Humanity is threatened by global risks that cross borders and national institutions in a way that has never been experienced before. Disasters, far from being purely natural phenomena, constitute the greatest danger in a context of political, social and scientific uncertainty. A new risk-based governance appears, ranging from the introduction of problematic exceptional measures and an increased vulnerability and inequality in risk exposure. This proposal aims to deepen the analysis of the relationship between law, politics and catastrophe as the focal (...) point of the evolution of risk prevention and management and its significance for the transformations of our understanding of democracy. The research proposes to engage catastrophes by conceiving them as powerful amplifiers and epiphanies of injustices, assuming that the role of the state should be inserted into a wider reading that must include the problem of unequal distribution of risks. (shrink)

Introduction: Novel coronavirus is having a devastating psychological impact on patients, especially patients with cancer. This work aims to evaluate mood disorders of cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy during COVID-19 in comparison with cancer patients who underwent radiation therapy in 2019.Materials and Methods: We included all the patients undergoing radiation therapy at our department in two-time points and during the COVID-19 outbreak. All the patients were asked to fulfill a validated questionnaire, the Symptom Distress thermometer, and the Beck Depression Inventory (...) v.2. We took into account the COVID-19 outbreak and also sex, age, week of radiation treatment, and disease.Results: We included 458 patients, with a median age of 64 years. STAI-Y1 median score was 40, whereas the median score of SDT was five and BDI-2 median score was 11. STAI-Y1, SDT, and BDI-2 were significantly correlated with the COVID-19 outbreak, sex, week of treatment, and disease.Conclusions: The prevalence of mood disorders in patients undergoing radiation therapy is higher than expected and even higher during the COVID-19 outbreak. These measurements could be useful as a baseline to start medical humanities programs to decrease these scores. (shrink)

Despite growing interest in risks of societal collapse due to anthropogenic climate change, there exists no consensus about how collapse should be understood. In this article, we critically examine existing definitions and argue that none adequately address the challenges for conceptualizing collapse that climate change presents. We therefore propose an alternative conception, which regards collapse as a reduction of collective capacity resulting in a pervasive and difficult-to-reverse loss of basic functionality. Our conception is dynamic in that it focuses on the (...) interrelations of constituent subsystems. It also distinguishes collapse from transformations needed to address climate change and provides insight into the relationship between collapse and sustainability. [Open access]. (shrink)

Chinese traditional characters share with Peirce’s existential graphs the fact of being endowed with an object-language that they describe through a nonlinear syntax and in an iconic way. Here iconicity is not restricted to images and perceptive similarity since diagrams and graphic metaphors are iconic too. The graphs are shown to be a borderland between Western traditional logic and Chinese traditional writing and culture, so the écart (Jullien’s concept for cultural distance) between characters and graphs is preserved even though graphs (...) break with the Western prejudice in favor of conventionality at the expense of iconicity in logical systems. The take-home lesson for the study of writing systems is to substitute the orality-writing duality with the interplay among orality, writing, and pictures thus shifting from a linguistic typology to a semiotic one. (shrink)

Abstract:There is a storied history of Native and Indigenous feminisms on Turtle Island (North America). We are fortunate that many of those stories birthed from an ancestral tradition of storytelling and survivance were captured in the canonical feminist anthology This Bridge Called My Back: Writings of Radical Women of Color. In celebration and commemoration of 40 years since This Bridge was first published we visit with three of the books original Native and Indigenous contributors–Chrystos, Max Wolf Valerio, and Jo (...) Carrillo–to recount old as well as new stories as they explore what Native and Indigenous feminisms mean to them and their continued work for Indigenous visibility. The conversation provides a unique intergenerational vision for conceptualizing contemporary Native and Indigenous feminisms all the while building upon the legacy and path set forth by amazing Native and Indigenous women trailblazers. (shrink)

We ordinarily believe that the inhabitants of the world - including ourselves - persist over time. Such an idea, however, has puzzled philosophers for centuries. How can we change and still be the same? More specifically, is there any constitutive condition of our identity over time? And if so, does this condition involve mental aspects, physical aspects, or something else? Or is rather personal identity primitive and unanalyzable, so that our persistence is nothing but a brute fact? This volume is (...) a collection of new essays from leading figures in the field analyzing the persistence of persons and the criteria of personal identity over time. It presents an extensive discussion of the most relevant views on personal identity in contemporary metaphysics and provides new treatments of the constitutive conditions of personal persistence. (shrink)

The 2005 Report on Social Responsibility and Health of the UNESCO International Bioethics Committee (Ibc) proposes a new approach to implementing the right to healthcare and suggests a number of Courses of Action to be followed in various fields. Based on the latest available data, we intend to present an overview of the current state of European health systems in two of those fields—decision-making procedures and quality assurance in health care—and to attempt a comparison of the situation with the Report’s (...) provisions, in order to pave the way for the identification of what still has to be done to bridge international recommendations and the reality of policy and practice in Europe’s health care. (shrink)

The last decade has seen great progress in the study of the nature of crossmodal links in exogenous and endogenous spatial attention . Exogenous spatial cuing studies of human crossmodal attention and multisensory integration. In C. Spence, & J. Driver , Crossmodal space and crossmodal attention . Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.], for a recent review). A growing body of research now highlights the existence of robust crossmodal links between auditory, visual, and tactile spatial attention. However, until recently, studies of (...) exogenous and endogenous attention have proceeded relatively independently. In daily life, however, these two forms of attentional orienting continuously compete for the control of our attentional resources, and ultimately, our awareness. It is therefore critical to try and understand how exogenous and endogenous attention interact in both the unimodal context of the laboratory and the multisensory contexts that are more representative of everyday life. To date, progress in understanding the interaction between these two forms of orienting has primarily come from unimodal studies of visual attention. We therefore start by summarizing what has been learned from this large body of empirical research, before going on to review more recent studies that have started to investigate the interaction between endogenous and exogenous orienting in a multisensory setting. We also discuss the evidence suggesting that exogenous spatial orienting is not truly automatic, at least when assessed in a crossmodal context. Several possible models describing the interaction between endogenous and exogenous orienting are outlined and then evaluated in terms of the extant data. (shrink)

La contaduría pública se ha vuelto una profesión importante en la actualidad, dado el cargo de confianza que asumen dentro de una institución al ser los emisores de información financiera relevante para la gerencia o la alta dirección. A su vez, es importante resaltar la gran cantidad de casos relacionados con la pérdida de valores y actos de corrupción que se presentan a diario en los medios de comunicación, la cual refleja la falta de ética de los profesionales a la (...) hora de ejercer sus funciones. En este contexto, se resalta el concepto de ética profesional, el cual garantiza el buen desempeño de un profesional bajo una serie de normas éticas que regulan su comportamiento. Por ello, el objetivo del presente artículo fue explorar el rol de la ética profesional en la formación y el ejercicio profesional del contador público. Los datos y consejos proporcionados por un contador definen en gran medida las decisiones tomadas respecto a la estructura financiera de una empresa u organización, razón por la cual un contador debe ser una persona íntegra e interesada en perseguir el interés general. Dadas las deficiencias existentes en la integridad ética y moral de los contadores, tanto universidades como empresas están implementando medidas para combatir este problema, buscando fortalecer la confianza de la población en la contaduría y prevenir que los futuros profesionales caigan en prácticas inmorales que dañan a la sociedad. (shrink)

Mathematics reinterpreted as political practice and not just as theory constitutes an extraordinary exercise in democracy: like democracy, it is based on a system of rules, creates groups, and works on relationships. Like democracy, mathematics widens but doesn't nullify things. By studying mathematics one can understand many things about truth. For instance, the fact that truths are shared and therefore the principles of authority do not exist; the fact that all truths are absolute but transient because they depend on the (...) set of definitions and on the surrounding conditions. Solving a mathematical problem is an exercise in democracy because those who do not accept error and do not strive to understand the world are not able to change or govern it. In her polemical pamphlet Chiara Valerio pieces together a parallel between mathematics and democracy, two fields that do not succumb to the dictatorship of urgency--Translated from back cover. (shrink)

_Riassunto_: La riflessione su Machiavelli di Luigi Antonello Armando presenta tratti di novità e originalità. Dell’opera più nota, _Il principe_, Armando sostiene che se ne è fatta una lettura che ignora la rilevanza dell’espressione “al tutto nuovo” riferito a un principe “senza padre” e che dalla fortuna (occasione) ha avuto soltanto la possibilità non ostacolata di imprimere la forma agli eventi, divenendo così artefice per virtù propria dell’inizio “di una storia possibile”. Della “mente” di un tal principe, che potrà essere (...) “savio” e proporsi come modello e non farsi imitatore di modelli fuorvianti, l’Autore s’interessa appassionatamente, facendone il fulcro del proprio impegno di interprete. Si cerca, in queste pagine, di confrontare la proposta interpretativa dell’Autore con la concezione drammatica dell’uomo e della storia di Machiavelli. _Parole chiave_: Niccolò Machiavelli; Politica; Potere _Machiavelli’s The Prince. A reading suggestion_ _ __Abstract_: Luigi Antonello Armando’s reflections on Machiavelli present elements of novelty and originality. Regarding Machiavelli’s most famous work, _The Prince_, Armando argues that it has been read in a way that overlooks the significance of the expression “_al tutto nuovo_” (“_completely new_”), referring to a prince “without a father,” who, through fortune (opportunity), was given only the unimpeded possibility to shape events, thus becoming the creator, through his own virtue, of the beginning “of a possible history”. The Author passionately focuses on the “mind” of such a prince, who can be “wise” and present himself as a model rather than imitating misleading models. In these pages, an attempt is made to compare the Author’s interpretative proposal with Machiavelli’s dramatic conception of man and history. _Keywords_: Niccolò Machiavelli; Politics; Power. (shrink)

The paper exhibits the relation between Heidegger’s idea of Andenken and one of the main concepts of Gadamer’s hermeneutics, viz., tradition, in the following way: tradition is interpreted from Andenken. In order to clarify this relation it was necessary to present the features of tradition pr..

La interpretación narrativa es un modo de conectar la obra de arte con la historia y a partir de ahí configurar la identidad narrativa en términos dinámicos. La interpretación narrativa es un camino viable para el pensar cuando éste trata de dar cuenta de formas problemáticas de arte, como el arte actual, ya que tiene la ventaja de trabajar con el contexto de la obra en vez de tratarla aisladamente. Una obra es lo que es gracias a sus conexiones con (...) obras anteriores y posteriores. La narratividad es probablemente el mejor modo de establecer, explicar y comprender estas conexiones. El objetivo de este artículo es mostrar que puede haber un tipo de interpretación que configure la identidad narrativa de la obra y que esta identidad no se restringe a la identificación, sino que crea una identidad dinámica para la obra. (shrink)

This article deals with democratic constitutionalism in order to investigate the proper nature of constitutionalism, by wondering about its peculiarities and specific objects. Against this background, this essay aims at providing a paradigmatic definition of constitutional theory, for more specifically exploring its different undertones. For this reason, the first section of the article offers an analysis of the most relevant theoretical contributions within modern and contemporary constitutionalism. Thus, the first section explores Carl Schmitt’s, Hans Kelsen’s and Robert Dahl’s definition of (...) constitutional democracy. The second section then focuses with more attention on contemporary liberal-democratic constitutionalism, manly on one of the most debated issues: the dichotomy between legal and political models of constitutionalism, which goes hand in hand with a distinction between dualist and monistic accounts of democratic theory. The last section proposes an insight into the Italian constitutional system, by comparing it with the U.S. model, by especially focusing on the functioning and structure of the Constitutional Court compared to the U.S. Supreme Court. (shrink)

Il libro intende fornire una ricostruzione dettagliata del dibattito, oggi centrale all’interno della teoria politica e democratica, tra due modelli costituzionali speculari: da un lato il cosiddetto “modello Washington”, che ricalca il sistema istituzionale degli Stati Uniti, dall’altro il “modello Westminster”, che invece descrive l’ordinamento britannico. Il libro ricostruisce il panorama liberal-democratico, discutendo i temi chiave di alcuni tra i maggiori teorici del costituzionalismo contemporaneo, a cominciare da John Rawls, Bruce Ackerman e Richard Bellamy. Attraverso il confronto tra modello dualista (...) e modello monista della democrazia costituzionale, il libro mira a gettare uno sguardo sulle interpretazioni, ma soprattutto sulle prospettive del costituzionalismo democratico contemporaneo, che si trova oggi a fronteggiare le sfide e i pericoli derivanti dal populismo. (shrink)

This article wants to propose some reflections on law, power and violence in contemporary political philosophy. My attention will be devoted to a critical analysis of some relevant contribution on these matters by prominent scholars and authors such as Alessandro Ferrara, Christoph Menke, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt. The first part is dedicated to a brief introduction in which the Alessandro Ferrara’s reading of Menke’s Law and Violence will be presented. The second part focuses its attention on the philosophical backgrounds of (...) violence, especially in its relation to liberty, power and government. In this case, the main focus is devoted to some of the classics in political philosophy: Niccolò Machiavelli; Thomas Hobbes; Hannah Arendt. The last two paragraphs are finally dedicated to further reflections on law and violence. On the one hand, giving a deeper description of Ferrara’s remarks on Menke’s work, especially in its connection to Rawlsian political liberalism. The last paragraph, on the other hand, proposes few brief and final reflections on law and violence. (shrink)

This book offers intriguing philosophical inquiries into biotechnological art and the life sciences, addressing their convergences as well as their epistemic and functional divergences. Rooted on a thorough understanding of the history of philosophy, this work builds on critical and ontological thought to interpret the concept of life that underscores first-hand dealings with matter and experimentation. The book breaks new ground on the issue of animality and delivers fresh posthumanist perspectives on the topics addressed. The authors embark on a deep (...) ontological probe of the concept of medium as communication-bridging and life-bearing. They also take on the concept of performativity as biotechnological art. The book includes concrete, well-documented case studies and shows how certain narratives and practices directly impact ideas surrounding science and technologies. It will interest philosophers in art and technology, aesthetics, ontology, and the life sciences. It will also engage art practitioners in art and science, curators and researchers. (shrink)

In his reflection on the nature of evil, the Neoplatonic philosopher Proclus affirms that evil itself is “also beyond the abso­lute non-being”. With this assumption, he intends to reinforce the thesis of the non-existence of absolute evil, conceived as totally separate from good, and contrasted with the collat­eral and parasitic existence of evil mixed with good. He thus maintains a distinction between absolute evil and relative evil, conceived with reference to the distinction between absolute non-being and relative non-being. In Proclus, (...) the thesis of the non-existence of absolute evil is presented as a necessary consequence of the non-dualist theory of evil in the sphere of a protology that identifies the first Principle of all things in the primary Good, and which aims to reconcile the absolute primacy of the latter with the presence of evil in some orders of reality. (shrink)

In late antiquity, in the context of the jagged tradition of Neo-Platonism,Aristotle’s Metaphysics and the specific science that is traced out in itare indicated with the current denominations of meta ta physika andtheologikē pragmateia, which are seen as consistent with one anotherand closely interconnected. In this connection, the Metaphysics, in thewake of previous philosophical readings, is considered as a treatise on“theological science” — the most elevated among the sciences — and thedenomination meta ta physika is seen in a specifically theological (...) sense.According to a widespread Neo-Platonic reading, the science thematizedin the Metaphysics is “metaphysics” in that it is theological science,an epistemic discourse on divine realities, which, within the ordo rerum,transcend the physical ones, and, therefore, according to the ordo cognoscendi,must be studied after the latter. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Cumpa : 319–324, 2014) argues that a scientific turn in metaphysics requires the acceptance of a materialist criterion of fundamentality, according to which the most fundamental metaphysical category is the one that provides us with a reconciliation of the ordinary world and the physical universe. He concludes that the dominant category of substance cannot be the most fundamental category, for it does not satisfy this criterion of fundamentality. The most fundamental category is instead the category of (...) fact. Although convincing, the defense of factualism over substantialism offered by Cumpa takes into account the case of classical physics without considering the physical universe of quantum mechanics. My aim in this paper is to offer a completion to Cumpa’s factualist approach. To achieve my aim, I show that substances cannot provide a satisfactory account of the relationship between the ordinary world and the physical universe even in the case of quantum mechanics, whereas a factualist approach does. (shrink)