This article aims at elucidating the logic of Arist. SE 22, 178b36–179a10 and, in particular, of the sophism labelled "Third Man" discussed in it. I suggest that neither the sophistic Walking Man argument, proposed by ancient commentators, nor the Aristotelian Third Man of the , suggested by modern interpreters, can be identified with the fallacious argument Aristotle presents and solves in the passage. I propose an alternative reconstruction of the Third Man sophism and argue that an explanation of the lines (...) regarding the identity of Coriscus and Coriscus the musician (178b39–179a3) is indispensable for its correct understanding, since they hint at another sophism in some important aspects analogous. Finally, I show that two contradictions concerning spotted by scholars in the passage are only apparent and can be dissolved once the assumption that the anti-Platonic Third Man argument is at stake here is discarded, and once the passage is read in the light of its agonistic context. (shrink)

The most complete edition yet published of Wittgenstein’s1929 lecture includes a never-before published first draft andmakes fresh claims for its significance in Wittgenstein’soeuvre. The first available print publication of all known drafts ofWittgenstein’s Lecture on Ethics Includes a previously unrecognized first draft of the lectureand new transcriptions of all drafts Transcriptions preserve the philosopher’s emendationsthus showing the development of the ideas in the lecture Proposes a different draft as the version read by Wittgensteinin his 1929 lecture Includes introductory essays on (...) the origins of the material andon its meaning, content, and importance. (shrink)

Both Michel Foucault and Barbara Cassin address Aristotle’s thought and the 5th century BCE sources attributed to the rhetorician Gorgias in order to reconstruct the history of the strategic exclusion of the Sophistics from the Western philosophical tradition. They retrace the scene of the rhetoric agon that Aristotle engaged with Gorgias. Both theorists’ arguments illuminate that the sophist has formulated an original account of political theatricality by talking about the scenes of the logos.

Il presente articolo si propone di seguire il percorso della tradizione dell’Epistola ai Pisoni di Orazio in Europa e in Italia tra Sette e Ottocento, con particolare attenzione al contesto storico-culturale di riferimento e agli specifici ambienti di ricezione. Il tema è certo ampio e necessiterebbe di una trattazione più distesa e articolata di quella che questa sede può offrire: la prospettiva sarà, dunque, limitata ad alcune specifiche considerazioni sull’argomento. Il lavoro si sofferma primariamente sui diversi meccanismi di traduzione e (...) ripresa che interessano l’opera oraziana tutta. Tra questi si rintracciano molteplici filoni: a partire dalla ricerca biografica, passando attraverso la vivace sfera dell’imitazione e della parodia, per approdare alle rielaborazioni musicale e pittorica. L’analisi giunge così a concentrarsi in particolare sull’Ars poetica, della quale si seguono le fila della diffusione e si ripercorrono gli episodi della fortuna in Italia, dove la ricezione dell’opera si lega alla questione linguistica ai tempi estremamente attuale. Sensibili all’influsso oraziano si rivelano tanto grandi nomi del panorama culturale italiano, quanto intere correnti letterarie, come l’Arcadia, oltre a docenti – sempre più interessati a una corretta lettura dell’opera da parte dei propri studenti – nonché semplici amatori. Funge, infine, da addentellato di uno studio che sarebbe, altrimenti, meramente descrittivo, un’ipotesi in merito a un possibile legame tra gli ambienti di diffusione dell’Ars poetica tipici di ciascuno dei due secoli. Dall’analisi condotta sui dati disponibili si evidenzia, infatti, una continuità di interessi tra arcadici e docenti riconducibile a una “discendenza educativa” di questi ultimi dai primi. (shrink)

L’obiettivo che questo lavoro si propone è quello di rintracciare nella prosa appassionante e appassionata di Michele Federico Sciacca tracce che rimandano alla speculazione filosofica di Bernardo di Chiaravalle. Divisi nel tempo, ma compartecipi di un modo comune di intendere la categoria mistica, i due filosofi appaiono uniti nella condivisione di una stessa sensibilità. È una filiazione che accoglie più interrogativi che certezze, primo tra tutti, il perché Sciacca non citi mai direttamente Bernardo, cosa che invece ripetutamente fa con Agostino, (...) Tommaso, Bonaventura, e altre colonne portanti del pensiero. Sono molte in tal senso le ipotesi che vengono prese in considerazione, tra queste l’idea che per il filosofo di Giarre, Bernardo fosse non una semplice fonte, ma una lente attraverso la quale guardare meglio e più lontano. Un legame taciuto dunque, tenuto a riparo dalla vista dei più, quello che Sciacca ha lasciato crescere tra le pieghe dei suoi scritti. I due filosofi sfidano il tempo e si trovano, o ri-trovano dentro una sincronicità filosofica che li vede messaggeri dagli stessi valori. In questo forse “immaginario” dialogo tra un pensatore che ha saputo sporgere lo sguardo oltre il suo secolo, e uno che non ha mai perso occasione per riflettere e riflettersi attraverso il passato, è possibile ritrovare e godere della tensione emotiva dell’essere umano che pretende di ricongiungersi con l’Assoluto. The aim of this paper is to find in Michele Federico Sciacca’s fascinating and passionate prose traces that refer to Bernard of Clairvaux philosophical speculation. Distant in time, but sharing a common way of understanding the mystical category, the two philosophers appear united in having the same sensitivity. It is a filiation that welcomes more questions than certainties. First of all, why Sciacca never quotes Bernard directly, something that instead he repeatedly does with Augustine, Thomas, Bonaventure, and many others. In this sense, many hypotheses are taken into consideration, including the idea that for the philosopher of Giarre, Bernard was not just a source, but a lens through which to look better and further awy. A silent relationship, therefore, kept away from the sight of most, that which Sciacca has allowed to grow between the folds of his writings. The two philosophers defy time and find themselves, or refind within a philosophical synchronicity that sees them as messengers of the same values. In this perhaps “imaginary” dialogue between a thinker who has been able to look beyond his century, and one who has never missed an opportunity to reflect and reflect through the past, we can find and enjoy the emotional tension of the human being who claims to reconnect with the Absolute. (shrink)

L’articolo qui riproposto e apparso originariamente nel 1988 anticipa alcune questioni fondamentali trattate nel presente numero, in riferimento alla collaborazione tra il video-artista Paolo Rosa e il suo gruppo Studio Azzurro e il regista teatrale Giorgio Barberio Corsetti. L’articolo sottolinea come l’incontro tra video-arte e teatro, tra arti tecnologiche e arti performative, rinnovi uno dei tratti caratteristici della pratica artistica moderna, dalla letteratura alle arti visive e performative: lo statuto del soggetto, in cui è in gioco l’interazione tra l’interno e (...) l’esterno della vita, della coscienza e dell’esperienza individuale. La collaborazione di Rosa e Studio Azzurro con Barberio Corsetti si collega così alla tradizione artistica moderna, sottolineata in modo particolare dall’opera letteraria di Rainer Maria Rilke. (shrink)

This paper examines two contemporary answers to the question of whether moral values and norms are apt for rational criticism and justification: Richard Rorty’s radically contextualist approach—which is centered around the notion of contingency and is characterized by a dismissal of all claims to philosophical justification—and Karl-Otto Apel’s transcendental-pragmatic version of discourse ethics—which encompasses highly ambitious claims to justification and universal validity. Contrasting the key theses of Rorty’s contextualism with those of Apel’s universalist discourse ethics and reconstructing their respective conceptions (...) of moral progress we argue that neither Rorty’s nor Apel’s position is convincing. (shrink)

A forgotten document by the young Leopardi: the Disputatio and its relation to the Dissertazioni filosofiche - In this essay we look at the Disputatio, a forgotten document by the young Leopardi. It consists of a list of sixty questions, thirty written in Latin and thirty in Italian. These were the questions that Leopardi had to answer in his last public examination, held on the 20 July 1812. In the first part, the authors and sources used by Leopardi in the (...) preparation of the exercise will be studied and compared with the text of the Disputatio. The second part is a comparison between the text of the Disputatio and that of the Dissertazioni filosofiche of 1811-1812. This comparison and consideration of the order in which the subjects are presented reveal that the Dissertazioni filosofiche were written when the poet was preparing for the above-mentioned examination, and that in the Disputatio there are thinkers and subjects, such as La Mettrie and Holbach, that were important for the development of Leopardi’s mature philosophy. (shrink)

_Abstract_: In philosophy and cognitive science, the tension between cognitivism and the 4E-Cognition approach is both deep and polarizing. A lack of serious engagement with the theoretical and empirical work generated by the opposing framework seems problematic on both sides. In this paper, we closely discuss data on early socio-cognitive development produced by an influential nativist current of thought in the cognitivist paradigm. We consider these data from the point of view of a 4E-Cognition perspective called “the pairing hypothesis”, which (...) originates in phenomenological philosophy. We show that a close examination of these cognitivist-nativist data strengthens the phenomenological 4E-Cognition perspective by significantly expanding the range of findings it can account for. By addressing the debate between rich and lean explanations in early social cognition, we corroborate the idea that careful interaction between cognitivism and the 4E-Cognition approach can lead to progress in cognitive science. _Keywords_: Development of Social Cognition; Cognitivist Nativism; Direct Social Perception; Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences; Action Production and Perception _Spiegazioni ricche o parsimoniose? Un’alternativa fenomenologica per lo sviluppo della prima cognizione sociale_ _Riassunto_: Un’accesa e radicale tensione nelle scienze cognitive è quella tra il cognitivismo e il cosiddetto approccio delle quattro E (_Embodied, Enactive, Embedded_ e _Extended_). La mancanza di una riflessione aperta e sostanziale sul lavoro teorico ed empirico proposto dall’approccio opposto appare problematica da entrambe le parti. Il presente contributo analizza a fondo le evidenze empiriche presentate da una delle maggiori correnti innatiste del paradigma cognitivista nello studio dello sviluppo socio-cognitivo. Queste evidenze sperimentali vengono esaminate dal punto di vista della “ipotesi dell’appaiamento”, ipotesi inserita nel quadro della prospettiva teorica 4E e che proviene dalla filosofia fenomenologica. Il presente contributo mostra come una considerazione approfondita dei dati generati dal cognitivismo innatista può rafforzare il potere esplicativo della prospettiva fenomenologica 4E, ampliandone in misura significativa la gamma di evidenze scientifiche che essa può contribuire a spiegare. Affrontando il dibattito sullo sviluppo della prima cognizione sociale tra spiegazioni ricche e parsimoniose, viene corroborata l’idea che un’attenta interazione tra cognitivismo e approccio 4E può essere un modo per far progredire le scienze cognitive. _Parole chiave_: Sviluppo della cognizione sociale; Innatismo cognitivo; Percezione sociale diretta; Fenomenologia e scienze cognitive; Produzione e percezione di azioni. (shrink)

Ontologies represent the standard way to model the knowledge about specific domains. This holds also for the legal domain where several ontologies have been put forward to model specific kinds of legal knowledge. Both for standard users and for law scholars, it is often difficult to have an overall view on the existing alternatives, their main features and their interlinking with the other ontologies. To answer this need, in this paper, we address an analysis of the state-of-the-art in legal ontologies (...) and we characterise them along with some distinctive features. This paper aims to guide generic users and law experts in selecting the legal ontology that better fits their needs and in understanding its specificity so that proper extensions to the selected model could be investigated. (shrink)

Ontologies represent the standard way to model the knowledge about specific domains. This holds also for the legal domain where several ontologies have been put forward to model specific kinds of legal knowledge. Both for standard users and for law scholars, it is often difficult to have an overall view on the existing alternatives, their main features and their interlinking with the other ontologies. To answer this need, in this paper, we address an analysis of the state-of-the-art in legal ontologies (...) and we characterise them along with some distinctive features. This paper aims to guide generic users and law experts in selecting the legal ontology that better fits their needs and in understanding its specificity so that proper extensions to the selected model could be investigated. (shrink)

Ontologies represent the standard way to model the knowledge about specific domains. This holds also for the legal domain where several ontologies have been put forward to model specific kinds of legal knowledge. Both for standard users and for law scholars, it is often difficult to have an overall view on the existing alternatives, their main features and their interlinking with the other ontologies. To answer this need, in this paper, we address an analysis of the state-of-the-art in legal ontologies (...) and we characterise them along with some distinctive features. This paper aims to guide generic users and law experts in selecting the legal ontology that better fits their needs and in understanding its specificity so that proper extensions to the selected model could be investigated. (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)