El presente aporte trata de reconstruir el largo recorrido intelectual de Hans Jonas que parte de la gnosis tardía, pasa por la filosofía de la biología, la ética y llega a la bioética. Este trabajo se propone como objetivo evidenciar la posición de Jonas confrontándola con aquellas de las cuales ha partido. En pocas palabras, intenta ser apenas una introducción de este fascinante filósofo de nuestro tiempo.

This handbook provides a systematic overview of the legal concept and the meaning of human dignity for each European state and the European Union. For each of these 43 countries and the EU, it scrutinizes three main aspects: the constitution, legislation, and application of law. The book addresses and presents answers to important questions relating to the concept of human dignity. These questions include the following: What is the meaning of human dignity? What is the legal status of the respective (...) human dignity norms? Are human dignity norms of a programmatic nature, or do they establish an individual right which can be invoked before court? Is human dignity inviolable? The volume answers these questions from the perspectives of all European countries. As a reaction to the barbaric events during World War II, human dignity found its way into international law. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “[a]ll human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” The starting point for developing the concept on a national level was the codification of human dignity in article 1, paragraph 1 of the German Grundgesetz. Consequently, the concept of human dignity spread throughout Europe and, in the context of human rights, became a fundamental legal concept. (shrink)

In Italien erlangte Hans Jonas, ähnlich wie in andersen Ländern, öffentliche Anerkennung dank seines Werks Das Prinzip Verantwortung, das 1990 ins Italienische übersetzt wurde. Die Übersetzung weckte das Interesse einer breiten Öffentlichkeit sowohl an seinem bioethischen Ansatz als auch an seinen früheren philosophisch-biologischen Schriften. Die Besonderheit des italienischen Kontexts besteht jedoch darin, dass der Philosoph in der akademischen Welt bereits lange vor seiner eingangs erwähnten allgemeinen Anerkennung und ›Entdeckung‹ in der Öffentlichkeit durch seine Arbeiten über die spätantike Gnosis gut bekannt (...) war. (shrink)

In this paper the author tries to approach the subject of death from a law and ethics perspective. The idea is that modern works in law and ethics that have studied two of the main topics of bio-ethics (euthanasia and organ transplants) still leave unresolved two main problems. The first problem is with the idea many authors have of defending the possibility of active euthanasia and consider it an obvious matter that doctors have to practice this type of euthanasia. But (...) we have good reasons to consider that doctors are the ones that have to abstain from this practice. The second is- sue is with the defense of the possibility of post mortem transplants and how this practice is also considered obvious due to the fact that the person from whom these organs are withdrawn is dead. Here we also have good reasons according to the author for considering that the person from whom these organs are withdrawn is not dead. The author finally tries to establish a link between these two unresolved problems.Resumen:En las siguientes páginas el autor intenta un acercamiento a la cuestión de la muerte desde una perspectiva ética y jurídica. La idea fundamental que guía este trabajo es que la ética y el derecho modernos que se han ocupado de los dos temas bioéticos cruciales relativos al fin de la vida (la eutanasia y el trasplante de órganos) hace que surjan dos problemas de fondo que comúnmente se consideran resueltos y que, de acuerdo con el autor, no lo están. El primero es que algunos estudiosos sostienen la licitud de la eutanasia activa y consideran del todo obvio que sea el médico quien la lleve a cabo. Sin embargo, existen buenas razones para considerar que es precisamente el médico quien debería abstenerse de practicar- la. El segundo es que hay otros que sostienen la licitud de los trasplantes post mortem y consideran también obvio que el sujeto del cual se toman los órganos sea ya un cadáver. En cambio existen buenas razones para considerar que actualmente cuando toman dichos órganos aún no están muertos. El autor sostiene que si así fuera, el tema de los tras- plantes presentaría un insospechado punto de contacto con el de la eutanasia. El desarrollo del trabajo, en primer lugar se detiene en el problema de la eutanasia, posteriormente en el del trasplante de órganos donde se busca finalmente evidenciar el punto de contacto entre las dos problemáticas. (shrink)

The article deals with present day challenges related to the employ of technology in order to reduce the exposition of the human being to the risks and vulnerability of his or her existential condition. According to certain transhumanist and posthumanist thinkers, as well as some supporters of human enhancement, essential features of the human being, such as vulnerability and mortality, ought to be thoroughly overcome. The aim of this article is twofold: on the one hand, we wish to carry out (...) an enquiry into the ontological and ethical thinking of Hans Jonas, who was among the first to address these very issues with great critical insight; on the other hand, we endeavour to highlight the relevance of Jonas’ reflections to current challenges related to bioscience and biotechnological progress. In this regard, we believe that the transcendent and metaphysical relevance of the «image of man» introduced by Jonas is of paramount importance to understand his criticism against those attempts to ameliorate the human being by endangering his or her essence. (shrink)

A comparison between the thinking of Hans Jonas and Joseph Ratzinger on Darwinism and Intelligent Design.

An enquiry into the relevance of Hans Jonas' thinking to present-day debates, including transhumanism, posthumanism, and human enhancement.

According to Hans Jonas (1903–1993), the modern technological progress endowed humanity with wondrous power, which in the long run risks altering the nature of human action. This is especially true for the realm of collective action, the effects of which evidence an unpredicted issue: the ecological crisis, which is the “critical vulnerability” of nature to technological intervention. This discovery brings to light that the whole biosphere of the planet has been added to that which human beings must be responsible for (...) because of their power over it. There is, however, a further dimension of vulnerability (and responsibility) to be considered, namely the one which characterizes organic life as such. Indeed, the essence of all living organisms–human beings included–is characterized by vulnerability, given their precarious and unstable condition of “needful freedom” towards the environment. Nevertheless, terrestrial life fl ourished through a multifaceted and unplanned (thus, again, vulnerable) evolution of living forms, ranging from bacteria to human beings – these evidencing a unique degree of freedom, which Jonas refers to as a “metaphysical gap” towards other living beings. The problem is that the present-day technology provides the possibility to manipulate the very essence of life and human nature. Is this process to be accepted and accomplished? And what about the related risks? Indeed, according to Jonas, issues such as genetic manipulation, euthanasia, organ transplantation, assisted reproduction, exploitation of other living beings etc., raise ethical dilemmas which can be addressed thanks to the idea of vulnerability. (shrink)

Analisi dei principali temi della riflessione bioetica italiana.

In this paper we offer an overall account of the complex and multilayered Italian reception of Hans Jonas’ philosophy, with an eye to its specific features compared to what happened elsewhere. After an introductory foreword the paper is structured in four sections and a brief conclusion, each of which deals with a peculiar aspect of Jonas’ thought: ethics and bioethics, philosophical biology and ontology of life, gnostic and religious studies, studies in the history of philosophy. In the final section we (...) sum up the overall meaning of the «Wirkungsgeschichte» of Jonas’ philosophy in Italy and highlight possible lines of research still to be accomplished. (shrink)

We edited and translated a so far unpublished manuscript ("Sur la generation des insectes et d'autres petits animaux") drafted by Leibniz in 1714. The text is written on the same paper of the first draft of the "Monadology" and, as we show, there is a connection between these two texts of the late Leibniz, as far as in the "Monadology" , the rejection of the traditional theory of the spontaneous generation of small animals (like insects) is considered by Leibniz as (...) a posteriori confirmation of his preformist theory. In addition to that, this piece shows that Leibniz was deeply influenced by the experimental results in biology and natural sciences, and, especially, by the works of Italian scientits of the Galilean tradition, like Francesco Redi and Antonio Vallisneri. (shrink)

Recent crises in Europe and beyond have renewed a longstanding debate on the status and treatment of refugees. Hannah Arendt famously questioned the limits of universalistic human rights discourse based on the widespread phenomena of statelessness and displacement that emerged during and after World War II. In this paper, we analyze recent patterns of inclusion and exclusion of refugees in Italy through the lens of Arendtian narrative and theorizing. We consider three cases of interaction between families, schools, and other public (...) institutions in light of the shifting normative framework before and during the war in Ukraine. Two major insights emerge from this analysis. From a pedagogical point of view, the most promising educational practices with refugees are those centered on enabling their agency and corresponding experiences of "natality". From an ethical-political perspective, these practices highlight a latent tension between the universalistic scope of human rights enshrined in the human rights declarations and their structural dependence on the particular norms and procedures enacted by nation states. The understanding and teaching of human rights within our political communities is inseparable from the practices that engage with refugees. In this sense, our practices of inclusion and exclusion affect the understanding of national borders as a barrier or threshold with other political communities, but also the interpretation of our own ethical-political principles. (shrink)

In a recent article, I have explored the historical, mathematical, and philosophical issues related to the new theory of numerosities. The theory of numerosities provides a context in which to assign numerosities to infinite sets of natural numbers in such a way as to preserve the part-whole principle, namely if a set A is properly included in B then the numerosity of A is strictly less than the numerosity of B. Numerosities assignments differ from the standard assignment of size provided (...) by Cantor’s cardinality assignments. In this talk, I generalize some specific worries emerging from the theory of numerosities to a line of thought resulting in what I call a ‘good company’ objection to Hume’s Principle (HP). The talk has four main parts. The first takes a historical look at 19th-century attributions of equality of numbers in terms of one-one correlations and argues that there was no agreement as to how to extend such determinations to infinite sets of objects. This leads to the second part where I show that there are countably infinite many abstraction principles that are ‘good’, in the sense that they share the same virtues of HP and from which we can derive the axioms of second order arithmetic. The third part connects this material to a debate on Finite Hume Principle between Heck and MacBride and states the ‘good company’ objection. Finally, the last part gives a tentative taxonomy of possible neo-logicist responses to the ‘good company’ objection and makes a foray into the relevance of this material for the issue of cross-sortal identifications for abstractions. (shrink)

From Brouwer To Hilbert: The Debate on the Foundations of Mathematics in the 1920s offers the first comprehensive introduction to the most exciting period in the foundation of mathematics in the twentieth century. The 1920s witnessed the seminal foundational work of Hilbert and Bernays in proof theory, Brouwer's refinement of intuitionistic mathematics, and Weyl's predicativist approach to the foundations of analysis. This impressive collection makes available the first English translations of twenty-five central articles by these important contributors and many others. (...) The articles have been translated for the first time from Dutch, French, and German, and the volume is divided into four sections devoted to Brouwer, Weyl, Bernays and Hilbert, and the emergence of intuitionistic logic. Each section opens with an introduction which provides the necessary historical and technical context for understanding the articles. Although most contemporary work in this field takes its start from the groundbreaking contributions of these major figures, a good, scholarly introduction to the area was not available until now. Unique and accessible, From Brouwer To Hilbert will serve as an ideal text for undergraduate and graduate courses in the philosophy of mathematics, and will also be an invaluable resource for philosophers, mathematicians, and interested non-specialists. (shrink)

In this article, I draw upon the ‘post-Kantian’ reading of Hegel to examine the consequences Hegel’s idea of God has on his metaphysics. In particular, I apply Hegel’s ‘recognition-theoretic’ approach to his theology. Within the context of this analysis, I focus especially on the incarnation and sacrifice of Christ. First, I argue that Hegel’s philosophy of religion employs a distinctive notion of sacrifice (kenotic sacrifice). Here, sacrifice is conceived as a giving up something of oneself to ‘make room’ for the (...) other. Second, I argue that the idea of kenotic sacrifice plays a fundamental role in Hegel’s account of Christ. Third, I conclude by sketching some of the consequences of Hegel’s idea of a God who renounces his own divinity for an idealistically conceived metaphysics. My main thesis is that the notion of incarnation is conceived by Hegel as the expression of a spirit that advances only insofar as it is willing to withdraw and make room for the other. A kenotic reading of the Hegelian notion of the incarnation is also useful in terms of a clarification of the dispute between ‘left Hegelians’ and ‘right Hegelians’ concerning the status of the idea of God in Hegel’s philosophy. (shrink)

A proposal for the biological grounding of intrinsic teleology and sense-making through the theory of autopoiesis is critically evaluated. Autopoiesis provides a systemic lan- guage for speaking about intrinsic teleology but its original formulation needs to be elaborated further in order to explain sense-making. This is done by introducing adaptivity, a many-layered property that allows organisms to regulate themselves with respect to their conditions of via- bility. Adaptivity leads to more articulated concepts of behaviour, agency, sense-construction, health, and temporality than (...) those given so far by autopoiesis and enaction. These and other implications for understanding the organismic generation of values are explored. (shrink)

In his third essay on earthquakes, Kant refers to “Pater Bina’s” electric interpretation of seismic phenomena. Although not a distinguished scholar, and maybe for that reason frequently confused with a certain “Father Isidore Binet”, Bina was nevertheless a noteworthy author. A Cassinese benedictine, Andrea Bina was a philosopher interested in sciences just like Kant; he studied Newton, translated Wolff, invented a seismoscope and was appreciated by his contemporaries at home and beyond the Alps. Kant’s laconic quotation, followed by a value (...) judgement regarding only Bina’s “audacity”, raises some questions, including, in primis those about the meaning of his hasty judgment. A plausible well-grounded answer should be looked for in the bio-bibliographical outline of the neglected author and in the perusal of his writings. The analysis of Bina’s Ragionamento sopra le cagioni de’ terremoti (1751) contributes to our knowledge of the eighteenth-century cultural background and helps us understand the degree of knowledge of the seismic phenomena acquired by men who – amidst many difficulties and hindered by the limits of their science – could only rely on secondhand data often imbued with misconceptions. Comparing Bina’s work – although indirectly – with Kant’s Fortgesetzte Betrachtung der seit einiger Zeit wahrgenommenen Erderschütterungen (1756) may help bring to light some convergences, as well as differences, which might be of use in clarifying some peculiarities of the Prussian Naturforscher. (shrink)

A novel theoretical framework for an embodied, non-representational approach to language that extends and deepens enactive theory, bridging the gap between sensorimotor skills and language. -/- Linguistic Bodies offers a fully embodied and fully social treatment of human language without positing mental representations. The authors present the first coherent, overarching theory that connects dynamical explanations of action and perception with language. Arguing from the assumption of a deep continuity between life and mind, they show that this continuity extends to language. (...) Expanding and deepening enactive theory, they offer a constitutive account of language and the co-emergent phenomena of personhood, reflexivity, social normativity, and ideality. Language, they argue, is not something we add to a range of existing cognitive capacities but a new way of being embodied. Each of us is a linguistic body in a community of other linguistic bodies. The book describes three distinct yet entangled kinds of human embodiment, organic, sensorimotor, and intersubjective; it traces the emergence of linguistic sensitivities and introduces the novel concept of linguistic bodies; and it explores the implications of living as linguistic bodies in perpetual becoming, applying the concept of linguistic bodies to questions of language acquisition, parenting, autism, grammar, symbol, narrative, and gesture, and to such ethical concerns as microaggression, institutional speech, and pedagogy. (shrink)

In recent years a certain emphasis has been put by some scholars on Leibniz’s concern about empirical sciences and the relations between such concern and the development of his mature metaphysical system. In this paper I focus on Leibniz’s interest for the microscope and the astonishing discoveries that such instrument made possible in the field of the life sciences during the last part of the Seventeenth century. The observation of physical bodies carried out by the “magnifying glasses” revealed a matter (...) swarming everywhere with life and activity, contrary to the cartesian and atomistic view of matter as something sterile and passive. Moreover, the discovery of uncountable complete “animalcula” living in the smallest drop of water provided evidence for the idea of the preformation of every organism. During his lifetime, Leibniz was extremely watchful about the new microscopical discoveries and came into contact with some of the major “observers” of his time, such as Hooke, Leeuwenhoek, Swammerdam and Malpighi. Relying both on some passages in Leibniz’s texts and on recent critical studies, I will argue that important aspects of his metaphysics have been strongly affected by the empirical observation of the “invisible world” which the microscope made possible. In the last part of the paper I show how the concept of “preformation”, originally drawn from the context of the life sciences, comes to play in Leibnizʼs philosophy a very general role, going far beyond the scope of biology and shaping important aspects of his overall philosophical system. (shrink)

This paper investigates the link between informational consequence and credence. I first suggest a natural constraint, namely that informational consequence should preserve certainty: on any rational credence distribution, when the premises of an informational inferences have credence 1, the conclusion also has credence 1. Then I show that the certainty‐preserving constraint leads to triviality. In particular, the following three claims are incompatible: (i) informational consequence is extensionally distinct from classical consequence; (ii) informational inferences preserve certainty; (iii) credences obey (a subset (...) of) classical Bayesian constraints. The proof is straightforward, but the theoretical implications are substantial. Informational theorists need to either give up the idea that credence applies to epistemic discourse, or develop a nonclassical theory of credence and credal update. Moreover, the result also suggests that there is a connection between informational consequence and triviality results, including classical triviality results like Lewis's. (shrink)

The literature on indicative conditionals contains two appealing views. The first is the selectional view: on this view, conditionals operate by selecting a single possibility, which is used to evaluate the consequent. The second is the informational view: on this view, conditionals don’t express propositions, but rather impose constraints on information states of speakers. Both views are supported by strong arguments, but they are incompatible on their standard formulations. Hence it appears that we have to choose between mutually exclusive options. (...) But the options are not exclusive. This paper develops a theory of the semantics and assertability of conditionals that is both selectional and informational. The theory vindicates the signature inferences of both selectional and informational theories, including so-called Conditionals Excluded Middle and principles about the interplay between conditionals and ‘might’. It also predicts some interesting and puzzling facts about the assertion of conditionals. (shrink)