Le infrastrutture e la logistica sono dimensioni costitutive dei processi globali e un campo di costante ridefinizione del rapporto tra spazi politici e spazi del capitale. Utilizzando contributi critici provenienti da diversi ambiti disciplinari, l’articolo analizza il rapporto tra un quadro internazionale segnato dagli effetti delle trasformazioni logistiche, dai processi di infrastrutturazione e dal rinnovato attivismo statale, concentrandosi sull’emergere degli Stati-piattaforma, degli agglomerati transnazionali e dei corridoi come spazi politici.

The article argues that the end of the formal division of the world between a colonizing metropolis and a colonized periphery requires a different reading of the State’s history. The essay deals with the relation between the formation of British India and the development of Indian nationalist movement through the events related to the ‘tiger of Mysore’, Tipu Sultan, and the swadeshi movement as portrayed in Tagore’s The Home and the World. The essay shows how colonial constitutionalism developed through the (...) contemporary affirmation of the rule of law and the colonial difference. The postcolonial State emerged via concrete crossing of this difference, which today allows a different reading of the political discourses beyond the affirmation of the State as the barycenter of political organization at a global scale. (shrink)

I will argue that the rule of recognition, as it has been conceived by Hart, is either a redundant, and hence mostly useless, concept, or a concept with limited explanatory potential —in either case, at best a concept whose scope is, in contemporary legal systems, much narrower than Hart envis- aged. I will also argue that the rule of recognition, in one of its possible (and plausible) reformulations, can nevertheless play a significant, non-redundant role, but only if employed in a (...) rather different way than the one proposed by Hart, as well as by much of post-Hartian positivist literatureResumen:En este artículo se argumenta que la regla de reconocimiento, tal como fuera concebida por Hart, es o bien un concepto redundante —y en consecuencia inútil— o un concepto limitado en su poder explicativo. En cualquier caso, se trata de un concepto cuyo alcance es, frente a los sistemas jurídicos contemporáneos, mucho más estrecho de lo que Hart pudo imaginar. De igual modo se argumenta que la regla de reconocimiento, en alguna de sus posibles (y plausibles) reformulaciones, puede tener a pesar de todo un papel significativo y no redundante, pero solamente si se emplea en un sentido radicalmente distinto al que propuso Hart o que se propone en buena parte de la literatura positivista posthartiana. (shrink)

Even though Scotus did not develop his account in direct opposition to Aquinas, a contrast between these two thinkers helps us to focus on some distinctive features of their respective approaches and on some characteristic moves they made to answer the question, “What is it to think?” Scotus agreed with Aquinas that, barring divine intervention, an intelligible species must be received in the intellect prior to the production of an occurrent thought about a thing’s essence. Unlike Aquinas, however, Scotus argued (...) that occurrent thoughts are qualities and not actions. This allowed him to reject the view held by Aquinas that the presence of the intelligible species in the intellect explains a thought’s intentionality. Rather, Scotus claimed that a thought’s intentionality is explained by a relation grounded in that thought and directed at its object. (shrink)

The disagreement between Henry of Ghent and John Duns Scotus on divine illumination is usually recognized as a high point in the history of medieval epistemology. Still, there is much obscurity surrounding that debate, including the specific nature of the disagreement between those two thinkers. In this paper, I argue that the point at issue is the relationship between sense and intellect. Henry of Ghent, who posits a close tie between sense and intellect, holds that the senses are the only (...) natural source of both content and certainty for the intellect. By contrast, Duns Scotus holds that, in our natural state, the senses are the source of content but not of certainty for the intellect, which can achieve knowledge of the truth of first principles true by virtue of the meaning of their terms independently of the sensory input it receives. (shrink)

Este trabajo intenta mostrar cómo Internet ofrece unos revolucionarios recursos tecnológicos que deben ser aprovechados por los estudiosos en general y por los estudiosos viquianos en particular. A su vez, recorre la presencia de Vico en la Web, documentando los lugares de referencia. Su aportación nos permite, además, plantearnos cómo hubiera respondido el mismo Vico ante un fenómeno tan lleno de recursos para el saber como resulta la Red.This paper tries to show the manyfold technological resources of the Web which (...) may be of great value not only to all sort of scholars but also to the Vichian in particular. It follows as well Vico’s many sites in the Web. Its results give rise to wonder what Vico would have thought of so many resources available to improve human wisdom. (shrink)

Nota informativa sobre el Convegno "G. Vico nel suo tempo e nel nostro" .An Informative note on the Convegno "G. Vico nel suo tempo e nel nostro".

In this article, I consider Duns Scotus’s treatment of accidents existing without substances (= homeless accidents) in the Eucharist to shed light on how he thinks Aristotle’s metaphysics should be modified to make room for miracles. In my reconstruction, Duns Scotus makes two changes to Aristotle’s metaphysics. First, he distinguishes a given thing’s natural inclinations (its “aptitudes”) from the manifestations of those inclinations. Second, he argues that it is up to God’s free decisions (organized in systematic policies) whether a thing’s (...) aptitudes manifest or do not manifest themselves in any given situation. In this way, Duns Scotus tries to find a point of equilibrium between the necessary causal order he attributes to Aristotle and his followers on the one hand, and God’s freedom to break the natural order at any moment on the other hand. (shrink)

Between the thirteenth and fourteenth century, a remarkable number of thinkers developed an interest in explaining a cognitive state's property of being about something, as many recent studies have shown.1 Several of those later medieval accounts shared a common strategy. According to this common strategy, intentionality was explained in causal terms. Thus, it was contended that cognitive states are about what causes them, and that it is precisely because a certain thing causes a certain cognitive state that such a cognitive (...) state is about that thing. For example, I see something white because my act of seeing is caused by something white. Similarly, my act of thinking is about horses because horses cause it. I .. (shrink)

Duns Scotus’ authorship of the commentary on Aristotle’s Topics transmitted in ms. Vatican, Ottoboni lat. 318 is demonstrated by no less than twelve references to his commentaries on the Isagoge and the Categories. In addition, new information is provided about the relative chronology of Scotus’ philosophical commentaries and the existence of a lost commentary on the Prior Analytics.

John Duns Scotus is commonly recognized as one of the most original thinkers of medieval philosophy. His influence on subsequent philosophers and theologians is enormous and extends well beyond the limits of the Middle Ages. His thought, however, might be intimidating for the non-initiated, because of the sheer number of topics he touched on and the difficulty of his style. The eleven essays collected here, especially written for this volume by some of the leading scholars in the field, take the (...) reader through various topics, including Duns Scotus's intellectual environment, his argument for the existence of God, and his conceptions of modality, order, causality, freedom, and human nature. This volume provides a reliable point of entrance to the thought of Duns Scotus while giving a snapshot of some of the best research that is now being done on this difficult but intellectually rewarding thinker. (shrink)

Reseña de las sesiones de las Jornadas de estudio en torno a las ediciones y traducciones de las obras de Vico, celebradas en Nápoles con ocasión del 250º aniversario de su muerte, bajo el título general: L'edizione critica di Vico: bilanci e prospettive.Review of the sessions devoted to the study of Vico’s Work editions and translations, which tock place in Naples in commemoration of the 250th anniversary of his death, under the generai title: L'edizione critica di Vico: bilanci e prospettive.

Can the Proslogion argument for God’s existence be parodied to demonstrate the existence of the worst evil? This is what Duns Scotus contends in one of his works, where he presents such a parody as evidence for the argument’s unsoundness. Elsewhere, however, Scotus defends a “touched-up” version (coloratio) of Anselm’s argument. In my reconstruction, Scotus’s touched-up argument includes three stages: first, a demonstration that that than which a greater cannot be thought is a possible object of thought; second, a demonstration (...) that that than which a greater cannot be thought can be thought to exist and so can exist; third, a demonstration that that than which a greater cannot be thought actually exists. Contrary to what has sometimes been maintained, I argue that Scotus’s argument does not make any illegitimate shift from logical to real possibility. I also contend that one of the most characteristic aspects of Scotus’s touched-up argument is that the comparison between existing in the intellect and existing in reality (arguably the weakest point in standard reconstructions of Anselm’s argument) plays no role in it, and that accordingly Scotus’s argument is immune from his own parody of Anselm’s argument. (shrink)

This paper deals first with the translations and the translators of the De Universi Juris Uno Principio et Fine Uno; second, with the four letters of Biagio Garofalo and Prince Eugene of Savoy; next with the exemplar “B E VIII M 9”; and finally with the apostils, with which Vico deleted, emended, corrected, added to, and marked in ink new variations of his thoughts in the exemplar “XIII B 62.”.

The Latin text and the translation of The Conspiracy of the Prince of Macchia -- The making of the narration -- Authorities and documents of the narrative.

In September of 1701, events transpired in Naples that, through frequent retellings, became popularly known as “the conspiracy of the Prince of Macchia.” Rapidly gaining fame, this apparently anonymous narrative was soon incorporated by different historians in their history of the transition years between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But who was the initial bard or narrator, the town clerk or citizen who first gave testimony of this event by creating a Latin text of the story of the Prince of (...) Macchia? Giambattista Vico was not among the claimants to the authorship of the fabulous story that changed the future of the Kingdom of Naples. Nevertheless, four scholars across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were themselves convinced, and managed to convince the intellectual world as well, that Vico, then a young teacher of rhetoric at the University of Naples, was indeed the source of this original Latin narration of this oft retold Neapolitan history. This book provides the original Latin text with a parallel translation, as well as historical context and analysis of both the text's authorship history and the account itself. (shrink)