A friend of Galileo and author of the renowned utopia The City of the Sun, Tommaso Campanella (Stilo, Calabria,1568- Paris, 1639) is one of the most significant and original thinkers of the early modern period. His philosophical project centred upon the idea of reconciling Renaissance philosophy with a radical reform of science and society. He produced a complex and articulate synthesis of all fields of knowledge – including magic and astrology. During his early formative years as a Dominican friar, he (...) manifested a restless impatience towards Aristotelian philosophy and its followers. As a reaction, he enthusiastically embraced Bernardino Telesio’s view that knowledge could only be acquired through the observation of things themselves, investigated through the senses and based on a correct understanding of the link between words and objects. Campanella’s new natural philosophy rested on the principle that the books written by men needed to be compared with God’s infinite book of nature, allowing them to correct the mistakes scattered throughout the human ‘copies’ which were always imperfect, partial and liable to revisions. It is in the light of these principles that he defended Galileo’s right to read the book of nature while denouncing the mistake of those – be they Aristotelian philosophers or theologians – who wanted to stop him from carrying on his natural investigations. However, Campanella maintained that the book of nature, far from being written in mathematical characters, was a living organism in which each natural being was endowed with life and a degree of sensibility that was appropriate for its preservation and propagation. Nature as a whole was an organism in which each single part was directed towards the common good. This is the reason why Campanella thought that nature had to be regarded as an ideal model for any political organisation. Political structures were often ruled by injustice and violence precisely because they had departed from that natural model. This book charts Campanella’s intellectual life by showing the origin, development and persistence of some of the fundamental tenets of his thought. (shrink)

v. 1. Proceedings, Rome, 2001-2004 -- v. 2. Giornate di studi, 2005-2008.

This essay analyzes the first among the three moments of Georges Bataille’s reception of Nietzsche’s thought. During the 1930s, in the context of the review Acéphale, the French writer takes position in the debate about the relationship between Nietzscheism and fascism. He lays claim on the heritage of the German thinker as the source of a “heterogeneous” politics. This group of articles provides the context in which Bataille can start to delineate an original meditation on the relationship between work and (...) society. In this sense, they will mark a turning point in the path toward the post-war developments on the writers’ engagement. A new thematization of the relationship between text and context will emerge from the confrontation with Nietzsche and from the articulation of the fundamental duality of the forms of politics. (shrink)

The TRIM/RBCC proteins are defined by the presence of the tripartite motif composed of a RING domain, one or two B‐box motifs and a coiled‐coil region. These proteins are involved in a plethora of cellular processes such as apoptosis, cell cycle regulation and viral response. Consistently, their alteration results in many diverse pathological conditions. The highly conserved modular structure of these proteins suggests that a common biochemical function may underlie their assorted cellular roles. Here, we review recent data indicating that (...) some TRIM/RBCC proteins are implicated in ubiquitination and propose that this large protein family represents a novel class of ‘single protein RING finger’ ubiquitin E3 ligases. BioEssays 27:1147–1157, 2005. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

L'histoire de l'interprétation des Ps 42-43 se révèle être une véritable Wirkungsgeschichte qui, dans l'évolution des méthodes de lecture, permet de percevoir la force d'une Parole Vivante, toujours actualisée dans les différentes époques de l'exégèse. Même dans la coexistence de tendances non parfaitement homogènes, on peut discerner deux orientations principales: une interprétation mystique et christologique, à partir des reprises néotestamentaires de ces psaumes, a cédé progressivement le pas, à partir des Maîtres Juifs du XIe siècle et de la Renaissance, à (...) une lecture toujours plus attentive aux questions philologiques/littéraires ainsi qu'à l'expérience du psalmiste et de son peuple. L'étude de ces différents horizons interprétatifs se révèle d'un grand intérêt aujourd'hui, lorsque l'on cherche une nouvelle herméneutique, qui permette à la Parole de «parler» encore. (shrink)

One key aspect of Phenomenology, i.e. the relationship between consciousness and phenomena, has been described, with regard to when this relationship be-gins to arise, as a co-emergence of the subject and the world. The aim of this article is to demonstrate how the theme of emergence may also be found in the philosophy of Mikel Dufrenne. First of all, strictly speaking, what emerges is what manifests itself and exerts influence due to the merging of some proper-ties, although what emerges cannot (...) be reduced to these properties. This dy-namic may be clearly seen in aesthetics, where affective or expressive qualities manifest themselves. Secondly, and more broadly, what emerges is that which begins to take shape from an indistinct, latent background. Hence, the plane of “presence” – a cognitive prereflective dimension of symbiosis with the world – may be understood as a place of originary co-emergence. (shrink)

For at least a century, light and homogeneous space, but also occluding and covering edges of surfaces, attract the interest of philosophers, psychologists and architectural theorists. In different fields, scholars and artists have explored the effects of edges and borders. Among them, the initiator of the ecological approach to visual perception, James J. Gibson, a visionary artist like James Turrell and Nordic and American architects imbued with phenomenological and Heideggerian suggestions. In their theories of perception and environmental psychology, these scholars (...) have explored the relationship between the observer and the natural environment, but also the effects of built places on the human mind and behavior. More or less openly declared, the influence of Gestalt psychology extends on all these conceptions, and this essay aims to trace the common origin of the many ideas that such distant scholars have elaborated on the concept of “looking” and on the “meaning of places”. (shrink)

1. Dal mito delle facoltà alle reti neurali «Neurophysiologica sunt, non leguntur!» Rifacendo il verso a una celebre battuta fregeana, questa esortazione sembra condensare il fastidio di molti filosofi di fronte all’ingerenza dei neuroscienziati, i quali s’illuderebbero di risolvere i massimi problemi di filosofia della mente, soprattutto quelli legati al sorgere della coscienza e agli aspetti qualitativi delle sensazioni. Viceversa, forse per sentirsi legittimati a trattare quei problemi, g...

1. Dal mito delle facoltà alle reti neurali «Neurophysiologica sunt, non leguntur!» Rifacendo il verso a una celebre battuta fregeana, questa esortazione sembra condensare il fastidio di molti filosofi di fronte all’ingerenza dei neuroscienziati, i quali s’illuderebbero di risolvere i massimi problemi di filosofia della mente, soprattutto quelli legati al sorgere della coscienza e agli aspetti qualitativi delle sensazioni. Viceversa, forse per sentirsi legittimati a trattare quei problemi, g...

In a science fiction story, the author finds clear cases of our tendency to attribute internal control, and various forms of thought and perception, when we are ignorant of the actual, environmental determiners of behavior.