The hopes fostered by the end of the Cold War have been shattered, in this troubled beginning of the XXI century, both by a new kind of extreme violence, transnational terrorism, and-more recently-by a global economic downturn with no end yet in sight. Facing these challenges, world governance suffers from the inadequacy both of political theory and of institutions. This book invites us to go back to basics, i.e. to revisit the very foundations of political and moral theory, and reconsider (...) in the light of the present global predicament the relationship between ends and means, the concept of liberty, the precept of solidarity. Terrorism is a test case of our capacity to look beyond our narrow political options in order to attain the common goal of banning it legally, politically and morally. In order to do that, we will have to be able to define terrorism in a way that recognizes it as distinct from other forms, sometimes equally repulsive but different, of violence. It is an effort that requires at the same time ethical sensitivity and a new kind if non-ideological realism. The same effort that must allow us to build and strengthen new international institutions, from the economy to international criminal law. (shrink)

This special issue of _boundary 2_ revisits the 1960s through a global and multidisciplinary lens. It treats the decade as a global historical event, comprising decolonization, liberation, revolution, and movements against various establishments. Engaging questions of history and temporality, this issue illustrates that continued exploration and consideration of the 1960s around the world are crucial to a critical engagement with the present. Contributors to this issue represent a wide range of disciplines, from Latin American studies and sociology to political theory (...) and literary criticism. They bring a global perspective to the social and political legacy of the 1960s, touching on the Caribbean, Latin America, the former USSR, China, and France, as well as the United States. One contributor presents a reexamination of Latin American armed struggles in the 1960s that foregrounds the relatively positive influence of these struggles on present-day Latin American society and politics. Another contributor translates a seminal essay on José Martí written by one of Cuba’s foremost intellectuals in the mid-1960s, when the course of the Cuban revolution was still uncertain. Yet another contributor considers the forces that have sought to neutralize the struggles and negate the gains of the African American liberation movement in the 1960s American South. _Contributors_. John Beverley, Anthony Bogues, Christopher Connery, Roberto Fernández Retamar, Wlad Godzich, Boris Kagarlitsky, Nina Power, Hortense Spillers, Silvia D. Spitta, Alberto Toscano. (shrink)

We introduce the notion of quantum MV algebra (QMV algebra) as a generalization of MV algebras and we show that the class of all effects of any Hilbert space gives rise to an example of such a structure. We investigate some properties of QMV algebras and we prove that QMV algebras represent non-idempotent extensions of orthomodular lattices.

Management of different types of partnerships plays a decisive role in company performance. Complex business ventures, such as those created to serve low-income populations, usually include both cross- and same-sector partnerships. However, the initial diversity featured in these alliance portfolios diminishes as companies take their ventures up to scale. This article develops theoretical propositions about the evolution and configuration patterns of portfolios that include both cross- and same-sector partnerships. Two longitudinal case studies serve to illustrate the theoretical framework developed for (...) alliance portfolios that include both types of partnerships. Companies that create such portfolios adopt partnership strategies that follow paths also identified in the evolution of portfolios only made up of partnerships with other private firms: i.e., an evolution from adapting to shaping and exploiting strategies. (shrink)

The word “utopia” was coined by Thomas More and refers to the unreal and ideal state described in his Utopia, first published in 1516. Following the example of Plato’s Republic, More as well as other thinkers and writers of the 16th and 17th century reflect on the political relevance of utopia and provide unique accounts of ideal, just, and perfect “no places”, as paradigms and standards of social, political, and religious reformation of the coeval world. However, the political significance of (...) utopia relies on a basic anthropological feature, which incidentally is already underlined by More: the relationship between imagination and experience. This means that: 1) the human being’s “eidetic” freedom is characterised by the inseparable relationship between imagination, reflection, experience and action; 2) utopia is capable of disclosing the transformative and normative features related to the human being’s constitution; 3) utopia can be fruitfully used to motivate human will and mobilise support for human flourishing. In this article I endeavour to show that among contemporary philosophers it is Hans Jonas who most fully develops the anthropological significance of utopia by investigating the very relationship between imagination and experience, and by underlining how the eidetic and reflective constitution of the human being leads to ethics. As a further goal, I wish to highlight that the anthropological relevance of utopia can shed light on our imaginative and ambivalent nature, and provide a practical and educational basis for the achievement of an “ethics of images” for the current digital era. For this purpose I shall draw on the thinking of Marie-José Mondzain and Jean-Jacques Wunenburger, among other scholars. (shrink)

Unger shows how a changed practice of legal analysis can reshape the dominant institutions of representative democracy, market economy and free civil society.

Roberto Frega & Giovanni Maddelena – Can you recollect what the situation was concerning the study of pragmatism when you were in college? Richard J. Bernstein – I was an undergraduate at the University of Chicago from 1949 to 1951. At the time the “Hutchins College” was an unusual institution. The entire curriculum was fixed and it was organized around reading many of the great books of the Western tradition. From the time I arrived, I was reading Plato, Aristotle, (...) Galileo, Darwin, Herodotus... (shrink)

I reject the widely held view that Duhem's 1906 book La Théorie physique is a statement of instrumentalistic conventionalism, motivated by the scientific crisis at the end of the nineteenth century. By considering Duhem's historical context I show that his epistemological views were already formed before the crisis occured; that he consistently supported general thermodynamics against the new atomism; and that he rejected the epistemological views of the latter's philosophical supporters. In particular I show that Duhem rejected Poincaré's account of (...) scientific language, Le Roy's view that laws are definitions, and the conventionalist's use of simplicity as the criterion of theory choice. Duhem regarded most theory choices as decidable on empirical grounds, but made historical context the main determining factor in scientific change. (shrink)

The explanation of the phenomenon of Brownian motion, given by Einstein in 1905 and based on the kinetic–molecular conception of matter, is considered one of the fundamental pillars supporting atomism in its victorious struggle against phenomenological physics in the early years of this century. Despite the importance of the subject, there exists no specific study on it of sufficient depth. Generally speaking, most histories of physics repeat the following scheme: the discovery made by Robert Brown in 1827 , of the (...) continuous movement of small particles suspended in a fluid did not arouse interest for a long time. Finally, at the close of the century, Gouy's research brought it to the attention of the physicists. Gouy was convinced that Brownian motion constituted a clear demonstration of the existence of molecules in continuous movement. Nevertheless, he did not work out any mathematized theory that could be subjected to quantitative confirmation. All nineteenth-century research remained at the qualitative level and yet it was able to clarify some general characteristics of the phenomenon: the completely irregular, unceasing, motion of the particles is not produced by external causes. It does not depend on the nature of the particles but only on their size. The first significant measurements, carried out by Felix Exner in 1900, appeared to deny the possibility of reconciling the kinetic theory with Brownian motion. The discovery of the ultra-microscope then allowed Zsigmondy to perceive the presence of movements, which were completely analogous to Brown's, in the particles of the colloids; these movements were rather smaller in size than those invesigated up to then. Thus Zsigmondy aroused interest in the phenomenon. Finally, in 1905, Einstein succeeded in stating the mathematical laws governing the movements of particles on the basis of the principles of the kinetic–molecular theory. The following year Smoluchowski arrived at conclusions which corresponded to Einstein's. These laws received a first, rough confirmation in the years immediately following by the work of The Svedberg, Seddig and, for some historians, Henri. Then in 1908 Jean Perrin gave it a definitive confirmation. (shrink)

Ce travail expose et discute la réception de Hans Jonas effectuée au sein de la « science de l’image » (Bildwissenschaft). On présente, en premier lieu, le débat actuel sur l’image dans le cadre de cette Bildwissenschaft. En second lieu, on expose les principaux moments de la réception de Jonas dans ledit contexte et on analyse les positions fondamentales de Jonas à propos de l’image et de l’imagination. Enfin, on évalue les avancées et les limites de la réception de Jonas (...) et on prend en considération quelques positions jonassiennes qui peuvent représenter un apport au débat actuel sur l’image. (shrink)

El presente esfuerzo se encuentra animado por la factura de un análisis comparativo entre Ernst Cassirer y Eduardo Nicol en torno al fenómeno de la expresión. Ambos autores tienen en común la preocupación precisamente por el tema de la expresión. Sin embargo, desde el punto de vista de Cassirer, ésta posee dos notas sobresalientes, a saber, por un lado, la expresión queda constreñida al ámbito del lenguaje, y por otro, ésta posee diferentes estratos, por así decirlo, geológicos de evolución. Por (...) su parte en Eduardo Nicol, la expresión no es reductible al lenguaje, ni va a tener estratos geológicos, sino más bien va a poseer un matiz estrictamente ontológico, es decir, la expresión va a ser la manera como el hombre va intentar en todo momento paliar su insuficiencia ontológica. Nicol va esbozar una nueva imagen del conocimiento a partir precisamente de una metafísica de la expresión. (shrink)

The idea that what we perceive are tropes is anything but new. In fact, it was one of the reasons why the ontology of tropes was postulated in the first place. Still, the claim that we perceive tropes is invariably and purely based on pre-philosophical intuitions or, indirectly, either as a supporting argument for the advantages of content view when compared to the relational view of experience, or as a supporting argument in favor of the irreducible subjective character of experience. (...) In this paper, I take the content view for granted and argue in favor of what is herein referred to as the trope-content view of experience. My defense is a case of inference to the best explanation. The trope-content view can meet all reasonable desiderata on the experience and its content without assuming gaps or making the ad hoc assumption that there are different layers of content, or so shall I argue. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy called 'poisoning the well' (PTW). There are some forms of ad hominem varieties that are usually a response to an interlocutor's claims. Unlike them, PTW occurs when we illegitimately prime our audience with a pre‐emptive strike against, or with adverse information about, an argumentative opponent before the latter has had a chance to say anything in her own defense, or in defense of her point of view. This has (...) the insidious effect of creating a conceptual framework according to which the audience – and maybe even the interlocutor herself – will interpret her claims as 'fulfilling' and 'confirming' the presumptions buried inside this conceptual trap. Most of the time Karl Popper's criterion of falsifiability is still quite a useful tool and one that can help us gain a firmer understanding of PTW. (shrink)

La fenomenología muestra desde su comienzo mismo una tendencia teológica. Mientras que Husserl desarrolló una teología filosófica vinculada a la teleología infinita de la comunidad trascendental, Scheler elaboró un saber de salvación como participación en el ens a se. A su vez, Heidegger se refirió al último Dios como el comienzo de las inconmensurables posibilidades de nuestra historia. Sobre este trasfondo, que realza la excedencia de posibilidades, el giro teológico en la fenomenología reciente puede ser entendido como un intento de (...) centrar la demasía en reinos particulares como la intersubjetividad, la interioridad y el mundo, o bien en la condición de los fenómenos refiriéndolos a una lógica de la sobreabundancia o a una máxima saturación. (shrink)

Una lungo viaggio fra esteti, scrittori e poeti, dotti riformatori, critici letterari, linguisti, traduttologi up to date.

v. 1. Il "background" religioso e culturale.

Editorial do periódico Filosofia e Educação.

I propose a revision of the received lexicography of μεσότης with regard to Plato’s and Aristotle’s use of the word. In their works, μεσότης never indicates something that merely ‘lies in the middle’, and rather hints at what establishes a reason-grounded, ἀναλογία-like relationship between two extremes. Particularly controversial occurrences of the word μεσότης are connected to the introduction of Aristotle’s ethical and perceptual doctrines of the mean, in Nicomachean Ethics II and De Anima II.12. In this regard, I shall briefly (...) mention some promising directions of inquiry that seem worthy of further investigation. (shrink)

This paper aims to be a compendium on the significance of images as an effective mediator in communication. The research work has resulted from the assumption that it is possible to think of the image as an intrinsically ethical mediator in communication. It has been amply demonstrated that the use of images can reach a level within a communication that is inherently ethical, able to take effective account of an otherness. There cannot exist, in this sense, a communication that is (...) not an appeal, a search for the other, inside this kind of exchange, with full respect of the other’s essence. A communication that makes use of images in an ethical manner will also be more immediate and certainly more effective. In order to address these issues, this paper’s investigation has been deepened with the semiotics bibliography of French essayist Roland Barthes, with particular reference to those essays concerning a kind of poetics of the punctum, an analysis in relation to those images that are able to disrupt the relationship between observer and observed. (shrink)

Five different Latin American experiences help us to understand the impacts of corporate social responsibility on communities. We focus on communities composed of low-income populations to compare types of interventions, their main characteristics, spaces for community participation, and some results and impacts. Some of the findings indicate that (a) a company’s enlightened self-interest in its CSR program ensures its commitment to the program and the program’s sustainability; (b) community involvement from the outset in defining a project increases the probability of (...) success, since corporations cannot assume they understand the needs of a community by taking them at face value; (c) projects do not create untenable expectations in local communities when they consider the whole life cycle and the sustainability of the investment after an appropriate exit strategy is executed; and (d) financial resources are only part of the equation because corporations can have enormous impacts with limited financing if programs are well defined and supported. (shrink)

In quantum information and computation, entanglement is a resource. When combining concepts, the application of entanglement outside of micro-physical systems is an useful tool. We suggest new cognitive image-based tests that do not need to be translated. No prior knowledge of terms related to the concepts is required, therefore the choice is more intuitive. We examine the merging of two concepts that establish non-classical statistical correlation and present an entanglement-aware vector encoding algorithm. This research’s added value results in an automated (...) system that teaches artificial intelligence to identify and handle entangled concepts. (shrink)

This work aims at introducing a monographic issue about two regional branches of the Mafia produced by Italian university scholars who have been dealing with this topic for over twenty years. In the first part the author explains his viewpoint about the Cosa Nostra starting from his experience in first person as Public Prosecutor of the Italian Republic in Palermo, while in the second he accompanies the reader with a short introduction of the content of the various articles.

In this essay we will argue for the following theses: 1- know-how is not a form of practical knowledge devoid of propositional sense; 2- the relationship between each perception and the body itself is metaphysically contingent. 3- it is up to the brain to configure or to shape a physical body (Körper) into a living body (Leib) and not the other way around; 4- phenomenal externalism of enactivist nature, even in its mild form, is empirically implausible: the correlation between the (...) conscious character of sensory experience with spatiotemporal neuronal patterns is much more systematic and regular than with anything outside the brain. But in its radical form is entirely implausible and contra-intuitive: phenomenal duplicates are not necessarily duplicates of agency; in short, 5-we are our own brain that has a body, avatars, and artifacts, properly configured and molded by the brain, and not a body that has a brain among other essential organs. (shrink)

Studying Giles of Rome’s De ecclesiastica potestate, scholars usually focus their attention on the first part, where the Augustinian master argues in favor of his extreme theory of papal power. The present paper deals with the second part of the treatise, devoted to the relationship between the Church and temporal possessions. The main issues discussed in this part are therefore not political and ecclesiastical power, but ownership and poverty. The paper underlines in the first place the connection existing between Giles (...) of Rome’s treatment of these problems and the controversy between Secular and Mendicant clergy. Although originally a mendicant friar himself, Giles tries to avoid any interpretation of mendicant proverty that could undermine the right of the Church to exercise lordship over temporal goods. In the second place, the paper shoes how Giles’ account of the origin of private poverty is functional to his claim that the Church possesses all rights on temporal goods at the highest level. In this way, the Church is the sole authority that can grant a right of property, so that every human being depends on the Church also for his legitimate possession of temporal goods. (shrink)

In popular culture, Einstein’s shaggy mustaches and disheveled hairstyle have come to represent the image of physics itself. The most famous physicist of the twentieth century is mainly celebrated as the creator of relativity, intended as both special and general relativity theories. The ubiquitous E = mc2 equation comes hand in hand with pictures of Einstein’s thoughtful wrinkles. Insofar as quantum theory is concerned, Einstein is usually remembered as a strenuous opponent of quantum mechanics who rejected this successful theory on (...) epistemological grounds till the end of his life.In Einstein and the Quantum: The Quest of the Valiant Swabian Douglas Stone—a theoretical physicist specialized in the application of quantum mechanics to solid-state physics—pursues the clearly stated aim of challenging this conventional view. In fact, Einstein made momentous contributions to the quantum theory as the main proponent of novel notions that radically shook the foundat .. (shrink)

Writing his Moralis philosophia, Roger Bacon discussed issues relevant to medieval political discourse. He felt the need to appeal to the authority of Aristotle, but having no access to Aristotle’s Politica, he tried to reconstruct its main tenets through the writings of other thinkers, such as Avicenna and Alfarabi. The result of this attempt is a sketch of a political theory that goes mainly under the name of Aristotle but has little to do with the actual contents of the Politica. (...) In the following years, Bacon remained faithful to his first reconstruction. The author suggests that, with all probability, Bacon, never read the actual text of the Politica. the result is that Bacon’s contribution in this field was not influenced by Aristotle’s political masterpiece, but by other texts, in particular by Avicenna’s Philosophia prima. Such an assessment should not imply a negative judgement on Bacon. Rather, we should consider him among those authors who contributed to the rich diversity of medieval political thought independent of Aristotle’s Politica. (shrink)

Si es cierto que Tocqueville apreció grandes virtudes en el sistema democrático, tampoco dejó de señalar sus peligros. Con arreglo al diagnóstico de Tocqueville, sobre sus contemporáneos –y por ende sobre todos nosotros– actuarían incesantemente dos pasiones opuestas: la necesidad de ser conducidos y el deseo de ser libres. No sabiendo acabar con ninguna de tales inclinaciones contradictorias, nos esforzaríamos por satisfacer ambas a la vez., concibiendo un poder único, tutelar, todopoderoso, pero elegido por los ciudadanos. La dialéctica entre igualdad (...) y libertad representa el núcleo de sus inquietudes. Los trabajos reunidos aquí fueron debatidos en el Ateneo madrileño al cumplirse 150 años del fallecimiento de Tocqueville. Todos ellos nos invitan a revisitar las múltiples facetas de un autor imprescindible, si queremos revisar los avatares de la democracia y proceder a repensar cómo deberíamos actualizar sus reglas de juego. (Este volumen se inscribe dentro del Programa sobre “Cultura de la Legalidad” TRUST-CM liderado por José María Sauca). Diálogos con clásicos europeos La Colección Clásicos europeos (que dirige Roberto R. Aramayo) pretende rescatar del olvido algunos textos fundamentales para comprender mejor nuestro presente, al poner en valor la impronta que han legado a Europa y al mundo determinados pensadores europeos. Como complemento a esa colección de textos, este volumen sobre Tocqueville prosigue la serie de Diálogos con clásicos europeos, que quisiera cumplir en castellano un papel similar al jugado por los Companions filosóficos de Cambridge. Conviene seguir dialogando con ciertos autores que forman parte del entramado de nuestro acervo cultural, pues no en vano el diálogo es condición sine qua non del filosofar. (shrink)

In this paper we take as our starting point Greta Thunberg’s message to an audience of adults at a recent climate change summit: ‘This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!’ We take Thunberg at her word and endeavour to investigate what is wrong and how it might be wrong. Through this investigation we (...) consider how education may be implicated in the problem to which Thunberg alludes: a problem about both climate change and intergenerational change. We draw upon Hannah Arendt’s seminal work, ‘A Crisis in Education’, to consider how an ecological crisis coincides with an educational crisis symptomatic of an inversion of the traditional adult and child relationship in which education serves to introduce the young to the world – a public world, which is distinct from the ecological world. Arendt’s position on education, we argue, reveals concerns that movements like School Strike for Climate expose young people prematurely to the risks of indoctrination that attend adult, public life, and hinders their renewal of the world. Science too may add to these risks. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to reconsider the relationship between living body and artefacts in the perspective of Helmuth Plessner’s aesthesiology. According to the outcomes of Plessner’s aesthesiology, I present two main theses: 1) artefacts are not created, but rather discovered and expressed by human agency, and 2) the bodily dimension of the human being is the condition of the “discovery” of material and symbolic artefacts. To argue these theses I highlight a) the process of “somatisation” that engages the (...) Kantian transcendental model of subject in Plessner’s philosophical anthropology, b) Plessner’s rejection of the Kantian profile of Uexküll’s theory of Umwelt as an application of this transcendental model of subjectivity in the biological field, and c) the development in Plessner of a type of transcendental aesthetics, which can be linked with S. Crowell’s recent theory of perception. (shrink)