In December 2017, Law 219/2017, ‘Provisions for informed consent and advance directives’, was approved in Italy. The law is the culmination of a year-long process and the subject of heated debate throughout Italian society. Contentious issues are addressed in the law. What emerges clearly are concepts such as quality of life, autonomy, and the right to accept or refuse any medical treatment – concepts that should be part of an optimal relationship between the patient and healthcare professionals. The law maximizes (...) the value of the patient’s time to decide. Every patient is allowed to make choices for the present as well as for the future, conceived as a continuation of the present, and to decide what comes next, based on what he/she already knows. The law identifies three distinct but converging paths towards the affirmation of a care relationship based on reciprocal trust and respect: the possibility to consent to or refuse treatment, the shared care planning, and advance directives. The fundamental point to emerge from the new Italian law is that consensus is an essential connotation of the treatment relationship. Consensus is not limited to the acceptance/rejection of medical treatment but is ongoing. It is projected into the future through shared care planning and advance directives which act as tools for self-determination and the manifestation of the beliefs and preferences of persons unable to express their will. These principles are in line with the idea of appropriate care as evaluated from two different perspectives, one of scientific adequacy and the other commensurate with the individual’s resources, fragility, values, and beliefs. Surely, however, the new law is not the end of the matter on issues such as conscientious objection, which is deeply rooted within the Italian cultural and political debate. In this regard, healthcare institutions and policymakers will be called upon to develop and implement organizational policies aimed at the management of foreseeable conscientious objection in this field. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented event entailing long-term consequences on population health and welfare. Those who contracted the coronavirus may have suffered from both physical and mental health issues that unfold the need for tailored intervention strategies. Hence, our study aims to investigate the psychological and social consequences of COVID-19 on a sample of 86 participants, encompassing 43 patients recruited from Bari University Hospital, 19 of whom were hospitalized due to the disease. The remaining 43 were individuals not fallen (...) ill with COVID-19 to date. The investigation yielded significant gender differences in post-traumatic stress symptoms, depression, and representation of interpersonal distance, evaluated through the IES-R, the BDI-II, and the IVAS task, respectively. This pattern of results was not replicated in the control group. In general, participants who reported having experienced the most intense post-traumatic symptoms also presented a greater mood deflection and, more specifically, within the clinical group women obtained the highest scores on both scales. Women reported higher IES-R and BDI-II scores compared to men, that could indicate that women who have contracted COVID-19 are more exposed to post-traumatic and depressive symptoms. Our results also showed a significant effect of COVID-19 on IPD with a tendency of disease-experienced individuals to increase their preferred IPD from adults, children, and elderly people. Regarding gender differences in mood and proxemic behavior, a correlation between depressive symptoms and probable PTSD and a further correlation between probable PTSD and greater IPD were found in women from both clinical and control group. Overall, these findings might contribute to a better understanding of gender-based implications of the current pandemic on mental health, also leading to the development of integrated yet personalized intervention strategies. (shrink)

In this article we introduce the reader to the reasons that led to this collection: an interdisciplinary exploration aimed at renewing interest in Luigi Einaudi’s search for «good government», broadly understood as «good society». Prompted by the Einaudian quest, the essays – exploring philosophy of law, economics, politics and epistemology – develop the issue of good government in several forms, including the relationship between public and private, public governance, the question of freedom and the complexity of the human in (...) contemporary societies. The common thread of these essays is that problematic but indissoluble knot that tells us something deeply human: our being torn between homing and roaming, institutional and individual, law and freedom, real and ideal. (shrink)

Italian Abstract: L'opposizione buon governo/mal governo è stato considerata uno dei grandi temi, se non il più grande, della riflessione politica di tutti i tempi. In questo libro mi propongo di qualificare teoreticamente il senso e il modo in cui Luigi Einaudi riattualizza il mito del buongoverno alla luce della portata dirompente dell’economico per la modernità e dei suoi effetti sul giuridico, il politico e l’etico. Il baricentro del liberalismo di Luigi Einaudi o del buon governo va ricercato (...) non tanto in una specifica teoria del liberalismo ma, piuttosto, nella "visione dell'uomo" di Einaudi riflessa dalla sua azione di economista-giornalista nella sfera pubblica, che testimonia di una cura costante per quel «bene supremo che è la libertà dell’uomo», nelle sue forme più «concrete», affinché ciascuno di noi possa «continuamente rompere la frontiera del noto, del già sperimentato, e muovere verso l’ignoto ancora aperto all’avanzamento materiale e morale dell’umanità». -/- English Abstract: The opposition good government/bad government has been considered one of the major issues, if not the major, of the legal and political reflection of all times. In this book I endeavour to provide a historical-theoretical account of the meaning and manner of Luigi Einaudi’s revisitation of the “myth of good government”, highlighting its contemporary relevance in the light of the momentous significance of economy for modernity, as well as its effects on the sphere of law, politics and ethics. I argue that the core of Einaudi’s liberalism and good government is to be found not so much in a specific theory of liberalism but, rather, in Einaudi’s “vision of the human”, reflected by his action in the public sphere as journalist-economist: a constant care for that “greater good that is the freedom of man” in its most “concrete” forms, so that every single man can “constantly break down the frontier of the known, of the already experienced, and move towards the unknown still open to the material and moral progress of mankind”. (shrink)

The book presents an interdisciplinary exploration aimed at renewing interest in Luigi Einaudi’s search for “good government”, broadly understood as “good society”. Prompted by the Einaudian quest, the essays - exploring philosophy of law, economics, politics and epistemology - develop the issue of good government in several forms, including the relationship between public and private, public governance, the question of freedom and the complexity of the human in contemporary societies.

Luigi Einaudi was a leading liberal economist, economic historian and political figure. This book provides the English-speaking world with a first critical edition of an unpublished version of Einaudi’s most important epistemological essay. The issues analysed here lie at the core of the problem concerning the nature and scope of economic sciences and the role played by economists in the public sphere, with particular emphasis on the interaction between economists and the ruling class. The earlier version of this essay (...) has also been considered the "historical epilogue" of the Italian tradition in public finance. An extensive reappraisal of this newly discovered document will help to reconsider and cast light on that tradition. This critical edition includes a comprehensive introduction and conclusion, both of which aim to place Einaudi’s essay in the context of his earlier epistemological speculation and the associated debates, and to assess the unsettled questions he left as an enduring heritage for the current generation of social scientists. (shrink)

I will argue here that Einaudi's thought reveals an awareness that the question of freedom has to do with two inter-related problems: the relation of individuals or communities with their respective limits and the question of going beyond these limits. Limits are to be understood here in the meaning of the foundation or conditions of possibility both of institutions (economic, political and juridical) and of thought and human action.

In this 2017 conversation, Gianni Vattimo discusses with Paolo Diego Bubbio the core themes of his own philosophical journey. Vattimo first comments on the legacy of his mentor Luigi Pareyson and on the differences between Pareyson’s conception of the relation between truth and interpretation and his own. Vattimo and Bubbio then elaborate on the return to Hegel and the possibility of a “hermeneuticized” Hegelianism. The participants also discuss Vattimo’s view of religion and the role that the Christian notion (...) of caritas plays in his “weak hermeneutics.” Finally, Vattimo comments on his recent political writings and on his view of a “hermeneutic communism,” arguing that revolution is possible only as a collective inner transformation. Vattimo concludes by mentioning his recent essays, collected under the title Being and Its Surroundings, in which he presents the radical thesis of Heidegger’s philosophy as a new form of theology. (shrink)

This article provides an overview of philosophical interpretations of Dostoevsky, focusing on readings that pay particular attention to his representation of the battle between good and evil, and postulating that said representation constitutes the essence of his works. The analysis maps this history of interpretations as developing within a specific framework: the dispute between interpreters who argue that good triumphs in Dostoevsky’s works and those who maintain that nihilism prevails in the end. In this context, the article submits its own (...) thesis: that a fundamental contradiction haunts the offer, in Dostoevsky’s works, of Christian salvation, and condemns Dostoevsky to defeat at the hands of his nihilists. (shrink)

In this afterword I will try to re-launch the inquiry into the causes of good-bad polity and good-bad relationships between man and society, individual and institutions. Through an analogy between Einaudi’s search for good government and Calvino’s “Invisible cities”, I will sketch an account of the human and invisible foundations – first of all: trust/distrust – of any good-bad polity.

This introduction provides a re-reading of Luigi Einaudi’s "On Abstract and Historical Hypotheses and on Value Judgments in Economic Sciences", focusing on how Einaudi conceived the relationship among economics, the humanities and values. In particular, its aim is: (§ 1) to explain the reasons why this essay can be considered a confession of a humanist-economist who constantly stepped “beyond the hedge of the garden reserved to the economist”; (§ 2) to clarify the nature of one of the main doubts (...) that Einaudi had concerning the issue of value judgments, with specific reference to the problem of entanglement of fact and value; (§ 3) to cast further light on why, at the end of his life, Einaudi claimed: “I proudly place economic disciplines within the humanities”. (shrink)

This paper presents in outline Luigi Ferrajoli’s axiomatic and general theory of law, as developed in his lifelong work Principia Iuris . The first section focuses on the three main aspects of the theory: the methodological, the theoretical and the pragmatic, which respectively represent the theory’s syntax, semantics and its pragmatics. Ferrajoli identifies three deontic gaps of norms: firstly, the one between their validity and efficacy ; secondly, the one between their justice and validity ; and finally, and most (...) importantly, the one between validity and existence (i.e. normative force). The presence of such gaps is, according to Ferrajoli, the extraordinary innovation that entrenched constitutions have brought into modern legal systems, by establishing norms that are superior to statutes and case law. In this sense, all normative phenomena (except for the constitution itself) can be conceived both as norms and as facts. In the second section the role of juridical science is briefly discussed. (shrink)

I fatti! I fatti! Caro signore, i fatti sono come siassumono; e allora, nello spirito, non sono più fatti:ma vita che appare, così o in altro modo.Luigi Pirandello 1 Ontologia del giuridico 1.1 Due ontologie del giuridico: ontologia degli oggetti giuridici (Adolf Reinach) vs. ontologia degli enti giuridici (Santi Romano) 1.1.1 Nella filosofia del diritto del xx secolo sono compresenti due ontologie del giuridico:(i) l’ontologia degli oggetti giuridici di Adolf Reinach (1883-1917),(ii) l’ontol...

Bernard Berenson used to refer to Giovanni Morelli as «the founder of the Method». With these words, he meant that Morelli was the scholar who, first, transformed connoisseurship in a science, giving to the discipline a stringent method. Does Morelli’s theory of painting really deserve this praise? To answer this question, this paper examines in the first part the philosophical and scientific background of Morelli’s doctrine, showing how its original debt payed to romantic philosophy went replaced by a neat positivist (...) orientation. In the second part, the Method itself is discussed, asking in which measure it was anticipated by the intuitions of art experts such as Giulio Mancini or Luigi Crespi and discussing the nature and epistemological relevance of the so-called “morellian details”, that is the forms of the nails, of the ears, of the hair’s curls in paintings. Are these details really sufficient for the attribution of a painting to an artist? Which role play the documents in connoisseurship? And, more generally, how important is aesthetic value in the morellian “Method”? (shrink)

A collection of essays dedicated to Pier Luigi Lecis' retirement. Contributors include: Mariano Bianca, Silvana Borutti, Vinicio Busacchi, Massimo Dell'Utri, Rosaria Egidi, Roberta Lanfredini, Giuseppe Lorini, Diego Marconi, Francesco Orilia, Paolo Parrini, Alberto Peruzzi, Simonluca Pinna, Pietro Salis, Paolo Spinicci.

This article is both a comment on Neyland’s ‘On organizing algorithms’ and a supplementary note to our ‘The concept of algorithm as an interpretative key of modern rationality’. In the first part we discuss the concepts of algorithm and recursive function from a different perspective from that of our previous article. Our cultural reference for these concepts is once again computability theory. We give additional arguments in support of the idea that a culture informed by an algorithmic logic has promoted (...) modern rationality both in science and in society. We stress again the importance of distinguishing between algorithms applied to quantifiable entities such as space, time and value and those applied to ontological entities such as human actions. In the second case, the algorithm is applied outside its domain of definition and leads to social disaggregation. (shrink)

Art, Beauty and Imitation in Plato's Philosophy -- Art and Imitation in Aristotle -- Horace, Pseudo-Longinus and the Aesthetics of Literature in Hellenism -- Plotinus, Neo-Platonic and Christian Conception of Beauty -- The Middle Ages and Dante Alighieri -- The Heritage of Kantian Philosophy in Romanticism -- Moritz: Beyond the Concept of Imitation -- Theory of Poetry of Early German Romanticism -- Hegel: Art as a Form of the Absolute Spirit -- Schopenhauer: Art as Disinterestedness and Knowledge of Reality -- (...) Nietzsche: Knowledge and Art -- Symbolism and Aestheticism -- Benedetto Croce: Art and intuition -- Linguistics and Criticism -- Antonio Gramsci: The Role of Intellectuals in Culture -- Structuralism -- Martin Heidegger: The Work of Art and Truth -- Hans-Georg Gadamer: Poetry and Interpretation -- Critical Theory: A New Attitude towards Art and Society -- Perspectives of Post-Structuralism -- The Practice of Deconstruction -- Contemporary Schools and Traditions in Literary and Critical Theory -- Postmodern and the New Character of the Literary Work. (shrink)

Le traité aristotélicien intitulé Les réfutations sophistiques (RS), un ouvrage indépendant mais rangé comme dernier livre des Topiques, classifie les argumentations trompeuses et discute leur « résolution », c’est-à-dire l’explication de l’erreur qu’elles cachent. Il s’agit d’un travail encore peu étudié en dépit des intéressants aperçus qu’il fournit sur la philosophie du langage et de la logique d’Aristote. Le volume de Myriam Hecquet nous offre une nouvelle édition critique, avec introduc...

L’opera raccoglie nove lezioni introduttive alla gnoseologia: esse scaturiscono da un’esperienza d’insegnamento concreta e si configurano come un approccio teoretico all’universo composito della filosofia della conoscenza, rappresentando un supporto didattico in grado di accompagnare pedetentim – tanto gli studenti quanto i cultori della materia – alla scoperta di una disciplina di fondamentale importanza per le sue attinenze con la metafisica e l’etica.

Part one: the act of speaking -- The speaker as performing artist -- The absolute performative -- The repetition of anthropogenesis -- Part two: toward a critic of interiority -- Second-degree sensualism: a physiognomic project -- In praise of reification -- Part three: from the beginning and right now -- Natural history -- The multitude and the principle of individuation -- Appendix: Wittgenstein and the question of atheism.

Journal Name: Philologus Issue: Ahead of print.

This article introduces a novel theoretical framework for addressing epistemic injustice—a phenomenon where certain groups or individuals are systematically excluded from knowledge creation and dissemination processes—by employing ontological relativity and conceptual analysis. “Ontological relativity” refers to a philosophical perspective that posits our understanding of reality as being shaped by our toolbox of concepts, categories, language, and social practices; “conceptual analysis” is a method of inquiry that involves the rigorous examination and deconstruction of a particular concept or set of concepts in (...) order to uncover their constituent elements, relationships, and underlying assumptions. To exemplify the effectiveness of the ontology‐based approach, two paradigmatic applications are explored: (a) educational practices and (b) clinical practice and access to health care. Through the presentation of these applications and the step‐by‐step illustration of the applied methodology, the aim of the article is to showcase the efficacy of ontology in tackling epistemic injustices, suggesting innovative paths for future research in this domain. (shrink)