The photographer and reformer Jacob Riis once wrote, “I have seen an armful of daisies keep the peace of a block better than a policeman and his club.” Riis was not alone in his belief that beauty could tame urban chaos, but are aesthetic experiences always a social good? Could aesthetics also inspire violent crime, working-class unrest, and racial murder? To answer these questions, Russ Castronovo turns to those who debated claims that art could democratize culture—civic reformers, anarchists, novelists, (...) civil rights activists, and college professors—to reveal that beauty provides unexpected occasions for radical, even revolutionary, political thinking. B eautiful Democracy explores the intersection of beauty and violence by examining university lectures and course materials on aesthetics from a century ago along with riots, acts of domestic terrorism, magic lantern exhibitions, and other public spectacles. Philosophical aesthetics, realist novels, urban photography, and black periodicals, Castronovo argues, inspired and instigated all sorts of collective social endeavors, from the progressive nature of tenement reform to the horrors of lynching. Discussing Jane Addams, W.E.B. Du Bois, Charlie Chaplin, William Dean Howells, and Riis as aesthetic theorists in the company of Kant and Schiller, Beautiful Democracy ultimately suggests that the distance separating academic thinking and popular wisdom about social transformation is narrower than we generally suppose. (shrink)

Abstract:There is a storied history of Native and Indigenous feminisms on Turtle Island (North America). We are fortunate that many of those stories birthed from an ancestral tradition of storytelling and survivance were captured in the canonical feminist anthology This Bridge Called My Back: Writings of Radical Women of Color. In celebration and commemoration of 40 years since This Bridge was first published we visit with three of the books original Native and Indigenous contributors–Chrystos, Max Wolf Valerio, and Jo (...) Carrillo–to recount old as well as new stories as they explore what Native and Indigenous feminisms mean to them and their continued work for Indigenous visibility. The conversation provides a unique intergenerational vision for conceptualizing contemporary Native and Indigenous feminisms all the while building upon the legacy and path set forth by amazing Native and Indigenous women trailblazers. (shrink)

The last decade has seen great progress in the study of the nature of crossmodal links in exogenous and endogenous spatial attention . Exogenous spatial cuing studies of human crossmodal attention and multisensory integration. In C. Spence, & J. Driver , Crossmodal space and crossmodal attention . Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.], for a recent review). A growing body of research now highlights the existence of robust crossmodal links between auditory, visual, and tactile spatial attention. However, until recently, studies of (...) exogenous and endogenous attention have proceeded relatively independently. In daily life, however, these two forms of attentional orienting continuously compete for the control of our attentional resources, and ultimately, our awareness. It is therefore critical to try and understand how exogenous and endogenous attention interact in both the unimodal context of the laboratory and the multisensory contexts that are more representative of everyday life. To date, progress in understanding the interaction between these two forms of orienting has primarily come from unimodal studies of visual attention. We therefore start by summarizing what has been learned from this large body of empirical research, before going on to review more recent studies that have started to investigate the interaction between endogenous and exogenous orienting in a multisensory setting. We also discuss the evidence suggesting that exogenous spatial orienting is not truly automatic, at least when assessed in a crossmodal context. Several possible models describing the interaction between endogenous and exogenous orienting are outlined and then evaluated in terms of the extant data. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Cumpa : 319–324, 2014) argues that a scientific turn in metaphysics requires the acceptance of a materialist criterion of fundamentality, according to which the most fundamental metaphysical category is the one that provides us with a reconciliation of the ordinary world and the physical universe. He concludes that the dominant category of substance cannot be the most fundamental category, for it does not satisfy this criterion of fundamentality. The most fundamental category is instead the category of (...) fact. Although convincing, the defense of factualism over substantialism offered by Cumpa takes into account the case of classical physics without considering the physical universe of quantum mechanics. My aim in this paper is to offer a completion to Cumpa’s factualist approach. To achieve my aim, I show that substances cannot provide a satisfactory account of the relationship between the ordinary world and the physical universe even in the case of quantum mechanics, whereas a factualist approach does. (shrink)

Mathematics reinterpreted as political practice and not just as theory constitutes an extraordinary exercise in democracy: like democracy, it is based on a system of rules, creates groups, and works on relationships. Like democracy, mathematics widens but doesn't nullify things. By studying mathematics one can understand many things about truth. For instance, the fact that truths are shared and therefore the principles of authority do not exist; the fact that all truths are absolute but transient because they depend on the (...) set of definitions and on the surrounding conditions. Solving a mathematical problem is an exercise in democracy because those who do not accept error and do not strive to understand the world are not able to change or govern it. In her polemical pamphlet Chiara Valerio pieces together a parallel between mathematics and democracy, two fields that do not succumb to the dictatorship of urgency--Translated from back cover. (shrink)

This contribution aims at discussing constitutional democracy in the age of populisms, by explaining how populist movements oppose liberal-democratic constitutionalism and by presenting the thesis of a so-called ‘populist constitutionalism’, as proposed by Mark Tushnet. In the first section, a general and analytic exploration of populist phenomena will be drawn, by focusing on the so-called thesis of a ‘populist’ constitutionalism. In the second part, Tushnet’s arguments for a populist constitutionalism will be presented, through the analysis of his two main contributions: (...) Taking the Constitution Away from the Courts, in which Tushnet develops his critique of legal constitutionalism and judicial review as an undemocratic power by unelected justices, and Authoritarian Constitutionalism, a recent article in which Tushnet distinguishes between ‘authoritarian’ and ‘populist’ definitions of constitutionalism. In conclusion, such arguments will be discussed, by proposing a critical response to Tushnet’s position and presenting some risks of a majoritarian and populist constitutional democracy. (shrink)

The renewed interest on political realism can offer a new reading of the traditional dichotomy between normative and realist conception of constitutionalism. The purpose of this article is to analyse this renewed discussion, especially by focusing on the relationship between “political realism” and “political constitutionalism,” in the light of some theorists and authors—such as Richard Bellamy and Jeremy Waldron. After a brief introduction in which political realism will be discussed, especially through Bernard Williams’ reinterpretation, the article proposes a rereading of (...) democratic constitutionalism from the classical dichotomy between normativism and realism in political theory. The focus will be set on three key issues: 1. Richard Bellamy’s constitutional theory in a realist perspective; 2. An insight of legal constitutionalism under a normative banner; 3. A brief conclusion in which the risks of a majoritarian and populist constitutionalism will be discussed. (shrink)

The paper is focused on the criticisms that theorists of political constitutionalism raise against legal constitutionalism, especially with regard to the idea of representation and political sovereignty. At the same time, the intention is to reconstruct the debate between legal and political constitutionalism in contemporary liberalism, starting from the so-called counter-majoritarian difficulty. This debate concerns two different approaches: the political one rejects the idea of judicial review by the Supreme Court because it may establish a possible rule of the judges (...) (Michelman; Dworkin). It defends the role of Parliament in constitutional matters, in contrast with the role of the Supreme Court, inasmuch as – according to them – it is not open to political participation. Parliament is considered the only place in which we can exercise our constitutional power and in which our rights could be adequately protected (Bellamy; Waldron; Tushnet; Goldoni). On the other hand, legal constitutionalism upholds the idea of judicial review, defending the role of the Supreme Court as “exemplar of public reason” (Rawls 1993). This article tries to answer to three fundamental questions about constitutional democracy under the banner of political liberalism: 1. What do we mean by counter-majoritarian difficulty? 2. What is the answer that legal and political model of constitutionalism give to this question? 3. What is the role of constitutional courts in democratic regimes and what is their authority within the State? (shrink)

We discuss models that attempt to provide an explanation for the violation of Bell inequalities at a distance in terms of hidden influences. These models reproduce the quantum correlations in most situations, but are restricted to produce local correlations in some configurations. The argument presented in (Bancal et al. Nat Phys 8:867, 2012) applies to all of these models, which can thus be proved to allow for faster-than-light communication. In other words, the signalling character of these models cannot remain hidden.

Quantum physics is often perceived as a weird and abstract theory, which physicists must use in order to make correct predictions. But many recent experiments have shown that the weirdness of the theory simply mirrors the weirdness of phenomena: it is Nature itself, and not only our description of it, that behaves in an astonishing way. This book selects those, among these typical quantum phenomena, whose rigorous description requires neither the formalism, nor an important background in physics.

The article introduces recursive ontology, a general ontology which aims to describe how being is organized and what are the processes that drive it. In order to answer those questions, I use a multidisciplinary approach that combines the theory of levels, philosophy and systems theory. The main claim of recursive ontology is that being is the product of a single recursive process of generation that builds up all of reality in a hierarchical fashion from fundamental physical particles to human societies. (...) To support this assumption, I provide the general laws and the basic principles of recursive ontology as well as a semi-formalised model of the theory based on a recursive generative grammar. Recursive ontology not only actively promotes a multidisciplinary investigation of reality, but also can be used as a general framework to develop future domain-specific theories. (shrink)

Chinese traditional characters share with Peirce’s existential graphs the fact of being endowed with an object-language that they describe through a nonlinear syntax and in an iconic way. Here iconicity is not restricted to images and perceptive similarity since diagrams and graphic metaphors are iconic too. The graphs are shown to be a borderland between Western traditional logic and Chinese traditional writing and culture, so the écart (Jullien’s concept for cultural distance) between characters and graphs is preserved even though graphs (...) break with the Western prejudice in favor of conventionality at the expense of iconicity in logical systems. The take-home lesson for the study of writing systems is to substitute the orality-writing duality with the interplay among orality, writing, and pictures thus shifting from a linguistic typology to a semiotic one. (shrink)

A escola de ensino de tempo integral tem assumido paulatinamente o lugar de referência para um novo modelo de educação pública nacional. Ancorada no desenvolvimento de competências, habilidades, conhecimentos específicos, atitudes e qualidades pessoais, elementos constitutivos do capital humano, ela tem fornecido aos estudantes uma formação cuja centralidade está no Projeto de Vida e na empresa si mesmo, a fim de responder as demandas de economias virtualizadas, que por sua vez, estão baseadas na competitividade e concorrência, condicionadas pelo forte processo (...) de financeirização do neoliberalismo. Partindo da análise de leis e documentos oficiais este artigo buscou conhecer e problematizar a operacionalização de novos dispositivos pela racionalidade neoliberal na formação de subjetividades no modelo de política pública educacional implantado em Pernambuco através Programa de Educação Integral (PEI) nas Escolas de Referência em ensino médio (EREMs), avaliando sua contribuição para formação de capital humano instrumentalizado pela lógica concorrencial e mão de obra precarizada. Utilizando-se dos conceitos da racionalidade neoliberal de Pierre Dardot e Christian Laval e de biopolítica de Michel Foucault, constatou-se que a implementação e execução do PEI operou uma ressignificação do Ensino Médio com o objetivo de formação de uma subjetividade específica, adaptada a flexibilidade produtiva da economia do conhecimento. Compreendeu-se que o Programa de Educação Integral produz uma escola utilitarista por essência, moldada conforme as diretrizes de padronização de sistemas de ensinos para países emergentes, determinadas por organizações internacionais como OCDE e Banco Mundial, atendendo a ordem global que diferencia países ricos e pobres. Conclui-se que apesar do discurso de inovação e modernidade o novo modelo de escola pública de ensino médio de tempo integral é um dispositivo biopolítico para forjar subjetividades dóceis. Ela é uma tecnologia de controle da governamentalidade neoliberal para formação de um capital humano precarizado e cidadanias fragilizadas. (shrink)

A Parábola dos Três Anéis é famosa em suas versões de Boccaccio e Lessing. Partilham a ideia fundamental de que apenas uma religião é verdadeira, mas a condição humana não nos permite saber qual é a verdadeira. É uma ideia inerentemente moderna enfatizar os limites do conhecimento humano enquanto se argumenta contra formas puras de ceticismo e relativismo. O resultado da parábola é a amizade em ambas as versões, mas a questão da verdade permanece no centro da estrutura conceitual subjacente (...) às histórias. Pelo contrário, os estudiosos passaram a dar muito mais relevância ao lado ético do diálogo, para que o relacionamento interpessoal não seja apenas o resultado de um processo cognitivo. O encontro pessoal deve ser anterior à questão da verdade. Esta nova abordagem é desafiada pela natureza do relacionamento com o outro. Deveria ser simétrico e mútuo? As opiniões sobre o diálogo inspiradas por Lévinas devem responder negativamente. Se quisermos manter a relevância da amizade, deveríamos preferir a ideia de diálogo de Buber. No nosso mundo, apesar disso, as desigualdades são tais que a simetria e a mutualidade não podem ser a condição padrão do diálogo e devemos ser antecipadamente responsáveis pelo outro (no sentido da servidão lévinasiana pelo outro). Uma mediação entre estes dois pontos de vista pode ser encontrada na noção de interindependência de Panikkar, como argumentarei. Na verdade, esta noção combina a interdependência presente na relação Eu-Tu de Buber e a independência ou separação sublinhada por Lévinas na relação com o outro entendida em termos de relação entre termos absolutos. (shrink)

La contaduría pública se ha vuelto una profesión importante en la actualidad, dado el cargo de confianza que asumen dentro de una institución al ser los emisores de información financiera relevante para la gerencia o la alta dirección. A su vez, es importante resaltar la gran cantidad de casos relacionados con la pérdida de valores y actos de corrupción que se presentan a diario en los medios de comunicación, la cual refleja la falta de ética de los profesionales a la (...) hora de ejercer sus funciones. En este contexto, se resalta el concepto de ética profesional, el cual garantiza el buen desempeño de un profesional bajo una serie de normas éticas que regulan su comportamiento. Por ello, el objetivo del presente artículo fue explorar el rol de la ética profesional en la formación y el ejercicio profesional del contador público. Los datos y consejos proporcionados por un contador definen en gran medida las decisiones tomadas respecto a la estructura financiera de una empresa u organización, razón por la cual un contador debe ser una persona íntegra e interesada en perseguir el interés general. Dadas las deficiencias existentes en la integridad ética y moral de los contadores, tanto universidades como empresas están implementando medidas para combatir este problema, buscando fortalecer la confianza de la población en la contaduría y prevenir que los futuros profesionales caigan en prácticas inmorales que dañan a la sociedad. (shrink)

Over the last 30 years, scholarship has produced countless books, essays, and articles on populism by investigating it from various perspectives and angles. This article seeks to contribute to this ongoing debate by offering a political-philosophical reconstruction of populism to define such a phenomenon from a multilateral perspective. The essay will proceed as follows: The first section will investigate populism from a purely political-philosophical position, while the second will discuss the constitutional effects of such a phenomenon, to define it mainly (...) as a form of anti-liberal and anti-judicial redefinition of democracy. Moreover, the first section will expose the dichotomy between the so-called left- and right-forms of the populist model and the populist threat to democracy, where the second will address populist constitutionalism and its antithetic relation to liberal constitutionalism.Footnote11 This article is the result of a period of research spent at the CAS-SEE UNIRI – Center for Advanced Studies of the University of Rijeka, Croatia. I wish to thank the Institute and its members for the opportunity to develop this research. Part of this research has been presented at the doctoral seminar of the Doctoral School of History and Philosophical-Social Sciences, University of Rome Tor Vergata. I wish to thank my colleagues Alessandro Ferrara, Matteo Bianchin, Tonino Griffero, Claudia Gina Hassan as well as the doctoral students of our programme, for comments and suggestions. (shrink)

In his tale entitled The Nameless City, Howard Phillips Lovecraft includes unspecified «paragraphs from the apocryphal nightmares of Damascius» among the «fragments» of the «cherished treasury of daemoniac lore» of the protagonist In the present essay, I suggest that there is a connection between this unusual reference and a note in the writer’s Commonplace Book, which refers to the notice by Photius on a lost work by Damascius that nowdays is generally referred to as Paradoxa and assumed to consist of (...) a variegated collection of extraordinary stories and facts. I, therefore, delineate a general presentation of the testimony by the Byzantine Patriarch, upon which I attempt to bring into focus the motivations that led the Providence to make the writer insert the name of Damascius in the fantastic plot of his story. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to investigate one of the most interesting and debated issues within the philosophical dis-cussion about politics: the metaphor of the body politic and its relation with the theory of sovereignty in contemporary political theory. After an opening section, which proposes a brief sketch about the origin of the body politic within phi-losophy (especially in Plato’s and Aristotle’s contributions), the article provides a theoretical insight of such a theory, by dealing with three of its definitions: (...) Kantorowicz’s “king’s two bodies”; Hobbes’ Leviathan and Schmitt’s theory of sovereignty. The article aims at presenting some arguments to de-fine these three perspectives, by examining – in the last sec-tion – how this paradigm has evolved into the more complex and articulated theory of the rule of law in contemporary democratic societies. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to discuss the logical form of exemplification. In order to achieve this goal, I analyze three views on the logical form of exemplification, namely, Gustav Bergmann's logical realism, Wilfrid Sellars's meta-linguistic expressivism, and Javier Cumpa's logical eliminativism. I start by examining the account advanced by Bergmann in his 1960 essay "Ineffability, Ontology, and Method," according to which the logical form of exemplification is represented by the juxtaposition of logical signs in a sentence. Then I (...) consider two alternatives to Bergmann's realism, namely, Sellars's meta-linguistic expressivism, according to which exemplification is a quasi-semantical relation that is accounted for at a meta-linguistic level; and Cumpa's molecular theory of exemplification—which I will call logical eliminativism—according to which exemplification is an eliminable constituent of facts. I conclude that neither the account advanced by Sellars nor the one provided by Cumpa is preferable to Bergmann's account of the logical form of exemplification, while offering a defense of the latter. (shrink)

Human beings possess external stores in which they put all sorts of goods to use them at some later time. In this paper we investigate this typically human adaptation using agent-based simulations. We show that the use of external stores explains many aspects of human life, allowing the agents to reduce their dependence on both the environment and the current state of their body and to be more efficient in extracting the energy contained in the environment. We analyse the spatial (...) behaviour of agents with external stores located in specific positions of the environment and we find that these agents tend to develop a sedentary life. We discuss how stores can be at the origin of many human mental and social phenomena such as the acquisition of a more extended temporal perspective, specialisation in producing different types of goods, and exchange of goods. (shrink)

We ordinarily believe that the inhabitants of the world - including ourselves - persist over time. Such an idea, however, has puzzled philosophers for centuries. How can we change and still be the same? More specifically, is there any constitutive condition of our identity over time? And if so, does this condition involve mental aspects, physical aspects, or something else? Or is rather personal identity primitive and unanalyzable, so that our persistence is nothing but a brute fact? This volume is (...) a collection of new essays from leading figures in the field analyzing the persistence of persons and the criteria of personal identity over time. It presents an extensive discussion of the most relevant views on personal identity in contemporary metaphysics and provides new treatments of the constitutive conditions of personal persistence. (shrink)

This article wants to propose some reflections on law, power and violence in contemporary political philosophy. My attention will be devoted to a critical analysis of some relevant contribution on these matters by prominent scholars and authors such as Alessandro Ferrara, Christoph Menke, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt. The first part is dedicated to a brief introduction in which the Alessandro Ferrara’s reading of Menke’s Law and Violence will be presented. The second part focuses its attention on the philosophical backgrounds of (...) violence, especially in its relation to liberty, power and government. In this case, the main focus is devoted to some of the classics in political philosophy: Niccolò Machiavelli; Thomas Hobbes; Hannah Arendt. The last two paragraphs are finally dedicated to further reflections on law and violence. On the one hand, giving a deeper description of Ferrara’s remarks on Menke’s work, especially in its connection to Rawlsian political liberalism. The last paragraph, on the other hand, proposes few brief and final reflections on law and violence. (shrink)

Reasonable disagreement is one of the most critical issues in contemporary political philosophy, especially within liberal-democratic constitutionalism. In emphasising the role of disagreement in the relationship between discourse and politics, many scholars such as Jeremy Waldron and Richard Bellamy – against the background of the Rawlsian idea of “reasonable pluralism” – defend the thesis of moral disagreement as the core of political deliberation. By refusing the idea of neutrality, these authors maintain that political discourse cannot be established by simply removing (...) our moral disagree- ment on political values. This essay engages the issue of “discourse and politics” by focusing on some relevant topics: the deliberative conception of democracy; the Rawlsian idea of public reason as a forum for deliberation and discourse; the fact of disagreement and its inuence on the deliberative process. In order to investigate such issues, the paper follows three ways. First, it aims at examining John Rawls’ idea of public reason, by presenting it as a tool to resolve reasonable disagreement in the context of constitutional essentials. The second section deals with reasonable disagreement from a liberal point of view, by trying to focus on some critical remarks which Bellamy raises against Rawlsian political lib- eralism. The third section briefly analyses Waldron’s arguments in defence of reasonable disagreement, as a critique of the deliberative model of democracy. From this perspective, Waldron presents deliberative democracy’s failure in considering political dissent and moral disagreement as two problematic aspects of democracy. (shrink)

This article deals with democratic constitutionalism in order to investigate the proper nature of constitutionalism, by wondering about its peculiarities and specific objects. Against this background, this essay aims at providing a paradigmatic definition of constitutional theory, for more specifically exploring its different undertones. For this reason, the first section of the article offers an analysis of the most relevant theoretical contributions within modern and contemporary constitutionalism. Thus, the first section explores Carl Schmitt’s, Hans Kelsen’s and Robert Dahl’s definition of (...) constitutional democracy. The second section then focuses with more attention on contemporary liberal-democratic constitutionalism, manly on one of the most debated issues: the dichotomy between legal and political models of constitutionalism, which goes hand in hand with a distinction between dualist and monistic accounts of democratic theory. The last section proposes an insight into the Italian constitutional system, by comparing it with the U.S. model, by especially focusing on the functioning and structure of the Constitutional Court compared to the U.S. Supreme Court. (shrink)

Il libro intende fornire una ricostruzione dettagliata del dibattito, oggi centrale all’interno della teoria politica e democratica, tra due modelli costituzionali speculari: da un lato il cosiddetto “modello Washington”, che ricalca il sistema istituzionale degli Stati Uniti, dall’altro il “modello Westminster”, che invece descrive l’ordinamento britannico. Il libro ricostruisce il panorama liberal-democratico, discutendo i temi chiave di alcuni tra i maggiori teorici del costituzionalismo contemporaneo, a cominciare da John Rawls, Bruce Ackerman e Richard Bellamy. Attraverso il confronto tra modello dualista (...) e modello monista della democrazia costituzionale, il libro mira a gettare uno sguardo sulle interpretazioni, ma soprattutto sulle prospettive del costituzionalismo democratico contemporaneo, che si trova oggi a fronteggiare le sfide e i pericoli derivanti dal populismo. (shrink)