The purpose of my study is to reconstruct the historical development of Kant's pre- critical approach to mechanical explanation and cosmology. I shall focus on three main works: the 1755 Theorie des Himmels, the 1763 Beweisgrund and the 1766 Träume. I shall challenge some interpretations of the relation between mechanism and finalism, looking for the emergence of a principle of demarcation separating both ontologically and epistemologically organics from inorganics products. I shall try to show why Kant came to be dissatisfied (...) with his early systematic account of the formation and arrangement of the heavenly bodies on purely mechanical principles. Finally I shall argue that the pre-critical period ends, paving the way to a revision of cosmology in the light of an appreciation of the role of chemical affinity for the construction of the world-edifice. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: What Is ‘High’ and What Is ‘Low’ in the Significance of Reason The Standpoint of Reason: or When Certainty Is Not Yet Truth Philosophical Issues: Standard Views and Reappraisals References Further Reading.

Background: Advances in biomedical sciences, technologies and care practices have resulted in an increase in ethical problems and a resulting growth of difficulties encountered by health workers in their professional activity. Objective: The main objective of this study was to analyse knowledge in the ethical field and experience with and the propensity for using ethics consultations by nurses and physicians. Methods: Between March and June 2014, a cross-sectional observational study was conducted on a sample of 351 nurses and 128 physicians (...) in four central Italian hospitals. For data collection, a semi-structured questionnaire was used, consisting of 21 items divided into four sections exploring (1) demographic and occupational characteristics, (2) knowledge in the ethics field, (3) experience with ethical issues and (4) the propensity to use ethics consultation. Ethical considerations: Research ethics approval was obtained from the Italian Nurses Professional Board. Results: The results show that both nurses and physicians are faced with ethically sensitive situations. Nurses were found to have better judgement concerning their own knowledge than physicians, but more physicians were found to have a deeper level of specific training in ethics issues. The propensity to ask for ethics consultations to address ethical issues was found to be significantly associated with the degree to which ethical issues have deepened (and the level of experience acquired in this field). Conclusion: The presence of a consulting service that can lead to shared choices may represent, together with basic and continuing education, a valid support for professional growth in the ethical field for both physicians and nurses. (shrink)

In the 1787 Transcendental Deduction of the Categories Kant indicates the only possible ways by which one can account for a necessary agreement of experience with the concepts of its objects (B166), using analogies between modes of explanation and biological theories about the origin of life. He endorses epigenesis as a model for his system of pure reason (B167). This paper examines various interpretive claims about the meaning of this theory of generation and its significance for Kant’s philosophy (Section 1), (...) showing that, after his Critical shift in perspective, in 1775/77 Kant already combined preformed elements and their purposively oriented formation by natural forces (Section 2). Contrary to the standard view, Kant’s theory of race appears to constitute the background to assess Blumenbach’s later (1799/1781) shift to epigenesis after supporting Haller’s preformism (Section 3). In Section 4, I argue that the ground of affinity between epigenesis and formal idealism rests in tracing the first origin of these conformities: externala posterioriclimate conditions and predisposed germs and dispositions within the generative power of the human body; and externala posterioriexperience and spontaneousa prioriconcepts of its objects, within pure sensory intuiting and pure thinking. In both cases the external empirical conditions would function as occasioning propelling factors affecting internal pre-established forms of generation. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Dialectic of Reason Observing Nature Observing the Nature of the Self References Further Reading.

Italy is one of the European countries with the highest levels of gender inequalities (World Economic Forum 2011). The aims of this paper were to understand to what extent the well-documented gender gap in Italian adult society has an impact on both political and civic actions of younger generations, and whether the process of participation assumes specific features according to gender. 835 Italian participants (49.6% males; 50.4% female, aged from 16 to 26 years old; 20% under voting age) completed a (...) self-administered questionnaire. Analyses confirmed general trends (voting at elections is the most frequently performed political action among Italian youth) and showed the existence of a small gender gap (a major orientation of young women toward civic action, while young men are more engaged in manifest political participation). The results confirmed that family cultural capital and normative support are significant predictors of political participation, in particular for girls and young women. (shrink)

This text introduces a symposium on the thought and legacy of the French Marxist, Daniel Bensaïd. The authors consider Bensaïd’s theoretical contributions to Marxism, especially the concepts of temporality, political strategy, and revolutionary organisation, as well as his ability to fuse militant activism and intellectual work. This is followed by brief summaries of the articles gathered in the symposium, and a reflection on Bensaïd’s relevance for future Marxist research.

The article traces the reflections found in the Hellenika on the theme of Athens/Sparta bipolarity, with the intention of illustrating Xenophon's interest in this international arrangement of the Greek world and of emphasizing its repercussions in Xenophon’s historiographical project.

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 206 Seiten: 109-127.

Summary Since its first description, the imprinting phenomenon has been deeply investigated, and researchers can nowadays provide profound knowledge of its functioning. Here, I present how this peculiar form of early exposure learning can be used as a strategy to study animal cognition. Starting from imprinting as a social trigger for the domestic chick and combining it with the unique possibility of accurate control of sensory experiences in this animal model, I present evidence that in artificial environments, imprinting serves as (...) a rigorous test of the core domains of cognition. Whether basic cognitive concepts are already present at birth or whether they need extensive experience to develop are questions that can be addressed in precocial birds and still, following the tradition of the seminal works made by Lorenz, can inform on human cognitive processing. (shrink)

IntroductionAnimal Assisted Interventions are increasingly common in pediatric care settings as a means to promote the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of hospitalized children and adolescents.ObjectivesThe aim of this work was to review published studies implementing AAIs in hospital settings and to assess the effects of AAIs on the biobehavioral response to stress and pain, social behavior, quality of life and level of satisfaction with hospitalization in children and adolescents. Stress and burden, quality of life, mood and level of satisfaction (...) with hospitalization in parents/caregivers as well as stress and burden, perception of the work environment and job satisfaction in hospital staff were also reviewed.MethodsAll published studies reporting quantitative assessments were systematically searched using PubMed, Scopus, ProQuest and Web of Science databases in accordance with PRISMA guidelines. The aim was to identify studies examining the effects of AAIs on behavioral, psychological and physiological responses to stress in children and adolescents formally admitted to a hospital for a stay, as well as in those undergoing a visit for treatments or medical examinations.ResultsOf the 350 studies screened, 21 were eligible for inclusion. Most of them focused on stress, pain, and anxiety reduction in pediatric patients, and used both physiological parameters and behavioral and psychological observations/scales. All studies employed dogs. Results show the potential of AAIs to reduce anxiety and behavioral distress in pediatric patients while acting on physiological measures associated with arousal.ConclusionAlthough further, more rigorous studies are still needed, the findings of this review may have implications for clinical practices suggesting appropriate planning of AAIs by pediatric healthcare professionals.Systematic Review Registration[https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=178993], identifier [CRD42020178993]. (shrink)

Cette étude de Chikako Takeshita détaille les différents usages du DIU (dispositif intra-utérin ou stérilet) depuis sa création dans les années 1960 jusqu’à nos jours. L’analyse s’appuie sur plusieurs sources : la littérature scientifique médicale, la recherche d’archives et l’examen des outils de communication utilisés par les firmes pharmaceutiques. Le livre se compose de six chapitres au fil desquels la chercheuse analyse l’histoire du DIU en tant que dispositif de biopouvoir pour le « Sud...

This Introduction by the editors of this special issue presents eleven contributions on the theme of fear in the Indian Subcontinent by Italian academic scholars.

A new interpretation of Hegel's reading of Sophocles's Antigone, focussing on Antigone's urge to action grounded in her religious feeling, on her facing the risk of death and the consequences of this move for her sense of self-awareness, becoming also conscious of her onesidedness in respect to Creon's (equally onesided) reasons.

La pensée est un patrimoine discret et secret au point qu'elle n'est pas habituellement considérée comme un patrimoine au sens propre. Pourtant elle est à l'origine de tous les autres. Probablement sans l'exercice de cette faculté qui leur est propre, les êtres humains n'auraient jamais conçu leurs monuments extraordinaires ni leurs constructions admirables. Du plus petit phénomène jusqu'à la loi générale qui en coordonnerait les enchaînements, la recherche cultivée à l'intérieur de jardins divers et multiples tout le long de l'histoire (...) révèle un désir caché d'absolu. Comme si le jardinier dans l'aspiration d'élargir son horizon avait été amené à un certain moment à pousser les murs et à se retrouver chez le voisin, dans le monde et hors du monde par étapes successives. Un jeu de l'observation, de la mémoire et de l'imagination. En 2003, dans le cadre idéal de la Chartreuse de Valbonne, quelques représentants de disciplines diverses allaient reprendre ce jeu autour d'un thème aussi libre que contraignant tel que l'Espace Spirituel peut l'être. Quelques architectes, mathématiciens, musicologues, musiciens, et philosophes évoquent l'expression : Espace Spirituel chacun selon son angle de vue. L'idée d'Espace dans une cathédrale, dans le désert ou dans un chou fleur... Le Spirituel traverse les cultures du christianisme au judaïsme à l'indouisme. Le regard a l'écoulement du temps et les vignobles de la Chartreuse de Valbonne comme perspective. (shrink)

In this paper I adopt Étienne Balibar’s distinction between three forms of universality—“universality as reality,” “fictive universality,” and “ideal universality”—in order to retrieve universalism for feminist politics. The paper articulates a proposal for the feminist adoption of a specific notion of universality, which I call political insurgent universality. This notion is not based on a definition of human essence or of women's nature. It is rather rooted in the “real universality” historically created by capitalism, that is, in the fact that (...) capitalism has generated a world in which people are interdependent and in which capitalist accumulation poses objective universal constraints on social reproduction. (shrink)

Edited by Cinzia Arruzza and Dmitri Nikulin, _Philosophy and Political Power in Antiquity_ is a collection of essays examining reflections by ancient philosophers on the implicit tension between political activity and the philosophical life from a variety of critical perspectives.

This paper is concerned with the nature of feminine bodily comportment described by Iris Marion Young in ‘Throwing Like a Girl.’ According to Young, the style of movement of women, who undergo patriarchal oppression, reveals their existential status as a socio-historically oppressed group. Her claim is that patriarchal oppression acts upon women’s bodily functions, thus causing feminine motility to exhibit an inhibited intentionality, an ambiguous transcendence and a discontinuous unity. In this paper I take issue with these three modalities of (...) feminine comportment. Firstly, I resort to Max Scheler’s phenomenological description of the different stages leading to motor action to show that the bodily functionality of oppressed women is intact when considered from the motor-intentional perspective. Secondly, I advocate, via Scheler’s phenomenology, a different mode through which to interpret the bodily expressivity of oppressed women. My claim is that feminine motility expresses the negative impact that sexism has upon the oppressed women’s emotional pre-theoretical and pre-non-motor level. My thesis is that patriarchal society negatively influences, and thereby compromises, the constitution of women’s axiological apparatus by inhibiting their preferences of values. Finally, I argue that the axiological apparatus of oppressive men is likewise compromised, and hence needs to be re-educated as much as that of the oppressed women. The main aim of this paper is to suggest a correct reading of the hampered motility of oppressed women, which keeps into consideration the phenomenon of ‘oppression’ in its entirety, and which can thus lead to adequate axiological therapies. (shrink)

My aim in this essay is to lead the reader through the complexity of Hegel’s philosophical understanding of organic nature by highlighting its distinctive theoretical features and by examining these historically, both against the background of the approaches, achievements and trends of the empirical sciences of his time and in light of their scholarly reception.1 First, I focuss on Hegel’s definition of the ‘universal form’ of life, pointing to what the connection is, in his philosophy of nature, between the structure (...) of conceptual and living processes in the path to the individualization of matter. Second, since Hegel calls animal life “the truth of organics,” 2 I shall try to explain how in the philosophy of nature the Idea of life comes to differentiate itself into certain essential characteristics of immediate, finite and individual animals, passing through the stages of geological nature and vegetable organisms. (shrink)

Massimiliano Tomba’s book, Marx’s Temporalities, stresses the centrality of the body for the critique of exploitation and suggests that a new phenotype is produced by consumerism and by the dynamic of capitalist accumulation, with its plural temporalities. However, both the body of the worker and the new phenotype do not appear to have a sex or a gender in Tomba’s book. In this intervention, I read some of Tomba’s insights about the body, the new phenotype, and primary accumulation in the (...) light of a critical gender and feminist perspective. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: General Characteristics of the Concept of Natural Life The Path to the Individualization of Matter Chemistry and Individuality: The Appearance and Disappearance of Life Contradiction in Chemicals The Necessary Limits of the Inorganic The Path to the Free Individuality of Life Conclusion References Abbreviations Works Cited.

In Plato’s _Republic_ V, 449a-457b, Socrates argues that the guardian class of Kallipolis will comprise both men and women and that women with the appropriate nature ought to receive the same education and fulfill the same tasks as their male counterparts. In this article I argue, against competing interpretations of this claim as dependent either on the necessity of abolishing the oikos or on eugenic principles, that Socrates’ argument ought to be understood as a genuine argument about women’s natural capabilities (...) and ought to be interpreted in light of the Socratic debate about women’s virtues. Moreover, I show that the legal language mobilized, combined with polemical references to Aristophanes, serves the purpose of evoking Socrates’ trial, thus alerting the reader to the seriousness of the proposal in question. (shrink)

From 1754 to 1756 Kant wrote on such central, related topics as the axial rotation of the Earth, the theory of heat, and the composition of matter, focusing on space, force, and motion. It has been noted that each of these topics pertains to his 1755 Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, in which he drew on extant cosmogonies and the analogical form of Newtonianism developed by naturalists including Buffon, Haller, and Thomas Wright. How does Kant build on (...) these various sources? This article aims to provide a nuanced account of specific features of the relation between natural history and natural philosophy in Kant’s early developmental theory of the universe and to illuminate the strategy that guides his innovative, selective appropriation of contemporaneous insights. -/- . (shrink)

'Human Diversity in Context' is a joint research project of the Academia Europaea and the Department of Humanities of the University of Trieste which aims to develop new, distinctive strategies to integrate the form and content of 'knowledge' and to awaken the sense of responsibility for social prejudices and 'us/them' dichotomies, by conveying a socially contextualised understanding of the complexity of the real world and its cultural and religious structures, facets, objects and of course, groups. Taken as a whole, this (...) collection of essays shows how differences can manifest, articulate and actualise the potential of identity when these two poles, identity and difference, are not taken to extremes in abstract, pre-judicial ways, as mutually opposed and challenging, but are seen and examined in their concrete, living interplay within a variety of contexts. These studies provide a multifaceted critical examination of the ways, tools and strategies through which European societies have historically envisioned and now confront, construct and conceptualise their perception, representation and evaluation of the unity of humankind within its contextualised diversity. As a distinctive compendium of scholarship reflecting the current state and different fields of studies of identity, otherness and processes of othering, the editor and research coordinator, together with the authors, hope to have produced a valuable contribution to current debates. What integrates the Academia Europaea's mission and vision with the research strategies and educational objectives of the Department of Humanities of the University of Trieste is the capacity to inspire new thinking to address contemporary challenges"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

This article examines how Italian commercial broadcast news on Mediaset’s three terrestrial channels has covered the transition to digital terrestrial television. Mediaset is the largest commercial broadcaster in the country and is owned by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. By drawing on critical discourse analysis of broadcast news, it is argued that linguistic elements such as pronouns, choice of words, and metaphors, together with tendentious editing and framing of interviews, were part of a strategy of positive representation of the broadcaster’s (...) interests in the transition and negative representation of media policies opposing such interests. In particular, the analysis brings to the surface the ideological usage of interviews. Interviews in this case did not function as an act of control over the powerful, but as a way to illuminate the broadcaster’s strategic interests while obfuscating the reasons behind attempts to regulate the transition to digital television and open the market to competition. The data attest that the way in which news programs covered the digital transition exposes the connections between media content, media ownership, and governmental institutions. Indeed, all three news programs, TG5, TG4, and Studio Aperto, despite their different target audience and the reputation of one of them as the most objective and authoritative newscast on Italian commercial television, echoed each other in unified support of the sort of interests and media legislation that best fitted the corporation, especially at times when those interests were threatened. The corpus consists of 13 newscasts grouped in two clusters aired in 2006 and 2009. The main participants in the story were Mediaset’s president, often interviewed as the ‘expert’ on the TV industry, the communications minister for the center-left Prodi government, and the communications undersecretary for the center-right Berlusconi government. Citizens and consumer groups were never given the opportunity to voice their positions or be an active part of the narration. (shrink)

This article addresses the notions of gender performativity and temporality in Butler’s early work on gender. The paper is articulated in four steps. First it gives an account of the role and nature of temporality in Butler’s theory of gender performativity. Second, it shows some similarities and connections between the role played by temporality in Butler’s theory of gender performativity and its role in Marx’s analysis of capital. Third, it raises some criticisms of Butler’s understanding of temporality and historicity, focusing (...) in particular on the lack of historicisation of her own categories in bothGender TroubleandBodies that Matter. This deficit is a consequence of the epistemological framework within which she is operating, in particular of her understanding of social practices and relations through the lens of linguistic concepts extrapolated from their theoretical context. The article concludes by referring to Floyd’s and Hennessy’s analyses of the formation of sexual identities as examples of the fruitful historicisation of gender performativity, which also sheds some light on the ‘the abstract character’ of the temporality of gender performativity. (shrink)