The phenomenological attitude allows us to grasp something that happens before the distinction between subject and object. The application to groups of human beings in a clinical and therapeutic context of the phenomenological setting allows us, in spite of its descriptive-contemplative aura, the extreme richness of potentialities, applicative and transformative, of one of the greatest intuitions of modern thought: the disappearance of the fracture between the subject, the others and the world-of-life, in the evidence of meaning that the mutual experience (...) of one's own presence or being-there opens up. The Mitsein doesn’t represent the only existential structure that makes the Dasein able to exist with others, but the relationship between the ‘originary temporality’ of the Dasein and the other as ‘you’. Dasein is that entity that is structurally “with” others. And it is in this relationship dynamic that unfolds the theme of the care. Care becomes for Heidegger the existential of the existentials, fundamental ontological structure, indicating the original opening of being. Being-with-in-loving could consist in the atmosphere, a kind of well-being which these flow-experiences, relatively rare in everyday life, are immersed in. (shrink)

Research Ethics Committees have the responsibility to protect the participants involved in researches and to guarantee the ethical behavior of researchers. In some institutions, such committees also review scientific projects of non-pharmaceutical areas, Public Health and Health Economics. Within this framework, the article analyzes what it means to be part of a Research Ethics Committee in a hospital or university based on personal experience as a community representative. By means of the convenience sampling technique, implemented in four Colombian cities that (...) have GCP-certified committees by INVIMA –National Institute for the Control of Medications and Food–, and by means of content analysis, based on fixed and emergent categories; the experience, perception, participation, representation, and ethical aspects are described as well as the learning process and personal contributions. Findings prove that representatives interviewed have been benefited by learning clinic and epidemiological aspects without necessarily being “experts in the community”. However, they seem not to recognize clearly the population they represent, which might lead these communities to being affected by certain particular studies. The article suggests to work on the minimal common elements that a community representative should possess to appropriately protect participants. (shrink)

The gist of modal epistemology is expressed in the idea that you fail to know if you do believe truly but it is seriously possible for you to believe falsely. According to subjunctivism, this idea is captured by certain subjunctive conditionals. One formulation invokes a safety condition—“If S had believed P, then P would have been the case,” while the other invokes a sensitivity condition—“If P had been false, S would not have believed that P.” According to simple subjunctivism, such (...) conditionals do not contrapose and Sosa derives important epistemological consequences which favor safety from this difference. However, simple subjunctivism is inadequate. I return to Goodman and his analysis of factuals and propose modal stability, which is restricted sensitivity or enhanced safety as a proper epistemic condition for the non-accidental connection between the basis for the belief and the relevant facts of the matter. The idea of modal stability combines robustness (benefi ts of safety) with responsiveness to facts (benefi ts of sensitivity) and recovers the original motivation for the relevant alternatives theory—when testing for claims of knowledge that p we ask what might be the case if not-p, but we ignore irrelevant possibilities. Epistemic modal conditions should be expressed in terms of conditionals of connection which contrapose within the limits of relevance. (shrink)

In the present article, I will discuss Lotze’s attempt to “sublate” Hegel’s conception of logic in his Logic of 1874. I will demonstrate that Lotze operates as a filter by recasting many Hegelian notions in a way that will influence the 20th-century philosophers in a decisive manner. In the first section, I will focus on how, according to both Hegel and Lotze, the relationship between representation and language conditions the transition from sensible impressions to concepts. In the second section, I (...) will discuss Lotze's re-elaboration of Hegel's idea of the objectivity of thought based on his notion of validity. In the third part, I will finally show how Lotze's revaluation of the function of imagination in the domain of “logic” allows us to re-discover the early modern idea of logic understood as an ‘ars inveniendi’. (shrink)

What are the different kinds of role played by receptivity and spontaneity in the natural experience? This question will be the clue of the essay. To answer, I will take into account some remarks raised by McDowell in Mind and World. After having shown why spontaneity should be considered as drawn into operation in experience, I will ask where the unconscious activity of conceptual capacities could be grasped. Referring on Hegels Faith and Knowledge, as first step, I will focus on (...) the idea that the blind synthesis of imagination could be identified with the hidden work of pure reason. Consecutively, as second step, by considering what Hegel said in the Phenomenology of Spirit chapter on Sense-certainty and in the Second Preface to Science of Logic, I will delve into Hegels idea that reasons instinct is operative within natural language. My aim is to understand in what a Hegelian radicalization of Kant could consist. (shrink)

The analysis is restricted to the architectural aspect. It puts in evidence a dialectical procedure which makes the gnoseological importance of the verb to look stand out clearly. The pharisee's knowledge is based on religious convictions ; that of the blind man on his experience.

Riassunto: Il 12 e il 13 gennaio 2017 si è svolto a Pisa un seminario di studi su La filosofia di Massimo Barale. Di seguito si presenta un resoconto degli interventi tenuti in quell’occasione dagli ultimi allievi di Massimo Barale e da alcuni degli studenti che hanno seguito i suoi ultimi corsi. Gli interventi abbracciano gran parte degli interessi e degli studi di Massimo Barale, dalla critica al metodo adottato da Kant nella Critica della ragion pura alla valorizzazione della prospettiva (...) della Critica del Giudizio condotta sulla scia dell’influenza di Eric Weil, dalla sua originale interpretazione delle prospettive dell’idealismo tedesco e della fenomenologia di Husserl e di Sartre sino al suo confronto con le filosofie della mente, per concludersi con una discussione dei limiti e delle potenzialità della rivalutazione di Barale del punto di vista trascendentale in filosofia. Parole chiave: Massimo Barale; Filosofia trascendentale; Idealismo tedesco; Fenomenologia; Filosofia della mente Massimo Barale’s Philosophy: In the following article, I will provide an account of the conference on The Philosophy of Massimo Barale, held in Pisa 12-13 January 2017. Younger scholars who had studied with Professor Barale or attended his last classes discussed Barale’s work and ideas. Some of them analyzed Barale’s criticism of Kant’s method in Critique of Pure Reason and his appreciation – in line with Eric Weil – for the perspective of the Critique of Judgement. Other scholars explored Barale’s interpretations of Classical German Philosophy and Phenomenology. One talk dealt with Barale’s discussion of the perspective of philosophy of mind and the last three talks focused on the limits and the potential of Barale’s revaluation of a transcendental point of view in philosophy. Keywords: Massimo Barale; Transcendental Philosophy; German Idealism; Phenomenology; Philosophy of Mind. (shrink)

Position and Criticism of the Symbolic Functionin the First Works of Merleau-PontyIn this article, we propose to address the question of the symbolic function in Merleau-Ponty’s first works. More specifically, we shall be interested in the place thathe grants to this question in The Structure of Behavior, and to the way he critically takes it up in the Phenomenology of Perception. Although Merleau-Ponty hardly clarifies this himself, Merleau-Ponty’s commentators also have rarely made this problematic an object of debate. In his (...) first work, by appropriating the semantics of the symbolic emerging from neuropsychology, Merleau-Ponty characterizes the level of organization of human corporality by means of its capacity to overcome the immediate character of lived situations. In this work, the categorical attitude appears as a new signification of organic structuration that, among the different forms of behavior, characterizes human activity. Moreover, in the chapters of the Phenomenology of Perception where Merleau-Ponty evokes the spatiality, the motility, and the expressivity of one’s own body, he abandons causal explanations of pathological phenomena which are used as if they are arguments, just as he gives up explanations copied off the symbolic function which are then associated with intellectualist analyses. These analyses delimit the notion of intentionality that Merleau-Ponty aims at developing. The notion is established on the foundation of the synergetic unity of one’s own body. Whence the importance that another theoretico-anthropological device acquires throughout the Phenomenology of Perception: the notion of the “corporeal schema”.Posizione e critica della funzione simbolicanei primi lavori di Merleau-PontyIn questo articolo ci proponiamo di affrontare la questione della funzione simbolica nei primi lavori di Merleau-Ponty. Ci interesseremo più specificamente al posto che è accordato a tale questione ne La struttura del comportamento e alla sua ripresa critica nella Fenomenologia della percezione. Poco esplicitata dal filosofo, questa problematica è altresì poco dibattuta presso i commentatori. Nel suo primo lavoro, Merleau-Ponty, appropriandosi della semantica del simbolo sorta dalla neuropsichiatria, caratterizza il livello d’organizzazione della corporeità umana mediante la sua capacità di superare il carattere immediato delle situazioni vissute. In quest’opera, l’attitudine categoriale appare come un nuovo signifi cato della ristrutturazione organica che, fra le differenti forme di comportamento, caratterizza l’attività umana. D’altronde, nei capitoli della Fenomenologia della percezione in cui Merleau-Ponty evoca la spazialità, la motricitàe l’espressività del corpo proprio, l’autore rinuncia alle spiegazioni causali dei fenomeni patologici utilizzati alla stregua di argomentazioni, così come rinuncia alla spiegazioni ricavate dalla funzione simbolica, ormai ricondotte a delle analisi di ordine intellettualistico. Tali analisi delimitano la nozione d’intenzionalità che il filosofo mira a sviluppare, e che si stabilisce in base al fondamento dell’unità simbolica del corpo proprio. Da qui l’importanza che acquista un altro dispositivo teorico-antropologico lungo tutta la Fenomenologia della percezione: la nozione di “schema corporeo”. (shrink)

Perché il terrorismo è oggi così diffuso e potente? Perché è riuscito a organizzarsi in forme così capillari ed efficaci al punto da essere considerato una minaccia per il mondo intero? Più in profondità: che cos’è esattamente il terrorismo? Qual è la sua "filosofia", quali le sue radici culturali e le sue motivazioni politiche? È possibile sconfiggerlo? O dobbiamo invece accettare di convivere con il terrorismo e considerare la sicurezza e la pace nel mondo come aspettative illusorie di retori, profeti (...) e visionari? Si tratta di questioni cruciali per capire il mondo in cui viviamo. E tuttavia non c’è alcuna possibilità di dare risposte definitive e condivise a questi interrogativi, anzitutto perché manca un consenso sulla nozione stessa di terrorismo. (shrink)

An examination of conditionals in di¤erent languages leads to a distinction of three types of conditionals instead of the usual two (indicative and subjunctive). The three types can be explained by the degree of acceptance or as-if acceptance of the truth of the antecedent. The labels subjunctive and indicative are shown to be inadequate. So-called indicative conditionals comprise two classes, the very frequent uncertain-fact conditionals and the quite rare accepted-fact conditionals. Uncertain-fact conditionals may have a time shift in contemporary English (...) and the future subjunctive in Portuguese (though not all of them do). Moreover, paraphrases of if with in case or supposing are usually possible with approximately the same meaning. Accepted-fact conditionals never have these features. (shrink)

This study intends to show that the usually given meaning of the teleological dualism τὸ οὗ/τὸ ᾧ of Aristotle’s De anima, understood as “an aim or goal” and “the beneficiary”, does not come from Aristotle, but from a controversial interpretation of the ancient commentators. It originates on the attempt of certain Peripatetics to appropriate the Stoic distinction between “happiness” and “the happy subject” designated as the σκοπός and the τέλος of moral action. After this historical accuracy, we will propose a (...) different reading of the Aristotelian distinction according to the context of De anima as designating the tendency in the individual towards its preservation and use. (shrink)

In the present article, I will address the question of whether Paul Valéry’s thought can somehow contribute to the recent debate concerning the philosophy of literature. Firstly, I will focus on the idea according to which philosophy can be meant not only as a literary genre but also as an art of thinking. This allows Valéry to state that the poet, too, has a philosophy insofar as he or she is able to think abstractly by practicing his or her own (...) mind. Secondly, following some remarks of Derrida and Rorty, I will discuss Valéry’s idea according to which the philosopher is a philosopher to the extent that he or she forgets that philosophy has to be written. This will lead me to distinguish the peculiar aesthetics of the philosopher as writer from that of the poet. (shrink)

L’autore si occupa di aspetti distinti del recente fenomeno dell’uso della forza internazionale mo¬tivato dall’impellente esigenza di tutelare i diritti dell’uomo. Nel primo paragrafo tratta i pre¬supposti storico-politici del fenomeno, riferendosi in particolare alla stra¬tegia del new world order, elaborata dagli Stati Uniti nei primi anni novanta del Novecento. Nel secondo paragrafo af¬fronta gli aspetti giuridici dell’uso della forza internazionale per ragioni umanitarie, esa¬mi¬nando sia il caso in cui tale uso sia stato autorizzato del Consiglio di Sicurezza delle Nazioni Uni¬te, (...) sia il caso in cui non sia stato autorizzato. Nel terzo paragrafo si occupa del rapporto fra la prospettiva universalistica implicita nell’‘interventismo umanitario’ e l’attuale ordinamento in¬ternazionale, che ha come presupposto la sovranità degli Stati nazionali e il principio della non-ingerenza nella loro domestic jurisdiction.The author deals with distinct aspects of a recent phenomenon, i.e. the use of international force grounded on the urgency to enforce human rights. In the first section he discusses the historical and political bases of this phenomenon, by referring in particular to the strategy of ‘new world order’, worked out by the United States in the early 1990s. In the second section the author treats the legal aspects of the use of international force for humanitarian reasons, both authorised and unauthorised by the United Nations Security Council. Finally he addresses the relationship between the universalistic perspective im¬plied by ‘humanitarian interventionism’ and the present international order, based on nation states sovereignty and non-interference within their domestic jurisdiction. (shrink)