L’intento di questo articolo è di porre in luce come, all’interno della Critica della ragione dialettica temi quali Prassi, Materia e Destino siano in un necessario ed essenziale rapporto. Per fare emergere tale cooriginarietà, ci siamo serviti della parola “costituzione”, intendendo con questa non una qualche descrizione statica, quanto piuttosto il senso dinamico della Storia secondo una motilità particolare, l’errare.

Il presente articolo esplora il significato del concetto di “istituzione”, prestando particolare attenzione all’esposizione che Merleau-Ponty ne dà nelle pagine del corso tenuto al Collège de France nel 1954-1955, _L’institution, la passivité_. Il saggio mira a mostrare come, attraverso tale nozione, sia possibile pensare una concezione dell’agire, della prassi e quindi della storia che connette il lato attivo e passivo del fare. Il contributo prende le mosse da un’analisi delle critiche che Merleau-Ponty rivolge a Sartre nel corso de _Le (...) avventure della dialettica_, per mostrare il bersaglio polemico al quale si rivolge la concezione dell’azione sviluppata nel corso sull’istituzione. Dopodiché, prende in considerazione più da vicino l’articolazione del tema nel corso sull’istituzione. Infine, cerca di descrivere la concezione della storia che emerge da tale plesso concettuale. In conclusione, il contributo propone un’apertura del problema dell’istituzione a problemi della contemporaneità, come quello dell’agency. (shrink)

Secondo Klemperer la lingua pensa per noi. Ma anche le istituzioni pensano per noi. Col risultato che le prassi determinano spesso un pensiero diffuso che viene condiviso e fatto proprio senza rendersene conto. Quale pensiero ci comunica l’organizzazione attuale della prassi didattica delle scuole italiane? La relazione risponde a questa domanda mostrando come occorre rendersi consapevoli del preciso significato di tutte queste prassi didattiche.

In this paper I discuss the notions of practice, institution and radical imaginary in Castoriadis. In section 1 I clarify the premises of my essay by contrasting Castoriadis with contemporary social ontology and an Aristotelian concept of practice. In section 2 I approach the problem of institution by distinguishing between production and creation and highlighting the crucial problem of the new ontology of magma with its distinctive temporality as opposed to the traditional identity logic and ontology of determinacy. In section (...) 3 I deal with autonomy and the psyche, by focusing especially on Freud and the monad. In section 4 I try to identify the heart of the novelty of Castoriadis’s treatment of imagination in its relation with the symbolic. I conclude in section 5 with a discussion of the meaning of representation and its internal difficulties. (shrink)

Le pagine che seguono riproducono un lavoro di annotazione e rielaborazione condotto su estratti delle Tesi su Feuerbach di Marx e della Settima riscrittura, apparsa su «Nóema» 5-1. Viene tracciata una sorta di mappa il cui intento principale è di rendere esplicite, mostrandole graficamente, le decisioni silenziose che hanno guidato la riscrittura.

According Klemperer language thinks for us. But also the institutions think for us. With the result that the practices often determine a common thought that is shared and made their own without realizing it. What thought communicates the current organization of the teaching practice of the Italian schools? The report answers this question by showing how users should be aware of the precise meaning of these educational practices.

A collection of essays dedicated to Pier Luigi Lecis' retirement. Contributors include: Mariano Bianca, Silvana Borutti, Vinicio Busacchi, Massimo Dell'Utri, Rosaria Egidi, Roberta Lanfredini, Giuseppe Lorini, Diego Marconi, Francesco Orilia, Paolo Parrini, Alberto Peruzzi, Simonluca Pinna, Pietro Salis, Paolo Spinicci.

The article considers the attitudes of the Church regarding homosexuality in the Middle Ages and the early Modern period, against the background of the anthropological concepts of those times. In the light of several important documents of those periods, it examines critically the interpretations most popular today in the area of gay-his- tory - that of the homophobia of the Church, that of early tolerance, that of the late development of the homosexual identity - and it demonstrates the unilateral nature (...) of these interpretations. Through a Thomistic reading of the Aristotelian texts on homosexuality, the article considers the significance of the categories of homosexual condition and homosexual person used in moral theology, introducing a reflection on the relationship between natural condition and sinfulness in the homosexual orientation. (shrink)

In this article I outline a conception of translation as a human practice that is dia- lectical, reasonable and not entirely governed by rules. In my contribution I use a concept of dialectics that is general and broad, not connected in a strict way to a single thinker or a single paradigm of dialectical thinking, and that is aimed to emphasize that a translation work is always characterized by dualities, by the simulta- neous presence of different or even opposite dimensions (...) that a good translator must take into account and be aware of. Following a stimulating insight offered by the Italian historian of philosophy and translator Franco Volpi, I attempt to investigate the particular form of reasonableness that a good translator must have and that can be understood in terms of sensitivity, tactfulness, know-how and respect for the otherness of the translated text. On this basis, following the suggestions offered by such different thinkers as Quine, Davidson, Benjamin and Gadamer about the partial indeterminacy and incompleteness of every translation and about the role played by interpretive components, I finally propose to understand translation as a human practice that, while necessarily relying on the possession of certain norms, methods or techniques, at the same time cannot be simply reduced to a mechanical application of rules. This leads me, in the final section of my article, to take into account Wittgenstein’s so-called rule-following paradox and to see if, how and to what extent it also applies to the specific case of translation. (shrink)