Nel corso della sua intera produzione filosofica, solo in due occasioni Schopenhauer riflette esplicitamente e sistematicamente sul misticismo, nel tentativo di determinarne i confini e i limiti rispetto al suo sistema metafisico e, più in generale, rispetto al pensiero filosofico lato sensu. La seguente analisi ha l’obiettivo di stabilire se sia possibile rilevare una definizione univoca del termine misticismo all’interno della sua filosofia, per poi determinare sulla base di essa il particolare rapporto che intercorre tra il misticismo e il nichilismo (...) schopenhaueriano. (shrink)

In the 1960s Goffredo Parise made use of a series of interesting similes in order to describe men and women of his time. The similarity between human being and animal makes room for comparisons with objects, that would mean the end of the traditional physiognomy. Can this rhetorical choice be considered a lucid and visionary anticipation of post-humanism?

1. Introductio generalis, logica, cosmologia.--2.Psychologia, gnoseologia, ontologia.--3. Theologia rationalis, ethica, pedagogia, aesthetica, historiologia.-4. Supplementum.

Grazie al prezioso lavoro di Salvatore Tedesco e di Valeria Costanza D’Agata, è ora disponibile anche in italiano un altro volume importante di Richard Shusterman, che si affianca alla traduzione precedente di Estetica pragmatista (Palermo, Aesthetica, 2010). Pertanto anche il lettore non specialista può farsi un’idea non superficiale delle proposte del filosofo americano, agevolato in questo da una scrittura e da uno stile argomentativo chiari, mai criptici, esenti da tecnicismi per iniziati...

Dopo un'introduzione che delinea lo status questionis relativo alla discussione sul diritto di proprietà nel sec. XIII, l'articolo si divide in tre parti: nella prima si discute la relazione tra gli ideali della fede cristiana e la proprietà comune, con particolare riguardo per l'origine dei diritti di proprietà; la seconda tratta gli argomenti che concernono il diritto alla proprietà privata, mentre la terza approfondisce il tema della proprietà condivisa. I testi sui quali viene condotta l'indagine sono il Tractatus brevis de (...) periculis novissimorum temporum di Guglielmo di Saint-Amour, il Contra adversarium perfectionis di Gerardo di Abbeville e le questioni quodlibetali di Enrico di Gand e di Goffredo di Fontaines, scritte a Parigi dal 1280 al 1290. Si mette in risalto l'uso della concezione aristotelica della proprietà contro l'ideale di assoluta povertà promosso da parte degli ambienti francescani. (shrink)

L’articolo si propone di analizzare, alla luce di un esteso scandaglio documentario e di un accurato spoglio delle testate locali, i rapporti fra Pier Paolo Pasolini e il Cineguf bolognese, negli anni in cui lo scrittore fu studente del Liceo Galvani e poi fra gli iscritti alla Facoltà di Lettere, sotto alla guida di docenti come Carlo Calcaterra e Goffredo Coppola. Questa ricerca ha permesso non solo di approfondire la conoscenza della cultura spettatoriale del giovane Pasolini, ma ha anche (...) consentito di ricondurre all’avvio del 1940 la sua prima prova da scrittore per il cinema, e cioè il soggetto Il giovine della primavera, rimasto inedito fino all’uscita dei Meridiani a cura di Walter Siti e Franco Zabagli nel 2001. Proprio uno sguardo inedito alle attività del Cineguf consente infatti di comprendere quanto la vita del circolo poté pesare sulla passione del poeta per il grande schermo, spingendolo a provarsi nelle vesti di sceneggiatore. (shrink)

The Wirkungsgeschichte of Schopenhauerism is a complex mixture of events, encounters, influences and transformations. In order to orient oneself concerning such an articulated phenomenon, it is necessary to have valid hermeneutical tools at hand. In this contribution, I am going to propose a reading of the history of the effects of Schopenhauerism through new and effective historiographical categories that resulted from the research conducted by the Interdepartmental Research Centre on Arthur Schopenhauer and his School at the University of Salento. On (...) the one hand, I will refer to Domenico Fazio’s studies on the Schopenhauer-Schuleand, on the other, to Fabio Ciracì’s research on the reception of Schopenhauer’s philosophy in Italy. This approach will reveal how the formulation of the so-called “two souls” of Schopenhauerism, the romantic and the illuministic, allows us to unravel the multifaceted panorama of the history of the effects of Schopenhauerian philosophy, in line with the subdivision within the Schopenhauer-Schule of metaphysical and heretical thinkers. (shrink)

Based on a sample of 54 Islamic indices over the period 2007–2014, we investigate the effect of Shariah board members' educational background on Islamic indices' risk and return characteristics via the screening criteria. Using a capital asset pricing model benchmark analysis, we assess the sensitivity of Islamic indices to their conventional peers in terms of beta and derive a measure of return (Jensen's alpha). First, we observe that the higher the number of members in common among the boards, the higher (...) the risk–return profile of Islamic indices. Second, commonalities among board members lead to standardization of the screening criteria and to similar Islamic indices' performance. Third, we show that different betas across providers depend on the screening criteria, while the economic educational background of board members affects performance in terms of Jensen's alpha. Our study aims at contributing to the governance literature related to board composition and its importance as a possible driver of performance. In addition, given the impressive growth that Islamic finance has experienced during the last decade, this topic is of great interest to the asset management industry. (shrink)

This article presents a longitudinal study during the Italian ‘short twentieth century’. Our focus is on the behaviour of the political field, the recruitment process of the ministerial elite and its impact on the stability of the political system. The main aim of the paper is to build a descriptive and explanatory model that sheds light on the fragility of the PS in Italy. There are two main findings: PF is formed through waves of new forces characterised by impermeable bonds. (...) The instability of the PS is largely due to a lack of inclusiveness in the PF. The National Solidarity governments showed that an inclusive PF which gathers loyal and disloyal forces even at a critical juncture phase is able to counterbalance the exogenous challenge. (shrink)

Almost a century after the emergence of right-wing dictatorships in twentieth-century Europe, a consensual regime paradigm has yet to be found. The debate always gets bogged down by ongoing attempts to find the definitive and complete definition of the two most common regime types: fascism or generic fascism, and totalitarianism/authoritarianism. This article claims that, although definitive nomenclatures are unlikely to be found, it is more useful to think of regimes as more or less approximating their ideal type than to posit (...) their typologies in abstract terms. It therefore analyzes a key aspect of three dictatorial regimes: the functioning of the consensus-building institutions in Nazi Germany, in Fascist Italy, and in Salazarist Portugal. Propaganda is central to an understanding of these regimes, because it constitutes their ideological footprint—revealing what it aims for (inputs) and its capacity to impose those goals or make them popular (output). The three regimes examined here were very different from each other, and these differences can help us verify the degree to which each of them attained the standard of the totalitarian ideal type. (shrink)

In recent previous work, the authors proposed a new approach extending the framework of statistical mechanics to reparametrization-invariant systems with no additional gauges. In this paper, the approach is generalized to systems defined by more than one Hamiltonian constraint. We show how well-known features as the Ehrenfest–Tolman effect and the Jüttner distribution for the relativistic gas can be consistently recovered from a covariant approach in the multi-fingered framework. Eventually, the crucial role played by the interaction in the definition of a (...) global notion of equilibrium is discussed. (shrink)

This book presents the framework for a new, comprehensive approach to cognitive science. The proposed paradigm, enaction, offers an alternative to cognitive science's classical, first-generation Computational Theory of Mind. _Enaction_, first articulated by Varela, Thompson, and Rosch in _The Embodied Mind_, breaks from CTM's formalisms of information processing and symbolic representations to view cognition as grounded in the sensorimotor dynamics of the interactions between a living organism and its environment. A living organism enacts the world it lives in; its embodied (...) action in the world constitutes its perception and thereby grounds its cognition. _Enaction_ offers a range of perspectives on this exciting new approach to embodied cognitive science. Some chapters offer manifestos for the enaction paradigm; others address specific areas of research, including artificial intelligence, developmental psychology, neuroscience, language, phenomenology, and culture and cognition. Three themes emerge as testimony to the originality and specificity of enaction as a paradigm: the relation between first-person lived experience and third-person natural science; the ambition to provide an encompassing framework applicable at levels from the cell to society; and the difficulties of reflexivity. Taken together, the chapters offer nothing less than the framework for a far-reaching renewal of cognitive science. Contributors: Renaud Barbaras, Didier Bottineau, Giovanna Colombetti, Diego Cosmelli, Hanne De Jaegher, Ezequiel A. Di Paolo. Andreas K. Engel, Olivier Gapenne, Véronique Havelange, Edwin Hutchins, Michel Le Van Quyen, Rafael E. Núñez, Marieke Rohde, Benny Shanon, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, Adam Sheya, Linda B. Smith, John Stewart, Evan Thompson. (shrink)

Many oppose the use of profile evidence against defendants at trial, even when the statistical correlations are reliable and the jury is free from prejudice. The literature has struggled to justify this opposition. We argue that admitting profile evidence is objectionable because it violates what we call “equal protection”—that is, a right of innocent defendants not to be exposed to higher ex ante risks of mistaken conviction compared to other innocent defendants facing similar charges. We also show why admitting other (...) forms of evidence, such as eyewitness, trace, and motive evidence, does not violate equal protection. (shrink)

This book offers a new reading of Aquinas' views on faith. The author argues that the theological nature of faith is crucial to Aquinas' thought, and that it gives rise to a peculiar and otherwise incomprehensible relationship with reason. The first part of the book examines various modern and contemporary accounts of the relationship between faith and reason in Aquinas' thought. The author shows that these accounts are unconvincing because they exhibit what he calls a Lockean view of faith and (...) reason, which maintains that the relationship in question should only be treated by way of evidence. In other words, this view ignores the specific nature of the Christian faith and the equally specific way it needs to relate to reason. The second part offers a comprehensive account of Aquinas' view of faith. It focuses on the way the divine grace and charity shape the relationship between evidence and human will. The final part of the book ties these ideas together to show how Christian faith, with its specifically theological nature, is perfectly compatible with rational debates. It also argues that employing the specificity of faith may constitute the best way to promote autonomous and successful rational investigations. Aquinas on Faith, Reason, and Charity will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working on Aquinas, philosophy of religion, Christian theology, and medieval philosophy. (shrink)

The sensorimotor approach to perception addresses various aspects of perceptual experience, but not the subjectivity of intentional action. Conversely, the problem that current accounts of the sense of agency deal with is primarily one of subjectivity. But the proposed models, based on internal signal comparisons, arguably fail to make the transition from subpersonal computations to personal experience. In this paper we suggest an alternative direction towards explaining the sense of agency by braiding three theoretical strands: a world-involving, dynamical interpretation of (...) the sensorimotor approach, an enactive description of sensorimotor agency as contrasted with organic agency in general, and a dynamical theory of equilibration within and between sensorimotor schemes. On this new account, the sense of oneself as the author of one’s own actions corresponds to what we experience during the ongoing adventure of establishing, losing, and re-establishing meaningful interactions with the world. The meaningful relation between agent and world is given by the precarious constitution of sensorimotor agency as a self-asserting network of schemes and dispositions. Acts are owned as they adaptively assert the constitution of the agent. Thus, awareness for different aspects of agency experience, such as the initiation of action, the effort exerted in controlling it, or the achievement of the desired effect, can be accounted for by processes involved in maintaining the sensorimotor organization that enables these interactions with the world. We discuss these processes in detail from a non-representational, dynamical perspective and show how they cohere with the personal experience of agency. (shrink)

The literature on algorithmic fairness has examined exogenous sources of biases such as shortcomings in the data and structural injustices in society. It has also examined internal sources of bias as evidenced by a number of impossibility theorems showing that no algorithm can concurrently satisfy multiple criteria of fairness. This paper contributes to the literature stemming from the impossibility theorems by examining how informational richness affects the accuracy and fairness of predictive algorithms. With the aid of a computer simulation, we (...) show that informational richness is the engine that drives improvements in the performance of a predictive algorithm, in terms of both accuracy and fairness. The centrality of informational richness suggests that classification parity, a popular criterion of algorithmic fairness, should be given relatively little weight. But we caution that the centrality of informational richness should be taken with a grain of salt in light of practical limitations, in particular, the so-called bias-variance trade off. (shrink)

Smith argues that, unlike other forms of evidence, naked statistical evidence fails to satisfy normic support. This is his solution to the puzzles of statistical evidence in legal proof. This paper focuses on Smith’s claim that DNA evidence in cold-hit cases does not satisfy normic support. I argue that if this claim is correct, virtually no other form of evidence used at trial can satisfy normic support. This is troublesome. I discuss a few ways in which Smith can respond.

We invoke the ideal of tolerance in response to conflict, but what does it mean to answer conflict with a call for tolerance? Is tolerance a way of resolving conflicts or a means of sustaining them? Does it transform conflicts into productive tensions, or does it perpetuate underlying power relations? To what extent does tolerance hide its involvement with power and act as a form of depoliticization? Wendy Brown and Rainer Forst debate the uses and misuses of tolerance, an exchange (...) that highlights the fundamental differences in their critical practice despite a number of political similarities. Both scholars address the normative premises, limits, and political implications of various conceptions of tolerance. Brown offers a genealogical critique of contemporary discourses on tolerance in Western liberal societies, focusing on their inherent ties to colonialism and imperialism, and Forst reconstructs an intellectual history of tolerance that attempts to redeem its political virtue in democratic societies. Brown and Forst work from different perspectives and traditions, yet they each remain wary of the subjection and abnegation embodied in toleration discourses, among other issues. The result is a dialogue rich in critical and conceptual reflections on power, justice, discourse, rationality, and identity. (shrink)

One of the difficulties nurses experience in clinical practice in relation to ethical issues in connection with young oncology patients is moral distress. In this descriptive correlational study, the Moral Distress Scale-Paediatric Version (MDS-PV) was translated from the original language and tested on a conventional sample of nurses working in paediatric oncology and haematology wards, in six north paediatric hospitals of Italy. 13.7% of the total respondents claimed that they had changed unit or hospital due to moral distress. The items (...) with the highest mean intensity in the sample were almost all connected with medical and nursing competence and have considerably higher values than frequency. The instrument was found to be reliable. The results confirmed the validity of the MDS-PV (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.959). This study represents the first small-scale attempt to validate MDS-PV for use in paediatric oncology-ematology nurses in Italy. (shrink)

Many philosophers have pointed out that statistical evidence, or at least some forms of it, lack desirable epistemic or non-epistemic properties, and that this should make us wary of litigations in which the case against the defendant rests in whole or in part on statistical evidence. Others have responded that such broad reservations about statistical evidence are overly restrictive since appellate courts have expressed nuanced views about statistical evidence. In an effort to clarify and reconcile, I put forward an interpretive (...) analysis of why statistical evidence should raise concerns in some cases but not others. I argue that when there is a mismatch between the specificity of the evidence and the expected specificity of the accusation, statistical evidence—as any other kind of evidence—should be considered insufficient to sustain a conviction. I rely on different stylized court cases to illustrate the explanatory power of this analysis. (shrink)