Though it is well known that Hume composed his Treatise and the first version of his essay On Miracles during his stay in La Flèche, this fact has not received the attention it surely deserves. What may have induced a gentleman from Edinburgh to bury himself in the library of a Jesuit college? While every historian of early modern philosophy is quick to credit La Flèche with having provided Descartes’s education, Burton’s amazement that Hume himself never alludes to this unique (...) circumstance is still suggestive. I shall argue that what attracted Hume’s attention were the scholastic items contained in every good Jesuit library. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:Cardinal Sforza Pallavicino, SJ (1607–67), conceived a procedure for determining natural moral laws by voting under a veil of ignorance. Behind this veil, imagined possible people who are ignorant of their social position, personal characteristics, nation, and the historical period in which they live vote as equals. These possible people are asked to establish a moral law in pursuit of their own and collective happiness, which they are obligated by God to follow. This article discusses Pallavicino's innovative (...) approach to natural law and examines its reception in Southern Germany and (what is now) Austria. (shrink)

Heideggers Denken wird in den letzten Jahren von der sogenannten Tierphilosophie mit dem Vorwurf attackiert, es lasse dem animalischen Leben keinen Raum, ja entwerte es sogar. Die vorliegende Studie nimmt Heideggers gesamtes OEuvre in den Blick, um einen diametral entgegengesetzten Entwurf zu präsentieren. Hierzu wird die von Heidegger beanspruchte Differenz zwischen Mensch und Tier im Bezugssystem der ontologischen Differenz verortet und ausgelegt. Auf diese Weise lässt sich zeigen, dass sich Tiere von Menschen nicht unterscheiden, weil ihnen etwas fehlen würde, sondern (...) weil ihnen eine grundsätzlich andere Seinsweise eignet. Ausgehend von dieser Feststellung widmet sich die Autorin der Erkundung der Seinsweise des Lebens und zeigt auf, dass sich mit Heidegger über das Lebendige sprechen lässt, ohne es zu degradieren oder - was im gleichen Maße verfehlt wäre - es einer romantisierenden Verherrlichung zu unterziehen. Das Ergebnis ist ein Zugang zum tierischen Leben, der seiner Andersheit Rechnung trägt. In recent years, Heidegger's thought has been attacked by so-called animal philosophy with the accusation that it leaves no room for animal life, and even devalues it. The present study takes a look at Heidegger's entire work in order to present a diametrically opposed design. For this purpose, the difference Heidegger claims to exist between man and animal is located and interpreted within the frame of reference of ontological difference. In this way, it can be shown that animals do not differ from humans because they lack something, but because they are endowed with a fundamentally different mode of being. Starting from this observation, the author devotes herself to exploring the mode of being that is "life" and shows that with Heidegger it is possible to speak about the living without degrading it or - which would be equally mistaken - subjecting it to a romanticizing glorification. The result is an approach to animal life that takes its otherness into account. (shrink)

Die Frage nach dem Sinn des Begriffes des »Vorprädikativen« wurde innerhalb der Heideggerforschung bislang nur marginal behandelt. Dabei geht es um einen Schlüsselbegriff, der Heideggers gesamtes Denken, von den frühen Vorlesungen bis zu seinem Spätwerk, durchzieht. Die Beiträge des vorliegenden Sammelbandes gehen den vielfältigen Dimensionen des Vorprädikativen nach und untersuchen sie im Zusammenhang mit wichtigen Themen der Philosophie Heideggers.

In this article, I contend that Franco Basaglia’s work of reform in psychiatry can be read as a proposal for an affirmative biopolitical psychiatry. My claim is that Basaglia’s reform is to be regarded not only as a successful dismantling of the old disciplinary psychiatry but also as an ante litteram attempt at preventing what Pierangelo Di Vittorio refers to as a “biopolitical psychiatry.” Di Vittorio’s definition is notably limited, for he seems to overlook Foucault’s conceptual oscillations between affirmative biopolitics (...) and negative biopower. Di Vittorio’s biopolitical psychiatry does not bear any affirmative connotation, and his radically negative perspective should rather be considered as the exertion of biopower in psychiatry, as a negative involution of an affirmative biopolitical psychiatry. I propose to read Basaglia’s entire work of reform, which can be summarised by his famous motto “bracketing mental illness” – that is, disregarding the patient’s diagnosis – as an affirmative biopolitical psychiatry. I suggest that biopolitical psychiatry cannot be understood only in negative terms, as Di Vittorio does, and that Basaglia did not propose to oppose its emergence; rather, he actively fought against disciplinary psychiatry. Basaglia’s reform does not prevent psychiatry from being one of the dispositifs of biopolitics, that is, one of the possible means through which political power reaches the lives of people: for him, this prevention might be impossible or even undesirable. On the other hand, it would preclude psychiatry from becoming a dispositif of biopower, one that would ultimately bring life under such strict control that it would degenerate into a thanatopolitical implosion. (shrink)

How many logics do logical pluralists adopt, or are allowed to adopt, or ought to adopt, in arguing for their view? These metatheoretical questions lurk behind much of the discussion on logical pluralism, and have a direct bearing on normative issues concerning the choice of a correct logic and the characterization of valid reasoning. Still, they commonly receive just swift answers – if any. Our aim is to tackle these questions head on, by clarifying the range of possibilities that logical (...) pluralists have at their disposal when it comes to the metatheory of their position, and by spelling out which routes are advisable. We explore ramifications of all relevant responses to our question: no logic, a single logic, more than one logic. In the end, we express skepticism that any proposed answer is viable. This threatens the coherence of current and future versions of logical pluralism. (shrink)

A thriving literature has developed over logical and mathematical pluralism – i.e. the views that several rival logical and mathematical theories can be equally correct. These have unfortunately grown separate; instead, they both could gain a great deal by a closer interaction. Our aim is thus to present some novel forms of abstractionist mathematical pluralism which can be modeled on parallel ways of substantiating logical pluralism (also in connection with logical anti-exceptionalism). To do this, we start by discussing the Good (...) Company Problem for neo-logicists recently raised by Paolo Mancosu (2016), concerning the existence of rival abstractive definitions of cardinal number which are nonetheless equally able to reconstruct Peano Arithmetic. We survey Mancosu’s envisaged possible replies to this predicament, and suggest as a further path the adoption of some form of mathematical pluralism concerning abstraction principles. We then explore three possible ways of substantiating such pluralism—Conceptual Pluralism,Domain Pluralism,Pluralism about Criteria—showing how each of them can be related to analogous proposals in the philosophy of logic. We conclude by considering advantages, concerns, and theoretical ramifications for these varieties of mathematical pluralism. (shrink)

German MS. 2 is a previously unstudied armorial dating from the mid-sixteenth century. This article shows that it was produced in the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Younger for Elector August of Saxony, and that it was copied from an earlier armorial of c.1500 which was kept in Cranach’s workshop, probably as reference material. Much of the original content and structure of this ‘old armorial’ has been preserved in Rylands German 2. On this basis, the original armorial can be located (...) in a late fifteenth-century Upper German tradition of armorial manuscripts known as the ‘Bodensee’ group. It was also closely linked to the Habsburg dynasty, and appears to have been dedicated to Empress Bianca Maria Sforza. The armorial therefore opens significant new perspectives on the relationships between artists and heraldry and between women and heraldic knowledge, and on ways of visualising the Holy Roman Empire through heraldry. (shrink)

From the 1960s, mathematical and computational tools have been developed to arrive at human population trees from various kinds of serological and molecular data. Focusing on the work of the Italian-born population geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, I follow the practices of tree-building and mapping from the early blood-group studies to the current genetic admixture research. I argue that the visual language of the tree is paralleled in the narrative of the human diasporas, and I show how the tree was (...) actually mapped onto the surface of the earth. This visual and textual structure is mirrored in the liberal discourse of unity in diversity that has been criticized as running counter to the socio-political effects of human population genetics. From this perspective, one may ask how far the phylogenetic diagram in its various forms is a manifestation of the physics of power that according to Michel Foucault consists in mechanisms that analyse distributions, movements, series, combinations, and that uses instruments to render visible, to register, to differentiate and to compare. It is one among other disciplinary technologies that ensure the ordering of human diversity. In the case of intra-human phylogenetic trees, population samples and labels are one issue. Another is that the separated branches seem to show groups of people, who have in reality been interacting and converging, as isolated. Often based on so-called isolated peoples, molecular tree diagrams freeze a hierarchical kinship system that is meant to represent a state before the great historical population movements. (shrink)

Many attempts have been made to explain the rise of religious phenomena based on evolutionary models, which attempt to account for the way in which religion can constitute a useful system to increase the fitness of both the individual and the group. These models implicitly mean that beliefs are simply effective adaptations to the environment and in this sense they cannot be truly accepted by those who adhere to the religions in question. In this paper, I use the evolution of (...) culture model elaborated by Cavalli Sforza to propose an approach that can explain the change of institutionalized religions over a more limited time frame than the long times of biological evolution. This model could be heuristically effective in the study of religious phenomena and could also be applicable in terms of theology and philosophy of religion. Given the limits of space, I will only try to take a few steps in this direction, trying to answer some of the major questions that arise about such an approach. In particular, one may ask whether, unlike others, the evolution of culture model applied to religions can make it possible to put into brackets - or to remain agnostic about - the value and the truth of the beliefs and precepts of the religion which is studied. (shrink)

Questo articolo si sforza di ricollocare le teorie del care in seno alla teoria politica contemporanea, in cui si attesta un ritorno al tema della vulner­abi­li­tà corporea e morale come problema politico e morale in sé. Qui si distin­guono tre accezioni della parola vulnerabilità, accezioni che im­plicano ogni volta ragionamenti morali e legittimano ordini politici differenti: il modello del­la disponibilità alla ferita fisica e morale, quello dell’associazione stretta fra l’idea della vul­nerabilità e il concetto di dipendenza , e infine (...) la vulnerabilità come non possesso di sé.The article aims to reframe philosophical theories of care within con­tem­po­rary political theories, with particular respect to the idea of bodily and spi­ritual vulnerability. Here I will distinguish three meanings of the word vul­ne­rability, all connected to different moral reflections and political orders. The first meaning concerns the disposition toward physical and moral wounds; the second one explains the connection between vulnerability and de­pendence ; the third one defines vulnerability as a lack of self-possession. (shrink)

Celem artykułu jest ukazanie podstaw prawnych i przebiegu sporu prawnego między królami Polski a władcami Hiszpanii dotyczącego praw do neapolitańskiego dziedzictwa królowej Bony, na które składały się księstwa Bari i Rossano, majątek ruchomy oraz pożyczka udzielona przez Bonę królowi Hiszpanii w wysokości 430 tys. dukatów zabezpieczona na komorze celnej w Foggii (tzw. sumy neapolitańskie). Skomplikowany i trwający półtora wieku spór dynastyczny dokumentuje kilka tysięcy różnego typu źródeł rozsianych po archiwach całej Europy od Krakowa po Simancas i od Neapolu po Sztokholm. (...) Część z nich, zwłaszcza z lat 1548–1572, została opublikowana w polskich i włoskich wydawnictwach źródłowych. Całość działań królów polskich w sprawie odzyskania spadku Bony nie doczekała się nowoczesnego opracowania, a jedynym pełnym opracowaniem jest popularnonaukowa książka Klemensa Kanteckiego wydana w 1881 r. Temat ten pojawiał się na marginesie w wielu pracach dotyczących Bony i Zygmunta Augusta, dziejów dyplomacji za ostatniego Jagiellona oraz w pracach dotyczących relacji polsko-hiszpańskich w XVI i XVII w. Punktem wyjścia analizy jest ustalenie sytuacji prawnej, w jakiej znajdowały się neapolitańskie posiadłości królowej w momencie podejmowania przez nią decyzji o wyjeździe z Polski. Na tym tle wskazano najważniejsze elementy gry dyplomatycznej, jaką Bona prowadziła z cesarzem Karolem V i królem Filipem II, oraz uwarunkowania jej powrotu do Bari. Śmierć królowej w listopadzie 1557 r. i jej testament, w którym księstwa Bari i Rossano zapisywała Filipowi II, a Zygmunt August dziedziczył jedynie dobra ruchome i sumy neapolitańskie, otworzyły nowy etap w dziejach sporu polsko-hiszpańskiego. Na potrzeby rokowań mających na celu odzyskanie całego spadku po matce Zygmunt August zbudował wyjątkowo rozległą i dobrze funkcjonującą sieć dyplomatyczną. Niepowodzenia w odzyskaniu Bari i Rossano spowodowały, że król zdecydował się na mediację cesarza w toczonym sporze z królem Hiszpanii. Arbitraż stwarzał dla Zygmunta Augusta nową sytuację prawną i modyfikował sposób i zakres działania. Wydaje się, że król nie do końca uświadamiał sobie, w jak skomplikowany labirynt prawno-administracyjny wprowadza sprawę spadku po matce i wkracza w świat odmiennych obyczajów i mentalności. Ostatecznie królowi udało się odzyskać jedynie część majątku ruchomego i zachować prawo do sum neapolitańskich, które wraz ze śmiercią Anny Jagiellonki przeszły na własność Rzeczypospolitej. W konsekwencji kolejni królowie elekcyjni aż do czasu wojny o sukcesję hiszpańską zabiegali w Madrycie i Neapolu o regularną wypłatę odsetek z sum neapolitańskich. (shrink)

The idea that cultural evolution exhibits variation, competition, and inheritance and therefore can be studied by adjusting the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection is an attractive one. It has been argued by a number of authors (e.g., Campbell 1960; Monod 1970; Dawkins 1976; Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman 1981; Boyd and Richerson 1985; Durham 1991; Aunger 2002; Mesoudi et al. 2004) and pursued in a variety of ways, some (Dawkins and memeticists) staying close to the Darwinian model, others (e.g., (...) Boyd, Richerson, and their collaborators) being more innovative. We agree that there are relevant analogies between biological and cultural evolution and, in particular, that cultural items do exhibit variation, competition, and cumulative modification. On the other hand, we believe that a proper understanding of the mechanisms of cultural propagation drawing on the work of cognitive and social scientists (see Sperber and Hirschfeld 1999 for a review) contradicts the idea that culture exhibits inheritance in the strict sense needed for the theory of evolution by natural selection to apply straightforwardly to it. If so, it will take more than adjusting the Darwinian model to be faithful to the Darwinian inspiration. (shrink)

Linguists intuitions about language change can be captured by adynamical systems model derived from the dynamics of language acquisition.Rather than having to posit a separate model for diachronic change, as hassometimes been done by drawing on assumptions from population biology (cf.Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman, 1973; 1981; Kroch, 1990), this new modeldispenses with these independent assumptions by showing how the behavior ofindividual language learners leads to emergent, global populationcharacteristics of linguistic communities over several generations. As thesimplest case, we formalize the example (...) of two grammars and show that eventhis situation leads directly to a nonlinear (quadratic) dynamical system.We study this one parameter model in a variety of situations for differentkinds of acquisition algorithms and maturational times, showing howdifferent learning theories can have very different evolutionaryconsequences. This allows us to formulate an evolutionary criterion for theadequacy of grammatical and learning theories. An application of thecomputational model to the historical loss of Verb Second from Old French toModern French is described showing how otherwise adequate grammaticaltheories might fail the evolutionary criterion. (shrink)