This volume addresses the intriguing issue of indirect reports from an interdisciplinary perspective. The contributors include philosophers, theoretical linguists, socio-pragmaticians, and cognitive scientists. The book is divided into four sections following the provenance of the authors. Combining the voices from leading and emerging authors in the field, it offers a detailed picture of indirect reports in the world’s languages and their significance for theoretical linguistics. Building on the previous book on indirect reports in this series, this volume adds an empirical (...) and cross-linguistic approach that covers an impressive range of languages, such as Cantonese, Japanese, Hebrew, Persian, Dutch, Spanish, Catalan, Armenian, Italian, English, Hungarian, German, Rumanian, and Basque. (shrink)

Scholars and international organizations engaged in institutional reconstruction converge in recognizing political corruption as a cause or a consequence of conflicts. Anticorruption is thus generally considered a centrepiece of institutional reconstruction programmes. A common approach to anticorruption within this context aims primarily to counter the negative political, social, and economic effects of political corruption, or implement legal anticorruption standards and punitive measures. We offer a normative critical discussion of this approach, particularly when it is initiated and sustained by external entities. (...) We recast the focus from an outward to an inward perspective on institutional action and failure centred on the institutional interactions between officeholders. In so doing, we offer the normative tools to reconceptualize anticorruption in terms of an institutional ethics of ‘office accountability’ that draws on an institution’s internal resources of self-correction as per the officeholders’ interrelated work. (shrink)

This article contributes to the debate concerning the identification of politically relevant cases of corruption in a democracy by sketching the basic traits of an original liberal theory of institutional corruption. We define this form of corruption as a deviation with respect to the role entrusted to people occupying certain institutional positions, which are crucial for the implementation of public rules, for private gain. In order to illustrate the damages that corrupt behaviour makes to liberal democratic institutions, we discuss the (...) case of health care professionals’ abuse of their right to conscientious objection to abortion services. We show that the conscience clause can be instrumentally abused to sabotage democratically established public rules and thus exert undue private influence on their implementation. In this sense, from a liberal democratic perspective, institutional corruption is problematic because it is disruptive of such fundamental liberal ideals as the impartiality of public institutions and citizens’ political equality. (shrink)

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries marks a period of transition between the vitalistic ontology that had dominated Renaissance natural philosophy and the Early Modern mechanistic paradigm endorsed by, among others, the Cartesians and Newtonians. This paper will focus on how the tensions between vitalism and mechanism played themselves out in the context of sixteenth and seventeenth century chemistry and chemical philosophy, particularly in the works of Paracelsus, Jan Baptista Van Helmont, Robert Fludd, and Robert Boyle. Rather than argue that these (...) natural philosophers each embraced either fully vitalistic or fully mechanistic ontologies, I hope to demonstrate that these thinkers adhered to complicated and nuanced ontologies that cannot be described in either purely vitalistic or purely mechanistic terms. A central feature of my argument is the claim that a corpuscularian theory of matter does not entail a strictly mechanistic and reductionistic account of chemical properties. I also argue that what marks the shift from pre-modern vitalistic chemical philosophy to the modern chemical philosophy that marked the Chemical Revolution is not the victory of mechanism and reductionism in chemistry but, rather, the shift to a physicalistic and naturalistic account of chemical properties and vital spirits. (shrink)

There are many situations and policies that strike us as unjust and make us look for alternatives. Yet in the absence of a clear definition, we may end up by equating injustice with everything that is evil in the world.

This essay offers a novel approach for understanding the poetry of negritude and its role in the struggle for black liberation by appealing to Giambattista Vico’s insights on the historical, cultural, and myth-making function of poetry and of the mythopoetic imagination. The essay begins with a discussion of Vico’s aesthetic historicism and of his ideas regarding the role of imagination, poetry, and myth-making and then brings these ideas to bear on the discussion of the function of negritude poetry, focusing primarily (...) on the writings of Aimé Césaire and on Jean-Paul Sartre’s essay, Black Orpheus. (shrink)

Von Hippel & Trivers (VH&T) interpret belief in God and belief in strong government as the outcome of an active process of self-deception on a worldwide scale. We propose, instead, that these beliefs might simply be a passive spin-off of efficient cognitive processes.

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)

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)

The 1830s and 1840s are the formative years of modern public health in Britain, when the poor law bureaucrat Edwin Chadwick conceived his vision of public health through public works and began the campaign for the construction of the kinds of water and sewerage works that ultimately became the standard components of urban infrastructure throughout the developed world. This book first explores that vision and campaign against the backdrop of the great "condition-of-England" questions of the period, of what rights and (...) expectations working people could justifiably have in regard to political participation, food, shelter and conditions of work. It examines the ways Chadwick's sanitarianism fit the political needs of the much-hated Poor Law Commission and of Whig and Tory governments, each seeking some antidote to revolutionary Charitism. It then reviews the Chadwickians' efforts to solve the host of problems they met in trying to implement the sanitary idea: of what responsibilities central and local units of government, and private contractors, were to have; of how townspeople could be persuaded to embark on untried public technologies; of where the new public health experts were to come from; and of how elegant technical designs were to be fitted to the unique social, political and geographic circumstances of individual towns. Rejecting the view that Chadwick's program was a simple response to an obvious urban problem Professor Hamlin argues that at the time a "public health" focusing narrowly on sanitary public works represented a retreat of public medicine from involvement with the great social issues of the Industrial Revolution. In exploring the views of medical men who were critical of Chadwick, Hamlin suggests the parameters of a public health that might have been, in which concern for health and well-being becomes the foundation of a public medicine that is a principal guarantor of social justice. This book offers modern public heatlh professionals elements of a forgotten professional heritage that might be useful in responding to the bewildering range of health problems we now confront. (shrink)

The present study aims at exploring whether the level of well-being vary as a function of fertility status in different phases of the ovulatory cycle. We investigated the multidimensional well-being, including the cognitive component of subjective well-being related to judgments about one’s life satisfaction, the psychological well-being concerning the full growth and self-realization of the individual, and self-esteem, that is the personal judgment of overall self-worth and is recognized as one indicator of well-being. On the basis of the cycle phase (...) estimation at the moment of the experiment, one hundred and sixteen normally cycling women were divided into “fertile” and “non-fertile” groups and were administered the Psychological Well-Being Scale, the Basic Self-Esteem Scale and the Satisfaction with Life Scale. A Multivariate Analysis of Variance has been performed to examine whether there were differences between groups according to their ovulatory phase. All dimensions of psychological well-being, self-esteem and satisfaction with life were found to be stable in the different phases of the menstrual cycle. The implications of these results are discussed. (shrink)

Catholic theologians after Trent saw the Protestant teaching about the remnants of original sin in the justified as one of the ‘chief ’ errors of Protestant soteriology. Martin Luther, John Calvin, Martin Chemnitz, and many Protestant theologians believed that a view of concupiscence as sinful, strictly speaking, did away with any reliance on good works. This conviction also clarified the Christian’s dependence on the imputed righteousness of Christ. Catholic theologians condemned this position as detracting from the work of Christ who (...) takes away the sins of the world. The rejection of this teaching—and the affirmation of Trent’s statement that original sin is taken away and that the justified at baptism is without stain or ‘immaculate’ before God—is essential for understanding Catholic opposition to Protestant soteriology. Two Spanish Dominican Thomists, Domingo de Soto and Bartolomé de Medina, rejected the Protestant teaching on imputation in part because of its connection with the view on the remnants of original sin in the justified. Adrian and Peter van Walenburch, brothers who served as auxiliary bishops of Cologne in the second half of the seventeenth century, argued that the Protestants of their time now agreed with the Catholic Church on a number of soteriological points. They also drew upon some of their post–Tridentine predecessors to offer a Catholic account of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. Nonetheless, the issue of sin in the justified remained a point of serious controversy. (shrink)

Luigi Pareyson’s concept of formativity is one of his most relevant and original concepts. In this paper I will give a short exposition of this concept in Pareyson’s Estetica and try to show how it can account, better as other object-, subject-, target- oriented theories, even of some features of contemporary art. The very relevant innovation that we can find in this concept is the shift from a concept of art as poiesis—as it is in Aristotle, namely, as a production (...) of an object—to the concept of art as praxis, that is, as an activity which involves the entire doing of the artist. As a doing that invents the form of doing, formativity appears as a kind of schematism that operates, not only without concept, as it is in Kant’s Critique of Judgement, but even without object. The thesis here suggested is that formativity can be understood as a transcendentalism of invention. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to analyse a passage of the pseudoepigraphic Carmen de resurrectione which relates to insipientes, interpreted as those who do not accept that the rational observation of nature proves the existence of a unique creator God. Such a refusal is believed to make them worthy of eternal damnation. The resulting concept of sapientia involves both ratio and voluntas; it is also connected with gnoseology and soteriology. A similar concept can be found in the Aquitanian poetry (...) of the fifth century and in the theology of the so-called Semipelagians. This similarity calls into question the traditional dating and the supposed area of origin of the Carmen. (shrink)

This essay emphasizes how Vico was one of the modern philosophers to set himself the goal to reconstruct the history of the primitive world. Differently from several authors who preceded him and also other contemporary thinkers, the Neapolitan philosopher showed that the world of the origin wasn’t idyllic, but it was affected by fear, anguish and basic needs. What mainly characterizes Vico, however, is the fact that he represented the primitive world not as a unitary and fixed block, but as (...) a world made of different historical phases and of class and social conflicts. As there were no written documents, Vico elaborated a reconstruction of history, basing it on a new and revolutionary theory of myths which, being based on creativity induced by fantasy, are called “universali fantastici”. (shrink)

Advances a hermeneutic conception of truth as a mode of being, in dialogue with Aristotle, Nietzsche, Gadamer, Heidegger, Putnam, and Rorty. What does it mean to say that something is true? In this book Gaetano Chiurazzi argues that when we say that something is true, we do not say something merely about a state of affairs, but also about ourselves. Truth is not just the fact of “what is out there,” but a mode of existence that shapes and transforms (...) human understanding. Supported by an original reading of Aristotle’s theory of judgment and Heidegger’s hermeneutical theory of truth, Chiurazzi also engages the work of Nietzsche, Gadamer, Putnam, and Rorty to challenge the rising tide of theories that dismiss the importance of human experience to the idea of truth. “This is a work of original scholarship. It does not simply explain key ideas but makes a compelling case for regarding truth in a distinctive way from a hermeneutic perspective.” — James Risser, author of Heidegger toward the Turn: Essays on the Work of the 1930s. (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 book offers a new and original hypothesis on the origin of modal ontology, whose roots can be traced back to the mathematical debate about incommensurable magnitudes, which forms the implicit background for Plato’s later dialogues and culminates in the definition of being as dynamis in the Sophist. Incommensurable magnitudes – also called dynameis by Theaetetus – are presented as the solution to the problem of non-being and serve as the cornerstone for a philosophy of difference and becoming. This shift (...) also marks the passage to another form of rationality – one not of the measure, but of the mediation. The book argues that the ontology and the rationality which arise out of the discovery of incommensurable constitutes a thread that runs through the entire history of philosophy, one that leads to Kantian transcendentalism and to the philosophies derived from it, such as Hegelianism and philosophical hermeneutics. Readers discover an insightful exchange with some of the most important issues in philosophy, newly reconsidered from the point of view of an ontology of the incommensurable. These issues include the infinite, the continuum, existence, and difference. This text appeals to students and researchers in the fields of ancient philosophy, German idealism, philosophical hermeneutics and the history of mathematics. (shrink)

Gaetano Rametta,Roberto Formisano | : Le présent essai tente de dégager les structures fondamentales de la philosophie de la religion de Fichte après 1800. Une attention particulière est accordée à l’Initiation à la vie bienheureuse et à la Doctrine de l’État. La connaissance théorique, la version johannique de la chrétienté, ainsi qu’une nouvelle conception de l’État sont interprétées ici comme autant de visages différents d’un système philosophique strictement interconnecté. Dans sa période berlinoise, Fichte n’a plus conçu le sujet comme (...) le premier principe de sa Doctrine de la science, mais plutôt comme l’« image » transcendantale au travers de laquelle s’écoule le flot d’une vie indivisée et spirituellement transfigurée. | : The present essay tries to show the fundamental structures of Fichte’s philosophy of religion after 1800. Particular attention is focused on the Introduction to a Blessed Life and the Theory of the State. Theoretical knowledge, John’s version of Christianity, and a new concept of the State are here interpreted as different faces of a strictly interconnected philosophical system. In his Berliner period, Fichte did not conceive the Subject any more as the “first principle” of his Doctrine of science, but rather as the transcendental “image” through which flows the stream of an undivided and spiritually transfigured Life. (shrink)

In this text, I connect the concept of existence worked out by Heidegger with the concepts of radical understanding. Under this concept I mean the idea that existence is the radical content of every understanding. The fact that according to Heidegger existence is understanding is then explained through their common structure: existence is possibility as well as understanding is directed prominently to possibility. But, as it is shown through wider references to ancient as well as to some contemporary discussions, possibility (...) introduces in the structure of existence a certain incommensurability: that is why existence can never be reduced to a positive, actual reality, but is always “something more” than actuality. (shrink)

La defensa gadameriana del carácter extra-metódico de la verdad de las ciencias humanas, teorizada en Verdad y método, no es el simple rechazo del método; ella nace de la conciencia de que hay verdades que no pueden ser reducibles a las condiciones del método, porque se refieren a una dimensión ontológica que no se refiere a la repetitividad y a la conmensurabilidad. Tales aspectos de lo real son los acontecimientos contingentes, accidentales, aquellos que definimos como propiamente históricos. En este texto (...) me propongo poner a la luz esta dimensión ontológica, que en Aristóteles está en particular en aquella de la praxis, de la acción humana, buscando mostrar que la necesidad de su tematización está estrechamente ligada a las discusiones lógicas y ontológicas que atravesaron el pensamiento griego después del descubrimiento de las grandezas inconmensurables. La ontología de la praxis es una ontología que toma en consideración aquella “irracionalidad” constituida a partir de lo contingente y lo accidental, a la que corresponde una forma de racionalidad que no es más conmensuradora sino mediadora, representada por la phrónesis Gadamer’s vindication of the extra-methodical feature of truth in the human sciences put forward in Truth and Method does not mean a mere refusal of method: rather, it arises from the awareness that there are truths which are not reducible to the conditions of repeatability and commensurability set up by methodical thinking. In fact, the truths of the human sciences refer to the ontological dimension of the contingent and the accidental, i.e. to the dimension of the historical. In this essay I aim at highlighting this ontological dimension, which for Aristotle is eminently that of the praxis and of human action. I will show that such an ontology is a consequence of the logical and ontological discussions which crisscrossed Greek thought after the discovery of the incommensurable magnitudes. The ontology of praxis is an ontology which takes into account the “irrationality” represented by the contingent, the accidental, to which a new form of rationality corresponds: that of phrónesis. Phrónesis is in fact not a commensurative but a mediative rationality. (shrink)

Dans la dernière phase de sa vie et de ses recherches, Michel Henry a fait dialoguer sa propre phénoménologie de la vie avec le kérygme et la pensée chrétienne, estimant que, depuis ses origines, le christianisme a vécu la révélation de Dieu non pas comme une connaissance mais comme une vie, la Vie même de Dieu dans laquelle les hommes sont invités à entrer, une vie qui configure les êtres humains à partir de la perspective trinitaire comme des fils dans (...) le Fils, relisant ainsi le christianisme en philosophe, ou comme une archi-phénoménologie. Grâce à la visée philosophique, les principes fondamentaux du christianisme peuvent avoir une nouvelle explicitation rationnelle, et la pensée chrétienne en tant que telle, agissant comme un prisme interprétatif, contribue à jeter un éclairage différent sur les principes généraux et les stratégies opérationnelles de la phénoménologie. De cette façon, on acquiert deux lieux forces, qui amènent Henry à mettre en évidence, d’une part, la connotation phénoménologique du premier et d’autre part, mais simultanément, à défendre le droit et l’importance de l’attention au phénomène chrétien par l’investigation philosophique. Parmi les nombreux thèmes pris en considération par Henry, pour cet essai, nous avons choisi d’analyser la relation Trinité-humanité et le concept de vérité du christianisme, que Henry oppose à la vérité du monde. (shrink)

In the present article, the role of Gestalt concepts in clarifying the issues of perception is evaluated. Grounded in anti-atomism, Gestalt assumed organizing forces intrinsic to perception. Insofar these were identified with singularity preference, Gestalt is criticized for having failed to distinguish between perception and thought.

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)