Le défi des antinomies joue un rôle décisif dans l'élaboration même de la pensée kantienne ; cela devient particulièrement significatif par rapport à l'Être absolument nécessaire, qui devrait dépasser le niveau des phénomènes même lorsque, comme l'on dit dans la thèse de la quatrième antinomie, l'on l'entend comme quelque chose du monde. Dans la structure même des antinomies nous sommes forcés à aller au-delà de l'expérience, à un Être qui dépasse radicalement le monde ; en ce sens, même à l'intérieur (...) de la pensée kantienne, l'analogie classique reste la structure spécifique de la métaphysique, surtout par la possibilité de dire la transcendance sans la réduire jamais au niveau des phénomènes. The challenge of the antinomies plays a decisive role in the development of Kantian thought. This becomes particularly significant with reference to the absolutely necessary Being, which should exceed the phenomenal domain even when, as Kant says in the fourth antinomy, it is considered as a part of the world. In the structure of the antinomies we are pushed beyond experience towards a Being which radically transcends the world; in this sense, even within Kantian thought, the classical analogy remains the specific structure of metaphysics, especially by virtue of the possibility of expressing transcendence without reducing it to the phenomenal level. (shrink)

This study intended to test whether attachment to one’s own residential place at neighborhood level could represent a coping response for the elderly (consistently with the “docility hypothesis;” Lawton, 1982), when dealing with the demands of unfamiliar environments, in order to balance their reduction of spatial abilities. Specifically, a sequential path was tested, in which neighborhood attachment was expected to play a buffer role between lowered spatial competence and neighborhood satisfaction. The participants (N = 264), senior citizens (over 65-year-old), responded (...) to a questionnaire including the measures of spatial self-efficacy, spatial anxiety, attitude toward wayfinding, residential attachment and residential satisfaction. Results from the mediation analysis showed that a lower perceived spatial self-efficacy is associated to a higher spatial anxiety, and both promote a more negative attitude toward wayfinding tasks in non-familiar places. This leads to a higher attachment to one’s own neighborhood, which in turn predicts a higher residential satisfaction. Thus, the “closure” response of becoming more attached to their residential place may be an adaptive strategy of the elderly for compensating the Person-Environment (P-E) mis-fit (Lawton and Nahemow, 1973) when they feel unable (or less able) to cope with the demands of unfamiliar environments. (shrink)

This article discusses the authority problem involved in revolutions and the institution of legal order from a phenomenological perspective. Paradoxically, every new claim to power, every revolutionary beginning, should present itself as coherent with what has already been established as authoritative by law. This authority problem is due to the two-fold challenge revolutions pose: the new order has to both constitute a break with the old order (transgression) and retain a relationship with it (response). In order to meet this two-fold (...) challenge, I will draw on the work of Hannah Arendt and Maurice Merleau-Ponty and develop a concept of the institution of legal order that can embrace transgression and response as two sides of the same coin and can shed new light on the authority problem involved in revolutions. (shrink)

Nicholas Kaldor was one of this century's most original thinkers on economics, his influence on British economic policy second only to that of Keynes. This book traces the development of Kaldor's thought as it underwent a remarkable evolution from his membership of the Austrian neoclassical school to his embracing of radical Keynesianism. He was also extremely quick to grasp essential changes in economic reality and to forge analytical tools to explain them. Although he was innovative from 1938 onwards, much of (...) his seminal work belongs to a coherent project of research which made him, together with Joan Robinson and Micha/l Kalecki, a leading representative of the post-Keynesian school, an outstanding critic of the neoclassical theory of equilibrium, growth, and distribution, and a convinced opponent of the monetarist school. The book also seeks to show how economic policy and political economy were closely connected in Kaldor's work. It was this that made Kaldor one of the most lucid and radical champions of the economic policies which, by blending political freedom with social justice, have been the outstanding feature of the great European tradition of social democracy. (shrink)

The article deals with some implications of radical uncertainty for participatory democracy, and more precisely for Participatory Technology Assessment. Two main forms of PTA are discussed. One is aimed at involving lay citizens and highlighting public opinion. The other is addressed to stakeholder groups and organisations, not only in terms of interest mediation but also of inclusion of their insight into a problem. Radical uncertainty makes 'intractable' many environmental and technological issues and brings into question traditional and new approaches to (...) policymaking. Its consequences are explored from the viewpoint of new science, deliberative democracy, and network governance. Radical uncertainty calls for a rethinking of the aims of public deliberation, and a reinterpretation of the divide between opinion- and position-oriented PTA. To look for a public opinion, understood as a shared principled view, can prove misleading, as can thinking of stakeholder participatory arrangements in the usual way. When facts and values overlap, and are deeply controversial, the only opportunity for mutual understanding may be to look for practical, 'local' answers, based on different positional insights. Moreover, radical uncertainty also affects interest determination and pursuit, and may enhance the opportunity of joint, inclusive, non-strategic issue definition and solution-devising. This vision of public deliberation is consistent with the idea of network governance. However, fragmentation can affect the effectiveness and legitimacy of participatory policies. Trying to handle fragmentation from the top, as many suggest, is unlikely to be successful. A more promising endeavour is to foster deliberative settings which, although positioned at the level of 'local' and often contingent networks and commonalities, are open to include 'Otherness' – other contexts, other problem definitions, other concerns. (shrink)

In this paper we compare the strategies applied by two successful biological components of the ecosystem, the viruses and the human beings, to interact with the environment. Viruses have had and still exert deep and vast actions on the ecosystem especially at the genome level of most of its biotic components. We discuss on the importance of the human being as contraptions maker in particular of robots, hence of machines capable of automatically carrying out complex series of actions. Beside the (...) relevance of designing and assembling these contraptions, it is of basic importance the goal for which they are assembled and future scenarios of their possible impact on the ecosystem. We can’t procrastinate the development and implementation of a highly inspired and stringent “ethical code” for human beings and humanoid robots because it will be a crucial aspect for the wellbeing of the mankind and of the entire ecosystem. (shrink)

In light of the recent revival of the debate on radical democracy, this paper seeks to show how a critical reappropriation of Chantal Mouffe’s theory of agonistic politics can explain the structure of a conflict-based understanding of democratic orders. In explicit convergence with Mouffe, I argue that a radical democratic project by no means needs to abandon—as many absolute democracy and multitude theorists claim—the modern political paradigm. I also show, diverging from her account, that Mouffe’s defence of a radical democratic (...) project based on pluralism and agonism would have been better served by a critical reception of Arendt’s thinking rather than that of Schmitt. The relevance of this alternative strategy—so I will argue—lies in the fact that it delivers an apt design for a politico-legal order which permits true and proper conflicts, on the one hand, while simultaneously allowing that they be dealt with democratically, on the other. (shrink)

This article focuses on the concrete and symbolic process of construction, self-identification and self-presentation of U.S.-America as a “material” nation, a self-identification elaborated, albeit seldom by using this term, through the emphasis on its “exceptional” system of production, distribution, and consumption between the turn of the century and the immediate aftermath of WWI. It weaves together three, so far separate, streams of research such as the one on the American system of manufacturing, that on the emergence of modern patterns of (...) distribution and consumption, and the literature on the sustained efforts at “exporting” abroad the “American dream”. It charts the evolution of the business practices and of the rhetoric used to forge the notion of “material nation,” the actors involved, the implications this had for the process of real and imagined nation-making and for the different social and cultural segments comprising the nation. (shrink)

Intergenerational justice represents a crucial theme in the on-going debate in ethics, politics and law. In what follows, I would like to show that a determined phenomenological perspective drawing from the motive of alterity can shed new light on such a topic. Importantly, my concern will be to display how this approach can provide a thorough justificatory underpinning for a responsibility towards future generations, while denouncing the main shortcomings that mainstream approaches reveal when dealing with this issue.

This work, in continuity with the article published by Ferdinando Casolaro and Giovanna Della Vecchia in Vol 5, 2017 of this series, in which we noted that in the centuries since the eight century B.C. at the 13th century A.D. the evolution of Astronomy and historical events have influenced the development of Mathematics, intends to demonstrate how the Architecture and Literature of the following centuries have further conditioned the development of the sciences in Italy and, in particular, of Mathematics, (...) identifying the affinities and, in some cases, the coincidences between the different forms of thought that invite us to make a serious reflection on the uniqueness of culture. (shrink)

This work presents a Decision Making Model riferring to the forecasts about Football World Cup in Brazil. The aim of this work is to demonstrate how it is possible to approach young students to the study of Mathematics through evoking themes that are congenial to them and able to arouse their interest.

The landscape of seventeenth-century chemistry is complex, and it is impossible to find in it either a clear-cut distinction between alchemy and chemistry or a sort of simple identification of the two. The seventeenth-century cultural context contained a rich variety of "chemical" discourses with arguments ranging from specific experiments to the justification of the validity of chemistry and its novelty in terms of its extraordinary antiquity. On the basis of an analysis of the works by O. Borch, J.J. Glauber, and (...) J. J. Becher, this paper tries to demonstrate that a historical reconstruction of "chemistry" must consider these different levels of the chemical debate. Only then will it be possible to appreciate the outstanding role played by G.E. Stahl in founding modern chemistry. The paper argues in favor of a contextualization of the historical research on seventeenth-century chemistry. (shrink)

The first part of this paper aims to highlight the analogies between Schutz’s vision of the natural attitude and Wittgenstein’s vision of a phenomenon that concerns the same problematic field, i.e. certainty, the belief of common sense that is free of all doubt, that the world “out there” is as it appears, absolutely real. These certainties form the basis, the foundation of language games and therefore of knowledge in general and in its entirety. This foundation is unfounded and yet indispensable. (...) The second part of the paper examines an important topic analysed by Wittgenstein, related to the aforementioned problem: the language transposition of pre-predicative, pre-reflective and non-propositional certainties, the cornerstones of which are “hinge propositions”, whose hybrid nature can be identified in the shift from empirical propositions to grammatical rules. (shrink)