In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“It’s not true, but I believe it”: Discussions on jettatura in Naples between the End of the Eighteenth and Beginning of the Nineteenth CenturiesFrancesco Paolo de CegliaIntroduction: What is Jettatura?Non èvero...ma ci credo (“It’s not true... but I believe it”) is the title of a comedy by the Italian actor and playwright, Peppino De Filippo, younger brother of the more famous Eduardo, which was staged for the first time (...) in 1942. The narrated events take place in the twentieth century and concern Gervasio Savastano, a Neapolitan businessman who is tormented by the fear of jettatura. The character, victim of grotesque events, first sacks a worker, believing him to be a jettatore, and then hires another, who is a hunchback and so should bring him good luck. In the end, however, it is discovered that the presumed jettatore has never harmed anyone and that the hunchback is not what he seems: he has stuffed his jacket in order to enter into the good graces of the gullible businessman and marry his daughter, with whom he has planned a con trick. The “lucky” events ascribed to his presence can therefore be considered casual. The epilogue? In keeping with the logic of compromise, typical of the brothers De Filippo’s theater, even though the character is rationally convinced of the unfounded nature of his beliefs, he remains adamant: “It’s not true, but I believe it” in other words.1 [End Page 75]“Where I come from, jettatura rules,” wrote the journalist and scriptwriter Giuseppe Marotta in 1947. Indeed, it is still a part of popular Neapolitan culture today.2 Often confused with similar beliefs, such as fascination (fascino) and the evil eye (malocchio), jettatura assumed its present form between the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, at a time when a polite debate on its nature was taking shape in the city. In this period, the epistemological pluralism animating the discussions was translated into a variety of interpretative hypotheses and literary genres, in which grotesque atmospheres and spirited quips also found room, all perfectly in line with what could be considered the Weltanschauung of Savastano. It is the purpose of this article to examine these discussions, which even spread the term abroad and, with it, the “local color” of the concept.Nineteenth-century European writers on jettatura knew the Neapolitan authors well, and either quoted them explicitly or associated them with characters whose names were a deformation of real people’s: for example, Volitta for Valletta (Stendhal), don Jo (Stendhal) or Ojori (Dumas) for De Jorio. They explained that jettatura corresponded to the more familiar evil eye, but they left the term in Italian, as if to underline the fact that it was untranslatable.Is jettatura a mere anthropological issue, linked to a “primitive” culture, in the face of which official science would remain refractory? A belief that could not be exported or shared by those educated in more “highly developed” contexts? Well, in part, yes. Nevertheless, in the 1840s there was a visitor to Naples who expressed himself in the following terms: “When a foreigner arrives in Naples, at first he laughs at jettatura, then, little by little, he becomes troubled by it, and finally, after a stay of three months, you will see him covered in horns and with his right hand forever clenched [to ward off evil].”3 [End Page 76]So wrote the novelist Alexandre Dumas, père, one of the many travellers who, after having completed the Grand Tour of southern Italy, decided to describe its picturesque scenes and backward customs.4 Creating a veritable topos of travel literature, in the same period the philologist Karl August Mayer commented, “often foreigners let themselves be influenced” by local “superstitions.”5 Indeed many of them were captivated by these Neapolitan beliefs, despite their desire to remain objective and detached; and so they were “converted,” and driven to seek scientific explanations, often after meeting “a Real Jettatore,” whose image had nothing in common with the exotic fantasies of “a French Novelist’s Idea of Jettatore.”6Actually, Dumas and Mayer probably exaggerated somewhat in order to make their descriptions more... (shrink)

Carl Menger’s Principles of Economics published in 1871 is usually regarded as the founding document of the Austrian School of economics. Many of the School’s prominent representatives, including Friedrich Wieser, Eugen Böhm-Bawerk, Ludwig Mises, Hans Mayer, Friedrich August Hayek, Fritz Machlup, Oskar Morgenstern, and Gottfried Haberler, as well as Israel Kirzner, Ludwig Lachmann, Murray Rothbard, and Don Lavoie, advanced and modified Menger’s research program in sometimes conflicting ways. Yet, some characteristics of the Austrian School remain (nearly) consensual from (...) its foundation through to contemporary neo-Austrian economists. In eight sections, we will briefly discuss some of the philosophical and methodological characteristics of Austrian economics: Austrian action theory and interpretative understanding, a relatively thoroughgoing subjectivism, methodological individualism, ontological individualism, apriorism, essentialism, an often overstated rejection of formal methods, and alertness to economic semantics. (shrink)

Carl Menger’s Principles of Economics, published in 1871, is usually regarded as the founding document of the Austrian School of economics. Many of the School’s prominent representatives, including Friedrich Wieser, Eugen Böhm-Bawerk, Ludwig Mises, Hans Mayer, Friedrich August Hayek, Fritz Machlup, Oskar Morgenstern, and Gottfried Haberler, as well as Israel Kirzner, Ludwig Lachmann, Murray Rothbard, Don Lavoie, and Peter Boettke, advanced and modified Menger’s research program in sometimes conflicting ways. Yet, some characteristics of the Austrian School remain (nearly) (...) consensual from its foundation through to contemporary neo-Austrian economists. In eight sections, we will briefly discuss some of the philosophical and methodological characteristics of Austrian economics: Austrian action theory and interpretative understanding, a relatively thoroughgoing subjectivism, methodological individualism, ontological individualism, apriorism, essentialism, an often overstated rejection of formal methods, and alertness to economic semantics. (shrink)

When developing computational models to analyze the tradeoffs between climate risk management strategies (i.e., mitigation, adaptation, or geoengineering), scientists make explicit and implicit decisions that are influenced by their beliefs, values and preferences. Model descriptions typically include only the explicit decisions and are silent on value judgments that may explain these decisions. Eliciting scientists’ mental models, a systematic approach to determining how they think about climate risk management, can help to gain a clearer understanding of their modeling decisions. In order (...) to identify and represent the role of values, beliefs and preferences on decisions, we used an augmented mental models research approach, namely values-informed mental models (ViMM). We conducted and qualitatively analyzed interviews with eleven climate risk management scientists. Our results suggest that these scientists use a similar decision framework to each other to think about modeling climate risk management tradeoffs, including eight specific decisions ranging from defining the model objectives to evaluating the model’s results. The influence of values on these decisions varied between our scientists and between the specific decisions. For instance, scientists invoked ethical values (e.g., concerns about human welfare) when defining objectives, but epistemic values (e.g., concerns about model consistency) were more influential when evaluating model results. ViMM can (i) enable insights that can inform the design of new computational models and (ii) make value judgments explicit and more inclusive of relevant values. This transparency can help model users to better discern the relevance of model results to their own decision framing and concerns. (shrink)

Are guest-worker programs exploitative? Egalitarian and neoclassical theories of exploitation agree that they always are. But these judgments are too indiscriminate. Privileged guests are the exception, and the exception points toward a more sensitive standard for identifying exploitation. This more sensitive standard, the sufficiency theory of exploitation, is used to analyze several guest-worker programs. Even when guest-worker programs are exploitative, it is argued that the unfairness should be tolerated if the exploitation is modest, not severe, and if the most likely (...) nonexploitative alternative worsens the plight of the disadvantaged. (shrink)

At the UN, important projects laying down transnational corporations' (TNCs) human rights responsibilities have been launched without ever clarifying the relevant theoretical foundations. One of the consequences is that the human rights principles in projects like the 2000 UN Global Compact and the 2003 Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights can be understood in different ways, which should not cause surprise given that their authors come from diverse backgrounds, including economics (...) and public policy. An examination of these projects and the views of their authors reveals that, although they are superficially linked to international human rights law, they go well beyond it and attempt to deal with corporate social responsibility issues in ways that elude neat classification as fitting neatly in either legal or non-legal categories. Too little attention has been paid to how in the course of developing these projects the legal and ethical dimensions have become entwined and how lines have gotten blurred. Meanwhile, there has been recognition that these UN projects have emerged simply as ad hoc responses to practical concerns about the sustainability of globalization. The lack of any foundational theory or normative framework should be addressed; it is time to bring together specialists from different fields concerned with the human rights responsibilities of corporations to see if it is possible to define a coherent overarching theory for these UN projects. (shrink)

U.S. multinational enterprises must now follow the policies of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in their overseas operations, at least with respect to U.S. expatriate employees. Doing so in a culture which discourages gender equality in the workplace raises difficult issues, both practically and ethically. Vigorously importing U.S. attitudes toward gender-equality into a social culture such as Japan or Saudi Arabia may seem ethnocentric, a version of ethical imperialism. Yet adapting to host country norms risks a (...) kind of moral relativism. This article supports the view that MNEs which promote workplace equality in a host country such as Japan, which is actively involved in the international economic and political community, is not ethical imperialism in any pejorative sense and is preferable to a moral relativism or social contract approach.We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, and endowed by their creator with certain rights — life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. (shrink)

Petti's unprecedented perspective will forever challenge the way people thinkabout God, human origins, ancient mysteries, and Revelation's foretold perilsand deceptive abuse of mistaken beliefs.

ArgumentThe psychoanalytic setting counts today as one of the familiar therapeutic rituals of the Western world. Taking up some of the insights of the anthropology of science will allow us to account for both the social and the material arrangements from which Freud's invention emerged at the end of the nineteenth century out of the clinical laboratories and private consulting rooms of practitioners of hypnosis. The peculiar way of neglecting or forgetting the object world and the institution of the psychoanalyst (...) as a “transference object” will be traced back to multiple reconfigurations in the history of hypnotism in France and in Germany. In this process, different practitioners tried to achieve a synthesis of clinical work and experimental psychology, with the aim of objectifying knowledge about human subjectivity. While Freud retained the claim of psychoanalysis performing an experimental situation, he set apart his own setting from the objectifying practices which were characteristic of this experimental psychology located in the clinic and the private consulting room.It is not easy to over-estimate the importance of the part played by hypnotism in the history of the origin of psychoanalysis. From a theoretical as well as from a therapeutic point of view, psycho-analysis has at its command a legacy which it has inherited from hypnotism.Sigmund Freud, A Short Account of Psycho-Analysis. (shrink)

What did Lenin mean when he claimed to be thinking dialectically about questions of political practice? Renewed interest has been expressed in this subject, but the tendency of most studies is to treat Lenin's dialectic as a metaphysical doctrine consisting of universal laws such as transformation into opposite, and so forth. Emphasizing Lenin's Hegel Notebooks, commentators have argued that his tactical innovations after 1914 were simply applications of these dialectical laws. Examination of Lenin's conception of the dialectic as set forth (...) in his tactical writings after the turn of the century shows, however, that the Leninist practice of dialectical thinking was in fact the very antithesis of metaphysical reason, because it repudiated the universality of abstract rules in the formulation of tactics. Several examples of this practice are examined, including the case of national self-determination and the problem of party dictatorship over the working class. (shrink)

1. A. Heyting (1930) introduced an intermediate logic whose semantics is based on a pair of states (‘here’ and ‘there’). This logic was axiomatized by Hosoi (1966), using the sequence of intermedia...

The way citizens regard and treat one another in everyday life, even when they are not engaged in straightforwardly “political” activities, matters for achieving democratic ideals. This claim provokes an underexamined unease in many. Here I articulate these concerns, which I argue are prompted by the approaches most often associated with these issues. Such theories, like democratic communitarianism, require problematic sorts of unity in everyday social life. To avoid these difficulties, I offer an alternative, called procedural democratic informal politics, which (...) allows democrats to evaluate everyday life without demanding questionable forms of unity within it. (shrink)

1 Das Paradox des Regelfolgens Regeln im Sinne von Handlungsvorschriften setzen ihre Anwendbarkeit schon begrifflich voraus. Alle Regeln regeln mögliches Verhalten, seien es Verkehrsregeln, juridische Gesetze, mathematische und logische Verfahren, und selbst „Bedeutungs-postulate“, die festlegen, wie ein Ausdruck verständlich zu verwenden ist. Regeln ohne irgendeinen möglichen Anwendungsspielraum sind sinnlos. Dabei werden durch Regeln nicht nur mögliche Anwendungen präsupponiert, sondern umgekehrt aus gegebenen Tatsachen oder Ereignissen Regelmäßigkeiten herausgelesen, die sich in der Regel ausdrücken. Die Regel bezeichnet in diesem Sinne das „Prinzip (...) hinter den Tatsachen“, das sie diesen freilich in gewisser Weise erst andichtet. Zweck dieses Vorgehens ist nicht zuletzt, die mögliche Fortsetzung der Tatsachenreihe gleichzeitig zu bestimmen und zu begründen, jedenfalls aber eine gewisse Ordnung, Rechtfertigung und Voraussagbarkeit des Handelns zu gewährleisten. Regelanwendung verlangt deshalb eine komplexe geistige Kompetenz, die nicht nur Fähigkeiten der Abstraktion und Reflexion, sondern auch Können und Erfahrung voraussetzt. (shrink)

T. 1. Beim jungen Augustinus.--T. 2. Die antimanichäische Epoche.

In C.Q. 42 551–2 E. J. Kenney impugned the appropriateness of femina in 28 on the grounds that it sabotages the poet's disclaimer to be treating not of women generally, but only of women not ruled out of bounds by the stola and uittae. Hesitantly he proposed to read in its place non or nee proba. It should be borne in mind that when a word has intruded itself from a nearby line and expelled the authentic reading, the ductus litterarum (...) is no guide to emendation. The door stands open to bold measures. I propose to read Thais. The name of the famous courtesan well serves as the type with which Ovid proposes to deal. But what advantage has she over, say, Lais or even Phryne, whose names would fit here as well as hers? The answer comes from Remedia Amoris 385–6 Thais in arte mea est: lasciuia libera nostra est; nil mihi cum uitta; Thais in arte mea est. (shrink)

The author applies the definitions of surrogacy offered by Donum vitae to the question of embryo adoption and shows that embryo adoption does not in fact constitute an act of surrogacy. The author shows that neither Donum vitae nor Dignitas personae condemns heterologous embryo transfer or embryo adoption per se but only when these acts also involve illicit forms of artificial fertilization or surrogacy. The author suggests that the apparent reason for a lack of endorsement of embryo adoption by Donum (...) vitae and Dignitas personae is pastoral caution, concern for scandal, and the connection between embryo adoption and IVF; it is not because embryo adoption is intrinsically illicit. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 11.2 (Summer 2011): 249–256. (shrink)

Lars Lih’s Lenin Rediscovered seeks to replace the textbook-myth of Leninism with a painstaking reconstruction of ‘Lenin’s Erfurtian drama’. That reconstruction is more accurate than the Lenin-myth, but Lih’s step forward is marred by two steps back. One is his account of Lenin’s ‘worry about workers’. The other is Lih’s new translation of What Is to Be Done?.

The diverse coalition of activists trying to cut the prison population has thus far failed to articulate a coherent moral foundation for criminal justice reform. Since the various constituents of this coalition support reform for different reasons, it may seem savvy to avoid conversation about moral questions. We argue, however, that failing to work toward developing a moral basis for reform puts the coalition at risk of repeating the failures of the sentencing reform movement of the 1970s and 1980s. This (...) initially promising movement culminated in the passage of the widely disliked and deeply flawed United States Sentencing Guidelines. We lay out and analyze the downsides of avoiding moral discourse in criminal justice reform movements and argue for more collaboration and dialogue between moral thinkers and activists. (shrink)

Why does Catullus in his eleventh poem tell Furius and Aurelius to take an unpleasant message to his girl-friend? After all, in the eighth poem he imagines himself able to do the job alone: ‘uale puella’ . Has his courage just evaporated? Or is it that he wants to put his messengers, whom he perhaps does not like, in an awkward position ? Kroll is not sure why the poet chooses intermediaries. Some think they came in the first place from (...) the girl, who wanted reconciliation, and that this poem is Catullus' response. But the poet is usually able to make it plain, as in poems 7 and 85, that he is replying to a question ; here that standard device is missing, and should not be introduced. This note offers a new solution to the problem, and identifies the imagined situation in such a way that the eleventh poem can be seen to be in harmony with the poet's attitude to his idealised love-affair. (shrink)

Enhanced by over one thousand pictures and fifty maps, tells the story of Chicago and how it grew from a frontier outpost to become one of the great cities of the world.