Ridare vita alle ombre esangui del passato”, che torna a vivere nel presente facendosinuovamente “carne e sangue”. Le citazioni di Dilthey e von Wartenburg delimitano ilcampo in cui, per l’Heidegger di Sein und Zeit, si gioca la partita decisiva della storicità delDasein. Per affondare il colpo, egli trova la stoccata vincente nelle frecciate che Nietzschescaglia contro lo storicismo nella seconda delle Considerazioni inattuali – Vom Nutzen undNachtheil der Historie für das Leben –. In lui, Heidegger intravede un autorevole alleato perinstaurare (...) un rapporto autentico con la storia. Essa non dovrà più essere confinata in unpassato museale, tanto grazioso quanto improduttivo per la vita: uscire dalla paralisi dellatradizione vuol dire scrollarsi di dosso il peso del passato e sbloccare il presente e ilfuturo. Solo così l’uomo sarà libero e la storicità recupererà il suo senso più elevato, alservizio della vita. Al di là delle differenze d’intento e di registro ermeneutico-stilistico, laricostruzione di un dialogo a distanza tra i passi di Sein und Zeit e le considerazioninietzscheane offrirà spunti interessanti per pensare alla storia e al suo rapporto, semprein bilico tra il vitale e il patologico, con l’esistenza umana. (shrink)

A significant body of research concludes that stable beliefs of perceived consumer effectiveness lead to sustainable consumption choices. Consumers who believe that their decisions can significantly affect environmental and social issues are more likely to behave sustainably. Little is known, however, about how perceived consumer effectiveness can be increased. We find that feelings of guilt and pride, activated by a single consumption episode, can regulate sustainable consumption by affecting consumers’ general perception of effectiveness. This paper demonstrates the impact that guilt (...) and pride have on perceived consumer effectiveness and shows how this effect rests on the ability of these emotions to influence perceptions of agency. After experiencing guilt or pride, consumers see themselves as the cause of relevant sustainability outcomes. The process of causal attribution associated with these emotions influences consumers’ use of neutralization techniques. Through the reduction in consumers’ ability to neutralize their sense of personal responsibility, guilt and pride positively influence perceived consumer effectiveness. The inability to rationalize-away their personal responsibility, persuades consumers that they affect sustainability outcomes through their decisions. The research advances our understanding of sustainable consumption and identifies a new avenue for the regulation of individual consumer behavior that has significant implications for the development of sustainable marketing initiatives. (shrink)

A growing body of literature documents the important role played by moral outrage or moral anger in stakeholders’ reactions to cases of corporate social irresponsibility. Existing research focuses more on the consequences of moral outrage than a systematic analysis of how appraisals of irresponsible corporate behavior can lead to this emotional experience. In this paper, we develop and test, in two field studies, an extended model of moral outrage that identifies the cognitions that lead to, and are associated with, this (...) emotional experience. This research contributes to the existing literature on reactions to corporate social irresponsibility by explaining how observers’ evaluation of irresponsible corporate behavior leads to reactions of moral anger. The paper also helps clarify the difference between moral outrage and other types of anger and offers useful insights for managers who have to confront public outrage following cases of irresponsible corporate behavior. Finally, the analysis of the causes of stakeholders’ anger at irresponsible corporations opens important avenues for future research that are presented in the paper. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger and Emanuele Severino reflected on the meaning of technology more than anyone else in the twentieth century. Their philosophies are irreconcilable. They converge on this simple recognition and its implications: techno‐science dominates our time. But they disagree even on the interpretation of this domination. Exploring this disagreement will help us understand the leading dynamics of our civilization. Therefore, the intention in this paper is to unveil, for English speakers, the value of Severino’s philosophy in relation to Heidegger and (...) the meaning technology. We will see that, ultimately, their disagreement concerns the originary truth of Being and has repercussions on how they conceptualize technology and the possibility of redemption from it. Heidegger indicated the letting‐be of beings in their freedom as the possible path beyond technology. Severino saw Heidegger’s indication as destined to remain trapped in technology itself. If we understand why this was so – from Severino’s point of view – this may open a new path for us: the path of day, the path that may truly lead beyond technology. The aim of this paper is, finally, to indicate one reason why delving into Severino’s works is truly worthwhile: if it is possible for the truth to unveil itself beyond willing – where Heidegger couldn’t see – then Severino’s works may the place where this possibility appears in coherent conceptual form. (shrink)

The present article aims at providing some clarification on the Horkheimer-Neurath 1937 debate, so as to make three main claims: (a) around 1937 (even though perhaps neither in the early 1930s, at the time of his review of Mannheim’s Ideology and Utopia, nor after the Second World War, at the time of Adorno’s disenchanted statement, “the whole is the false”), Horkheimer belonged to the Hegelian-Marxist tradition stemming from Lukács’s History and Class Conscioussness (1923); (b) notwithstanding Neurath’s semantic and epistemological holism, (...) his fallibilism, his rejection of Wertfreiheit in the social sciences, his commitment to socialism, there is still a gulf between his position and Horkheimer’s, for Neurath did not accept the main methodological claim made by the latter, namely, the Lukács-inspired view that what “constitutes the decisive difference between Marxism and bourgeois thought” is the Hegelian “point of view of totality”; (c) highlighting the main differences between Neurath’s and Lukács’s versions of Marxism – one concerning the very idea of dialectic, and the other concerning the epistemic privilege of the proletariat – can throw some light on and help understand better the distinctive features of Lukács’s Hegelianization of Marxism. (shrink)

Current research has documented how cases of irresponsible corporate behavior generate negative reactions from consumers and other stakeholders. Existing research, however, has not examined empirically whether the characteristics of the victims of corporate malfeasance contribute to shaping individual reactions. This study examines, through four experimental surveys, the role played by the national identity of the people affected on consumers’ intentions to spread negative word of mouth. It is shown that national identity influences individual reactions indirectly; mediated by perceived similarity and (...) sympathy. Consumers perceive foreign victims as different from the self and this reduces the sympathy experienced towards them. Sympathy is an emotion that shapes consumer reactions and regulates WOM. The study identifies two moderating processes of this effect. Individuals who score high on collective narcissism are most likely to be strongly biased against foreign victims. In-group bias is also moderated by the perceived severity of the crisis. When a case is perceived as very serious, perceived similarity plays a less important role in generating sympathy because consumers focus on the perceived suffering of the victims. Hence, in-group bias is stronger in cases perceived as having minor consequences. The paper contributes to the literature on corporate social irresponsibility and offers implications for both scholars and managers. (shrink)

To our contemporary eyes, science appears as the most reliable guide to the human enterprise. However, we possess little awareness as to what the proper meaning of scientific specialization is, and this knowledge is indispensable if we are not to proceed mindlessly in our relationship with being. Italian philosopher Emanuele Severino sees in scientific specialization the most coherent consequence of humanity’s most ancestral interpretation of the world, which all human decisions and actions enact. To him, this coherency is what makes (...) the dominance of scientific specialization on our time necessary. By focusing on one of Severino’s major theoretical works (Oltre il linguaggio, 1992), and with reference to other key texts, this essay introduces international readers to a specific facet of Severino’s discourse. In doing so, it translates passages of his works that have never appeared in English. (shrink)

Scientific literature on particular themes in ontology is extremely abundant, but it is often very hard for freshmen or sophomores to find a red thread between the various proposals. This text is an opinionated introduction, a preliminary text to research in ontology from the so called standard approach to ontological commitment, that is from the particular point of view that connects ontological questions to quantificational questions. It offers a survey of this viewpoint in ontology together with their possible applications through (...) a broad array of examples and open problems and, at the same time, essential references to the classics of philosophy, so as to allow non-specialists to understand the terms and analysis procedures characterizing the discipline. Its result is a wide-ranging overview of the issued tackled by ontology, with a particular focus on the most relevant problems of contemporary debate. (shrink)

In the last decades, Systems Biology (including cancer research) has been driven by technology, statistical modelling and bioinformatics. In this paper we try to bring biological and philosophical thinking back. We thus aim at making diferent traditions of thought compatible: (a) causality in epidemiology and in philosophical theorizing—notably, the “sufcient-component-cause framework” and the “mark transmission” approach; (b) new acquisitions about disease pathogenesis, e.g. the “branched model” in cancer, and the role of biomarkers in this process; (c) the burgeoning of omics (...) research, with a large number of “signals” and of associations that need to be interpreted. In the paper we summarize frst the current views on carcinogenesis, and then explore the relevance of current philosophical interpretations of “cancer causes”. We try to ofer a unifying framework to incorporate biomarkers and omic data into causal models, referring to a position called “evidential pluralism”. According to this view, causal reasoning is based on both “evidence of diference-making” (e.g. associations) and on “evidence of underlying biological mechanisms”. We conceptualize the way scientists detect and trace signals in terms of information transmission, which is a generalization of the mark transmission theory developed by philosopher Wesley Salmon. Our approach is capable of helping us conceptualize how heterogeneous factors such as micro and macro-biological and psycho-social—are causally linked. This is important not only to understand cancer etiology, but also to design public health policies that target the right causal factors at the macro-level. (shrink)

This article argues that Tolstoy’s What Is Art? had a direct influence on David Foster Wallace’s conception of literature, and most specifically that Wallace appropriated Tolstoy’s discourse (down to most of its most specific details) to found his literary project. The article seeks to prove this by exhibiting the striking extent of Wallace’s alignment with Tolstoy’s beliefs, by retracing the multiple direct references to Tolstoy in Wallace’s work, and by uncovering Wallace’s annotations on his own copy of What Is Art? (...) as further confirmation of what a careful comparative analysis of the works of the two authors makes manifest. (shrink)

In 2005, Wallace gave a commencement address at Kenyon College that later became famous under the title This Is Water, and that both summarizes and schematizes Wallace’s thoughts on consciousness. The present essay, therefore, uses This Is Water as a cornerstone for analysis in order to indicate how the contents of This Is Water pervade all of Wallace’s fiction, how these contents lead back to the central theme of consciousness, and how, as a result, all of Wallace’s fiction can be (...) said to explore the theme of consciousness. The method is as follows: each facet of Wallace’s discourse on consciousness is treated individually, in its own section or subsection. Each facet, also, is transposed from its theoretical formulation in This Is Water to at least one paradigmatic representation in Wallace’s fiction. The fictional examples cover all of Wallace’s four mature works, which should suffice to indicate the pervasiveness of the treated concepts throughout Wallace’s fiction. I have not included Wallace’s first novel (except for a brief mention) and first short-story collection for simple reasons of length. That these two works constitute further proof in defense of the present argument can be demonstrated, but in another setting. Here, delimitation was needed, I felt, for the sake of clarity. (shrink)

During the 1930s the fascist government launched a programme for the reclamation of the Pontine Marshes, one of the largest forested wetlands in Italy. In less than a few years the muddy and uneven ground of the forest was transformed into flat land to be cultivated and into solid surface where three new towns were built. Hegemonic narratives describe the fascist reclamation as a process that imposed a solid form upon the raw materials of nature, thereby establishing an unbridgeable divide (...) between nature and culture, natural and built environment. The article challenges this dualism, drawing on ethnographic and historical materials to explore spatial and temporal zones in-between fluidity and solidity. It suggests an approach in which fluidity and solidity are understood as patterns of social and ecological relations rather than mutually exclusive properties of matter, thus exposing the continuity between them. (shrink)

Numerosity perception is a key ability for human and non-human species, probably mediated by dedicated brain mechanisms. Electrophysiological studies revealed the existence of both early and mid-latency components of the Electrophysiological (EEG) signal sensitive to numerosity changes. However, it is still unknown whether these components respond to physical or perceived variation in numerical attributes. We here tackled this point by recording electrophysiological signal while participants performed a numerosity adaptation task, a robust psychophysical method yielding changes in perceived numerosity judgments despite (...) physical numerosity invariance. Behavioral measures confirmed that the test stimulus was consistently underestimated when presented after a high numerous adaptor while perceived as veridical when presented after a neutral adaptor. Congruently, EEG results revealed a potential at around 200 ms (P2p) which was reduced when the test stimulus was presented after the high numerous adaptor. This result was much prominent over the left posterior cluster of electrodes and correlated significantly with the amount of adaptation. No earlier modulations were retrievable when changes in numerosity were illusory while both early and mid-latency modulations occurred for physical changes. Taken together, our results reveal that mid-latency P2p mainly reflects perceived changes in numerical attributes, while earlier components are likely to be bounded to the physical characteristics of the stimuli. These results suggest that short-term plastic mechanisms induced by numerosity adaptation may involve a relatively late processing stage of the visual hierarchy likely engaging cortical areas beyond the primary visual cortex. Furthermore, these results also indicate mid-latency electrophysiological correlates as a signature of the internal representation of numerical information. (shrink)

I temi della fede e della religione, e del loro conflitto con la cultura laica, sono da qualche tempo al centro di un interesse mediatico crescente, alimentato anche dalle polemiche politiche suscitate dal moltiplicarsi degli interventi e delle "scomuniche" del papa e della Conferenza Episcopale Italiana contro la modernità. Mancava fin qui, tuttavia, un testo di discussione, da punti di vista diversi e reciprocamente problematici, sulle ragioni dell'ateismo e della fede. Un confronto tra gli esponenti di tre posizioni ideologiche molto (...) lontane tra loro, accomunate però dal rifiuto di ogni appartenenza accademica: il cristianesimo nietzschiano del "pensiero debole" di Gianni Vattimo, la saggezza atea di una tradizione antica rilanciata da Michel Onfray e l'empirismo naturalistico-esistenziale della "filosofia del finito" di Paolo Flores d'Arcais. In questo insolito dialogo a tre voci emergono tutti gli interrogativi essenziali legati al problema, a partire da quello più generale: quali devono essere i rapporti tra filosofia e ateismo? L'"ipotesi Dio" deve ormai essere considerata superflua anche dalla riflessione filosofica, visto che le scienze ne fanno metodologicamente a meno? Quali sono le conseguenze etiche e politiche dell'essere atei o, all'opposto, credenti? (shrink)

Past research on recruitment has shown that employer image predicts job seekers’ perceptions of organizational attractiveness. We contribute to this body of work by examining job seekers’ reactions to a market-dominant employer that has suffered from a case of corporate social irresponsibility (CSI). We show that job seekers’ reaction is buffered in the case of dominant employers’ wrongdoing. This effect is stronger for job seekers who are very interested in working in the dominant employers’ industry. Market dominance, however, reduces the (...) negative impact of CSI only under certain circumstances. We find that market dominance provides a buffer against the negative effect of CSI only when (1) CSI is directly relevant to the domain of performance of the organization and (2) job seekers feel very certain about their attitudes toward the organization. In two experiments with participants actively looking for employment at the time of study, we tested a model of moderated mediation examining how market dominance and CSI influence perceived employer ethicality and perceived employer competence. These two variables, in turn, explain how job seekers form perceptions of organizational attractiveness. This is the first study to explore how job seekers react to potential employers that are dominant in a market but have suffered from a CSI incident. The study identifies the boundary conditions that explain why sometimes market-dominant employers can emerge relatively unscathed in the eyes of job seekers following CSI. The research opens important managerial implications concerning the recruitment efforts of organizations that have suffered from CSI. (shrink)

According to the quantificational Quinean model in meta-ontology, the question of ontology boils down to the question of whether a sortal property is exemplified. I address some complications that arise when we try to build a philosophical reconstruction of the link between individuals and kinds displayed in the exemplification relation from the point of view of conceptualism about kinds and having in mind this stand in ontology. I distinguish two notions of resemblance, object-to- object and object-to- kind, and show the (...) problems with both of them. Finally, I argue for a better awareness of the implicit "bias" involved in the very notion of "resemblance," without indulging in Quine's veto toward this notion. (shrink)

One of the complications of a clear evaluation of different positions called “realism” in metaphysics and ontology is discrepancy in terminology and variance of basic intuitions inherent this notion. I recommend a taxonomy that distinguishes three kinds of variance: variance in the sets of conditions for a philosophical position to be acknowledged as actual realism, variance in strength and variance in conceptual frameworks. Within this last case, I propose to differentiate realism in epistemology, in ontology, and in metaphysics, intersecting these (...) three variants with the local/global realism dichotomy. The taxonomy here provided aims at being meta-philosophical; expressive enough for a fine-grained articulation of different philosophical positions in the recent debate, including the question of metaphysical grounding; and impartial, with no need to be connected to the defense of one form or another of the philosophical positions called “realism.”. (shrink)

In his third essay on earthquakes, Kant refers to “Pater Bina’s” electric interpretation of seismic phenomena. Although not a distinguished scholar, and maybe for that reason frequently confused with a certain “Father Isidore Binet”, Bina was nevertheless a noteworthy author. A Cassinese benedictine, Andrea Bina was a philosopher interested in sciences just like Kant; he studied Newton, translated Wolff, invented a seismoscope and was appreciated by his contemporaries at home and beyond the Alps. Kant’s laconic quotation, followed by a value (...) judgement regarding only Bina’s “audacity”, raises some questions, including, in primis those about the meaning of his hasty judgment. A plausible well-grounded answer should be looked for in the bio-bibliographical outline of the neglected author and in the perusal of his writings. The analysis of Bina’s Ragionamento sopra le cagioni de’ terremoti (1751) contributes to our knowledge of the eighteenth-century cultural background and helps us understand the degree of knowledge of the seismic phenomena acquired by men who – amidst many difficulties and hindered by the limits of their science – could only rely on secondhand data often imbued with misconceptions. Comparing Bina’s work – although indirectly – with Kant’s Fortgesetzte Betrachtung der seit einiger Zeit wahrgenommenen Erderschütterungen (1756) may help bring to light some convergences, as well as differences, which might be of use in clarifying some peculiarities of the Prussian Naturforscher. (shrink)

This article introduces a novel theoretical framework for addressing epistemic injustice—a phenomenon where certain groups or individuals are systematically excluded from knowledge creation and dissemination processes—by employing ontological relativity and conceptual analysis. “Ontological relativity” refers to a philosophical perspective that posits our understanding of reality as being shaped by our toolbox of concepts, categories, language, and social practices; “conceptual analysis” is a method of inquiry that involves the rigorous examination and deconstruction of a particular concept or set of concepts in (...) order to uncover their constituent elements, relationships, and underlying assumptions. To exemplify the effectiveness of the ontology‐based approach, two paradigmatic applications are explored: (a) educational practices and (b) clinical practice and access to health care. Through the presentation of these applications and the step‐by‐step illustration of the applied methodology, the aim of the article is to showcase the efficacy of ontology in tackling epistemic injustices, suggesting innovative paths for future research in this domain. (shrink)

Companies faced with a crisis sometimes blame others in their communications, when they feel that responsibility for the negative event lies elsewhere. Research has argued that stakeholders often react negatively to this type of message, because they perceive them as an unfair attempt to deny responsibility. In four experiments, examining blame directed at an employee and a supplier, we complement existing research by demonstrating that blame-giving messages can be persuasive in certain circumstances. Blame-giving communications can improve perceptions of firm ethicality (...) more than apologies or an absence of corporate communication. This effect, in turn, reduces negative word-of-mouth intentions. The study identifies several boundary conditions for this effect. For blame-giving to be effective, a credible third party needs to identify who is responsible for wrongdoing, and the company needs to use vivid communication with detailed information about the culprit. Furthermore, blame-giving can backfire: when stakeholders doubt the company’s honesty, this type of messaging is seen as manipulative. The study contributes to a developing research stream on the relative effectiveness of different types of crisis communications by demonstrating that, in certain circumstances, blame-giving messages are more persuasive than apologies. Moreover, our analysis offers guidelines on how to design these messages to make them acceptable to stakeholders. (shrink)