The ability of using a large variety of tools is important in our daily life. Behind human tool-use abilities lays the brain capacity to incorporate tools into the body representation for action (Body Schema, BS), thought to rely mainly on proprioceptive information. Here we tested whether tool incorporation is possible in absence of proprioception by studying a patient with right upper-limb deafferentation. We adopted a paradigm sensitive to changes of the Body Schema and analysed the kinematics of free-hand movements before (...) and after tool-use, in three sessions over a period of two years. In the first session, before tool-use, the kinematics of the deafferented hand was disrupted. Similarly, the first movements with the tool (a mechanical grabber elongating the arm by ∼40cm) showed an abnormal profile that tended to normalize at the end of the session. Subsequent free-hand movements were also normalised. At session 2, 6 months later, the patient exhibited normal free-hand kinematic profiles, additionally showing changes in grasping kinematics after tool-use, but no sign of tool incorporation. A follow-up two years later, further confirmed the normalized kinematic profile but the absence of tool incorporation. This first description of tool-use in absence of proprioception shows the fundamental role of proprioception in the update of the Body Schema. These results provide an important further step in understanding human motor control and have implications for future development of rehabilitation programs for patients with sensory deficits. (shrink)

Common sense dictates that cannibalism—eating another person—is immoral whether because of the harm done to the other person or because of a violation of human sanctity. Some Christian traditions interpret the Eucharist as the actual flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. Hence, on its face, communion would involve a form of cannibalism. As human beings, is it morally permissible for us to eat the flesh of another in a sacred ritual? According to many Christian theologies, this is one of the (...) most important ways that human beings relate to the divine. This constitutes a conflict between what is ethical (to not commit cannibalism) and what is divine (to participate in a sacred ritual). Søren Kierkegaard’s _Discourses at the Communion on Friday_ illuminates the ethical tension between communion and cannibalism. For Kierkegaard, communion is an exception to the ethical, ‘a teleological suspension of the ethical.’ There is no resolution to the fact that Christianity calls its members to commit spiritual cannibalism, but the ethical is suspended by a higher power, a direct divine mandate. Furthermore, Kierkegaard’s understanding of the human-divine relation emphasizes that cannibalism is necessary in order to maintain a right relationship with God. It is through the act of communion that humans affirm their relationship with God, and to reject this relationship leads not only to despair but to auto-cannibalism. While other forms of cannibalism may be unethical, ritualistic cannibalism, in which the human and divine come into relation, supersedes any moral rule against cannibalism. (shrink)

The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic had a negative psychological impact on the population at scale, yet it is possible that vulnerable patient populations may experience a heavier burden with increased feelings of anxiety and distress. Cancer patients have to trade-off between the fear of exposing themselves to the virus and the need to continue life-saving medical procedures. The present study investigated the prevalence of generalized anxiety and post-traumatic stress symptoms in a population of Italian cancer patients and healthy participants in (...) the months following the COVID-19 outbreak. Using standardized measures of PTSS and generalized anxiety, we found that patients experienced higher levels of adverse mental health outcomes. Several variables were found to negatively affect PTSS and anxiety in this population, including the younger age of respondents, having children, and the impossibility to attend regular medical check-ups. These findings stress the importance of maintaining a clear and regular communication with patients throughout future waves of the pandemic and ensure continuity of care in this vulnerable population. Furthermore, this study indicates the need to establish psychological interventions aimed at patients with cancer, targeting especially younger generations who are more likely to experience adverse psychological outcomes. (shrink)

This volume, edited by Lucilla Guidi and Thomas Rentsch, establishes the first systematic connection between phenomenology and performativity. On the one hand, it outlines the performativity of phenomenology by exploring its enactment and the transformation of attitude it effects; this exploration is conducted through a number of parallels between phenomenology and the ancient understanding of philosophy as an exercise and a way of life. On the other hand, the volume examines different notions of performativity from a phenomenological perspective, so (...) as to show that a phenomenological understanding of embodied experience complements a linguistic account of performativity and can also offer a ground for bodily practices of resistance, critique, and self-transformation in our own day and age. (shrink)

The paper discusses Martin Heidegger’s account of the anyone in Being and Time in connection with his reinterpretation of Aristotle’s categories of poiesis and praxis, carried out in his Lecture on Aristotle’s Ethics. The main purpose of the paper is to rethink the relation between production and action developed in Hannah Arendt’s Vita Activa, by understanding them as two different ways of enacting our relation to the world. By showing the inseparability between anyone and self in Heidegger’s account, and therefore (...) by drawing a parallel between these two different ways of existing and Heidegger’s phenomenological interpretation of poiesis and praxis, the paper aims at reformulating Arendt’s distinction between work and action. The purpose is to show – with and against Arendt’s conception – that there is no authentic action without a transformation of the sphere of production. Furthermore, by analyzing the constitutive ambivalence of the activity of building, the paper describes – with and against Heidegger’s perspective – the possibility to transform the self-assurance involved in each making, i.e. in our productive way of being. This transformation points to an ongoing process and lies in facing our self-assurance, thereby acknowledging our constitutive groundlessness and building a public and political place. (shrink)

In this paper I will examine the embodied dimension of emotions, and of inner life more generally, according to Wittgenstein’s anti-subjectivistic account of expression. First of all, I will explore Wittgenstein’s critique of a Cartesian disembodied account of the inner life, and the related argument against the existence of a private language. Secondly, I will describe the constitution of inner life as the acquisition of embodied ways of expressing oneself and of responding to others within a shared context, against the (...) background of an inherited weave of cultural expressive practices. Here, I will analyze Wittgenstein’s embodied account of expression, the ‘modified concept of sensing’ and ‘seeing’ which is involved in seeing the emotions of others as their expressions, and consequently Wittgenstein’s critique of an epistemological account concerning our ‘knowledge’ of others’ minds. Finally, with reference to Cavell’s and Mulhall’s readings, I will reflect on the figure of the ‘aspect-blind’, one who ‘just knows’ the emotion of others but cannot acknowledge it, and accordingly is not able to see it as the embodied expression of the other’s inner life. In this way, I wish to argue that Wittgenstein not only calls into question a disembodied account of the inner life from a theoretical point of view, but also shows the ethical consequences of a disembodied account of self through the figure of the aspect-blind. (shrink)

The paper analyzes the ontological meaning of mood in Heidegger’s conception of Attunement, in order to relate this notion of Stimmung specifically to our “attunement” to a form of life, as conceived in Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language. It claims that moods spell out the constitutive impossibility to grasp and found the human experience as such. However, this impossibility is not a lack of human knowledge, but rather corresponds to the necessary opacity, indeterminability and groundlessness of every human experience, which make (...) it possible as such. The paper argues that the ontological mood of anxiety in Heidegger’s thought cannot be understood as a dark feeling, since it points to a constitutive sense of disorientation, which involves the impossibility to found and ensure the very familiarity of our ordinary experience. Moreover, the paper claims that the same impossibility is also involved in our “attunement” to language and to a form of life, as described by Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations. By analyzing the mood of trust sketched out by Wittgenstein in On Certainty, the paper suggests that the ontological mood of trust, as the groundless certainty of our praxis, points to the very impossibility to found and ensure every human experience. From this perspective, moods reveal the groundlessness of human experience and make us acknowledge it. (shrink)

The body may be the object we know the best. It is the only object from which we constantly receive a flow of information through sight and touch; and it is the only object we can experience from the inside, through our proprioceptive, vestibular, and visceral senses. Yet there have been very few books that have attempted to consolidate our understanding of the body as it figures in our experience and self-awareness. This volume offers an interdisciplinary and comprehensive treatment of (...) bodily self-awareness, the first book to do so since the landmark 1995 collection The Body and the Self, edited by José Bermúdez, Naomi Eilan, and Anthony Marcel. Since 1995, the study of the body in such psychological disciplines as cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience, psychiatry, and neuropsychology has advanced dramatically, accompanied by a resurgence of philosophical interest in the significance of the body in our mental life. The sixteen specially commissioned essays in this book reflect the advances in these fields. The book is divided into three parts, each part covering a topic central to an explanation of bodily self-awareness: representation of the body; the sense of bodily ownership; and representation of the self. ContributorsAdrian Alsmith, Brianna Beck, José Luis Bermúdez, Anna Berti, Alexandre Billon, Andrew J. Bremner, Lucilla Cardinali, Tony Cheng, Frédérique de Vignemont, Francesca Fardo, Alessandro Farnè, Carlotta Fossataro, Shaun Gallagher, Francesca Garbarini, Patrick Haggard, Jakob Hohwy, Matthew R. Longo, Tamar Makin, Marie Martel, Melvin Mezue, John Michael, Christopher Peacocke, Lorenzo Pia, Louise Richardson, Alice C. Roy, Manos Tsakiris, Hong Yu Wong. (shrink)

It has been tempting for many historians of fourth century North Africa to view the Donatist Church as a patriarchal movement. However Donatism exhibited varied contours during its period of ascendancy in north Africa, and the female presence often led to tension, even schism, within itself. The purpose of this article is to discuss the Donatist movement through a gender perspective and to explain the role of the women who lived between the Great Persecution and the Conference of Carthage (411). (...) In particular, the article examines Lucilla and other women of the Donatist movement. (shrink)

_Experience the world of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius and the tremendous challenges he faced and overcame with the help of Stoic philosophy_ This novel biography brings Marcus Aurelius (121–180 CE) to life for a new generation of readers by exploring the emperor’s fascinating psychological journey. Donald J. Robertson examines Marcus’s relationships with key figures in his life, such as his mother, Domitia Lucilla, and the emperor Hadrian, as well as his Stoic tutors. He draws extensively on Marcus’s own _Meditations_ (...) and correspondence, and he examines the emperor’s actions as detailed in the _Augustan History_ and other ancient texts. Marcus Aurelius struggled to reconcile his philosophy and moral values with the political pressures he faced as emperor at the height of Roman power. Robertson examines Marcus’s attitude toward slavery and the moral dilemma posed by capturing enemies in warfare; his attitude toward women; the role of Stoicism in shaping his response to the threat of civil war; the treatment of Christians under his rule; and the naming of his notorious son Commodus as his successor. Throughout, the _Meditations _is used to shed light on the mind of the emperor—his character, values, and motives—as Robertson skillfully weaves together Marcus’s inner journey as a philosopher with the outer events of his life as a Roman emperor. (shrink)

Pierre Levy è un professore di filosofia dell’Università di Parigi VIII a Saint-Denis che si è formato alla Sorbona seguendo i corsi dei maestri, M. Serres e C. Castoriadis. I suoi interessi di studio sono rivolti alle trasformazioni dello sviluppo tecnologico nell’ambito delle forme della conoscenza e della comunicazione e alle conseguenze economiche e politiche del nuovo cyberspazio sull’evoluzione antropologica e sociale. Pierre Levy esamina, quindi, i processi basilari del processo di globalizzazione su cui si concentrano le scienze sociali; ma (...) a suo modo, da intellettuale francese che «non aspira all’esattezza storica o scientifica, ma alla fecondità filosofica e pratica». L’intelligenza collettiva. Per un'antropologia del cyberspazio (1994) si presenta come un'opera suggestiva che contiene riflessioni lucide in un linguaggio personalizzato, con concessioni liriche imbarazzati e con una narrazione ridondante. Tuttavia, in questa opera così eterodossa, è possibile ritrovare un nucleo di analisi sociologica che affonda alcune delle sue premesse nella teoria dell’evoluzione dei sistemi sociali. Nella prima parte ,presento la teoria degli spazi antropologici , da una prospettiva diacronica: gli spazi antropologici – Terra, Territorio, Merci, Sapere – corrispondono a sviluppi evolutivi della specie umana - società primitive,antiche, moderne e contemporanee - in un processo discontinuo di significazione della riproduzione simbolica e materiale. Nell’analisi dello Spazio del sapere, si evidenzia come il consolidarsi del nuovo cyberspazio potrebbe ridefinire l’organizzazione e lo sviluppo degli spazi precedenti e si sottolineano le finalità pratiche della complessa prospettiva di Pierre Lévy (A): «una filosofia politica degna di questo nome non può accontentarsi di analizzare e sezionare una situazione senza assumersi il rischio di indicare una via di uscita adeguata». L’ambito dell’analisi diventa, infine, quello delle relazioni armoniche e cacofoniche tra i differenti spazi antropologici con la riuscita metafora dei quattro punti cardinali (B). (shrink)

Indice: 1. Astronomia e tecnica di Ilario Altobelli; 2. Altobelli e i sistemi di mondo; 3. Altobelli e Regiomontano nella Demonstratio Ostendens artem dirigendi; 4. Conclusioni. Ilario Altobelli nasce nel 1610 nella regione italiana delle Marche, precisamente a Montecchio. Fu frate minore conventuale, ben presto occupato in incarichi didattici e pastorali dell’Ordine prima e come annalista poi2. La sua attività si svolse soprattutto tra Fermo, Ancona e Verona. Conosciuto per l’abilità retorica, fu teologo presso vari cardinali e fu il (...) cardinale Conti ad Ancona a mostrargli il Sidereus nuncius di Galileo 3. Altobelli si occupava infatti di matematica e di astronomia, ed ebbe... (shrink)

This paper attempts to open the debate on the idea of local and territorial development of microregional nodes in the Province of Buenos Aires. Under this approach, a model that proposes the creation of Municipal Development Forum, with the participation of local actors, generate local development program is proposed. The proposal is formulated for territories over 5,000 and below 30,000 inhabitants. This criterion is based on the applicability of the proposed model to municipalities with potential for territorial development, large and (...) balanced internal consumption, but where progress is hindered by the proximity of one or two political jurisdictions of a larger productive scale that have became regional administrative centers. The development program will consider a diagnosis of the productive profile of the territory and its relationship with the characteristics and origin of goods or services consumed at the municipality. This territorial development model aims to move towards self-sufficiency on goods and services, to create new jobs and to promote effective and efficient use of local resources. In short, we propose to tackle territorial development from an innovative perspective, focusing on the creation of Municipal Development Fora that foster the improvement and growth of the productive system, the creation of jobs, local identity and the consumption of goods and services locally produced. (shrink)