In the last few years, an old question seems to have returned to the forefront among philosophers: is it improper to speak about national philosophical traditions? Or is it legitimate, for example, to identify a precise Italian philosophy and distinguish it from a French one? In the case it is legitimate, is it also beneficial to speak in such terms? Which are the risks and advantages of using national or territorial criteria as a principle for identifying different traditions of (...) philosophical thought? The essay analyses these questions, going through the main stages of the Italian philosophical historiography from Bertrando Spaventa’s theory of the “European circulation of Italian thought” to the “Italian Theory” of Roberto Esposito. (shrink)

This collection provides English readers with a critical update on current debates on biopolitics in and around Italian thought. More than a decade after the publication of seminal books such as Agamben’s Homo Sacer and Hardt and Negri’s Empire , the names of, among others, Roberto Esposito, Paolo Virno, Christian Marazzi, and Andrea Fumagalli have recently been brought to the attention of Anglophone scholars and political activists. Several authors have rightly emphasised the evanescent character of biopolitics, and the difficulty (...) in providing a definition of it that could embrace all the conflicting theories of its most celebrated critics and supporters. The present collection is structured around the basic contention that bio-economy, human nature, and Christianity are the three visible contemporary manifestations of the theoretical object/problem of biopolitics in, respectively, Italian post-workerist economics, post-Marxist philosophical anthropology, and post-structuralist ontology. This book was originally published as a special issue of Angelaki. (shrink)

Angelaki, Volume 16, Issue 3, Page 1-5, September 2011.

The aim of this article is to explore how, and to what extent, Italian thought – by its focalization on pre-modern theoretical issues and its distance from classical modern topics, such as the philosophy of conscience or the transcendence of language – can offer a different insight on contemporary social theory and critical theory, after the dissolution of the idea of totality as a foundational concept of modernity. In the last decades, a frame named ‘Italian (...) class='Hi'>theory’ has started to circulate in international theoretical debates, often with the aim of replacing the exhausted paradigms of poststructuralism, postmodernism and deconstructionism. Indeed, ‘Italian thought’ seems to offer new insights, thinking about the ‘post-totality’ era in a different way. In the article we present a synthetic cartography of Italian thought and we analyse the way in which it can contribute to design new horizons for social theory. (shrink)

The relevance of social cognition assessment has been formally described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5. However, social cognition tools evaluating different socio-cognitive components for Italian-speaking populations are lacking. The Edinburgh Social Cognition Test is a new social cognition measure that uses animations of everyday social interactions to assess cognitive theory of mind, affective theory of mind, interpersonal social norm understanding, and intrapersonal social norm understanding. Previous studies have shown that the ESCoT is a (...) sensitive measure of social cognition in healthy and clinical populations in the United Kingdom. This work aimed to adapt and validate the ESCoT in an Italian population of healthy adults. A translation-back-translation procedure was followed to create and refine the Italian version. Then, 94 healthy adults completed the ESCoT, a battery of conventional social cognition tests and measures of intelligence and executive functions. Reliability, convergent validity, and predictors of performance on the ESCoT were examined. Results demonstrated good reliability of the ESCoT and an association between the ESCoT scores and some traditional social cognition tests. Hierarchical regression results showed that the ESCoT total score was associated with age. Also, the ESCoT subscore was associated with education. These findings support the ESCoT as a valid tool testing social norm understanding, a reliable measure of social cognition for an adult Italian population, and provides further evidence that the ESCoT is sensitive to age- and education-related changes in social cognition, and it is a task not affected by general cognitive functioning. (shrink)

This article tries to establish a possible dialogue between the way in which two influential contemporary theories, Roberto Esposito's biopolitical theory and Jacques Lacan's psychoanalysis, approach racism and the constitution of Otherness. After summing up key concepts in Esposito's theory, the article lays out the very deadlock in his work, represented by his assumption of racial difference or Otherness as inscribed in the bio-logical content of human life. However, by interpreting Jewishness under Nazism in terms of ‘undead’ ‘flesh (...) without body’, Esposito himself crosses paths with the psychoanalytic approach, in so far as Lacan defined the Freudian death drive using the same term. The second part of the article is thus dedicated to the articulation of the relations between primal repression, trauma and jouissance, out of which can be derived an alternative conception of biopolitics, based on the discursive constitution of Otherness, rather than on the assumption that it is a biological fact. (shrink)

Over the last few years, there has been an exaggeratedly widespread and frequently confused use of the concepts of 'stakeholder' and 'corporate social responsibility'. However, some interesting insights of both these notions can be found in traditional European business administration studies. In this article, the Italian view will be examined. In particular, this paper investigates the teachings of some of the historical masters of the Italian "Economia Aziendale" (EA), with particular attention to the concept of the azienda, its (...) finalism and its essential characteristics, in order to verify some consistencies with the more recent Stakeholder Management Theory (SMT). Principles and considerations seem to emerge from EA scholars' seminal works that unequivocally connect ethics with business decisions. EA fits in with SMT in many ways, and the former (EA) seems, moreover, to suggest a specific normative point of view from which the role of ethics in business activities can be approached. (shrink)

Over the last few years, there has been an exaggeratedly widespread and frequently confused use of the concepts of 'stakeholder' and 'corporate social responsibility'. However, some interesting insights of both these notions can be found in traditional European business administration studies. In this article, the Italian view will be examined. In particular, this paper investigates the teachings of some of the historical masters of the Italian "Economia Aziendale", with particular attention to the concept of the azienda, its finalism (...) and its essential characteristics, in order to verify some consistencies with the more recent Stakeholder Management Theory. Principles and considerations seem to emerge from EA scholars' seminal works that unequivocally connect ethics with business decisions. EA fits in with SMT in many ways, and the former seems, moreover, to suggest a specific normative point of view from which the role of ethics in business activities can be approached. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has acquired an unquestionably high degree of relevance for a large number of different actors. Among others, academics and practitioners are developing a wide range of knowledge and best practices to further improve socially responsible competences. Within this context, one frequent question is according to what theory should general knowledge of CSR be developed, and in particular the relationship between CSR and small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs). This paper suggests that research on large firms should (...) be based on stakeholder theory, while research on CSR among SMEs should be based on the concept of social capital. This paper first provides a theoretical and practical perspective on CSR today; the focus then shifts to the specific literature on CSR and SMEs; some data and information follow on SMEs in Europe and Italy; finally, some conclusions and questions for future research are suggested. (shrink)

Introduction Without a leg to stand on Sandra Kemp and Paola Bono The project that became The Lonely Mirror had been to edit an international collection of ...

The essay briefly review the intellectual bonds between Alchourrón and Bulygin and Italian legal thought. Alchourrón and Bulygin’s seminal work is widely read in Italy; and by now is considered essential groundwork by a growing generation of young legal scholars.

The article provides a review of the book "Italian Feminist Theory and Practice: Equality and Sexual Difference", edited and published by Graziella Parati and Rebecca West in 2002.

This study investigated how young Italian people experienced the period of peak spread of COVID-19 in their country by probing their emotions, thoughts, events, and actions related to interpersonal and community bonds. This approach to the pandemic will highlight social dimensions that characterized contextual interactions from the specific perspective of Community Psychology. The aim was to investigate young people's experiences because they are the most fragile group due to their difficulty staying home and apart from their peers and because (...) they are, at the same time, the most potentially dangerous people due to their urge to gather in groups. The research involved 568 university students, 475 females, and 93 males, with an average age of 21.82 years. The collected data were analyzed with the Grounded Theory Methodology, using the Atlas 8.0 software. From the textual data, representative codes were defined and grouped into 10 categories, which reflect the individuals' prosocial attitudes, behaviors, and values. These categories formed three macro-categories, called: “Collective Dimensions,” which includes Connectedness, Solidarity, Italian-ness, Social Problems, and Collective Mourning; “Prosocial Orientation,” which includes Trust and Hope; and “Collective Values,” which includes Values of Freedom, Respect of Social Rules, and Civic-Mindedness. All these macro-categories are indicative of the shared feelings experienced by Italians during the first time of the pandemic. Further practical implications of these results will be discussed, including a consideration of the risk of developing distress and improving well-being, as well as promoting preventive behaviors. (shrink)

Back in vogue today is the tendency of Italian philosophy toward reflection on itself that has always characterized an important part of our historiographical tradition. The present essay firstly analyzes the various interpretative positions in respect to the legitimacy, the risks, and the benefits of such a discourse, which intends to distinguish the different traditions of thought by resorting to a criterion of territorial or national kind. Secondly, the essay examines diverse paradigms that identify – in “precursory genius”; in (...) ethical and civil vocation; and in “living thought” – the distinctive hallmark of the Italian philosophical tradition from the Renaissance to today. (shrink)

Negation can be considered a shared social action that develops since early infancy with very basic acts of refusals or rejection. Inspired by an approach to the embodiment of concepts known as Multiple Representation Theories, the present paper explores negation as an embodied action that relies on both sensorimotor and linguistic/social information. Despite the different variants, MRT accounts share the basic ideas that both linguistic/social and sensorimotor information concur to the processes of concepts formation and representation and that the balance (...) between these components depends on the kind of concept, the context, or the performed task. In the present research we will apply the MRT framework for exploring negation in Italian sign language. The nature of negation in LIS has been explored in continuity with the co-speech gesture where negative elements are encoded through differentiated prosodic and gestural strategies across languages. Data have been collected in naturalistic settings that may allow a much wider understanding of negation both in speech and in spoken language with a semi-structured interview. Five LIS participants with age range 30–80 were recruited and interviewed with the aim of understanding the continuity between gesture and sign in negation. Results highlight that negation utterances mirror the functions of rejection, non-existence and denial that have been described in language acquisition both in deaf and hearing children. These different steps of acquisition of negation show a different balance between sensorimotor, linguistic and social information in the construction of negative meaning that the MRT is able to enlighten. (shrink)

The work of contemporary Italian thinkers, what Roberto Esposito refers to as Italian Theory, is attracting increasing attention around the world. This book explores the reasons for its growing popularity, its distinguishing traits, and why people are turning to these authors for answers to real-world issues and problems. The approach he takes, in line with the keen historical consciousness of Italian thinkers themselves, is a historical one. He offers insights into the great "unphilosophical" philosophers of life—poets, (...) painters, politicians and revolutionaries, film-makers and literary critics—who have made Italian thought, from its beginnings, an "impure" thought. People like Machiavelli, Croce, Gentile, and Gramsci were all compelled to fulfill important political roles in the societies of their times. No wonder they felt that the abstract vocabulary and concepts of pure philosophy were inadequate to express themselves. Similarly, artists such as Dante, Leonardo Da Vinci, Leopardi, or Pasolini all had to turn to other disciplines outside philosophy in order to discuss and grapple with the messy, constantly changing realities of their lives. For this very reason, says Esposito, because Italian thinkers have always been deeply engaged with the concrete reality of life and because they have looked for the answers of today in the origins of their own historical roots, Italian theory is a "living thought." Hence the relevance or actuality that it holds for us today. Continuing in this tradition, the work of Roberto Esposito is distinguished by its interdisciplinary breadth. In this book, he passes effortlessly from literary criticism to art history, through political history and philosophy, in an expository style that welcomes non-philosophers to engage in the most pressing problems of our times. As in all his works, Esposito is inclusive rather than exclusive; in being so, he celebrates the affirmative potency of life. (shrink)

From 28 February to the end of March 2012, the Italian media reacted fiercely to the Giubilini and Minerva paper published in the Journal of Medical Ethics a few days earlier. The first article viewed the proposal as analogous to ‘barbaric invasions’, but in a first stage of the debate it could be seen as a case of the usual controversy between Catholics and secularists. Then emotive reactions prevailed and a flood of papers expressed strong opposition to ‘infanticide’. The (...) authors were even deemed insane; the fact that both are Italian certainly increased interest in the subject as well as surprise at their proposal, which some reckoned to be an insult to their ‘national identity’. Even freedom of academic research and discussion was put in question, and defenders of free debate were accused of being supporters of the theory of infanticide. (shrink)

The political economy of the information machine is discussed within the Marxist tradition of Italian operaismo by posing the hypothesis of an informational turn already at work in the age of the industrial revolution. The idea of valorizing information introduced by Alquati in a pioneering Marxist approach to cybernetics is used to examine the paradigms of mass intellectuality, immaterial labour and cognitive capitalism developed by Lazzarato, Marazzi, Negri, Vercellone and Virno since the 1990s. The concept of machinic by Deleuze (...) and Guattari is then adopted to extend Marx’s analysis of the industrial machine to the algorithms of digital machines. If the industrial machine can be described as a bifurcation of the domains of energy and information, this essay proposes to conceive the information machine itself as a further bifurcation between information and metadata. In conclusion, the hypothesis of the society of metadata is outlined as the current evolution of that society of control pictured by Deleuze in relation to the power embodied in databases. (shrink)

This contribution thematizes the Gadamerian legacy in the context of the Italian philosophical debate, attempting to understand whether this debate can contribute to rethink the vitality of the hermeneutic tradition and the future of its possible developments. When, in 1972, Gianni Vattimo, one of the key figures in contemporary Italian thought, published his seminal translation of Truth and Method, Gadamerian themes began to circulate, in Italy, based on a specific interpretation: The Italian hermeneutic debate received the project (...) of Truth and Method as a kind of philosophical defense of the humanistic tradition. As the inventor of the "weak thought," Vattimo defended the idea that the 'weakening' of the project of the world's scientific rationalization could enhance other experiences related to truth, namely humanistic, artistic, literary, and religious ones. Just like then, the triumph of scientific rationality and calculative thinking places contemporary hermeneutics in front of a daunting task. One must ask whether hermeneutics, in order to remain faithful to the Gadamerian project, should remain essentially a project of metatheoretical foundations of textual interpretation, endowed with a historically and linguistically informed approach, or it should rather radically rethink its relationship to the problem of 'method.' To avoid this deflation of the Gadamerian tradition, one possible way forward is to orient hermeneutic research toward a 'hard' and philosophically grounded idea of objectuality/objectivity, but at the same time not methodologically sterile, that is, not flattened on the methods of the 'hard sciences'. (shrink)

This collection provides English readers with a critical update on current debates on biopolitics in and around Italian thought. More than a decade after the publication of seminal books such as Agamben’s _Homo Sacer_ and Hardt and Negri’s _Empire_, the names of, among others, Roberto Esposito, Paolo Virno, Christian Marazzi, and Andrea Fumagalli have recently been brought to the attention of Anglophone scholars and political activists. Several authors have rightly emphasised the evanescent character of biopolitics, and the difficulty in (...) providing a definition of it that could embrace all the conflicting theories of its most celebrated critics and supporters. The present collection is structured around the basic contention that bio-economy, human nature, and Christianity are the three visible contemporary manifestations of the theoretical object/problem of biopolitics in, respectively, Italian post-workerist economics, post-Marxist philosophical anthropology, and post-structuralist ontology. This book was originally published as a special issue of _Angelaki_. (shrink)

Psychoanalysis in Italy is a particularly diverse and vibrant profession, embracing a number of influences and schools of thought, connecting together new thinking, and producing theorists and clinicians of global renown. _Reading Italian Psychoanalysis_ provides a comprehensive guide to the most important Italian psychoanalytic thinking of recent years, including work by major names such as Weiss, E.Gaddini, Matte Blanco, Nissim Momigliano, Canestri, Amati Mehler, and Ferro. It covers the most important theoretical developments and clinical advances, with special emphasis (...) on contemporary topics such as transference, trauma and primitive states of mind where Italian work has been particular influential. In this volume, _Franco Borgogno, Alberto Luchetti_ and _Luisa Marino Coe_ of the Italian Psychoanalytical Society provide an overview of how Italian psychoanalysis has developed from the 1920’s to the present day, tracing its early influences and highlighting contemporary developments. Forty-six seminal and representative papers of psychoanalysts belonging to the two Italian psychoanalytical societies have been chosen to illuminate what is special about Italian theoretical and clinical thinking, and what is demonstrative of the specificity of its psychoanalytic discourse. The selected papers are preceded by a first introductory section about the history of psychoanalysis in Italy and followed by a "swift glance at Italian psychoanalysis from abroad". They are grouped into sections which represent the areas particularly explored by Italian psychoanalysis. Each section is accompanied by introductory comments which summarize the main ideas and concepts and also their historical and cultural background, so as to offer to the reader either an orientation and stimulus for the debate and to indicate their connections to other papers included in the present volume and to the international psychoanalytic world. The book is divided into six parts including: History of psychoanalysis in Italy Metapsychology Clinical practice, theory of technique, therapeutic factors The person of the analyst, countertransference and the analytic relationship/field Trauma, psychic pain, mourning and working-through Preverbal, precocious, fusional, primitive states of the mind This volume offers an excellent and detailed "fresco" of Italian psychoanalytic debate, shining a light on thinking that has evolved differently in France, England, North and Latin America. It is an ideal book for beginners and advanced students of clinical theory as well as experienced psychoanalysts wanting to know more about Italian psychoanalytic theory and technique, and how they have developed. (shrink)

Background On December 2017 the Italian Parliament approved law n. 219/2017 “Provisions for informed consent and advance directives” regarding challenging legal and bioethical issues related to healthcare decisions and end-of-life choices. The law does not contain an explicit reference to Ethics Committees (ECs), but they could still play a role in implementing the law. Methods A questionnaire-based survey was performed among the ECs of the Italian Institute for Research and Care belonging to the Network of neuroscience and neurorehabilitation, (...) with the aim of (1) knowing whether the ECs participated and, if so, how in the process of implementation of law n. 219/2017 in the referring institutes; (2) investigating the point of view of the ECs regarding their possible involvement in the process; (3) exploring the contribution ECs can provide to give effective implementation to the law principles and provisions. Results Seventeen ECs out of thirty took part in the survey; the characteristics of the responding and non-responding committees are similar, so the responding ECs can be regarded as representative of all ECs in the Network. Nine ECs did not discuss the law in anyway: the main reason for this is that the referring institutions (6) and the health care professionals (3) did not ask for an EC intervention. Nevertheless, the large majority of the ECs believe that their involvement in the implementation of the law as a whole is appropriate (8) or absolutely appropriate (6), while 3 of them are neutral. No EC believes that the involvement is inappropriate. The aspect of the law on which the 14 ECs converge in considering the EC involvement appropriate/absolutely appropriate is the one related to the health facilities obligation to guarantee the full and proper implementation of the principles of the law. Conclusions Our survey confirms that ECs believe they can play a role in the implementation of law n. 219/2017, although this does not entirely correspond to what the committees have actually done in reality. This role could be better exercised by ECs specifically established for clinical practice, which would have a composition, functioning and a mandate better suited to the purpose. This supports the call for a national regulation of ECs for clinical practice. (shrink)

This paper discusses David Roberts's latest book in which he seeks to throw some light on urgent postmodern historiographical issues from the angle of Italian historicism, led by Benedetto Croce and Giovanni Gentile . Focusing on the relationship between theory and practice, Roberts argues that there was a close relationship between Italian historicism and fascism. On the basis of the principle that “reality is nothing but history”, both Croce and Gentile sought to develop a philosophy that connects (...) historical thinking to action. In this context, Gentile's presentist interpretation of the historical sublime eventually led to totalitarianism, whereas Croce's radical historicism formed the basis of a more liberal view of society. In his discussion of the reception of the Italian tradition, Roberts rejects Carlo Ginzburg's and Hayden White's “misreadings” of Croce and Gentile, and concludes that Italian historicism is still relevant to modern historiography. In this paper I show that Roberts, by renouncing an exclusively philosophical approach to the Italian tradition, tends to overlook the underlying issues. In order to redress the balance, I argue that the political issues between Croce and Gentile went back to profound philosophical differences concerning the relationship between philosophy and history on the one hand and between past and present on the other. From this perspective, Ginzburg's and White's debates about the relationship between history and politics, and the role of the historical sublime in historiography, should not be viewed as “misreadings” of Croce and Gentile, but as mere variations on the themes of their predecessors. The relevance of the Italian tradition is therefore not primarily to be found in its response to postmodernism, but in setting the agenda for rethinking the relationship between history and practical life in the contemporary world. (shrink)

Cimatti and Salzani have put together a rich collection of essays on animal studies that provides an exhaustive overview of how Italian contemporary philosophers are engaging with animal ethics, antispeciesism, posthumanism, ecofeminism, and biopolitics. This edited volume represents an important development in the “animal turn” in the humanities, particularly because it is published in English, allowing for a more efficient dialogue between “Italian theory” and philosophers around the world. This is, in fact, the first collection that will (...) give an international audience access to the rich and varied contribution of Italian contemporary philosophy in the burgeoning field of animal studies. It is also important to point out that all the authors—who are either well-established erudite thinkers or bright and innovative new voices in the panorama of Italian philosophy—effectively engage with recent and prominent scholarship in the fields of animal studies, posthumanism, and biopolitics, such as the work of Zizek, Esposito, Hardt, Calarco, Braidotti, and Wolfe.The volume is clearly intended for an academic audience: professors, scholars, and graduate students studying not only philosophy, Italian studies, environmental humanities, and animal ethics, but also political science, ethology, comparative literature, art history, and religious studies. In addition, the book could also find an audience in animal rights and environmental activists who are interested in the philosophical aspects and ethical and political implications of their actions.The division of the book into three sections (“Animality in the Italian Tradition,” “Animality in Perspective,” and “Fragments of a Contemporary Debate”) provides the reader a clear trajectory from the Italian philosophical tradition to the current debate on “animality.” In the first section, in fact, the authors engage with the rich and complex tradition of both Italian animal philosophy and advocacy. In the three essays that make up this section, the authors provide a compelling historical perspective of the anti-Cartesian and antidualistic aspects of Italian thought, tracing its pre-Cartesian origin and post-Cartesian developments through the work of Francis of Assisi, Dante Alighieri, Giordano Bruno, Giambattista Vico, and Giacomo Leopardi, among others. This section also includes essays outlining the development of animal bioethics in Italy, which emerged from the work of animal advocacy pioneer Aldo Capitini and continued to have an important impact on Italian culture thanks to the antispeciesist movement and debate, of which the third essay of this section provides an exhaustive intellectual history.The second section of the volume, comprised of six essays, provides an overall view of the ongoing philosophical debate on animality that traverses Italian posthumanism, feminism, theology, biopolitics, environmental ethics, and Marxist thought. Here the authors engage with some of the prominent voices in the contemporary Italian philosophical landscape, such as Giorgio Agamben, Roberto Esposito, Roberto Marchesini, Antonio Negri, Maria Turchetto, Adriana Caravero, Luisa Muraro, and Paolo De Benedetti. As pointed out by the editors in their introduction, this section does not intend to offer a complete account of the extensive and heterogenous exchanges occurring inside the Italian biological turn, but instead aims at investigating its most compelling approaches and effectively links them to the ongoing transnational debate.The rich historiography and analysis of the first two sections is complemented, in the third section of the volume, by the speculative approach that strongly characterizes all five final essays. Here we can find some of the most exciting and original developments in Italian scholarship on animal philosophy. This section is, therefore, the most effective in presenting the distinctive approach of contemporary Italian philosophers in rethinking animality and the human-animal interplay, in particular inside the historical and epistemological frame of the Anthropocene. For instance, Massimo Filippi explores how slaughterhouses have become exemplary spaces to investigate the calculation that adds, subtracts, multiplies, and divides humans and animals, which removes animality and excises the other, which forcefully bans any imagining of the monstrously other, of the other-than-human, and that produces, among others and besides It-Self, the Woman, the Homosexual, the Abnormal, the Migrant, the Criminal, and the Animal. (p. 225)Structuring his argument on the real and metaphorical “mathematics of sacrifice” at work in the slaughterhouse (p. 226), Filippi engages with the processes that enable human ontological privilege, with intraspecific and interspecific mechanisms of discrimination, and with philosophical, political, and ethical implications of meat production.For a second and final example, ethologist Roberto Marchesini—one of the most original and prominent voices in animal studies—focuses on redefining the paradigm of “animality.” In his essay, Marchesini questions behaviorism and the automatism of learning, key aspects that have been prominent in defining animality in many fields, from biology to philosophy. Building from his groundbreaking and extensive work in ethology and zooanthropology, he argues for an “elaborative model” of animality (animal as subject) against the fallacy of the “automatism-based model” (animal as mechanism): Subjectivity is the implicit condition of the animal being, an expressive dimension that may also be unconscious but that precedes from (i) a constructivist conception of behavior, which we could explain by considering it a work in progress, always open and never predetermined, but equally never imposed and nonetheless always co-factorial to external contributions, and (ii) a propositional view of the individual, or rather from being supported by verbal structures such as to delight, to fear, to want, which join themselves to modal predicates declined according to context, but which likewise render the individual the protagonist. (p. 247)Animal studies has established itself as one of the most exciting areas of research inside the biological turn of the humanities worldwide and, by collecting such a large number of compelling and provocative theories from Italian contemporary philosophy, the impact of Cimatti and Salzani's volume will be twofold: It will enrich and expand a developing discussion in the environmental humanities and in animal studies while establishing the centrality of Italian thought in such an important and, in the Anthropocene era, necessary debate. (shrink)

The resiliency and independence of Italian Marxism is often attributed to the influence of Gramsci. This influence arises in part from Gramsci's role as a founder and theoretician of the Italian Communist Party (PCI). Yet, his significance arises from his identification with Western Marxism. Gramsci is considered to be a prime representative of this tradition by virtue of his roots in Hegelianism, which is often used to explain how the PCI was spared many of the worst aspects of (...) Stalinism. It is also credited with allowing the PCI to develop its “third way” or “via italiana,” which abandons the accepted Marxist-Leninist approaches to the acquisition of political power and makes the pursuit of parliamentary politics a legitimate enterprise for the communist movement. (shrink)

ExcerptWith the acceptance of race-based discrimination the entire front of Italian culture has collapsed. Vittorio Foa, letter, November 20, 19381This essay will focus on one specific aspect in the attitude of intellectuals toward anti-Semitism in Italy: not the “theoretical” aspect (by which I mean their ideological support or their propaganda contributions to the anti-Jewish campaign, although those too were significant), but the practical one, i.e., their individual and collective behavior in the face of the bureaucratic process through which the (...) anti-Jewish legislation was applied in the field of high culture. As recent research has shown,…. (shrink)