Between the radical, creative capacity of our imagination and the social imaginary we are immersed in is an intermediate space philosophers have termed the imaginal, populated by images or (re)presentations that are presences in themselves. Offering a new, systematic understanding of the imaginal and its nexus with the political, Chiara Bottici brings fresh perspective to the formation of political and power relationships and the paradox of a world rich in imagery yet seemingly devoid of imagination. Bottici begins by defining (...) the difference between the imaginal and the imaginary, locating the imaginal's root meaning in the image and its ability to both characterize a public and establish a set of activities within that public. She identifies the imaginal's critical role in powering representative democracies and its amplification through globalization. She then addresses the troublesome increase in images now mediating politics and the transformation of politics into empty spectacle. The spectacularization of politics has led to its virtualization, Bottici observes, transforming images into processes with an uncertain relationship to reality, and, while new media has democratized the image in a global society of the spectacle, the cloned image no longer mediates politics but does the act for us. Bottici concludes with politics' current search for legitimacy through an invented ideal of tradition, a turn to religion, and the incorporation of human rights language. (shrink)

The Hippocratic texts and other contemporary medical sources have often been overlooked in discussions of ancient psychology. They have been considered to be more mechanical and less detailed than poetic and philosophical representations, as well as later medical texts such as those of Galen. This book does justice to these early medical accounts by demonstrating their richness and sophistication, their many connections with other contemporary cultural products and the indebtedness of later medicine to their observations. In addition, it reads these (...) sources not only as archaeological documents but also in the light of methodological discussions that are fundamental to the histories of psychiatry and psychology. As a result of this approach, the book will be important for scholars of these disciplines as well as those of Greek literature and philosophy, strongly advocating the relevance of ancient ideas to modern debates. (shrink)

This article addresses the inherently relational nature of musical agency, drawing upon interdisciplinary research. It argues that music does not exist in isolation but within social and emotional contexts shaped by a network of relationships among musicians. These interactions create a collaborative space that transcends mere technical execution, fostering a collective experience enriched by shared sensitivity and emotional engagement. Consequently, musical practice, whether compositional or performative, entails a moral responsibility, particularly challenging the perspectives of Levinas; Bauman; and Wilde, who traditionally (...) separated art from ethics. As outlined in Nielsen and Cobussen’s work “music contributes to a better understanding of one’s place within the world, and thus, to an ethical sensibility”, emphasizing how musical practice cultivates ethical awareness through its relational nature. Music is thus conceived as a moral endeavor, where care extends not only to the music itself but also to the individuals involved in its creation and performance. Moreover, this moral responsibility extends to future generations, as musical tradition is conceived as a temporal bridge linking the past, the present, and the future. The tradition is composed of individuals actively engaged in the practices that shape the tradition or traditions. Musicians bear an intergenerational responsibility toward those who will inherit and reinterpret current practices—a responsibility not grounded in direct reciprocity, but in what Randall describes as “conceptual ties”. The continuity of musical tradition and its aesthetic value depend on the care and responsibility each generation shows toward both the participants and the evolving cultural products of this process. Thus, the discussion elucidates the ethical dimensions of musical agency and practice, particularly in Western classical music, and highlights how our obligations to future generations are intrinsic to the practice itself, thereby contributing to broader debates on intergenerational care ethics. (shrink)

_The Politics of Imagination_ offers a multidisciplinary perspective on the contemporary relationship between politics and the imagination. What role does our capacity to form images play in politics? And can we define politics as a struggle for people’s imagination? As a result of the increasingly central place of the media in our lives, the political role of imagination has undergone a massive quantitative and a qualitative change. As such, there has been a revival of interest in the concept of imagination, (...) as the intimate connections between our capacity to form images and politics becomes more and more evident. Bringing together scholars from different disciplines and theoretical outlooks, _The Politics of Imagination_ examines how the power of imagination reverberates in the various ambits of social and political life: in law, history, art, gender, economy, religion and the natural sciences. And it will be of considerable interest to those with contemporary interests in philosophy, political philosophy, political science, legal theory, gender studies, sociology, nationalism, identity studies, cultural studies, and media studies. (shrink)

After initially emerging in China, the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak has advanced rapidly. The World Health Organization (WHO) has recently declared it a pandemic, with Europe becoming its new epicentre. Italy has so far been the most severely hit European country and demand for critical care in the northern region currently exceeds its supply. This raises significant ethical concerns, among which is the allocation of scarce resources. Professionals are considering the prioritisation of patients most likely to survive over those with remote (...) chances, and this news has triggered an intense debate about the right of every individual to access healthcare. The proposed analysis suggests that the national emergency framework in which prioritisation criteria are currently enforced should not lead us to perceive scarce resources allocation as something new. From an ethical perspective, the novelty of the current emergency is not grounded in the devastating effects of scarce resources allocation, which is rife in recent and present clinical practice. Rather, it has to do with the extraordinarily high number of people who find themselves personally affected by the implications of scarce resources allocation and who suddenly realise that the principle of ‘equals should be treated equally’ may no longer be applicable. Along with the need to allocate appropriate additional financial resources to support the healthcare system, and thus to mitigate the scarcity of resources, the analysis insists on the relevance of a medical ethics perspective that does not place the burden of care and choice solely on physicians. (shrink)

In this book, originally published in 2007, Chiara Bottici argues for a philosophical understanding of political myth. Bottici demonstrates that myth is a process, one of continuous work on a basic narrative pattern that responds to a need for significance. Human beings need meaning in order to master the world they live in, but they also need significance in order to live in a world that is less indifferent to them. This is particularly true in the realm of politics. (...) Political myths are narratives through which we orient ourselves, and act and feel about our political world. Bottici shows that in order to come to terms with contemporary phenomena, such as the clash between civilizations, we need a Copernican revolution in political philosophy. If we want to save reason, we need to look at it from the standpoint of myth. (shrink)

Le Quaestiones 2 («Se l’oggetto adeguato della conoscenza divina sia l’essenza di Dio o l’ente universale») e 3 («Se le creature secondo le loro proprie nature e le loro essenze siano vita in Dio e nel Verbo») della Distinctio 35 dello Scriptum di Pietro Aureoli sono importanti per la ricostruzione sia del pensiero del loro autore che della storia della dottrina delle idee divine nel Medioevo. Aureoli rifiuta il modello tradizionale di causalità esemplare, secondo cui Dio avrebbe creato il mondo (...) sulla base di modelli archetipi esistenti dall’eternità nella sua mente. Ricorrendo al concetto di aequivocatio, stabilisce che l’essenza di Dio è in maniera equivoca l’unico esemplare per tutte le creature ed elabora, così, la teoria della causalità esemplare equivoca. (shrink)

Saggio storico-pedagogico costruito su scritti editi e inediti di Elena Marano, pedagogista, filantropa, scrittrice vissuta tra la il XIX e il XX secolo ad Adrano (Ct). Ancorato alla pedagogia tradizionale, il suo pensiero trae alimento da ideologi del Risorgimento (Mazzini e Gioberti), si confronta con studiosi e intellettuali coevi, si apre a forme di rigenerazione didattico-educative i cui temi precorrono la contemporaneità: riposizionamento morale per contrastare emergenza educativa, istruzione diffusa per abbattere disagio sociale e analfabetismo, formazione delle bambine per favorire (...) cittadinanza femminile e inserimento delle donne nella società, relazionalità produttiva e funzione pedagogica del lavoro per conseguire «quella legalità che è attributo dello Stato». Diversi gli aspetti dell'educazione – morale, intellettuale, civile...– che, avviando corresponsabilità educativa tra docente e studente, scuola e famiglia, costituiscono strumento di interazione tra le discipline e l'unità di pensiero, necessaria diade per la deduzione del vero. (shrink)

Il trascendentalismo della prassi per andare oltre lo scetticismo e oltre ogni pretesa da parte della filosofia di cogliere l'essere nella sua definizione universale e razionale. Una proposta anche storiografica.

Drawing on philosophy, law and political science, and on a wealth of practical experience delivering emergency medical services in conflict-ridden settings, Lepora and Goodin untangle the complexities surrounding compromise and complicity.

: Autonomous driving systems promise important changes for future of transport, primarily through the reduction of road accidents. However, ethical concerns, in particular, two central issues, will be key to their successful development. First, situations of risk that involve inevitable harm to passengers and/or bystanders, in which some individuals must be sacrificed for the benefit of others. Secondly, and identification responsible parties and liabilities in the event of an accident. Our work addresses the first of these ethical problems. We are (...) interested in investigating how humans respond to critical situations and what reactions they consider to be morally right or at least preferable to others. Our experimental approach relies on the trolley dilemma and knowledge gained from previous research on this. More specifically, our main purpose was to test the difference between what human drivers actually decide to do in an emergency situations whilst driving a realistic simulator and the moral choices they make when they pause to consider what they would do in the same situation and to better understand why these choices may differs. Keywords: Self-driving Cars; Trolley Problem; Moral Choices; Moral Responsibility; Virtual Reality Dilemmi morali nelle automobili a guida autonoma Riassunto: I sistemi di guida autonomi promettono importanti cambiamenti per il futuro dei trasporti, principalmente attraverso la riduzione degli incidenti stradali. Tuttavia, vi sono preoccupazioni etiche, in particolare due questioni centrali, fondamentali per il loro sviluppo. In primo luogo, le situazioni di rischio che comportano inevitabili danni ai passeggeri e/o ai pedoni, ovvero situazioni in cui alcune persone devono essere sacrificate a beneficio di altri. In secondo luogo, l’identificazione delle parti responsabili in caso di incidente. Il nostro lavoro affronta il primo di questi problemi etici. Siamo interessati a studiare come gli umani rispondono a situazioni critiche e quali reazioni considerano moralmente giuste o almeno preferibili. Il nostro approccio sperimentale si basa sul trolley problem e sulle conoscenze acquisite da precedenti ricerche su questo ambito. Più specificamente, il nostro scopo principale è quello di testare la differenza tra ciò che i conducenti umani decidono effettivamente di fare in una situazione di emergenza, mentre guidano un simulatore realistico, e le scelte morali che compiono se posti nella stessa situazione e hanno la possibilità di decidere senza limiti di tempo. Lo scopo è inoltre comprendere come e perché queste scelte possono differire. Parole chiave: Automobili a guida autonoma; Trolley problem; Scelte morali; Responsabilità morale, Realtà virtuale. (shrink)

In Imagining Europe, Chiara Bottici and Benoît Challand explore the formation of modern European identity. Europe has not always been there, although we have been imagining it for quite some time. Even after the birth of a polity called the European Union, the meaning of Europe remained a very much contested topic. What is Europe? What are its boundaries? Is there a specific European identity or is the EU just the name for a group of institutions? This book answers (...) these questions, showing that in Europe's formation, myth and memory, although distinct, are often merged in a common attempt to construct an identity for its present and its future. In a time when Europe is facing an existential crisis, when its meaning is being questioned, Imagining Europe explores a vital and often unacknowledged aspect of the European project. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to illuminate the idea that humility – understood as self-knowledge and a relational virtue in the Thomistic sense – is essential for professional excellence in music. The article begins by examining contemporary interpretations of humility and then refers to the conceptions of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. It argues that 1) Aquinas’s conception of humility aligns well with current understandings of humility among professional musicians in Western classical music; 2) humility can be considered a role-specific (...) virtue in music; and 3) high-level musical practice serves as a form of training in the virtue of humility. The article then draws on studies by social scientists and testimonies from professional musicians and conductors to explore how humility is manifested and actualized in music, particularly concerning self-knowledge and excellence. (shrink)

The study is aimed at clarifying Meister Eckhart's theory of relations, which involves all fields of his philosophy: gnoseological, theological, ontological. Its general features (concerning the ontological status of relations and relatives, the nature of the fundamentum relationis, and the origin ab altero proper to the relation) seem to denote a realist position, in opposition to the Nominalism. Yet, when he applies the theory to particular problems, it is evident that his position cannot be simply qualified as a realist one. (...) In Eckhart's view, the objectivity of knowledge is not guaranteed by the correspondence between the extra-mental entities and their images in the mind, but by the close relationship between the subject and the object of knowledge. This same dynamic relationship (a sort of inclusion) holds between the Father and the Son and between God and the creatures: the Son is the image of the Father, who is inside him, like the creature is the image of God, who is the inner ontological foundation of the creature. (shrink)

The Sārasaṅgaha is a Pāli text of XIIth–XIIIth century by the Sinhalese monk Siddhattha Thera. Its themes include the aspiration to become a Buddha, shrines, meditation, theories on rain, wind, gender and more. The main body consists of citations from the Nikāyas, the Jātakas, the Visuddhimagga and above all, from commentarial literature. By analysing the way the Sārasaṅgaha refers to and establishes a dialogue with the quoted works, this paper promotes a new assessment of the cultural and textual tendencies that (...) influenced the development of Buddhist literature especially in the Middle Ages. In particular, the analysis of this text and the quotations of which it is composed reveals the importance of commentarial literature, a literary genre that only recently has attracted the attention of Pāli scholars. (shrink)

Why government outsourcing of public powers is making us less free Many governmental functions today—from the management of prisons and welfare offices to warfare and financial regulation—are outsourced to private entities. Education and health care are funded in part through private philanthropy rather than taxation. Can a privatized government rule legitimately? The Privatized State argues that it cannot. In this boldly provocative book, Chiara Cordelli argues that privatization constitutes a regression to a precivil condition—what philosophers centuries ago called "a (...) state of nature." Developing a compelling case for the democratic state and its administrative apparatus, she shows how privatization reproduces the very same defects that Enlightenment thinkers attributed to the precivil condition, and which only properly constituted political institutions can overcome—defects such as provisional justice, undue dependence, and unfreedom. Cordelli advocates for constitutional limits on privatization and a more democratic system of public administration, and lays out the central responsibilities of private actors in contexts where governance is already extensively privatized. Charting a way forward, she presents a new conceptual account of political representation and novel philosophical theories of democratic authority and legitimate lawmaking. The Privatized State shows how privatization undermines the very reason political institutions exist in the first place, and advocates for a new way of administering public affairs that is more democratic and just. (shrink)

This study offers a new interpretation of the poem of the founder of Western philosophy: Parmenides. It shows that there is more in his poem than the description of Being by means of negative adjectives such as ingenerated and immobile. His words ask his audience to question their habits, to modify their goals, to engage in new enterprises and to look with a critical eye at their previous attempts to get knowledge. It operates as a travel guide that leads the (...) audience on a journey that will educate them and help them to gradually become philosophically mature, to become true themselves, which can also be described as the encouragement to become Being. (shrink)

Boredom, in cinema as well as in our everyday experience, is usually associated with a generalised loss of meaning or interest. Accordingly, boredom is often perceived as that which ought to be avo...

This is the first of two volumes comprising the papers submitted for publication by the invited participants to the Tenth International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, held in Florence, August 1995. The Congress was held under the auspices of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science, Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science. The invited lectures published in the two volumes demonstrate much of what goes on in the fields of the Congress and give (...) the state of the art of current research. The two volumes cover the traditional subdisciplines of mathematical logic and philosophical logic, as well as their interfaces with computer science, linguistics and philosophy. Philosophy of science is broadly represented, too, including general issues of natural sciences, social sciences and humanities. The papers in Volume One are concerned with logic, mathematical logic, the philosophy of logic and mathematics, and computer science. (shrink)

In the philosophy of science and epistemology literature, robustness analysis has become an umbrella term that refers to a variety of strategies. One of the main purposes of this paper is to argue that different strategies rely on different criteria for justifications. More specifically, I will claim that: i) robustness analysis differs from de-idealization even though the two concepts have often been conflated in the literature; ii) the comparison of different model frameworks requires different justifications than the comparison of models (...) that differ only for the assumption under test; iii) the replacement of specific assumptions with different ones can encounter specific difficulties in scientific practice. These claims will be supported by a case study in population ecology and a case study in geographical economics. (shrink)

Here I present the first version of the transcription of the Commentarius in Metaphysicam by Konrad Graf from Cod. Pp 183 4°, Teil 2, Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern [ZHB], Sondersammlung (ff. 1r-56v), which collects Graf's lectures in metaphysics, held at the Lucerne Gymnasium in 1635-36. The transcription of the text was carried out at the Lucerne Faculty of Theology within the SNSF project "Zwischen monastischer und reformierter Metaphysik. Die schweizerische 'Wiege' der Ontologie im Zeitalter der Reformation" (SNSF project 100012_192559 - (...) applicant: Prof. Dr. Giovanni Ventimiglia (TF- University of Lucerne), Employees: Marco Lamanna, Chiara Paladini. The project aimed to redefine the "cartography" of the Reformation in Switzerland on the traces of metaphysics teaching (Reportationes) in Swiss educational institutions and monastic poles, and thereby to gain a precise place for Swiss studies in the panorama of research on metaphysics and ontology in the early modern period. The project was based on a preliminary investigation that made it possible to recover new texts transmitting lessons on metaphysics held in Lucerne and Engelberg. The method was 1. to produce a systematic and comprehensive documentation based on an index of manuscripts and printed texts, most of them already identified, which testify to the existence of a cultural flourishing in Switzerland that has so far remained unexplored. 2. this documentation should be placed on a solid textual basis by transcribing and eventually critically editing those texts judged to be of interest in terms of their content and influence, in order to make them accessible to the scholarly community and to readers. 3. finally, we will examine the specific aspects of the teachings transmitted in these manuscripts. (shrink)