A fronte del quotidiano rincorrersi di nuovi interrogativi che esigono una risposta dalla bioetica, si assiste alla difficoltà di trovare un solido fondamento al giudizio etico in bioetica. Si confrontano e si scontrano, infatti, teorie etiche tra di loro non sovrapponibili né conciliabili, che portano a soluzioni pratiche tra di loro divergenti e spesso, troppo spesso, dimentiche della centralità della persona umana. Edè proprio la riflessione sulla persona umana, con i suoi diritti, ma anche con i suoi doveri, secondo la (...) lettura del personalismo ontologicamente fondato, il filo conduttore dei contributi contenuti in questo volume...(Dalla quarta di copertina)- In sommario: La nuova genetica - La clonazione umana: aspetti tecnici e considerazioni - Le basi biologiche della sessualità - Natura e interpretazione dei disordini sessuali: l'omosessualità - I disorientamenti sessuali: il ruolo dell'educatore - La sindrome da immunodeficienza acquisita - Orientamenti metodologici nell'educazione sessuale. (shrink)

Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) is one of the 25 syndromic forms of obesity, in which patients present—in addition to different degrees of obesity—intellectual disability, endocrine disturbs, hyperphagia and/or other signs of hypothalamic dysfunction. In front of a severe/extreme obesity and the failure of non-invasive treatments, bariatric surgery is proposed as a therapeutic option. The complexity of the clinical condition, which could affect the long-term effects of bariatric surgery, and the frequent association with a mild to severe intellectual disability raise some ethical (...) concerns in the treatment of obese PWS adolescents. This article analyses these issues referring to the principles of healthcare ethics: beneficence/non-maleficence (proportionality of treatments; minimisation of risks); respect of autonomy; justice. Based on these principles, three hypothetical scenarios are defined: (1) obese PWS adolescent, capable of making an autonomous decision; (2) obese PWS adolescent with a severe intellectual disability, whose parents agree with bariatric surgery; (3) obese PWS adolescent with a life-threatening condition and a severe intellectual disability, whose parents do not agree with bariatric surgery. The currently available evidence on efficacy and safety of bariatric surgery in PWS adolescents with extreme or severe obesity and the lack of adequate long-term follow-up suggests great caution even in a very life-threatening condition. Clinicians must always obtain a full IQ assessment of patients by psychologists. A multidisciplinary team is needed to analyse the clinical, psychological, social and ethical aspects and organise support for patient and parents, involving also the hospital ethical committee or, if necessary, legal authorities. (shrink)

In this paper, we analyse the most important documents establishing the criteria for the treatment and exclusion of COVID-19 patients, especially in regard to the giving of respiratory support, in Italy and Spain. These documents reflect a tension that stems from limited healthcare resources which are insufficient to save lives that, under normal conditions, could have been saved, or at least could have received the best possible treatment. First, we analyse the healthcare systems of these two countries before the spread (...) of the virus, both of which have seen decreases in the number of intensive care beds and have been marked by financial cuts during the last ten years. It is a fact that a greater number of people, especially those over 70 years of age, have been left without respiratory support treatment, and therefore, there have been a greater number of deaths. It is also a fact that there has been a higher infection rate among healthcare professionals due to the delay in the management of protective measures and the inability to provide adequate care for those in nursing homes, as recognised by WHO. In the context of this health emergency, healthcare professionals have suffered a real ‘moral distress’ because, knowing first-hand the causes of the limitation of resources, they have had to put triage protocols into practice. Finally, we set forth a series of concrete ethical proposals with which to face the successive waves of COVID-19 infection, as well as other future pandemics. (shrink)

In human groups performing oscillatory tasks, it has been observed that the frequency of participants' oscillations reduces when compared to that acquired in solo. This experimental observation is not captured by the standard Kuramoto oscillators, often employed to model human synchronization. In this work, we aim at capturing this observed phenomenon by proposing three alternative modifications of the standard Kuramoto model that are based on three different biologically-relevant hypotheses underlying group synchronization. The three models are tuned, validated and compared against (...) experiments on a group synchronization task, which is a multi-agent extension of the so-called mirror game. (shrink)

Motor learning can be defined as a process that leads to relatively permanent changes in motor behavior through repeated interactions with the environment. Different strategies can be adopted to achieve motor learning: movements can be overtly practiced leading to an amelioration of motor performance; alternatively, covert strategies (e.g., action observation) can promote neuroplastic changes in the motor system even in the absence of real movement execution. However, whether a training regularly alternating action observation and execution (i.e., Action Observation Training, AOT) (...) may surpass the pure motor practice (MP) and observational learning (OL) remains to be established. To address this issue, we enrolled 54 subjects requiring them to learn tying nautical knots via one out of three types of training (AOT, MP, OL) with the scope to investigate which element mostly contributes to motor learning. We evaluated the overall improvement of each group, along with the predictive role that neuropsychological indexes exert on each treatment outcome. The AOT group exhibited the highest performance improvement (42%), indicating that the regular alternation between observation and execution biases participants toward a better performance. The reiteration of this sequence provides an incremental, adjunct value that super-adds onto the efficacy of motor practice or observational learning in isolation (42% > 25% + 10%, i.e., OL + MP). These findings extend the use of the AOT from clinical and rehabilitative contexts to daily routines requiring the learning and perfectioning of new motor skills such as sports training, music, and occupational activities requiring fine motor control. (shrink)

While dreaming amputees often experience a normal body image and the phantom limb may not be present. However, dreaming experiences in amputees have mainly been collected by questionnaires. We analysed the dream reports of amputated patients with phantom limb collected after awakening from REM sleep during overnight videopolysomnography . Six amputated patients underwent overnight VPSG study. Patients were awakened during REM sleep and asked to report their dreams. Three patients were able to deliver an account of a dream. In all (...) dreaming recalls, patients reported that the amputated limbs were intact and completely functional and they no longer experienced phantom limb sensations. Phantom limb experiences, that during wake result from a conflict between a pre-existing body scheme and the sensory information on the missing limb, were suppressed during sleep in our patients in favour of the image of an intact body accessed during dream. (shrink)

Reassesses the Italian Resistance movement, historically conceived, and explores the concept of Resistance within the contemporary cultural context from a multidisciplinary perspective.

BackgroundChronic airway diseases are prevalent and costly conditions. Interdisciplinary rehabilitation programs that include Acceptance and Commitment-based components could be important to tackle the vicious circle linking progression of the disease, inactivity, and psychopathological symptoms.MethodsA retrospective evaluation of routinely collected data of an interdisciplinary rehabilitation program was performed. The program included group sessions including patient education, breathing exercise, occupational therapy and an ACT-based psychological treatment, and individual sessions of physical therapy. Demographic data, clinical characteristics of the patients and the values of (...) outcome variables before treatment, at discharge, at 3 months, and at 6 months were extracted from medical records. Multiple imputation was employed to address missing data. Linear mixed models were employed to assess changes over time. Multivariable logistic regression was performed to assess predictors of a minimum clinically important change of health status from baseline to the 6-months follow-up.ResultsData from 31 patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and 12 patients with bronchiectasis were extracted. Health status improved from baseline to discharge to the 3 months follow-up, but not to the 6 months follow-up. Anxiety and depression improved across all the time points. Quality of life did not improve over time. Having a worse health status at baseline and fewer depressive symptoms were significantly associated with achieving a minimum clinically important change of health status at 6 months. The effects of the interdisciplinary program were not different for patients with COPD or with bronchiectasis.DiscussionInterdisciplinary programs including ACT-based components are promising treatments for the rehabilitation of patients with chronic airway diseases. (shrink)

When people combine concepts these are often characterised as “hybrid”, “impossible”, or “humorous”. However, when simply considering them in terms of extensional logic, the novel concepts understood as a conjunctive concept will often lack meaning having an empty extension (consider “a tooth that is a chair”, “a pet flower”, etc.). Still, people use different strategies to produce new non-empty concepts: additive or integrative combination of features, alignment of features, instantiation, etc. All these strategies involve the ability to deal with conflicting (...) attributes and the creation of new (combinations of) properties. We here consider in particular the case where a Head concept has superior ‘asymmetric’ control over steering the resulting concept combination (or hybridisation) with a Modifier concept. Specifically, we propose a dialogical approach to concept combination and discuss an implementation based on axiom weakening, which models the cognitive and logical mechanics of this asymmetric form of hybridisation. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the kind of expertise required by doctors in health communication and argues that such an expertise is twofold: both epistemological and communicative competences are necessary to achieve compliance with the patient. Firstly, we introduce the specific epistemic competences that deal with diagnosis and its problems. Secondly, we focus on the communicative competences and argue that an inappropriate strategy in communicating the reasons of diagnosis and therapy can make patient compliance unworkable. Finally, we focus on the case (...) of diabetes metaphor and propose the deliberate use of metaphors in health communication as an educational tool. On the one hand, metaphors might help doctors in explaining the disease in simpler terms and framing the experience of illness according to patient’s specific needs. On the other hand, metaphors might encourage a change in patient’s beliefs on their own experience of illness, and enable them to reach a shared decision making with doctors. (shrink)

The New Economic Windows Series, derived from Massimo Salzano's ideas and work, incorporates material from textbooks, monographs and conference proceedings that deals with both the theoretical and applied aspects of various sub-disciplines ...

Questo contributo mette in luce la molteplice funzione politica di uno schema agiografico centrale nella rappresentazione della giovinezza di Bernardino da Siena: il suo servizio durante la peste del 1400 presso l’Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala di Siena. La memoria di questo episodio si prestava ad essere utilizzata tanto dall’Osservanza minoritica quanto in diversi contesti locali. In questo racconto Bernardino è presentato come capace di rispondere ai bisogni della città non solo attraverso le proprie virtù, ma radunando altre (...) persone e convincendole a impegnarsi per il bene comune, anche a rischio della propria vita. L’episodio, così come è raccontato dagli agiografi, incorpora la prima predica fatta dal giovane Bernardino ai membri della confraternita dell’Ospedale. Il testo indica programmaticamente la necessità per i laici di anteporre il bonum commune al bonum proprium e delinea un ruolo di leadership dei frati dell’Osservanza nel cuore delle città. Inoltre, se a Siena la memoria della peste del 1400 serviva a sottolineare il rapporto tra il santo e le istituzioni della città, la raffigurazione di tale episodio in alcuni affreschi dipinti a Lodi nel 1476 non soltanto veicolava un modello di spiritualità laicale ma serviva a promuovere e legittimare la riforma ospedaliera in corso a Lodi. (shrink)

The bourgeoisie—that fundamental reality of our civilization—has not i yet found its historian. Although there are more studies, relatively speaking, on the period following the Revolution, the evolution of the bourgeoisie prior to the eighteenth century is known to us only through fragmentary research, local and limited. The attention of historians is attracted solely to the exceptional cases in which the financial powers happen to play a direct political role—Colbert, Jacques Coeur, Fugger, Bardi, or Buonsignori. The great expansion of (...) the northern cities during the thirteenth century inspired the researches of Henri Pirenne and his disciples; the high point in the development of Italian cities was studied by the Sapori-Luzzatto school, but the sum of this evolution has not been synthesized. There is not a single general history of the bourgeoisie, yet entire libraries are dedicated to feudal society. (shrink)

The period, from the middle of the fifteenth century, and in particular the fruition of the Franciscan Observance under the leadership of Bernardino of Siena, John of Capistrano and James of the Marches, through the end of the Council of Trent , lasts about a century. It is a century that has recently been the focus of much attention in our research group.2 The hypothesis in this essay is that this century was marked more by continuities than fractures, and in (...) which many problems came to the fore. Therefore, this was a period of instability but also of great vitality:3 “not a starting point, but the climax,” as Paolo Prodi wrote.4The booklet of Paolo Giustiniani and Pietro Quirini, the so-called Libellus ad .. (shrink)

La diffusione del libro nel Medioevo potrebbe essere riletta alla luce di una metafora attuale sebbene non scevra di aspetti dialettici: quella della “rete”. All’ubicazione spazio-temporale del libro nei monasteri medievali, contraddistinta da fisicità e permanenza, si sotituisce oggi un formato digitale e virtuale, che porta ad una sorta di decontestualizzazione e alla continuità del flusso di informazioni, contribuendo alla diffusione capillare del sapere. L’ottica di universalità e globalità accomuna tuttavia entrambe le epoche. Alcuni concetti-chiave dell’informatica potrebbero infatti declinarsi in (...) ambito medievale: Server-Client per la raccolta, la conservazione e la trasmissione delle conoscenze da parte dei monasteri, quali centri del sapere in Europa, agli uomini di cultura; Firewall, per alludere alla necessità di tutelare i manoscritti, mediante la copiatura e la diffusione dei codici; Community, ad indicare non solo la comunità religiosa o monastica in senso stretto, bensì l’apertura ad una costruzione del sapere mediante un’azione partecipativa. I problemi dell’autenticità delle fonti, dell’acriticità delle informazioni e la pratica delle citazioni trovano un precedente significativo nelle Sententiae di Pietro Lombardo: una sorta di “biblioteca virtuale” grazie alla collezione di passi dalla Sacra Scrittura e da fonti latine e greche, paragonabile a un moderno modello enciclopedico di sapere. The diffusion of the book in the Middle Ages could be critically read through a modern metaphor: the “net”. The space-temporal coordinates of the book shift from being physical and permanent in the Medieval monasteries, to being de-contextualized and continue in the flow of information of digital and virtual format. However the universal and global perspective is common to the contemporary and the Medieval periods. In fact some key-words of computer science could be applied to the Medieval context: Server-Client, for the collection, the preservation and the transmission of knowledge from monasteries, as cultural centers in Medieval Europe, to men of culture; Firewall, for the necessary protection of manuscripts, through copying and diffusing codes; Community, referred not only to the monastic and religious groups, but also to an open sharing of the building of knowledge. Problems like the authenticity of the sources, the lack of criticality in the reception of data, and the practice of quotations are well represented in Peter Lombard’s Sententiae: this work can be compared to a modern encyclopedia thanks to the collection of passages from the Holy Scripture and from Latin and Greek sources, as well as a “virtual library”. (shrink)

By reconstructing the eighteenth-century movement of the Italian Enlightenment, I show that Italy’s political fragmentation notwithstanding, there was a constant circulation of ideas, whether on philosophical, ethical, political, religious, social, economic or scientific questions—among different groups in various states. This exchange was made possible by the shared language of its leading illuministi— Cesare Beccaria, Ludovico Antonio Muratori, Francesco Maria Zanotti, Antonio Genovesi, Mario Pagano, Pietro Verri, Marco Antonio Vogli, and Giammaria Ortes—and resulted in four common traits. First, the (...) absence of a radical trend, such as the French materialist-atheist trend and British Deism, or religious reformation. Second, the rejection of inhumane laws and institutions, capital punishment, torture, war and slavery. Third, the idea of public happiness as the goal of good government and legislation. And fourth, the conception of the economy as a constellation where social capital, consisting of education, morality, and civility, plays a decisive role. I conclude that the Italian Enlightenment, not unlike the Scottish Enlightenment, was both cosmopolitan and local, which allowed its leading writers to develop a keen awareness of the complexity of society alongside a degree of prudence regarding the possibility and desirability of its modernization. (shrink)

Pietro Pomponazzi.--Simnoe Porzio.--Maria d'Aragona marchesa del Vasto.--Andrea Cesalpino.--Giovan Battista de la Porta.--Giordano Bruno.--Tommaso Campanella.--Giulio Cesare Vanini.--Trajano Boccalini.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Images of Ancient Rome in Late Eighteenth-Century Neapolitan HistoriographyMelissa CalaresuThe case of the late Neapolitan enlightenment, the variety and sophistication of which has been little recognized outside of Italian scholarship, illustrates the significance of particular regional concerns and intellectual traditions in the development of enlightened movements in Europe. 1 This becomes apparent when examining how Neapolitans looked to their own past in relation to the unique set of political (...) and social problems of the Kingdom of Naples. In this article I shall examine a number of historical writings published in the 1780s. This was a decade of intense intellectual activity which saw the publication of the defining works of the later Neapolitan enlightenment, such as Gaetano Filangieri’s Scienza della legislazione from 1780 and Francesco Mario Pagano’s Saggi politici between 1783 and 1785. 2 It was also the decade in which Giuseppe Maria Galanti’s Storia filosofica e politica delle nazioni antiche e moderne [End Page 641] introduced in translation important texts of the British and French Enlightenments, and the journal Scelta miscellanea briefly became an important focal point of collaboration and intellectual exchange for reform-minded intellectuals in Naples. 3 The impetus which bound together these many projects of the 1780s was twofold: on one hand, the growing awareness of the particular problems of Neapolitan society and of the urgent need for reform, expressed through the language and concerns of the wider enlightened movement; and at the same time a revived sense of a distinct cultural and political identity. The writing of history, even of the most remote age, did not escape these concerns.The cultural renewal of the 1780s brought new histories of the Kingdom, and in these Rome played an essential role. As Naples’s most powerful neighbor in ancient times, Rome defeated the Samnites, the tribe which had inhabited the Kingdom, and brought the region under Imperial control. From the Middle Ages the universal pretensions of the Roman papacy had continually threatened the temporal authority of Neapolitan rulers, and the symbol of these pretensions had survived into the eighteenth century with the offering each year of a feudal homage, the Chinea, to Rome. It was against this threat which Pietro Giannone’s anti-clericalism in the Istoria civile del Regno di Napoli (1723) was directed. 4 The symbol of Rome, ancient and modern, served as an effective foil for Neapolitan intellectuals who believed that the development of good government in the Kingdom had been frustrated by the interference of outside powers.This interference was perceived as having broken the natural bond between the rulers of Naples and their subjects. The Spanish viceroys already had an established and especially reviled place in this history of misgovernment in Naples. 5 The arrival of Charles III in 1734 and the establishment of an autonomous monarchy in the Kingdom broke this history and brought a new optimism for the possibility of reform. As regalisti, the reformers of the end of the [End Page 642] eighteenth century continued their efforts to strengthen the jurisdictional rights of the now autonomous Bourbon monarchy against both the Papacy and the feudal nobility within the Kingdom. 6 Within these historiographical and political traditions Rome was clearly recognized as a recurring symbol of oppression and obstacle to Naples’s sovereignty, and late eighteenth-century historians looked back to a period before the arrival of the ancient Romans to find a native tradition which could inform contemporary reform and upon which a cultural identity could be constructed.Italian writers, from the Renaissance, had charted the early history of the various city-states, duchies, and kingdoms in the Italian peninsula relative to the rise and fall of ancient Rome. Despite the local patriotism which these histories expressed, Rome remained a powerful symbol and model of civilization, and it was from such a model that both politics and culture were discussed and compared in Europe. Consequently, interest in pre-Roman Italy most often related to the reconstruction of the origins and early history of Rome, and it was towards this which most antiquarians and historians worked in their attempts to understand the causes for its rise. 7 In any case antiquarian interest in pre-Roman... (shrink)

Inhalt: Michael Albrecht: Zum Wortgebrauch von 'Aufklarung' bei Johann Joachim Spalding. Mit einer Bibliographie der Schriften und zwei ungedruckten Voten Spaldings - Bruno Bianco: Schulbegriff und Weltbegriff der Philosophie in der Wiener Logik. Ein Beitrag zum Verstandnis von Kants Philosophie- und Wissenschaftsbegriff - Luigi Cataldi Madonna: Theorie und Kritik der Vernunft bei Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz - Claudio Cesa: Reformation statt Aufklarung. Hegel uber Friedrich den Grossen - George di Giovanni: Rehberg, Reinhold und C. C. E. Schmid uber Kant und die (...) moralische Freiheit - Jean Ecole: Christian Wolffs Metaphysik und die Scholastik - Gunter Gawlick: Theodizee fur den Alltag. Bemerkungen zur Rezeption von A. A. Sarasas Ars semper gaudendi in der deutschen Aufklarung - Volker Gerhardt: Prolegomena zum Begriff der Individualitat - Hansmichael Hohenegger: Der Weg der Wissenschaft und die Arbeitsteilung in der Philosophie. Zur Rolle der Teleologie in Kants Philosophieauffassung - Gerd Irrlitz: Antinomik bei Kant und was er von deren Aufklarung erwartete - Fumiyasu Ishikawa: Die 'ungesellige Geselligkeit' der Vernunftkritik. Kant als Polemiker - Soo Bae Kim: Ethik als Kasuistik. Kants Antwort auf die Garvesche Kritik - Lothar Kreimendahl: Hat Hume William Kings 'De origine mali' gelesen? Die Notizen zur Theodizee in den 'Early Memoranda' und ihre Quelle - Silvestro Marcucci: Kant, Gustav von Starck und die 'pythagorischen Ternen' - Pietro Pimpinella: 'Cognitio intuitiva' bei Wolff und Baumgarten - Horst Schropfer: Ludwig Martin Trager - ein fruher Anhanger der philosophischen Ideen und Bestrebungen Immanuel Kants - Clemens Schwaiger: Vollkommenheit als Moralprinzip bei Wolff, Baumgarten und Kant - Rainer Specht: John Lockes Lehre vom Allgemeinen - Katrin Tenenbaum: 'Was ist der Mensch?' Mannliche Universalitat und weibliche Partikularitat in der Anthropologie Kants - Robert Theis: Gottes Spur in der Welt? Kant uber den Optimismus um die Mitte der 1750er Jahre - Maria Jesus Vazquez Lobeiras: Kants Logik zwischen Tradition und Innovation - Verzeichnis der Schriften Norbert Hinskes. (shrink)

Johannes Müller von Königsberg (1436-1476), better known as Regiomontanus, is widely considered as the most influential astronomer and mathematician of 15th-century Europe. He was active as an astrologer and deemed astrology to be the queen of mathematical sciences. Despite this, Regiomontanus's astrological activity has yet to be fully explored. A brief examination of Regiomontanus's manuscripts shows that his astrological interests were accompanied by interests in the arts and in methods of prognostication. This article studies an unconventional astrological-chiromantical text, whose relevance (...) is threefold: a) it sheds new light on Regiomontanus's astrological interests; b) it enriches our knowledge of Regiomontanus's efforts to learn and understand Greek-Regiomontanus transcribed it into his own manuscript during his sojourn in Italy from 1460-1467; and c) it is the sole extant text in the Greek tradition that provides a system for prognostication from the study of a person's hand, the parts of which are considered as being under the domain of planets. The article provides an English translation of Regiomontanus's transcription, alongside a brief commentary, and studies the intellectual and historical context of that production through manuscript analysis. (shrink)

A striking feature of atrocities, as seen in genocides, civil wars or violence against certain racial and ethnic groups, is the attempt to dehumanize – to deny and strip human beings of their humanity. Yet the very nature of dehumanization remains relatively poorly understood. The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization is the first comprehensive and multidisciplinary reference source on the subject and an outstanding survey of the key concepts, issues and debates within dehumanization studies. Organized into four parts, the Handbook covers (...) the following key topics: (I) The history of dehumanization from Greek Antiquity to the Twentieth century, contextualizing the oscillating boundaries, dimensions, and hierarchies of humanity in the history of the ‘West’. (II) How dehumanization is contemporarily studied with respect to special contexts: as part of social psychology, as part of legal studies or literary studies, and how it connects to the idea of human rights, disability and eugenics, the question of animals, and the issue of moral standing. (III) How to tackle its complex facets, with respect to the perpetrator’s and the target’s perspective, metadehumanization and selfdehumanization, rehumanization, social death, status and interdependence, as well as the fear we show towards robots that become too human for us. (IV) Conceptual and epistemological questions on how to distinguish different forms of dehumanization and neighboring phenomena, on why dehumanization appears so paradoxical, and on its connection to hatred, essentialism, and perception. -- Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy, history, psychology, and anthropology this Handbook will also be of interest to those in related disciplines such as politics, international relations, criminology, legal studies, literary studies, gender studies, disability studies, or race and ethnic studies, as well as readers from social work, political activism, and public policy --- Table of Contents: Introduction. 1. Mapping dehumanization studies. – Maria Kronfeldner. Part I. Oscillating boundaries, dimensions, and hierarchies of humanity in historical contexts. 2. Dehumanization Before the Columbian exchange – Siep Stuurman. 3. 'Humanity' and its Limits in Early Modern European Thought – László Kontler. 4. Enlightenment Humanization and Dehumanization and the Orang-utan – Silvia Sebastiani. 5. Dehumanizing the Exotic in Living Human Exhibitions – Guido Abbattista. 6. Dehumanizing Strategies in Nazi Ideology and their Anthropological Context – Johannes Steizinger. 7. Theorizing the Inhumanity of Human Nature, 1955-1985 – Erika Lorraine Milam. Part II: Further special contexts of dehumanization. 8. The Social Psychology of Dehumanization – Nick Haslam. 9. Dehumanization and the Loss of Moral Standing – Edouard Machery. 10. Dehumanization and the Question of Animals – Alice Crary. 11. Dehumanization, Disability, and Eugenics – Robert A. Wilson. 12. Dehumanization and Human Rights – Marie-Luisa Frick. 13. Dehumanization by Law – Luigi Corrias. 14. Dehumanisation in Literature and the Figure of the Perpetrator – Andrea Timár. Part III: The complex facets of dehumanization. 15. Dehumanization and Social Death as Fundamentals of Racism – Wulf D. Hund. 16. How Status and Interdependence Explain Different Forms of Dehumanization – Susan T. Fiske. 17. Exploring Metadehumanization and Self-dehumanization from a Target Perspective – Stéphanie Demoulin, Pierre Maurage, Florence Stinglhamber. 18. The Dehumanization and Rehumanization of Refugees – Victoria M. Esses, Stelian Medianu, Alina Sutter. 19. Motivational and Cognitive Underpinnings of Fear of Social Robots that become ‘Too Human for Us’ – Maria Paola Paladino, Jeroen Vaes, Jolanda Jetten. Part IV: Conceptual and epistemological questions regarding dehumanization. 20. Objectification, Inferiorization and Projection in Phenomenological Research on Dehumanization – Sara Heinämaa and James Jardine. 21. Why Dehumanization is Distinct from Objectification – Mari Mikkola. 22. On Hatred and Dehumanization – Thomas Brudholm and Johannes Lang. 23. Dehumanization, the Problem of Humanity, and the Problem of Monstrosity – David Livingstone Smith. 24. Psychological Essentialism and Dehumanization – Maria Kronfeldner. 25. Could Dehumanization Be Perceptual? – Somogy Varga. (shrink)

This chapter provides an analysis of the work of Rita Segato and María Lugones’s assessment of Segato’s approach to gender and questions of decoloniality. The chapter examines the concepts of “patriarchy” and “gender” from within several critical paradigms among communities of color, including, specifically, indigenous and Afro-descendant communities within Abya Yala (a Puna term for the geographic lands of the Americas). Lugones proposes that terms of analysis such as “patriarchy” and “gender” undermine the complexity of the relations of power constituted (...) in and through coloniality, including specifically the racialization of gendered terms. European women were racialized, but colonized females were not. Retaining the use of gender as a category of analysis thereby leaves decolonial activists and scholars working toward coalitional struggle with indigenous and Afro-descedent communities unable to sufficiently affirm the embodied, erotic, intersubjective, and otherwise distinct modes of communal relations not bound by dimorphic gender categories that continue to exist among these communities. The conclusion of the chapter then traces Lugones’s contributions to decolonial feminism, responding to the concerns she raises in the previous sections. (shrink)

Combining the liberalism of Locke and the "civic humanism" of Republicanism, Mary Wollstonecraft explored the need of women for coed and equal education with men, economic independence whether married or not, and representation as citizens in the halls of government. In doing so, she foreshadowed and surpassed her much better known successor, John Stuart Mill. Ten feminist scholars prominent in the fields of political philosophy, constitutional and international law, rhetoric, literature, and psychology argue here that Wollstonecraft, by reason of the (...) scope and complexity of her thought, belongs in the "canon" of political philosophers along with Rousseau and Burke, her contemporaries, both of whom she strenuously engaged in political debate. These essays explore the many aspects of her thought that resound so tellingly to the modern woman, including her groundbreaking attempt to be completely self-sufficient. The final bibliographical essay outlines the changing interpretations of Wollstonecraft's work over the past two hundred years and evaluates her standing among political theorists today. Contributors are Maria J. Falco, Penny A. Weiss, Virginia Sapiro, Virginia L. Muller, Wendy Gunther-Canada, Carol H. Poston, Miriam Brody, Moira Ferguson, Louise Byer Miller, and Dorothy McBride Stetson. (shrink)

Written in broad strokes, this paper attempts to draw form Krishnamurti’s life and teachings, a hermeneutics of the human soul’s quest-journey towards transcendent wholeness. It begins with an attempt to frame K’s “process” (the name given to the painful ordeals in his youth that many believe were the catalyst responsible for his metamorphosis) through a variety of disciplines and cultural perspectives, some of which underscore the impasse of scientific objectivity and the limits of phenomenalist categories in general. It then explores (...) the procedures and conceits of present technologies of self-transformation via pseudomeditative body work and suggests that this subject can only be confirmed by an experience so intimately and subversively (to its own object) subjective that it risks undermining its own legitimacy in the face of our body-phobic Cartesian cultural ethos that holds sacrosanct the mind-body split. -/- It then explores the deeper origins and history of this problem from the pre-Socratics to the misconceptions of modern mathematics about the proper place of metaphor and paradox and underscores how present day false consciousness fails to discriminate between a “noumenal” world and its conditioned “phenomenal” counterfeit copy. It ends with a brief meditation on K’s process. (shrink)

En reseña de:Elósegui Itxaso, María (coord.), Los principios y la interpretación judicial de los derechos fundamentales. Homenaje a Robert Alexy en su 70 Aniversario. Zaragoza y Madrid, Fundación Manuel Giménez Abad y Marcial Pons, 2016.

This book brings together the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Jacques Lacan around their treatments of ‘astonishment,’ an experience of being struck by something that appears to be extraordinarily significant. Both thinkers have a central interest in the dissatisfaction with meaning that these experiences generate when we attempt to articulate them, to bring language to bear on them. Maria Balaska argues that this frustration and difficulty with meaning reveals a more fundamental characteristic of our sense-making capacities –namely, their groundlessness. (...) Instead of disappointment with language’s sense-making capacities, Balaska argues that Wittgenstein and Lacan can help us find in this revelation of meaning’s groundlessness an opportunity to acknowledge our own involvement in meaning, to creatively participate in it and thereby to enrich our forms of life with language. (shrink)