In its literal meaning, the term ἔκστασις (ekstasis) indicates a displacement, ‘being out of immobility’, and ultimately being outside oneself. To some extent, this term takes on a mystical connotation in late Antiquity, notably in book VI.9.11.24 of Plotinus’ Enneads, where ekstasis is described as a non-ordinary way of seeing. The notion of ecstasy, often inseparable from the concept of vision, would keep its mystical role, though altered in some ways, over the centuries, conceptualizing a specific kind of knowledge, which (...) goes beyond the subject-object opposition, addressing the epistemological issues of perceiving and knowing the divine, and often challenging the nature of the self. This issue offers some attempts to track the constant reshaping and migration of the notions of ecstasy and intellectual or spiritual vision over the history of Western thought, unearthing their structural and constant persistence, from the Middle Ages to the contemporary ages, recurrently in many different non-ultimately-dialectical metaphysical systems. The papers in this volume provide some illustrative examples of the tangled history of the divergent meanings that the notions of ecstasy and vision have taken on, and their considerable reassessments and adaptations to constantly evolving conceptual frameworks, often redefining further notions such as those of rapture, prophecy, sleep, dream, and death. -/- . (shrink)

The 'Enciclopedia Filosofica' is an encyclopaedia of philosophical topics promoted by the Centre for Philosophical Studies of Gallarate and published, in its third and last edition in 2006, by the Bompiani publishing house in Milan. The first edition of the 'Enciclopedia Filosofica' was promoted by the Centre for Philosophical Studies of Gallarate in the 1950s, seeing the light in 1957-58. A second edition, published by the Sansoni publishing house in Florence, was published in 1968-69 and reprinted in 1979. The third (...) and last edition, published by Bompiani in 2006, is intended to cover the whole of philosophical knowledge and related disciplines with over ten thousand entries edited by about a thousand academics, both Italian and non-Italian, and distributed in twelve volumes for a total of 12,496 pages. (shrink)

ObjectiveGonadotoxicity is considered one of the most distressing side effects of cancer treatment. Although fertility preservation can be a valid solution, it also involves a challenging process. A clear understanding of the features of women who decide to pursue fertility preservation after cancer diagnosis is missing. The purpose of the present study was therefore to analyze the personality profile of female patients referred to oncofertility prior to gonadotoxic treatment.MethodsFifty-two female cancer patients took part in the study. The Temperament and Character (...) Inventory-Revised, the Response Evaluation Measure-71, the Beck Depression Inventory, and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory-Y Form were administered to examine personality characteristics, defense mechanisms, depression and anxiety symptoms.ResultsCompared with reference data of the Italian population, our sample reported significantly lower scores in Harm Avoidance and trait anxiety, and significantly higher levels of mature defense mechanisms. Most of the patients reported low scores in immature defense mechanisms, depression, and trait anxiety, and medium scores in state anxiety.ConclusionsOur findings suggest that these women display functional personality traits and defensive style, in association with low levels of depression and trait anxiety. These features may enable a proactive attitude to cancer and the ability to make long-term plans. This may favor psychological adjustment to cancer and a projection toward the future. (shrink)

Il saggio esamina e pubblica per la prima volta due lettere scritte nel 1683 da una monaca benedettina, Suor Maria Candida Colomba, a papa Innocenzo XI, in cui in seguito a una visione della Vergine, questa invita il papa a far dire mille rosari ai carmelitani per vincere la guerra contro il Turco e cerca di ottenere il trasferimento presso un monastero di carmelitane scalze. Le lettere verranno analizzate alla luce della politica di Innocenzo XI in occasione della Battaglia (...) di Vienna e in relazione alla legittimazione di profetesse e visionarie ricevuta in nome della Vergine Maria e al loro rapporto con il potere. (shrink)

Razón, poesía, historia.--La cuestión del estoicismo español.--El querer.

Italian Constitutional Justice in Global Context is the first book ever published in English to provide an international examination of the Italian Constitutional Court, offering a comprehensive analysis of its principal lines of jurisprudence, historical origins, organization, procedures, and its current engagement with transnational European law. The ItCC represents one of the strongest and most successful examples of constitutional judicial review, and is distinctive in its structure, institutional dimensions, and well-developed jurisprudence. Moreover, the ItCC has developed a distinctive voice among (...) global constitutional actors in its adjudication of a broad range of topics from fundamental rights and liberties to the allocations of governmental power and regionalism. Nevertheless, in global constitutional dialog, the voice of the ItCC has been almost entirely absent due to a relative lack of both English translations of its decisions and of focused scholarly commentary in English.This book describes the "Italian Style" in global constitutional adjudication, and aims to elevate Italian constitutional jurisprudence to an active participant role in global constitutional discourse. The authors have carefully structured the work to allow the ItCC's own voice to emerge. It presents broad syntheses of major areas of the Court's case law, provides excerpts from notable decisions in a narrative and analytical context, addresses the tension between the ItCC and the Court of Cassation, and positions the development, character, and importance of the ItCC's jurisprudence in the larger arc of global judicial dialog. (shrink)

Dibujar el pensamiento de Seneca es dibujar su figura viva, trazar el esquema de su persona. Seneca es un mediador que para alzarse sobre nosotros necesita de nuestra necesidad, pues solo apoyado en nuestra indigencia tiene sentido. Maria Zambrano lleva a cabo un lucido estudio de la figura y significacion del pensador cordobes y presenta una seleccion de sus escritos.

Ist Geschichtsdarstellung ein transparentes Fenster zu einer faktischen Vergangenheit? Oder verlieren Fakten ihre Verbindlichkeit zugunsten der Repräsentation? Der vorliegende Band weist einen vermittelnden Weg zwischen diesen Extremen. Jenseits der positivistisch verstandenen historischen Fakten sowie der infolge des linguistic turn häufig behaupteten Unzugänglichkeit und Unentscheidbarkeit der faktischen Vergangenheit wird die Geschichtsdarstellung selbst als das eigentlich Greifbare zur Geltung gebracht. Geschichte ist demnach in ihrer Darstellung zu suchen – unabhängig davon, ob es sich um historiographische Quellen, literarische Texte, Gemälde oder um Museen (...) als mediale Darstellungsräume handelt. Die Beiträge gehen einem breiten Spektrum unterschiedlicher Dimensionen von Geschichtsdarstellung nach. Medien, Methoden und Strategien bilden dabei die zentralen Koordinaten, anhand derer Geschichtsdarstellung mit ihren narrativen und bildlichen Ausdrucksformen exemplarisch erörtert wird. Mit Beiträgen von Wolfgang Frühwald, Werner Goez, Thomas Kirchner, Wolfgang Müller-Funk, Otto Gerhard Oexle, Antonios Rengakos, Hermann Schäfer, Jörg Schönert, Howard Weinbrot, Horst Wenzel und Gernot R. Wieland. (shrink)

Die Korrespondenz zwischen körperlichen Merkmalen und dem Charakter eines Menschen, die im 19. Jahrhundert die Matrix für die Naturwissenschaften fungierte, stellt heute die Basis von Lifestyle-Normen oder auch von psychologischer und medizinischer Diagnostik dar. Infolge strukturalistisch-semiotischer Methoden gilt die Physiognomik immer noch als Deutungsdispositiv bei Formen literarischer Personendarstellungen oder philosophischer Deutung menschlichen Antlitzes. In den durch umfangreiche mediale und technische Umwälzungen hervorgebrachten Modellierungen der Sinnlichkeit erweist sich die Physiognomik auch als Paradigma des Enhancements. Der Band untersucht historisch und systematisch die (...) biopolitische Performativität physiognomischer Praktiken der Selbst- und Fremddeutung, ihre Gestaltung sowie ihre Transformationen durch neue Technologien. Er diskutiert ihre materiell-mediale Dynamik, das in der Ästhetik von Texten und Medien implizierte Lebenswissen, Formen der Affektforschung sowie die anthropozentrischen Implikationen der Physiognomik. (shrink)

Spectroscopy is a scientific topic at the interface between Chemistry and Physics, which is taught at high school level in relation with its fundamental applications in Analytical Chemistry. In the first part of the paper, the topic of spectroscopy is analyzed having in mind the well-known Johnstone’s triangle of chemistry education, putting in evidence the way spectroscopy is usually taught at the three levels of chemical knowledge: macroscopic/phenomenological, sub-microscopic/molecular and symbolic ones. Among these three levels, following Johnstone’s recommendations the macroscopic (...) one is the most useful for high school students who learn spectroscopy for the first time. Starting from these premises, in the second part of the paper, we propose a didactic sequence which is inspired by the historical evolution of spectroscopic instruments from the first spectroscopes invented by Gustav Kirchhoff and Robert Bunsen in 1860 to the UV–vis spectrophotometers which became common since the 1960s. The idea behind our research is to analyze the conceptual advancements through the history of spectroscopy and to identify the key episodes/experiments and spectroscopic instruments. For each of them, a didactic activity, typically an experiment, is then proposed underlining the relevant aspects from the chemistry education point of view. The present paper is the occasion to reflect on the potentialities of an historical approach combined with a laboratorial one, and to discuss the role of historical instruments and related technological improvements to teach spectroscopy. (shrink)

This essay aims to reappraise Agnes Arber's contribution to the history of science with reference to her work in the history of botany and biology. Both her first and her last books are classics: the former in the history of botany, the latter in that of biology. As such, they are still cited today, albeit with increasing criticism. Her very last book was rejected by Cambridge University Press because it did not meet the publisher's academic standards – we shall return (...) to it in due course. Despite Kathryn Packer's two essays about Arber's life in context, much remains to be done toward a just appreciation of her research. We need such a reappraisal in order to avoid anachronistic criticisms of her contributions to the historiography of botany, or, on the other hand, uncritical applause for her studies in plant morphology. (shrink)

Hilary Putnam is one of the world’s leading philosophers. His highly original and often provocative ideas have set the agenda for a variety of debates in philosophy of science, philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. His now famous philosophical thought experiments, such as the ‘Twin earth’ and ‘the brains in the vat’ have become part of the established canon in philosophy and cognitive science. _Reading Putnam_ is an outstanding overview and assessment of Hilary Putnam’s work by a team of (...) international contributors, and includes replies by Putnam himself. Divided into clear sections, it contains chapters on key aspects of Putnam’s large body of writing, including: Scientific realism and the changes that Putnam’s thought has undergone on this topic analyticity and ontology, including the important interconnections between the views of Putnam and Quine Putnam’s arguments concerning externalist views of meaning and reference, questions of conceptual relativity, and his preoccupation with ethics through a denial of the fact–value dichotomy Putnam’s developing views on perception. Offering an excellent survey of Putnam’s work, _Reading Putnam_ is essential for those studying philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science, as well as for anyone interested in contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

In the literature, the pragmatic dimension of metaphors has been clearly acknowledged. Metaphors are regarded as having different possible uses, especially pursuing persuasion. However, an analysis of the specific conversational purposes that they can be aimed at achieving in a dialogue and their adequacy thereto is still missing. In this chapter, we will address this issue focusing on the classical distinction between the explanatory and persuasive uses of metaphors, which is, however, complex to draw at an analytical level and often (...) blurred and controversial also from a theoretical point of view. Building on the analysis of explanation in different theories and fields of study, we show how it can be conceived as characterized by a cognitive and a pragmatic dimension, where the transference of understanding is used pragmatically for different dialogical goals - such as informing, making a joint decision, and most importantly persuading. In this sense, the cognitive effects of understanding are not incompatible with a persuasive dialogical purpose. This theoretical proposal will be applied to examples drawn from the medical context, to show how a pragmatic approach to explanation can account for the complexity of the cases that can be found in actual dialogical contexts. (shrink)

Probability as understood today, namely as a quantitative notion expressible by means of a function ranging in the interval between 0–1, took shape in the mid-17th century, and presents both a mathematical and a philosophical aspect. Of these two sides, the second is by far the most controversial, and fuels a heated debate, still ongoing. After a short historical sketch of the birth and developments of probability, its major interpretations are outlined, by referring to the work of their most prominent (...) representatives. The final section addresses the question of whether any of such interpretations can presently be considered predominant, which is answered in the negative. (shrink)

We study ultimatum and dictator variants of the generosity game. In this game, the first mover chooses the amount of money to be distributed between the players within a given interval, knowing that her own share is fixed. Thus, the first mover is not confronted with the typical trade-off between her own and the other’s payoff. For each variant of the game, we study three treatments that vary the range of potential pie sizes so as to assess the influence of (...) these changes on the first movers’ generosity. We find that removing the trade-off inspires significant generosity, which is not always affected by the second mover’s veto power. Moreover, the manipulation of the choice set indicates that choices are influenced by the available alternatives. (shrink)

Giordano Bruno’s interest in magic was not a marginal aspect of his philosophy. In the magical works written in 1589 and 1591, Bruno carried out his project of a cultural reform, which he also conceived as a pratical renovatio. In De magia naturali Bruno undertook a careful theoretical reexamination of Renaissance magic in order to ground its "experimental data" on physical foundation. Some traditional notions , which Bruno found in his sources and made use of, are analyzed in his paper (...) to show the deep change they underwent in the light of Bruno’s new ontology and cosmology. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to investigate what epistemic role, if any, do appeals to representations play in cognitive neuroscience. I suggest that while at present they seem to play something in between a minimal and a substantive explanatory role, there is reason to believe that representations have a substantial contribution to the construction of neuroscientic explanations of cognitive phenomena.