42 research outputs found

    La filosofia di T. H. Green tra empirismo e idealismo. Osservazioni e interpretazioni di gnoseologia, etica e politica

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    This work aims to shed new light about the current debate concerning the thought of Thomas H. Green. In the history of philosophy he is considered as one of the most representative exponent of the British Idealism, overshadowed solely by the success of his friend and colleague, Francis H. Bradley. But many scholars have underestimated him for a long time, without really recognising what he had to offer, thinking that Bradley's philosophy was the natural landing and resolution of all his philosophical inconsistencies. Only in the last few decades the scientific community has begun to re-discover and to go deeper into Green's works (especially his Prolegomena to Ethics), bringing to light the hidden meaning of his words. Thanks to the effort of some of them we are now able to analyse him through different eyes, finding out the uniqueness of his thought. But not all the hallmarks and peculiarities have been uncovered untill now and it is here that this work starts. Beginning from the criticism Green turns against the epistemological theory of the empiricism, in particular that of J. Locke and D. Hume, it will be called into question the greenian notion of the eternal consciousness and the different interpretations that have been given. All his philosophy revolves around this idea and it will guide the reader through the whole work, going from the metaphysics of knowledge to the metaphysics of moral and ending in what Plato identified with the true purpose of philosophy: politics. Each aspect of this journey is not only described with the words of Green's current interpreters, but with them of the writer himself, who made the attempt of offering a new reading of Green's thought making to emerge a different nature of his philosophy

    La volontà giuridica. Genesi ed anatomia di un concetto moderno.

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    The juridical – historical – theoretical work covered in thesis is divided ideally into three parts. In the first it is analyzed the relevance of the concept of Will in positive law, in the living and the development of doctrine law, focusing in particular on a conceptual category that in recent decades has enjoyed a lot of luck within the orbit of the Law: the self-determination. Reviewing Applications some of that figure, it highlights the consonance with the Will. A Will That is usually identified as a subjective absolute power. A totipotent power through which the subject may engage in unlimited legal changes within the limits and with the observance of the obligations Established by the law. These will established concept, which assumes the value of a éndoxon, to quote Aristotle, is the primary object of the research: where does it come from, and the more or less unconscious, hermeneutical assumptions. The hypostatization of that concept has been found in the elaboration of the Franciscan and, mainly school, in the thinking of Peter John Olivi, a philosopher and theologian so little known, as much of profound speculation, at least for the present. This concept of will caused fracture in the history of the Legal thought (and not only in the legal thought). A fracture I decided to name "voluntarical Revolution". Then I analysed the William of Ockham’s speculation, and his relevance in the fracture mentioned above. The reverberations of the same have been then illustrated in the thought of John Locke, Who, is located perfectly within the channel drawn From His medieval precursors

    Il carattere tra Hume e Kant. Sviluppi antropologici del concetto

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    2008/2009Il termine carattere rimanda a una nozione non di rado sottovalutata, le cui molteplici sfumature la rendono tuttavia particolarmente interessante in vista di un’analisi condotta dal punto di vista filosofico. Non si è inteso invece dare spazio a tutte quelle indagini di tipo psicologico, oggetto della «caratterologia», che esulano dunque dall’ambito del lavoro. In particolare, la presente ricerca si propone di indagare alcuni aspetti dell’utilizzo del concetto in David Hume e Immanuel Kant allo scopo di evidenziare alcuni possibili punti d’incontro tra i due autori. Interessante in tal senso è soprattutto l’interpretazione antropologica del concetto di carattere, a lungo sottovalutata dalla letteratura critica nel caso di entrambi gli autori. Essa consente invece di leggere l’Antropologia pragmatica kantiana (la cui seconda parte è appunto una Caratteristica antropologica) nel contesto della discussione settecentesca sul carattere, in parziale continuità con alcuni esiti del pensiero britannico settecentesco e con lo Hume saggista in particolare. Si apre così la possibilità di una rivalutazione del significato dell’«antropologia» in seno al pensiero filosofico del tempo, capace di mostrarne le linee di forza autonome e di circoscrivere, nel caso di Kant, il peso della tante volte affermata dipendenza dalla psicologia scolastica. Il lavoro muove da un’indagine, necessariamente schematica, della storia pregressa della nozione, che ha lo scopo di individuare il possibile filo conduttore per un’interpretazione in chiave antropologica (cap. I). A questo segue un’analisi dettagliata del concetto di carattere in Hume (cap. II) e Kant (cap. III) in vista di alcune conclusioni generali.XXII Cicl

    Between God and the Public Sphere. Mary Astell in English Constitutional History

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    La tesi ricostruisce la vita e la dottrina politica di Mary Astell (1666-1731), pensatrice politica, filosofa e teologa inglese. La sua riflessione costituisce un capitolo essenziale ma poco esplorato della storia costituzionale e del pensiero politico inglese. Malgrado il suo conservatorismo anglicano, Astell incarna una critica proto-femminista al patriarcato. Questa critica, pur essendo specialmente affilata nel pensiero di Astell, è condivisa, al netto di alcune significative differenze, anche da altre importanti pensatrici tra metà Seicento e inizio Settecento. Essa è definita come antipatriarcalismo materiale, in quanto mette in discussione i rapporti materiali di potere tra i sessi e si oppone all'antipatriarcalismo formale di Locke. L'antipatriarcalismo materiale si lega all'irruzione femminile nella sfera pubblica in formazione, durante la grande ribellione degli anni Quaranta del Seicento, che è contestuale allo sviluppo di una agency femminile in campo economico e giuridico. Insieme al dibattito politico-religioso, dunque, si considerano i trattati giuridici, i manuali di condotta, le petizioni e le profezie femminili del secolo delle Rivoluzioni, al fine di ricostruire il contesto giuridico e sociale a cui appartengono Astell e le altre donne “straordinarie” del tempo. In questo scenario Astell elabora la sua teologia politica, che implica una critica delle politiche di tolleranza e del tentativo dei dissenzienti e dei whig di riscrittura della storia. Astell teorizza la necessità dell'ordine politico, laddove tutto il potere è nelle mani di Dio e del re, Suo vicario sulla terra. L'autorità divina assoluta consente di pensare un'eguaglianza radicale delle anime davanti a Dio, condizione che rende la subordinazione delle donne agli uomini impossibile da sostenere. Questa rivendicazione dell’uguaglianza delle donne emerge con forza nel dibattito sull'educazione, in cui Astell interviene proponendo la creazione di un ritiro filosofico-religioso femminile che inauguri una sfera pubblica separata in grado di preparare le donne ad affrontare la società degli uomini.The thesis investigates the life and political thought of Mary Astell (1666-1731), English political thinker, philosopher and theologian. Her reflections constitute an essential but rather unexplored chapter of English political thought and Constitutional History. Despite her Anglican Toryism, she embodies a proto-feminist critique to early modern patriarchy. While this critique is most consistently advanced by Astell, it is shared, notwithstanding some significant differences, by other outstanding female thinkers of the Century of Revolution. It can be defined as material antipatriarchalism, insofar as it questions the material power relations between the sexes and opposes the formal antipatriarchalism of Locke. Material antipatriarchalism is strictly linked to the female irruption into the emerging public sphere during the great rebellion of 1640s, which concurs with women's economic and legal agency. Therefore, together with the political and religious debate, legal treatises, conduct books, female petitions and prophecies of XVII and early XVIII century are taken into account in order to reconstruct the judicial and social context to which Astell belongs. Against this backdrop Astell elaborates her own political theology, which entails a critique of toleration policies and of the dissenters' and Whigs' attempt to reinterpret the English past. Astell theorizes the necessity of political order, whereby all power is held by God and the King, His vicar on earth. Absolute divine authority, in turn, paves the way to the radical equality of all souls in front of God, a condition that makes women's subordination to men unsustainable. The claim to women's equality is strongly reflected in the educational debate, where Astell intervenes proposing the creation of a philosophical-religious retirement that should lead to a separate public sphere able to prepare women to confront the male-run society

    Il sistema della ricchezza. Economia politica e problema del metodo in Adam Smith

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    Introduction. The book is a study in Adam Smith's system of ideas; its aim is to reconstruct the peculiar framework that Adam Smith’s work provided for the shaping of a semi-autonomous new discipline, political economy; the approach adopted lies somewhere in-between the history of ideas and the history of economic analysis. My two claims are: i) The Wealth of Nations has a twofold structure, including a `natural history' of opulence and an `imaginary machine' of wealth. The imaginary machine is a kind of Newtonian theory, whose connecting links are principles; provided either by `partial' characteristics of human nature or by analoga of physical mechanisms transferred to the social world; ii) a domain of the economic, understood as a self-standing social sub-system, was discovered first by Adam Smith. His `discovery' of the new continent of the economic was an `unintended result' of a deviation in his voyage to the never-found archipelago of natural jurisprudence. 1. Imaginary machines and invisible chains: natural philosophy and method. The first chapter reconstructs Smith's views on the method in natural philosophy, presented primarily in the History of Astronomy (HA). The peculiar kind of semi-sceptical Newtonianism which permeates the essay is highlighted. Its reconstruction of the history of one natural science is shown to be based on the assumptions of Hume’s epistemology, and to lead to a self-aware deadlock. Smith's dilemma is between an essentialist realism and sceptical instrumentalism; the Cartesian presuppositions he shares with Hume and with the 18th century as a whole make it impossible for him to overcome his dilemma. The following chapters will show how, on the one hand, Smith's skeptical methodology encourages him in the enterprise to `carve off' a new self-contained discipline and how, on the other hand, his epistemological dilemma is reflected in the inner tensions of his moral and political theory as well as in a number of basic oscillations concerning the status of the new discipline. 2. Chessboards and clocks: moral philosophy and method. The second chapter reconstructs Smith's views on the method in the parallel field of moral philosophy, including the theory of moral sentiments and natural jurisprudence. I argue that The Theory of Moral Sentiments, when considered together with with the Lectures on Jurisprudence, where Smith's peculiar version of a `weaker' form of natural law is presented, wins special interest, not only for the history of ethics but even more for the history of political theory and the social sciences. The two most striking features of Smith's work in this area are highlighted. First, his effort at reformulating the `practical science' is a methodologically self-aware attempt at applying the Newtonian method to moral subjects. Secondly, this attempt ends in a stalemate as two distinguished kinds of normative order are introduced: one ultimate order of Reason, ultimately justifiable but inaccessible, and one weaker order of our `natural sentiments', to which we have empirical access, but which is so variable as to lack any ultimate value as a basis for grounding our normative claims. These two parallel conundrums may arguably account for the author's inability to publish during his lifetime both The History of Astronomy and the projected history and theory of law and government. 3. Wheels, dams, and gravitation: the structure of scientific argument in The Wealth of Nations. The third chapter provides the core of the book, dealing with the structure of the argument in WN. I argue that the main presupposition that makes the shift possible from a `natural history' to a `system' approach is the Newtonian contrast of `mathematical' with `physical' explanation; that is, Smith drops any discussion of the "original qualities" of human nature that could account for economic behaviour, while introducing, as `principles' for the system, a set of `hypothetical' statements of `observed' regularities in human behaviour and of `observed' super-individual self-regulating mechanisms. In bringing this presupposition to light, the coexistence of a teleological with a mechanistic approach is clarified; fresh light is shed on the notion of the invisible hand by a comparison of its occurrence in Smith with the occurrence of the same expression (until now overlooked) in the correspondence between Newton and Cotes. Finally, the peculiar semi-prescriptive and semi-descriptive character of political economy are highlighted, and the consistency of Smith's `impure' semi-prescriptive social science, when understood in his own terms, is defended against familiar charges with inconsistency and against even more familiar strained modernizations. 4. Apples, deer, and frivolous trinkets: the construction of the economic. The fourth chapter draws consequences from the third, examining how Smith's achievement in political economy, marking its transition to scientific status, carried a re-description of the phenomena, creating the comparatively independent and unified field of the economic. Smith's achievement is interpreted not as the `discovery' of an autonomous character already possessed by the economy out there, so much as a Gestalt-switch by which our perception of social phenomena is modified making us `see' the partial order of the economy as an isolated system. To sum up, the autonomy of the economic in social reality and the autonomy of the economic in social consciousness are shown to be two sides of one process. 5. Concluding considerations: Political economy and the Enlightenment halved. A few suggestions on the status of economic theory two centuries after The Wealth of Nations in its relationship to ‘practical philosophy’ are illustrated

    La giustizia degli invisibili. L’identificazione del soggetto morale, a ripartire da Kant.

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    L'intera storia delle istituzioni umane è piena di società discriminatorie, che davano e danno di volta in volta per scontato che gli schiavi, gli stranieri, le donne e ogni altro genere di "diversi" non siano soggetti morali e giuridici nella loro pienezza. Ma se - seguendo Kant - il soggetto morale è libero, e se la libertà non può essere descritta, chi sia il soggetto morale non solo non è ovvio, ma non può mai esserlo. Se il soggetto dell'etica e della politica deve essere pensato come un soggetto libero, una filosofia pratica così impostata non sa e non può "vedere" coloro di cui parla. Si pone dunque la questione della "giustizia degli invisibili": è possibile costruire un'etica e una politica che assumano la soggettività morale come un problema e non come un dato di fatto

    La lingua dei liberi: istituzione e governo in Rousseau

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    The present reasearch work aims at tracing within Rousseau's thought a few philosophical issues that allow us to read his political elaboration in a different way than a certain line of interpretation – from Hegel and more recently the Begriffsgeschichte – that is inclined to include it absolutely in the pattern of modern history of power, sovreignty and representation. It is clear that, in order to reach such a target, an outplacement of the Social Contract is needed, by reshaping it on the basis of a problematic context that has been very often ignored by the historiography of political thought. The first and most important problem that needs to be discussed is Rousseau's philosophy of history, that appears radically conflicting with the classical theory of the social pact and with its epistemological and anthropological premises. The second fundamental step lies in pointing out that the political dimension in Rousseau is entirely marked by the crucial role of the social space and of its autonoumous set of rules, especially as concerns the decisive relationship between institutions and the forms of knowledge and opinion: this allows us to understand the importance of a certain interpretation of the topic of social needs. Besides, the research work underlines how the problem of the law might and should be assumed on a governmental level, that can be observed in its whole extension only if we understand Rousseau's pedagogical issues as a paradigmatic structure that must replace any possibile anthropology, focusing on a matter of permanent balance between resources and needs: in such a perspective, pedagogy in Rousseau turns out to be a philosophical operation that is capable to assume liberty in a dynamic relationship with institutions, romovimg from the notion of individual any political potential. In the end, all these aspects give us the chance to reconsider the role of the law in Rousseau from a different point of view on the basis of its relationship with the right, showing that it can be read as the materialization of a balance between commom needs and common forces, and not simply as the intersection of independent wills and particular interests: if we follow this path, the problem of generality, that makes up the Social contract, does not merely appear as a perfect expression of the sovreign model any more, but as the space of production of institutional structures that configure the community's liguistic pattern and its necessary frames of communication. The whole conceptual itinerary was also made possibile thanks to the firm belief that Rousseau was influenced by a specic inheritance of the scientific thought, that he grasped above all from Condillac (whose importance has not been appropriately pointed out yet) and that carries out in his philosophical reflection a radical displacement of the juridical field from the cartesian reason to Newton's hypothetical patterns, within a critical genealogy of rationalit

    La non-distopia di Jeremy Bentham. Il Panopticon tra utilitarismo e riformismo

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    Between 1786 and 1791 Jeremy Bentham conceived and complete the drafting of the Panopticon. It is a proposal of prison's reform to which he will work for twenty years, both introducing changes and clarifications to the original text, and trying to give it concrete implementation. Despite the intellectual and economic efforts made by the philosopher for the construction of the prison, and although it is one of the few texts he published, the Panopticon was mostly overlooked by critics and, among those who have dealt with it, there were who have considered it as a theoretical exercise, and many were those who have reduced it to a utopian model and, most often, as an inhuman tool, and tracked in it an example of dystopia. A crucial role in this regard has played the reading proposed by Foucault in Surveiller et punir (1975) in which the Panopticon is presented as the paradigm of society conceived by Bentham, a society dominated by a disciplinary power. These interpretations are the result of a misunderstanding of the Bentham's work produced by its contextualization both as compared to the historical period and the particular socio-economic conditions in which it was conceived, and as to a greater and more decisive consequences with respect to the philosophical system of which it flows. The Panopticon is proof positive of the reformatory spirit of its author and it is conceived by him as a powerful tool for the realization of the "artificial harmony" between individual interest and collective interest that is the basic problem of the English philosopher's whole political-legal project. Starting from the centrality that the criminal dimension occupies within the Bentham's philosophical and reformatory system and from the priority that security takes on among the purposes of government, my research aims to offer a new reading of the text, that without consider it like a paradigm of each proposal promoted by Jeremy Bentham, both ethical and more specifically political, recognize it as a key moment in the development of utilitarian philosopher's thought: the practical outcome of a comprehensive theoretical work, much stranger both utopian horizon, and despite the dominant control, the dystopian prospect

    La non-distopia di Jeremy Bentham. Il Panopticon tra utilitarismo e riformismo

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    Between 1786 and 1791 Jeremy Bentham conceived and complete the drafting of the Panopticon. It is a proposal of prison's reform to which he will work for twenty years, both introducing changes and clarifications to the original text, and trying to give it concrete implementation. Despite the intellectual and economic efforts made by the philosopher for the construction of the prison, and although it is one of the few texts he published, the Panopticon was mostly overlooked by critics and, among those who have dealt with it, there were who have considered it as a theoretical exercise, and many were those who have reduced it to a utopian model and, most often, as an inhuman tool, and tracked in it an example of dystopia. A crucial role in this regard has played the reading proposed by Foucault in Surveiller et punir (1975) in which the Panopticon is presented as the paradigm of society conceived by Bentham, a society dominated by a disciplinary power. These interpretations are the result of a misunderstanding of the Bentham's work produced by its contextualization both as compared to the historical period and the particular socio-economic conditions in which it was conceived, and as to a greater and more decisive consequences with respect to the philosophical system of which it flows. The Panopticon is proof positive of the reformatory spirit of its author and it is conceived by him as a powerful tool for the realization of the "artificial harmony" between individual interest and collective interest that is the basic problem of the English philosopher's whole political-legal project. Starting from the centrality that the criminal dimension occupies within the Bentham's philosophical and reformatory system and from the priority that security takes on among the purposes of government, my research aims to offer a new reading of the text, that without consider it like a paradigm of each proposal promoted by Jeremy Bentham, both ethical and more specifically political, recognize it as a key moment in the development of utilitarian philosopher's thought: the practical outcome of a comprehensive theoretical work, much stranger both utopian horizon, and despite the dominant control, the dystopian prospect

    La non-distopia di Jeremy Bentham. Il Panopticon tra utilitarismo e riformismo

    Get PDF
    Between 1786 and 1791 Jeremy Bentham conceived and complete the drafting of the Panopticon. It is a proposal of prison's reform to which he will work for twenty years, both introducing changes and clarifications to the original text, and trying to give it concrete implementation. Despite the intellectual and economic efforts made by the philosopher for the construction of the prison, and although it is one of the few texts he published, the Panopticon was mostly overlooked by critics and, among those who have dealt with it, there were who have considered it as a theoretical exercise, and many were those who have reduced it to a utopian model and, most often, as an inhuman tool, and tracked in it an example of dystopia. A crucial role in this regard has played the reading proposed by Foucault in Surveiller et punir (1975) in which the Panopticon is presented as the paradigm of society conceived by Bentham, a society dominated by a disciplinary power. These interpretations are the result of a misunderstanding of the Bentham's work produced by its contextualization both as compared to the historical period and the particular socio-economic conditions in which it was conceived, and as to a greater and more decisive consequences with respect to the philosophical system of which it flows. The Panopticon is proof positive of the reformatory spirit of its author and it is conceived by him as a powerful tool for the realization of the "artificial harmony" between individual interest and collective interest that is the basic problem of the English philosopher's whole political-legal project. Starting from the centrality that the criminal dimension occupies within the Bentham's philosophical and reformatory system and from the priority that security takes on among the purposes of government, my research aims to offer a new reading of the text, that without consider it like a paradigm of each proposal promoted by Jeremy Bentham, both ethical and more specifically political, recognize it as a key moment in the development of utilitarian philosopher's thought: the practical outcome of a comprehensive theoretical work, much stranger both utopian horizon, and despite the dominant control, the dystopian prospect
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