The question concerning the meaning of the figures of the second stage of the Phenomenology of Spirit - desire, the master/slave relation, and universal self-consciousness - opens up a vast territory of possible interpretations. These few pages have indeed a density and a richness which is rare in philosophy. One could say that this section alone of the Phenomenology contains more matter for thought than the complete works of many philosophers. Hegel synopsizes this well known section with one paragraph.

Possenti's volume collects his most recent essays on metaphysical and ethical topics. In the first part Possenti deals particularly with Heidegger. The second part, dealing with ethics and ethical questions, contains a polemical piece against critical rationalism. The last essay of the section, "Universality of Human Rights", is exceptionally noteworthy for its concise clarity, and we shall deal with it in this short review.

This book is about Buttiglione's teacher and friend, Augusto Del Noce, an Italian philosopher who died in 1989. It would be hard to describe the relevance of Del Noce's thought to twentieth-century Italian cultural and philosophical history, both because of the complexity of Del Noce's thought and because of the limited space of this review. Therefore I will outline three components of the thought of Del Noce as presented by Buttiglione in this book: Christianity and modernity, the criticism of the (...) idea of one modernity, Marxism, and "Western irreligion.". (shrink)

"Marxism is far too important to be left to Marxists". One can continue by saying that Gramsci's place in the history of Marxism is far too important to leave his thought for communist parties in the West to make use of. So Finocchiaro's book treats Gramsci's thought outside the "tradition" that has used and still uses Gramsci's thought as a good tactic in the Western world, an exceptional tool to gain power democratically. And if the power of a tool must (...) be measured by the results of its application, then his thought is, without a doubt, the best tool to attain "hegemony" in a liberal democracy. (shrink)

In the attempt of post-Hegelian philosophies to substitute ethics with politics, failure is most evident in Marxism, the most powerful, politically speaking, post-Hegelian philosophy. This failure points out the need to rethink ethics. In La Crisi della Morale Buttiglione does not claim to satisfy this need, but this is for him the horizon to deal with a specific moral question: sexual ethics. The focus of this book is Humanae Vitae and the teaching of Karol Wojtyla, as Pope John Paul II. (...) This collection of essays is particularly interesting for Catholic philosophers, and for whomever is interested in a rational discussion and justification of Catholic "opinions" on sexuality, marriage, contraception. Moral norms are rational norms for Catholicism, and even if the adherence to these norms may be external to a rational-philosophical process, as is normally the case, their content is rational. In this review I will not be able to summarize the entire book essay by essay, but will try to give a taste of some of the major points, as an invitation, for those who read Italian, to read this book directly. (shrink)

Francesco Botturi, professor of the philosophy of history at The Catholic University of Milan, is the author of several essays on Vico; in this book he takes a larger look at Vico's entire work through the guiding thread of the concept of wisdom. The idea of wisdom is the "foundation of Vico's practical philosophy", a kind of wisdom whose locus is between poetic wisdom and reflected wisdom, between imagination and concept. From a genetic point of view, poetic wisdom upholds a (...) primacy, but philosophical wisdom retains the structural primacy. According to Botturi, Vico, who wants to maintain the unity of these forms of wisdom, tries to keep them together by placing them in temporal succession. Both forms of wisdom are "complementary and irreducible paths of Vico's metaphysical transcendentality", and both constitute wisdom synchronically. Botturi articulates Vico's thought in four chapters on the concept of wisdom: chapter 1, "The Ideal of Wisdom and Epistemology of the True"; chapter 2, "Poietic Wisdom"; chapter 3, "Wisdom as Justice"; and chapter 4, "Communication of Wisdom.". (shrink)

This is the latest book of Vittorio Possenti, professor of history of moral philosophy at the University of Venice and one of the major experts on the thought of Jacques Maritain. Possenti deals here with the situation of liberal Western societies from the point of view of classical political philosophy, understood as the tradition of political thought originating in Aristotle and adopted by Aquinas and modern Thomists such as Jacques Maritain.

Italian political thinker Paolo Virno argues that the category of "multitude" is a far better tool to analyze contemporary issues than the Hobbesian concept of "people." Globalization is forcing us to rethink some of the categories—such as "the people"—that traditionally have been associated with the now eroding state. Italian political thinker Paolo Virno argues that the category of "multitude," elaborated by Spinoza and for the most part left fallow since the seventeenth century, is a far better tool to (...) analyze contemporary issues than the Hobbesian concept of "people," favored by classical political philosophy. Hobbes, who detested the notion of multitude, defined it as shunning political unity, resisting authority, and never entering into lasting agreements. "When they rebel against the state," Hobbes wrote, "the citizens are the multitude against the people." But the multitude isn't just a negative notion, it is a rich concept that allows us to examine anew plural experiences and forms of nonrepresentative democracy. Drawing from philosophy of language, political economics, and ethics, Virno shows that being foreign, "not-feeling-at-home-anywhere," is a condition that forces the multitude to place its trust in the intellect. In conclusion, Virno suggests that the metamorphosis of the social systems in the West during the last twenty years is leading to a paradoxical "Communism of the Capital.". (shrink)

The philosophical analysis of mathematical explanations concerns itself with two different, although connected, areas of investigation. The first area addresses the problem of whether mathematics can play an explanatory role in the natural and social sciences. The second deals with the problem of whether mathematical explanations occur within mathematics itself. Accordingly, this entry surveys the contributions to both areas, it shows their relevance to the history of philosophy and science, it articulates their connection, and points to the philosophical pay-offs to (...) be expected by deepening our understanding of the topic. (shrink)

The temporality of intentions and actions in situations of social interaction can sometimes be paradoxical. I argue that in these situations it may sometimes be possible to conceive of individual acts that can, in a strong sense, be intended retroactively. This could happen when the relational patterns in social interaction literally alter the virtual structure of a participant's past corporeal intentions resulting in an odd experience of having intended something all along without knowing it. I propose that this possibility should (...) be interpreted as more than just a narrowly epistemic phenomenon. Examining this claim involves clarifying the enactive perspective on intentionality, which I do here. The enactive approach rejects the model of a causal relation between intention and action for one of an intrinsic qualitative relation between the two as facets of sense-making. I develop this idea and compare it with Merleau-Ponty's Fundierung model of the mutual relation between corporeal and reflexive intentionality to show that co-regulated moves/affections during social interaction may modulate both arcs of this relation, creating the possibility of a re-signification that alters not the actuality but the virtual tendencies that preceded the social act. (shrink)

This paper explores the epistemology of extrapolation from model organisms to humans in molecular medicine. We take into account two common views on the issue, the homology view and the disanalogy view. In response to both interpretations, we argue that the foundational basis of extrapolations cannot simply be provided by homology and that relevant disanalogies can, thanks to the techniques of molecular biology, be experimentally controlled and exploited to allow useful and reliable extrapolations. The case of "humanised mice" in the (...) context of cancer stem cell research provides evidence of how animal models can be construed to approximate bona fide causal analogue models of human diseases. To supplement this view we show how the epistemology of model organisms needs to take into account the engineering side of molecular medicine. Model organisms are often manipulated to create analogies or remove disanalogies with the target system. We maintain that highlighting this feature is fundamental to explain what warrants extrapolation in the search for the molecular causes of disease. (shrink)

A novel theoretical framework for an embodied, non-representational approach to language that extends and deepens enactive theory, bridging the gap between sensorimotor skills and language. -/- Linguistic Bodies offers a fully embodied and fully social treatment of human language without positing mental representations. The authors present the first coherent, overarching theory that connects dynamical explanations of action and perception with language. Arguing from the assumption of a deep continuity between life and mind, they show that this continuity extends to language. (...) Expanding and deepening enactive theory, they offer a constitutive account of language and the co-emergent phenomena of personhood, reflexivity, social normativity, and ideality. Language, they argue, is not something we add to a range of existing cognitive capacities but a new way of being embodied. Each of us is a linguistic body in a community of other linguistic bodies. The book describes three distinct yet entangled kinds of human embodiment, organic, sensorimotor, and intersubjective; it traces the emergence of linguistic sensitivities and introduces the novel concept of linguistic bodies; and it explores the implications of living as linguistic bodies in perpetual becoming, applying the concept of linguistic bodies to questions of language acquisition, parenting, autism, grammar, symbol, narrative, and gesture, and to such ethical concerns as microaggression, institutional speech, and pedagogy. (shrink)

Christ as symbol in Kant¿s religion -- Hegel's conception of God -- The reality of religion in Hegel's idealist metaphysics -- Hegel's version of the ontological argument for the existence of God -- The trinity and the I -- The death of God and recognition of the self -- Beyond subjectivism -- The relevance of Hegel's philosophy of religion today.

Summary This article presents three hitherto unpublished letters by Frank Plumpton Ramsey on the foundations of mathematics with commentary. One of the letters was sent to Abraham Fraenkel and the other two letters to Heinrich Behmann. The transcription of the letters is preceded by an account that details the extent of Ramsey's known contacts with mathematical logicians on the Continent.

The literature on indicative conditionals contains two appealing views. The first is the selectional view: on this view, conditionals operate by selecting a single possibility, which is used to evaluate the consequent. The second is the informational view: on this view, conditionals don’t express propositions, but rather impose constraints on information states of speakers. Both views are supported by strong arguments, but they are incompatible on their standard formulations. Hence it appears that we have to choose between mutually exclusive options. (...) But the options are not exclusive. This paper develops a theory of the semantics and assertability of conditionals that is both selectional and informational. The theory vindicates the signature inferences of both selectional and informational theories, including so-called Conditionals Excluded Middle and principles about the interplay between conditionals and ‘might’. It also predicts some interesting and puzzling facts about the assertion of conditionals. (shrink)

Le but de cet ouvrage est de montrer la teneur philosophique unitaire de la pensée critique de Diderot par delà le caractère éclaté et dispersé de son œuvre. Diderot philosophe est présenté comme un penseur critique et systématique, c'est-à-dire un philosophe dont la réflexion, d'une part, s'inscrit dans le cadre du courant de pensée moderne qui vise à dépasser les perspectives du « premier regard géomètre de la raison », celui de Descartes, de Malebranche et des post-cartésiens. D'autre part, elle (...) atteint un « second regard critique », plus profond, jeté sur le monde de la nature et surtout, sur lui-même (une philosophie de l'aperception : Spinoza, Wolff, les Moralistes anglais et Kant), qui se rattache intimement à un matérialisme biologique tout à fait original, issu de la confrontation de Diderot avec les naturalistes et les médecins de son temps. C'est ce matérialisme élaboré dans l'usine encyclopédique qui met en cause la notion clé d'« individualité naturelle » (jouée en couplet avec une « communauté du désir ») - néologisme dont Le Neveu de Rameau et Le Rêve de D'Alembert développeront les tenants et les aboutissants philosophiques -, et qui témoigne de la nouveauté d'approche propre à cette philosophie, à l'intérieur de la pensée des Lumières européennes. Avec Diderot, c'est une nouvelle figure historique de la philosophie elle-même - celle de la subjectivité individuelle complexe, uni-totalité de penser-sentir-agir - qui monte sur la scène de la modernité, comme étant la substance première, incontournable et insaisissable, de la pensée critique de nos jours. (shrink)

Heinrich Behmann (1891-1970) obtained his Habilitation under David Hilbert in Göttingen in 1921 with a thesis on the decision problem. In his thesis, he solved - independently of Löwenheim and Skolem's earlier work - the decision problem for monadic second-order logic in a framework that combined elements of the algebra of logic and the newer axiomatic approach to logic then being developed in Göttingen. In a talk given in 1921, he outlined this solution, but also presented important programmatic remarks on (...) the significance of the decision problem and of decision procedures more generally. The text of this talk as well as a partial English translation are included. (shrink)