Vers la fin du vie s.apr. J.‑C., le forum de Philippes est devenu une place de village, en fort contraste avec l’intense activité de construction d’églises qu’avait connue le centre de la ville dans la première moitié du siècle. Ce retour à la ruralité s’inscrit dans un courant plus général qui affecte alors les Balkans, mais la présente note étudie l’hypothèse que l’épidémie dite « peste de Justinien » a eu un fort impact à Philippes. Une vague connue à Constantinople (...) en 573‑574 a atteint Thessalonique en juillet 586 et a dû passer par Philippes. Ce facteur qui n’a pas été invoqué jusqu’ici pourrait expliquer les enterrements en masse très mal connus et mal datés observés par Paul Lemerle dans la basilique B, l’abandon de la construction de cette église en raison de la diminution des moyens financiers et surtout humains qui pouvaient lui être consacrés, et le déclin de la forme urbaine de la vie collective qui ne correspondait plus aux besoins d’une population devenue moins nombreuse. (shrink)

The ArgumentAlexandre Koyré is one of the most important historians of philosophic and scientific though since the thirties. Research on the Scientific Revolution, on Galileo, Descartes, Newton, as well as on Paracelsus and Boehme has deeply changed under his influential method: it has been a model for Kuhn's methodology of paradigms and revolutions in the histroy of science. Whereas Koyré used to be considered opposed in his ideology and method to sociological approaches, he has recently been characterized by Yehuda Elkana (...) as a sociologist of knowledge. In fact, until now one of the main sources of his method had not been identified: it is only by acknowledging the influence of Lucien Lévy-Bruhl on Koyré that it is possible to explain how the latter wrote his thesis on Boehme's mystical thought just before his Etudes galiléennes. Lucien Lévy-Bruhl was teaching history of philosophy at the Sorbonne, and Koyré was strongly influenced by his idea of “prelogical thinking” as a universel phenomenon and in a general way by the sociological school of Durkheim. Conceptual analysis deriving from Husserl, collective representations and attitude mentale, came together in Alexandre Koyrè's method. (shrink)

We invited five Cavell scholars to write on this topic. What follows is a vibrant exchange among Paola Marrati, Andrew Norris, Jörg Volbers, Cary Wolfe and Thomas Dumm addressing the question whether, in the contemporary political context, Cavell’s skepticism and his Emersonian perfectionism amount to a politics at all.

In this study, Paola Marrati approaches—in an extremely insightful, rigorous, and well-argued way—the question of the philosophical sources of Derrida's thought through a consideration of his reading of both Husserl and Heidegger. A central focus of the book is the analysis of the concepts of genesis and trace as they define Derrida's thinking of historicity, time, and subjectivity. Notions such as the contamination of the empirical and the transcendental, dissemination and writing, are explained as key categories establishing a guiding (...) thread that runs through Derrida's early and later works. Whereas in his discussion of Husserl Derrida problematizes the relationship between the ideality of meaning and the singularity of its historical production, in his interpretation of Heidegger he challenges the very idea of the originary finitude of temporality. This book is essential reading not only for those interested in the philosophical roots of deconstruction, but for all those interested in the central questions of history and temporality, subjectivity and language, that pervade contemporary debates in cultural, literary, and visual theory alike. (shrink)

In constitutional scholarship, legal sanctions and customary law seem to be opposed to each other: customary law is often defined precisely as law without sanctions. Applied to the constitutional field, it is possible to better define those two elements of discourse: constitutional sanctions are essentially procedures of constitutional review of legislation, while customary law is more frequently referred to as constitutional conventions. While insisting on the presence of the element of sanction is typical of the normative discourse attributed to Hans (...) Kelsen, stressing the importance of constitutional conventions implies different strategic goals. Those goals are related to the definition of constitutional law and its specificity compared to other –less political– legal fields. (shrink)

Una discussione della filosofia neoscolastica e della storiografia da essa ispirata, con particolare riferimento alla scuola milanese che si sviluppa nel contesto della Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. Agostino Gemelli, la Rivista di Filosofia Neoscolastica e la ricerca nel pensiero medievale del nucleo centrale di una philosophia perennis: rischio di una interpretazione pre-costituita del pensiero medievale, individuato come itinerario di ricostruzione di modelli di verità. Il progressivo dissolversi dell'immagine della scolastica come blocco omogeneo e compatto di dottrine culminanti nella filosofia (...) tomista, a favore di una visione sempre più articolata e complessa dei grandi temi e problemi teorici nati dal confronto diretto o indiretto con le massime tradizioni del pensiero classico, con i maestri arabi ed ebrei, con il mondo bizantino. In questa storia è fondamentale il ruolo di Sofia Vanni Rovighi , la sua fiducia nel continuo progresso della ragione e la sua interpretazione della philosophia perennis come idea regolatrice più che come filosofia storicamente determinata.A discussion concerning the so called filosofia neoscolastica and the historiography influenced by this theoretical tradition, with particular reference to the school that develops in Milano in the context of Catholic University del Sacro Cuore. Agostino Gemelli, the journal Rivista di filosofia neoscolastica, looking in medieval thought for the primary core of a philosophia perennis and the consequent risk of a dogmatc interpretation of medieval thought, interpreted as itinerary for the reconstruction of models of truth. The progressive weakening of the image of the scholastic philosophy as an homogeneous and solid doctrinal piece, culminating in the thought of Thomas Aquinas, in favour of a more and more detailed and complex vision of the fundamental issues and theoretical problems born from a direct or indirect comparison with the great classical traditions, with the Arab and Jewish thinkers and with the Byzantine world. In this history is fundamental the thought of Sofia Vanni Rovighi, her confidence in the continuous growth of human reason and her interpretation of philosophia perennis as a regulative idea more than as an historically definite philosophy. (shrink)

How much do animals matter--morally? Can we keep considering them as second class beings, to be used merely for our benefit? Or, should we offer them some form of moral egalitarianism? Inserting itself into the passionate debate over animal rights, this fascinating, provocative work by renowned scholar Paola Cavalieri advances a radical proposal: that we extend basic human rights to the nonhuman animals we currently treat as "things." Cavalieri first goes back in time, tracing the roots of the debate (...) from the 1970s, then explores not only the ethical but also the scientific viewpoints, examining the debate's precedents in mainstream Western philosophy. She considers the main proposals of reform that recently have been advanced within the framework of today's prevailing ethical perspectives. Are these proposals satisfying? Cavalieri says no, claiming that it is necessary to go beyond the traditional opposition between utilitarianism and Kantianism and focus on the question of fundamental moral protection. In the case of human beings, such protection is granted within the widely shared moral doctrine of universal human rights' theory. Cavalieri argues that if we examine closely this theory, we will discover that its very logic extends to nonhuman animals as beings who are owed basic moral and legal rights and that, as a result, human rights are not human after all. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Present Trends of French Philosophical ThoughtAlexandre Koyré and Paola ZambelliThe paper that is published here for the first time was read to the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research by Alexandre Koyré, probably during one of his first trips to the United States as a visiting professor in the fall of 1946 or in the fall of 1950. 1 Given its content and the secondary (...) literature he quoted, the paper seems to go back to the end of 1946, when eight lectures were announced in the Bulletin of the New School, 2 but Koyré probably read only the first of them, deciding to postpone the later ones, because the other subject chosen for his 1946 seminars at the New School (“Les philosophes et la machine”) gained more interest and grew longer. He came back to the New School in 1950 to give some lectures on existentialism [End Page 521] in France, but this time he was the guest of Horace Kallen. 3 But we read in this paper that Koyré had spoken in a series of seminars organized by Albert Salomon. It was determined that Koyré should speak on a broad subject—not only on Sartre’s existentialism, but also on French philosophical trends in general in the first year after the Second World War. His American listeners were obviously interested in hearing about Sartre, Camus, Merleau-Ponty, and the development of the new existentialist school in France.The result was that Koyré prepared a long paper—one that began by mentioning philosophers who had died in the War and the Resistance and concluded with an analysis of Sartre’s ontology and ethics. In the archives of the Centre Koyré in Paris there are three originals of this paper: a longer manuscript which, though earlier in date than the other two, is more complete and provides the basis of my edition, and two shorter typescripts, possibly prepared by the author’s typist with a view to publishing the piece in an American journal. In the first of the two typed versions several sentences, names, and words are missing in the typescript but were inserted into the text by an unknown hand. The second of the typescripts is complete in these points, but its preparation was interrupted for unknown reasons, and the copies (an original and two carbons) bear a final handwritten note: “Le texte s’arrête là.” Happily, the present manuscript version continues to the paper’s original conclusion.Perhaps Koyré, having temporarily mislaid the last pages of the manuscript among his many notes, decided not to publish the paper. 4 The omission from the [End Page 522] body of his published work is regrettable, since this is one of the few papers in which Koyré took a position on contemporary philosophical problems. On the basis of his deep knowledge of Husserl’s and Heidegger’s philosophies, he was able to give a serious interpretation of Sartre. In discussing Sartre, Koyré predominantly used Sartre’s polemical lecture L’exis-tentialisme est un humanisme, read, and published in 1946 as a response to Catholic and Marxist critiques. This was certainly a simpler text than the bulky but more authoritative L’être et le néant. And perhaps it was to avoid taking this latter work in his suitcase that Koyré—as he often did—prepared a selection of fundamental passages for his American trip, copying them first in French and then making what was their first translation into English (published below in an appendix).No doubt, after five years of exile, Koyré wished to familiarize himself with the work of contemporary thinkers, both French and German. Indeed, he had already been doing this, since just before the lecture in New York, Koyré took part in a private debate with Jean Wahl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Georges Blin, Maurice de Gandillac, and Gabriel Marcel on the subject of Heidegger’s philosophy. The last two speakers, together with Koyré himself, published their papers from the exchange in a journal and later in a volume introduced by Wahl. In his contribution Koyré emphasized Heidegger’s ideas of “concern [Sorge, souci]” and of “being unto death [zum Tode sein],” writing... (shrink)

A partir de la problemática de la cuestión de las emociones en tratados legislativos de Filón de Alejandría y su relación con el legado estoico, nuestro estudio se propone indagar espacios poco explorados por la investigación académica. Por un lado, busca ana­lizar la definición de _páthos _en los tratados legislativos de Filón, especialmente en _Spec_. 4.79. Por otro lado, procura examinar la clasificación de las emociones en esos tratados, reflexionando sobre la representación afectiva en el marco de la teoría de (...) la voluntariedad (_Decal_. 142) y de los valores buenos y malos, presentes y futuros, de los bienes (_Decal_. 142-146). Con esto pretende contribuir al diálogo de la cuestión de la emo­ciones en el campo de los estudios filónicos y, a través de este, de la Antigüedad griega. (shrink)

In this article the author tries to answer the difficult question of the roots of the welfare state. The study of the French example shows that if some roots are ideological, at the same time they are sociological, too. In the article the main streams of ideological roots are described and conclusion is drawn that nowadays sociological issues are very important. The popularity of the welfare state shows that dismantlement is impossible in the democratic States. Yet, its crisis due to (...) its cost in a globalized world asks the question of the balance point between the fight against assistantship and maintenance of the redistributive nature of the welfare state. The answer to that question still remains the key challenge for European politicians. (shrink)

We study preferences over lotteries which do not necessarily satisfy completeness. We provide a characterization which generalizes Expected Utility theory. We show in particular that various sure-thing axioms are needed to guaranteee the representability in terms of utility intervals rather than numbers, and to provide a linear interval order representation which is very much in the spirit of Expected Utility theory.

Although remote working can involve positive outcomes both for employees and organizations, in the case of the sudden and forced remote working situation that came into place during the COVID-19 crisis there have also been reports of negative aspects, one of which is technostress. In this context of crisis, leadership is crucial in sustainably managing and supporting employees, especially employees with workaholic tendencies who are more prone to developing negative work and health outcomes. However, while research on the role of (...) the positive aspects of leadership during crises does exist, the negative aspects of leadership during the COVID-19 crisis have not yet been studied. The present study aimed to explore the role of authoritarian leadership in a sample of 339 administrative university employees who worked either completely from home or from home and the workplace. The study examined the moderating effect of a manager on this relationship and the connections between workaholism and technostress through conditional process analysis. Results pointed out that high authoritarian leadership had an enhancing effect, whereas low authoritarian leadership had a protective effect on the relationship between workaholism and technostress, only in the group of complete remote workers. Thus, authoritarian leadership should be avoided and training leaders to be aware of its effect appears to be essential. Limitations, future directions for the study, and practical implications are also discussed. (shrink)

This paper describes the disorienting aesthetics of some environments that are characteristic of the Anthropocene. We refer to these environments as ‘mashed-up’ and present three dimensions – phenomenological, epistemological and narrative – of the aesthetic disorientation they can trigger. We then advance the suggestion that a rich, nuanced and meaningful aesthetic experience of mashed-up Anthropocene environments (MAEs) calls for a mode of appreciation grounded on performative practices of aesthetic familiarisation with particular MAEs and entities and processes thereof. Familiarisation with MAEs, (...) we further note, can have disorienting codas of its own. It can reveal and highlight, rather than eliminate or alleviate, the solid strangeness of Earth even in the systemically humanised world of the Anthropocene, and it can expose and tie at least some of our agency, identity and sources of meaning in life to the same unstable evolvability of particular MAEs. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine the problems facing a policy maker who observes inconsistent choices made by agents who are boundedly rational. We contrast a model-less and a model-based approach to welfare economics. We make the case for the model-based approach and examine its advantages as well as some problematic issues associated with it.

After its remarkable affirmation overseas, creationism has landed in Europe and is also present in Italy. As in the USA, also in Italy the main terrain of the clash with Darwinism is the public school. The essay investigates the reasons why in Italy too has been possible to require to teach creationism alongside evolutionism. If in the US this is explained by the strong influence of the evangelical communities, in Italy creationism has found fertile ground in the traditional backwardness of (...) the country in terms of scientific culture. To this we must add a relativistic epistemological interpretation that allows to equalize scientific doctrines to ideologies. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose meaningfulness as one important evaluative criterion in individual climate ethics and suggest that most of our greenhouse gas emitting actions, behaviours, and lives are the opposite of meaningful: anti-meaningful. We explain why such actions etc. score negatively on three important dimensions of the meaningfulness scale, which we call the agential, narrative, and generative dimensions. We suggest that thinking about individual climate ethics also in terms of (anti-) meaningfulness illuminates important aspects of our troubled ethical involvement (...) with CC and can make a fresh and fruitful contribution to existing discussions, which tend to focus on moral responsibility and obligations. (shrink)

This text was first published in Theory, Culture & Society, May 13, 2015. For a special issue of Body & Society on ‘Rhythm, Movement, Embodiment', Paola Crespi presents two previously untranslated texts, Rudolf Bode's ‘Rhythm and its Importance for Education' and Rudolf Laban's ‘Eurhythmy and Kakorhythmy'. In the following interview she uncovers further unpublished and untranslated sources and she discusses some of the main themes of these texts in relation to the more widely known text - Danse, théâtre et (...) spectacle vivant – GALERIE – Nouvel article. (shrink)

This paper discusses the outstanding problem of replicability of empirical data in the context of recent work on meta-analysis, especially within the field of evidence-based medicine. Specifically, it deals with the methodological issue of how to determine the degrees of heterogeneity between different collected studies. After critically reviewing the standard measures used to quantify meta-analytical heterogeneity, we argue that they should be revised in such a way to take into account the statistical power of the individual studies. We thus propose (...) some new measures of heterogeneity. Subsequently, we apply them to re-assess concrete case-studies from clinical research, thereby showing explicitly how the relevant values of heterogeneity diverge from those obtained with the original measures. (shrink)

There is something frustrating in the concept of algorithm that can even worry: its limitations. An algorithm does not need the time to define itself, it possesses in its structure everything that defines it and can work exclusively in a site, such as a computer, which is itself another finite system. Whenever a particular algorithm will be executed it will always be inexorably equal to itself because the number of possible states is finite. A logical­mathematical algorithm is essentially very different (...) from a living being that reveals its being only in the passage of time, in the relationship with the environment, in the happening of events. On the contrary there is a strong relationship between living things and the art, since art essentially needs time to express itself. The art has a time dimension, if for no other reason, because the purpose of art is reaching human beings. But art, through technology, can also broaden its horizons. Art can make use of the technology and can do exactly as the man whose expression is, to grow, to expand, to discover new identities, to conduct an investigation in those distant places, on the border with the irrational. (shrink)

Interest in German Romanticism has been revitalized in recent years by new post-structural, interdisciplinary, and intertextual perspectives. However until now this renewed interest has not led to a re-examination of Jakob Böhme's formative influence on.

Bergson's engagement with evolutionary theory was remarkably up to date with the science of his time. One century later, the scientific and social landscape is undoubtedly quite different, but some of his insights remain of critical importance for the present. This paper aims at discussing three related aspects of Bergson's philosophy of evolution and their relevance for contemporary debates: first, the stark distinction between the affirmation of the reality of change and becoming, on the one hand, and any notion of (...) progress on the other; second, the insistence on the intimate interplay between forms of knowledge and forms of life; third, his idea that machines and organisms, technology and biology, are not separate domains but, rather, stem from and answer to the same problems and needs that living beings express. Such a Bergsonian framework may prove very helpful in reassessing the implicit assumptions of several contemporary debates on the ethical and political stakes of evolution, biosciences, and technologies, as well as the increasingly problematic boundary between “biology” and “culture.”. (shrink)