L’articolo si propone di ricostruire criticamente il processo di crisi e trasformazione del concetto di impero a ridosso delle rivoluzioni settecentesche. A partire dalla Histoire des deux Indes di Raynal, e dalla critica illuminista ai differenti modelli imperiali, Pandolfi delinea il passaggio dal colonialismo classico – costruito attorno al rapporto tra coloni, selvaggi e schiavi – a una fase contraddistinta invece dallo sfruttamento indiretto della forza lavoro. La trattazione porta alla luce l’ambivalenza illuminista nei confronti della questione dell’impero, dimostrando (...) come l’opera di Raynal intersechi e restituisca al lettore le tensioni fondanti della seconda metà del Settecento. Così, ripercorrendo l’analisi di Diderot, l’autore dimostra come l’avanzamento morale dell’umanità sia il prodotto della costante interazione tra la retorica imperialista del commercio e le rivoluzioni che, in luoghi e momenti diversi, hanno attraversato lo spazio coloniale. (shrink)

The topic of this article is the «discourse of the philanthropist» in the thought of Michel Foucault. The discourse of the philanthropist has played a vital role in the formation of the psychiatric and psychological sciences; was crucial in the birth and development of modern penalty; has deeply influenced the history of the prison institution and was instrumental in the formation of the working class. Finally, the discourse of the philanthropist has animated the human and social sciences from the first (...) half of the nineteenth century. The discourse of the philanthropist, for Foucault, is the discourse that addresses the meaning of reality as a norm and rule that the behaviors, actions and representations of individuals must be uniform in all areas in which it carries out their existence. (shrink)

This introduction first justifies the approach of this focus on the political thought of Foucault. Therefore it highlights the conditions that determine the appearance and the operation of the political discourse, then it clarifies because, according to Foucault, political discourse should not be analyzed in a format which opposes science to ideology, but as an act of discourse located in a strategic field and fighting with other discursive formations. It concludes with a look at the difference and interweaving that for (...) Foucault stand and connect political discourse and philosophy. (shrink)

The essay aims to highlight the role of the repression in the course taught by Michel Foucault at the Collège de France Théories et institutions pénales of 1971-1972 and in the texts in which, during the same years, Foucault elaborates the genealogy of the modern penal system. During the 1971-72 course Foucault represents repression as a political device that beside the use of violence, simultaneously brings into play new tactics, new relationships, new balance of power, and above all, anticipates the (...) institutions and the fundamental practices criminal law of modernity. (shrink)

(1992). The rituals of science: Comments on Abir‐Am (with response) Social Epistemology: Vol. 6, The Historical Ethnography of Scientific Rituals, pp. 373-387.

The aim of the present study is (1) to show, on the basis of a number of unpublished documents, how Heinrich Scholz supported his Warsaw colleague Jan Łukasiewicz, the Polish logician, during World War II, and (2) to discuss the efforts he made in order to enable Jan Łukasiewicz and his wife Regina to move from Warsaw to Münster under life-threatening circumstances. In the first section, we explain how Scholz provided financial help to Łukasiewicz, and we also adduce evidence of (...) the risks incurred by German scholars who offered assistance to their Polish colleagues. In the second section, we discuss the dramatic circumstances surrounding the Łukasiewiczes' move to Münster in the summer of 1944. (shrink)

The central thesis of Karl Popper's philosophy is that intellectual and political progress are best achieved by not deferring to dogmatic authority. His philosophy of science is a plea for the replacement of classic dogmatic methodology with critical debate. His philosophy of politics, similarly, is a plea for replacing Utopian social and political engineering with a more fallibilist, piecemeal variety. Many confuse his anti‐dogmatism with relativism, and his anti‐authoritarianism with Cold War conservatism or even with libertarian politics. Not so: he (...) showed a clear preference for the ideal of truth over relativist complacency, for cosmopolitanism over nationalism, and for democratic control over unbridled capitalism. (shrink)

In his last book, Agassi reiterates Critical Rationalism as a full-fledged philosophy of life. He criticizes Paternalism and Relativism as degenerative, and even pathological, attempts to grant life a meaning, and suggests, in their place, that fallibilism is the minimal condition for a meaningful life.

Quine’s philosophy comprises a bewildering set of views whose integrating principle is his "confirmed extensionalism". The paper offers a historical as well as an intellectual reconstruction of extensionalism. Traditional extensionalism (Boole) freed logic from Aristotelian essentialism that had inhibited the development of logic. Quine’s confirmed extensionalism is the acceptance, as a matter of course, of the validity of Frege’s criticism of [Boole’s] extensionalism. His confirmed extensionalism is a generalized version of the philosophy of science known as conventionalism. As such, it (...) places the advancement of science outside the province of science proper. It is, thus, at odds with Quine’s repeated expressions of alliance with the Popperian (hypothetico-deductive) model of science. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a brief summary of Popper’s views on metaphysics. I then explain Agassi’s criticism of those views, and why I regard them as fruitful improvements.

a single life-span. Philosophers, then, do not see more or know more, and they do not see less or know less. They aim to see less detail and more of the abstract. Their details, if you like, are abstractions. Walking on God’s earth as a pedestrian, as a farmer working his fields or as a passer-by, one’s picture of one’s surroundings is every bit as intelligent as that of the pilot riding the sky. The views of the field are radically (...) different, however. One sees only a specific field and in all lively detail: the exact pattern of the land, or even the exact outline of a given leaf, grasshopper, grain of sand even. Acquaintance with minute detail is not without its price: details may stand in the way of conjuring the big picture. It may be difficult to compare whichever field one happens to be in with far off fields, with respect to their size or shape or any other quality. One may wish to inquire if far off fields were already planted, harvested, or even if they exist. A pedestrian may find it hard or even impossible to do so. The pedestrian view contains fine points that the pilot’s map never would, but it does not necessarily contain more information, for it lacks the general context. After all, there are only so many items that one can observe and account for at a single glance, a single map, a single book, a single life-span. (shrink)

Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Ahead of Print.

This volume breaks new ground in the study of how national culture, disciplinary tradition, epistemological choice, and political expediency affect the construction of collective memory and, then, how historians work with—and sometimes against—those constructions. Essays focus on a variety of commemorative rites, ranging from the quincentennial of Copernicus to the centennials of Pasteur, Darwin, and Planck; from the tercentenary of Harvard to the half centennial of Los Alamos; from the centennial of evolutionary theory to anniversaries of research schools in molecular (...) biology. Contributors include Clark A. Elliott, Owen Gingerich, Dieter Hoffmann, Dominque Pestre, Robert W. Seidel, and V. Betty Smocovitis. (shrink)

Los partidos políticos en Córdoba desde la hora del pueblo hasta la caída de Levingston.