La complessa, profonda e articolata costruzione filosofica di Michel Henry (1922-2002), sviluppata nell’arco di più di quaranta anni, è interamente dominata dalla passione per la verità e dalla fedeltà alla ricerca. Per comprenderla a fondo è necessaria una solida conoscenza della tradizione filosofica e fenomenologica a lui precedente, che tenga conto non solo del pensiero di Heidegger e Husserl ma anche — tra gli altri — di Cartesio, Kant, Hegel, Merleau-Ponty e Sartre. Sulla base di una at...

This is my first professional philosophical essay. I wrote "The twofold meaning of being" in 1996 when I was a student of Nunzio Incardona at University of Palermo (Italy) and before my degree thesis, "The difference in Aristotle’s Metaphysics". It still waits to be published.

v. 1. Teorica dei governi e governo parlamentare -- v. 2. Elementi di scienza politica.

The 1830s and 1840s are the formative years of modern public health in Britain, when the poor law bureaucrat Edwin Chadwick conceived his vision of public health through public works and began the campaign for the construction of the kinds of water and sewerage works that ultimately became the standard components of urban infrastructure throughout the developed world. This book first explores that vision and campaign against the backdrop of the great "condition-of-England" questions of the period, of what rights and (...) expectations working people could justifiably have in regard to political participation, food, shelter and conditions of work. It examines the ways Chadwick's sanitarianism fit the political needs of the much-hated Poor Law Commission and of Whig and Tory governments, each seeking some antidote to revolutionary Charitism. It then reviews the Chadwickians' efforts to solve the host of problems they met in trying to implement the sanitary idea: of what responsibilities central and local units of government, and private contractors, were to have; of how townspeople could be persuaded to embark on untried public technologies; of where the new public health experts were to come from; and of how elegant technical designs were to be fitted to the unique social, political and geographic circumstances of individual towns. Rejecting the view that Chadwick's program was a simple response to an obvious urban problem Professor Hamlin argues that at the time a "public health" focusing narrowly on sanitary public works represented a retreat of public medicine from involvement with the great social issues of the Industrial Revolution. In exploring the views of medical men who were critical of Chadwick, Hamlin suggests the parameters of a public health that might have been, in which concern for health and well-being becomes the foundation of a public medicine that is a principal guarantor of social justice. This book offers modern public heatlh professionals elements of a forgotten professional heritage that might be useful in responding to the bewildering range of health problems we now confront. (shrink)

La critique kierkegaardienne de Hegel est‑elle si facile à désamorcer? Si l’on accepte de répondre aux véritables questions posées par l’auteur, sans les faire passer au préalable par la machine conceptuelle hégélienne, ce qui se dessine est un nouvel ordre problématique où il devient difficile de réduire Kierkegaard à un moment du système hégélien : moment nécessaire, certes, mais aussi dépassable. Nous avons choisi d’éclaircir ce nouvel ordre problématique et de le faire rétroagir sur la philosophie hégélienne. La fonction d’autorialité (...) du texte philosophique, l’histoire, le temps : voici les champs qui se retrouveront bouleversés par la pensée kierkegaardienne du fait absolu de la foi. C’est l’amour du paradoxe qui s’opposera en définitive à Hegel, tel le moteur qui pousse la pensée philosophique à prendre véritablement en compte la singularité. (shrink)

This paper provides a synthesis and translation of Le strutture speculative della dottrina della scienza; Il pensiero di J.G. Fichte negli anni 1801–1807 (Genova: Pantograf, 1995) by Gaetano Rametta. The 1807 Wissenschaftslehre offers important insight into Fichte’s mittlere Phase (1801–1807). Fichte’s text and Rametta’s work on it remain untranslated into English; this translation, the notes to which offer a running commentary and defi nitions of key terms, intends to make the former known through the latter. Rametta focuses on Fichte’s (...) analysis of vision, and the vision of vision. In his middle-period and later work, Fichte developed this theme far past the early Jena-period doctrine thereof, as treated by Dieter Henrich. Within this thematic context, Rametta also discusses the proof-structure of the 1807 WL, the distinction between Wahrheitslehre and Phänomenologie, and the concept of Weisheit or “wisdom.” The article concludes with a treatment of the significance of Fichte’s later philosophy for the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Gaetano Rametta,Roberto Formisano | : Le présent essai tente de dégager les structures fondamentales de la philosophie de la religion de Fichte après 1800. Une attention particulière est accordée à l’Initiation à la vie bienheureuse et à la Doctrine de l’État. La connaissance théorique, la version johannique de la chrétienté, ainsi qu’une nouvelle conception de l’État sont interprétées ici comme autant de visages différents d’un système philosophique strictement interconnecté. Dans sa période berlinoise, Fichte n’a plus conçu le sujet comme (...) le premier principe de sa Doctrine de la science, mais plutôt comme l’« image » transcendantale au travers de laquelle s’écoule le flot d’une vie indivisée et spirituellement transfigurée. | : The present essay tries to show the fundamental structures of Fichte’s philosophy of religion after 1800. Particular attention is focused on the Introduction to a Blessed Life and the Theory of the State. Theoretical knowledge, John’s version of Christianity, and a new concept of the State are here interpreted as different faces of a strictly interconnected philosophical system. In his Berliner period, Fichte did not conceive the Subject any more as the “first principle” of his Doctrine of science, but rather as the transcendental “image” through which flows the stream of an undivided and spiritually transfigured Life. (shrink)

: I shall discuss the relationship between the interventionist theory of causation and free action. Interventionist accounts of causation define causation on the basis of “intervention”. These theories can be reductive, if they explain causes on the basis of free human interventions, or non-reductive, if they consider causes and interventions as two inter-defined concepts, where interventions are regarded as explicitly not human. I will show that the dilemma between reductive and non-reductive interventionist theories of causality can be overcome in favour (...) of reductive accounts, with regard to what causation is in an anthropological sense, and with regard to the causal explanation of phenomena. Non-reductive accounts, explaining causes based on interventions and defining interventions as special causes create a dangerous explanatory circularity between cause and intervention and are not able to give a general and explanatory idea of causation. Reductive interventionist theories, by contrast, do not suffer from this circularity. Keywords: Causation; Free Action; Experiment; Interventionist Theory of Causality; Anthropomorphism L’azione libera e le teorie interventiste della causalità Riassunto: Intendo discutere il rapporto tra la teoria interventista della causalità e l’azione libera. Gli approcci interventisti alla causalità definiscono la causazione sulla base dell’“intervento”. Queste teorie possono essere riduttive, se spiegano le cause in base all’intervento umano come libero intervento umano, oppure non-riduttive, se considerano cause e interventi come due concetti inter-definiti, dove gli interventi sono considerati come esplicitamente non umani. Intendo mostrare che il dilemma tra teorie interventista della causalità di tipo riduttivo e non-riduttivo può essere superato in favore degli approcci riduttivi, con riferimento a ciò che la causazione è in senso antropologico e con riferimento alla spiegazione causale dei fenomeni. Gli approcci non-riduttivi, spiegando le cause sulla base di interventi e definendo gli interventi come cause speciali, creano una perniciosa circolarità esplicativa tra cause e interventi e non sono in grado di dare un’idea generale ed esplicativa della causazione. Le teorie interventiste riduttive, al contrario, non soffrono di questa circolarità. Keywords: Causazione; Azione libera; esperimento; Teoria interventista della causalità; Antropomorfismo. (shrink)

Dans la dernière phase de sa vie et de ses recherches, Michel Henry a fait dialoguer sa propre phénoménologie de la vie avec le kérygme et la pensée chrétienne, estimant que, depuis ses origines, le christianisme a vécu la révélation de Dieu non pas comme une connaissance mais comme une vie, la Vie même de Dieu dans laquelle les hommes sont invités à entrer, une vie qui configure les êtres humains à partir de la perspective trinitaire comme des fils dans (...) le Fils, relisant ainsi le christianisme en philosophe, ou comme une archi-phénoménologie. Grâce à la visée philosophique, les principes fondamentaux du christianisme peuvent avoir une nouvelle explicitation rationnelle, et la pensée chrétienne en tant que telle, agissant comme un prisme interprétatif, contribue à jeter un éclairage différent sur les principes généraux et les stratégies opérationnelles de la phénoménologie. De cette façon, on acquiert deux lieux forces, qui amènent Henry à mettre en évidence, d’une part, la connotation phénoménologique du premier et d’autre part, mais simultanément, à défendre le droit et l’importance de l’attention au phénomène chrétien par l’investigation philosophique. Parmi les nombreux thèmes pris en considération par Henry, pour cet essai, nous avons choisi d’analyser la relation Trinité-humanité et le concept de vérité du christianisme, que Henry oppose à la vérité du monde. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to argue that, in order for the debate in Computing and philosophy to move forward with respect to its current state, the advances of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence of the last decades must be taken into account. Computational reflection, one of these advances, is presented in detail and its philosophical implications are discussed, in contrast with old-fashioned views of computational systems such as those presented by Lucas’ papers on Minds and Machines.