'Io poi ho sempre pensato--scrive Henri Matisse nel 1935--che gran parte della bellezza di un quadro derivi dalla lotta impegnata dall'artista con i limiti del suo mezzo espressivo.'" Le sue parole riassumono bene il tema di questo libro, la lotta dell'artista con la materia dell'arte, dunque il ruolo fondamentale della costruzione concreta dell'arte rispetto all'idea. L'opera d'arte--una composizione, un romanzo, un dipinto, una scultura, un film--è il risultato di un atto intellettuale consapevole--dunque di un'idea--dove tuttavia entra in gioco l'azione concreta, (...) materiale del fare artistico, che inevitabilmente pervade e condiziona l'opera fin dal momento in cui essa inizia a prendere forma sul pentagramma, sulle righe, sulla tela, sulla pellicola. L'immagine iniziale o idea può mantenere inalterata la sua forza oppure trasformarsi nel corso del lavoro, ma il più delle volte serve soprattutto da stimolo, perché a poco a poco--come scrive Italo Calvino--la materia resta padrona del campo e offre il suo prezioso, indispensabile alimento all'immaginazione. È solo mentre si scrive o dipinge che la fantasia dona i suoi frutti, in astratto la materia è ancora troppo lontana per suggerire combinazioni, accostamenti, soluzioni, scoperte. Le testimonianze dei maggiori protagonisti delle arti del '900, qui ampiamente riportate, confermano nella sostanza la tesi del libro: anche il pittore più desideroso di trasmettere un messaggio e di contribuire attraverso la sua arte alla crescita civile della società, quando riflette sul proprio lavoro difficilmente può negare che l'opera sia il risultato talvolta inatteso di un percorso accidentato nel quale l'azione concreta, materiale del fare artistico entra in gioco giungendo in alcuni casi a modificare in modo radicale le intenzioni originali. L'arte--scrivono Fellini, Mirò, Calvino, Stravinsky e tanti altri--si fa facendola. Sul piano interpretativo ciò comporta un radicale ridimensionamento del ruolo messianico dell'artista, il quale spesso non ha alcuna intenzione o pretesa di comunicare qualcosa di fondamentale, è perso in questo mondo esattamente come tutti noi. 'Giornalisti curiosi e amatori di pittura'--scrive Picasso--vengono a vederci per trarre da noi verità dogmatiche o definizioni che potrebbero spiegare loro la nostra arte, mettendo in rilievo il suo valore pedagogico, valore che io nego categoricamente. Noi facciamo della pittura. Vorrebbero forse che, per aggiunta, noi fossimo fabbricanti di verità e di massime?'"--Back cover. (shrink)

The World Health Organization has published a global priority list of antibiotic-resistant bacteria to guide research and development of new antibiotics. Every pathogen on this list requires R&D activity, but some are more attractive for private sector investments, as evidenced by the current antibacterial pipeline. A “pipeline coordinator” is a governmental/non-profit organization that closely tracks the antibacterial pipeline and actively supports R&D across all priority pathogens employing new financing tools.

In this paper I argue that Rawlsians have largely misunderstood the idea of an overlapping consensus of reasonable comprehensive doctrines, thereby failing to delineate in an appropriate way the place of comprehensive doctrines in political liberalism. My argument rests on two core claims. The first claim is that (i) political liberalism is committed to three theses about the overlapping consensus. The first thesis concerns the subject of the overlapping consensus; the second thesis concerns the function of the overlapping consensus; the (...) third thesis explains how the overlapping consensus can serve its function in accordance with political liberalism’s commitment to epistemic neutrality. The second claim on which my argument relies is empirical: (ii) Rawlsians typically deny at least one of the three theses to which political liberalism is committed. Based on (i) and (ii), I conclude that Rawlsians have hitherto provided unconvincing accounts of the place of comprehensive doctrines in political liberalism. (shrink)

The idea of an ?inversion principle?, and the name itself, originated in the work of Paul Lorenzen in the 1950s, as a method to generate new admissible rules within a certain syntactic context. Some fifteen years later, the idea was taken up by Dag Prawitz to devise a strategy of normalization for natural deduction calculi (this being an analogue of Gentzen's cut-elimination theorem for sequent calculi). Later, Prawitz used the inversion principle again, attributing it with a semantic role. Still working (...) in natural deduction calculi, he formulated a general type of schematic introduction rules to be matched ? thanks to the idea supporting the inversion principle ? by a corresponding general schematic Elimination rule. This was an attempt to provide a solution to the problem suggested by the often quoted note of Gentzen. According to Gentzen ?it should be possible to display the elimination rules as unique functions of the corresponding introduction rules on the basis of certain requirements?. Many people have since worked on this topic, which can be appropriately seen as the birthplace of what are now referred to as ?general elimination rules?, recently studied thoroughly by Sara Negri and Jan von Plato. In this study, we retrace the main threads of this chapter of proof-theoretical investigation, using Lorenzen's original framework as a general guide. (shrink)

In the first part of this paper, published in issue 1 of Augustinianum 63 (2023), 9-45, we examined the question of whether Irenaeus of Lyons depended on the Exposition of Logia about the Lord of Papias of Hierapolis. In this second and final part we focus on the way Irenaeus used information which, since the first decades of the second century, had been attributed to presbyters of Asia and then in particular on the way he identifies the succession of presbyters (...) with that of bishops (primarily in Rome). He links the latter with Christian origins but also profoundly alters the function traditionally attributed to the presbyters themselves, within a system he devised in order to respond to urgent problems, in a context quite different from the era in which the traditions to which he appeals were born. (shrink)

This article examines how theology and social science can contribute to the specific task of talking about God in management without compromising the integrity of the Triune God. To talk about God in management studies initially requires a discussion on the character of modernity and about whether modernity is absence or transformation of religious forms; to follow is an examination of the governing assumptions operating in social theory from a religious perspective. The conclusion is that without the correct hermeneutics, what (...) management scholars mean by God cannot be more than an idea. (shrink)

This paper considers two issues raised by the claim that fictional characters are abstract artifacts. First, given that artifacts normally have functions, what is the function of a fictional character? Second, given that, in experiencing works of fictions, we usually treat fictional characters as concrete individuals, how can such a phenomenology fit with an ontology according to which fictional characters are abstract artifacts? I will indirectly address the second issue by directly addressing the first one. For this purpose, I will (...) rely on the notion of a mental file. I will argue that the function of fictional characters is the generation of mental files of a special kind. I will show that our experience of fictional characters as concrete individuals depends on the kind of mental files that are generated by fictional characters as abstract artifacts. I will conclude that an appreciator of a work of fiction can open two files about a certain fictional character; one about the character as an individual in the fictional world, and the other about the character as an abstract artifact in the actual world. In this sense, our relation to a fictional character is characterized by a duality of files or ‘twofileness’. (shrink)

Regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with Stacie Friend’s claim that fiction is a genre, her notion of genre can be fruitfully applied to a paradigmatic genre such as science fiction. This article deploys Friend’s notion of genre in order to improve the influential characterization of science fiction proposed by Darko Suvin and to defend it from a criticism recently raised by Simon Evnine. According to Suvin, a work of science fiction must concern “a fictional ‘novum’ validated by cognitive (...) logic.” While Suvin conceives of his characterization as a necessary and sufficient condition for membership in the genre, I propose to cast the notions of “fictional novum” and “cognitive validation” as standard features of the genre, which works of science fiction should have but might lack. I argue that this amended version of Suvin’s characterization can better account for two basic properties of science fiction as a genre, namely its historicity and its relevance to appreciation. Lastly, I show that the amended version can shed some light on the affinity between works of science fiction and philosophical thought experiments. (shrink)

A rigorous ab initio derivation of the (square of) Dirac’s equation for a particle with spin is presented. The Lagrangian of the classical relativistic spherical top is modified so to render it invariant with respect conformal changes of the metric of the top configuration space. The conformal invariance is achieved by replacing the particle mass in the Lagrangian with the conformal Weyl scalar curvature. The Hamilton-Jacobi equation for the particle is found to be linearized, exactly and in closed form, by (...) an ansatz solution that can be straightforwardly interpreted as the “quantum wave function” of the 4-spinor solution of Dirac’s equation. All quantum features arise from the subtle interplay between the conformal curvature acting on the particle as a potential and the particle motion which affects the geometric “pre-potential” associated to the conformal curvature itself. The theory, carried out here by assuming a Minkowski metric, can be easily extended to arbitrary space-time Riemann metric, e.g. the one adopted in the context of General Relativity. This novel theoretical scenario appears to be of general application and is expected to open a promising perspective in the modern endeavor aimed at the unification of the natural forces with gravitation. (shrink)

This paper develops Richard Wollheim’s claim that the proper appreciation of a picture involves not only enjoying a seeing-in experience but also abiding by a standard of correctness. While scholars have so far focused on what fixes the standard, thereby discussing the alternative between intentions and causal mechanisms, the paper focuses on what the standard does, that is, establishing which kinds, individuals, features and standpoints are relevant to the understanding of pictures. It is argued that, while standards concerning kinds, individuals (...) and features can be relevant also to ordinary perception, standards concerning standpoints are specific to pictorial experience. Drawing on all this, the paper proposes an ontology of depiction according to which a picture is constituted by both its visual appearance and its standard of correctness. (shrink)

In the middle of the 60s Nespolo started using curved lines in his paintings. While modern painting had until then had been dominated by straight lines and therefore by a rational, geometric approach, curved lines brought back a wider freedom in shapes and concepts. Nespolo used simple curves as the core of his creations and these were probably responsible for his turn towards cinema. As curved lines divide a flat surface into pieces with a jigsaw effect, so a movie sequence (...) is a jigsaw of overlapping shots undistinguished by human eye. Each movie scene is in turn interrupted, broken and distorted in a dynamic jigsaw for which the viewer is free to give his own interpretation. (shrink)

L’analisi di un periodo storico attraverso la sua narrazione, sia esso il Medioevo o persino un’epoca più recente, considera una moltitudine di fonti, assai eterogenee e di forma non sempre immediata. In alcuni casi uno studioso può nutrire un interesse perfino secondario per un documento storico in sé, rivolgendo l’attenzione alle _motivazioni_ e al _contesto_ che hanno portato alla creazione e alla conservazione di una testimonianza, sia essa scritta, orale o iconografica. La lettura del passato apre diverse prospettive: è possibile (...) rintracciare un genere narrativo che più di ogni altro meglio descrive il Medioevo? In quale senso una fonte arricchisce la nostra conoscenza del passato? È sensato estendere lo studio a testimonianze non strettamente testuali o iconografiche, come le mappe geografiche? La riflessione che poggia su questi quesiti rivela un Medioevo in parte inventato, una fantasia che non è tuttavia l’ombra del passato storico, bensì il suo complemento. _Analysing an historical period, such as the Middle Ages, or a more recent era, through its narration, must take into consideration many heterogeneous sources, whose form is not always immediately identifiable. In some cases, scholars may even have a secondary interest in a specific historical document, preferring to study the _motivations_ and _context_ behind its creation and conservation of historical testimony, either written, spoken or iconographic._ _Interpreting the past opens up different perspectives: is it possible to determine a single narrative genre able to describe the Middle Ages better than others? In what sense does a historical source enrich our knowledge of the historical past? Does it make sense to include in the study of history, sources that are not strictly textual or iconographic, such as a geographical map?_ _Reflecting on these questions reveals an invented aspect of the Middle Ages, a fictional portrait that not only brings into view history__’s shadow but also complements it_. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Italian historiographers of the second half of the seventeenth century often establish parallels between early modern republics, comparing Genoa and Venice with the United Provinces, considered as similar political entities despite their evident political differences. The article, taking into account four different sources, investigates the meaning of those comparisons, published when the absolutist model was taking root all around Europe. In the twilight of the republican state, when the power and reputation of the Italian republics was maybe at its (...) weakest, those comparisons served both as a way to boost a supranational republican identity, and to question the strength of the classical republican constitution. This survey explores how these authors claim that, in order to survive in the Europe of absolute monarchies, those republics have to undergo a radical political change. Only by avoiding splitting the sovereignty among too many subjects, and reinforcing the monarchical element in their constitution, these republican states, no more based on the principle of equality, could compete in the new seventeenth-century political scenario. For this reason, Italian authors looked with great interest, and often celebrated the Dutch republic, considered a stronger government than that of Venice, even if it was regarded as an imperfect republic. (shrink)

Conceiving of fictional characters as types allows us to reconcile intuitions of sameness and difference about characters such as Batman that appear in different fictional worlds. Sameness occurs at the type level while difference occurs at the token level. Yet, the claim that fictional characters are types raises three main issues. Firstly, types seem to be eternal forms whereas fictional characters seem to be the outcome of a process of creation. Secondly, the tokens of a type are concrete particulars in (...) the actual world whereas the alleged tokens of a fictional character are concrete particulars in a fictional world. Thirdly, many fictional characters, unlike Batman, only appear in one work of fiction, and therefore one can wonder whether it does make sense to treat them as types. The main aim of this paper is to address these issues in order to defend a creationist account of fictional characters as types. (shrink)

From within a “systemic approach” to deliberative democracy, political parties can be seen as crucial actors in facilitating deliberation, by playing epistemic, motivational, and justificatory functions that are central to the deliberative ideal. However, we point out that if we assume a purely outcome-oriented conception of the role of parties within a deliberative system, we risk losing sight of a central tenet of deliberative democracy and of its distinctive principle of legitimacy, namely, that citizens must be able to exercise critical (...) reflection on the grounds of democratic decisions. We argue that parties have a special responsibility in making a deliberative system meet this requirement, and that such special role can be fulfilled only if parties’ programs, values, and strategies are shaped through intra-party deliberation. On the grounds of this discussion, we define a model of intra-party deliberation that is based on the principles of mutual acceptability, pluralism, and publicity. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the theory of mental files can provide a unitary cognitive account of how names and singular terms work in fiction. I will suggest that the crucial notion we need is not the one of regular file, i.e., a file whose function is to accumulate information that we take to be about a single object of the outside world, but the notion of indexed file, i.e., a file that stands, in the subject’s mind, for another (...) subject’s file about an object. When we read a novel containing the name of an individual, we acquire (fictional) information about that individual and we store those pieces of information into an indexed file. If the name also refers to a real individual outside the context of fiction, the indexed file is linked with the pre-existing regular file that we have about such individual. Otherwise, the indexed file is linked to a regular file referring to an abstract object, namely the fictional entity itself. (shrink)

Diachronic perceptual atomism is the view that the contents of experience do not involve temporal relations between non-simultaneous events, such as motion, succession, or duration, but only 'snapshots' of the world. Traditionally, atomism has not been a very popular view. Indeed, many philosophers think that it is obviously false and that the main debate about time consciousness takes place between models which reject atomistic commitments. This antiatomistic sentiment can be traced back to William James's slogan that 'a succession of feelings, (...) in and of itself, is not a feeling of succession'. In this paper I argue, first, that the arguments typically launched against atomism in the spirit of James's slogan fail; and second, that the viability of atomism depends on what the conditions for a mental event's being an experience are. In particular, I argue that if a mental event is an experience only if it fulfils certain downstream conditions, which concern the role of the event in the subject's cognitive life, then atomism fails. Otherwise, it is in fact a viable and in many ways attractive view. It follows from my discussion that, contrary to popular belief, atomism is by no means obviously false. Rather, its viability depends on one's further views about the relationship between experience and cognition. (shrink)

Este estudio trata de la relación de Bruno y Vico con el Barroco, ubicado el autor en una perspectiva acerca de la modernidad desde la que autores como Bruno, Leibniz o Vico son estudiados en virtud del señalamiento de un “lenguaje filosófico barroco”. Se trata de estudiar la posibilidad de vislumbrar un conjunto de respuestas a la crisis del fundamento que no sean sólo “expresivas” de ésta, sino “constructivas”.Palabras clave: Vico, Bruno, Leibniz, modernidad, Barroco, metaforología.This paper is focussed on the (...) relationship between Bruno, Vico and the Baroque. Its author assumes a perspective about modernity that studies figures such as Bruno, Leibniz or Vico under the light of a “philosophical baroque language”. The aim is to point out a possible a set of responses to the crisis of foundations, that would not only be “expressive”, but “constructive”.Keywords: Vico, Bruno, Leibniz, modernity, Baroque, metaphorology. (shrink)

Conceptualism is the thesis that, for any perceptual experience E, (i) E has a Fregean proposition as its content and (ii) a subject of E must possess a concept for each item represented by E. We advance a framework within which conceptualism may be defended against its most serious objections (e.g., Richard Heck's argument from nonveridical experience). The framework is of independent interest for the philosophy of mind and epistemology given its implications for debates regarding transparency, relationalism and representationalism, demonstrative (...) thought, phenomenal character, and the speckled hen objection to modest foundationalism. (shrink)

Nella Tempesta shakespeariana, le avversità della vita obbligano il povero Trinculo a condividere il giaciglio con qualcuno assai differente da lui. Si tratta di un’immagine che rappresenta il momento in cui due individui radicalmente diversi sono obbligati a percorrere il medesimo cammino per realizzare uno scopo comune. In questo lavoro, sostengo che alcune delle interpretazioni del misticismo medievale possono identificarsi in una forma di esperienza digitale basata sul World Wide Web, il quale, grazie al rapido sviluppo delle metodologie dell’Intelligenza Artificiale, (...) si appresta a diventare una nuova forma di misticismo. In Shakespeare’s Tempest, the misfortunes of life force poor Trinculo to share a bed with a stranger in order to survive. This image represents the moment where two persons, utterly different in their perspectives, share a path in order to achieve a common goal. In this article, I put forward the claim that some interpretations of Middle Ages philosophy can be identified as a form of digital experience based on the World Wide Web, which, thanks to the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence methodologies, opens up a new kind of mysticism for the future era. (shrink)

In this article, I place management theory in conversation with Giorgio Agamben’s political theology with the dual scope of offering (a) a critical examination of the Agambenian interpretation of management, and (b) an application of such interpretation to illuminate and eventually explain the nature of some decisive and persistent limitations of the discipline. The main argument is that Agamben’s theological genealogy of economy transforms the discourse on management from a matter of value to one of control. In the first section, (...) I introduce Agamben’s political theological project and a couple of fundamental elements of Agamben’s interpretation of management. In the second, I discuss three fundamental shortcomings of management as a discipline that an Agambenian interpretation of management can make intelligible. (shrink)

In this article I propose a theological reflection on the philosophical assumptions behind the idea that intelligent machine can be governed through ethical protocols, which may apply either to the people who develop the machines or to the machines themselves, or both. This idea is particularly relevant in the case of machines’ extreme wrongdoing, a wrongdoing that becomes an existential risk for humankind. I call this extreme wrong-doing, ‘evil.’ Thus, this article is a theological account on the philosophical assumptions behind (...) the possibility of evil machines, machines that can create an existential risk for humankind, and the ethical remedies that limit that risk. After discussing these assumptions, I argue for the ineffectiveness of these ethical remedies to prevent the possibility of evil machines. The article is an application of Romano Guardini’s thought on technology to evil machines. (shrink)