The article aims to understand the notion underlying the term “revolution” in René de Chateaubriand’s Essay on Revolutions, making particular reference not only to the substantial notes of the 1826 re-edition, provided by the author himself, but also to the conceptual constellation surrounding the nascent concept of revolution, in particular “history” and “revolutionary rupture”.

The adoption of the Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights by the United Nations in 2011 created a new governance instrument aimed at improving the promotion of human rights by business enterprises. While reaffirming states duties to uphold human rights in law, the UNGPs called on firms to promote the realization of human rights within global markets. The UNGPs thus have sought to embed human rights more firmly within the field of corporate social responsibility and to use CSR practices (...) to improve corporate human rights accountability. In this paper, we explore how this incorporation of human rights into the CSR field has affected the business practices and public commitments British firms have made to promote human rights. We analyse the CSR reports published by the 50 largest British firms over a 20-year period starting in the late 1990s and interview senior CSR managers of these firms. We find that these firms have expanded how they articulate their responsibility for human rights over time. These commitments however remain largely focused on improving management practices such as due diligence and remediation procedures. Firms are often both vague and selective about which substantive human rights they engage with in light of their concerns about their market competitiveness and broader legitimacy. These outcomes suggest that, while firms cannot completely resist the normative pressures exerted by the CSR field, they retain significant resources and agency in translating such pressure into concrete practices. (shrink)

This paper deals with the concept of simultaneity in classical and relativistic physics as construed in terms of group-invariant equivalence relations. A full examination of Newton, Galilei and Poincaré invariant equivalence relations in ℝ4 is presented, which provides alternative proofs, additions and occasionally corrections of results in the literature, including Malament’s theorem and some of its variants. It is argued that the interpretation of simultaneity as an invariant equivalence relation, although interesting for its own sake, does not cut in the (...) debate concerning the conventionality of simultaneity in special relativity. (shrink)

Philosophers have long been interested in the study of induction. This paper aims at examining Philoponus’ treatment, with a focus on his commentary on the Posterior Analytics, which is an especially rich source of information on this topic. Following in Aristotle’s footsteps, Philoponus maintains that it is through induction that universal knowledge is achieved, but in his interpretation of the Aristotelian doctrine he also introduces intriguing novelties. In particular, I argue that in some passages he treats induction as an intellectual (...) means of teaching and learning, that is, as a logical argument-form in which a universal conclusion is inferred from particular premises. In other passages, however, he treats induction as a sort of sense perception, specifically that which triggers the recovery of innate universal knowledge. (shrink)

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

A new formulation of what may be called the “fundamental theorem of the theory of relativity” is presented and proved in -space-time, based on the full classification of special transformations and the corresponding velocity addition laws. A system of axioms is introduced and discussed leading to the result, and a study is made of several variants of that system. In particular the status of the group axiom is investigated with respect to the condition of the two-way isotropy of light. Several (...) issues which are ignored or misunderstood in the literature are emphasized. (shrink)

The concept of an objective spatial direction in special relativity is investigated and theories assuming light-speed isotropy while accepting the existence of a privileged spatial direction are classified, including so-called very special relativity. A natural generalization of the proper time principle is introduced which makes it possible to devise non-optical experimental tests of spatial isotropy. Several common misunderstandings in the relativistic literature concerning the role of spatial isotropy are clarified.

In this paper the classical topic of “conventionality” in defining the simultaneity (or synchrony) of distant events is tackled again, and the validity of Reichenbach's view is carefully circumscribed. In particular, the role of “one-way” assumptions in the foundations of special relativity is emphasized. The restriction by the round-trip isotropy condition on the admissible distance functions in inertial frames is studied, and its relevance to several issues (absolute simultaneity, the interpretation of Michelson–Morley type experiments, the self-measured speed of a clock) (...) is shown. Two “clock transport” synchronizations in an inertial frame, using self-measured speed and “proper distance,” are presented in detail, and the agreement of the synchronies so established with standard synchrony is proven to be non- circular. By assuming a reasonable concept of “convention” this result is shown to dissolve several objections by supporters of a strong version of conventionalism. Throughout, a number of common misapprehensions in the literature are pointed out. (shrink)

A rigorous wave-theoretic approach to the Michelson-Morley (M-M) experiment is presented, with special emphasis on the Huygens' principle derivation of the laws of reflection by a moving mirror. A detailed discussion of the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction hypothesis (CH) is included. Several mistakes appearing in the standard textbook treatments of these issues are pointed out, and a number of related historical questions are considered.

By a comparison between Maxwell's electrodynamics classically interpreted (MT) and relativistic electrodynamics (RED), this paper discusses whether the “asymmetries” in MT mentioned by A. Einstein in his 1905 relativity paper are only of a conceptual nature or rather involve specific empirical claims. It is shown that in fact MT predicts strongly asymmetric behaviour for very simple interactions, and an analysis is made of the extent of the “symmetry” achieved by means of relativistic postulates. A “low” velocity experiment is suggested which (...) could provide another test of the accuracy of RED with respect to MT. (shrink)