Che cosa ci puoa dire oggi una riflessione sulla pohtica quando la politica come, per esempio cento anni fa, e vista come una „cosa sporca"? Se veramente una tale riflessione ha solo un valore teoretico o anche storico? Sembra di no... Uno dei modi per evitare le controversie sulla realtä e per comprendere bene i meccanismi del funzionamento di uno Stato, della societa, di un partite e delVethos politico nella sua complessita e quelle di intendersi sui concetto di politica. II (...) fatto che questo concetto della politica, negli ultimi tempi, e soprattutto nei paesi postcomunisti, sia oggetto di notevoli studi ed approfondimenti, sta ad indicare che ci si trova di fronte ad un tema molto attuale e che i l nuovo clima di distensione e frutto di cambiamenti socio-politici e di una faticosa riflessione e preparazione di numerosi studiosi delle piu varie discipline: dalla sociologia alla storia, dalla filosofia al diritto, dall'etica all'insegnamento sociale della Chiesa. (shrink)

Che cosa ci puoa dire oggi una riflessione sulla pohtica quando la politica come, per esempio cento anni fa, e vista come una „cosa sporca"? Se veramente una tale riflessione ha solo un valore teoretico o anche storico? Sembra di no... Uno dei modi per evitare le controversie sulla realtä e per comprendere bene i meccanismi del funzionamento di uno Stato, della societa, di un partite e delVethos politico nella sua complessita e quelle di intendersi sui concetto di politica. II (...) fatto che questo concetto della politica, negli ultimi tempi, e soprattutto nei paesi postcomunisti, sia oggetto di notevoli studi ed approfondimenti, sta ad indicare che ci si trova di fronte ad un tema molto attuale e che i l nuovo clima di distensione e frutto di cambiamenti socio-politici e di una faticosa riflessione e preparazione di numerosi studiosi delle piu varie discipline: dalla sociologia alla storia, dalla filosofia al diritto, dall'etica all'insegnamento sociale della Chiesa. (shrink)

The article deals with some implications of radical uncertainty for participatory democracy, and more precisely for Participatory Technology Assessment. Two main forms of PTA are discussed. One is aimed at involving lay citizens and highlighting public opinion. The other is addressed to stakeholder groups and organisations, not only in terms of interest mediation but also of inclusion of their insight into a problem. Radical uncertainty makes 'intractable' many environmental and technological issues and brings into question traditional and new approaches to (...) policymaking. Its consequences are explored from the viewpoint of new science, deliberative democracy, and network governance. Radical uncertainty calls for a rethinking of the aims of public deliberation, and a reinterpretation of the divide between opinion- and position-oriented PTA. To look for a public opinion, understood as a shared principled view, can prove misleading, as can thinking of stakeholder participatory arrangements in the usual way. When facts and values overlap, and are deeply controversial, the only opportunity for mutual understanding may be to look for practical, 'local' answers, based on different positional insights. Moreover, radical uncertainty also affects interest determination and pursuit, and may enhance the opportunity of joint, inclusive, non-strategic issue definition and solution-devising. This vision of public deliberation is consistent with the idea of network governance. However, fragmentation can affect the effectiveness and legitimacy of participatory policies. Trying to handle fragmentation from the top, as many suggest, is unlikely to be successful. A more promising endeavour is to foster deliberative settings which, although positioned at the level of 'local' and often contingent networks and commonalities, are open to include 'Otherness' – other contexts, other problem definitions, other concerns. (shrink)

This collection provides English readers with a critical update on current debates on biopolitics in and around Italian thought. More than a decade after the publication of seminal books such as Agamben’s Homo Sacer and Hardt and Negri’s Empire , the names of, among others, Roberto Esposito, Paolo Virno, Christian Marazzi, and Andrea Fumagalli have recently been brought to the attention of Anglophone scholars and political activists. Several authors have rightly emphasised the evanescent character of biopolitics, and the difficulty in (...) providing a definition of it that could embrace all the conflicting theories of its most celebrated critics and supporters. The present collection is structured around the basic contention that bio-economy, human nature, and Christianity are the three visible contemporary manifestations of the theoretical object/problem of biopolitics in, respectively, Italian post-workerist economics, post-Marxist philosophical anthropology, and post-structuralist ontology. This book was originally published as a special issue of Angelaki. (shrink)

Angelaki, Volume 16, Issue 3, Page 163-180, September 2011.

In this paper we compare the strategies applied by two successful biological components of the ecosystem, the viruses and the human beings, to interact with the environment. Viruses have had and still exert deep and vast actions on the ecosystem especially at the genome level of most of its biotic components. We discuss on the importance of the human being as contraptions maker in particular of robots, hence of machines capable of automatically carrying out complex series of actions. Beside the (...) relevance of designing and assembling these contraptions, it is of basic importance the goal for which they are assembled and future scenarios of their possible impact on the ecosystem. We can’t procrastinate the development and implementation of a highly inspired and stringent “ethical code” for human beings and humanoid robots because it will be a crucial aspect for the wellbeing of the mankind and of the entire ecosystem. (shrink)

What can we learn from the open and attentive perception of children and poets? How does this perception contribute to a methodology that reaches the intricate entanglement of worldly phenomena in its entire otherness? In this essay, we aim to answer these questions, taking into account the phenomenological grounds which lead us to achieve a singular state of perception and, therefore, a more crystal clear knowledge of the beings and things in the lived world. We seek to explore other forms (...) of rationality and aesthetic sensibility, by considering poetic language and a phenomenological understanding of the environment. We argue for a modality of thought that encompasses the foundations of Goethe, Husserl, Bateson, Ingold, Leiris and Krishnamurti to collapse the dichotomy between person and environment. (shrink)

Why has power in the West assumed the form of an "economy," that is, of a government of men and things? If power is essentially government, why does it need glory, that is, the ceremonial and liturgical apparatus that has always accompanied it? In the early centuries of the Church, in order to reconcile monotheism with God's threefold nature, the doctrine of Trinity was introduced in the guise of an economy of divine life. It was as if the Trinity amounted (...) to nothing more than a problem of managing and governing the heavenly house and the world. Agamben shows that, when combined with the idea of providence, this theological-economic paradigm unexpectedly lies at the origin of many of the most important categories of modern politics, from the democratic theory of the division of powers to the strategic doctrine of collateral damage, from the invisible hand of Smith's liberalism to ideas of order and security. But the greatest novelty to emerge from _The Kingdom and the Glory _ is that modern power is not only government but also glory, and that the ceremonial, liturgical, and acclamatory aspects that we have regarded as vestiges of the past actually constitute the basis of Western power. Through a fascinating analysis of liturgical acclamations and ceremonial symbols of power—the throne, the crown, purple cloth, the Fasces, and more—Agamben develops an original genealogy that illuminates the startling function of consent and of the media in modern democracies. With this book, the work begun with _Homo Sacer_ reaches a decisive point, profoundly challenging and renewing our vision of politics. (shrink)

Angelaki, Volume 16, Issue 3, Page 101-115, September 2011.

The current study aims to test a moderated-mediation model in which the indirect effect of the presence of negative stereotypes towards older workers in the organization on psychological engagement to work domain and attitudes toward development opportunities through identification with the company depends on the occupational self-efficacy. The survey involved 1501 Italian employees over age 50, working for a major retailer of the big distribution. In line with Social Exchange theory, the results showed that the perception of negative stereotypes towards (...) older workers in the organization is associated with low identification with the company and in turn with psychological engagement to work domain and attitudes toward development opportunities. In addition, this relationship was found to be stronger for older workers with higher and medium levels of occupational self-efficacy. These findings suggest to organizations to discourage the dissemination of negative stereotypes toward older workers in the workplace because the perception of the lack of reciprocity may lead to older workers’ disengagement from the work domain and their loss of interest toward development opportunities. (shrink)

This article aims to provide a semiotic analysis of environmental law and youth protests. More precisely, drawing on speech act theory this article regards both as types of communication and teases out the inherent voice and message, specifically with regard to the interests of future generations. The argument unfolds in three steps. First, the article looks into speaker and speech of environmental law and argues that it speaks, as legislation does, in the first-person plural voice of a ‘we’. Second, the (...) article examines a speech of Greta Thunberg through the lens of Stanley Cavell’s theory of passionate utterances. This interpretation will unlock the political stakes of Thunberg’s speech as she claims standing with those responsible for enacting environmental law. Finally, the consequences of this reading will be analysed by relating message and voice of environmental law. As youth protests question ordinary forms of political representation, new ways of safeguarding the interests of future generations are called upon. (shrink)

Poznanski's Mabo' 'al 'ofen ketibat ha-Qara'im 'et dibrey yemehem remains, despite its flaws, the only essay expressly devoted to Karaite historiography. al-Qirqisani's Kitab al-an war wal-maraqib is an historical piece of work viewed, by personal choice or owing to his own cultural development or under the historical circumstances, through theological glasses. al-Qirqisani was writing for the benefit of his own co-religionists in order to strengthen their faith. However limited his historical perspective may appear, it resolves into a public appreciation of (...) the author's party, which is founded on a recovery of the past, and which aimed to strengthen the Selbstverstandnis of a Jewish minority. It would be difficult to describe such an approach otherwise than as an attempt to historicize the past. The Kitab al-anwar appears not only as a document of the literary history of Karaism, but as an original reading of the history of Judaism, the differentiation between secular and religious being only ours. (shrink)

En jetant la sonde de l’interrogation philosophique au lieu de soi, Jean-Luc Marion nous donne une approche organique et originale à la pensée d’Augustin, en entrecroisant entre eux deux plans herméneutiques : sur le premier, l’on poursuit un itinéraire de rapprochement au cœur de la confessio augustinienne permettant de réduire le vaste univers sémantique d’Augustin à un noyau génétique unifiant; sur le second plan, le parcours philosophique de l’auteur se développe ultérieurement, tendant à désarticuler un bloc théorique d’ontologie et métaphysique (...) et atteignant ainsi par une voie phénoménologique une idée de philosophie finalement affranchie de la présupposition du caractère central de la question de l’étant et du fondement. En tout cas, même si l’on ne veut pas donner trop d’éclat à la critique anti-ontologique et antimétaphysique caractérisant l’approche à la pensée augustinienne proposée dans cet ouvrage, l’acquis spéculatif de celle-ci ne semble pas diminuer. Un parmi les mérites principaux de ce livre est d’avoir restitué à la confessio sa dignité théorique, en y apercevant un lieu phénoménologique originaire où la relation entre moi et Dieu se noue; une relation dont le caractère paradoxal, autrement insoutenable, est résolu par le primat du don et de l’amour. Ce sont tous ces traits originaux qui nous mènent à dire qu’Au lieu de soi n’est pas seulement un livre sur Augustin, car il est plus qu’un livre sur Augustin. (shrink)

This article analyses the use of the term “‘political oeconomy” in the Wealth of Nations, considered by many the founding text of the discipline of Political Economy. It shows that Adam Smith could not accept the use of the term “political oeconomy” that had been made by other authors to indicate the subject matter of his scientific inquiry, devoted to the nature and causes of the wealth of nations; he used the term “political oeconomy” as a synonym for economic policy, (...) especially in the fourth book of the Wealth of Nations. In order to understand this statement, it is necessary to keep in mind the methodological and epistemological perspective developed by Smith; in his view, the inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations would have to discover the almost unchangeable rules that presided over the choices of the legislators in the field of public economy and in the management of public resources. By contrast, the term “political oeconomy” was used by Smith exactly to indicate the policies really adopted in these fields, policies which frequently altered the system of natural liberty. (shrink)

Because of a strong similarity between two passages in Philo Judaeus, Cher. 37 and Her. 206, and the verb ejpikhrukeuvomai which is used in both loci is almost always completed by a dative. The Author proposes to read bivw/ instead of bivou at Cher. 37.

Substantial evidence supports the perspective that the people of Ancient Greece had a language for and some use for drugs, both for the purpose of medicine and poison; however, the question remains whether Ancient Greek civilization held a concept approximating what we today call drug addiction. This article explores the textual evidence for the use of two drugs, nepenthes and cannabis, in Ancient Greece. While the existence of nepenthes remains in doubt, the use of cannabis is well documented. Either drug (...) or both drugs may have been used in the rites of the Bacchic and Orphic mysteries, which might explain why there are so few references to these drugs in the Ancient Greek literature. (shrink)

The discovery of incommensurability by the Pythagoreans is usually ascribed to geometric or arithmetic questions, but already Tannery stressed the hypothesis that it had a music-theoretical origin. In this paper, I try to show that such hypothesis is correct, and, in addition, I try to understand why it was almost completely ignored so far.