La frase con la que a veces se ha llamado a Francisco de Asís «il più santo tra gli italiani, il più italiano tra i santi» puede causar sorpresa desde fuera de Italia por su afirmación demasiado exclusiva de una nacionalidad. Algunas sugestiones que surgen de la lectura de unas lí­neas de Jorge Luis Borges orientan un posible sentido de interpretación sobre la representación subjetiva de ideales patrióticos. Además de ello, tomando como base la investigación de Felice Accrocca (...) para determi­nar el origen de la frase, se observa cómo la segunda parte de esta se encuentra por primera vez en la obra de Vincenzo Gioberti (1843); con ella se buscaba elogiar las cualidades del Santo que caracterizarían un emblema patriótico para la unificación de la Italia. Se completa la breve crónica histórica que expone Accrocca con las vicisitudes de la frase eslogan, en cuanto a su uso ideológico y político, incluyendo la manipulación de la figura del Santo. Sin embargo, la necesidad de precisar otros elementos ausentes en el trabajo de Accrocca lleva al examen de algunos textos con argumentaciones sobre la identificación del amor al prójimo con el amor a la patria. Se indica asimismo cómo la frase inicial se convirtió en memorable retruécano en un discurso de Geremia Brunelli (1882). Finalmente, la proclamación de Francisco de Asís como Patrono de Italia (1939) busca recuperar el sentido de los valores que el Santo ejemplifica más allá de la exaltación patriótica y aun en contraposición con una exacerbación de esta. (shrink)

This study explores the experiences of nurses that provide ‘complex’, generalist healthcare in hospital settings. Complex care is described as care for patients experiencing acute issues additional to multimorbidity, ageing or psychosocial complexity. Nurses are the largest professional group of frontline healthcare workers and patients experiencing chronic conditions are overrepresented in acute care settings. Research exploring nurses’ experiences of hospital‐based complex care is limited, however. This study aims to add to what is known currently. Four ‘complex care’ nurses undertook in‐depth (...) semistructured interviews and their narratives were analysed using the conceptual framework of complex adaptive phenomenology. Two overarching themes constituting the ‘essence’ of complex care nursing were identified: Contextual factors and attribute/value‐based elements. Creating meaningful patient outcomes and feeling part of a team were experienced as fulfilling, whereas time constraints, institutional settings and systemic barriers to comprehensive caregiving diminished the experience of providing complex care. Overall, work meaning presented as a dynamic phenomenon, shaped by personal and professional values, local settings and systemic factors. It is recommended that more expansive research be undertaken to explore the experience of complex care for nurses. Such knowledge can contribute to initiatives that draw a skilled, effective and engaged hospital‐based complex care nursing workforce. (shrink)

Temporality represents the most important and difficult question of phenomenology: decisive for its idea of phenomenon and consciousness. What means that time is the appearing itself, so not a time of consciousness but the consciousness itself: this is the phenomenological question about the origin of time. Composed in three decades approximately—from 1904 to 1934—Husserlian contributions phenomenology of temporality constitutes the most extensive corpus about this matter in the canon of occidental philosophy. They lead in three main directions and correspond to (...) the same number of periods of their development: the mathesis of intentional manifolds, the metaphysics of individuality, the theory of temporal self-constitution. After the description of the phases, the sources and the internal articulations, the paper makes room for a brief and essential glossary of phenomenology of temporality, made up of some of the most considerable and aporetic notions: the retention, and its bond with protention, individuality and its elusive essence, the flow and the stream. Lastly, the paper inspects and examines some of the most remarkable critics to phenomenology of temporality, from Heidegger to Derrida, from Bergmann to Lévinas, in order to demonstrate how leading was its role in the whole philosophy of the twentieth century. (shrink)

In the cladistic literature, there is a recurrent perspective that considers homoplasy as something undesirable. Homoplasy, according to this view, is believed to obscure homologies that may lead to synapomorphies. Some cladists often call homoplasies an ad hoc hypothesis or an “error in our preliminary assignment of homology.” Consequently, homoplasy is generally regarded negatively, hindering further investigations, because it matters little whether a character subject to homoplasy is a convergence, a parallelism, or a reversal, since they all fall within the (...) problematic homoplastic category. Nixon and Carpenter developed one of the recent arguments supporting this vision. In this context, I will argue that phylogenetics, being a part of evolutionary biology, must be compatible with its principles. Therefore, I will discuss the idea that homoplasy is more complex than just nonhomology, sometimes even constituting evidence of common ancestry (e.g., parallelism). I will put forward the thesis that it is crucial to differentiate instances of convergence, parallelism, and reversions by incorporating recent advances from EvoDevo research. Ultimately, this approach aims to demonstrate that evolutionary biology and phylogenetics mutually complement each other and assist in providing different lines of evidence that can be used to test different evolutionary hypotheses. (shrink)

How Do I Save My Honor? is a powerful exploration of individual moral responsibility in a time of war. When individuals conclude that their leaders have violated fundamental ethical principles, what are they to do? Through the compelling personal stories of those in the U.S. and British government and military who struggled with these thorny issues during the war in Iraq, William F. Felice analyzes the degrees of moral responsibility that public officials, soldiers, and private citizens bear for the (...) actions of their governments. Examining the struggles of these contemporary men and women, as well as of historical figures facing similar dilemmas, the author weighs the profound difficulties of overcoming the intense pressures of misguided loyalty, patriotism, and groupthink that predominate during war. (shrink)

"Phenomenology was one of the twentieth century's major philosophical movements, and it continues to be a vibrant and widely studied subject today with relevance beyond philosophy in areas such as medicine and cognitive sciences. The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy is an outstanding guide and reference source to this important and fascinating topic. Comprising seventy-five chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook offers unparalleled coverage of the subject, and is divided into five clear parts: Phenomenology and (...) the History of Philosophy Issues and Concepts in phnomenology Major Figures in Phenomenology Intersections Phenomenology in the World. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy studying phenomenology, The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy is also suitable for those in related disciplines such as psychology, religion, literature, sociology and anthropology"--. (shrink)

The present paper provides the first reconstruction of the discussion between Martin Heidegger and Maximilian Beck, a former member of the Munich Circle of Phenomenology—a discussion that revolved around Beck’s interpretation of the “fundamental ontology” of Being and Time. Based upon the still unpublished correspondence between Heidegger and Beck, the essay first reconstructs their relation and then offers a meticulous discussion of Beck’s major criticism of Heidegger, i.e., “correlativism,” and the latter’s response to it in his courses of 1928.

This article investigates how the turn to affect within the humanities and social sciences re-imagines the relationship between cultural theory and science. We focus on how the writings of two neuroscientists (Antonio Damasio and Joseph LeDoux) and one developmental psychologist (Daniel Stern) are used in order to ground certain claims about affect within cultural theory. We examine the motifs at play in cultural theories of affect, the models of (neuro)biology with which they work, and some fascinating missteps characterizing the taking (...) up of scientific literature. While neuroscience frames the affective as part of a system of regulation that makes both self and social coherence possible, in cultural theory’s narratives, by contrast, affectivity becomes a placeholder for the inherent dynamism and mutability of matter. The article interrogates the consequences of cultural theory’s strange borrowings from neuroscience and developmental psychology in their institution of a model of subjectivity preoccupied with a lived present in excess of the hold of habit and embodied history. (shrink)

In the following paper we will attempt to analyze and reconstruct Edith Stein’s interpretation of Husserl’s “transcendental idealism,” notably, the reason why, in her opinion, the latter ended up embracing that specific philosophical position. As will soon become apparent, according to Stein, Husserl misunderstands the peculiar ontological structure of individual essences and, in particular, the specific connection with reality that they carry within themselves. Without raising the question of whether Stein’s own understanding of transcendental idealism perfectly corresponds with Husserl’s, we (...) will confine ourselves to discussing, first, the wider context within which she tackles it and, second, the relation between Husserl’s idealism and the formal-ontological issue of how to characterize the internal content of individual essences. No matter what we think of Stein’s critical assessment, her approach has the great and undeniable merit of forcing the “interpreter” to face the problem of the tight connection between the transcendental dimension and the eidetic dimension of Husserl’s thought. (shrink)

This collection offers the first systematic, comparative analysis of Wilfrid Sellars's Pittsburgh school of thought and Husserlian phenomenology. Beginning with an introduction to contemporary philosophical debates about the mind and pragmatism, the essays examine and clarify the discursive divide between analytic and Continental philosophy.

Modal logics support philosophy, providing means to organise information, and to think and act in response to abstract concepts and to real conditions. In its organisation, the modal is generative of the ethics of any given system. Feminist new materialist practices require us to consider ethics when generated by technological rather than theological modalities.

This article investigates the place of trust in learning relations in the classroom, not only between teacher and student, but also between student and student. To do this, it will first examine a pedagogy called community of inquiry, espoused by John Dewey and used in most Philosophy for Children courses in Australia. It will then consider what different forms of trust are involved in other power relations in the classroom, particularly the rational structuralism of R.S Peters, or the experiential philosophy (...) of Maria Montessori. It concludes that a community of inquiry shifts the ethical learning relation in significantly different ways because for educational growth, it values ethical trust more highly than a strategic trust in logical principle, duty, Truth, or cost/benefit analysis. (shrink)

Beyond impressionistic observations, little is known about the role and influence of scientific societies on research conduct. Acknowledging that the influence of scientific societies is not easily disentangled from other factors that shape norms and practices, this article addresses how best to study the promotion of research integrity generally as well as the role and impact of scientific societies as part of that process. In setting forth the parameters of a research agenda, the article addresses four issues: (1) how to (...) conceptualize research on scientific societies and research integrity; (2) challenges and complexities in undertaking basic research; (3) strategies for undertaking basic research that is attentive to individual, situational, organizational, and environmental levels of analysis; and (4) the need for evaluation research as integral to programmatic change and to assessment of the impact of activities by scientific societies. (shrink)

This paper aims at offering a concise, yet systematic, presentation of the Husserlian method of “self-variation” in connection to eidetic variation sic et simpliciter. After a brief review of the different meanings of this method in Husserl’s writings, I will focus on the way in which Husserl employs it to bring the eidos “ego” to the fore. To this end, I will take into account the specific subject matter of self-variation by resorting to a twofold concept of essence as well (...) as to the formal-ontological notion of τóδε τι. The present investigation will have an almost exclusively methodological character, its purpose being to clarify a specific, yet still quite unexplored, tool of Husserl’s phenomenology. (shrink)

This chapter explores some of the similarities and differences in the philosophical methods of five philosophers often considered existentialists: Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, de Beauvoir and Marcel. The relationship between existentialism and phenomenological methods, as well as transcendental reasoning in general, is examined.

The direct protection of civilians from the violence and harms of armed conflict is most often understood in fixed, identity-centred terms: of what protection is, where it is located, of who provid...

Starting from the Italian results of the PISA 2015 surveys as regards the competence of young students in collaborative problem-solving, in this paper we conduct a critical analysis of the concept of competence, as seen through the lens of the Capability Approach. The Philosophy for Children curriculum is presented as a pedagogical and didactic proposal capable of re-conceptualizing the constructs of ‘problem-solving’ and ‘collaboration’. In the light of ‘Complex Thinking’ theory and the ‘community of inquiry’ classroom methodology, the general theoretical (...) frame of the PISA and DeSeCo approach to problem-solving has been criticized for its focus on what has been defined in terms of “internal mental structures in the sense of abilities, dispositions or resources embedded in the individual”. The proposal of Philosophy for Children and its ‘community of inquiry’ methodology are considered and discussed. This educational curriculum provides a real opportunity to rethink citizenship education by concentrating on the value and power of collective agency and the ability to wonder about our world. The pedagogical implications are significant because this means that we should be aiming to align academic education not with what society is, but with what it could or should be. To achieve this, education policies and planning actions need to focus on values and principles, on matters such as freedom, social equity and participation. These matters are not exclusive to the realms of individual endowment and performance. They have fundamental ethical and cultural components. Philosophy for Children can be considered as an opportunity to work towards the educational and political goal of creating “flourishing communities”. (shrink)

The main goal of this article is to examine Edmund Husserl’s method of “eidetic variation”—that is, to examine the way this method is supposed to work in connection with the notion of “similarity” (Ähnlichkeit). Unlike most interpretations, it will be suggested that similarity represents the leading methodologicalprinciple of eidetic variation. We will argue, therefore, that, on the one hand, this method is rooted in the sphere of association and passivity while, on the otherhand, it is constituted by the transposition of (...) a passive synthesis into an active operation. After having introduced and discussed a twofold notion of phantasy(as “localized phantasy” and as “pure phantasy”) as well as a twofold concept of eidos (as “hen epi pollon” and as “pure eidos”), the extent to which for Husserl there cannot be any eidetic variation without a monadology will be shown. (shrink)

Giorgio Prodi was an important Italian scientist who developed an original philosophy based on two basic assumptions: 1. life is mainly a semiotic phenomenon; 2. matter is somewhat a semiotic phenomenon. Prodi applies Peirce's cenopythagorean categories to all phenomena of life and matter: Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. They are interconnected meaning that the very ontology of the world, according to Prodi, is somewhat semiotic. In fact, when one describes matter as “made of” Firstness and Secondness, this means that matter ‘intrinsically’ (...) implies semiotics. At the very heart of Prodi’s theory lies a metaphysical hypothesis which is an ambitious theoretical gesture that places Prodi in an awkward position with respect to the customary philosophical tradition. In fact, his own ontology is neither dualistic nor monistic. Such a conclusion is unusual and weird, but much less unusual in present time than it was when it was first introduced. The actual resurgence of various “realisms” make Prodi’s semiotic realism much more interesting than when he first proposed his philosophical approach. What is uncommon, in Prodi perspective, is that he never separated semiotics from the materiality of the world. Prodi does not agree with the “standard” structuralist view of semiosis as an artificial and unnatural activity. On the contrary, Prodi believed semiosis lies at the very bottom of life. On one hand, Prodi maintains a strong realist stance; on the other, a realism that includes semiosis as ‘natural’ phenomena. This last view is very unusual because all forms, more or less, of realism exclude semiosis from nature but they frequently “reduce” semiosis to non-semiotic elements. According to Prodi, semiosis is a completely natural phenomenon. (shrink)

In language learning, learners engage with their environment, incorporating cues from different sources. However, in lab‐based experiments, using artificial languages, many of the cues and features that are part of real‐world language learning are stripped away. In three experiments, we investigated the role of positive, negative, and mixed feedback on the gradual learning of language‐like statistical regularities within an active guessing game paradigm. In Experiment 1, participants received deterministic feedback (100%), whereas probabilistic feedback (i.e., 75% or 50%) was introduced in (...) Experiment 2. Finally, Experiment 3 explored the impact of mixed probabilistic feedback (33% positive, 33% negative, 33% no feedback). The results showed that cross‐situational learning of words was observed without feedback, but participants were able to learn structural regularities of the miniature language only when feedback was provided. Interestingly, the presence of positive feedback was particularly helpful for the learner, promoting more in‐depth learning of the artificial language. (shrink)