The essay reconstructs Mussolini's passion for literature. In 1909 he published a serial novel entitled “The Cardinal's lover. Claudia Particle”. After the Mussolini's rise to power, Giovacchino Forzano acted as a ghostwriter for him in the writing of three dramas. Mussolini’s knowledge of more or less classic authors in literature becomes an essential part in the construction of the rhetoric of the leader both in public discourses and in his well-known slogans. At the same time, Mussolini’s attempt to become a (...) renowned author was functional to the construction of the character of the Duce. (shrink)

Recordando a Bachelard a medio siglo de su muerte (2011) -- Filosofia de la relatividad (2011) -- La proliferación de los conceptos de especie en la biología evolucionista (2010).

Volume 19, Issue 9, September 2019, Page 37-39.

A critical survey of the main philosophical theories about events and event talk, organized in three main sections: (i) Events and Other Categories (Events vs. Objects; Events vs. Facts; Events vs. Properties; Events vs. Times); (ii) Types of Events (Activities, Accomplishments, Achievements, and States; Static and Dynamic Events; Actions and Bodily Movements; Mental and Physical Events; Negative Events); (iii) Existence, Identity, and Indeterminacy.

Recent debates in the field of contemporary art have underlined the political importance of creative reworkings of the past, especially for those subjects that have been traditionally marginalised. A feminist perspective has been nevertheless quite absent from such debates. This article addresses feminist uses of archival documents in the visual arts through the analysis of three works produced in the past two decades: The Fae Richard's Photo Archive (1997) by Zoe Leonard and Cheryl Dunye, Some Chance Operations (1998) by Renée (...) Green and Queen of the Artists’ Studios (2004–2007) by Andrea Geyer. These works share an interest for women's histories and representations by composing a series of documents (both factual and fictive) into complex narratives where history and subjectivity intersect. (shrink)

This article analyses the work of the Italian collective Kinkaleri, situated on the border between various artistic disciplines . It focuses on the implications of their collective mode of working, on their questioning of the nature of the stage, and on the anti-spectacular aesthetics that characterized their later projects.

Smithson, Notari, Le Corbusier, Einstein…Renée Green’s work sketches genealogies through reconstructions and inquiries based on displacements through times and spaces, between the present and the past, the subject of narration and the subject of the story, here and elsewhere. In these back-and-forth movements between archive and fiction, historical figures emerge as ghosts which literally haunt her films, occupying a spatial borderline between imagination, history and the desires invested in the process of remembrance.

The crisis, characteristic of our present postcolonial era, in the historically-codified forms of talking about alterity has permitted the emergence of what can be called « stories of the other » — stories about those who have been implicitly excluded from the position of the subject. This crisis is particularly evident in a discipline such as anthropology, which is founded precisely upon narratives of the Other. Beginning with the problems posed by the possibility of a visual narration of alterity, this (...) article proposes to analyse the connections among narrative, representation and identity in the works of Tracey Moffat, Isaac Julien and Fiona Tan. In their videos and installations, the question of the gaze fixed on the other is articulated around the themes of memory and the crisis of ethnography as a means of representation of or narrative about cultural alterity. These artists stage an « other » gaze capable of bringing out repressed and subaltern histories. They affirm an identity that is marginal and hybrid at the same time, beyond the myths of origin and purity that delineate colonial and colonialist thought. (shrink)

Roberto Esposito is one of the most prolific and important exponents of contemporary Italian political theory.

This unique textbook states and proves all the major theorems of many-valued propositional logic and provides the reader with the most recent developments and trends, including applications to adaptive error-correcting binary search. The book is suitable for self-study, making the basic tools of many-valued logic accessible to students and scientists with a basic mathematical knowledge who are interested in the mathematical treatment of uncertain information. Stressing the interplay between algebra and logic, the book contains material never before published, such as (...) a simple proof of the completeness theorem and of the equivalence between Chang's MV algebras and Abelian lattice-ordered groups with unit - a necessary prerequisite for the incorporation of a genuine addition operation into fuzzy logic. Readers interested in fuzzy control are provided with a rich deductive system in which one can define fuzzy partitions, just as Boolean partitions can be defined and computed in classical logic. Detailed bibliographic remarks at the end of each chapter and an extensive bibliography lead the reader on to further specialised topics. (shrink)

In this article Roberto Balzani, the mayor of Forlì, remembers Roberto Ruffilli, 25 years after his murder. The remembrance reconstructs the steps of his academic career and of his political commitment. Ruffilli graduated at the Catholic University of Milan; his researches in contemporary history placed him in an original position if compared with the Italian studies of the time. The constant attention towards the history of administration and the transformations of the state is the basis on which Ruffilli (...) built his proposals concerning the reform of the insitutional and political system. Balzani concludes the article by affirming that the problems of today aren't any different, that is why Ruffilli's proposals still demonstrate their modernity. (shrink)

According to a leading view, emotions such as admiration, contempt, pride, and shame are important vehicles of agential development. Through admiration and contempt, we establish models and countermodels against which to shape our character; through pride and shame, we get a sense of how we measure up to them. Critics of this view object that these emotions always deliver uncompromising evaluations: admiration casts people in a completely positive light, while contempt casts aspersion on them. Therefore, insofar as they lack the (...) capacity for nuance, these emotions are systematically unfitting and misleading. This paper discusses this objection as originally formulated by John Doris as well as Macalester Bell’s response. Drawing from research on emotional intentionality, it will be argued that Doris’ and Bell’s accounts are respectively misguided criticisms and inadequate defences of these emotions. Their mistake lies in an invalid transition from the claim that these emotions are intentionally directed towards persons to the claim that they deliver global evaluations of those towards whom they are directed. By rejecting this inference, it will be shown that these emotions can deliver nuanced and fitting evaluations in a way Doris’ objection overlooks and Bell’s response precludes us from articulating. (shrink)

This book by Roberto Esposito - a leading Italian political philosopher - is a highly original exploration of the relationship between human bodies and societies. The original function of law, even before it was codified, was to preserve peaceful cohabitation between people who were exposed to the risk of destructive conflict. Just as the human body's immune system protects the organism from deadly incursions by viruses and other threats, law also ensures the survival of the community in a life-threatening (...) situation. It protects and prolongs life. But the function of law as a form of immunization points to a more disturbing consideration. Like the individual body, the collective body can be immunized from the perceived danger only by allowing a little of what threatens it to enter its protective boundaries. This means that in order to escape the clutches of death, life is forced to incorporate within itself the lethal principle. Starting from this reflection on the nature of immunization, Esposito offers a wide-ranging analysis of contemporary biopolitics. Never more than at present has the demand for immunization come to characterize all aspects of our existence. The more we feel at risk of being infiltrated and infected by foreign elements, the more the life of the individual and society closes off within its protective boundaries, forcing us to choose between a self-destructive outcome and a more radical alternative based on a new conception of community. (shrink)

This paper discusses three relevant logics that obey Component Homogeneity - a principle that Goddard and Routley introduce in their project of a logic of significance. The paper establishes two main results. First, it establishes a general characterization result for two families of logic that obey Component Homogeneity - that is, we provide a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for their consequence relations. From this, we derive characterization results for S*fde, dS*fde, crossS*fde. Second, the paper establishes complete sequent calculi (...) for S*fde, dS*fde, crossS*fde. Among the other accomplishments of the paper, we generalize the semantics from Bochvar, Hallden, Deutsch and Daniels, we provide a general recipe to define containment logics, we explore the single-premise/single-conclusion fragment of S*fde, dS*fde, crossS*fdeand the connections between crossS*fde and the logic Eq of equality by Epstein. Also, we present S*fde as a relevant logic of meaninglessness that follows the main philosophical tenets of Goddard and Routley, and we briefly examine three further systems that are closely related to our main logics. Finally, we discuss Routley's criticism to containment logic in light of our results, and overview some open issues. (shrink)

As the worlds of economics, politics, culture, and communications face a growing wave of globalization that will likely continue, ethical challenges for journalists have also gone global. I propose a clear division between ethics codes for media owners, the public, and professional journalists and present a set of considerations and specific rules applicable only to the last group. In this article I advocate a universal code of journalistic ethics but point out problems and warn against dangers that have made the (...) application of such codes difficult in the past. A universal code should consider the voluntary nature of such an endeavor, the cultural and economic differences in various journalistic traditions, and the problem of producing solutions acceptable to all involved. (shrink)

A discussion with Roberto Andorno about global bioethics and biolaw, the Coronavirus pandemic, and its impact on human dignity and rights. Can we foresee the emerging new profile of global bioethics and biolaw in the post-Coronavirus era? How significant are they going to be in the future, after the enormous pressure that the Coronavirus pandemic has exercised on key political, legal, and ethical values? Must the voice of bioethicists -compared to the ‘hard’ scientific data- be louder in the future (...) concerning decisions about emergency social and medical measures? Is there a hope that public empowerment will support robust, global public engagement and meaningful deliberation? How much does Roberto Andorno’s view on human dignity reveal a supposed commitment to moral realism? The massive deaths of elderly people living in hospices of Sweden, Spain, and Italy, based on an implicit ‘fair innings’ view, has recently posed certain questions on the moral unacceptability of such practices. The same questions arise in the case of the legalization of euthanasia grounded on the implicit acceptance of the view that life is not worth living under certain circumstances. Is it possible that the human rights bodies worldwide will acquire executive power, and how could this become possible? How influential the ‘precautionary principle’ can become regarding clinical and research ethics in the future? How urgent is the importance of the introduction of bioethical education in the curricula of ‘hard’ empirical studies? Roberto Andorno discusses with us all these controversial and under heated public debate issues, giving sometimes provocative answers. (shrink)

Holes are a good example of the sort of entity that down-to-earth philosophers would be inclined to expel from their ontological inventory. In this work we argue instead in favor of their existence and explore the consequences of this liberality—odd as they might appear. We examine the ontology of holes, their geometry, their part-whole relations, their identity and their causal role, the ways we perceive them. We distinguish three basic kinds of holes: blind hollows, perforating tunnels, and internal cavities, treating (...) these uniformly as immaterial bodies. We develop a morphology of holes, focusing on the way a hole can be filled, and then look at the main properties of the resulting conceptual framework: holes are parasitic upon the surfaces of their hosts; holes can move, fuse into each other, split; they can be born, develop, and die. Finally, we examine how some morphological features of holes are represented in perception, including the conditions whereby we have the impression that we see, feel, or even hear a hole. The book has over 150 pictures and is completed by a formal appendix, a section with puzzles and exercises, and a extensive annotated bibliography. (shrink)

Neste artigo, temos como objetivo perscrutar o funcionamento da verbo-visualidade de uma perspectiva dialógica do discurso, utilizando, como material de análise, uma videomontagem humorística acerca do ator político Dilma Rousseff, durante a campanha presidencial brasileira do ano de 2010. Primeiramente, procuramos refletir acerca de alguns pressupostos teórico-metodológicos de Bakhtin e de Brait, qual seja, o de verbo-visualidade, alicerçado na concepção bakhtiniana de linguagem. Em um segundo momento, detivemo-nos na análise do texto objeto do artigo, que se pautou na seguinte indagação: (...) como contribuem e funcionam os elementos verbais e visuais para produção e direcionamento de sentidos na videomontagem? Nossa hipótese é a de que os discursos carregados pela montagem criam uma trilha ideológica de sentido que leva os interlocutores a interpretar a então candidata como uma pessoa sem discurso, manipulável. Diante do exposto, tentaremos demonstrar a hipótese que sustentamos. (shrink)

A wide family of many-valued logics—for instance, those based on the weak Kleene algebra—includes a non-classical truth-value that is ‘contaminating’ in the sense that whenever the value is assigned to a formula φ⁠, any complex formula in which φ appears is assigned that value as well. In such systems, the contaminating value enjoys a wide range of interpretations, suggesting scenarios in which more than one of these interpretations are called for. This calls for an evaluation of systems with multiple contaminating (...) values. In this paper, we consider the countably infinite family of multiple-conclusion consequence relations in which classical logic is enriched with one or more contaminating values whose behavior is determined by a linear ordering between them. We consider some motivations and applications for such systems and provide general characterizations for all consequence relations in this family. Finally, we provide sequent calculi for a pair of four-valued logics including two linearly ordered contaminating values before defining two-sided sequent calculi corresponding to each of the infinite family of many-valued logics studied in this paper. (shrink)

Introduction : nothing in common -- Fear -- Guilt -- Law -- Ecstasy -- Experience -- Appendix : nihilism and community.

This paper argues that some of the misunderstandings surrounding the meaning and function of the concept of human dignity in bioethics arise from a lack of distinction between two different roles that this notion plays: one as an overarching policy principle, and the other as a moral standard of patient care. While the former is a very general concept which fulfils a foundational and a guiding role of the normative framework governing biomedical issues, the latter reflects a much more concrete (...) and context-specific understanding of the patient as a “person”. The importance of dignity as a policy principle will be described by appealing to the distinction between principles and rules as developed by some legal philosophers. The value of dignity as a standard of patient care will be illustrated with the help of concrete examples and by drawing on the taxonomies of dignity proposed by Jonathan Mann and other scholars. The overall scope of the article is to highlight this double and complementary role of human dignity in bioethics. (shrink)

Résumé En 2007, bon nombre d’expositions, colloques et numéros monographiques de revues se sont penchés sur les rapports entre l’art et le féminisme, alors que la Documenta 12, très critiquée pour son approche conservatrice, restera peut-être dans l’histoire pour avoir été la première Documenta à montrer 50 % d’artistes femmes. En s’interrogeant sur ces différents phénomènes, cet article pose la question des temporalités du féminisme opposées à la linéarité du récit de l’histoire de l’art et propose une utilisation stratégique du (...) féminisme dans le domaine esthétique. (shrink)

Résumé En 2007, bon nombre d’expositions, colloques et numéros monographiques de revues se sont penchés sur les rapports entre l’art et le féminisme, alors que la Documenta 12, très critiquée pour son approche conservatrice, restera peut-être dans l’histoire pour avoir été la première Documenta à montrer 50 % d’artistes femmes. En s’interrogeant sur ces différents phénomènes, cet article pose la question des temporalités du féminisme opposées à la linéarité du récit de l’histoire de l’art et propose une utilisation stratégique du (...) féminisme dans le domaine esthétique. (shrink)

This article discusses the controversy between Schelling and Eschenmayer regarding the Freiheitsschrift of 1809. Eschenmayer, a follower of the ideas of Jacobi, accuses Schelling of degrading God in applying to Him human concepts. Schelling, on the contrary, thinks that the faith needs the understanding.

I present an argument proving that there are no fundamental facts, which is similar to an argument recently presented by Mark Jago for truthmaker maximalism. I suggest that this argument gives us at least some prima facie, defeasible reason to believe that there are no fundamental facts.

This paper presents a semantical analysis of the Weak Kleene Logics Kw3 and PWK from the tradition of Bochvar and Halldén. These are three-valued logics in which a formula takes the third value if at least one of its components does. The paper establishes two main results: a characterisation result for the relation of logical con- sequence in PWK – that is, we individuate necessary and sufficient conditions for a set.

ABSTRACT The philosophical tradition approaches to morals have their grounds predominantly on metaphysical and theological concepts and theories. Among the traditional ethics concepts, the most prominent is the Divine Command Theory (DCT). As per the DCT, God gives moral foundations to the humankind by its creation and through Revelation. Morality and Divinity are inseparable since the most remote civilization. These concepts submerge in a theological framework and are largely accepted by most followers of the three Abrahamic traditions: Judaism, Christianity, and (...) Islam: the greatest part of the human population. Holding faith and Revelation for its grounds, the Divine Command Theories are not strictly subject to the demonstration. The opponents to the Divine Command conception of morals, grounded in the impossibility of demonstration of its metaphysical and religious assumptions, have tried for many centuries (albeit unsuccessfully) to devalue its importance. They held the argument that it does not show material evidence and logical coherence and, for this reason, cannot be taken into account for scientific nor philosophical purposes. It is just a belief and, as so, should be understood. Besides these extreme oppositions, many other concepts contravene the Divine Command theories, in one or another way, in part or in full. Many philosophers and social scientists, from the classic Greek philosophy up to the present date, for instance, sustain that morality is only a construct, and thus culturally relative and culturally determined. However, this brings many other discussions and imposes the challenge to determine what is the meaning of culture, which elements of culture are morally determinant, and finally, what are the boundaries of such relativity. Moral determinists claim that everything related to human behavior, including morality, is determined, once free will does not exist. More recently, modern thinkers argued that there is a strict science of morality. However, the scientific method alone, despite explaining several facts and evidence, cannot enlighten the entire content and full meaning of ethics. Morals’ understanding requires a broader perception, and an agreement among philosophers, which they have never achieved. All of these questions have many different configurations depending on each philosophical strand, and start complex analysis and endless debates, as long as many of them are reciprocally conflictive. The universe and the atmosphere involving this thesis are the dominions of all these conceptual conflicts, observed from an objective and evolutionary standpoint. Irrespective of this circumstance and its intrinsic importance, however, these questions are far distant from the methodological approach of an analytical discussion on objective morals, what is, indeed, the aim and scope of this work. We should briefly revisit these prominent traditional theories because this thesis shelters a comparative study, and its assumptions at least differ profoundly from all traditional theories. Therefore, it becomes necessary offering direct and specific elements of comparison to the reader, for the right criticism, dispensing interruptive researches. However, even revisiting the traditional theories, for this comparative and critical exposure purpose, they will be kept by the side of our main concerns, as “aliena materia.” Irrespective of the validity of any or all of the elements of this discussion, and their meaning as the philosophical universe of this thesis, the purpose of this work is demonstrating and justifying the existence and meaning of prehistoric moral archetypes arisen directly from the very first social needs and efforts for survival. These archetypes are the definition of the essential foundation of ethics, its aggregation to the collective unconscious and corresponding logic organization and transmission to evolutionary stages of the human genome and different relations space-time, irrespective of any contemporary experience of the individuals. The system defined by these archetypes composes an evolutionary human social model. Is this a metaethical position? Yes, it is. Moreover, as in any metaethical reasoning, we should look carefully for the best and coherent routes, as the Analytical Philosophy offers them. Thus, this work should reasonably demonstrate that morals are not a cultural product of the civilized men or modern societies and that despite being subject to several cultural relative aggregations and subtractions, its essential foundations are archetypal and have never structurally changed. This reasoning induces that morality is an original attribute of the “homo sapiens”; it is not a property and nor an accident: it integrates the human essence and belongs to the realm of the ontological human identity. The human phenomena is a continuing process, playing its role between random determination and free will, and we need to question how morality began and how did it come to us in the present. (shrink)

What are the relationships between an entity and the space at which it is located? And between a region of space and the events that take place there? What is the metaphysical structure of localization? What its modal status? This paper addresses some of these questions in an attempt to work out at least the main coordinates of the logical structure of localization. Our task is mostly taxonomic. But we also highlight some of the underlying structural features and we single (...) out the interactions between the notion of localization and nearby notions, such as the notions of part and whole, or of necessity and possibility. A theory of localization—we argue—is needed in order to account for the basic relations between objects and space, and runs afoul a pure part-whole theory. We also provide an axiomatization of the relation of localization and examine cases of localization involving entities different from material objects. (shrink)

In this paper I will present three arguments (based on the notions of constitution, metaphysical reality, and truth, respectively) with the aim of shedding some new light on the structure of Fine’s (2005, 2006) ‘McTaggartian’ arguments against the reality of tense. Along the way, I will also (i) draw a novel map of the main realist positions about tense, (ii) unearth a previously unnoticed but potentially interesting form of external relativism (which I will label ‘hyper-presentism’) and (iii) sketch a novel (...) interpretation of Fine’s fragmentalism (which I contrast with Lipman’s 2015, 2016b, forthcoming). (shrink)

This paper is concerned with certain ontological issues in the foundations of geographic representation. It sets out what these basic issues are, describes the tools needed to deal with them, and draws some implications for a general theory of spatial representation. Our approach has ramifications in the domains of mereology, topology, and the theory of location, and the question of the interaction of these three domains within a unified spatial representation theory is addressed. In the final part we also consider (...) the idea of non-standard geographies, which may be associated with geography under a classical conception in the same sense in which non-standard logics are associated with classical logic. (shrink)