In this paper, I will try to analyze St. Augustine’s and Dante’s views towards history by showing how their visions can be articulated into particular models of history, i.e. a particular schema that describes the unfolding of history with its specific focal points, and to what extent this model differs from one author to another. If in Augustine’s case, by exploring his division of sacred history in component parts, that can be found throughout his work, I will argue (...) for a Christocentric model, in Dante’s case, by analyzing his work on political philosophy, De monarchia, I will argue for a teleological model of history. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to analyze the figure of the monarch presented in Dante's “De Monarchia”. The study of Dante's political project will provide us with an opportunity to see the shifts in intellectual environment of the late Middle Ages through the evolution or perhaps return from the theocratic model to the earlier pre-Christial concept of the ruler. The study of Dante's political lexicon will demonstrate the revival of the original meanings starting to challenge (...) and shift the consensus of the political philisophy at the time. (shrink)

The De Doctrina Christiana is one of Augustine's most important works on the classical tradition. Undertaken at the same time as the Confessions, is sheds light on the development of Augustine's thought, especially in the areas of ethics, hermeneutics, and sign-theory. What is most interesting, however, is its careful attempt to indicate precisely what elements of a classical education are valuable for a Christian, and how the precepts of Ciceronian rhetoric may be used to communicate Christian truth. An up-to-date translation (...) has long been necessary, for readers of Augustine and all who study the early church, or the classical tradition, or the history of literary criticism or Biblical interpretation. This completely new translation gives a close but stylish representation of Augustine's thought and expression. A succinct introduction and select bibliography embodies the results of recent work. (shrink)

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is one of the most deadly and costly chronic diseases in the world characterized by many breathing problems. The management of COPD and the prevention of exacerbations are a priority goals to improve the quality of life in patients affected by this illness. In addition, it is also crucial to improve the patients’ adherence to care which, in turn, depends on their knowledge and understanding of some factors such as the prescribed medical treatment, changes in (...) dailylife, and the process of breathing. In turn, the adherence to care leads to greater autonomy for the patient who is thus able to better manage his illness. Here we presented the application of the Model IARA in patients affected by COPD in order to achieve their autonomy in illness management which, in turn, leads to a better quality of life. IARA is an intervention program which improve the awareness and knowledge of patients with respect to both the disease and symptoms through health education. Moreover, through IARA the patients are encouraged to become more actively involved in COPD care process, also regarding drug therapy adherence. Using St. George's Respiratory Questionnaire combined with qualitative analysis, we demonstrated that IARA could be considered a useful approach in COPD management. (shrink)

Dante’s engagement with philosophy cannot be studied apart from his vocation as a writer, in which he sought to raise the level of public discourse by educating his countrymen and inspiring them to pursue happiness in the contemplative life. He was one of the most learned Italian laymen of his day, intimately familiar with Aristotelian logic and natural philosophy, theology, and classical literature. He is, of course,most famous for having written the Divine Comedy, but in his poetry as well (...) as his philosophical treatises and other writings, he freely mingles and synthesizes philosophical and theological language as well extensive references and allusions to scripture and classical and contemporary poetry. While his contributions to world literature and other artistic genres are universally acknowledged, his theological imagination has also remained influential from his own time to the present day. His philosophical legacy, by comparison, remains more difficult to assess, though his writings provide, at the very least, a powerful tool for the study of the landscape of late medieval and Renaissance philosophy. (shrink)

St. Augustine doesn't see in the crisis of the Pagan City the simple occasion of revenge, but the 'kairós' of an innovation that emerges among 'debris'. Without needing from the resource to the 'Phoenix', the Christian truth of the eternity, for Christ's Resurrection, communicates to the time limited and not repeat a new horizon. This 'new times' is apt to cross the things street and mutants, and so, the own 'death of the city' does not determine more 'death of man'. (...) The inspiration of The City of God is not a political projection in the way that we know in classical grec-latin culture. In the 'De Civitate Dei', on the contrary, Saint Augustine serves the Christian faith and of the Gospel to explain this mission of the city of God peregrine in time. (shrink)

St Augustine himself recognised in Retractationes that De Mendacio is a difficult text to understand, because its argument is both complex and dialectical. Understanding the treatise has been further complicated by St Thomas Aquinas’ reading of it in the light of Aristotle, and under the influence of a possibly flawed textual tradition. This article clarifies Augustine’s well known eight categories of lies to resituate them in the social experience of Augustine and his contemporaries. It shows that Augustine’s argument and exegesis (...) are strikingly exploratory and undogmatic. His hard-won conclusion is driven by a demanding understanding of sanctity. A synopsis of the argument of De Mendacio is appended. (shrink)

Este trabajo sostiene que Egidio Romano y Dante Alighieri han utilizado el Liber de Causis como fuentede sus tratados de filosofía política. Asimismo, ambos autores han trasladado al ámbito político el modelode causalidad neoplatónico para defender tesis opuestas respecto del problema de la autonomía de los poderesespiritual y temporal. Mientras que, para fundamentar la intervención directa del papa en los asuntosdel poder temporal, Egidio postula la anulación de las causas segundas que actúan sobre la realidad; en la teoríade (...) class='Hi'>Dante sobre el imperio, la no cancelación de los poderes intermedios entre el emperador y los súbditospermite establecer conceptualmente una cierta autonomía del poder temporal respecto del espiritual.This paper argues that the Liber de Causis was a source for both Egidio Romano`s and Dante Alighieri`s philosophical and political treatises. Both authors used a Neoplatonic model of causality in orderto sustein opposite theories on the relationship between temporal and spiritual powers. Egidio bases thedirect intervention of the pope in temporalibus on the annulment of the second causes which operate inCreation. On the contrary, in Dante`s political theory, the intermediary powers between the emperor and the subjects are precisely that which allows —from a theoretical point of view— a certain independence of the temporal power from the spiritual one. (shrink)

Exam of affinities and differences in the philosophy, of them qualified representatives of the Humanism of the XII and XIV centuries, John of Salisbury and Dante Alighieri respectively, through a compared study of Policraticus and De Monarchia; to the light of the secularization process of the culture and european thoughts at the end of the Medieval Age.

Introduction : "The idea of divine providence in Orosius, Augustine, and Dante" -- "Destined lands and chosen fathers: Virgil, Livy, and the Bible" -- "Orosius defends the Roman Empire" -- "Augustine's theology of history" -- "Dante's monarchia with and against Augustine" -- "Dante's Commedia and the ascent to incarnational history" -- Conclusion : "The hand of God".

In his last years, St. Augustine became impatient with the doctrinal questions and requests for advice on practical matters of ecclesiastical discipline frequently referred to in correspondence of his last decade. Scholars have often attributed his uncharacteristic reluctance to address these matters to the diminishing competence and energy of old age. This article demonstrates that his evident unwillingness to respond at length to such queries relates rather to his desire to sequester increased time for meditation. Throughout his Christian life, he (...) described and refined his practice of meditation; it gathered urgent importance as he neared death. Augustine’s lifelong search for “God and the soul,” articulated in his first writings, evolved through his meditation, changing from an intellectual effort to achieve a vision of God by the use of reason to a search for the truth of his own life. In meditation he sought to recall in detail God’s loving leading within the chaos and pain of his youthful desires and throughout his life. I explore his understanding of “God is love” from his earliest (extant) treatise, De beata uita (386 CE), his Easter sermons on First John (415 CE), to his Enchiridion (421 CE) as the core of his developing understanding of God’s activity in himself. (shrink)

The progressive publication -along the past two decades- of the courses taught by Heidegger in his first years in teaching has allowed the reconstruction of the process of creation of Being and Time , its multiple textual references and influences. Among these, St. Augustine's thought bears a prominent place, for which reason I intend to consider its noticeable presence in some of the key concepts in the work mentioned. The first to be considered is Sorge , with which Heidegger characterises (...) the fundamental ontological constitution of human existence. His first drafts emerged from the reflection upon the famous "inquietum cor nostrum" and the cura for the vita beata from Confessions X. Based on this same text Heidegger had offered a phenomenological interpretation of temptation, which constitutes one of the first elaborations of the so-called "fall", precisely one of the structural moments of the Sorge. Explicit references or suggestive analogies between both thinkers can also be appreciated between the explanation of "tempus" as "distentio animi" in Confessions XI and the heideggerian thesis of "temporality" as the basis of the constitution of human subjectivity; the road from the search of God to the exploration of the interiority of the one who looks for Him and the way back from the question about the "being" to the question about the one who understands the "being", in other no less significant cases.La progresiva publicación a lo largo de las últimas dos décadas de los cursos dictados por Heidegger durante sus primeros años de docencia ha permitido reconstruir el proceso de gestación de Ser y Tiempo , sus múltiples referencias textuales e influencias. Entre ellas, ocupa un lugar destacado el pensamiento agustiniano, por lo cual me propongo considerar aquí su fuerte presencia en algunos de los conceptos centrales de dicha obra. El primero a tener en cuenta es el de "Sorge" con el que Heidegger caracteriza la constitución ontológica fundamental del existir humano. Sus primeros esbozos habían surgido de la reflexión en torno al célebre "inquietum cor nostrum" y a la cura por la vita beata de Confesiones X. A partir de este mismo texto Heidegger había realizado también una interpretación fenomenológica de la tentación, que constituye una de las primeras elaboraciones de la llamada "caída", precisamente uno de los momentos estructurales de la "Sorge". Referencias explícitas o sugerentes analogías entre ambos pensadores pueden apreciarse también entre la explicación de Confesiones XI del "tempus" como "distentio animi" y la tesis heideggeriana de la "temporalidad" como fundamento de la constitución de la subjetividad humana; el tránsito desde la búsqueda de Dios a la exploración de la interioridad de aquel que lo busca y el retroceso desde la pregunta por el "ser" a la pregunta por el que comprende el "ser", entre otros casos no menos significativos. (shrink)

Examen de afinidades y diferencias en la filosofía de dos cualificados representantes del Humanismo del siglo XII y XIV, Juan de Salisbury y Dante Alighieri respectivamente, a partir de un estudio comparado del Policraticus y De Monarchia; a la luz del proceso de secularización de la cultura y pensamiento europeos a fines del Medievo.Exam of affinities and differences in the philosophy, of them qualified representatives of the Humanism of the XII and XIV centuries, John of Salisbury and (...) class='Hi'>Dante Alighieri respectively, through a compared study of Policraticus and De Monarchia; to the light of the secularization process of the culture and european thoughts at the end of the Medieval Age. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:INTELLIGO UT CREDAM: ST. AUGUSTINE'S CONFESSIONS* BAPTISM INTO the Catholic Church ended Augustine's Odyssey through the intellectual and spiritual seas of late antiquity. His Confessi.ons tells us how he joined the Manicheans, became attached to astrology, imbibed Aristotle, was attracted to the Academy, learned Epicureanism, discovered the Platonists, and finally came home to Christianity.1 From the first moment he read Cicero, then, Augustine became a seeker of wisdom; few (...) of humanity's questions and concerns failed to move him. His initial conversion to Manicheanism, indeed, was prompted by its alleged ability to give a satisfactory response to the questions raised by human experience. In the same way, his initial aversion to Christianity in part arose from its alleged inability to provide such an account. Still, the nature of Augustine's ultimate conversion to Christianity is not entirely clear. He certainly indicates that a properly tutored biblical faith is the only solution to those questions and concerns which so vexed him: " credo ut intelligam," as Anselm formulated Augustine's understanding. But what is the role of philosophical reflection in this? Does reason work only within the context of faith? Is it merely the scullery maid for explicating the understanding of divine revelation? Or does Augustine say or at least show that unaided human reason has another sphere of operation? Can human reason understand *Earlier versions of this paper were read at the Twentieth International Medieval Congress, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 11, 1985, and at the University of Dallas Augustine Colloquium, November 22, 1985. I am grateful to Dr. Michael Platt for his helpful comments and suggestions. 1 All references to the Confessions are from J. Gibb and W. Montgomery, The Confessions of Augustine (Cambridge, 1927)..JAMES LEHRBERGER, O. CIST. anything about God, human beings, and the universe before the advent of faith? While Augustinian scholarship has tended to stress the way in which philosophical thought. especially Neo-Platonism, operates within Christian faith, I hope to show that Augustine conceives the " faith and reason " relation in broader terms.2 More specifically, in this paper I hope to show that the Confessions presents reason itself, without revelation, as capable of assaying the possibility of any religious claim to 2 The problem of "faith and reason," or " authority and philosophy," in Augustine's thought has a history of critical analysis reaching back to the last century. The early discussions of this question have been traced by Sister Mary Patricia Garvey, in Saint Augustine: Christian or N ea-Platonist (Milwaukee, 1939), pp. 3-40, and more briefly by J. O'Meara, in St. A.ugustine, A.gainst the Academics, "Ancient Christian Writers," XU (Baltimore, 1950), pp. 19-22. The more recent discussions have failed to produce any consensus. H. A. Wolfson, in The Philosophy of the Church Fathers, I (Cambridge, 1956), pp. 127-140, sees Augustine as illustrating the patristic "double faith" against Manichean credulity. R. Cushman, in "Faith and Reason in the Thought of St. Augustine," Church History, 19, 1950), 271-294, awards the primacy to faith on the basis of the perversity of the will. P. Courcelle, in Recherches sur les Confessions de Saint Augustin (Paris, 1950), pp. 251-255, understands Augustine to progress from Neo-Platonism to Christianity without abandoning the former. R. Holte, in Beatitude et Sagesse: Saint Augustin et le probleme de la fin de l'homme dans la philosophie ancienne (Paris, 1962), pp. 373-386, considers the cooperation of reason and authority in Augustine's use of Christianity to confront the philosophic problems of his age. J. O'Meara, in The Young Augustine (New York, 1965), pp. 196197, admits a clarification in Augustine's thought but no basic change in his understanding of the primacy of faith over reason. R. O'Connell, in Saint Augusti.ne's Confessions: the Odyssey of a Soul (Cambridge, 1969), insists on a strong Neo-Platonic influence on Augustine's understanding of the human being as the " fallen soul." A. H. Armstrong, in " St. Augustine and Christian Platonism," Plotinian and Christian Studies (London, 1979), Ch. XI, 1-66, argues that the designation "Christian Platonist" is insufficient to characterize Augustine; the way in which Augustine takes up and transforms... (shrink)

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In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 349 Wittgenstein: From Mysticism to Ordinary Language: A Study of Viennese Positivism and the Thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein. By RUSSELL NIELI. SUNY Series in Philosophy. Albany; State University of New York Press, 1987. Pp. xvi + 261. $39.50 (cloth) ; $12.95 (paper). In his original and thought-provoking hook, Russell Nieli offers a well-documented interpretation of Wittgenstein's philosophical development from mysticism, which supposedly dominated the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), (...) to ordinary language philosophy, as expressed, for instance, in the posthumously published Philosophical Investigations (1953). According to Nieli, Wittgenstein's rejection of traditional metaphysics and theology in the Tractatus was grossly misunderstood by the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle, who missed the main point, namely Wittgenstein's emphasis on the mystical ascent toward higher reality (God) which "lay outside and beyond the world" (p. xi). Metaphysics was rejected by Wittgenstein-Nieli claims-because it leads to " God-debasing profanation or impropriety " (p. 83); it attempts to say what cannot he said hut only shown. The logical system of the Tractatus is then " a precise delineation of the profane world which is left behind in the transcendental encounter with the Sacred" (p. 98). Allegedly, such mystical, ekstatic experience cannot he articulated by any however perfected linguistic medium, which hopelessly remains an " inner-worldly " phenomenon. Of course, this application of via negativa must have been totally alien to the Humean-empiricist philosophy of Wittgenstein's teacher, B. Russell, as well as to any positivistically oriented philosophers operating in the tradition of the Enlightenment. Nieli supports his claims and comparisons by very rich documentary material drawn from the history of mystical experiences and doctrines, just as from the recent philosophical and psychological sources: from St. Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, St. John of Cross, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, W. James, R. Carnap, Heidegger, Sartre, R. D. Laing, and many others. In addition, he follows closely Wittgenstein's personal and intellectual history, as it has been revealed by various relevant memoirs, notebooks, and recollections. As expected, Wittgenstein's alleged mystico-religious experiences are given prominent coverage. Wittgenstein's puzzling transition from the Tractarian logical atomism and picture theory of language to the ordinary language philosophy is treated by Nieli through the analogy of the prophet turning into a rabbi (this is already suggested by the title of his Preface). According to this characterization, the early Wittgenstein-the prophet- " has descended the mountain to join the priests and rabbis below, as 850 BOOK REVIEWS the immediate pastoral needs of society have come to overshadow the former concern with maintaining the truth and purity of mystic theophany " (p. 183). Nieli draws an interesting comparison between the development of Wittgenstein's later philosophy and the actions of the Jewish council of Jamnia in 90 A. D. which declared the end of the age of prophecy and canonized sacred writings of the past as models for the prescribed way of living. Regarded as an accumulation and expression of life-experiences and life-attitudes of common people, ordinary language acquired for Wittgenstein a new status as scripture. After the devastating experiences of the First World War Wittgenstein made remarkable steps in an attempt to help common people as a teacher in small Austrian villages. He gave away his fortune and even thought about joining a monastery. Nieli persuasively reports on Wittgenstein 's affinities to L. N. Tolstoy as well as on Wittgenstein's deeply troubled soul, for which hard physical work and communication with plain folks were cherished means for escaping the threat of mental insanity. The late Wittgenstein's concern with language-games, rule following, his quasi-behaviorism and emphatic rejection of the so-called private language-all of this is then explicable, Nieli believes, by Wittgenstein's search for and endorsement of the normal, sane, standard, commonsensical. Is it possible that Wittgenstein's struggle with the " dark side " of his tormented soul, reflecting almost a Manichean-Gnostic position, played such a decisive role in his production of a highly influential therapeutic linguistic philosophy? Nieli's affirmative answer seems plausible, yet it would need further elaboration, in particular with respect to Freud and depth-psychology. Nieli's sympathetic treatment of Wittgenstein's philosophy comes to a rather abrupt... (shrink)

ABSTRACT As a reverse effect of constraining interpretation and limiting itself to the moral ordering of commerce defended by Aquinas, the Summa Theologica both motivated the enrichment of the Christian imaginary in narratives like Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy and Geoffrey Chaucer’s work, The Canterbury Tales. In the case of the Divine Comedy, it expanded the reflection on the categories of sinners related to money, and as regards The Canterbury Tales, it provided support for the construction of anti-models in (...) some of the framed narrative types of misers, simoniacs, and fraudsters. This article aims to present Aquinas’ instructions regarding the uses of money, juxtaposing, at times, with literary texts. For this purpose, biblical passages, commentators of the Catholic tradition Bible, and texts from economists are brought in as the Summa Theologica is analyzed. Theoretical thinkers of Christian thought, such as Augustine and Boethius, and economic thought, such as Molina and Robbins, have been used. (shrink)

NADOT M. Nursing Inquiry 2010; 17: 118–127The world’s first secular autonomous nursing school against the power of the churchesSecular healthcare practices were standardized well before the churches’ established their influence over the nursing profession. Indeed, such practices, resting on the tripartite axiom of domus, familia, hominem, were already established in hospitals during the middle ages. It was not until the last third of the eighteenth century that the Catholic Church imposed its culture on secular health institutions; the Protestant church followed (...) suit in 1836. In reaction to the encroachment of religious orders on civil society and the amalgam of religious denominations favored, for example, by the devout Florence Nightingale (supported, in 1854, by Sir Sidney Herbert, the influential Puseyite), it is on 20 July 1859 that the great Swiss nineteenth century pedagogue and recipient of the Académie française Gold Medal, Valérie de Gasparin-Boissier (1813–94), proposed a model of secular healthcare training for nurses that would become a counter-model set in opposition to religious health institutions. Forerunner of later schools, the world’s first secular autonomous Nursing School was founded in Lausanne, Switzerland. Its mission was to bring decisive changes to the statutes of nurses’ training, which were then still based on six principles not far removed from those of religious communities at the time: commitment for life, the Rule of St Augustine, obedience, celibacy, the renouncement of salary, and the uniform. (shrink)

This article takes as its point of departure the episode from Confessiones 4 in which a mature Augustine questions his earlier distraught reaction to the death of a friend. In order to place Augustine’s account of this episode within a broader context, I discuss, in the first part of the article, Augustine’s teaching on love of neighbor in De doctrina christiana. The second part of the article proposes an analogy between Augustine’s views of how one ought to be related to (...) one’s neighbor, and his views of how one ought to be related to the sacraments, and particularly to the Eucharist. By seeking to reconcile Augustine’s treatment of how we ought to love our neighbors with his treatment of the Eucharist, and of the Eschaton, I suggest how the reader might understand love of neighbor in Augustine’s thought as having both a temporary aspect and a lasting aspect. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the analysis of the “relationships” between philosophy and theology in Dante's works and, on the example of his work, the influence of ancient philosophy on medieval theology. The medieval theocratic tendencies, which were connected with the inheritance of St. Augustine and finally formed in the writings of Thomas Aquinas, can be interpreted in Dante's era as short-lived phenomena and dependent on the personal preferences of the Roman popes. In search of the purpose of (...) earthly existence, Dante immerses himself in the study of human nature. His reflections bear the stamp of long and painful experiences for the fate of his homeland, which was engulfed in civil strife. Dante undertakes to consider the ways that would allow the realization of human unity, that is, he sets out on the path of existential interpretation of man.The relevance of the study is determined by the problematic of the work itself, which examines the question of the individual's search for the path leading to the Truth, moral criteria that define human life and man as a being. In the “Divine Comedy” Dante Alighieri combined medieval scientific knowledge, ancient philosophy, elements of the worldview of Eastern philosophical schools, religious teachings of the Catholic Church, world and national history. Such a multitude of connected faces makes the poem difficult for a modern person to understand. The analysis of philosophical teachings found in Dante's works makes it possible to understand the dynamics of philosophical thought and to propose possible solutions to modern problems.The purpose of the article is to investigate the intellectual biography of an individual person, as well as philosophical-theological-literary thought in its historical development. The methodology of obtaining new knowledge is based on the comparative research method. (shrink)

Cimatti and Salzani have put together a rich collection of essays on animal studies that provides an exhaustive overview of how Italian contemporary philosophers are engaging with animal ethics, antispeciesism, posthumanism, ecofeminism, and biopolitics. This edited volume represents an important development in the “animal turn” in the humanities, particularly because it is published in English, allowing for a more efficient dialogue between “Italian theory” and philosophers around the world. This is, in fact, the first collection that will give an international (...) audience access to the rich and varied contribution of Italian contemporary philosophy in the burgeoning field of animal studies. It is also important to point out that all the authors—who are either well-established erudite thinkers or bright and innovative new voices in the panorama of Italian philosophy—effectively engage with recent and prominent scholarship in the fields of animal studies, posthumanism, and biopolitics, such as the work of Zizek, Esposito, Hardt, Calarco, Braidotti, and Wolfe.The volume is clearly intended for an academic audience: professors, scholars, and graduate students studying not only philosophy, Italian studies, environmental humanities, and animal ethics, but also political science, ethology, comparative literature, art history, and religious studies. In addition, the book could also find an audience in animal rights and environmental activists who are interested in the philosophical aspects and ethical and political implications of their actions.The division of the book into three sections (“Animality in the Italian Tradition,” “Animality in Perspective,” and “Fragments of a Contemporary Debate”) provides the reader a clear trajectory from the Italian philosophical tradition to the current debate on “animality.” In the first section, in fact, the authors engage with the rich and complex tradition of both Italian animal philosophy and advocacy. In the three essays that make up this section, the authors provide a compelling historical perspective of the anti-Cartesian and antidualistic aspects of Italian thought, tracing its pre-Cartesian origin and post-Cartesian developments through the work of Francis of Assisi, Dante Alighieri, Giordano Bruno, Giambattista Vico, and Giacomo Leopardi, among others. This section also includes essays outlining the development of animal bioethics in Italy, which emerged from the work of animal advocacy pioneer Aldo Capitini and continued to have an important impact on Italian culture thanks to the antispeciesist movement and debate, of which the third essay of this section provides an exhaustive intellectual history.The second section of the volume, comprised of six essays, provides an overall view of the ongoing philosophical debate on animality that traverses Italian posthumanism, feminism, theology, biopolitics, environmental ethics, and Marxist thought. Here the authors engage with some of the prominent voices in the contemporary Italian philosophical landscape, such as Giorgio Agamben, Roberto Esposito, Roberto Marchesini, Antonio Negri, Maria Turchetto, Adriana Caravero, Luisa Muraro, and Paolo De Benedetti. As pointed out by the editors in their introduction, this section does not intend to offer a complete account of the extensive and heterogenous exchanges occurring inside the Italian biological turn, but instead aims at investigating its most compelling approaches and effectively links them to the ongoing transnational debate.The rich historiography and analysis of the first two sections is complemented, in the third section of the volume, by the speculative approach that strongly characterizes all five final essays. Here we can find some of the most exciting and original developments in Italian scholarship on animal philosophy. This section is, therefore, the most effective in presenting the distinctive approach of contemporary Italian philosophers in rethinking animality and the human-animal interplay, in particular inside the historical and epistemological frame of the Anthropocene. For instance, Massimo Filippi explores how slaughterhouses have become exemplary spaces to investigate the calculation that adds, subtracts, multiplies, and divides humans and animals, which removes animality and excises the other, which forcefully bans any imagining of the monstrously other, of the other-than-human, and that produces, among others and besides It-Self, the Woman, the Homosexual, the Abnormal, the Migrant, the Criminal, and the Animal. (p. 225)Structuring his argument on the real and metaphorical “mathematics of sacrifice” at work in the slaughterhouse (p. 226), Filippi engages with the processes that enable human ontological privilege, with intraspecific and interspecific mechanisms of discrimination, and with philosophical, political, and ethical implications of meat production.For a second and final example, ethologist Roberto Marchesini—one of the most original and prominent voices in animal studies—focuses on redefining the paradigm of “animality.” In his essay, Marchesini questions behaviorism and the automatism of learning, key aspects that have been prominent in defining animality in many fields, from biology to philosophy. Building from his groundbreaking and extensive work in ethology and zooanthropology, he argues for an “elaborative model” of animality (animal as subject) against the fallacy of the “automatism-based model” (animal as mechanism): Subjectivity is the implicit condition of the animal being, an expressive dimension that may also be unconscious but that precedes from (i) a constructivist conception of behavior, which we could explain by considering it a work in progress, always open and never predetermined, but equally never imposed and nonetheless always co-factorial to external contributions, and (ii) a propositional view of the individual, or rather from being supported by verbal structures such as to delight, to fear, to want, which join themselves to modal predicates declined according to context, but which likewise render the individual the protagonist. (p. 247)Animal studies has established itself as one of the most exciting areas of research inside the biological turn of the humanities worldwide and, by collecting such a large number of compelling and provocative theories from Italian contemporary philosophy, the impact of Cimatti and Salzani's volume will be twofold: It will enrich and expand a developing discussion in the environmental humanities and in animal studies while establishing the centrality of Italian thought in such an important and, in the Anthropocene era, necessary debate. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: The Philosophical Assessment of Theology: Essays in Honour of Frederick C. Copleston. Edited by Gerard J. Hughes. Language, Meaning and God: Essays in Honour of Herbert McCabe OP. Edited by Brian Davies. God Matters. By Herbert McCabe. Philosophies of History: A Critical Essay. By Rolf Gruner. The ‘Phaedo’: A Platonic Labyrinth. By Ronna Burger. Lessing's ‘Ugly Ditch’: A Study of Theology and History. By Gordon E. Michalson, Jr. Peirce. By Christopher Hookway. Frege: Tradition and Influence. (...) Edited by Crispin Wright. The Private World. Selections from the Diario Íntimo and Selected Letters 1890–1936. By Miguel de Unamuno, translated by Anthony Kerrigan, Allen Lacy, Martin Nozick. A Third Collection: Papers by Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J. Edited by Frederick E. Crowe. Philosophical Papers. By Charles Taylor. 2 vols. Principles of Language and the Mind. By T.P. Waldron. The Principle of Double Effect: A Critical Appraisal of its Traditional Understanding and its Modern Reinterpretation. By L.I. Ugorji. Human Rights: Fact or Fancy By Henry B. Veatch. Enlightenment and Alienation: An Essay towards a Trinitarian Theology. By Colin Gunton. Only Human. By Don Cupitt. The Roots of the Modern Christian Tradition. Edited by E. Rpzanne Elder. ‘Africanische Theologie’: Darstellung und Dialog.. By Heribert Rücker. African Religions in Western Conceptual Schemes. By Emefie Ikenga Metuh. The Destiny of Man: Dagaare Beliefs in Dialogue with Christian Eschatology. By Edward Kuukure. The World in Between: Christian Healing and the Struggle for Spiritual Survival. By E. Milingo. Theology in Africa. By Kwesi A. Dickson. The Future of Anglican Theology. Edited by M. Darrol Bryant. Reconciling. By John Coventry. The Genesis of Faith: The Depth Theology of Abraham Joshua Heschel. By John C. Merkle. Anthropology in Theological Perspective. By Wolfhart Pannenberg. Contemporary Approaches to the Study of Religion. Volume II: The Social Sciences. Edited by Frank Whaling. American Sociology: Worldly Rejections of Religion and Their Directions. By Arthur J. Vidich and Stanford M. Lyman. A Critical Theory of Religion: The Frankfurt School. By Rudolf J. Siebert. The Anthropology of Evil. Edited by David Parkin. The Wealth of Christians. By Redmond Mullin. Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel. By Michael Fishbane. Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction. By Lawrence Boadt. Old Testament Theology: Its History and Development. By John H. Hayes and Frederick C. Prussner. God's Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea: Echoes of a Canaanite Myth in the Old Testament. By John Day. Law and Wisdom from Ben Sira to Paul. By Eckhard J. Schnabel. The Order of the Synoptics: Why Three Synoptic Gospels? By Bernard Orchard and Harold Riley. The Making of Mark. By J. Duncan M. Derrett. Argumentation bei Paulus. By Folker Siegert. Christians and the Military: The Early Experience. Edited by Robert J. Daly. Origienes' Eucharistielehre im Streit der Konfessionen; Die Auslegungsgeschichte seit der Reformation. By Lothar Lies. L'église de Cappadoce au IVe siècle d'après la correspondance de Basile de Césarée. By Benpit Gain Cave Monasteries of Byzantine Cappadocia. By Lyn Rodley. Augustine of Hippo, Selected Writings. Translated with an Introduction by Mary T. Clark. Wisdom from St Augustine. By Vernon J. Bourke. A History of Religious Ideas, Vol. 3: From Muhammad to the Age of Reforms. By Mircea Eliade. Les Lectionnaires Copies Annuels: Basse‐Egypte. By Ugo Zanetti. Humanism and Scholasticism in Late Medieval Germany. By James H. Overfield. Wyclif. By Anthony Kenny. The Lady and the Virgin: Image, Attitude and Experience in Twelfth Century France. By Penny Shine Gold. Unquiet Souls: Fourteenth‐Century Saints and Their Religious Milieu. By Richard Kieckhefer. Luther: Theologian for Catholics and Protestants. Edited by George Yule. La Réforme Catholique: Le Combat de Maldonat. By Paul Schmitt. Roman Catholicism in England: From the Elizabethan Settlement to the Second Vatican Council. By Edward Norman. The Life of David Brainerd. Edited by Norman Pettit. Nineteenth Century Religious Thought in the West. Edited by Ninian Smart, John Clayton, Patrick Sherry and Steven T. Katz The Significance of Jesus Christ in Asia. By Hans Staffner. Is the Virgin Mary Appearing at Medjugorje? By René Laurentin and Ljudevit Rupčić. Mary Queen of Peace: Is the Mother of God Appearing in Medjugorje? By Lucy Rooney and Robert Fancy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:On Dante, Hyperspheres, and the Curvature of the Medieval CosmosWilliam EggintonIn the course of his lectures on medieval literature at Oxford University in the 1950s C. S. Lewis would ask students to walk alone at night, gaze at the star-filled sky, and try to imagine how it might look to a walker in the Middle Ages. It would not likely have occurred to him that some forty years (...) later several astrophysicists would ask that their readers perform the same activity, at least figuratively—not, however, with the intention of experiencing medieval conceptions of the cosmos but rather in order to begin to imagine the shape of our own. One of the astrophysicists in question is Stanford Professor Emeritus Robert Osserman, whose 1995 book The Poetry of the Universe is an attempt to acquaint lay readers with what the most recent research suggests is the shape of the universe by leading them through a brief history of the mathematical and technological developments that made such boundary-breaking thought possible. Paradoxically, when it comes to trying to imagine that all-encompassing form which is derived from a four-dimensional mathematical model called a hypersphere, he turns not to ultra-modern computer-generated images nor to dry but technically accurate exegeses of mathematical formulae but rather to the verses of a fourteenth-century Italian poet, Dante Alighieri. His claim is that in the third canticle of the Divine Comedy, which details his ascent through the heavens, Dante describes the cosmos with astonishing precision as a hypersphere, exactly as modern physics has determined it to be.If the cosmology of the present makes use of Dante heuristically, however, it never asks the most obvious question: Why? Why does one need to go back to the fourteenth century for a poetic description of how the universe appears to modern science? Osserman assumes it to be a mere coincidence, and why should he not? What possible access would a thinker—a poet even—of the European Middle Ages have to the highest achievements of almost six centuries of subsequent thought? In answering this question, I am not proposing to naively interpret the past in our own image, claiming Dante to be a mathematical genius [End Page 195] before his time. I am, however, suggesting that there is an excellent explanation for why one must look to the fourteenth century for models of expression adequate to the challenges posed by nineteenth and twentieth-century advances in mathematics: namely, that in the course of the Scientific Revolution, wherein were laid the epistemological foundations for the discoveries of modern science, certain possibilities of thought and imagination were discarded, forgotten, and certain abilities were, if only temporarily, lost. The Middle Ages has long been painted as a period whose culture was hostile to free thought and new knowledge; perhaps it is now time to recognize that it was also a time in which phenomena could sustain mutually exclusive and contradictory explanations, when the battle between faith and science had not yet been conclusively won by either side, and when the efforts to bridge the stories they told could produce conceptual edifices whose mere possibility would be unthinkable only 200 years later. This essay is about one such conceptual edifice and how openness to its perspective allowed a poet to put into words what could not be imagined by his descendants, and what eludes us even today.The Shape of the Modern UniverseImagine that you are a completely flat creature, living happily in your two-dimensional world.1 As observers we are outside this world, and we can see you milling about with your flat friends, blissfully unaware of the uncharted regions one dimension away on either side of you. Now imagine that this plane is not flat—in the sense of rectilineal—as you might have created it in your mind, but rather is curved; in fact it is a sphere. Assuming that this sphere is large enough, there is no reason that you, an inhabitant of this surface, should be aware of its curvature. Even we, the three-dimensional observers, if close enough to the surface, would not recognize its curvature. One could conjecture, however... (shrink)

The paper reviews some of the links between the notion of “ultimate reality” and everyday life, mainly art, beauty, the creative processes in art, and citizenship. If, according to M. Heidegger, art reveals the truth of being (i.e., also of ultimate reality), then we may find some historical descriptions of creative processes that are very close to descriptions of ultimate reality. Three examples of these kinds of descriptions are discussed (Abhinavagupta, St. Augustine, F. Engels). The final aim is to show (...) how the interpretation of ultimate reality can contribute to a better understanding of the creative process in art. These considerations can also throw light on one particular aspect of civil life—the relations between everyday life and its final goals. If we are to gain an understanding of the relations between ultimate reality, art and civil life, then the disciplines of aesthetics, philosophy, history and anthropology, and cultural history should all contribute together. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Dante's Inferno as Poetic Revelation of Prophetic TruthWilliam FrankeIDante's Inferno demands to be understood as the culmination of a series of visits to the underworld in ancient epic tradition. Dante's most direct precedent is Aeneas's journey to meet his father in Hades, as told by Virgil in Book VI of the Aeneid. Aeneas's voyage is modeled in turn on Odysseus's encounter with shades of Hades in Book (...) XI of the Odyssey. The epic quest in each of these models pivots, in various ways, on a visit to the world of the dead, a discensus ad inferas, as a climactic episode at its center. However, Dante makes this episode the general framework of the whole poem: from beginning to end, Dante's poem represents a voyage through the world beyond the grave. In this respect, Dante's Inferno, and indeed the whole Divine Comedy, is conceived primarily as an expansion of the ancient epic motif of the katabasis or "going down" of the protagonist to the underworld for a revelation of his destiny from beyond the threshold of death. Like Virgil, Dante interprets history prophetically, finding in it the essential pattern of things to come. But this projection now reaches to an eschatological future beyond history altogether—to an uncannily dynamic realization of eternity.The other world that is visited by Dante asserts itself unequivocally as ultimate reality. It is not just some shadowy world of bloodless phantasms like the shades that approach Odysseus, nor is it vacuous and inane, as are Virgil's "houses void and empty realms of Dis" ("domos Ditis vacuas et inania regna," Aeneid VI.269). This "other" world shows up as even more vivid than the world of ordinary sense-perception by virtue of a strikingly realistic, indeed surrealistic imagery. Dante heightens the [End Page 252] mythological topos of the visit to the underworld that he inherited from Virgil and Homer to a level where it represents the true essence of life on this earth transposed into a transcendent dimension. The world of the dead is not just one in a series of episodes befalling the protagonist but rather the final and definitive experience that reveals the true meaning of all possible experiences and thereby the meaning of the world as a whole. This is perhaps implicit and incipient in Homer and Virgil, since the journey to the underworld in each case encloses a revelation that illuminates the meaning of everything else and orients the protagonist's subsequent life in the world up to his death. But Dante's other world is more than the place for a miraculous glimpse into the true meaning of life: it is itself the vera vita, the "true life."Of course, Virgil had interpreted the whole of Roman history through the optics of prophecy, but his prophetic history was directly disclosed only in privileged moments within his poem. Dante's entire poetic narrative transpires in an eschatological dimension of existence; it thereby aspires to reveal beyond the limits of history a full-blown vision of eternity—that is, history as projected into the eternal worlds that it prefigures. While at the level of content Dante expands the theme of a visit to the underworld into an entire poem of epic proportions, more deeply, at the level of genre and in terms of its mode, Dante's whole poem is prophetic in character. History and narrative become in themselves prophetic rather than only forming a background for prophecy and framing it.The descent to the world of the dead—a symbol for the place of revelation of the meaning of life—is a thematic issue that runs as a thread through each of the epic works that have been mentioned so far. But in Dante it becomes the central axis of a poem that emerges in its entirety as religious revelation, and Dante greatly intensifies the self-conscious grasp of this function of poetry. His work represents an unprecedentedly powerful reflection on poetry as revelation in the mode of prophecy, for the customary literary means of poetic expression are now revealed in their intrinsically prophetic potency. From the Aeneid Dante could learn... (shrink)

Článek se zaměřuje na některé aspekty Dantova spisu De monarchia, především na povahu Alighieriho realizace ideje celosvětové monarchie, jež je jedinou zárukou trvalého míru, který je představen jako nezbytný předpoklad plné realizace všech duchovních potencí lidského rodu jako takového. Ačkoliv Dantovy názory vykazují ovlivnění dobovým averroismem, opírá se ve filosofické argumentaci pro upřednostnění vlády jediného celosvětového vladaře o scholasticky interpretovanou aristotelskou metafyziku. Autor konfrontuje základní momenty Dantovy politické filosofie s názory Marsilia z Padovy a především s koncepcemi Tomáše Akvinského. (...) Ačkoliv Dante přispěl k posílení autonomie světského a vymanění se panovnické moci z nároků, jež si osobovalo dobové papežství, vytvořilo jeho zbožštění panovnické moci ideové předpoklady pro zbožštění státu a novodobý etatismus. The study focuses on aspects of Dante`s De monarchia — particularly on Alighieri`s conception of realization of the idea of universal monarchy as the only guarantee of permanent peace. This is presented as a necessary precondition for a full realization of all spiritual potentialities of the human kind as such. Although Dante`s views display an influence of contemporary Averroism, his philosophical argumentation in favour of the rule of one universal monarch is based on scholastic interpretations of Aristotelian metaphysics. Key moments of Dante`s philosophy are confronted with the views of Marsilius of Padua and, particularly, with the conceptions of Thomas Aquinas. It is then argued that Dante contributed to strengthening of the autonomy of the secular order and to liberation of monarchic rule from power claims of the contemporary papacy. At the same time, however, his deification of monarchic rule created preconditions for deification of the state and modern etatism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS 167 they regard as the Standard of every Thing, and which they will not submit to the superior Light of Revelation?" (p. 21) is the Hume we have come to accept, Hume the philosopher, Hume the foe of superstition and enthusiasm. Indeed, upon reading the Letter it seems that one must ask himself if Hume;s desire for this position--and the financial security it would offer--has not (...) affected his response. We know that in his later life Hume flatly refused to debate the multitude of clergymen who attacked his works. Not even so respectable a philosopher as Thomas Reid could elicit a public response from him. Why then did he reply to a philosophical scoundrel such as Wishart? Of course, one could suggest that Courts and Kames and perhaps others may have urged Hume to this reply in his own interest. But that, to me, is precisely the point: Why so unusual a concern in just this case, and why one which seems to undercut some of what are thought to be Hume's most daring and creative analyses? These are not rhetorical questions, but queries of importance to those who wish to see Hume and his work whole. The Letter ]rom a Gentleman does shed important light on the Treatise. Professor Mossner was quite correct in his surmise. But I believe that it raises more questions than it answers--and for this reason too we are fortunate that it has been added to the Hume bibliography. DAVZDFATE NORTON Edinburgh, Scotland THE HEGELIAN DANTE OF WILLIAM TORREY HARRIS William Torrey Harris is remembered as the foremost American exponent of Hegelianism; as founder of the Philosophical Society (1866); as editor of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy (1867-93); as U.S. Commissioner of Education (1889-1906); and as founder, with Miss Susan E. Blow, of the first permanent public school kindergarten in America. He also gave Melville Dewey the order of the ten subiect classes of his famous book classification system, and was co-founder of the Library Journal. Harris was born in North Killingsly, Connecticut in 1835. He studied at Phillips Andovcr Academy, and at Yale University, from which he withdrew in his junior year to accept a teaching position in St. Louis, Missouri in 1857. In St. Louis he met Henry C. Brockmeyer, a German immigrant and intellectual, and under his influence began a lifelong commitment to the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. He states that Hegel's philosophy became the center of all his thinking, but he nevertheless ~vent on to study the works of the other great thinkers, including those of Dante Alighieri. In 1883-84 he gave a series of lectures in St. Louis on Dante, and again in 1886 at the Concord School of Philosophy. These lectures were later expanded and published as The Spiritual Sense o] Dante's Divina Commedia, in Boston, by Houghton in 1889, and reissued in 1896. 168 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY The form of the Divina Commedia is a massive triadic structure of written words developed by exhaustive repetition of the terza rima. Structurally it is a development of the concept of The Trinity. The reader who knew not a single word of Italian could not escape having the Trinitarian notion hammered into his consciousness. Harris, however, was more concerned with meaning than form, and so he considered the triadic format a relatively trivial matter. Harris uses the Commedia to illustrate by imaginative representation the dialectic of the Holy Trinity to the American Protestant while explaining it with Hegelian logic. In summary he writes, "The doctrine of the divine form, or the self-activity of the absolute, involves the common nature of man and God, or God as divine human. This is the great central truth (of which the doctrine of the Trinity is the symbol) on which all modern civilization is built, and it is its open secret." Dante's Inferno corresponds with Hegel's logical and ontological level, called "Sein," the realm of abstract-unconscious-being-for-another. The Purgatory corresponds with his level "Wesen," the realm of mediated being in which the self is conscious of its being-in-and-for-another... (shrink)

We present in this article a discussion about gestures produced from the childhood entry in the interface with the experience of school time. It is a discussion woven inside the center for studies and research in education in particular, the times group of the faculty of education of the federal university of Juiz de Fora/MG. Throughout history, time has been discussed in various ways and still is, as well as childhood, conceptually constructed as a result of social, political, religious, and (...) cultural influences. In the attempt to "start thinking", we ask ourselves about what theoretical formulations have been based on childhood at the interface with school time in the field of education? We defend the central thesis that childhood, in a western cut, has been presented in productions still as social time. It is a recent movement to consider childhood as an event, experience, as opposed to the idea of childhood as the stage of life. As a result, considering infancy related to the tension between social time and time as intensity of the present, implies the need for pedagogical gestures that think this tension and, thus, consider the children of the current, narrowing their relations with the school, with knowledge and with life. To enlighten the issues sewn from our concerns, we chose authors such as Agamben, Leal, Bakhtin/Volochinov, Kohan, Vieira, Bento and Meneghel, Kramer, Borba, who focused on childhood and education. In order to problematize the time category, we dialogued with St. Augustine, Oliveira, Marques C. and Marques L, Skliar. The reading of our interlocutors and our listening with/to the school could subsidize the thought that we can invent ways not only imagined as possible with the perspective of reflecting time, childhood, experience and school on other bases. The interrogation, not the conviction, enables the sense of knowledge in the materiality of our practices, produced inside/outside the university. These are underprivileged subjects in curriculum matrices and disciplines that address the issue of children, their childhoods and temporalities. (shrink)

_A fresh, new translation of Augustine’s inaugural work as a Christian convert_ The first four works written by St. Augustine of Hippo after his conversion to Christianity have influenced prominent thinkers from Boethius to Bernard Lonergan. Usually called the Cassiciacum dialogues, these four works are a “literary triumph,” combining Ciceronian and neo-Platonic philosophy, Roman comedy and Vergilian poetry, and early Christian theology. They are also, arguably, Augustine’s most charming works, exhibiting his whimsical levity and ironic wryness. In this first dialogue, (...) Augustine and his interlocutors have retreated to a quiet country villa north of Milan to explore the history and teachings of Academic Skepticism. Augustine is both sympathetic to and critical of the Skeptics, eventually hypothesizing that they could not possibly have believed everything they taught. The dialogue serves as a fitting launch point for a knowledge of God and the soul, the overall subject of the Cassiciacum tetralogy. Michael Foley’s clear, precise and playful translations are accompanied by his brief, illuminating commentaries. (shrink)

Drawing primarily upon Dante’s three major philosophical treatises (De vulgari eloquentia, Convivio, and Monarchia), this essay explores how Dante’s ethico-political philosophy operates within the crucial tension between the phenomenology of time as the condition for the possibility of human moral development and yet also as, metaphysically speaking, the privation and imitation of eternity. I begin by showing that, in the De vulgari eloquentia, Dante’s understanding of the poetic and rhetorical function of the illustrious vernacular is tied (...) to his political philosophy in a way that depends upon a rich but ultimately unresolved tension between (a) the demand that only an atemporal, unchanging vernacular would be suitable for the tasks of universal monarchy and (b) the recognition that only a temporal, localized, and changing illustrious vernacular could possibly bring about the existence of the universal monarchy. In the second half of the essay, I will turn to Dante’s treatment of the providential grounding for the independence of spiritual and temporal authority in Convivio and Monarchia. I will argue that Dante’s understanding of divine providence provides common justification for the temporal and spiritual authorities whose independence he otherwise insists upon. Finally, drawing on the letter to Cangrande della Scala (the authorship of which is disputed), I will discuss how, for Dante, the providential ground for the legitimacy of temporal authority can only be discerned through the allegorical interpretation of history itself. In light of my discussion of these themes in Dante’s political philosophy and its dependence on his understanding of divine providence, I will conclude with a brief reflection on how Dante’s understanding of divine providence might help us better appreciate important aspects of the neglected legacy of Renaissance humanism in the history of early modern philosophy. (shrink)

IntroductionThe French New Right was born in 1968. It is not a political movement, but a think-tank and school of thought. For more than thirty years—in books and journals, colloquia and conferences, seminars and summer schools, etc.—it has attempted to formulate a metapolitical perspective. Metapolitics is not politics by other means. It is neither a “strategy” to impose intellectual hegemony, nor an attempt to discredit other possible attitudes or agendas. It rests solely on the premise that ideas play a fundamental (...) role in collective consciousness and, more generally, in human history. Through their works, Heraclitus, Aristotle, St. Augustine, St.…. (shrink)