Dans cet article, je discute quatre contributions récentes sur Leo Strauss écrites par des chercheurs italiens : celles de M. Farnesi Camellone (1), de M. Menon (2), d’A. Ghibellini et la mienne (3). Il s’agit ici de clarifier les raisons pour lesquelles, dans plusieurs études italiennes des deux dernières décennies, Strauss a été étudié davantage comme philosophe que comme penseur politique au sens strict. La principale réside à mon avis dans la relation que Strauss lui-même a établie entre le « (...) problème de la possibilité de la philosophie », relatif à la séparation de l’épistémé d’avec la doxa, et la nécessité de « l’écriture réticente ». L’écriture réticente est un outil méthodologique permettant de contrôler le conflit généré par la question philosophique de la justice, un conflit aux conséquences potentiellement exorbitantes pour la philosophie en tant que mode de vie. (shrink)

O presente artigo parte da difundida opinião de que poetas são mentirosos para analisar a posição paradoxal de Nietzsche em relação à crítica da vontade de verdade: por um lado, sua denúncia da falsidade entranhada nos ideais epistemológicos e morais mais sublimes de nossa tradição; por outro lado, a reconstituição da gênese da probidade intelectual inerente à consciência científica moderna como tradução sublimada da veracidade cristã. Em conclusão, num tensionamento ente Nietzsche e Goethe, interpreta o ensinamento do eterno retorno como (...) verdadeira recriação poética do mundo, que o redime do acaso e da brutalidade dos fatos, e torna possível a superação do niilismo. (shrink)

The debate over the place of religion in secular, democratic societies dominates philosophical and intellectual discourse. These arguments often polarize around simplistic reductions, making efforts at reconciliation impossible. Yet more rational stances do exist, positions that broker a peace between relativism and religion in people's public, private, and ethical lives. _Christianity, Truth, and Weakening Faith_ advances just such a dialogue, featuring the collaboration of two major philosophers known for their progressive approach to this issue. Seeking unity over difference, Gianni Vattimo (...) and René Girard turn to Max Weber, Eric Auerbach, and Marcel Gauchet, among others, in their exploration of truth and liberty, relativism and faith, and the tensions of a world filled with new forms of religiously inspired violence. Vattimo and Girard ultimately conclude that secularism and the involvement of religion in governance are, in essence, produced by Christianity. In other words, Christianity is "the religion of the exit from religion," and democracy, civil rights, the free market, and individual freedoms are all facilitated by Christian culture. Through an exchange that is both intimate and enlightening, Vattimo and Girard share their unparalleled insight into the relationships among religion, modernity, and the role of Christianity, especially as it exists in our multicultural world. (shrink)

The principle of belief persistence, or conservativity principle, states that ’\Nhen changing beliefs in response to new evidence, you should continue to believe as many of the old beliefs as possible' (Harman, 1986, p. 46). In particular, this means that if an individual gets new information, she has to accommodate it in her new belief set (the set of propositions she believes), and, if the new information is not inconsistent with the old belief set, then (1) the individual has to (...) maintain all the beliefs she previously had and (2) the change should be minimal in the sense that every proposition in the new belief set must be deducible from the union of the old belief set and the new information (see, e.g., Gardenfors, 1988; Stalnaker, 1984). We focus on this minimal notion of belief persistence and characterize it both semantically and syntactically. A ’possible world' semantic formalization of the principle easily comes to mind. The set of all the propositions that the individual believes corresponds to the set of states of the world that she considers possible and is a subset of the set of states that are not ruled out by the individual's information (or knowledge). It is required that, if the individual considers a state possible and her new information does not exclude this state, then she continue to consider it possible. Furthermore, if the individual regards a particular state as impossible, then she should continue to regard it as impossible unless her new information excludes all the states that she previously regarded as possible. This is closely related to the.. (shrink)

In On a Discovery, Kant depicts monads as simple beings that are thought in the idea as the ground of appearances. He argues that his account of monads is partially in line with both Leibniz's monadology and his own critical philosophy. However, in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant appears to depart from the monadologies of his predecessors. In this article, I make sense of Kant's late subscription to a version of Leibniz's monadology by arguing that Kant considers monads to (...) be the objects represented through cosmological and psychological ideas posited by reason in its search for the unconditioned conditions of appearances. In particular, I point to what I take to be two instances of what Kant calls “objects in the idea” in the Critique of Pure Reason, namely (a) the substratum of matter qua ground of external appearances, and (b) the soul qua ground of internal appearances. Drawing on Kant's reply to Eberhard and the Transcendental Dialectic of the first Critique, I highlight the merely regulative—and yet fundamental—role that monads conceived as objects of reason play in Kant's critical philosophy. (shrink)

This paper aims to analyze the letters of Nietzsche, questioning if we can legitimately regard them as a vehicle for understanding and interpretation his work. Although letters are inevitably tainted by their context, it is now generally accepted that they cannot be thought of as “parasitic” on the works of their author, but are an “integral part of his machine for writing or expression” (Deleuze-Guattari). It is not a question of interpolating or interpreting the genesis and contents of the works (...) with the pressure of biographical elements, so much as using the letters as a sort of hermeneutic scheme, the better to understand an author’s representation of himself, the underlying intentions of his works, and to grasp their stylistic elements and argumentative resources, which the works inevitably transform. (shrink)

La pedagogia utilizza sempre più spesso il termine formazione. Ciò richiede però un atteggiamento critico capace di riconoscere le diverse valenze del termine, i diversi contesti d'uso, il ricco e problematico spessore teoretico. Occorre che la riflessione pedagogica coniughi il pensare alla formazione con un pensare la formazione capace di accogliere le suggestioni e i contributi provenienti da diversi autori e discipline. In questa prospettiva si colloca l'approfondimento della realtà della coscienza svolto da Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984), filosofo e teologo canadese, (...) gesuita. Egli ha elaborato, nel corso degli anni, un pensiero molto articolato sulla vita coscienziale, in cui appare chiaro il legame con la dimensione della formazione. La coscienza è intrinsecamente segnata da un processo formativo, così come la formazione non si realizza pienamente se non attraverso una appropriazione operata dal soggetto del proprio dinamismo coscienziale. Inoltre l'approfondimento del pensiero coscienziale svela in Lonergan la presenza di elementi che concorrono a costituire una vera e propria 'filosofia' della formazione. La formazione risulta essere, nella sua peculiarità, nella sua essenza, una risignificazione costitutiva del soggetto. (shrink)

Taking as its point of departure the existing critical literature on the intersections between René Girard’s and Giorgio Agamben’s anthropogenetic theories, this essay aims to add further considerations to the debate by discussing some of Agamben’s intuitions within a Girardian paradigmatic explanatory framework. I show how by regressing the archeological analysis to a pre-institutional and pre-legal moment, and by re-examining the antinomic structure of the sacred in its genetic organizing form, one can account more cogently for certain key issues relevant (...) to Agamben’s theoretical project, such as the “paradox of sovereignty,” the nature of the “state of exception,” and the dissociation between culpa and individual responsibility in archaic law, as recently discussed in Karman. I also put forward arguments concerning the limitations of Agamben’s immanent ontology to account for the zoe/bios distinction as a key structural element of his particular take on biopolitics, viewing this specifically in the light. (shrink)

The literature suggests that the moral sense is based on innate abilities. In fact, it has been shown that children show the capacity for moral discernment, emotions and prosocial motivations from an early age. However, the moral sense is a complex construct of an evolutionary and social nature that evolves under the influence of interpersonal relationships. The emergence and development of moral sense is a challenge that has prompted many research studies with the aim of achieving a clear comprehension of (...) moral development. However, success has been scarce, and studies relevant to this subject are limited. Thus, a systematic review of studies relevant to this topic was conducted to clearly establish how moral sense emerges and develops. An Ovid search was conducted to retrieve relevant items for this systematic review. The databases that were electronically visited are Cross-reference, Google Scholar and PubMed. Strict inclusion and exclusion criteria were imposed on the retrieved items to retain only relevant resources. Twenty-six studies were found valid for inclusion in this systematic review. The results of these studies were presented differently: In order to effectively analyze the selected papers and bring out the results more clearly, a categorization of the approaches adopted in the studies was carried out. The approaches identified were: “Natural Moral Sense,” “Social Relationships and Moral Development,” and “Environmental Factors and Moral Development.” The evidence that emerged from the analysis of the papers was collected to produce a general basic model that explains moral development while also serving as a link between the various studies. First, moral sense is found to be innate in humans; individuals can naturally respond morally to various dilemmas. As seen among children and young infants, moral sense naturally exists. Second, it can be socially nurtured through social interactions and exposure to various environmental factors. Various research studies were reviewed in this systematic review to obtain a consensus on how moral sense emerges and develops. From the systematic review, the moral sense is found to be innate. However, moral development is fostered by social interactions and environmental factors. (shrink)

The aim of this special collection of essays, titled Intersubjectivity, Desire, and Mimetic Theory: René Girard and Psychoanalysis, is to reappraise the relationship between René Girard's thought and the psychoanalytic tradition. The tripartite structure of the title clearly echoes the English title of Girard's first book, Deceit, Desire and the Novel, with which he introduced the psychological dynamics of mimetic desire as represented in modern European novels.1 Through the reference to the intentionally broad notions of "intersubjectivity," "desire," and "mimetic theory," (...) our title also signals the intention to cover the multifarious aspects and issues that inform Girard's thinking in relation to core issues of... (shrink)

This article examines the evolution of peer review and the modern editorial processes of scholarly journals by analyzing a novel data set derived from the Royal Society’s archives and covering 1865-1965, that is, the historical period in which refereeing became firmly established. Our analysis reveals how the Royal Society’s editorial processes coped with both an increasing reliance on refereeing and a growth in submissions, while maintaining collective responsibility and minimizing research waste. By engaging more of its fellows in editorial activity, (...) the society was able to establish an equilibrium of number of submissions per reviewer that was relatively stable over time. Nevertheless, our analysis shows that the distribution of editorial work was significantly uneven. Our findings reveal interesting parallels with current concerns about the scale and distribution of peer review work and suggest the strategic importance of the management of the editorial process to achieve a creative mix of community commitment and professional responsibility that is essential in contemporary journals. (shrink)

The overarching theme of causality in behavioral genetics is discussed on epistemological grounds. Evidence is offered in favor of a continuum spectrum in causality, in contrast to discrimination between causal factors and associations. The risk of invalidating exploratory studies in behavior genetics is discussed, especially for the potential impact on those fields of medicine interested in complex behaviors.

This paper reconstructs what the famous sentence "what is rational is actual /and what is actual is rational" specifically means within the Hegel's Philosophy of Right. The two traditional and antithetical interpretations of these words share one main point: both transpose them on the level of the Philosophy of History. Haym does this from a conservative perspective. He regards the Hegelian saying as an immediate justification for existence. Gans and, more recently, Ilting do this from a liberal perspective. They find (...) the idea of the progressive realization of rationality in history in the Hegelian saying. The latter interpretation seems to be attested in some alternative formulations provided by Hegel in his lectures (where "real" and "actual" are linked by "wird" or "muß sein", not by "ist"). Hegel's words, however, do not directly refer to the Philosophy of History. They concern in the first place the structure of ethical life (Sittlichkeit). This is confirmed by the recurring reference to the category of “idea”. Ethical life is the process through which ethical substance – i.e. the ensemble of the substantial determinations that structure everyone’s life – is realized through the self-conscious action of individuals. This action is the objectifying of the spirit and is always a finite action. Through this very manifold contingency, the "brightly coloured covering" of men's being busy, the substance emerges as the "universal way of their acting". This process turns into a whole series of specific differences that structure several spheres of action and existence, whose compresence must be governed. As it is always open to error and not logically deducible, this process turns the identity of rational and actual, in the Philosophy of Right, into an ethical-political problem. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to consider the connection between the structure of consciousness and absolute knowing, starting from the notion of Unruhe, “restlessness”. This word has two different meanings in the Phenomenology: 1) in the Introduction, Hegel uses it in order to define the experience of natural consciousness; 2) in the last chapter, it refers to the dialectical movement of the Concept. These two different meanings are strictly connected. The Unruhe that Hegel recognizes in every experience of consciousness (...) implies an original conception of the relation between consciousness and its objects and between consciousness and truth. These aspects have been pointed out by the french interpretations of the Phenomenology, from Kojève and Hyppolite up to Lacan and Foucault. This restlessness of consciousness derives from the spiritual element (Geist) that appears progressively in every experience of consciousness itself. This first meaning of Unruhe is therefore based on the second one. Then absolute knowing, that is, the overcoming of every difference between consciousness and its object, doesn’t imply the disappearing of restlessness. On the contrary, Unruhe actually finds in absolute knowing its strongest expression, as essential restlessness of the Concept. The Unruhe that every consciousness goes through is therefore the sign of its belonging to the life of Spirit. (shrink)