The description of Immanuel Kant's last days and of the phrenological and craniometric studies of his skull gives the Author the opportunity to discuss the philosophical validity of biographies and more in general to re-examine the vexata quaestio of the relationship between philosophy and history of philosophy. Here the Author supports the thesis that, for the most part, any reference to the biographies of philosophers is essentially of no use – their works have to be judged as such, independently of (...) whoever wrote them and also to a large extent of the historical context – and that there is the need to get back to a philosophical history of philosophy, while still maintaining the very rigorous approach to which the history of philosophy has accustomed us in the last few decades. (shrink)

The "discovery" of non-Euclidean geometries had profound repercussions on the sciences and philosophy alike and opened a heated debate on the nature of space and on the origin of geometry and its axioms. At the heart of the discussion lay Kant’s doctrine of space. Nelson took part in this debate, rejecting the three main theories of time: the logical, the empirical and the conventionalist. Referring to J.F. Fries’ philosophy, he tried to demonstrate the a priori, synthetic nature of Euclidean axioms (...) and the merely logical character of non-Euclidean geometries. His attempt, though interesting, ended according to the Author of this essay in failure. (shrink)

La non esistenza di una tradizione storico-filosofica milanese. Una storia della filosofia senza convinzioni filosofiche finisce per divorare se stessa.

Can we do without Hegel today? Can we philosophize without Hegel, without competing with him? For a long time, especially in the sphere of analytic and empiricist philosophy, Hegel was considered a “dead dog,” not even worth discussing, and we were nearly ashamed to mention him. But nowadays it seems that the situation is changing and maybe has already come around to the time for a more fair and balanced judgment of Hegel’s significance for contemporary thought. So, we have to (...) be grateful to Antimo Negri for his attempt to sketch a map of the presence of Hegel’s philosophy in 20th century culture. His book is not in fact a history of Hegel-Forschung, but rather a Wirkungsgeschichte, or in short, an attempt to measure the level of Hegelianism in our culture. (shrink)