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.

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)

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)

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 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 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)

While moral perfectionists rank conscious beings according to their cognitive abilities, Paola Cavalieri launches a more inclusive defense of all forms of subjectivity. In concert with Peter Singer, J. M. Coetzee, Harlan B. Miller, and other leading animal studies scholars, she expands our understanding of the nonhuman in such a way that the derogatory category of "the animal" becomes meaningless. In so doing, she presents a nonhierachical approach to ethics that better respects the value of the conscious self. Cavalieri (...) opens with a dialogue between two imagined philosophers, laying out her challenge to moral perfectionism and tracing its influence on our attitudes toward the "unworthy." She then follows with a roundtable "multilogue" which takes on the role of reason in ethics and the boundaries of moral status. Coetzee, Nobel Prize winner for Literature and author of _The Lives of Animals_, emphasizes the animality of human beings; Miller, a prominent analytic philosopher at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, dismantles the rationalizations of human bias; Cary Wolfe, professor of English at Rice University, advocates an active exposure to other worlds and beings; and Matthew Calarco, author of _Zoographies: The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida_, extends ethical consideration to entities that traditionally have little or no moral status, such as plants and ecosystems. As Peter Singer writes in his foreword, the implications of this conversation extend far beyond the issue of the moral status of animals. They "get to the heart of some important differences about how we should do philosophy, and how philosophy can relate to our everyday life." From the divergences between analytical and continental approaches to the relevance of posthumanist thinking in contemporary ethics, the psychology of speciesism, and the practical consequences of an antiperfectionist stance, _The Death of the Animal_ confronts issues that will concern anyone interested in a serious study of morality. (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)

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)

ABSTRACTThe paper focuses on the gradual separation between materialism and mechanism in early modern German philosophy. In Germany the distinction between the two concepts, originally introduced by Leibniz, was definitively stated by Wolff who was the first to provide a definition of the new philosophical term Materialismus, and of the related philosophical sect. In the first part I describe the initial identification of mechanism and materialism in German philosophy between the last decades of the seventeenth century and 1720. Mechanism is (...) here mostly conceived within a monistic metaphysics of body, which refers mainly to Hobbes and to some interpretations of Spinoza’s pantheism. This tight connection between a mechanical explanation of nature and the Deus sive natura issue leads to a negative judgement on mechanism and its materialistic implications, both charged with a form of more or less explicit atheism. In the second part I describe the gradual emancipation in Germany of mechanism fro... (shrink)

This book takes the reader on a philosophical quest to understand the dark side of emotions. The chapters are devoted to the analysis of negative emotions and are organized in a historical manner, spanning the period from ancient Greece to the present time. Each chapter addresses analytical questions about specific emotions generally considered to be unfavorable and classified as negative. The general aim of the volume is to describe the polymorphous and context-sensitive nature of negative emotions as well as changes (...) in the ways people have interpreted these emotions across different epochs. The editors speak of ‘the dark side of the emotions’ because their goal is to capture the ambivalent – unstable and shadowy – aspects of emotions. A number of studies have taken the categorial distinction between positive and negative emotions for granted, suggesting that negative emotions are especially significant for our psychological experience because they signal difficult situations. For this reason, the editors stress the importance of raising analytical questions about the valence of particular emotions and focussing on the features that make these emotions ambivalent: how – despite their negativity – such emotions may turn out to be positive. This opens up a perspective in which each emotion can be understood as a complex interlacing of negative and positive properties. The collection presents a thoughtful dialogue between philosophy and contemporary scientific research. It offers the reader insight by illuminating the dark side of the emotions. (shrink)

This essay traces the influence of Carl Schmitt on an interpretative tendency found in a number of contemporary readings of Kant’s political philosophy. This influence can be traced back to two basic commitments: the idea that Kant’s philosophy seeks to defend a pacifist and humanitarian ideal of history and progress, and that political conflict must, for this reason, be somehow pacified or eradicated. I argue that these ‘anti-conflict’ readings of Kant go astray in ignoring the systemic role conflict plays in (...) Kant’s understanding of agency and freedom on the one hand, and in overlooking that this conflict is not empirical but normative, and thereby, unavoidable. In light of this ‘agential conflict’, Schmitt’s critique to Kant begins to lose all its force. (shrink)

My aim in this note is to shed light on ways of interpreting Kant’s Formula of Universal Law (FUL), by looking at relevant similarities and differences between Pauline Kleingeld and Mark Timmons. I identify both their readings as a formal interpretation of Kant’s FUL, in contrast to the substantive interpretations that favor a robust conception of rational agency as a necessary requirement for moral deliberation. I highlight the benefits that arise from Kleingled’s interpretation in showing the immediacy involved in the (...) volitional self-contradiction when universalizing a maxim. Alongside Timmons, I address a question as to whether Kleingeld’s interpretation is completely free from at least a minimal set of assumptions about practical deliberation more broadly, that seem to play a role in generating the volitational self-contradiction she is defending. I close by raising some skeptical worries about the capacity of this kind of contradiction to translate into a moral judgment triggering action. (shrink)

A comparison between ecl. 1 and ecl. 10 shows not only the deep differences of the new Virgilian pastoral poetry from Theocritus’ bucolic, but confirms that even Virgil lacked confidence in the power of poetry to solace real sorrow, an idea maintained throughout the whole Bucolicon liber. Interesting analogies between the first and the last eclogue help furthermore to explain Virgil’s farewell to his bucolic production.

SUMMARYThe essay argues that Jeremy Bentham played a major role in the transitional process between the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries leading to the ‘discovery' or ‘invention of society' as an order, i.e., as an autonomous object of knowledge. By comparing Bentham's discourse with those developed by select protagonists of that transition, particularly Ferguson, Sieyès, and Mirabeau, it is shown how society emerges as the logical and historical space of a set of relationships that affects both the rationalisation and the (...) practice of government. In contrast with Michel Foucault's interpretation of Bentham's role in the genealogy of neoliberalism, recently developed by Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval, this paper suggests that ‘the new governmental reason’ rose from within the discourse of law. Consequently, the problem of ‘constitution’ was not left behind by the epistemological change of the eighteenth century, as they argue. Rather, the scientific and political understanding of society as a code became the base for an innovative conception of both law and politics. (shrink)

The article evaluates the Domain Postulate of the Classical Model of Science and the related Aristotelian prohibition rule on kind-crossing as interpretative tools in the history of the development of mathematics into a general science of quantities. Special reference is made to Proclus’ commentary to Euclid’s first book of Elements , to the sixteenth century translations of Euclid’s work into Latin and to the works of Stevin, Wallis, Viète and Descartes. The prohibition rule on kind-crossing formulated by Aristotle in Posterior (...) analytics is used to distinguish between conceptions that share the same name but are substantively different: for example the search for a broader genus including all mathematical objects; the search for a common character of different species of mathematical objects; and the effort to treat magnitudes as numbers. (shrink)

We animals have evolved a variety of mechanisms to avoid conspecifics who might be infected. It is currently unclear whether and why this “behavioral immune system” targets unfamiliar individuals more than familiar ones. Here I answer this question in humans, using publicly available data of a recent study on 1969 participants from India and 1615 from the USA. The apparent health of a male stranger, as estimated from his face, and the comfort with contact with him were a direct function (...) of his similarity to the men in the local community. This held true regardless of whether the face carried overt signs of infection. I conclude that our behavioral immune system is finely tuned to degrees of outgroupness — and that cues of outgroupness are partly processed as cues of infectiousness. These findings, which were consistent across the two cultures, support the notion that the pathogens of strangers are perceived as more dangerous. (shrink)

The paper aims to establish if Grassmann’s notion of an extensive form involved an epistemological change in the understanding of geometry and of mathematical knowledge. Firstly, it will examine if an ontological shift in geometry is determined by the vectorial representation of extended magnitudes. Giving up homogeneity, and considering geometry as an application of extension theory, Grassmann developed a different notion of a geometrical object, based on abstract constraints concerning the construction of forms rather than on the homogeneity conditions required (...) by the modern version of the theory of proportions. Secondly, Grassmann’s conception of mathematical knowledge will be investigated. Parting from the traditional definition of mathematics as a science of magnitudes, Grassmann considered mathematical forms as particulars rather than universals: the classification of the branches of mathematics was thus based on different operational rules, rather than on empirical criteria of abstraction or on the distinction of different species belonging to a common genus. It will be argued that a different notion of generalization is thus involved, and that the knowledge of mathematical forms relies on the understanding of the rules of generation of the forms themselves. Finally, the paper will analyse if Grassmann’s approach in the first edition of the Ausdehnungslehre should be explained in terms of the notion of purity of method, and if it clashes with Grassmann’s later conventionalism. Although in the second edition the features of the operations are chosen by convention, as it is the case for the anti-commutative property of the multiplication, the choice is oriented by our understanding of the resulting forms: a simplification in the algebraic calculus need not correspond to a simplification in the ‘dimensional’ interpretation of the result of the multiplicative operation. (shrink)

Giuseppe Veronese (1854-1917) est connu pour ses études sur les espaces à plusieurs dimensions ; moins connus sont les écrits « philosophiques », qui concernent les fondements de la géométrie et des mathématiques et qui expliquent les raisons pour la construction d’une géométrie non-archimédienne (une dizaine d’années avant David Hilbert) et la formulation d’un concept de continu, qui contient des éléments infinis et infiniment petits. L’article esquissera quelques traits saillants de son épistémologie et analysera le rapport entre géométrie et intuition (...) spatiale, en comparant les conceptions de l’espace géométrique dans les œuvres de Veronese, Helmholtz et Poincaré. Selon Veronese l’espace intuitif, de même que l’espace géométrique, n’est pas euclidien et il n’a pas un nombre déterminé de dimensions : on peut donc avoir l’intuition aussi bien d’un espace à quatre dimensions que d’un continu non-archimédien. (shrink)

The paper discusses some difficulties that life in Anthropocene poses to our ethical thinking. It describes the sort of ethical task that individuals find themselves confronting when dealing with the planetary environmental quandaries that characterise the new epoch. It then asks what, given the situation, would count as environmentally virtuous ways of looking at and going about our lives, and how relevant virtues can be developed. It is argued that the practice of gardening is distinctively conducive to that objective. Finally, (...) some garden virtues that will be of special importance in the Anthropocene, but have so far been largely neglected by environmental ethicists, are listed and described. (shrink)

La obra poética de Olga Orozco (1920-1999) es profundamente religiosa. El cuerpo es uno de los temas centrales en su preocupación por alcanzar lo divino. En este sentido, el cuerpo tiene doble valencia: opera como impedimento y también como condición de posibilidad. El abordaje interdisciplinario entre literatura y filosofía que asume este trabajo permite una relectura original del cuerpo en Orozco, que revela las implicancias filosóficas de su intuición poética. La primera parte recorre pasajes en los que el cuerpo es (...) considerado un obstáculo que aísla a los seres y dificulta el retorno a la divinidad. Se analizan sus figuras oscuras y despectivas, como “muro”, “lastre”, “sombra”. La segunda parte examina el poema titulado “El narrador”, del libro _En el revés del cielo_ (1987), como punto de inflexión. El cuerpo reviste allí una significación nueva. La poeta le atribuye el poder de narrar su propia historia. Se puede vislumbrar la profunda analogía entre cuerpo y lenguaje: su función mediadora. El recurso a herramientas conceptuales de la fenomenología hermenéutica ayuda a pensar, desde el poema, la experiencia ambivalente del cuerpo. La noción de carne como alteridad primera explica el extrañamiento que describe la poeta y es condición indispensable para la mediación del sí mismo con el mundo, con los otros y con la ipseidad. La hermenéutica de “El narrador” arroja la luz del registro poético a la interpretación del cuerpo como signo y como condición de posibilidad del encuentro con la alteridad. Seguramente, otras lecturas de Orozco iluminen diversos temas antropológicos y metafísicos, ya que poesía y pensamiento se orientan hacia el mismo misterio. (shrink)

At the beginning of the xxth century the high rate of analphabetism and the recent unification of the country, achieved only in 1870, had required a vast program of school and university reforms which were accompanied by a debate on two fundamental questions: whether the university should depend on public funds or become autonomous, and whether the curriculum should be specialized or remain general as in the modern era. The 1859 Casati reform had separated the faculty for literature and philosophy (...) from the faculty for mathematical, physical and natural sciences, thus introducing for the first time specialized curricula. (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.

This article discusses the encounter between virtue ethics and environmental ethics and the ways in which environmental virtue ethics confronts nonhuman axiology and the controversial theme of moral anthropocentrism. It provides a reasoned review of the relevant literature and a historical–conceptual rendition of how environmental and virtue ethics came to converge as well as the ways in which they diverge. It explains that contrary to important worries voiced by some non-anthropocentric environmental ethicists, environmental virtue ethics enables and requires a rich (...) and nuanced engagement with nonhuman values of all sorts—intrinsic as well as extrinsic, moral as well as nonmoral, anthropocentric as well as non-anthropocentric—and neither presupposes nor implies moral anthropocentrism in its normativity. Finally, the article considers the fortunes of, and some challenges for, environmental virtue ethics in its application to the ethics of climate change, an increasingly central topic in environmental ethics. This article proceeds as follows: the first section introduces virtue ethics; the second section looks at axiological and normative themes in environmental ethics; the third section discusses environmental virtue ethics; and the fourth section considers its application to climate change. The fifth section draws some conclusions. (shrink)

Background: The research question for this study was as follows: Is the Code of Ethics for Nurses in Italy (Code) a valid or useful decision-making instrument for nurses faced with ethical problems in their daily clinical practice? Method: Focus groups were conducted to analyze specific ethical problems through 11 case studies. The analysis was conducted using sections of the Code as well as other relevant documents. Each focus group had a specific theme and nurses participated freely in the discussions according (...) to their respective clinical competencies. Ethical considerations: The executive administrative committee of the local nursing licensing council provided approval for conducting this project. Measures were taken to protect the confidentiality of consenting participants. Findings: The answer to the research question posed for this investigation was predominantly positive. Many sections of the Code were useful for discussion and identifying possible solutions for the ethical problems presented in the 11 cases. Conclusion: We concluded that the Code of Ethics for Nurses in Italy can be a valuable aid in daily practice in most clinical situations that can give rise to ethical problems. (shrink)

The paper advocates an epistemological interpretation of the Peano School axiomatics. The construction of axiom systems is presented as a cognitive enterprise unveiling the internal dynamics, evolution, and architecture of axiomatic systems as well as connections to applications. This approach reveals that the study of the relation between axioms and theorems not only serves to reduce a theory to a minimum number of principles and increase the certainty or justification of the latter, but also to study alternative settings of a (...) given mathematical theory. The paper explains why the Peanian conception of axiomatics differs from axiomatic deductivism, if-thenism and scientific deductivism, and analyzes Peano’s conception of rigor. The paper also postulates that Peano had a set-theoretic but also an algorithmic conception of function, and prioritized functions over relations. Two seemingly contradictory aspects of Peano’s axiomatics, global and local reasoning, are illustrated through the examples of rigor and simplicity. Finally, the paper claims that Peano’s axiomatics was a dynamic mathematical enterprise rather than an a priori axiomatization grounded on logical principles, which explains the difference with respect to Frege’s project. (shrink)

Cross-situational statistical learning of words involves tracking co-occurrences of auditory words and objects across time to infer word-referent mappings. Previous research has demonstrated that learners can infer referents across sets of very phonologically distinct words, but it remains unknown whether learners can encode fine phonological differences during cross-situational statistical learning. This study examined learners’ cross-situational statistical learning of minimal pairs that differed on one consonant segment, minimal pairs that differed on one vowel segment, and non-minimal pairs that differed on two (...) or three segments. Learners performed above chance for all pairs, but performed worse on vowel minimal pairs than on consonant minimal pairs or non-minimal pairs. These findings demonstrate that learners can encode fine phonetic detail while tracking word-referent co-occurrence probabilities, but they suggest that phonological encoding may be weaker for vowels than for consonants. (shrink)

Ante una ciencia mal-tratada desde su interior, un ojo enajenado y confundido en su visión, un ser humano cansado y desconfiado de la misma explicación, un mundo necesitado de comprensión y cuidado, ante unos cuantos insistentes de vivir en unos tiempos y espacios fragmentados, aparece la necesidad de escuchar de nuevo a lo propio, a lo primero y fundante como fuerza de transformación. Así, las siguientes letras reconocen un camino fenomenológico y contemplativo en la gran madre, la Hytcha Guaia, la (...) Pachamama, el primer gran útero, matriz sagrada que alimenta y nutre lo humano en toda su manifestación. Para la psicología, saber de psyque, de alma, su tarea también está en mirarse, recuperarse y a través de un logos trascendente, integrativo, volver a la sensible y sentida escucha de lo divino como curación, por ello su afirmación a lo mágico, chamánico, potente y sagrado del conocimiento telúrico (de tierra), a la medicina que en ella habita y su sanación. La propuesta es el gran camino de andar la tierra, de sentir, escuchar y estar en conciencia de raíz, un camino de cuidado que constata en cada ritual y experiencia la fuerza espiritual de nuestro saber ancestral indígena como primera y perenne ciencia. (shrink)