In this paper I investigate Aristotle’s power ontology, and of it argue for a new interpretation of his hylemorphism and theory of the four causes.

I shall explain the notions of propositions and states of affairs as they are understood in the current ontological debate and I shall briefly relate them to similar notions in Aristotle and some Medieval authors. In contrast with the point of view of some philosophers who identify propositions and states of affairs, I shall argue that they need to be sharply distinguished. I shall then move on to a problem for propositions and, above all, states of affairs, known as Bradley’s (...) regress, and hint at discussions of this or analogous puzzles in the philosophical tradition before Bradley. Finally, I shall present my own approach to this issue, Fact Infinitism, focusing on why it would have been hardly acceptable before ontology came to have the Cantorian conception of the infinite at its disposal. (shrink)

The Aristotelian tradition in a sense is constituted by the history of Aristotelianism, i. e. by the philosophies of those who declared themselves Aristotle’s followers, even if in fact they hardly ever have been completely such. But in another sense the Aristotelian tradition is formed by the patrimony of concepts, distinctions, definitions, of which not only the philosophy, but also the culture in general, and even the common language, made use for millennia and of which still now they make use: (...) category, subject-predicate, square of oppositions, syllogism, induction, refutation, contradiction, matter-form, potency-act, essence, substance-accident, types of cause, types of change, nature-art, time, place, infinite, chance, luck, soul-body, sensation, memory, fantasy, experience, intellect, desire, analogy, mean-end, action- production, choice, deliberation, virtue, happiness, justice, friendship, city, family, slavery, constitution, revolution, persuasion, character, passion, poetry, tragedy, myth, catharsis, etc. (shrink)

The issue of tradition represents is of fundamental importance today as it implies both practical and existential problems: the crisis of Modernity, or the downfall of post-Modern age, exemplifies the semantic slip or rift that the notion of tradition has in it. One of the most important philosophers of the XXth century, Jacques Maritain, shows the specificities of his time. His thought, as a consequence, is characterized by the need for a strong historical commitment and for the necessary mediation of (...) Modernity and tradition. According to Maritain, tradition represents the occasion for new and authentic freedom, since there is no freedom without tradition, that is, without an hypothesis of work which is in principle able to detect and welcome the new exigencies of each epoch. Maritain addressed the problem of tradition in many different fields, f.i. aesthetics, education, science, morals, politics, religion etc. In particular, aesthetic experience and intuitive fruition and creation of artistic beauty are a crucial instance of the dialectical dynamic of tradition, as they prove to be able to interact with the needs of Modernity and, at the same time, to give them a new birth in the light of a superior constitutive unity. Maritain defends the sempiternal preciosity of being because tradition is the treasure of being. In it, the different levels of reality and of hum a agency are recomposed together thanks to the analogia entis and to the principle of subalternation. (shrink)

1. The idea of tradition is controversial: residual and inertial concept in the Enlightenment; factor of truth in Traditionalism; condition of comprehension in philosophical hermeneutics; constitutive factor of relations in neo-communitarianism. 2. Conditions of sense of the tradition: manifestation and development of an origin ; community; productivity. 3. “Tradition” stands for an activity: the activity of handing down. The tradition is a living tradition only if it is generative and if it implies real relations between different generations.

We may find fault with the past. Nevertheless, it produced us. To what extent can we be sure that our present will produce a future? Man’s “natality” as ability for each human being to begin afresh must be compensated by piety towards the past that produced us.

After some reflections on style in contemporary anglophone philosophy, I dig a little deeper, and explore what that style is a symptom of — which I suggest is a kind of blindness to the importance of the second-personal in ethics. I develop the notion of the second-personal with reference to Levinas and Darwall; and I show some of the explanatory potential of that notion by looking again at divine-command ethics.

Starting from the consideration that in the West philosophical notion of tradition is linked the contribution of Christianity, the aim of my paper is to scrutinize this notion from the point of view of the analytic philosophy of religion. Newman’s classic paradigm on this subject has been drawn from Wittgensteinian Thomists, in particular from McCabe, Kenny and Haldane who underline the epistemological and the anthropological aspects of his reflection. In this fashion a comparison with wittgensteinian suggestions is necessary to evaluate (...) the historical and the social claim of every belief. (shrink)

In questa rassegna Luca Di Donato traccia un percorso bibliografico generale attorno al concetto di tradizione, mettendo in rilievo le maggiori pubblicazioni inerenti a questo tema e il contesto culturale nel quale esso ha visto la sua evoluzione.

In clear opposition to values stemmed from tradition or natural law, modern time enhances and cares for the contingent nature of law to the point to embrace any social practise. In this context, contingency refers to the lack of any binding principle which implies that legal norms’ change depends only upon limitless and free social mutations. Leaving apart the value of tradition and denying the possibility to found law on the base of natural law, it turns out that the quality (...) of law is not supported by the immanent value of its norms but it is backed up by the mere fact that law can always be changed. Modern law emphasises its quality of being a legal positivism. The production of law as being a legal positivism simply means the selection of those norms that have been retained valid; in other words, norms recognised as such for they are coercive. (shrink)

Certain passages of Nicomachean Ethics seem to suggest a model of moral education that excludes those who have been misguided by their educators from being responsible for their character. I will argue, however, that this impression may result from misinterpreting the method of Aristotle’s moral educators. It is often thought, at least since Myles Burnyeat’s classic paper, ‘Aristotle on Learning to Be Good’1, that according to Aristotle, a moral educator should tell to moral students which actions are good so that (...) they could begin to practice performing them. I will show that this interpretation is both exegetically problematic, and the likely cause of the above, uncharitable impression. I will argue that it would be more justifiable to interpret Aristotle to be maintaining that the moral students should discover good actions themselves, though trial and error, and that the moral educator might only be needed to keep them away from acting too badly, as Howard Curzer has proposed2. Since in order to discover good actions on his own, a moral student needs to exercise moral discernment, he could be held responsible of the character that he will develop even if his moral educators were misguided him. I will suggest that Aristotle might think that what enables even morally misled people to become morally discerning learners is synesis–ability to identify good actions on the basis of other people’s opinions. (shrink)

In many ways, Plato’s cosmological myth in the Timaeus represents a breakup with the ancient Greek religious tradition, or at least, a significant divergence. After he carried out a severe critique of anthropomorphic representations of Gods in the second and the third book of The Republic, Plato proceeded to sketch his own vi- sion of ideal state by calling upon the so-called Forms, or Ideas – the objects of true knowledge and principles of all things. However, Plato’s method achieves its (...) final, mature form, only in The Timaeus. The treatise on the nature of righteousness and good governance turns into a creationist-cosmological myth, as we learn that being Good and Just requires not only good deeds and the knowledge of the Idea of Good, but also the knowledge of the underlying mechanisms of the Universe. We are intro- duced to an Architect , the one God who creates the physical world by using mathematical objects as paradigms. The Timaeus could be described as a well- balanced mixture of scientific, religious, and literary ideas, and is heavily influenced by the Pythagorean theories of number and proportion. There is no doubt that Plato’s conception of demiourgos as well as his understanding of the Good as One inspired Christian theologians in great extent, particularly through the Neo-Pythagoreans and the Neo-Platonists. Contemporary experimental sciences, particularly physics and chemistry, are now coming to the realization that the Universe we inhabit truly is structured by number and proportion, and that some of the geometry Plato described in The Timaeus may very well correspond to the geometry of physical structures. (shrink)

The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the connections between the medieval concept of intentio and its relations with Juan Sanchez Sedeno’s Aristotelis Logica Magna . Sanchez Sedeno’s theory can be considered as a paradigmatic example of a renewed view of the traditional concept of intention to correspond the new philosophical perspectives of late XVIth century Spain.

In this contribution we would like to sketch some typical themes of Hegelian thought developed during the permanence in Jena. The principal aim of our enquiry is to individuate the relation between subjectivity and the external reality, the latter conceived as a natural world or as a complex of cultural forms generated by the spirit or transmitted in an ethos. The scope of the essay is to outline Hegel’s philosophy of the activity of the Spirit in its original forms, dynamic (...) and inner creativity. (shrink)

Does a version of virtue ethics develop within a singular tradition? Is it possible to provide a conception of the life in a polis without appealing to a theory of virtue? In the contemporary debate, sometimes the notion of virtue is considered outdated; on the contrary, some authors, such as A. MacIntyre, responsible for the revival of the virtue ethics, put forth the idea that there are incommensurable philosophical traditions and that, as a consequence, there are incommunicable catalogues of virtues. (...) The reaction of thinkers wedded to the liberal tradition, such as J. Rawls, W. Galston and P. Macedo, focuses on the importance of certain liberal virtues, typical of a pluralistic conception the good. However, also this tradition proves to be weak, since it does not develop an ethics of human character.A compelling argument for an Aristotelian virtue ethics can be found in Aristotle Rhetoric. Rhetoric relies on the ideals of justice and truth and proves to be a fundamental factor of the process of decision making in politics .The most important features of the orator’s persuasiveness are logical arguments, phronesis and, in general, virtues and benevolence . According to Aristotle, the social process of decision making is efficient within a tradition only if it is supported by an ethics of character. In this view, phronesis has great importance and requires a deep analysis, also in relation to juridical reasoning. (shrink)

The prevailing notion of tradition in modern political thought has been that of a mere repository of beliefs about the good life, a repertoire of narratives and practical articulations of social bonds that is transmitted through history in a static condition. In spite of this prolonged diminished role, we are now seeing relevant attempts of theoretical and practical reprise. In particular, the accounts about the historical evolution of practical rationality and about the transformations of the public sphere have been recently (...) a favorable place for a return of theoretical consideration about the concept of tradition. Such a comeback took different forms, from Neo- communitarianism, to Neo-pragmatism and sociological inquiry.The very notion of a tradition has been widely re-explored by some authors as an evolving rational moral research , as a place for mediation between the dimension of communicative action and the plurality of practices , as the epistemic condition for the exercise of democratic practices . Tradition is then placed at the crossroads between the evolution of forms of rational public deliberation about the common goods and the historical construction of norms, institutions and procedures which are typical of public life.The redefinition of a concept of tradition which shifts the attention from the conservation of tokens of past knowledge to the evolution of the forms of cooperative exercise of practical reason allows for a fruitful development of some related notions, like those of exemplarity, symbol and shared imaginary. Moreover, a renewed conception of tradition is a favorable condition to think differently about the ethical and political meaning of religions in the public sphere. (shrink)

Aim of the paper is to investigate the meaning of auctoritas of classics in George Steiner’s thought. According to him, the great masterpieces of humanistic tradition were the expression of Western culture because they were able to show the “real presence” of the Meaning. Because of this opening, human order kept his link with trascendent order. The “broken contract” between word and world, started with Mallarmè and Rimbaud and kept it up until deconstructionism, rappresented the beginning of the breakdown of (...) the tradition. (shrink)

My contribution aims at drawing a new way of inclusion in the citizenry as alternative to the Rawlsian overlapping consensus. This way should be able to include the so called ‘unreasonable’ in the public debate. These people are ‘unreasonable’ as they do not share public values but firmly hold a traditional set of values often conflicting with the public ones. My point is that a stable modus vivendi represents a more realistic device of inclusion. If the inclusion via overlapping consensus (...) requires people to be ‘reasonable’, that is, to underwrite a civic morality as featuring the well- ordered and stable society, the ‘unreasonable’ turn out to be excluded from citizenry. My point is that the fair society may reach stability without moral consensus. The fair society may be stable although a group or more groups of citizens do not endorse its moral essentials . These people are expected to be loyal to institutions although their loyalty could be unlikely wholehearted. However, a partial loyalty does not imply the risk to undermine peace and coexistence. On the contrary the so-called unreasonable may be citizens on the same footing as the other albeit their citizenship would be backed by non-sharable motives, that is, by non-public reasons. These motives may indeed derive from their own traditions – be they habits, customs, beliefs, attachments, the not chosen features of belonging to their group. (shrink)

The complexity of the meaning of tradition in Lévinas reflects the contraposition between the ontology as Totality and the face of the other as Infinity. Tradition, in its negative meaning, is the history of ontology in its diachronic development and a betrayal of the living subjectivity, crystallizing his axioms in a saying without author. On the other hand, the other’s face is the place of the irruption of the sense in the context of an ethical relation that presupposes no cultural (...) mediation. Nevertheless, the tradition also testifies the historical attempts to give sense to reality by a cultural construction and, in this sense, it has a positive value. In particular, it is possible a revaluation of tradition in Hebraism: the religious heritage transmitted by Scriptures and by their interpretations is not an already-said, but has the same vitality of the oral word coming from the other’s face. (shrink)

One of the aims of Gadamer’s hermeneutic ontology is the definition of the specific character of the human sciences. Gadamer maintains that their method is based upon the acknowledgement of the authority of tradition. Hence the main problem that faces his theory is the question of what makes the investigation in the humanities scientific and innovative. In my paper I try to reconstruct Gadamer’s solution of this problem. I consider his notion of tradition and its role in the definition of (...) understanding as a cognition of truth. For Gadamer tradition is a precondition both of all possibility of understanding and of the historicity of the hermeneutic happening. This conception permits to define how the human sciences grasp the reality and what is studied by them. (shrink)

While it is undeniable that tradition, in the sense of traditum, plays a fundamental role in the constitution of the morality of individuals and groups, it is equally clear that it requires a continuous revision and rediscovery. On the one hand, experience would be opaque from a tabula rasa, and becomes intelligible only through a particular “lens”, which allows one to understand the situation, and to grasp its moral relevance, but, on the other, the lens itself needs to improve, to (...) become more and more comprehensive by incorporating new cases, to be able to adapt to new and different circumstances, which are often unpredictable. The Aristotelian and Thomistic account of phronesis-prudentia is illuminating from this point of view. Phronesis represents an ability to see the particular situation in the light of the end, the novelty and the change in the light of the past, the unexpected in the light of the traditum. Therefore, it is the trait d’union which brings together the particular and the universal, building up one’s unique story and moral character. Its creativity is a solid and grounded one: while firmly grounded on the universal end, that it knows, but does not create, phronesis acknowledges at the same time its partial indeterminacy, which needs to be clarified and enriched in the light of the particular contingency. That’s why it can be said that phronesis acts as a connection between traditio and inventio, making these two poles the interlocutors of an ongoing and fruitful dialogue. (shrink)

Here analyse I the problem of the relation between tradition and innovation through John Dewey’s most significant writings on this topic. In order to do that, I focus not only on the basic Darwinian background of Dewey’s thought, which is clearly stated in his works of the new century , but on two main dichotomies that mark a great part of Dewey’s interests: mind-body and philosophy-science. The first one, mind-body, let me show as Dewey’s idea of transaction conveys to the (...) most recent studies, mainly those on the role of emotion and on the concept of interaction . The first dichotomy recalls the second one, philosophy-science, which it belongs to. And both the dualisms stand for a big one: old logic versus new logic. We could solve the perennial dispute between tradition and innovation assuming the new logic as the place where they can profitably merge, if we pay attention to the interactions between mind and body, that is between ambience and humans, otherwise none of those dichotomies can be solved. So, I end up by posing a capital question: are logic, education, politics, and ethics properly developed to foster a beneficial interaction between minds and bodies, between milieus and people, between tradition and innovation? (shrink)

Summary and reflections about a recent philosophical congress on Consciousness.

Clicca su ‘compra subito‘ per scaricare l’intera sezione*. In questa sezione sono raccolte le seguenti recensioni: Rassegna bibliografica critica sull’etica delle virtù; di Angelo Campodonico, p. 190. Ariberto Acerbi, Il sistema di Jacobi. Ragione, esistenza, persona, Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim-Zürich-New York 2010; di Gabriele De Anna, p. 196. David M. Armstrong, Sketch for a Systematic Metaphysics, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2010; di Francesco Calemi, p. 200. Angelo Campodonico – Letterio Mauro, L’Uomo formato. Percorsi nella paideia ieri e oggi, Franco Angeli, (...) Milano 2011; di Marco Damonte, p. 208. Marco Damonte, Una nuova teologia naturale. La proposta degli epistemologi riformati e dei tomisti wittgensteiniani, Carocci, Roma 2011; di Mario Micheletti, p. 212. Francesco Giacomantonio, Introduzione al pensiero politico di Habermas. Il dialogo della ragione dilagante, Mimesis, Milano-Udine 2010; di Ruggero D’Alessandro, p. 215. Maria Cristina Laurenti, Gustav Thibon. Il filosofo contadino, La Sapienza, Roma 2011; di Anna Rita Innocenzi, p. 220. Alvin Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion & Naturalism, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2011; di Michele Paolini Paoletti, p. 226. * Nell’acquisto sono incluse tutte le recensioni di questo numero. Le recensioni non possono essere scaricate singolarmente; download a pacchetto. (shrink)

«Di fronte a una poesia così scintillante, ogni analisi, ogni commento rischiano di sembrare, ahimé, nient’altro che querimonioso chiacchiericcio». La poesia cui accenna Adam Zagajewski è quella di Wisława Szymborska , premio Nobel per la letteratura , una delle voci liriche più importanti del ’900….

The revival of EV takes place on the background of modern moral theories which neglect the agent’s character, the value of emotions and rational deliberation on the good life. In the multifarious number of contributions that have been brought to the new EV by authors well-known also because of other theoretical interests, such as B. Williams and A. MacIntyre, and in the plethora of contributions offered by scholars specialized on the virtues in a variety of contemporary collections we can identify (...) spot out some issues of ancient ethics – already sketched out above – that have been neglected by dominant moral theories of a Kantian and utilitarian brand. However, we should not forget that major utilitarian authors and Kant have not neglected the virtues and specially in the latter we can find a EV which should induce to reflection on how misleading sometimes the contemporary debate can be. It is also noteworthy the importance of virtues in Christian ethics that has much in common with the EV of Aristotelian legacy: it is possible to argue for a common line able to overcome the present divide. Finally, the revival of virtues brought about also a revival of interest in the field of political philosophy with a lively debate between liberal and republican authors. (shrink)

The subject of virtue, recovered from the end of last century by authors such as Ph. Foot and A. MacIntyre, has followed in many cases, the paths opened by the classical theories of virtue expressed by Aristotle or Thomas Aquinas. One of the issues raised by these authors is the interdependence of virtue. In this paper I would like to deal with the interdependence of virtue in two areas: a) The internal interdependence of virtue, known by the name of ‘unity (...) of the virtues’. The classical tradition argued that the acquisition and development of a virtue is linked to the acquisition of others, at least as far as concerns the cardinal virtues. This thesis has been challenged by several contemporary authors. b) The external interdependence of virtue which de- fends the need to acquire virtue in a cooperative context that allows the recognition of basic goods of human life. The communities of cooperation are diverse, but all the acquisition, development and practice of virtue involves all its members. Issues such as practical rationality, education and social and political organization are involved in external interdependence of virtue. A. MacIntyre has defended this view. The purpose of the paper is to defend a) the thesis of the unity of virtue taking its genesis as a foundation, and b) the need for an education and a social context allowing the acquisition and independent exercise of virtue. (shrink)

The moral sensibility of the Greeks distinguished among three main ends of human action: kalon , agaton end hedu . Plato first indicated that human live as a unity has a single end, which rejoins these three distinct characters. Aristotle developed this focal intuition in his idea of eudaimonia as complete end of human life. This essay put to question the coincidence between eudaimonia and particular ends and asks about the role played by virtue as an ingredient of eudaimonia. The (...) analysis develops considering central passages in Plato’s Republic and Philebus, and the three ethic treatises of Aristotle. (shrink)

Reid thought that testimony possesses positive epistemic value. Epistemic autonomy is not necessarily the royal road to truth; nor is credulity a systematic epistemic fault and indeed, it can be an intellectual virtue. Even though the notion of epistemic virtue does not explicitly appear in Reid’s epistemology, it seems inherent to his views that what will give a heteronomous agent exercising the social operations of the mind the best chance to acquire and develop true beliefs is the epistemic virtues that (...) permit her to recognize reliable authorities. This is why it seems to me possible to associate Reid with to the virtue epistemology tradition. (shrink)

This essay outlines an approach to virtue theory that makes the foundation of the theory direct reference to virtuous exemplars, modeled on the famous theory of direct reference, devised in the seventies by Hilary Putnam and Saul Kripke. The basic idea is that exemplars are persons like that, just as water is liquid like that, and humans are members of the same species as that, and so on. In this theory exemplars are picked out directly through the emotion of admiration (...) rather than through the satisfaction of a description. We discover the virtues empirically by investigating the qualities of exemplars in a way that parallels the discovery that water is H2O. It is also possible that although the virtues are discovered empirically, the connection between being admirable and having certain traits is necessary, just as Kripke claims that “water is H2O” is necessary, but known a posteriori. (shrink)