La pace non e un argomento ma un sogno evolutivo della coscienza umana. Un sogno timido che sopravvive al dramma della storia e alle sue smentite piu derisorie. Un sogno che e cruciale custodire, dunque, come gesto di resistenza a fronte del cinismo di ogni epoca e in particolar modo davanti alle derive piu subdole e inquietanti della contemporaneita. Un'esplorazione evocativa dei quattro modi in cui l'umanita, da sempre e non senza contraddizioni, prova a sognare la pace: attraverso la natura (...) (phusis), il pensiero (logos), la legge (nomos), l'amore (eros). Quattro dimensioni esistenziali che l'autrice sorvola in compagnia di alcune figure della filosofia, del mito, della letteratura, della poesia, della psicoanalisi e della storia che hanno rappresentato, nella sua esperienza autobiografica, una fonte generosa di fiducia e orientamento. Muovendo dall'intuizione comune a tante saggezze secondo cui la vera pace non elude la tragedia umana ma la denuncia e la interroga, il libro ci conduce in un viaggio meditativo che costeggia, senza negarlo, l'abisso della distruttivita, sia sul piano individuale sia su quello sociale e collettivo. L'abisso nel quale ripetutamente sprofonda il sogno di vivere insieme e amichevolmente su questa Terra. Ma proprio a partire da questa confidenza con la tragicita della vicenda umana si dipana quel filo sottile dell'etica che e risorsa elettiva della sensibilita femminile e che riconduce l'intelligenza all'intimita con la vita. E il sogno desto della pace, per desiderare ancora.". (shrink)

Grounded in self-determination theory and the dualistic model of passion, the present study tested whether a social media intervention could promote harmonious passion and positive emotions related to exercise activities. A four-week intervention managed through an Instagram account was designed to promote more harmonious passion and less obsessive passion, as well as more positive emotions and less negative emotions related to participants’ favourite exercise activities. A web-based questionnaire was distributed to 518 young adults (mean age 26.5) before and after the (...) intervention. Participants were randomly assigned to an intervention group (N = 226) or control group (N = 292). The intervention did not predict change in passion for the activity. However, the intervention predicted more positive emotional outcomes from the activity, statistically controlled for emotions reported at baseline and negative emotions reported at follow-up. Results indicate that digital platforms may be relevant in promoting more physical activity in the population, through the facilitation of more positive emotions related to exercise. (shrink)

The article offers a reconstruction of John Rawls views on political legitimacy, from A Theory of Justice to his late writings on political liberalism. It argues that Rawls had three conceptions of legitimacy, not two as one might expect based on the distinction between his two major works. Its argument is that the most radical change in Rawls’ thinking about legitimacy occurs in ‘Introduction to the Paperback Edition’ and ‘The Idea of Public Reason Revisited’. Here Rawls assumes that there can (...) be a reasonable pluralism not only of comprehensive doctrines, but also of political liberal conceptions of justice. As a consequence, the standard of political legitimacy is no longer specified as sufficient justice relative to justice as fairness, but instead as sufficient justice relative to a family of political conceptions of justice – a family which in turn is animated by an ideal of public reasoning about constitutional matters and matters of basic justice. The article also shows how Rawls’ late ideal of public reason is grounded in the need for legitimate constitutional government. (shrink)

In recent years, multifetal pregnancy reduction (MFPR) has increasingly been the subject of debate in Norway, and the intensity reached a tentative maximum when Legislation Department delivered the interpretative statement § 2 - Interpretation of the Abortion Act in 2016 in response to the Ministry of Health (2014) requesting the Legislation Department to consider whether the Law on abortion allows for MFPR of healthy fetuses in multiple pregnancies. The Legislation Department concluded that current abortion laws allow MFPR within the framework (...) the law otherwise stipulates. The debate has not subsided, and during autumn 2018, it was further intensified in connection with the Christian Democrat "crossroads" and signals from the Conservatives to consider removing §2.3c and to forbid MFPR. -/- Many of the arguments in the MFPR debate appear seemingly similar to arguments pending in the general abortion debate, and an analysis of what sets MFPR apart from other abortions is wanting. The aim of this article is, therefore, to examine whether there is a moral distinction between abortion and MFPR of healthy fetuses. We will cover the typical arguments of the Norwegian debate, and highlight them with scholarly articles from the literature. The most important arguments against MFPR that we have identified we have dubbed the harm argument, slippery-slope argument, intent argument, grief argument, psychological long-term effects for the woman and sorting argument. We conclude that counter-arguments do not measure up in terms of detecting a morally relevant difference between MFPR of healthy fetuses and abortions. Our conclusion is therefore that—despite what several debaters seem to think—there is no morally relevant difference between the two. Therefore, when we allow abortion, we should also allow MFPR. (shrink)

In this article, we present findings from a qualitative study examining how young women experience being long‐term bedridden with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), also known as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), during childhood and adolescence. The aim is to explore how young women who fell ill with ME/CFS during childhood and adolescence look back on their lived experience of being long‐term bedridden from the vantage point of being fully or partially recovered. Informed by a phenomenological theoretical perspective, the researchers applied a narrative (...) methodological approach involving the analysis of interviews with 13 women, aged 16–29 years at the time of the interview. Attention was particularly paid to how participants structured their narratives and to the events (telling moments) they identified as important. Four major storylines were developed: Ambivalent responses to the presence of others; A body on the edge of life; An eternity in the dark; and Recasting painful memories of being bedridden and alone. Based on our findings, we argue that the experience of being long‐term bedridden with ME/CFS during childhood and adolescence can be understood and communicated as a plot in which individuals find themselves pushed to the extreme limit of suffering and loneliness. (shrink)

In recent years, multifetal pregnancy reduction has increasingly been a subject of debate in Norway. The intensity of this debate reached a tentative maximum when the Legislation Department delivered their interpretative statement, Section 2 - Interpretation of the Abortion Act, in 2016 in response to a request from the Ministry of Health that the Legislation Department consider whether the Abortion Act allows for MFPR of healthy fetuses in multiple pregnancies. The Legislation Department concluded that the current abortion legislation [as of (...) 2016] allows for MFPR subject to the constraints that the law otherwise stipulates. The debate has not subsided, and during autumn 2018 it was further intensified in connection with the Norwegian Christian Democratic "crossroads" policy and signals from the Conservatives to consider removing section 2.3c and to forbid MFPR. Many of the arguments in the MFPR debate are seemingly similar to arguments put forward in the general abortion debate, and an analysis to ascertain what distinguishes MFPR from other abortions has yet to be conducted. The aim of this article is, therefore, to examine whether there is a moral distinction between abortion and MFPR of healthy fetuses. We will cover the typical arguments emerging in the debate in Norway and exemplify them with scholarly articles from the literature. We have dubbed the most important arguments against MFPR that we have identified the harm argument, the slippery-slope argument, the intention argument, the grief argument, the long-term psychological effects for the woman argument, and the sorting argument. We conclude that these arguments do not measure up in terms of demonstrating a morally relevant difference between MFPR of healthy fetuses and other abortions. Our conclusion is, therefore — despite what several discussants seem to think — that there is no morally relevant difference between the two. Therefore, on the same conditions as we allow for abortions, we should also allow MFPR. Keywords: abortion, ethics, medical ethics, MFPR, selective MFPR. (shrink)

It is a long-standing view that global translation varies during the cell cycle and is much lower in mitosis than in other cell-cycle phases. However, the central papers in the literature are not in agreement about the extent of downregulation in mitosis, ranging from a dramatic decrease to only a marginal reduction. Herein, it is argued that the discrepancy derives from technical challenges. Cell-cycle-dependent variations are most conveniently studied in synchronized cells, but the synchronization methods by themselves often evoke stress (...) responses that, in turn, affect translation rates. Further, it is argued that previously reported cell-cycle-dependent changes in the global translation rate to a large extent reflect responses to the synchronization methods. Recent findings strongly suggest that the global translation rate is not regulated in a cell-cycle-dependent manner. Novel techniques allowing a genome-wide analysis of translational profiles suggest that the extent and importance of selective translational regulation associated with cell-cycle transitions have been underestimated. Therefore, the main question is which messenger RNAs (mRNAs) are translated, rather than whether the global translation rate is decreased. (shrink)

This paper analyses the interrelations between academic disciplines and society beyond academia by the case of sociology in Norway. For that purpose, this paper introduces the concept of disciplines’ societal territories, which refer to bounded societal spaces that are shaped by the knowledge of a discipline, premised on the linkages between the discipline and its audience. By mapping sociologists’ reported contributions to societal changes beyond academia, the paper firstly shows how societal territories are established by sociologists’ recurring engagement with certain (...) topics and research users. Secondly, it traces the interactions between researchers and their users, and identifies four ideal typical pathways by which the cognitive territory of Norwegian sociology is transformed into societal territories. A key observation is that the establishment of societal territories is co-determined by the structures of research use among its audience. As for the case of sociology in Norway, questions therefore arise over the interdependency between sociologists as knowledge ‘suppliers’ and the ‘demand side’ for research, and the autonomy of the sociological discipline in selecting its focus of attention. (shrink)

The increasing implementation of and reliance on machine-learning (ML) algorithms to perform tasks, deliver services and make decisions in health and healthcare have made the need for fairness in ML, and more specifically in healthcare ML algorithms (HMLA), a very important and urgent task. However, while the debate on fairness in the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI) and in HMLA has grown significantly over the last decade, the very concept of fairness as an ethical value has not yet been sufficiently (...) explored. Our paper aims to fill this gap and address the AI ethics principle of fairness from a conceptual standpoint, drawing insights from accounts of fairness elaborated in moral philosophy and using them to conceptualise fairness as an ethical value and to redefine fairness in HMLA accordingly. To achieve our goal, following a first section aimed at clarifying the background, methodology and structure of the paper, in the second section, we provide an overview of the discussion of the AI ethics principle of fairness in HMLA and show that the concept of fairness underlying this debate is framed in purely distributive terms and overlaps with non-discrimination, which is defined in turn as the absence of biases. After showing that this framing is inadequate, in the third section, we pursue an ethical inquiry into the concept of fairness and argue that fairness ought to be conceived of as an ethical value. Following a clarification of the relationship between fairness and non-discrimination, we show that the two do not overlap and that fairness requires much more than just non-discrimination. Moreover, we highlight that fairness not only has a distributive but also a socio-relational dimension. Finally, we pinpoint the constitutive components of fairness. In doing so, we base our arguments on a renewed reflection on the concept of respect, which goes beyond the idea of equal respect to include respect for individual persons. In the fourth section, we analyse the implications of our conceptual redefinition of fairness as an ethical value in the discussion of fairness in HMLA. Here, we claim that fairness requires more than non-discrimination and the absence of biases as well as more than just distribution; it needs to ensure that HMLA respects persons both as persons and as particular individuals. Finally, in the fifth section, we sketch some broader implications and show how our inquiry can contribute to making HMLA and, more generally, AI promote the social good and a fairer society. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 9, Page 1226-1246, November 2022. In this study, we claim that political liberalism, despite harsh criticism, is still the best option available for providing a just and stable society. However, we maintain that political liberalism needs to be revised so as to be justifiable from the perspective of not only the “reasonable” in a Rawlsian sense but also the ones whom Rawls labels as “unreasonable.” To support our claim, going beyond Rawls’s original account, (...) we unpack the concept of unreasonableness and identify three different subsets that we label as the “partially reasonable,” the “non-reasonable,” and the “unreasonable.” We argue that both the “fully” reasonable and the “partially reasonable” would be included into the constituency of public justification; more specifically, we claim that the latter would support liberal institutions out of their reasons: we define these reasons as mutually intelligible reasons and claim that they allow to acknowledge the importance of a convergence approach to public justification. As for the “non-reasonable” and “unreasonable,” we claim that they cannot be included in the constituency of public justification, but they nonetheless could be compliant with liberal institutions if political liberalism offers them some reasons to comply: here, we claim that political liberalism should include them through engagement and propose reasoning from conjecture as an effecting way of offering reasons for compliance. In particular, we claim that through reasoning from conjecture, the “non-reasonable” could find conciliatory reasons to comply with liberal institutions on a stable base. With regard to the “unreasonable” in the strict sense, we claim that through reasoning from conjecture, their unreasonableness could be contained and they could find reasons—even if just self-interested—for complying with liberal institutions rather than defying them. In our discussion, we consider the different subsets not as “frozen” but as dynamic and open to change, and we aim to propose a more complex and multilayered approach to inclusion that would be able to include a wider set of people. To strengthen our argument, we show that the need for a wider public justification and for broader inclusion in liberal societies is grounded in respect for persons both as equal persons and as particular individuals. In particular, we claim that individuals’ values, ends, commitments, and affiliations activate demands of respect and can strengthen the commitment to the liberal–democratic order. Through a reformulation of the role of respect in liberal societies, we also show a kind of social and communitarian dimension that, we claim, is fully compatible with political liberalism and opens it up to “civic friendship” and “social solidarity,” which are constitutive elements for the development of a sense of justice and for the realization of a just and stable society. (shrink)

We are repeatedly told that AI will help us to solve some of the world's biggest challenges, from treating chronic diseases and reducing fatality rates in traffic accidents to fighting climate change and anticipating cybersecurity threats. However, the article contends that public discourse on AI systematically avoids considering AI’s environmental costs. Artificial Intelligence- Brevini argues- runs on technology, machines, and infrastructures that deplete scarce resources in their production, consumption, and disposal, thus increasing the amounts of energy in their use, and (...) exacerbate problems of waste and pollution. It also relies on data centers, that demands impressive amounts of energy to compute, analyse, categorize. If we want to stand a chance at tackling the Climate Emergency, then we have to stop avoiding addressing the environmental problems generated by AI. (shrink)

This article aims at showing the need for a sound ethical and anthropological foundation of economics and business, and argues the importance of a correct understanding of human values and human nature for the sake of economics and of businesses themselves. It is suggested that the ethical-anthropological side of economics and business can be grasped by taking Aristotle’s virtue ethics and Amartya Sen’s capability approach (CA) as major reference points. We hold that an “Aristotelian economics of virtues”, connected with the (...) CA’s notion of human richness, can promote the shift to the concept of personhood, and can lead to a more “humanized” business, by fostering human flourishing, the enhancement of human capabilities, and the pursuit of a more humane development for each and every person. (shrink)

Most theories of justice rest on the idea that emotions need to be contained or set aside and that rationality serves as the best, if not exclusive, criterion for identifying the principles of a fair distribution. In recent years, however, two important claims have been made. One is that rationality and emotions are not in conflict with one another, but should be conceived of as strictly interconnected; the other is that social justice is not just about distribution, but also – (...) or especially – about social relations. This paper aims to bridge these claims and argues that (a) the role of emotions should be recognised by theories of justice, as it is compatible with the importance such theories attribute to rationality, and (b) an inquiry into emotions is particularly important to investigate the socio-relational dimension of justice. Moreover, the paper claims that (c) in order to adequately investigate the role of emotions in social justice, it is important to acknowledge that emotions are structurally mediated and shaped by powerful transformative forces, among which technologies – especially so-called socially disruptive technologies (SDTs) – prove to be particularly relevant. The paper argues that SDTs have a fundamental role in shaping social relations, shared commitments, and the emotions that follow from them or enable them. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 9, Page 1226-1246, November 2022. In this study, we claim that political liberalism, despite harsh criticism, is still the best option available for providing a just and stable society. However, we maintain that political liberalism needs to be revised so as to be justifiable from the perspective of not only the “reasonable” in a Rawlsian sense but also the ones whom Rawls labels as “unreasonable.” To support our claim, going beyond Rawls’s original account, (...) we unpack the concept of unreasonableness and identify three different subsets that we label as the “partially reasonable,” the “non-reasonable,” and the “unreasonable.” We argue that both the “fully” reasonable and the “partially reasonable” would be included into the constituency of public justification; more specifically, we claim that the latter would support liberal institutions out of their reasons: we define these reasons as mutually intelligible reasons and claim that they allow to acknowledge the importance of a convergence approach to public justification. As for the “non-reasonable” and “unreasonable,” we claim that they cannot be included in the constituency of public justification, but they nonetheless could be compliant with liberal institutions if political liberalism offers them some reasons to comply: here, we claim that political liberalism should include them through engagement and propose reasoning from conjecture as an effecting way of offering reasons for compliance. In particular, we claim that through reasoning from conjecture, the “non-reasonable” could find conciliatory reasons to comply with liberal institutions on a stable base. With regard to the “unreasonable” in the strict sense, we claim that through reasoning from conjecture, their unreasonableness could be contained and they could find reasons—even if just self-interested—for complying with liberal institutions rather than defying them. In our discussion, we consider the different subsets not as “frozen” but as dynamic and open to change, and we aim to propose a more complex and multilayered approach to inclusion that would be able to include a wider set of people. To strengthen our argument, we show that the need for a wider public justification and for broader inclusion in liberal societies is grounded in respect for persons both as equal persons and as particular individuals. In particular, we claim that individuals’ values, ends, commitments, and affiliations activate demands of respect and can strengthen the commitment to the liberal–democratic order. Through a reformulation of the role of respect in liberal societies, we also show a kind of social and communitarian dimension that, we claim, is fully compatible with political liberalism and opens it up to “civic friendship” and “social solidarity,” which are constitutive elements for the development of a sense of justice and for the realization of a just and stable society. (shrink)

There is a need to understand more of the risk factors involved in the process from suicide ideation to suicide attempt. Cognitive control processes may be important factors in assessing vulnerability to suicide. A version of the Stroop procedure, Delis–Kaplan Executive Function System Color–Word Interference Test and Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function were used in this study to test attention control and cognitive shift, as well as to assess everyday executive function of 98 acute suicidal psychiatric patients. The Columbia (...) Suicide History Form was used to identify a group of suicide ideators and suicide attempters. Results showed that suicide attempters scored lower on attention control than suicide ideators who had no history of attempted suicide. The self-report in the BRIEF-A inventory did not reflect any cognitive differences between suicide ideators and suicide attempters. A logistic regression analysis showed that a poorer attention control score was associated with the suicide attempt group, whereas a poorer cognitive shift score was associated with the suicide ideation group. The results found in this study suggest that suicide attempters may struggle with control of attention or inhibiting competing responses but not with cognitive flexibility. (shrink)

This article assesses recent claims that international courts and tribunals can enhance their legitimacy through public reason. Section one argues that international legal scholars attribute a wide range of meanings to public reason, and goes on to provide clarification of how this range of conceptions, or ideas and ideals, referred to as public reason fits into the dominant and broadly Rawlsian tradition. Section two analyses properties and features of international courts that make public reason normatively relevant. Section three then sketches (...) an ideal of public reason for ICs that suggests guidelines and principles to limit the discretion of judges when reasoning about morally and politically contentious issues. This ideal is designed to address a particular legitimacy concern raised against many new international courts, namely, that they engage in judicial activism, passing judgments on contentious moral and political issues without being sufficiently authorized and accountable. This ideal does not encourage the judges to engage in more judicial review, rather it seeks to restrict the judges' reasoning and judicial discretion when engaging in review and judicial development of the law. The final section compares and contrasts the proposed account of public reason to other adjudicative ideals, both from the general adjudicative accounts of Ronald Dworkin and Cass Sunstein, as well as the more ambitious and cosmopolitan accounts of public reason for ICs offered by the legal scholars Kumm, Sadurski, and Petersmann. (shrink)

Geometrical intuitions spontaneously drive visuo-spatial reasoning in human adults, children and animals. Is their emergence intrinsically linked to visual experience, or does it reflect a core property of cognition shared across sensory modalities? To address this question, we tested the sensitivity of blind-from-birth adults to geometrical-invariants using a haptic deviant-figure detection task. Blind participants spontaneously used many geometric concepts such as parallelism, right angles and geometrical shapes to detect intruders in haptic displays, but experienced difficulties with symmetry and complex spatial (...) transformations. Across items, their performance was highly correlated with that of sighted adults performing the same task in touch (blindfolded) and in vision, as well as with the performances of uneducated preschoolers and Amazonian adults. Our results support the existence of an amodal core-system of geometry that arises independently of visual experience. However, performance at selecting geometric intruders was generally higher in the visual compared to the haptic modality, suggesting that sensory-specific spatial experience may play a role in refining the properties of this core-system of geometry. (shrink)

A letter from Fénelon to the duke de Bourgogne, written in 1708, constitutes the highest point of the correspondence between the archbishop and the prince. We intend to use this text as a starting point to explore the linguistic and rhetorical richness of Fénelon’s discourse about trials. This letter – a true synthesis of an exquisitely fenelonian topic – can be the object of a close reading, but it is as well possible to broaden the inquiry to the vast inter-text (...) of the spiritual director’s correspondence: the absolute requirements of mystic love shine through the political advices, the maxims of humanistic wisdom or the nuances of a spiritual portrait, as well as they shine (elsewhere, in Les Aventures de Télémaque) through the veil of fiction. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Nietzsche was an avid reader of Emerson's essays, and their influence is discernible from his earliest philosophical writings through to his final philosophical works. Nietzsche's copies of Emerson's books are covered with traces of his reading, from underlinings, exclamation marks, question marks, and dog-eared pages to numerous annotations and philosophical comments written in the margins. I use some of these to analyze the influence Emerson exerted on Nietzsche's conception of history and historiography. The two authors can be considered “twin (...) souls” in that they both praised the strengthening effects of past greatness and, at the same time, opposed psychological subjugation or fanaticism. Nevertheless, they were not twin minds: Nietzsche rejected Emerson's metaphysical concept of an Oversoul and turned it into the ideal of a Dionysian soul, which aims at reliving the history of humanity in order to increase its power. (shrink)

Fairness is one of the most prominent values in the Ethics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) debate and, specifically, in the discussion on algorithmic decision-making (ADM). However, while the need for fairness in ADM is widely acknowledged, the very concept of fairness has not been sufficiently explored so far. Our paper aims to fill this gap and claims that an ethically informed re-definition of fairness is needed to adequately investigate fairness in ADM. To achieve our goal, after an introductory section aimed (...) at clarifying the aim and structure of the paper, in section “Fairness in algorithmic decision-making” we provide an overview of the state of the art of the discussion on fairness in ADM and show its shortcomings; in section “Fairness as an ethical value”, we pursue an ethical inquiry into the concept of fairness, drawing insights from accounts of fairness developed in moral philosophy, and define fairness as an ethical value. In particular, we argue that fairness is articulated in a distributive and socio-relational dimension; it comprises three main components: fair equality of opportunity, equal right to justification, and fair equality of relationship; these components are grounded in the need to respect persons both as persons and as particular individuals. In section “Fairness in algorithmic decision-making revised”, we analyze the implications of our redefinition of fairness as an ethical value on the discussion of fairness in ADM and show that each component of fairness has profound effects on the criteria that ADM ought to meet. Finally, in section “Concluding remarks”, we sketch some broader implications and conclude. (shrink)

Un saggio in memoria di Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd , filosofo e teologo egiziano che ha contribuito in modo fondamentale alla diffusione dell’approccio letterario applicato al testo sacro dell’islam e al successivo sviluppo di un’ermeneutica di tipo umanistico in grado di affermare la portata rivoluzionaria e antidogmatica del concetto di Corano come insieme di discorsi. Nominato professore onorario all’Università di Leida, dove insegna a partire dal 2000, il professor Abu Zayd è costretto all’esilio nel 1995, dopo la condanna per apostasia (...) che gli viene mossa in ambito giudiziario proprio a causa del suo interesse per un terreno di studio così delicato.An essay written in memory of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd , Egyptian philosopher and theologian who substantially contributed to the spread of the literary approach to the sacred text of Islam and to the subsequent development of a humanistic hermeneutics being able to affirm the revolutionary and anti-dogmatic significance of the concept of the Qur’an asset of discourses. Appointed honorary professor at Leiden University, where he began teaching in 2000, the professor Abu Zayd is obliged to go into exile in 1995, after his judicial conviction for apostasy due to his interest in such a delicate field of study. (shrink)

This article assesses Frank I. Michelman’s constitution-centered and proceduralist interpretation of Rawls’ conception of political legitimacy and argues that it merits attention because it highlights the institutional aspects of Rawls’ understanding of political legitimacy for constitutional democracies. However, the article also questions Michelman’s interpretation of Rawls’ ‘liberal principle of legitimacy’ (LPL) and the later ‘idea of political legitimacy based on the criterion of reciprocity’ (ILBR). As Michelman rightly points out, for the exercise of political power to be legitimate in a (...) constitutional democracy, it must be in accordance with a constitution that is itself legitimate or reasonably acceptable to free and equal citizens. Yet, the article argues that Rawls’ two legitimacy formulations are attempts to make an additional point: Namely that when democratic citizens exercise political power in ‘the fundamental political issues’, or in issues that shape the basic justice of society or the essentials of the constitution itself, they must respect the ideal of public reason – or ensure themselves and other citizens that their exercise of political power is in accordance with the underlying basic political-moral ideas of persons and society that make the constitution itself acceptable to them. The LPL and the ILBR are conceptions of political legitimacy, not in the sense of setting up a criterion for when a specific law is legitimate, but in the sense of outlining civic or “office-specific” constraints that citizens and public officials must put on their reasoning and exercise of political power in the fundamental political issues for the practice of a constitutional democracy to be legitimate, or well-ordered, reasonably just, and stable for the right reasons – in the long run. The article also discusses why Rawls saw the need to reformulate the LPL, and how the later ILBR assigns a new significance to citizens’ actual use of public reason and their intersubjective deliberation. (shrink)

A comprehensive study of public reason for courts, with contributions from leading scholars in philosophy, political science and law.

Sulla base degli studi di Mircea Eliade, l’Autore evidenzia, nel lai antico francese Yonec e in due racconti popolari riconducibili al tipo AT 432, «The Prince as bird», tracce di scenari iniziatici femminili e del viaggio oltremondano sciamanico. Sur la base des études de Mircea Eliade, l’auteur met en évidence, dans le Lai de Yonec de Marie de France et dans deux contes de fées liés au conte-type AT 432 « L’Oiseau bleu », des traces des rites initiatiques féminins et (...) du voyage chamanique vers l’Autre Monde. On the ground of Mircea Eliade studies, the author analyses the Ancient French Lay of Yonec and two folk tales, connected to the type AT 432 “The Prince as bird”, focusing on the presence of hints of ancient initiatory female rites and shamanic female otherworld voyages. (shrink)

Sensibilité is in Valéry’s theory the name of a large grasp of functions, involving both perception and creation, and involved both in art and in experience. So far, this key word of Valéry’s aesthetics can be read as the bridge between his conceptions of art and his idea of the self in order to understand the way this author writes and conceives what philosophy can aim to.

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

In this paper, I consider emotional reactions in response to political facts, and I investigate how they may provide relevant knowledge about those facts. I assess the value of such knowledge, both from an epistemic and a political perspective. Concerning the epistemic part, I argue that, although emotions are not in themselves sufficient to ground evaluative knowledge about political facts, they can do so within a network of further coherent epistemic attitudes about those facts. With regards to the political part, (...) I argue that the contribution of emotions to evaluative knowledge about political facts, is indeed politically valuable. To develop my argument, I show first that an evaluative kind of knowledge is relevant for reaching a sophisticated level of political cognition, and second that emotions contribute distinctively to this kind of knowledge. I conclude that, when emotional experiences towards political events are coupled with an adequate factual knowledge about those events, they can ground a distinctive evaluative knowledge about those events, and such knowledge is relevant both from an epistemic and a political perspective. (shrink)

O artigo tem por objetivo central apresentar a leitura da pesquisadora Benedetta Bisol sobre a noção de corpo em Fichte, no sentido de mostra-lhe a pertinência e mesmo a atualidade, frente às pesquisas contemporâneas da neurociência.

This review article puts two recent publications —Existence and Heritage: Hermeneutic Explorations in African and Continental Philosophies by Tsenay Serequeberhan and What Fanon Said. A Philosophical Introduction to His Life and Thought by Lewis R. Gordon—in conversation with Achille Mbembe’s renowned On the Postcolony, first published in French in 2000, in English in 2001, and here reviewed in the 2015 Wits University Press edition. The opportunity for such a literary dialogue to take place across fifteen years is occasioned both by (...) the latest South African edition of On the Postcolony, which in itself invites a fresh reading of Mbembe’s manifesto on postcolonial authoritarianism in Africa, as well as by the different potential outcome of the postcolonial condition that Gordon and Serequeberhan envision and propose with respect to Mbembe. I argue that while Mbembe’s pessimistic portrayal of the postcolonial present is one whereby it is difficult to envision transformation, both Serequeberhan and Gordon’s books offer a rich philosophical terrain from which to imagine possible futures, grounded in notions of dialogue and solidarity, that, however, vary significantly for each author. (shrink)

Jo-Anne McArthur est l’une des photojournalistes majeures de la condition animale dans le monde. Elle a documenté les conditions de vie et d’exploitation des animaux dans plus de soixante pays différents, et ses images sont utilisées par les mouvements animalistes dans le monde entier. Elle vit à Toronto et dirige l’agence multi-média We animals Media dont elle est la fondatrice. En vingt ans de travail, elle a accumulé une énorme documentation, et multiplié les projets de collaboration avec...