Cooperatives are facing the challenge to be competitive in the market, without losing their traditional values of mutuality and democracy. To do that, they need to re-construct open and participative dialogue with their employees and members based on more democratic forms of communication and engagement. From this point of view, the measurement and communication of sustainability aspects may allow a dialogue to be mobilized with shareholders and stakeholders without losing the attention on competitive factors. Based on these premises, the article (...) analyses the experience of a 5-year action research project , carried out within Unicoop Tirreno, an Italian consumers' cooperative, and aimed to implement different tools for sustainability accounting and to embrace a more open dialogue with stakeholders, in particular with employees and members. In this process of change, the tools implemented for sustainability accounting played a key role in supporting the cooperative to reinterpret its own values and in stimulating a new and participative management approach. The results indicate a virtuous circle between the management and measurement of cooperative principles and the management and measurement of sustainability issues. (shrink)

Il 2021 segna gli ottant’anni dalla nascita di Mario Perniola, uno dei massimi filosofi italiani del secondo dopoguerra. Questo volume raccoglie interventi che esplorano la sua opera mostrandone la fertilità e sottolineando al tempo stesso la prossimità delle sue idee con le principali sfide del nostro tempo. Dall’Italia al Brasile, passando per gli Stati Uniti, l’Irlanda, la Francia, il Belgio, il Messico e la Cina, gli autori si soffermano su temi che comprendono l’estetica, la politica, la teoria della comunicazione, i (...) queer studies, il pensiero rituale e religioso, la sessualità e la letteratura, restituendo la plurivocità e l’originalità di un filosofo di respiro internazionale e più che mai attuale. (shrink)

Stakeholder engagement and dialogue have a central role in defining the relations between organisations and their internal and external interlocutors. Drawing upon the analysis of dialogic motifs, power–conflict dynamics and sociopolitical perspectives, and based on a set of interviews with the stakeholders of a consumer-owned cooperative, the research explores the dialogic potential of stakeholder engagement. The analysis revealed a fragmented picture where the co-design and co-implementation aspects were mainly related to the non-business areas of cooperative life, while business logic dominated (...) the most central aspects. Stakeholder engagement was mainly related to consensus building, while dialogic engagement based on a pluralistic understanding was only partially considered and then neglected. The social capital in the local area, the growing size of the organisation and the related power structure embrace stakeholder engagement, influencing the orientation of the dialogic dynamic. The analysis indicates that a dialogic exchange is a relative concept which depends on the interests involved and the topics discussed. It also reveals that the key factors in the democratisation of stakeholder engagement are a mutual understanding and long-term opportunities. Common sociopolitical aspects are also important, but they do not necessarily guarantee the creation of dialogism paths. The research contributes to the critical dialogic literature in revealing whether and how stakeholder engagement has been implemented in a specific setting. It also shows the limitations of voluntarist stakeholder engagement initiatives. (shrink)

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.

I describe two approaches to modelling the universe, the one having its origin in topos theory and differential geometry, the other in set theory. The first is synthetic differential geometry. Traditionally, there have been two methods of deriving the theorems of geometry: the analytic and the synthetic. While the analytical method is based on the introduction of numerical coordinates, and so on the theory of real numbers, the idea behind the synthetic approach is to furnish the subject of geometry with (...) a purely geometric foundation in which the theorems are then deduced by purely logical means from an initial body of postulates. The most familiar examples of the synthetic geometry are classical Euclidean geometry and the synthetic projective geometry introduced by Desargues in the 17th century and revived and developed by Carnot, Poncelet, Steiner and others during the 19th century. The power of analytic geometry derives very largely from the fact that it permits the methods of the calculus, and, more generally, of mathematical analysis, to be introduced into geometry, leading in particular to differential geometry (a term, by the way, introduced in 1894 by the Italian geometer Luigi Bianchi). That being the case, the idea of a “synthetic” differential geometry seems elusive: how can differential geometry be placed on a “purely geometric” or “axiomatic” foundation when the apparatus of the calculus seems inextricably involved? To my knowledge there have been two attempts to develop a synthetic differential geometry. The first was initiated by Herbert Busemann in the 1940s, building on earlier work of Paul Finsler. Here the idea was to build a differential geometry that, in its author’s words, “requires no derivatives”: the basic objects in Busemann’s approach are not differentiable manifolds, but metric spaces of a certain type in which the notion of a geodesic can be defined in an intrinsic manner. I shall not have anything more to say about this approach. The second approach, that with which I shall be concerned here, was originally proposed in the 1960s by F.. (shrink)

Traditionally, there have been two methods of deriving the theorems of geometry: the analytic and the synthetic. While the analytical method is based on the introduction of numerical coordinates, and so on the theory of real numbers, the idea behind the synthetic approach is to furnish the subject of geometry with a purely geometric foundation in which the theorems are then deduced by purely logical means from an initial body of postulates. The most familiar examples of the synthetic geometry are (...) classical Euclidean geometry and the synthetic projective geometry introduced by Desargues in the 17th century and revived and developed by Carnot, Poncelet, Steiner and others during the 19th century. The power of analytic geometry derives very largely from the fact that it permits the methods of the calculus, and, more generally, of mathematical analysis, to be introduced into geometry, leading in particular to differential geometry (a term, by the way, introduced in 1894 by the Italian geometer Luigi Bianchi). That being the case, the idea of a “synthetic” differential geometry seems elusive: how can differential geometry be placed on a “purely geometric” or “axiomatic” foundation when the apparatus of the calculus seems inextricably involved? To my knowledge there have been two attempts to develop a synthetic differential geometry. The first was initiated by Herbert Busemann in the 1940s, building on earlier work of Paul Finsler. Here the idea was to build a differential geometry that, in its author’s words, “requires no derivatives”: the basic objects in Busemann’s approach are not differentiable manifolds, but metric spaces of a certain type in which the notion of a geodesic can be defined in an intrinsic manner. I shall not have anything more to say about this approach. The second approach, that with which I shall be concerned here, was originally proposed in the 1960s by F. W. Lawvere, who was in fact striving to fashion a decisive axiomatic framework for continuum mechanics.. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss Kant’s concept-less schematism (KU, 5: 287) in the third Critique1 and make three claims: 1) concept-less schematism is entirely consistent with the schematism in the first Critique; 2) concept-less schematism is schematism with no empirical concept as an outcome; and 3) in accordance with 1) and 2), the imagination is free to synthesize the given manifold and leads to judgements of taste without this meaning either that the categories play no role at all or that (...) these judgements are full-fledged cognitive determining judgements. While most commentators read the freedom of the imagination as its independence from the understanding, I argue that the freedom of the imagination is based on a non-determining employment of the pure concepts of the understanding. The freedom of the aesthetic imagination consists in the temporal schematization of the categories without any complementary determination of the empirical concept. (shrink)

Following the murder of George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter-movement (BLM) took to the streets to protest against institutional racism. In these protests, one could often hear the slogan “No Justice, No Peace”. Drawing on legal theory, speech act theory and phenomenology, this article investigates what kind of justice and peace are called upon and how the slogan functions as a claim addressed to the legal order. First, the article shows that the rule of law provides a comprehensive normative framework (...) to evaluate what went wrong during the arrest of George Floyd. Second, the article maintains that the slogan should be understood as a passionate utterance in the sense of Stanley Cavell. Finally, drawing on a responsive phenomenology of legal order inspired by the work of Bernhard Waldenfels, the article concludes that the slogan is an extraordinary claim questioning the legal order, showing its contingent origins. (shrink)

Kant’s criticism of democracy has been traditionally defused with the consideration that Kant’s aversion is not to democracy per se, but to direct democracy. However, what Kant says – ‘to prevent the republican constitution from being confused with the democratic one, as commonly happens’ (ZeF, 8: 351) – appears to count not only against direct democracy, but also against conceptions of democracy closer to the ones we are accustomed to. By offering a new account of what Kant sees as the (...) real problem of democracy (direct or not), the article unpacks a lesson about the limits of democracy that has gone largely unnoticed among political theorists and Kant specialists. (shrink)

Preparedness is an anticipatory approach developed in the military and health sectors in response to unforeseen and unforeseeable crises and emergencies. It has recently entered the debate over the resilience and sustainability of European food systems. The paper seeks to shed light on the implications of the European Union's adoption of preparedness in its food security policy, particularly focusing on the preparatory phase and the early activity the European Food Security Crisis Preparedness and Response Mechanism (EFSCM), a consultative body launched (...) by the European Commission in 2021. Through an analysis of documents and meeting minutes, we illustrate how debates on implementing preparedness are influenced by conflicting sociotechnical imaginaries of sustainable food security. Results show that the EU's shift towards preparedness combines elements of continuity and novelty in its food policy. Continuity concerns the acknowledged need to deal with growing turbulence and unpredictability affecting food systems. Novelty involves attempts at building bridges between diverging imaginaries of sustainable food security to address both short-term and long-term challenges to food security. Also new is the shift to a ‘management,’ as opposed to a ‘problem-solving,’ outlook on crisis and emergency. (shrink)

Preparedness is an anticipatory approach developed in the military and health sectors in response to unforeseen and unforeseeable crises and emergencies. It has recently entered the debate over the resilience and sustainability of European food systems. The paper seeks to shed light on the implications of the European Union's adoption of preparedness in its food security policy, particularly focusing on the preparatory phase and the early activity the European Food Security Crisis Preparedness and Response Mechanism (EFSCM), a consultative body launched (...) by the European Commission in 2021. Through an analysis of documents and meeting minutes, we illustrate how debates on implementing preparedness are influenced by conflicting sociotechnical imaginaries of sustainable food security. Results show that the EU's shift towards preparedness combines elements of continuity and novelty in its food policy. Continuity concerns the acknowledged need to deal with growing turbulence and unpredictability affecting food systems. Novelty involves attempts at building bridges between diverging imaginaries of sustainable food security to address both short-term and long-term challenges to food security. Also new is the shift to a ‘management,’ as opposed to a ‘problem-solving,’ outlook on crisis and emergency. (shrink)

The relationship between knowledge and values, experts and lay people, represents a major issue of the debate involving environment and technology. There is a growing awareness that the connection between value commitments and technical solutions, scientific expertise and lay competence, is much more entangled than once was believed. The article deals with this issue by analysing Robert Dahl's `minipopulus' and Silvio Funtowicz and Jerry Ravetz's `extended peer communities' arguments. They are subsequently inserted into the sociological debate which is, at present, (...) considerably influenced by the reflexive modernization framework. As a result, Ulrich Beck's and Anthony Giddens' theories appear as one of four ideal-typical approaches to the social construction of the issues that can be outlined, according to the priority assigned to knowledge versus power and nature versus society. The idea of an `extended peer review' of problems and solutions is remarkably close to the deliberative democracy concept. However, the high level of uncertainty characterizing major environmental and technological questions suggests that a `strong' version of deliberative democracy, such as the Discourse Ethics proposed by Habermas, is untenable in its search for a universal, rational consensus on the normative grounds of action. Thus it is necessary to develop a `weak' interpretation of the extended peer review, exploring the possibility of fair and stable agreements on bounded, practical solutions to bounded, practical problems. (shrink)

Introduzione di Pietro Rossi - Bobbio e il diritto di Gustavo Zagrebelsky - Bobbio e la politica di Massimo L. Salvadori - La teoria generale del diritto di Riccardo Guastini - La teoria generale della politica. Per la ricostruzione del "modello bobbiano" di Michelangelo Bovero - Realismo politico e dottrina dello Stato di Pier Paolo Portinaro - Le relazioni tra gli Stati di Luigi Bonanate - Gli autori - Indice dei nomi.