This study offers a new interpretation of the poem of the founder of Western philosophy: Parmenides. It shows that there is more in his poem than the description of Being by means of negative adjectives such as ingenerated and immobile. His words ask his audience to question their habits, to modify their goals, to engage in new enterprises and to look with a critical eye at their previous attempts to get knowledge. It operates as a travel guide that leads the (...) audience on a journey that will educate them and help them to gradually become philosophically mature, to become true themselves, which can also be described as the encouragement to become Being. (shrink)

Between the radical, creative capacity of our imagination and the social imaginary we are immersed in is an intermediate space philosophers have termed the imaginal, populated by images or (re)presentations that are presences in themselves. Offering a new, systematic understanding of the imaginal and its nexus with the political, Chiara Bottici brings fresh perspective to the formation of political and power relationships and the paradox of a world rich in imagery yet seemingly devoid of imagination. Bottici begins by defining (...) the difference between the imaginal and the imaginary, locating the imaginal's root meaning in the image and its ability to both characterize a public and establish a set of activities within that public. She identifies the imaginal's critical role in powering representative democracies and its amplification through globalization. She then addresses the troublesome increase in images now mediating politics and the transformation of politics into empty spectacle. The spectacularization of politics has led to its virtualization, Bottici observes, transforming images into processes with an uncertain relationship to reality, and, while new media has democratized the image in a global society of the spectacle, the cloned image no longer mediates politics but does the act for us. Bottici concludes with politics' current search for legitimacy through an invented ideal of tradition, a turn to religion, and the incorporation of human rights language. (shrink)

We develop an account of how mutually inconsistent models of the same target system can provide coherent information about the system. Our account makes use of ideas from the debate surrounding rob...

Why government outsourcing of public powers is making us less free Many governmental functions today—from the management of prisons and welfare offices to warfare and financial regulation—are outsourced to private entities. Education and health care are funded in part through private philanthropy rather than taxation. Can a privatized government rule legitimately? The Privatized State argues that it cannot. In this boldly provocative book, Chiara Cordelli argues that privatization constitutes a regression to a precivil condition—what philosophers centuries ago called "a (...) state of nature." Developing a compelling case for the democratic state and its administrative apparatus, she shows how privatization reproduces the very same defects that Enlightenment thinkers attributed to the precivil condition, and which only properly constituted political institutions can overcome—defects such as provisional justice, undue dependence, and unfreedom. Cordelli advocates for constitutional limits on privatization and a more democratic system of public administration, and lays out the central responsibilities of private actors in contexts where governance is already extensively privatized. Charting a way forward, she presents a new conceptual account of political representation and novel philosophical theories of democratic authority and legitimate lawmaking. The Privatized State shows how privatization undermines the very reason political institutions exist in the first place, and advocates for a new way of administering public affairs that is more democratic and just. (shrink)

The exponential accumulation, processing and accrual of big data in healthcare are only possible through an equally rapidly evolving field of big data analytics. The latter offers the capacity to rationalize, understand and use big data to serve many different purposes, from improved services modelling to prediction of treatment outcomes, to greater patient and disease stratification. In the area of infectious diseases, the application of big data analytics has introduced a number of changes in the information accumulation models. These are (...) discussed by comparing the traditional and new models of data accumulation. Big data analytics is fast becoming a crucial component for the modelling of transmission—aiding infection control measures and policies—emergency response analyses required during local or international outbreaks. However, the application of big data analytics in infectious diseases is coupled with a number of ethical impacts. Four key areas are discussed in this paper: automation and algorithmic reliance impacting freedom of choice, big data analytics complexity impacting informed consent, reliance on profiling impacting individual and group identities and justice/fair access and increased surveillance and population intervention capabilities impacting behavioural norms and practices. Furthermore, the extension of big data analytics to include information derived from personal devices, such as mobile phones and wearables as part of infectious disease frameworks in the near future and their potential ethical impacts are discussed. Considered together, the need for a constructive and transparent inclusion of ethical questioning in this rapidly evolving field becomes an increasing necessity in order to provide a moral foundation for the societal acceptance and responsible development of the technological advancement. (shrink)

Drawing on philosophy, law and political science, and on a wealth of practical experience delivering emergency medical services in conflict-ridden settings, Lepora and Goodin untangle the complexities surrounding compromise and complicity.

Parmenides and Śaṅkara are two ontological non-dualists who regard any division—for instance, between everyday objects or individuals—as conventional. Both Parmenides and Śaṅkara, by arguing for the undividedness of absolute reality, provide a vantage point from which to consider the possible arbitrariness of all divisions, which originate from human distinctions, rather than reflect gaps between different joints of reality. Human distinctions—and words used to draw them—are secondary to a reality that cannot be cut at its natural joints, since it does not (...) have such joints. Reality can only be cut in useful pieces, according to the cutter’s perspective and purpose—thus no individual, science, or discourse can claim to know the allegedly real divisions of reality. In spite of this, Parmenides and Śaṅkara regard distinctions as both useful for everyday life and necessary for doing philosophy. I visualize their non-dual reality as an undivided background that can be both known immediately and non-dually, and foregrounded by means of distinctions, such as being and not-being, atman and non-atman —while they make it clear that such distinctions are just useful words. Epistemological dualism might be a useful tag for both of their philosophies. A reflection on these two philosophers is an example of borderless philosophy: an inquiry into conceptual tools that come from different philosophical traditions, and that provide a vantage point for reflection on our practices—in this case, our use of words that create distinctions rather than divisions. (shrink)

This essay explores Werner Hamacher’s suggestion that the realm of “philology” lies epékeina tes ousías. I suggest that for him “philology” is concerned with what, according to Plato, generates meaning without itself being generated, and that in his work this “beyond being” is often mediated in terms of caesura. After a brief engagement with a conversation of sorts between Hamacher and Jacques Derrida, in which the view of his “philology” as mostly derivative of Derrida’s work is rejected, the essay returns (...) to Hamacher’s discussion of caesura as what constitutes the very possibility of language. The final section focuses on Hamacher’s engagement with Walter Benjamin and Paul Celan and his suggestion that Dichtung (poetry) is the first philology. The essay concludes by arguing that Hamacher’s philology opens up new ways of thinking about thinking, as well as about the relationship between literature and philosophy. (shrink)

This paper focuses on a specific aspect of political imaginaries: political myth. What are political myths? What role do they play within today commoditised political imaginaries? What are the conditions for setting up a critique of them? We will address these questions, by putting forward a theory of political myth which situates itself between psychoanalysis and political philosophy, in line with the tradition of critical theory that many still associate with the name of the Frankfurt School. We will first discuss (...) the notion of political myth by illustrating the contribution of both disciplines to its understanding and then, through a discussion of the notion of social unconscious, we will apply this analysis to a contemporary example of political myth, that of a clash of civilisations. (shrink)

What happens to women who are denied abortions? Abortion is a very controversial issue, and there are many attemps to restrain or ban safe and legal access to it. A few studies claim to demonstrate a connection between abortion and mental - and even physical - health. Politicians and pro-lifers use this kind of misleading arguments to justify unfair limitations to abortion access. Not many people ask themselves what happens to those women who would want to get an abortion but (...) are turned away. The Turnaways Study is the first study on the consequences of denied abortions. (shrink)

I argue that an agent can be appropriately blamed for failing to assist someone in need, even if her failure to assist is not wrong, and that an agent can be morally required to assist even if assisting is overly costly for her—more costly than what the relevant moral baseline is ordinarily taken to allow. Whether this is the case depends on whether the agent has previously failed to discharge her “prospective duties.” Once these duties are taken into consideration, even (...) apparently moderate accounts of beneficence appear to be not very moderate after all. (shrink)

After initially emerging in China, the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak has advanced rapidly. The World Health Organization (WHO) has recently declared it a pandemic, with Europe becoming its new epicentre. Italy has so far been the most severely hit European country and demand for critical care in the northern region currently exceeds its supply. This raises significant ethical concerns, among which is the allocation of scarce resources. Professionals are considering the prioritisation of patients most likely to survive over those with remote (...) chances, and this news has triggered an intense debate about the right of every individual to access healthcare. The proposed analysis suggests that the national emergency framework in which prioritisation criteria are currently enforced should not lead us to perceive scarce resources allocation as something new. From an ethical perspective, the novelty of the current emergency is not grounded in the devastating effects of scarce resources allocation, which is rife in recent and present clinical practice. Rather, it has to do with the extraordinarily high number of people who find themselves personally affected by the implications of scarce resources allocation and who suddenly realise that the principle of ‘equals should be treated equally’ may no longer be applicable. Along with the need to allocate appropriate additional financial resources to support the healthcare system, and thus to mitigate the scarcity of resources, the analysis insists on the relevance of a medical ethics perspective that does not place the burden of care and choice solely on physicians. (shrink)

We believe that intellectual humility is an essential intellectual virtue for university students to foster. It enables them to excel as students of philosophy and other disciplines, to navigate the fast-changing world inside and outside academia, and to flourish in interaction with others. In this paper, we analyze this virtue by singling out two distinct but related aspects: the openness-aspect and the care-aspect. The former makes one value a dialogue with those who have different views from one’s own. The latter (...) aspect involves searching for implicit assumptions one brings to encounters with one’s object of inquiry and trying to study this object as unique and irreducible. We discuss four learning activities we developed for the philosophy bachelor course “Who are we? Philosophical views on humans and the gods” at University College Utrecht (the Netherlands). Throughout this paper, we show extracts from the students’ assignments, reflections, and evaluations. These extracts indicate that students developed both aspects of intellectual humility —openness to different views and care for the uniqueness of each object of inquiry— and acknowledged their importance. (shrink)

What are the most detailed descriptions under which subjects intend to perform bodily actions? According to Pacherie (2006), these descriptions may be found by looking into motor representations—action representations in the brain that determine the movements to be performed. Specifically, for any motor representation guiding an action, its subject has an M‐intention representing that action in as much detail. I show that some M‐intentions breach the constraints that intentions should meet. I then identify a set of intentions—motor intentions—that represent actions (...) in as much detail as some motor representations while meeting the constraints that intentions should meet. (shrink)

This article seeks to extend existing models of argumentation by considering an important dimension of real-life argumentative discourse: how complex argumentative discussions evolve over time. We define a complex argumentative discussion as a multi-issue discussion, in which the different issues are interrelated in the form of a hierarchy. We claim that justified reframing might be used to transform a single-issue argumentative discussion into a complex argumentative discussion. To illustrate this, we examine the Facebook discourse of the Rhodes Must Fall movement (...) in South Africa. We analyse how reframing is justified by means of arguments, allowing the protagonists to claim as legitimate their reframing of a single issue into a complex argumentative discussion. Our findings complement existing sociological research on social movements by highlighting how their goals are achieved by means of argumentative discourse. (shrink)

Disagreement among philosophers over the proper justification for political institutions is far from a new phenomenon. Thus, it should not come as a surprise that there is substantial room for dissent on this matter within democratic theory. As is well known, instrumentalism and proceduralism represent the two primary viewpoints that democrats can adopt to vindicate democratic legitimacy. While the former notoriously derives the value of democracy from its outcomes, the latter claims that a democratic decision-making process is inherently valuable. This (...) article has two aims. First, it introduces three variables with which we can thoroughly categorise the aforementioned approaches. Second, it argues that the more promising version of proceduralism is extrinsic, rather than intrinsic, and that extrinsically procedural accounts can appeal to other values in the justification of democracy without translating into instrumentalism. This article is organised as follows. I present what I consider to be the ‘implicit view’ in the justification of democracy. Then, I analyse each of the three variables in a different section. Finally, I raise an objection against procedural views grounded in relational equality, which cannot account for the idea that democracy is a necessary condition for political legitimacy. (shrink)

Clinical Ethics Committees (CECs), as distinct from Research Ethics Committees, were originally established with the aim of supporting healthcare professionals in managing controversial clinical ethical issues. However, it is still unclear whether they manage to accomplish this task and what is their impact on clinical practice. This systematic review aims to collect available assessments of CECs’ performance as reported in literature, in order to evaluate CECs’ effectiveness. We retrieved all literature published up to November 2019 in six databases (PubMed, Ovid (...) MEDLINE, Scopus, Philosopher’s Index, Embase and Web of Science), following PRISMA guidelines. We included only articles specifically addressing CECs and providing any form of CECs performance assessment. Twenty-nine articles were included. Ethics consultation was the most evaluated of CECs’ functions. We did not find standardized tools for measuring CECs’ efficacy, but 33% of studies considered “user satisfaction” as an indicator, with 94% of them reporting an average positive perception of CECs’ impact. Changes in patient treatment and a decrease of moral distress in health personnel were reported as additional outcomes of ethics consultation. The highly diverse ways by which CECs carry out their activities make CECs’ evaluation difficult. The adoption of shared criteria would be desirable to provide a reliable answer to the question about their effectiveness. Nonetheless, in general both users and providers consider CECs as helpful, relevant to their work, able to improve the quality of care. Their main function is ethics consultation, while less attention seems to be devoted to bioethics education and policy formation. (shrink)

Virgilio desarrolló en sus obras el mito de la edad de oro y lo concibió como posible en el tiempo presente. El objetivo de nuestro trabajo es analizar en Eneida las menciones de los gobernantes itálicos de la edad de oro, Saturno y Augusto, como un continuum mítico-histórico. Nos proponemos demostrar que el regreso áureo en Eneida, en consonancia con sus anteriores obras (Ecl. y G.), solo es factible si existe un buen gobernante que cumpla determinadas condiciones, como promover la (...) paz entre guerras (Zetzel, 1997) y dar leyes al pueblo para fomentar la agricultura (Johnston, 1980). (shrink)

The paper offers a point of view on credibility of eco-labeled products, analyzing the relationships among company’s sustainable strategy, eco-label and no-financial reports. Based on a cross-sector study of 109 companies with the EU-Eco-label licenses in Italy, the paper points out different behaviors among the companies investigated and explains the leadership of Italy in the number of these licenses. However, the paper underlines that the use of sustainability tools is not always matched to the explanation of companies’ sustainable strategies. The (...) study identifies the significant drivers for the management of eco-label within a sustainability strategy, drawing attention to the weight, and the hierarchical level of different decisions about sustainability. This study contributes to strengthening the understanding, promoting a discussion on the use of eco-label and on its value, and describing a desirable behavior that any company should tend in order to nourish the credibility that is an essential aspect for building strong associations with the brand. (shrink)

In contemporary virtue ethics, virtues are often assimilated to skills. This assimilation suggests that the moral knowledge of virtuous individuals parallels the practical knowledge of experts in a particular skill. According to Julia Annas (2011a, 2011b), virtues function as skills requiring the ability to articulate reasons for one’s actions. These skills are developed through habitual practice over time. For example, a pianist who internalizes piano techniques possesses practical expertise akin to someone who understands their actions, even when performed automatically. Annas (...) argues that to cultivate ethical virtue, we should emulate musical action, viewing it as a habit rather than mere repetition. This analogy aids in understanding virtue acquisition as practical skill-building. Expanding on Annas’s insights, this article contends that musical practice offers profound ethical implications for musicians as potential moral agents. Supported by important neurological and psychological studies on musical expertise, as well as the dynamics of classical music interpretation and professional career development, this argument sheds light on the ethical dimensions of musical agency. These insights into musical expertise could enhance our understanding of ethical expertise overall. (shrink)

This article considers the relationship between John Buridan’s natural philosophy and medicine. By examining some aspects of Buridan’s description of the human body related to sensation, nutrition, and generation—especially as they were framed in the so-called “controversy between philosophers and physicians”—this article shows that, though mostly faithful to Aristotelian doctrine, Buridan’s theoretical biology relies to a large extent on medical ideas.

In this book, originally published in 2007, Chiara Bottici argues for a philosophical understanding of political myth. Bottici demonstrates that myth is a process, one of continuous work on a basic narrative pattern that responds to a need for significance. Human beings need meaning in order to master the world they live in, but they also need significance in order to live in a world that is less indifferent to them. This is particularly true in the realm of politics. (...) Political myths are narratives through which we orient ourselves, and act and feel about our political world. Bottici shows that in order to come to terms with contemporary phenomena, such as the clash between civilizations, we need a Copernican revolution in political philosophy. If we want to save reason, we need to look at it from the standpoint of myth. (shrink)

This study analyses for the first time whether and when moral distress may be related to work-family conflict and burnout. Additionally, this study examines whether resilience and positive refocusing might protect healthcare professionals from the negative effects of moral distress. A total of 153 Italian healthcare professionals completed self-report questionnaires. Simple and moderated mediation models revealed that moral distress was positively related to burnout, directly and indirectly, as mediated by work-family conflict. Highly resilient professionals experienced low work-family conflict, regardless of (...) moral distress levels. Moreover, professionals who frequently used positive refocusing were less vulnerable to burnout following moral distress. (shrink)

The article examines the ethics of musical interpretation, focusing on the performer’s responsibility in faithfully recreating a work from the score. Drawing inspiration from conductor Daniel Barenboim’s reflections (2016), it analyzes the delicate balance between personal expression and fidelity to the work, highlighting how interpretation involves not only technical skill but also moral responsibility. This notion develops through the importance attributed to history, authenticity, and the present in interpretation. These concepts are explored in the relationship between the score and the (...) performer, addressing the ethical challenges involved in balancing fidelity and creativity. The study of Historically Informed Performance (HIP) demonstrates how it serves as the foundation of the ethics of musical interpretation, due to its attempt to recreate the original conditions of performances. However, it is also noted that HIP embodies an overly rigid fidelity, thus requiring a more balanced approach that views musical practice as an ongoing dialogue between past and present. Finally, since the rules of musical practice are not enough for performers to interpret ethically, as they need to be internalized, the role of Aristotelian phronesis is explored as an internal guide for performers in interpretative practice. Phronesis aids the performer in mediating between past and present and in making interpretative decisions that are both ethically and musically appropriate. (shrink)

Le Quaestiones 2 («Se l’oggetto adeguato della conoscenza divina sia l’essenza di Dio o l’ente universale») e 3 («Se le creature secondo le loro proprie nature e le loro essenze siano vita in Dio e nel Verbo») della Distinctio 35 dello Scriptum di Pietro Aureoli sono importanti per la ricostruzione sia del pensiero del loro autore che della storia della dottrina delle idee divine nel Medioevo. Aureoli rifiuta il modello tradizionale di causalità esemplare, secondo cui Dio avrebbe creato il mondo (...) sulla base di modelli archetipi esistenti dall’eternità nella sua mente. Ricorrendo al concetto di aequivocatio, stabilisce che l’essenza di Dio è in maniera equivoca l’unico esemplare per tutte le creature ed elabora, così, la teoria della causalità esemplare equivoca. (shrink)

While most studies on stakeholder engagement focus on high-power stakeholders (typically, employees), limited attention has been devoted to the engagement of low-power stakeholders. These have been defined as vulnerable stakeholders for their low capacity to influence corporations. Our research is framed around the engagement of low-power stakeholders in the coffee industry who are, paradoxically, critical resource providers for the major roasters. Through the case study of Lavazza—the leading Italian roaster—we investigate empowerment actions addressed to smallholder farmers located in Brazil, India, (...) East Africa, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. We contribute to the theoretical discussion around engagement and empowerment by developing a framework linking together areas of empowerment (defined in the literature) and specific empowerment actions (emerging from our interviews). Our insights shed light on how organizations can design empowerment strategies leading to more effective stakeholder engagement and how empowerment actions can contribute to turn low-power stakeholders into active business partners. We demonstrate that moving from a traditional competitive view of corporate–stakeholder relationships to a stakeholder theory view based on a logic of cooperative partnerships reinforces the idea that stakeholder engagement and empowerment are both entangled with the value creation process. (shrink)

Recording of neural activity during grasping actions in macaques showed that grasp-related sensorimotor transformations are accomplished in a circuit constituted by the anterior part of the intraparietal sulcus (AIP), the ventral (F5) and the dorsal (F2) region of the premotor area. In humans, neuroimaging studies have revealed the existence of a similar circuit, involving the putative homolog of macaque areas AIP, F5, and F2. These studies have mainly considered grasping movements performed with the right dominant hand and only a few (...) studies have measured brain activity associated with a movement performed with the left non-dominant hand. As a consequence of this gap, how the brain controls for grasping movement performed with the dominant and the non-dominant hand still represents an open question. A functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment has been conducted, and effective connectivity (dynamic causal modeling, DCM) was used to assess how connectivity among grasping-related areas is modulated by hand (i.e., left and right) during the execution of grasping movements toward a small object requiring precision grasping. Results underlined boosted inter-hemispheric couplings between dorsal premotor cortices during the execution of movements performed with the left rather than the right dominant hand. More specifically, they suggest that the dorsal premotor cortices may play a fundamental role in monitoring the configuration of fingers when grasping movements are performed by either the right and the left hand. This role becomes particularly evident when the hand less-skilled (i.e., the left hand) to perform such action is utilized. The results are discussed in light of recent theories put forward to explain how parieto-frontal connectivity is modulated by the execution of prehensile movements. (shrink)

IntroductionDespite a growing interest in the field, scarce narrative studies have delved into adolescents’ psychological experiences related to global emergencies caused by infective diseases. The present study aims to investigate adolescents’ narratives on positive and negative experiences related to COVID-19.MethodsItalian adolescents, 2,758, completed two narrative tasks on their most negative and positive experiences during the COVID-19 emergency. Data were analyzed by modeling an analysis of emergent themes.Results“Staying home as a limitation of autonomy,” “School as an educational, not relational environment,” the (...) impact of a “new life routine,” and experiencing “anguish and loss” are the four emergent themes for negative experiences. As for positive experiences, the four themes were “Being part of an extraordinary experience,” “Discovering oneself,” “Re-discovering family,” and “Sharing life at a distance.”ConclusionAuthors discuss the impact of COVID-19 on adolescents’ developmental tasks, such as identity processes and autonomy acquisition. (shrink)