Hegel, nell’Enciclopedia, definisce la filosofia leibniziana come “la contraddizione” completamente sviluppata. Da sempre questa affermazione ha suscitato l’attenzione degli interpreti e nel tempo si è consolidata l’immagine storiografica di uno Hegel poco attento nei confronti di Leibniz, o semplicemente iniquo nella sua valutazione. Approfondendo tuttavia i termini concettuali del giudizio hegeliano e ripercorrendone insieme la genesi storica e sistematica, la questione appare teoreticamente ancora aperta e stimolante. Il vibrante dialogo che Hegel fin dai primi anni di Jena instaura con Leibniz (...) supera le anguste barriere di un confronto di “filologia storica”, ma si pone piuttosto come un momento assolutamente significativo in rapporto a quel processo di auto-comprensione che il pensiero moderno attua nei propri confronti e che rappresenta uno dei lasciti più preziosi sui quali si è oggi chiamati a riflettere. (shrink)

By juxtaposing issues and problems, Donald Preziosi's latest collection of essays, In the Aftermath of Art , opens up multiple interpretive possibilities by bringing to the surface hidden resonances in the implications of each text. In re-reading his own writings, Preziosi opens up alternatives within contemporary discourses on art history and visual culture. A critical commentary by critic, historian, and theorist Johanne Lamoureux complements the author's own introduction, mirroring the multiple interpretations within the essays themselves.

Until fairly recently, most of the attention of art historians and others in these debates has been paid to differences among the partisans of various disciplinary methodologies, or to the differential benefits of one or another school of thought or theoretical perspective in other areas of the humanities and social sciences as these might arguably apply to questions of art historical practice.1 Yet there has also come about among art historians a renewed interest in the historical origins of the academic (...) discipline itself, and in the relationships of its institutionalization in various countries to the professionalizing of other historical and critical disciplines in the latter part of the nineteenth century. These interests have led increasingly to wider discussion by art historians of the particular nature of disciplinary knowledge, the circumstances and protocols of academic practice, and the relations between the various branches of modern discourse on the visual arts: academic art history, art criticism, aesthetic philosophy, the art market, exhibitions, and musicology.2 What follows does not aim to summarize or characterize these developments but is more simply an attempt to delineate some of the principal characteristics of the discipline as an evidentiary institution in the light of the material conditions of academic practice that arose in the latter half of the nineteenth century in relation to the history of mueological display. In brief, this essay is concerned with the circumstances of art history’s foundations as a systematic and “scientific” practice, and its focus is limited to a single, albeit paradigmatic, American example. 1. An extended discussion of these issues may be found in Donald Preziosi, Rethinking Art History: Meditations on a Coy Science , pp. 80-121. See also The New Art History, ed. A. L. Rees and Frances Borzello .2. One important sign off these discussions has been a series of “Views and Overviews” of the discipline appearing in The Art Bulletin in recent years, of which the most recent has been perhaps the most extensive and comprehensive: Mieke Bal and Norman Byrson, ”Semiotics and Art History,” The Art Bulletin 73 : 174-208. Donald Preziosi is professor of art history at the University of California, Los Angeles, and, beginning in 1992, at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He is the author of Rethinking Art History: Meditations on a Coy Science and is currently completing a book on the history of museums entitled Framing Modernity. (shrink)

This theory accords to volitions the status of basic mental actions, maintaining that these are spontaneous exercises of the will--a "two-way" power which ...

Durkheim écrit ce livre avec un but double : d'abord il voulait expliquer ce qui crée une société, ce qui la tient ensemble ; ensuite il voulait éclaircir l'influence qu'a la société sur la pensée logique. Pour Durkheim, la religion est la clé utilisée pour déverrouiller ces deux problématiques.Dans ce livre, Durkheim argumente que les représentations religieuses sont en fait des représentations collectives : l'essence du religieux ne peut être que le sacré. Il est une caractéristique qui se trouve universellement (...) dans toutes les religions. Le sacré, être collectif et impersonnel, représente ainsi la société elle-même. Ensuite il argumente que la société a un impact majeur dans la genèse de la pensée logique. C'est la société qui fournit à l'individu les catégories (le temps, l'espace, le nombre etc.) et les concepts nécessaires pour la pensée logique. (shrink)

There is a long tradition in philosophy and literary theory defending the view that engagement with literature promotes readers’ empathy. Until the last century, few of the empirical claims adduced in that tradition were investigated experimentally. Recent work in psychology and neuropsychology has now shed new light on the interplay of empathy and literature. This article surveys the experimental findings, addressing three central questions: What is it to read empathically? Does reading make us more empathic? What characteristics of literature, if (...) any, affect readers’ empathy? While experimental studies have delivered no conclusive answers to these questions, it has exposed their psychological complexity and constructed a more nuanced picture of the diverse ways in which literature interacts with our empathic capacities. (shrink)

With special emphasis on Foucault's many recently published lecture series this book provides an updated, comprehensive presentation of his most important diagnoses, his many ground-breaking analytical concepts as well as a systematic account of his unique conception of philosophy.

When we perceive an object, we perceive the object from a perspective. As a consequence of the perspectival nature of perception, when we perceive, say, a circular coin from different angles, there is a respect in which the coin looks circular throughout, but also a respect in which the coin's appearance changes. More generally, perception of shape and size properties has both a constant aspect—an aspect that remains stable across changes in perspective—and a perspectival aspect—an aspect that changes depending on (...) one's perspective on the object. How should we account for the perspectival aspect of spatial perception? We present a framework within which to discuss the perspectival aspect of perception and put forward three desiderata that any account of the perspectival aspect of perception should satisfy. We discuss views on which the perspectival aspect of perception is analyzed in terms of constitutively mind-dependent appearance properties as well as views on which the perspectival aspect of perception is analyzed in terms of representations of mind-independent perspectival properties. (shrink)

First published in 1818, The World as Will and Representation contains Schopenhauer's entire philosophy, ranging through epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and action, aesthetics and philosophy of art, to ethics, the meaning of life and the philosophy of religion, in an attempt to account for the world in all its significant aspects. It gives a unique and influential account of what is and is not of value in existence, the striving and pain of the human condition and the possibility of (...) deliverance from it. This new translation of the first volume of what later became a two-volume work reflects the eloquence and power of Schopenhauer's prose and renders philosophical terms accurately and consistently. It offers an introduction, glossary of names and bibliography, and succinct editorial notes, including notes on the revisions of the text which Schopenhauer made in 1844 and 1859. (shrink)

We argue that the trend toward providing users with feasible and actionable explanations of AI decisions—known as recourse explanations—comes with ethical downsides. Specifically, we argue that recourse explanations face several conceptual pitfalls and can lead to problematic explanation hacking, which undermines their ethical status. As an alternative, we advocate that explanations of AI decisions should aim at understanding.

In his Treatise, Hume confronted the tensions between his project of uncovering the causal operations of the human mind and the extreme skeptical tendencies of his system. Louis Loeb argues that Hume overreaches, and he advances a controversial interpretation of Hume's epistemological framework that shows how Hume could have avoided the more destructive positions in his work.

In questo studio sono pubblicate alcune lettere inedite, conservate nella Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire di Ginevra, risalenti agli anni 1669-1678, scambiate tra Jean-Robert Chouet e Claude Pajon. Grazie all’apporto di questi due protagonisti delle accademie di Saumure di Ginevra è possibile meglio intendere, nella complessità dei riferimenti e delle sfumature, le soluzioni relative al tema della libertà divina nell’opera della creazione e della redenzione, argomento di grande interesse nella speculazione filosofica e teologica del Seicento. Si tratta di documenti preziosi, (...) in particolare per la storia della filosofia cartesiana, in quanto il confronto critico, che verte soprattutto sulle tesi di Cartesio concernenti la volontà divina e umana, offre a Chouet l’opportunità di intervenire a chiarire, contro riduttive letture volontaristiche, il significato della dottrina cartesiana della «volonté souveraine et independante de Dieu». (shrink)

Hume's claim that a state is a belief is often intertwined—though without his remarking on this fact—with epistemic approval of the state. This requires explanation. Beliefs, in Hume's view, are steady dispositions (not lively ideas), nature's provision for a steady influence on the will and action. Hume's epistemic distinctions call attention to circumstances in which the presence of conflicting beliefs undermine a belief's influence and thereby its natural function. On one version of this interpretation, to say that a belief is (...) justified, ceteris paribus, is to say that for all that has been shown the belief would be steady in its influence under suitable reflection. On a second version, it is to say that prima facie justification is an intrinsic property of the state, in virtue of its steadiness. These versions generate different understandings of the relationship between Parts iii and iv of Book I of the Treatise. (shrink)

A dialogue between a foreign philosopher and a powerful statesman outline Plato's reflections on the family, the status of women, property rights, and criminal law.

The Anthropocene is heralded as a new epoch distinguishing itself from all foregoing eons in the history of the Earth. It is characterized by the overarching importance of the human species in a number of respects, but also by the recognition of human dependence and precariousness. A critical human turn affecting the human condition is still in the process of arriving in the wake of an initial Copernican Revolution and Kant's ensuing second Copernican Counter-revolution. Within this landscape, issues concerning the (...) human - its finitude, responsiveness, responsibility, maturity, auto-affection and relationship to itself - appear rephrased and re-accentuated as decisive probing questions. In this book Sverre Raffnsøe explores how the change has ramifications for the kinds of knowledge that can be acquired concerning human beings and for the human sciences as a study of human existential beings in the world. (shrink)

Criticism on Bhagavadgītā, Hindu sacred work.

This article critically reflects on the research portfolio by the ecological economist Clive Spash who has helped pinpoint specific and systemic blindspots in a political-economic system that prioritises myopic development trajectories divorced from ecological reality. Drawing on his published work and collaborations it seeks to make sense of the slow, or absent, progress in averting global warming and ecological destruction. Three strands of key concern and influence are identified and discussed with reference to their orientation and explicit expression regarding Ontology, (...) Epistemology and Axiology. Some complementary points about indeterminacy and holism are presented to further strengthen the arguments for a transition towards a social-ecological economic system that puts values and principles back into focus. While Clive Spash's work has made a strong case within the economic community and appealing to ecology professionals, the value-myopia or value-vacuum has to be tackled across all disciplines, politics and society for a meaningful and urgently required transformation in decision making. Hence, the article finishes with some suggestions for the (higher) education system, and highlights the importance of simplicity and sufficiency, as well as strong sustainability-driven citizen and community action as necessary catalysts of change in this social-ecological transformation. (shrink)