This paper focuses on value, which I shall provisionally define as the experiential aspect of normativity. That there is an experiential aspect of normativity is a main claim of classical phenomenology. This paper aims to provide some evidence for this claim. I shall first discuss the current state of knowledge concerning normative properties and the dilemma of normative supervenience. We shall then devote ourselves to an exercise in visual and emotional exploration, accompanied by a phenomenological analysis of value, which will (...) allow us to spell out what appears to be wrong with all the competing proposed non-phenomenological solutions to the dilemma. I shall finally outline a phenomenological way out of the dilemma, thereby indicating the path to a full-fledged phenomenological axiology. (shrink)

Da un colloquio tra una fenomenologa di chiara fama e un pedagogista emergono iconnotati dell’atteggiamento fenomenologico, inteso come disposizione intellettuale e morale capace di fondare una “conoscenza personale” nel lavoro di cura. Questa attitudine della mente e del cuore può dar forma al “modo di essere” peculiare di chi, per professione e per vocazione, si prende quotidianamente cura delle persone e della loro esistenza.From this conversation between a well-known phenomenologist and a pedagogist thephenomenological attitude arises as both intellectual and existential (...) disposition, wich is the basis of a “personal knowledge” in care professions. This cognitive and emotional attitude can mould the particular “way of being” which characterizes those professionals who, day by day, take care of people and their existence. (shrink)

This book attempts to open up a path towards a phenomenological theory of values. By drawing on everyday experience, and dissociating the notion of value from that of tradition, it shows how emotional sensibility can be integrated to practical reason. This project was prompted by the persuasion that the fragility of democracy, and the current public irrelevance of the ideal principles which support it, largely depend on the inability of modern philosophy to overcome the well-entrenched skepticism about the power of (...) practical reason. The book begins with a phenomenology of cynical consciousness, continues with a survey of still influential theories of value rooted in 20th century philosophy, and finally offers an outline of a bottom-up axiology that revives the anti-skeptical legacy of phenomenology, without ignoring the standards set by contemporary metaethics. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe main question addressed in this paper is whether conflict is constitutive of the nature of value commitment, and hence necessarily implied by value pluralism. If this is the case, no resolution of value disagreements, whether on the global level or within modern multicultural societies, is possible via practical reasons, and the only solutions to inner or outer conflicts will be “political”, in the sense of a Realpolitik. Positive and negative answers to the main question are shown to express two (...) intellectual and moral attitudes opposing each other as Gorgias and Socrates, or Rhetoric and Philosophy did in the Ancient World. In post-Nietzschean Modernity, however, most philosophers seem to take sides with Gorgias, against Socrates, as is shown on the basis of Ronald Dworkin’s solitary campaign against the many faces of value scepticism. Drawing on phenomenological axiology, this paper takes sides with Socrates by reconciling value pluralism and universalism. (shrink)

Altiero Spinelli (1907-1986) is worldwide renowned as the principal author (with Ernesto Rossi) of the Ventotene Manifesto (1941), whose second edition (1944), prefaced by Eugenio Colorni, is one of the founding documents of the European Union. Less known is the width and depth of Spinelli's thought, not only as a political theorist of supra-national democracy and institutional designer of a possible European Federation but also as a philosopher of civilization and history. While the sources of his federalism have been largely (...) investigated, much less have those of his more comprehensive philosophy. This paper discusses, on a philological basis, the dialogue Spinelli certainly has with some of Max Scheler's writings while going into this dialogue more in-depth, in a philosophical more than philological attitude. (shrink)

Avec sa participation à l’approche incarnée-enactive de la conscience, la phénoménologie connaît actuellement un regain d’activité. Toutefois, la dimension normative de la conscience tend encore à être négligée dans cette approche, une lacune d’avance dénoncée par Husserl, qui fondait sur l’incapacité du naturalisme d’y remédier sa critique classique de la psychologie scientifique. C’est précisément à l’exigence d’une théorie phénoménologique de la normativité qui soit compatible avec l’approche incarnée-enactive que l’auteure tente d’apporter une réponse satisfaisante.

The notion of de re truth (Conte, 2016) is put to work in this paper (§ 1). It introduces us to a confrontation between a metaphysics of desertic landscapes, as presented in a stunning poem by Achille Varzi and Claudio Calosi, The Tribulations of Philosophye (§ 2), and an ontology of the lifeworld, as a long-term project based on the key concept of bonds (De Monticelli, 2018). The rich and structured objects of the everyday world are infinite sources of (...) information and cognitive adventure (§§ 3, 3.1., 3.2). Or so I will claim against Varzi’s skepticism about ordinary language, common sense, and ontological realism (§ 4). Far from encouraging our minds to stick to concrete individual things, Ockham’s Razor has been the murder weapon in the dismission of concreteness and the sensible world from the intellectual horizon of Modernity (§§ 5, 6). The “Unitarian Tradition” is a half-playful denomination of a quite real, albeit ignored, alternative theory of individuality (and hence concreteness), brilliantly represented by Boethius, Duns Scotus, and Leibniz. Classic phenomenology quite independently revived it and brought it up to modern analytic standards of rigor and formality (§ 7). (shrink)

Lynne Baker’s Constitution Theory seems to be the farthest-reaching and yet the most subtly elaborated antireductive metaphysics available today. Its original theoretical contribution is a nonmereological theory of material constitution, which yet has a place for classical and Lewisian mereology (this formalized version of Materialism). Constitution Theory hence apparently (i) complies with modern natural science, and yet (ii) rescues the concrete everyday world, and ourselvesin it, from ontological vanity or nothingness, and (iii) does it by avoiding dualism. Why, then, does (...) it meet so many opponents—or rather, why are its many opponents so stubbornly resisting the very idea of constitution, in Baker’s form? One of the most resisted claims is (iii). Is unity without identity—the feature distinguishing the relation between constituting and constituted things—the only nondualist way to oppose reductionism? What would be the price to pay for unity with identity—without reduction? What I (jokingly) call the Unitarian Tradition, going back to Plato, keeps working out the original Platonic way of constructing acomplex object as a Unity comprising a Collection, as opposed to the Aristotelian suggestion of opposing Collections and Substances. For once you have split things apart ontologically, unifying them again may prove a very hard task. (shrink)

La obra de Giovanni Piana se ha interesado también de literatura. La razón se debe al hecho que entre los actos de experiencia la percepción estética posee una naturaleza específica que la filosofía fenomenológica quiere aclarar. Por otra parte, se sabe la pasión de este autor para la música, a la cual ha dedicado un libro de filosofía y numerosos otros textos. El objetivo de este ensayo es analizar el estudio de Piana sobre la obra del poeta italiano Giovanni Pascoli (...) y en particular sobre la relación entre percepción estética, imaginación y material sonoro que se desprende de las poesías de Pascoli. Más allá de considerarse sólo una actividad creativa la producción poética de este autor representa para Piana el lugar de un verdadera reflexión filo-sófica. (shrink)

Se lleva a cabo un intento de fundación fenomenológica de una psicología de la persona tomando como base relevantes escritos de Husserl, Scheler, Stein y Von Hildebrand, entre otros. Se discute la contribución original hecha por estos fenomenólogos y se introduce así al lector en una rica fenomenología de la vida emocional, su estructura, el papel que juega en la constitución del ethos de la persona. La fenomenología en esta versión «realista» menos conocida ofrece un poder de análisis no soñado (...) ni siquiera por la filosofía analítica de la mente y de las emociones, al menos en el momento presente. Se bosqueja una introducción del núcleo de la teoría fenomenológica de la identidad personal y se propone una revisión de conjunto de ideas tópicas sobre la fenomenología husserliana y no-husserliana. (shrink)

La obra de Giovanni Piana se ha interesado también de literatura. La razón se debe al hecho que entre los actos de experiencia la percepción estética posee una naturaleza específica que la filosofía fenomenológica quiere aclarar. Por otra parte, se sabe la pasión de este autor para la música, a la cual ha dedicado un libro de filosofía y numerosos otros textos. El objetivo de este ensayo es analizar el estudio de Piana sobre la obra del poeta italiano Giovanni Pascoli (...) y en particular sobre la relación entre percepción estética, imaginación y material sonoro que se desprende de las poesías de Pascoli. Más allá de considerarse sólo una actividad creativa la producción poética de este autor representa para Piana el lugar de un verdadera reflexión filo-sófica. (shrink)

Selon une de ses nombreuses acceptions, philosophie signifie traduction d'une experience de realite en une experience de sens. C'est la la demarche distinctive de la phenomenologie. Les dix chapitres qui composent ce livre la precisent d'abord a l'aide d'une mise en question de la philosophie contemporaine de l'esprit et de ses tentations naturalistes, pour ensuite les appliquer aux domaines de l'ethique, de l'esthetique, des fondements de la psychologie et de la psychopathologie. L'ascese de la pensee qui remonte aux idees et (...) aux valeurs constitutives de chaque domaine d'experience differe de la tendance a s'interroger sur les causes des faits, tout comme l'esprit platonicien de la philosophie differe de son esprit aristotelicien. Ces etudes proposent autant une phenomenologie sur un mode platonicien que des exercices de philosophie dans cet esprit platonicien. (shrink)

John Searle reflections on how to derive “Ought” from an “Is’” present a general theory of the sources of normativity within human civilizations. This chapter explores an alternative grounding of normativity on “laws of essence”, a grounding that proceeds by addressing the crucial problem of how to locate essences in a world of facts. To that end, classical phenomenology is shown to be an ontology of concreteness, but this, far from removing it from the dimension of ideals and norms—even practical, (...) ethical, and political ones—instead makes it the philosophy of ideals and relative “oughts” par excellence. (shrink)

Questo lavoro verte essenzialmente sul concetto di novità ontologica delle persone umane, e difende una metafisica antimonistica e antidualistica della personhood: essere una persona umana non è avere una mente o un’anima sostanziale in un organismo biologico, non è neppure realizzare un certo insieme di funzioni mediante questo organismo biologico, non è neppure, semplicemente, essere un organismo di specie biologica homo sapiens.Essere una persona umana non è neppure soltanto essere un esemplare della specie suddetta, che in più gode di uno (...) status socialmente riconosciuto, essere cioè una realtà “nuova” solo perché “creata” da certi particolari atti di conferimento di status del tipo di quelli descritti da Searle in svariati scritti — una realtà che decadrebbe se questi atti fossero revocati. Essere una persona non è essere un oggetto sociale. (shrink)

Il pensiero pratico dominante nel Novecento europeo fornisce risposte negative alla questione se sia possibile una fondazione razionale del pensiero pratico, configurando una posizione di scetticismo assiologico e morale ancora oggi maggioritaria. Ma il secolo xx, se da un lato ha rappresentato la bancarotta della ragione pratica, dall'altro ne ha prodotto una vera e propria incarnazione, nelle istituzioni e organizzazioni internazionali, nelle costituzioni rigide degli Stati europei del dopoguerra, nella Dichiarazione Universale dei diritti dell'essere umano del 1948 ecc. Come puň (...) la filosofia pratica portarsi all'altezza della ragione pratica incarnata, invece di minacciarla dall'interno con le sue neo-sofistiche, attraverso relativismi, soggettivismi, nichilismi, politeismi assiologici e simili? (shrink)

Il pensiero pratico dominante nel Novecento europeo fornisce risposte negative alla questione se sia possibile una fondazione razionale del pensiero pratico, configurando una posizione di scetticismo assiologico e morale ancora oggi maggioritaria. Ma il secolo XX, se da un lato ha rappresentato la bancarotta della ragione pratica, dall’altro ne ha prodotto una vera e propria incarnazione, nelle istituzioni e organizzazioni internazionali, nelle costituzioni rigide degli Stati europei del dopoguerra, nella Dichiarazione universaledei diritti dell’essere umano del 1948 ecc. Come può la (...) filosofia pratica portarsi all’altezza della ragione pratica incarnata, invece di minacciarla dall’interno con le sue neo-sofistiche, attraverso relativismi, soggettivismi, nichilismi, politeismi assiologici e simili?Axiologic and moral scepticism has nourishedmainstream European practical philosophy during the XXth century, a time of bankruptcy of practical reason on the Continent. Yet the XXthcentury has also produced a kind of embodiment of practical reason, within the international organizations and institutions, as well as by means of the rigid post-war constitutions of the European States, the Declaration of the Human Rights in 1948 etc. How can practical philosophy grow up to the standards of embodied practical reason, instead of challenging it from a neo-sophistic point of view, through relativism, value polytheism and the like? (shrink)

This paper compares two basic approaches to “ontology”. One originated within the analytic tradition, and it encompasses two diverging streams, philosophy of language and (contemporary) philosophy of mind which lead to “reduced ontology” and “neo-Aristotelian ontology”, respectively. The other approach is “phenomenological ontology” (more precisely, the Husserlian, not the Heideggerian version).Ontology as a theory of reference (“reduced” ontology, or ontology dependent on semantics) is presented and justified on the basis of some classical thesis of traditional philosophy of language (from Frege (...) to Quine). “Reduced ontology” is shown to be identifiable with one level of the traditional, Aristotelian ontology, which corresponds to one ofthe four “senses of Being” listed in Aristotle’s Metaphysics: “being” as “being true”. This identification is justified on the basis of Brentano’s “rules for translation” of the Aristotelian table of judgements in terms of (positive and negative) existential judgments such as are easily translatable into sentences of first order predicate logic.The second part of the paper is concerned with “neo-Aristotelian ontology”, i.e. with naturalism and physicalism as the main ontological options underlying most of the contemporary discussion in philosophy of mind. The qualification of such options as “neo-Aristotelian” is justified; the relationships between “neo-Aristotelian” and “reduced” ontology are discussed. The third part presents the basic claim of “phenomenological ontology”: the claim that a logical theory of existence and being does capture a sense of “existing” and “being” which, even if not itself the basic one, is grounded in the basic one. An attempt is done at further clarifying this “more basic” sense of “being”. An argument making use of this supposedly “more basic” sense is advanced in favour of “phenomenological ontology”. (shrink)

Each person is perceived by others and by herself as an individual in a very strong sense, namely as a unique individual. Moreover, this supposed uniqueness is commonly thought of as linked with another character that we tend to attribute to persons (as opposed to stones or chairs and even non-human animals): a kind of depth, hidden to sensory perception, yet in some measure accessible to other means of knowledge. I propose a theory of strong or essential individuality. This theory (...) is introduced by way of a critical discussion of Van Inwagen’s and Baker’s ontologies of persons. Composition Theory and Constitution Theory are shown to be complementary, in their opposite strong and weak points. I argue that both theories have unsatisfactory consequences concerning personal identity, a problem which the proposed theory seems to solve more faithfully both to folk intuitions and the phenomenology of personal life. (shrink)

«Everything is what it is, and not another thing»: Roberta De Monticelli avrebbe forse potuto servirsi dell’epigrafe che George Moore pose come incipit dei Principia Ethica, nel 1922, per intitolare il suo nuovo libro. Sceglie invece un titolo che richiama Nietzsche e ciò che il suo pensiero ha rappresentato, per porre l’accento su un disegno teorico che percorre tutto il libro: tornare al di qua del nietzschianesimo, del suo scetticismo epistemologico e assiologico, per riprenderci non solo...