Umberto Eco -- Stephen Jay Gould -- Jean-Claude Carrière -- Jean Delumeau.

This article explores the concept of institution as the legal performance par excellence. It starts by giving an account of the perspective that Merleau-Ponty opens on the notion of institution and aims to show the connection with the concept of passivity. The central focus is on the dynamics of instituting: in order to deal with this concept and to see its implications in the field of philosophy, it will proceed by making Merleau-Ponty’s speculations dialogue with the research conducted in the (...) same year by Deleuze: Instincts et institutions. In passing, it will be necessary to show what is at stake in the debate on the concept of institution, and the short-circuits that can be avoided through a better conceptualisation. To this end, a brief reference will be made to the main anti-institutionalist currents that have left deep traces in the contemporary debate, and to the idea of institution that, more or less explicitly, is still at the heart of social sciences. Given these preliminary foundations, the project is to make the fundamental questions inherent to the concept of institution—its relationship with temporality, with history, as well as the “classic” contractualist alternative to the institution that is still at the heart of political philosophy—react with the research of Yan Thomas on the origin of ius and on law as the quintessential instituting technique. Finally, we will return to Merleau-Ponty to take his insights a bit further and show their potential in the contemporary debate on instituting praxis. (shrink)

An erudite and witty collection of Umberto Eco's essays on mass culture from the 1960s through the 1980s, including major pieces which have not been translated into English before. The discussion is framed by opposing characterizations of current intellectuals as apocalyptic and opposed to all mass culture, or as integrated intellectuals, so much a part of mass culture as to be unaware of serving it. Organized in four main parts, "Mass Culture: Apocalypse Postponed," "Mass Media and the Limits of (...) Communication," "The Rise and Fall of Counter-Cultures," and "In Search of Italian Genius," Eco looks at a variety of topics and cultural productions, including the world of Charlie Brown, distinctions between highbrow and lowbrow, the future of literacy, Chinese comic strips, whether countercultures exist, Fellini's Ginger and Fred, and the Italian genius industry. (shrink)

Antonio Rosmini is considered by many to be greatest Italian - or even European - thinker of the nineteenth century. But for christians he is also a saint. Here, marking ten years since his beatification in 2007, is an updated biography.

Essays discuss poetry, communication, television, form, aesthetics, bad taste, and art.

In preference aggregation a set of individuals express preferences over a set of alternatives, and these preferences have to be aggregated into a collective preference. When preferences are represented as orders, aggregation procedures are called social welfare functions. Classical results in social choice theory state that it is impossible to aggregate the preferences of a set of individuals under different natural sets of axiomatic conditions. We define a first-order language for social welfare functions and we give a complete axiomatisation for (...) this class, without having the number of individuals or alternatives specified in the language. We are able to express classical axiomatic requirements in our first-order language, giving formal axioms for three classical theorems of preference aggregation by Arrow, by Sen, and by Kirman and Sondermann. We explore to what extent such theorems can be formally derived from our axiomatisations, obtaining positive results for Sen’s Theorem and the Kirman-Sondermann Theorem. For the case of Arrow’s Theorem, which does not apply in the case of infinite societies, we have to resort to fixing the number of individuals with an additional axiom. In the long run, we hope that our approach to formalisation can serve as the basis for a fully automated proof of classical and new theorems in social choice theory. (shrink)

Il volume si presenta come un manuale di riferimento sul pensiero di Umberto Galimberti, una miscellanea di studi cui ha contribuito un alto numero di studiosi di diverse discipline. Questo libro indaga il lungo arco del lavoro galimbertiano: dal pensiero simbolico, dalla fenomenologia alla psichiatria, fino ad approdare alla riflessione sull'età della tecnica e alla consulenza filosofica.

La crisi dello strutturalismo e i confini della semiotica in un volume importante della produzione di Eco. Un libro che trova la sua continuazione ideale in 'Lector in fabula'.

This paper discusses an earlier emendation to fr. 54 GRF Funaioli from Varro's De bibliothecis and argues that, while the text et citro refers to cedar oil, it should not be emended to et cedro. A comparison with a passage from Pliny the Elder (HN 13.86) is used to support the view presented in the article.

"Eco wittily and enchantingly develops themes often touched on in his previous works, but he delves deeper into their complex nature... this collection can be read with pleasure by those unversed in semiotic theory." —Times Literary Supplement.

As the only book-length treatment of Aquinas's aesthetics available in English, this volume should interest philosophers, medievalists, historians, critics, and ...

The Calcolo geometrico (1888) seems to have been a turning point in the scientific career of Giuseppe Peano (1858?1932) because with this book he started publishing in logic. Looking for motivations of his early interests in the field one is naturally led to investigate the background of that book. Besides his previous work in mathematical analysis, methods and results of some Italian mathematicians and?above all?the spread of Grassmann's theories in Italy played a significant role: this point seems to have been (...) often underestimated by the historians of the subject. The connections between Calcolo geometrico and other related areas are also discussed. Peano's handwritten remarks and references taken from his own working copy of the Calcolo geometrico constitute the appendix of the paper. ?Simbolismo da alas ad mente de homo? (Peano 1913, 390). (shrink)

What is beauty? What is art? What is taste and fashion? Is beauty something to be observed coolly and rationally or is it something dangerously involving? So begins Umberto Eco's intriguing journey into the aesthetics of beauty, in which he explores the ever-changing concept of the beautiful from the ancient Greeks to today. While closely examining the development of the visual arts and drawing on works of literature from each era, Eco broadens his enquiries to consider a range of (...) concepts, including the idea of love, the unattainable woman, natural inspiration versus numeric formulas, and the continuing importance of ugliness, cruelty, and even the demonic. Professor Eco takes us from classical antiquity to the present day, dispelling many preconceptions along the way and concluding that the relevance of his research is urgent because we live in an age of great reverence for beauty, "an orgy of tolerance, the total syncretism and the absolute and unstoppable polytheism of Beauty." In this, his first illustrated book, Professor Eco offers a layered approach that includes a running narrative, abundant examples of painting and sculpture, and excerpts from writers and philosophers of each age, plus comparative tables. A true road map to the idea of beauty for any reader who wishes to journey into this wonderful realm with Eco's nimble mind as guide. (shrink)

In the course of the long debate on the nature and the classification of signs, from Boethius to Ockham, there are at least three lines of thought: the Stoic heritage, that influences Augustine, Abelard, Francis Bacon; the Aristotelian tradition, stemming from the commentaries on De Interpretatione; the discussion of the grammarians, from Priscian to the Modistae. Modern interpreters are frequently misled by the fact that the various authors regularly used the same terms. Such a homogeneous terminology, however, covers profound theoretical (...) differences. The aim of these essays is to show that the medieval theory of signs does not represent a unique body of semiotic notions: there are diverse and frequently alternative semiotic theories. This book thus represents an attempt to encourage further research on the still unrecognized variety of the semiotic approaches offered by the medieval philosophies of language. (shrink)