This article examines the legacy of Gramscian thought in Anglophone social sciences. It focuses in particular on three currents or disciplines, namely Cultural Studies, Anthropology, and Gender Studies. All three have sought and sometimes found in Gramscian categories a number of theoretical and political instruments through which to think the structures of domination, individual or collective subjectivity, and their relation to culture, in particular through the use of the dialectical relationship of hegemony/subalternity. Demonstrating how Gramsci was received in the intellectual (...) and political Anglophone context, the article highlights certain genealogies which have sometimes led to what amounts to a number of fully-fledged “translations” of Gramscian concepts, but also to a series of “lighter”, more distant uses. In this perspective, the article focuses on the translation of Gramsci undertaken by the New Left in the Seventies, insofar as this detour has proved of capital importance for the successive interpretations of Gramscian theories in the Anglophone social sciences. (shrink)

In this highly readable and compact introduction to Durkheim's thought, Gianfranco Poggi examines all of Durkheim's central works and assesses their significance today, a century after his death. Poggi's analyses includes a study of what Durkheim meant by 'society' and an evaluation of Durkheim's contributions to both political sociology and the sociology of law. Poggi's clear and concise reappraisal of one of the most important modern thinkers will be essential reading for students of sociology and an invaluable guide for (...) anyone studying the ways modern societies function. (shrink)

It is by now common knowledge that analytic philosophy has its roots, at least partially, in phenomenology. It is less known that analytic philosophy has inherited part of its original antipsychologism precisely from phenomenology, or rather from early phenomenology. The present article traces the historical brackground of antipsychologism, starting with the debate on the philosophical foundations of psychology during the 19th century. It appears that naturalistic antipsychologism, the early phenomenologists position, has to be distinguished from transcendental antipsychologism, as it was (...) promoted most prominently by Husserl after 1907. The article explains how this divide emerged from different conceptions of the specificity of the philosophical inquiry into the mind, as opposed to its psychological study. Adopting the naturalistic approach, the early phenomenological as well as the analytical school have reacted to the antipsychologistic challange by eliminating subjective elements from the content of the mind. (shrink)

In this paper we shall address some issues concerning the relation between the content and the nature of perceptual experience. More precisely, we shall ask whether the claim that perceptual experiences are by nature relational implies that they cannot be intentional. As we shall see, much depends in this respect on the way one understands the possibility for one to be wrong about the phenomenal nature of one’s own experience. We shall argue that once this very possibility is properly understood, (...) the metaphysical claim that perceptual experiences are relational is compatible with the view that they are intentional. Before presenting the argument, we should try to articulate some elements of an intentionalist approach concerning the role of experience in our relation to ourselves and to our environment. The picture should offer a motivation for the arguments that follow. more about illusions etc (see Clatilde’s comments). (shrink)

Gianfranco Ravasi ha voluto "ripensare" ciò che era già stato indagato e meditato durante la lunga avventura del pensiero umano, a partire dalle culture primitive e dalle antiche civiltà. E ha analizzato le due sorgenti che alimentano il concetto occidentale di anima: le Sacre Scritture e la cultura greca, con i miti di Psiche e di Orfeo e pensatori come Platone, Aristotele e Plotino. Giunti alla fine di questa riflessione ci si rende conto che la storia dell'anima coincide con (...) la storia dell'uomo, creatura di Dio. E un dubbio affiora: che l'agitarsi febbrile dell'umanità contemporanea non sia un avanzare ma un insensibile retrocedere, o uno strano volteggiare sempre sullo stesso spazio, e che proprio “l'anima, con la sua fame di eterno e di infinito” sia ciò che invece ci costringerà a muoverci “sempre oltre, verso un Oltre illimitato”. (shrink)

Resumen Tomando como motivo una conjetura de Lacan dirigida a Heidegger, referida a lo que sería la metafísica y lo que determinaría su historia y sus efectos, el presente trabajo pretende poner en relación la topología lacaniana y la topología heideggeriana. Ahí donde Lacan traduce a Heidegger, veremos que lo que asoma, y que parece haber pasado inadvertido, es la cuestión topológica del agujero y los efectos políticos que implica velarlo. En definitiva, cuando se lleva hasta sus últimas consecuencias lo (...) que implica habitar el lenguaje, veremos que el sentido que ambos autores imprimen a su topología, luego de coincidir, diverge.Taking as a motive a conjecture of Lacan directed to Heidegger, referred to what would be the metaphysics and what would determine its history and its effects, the present work tries to put in relation the Lacanian topology and the Heideggerian topology. Where Lacan translates Heidegger, we will see that what appears, and that seems to have gone unnoticed, is the topological question of the hole and the political effects involved in watching it. In short, when it takes to its ultimate consequences what it means to inhabit the language, we will see that the sense that both authors print to their topology, after agreeing, diverges. (shrink)

The recognition of self as other and others as self continues to be one of the greatest challenges to the ethos necessary for institutions, public and private, engaged in hospitality. Indeed, hospitality is an intrinsic part of the recognition of the common and communal bond in which each human person can rediscover a sense of belonging and his or her own specific creaturality, the fruit of mutual and diverse encounters in the relationship between peoples and among peoples. Inspired by papal (...) words and documents, as well as philosophical and political debates of jus, here we defend the value of experiences of mutual bonds of memory and humanitarian revelation, in which a clear distinction between demos and ethnos can be established. By questioning globalization in its economic and financial promises, unrelated to human dignity and hospitality, it reveals how paths to peace are sustained by the synodal consolidation of human rights and fundamental freedoms. Thus, a distinction must be made between claims of ethnic recognition, on the one hand, and the promises of global recognition of civil rights and pseudo-cultural acquisitions, which have in recent years risen to legal protection and political guarantee; on the other hand, it is pointed out that true recognition of the human person as constituted in a relational, social and community dignity is only beyond the economic-financial constraints of globalization. (shrink)

In Systčme d'Epicure, La Mettrie presents a hypothesis on the origin and evolution of animals which owes much both to the fifth book of Lucretius's poem and to Montaigne's Apologie de Raimond Sebond. Claiming that Nature's operations are as unintentional and as amoral as the play of children, the French physician argues against all teleological explanations of the physical constitution of living beings. Nature's first attempts at creating individual beings must therefore have been characterized by frequent mistakes, some of which (...) are still to be seen in a few monstruous cases. Evolution is assured only through a process of trial and error, where the elimination of "unfit" combinations is due to the inability of specific animals to reach adulthood and give birth to offspring. The perfection of a living being is not to be evaluated by means of comparisons to a preexisting model but depends instead on the intensity of this being's sexual needs, which compel it to seek pleasure and to develop its mental skills. (shrink)

The text "Frühe Phänomenologie und die Ursprünge der analytischen Philosophie" was originally published in „Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung” 2000, Bd. 54, Heft 3, s. 313—340.