This article introduces and discusses the initial results of a survey focused on the contents, role and effectiveness of company codes of ethics. The article examines the contents of the codes of ethics of companies operating in the private sector in Italy, quoted on the Italian Stock Exchange (Standard& Poor/Mib-Milano Indice Borsa). The purpose of this investigation was to identify any correlations between sector characteristics and the contents of the codes of ethics, which would enable us to map out the (...) main principles followed in writing the companies' codes of ethics. The analysis was conducted in order to ascertain whether there were common factors deriving from the shared ethical questions faced by the companies operating in the same sector of activity. As the first step, the 40 companies were subdivided into three main economic categories -Industrial, Financial and Service. Then the contents of each code of ethics were evaluated and classified in accordance with different criteria. The main categories of classification were based on -general principles, social values, rules of conduct, relationships with third parties, implementation and sanctions. The next objective was to investigate whether these characteristics were due to the regulation of the sector of reference, the existence of sector benchmarks for best practice, or simply companies' voluntary stance on ethical issues. The main conclusions were that the codes of ethics of the Italian companies that we analysed do not seem to show relevant differences traceable to sector of activity, and their adoption is affected by several reasons other than intentionally ethical considerations. (shrink)

The mnemonic arts and the idea of a universal language that would capture the essence of all things were originally associated with cryptology, mysticism, and other occult practices. And it is commonly held that these enigmatic efforts were abandoned with the development of formal logic in the seventeenth century and the beginning of the modern era. In his distinguished book, Logic and the Art of Memory Italian philosopher and historian Paolo Rossi argues that this view is belied by an (...) examination of the history of the idea of a universal language. Based on comprehensive analyses of original texts, Rossi traces the development of this idea from late medieval thinkers such as Ramon Lull through Bruno, Bacon, Descartes, and finally Leibniz in the seventeenth century. The search for a symbolic mode of communication that would be intelligible to everyone was not a mere vestige of magical thinking and occult sciences, but a fundamental component of Renaissance and Enlightenment thought. Seen from this perspective, modern science and combinatorial logic represent not a break from the past but rather its full maturity. Available for the first time in English, this book (originally titled Clavis Universalis ) remains one of the most important contributions to the history of ideas ever written. In addition to his eagerly anticipated translation, Steven Clucas offers a substantial introduction that places this book in the context of other recent works on this fascinating subject. A rich history and valuable sourcebook, Logic and the Art of Memory documents an essential chapter in the development of human reason. (shrink)

Our brains readily decode facial movements and changes in social attention, reflected in earlier and larger N170 event-related potentials (ERPs) to viewing gaze aversions vs. direct gaze in real faces (Puce et al. 2000). In contrast, gaze aversions in line-drawn faces do not produce these N170 differences (Rossi et al., 2014), suggesting that physical stimulus properties or experimental context may drive these effects. Here we investigated the role of stimulus-induced context on neurophysiological responses to dynamic gaze. Sixteen healthy adults (...) viewed line-drawn and real faces, with dynamic eye aversion and direct gaze transitions, and control stimuli (scrambled arrays and checkerboards) while continuous electroencephalographic (EEG) activity was recorded. EEG data from 2 temporo-occipital clusters of 9 electrodes in each hemisphere where N170 activity is known to be maximal were selected for analysis. N170 peak amplitude and latency, and temporal dynamics from event-related spectral perturbations (ERSPs) were measured in 16 healthy subjects. Real faces generated larger N170s for averted vs. direct gaze motion, however, N170s to real and direct gaze were as large as those to respective controls. N170 amplitude did not differ across line-drawn gaze changes. Overall, bilateral mean gamma power changes for faces relative to control stimuli occurred between 150-350 ms, potentially reflecting signal detection of facial motion. Our data indicate that experimental context does not drive N170 differences to viewed gaze changes. Low-level stimulus properties, such as the high sclera/iris contrast change in real eyes likely drive the N170 changes to viewed aversive movements. (shrink)

Strategic interactions have been studied extensively in the area of judgment and decision-making. However, so far no specific measure of a decision-maker's ability to be successful in strategic interactions has been proposed and tested. Our contribution is the development of a measure of strategic ability that borrows from both game theory and psychology. Such measure is aimed at providing an estimation of the likelihood of success in many social activities that involve strategic interaction among multiple decision-makers. To construct a reliable (...) measure of strategic ability, that we propose to call ``Strategic Quotient'' (SQ), we designed a test where each item is a game and where, therefore, the individual score obtained depends on the distribution of choices of other decision-makers taking the test. The test is designed to provide information on the abilities related to two dimensions, mentalization and rationality, that we argue are crucial to strategic success, with each dimension being characterized by two main factors. Principal component analysis on preliminary data shows that indeed four factors (two for rationality, two for mentalization) account for strategic success in most of the strategically simpler games of the test. Moreover, two more strategically sophisticated games are inserted in the test and are used to investigate if and to what extent the four factors obtained by simpler games can predict strategic success in more sophisticated strategic interactions. Overall, the collected empirical evidence points to the possibility of building a SQ measure using only simple games designed to capture information about the four identified factors. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 98 Heft: 1 Seiten: 139-157.

One of the main challenges faced by realists in political philosophy is that of offering an account of authority that is genuinely normative and yet does not consist of a moralistic application of general, abstract ethical principles to the practice of politics. Political moralists typically start by devising a conception of justice based on their pre-political moral commitments; authority would then be legitimate only if political power is exercised in accordance with justice. As an alternative to that dominant approach I (...) put forward the idea that upturning the relationship between justice and legitimacy affords a normative notion of authority that does not depend on a pre-political account of morality, and thus avoids some serious problems faced by mainstream theories of justice. I then argue that the appropriate purpose of justice is simply to specify the implementation of an independently grounded conception of legitimacy, which in turn rests on a context- and practice-sensitive understanding of the purpose of political power. (shrink)

In the literature, the pragmatic dimension of metaphors has been clearly acknowledged. Metaphors are regarded as having different possible uses, especially pursuing persuasion. However, an analysis of the specific conversational purposes that they can be aimed at achieving in a dialogue and their adequacy thereto is still missing. In this chapter, we will address this issue focusing on the classical distinction between the explanatory and persuasive uses of metaphors, which is, however, complex to draw at an analytical level and often (...) blurred and controversial also from a theoretical point of view. Building on the analysis of explanation in different theories and fields of study, we show how it can be conceived as characterized by a cognitive and a pragmatic dimension, where the transference of understanding is used pragmatically for different dialogical goals - such as informing, making a joint decision, and most importantly persuading. In this sense, the cognitive effects of understanding are not incompatible with a persuasive dialogical purpose. This theoretical proposal will be applied to examples drawn from the medical context, to show how a pragmatic approach to explanation can account for the complexity of the cases that can be found in actual dialogical contexts. (shrink)

Could the notion of compromise help us overcoming – or at least negotiating – the frequent tension, in normative political theory, between the realistic desideratum of peaceful coexistence and the idealistic desideratum of justice? That is to say, an analysis of compromise may help us moving beyond the contrast between two widespread contrasting attitudes in contemporary political philosophy: ‘fiat iustitia, pereat mundus’ on the one side, ‘salus populi suprema lex’ on the other side. More specifically, compromise may provide the backbone (...) of a conception of legitimacy that mediates between idealistic (or moralistic) and realistic (or pragmatic) desiderata of political theory, i.e. between the aspiration to peace and the aspiration to justice. In other words, this paper considers whether an account of compromise could feature in a viable realistic conception of political legitimacy, in much the same way in which consensus features in more idealistic conceptions of legitimacy (a move that may be attributed to some realist theorists, especially Bernard Williams). My conclusions, however, are largely sceptical: I argue that grounding legitimacy in any kind of normatively salient agreement does require the trappings of idealistic political philosophy, for better or – in my view – worse. (shrink)

This is a response to Erman and Moller's response to our reply to their 'Political Legitimacy in the Real Normative World', both also in this journal.

In this paper, I introduce a new species of elusive reason–reasons that it is impossible for an agent to act, or be motivated to act, for–and I show how this kind of elusive reason undermines a plausible claim about normative reasons, the Motivational Constraint. To defend the existence of this new kind of elusive reason, I respond to the objection that our intuitions are tracking another normative or evaluative phenomenon, such as reasons to have certain affective responses or reasons for (...) others to act. In addition, because accepting the new kind of elusive reason requires affirming the claim that S acts for a reason p only if S regards p as a reason to A, I develop an account of what it is for S to regard p as a reason to A. Finally, as part of arguing for the former claim, I argue that the idea of being moved to A for a reason p entails the idea of being moved to A in light of p, which itself entails the idea of regarding p as a reason. (shrink)

The Palgrave Handbook of Practical Animal Ethics is a recent addition to anthologies in the field, joining The Oxford Handbook of Animal Ethics, and The Routledge Handbook of Animal Ethics. Edited by Andrew Linzey and Clair Linzey of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, the book boasts more than 30 contributors, many of them philosophers, but also including sociologists, scientists, theologians, lawyers, psychologists, and animal advocates. The editors were intentionally multidisciplinary in their approach, noting that “there is currently no book (...) series that is a focus for multidisciplinary research in the field,” and calling attention to the need not only for philosophical inquiry into what we owe animals, but also into the “social, legal, cultural, religious and political” influences that “legitimate animal abuse” (p. viii).The book is divided up into four sections: “The Ethics of Control,” “The Ethics of Captivity,” “The Ethics of Killing,” and “The Ethics of Causing Suffering.” Each of these sections includes an editorial introduction and multiple entries spanning diverse issues, including animal research, animal agriculture, hunting, fishing, zoos, the role of animals in religion, the role of language in structuring thought about nonhuman animals, and others. Similarly, the chapters span issues affecting many species, including farmed animals, fish, deer, elephants, whales and dolphins, rodents, companion animals (e.g., dogs and cats), and others.While the book is billed as a “practical” handbook of animal ethics, it does wade into some conceptual territory, tackling such issues as the ethical permissibility of confining and controlling animals, the question of whether (painless) death harms nonhuman animals, and the comparative wrongness of killing humans and nonhuman animals. This said, it largely stays away from more detailed discussion of normative ethical theory and the moral standing of nonhuman animals, focusing instead on the specific ways that humans treat nonhuman animals. In focusing more on practical than theoretical ethics, the Palgrave Handbook of Practical Animal Ethics both complements and differentiates itself from some other anthologies in the field.The book has several strengths to recommend it, the first being the logic of its organization. The ethically problematic aspects of humans’ treatment of nonhuman animals frequently map onto one or more of the categories of causing suffering, killing, and confining. The organization of chapters under these section headings helps to provide a rational structure to the text, as well as an easy way for the reader to navigate which sections they would like to tackle first (although there is some overlap between sections). With this, the explicit and sustained focus on the ethics of control (section 1) is a welcome and differentiating feature of the text. Much prior work in animal ethics has addressed questions of harming and killing animals, but the ethical permissibility of control per se has received comparatively lesser attention.The multidisciplinary nature of the book is also a selling point. In any anthology on animal ethics, the reader can expect entries from academic philosophers, but the book's inclusion of empirical scientific reviews, sociological and legal analyses, and work in discourse analysis are strengths. One danger in focusing exclusively on what we ought to think and do is that it ignores the influences on how we actually think and act. Many of the book's entries address these influences and thus round out the normative analysis.The middle two sections of the book seem most successful to this reviewer. The section on the ethics of killing contains two well-argued conceptual chapters, coupled with practical analyses of fishing, deer hunting, and religious perspectives on killing nonhuman animals. While animal research and animal agriculture are not directly addressed in this section, the conceptual arguments can be applied to the killing of nonhuman animals in these contexts. The section on the ethics of captivity is not as conceptually strong but contains excellent empirical chapters on the welfare of elephants, whales, and dolphins in captivity. Prior work in normative ethics has established how confinement can be harmful to nonhuman animals by directly causing suffering or depriving them of opportunities for satisfaction (see, e.g., DeGrazia, 2002). However, it is important to complement such theoretical frameworks with substantiation of how captivity actually is harmful to nonhuman animals in virtue of the interests they have and how captivity infringes upon such interests. These chapters argue that captivity is fundamentally (and not conditionally) incompatible with the welfare of elephants, whales, and dolphins.If I have one criticism of the book, it is that it could be stronger on certain conceptual issues. Acknowledging its practical and not theoretical focus, it is nonetheless true that if controlling, confining, killing, and causing suffering to nonhuman animals is wrong, then it is important to say something about why it is wrong—even if that explanation amounts to a short synopsis of more theoretical work done elsewhere. While the question of killing is addressed well, the section on the ethics of causing suffering does not address directly why (or under what conditions) causing suffering is wrong. The chapters in this section are worthwhile reading and review practices causing animal suffering in a variety of contexts. Nonetheless, some additional conceptual front matter would have strengthened the section overall.From a conceptual standpoint, the sections on the ethics of control and captivity seem to hang together. Confinement is a form of control and might be argued against on the grounds that it deprives nonhuman animals of opportunities for satisfaction, directly causes physical injury, or causes psychological distress, anxiety, or boredom. These kinds of arguments fit into interest-based accounts of animal welfare, which in turn can be subsumed under a principle of nonmaleficence: We should not cause harm to animals under some specified set of conditions; confinement harms animals in ways x, y, or z; therefore, we should not confine animals in this way.While such interest-based arguments do make an appearance in the text, several of the book's authors also elaborate an autonomy-based argument against control and confinement: Nonhuman animals have their own kind of autonomy, and just as infringing upon the autonomy of paradigmatic persons is wrong, infringing upon nonhuman animals’ autonomy is also wrong. The problem with this argument is that different kinds of autonomy are likely to be at stake. The wrongness of infringing upon paradigmatic persons’ autonomy is often explained by the facts that we are self-conscious, capable of abstract thought (including language use), and capable of intentionally choosing the kind of life that we want to live (e.g., relating to long-term projects or schemes of personal ethics). It could be argued that because nonhuman animals are not capable of exercising this kind of autonomy, they therefore cannot be harmed by its infringement.Some of the book's authors chip away at this presumption, noting (inter alia) that nonhuman animals have desires to move around and do things that are thwarted by confinement or control, that these desires constitute a form of agency, and that (following previous scholarship) nonhuman animals possess some forms of self-awareness. Specifically, the chapters from Valéry Giroux and Carl Saucier-Bouffard, Lori Gruen, and Carlos Naconecy consider such arguments. Naconecy draws upon David DeGrazia's (2009) analysis of animal self-awareness in making his argument. Though the issue deserves more treatment than I can give it here, it seems that nonhuman animals’ autonomy and self-awareness, even if granted, are of a different sort than that possessed by paradigmatic persons. Specifically, (most) nonhuman animals cannot feel wronged by having their preferences overridden because they are not the kinds of beings who are capable of abstractly considering themselves as autonomous and worthy of self-direction. They may desire things, and thwarting these desires might sometimes harm them, but that is a different kind of argument.Infringing upon nonhuman animals’ (more limited kind of) autonomy might nonetheless be wrong, but if different sorts of autonomy are at stake, then moral arguments relating to paradigmatic persons cannot be directly transposed to nonhuman animals. Some additional argument(s) must be supplied, but (on my reading) the book's contributors stop short of this. Nonetheless, as stated above, the ethics of control and questions of nonhuman animals’ autonomy are not as well trod as other issues in animal ethics. Despite my taking issue with some of the details, the discussions contained in the book's first two sections are worthy reading and help to advance the field.Overall, the book's chapters are well written and cogently argued, and given its breadth, different readers will find different things to value in it. The Palgrave Handbook of Practical Animal Ethics is a welcome addition to the literature. (shrink)

This paper provides a critical overview of the realist current in contemporary political philosophy. We define political realism on the basis of its attempt to give varying degrees of autonomy to politics as a sphere of human activity, in large part through its exploration of the sources of normativity appropriate for the political and so distinguish sharply between political realism and non-ideal theory. We then identify and discuss four key arguments advanced by political realists: from ideology, from the relationship of (...) ethics to politics, from the priority of legitimacy over justice and from the nature of political judgement. Next, we ask to what extent realism is a methodological approach as opposed to a substantive political position and so discuss the relationship between realism and a few such positions. We close by pointing out the links between contemporary realism and the realist strand that runs through much of the history of Western political thought. (shrink)

Is there more to the recent surge in political realism than just a debate on how best to continue doing what political theorists are already doing? I use two recent books, by Michael Freeden and Matt Sleat, as a testing ground for realism’s claims about its import on the discipline. I argue that both book take realism beyond the Methodenstreit, though each in a different direction: Freeden’s takes us in the realm of meta-metatheory, Sleat’s is a genuine exercise in grounding (...) liberal normative theory in a non-moralistic way. I conclude with wider methodological observations. I argue that unlike communitarianism (the previous contender for the discipline’s renewal), realism has the potential to open new vistas, though their novelty is to a large extent relative to the last forty years or so: realism is best thought of as a return to a more traditional way of doing political philosophy. (shrink)

In *How Propaganda Works* Jason Stanley argues that democratic societies require substantial material equality because inequality causes ideologically flawed belief, which, in turn, make demagogic propaganda more effective. And that is problematic for the quality of democracy. In this brief paper I unpack that argument, in order to make two points: (a) the non-moral argument for equality is promising, but weakened by its reliance on a heavily moralised conception of democracy; (b) that problem may be remedied by whole-heartedly embracing a (...) more realistic conception of democracy. That conception is at least compatible with Stanley’s argument, if not implicit in parts of it. (shrink)

This thesis is a critique of the prominent strand of contemporary liberal political theory which maintains that liberal political authority must, in some sense, rest on the free consent of those subjected to it, and that such a consensus is achieved if a polity’s basic structure can be publicly justified to its citizenry, or to a relevant subset of it. Call that the liberal legitimacy view. I argue that the liberal legitimacy view cannot provide viable normative foundations for political authority, (...) for the hypothetical consensus it envisages cannot be achieved and sustained without either arbitrarily excluding conspicuous sectors of the citizenry or commanding a consent that is less than free. That is because the liberal legitimacy view’s structure is one that requires a form of consent that carries free-standing normative force, yet the particular form of hypothetical consent through public justification envisaged by the view does not possess such force, because of its built-in bias in favour of liberalism. I also argue that the liberal legitimacy view is the most recent instantiation of one of two main strands of liberal theory, namely the nowadays dominant contract-based liberalism, which seeks to ground liberal political authority in a hypothetical agreement between the citizens. My case against the liberal legitimacy view, then, contributes to the revitalisation of the other main approach to the normative foundations of liberalism, namely the substantivist one, which legitimates liberal political authority through an appeal to the substantive values and virtues safeguarded and promoted by liberal polities. (shrink)

The mnemonic arts and the idea of a universal language that would capture the essence of all things were originally associated with cryptology, mysticism, and other occult practices. And it is commonly held that these enigmatic efforts were abandoned with the development of formal logic in the seventeenth century and the beginning of the modern era. In his distinguished book, Logic and the Art of Memory Italian philosopher and historian Paolo Rossi argues that this view is belied by an (...) examination of the history of the idea of a universal language. Based on comprehensive analyses of original texts, Rossi traces the development of this idea from late medieval thinkers such as Ramon Lull through Bruno, Bacon, Descartes, and finally Leibniz in the seventeenth century. The search for a symbolic mode of communication that would be intelligible to everyone was not a mere vestige of magical thinking and occult sciences, but a fundamental component of Renaissance and Enlightenment thought. Seen from this perspective, modern science and combinatorial logic represent not a break from the past but rather its full maturity. Available for the first time in English, this book (originally titled Clavis Universalis) remains one of the most important contributions to the history of ideas ever written. In addition to his eagerly anticipated translation, Steven Clucas offers a substantial introduction that places this book in the context of other recent works on this fascinating subject. A rich history and valuable sourcebook, Logic and the Art of Memory documents an essential chapter in the development of human reason. (shrink)

Public health communications often attempt to persuade their audience to adopt a particular belief or pursue a particular course of action. To a large extent, the ethical defensibility of persuasion appears to be assumed by public health practitioners; however, a handful of academic treatments have called into question the ethical defensibility of persuasive risk- and health communication. In addition, the widespread use of persuasive tactics in public health communications warrants a close look at their ethical status, irrespective of previous critiques. (...) In this article, we review some ethical objections previously advanced against the use of persuasion in public health communications, and also consider some novel but potentially relevant objections. We conclude that persuasion is ethically problematic in some circumstances and attempt to clarify what these circumstances are. However, whereas persuasion may be ethically problematic in some circumstances, it need not be viewed as intrinsically problematic. (shrink)

Political realism is characterised by fidelity to the facts of politics and a refusal to derive political judgments from pre- political moral commitments. Even when they are not taken to make normative theorising impossible or futile, those characteristics are often thought to engender a conservative slant, or at least a tendency to prefer incremental reformism to radicalism. I resist those claims by distinguishing between three variants of realism—ordorealism, contextual realism, and radical realism—and contrasting them with both non-ideal theory and utopianism. (...) I then develop a version of radical realism as a form of debunking and vindicatory genealogy. Even though this new approach eschews both feasibility constraints (unlike non-ideal theory) and prescriptions about the ideal society (unlike utopianism), I show how it has more radical potential than morality-driven (and hence often ideological) political theory, and how it supports both open-ended, radical social critique and concrete forms of prefigurative political action. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that equal respect-based accounts of the normative basis of tolerance are self-defeating, insofar as they are unable to specify the limits of tolerance in a way that is consistent with their own commitment to the equal treatment of all conceptions of the good. I show how this argument is a variant of the long-standing ‘conflict of freedoms’ objection to Kantian-inspired, freedom-based accounts of the justification of systems of norms. I criticize Thomas Scanlon’s defence of ‘pure (...) tolerance’, Anna Elisabetta Galeotti’s work on the relationship between tolerance, equal respect and recognition, and Arthur Ripstein’s recent response to the ‘conflict of freedoms’ objection. The upshot of my argument is that, while valuing tolerance for its own sake may be an appealing ideal, it is not a feasible way of grounding a system of norms. I close with a thumbnail sketch of two alternative, instrumental (i.e. non-Kantian) approaches to the normative foundations of tolerance. (shrink)

What do we talk about when we talk about ethical diversity as a challenge to the normative justifiability of liberal democracy? Many theorists claim that liberal democracy ought to be reformed or rejected for not being sufficiently ‘inclusive’ towards diversity; others argue that, on the contrary, liberalism is desirable because it accommodates (some level of) diversity. Moreover, it has been argued that concern for diversity should lead us to favour (say) neutralistic over perfectionist, universalistic over particularistic, participative over representative versions (...) of liberal democracy. This paper provides a conceptual framework to situate those debates, and argues that there are two fundamental ways in which diversity constitutes a challenge to the justificatory status of liberal democracy: consistency (whereby diversity causes clashes between the prescriptions generated by normative political theories), and adequacy (whereby diversity generates a rift between our experience of what is considered valuable and what the theory treats as such). (shrink)

We present a revenge argument for non-reflexive theories of semantic notions – theories which restrict the rule of assumption, or initial sequents of the form φ ⊩ φ. Our strategy follows the general template articulated in Murzi and Rossi [21]: we proceed via the definition of a notion of paradoxicality for non-reflexive theories which in turn breeds paradoxes that standard non-reflexive theories are unable to block.

In this paper we show how a realistic normative democratic theory can work within the constraints set by the most pessimistic empirical results about voting behaviour and elite capture of the policy process. After setting out the empirical evidence and discussing some extant responses by political theorists, we argue that the evidence produces a two-pronged challenge for democracy: an epistemic challenge concerning the quality and focus of decision-making and an oligarchic challenge concerning power concentration. To address the challenges we then (...) put forward three main normative claims, each of which is compatible with the evidence. We start with a critique of the epistocratic position commonly thought to be supported by the evidence. We then introduce a qualified critique of referenda and other forms of plebiscite, and an outline of a tribune-based system of popular control over oligarchic influence on the policy process. Our discussion points towards a renewal of democracy in a plebeian but not plebiscitarian direction: Attention to the relative power of social classes matters more than formal dispersal of power through voting. We close with some methodological reflections about the compatibility between our normative claims and the realist program in political philosophy. (shrink)

What is the point of ideology critique? Prominent Anglo-American philosophers recently proposed novel arguments for the view that ideology critique is moral critique, and ideologies are flawed insofar as they contribute to injustice or oppression. We criticize that view and make the case for an alternative and more empirically-oriented approach, grounded in epistemic rather than moral commitments. We make two related claims: (i) ideology critique can debunk beliefs and practices by uncovering how, empirically, they are produced by self-justifying power, and (...) (ii) the self-justification of power should be understood as an epistemic rather than moral flaw. Drawing on the recent realist revival in political theory, we argue that this genealogical approach has more radical potential, despite being more parsimonious than morality-based approaches. We demonstrate the relative advantages of our view by discussing the results of empirical studies on the contemporary phenomenon of neopatriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa. (shrink)

This work is the first monograph devoted to the interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of chance in Physics II 4-6 and its implications and projections in other treatises, including an original and comprehensive account of the Aristotelian conception of chance, of accidental causality in the realm of nature, and of accidental causality in the realm of human action. One of the main interpretative issues around Aristotle’s discussion of chance is its relation to the four causes and to teleology. In this sense, (...) it is particularly difficult to find the common features which fortune (tyche) and spontaneity (automaton) share. This work, offers such an interpretation of Aristotle’s general concept of chance (i.e. common to fortune and spontaneity), which shows clearly its relation with his theory of causality (Phys. II 3), with teleology, and with the application of this theory to the study of nature. It also shows how fortune and spontaneity can be interpreted consistently with this general characterization of chance, and how the specific differences between them can be accounted for paying attention to the different structures of causality in the realm of nature and in the realm of human action. Regarding the specific concept of spontaneity (automaton), a crux interpretum, the book offers one of the few independent discussions this issue in Aristotelian literature, and proposes a sub-classification in two kinds of spontaneity based on an analysis of Aristotle’s different examples and characterizations: ‘mixed spontaneity’ (which shares some features with fortune), and ‘pure spontaneity’ (which takes place strictly in the realm of nature). These different structures had not been recognized in specialized literature before. The problem of chance has projections into Aristotle’s natural philosophy, as well as into Aristotle’s theory of action and practical philosophy. This ample perspective of Aristotle’s work, and of the different explanatory models and ontological structures therein involved, constitutes an interesting groundwork for future developments in some or many of these realms of investigation. (shrink)