ABSTRACTThis article examines the Trinitarian anthropology inherent in the ‘charism of unity’ that characterizes the Focolare Movement stemming from the mystical experience of Chiara Lubich. After describing the theological cornerstones of this charism―namely the evangelical centrality of the commandment of reciprocal love, the circularity between theology and anthropology and Jesus Forsaken as the Christological key to understanding and achieving unity―the article studies its cultural implications as reflected in the philosophical and theological contribution of Klaus Hemmerle. In dialogue with modern thought, (...) Hemmerle in fact draws from and develops the anthropological meaning of the charism of unity as a feasible way to respond to the most acute challenges of today. (shrink)

Aging is characterized by the decline and deterioration of functional cells and results in a wide variety of molecular damages and reduced physical and mental capacity. The knowledge on aging process is important because life expectancy is expected to rise until 2050. Aging cannot be considered a homogeneous process and includes different trajectories characterized by states of fitness, frailty, and disability. Frailty is a dynamic condition put between a normal functional state and disability, with reduced capacity to cope with stressors. (...) This geriatric syndrome affects physical, neuropsychological, and social domains and is driven by emotional and spiritual components. Sarcopenia is considered one of the determinants and the biological substrates of physical frailty. Physical and cognitive frailty are separately approached during daily clinical practice. The concept of motoric cognitive syndrome has partially changed this scenario, opening interesting windows toward future approaches. Thus, the purpose of this manuscript is to provide an excursus on current clinical practice, enforced by aneddoctical cases. The analysis of the current state of the art seems to support the urgent need of comprehensive organizational model incorporating physical and cognitive spheres in the same umbrella. (shrink)

Complex crises like the coronavirus pandemic are showing us that modern societies are becoming increasingly unable to live in equilibrium with nature. These crises are the result of multiple causes, which interact at different scales and across different domains. Therefore, investigating their proximate causes is not enough to fully understand them. It is also crucial to take into account the structural factors involved. As concerns the global pandemic, I suggest four levels of analysis: (i) the surface or “proximate” level of (...) the crisis; (ii) the human–environment–animal interface, as pointed out by the One Health approach; (iii) the broader socioeconomic context; and (iv) the deeper or worldview level. Furthermore, I argue that there is the need for a mindset shift if we want to properly trace causality. Much more attention must be given to the study of multilevel connecting patterns and nonlinear mechanisms as the producers of emergent global effects. (shrink)

During the COVID-19 pandemic, scientific experts advised governments for measures to be promptly taken; they also helped people to understand the situation. They carried out this role in the face of a worldwide emergency, when scientific understanding was still underway. Public scientific disputes also arose, creating confusion among people. This article highlights the importance of experts’ epistemic stance under these circumstances. It suggests they should embrace the intellectual virtue of epistemic humility, regulating their epistemic behavior and communication accordingly. In so (...) doing, they would also favour the functioning of the broad network of knowledge-based experts, which is required to properly address all the aspects of the global pandemic. (shrink)

The potential for jointly using or integrating Western science and indigenous knowledge, especially in such fields as environmental management, is a hotly debated topic nowadays. However, the difficulties involved in such a task are not always fully understood and co-management experiences achieved only partially the expected outcomes. In this contribution, I show how a sound combination of the two bodies of knowledge would be possible only if there is a way to accommodate different interpretations of reality and knowledge criteria. The (...) issue should then be faced at the epistemological level too, discussing the possibility and implications of a genuine epistemic pluralism. With reference, among others, to Feyerabend’s later writings, here I illustrate some possible insights for addressing the matter that a Western perspectivist stance could provide. (shrink)

De bono comuni -- De bono pacis -- Sermones de pace.

Cybernetic governmentality weakens the capacity of resistant subjectivities to struggle against neoliberal rationality because digitalized subjectivation processes are constantly pushed towards the logics of the market and into codifications of competitive evaluation. Despite the potential for new forms of collectivity contained in the concept of virtuality, technological evolution has disseminated a systemic form of digitality that operates not through collective procedures but through subjective-individualistic ones. Hence arises a danger that was indicated by Deleuze decades ago: that of confusing the virtual (...) with the possible. By constructing a genealogy that is built around Pierre Levy’s optimistic representation of cyberspace, Bernard Stiegler’s work on the contemporary disenchantment of the computerized world, Baudrillard’s metaphysics of code and Antoinette Rouvroy’s analysis of algorithmic governmentality, we will demonstrate that digitality is between us and that this amounts to an irreversible fact entailing a critical confrontation with its current manifestation. (shrink)

As is well known, any preorder R on a set U induces an Alexandrov topology on U. In some interesting cases related to data mining an Alexandrov topology can be transformed into different types of logico-algebraic models. In some cases, (pre)topological operators provided by Pointless Topology may define a topological space on U even if R is not a preorder. If this is the case, then we call R a crypto-preorder. The paper studies the conditions under which a relation R (...) is a crypto-preorder and how to transform a crypto-preorder into a proper preorder. (shrink)

We study a regularized version of Van Hove’s 1952 model, in which a quantum field interacts linearly with sources of finite width lying at fixed positions. We show that the central result of Van Hove’s 1952 paper on the foundations of Quantum Field Theory, the orthogonality between the spaces of state vectors which correspond to different values of the parameters of the theory, disappears when a well-defined model is considered. We comment on the implications of our results for the contemporary (...) relevance of Van Hove’s article. (shrink)