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)

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 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)

Baseando-se na premissa de que a pessoa com deficiência se torna vítima das várias violências institucionais, sobretudo as de cunho jurídico e social, quando introduzida no sistema carcerário, o objetivo deste trabalho é assentar uma reflexão acerca da introdução dos deficientes na prisão, especialmente em relação à provisão da acessibilidade, sob a perspectiva das normas do direito nacional. A partir do objetivo traçado, o estudo é demarcado pela pesquisa de cunho bibliográfico, destacando opiniões doutrinárias e dados estatísticos brasileiros em relação (...) ao número de encarcerados nessas condições. Dentre os resultados e conclusões atingidas, cumpre dizer que o Brasil ainda possui atitudes jurídico-administrativas embrionárias em relação à provisão de acessibilidade ao deficiente no ambiente carcerário, incompatível com a dignidade dessas pessoas. (shrink)

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)

In March 2004 the French parliament controversially adopted legislation regulating the wearing of symbols indicating religious affiliation in public educational establishments. This note discusses several features of the new law indicating its origins, its rationale and its position within French constitutional discourse on religious freedom and secularity. It is based on a panel discussion held in April 2004 within the Gender Studies Programme at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Florence. Placing the French legislative initiative in (...) the context of recent developments in national and European case law (suggesting clear limitations to freedom of religion), the note explores the complexity of issues of gender, identity and difference in the present debate, especially when considered in the light of reactions to the law in Islamic countries. (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)

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar is well known as one among the protagonists of India’s political history in the 20th century, as he played a major role in the struggle against the caste system, and in designing a pluralist and egalitarian democracy. Ambedkar’s intellectual legacy is a crucial tool for investigating the contradictions of the contemporary Indian political experience, and as such has much to offer to the international political-philosophical debate. This essay presents the main aspects of Ambedkar’s thought, focusing on themes (...) such as his non-majoritarian conception of democracy, the tension between universality and difference in political citizenship, social and political equality, as well as his reflection on religious identity. Ambedkar’s intellectual profile will also be assessed in light of the ongoing debate on the status of a non-derivative Indian political thought. (shrink)

The presence of Muslims in the European public spheres has raised a hoist of debates concerning issues of neutrality, tolerance, and secularism. All over Europe, Muslims are the target of specific forms of hostility, a phenomenon rising substantial questions about the real inclusivity of European democratic spaces. The category of ‘Islamophobia’ has emerged as a valid heuristic tool to identify specific processes of racialization of religion. However, its validity has been fiercely questioned, and the use of this term has been (...) defined as a pretext to bar the way to any form of criticism and objection to Islam. This paper will use the case of Islamophobia to reflect on the new set of conflicts between freedom of religion and freedom of speech, in the perspective of constructing post secularist, pluralistic public spheres. This paper adopts gender as a privileged lens to identify the mechanisms of essentialization and reification at work in the case of Islam. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 4, Page 556-567, May 2022. The presence of Muslims in the European public spheres has raised a hoist of debates concerning issues of neutrality, tolerance, and secularism. All over Europe, Muslims are the target of specific forms of hostility, a phenomenon rising substantial questions about the real inclusivity of European democratic spaces. The category of ‘Islamophobia’ has emerged as a valid heuristic tool to identify specific processes of racialization of religion. However, its validity (...) has been fiercely questioned, and the use of this term has been defined as a pretext to bar the way to any form of criticism and objection to Islam. This paper will use the case of Islamophobia to reflect on the new set of conflicts between freedom of religion and freedom of speech, in the perspective of constructing post secularist, pluralistic public spheres. This paper adopts gender as a privileged lens to identify the mechanisms of essentialization and reification at work in the case of Islam. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 4, Page 556-567, May 2022. The presence of Muslims in the European public spheres has raised a hoist of debates concerning issues of neutrality, tolerance, and secularism. All over Europe, Muslims are the target of specific forms of hostility, a phenomenon rising substantial questions about the real inclusivity of European democratic spaces. The category of ‘Islamophobia’ has emerged as a valid heuristic tool to identify specific processes of racialization of religion. However, its validity (...) has been fiercely questioned, and the use of this term has been defined as a pretext to bar the way to any form of criticism and objection to Islam. This paper will use the case of Islamophobia to reflect on the new set of conflicts between freedom of religion and freedom of speech, in the perspective of constructing post secularist, pluralistic public spheres. This paper adopts gender as a privileged lens to identify the mechanisms of essentialization and reification at work in the case of Islam. (shrink)

The presence of Muslims in the European public spheres has raised a hoist of debates concerning issues of neutrality, tolerance, and secularism. All over Europe, Muslims are the target of specific forms of hostility, a phenomenon rising substantial questions about the real inclusivity of European democratic spaces. The category of ‘Islamophobia’ has emerged as a valid heuristic tool to identify specific processes of racialization of religion. However, its validity has been fiercely questioned, and the use of this term has been (...) defined as a pretext to bar the way to any form of criticism and objection to Islam. This paper will use the case of Islamophobia to reflect on the new set of conflicts between freedom of religion and freedom of speech, in the perspective of constructing post secularist, pluralistic public spheres. This paper adopts gender as a privileged lens to identify the mechanisms of essentialization and reification at work in the case of Islam. (shrink)

My essay provides a few elements to analyse how the neoconservative perspective on gender issues has evolved from its early phases to the last years. The aim is to highlight how neoconservative authors shifted from an openly patriarchal view of gender roles to more or less successful attempts at appropriating “feminist” themes and issues, in view of the affirmation of America’s moral superiority as a justification of hard power.

In this paper, starting from Condorcet's discussion on progress, the author analyzes the relationship between the decline of religions, the end of State paternalism and tolerance. The author underlines how history shows a different course with respect to illuminist previsions.

The scholia to Wasps gloss τραχήλια variously as τὰ ἄκρα καὶ τὰ εὐτελῆ κρέα , τὰ ἀποβαλλόμενα τῶν ὄψων , ὀστράκιόν τι βραχὺ τελέως , and εὐτελὲς προσόψημα ἐν λοπαδίσκοις σκευαζόμενον . These might all be guesses, but the absence of the definite article in the original text shows that Bdelycleon's reference is to something more generic than ‘the backbones’ in the next verse. The ancient commentators were thus probably right not to interpret the word ‘bits of neck’, vel sim., (...) as if this were a diminutive of τράχηλος . Instead, these must be ‘tail-ends’ of food, scraps and leftovers of a sort that might be fed to a dog; compare Hippocrates, Epidemiae 7.62 , where βόεια τραχήλια are mentioned along with ham as part of the diet of a man recovering from illness. (shrink)