersji a priori (aprioryzmu). Opiera się on na podstawowym założeniu priorytetu tego, co przeżyte prerefleksyjnie w stosunku do syntezy naukowej. Prerefleksyjność posiada swą immanentną organizację, którą można utożsamić z językiem naturalnym. Wychodząc od prerefleksyjności przeżycia świata i naturalności języka można zbudować przejście od konkretności percepcji do idealności obiektu logiczno-naukowego. Właściwie określona kategoria a priori pozwala stworzyć nowy typ refleksji filozoficznej, który umożliwia zniesienie dualizmu ja transcendentalnego i ja empirycznego, i który można określić Jako "nieskończoną medytację". Pojawia się także możliwość potraktowania podmiotu ludzkiego już nie w perspektywie pozaczasowej aktywności konstytutywnej, formalizującej i syntetyzującej materiał dany z zewnątrz, lecz jako wszechstronnie aktywnego uczestnika sytuacji biosocjokulturowej. Jednakże w pełni twórcza kontynuacja poszukiwań fenomenologicznych Husserla przez Merleau-Ponty'ego jest możliwa dzięki zainteresowaniom strukturalizmem. Wykorzystanie myślenia strukturalistycznego jest u Merleau-Ponty'ego pochodną lektur teoretyków behawioryzmu, psychoanalizy i teorii postaci, dopełnionych lingwistyką strukturalną i etnosocjologią. Pojęcie struktury ma duży walor operacyjno-metodologiczny w naukach humanistycznych, a jej znaczenie dla filozofii wyraża się w tym, że jest ona "miejscem unaoczniania się sensu", zarazem narzędziem, jak i obiektem rozumienia. Operowanie strukturami umożliwia wyjście poza konstelację: podmiot-przedmiot, dominującą od Kartezjusza do Hegla. Pozwala także zobaczyć podmiot ludzki w świecie społeczno-historycznym, człowieka poprzez obecność w świecie i uspołecznienie poprzez człowieka. (shrink)

The purpose of this research was to discover and describe the economic contribution one group of women entrepreneurs. The research participants were lowresource and laid-off women who had graduated from a Microenterprise Assistance Program . There was no differentiation among women by age, race, or ethnicity. The theoretical landscape that underpins this research includes economic geography and women entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurship and economic development. This research provided a geographic representation of the dispersion and volume of the self-reported business expenses of (...) women entrepreneurs located in one geographic area. In addition, this research developed and examined the viability of an assessment tool that maps the business payments made by entrepreneurs. (shrink)