El ordenamiento jurídico de Santi Romano es, sin duda alguna, una obra fundamental. Y no es la circunstancia concreta de presentar ahora la obra al lector español la que dicta estas palabras, sino que las recojo conociendo plenamente el valor objetivo que ellas tienen; sobradamente tendremos ocasión de ver la consideración que la obra de Romano recibe por parte de la doctrina, como de un auténtico y verdadero hito en el desarrollo del pensamiento jurídico contemporáneo. De ahí precisamente que (...) no trate de llevar a cabo ni un análisis crítico de la misma, ni menos aún de la obra de Romano en general; tal pretensión de enjuiciamiento limitaría casi con lo grotesco, por carecer de toda autoridad en el campo de la dogmática general del Derecho, que es en el que, en concreto, se mueve Santi Romano en la obra que presentamos. Estas páginas, por el contrario, pretenden tener una finalidad mucho más modesta: simplemente presentar la obra al lector español, formulando al mismo tiempo algunas aplicaciones concretas de la tesis ordinamental en el campo específico del Derecho administrativo. Sebastián Martín Retortillo. (shrink)

This book presents a systematic discussion of the development of Husserl’s concept of the a priori from his early and through his later writings. The chapters contained herein analyze the different phases and aspects of Husserl’s phenomenology of the a priori in light of his twofold notion of reason, construed as both ontological and transcendental. Starting from the assessment of the introduction of the notion of a priori knowledge in the context of the Logical Investigations, this text uniquely explores its (...) development during the Göttingen years. It is at this time during his work on The Crisis of European Sciences, that Husserl comes to see the a priori as a criterion to interpret the history of philosophy, notably, modern philosophy. This book sheds light upon such concepts as: essence and eidos; ideation, eidetic attitude and eidetic reduction; as well as formal and material, innate and contingent a priori. The author argues that the a priori becomes for Husserl the expression of an ontological form of rationality, i.e., the rationality immanent to being. This book appeals to students and researchers working on Husserl and phenomenology. (shrink)

The present essay offers a first, systematic reconstruction of Husserl’s understanding of Socrates’ philosophical position in the Ideengeschichte with a special focus on the Socratic method. Our goal is twofold. On the one hand, we aim to provide a clear presentation of the way in which Husserl himself conceives of the “beginning” of Western philosophy by tackling the specifically Socratic contribution to it. On the other hand, we will clarify in what sense, and to what extent, the assessment of Husserl’s (...) Socrates helps shed some light upon the properly Husserlian conception of philosophy, notably, his twofold notion of “rationality.”. (shrink)

This paper aims at offering a concise, yet systematic, presentation of the Husserlian method of “self-variation” in connection to eidetic variation sic et simpliciter. After a brief review of the different meanings of this method in Husserl’s writings, I will focus on the way in which Husserl employs it to bring the eidos “ego” to the fore. To this end, I will take into account the specific subject matter of self-variation by resorting to a twofold concept of essence as well (...) as to the formal-ontological notion of τóδε τι. The present investigation will have an almost exclusively methodological character, its purpose being to clarify a specific, yet still quite unexplored, tool of Husserl’s phenomenology. (shrink)

The present work is a contribution towards understanding the cultural environment in which the concept of man and nature were conceived in India. The book has the virtue of presenting the Hindu philosophical systems in a style that is intelligible for even neophytes.

Proprioception has a crucial role in promoting or hindering motor learning. In particular, an intact position sense strongly correlates with the chances of recovery after stroke. A great majority of neurological patients present both motor dysfunctions and impairments in kinesthesia, but traditional robot and virtual reality training techniques focus either in recovering motor functions or in assessing proprioceptive deficits. An open challenge is to implement effective and reliable tests and training protocols for proprioception that go beyond the mere position sense (...) evaluation and exploit the intrinsic bidirectionality of the kinesthetic sense, which refers to both sense of position and sense of movement. Modulated haptic interaction has a leading role in promoting sensorimotor integration and it is a natural way to enhance volitional effort. Therefore, we designed a preliminary clinical study to test a new proprioception-based motor training technique for augmenting kinesthetic awareness via haptic feedback. The feedback was provided by a robotic manipulandum and the test involved 7 chronic hemiparetic subjects over three weeks. The protocol included evaluation sessions, that consisted of a psychometric estimate of the subject’s kinesthetic sensation, and training sessions, in which the subject executed planar reaching movements in the absence of vision and under a minimally assistive haptic guidance made by sequences of graded force pulses. The bidirectional haptic interaction between the subject and the robot was optimally adapted to each participant in order to achieve a uniform task difficulty over the workspace. All the subjects consistently improved in the perceptual scores as a consequence of training. Moreover, they could minimize the level of haptic guidance in time. Results suggest that the proposed method is effective in enhancing kinesthetic acuity, but the level of impairment may affect the ability of subjects to retain their improvement in time. (shrink)

The book offers a systematic reconstruction of the disagreement between Husserl and Heidegger from the former's perspective, but without falling into any form of Husserlian apologetics. The main thesis is that Husserl's critique of Heidegger's existential analytics as a form of philosophical anthropology entails a deeper fundamental thesis, namely that Heidegger confuses the object of first philosophy (the transcendental determination of the subject) with metaphysics (in the Husserlian sense of the expression). Addressing the Husserl-Heidegger confrontation, this text provides the first (...) systematic reconstruction of Husserl's conception of the system of philosophy from the perspective of his later works, with a special focus on the Cartesian Meditations. At stake in Husserl's critique of Heidegger's philosophy in Being and Time is the refusal to transcendentalize the irrational aspects and nature of our human existence. This first volume addresses Husserl's doctrine of transcendental idealism with the aim of elucidating the distinction between first philosophy, second philosophies and what Husserl calls last philosophy. This volume appeals to students and researchers. (shrink)

Right-wing populist parties often resort to a xenophobic rhetoric which both exploits and fuels existing illiberal anti-immigrant sentiments. Since populist anti-immigrant sentiments are at odds with fundamental liberal values and challenge the implementation of any liberal ethics of migration, this essay argues that states should adopt civic education policies to counter such sentiments and persuade citizens to develop liberal attitudes towards immigrants. Empirical evidence suggests that sentiments may be malleable, and there are already examples of local governments devising or supporting (...) initiatives aimed at dispelling prejudices and promoting positive interactions. It might be objected that a government’s involvement in shaping sentiments and opinions conflicts with liberal democratic states’ commitment to individual autonomy and electoral fairness. However, I argue that civic education policies are not necessarily incompatible with such values and I provide five criteria to identify policies that liberal democratic governments may legitimately adopt to counteract anti-immigrant sentiments. (shrink)

In the following paper we will attempt to analyze and reconstruct Edith Stein’s interpretation of Husserl’s “transcendental idealism,” notably, the reason why, in her opinion, the latter ended up embracing that specific philosophical position. As will soon become apparent, according to Stein, Husserl misunderstands the peculiar ontological structure of individual essences and, in particular, the specific connection with reality that they carry within themselves. Without raising the question of whether Stein’s own understanding of transcendental idealism perfectly corresponds with Husserl’s, we (...) will confine ourselves to discussing, first, the wider context within which she tackles it and, second, the relation between Husserl’s idealism and the formal-ontological issue of how to characterize the internal content of individual essences. No matter what we think of Stein’s critical assessment, her approach has the great and undeniable merit of forcing the “interpreter” to face the problem of the tight connection between the transcendental dimension and the eidetic dimension of Husserl’s thought. (shrink)

This collection offers the first systematic, comparative analysis of Wilfrid Sellars's Pittsburgh school of thought and Husserlian phenomenology. Beginning with an introduction to contemporary philosophical debates about the mind and pragmatism, the essays examine and clarify the discursive divide between analytic and Continental philosophy.

The present paper provides the first reconstruction of the discussion between Martin Heidegger and Maximilian Beck, a former member of the Munich Circle of Phenomenology—a discussion that revolved around Beck’s interpretation of the “fundamental ontology” of Being and Time. Based upon the still unpublished correspondence between Heidegger and Beck, the essay first reconstructs their relation and then offers a meticulous discussion of Beck’s major criticism of Heidegger, i.e., “correlativism,” and the latter’s response to it in his courses of 1928.

The present essay, here published for the first time, is part of a group of four texts on the history of the early phenomenological movement that Theodor Conrad wrote right after World War II. One of these texts known as “Conrads Bericht” was edited by Eberhard Avé-Lallemant and Karl Schuhmann and published in Husserl Studies in 1992. The four original typescripts are preserved in the archive of the Munich Circle of phenomenology at the Bavarian State Library. As the reader will (...) immediately realize, at the center of the present text is a peculiar account of the beginning of the phenomenological tradition, namely, of its first schism. Contrary to the usual thesis according to which the first schism revolved mainly, if not exclusively around the so-called “idealism-realism controversy,” Conrad points out that this was only part of it, and that the first controversy between Husserl and some of his early disciples or students bore on the nature of phenomenology itself. (shrink)

This essay argues that the illiberal anti-immigrant sentiments which lie behind the success of populist right-wing parties deserve the attention of political theorists working on the ethics of migration, even though such sentiments exceed the boundaries of admissible disagreement on justice in migration. Firstly, populist anti-immigrant sentiments hinder the implementation of liberal democratic immigration policies and thus they represent a feasibility constraint for any liberal ethics of migration, not only the most cosmopolitan ones. Secondly, there are legitimacy reasons why such (...) views should be neither merely dismissed nor simply contained, since they are voiced by populist political parties which are admitted in the electoral competition and even participate in governments. The main upshot of this discussion is a methodological one: the article argues that, since political theory should deal with the feasibility and legitimacy issues raised by populist anti-immigrant sentiments, a realistic approach is needed. The last section shows that such a methodological change offers the opportunity to extend the scope of normative theorising. In particular, it illustrates how a realistic approach encourages theorists to focus on local-level policies, as well as to devote attention to non-governmental actors and to their role in tackling citizens’ hostility towards immigrants. (shrink)

This paper presents a systematic discussion of Edith Stein’s critical understanding of Husserl’s transcendental-phenomenological idealism. After a brief explanation of the way in which, according to Stein, Husserl’s idealism should be framed, this paper offers an evaluation of her criticism with a special focus on her Introduction to Philosophy lectures of 1920. I argue that if, ultimately, Stein’s rejection of Husserl’s idealism in the text in question is deemed unsuccessful, we must examine the premises on which her own per-spective on (...) the eidetics of nature is based. (shrink)

The present research contributes to the elucidation of an important aspect of Husserl’s interpretation of the history of philosophy, that is, his reading of the beginning of Western thought. In par...

Walter Bock was committed to developing a framework for evolutionary biology. Bock repeatedly discussed how evolutionary explanations should be considered within the realm of Hempel’s deductive-nomological model of scientific explanations. Explanation in evolution would then consist of functional and evolutionary explanations, and within the latter, an explanation can be of nomological-deductive and historical narrative explanations. Thus, a complete evolutionary explanation should include, first, a deductive functional analysis, and then proceed through nomological and historical evolutionary explanations. However, I will argue that (...) his views on the deductive proprieties of functional analysis and the deductive-nomological parts of evolution fail because of the nature of evolution, which contains a historical element that the logic of deduction and Hempel’s converting law model do not compass. Conversely, Bock’s historical approach gives a critical consideration of the historical narrative element of evolutionary explanation, which is fundamental to the methodology of the historical nature of evolutionary theory. Herein, I will expand and discuss a modern view of evolutionary explanations of traits that includes the currentacknowledgement of the differences between experimental and the historical sciences, including the token and type event dichotomy, that mutually illuminate each other in order to give us a well confirmed and coherent hypothesis for evolutionary explanations. Within this framework, I will argue that the duality of evolutionary explanations is related to two components of character evolution: origin, with its evolutionary pathways along with the history, and maintenance, the function (mainly a current function) for the character being selected. (shrink)

The recent global outspread of the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced the lives of people across multiple countries including athletes, coaches, and supporting staff. Along with everybody else, coaches found themselves constrained to an at-home self-isolation, which limited their ability to normally engage with their profession and to interact with their athletes. This situation may also have impacted their own psychological well-being. With this study, we explored coaches’ perceptions of stress in relation to their emotion regulation strategies depending upon their gender (...) and competitive level. A sample of 2272 Italian coaches were surveyed during the period of lockdown. Mean values for perceived stress and emotion regulation strategies were compared to normative data of the two instruments as reported in the original studies. Furthermore, two Multivariate analyses of variance were completed to observe the potential differences in the coaches’ emotion regulation strategies and perception of stress. Finally, a blockwise regression analysis was run to assess how coaches’ emotion regulation strategies impacted upon their perception of stress. Both women and men reported higher levels of perceived stress than those reported in the normative data. Similarly, average scores for emotion regulation strategies were significantly different from those reported for normative data, in particular, coaches reported slightly higher use of emotion regulation strategies than participants in the original study. Significant gender-based differences emerged in terms of emotional regulations, with men adopting more suppression than women. No differences by competitive level were found. In terms of perceived stress, male coaches and elite coaches showed to be more in control of the situation than female coaches and non-elite coaches, respectively, while women experienced more negative stress than men. The blockwise regression evidenced how reappraisal resulted to be predictive in helping coaches to reduce their perception of stress, while suppression predicted higher stress perceptions. (shrink)

The book offers a systematic reconstruction of the disagreement between Husserl and Heidegger from the former's point of view, but without falling into any form of Husserlian apologetics. The main thesis is that Husserl's critique of Heidegger's existential analytics as a form of philosophical anthropology entails a deeper fundamental thesis, namely, that Heidegger confuses the subject matter of first philosophy (the transcendental subject) with metaphysics (in the Husserlian sense of the expression). At stake in Husserl's critique of Heidegger's philosophy in (...) Being and Time is the refusal to transcendentalize the irrational aspects of our human existence. This second volume focuses on the question of being, clarifying the distinction between ontology and metaphysics in Husserl's thought. In fact, contrary to a long-standing and established interpretive tradition, according to which Husserl's phenomenology is metaphysically neutral, the book shows to what extent Husserl always understood as the ultimate goal of his philosophizing the positive foundation of a metaphysics. This volume appeals to students and researchers. (shrink)

This paper aims at discussing a quite specific aspect of Husserl’s phenomenology, i.e., the notion of synthesis of identification, and the role it plays in the arguments set forward in the Fifth Cartesian Meditation during the discussion of the constitution of the other, hence of the monadological inter-subjectivity. The case will be made for considering the very heart of the Meditation to be what we will refer to as Husserl’s “transcendental argument”, consisting in the claim that there can be only (...) one inter-subjectivity, hence, the “world” being the correlate of the transcendental monadological inter-subjectivity, only one real and actual world. This will also give us the opportunity to critically approach a series of views lately held by some leading figures of the “continental” and “analytic” tradition, which, as the first part of the essay will show, pursue views directly opposed to Husserl’s. (shrink)

No better analogy can be found to indirectly “illustrate” and thus describe the vicissitudes of the thought of Rudolf Hermann Lotze than what Don Abbondio exclaims about Carnades in Alessandro Manzoni’s 1827 masterpiece I promessi sposi. Carneades was in fact one of the most important and famous thinkers of the Hellenic period; as one of the great heads of the Platonic Academy after Arcesilaus, he was sent to Rome in 155 BC to lecture on justice. Apparently, more than 400 books (...) were written about him. And yet, the question that Don Abbondio asks himself reveals how little his name is known outside the quite restricted circles of professional scholarship. (shrink)

Esse texto pretende fazer uma análise da trajetória das reflexões estéticas de Marcuse, associando-o, enfim, à tradiçáo moderna do séc. XVIII, de valorizaçáo do polo da recepçáo estética em detrimento do aspecto da produçáo.

The goal of the present paper is to assess Hans Vaihinger’s understanding of the notion of the given in Die Philosophie des Als Ob. The claim will be advanced that the overall framework of Vaihinger’s theory of knowledge and, more specifically, his understanding of both the given and fictions should be sought for in the manner in which R. Hermann Lotze assesses the problem of knowledge, namely, the relation between thought and being in both his early and late Logik. As (...) we will argue, the way in which Vaihinger recasts the opposition between what is given objectively (data of sensations) and what is added subjectively is to be deemed a direct radicalization of Lotze’s own stance. As the conclusion will further add, what is at stake inVaihinger’s fictionalism is a quite specific understanding of the ideas of reason and transcendental philosophy. (shrink)

William Whewell is usually portraied as an anti-Hegelian. This article shows that, despite his criticism for Hegel’s philosophical system, Whewell was influenced by the Hegelian “historical” approach in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy, and by the conception of the progressive development of though (philosophy for Hegel, science for Whewell) as a dialectical unity.

In the present essay an attempt will be made at quickly reconstructing the debate between Dorion Cairns and the Munich phenomenologist Maximilian Beck, which bears on Husserl’s last published work, i.e., the Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. What is at stake is the value of Husserl’s phenomenology, with a focus upon the concepts of reason and rationality. As will be argued, the discussion between the two concerns the distinction, and relevant articulation, between what can be called “transcendental” and (...) “ontological” rationality respectively. In so doing, this paper aims at both interpreting a crucial moment in the history of 20th century phenomenology and bringing attention back to the life and work of Max Beck. (shrink)