This book develops Non-Identity Theodicy as an original response to the problem of evil. It constructs an ethical framework for theodicy by sketching four cases of human action where horrendous evils are either caused, permitted, or risked, either for pure benefit or for harm avoidance.

Abstract:Francesco Vitale discusses with Rodolphe Gasché the history of Heidegger reception in France and Germany, and more.

Examines the relationship of Derrida’s writings on architecture to his methodology of deconstruction and to deconstrutivism in architecture. Between 1984 and 1994 Jacques Derrida wrote and spoke a great deal about architecture both in his academic work and in connection with a number of particular building projects around the world. He engaged significantly with the work of architects such as Bernard Tschumi, Peter Eisenman, and Daniel Libeskind. Derrida conceived of architecture as an example of the kind of multidimensional writing that (...) he had theorized in Of Grammatology, identifying a rich common ground between architecture and philosophy in relation to ideas about political community and the concept of dwelling. In this book, Francesco Vitale analyzes Derrida’s writings and demonstrates how Derrida’s work on this topic provides a richer understanding of his approach to deconstruction, highlighting the connections and differences between philosophical deconstruction and architectural deconstrutivism. “Although there has been some discussion of the intersection of deconstruction and architecture in the past, mostly among architects and architectural critics, Vitale’s work is distinguished by the fact that it is written by a true philosopher who has a much more acute sense than has usually been the case of the philosophical underpinnings of Derrida’s exchanges with Tschumi, Eisenman, and others. Vitale is throughout concise, precise, insightful, and often brilliant.” — Geoffrey Bennington, author of Interrupting Derrida. (shrink)

Há duzentos anos (1823) triunfou a contrarrevolução da _Vila-Francada_, pondo fim à primeira experiência constitucional moderna em Portugal. De imediato, D. João VI determinou a revogação da Constituição de 1822, assim como das reformas adotadas para apagar a memória do regime constitucional anterior. Em simultâneo, a partir de uma iniciativa espontânea da Câmara da vila de Sernancelhe, formou-se um movimento municipal para anulação das próprias eleições às Cortes vintistas e revogação das procurações outorgadas aos deputados. Este artigo versa sobre ambas (...) as iniciativas, régia e municipal, considerando sobretudo que a anulação municipal das eleições vintistas é muito pouco conhecida e está praticamente por estudar na historiografia sobre a contrarrevolução. (shrink)

The article seeks to outline the relationship between Geschlecht III and Jacques Derrida’s published texts devoted to the mark “Geschlecht,” in order to detect the general strategy followed by Derrida in the construction of his archive during his lifetime. Indeed, we suppose that his archive has to be built in accordance with his deconstructive statements about the classical conception of the archive: a totalizing closure of a textual production able to trace it back to the unity of an ideal identity. (...) In particular, the article aims to focus on a passage at the end of Jacques Derrida’s Geschlecht III, where the question of the animal in Heidegger comes into the foreground and in a way that is slightly different from what we already know through Derrida’s published works and that could require a re-reading of his “entire” work. (shrink)

La Jetée is a Chris Marker movie composed by still images, photographs, with the exception of a very short sequence. The paper aims to account for the experience of temporality induced by photography, framing the structural analysis of the movie in a phenomenological horizon, in particular with regard to the Husserlian’s notion of “Living Present”.

In this essay, I focus on Norberto Bobbio’s reflections on human rights. Firstly, I seek to establish his underlying conception of philosophy: although it is impossible to spell out the philosophical foundations of human rights, this does not imply that philosophical thought, in the sense of critical reason, cannot make a useful contribution and provide valuable arguments in support of human rights. Secondly, I examine the related issue of the justification of human rights and assess his theory on the basis (...) of its own conception of a possible foundation. The way we answer the question of coherence also clarifies (a) what model of civil association is compatible with such a foundation, i.e. with such a worldview; (b) what model is absolutely incompatible with it; and finally (c) what intermediate solutions are there, if there are any. I argue that the communitarian variants of the conception of rights are distortions: collective or cultural rights, i.e. rights of a community towards which all of its members have duties, appearing alongside individual rights, trump individual rights, i.e. the rights linked to personhood that once constituted the most effective legal and political means for emancipating the individual from the power of the community. I therefore consider the “Copernican Revolution” of individualism and its consequences in Bobbio’s thought. As the example of personal freedom shows, where rights are ascribed principally to groups or communities rather than to individuals, we have good reason to fear that rights will turn out to be merely the privilege of the few. Once we follow this line of though in Bobbio, the ecumenical openness to alternative approaches and the argument from “the consensus of the people” yield to a clearly universalistic perspective that derives from the Enlightenment and can be interpreted as the product of the specifically modern version of natural law theory. (shrink)

Depois de estabelecer as características do corpo político ou soberano e destacar a função excepcional do legislador no Livro segundo do Contrato social, e no livro seguinte analisada a incumbência do governo na ordem política, Rousseau, no livro quarto da obra referida, se mobiliza para demonstrar a importância fundamental de algumas instituições para a manutenção dos valores republicanos. Entre as diversas instituições apresentadas pelo filósofo genebrino que visam cumprir esses objetivos, o presente artigo se concentra no exame de três delas: (...) o tribunato, a ditadura e a censura - instituições claramente inspiradas nas instituições romanas no período da Roma republicana. Em vista disso, indagamos: em que consiste o tribunato, a ditadura e a censura no arcabouço teórico de Rousseau? Quais são suas características? Como elas podem contribuir para a conservação da República? Partindo dessas indagações, pretende-se investigar as definições das três instituições elencadas bem como suas particularidades e a maneira como elas operam e podem contribuir para a preservação da República em longo prazo. (shrink)

The author proposes to read Documentalità constantly referring to Jacques Derrida’s work, which is one of its main sources. This comparative reading develops through a double move: on the one hand, it attempts to explain Derrida’s famous sentence “there is nothing outside the text” taking into account the criticism elaborated in Ferraris’ work. On the other hand, it suggests an understanding of the theory of document as a development of Derrida’s project of a “Grammatology as a positive science”. The articulation (...) of this twofold movement is found in Derrida’s theory of archiwriting, to which Ferraris refers: the liberation of the theory of writing from the linear phonetic-alphabetic ideal in view of a multidimensional writing, which can explain the functioning of our thinking and its articulation with the systems of inscription that the new technologies have made available. (shrink)

This paper intends to verify the extent and effectiveness of the transforming appropriation of the Derridean concept of ‘differance’ by Stiegler with respect to the problems that, according to Stiegler, make this creative critical operation necessary; in particular with respect to the most recent question concerning the possibility of thinking about and putting into practice a ‘neganthropological différance’ capable of facing the ecological crisis that today seems to threaten the very existence of life on earth. The paper goes back to (...) Technics and Time 1. to analyze the distinction between ‘vital difference’ and ‘noetic difference’ that constitutes the condition of possibility of the ‘neganthropological différance.’ In this perspective, the distinction proposed by Stiegler seems to re-propose the hierarchically oriented oppositional structure that characterizes metaphysical thought and in particular the opposition between man and animal, attributing to the human being the ability to free himself from the constraints of his biological-natural condition. Finally, the paper attempts to account for the repercussions of this approach on the very possibility of an effective response to the ecological crisis, concluding with a provocation regarding the role that theory can and must play with regard to such an urgent and far-reaching problem. (shrink)

Este trabajo está dedicado al análisis de dos legados fundamentales de Thomas Hobbes al pensamiento político moderno, en la lectura que de ello ha ofrecido Norberto Bobbio. El primero es un legado de carácter metodológico, que consiste en dar prioridad a la demostratio por encima de cualquier forma de interpretatio. El segundo es el individualismo, cuyas diferentes declinaciones son decisivas para fundar, medir y valorar las diversas fórmulas políticas que el Leviatán, en cuanto esencia del Estado moderno, puede albergar. El (...) trabajo se cierra con un tercer nivel de comparación sobre la fortuna de Hobbes y de Bobbio entre sus contemporáneos y en nuestros días. (shrink)

The paper seeks to outline the relationship between Geschlecht III and Derrida’s published texts devoted to the mark «Geschlecht» in order to detect the general strategy followed by Jacques Derrida into the construction of his archive during his lifetime. Indeed, we suppose that his archive has to be build in accordance with his deconstructive statements about the classical conception of the archive: a totalizing closure of a textual production able to trace it back to the unity of an ideal identity. (...) In particular, the paper aims to focus on a passage at the end of Jacques Derrida’s Geschlecht III, where the question of the animal in Heidegger comes in the foreground and in a way that is slightly different from what we already know through Derrida’s published Works and could impose a re-reading of its «entire» work. (shrink)

The secretory system of plant cells sorts a large number of soluble proteins that either are secreted or accumulate in vacuoles. Secretion is a bulk‐flow process that requires no information beyond the presence of a signal peptide necessary to enter the endoplasmic reticulum. Many vacuolar proteins are glycoproteins and the glycans are often modified as the proteins pass through the Golgi complex. Vacuolar targeting information is not contained in glycans as it is in animal cells; rather, targeting information is in (...) polypeptide domains as it is in yeast cells. Several such domains have now been identified, but these show little or no amino acid sequence homology. We discuss the possibilities that targeting of protein to plant vacuoles may involve receptors as well as aggregation of protein at low pH. (shrink)

This article briefly examines the topic of surrogacy in light of two opposing perspectives, mainstream feminism and Catholicism, which despite very different moral dimensions, arrive at the same conclusion. The author discusses the similarities between these two moral perspectives that are nor­mally considered to be opposed to each other.

Partendo da un corso sul cambiamento politico tenuto da Norberto Bobbio nel 1979 e ora trasformato in un libro postumo grazie ad alcuni studenti di allora, Vitale mette in luce quattro questioni su rivoluzione, riforma e altre forme di cambiamento nell’età moderna e contemporanea. In primo luogo, qual è oggi, nelle nostre società capitalistiche alle prese con i cambiamenti climatici e altri disastri ecologici, il rapporto tra rivoluzioni scientifiche e politiche? In secondo luogo, alla fine del secolo scorso la prospettiva (...) rivoluzionaria è stata abbandonata a favore di un più realistico riformismo, ma possiamo chiederci se questa scelta non abbia portato a un grande inganno, perché il riformismo era in effetti una forma di “dolce” resa alla società di mercato e ai suoi valori. In terzo luogo, ci sono nel nostro tempo gli ingredienti (principalmente, soggetto politico, leadership e un’ideologia ben strutturata) per trasformare la rabbia per l’ingiustizia e la disuguaglianza in un progetto rivoluzionario e non solo in sporadiche rivolte? In quarto luogo, quale ruolo gioca la guerra a livello del cambiamento geopolitico, con particolare riferimento all’attuale guerra in Ucraina che sembra prospettare una nuova situazione di “scontro di civiltà” tra Weltanschauung occidentale e orientale? (shrink)

Towards biodeconstruction -- Between life and death: différance -- The absolute programme -- The text and the living -- Between life and death: the bond -- Beyond life death: autoimmunity -- Living on: the arche-performative.

Zusammenfassung Nach einer von Athen beförderten literarisch-philosophischen Tradition scheint überwiegend die Herrschaft einzelner den Greek way of politics in Sizilien geprägt zu haben: Als Charakteristikum der sikeliotischen Staatenwelt werden die häufigen Verfassungswechsel von der Oligarchie in die Tyrannis herausgehoben. Insbesondere im Rahmen zwischenstädtischer Bündnisse gegen die im Westteil der Insel herrschenden Punier zeigt sich jedoch an den Fallbeispielen von Akragas und Syrakus, dass der jeweilige Bürgerverband durch seine beschlussfähigen Polis-Gremien etwa in Bezug auf die Mehrheitswahl der mit außerordentlichen Kompetenzen ausgestatteten (...) Funktionsträger am politischen Leben aktiv teilnahm. Das spätarchaische und klassische Sizilien bot für die Bildung eines provinzialrömischen Städtebunds genügend föderale Vorstrukturen. (shrink)