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.

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)

Is it the task of legal semiotics or the legal philosophers to define legal semiotics? For the philosopher of law, the question recalls the distinction between philosophers’ philosophy of law and legal scholars’ philosophy of law. The thesis that the paper argues is that a semiotic legal perspective can also be sought from the analysis of anthropological knowledge on the origin of the social bond and society, implying a social and institutional theory of the mind. In the first paragraph, the (...) search for a different kind of rationality emerges from a semiotician, Jürgen Trabant, who analyses semiotically the thought of a rhetorician and philosopher of law, Giambattista Vico. In the second paragraph, the anthropological notion of social bond emerges from the debate on the relationship between the idea of the gift and that of exchange. In the third paragraph, the analysis of the legal notion of thirdness recognizes the central role of myth and fiction in the configuration of the civil world and sign, returning to Vico’s critical view of the philosophy of language as an institution of society. (shrink)

The article analyzes one aspect of Rodolfo Sacco’s complex and innovative theoretical itinerary as it evolved. While the author’s theoretical perspective is often remembered as the theory of the legal formant and of the mute origin of law within a comparatist perspective, it seems to me that another area of his work remains relevant and needs to be explored further, perhaps beyond the very methodological ways provided by the author. From the work on interpretation to the legal anthropology, the implicit (...) copresence of mute and spoken represents one of the most interesting features of the theory, which appears capable of intercepting many contemporary problems of the evolutions of the law. The paper will move toward a different direction: with the aim to show how there are very different theoretical positions within the philosophy of law that can be approached from the perspective of comparative law in the formulation proposed by Rodolfo Sacco, around the central problem of the radical transformations of the concept of law. Thus, a problem is identified, at once epistemological and semiotic, that appears central to the configuration of legal thought in the age of globalization: the epistemological role of the unknown in the construction of knowledge, as a modular methodological problem and its implicit Vichian ancestry. (shrink)

The paper aims to analyze the problems that religious truth, particularly Christian truth understood as an event, poses to the category of de re truth. How does the conception of truth ‘as event’ stand phenomenologically in relation to the contemporary analytical debate on truth? Statements in the catechism such as “true God and true man” referring to Jesus, or the same words attributed to Jesus in John’s gospel (14:6) such as “I am the way, the truth or the life” how (...) can they be understood in relation to the category of recently called ‘dual character concepts’? Is there a difference between the notion of ‘true warrior’ and that of ‘true God’? When is a person appropriately categorized as a true man? When is a person appropriately categorized as a true God? What is the relationship between faith and truth? (shrink)

Without extending the historical analysis, this article analyzes the relationship between the legal concept of person with regard to the notion of living independently. The concept is normatively established in Article 19 of the CRPD and is presented as a legal fiction. The legal technique of fictio iuris is the premise for analyzing contemporary problems, for example, the attribution of responsibilities to non-human personalities, such as robots. The article, however, develops the problem of attributing rights to persons with disabilities. The (...) contraposition of robots and disabled people, understood as opposing visions of anthropological and human models, is part of the philosophical dispute between humanism and post- or transhumanism. The conception of man appears different if created in the image and likeness of God, or as the fruit of evolution from primates, or as a transhumanist entity that can be replaced by the robot. The latter vision is rooted in the mechanization of the mind triggered by cybernetics and cognitive sciences and referable to problems of justice theory and political philosophy concerning the inclusion in society of disabled people. In this article I will limit myself to analyzing, against the background of this complex problem, the link between person, legal fiction and the right to disability starting from the criticism addressed by Nussbaum to Rawls based on the convention and following the methodology developed by Marchisio and Curto in order to clarify the legal connection between thirdness, disability, and person.However, I go one step further by including the issue of disability as justice within the evolution of the notion of the legal person, through the inclusion of fictio iuris and rhetorical methodology in positive law, as a criterion for the interpretation of art. 19 CRPD. (shrink)

The article reconstructs the is/ought debate in legal theory through a phenomenological reading of the concept of normality. An analysis of Siniscalchi, Fuller and Manderson looks at the issue from the perspective of law and literature, and then applies Giambattista Vico’s rhetorical methodology within the contemporary debate. The question: “is Hume’s law really visible within Hume’s thought?” also paradoxically poses the figure of phantoms and fictions at the heart of the current theoretical debate on law. A history of the phantom (...) placed at the centre of the history of Western institutions still remains to be written, but a comparison of very diverse and incongrous approaches such as the extended order of Hayek, the dogmatic anthropology of Legendre, the eunomics of Fuller and the new science of Vico shows how the mystery of consciousness and the mystery of institutions are inextricably entwined. It is impossible at the moment to draw a coherent doctrine from these conflicting perspectives, but their convocation is sufficient to demonstrate how the theory of law is always suspended between the unknown and the human attempt to inhabit it, moving us toward an affective turn that has yet to be fully conceived in the theory of law, following the iconic turn. The anthropological primacy of fictio and the aesthetic-legal dimension in the constitution of language is not that of a logic and separation from the body and meaning, but the exact inverse, even in the unavoidable constant tension between the two poles: logic is born through the gesture of the body that precedes it, as myth precedes the foundation of the State; the origin of the concept is affective, as Hume, and perhaps Vico himself, would have passionately affirmed. (shrink)

The paper analyzes the sacred foundations of Western institutional order, moving from an epistemological, historical and legal–aesthetic perspective. Firstly, it identifies an epistemological theory of complexity which, pursuing Hayek’s theory of complexity, Robilant’s notion of informative–normative systems, Popper’s theory of the Worlds, and Dupuy’s theory of endogenous fixed point, will conclusively lead to presenting the hypothesis of World 0 as the World of the foundation of legal thinking, the home of the sacred and the aesthetic. Secondly, it identifies the axiological (...) character of the legal aesthetic as a discipline, a topic that will be taken up in relation to the work of the French historian of canonical law and psychoanalyst Legendre, starting from the analysis of a legal/historiographical context (Corpus Iuris Civilis, Corpus Iuris Canonici, Hobbesian Leviathan, Kelsenian Grundnorm). Thirdly, following Ellul’s thought on secularization, the idea that we now live in a secularized, lay society, lacking in the sacred is revealed as a sort of illusion, the creation of a myth of modernity, only apparently rational. Finally the paper proposes as the task of legal theory the identification of the system of “nomograms” in which the normative message is organized, according to a nonreductionistic approach that forces legal theory to recognize the plurality of the iconic forms of the normative message. The “nomograms” respond to the need of extending the field of legal science to phenomena that the positivist theory of law does not consider important, but which the process of evolution of contemporary society imposes. (shrink)

Pierre de Fermat is known as the inventor of modern number theory. He invented–improved many methods useful in this discipline. Fermat often claimed to have proved his most difficult theorems thanks to a method of his own invention: the infinite descent. He wrote of numerous applications of this procedure. Unfortunately, he left only one almost complete demonstration and an outline of another demonstration. The outline concerns the theorem that every prime number of the form 4n + 1 is the sum (...) of two squares. In this paper, we analyse a recent proof of this theorem. It is interesting because: it follows all the elements of which Fermat wrote in his outline; it represents a good introduction to all logical nuances and mathematical variants concerning this method of which Fermat spoke. The assertions by Fermat will also be framed inside their historical context. Therefore, the aims of this paper are related to the history of mathematics and to the logic of proof-methods. (shrink)

The development of the curriculum for engineering education (course requirements as well as extra-curricular activities like study abroad and internships) should be based on a comprehensive understanding of engineers’ responsibilities. The responsibilities that are constitutive of being an engineer include striving to fulfill the standards of excellence set by technical codes; to improve the idealized models that engineers use to predict, for example, the behavior of alternative designs; and to achieve the internal goods such as safety and sustainability as they (...) are reflected in the design codes. Globalization has implications for these responsibilities and, in turn, for engineering education, by, for example, modifying the collection of possible solutions recognized for existing problems. In addition, international internships can play an important role in fostering the requisite moral imagination of engineering students. (shrink)

Christ as symbol in Kant¿s religion -- Hegel's conception of God -- The reality of religion in Hegel's idealist metaphysics -- Hegel's version of the ontological argument for the existence of God -- The trinity and the I -- The death of God and recognition of the self -- Beyond subjectivism -- The relevance of Hegel's philosophy of religion today.

The main aim of this paper is to put Peano’s opinion about the unacceptability of the actual infinitesimal notion into evidence. First we briefly focus on the cultural environment where Peano’s considerations originated and developed. Then we examine Peano’s article of 1892, “Dimostrazione dell’impossibilità di segmenti infinitesimi costanti” [Peano 1892].

We develop a method for extending results about ultrafilters into a more general setting. In this paper we shall be mainly concerned with applications to cardinality logics. For example, assumingV=L, Gödel's Axiom of Constructibility, we prove that if λ > ωα then the logic with the quantifier “there existα many” is (λ,λ)-compact if and only if either λ is weakly compact or λ is singular of cofinality<ωα. As a corollary, for every infinite cardinals λ and μ, there exists a (λ,λ)-compact (...) non-(μ,μ)-compact logic if and only if either λ<μ orcfλshrink)

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)

The study of the neuroscience and genomics of mental illness are increasingly intertwined. This is mostly due to the translation of medical technologies into psychiatry and to technological convergence. This article focuses on psychosis. I argue that the convergence of neuroscience and genomics in the context of psychosis is morally problematic, and that ethics scholarship should go beyond the identification of a number of ethical, legal, and social issues. My argument is composed of two strands. First, I argue that we (...) should respond to technological convergence by developing an integrated, patient-centred approach focused on the assessment of individual vulnerabilities. Responding to technological convergence requires that we integrate insights from several areas of ethics, translate bioethical principles into the mental health context, and proactively try to anticipate future ethical concerns. Second, I argue that a nuanced understanding of the concept of vulnerability might help us to accomplish this task. I borrow Florencia Luna’s notion of ‘layers of vulnerability’ to show how potential harms or wrongs to individuals who experience psychosis can be conceptualised as stemming from different sources, or layers, of vulnerability. I argue that a layered notion of vulnerability might serve as a common ground to achieve the ethical integration needed to ensure that biomedical innovation can truly benefit, and not harm, individuals who suffer from psychosis. (shrink)

René Girard’s mimetic theory has significantly influenced the fields of comparative literature and cultural studies, as well as sociological anthropology and philosophy. Nevertheless, I argue that a somewhat different line of interpretation, an interdisciplinary one, has not been sufficiently investigated. This involves an interpretation which focuses on the vicissitudes of the mimetic and “victimage” circle not (or not only) in sociological terms, but by analysing their articulation on the level of knowledge. The sociological and epistemological perspectives do not exclude each (...) other, but can be integrated. The main aim of this paper is to clarify this articulation, and to show that integration between these two perspectives is possible only by bringing into play a real ‘literary aesthetics’. The notion of literary aesthetics needs to be considered in both the common and the etymological sense, as a theory of feeling and of experiencing. In doing so, I firstly cover in brief the main stages of Girard’s thought in the light of this perspective, to then focus on the relationship between literary aesthetics and knowledge. Finally I argue that this picture, if seriously considered, could lead to a mystical outcome, and will discuss the possible alternatives to that outcome. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to shed some light on the early Stoics' practice of managing platonic suggestions to construct their epistemology. Instances of such a practice, which scholars have recently focussed on, are the Stoic reassessment of the account of phantasia Plato offers in the Sophist and the image of the wax block as discussed in the Theaetetus. In this work I put forward a comparison between the simile of the soul-book, as presented by Socrates in (...) the Philebus (39a1-c2), and the Stoic image of the soul as a sheet in which conceptions are inscribed. I try to show that a far-reaching investigation of the relationship between Plato and early Stoic epistemology should take such a comparison into due account. In section one, I go into the details of the comparison and argue that Plato's perceptual judgment (this is how I translate the term doxa as it is used in the relevant section of the Philebus) is compatible with Stoic phantasia. In section two, I try to show that the theorisation of assent enable the Stoics to reply to an objection Aristotle made to Plato's definition of phantasia as a mixture of perception and judgment. (shrink)

This article explores Hegel's conception of experience, positing it as the entry point for grasping the implications of the philosophy of nature. The article briefly examines Hegel's view of nature, focusing on its transformative journey from externality to integration with the conscious I. Subsequently, the purpose of Hegel's philosophy of nature is discussed, and recent interpretations are compared. The article unfolds the notion of experience as a bridge between the subjective dimension explored in the Phenomenology of Spirit and the understanding (...) of reality presented in the Encyclopedia. Experience, considered in its threefold meaning of unveiling, actively interpreting, and generating rationality within nature, dynamically shapes both the self‐conscious subject and the natural world across logic, nature, and spirit. Finally, the article highlights experience as mediating both the epistemological and the metaphysical relationship between nature and spirit. The article concludes by arguing that the transformative power of experience plays a central role in overcoming the separation between spirit and nature, fostering a mediated unity between the human subject and the natural world. (shrink)

In the Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, Elucidated by Dreams of Metaphysics (1766), Kant remarks that Stahl, with his admission of immaterial forces for the explanation of organisms, was “closer to the truth than Hoffmann and Boerhaave, to name but a few,” although the latter adopted a “more philosophical method.” This puzzling statement is very significant for the understanding of Kant’s reception of animism, as it documents Kant’s reaction to the issues raised by the Leibniz-Stahl controversy and his striking preference for (...) Stahl’s nonmechanistic account of organisms. Kant agrees with Stahl that organisms suggest the existence of immaterial thinking beings, but at the same time, the example of this speculative hypothesis leads him to question the explanatory power of metaphysical hypotheses in natural philosophy in general, as well as the possibility of empirically distinguishing among different hypotheses, such as monadology, materialism, and hylozoism. After the analysis of Kant’s skeptical conclusions in the Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, I discuss how this earlier connection of medicine, life sciences, and metaphysics leaves traces in Kant’s later work, by analyzing Kant’s discussion of Samuel Sömmering’s claim that matter “can be animated” in On the Organ of the Soul (1796) and the preliminary drafts for this essay. (shrink)

This paper deals with a case of Virgilian ambiguity, namely the famous hemistich at Aen. 4.298 omnia tuta timens. By highlighting a plausible reading with a causal force (‘fearing everything too calm’, ‘because of the excessive calmness’), it seeks to demonstrate that this hemistich is an ambiguous passage. This view is confirmed through the imitation by Valerius Flaccus, who, in alluding to the Virgilian passage (Argonautica 8.408–12), highlights its ambiguity by including both of the most plausible readings.

The aim of this article is to shed light on an understudied aspect of Giordano Bruno's intellectual biography, namely, his career as a mathematical practitioner. Early interpreters, especially, have criticized Bruno's mathematics for being “outdated” or too “concrete”. However, thanks to developments in the study of early modern mathematics and the rediscovery of Bruno's first mathematical writings (four dialogues on Fabrizio's Mordente proportional compass), we are in a position to better understand Bruno's mathematics. In particular, this article aims to reopen (...) the question of whether Bruno anticipated the concept of infinitesimal quantity. It does so by providing an analysis of the dialogues on Mordente's compass and of the historical circumstances under which those dialogues were written. (shrink)

The interpretation of Parmenides’ Περί Φύσεως is a fascinating topic to which philosophers, historians of philosophy and scientists have dedicated many studies along the history of Western thought. The aim of this paper is to present the reading of Parmenides’s work offered by Federigo Enriques. It is based on several original theses: (1) Parmenides was the discoverer of abstract geometry; (2) his critics was addressed against the Pythagoreans rather than against Heraclitus; (3) Parmenides discovered and applied the contradiction and the (...) third excluded principles in the context of his research on foundation of geometry; (4) Parmenides’s metaphysical and physical conceptions have their bases in his speculation on geometry; (5) Parmenides used the principle of sufficient reason. Enriques’s reading is worth being expounded and discussed within the historical, philosophical and scientific context in which it is inserted. Since Enriques’s ideas are not widely known and discussed, my research has the purpose to fill this gap. The article also aims to provide elements to illustrate the discussion on Parmenides in the first half of the last century. (shrink)

In many countries, life expectancy has increased considerably in past years, and the importance of finding ways to ensure good levels of wellbeing through aging has become more important than ever. Arts based interventions are promising in this respect, and the literature suggests that musical activities can reduce isolation and anxiety and foster feelings of achievement and self-confidence. The present study examined the effects of group music making programs on the health and wellbeing of nursing home residents in Southern Switzerland. (...) A team of professional and student musicians delivered 10 weekly music sessions in four nursing homes, focusing on singing, rhythm-based activities with percussion instruments, and listening to short, live performances. 22 participants were recruited to take part in the study and were interviewed after the last music session. The data were analyzed with thematic analysis to investigate how residents experienced group music making and its effects. The findings show that the music programs were beneficial for residents’ wellbeing. Music plays an important role in their lives, both in their pasts and presently, and being involved in musical activities offers engagement and novelty in daily life, providing learning opportunities and facilitating interpersonal relationships. Moreover, these results were due to interactions with the musicians involved. Residents particularly appreciated the opportunity to listen to live performances as part of the sessions. This study suggests that nursing home residents value music and that music based interventions play an important and direct role in enhancing their wellbeing. (shrink)

One of the complications of a clear evaluation of different positions called “realism” in metaphysics and ontology is discrepancy in terminology and variance of basic intuitions inherent this notion. I recommend a taxonomy that distinguishes three kinds of variance: variance in the sets of conditions for a philosophical position to be acknowledged as actual realism, variance in strength and variance in conceptual frameworks. Within this last case, I propose to differentiate realism in epistemology, in ontology, and in metaphysics, intersecting these (...) three variants with the local/global realism dichotomy. The taxonomy here provided aims at being meta-philosophical; expressive enough for a fine-grained articulation of different philosophical positions in the recent debate, including the question of metaphysical grounding; and impartial, with no need to be connected to the defense of one form or another of the philosophical positions called “realism.”. (shrink)

Scholars of aristotelian political philosophy generally agree that the project of the ideal polis of Politics VII – VIII is strictly linked to Ethics. They disagree however on the nature of the constitution outlined. It is broadly accepted that it is a "polity". In this paper I deal with the topic of aristocracy in aristotelian political thought and I show that, throughout Politics, Aristotle never swerved from the idea of aristocracy as the optimal constitution, where the truly virtuous rule. Finally (...) I argue that the ideal polis of Politics VII – VIII, though it is never explicitly thus termed, is an aristocracy. (shrink)

SummaryIn the 1780s the anatomist Vincenzo Malacarne discussed the possibility of testing experimentally whether experience can induce significant changes in the brain. Malacarne imagined taking two littermate animals and giving intensive training to one while the other received none, then dissecting their brains to see whether the trained animal had more folds in the cerebellum than the untrained one. This experimental design somewhat anticipated one used 180 years later by Mark R. Rosenzweig at the University of California, Berkeley. This paper (...) explores some methodological aspects of the case study just outlined by pointing out that our grounds for being interested in it are neither merely neuroscientific (for, strictly speaking, Malacarne's proposal was false) nor narrowly historical (for there is no causal chain linking Malacarne's ideas to Rosenzweig's experiment). Rather, the really interesting point here is to what extent Malacarne's ideas are similar to Rosenzweig's, a point that we can better investigate by employing certain conceptual tools borrowed typically (but not exclusively) from (a certain kind of) philosophy. If we do not handle the analogy with care, we run the risk of ‘discovering’ nothing but void platitudes or anachronistically misleading common features. (shrink)