The U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling triggered a global debate about access to abortion and the legislative models governing it. In the United States, there was a sudden reversal of federal guidance about pregnancy termination that is unprecedented in Western and high-income countries. The strong polarization on the issue of abortion and the difficulty of finding a point of compromise lead one to consider the experiences of countries that have had different paths. Italy stands as a candidate for being a (...) partially alternative model because it allows abortion up to 12 weeks, but without considering it a subjective right. The legislation in place since 1978 aims to balance the interests of the fetus and those of the woman. An issue often raised concerning Italian law is that of conscientious objection granted to doctors. Many gynecologists declare themselves objectors, and this makes access to abortion more difficult in some regions of Italy. After discussing this issue and envisaging different ways to deal with it, the article concludes by highlighting new dilemmas about a possible divorce between the law and medical ethics in different directions and offers some avenues to begin setting up a response. (shrink)

Research in the fields of pragmatics has highlighted important differences in speech act realisation strategies and the perception of contextual variables across lingua-cultures. This particularly applies for requests, which are potentially face-threating acts and important expressions of cultural behaviour, as their performance is influenced by culturally-embedded perspectives on rights and obligations. Although some languages have been widely investigated in terms of request realisation, such as English, little research has been done on Italian. This study examines request realisation strategies in (...) Italian, in terms of Head Acts and request perspective, and the impact of the sociopragmatic factors of social distance and weight of imposition of the request on strategy choice amongst eight Italian speakers, by means of open-ended roleplays. The data was analysed by using a coding scheme based on Blum-Kulka and Olshtain and revealed that the Italian speakers where more influenced by social distance, which in turn impacted on the choice of request perspective. They were shown to prefer using hearer-orientation, which reflected in the verb conjugation of the Head Acts, since this perspective allows them to do relational work with the hearer, by either addressing the recipient with the familiar tu or with the formal lei. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:194 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY and properly, in a consideration of Bradley, although it is a little like citing Bradley in his own behalf. In all, Mr. Saxena's book is carefully researched and judicious, selecting Bradley's chief metaphysical themes for explication and defence. As one slight criticism: Bradley's doctrine of truth is treated as coherence, which it indeed was on the level of reality; but he dealt with truth quite (...) differently in immediate experience and on the level of appearance (elaborating those levels in his Essays on Truth and Reality), and hia metaphysics would appear richer if those theories of truth were discussed and applied to their appropriate realms. It~J~ Ross Scripps College Filosofia e SLoria nel Pensiero Crociano. By Adriano Bausola. (Milano: SocietA editrici Vitae Pensiero, 1965. Pp. 280. Paper. L. 4~500.) Etica e Politica nel Pensiero dl Benedetto Croce. (Milano: SocietA editrici Vitae Pensiero, 1966. Pp. 265. Paper. L 3,500.) Theee two volumes examine respectively Croce's doctrines of the theoretic and of the practical spheres of experience and thus treat of many of the main tenets of Croce's entire philosophy. For within these spheres, Adriano Bausola critically discusses important views which occur in the areas of logic, gnoseology, theory of history, as well as in ethics, economic and political doctrine. The scope of Bausola's treatment is in accord with Croce's own approach to philosophy, since strictly speaking, neither the theoretic nor the practical sphere can be correctly understood in abstraction from the other. Moreover, in his treatment of Croce's view, Bausola frequently discusses the criticisms of other contemporary Italian Crocean critics,as for example, of Gentile, Guido Calogero and Ugo Spirito, and this method of exposition has the advantages of making Croce's own position clear and of giving us some idea of very recent Italian philosophy. According to Bausola, the essential character of Croce's philosophy is shown in his rejection of every view which admits of transcendent experience or of abstract ideas. Thus, Filosofia e Storia critically traces this rejection as it occurs throughout the theoretic sphere of experience and attempts to make explicit the "positive" Crocean doctrine which accompanies his denial of the transcendent and of the abstract. Here Bausola concludes that despite Croce's claim to the contrary, there is more than one "logical" reason for Croce's refutation of the transcendent. Among these reasons are Croce's view of the identity of subject and object, his refutation of every mediate cognitive process, of every inference, and of every experience which issupposed to be neither theoretic nor practical. Chapter i ol Filosofia c Storia discusses the foundation of Croce's philosophy which Bausola maintains should be described as "spiritualism" (spiritualismo) rather than as "idealism" (idealismo), since for Croce, reality is fundamentally "spirit" and not "pure thought." Chapters 11 and 111 treat specifically of epistemic problems, such as, the nature of philosophic or pure concepts and the judgments to which they give rise, the nature of scientific or pseudoconcepts and the relations between philosophy and science. Chapters IV and v treat of Croce's view of the nature of "the real" and of the relations between the categories---their autonomy and their unity. Here Bausola attempts to show that Croce's transcendental deduction of the four forms of experience (aesthetic, logical, economic and ethical) has failed and that his demonstration shows merely that the distinction between these forms are empirical. Chapter IV then discusses Croce's view of philosophy as history. The next three chapters present a critical analysis of Croce's doctrine of error which forms one of his most interesting contributions to philosophy. Here Bausola's task is not to consist of an explication of the central Crocean view on error, but rather of an examination of its "concrete" development and its validity. At the outset of his discussion, Bausola asks: Does error ever result from non-practical as well as from practical acts? BOOK REVIEWS 195 Does error invariably result from conscious volition? And Bausola tries to show contrary to Croce% view that there are instances of error which do not involve conscious volition, but that Croce% denial of such instances follows... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:80 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Gilson often contrasts the God of Aquinas, who is esse, with the God of Augustine, who is essentia. This difference in terminology is taken as emphasizing the essentialist character of Augustine's thought. However, Professor Anderson maintains that essentia should not be regarded as equivalent to the Thomistic notion of essence. F,ssentia is derived, according to Augustine, from esse and is most equivalent to the Thomistic (...) ens. Hence, according to Anderson, Augustine was not ignoring or slighting the factor of existence when he referred to God as essentia. Once again, Anderson's point is valid only if we grant that esse meant "to exisff' for Augustine and could not be interpreted as meaning "to be unchangeable." That there is any doubt that esse meant "to exist" for Augustine seems to be ruled out by Anderson (p. 40). One of Anderson's most interesting theses is the suggestion that the Augustinian distinction between being and non-being is substantially the same as the Thomistie distinction between essence and existence. For Augustine God alone is esse itself, while all creatures are limited by non-esse, i.e., they share in both esse and non-esse. Similarly, for Aquinas only God is esse itself, while all creatures merely possess esse. It is evident that for both philosophers the distinction between what is esse itself and what is not csse itself provides an important way of distinguishing between God and creatures. How much more alike the two distinctions are will depend on how the notion of esse is interpreted by Augustine and Aquinas. One problem is bound to arise: If for Aquinas the "proportionality" of being is to be found in the relationship between esse and essentia in ens, while for Augustine essentia ---- ens, then either Augustine does not have a Thomistic notion of the analogy of being or it must be shown what Augustine 's equivalent for the Thomistic essentia would be. Non-being does not seem adequate for such a role. A good portion of Professor Anderson's essay is devoted to discussing Augustinian metaphysics precisely in the areas in which Gilson claims that Augustine's essentialism creates problems for Augustine the Christian. These include the problems of proving the existence of God, creation and the nature of participation. It is pointed out that many of Augustine's remarks which have frequently been supposed to be of Neoplatonic inspiration are in fact based upon Scripture as far as the Saint is concerned. Although I find some portions of his essay obscure, on the whole I should say that Professor Anderson's study is quite exciting and a considerable challenge to those who are tempted to draw striking contrasts between the "essentialism" of Augustine and the "existentialism" of Aquinas. BRUCE GARSIDE McGiU University Eight Philosophers o] the Italian Renaissance. By Paul Oskar Kristeller. (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1964.Pp. ix -~ 194.$5.00.) The eight chapters constituting the main body of this volume, devoted in succession to Petrarch, Valla, Ficino, Pieo, Pomponazzi, Telesio, Patrizi, and Bruno, are based on the Arensberg Lectures which were delivered by Professor Kristeller in 1961 at Stanford University. Footnotes and bibliographical references have been added, and as an appendix there is included an essay on "The Medieval Antecedents of Renaissance Humanism" which, though delivered as a lecture on several occasions, is here printed for the first time. The purpose of the series of eight lectures, as Kristeller indicates in his short preface, was "to give a brief survey of Italian thought during the Renaissance period". The aspects of Italian Renaissance thought, represented by the authors selected for discussion, are those traditionally described as humanism, Florentine Platonism, Paduan Aristotelianism, and speculative philosophies of nature. As representatives of the humanist movement Petrarch and Valla are selected, not merely because of their prominence but in order to make clear that Renaissance humanism cannot be identified with preference for a particular philosophical tradition. Petrarch preferred Plato to Aristotle, Augustine to Aquinas, and Cicero and Seneca to the Epicureans, whereas Valla preferred the Epicurean philosophy to that of the Stoics or Platonists, and appealed to Quintilian more than to Cicero in his proposals for a reform of... (shrink)

Racist jokes are often funny. And part of this has to do with their racism. Many Polish jokes, for example, may easily be converted into moron jokes but are not at all funny when delivered as such. Consider two answers to ‘What has an I.Q. of 1007’: a nation of morons; or Poland. Similarly, jokes portraying Jews as cheap, Italians as cowards, and Greeks as dishonest may be told as jokes about how skinflints, cowards, or dishonest people get on in (...) the world. But they are less funny as such. As this suggests, racist humor is ‘put down’ humor. We laugh, in part, because we find put-downs funny, sometimes even if they are about us. In many contexts, this tendency is relatively harmless; indeed, within reason, it may be therapeutic to join others in a good laugh at oneself. Why, then, all the commotion about racist humor? (shrink)

Recent research on the semantics and pragmatics of slurs has offered insight into several important facts concerning their meaning and use. However, prior work has unfortunately been restricted primarily to considerations of slurs that typically target females, homosexuals, and African Americans. This is problematic because such a narrowly focused attention to slurs in prior work has left theorizing of how slurs generally function relatively uninformed by facts of actual language use. As a result, theoretical accounts of slurs that have so (...) far been proposed have largely failed to accurately reflect actual usage, account for the empirical findings about slurs and general pejoratives from the social sciences, and offer any informative predictions to help guide future research. At this time more empirically oriented homework on the variety of ways that different slurs have been used in different cases would be helpful for theorists to consider so that they can proceed to develop more nuanced and empirically informed theories about slurs, their usage, and their effects. Accordingly, since no account of slurs for Italian Americans has so far been offered, this article provides a systematic and empirically informed analysis of slurs for Italian Americans that accounts for both their derogatory and appropriative use. Further, this article demonstrates that the family resemblance account of slurs maintained here has major advantages over previous accounts insofar as it is flexible yet robust enough to accommodate both the derogatory and appropriative use of slurs, can explain many of the psychological effects that slurs actually have on both their users and targets, and is more in accord with the real rather than ideal nature of our organic human psychology. (shrink)

This paper provides a systematic description and analysis of the non-predictive use of the Italian future. Several authors claim that, on this use, the Italian future is an evidential (Squartini 2001, Mari 2010, Eckardt and Beltrama 2019, Frana and Menéndez-Benito 2019 ). Others argue that the non-predictive future does not directly contribute an evidential signal (e.g., Giannakidou and Mari 2018, Farkas and Ippolito 2022 ). We side with the evidential camp. From an empirical standpoint, we present the results (...) of a battery of tests that show that the non-predictive future patterns with evidentials cross-linguistically. From a theoretical standpoint, we put forward an analysis that combines a slightly modified version of the proposal for evidentials in Davis et al. ( 2007 ) with Schlenker’s ( 2007 ) view of expressive content. On this account, the Italian evidential future (i) lowers the quality threshold required to perform a successful speech act (Davis et al. 2007 ) and (ii) triggers an evidential presupposition relativized to the speaker’s beliefs (modeled after Schlenker’s analysis of expressives). Our treatment of the evidential component as an expressive presupposition opens up a new perspective on the study of evidentiality and highlights the need for further detailed empirical studies exploring the extent to which this perspective is applicable cross-linguistically. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:194 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY and properly, in a consideration of Bradley, although it is a little like citing Bradley in his own behalf. In all, Mr. Saxena's book is carefully researched and judicious, selecting Bradley's chief metaphysical themes for explication and defence. As one slight criticism: Bradley's doctrine of truth is treated as coherence, which it indeed was on the level of reality; but he dealt with truth quite (...) differently in immediate experience and on the level of appearance (elaborating those levels in his Essays on Truth and Reality), and hia metaphysics would appear richer if those theories of truth were discussed and applied to their appropriate realms. It~J~ Ross Scripps College Filosofia e SLoria nel Pensiero Crociano. By Adriano Bausola. (Milano: SocietA editrici Vitae Pensiero, 1965. Pp. 280. Paper. L. 4~500.) Etica e Politica nel Pensiero dl Benedetto Croce. (Milano: SocietA editrici Vitae Pensiero, 1966. Pp. 265. Paper. L 3,500.) Theee two volumes examine respectively Croce's doctrines of the theoretic and of the practical spheres of experience and thus treat of many of the main tenets of Croce's entire philosophy. For within these spheres, Adriano Bausola critically discusses important views which occur in the areas of logic, gnoseology, theory of history, as well as in ethics, economic and political doctrine. The scope of Bausola's treatment is in accord with Croce's own approach to philosophy, since strictly speaking, neither the theoretic nor the practical sphere can be correctly understood in abstraction from the other. Moreover, in his treatment of Croce's view, Bausola frequently discusses the criticisms of other contemporary Italian Crocean critics,as for example, of Gentile, Guido Calogero and Ugo Spirito, and this method of exposition has the advantages of making Croce's own position clear and of giving us some idea of very recent Italian philosophy. According to Bausola, the essential character of Croce's philosophy is shown in his rejection of every view which admits of transcendent experience or of abstract ideas. Thus, Filosofia e Storia critically traces this rejection as it occurs throughout the theoretic sphere of experience and attempts to make explicit the "positive" Crocean doctrine which accompanies his denial of the transcendent and of the abstract. Here Bausola concludes that despite Croce's claim to the contrary, there is more than one "logical" reason for Croce's refutation of the transcendent. Among these reasons are Croce's view of the identity of subject and object, his refutation of every mediate cognitive process, of every inference, and of every experience which issupposed to be neither theoretic nor practical. Chapter i ol Filosofia c Storia discusses the foundation of Croce's philosophy which Bausola maintains should be described as "spiritualism" (spiritualismo) rather than as "idealism" (idealismo), since for Croce, reality is fundamentally "spirit" and not "pure thought." Chapters 11 and 111 treat specifically of epistemic problems, such as, the nature of philosophic or pure concepts and the judgments to which they give rise, the nature of scientific or pseudoconcepts and the relations between philosophy and science. Chapters IV and v treat of Croce's view of the nature of "the real" and of the relations between the categories---their autonomy and their unity. Here Bausola attempts to show that Croce's transcendental deduction of the four forms of experience (aesthetic, logical, economic and ethical) has failed and that his demonstration shows merely that the distinction between these forms are empirical. Chapter IV then discusses Croce's view of philosophy as history. The next three chapters present a critical analysis of Croce's doctrine of error which forms one of his most interesting contributions to philosophy. Here Bausola's task is not to consist of an explication of the central Crocean view on error, but rather of an examination of its "concrete" development and its validity. At the outset of his discussion, Bausola asks: Does error ever result from non-practical as well as from practical acts? BOOK REVIEWS 195 Does error invariably result from conscious volition? And Bausola tries to show contrary to Croce% view that there are instances of error which do not involve conscious volition, but that Croce% denial of such instances follows... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:80 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Gilson often contrasts the God of Aquinas, who is esse, with the God of Augustine, who is essentia. This difference in terminology is taken as emphasizing the essentialist character of Augustine's thought. However, Professor Anderson maintains that essentia should not be regarded as equivalent to the Thomistic notion of essence. F,ssentia is derived, according to Augustine, from esse and is most equivalent to the Thomistic (...) ens. Hence, according to Anderson, Augustine was not ignoring or slighting the factor of existence when he referred to God as essentia. Once again, Anderson's point is valid only if we grant that esse meant "to exisff' for Augustine and could not be interpreted as meaning "to be unchangeable." That there is any doubt that esse meant "to exist" for Augustine seems to be ruled out by Anderson (p. 40). One of Anderson's most interesting theses is the suggestion that the Augustinian distinction between being and non-being is substantially the same as the Thomistie distinction between essence and existence. For Augustine God alone is esse itself, while all creatures are limited by non-esse, i.e., they share in both esse and non-esse. Similarly, for Aquinas only God is esse itself, while all creatures merely possess esse. It is evident that for both philosophers the distinction between what is esse itself and what is not csse itself provides an important way of distinguishing between God and creatures. How much more alike the two distinctions are will depend on how the notion of esse is interpreted by Augustine and Aquinas. One problem is bound to arise: If for Aquinas the "proportionality" of being is to be found in the relationship between esse and essentia in ens, while for Augustine essentia ---- ens, then either Augustine does not have a Thomistic notion of the analogy of being or it must be shown what Augustine 's equivalent for the Thomistic essentia would be. Non-being does not seem adequate for such a role. A good portion of Professor Anderson's essay is devoted to discussing Augustinian metaphysics precisely in the areas in which Gilson claims that Augustine's essentialism creates problems for Augustine the Christian. These include the problems of proving the existence of God, creation and the nature of participation. It is pointed out that many of Augustine's remarks which have frequently been supposed to be of Neoplatonic inspiration are in fact based upon Scripture as far as the Saint is concerned. Although I find some portions of his essay obscure, on the whole I should say that Professor Anderson's study is quite exciting and a considerable challenge to those who are tempted to draw striking contrasts between the "essentialism" of Augustine and the "existentialism" of Aquinas. BRUCE GARSIDE McGiU University Eight Philosophers o] the Italian Renaissance. By Paul Oskar Kristeller. (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1964.Pp. ix -~ 194.$5.00.) The eight chapters constituting the main body of this volume, devoted in succession to Petrarch, Valla, Ficino, Pieo, Pomponazzi, Telesio, Patrizi, and Bruno, are based on the Arensberg Lectures which were delivered by Professor Kristeller in 1961 at Stanford University. Footnotes and bibliographical references have been added, and as an appendix there is included an essay on "The Medieval Antecedents of Renaissance Humanism" which, though delivered as a lecture on several occasions, is here printed for the first time. The purpose of the series of eight lectures, as Kristeller indicates in his short preface, was "to give a brief survey of Italian thought during the Renaissance period". The aspects of Italian Renaissance thought, represented by the authors selected for discussion, are those traditionally described as humanism, Florentine Platonism, Paduan Aristotelianism, and speculative philosophies of nature. As representatives of the humanist movement Petrarch and Valla are selected, not merely because of their prominence but in order to make clear that Renaissance humanism cannot be identified with preference for a particular philosophical tradition. Petrarch preferred Plato to Aristotle, Augustine to Aquinas, and Cicero and Seneca to the Epicureans, whereas Valla preferred the Epicurean philosophy to that of the Stoics or Platonists, and appealed to Quintilian more than to Cicero in his proposals for a reform of... (shrink)

‘First. That on October 23, in the city of New York, your relator was arrested by divers persons claiming to be acting by authority of the government of the United States, and was by said persons conveyed to the United States immigration station at Ellis island, in the harbor of New York, and is now there imprisoned by the commissioner of immigration of the port of New York.

Since the early 1990s, increasing attention has been paid to the impact of workplace bullying on employees’ well-being and job attitudes. However, the relationship between workplace bullying and job satisfaction remains unclear. This study aims to shed light on the nature of the bullying-job satisfaction relationship in the Italian context. As expected, the results revealed a U-shape curvilinear relationship between workplace bullying and job satisfaction after controlling for demographic variables. In contrast to the curvilinear model, the results support a (...) negative linear relationship between workplace bullying and psychological well-being, in which higher exposure to negative acts at work is associated with diminished well-being. In addition, gender and job position significantly predicted mental health scores where men and managers reported a better psychological well-being than women, blue-collar, and white-collar employees. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed according to these results. (shrink)

Negation can be considered a shared social action that develops since early infancy with very basic acts of refusals or rejection. Inspired by an approach to the embodiment of concepts known as Multiple Representation Theories, the present paper explores negation as an embodied action that relies on both sensorimotor and linguistic/social information. Despite the different variants, MRT accounts share the basic ideas that both linguistic/social and sensorimotor information concur to the processes of concepts formation and representation and that the balance (...) between these components depends on the kind of concept, the context, or the performed task. In the present research we will apply the MRT framework for exploring negation in Italian sign language. The nature of negation in LIS has been explored in continuity with the co-speech gesture where negative elements are encoded through differentiated prosodic and gestural strategies across languages. Data have been collected in naturalistic settings that may allow a much wider understanding of negation both in speech and in spoken language with a semi-structured interview. Five LIS participants with age range 30–80 were recruited and interviewed with the aim of understanding the continuity between gesture and sign in negation. Results highlight that negation utterances mirror the functions of rejection, non-existence and denial that have been described in language acquisition both in deaf and hearing children. These different steps of acquisition of negation show a different balance between sensorimotor, linguistic and social information in the construction of negative meaning that the MRT is able to enlighten. (shrink)

In December 2017, Law 219/2017, ‘Provisions for informed consent and advance directives’, was approved in Italy. The law is the culmination of a year-long process and the subject of heated debate throughout Italian society. Contentious issues are addressed in the law. What emerges clearly are concepts such as quality of life, autonomy, and the right to accept or refuse any medical treatment – concepts that should be part of an optimal relationship between the patient and healthcare professionals. The law (...) maximizes the value of the patient’s time to decide. Every patient is allowed to make choices for the present as well as for the future, conceived as a continuation of the present, and to decide what comes next, based on what he/she already knows. The law identifies three distinct but converging paths towards the affirmation of a care relationship based on reciprocal trust and respect: the possibility to consent to or refuse treatment, the shared care planning, and advance directives. The fundamental point to emerge from the new Italian law is that consensus is an essential connotation of the treatment relationship. Consensus is not limited to the acceptance/rejection of medical treatment but is ongoing. It is projected into the future through shared care planning and advance directives which act as tools for self-determination and the manifestation of the beliefs and preferences of persons unable to express their will. These principles are in line with the idea of appropriate care as evaluated from two different perspectives, one of scientific adequacy and the other commensurate with the individual’s resources, fragility, values, and beliefs. Surely, however, the new law is not the end of the matter on issues such as conscientious objection, which is deeply rooted within the Italian cultural and political debate. In this regard, healthcare institutions and policymakers will be called upon to develop and implement organizational policies aimed at the management of foreseeable conscientious objection in this field. (shrink)

"Annual dinner and act golden gavel competition." Ethos: Official Publication of the Law Society of the Australian Capital Territory, (194), pp. 18.

SummaryThis paper explores the interactions between scientific travel, politics, instrument making and the epistemology of scientific instruments in Napoleon's Europe. In the early 1800s, the German astronomer Franz Xaver von Zach toured Italy and Southern France with instruments made by G. Reichenbach in his newly-established Bavarian workshop. I argue that von Zach acted as a broker for German technology and science and that travel, personal contacts and direct demonstrations were crucial in establishing Reichenbach's reputation and in conquering new markets. The (...) rise of German instrument making highlights the complexity of the scientific relationship between the centre and the peripheries in Napoleon's empire, and reveals the existence of diverging views on the role of instruments and of their makers. In von Zach's view, Reichenbach's instruments could not penetrate the French market because Parisian astronomers focused on mathematical astronomy and, for both political and epistemological reasons, dismissed instruments and material innovations from the peripheries. The German astronomer and his Italian colleagues, on the contrary, regarded Reichenbach's technical achievements as outstanding contributions to astronomy, and considered the political and cultural hegemony of the capital as a hindrance to the advancement of science. (shrink)

The right to ‘domestic remedies’, which ideally connects ‘subsidiarity’ and ‘embeddedness’ of the ECHR in the legal systems of member States, is deemed to play a crucial role for the Strasbourg machinery survival as well as for an effective protection of human rights, especially in the field of the ‘reasonable-time’ requirement. In this respect the Italian case seems an excellent test. Once a compensatory remedy was introduced in the Italian legal system by Law No. 80 of 2001 (the (...) ‘Pinto Act’), it soon appeared that such a remedy could be considered ‘effective’ in so far as it was implemented in accordance with the ECtHR’s jurisprudence. Therefore a legal tool for the interaction between ECtHR and Italian courts had to be found. Nevertheless, the results of this interaction might suggest that the domestic remedy has neither increased the protection of the reasonable-time requirement in Italy nor is it the final solution to the ECtHR’s overload. (shrink)

During the Nineties Italian politics underwent major changes. Following the uncovering of systemic corruption, the current political establishment was wiped out. The system of representation at both the national and local level underwent a significant transformation that improved voters’ control over their elected representatives. We argue that both events were the consequence of citizens’ demand for greater accountability of public officers. We model the relationship between voters and politicians as a repeated Trust game. In such game, cooperation can be (...) attained by means of external or internal controls. Whereas judicial investigation is an external monitoring mechanism, the electoral reform provides controls internal to the political system. We explain the Italian transition between these different modes of control and show under which conditions a cooperative equilibrium can be established in which voters trust their representatives who in turn act in the public interest. (shrink)

Few data exist regarding treatment with antipsychotics in forensic psychiatric patient populations with high social dangerousness. We performed a secondary analysis of 681 patients treated with at least one antipsychotic, extracted from a 1-year observational retrospective study, conducted on 730 patients treated in the Italian Residencies for Execution of Security Measures. We aimed at investigating antipsychotic polypharmacy and high dose/very high-dose antipsychotics, as well as the possible factors associated with such therapeutic regimens. High dose/very high-dose antipsychotics were defined as (...) a prescribed daily dose to WHO-defined daily dose ratio greater than 1.5 or 3.0, respectively. Binary logistic regression analysis was used in three models to test possible predictors of antipsychotic polypharmacy, high-dose antipsychotics, and very high-dose antipsychotic prescription. Antipsychotic polypharmacy resulted in n = 308 of the patients, n = 346 received high-dose antipsychotics, and n = 96 very high-dose antipsychotics. The multivariate analysis disclosed an association between antipsychotic polypharmacy and male gender : 2.75 and 95% CI: 1.34–5.65), long-acting injectable antipsychotic prescription, and aggressive behavior in REMS. High-dose antipsychotics were also associated with male gender, LAI antipsychotic prescription, and aggressive behavior in REMS. The use of antipsychotic polypharmacy and high-dose antipsychotics is frequent in the REMS population. These results might depend on regulatory and organizational aspects of the REMS system, including variability in structures, lack of a common model of care, and lack of stratified therapeutic security. (shrink)

Translated from the Italian, this work forms part of the author's La philosophie de l'intégralité; it deals dialectically with the essence of being and with existence and reality, throwing interesting light on values, love, and morality. A long appendix presents some critical reflexions on Gentile's "Actualism."--R. D. G.

Cyberbullying is associated with the expansion of digital devices and the Internet. In Italy and other European and non-European countries, the phenomenon is growing. Young people who suffer from cyberbullying develop psychopathological symptoms of anxiety, depression, and social phobia that can lead to extreme acts, such as suicide. The pressure, the sense of isolation, and helplessness experienced by cyber-victims also affect their family and the school context. Cyberbullying is acted through digital tools, it is often anonymous, and aims to destroy (...) and psychologically humiliate the victim. There are various forms of cyberbullying that involve different reactions and consequences. However, few studies have focused on adolescents’ perception of cyberbullying. Youths often engage in aggressive behaviors, ignoring the feelings and reactions of the victims. Based on these considerations, our article aims to provide a general overview of the spread of the phenomenon and to understand the various types of cyberbullying and its consequences on victims. We will also illustrate a brief evaluation conducted in Italian schools investigating the perception of cyberbullying in a sample of 600 Italian adolescents. Our work aims to investigate the cognition and the personal perception of youths about cyberbullying and its consequences and to promote educational interventions within and outside the context of school. (shrink)

The central focus of this research is the fast and crucial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and its exceptionally serious consequences in terms of healthcare, state intervention and impositions, radical changes in people’s life, on a crucial psychological, relational, and political construct: trust. In this survey, addressed to 4260 Italian citizens, we tried to analyze and measure such impact, focusing on various aspects of trust. This attention to multiple dimensions of trust constitutes the key conceptual advantage of this research, (...) since trust is a complex and layered construct, with its own internal dynamics. In particular, the analysis focuses on how citizens attribute trust to Public Authorities, in relation to the management of the health crisis: with regard to the measures and guidelines adopted, the purposes pursued, the motivations that determine them, their capacity for involvement and their effectiveness for the containment of the virus itself. A pandemic creates a bilateral need for trust, both in Public Authorities (they have to rely on citizens’ compliance, and must try to promote and maintain their trust in order to be effective), and in citizens, since they need to feel that somebody can do something, can (has the power) to protect them, to act at the needed collective level. We are interested to explore how this need for trust affects the attributional process, regarding both attitudes and the corresponding decisions and actions. The most striking result of this survey is the very high level of institutional trust expressed by respondents: 75% of them trust Italian public authorities to be able to deal with the COVID-19 emergency. This is in sharp contrast with the relatively low levels of institutional trust characteristic of Italy, both historically and in recent surveys. Moreover, the survey allowed to discriminate several potential predictors for trust, thus emphasizing factors that, during this crisis, are exhibiting an anomalous impact on trust. (shrink)

Within a digital corpus of 20 Italian post-unification conduct books, UAM CorpusTool is used to perform a manual annotation of 13 emotive rhetorical figures as indices of “shown” emotion. The analysis consists in two text mining tasks: classification, which identifies emotive figures using the 13 categories, and clustering, which identifies groups, i.e. clusters where emotive figures co-occur. Emotive clusters mainly discuss diligence and parsimony—personal values linked to self-improvement for which reader agreement is not taken for granted. In this corpus (...) they function as “moving” values, that is, values acting recurrently as contexts for “argued” emotion. (shrink)

This paper explores the interactions between scientific travel, politics, instrument making and the epistemology of scientific instruments in Napoleon's Europe. In the early 1800s, the German astronomer Franz Xaver von Zach toured Italy and Southern France with instruments made by G. Reichenbach in his newly-established Bavarian workshop. I argue that von Zach acted as a broker for German technology and science and that travel, personal contacts and direct demonstrations were crucial in establishing Reichenbach's reputation and in conquering new markets. The (...) rise of German instrument making highlights the complexity of the scientific relationship between the centre and the peripheries in Napoleon's empire, and reveals the existence of diverging views on the role of instruments and of their makers. In von Zach's view, Reichenbach's instruments could not penetrate the French market because Parisian astronomers focused on mathematical astronomy and, for both political and epistemological reasons, dismissed instruments and material innovations from the peripheries. The German astronomer and his Italian colleagues, on the contrary, regarded Reichenbach's technical achievements as outstanding contributions to astronomy, and considered the political and cultural hegemony of the capital as a hindrance to the advancement of science. (shrink)

On the Pragmatics of Hortatory Subjunctive in Italian Business Letter Discourse This paper is a pragmatic account of the use of the Italian hortatory subjunctive in business letter discourse. According to traditional descriptions of the Italian subjunctive mood which mostly focus on the use of this mood in dependent clauses, the hortatory subjunctive is one of the few remaining examples of subjunctive use in independent clauses. In business letter discourse it is used in independent clauses, always as (...) a formulaic modal expression with the modal verb of volition volere. In this paper it is argued that the rare examples of its use seem to confirm that in the Italian language the hortatory subjunctive survives only in very formal types of writing, business letter discourse being a case in point; and that in this type of genre the dynamic modality expressed by the subjunctive mood is used only in specific moves within the text for negative politeness reasons. The findings also suggest the need to take a "discourse-approach" to politeness, i.e. to rethink and analyze politeness as a holistic phenomenon which is the result of a number of acts intricately wound together in the text, both at the micro and macro level. (shrink)

Using the conceptual lenses offered by the ideational and cultural path taken in the health care arena, this article attempts to explain the trajectory of recent major health care reforms in Italy and the reasons for their failure, as well as providing some directions for successful intervention. A diachronic analysis of the relatively under-investigated phenomenon of health care reforms in Italy is carried out, drawing on a systematic review of the Italian and international literature combined with the research work (...) carried out by the Author. For all the three major health reforms examined, a significant gap between the authoritative policy choices taken and the overall implementation, in terms of process and system changes, can be observed, determining a growing distance between the theoretical efficiency and the practical effectiveness of the Italian National Health Service (NHS) as well as its detachment from the social system. The main obstacle to effective reform seems to be the cultural hegemony of the administrative-managerial and the biomedical paradigms, which, by reinforcing one another, yielded infertile ground for renewing in a post-modern sense the Italian NHS. The various Reforms have not been conceived to break such a positivistic monopoly in that they did not promote cultural or educational intervention. In this context, intervention that acts at a cultural level, such as reforming university education for physicians and managers or devising immigration policies to attract adequately acculturated people to the Italian NHS, seems to be the most promising. (shrink)

Although use of assisted reproduction techniques was examined by an ad hoc act in 2004 in Italy, there are many opposing views about ethical and economic implications of the technologies dealing with infertility and sterility problems. In this paper, the authors examine a recent judge's decision that ordered the removal and subsequent adoption of a 1-year-old child because her parents were considered too old to be parents. The couple had had recourse to heterologous artificial insemination abroad and decided to give (...) birth in Italy. The judgement deals with and discusses the complex issue of the right to procreate in order to balance the opportunities offered by scientific progress with the unborn child's condition. (shrink)

An important milestone of 20th Century philosophy was the rise of personalism. After the crimes and atrocities against millions of human beings in two World Wars, especially the Second, some philosophers and other thinkers began to seek arguments showing the value of each human being, to expose and denounce the folly of political structures that violate the inalienable rights of the individual person. -/- Karol Wojtyla appeals to the ancient concept of 'person' to emphasize the particular value of each human (...) being. The person is unique because of their subjectivity by which they possesses an unrepeatable interior world in the history of humanity. Their rational nature grants them a special character among living beings, among which is the transcendence to the infinite. Wojtyla magisterially shows how each human being's personhood is rooted in a conscious and free subjectivity, which is marked also by personal and social responsibility. Wojtyla's original philosophical analysis takes for its starting point the human act, in which consciousness and experience consolidate voluntary choices, which are objectively efficacious. By their acts, the person determines their own personhood. This self-dominion manifests the person and enables them to live together in a community in which one's neighbor can be a companion on the voyage of life. -/- This work provides a clear guide to Karol Wojtyla's principal philosophical work, Person and Act, rigorously analyzing the meaning that the author intended in his exposition. An important feature of the work is that the authors rely on the original Polish text, Osoba i czyn, as well as the best translations into Italian and Spanish, rather than on a flawed and sometimes misleading English edition of the work. -/- Besides the analysis of Wojtyla's masterwork, this volume offers three chapters examining the impact of Wojtyla's anthropology on the relationship between faith and reason. (shrink)