Amartya Sen: la speranza di un mondo “migliorabile”

Amartya Sen come filosofo politico e teorico della giustizia: l'unico, forse, che abbia proposto una convincente mediazione fra le etiche formali del "giusto" e quelle sostantive della "vita buona"

“Das Unbehagen in der Multi-Kultur“. Phenomenology of Discontent in a Multi-cultural Society, and How to Take Care of It

More and more often are psychotherapists confronted with patients from other cultures. This paper aims at showing how many things psychoanalysis and dynamic psychotherapy can, and must, learn from social sciences such as cultural anthropology, social psychology, and political philosophy, in order to better do their job in multicultural societies. With special regard to the problem of two-way translation: from/into our theory

Che fare del marxismo?

Che cosa è vivo e che cosa è morto nel pensiero di Marx? Quali parti devono essere abbandonate? Quali modificate? E come? In particolare: l'a. propone di passare da una teoria materialistica del valore a una teoria francamente fisicalistica e, su questa base, ipotizza che siamo ormai fuori dal modo di produzione capitalistico: dentro un tipo di società dove l'estorsione di plusvalore funziona in modo affatto diverso dal passato

Mamma,li turchi!

The Western stereotype of "the Arab" is analysed and interpreted as a kind of collective dream, where some historical events play the same role as the day's residue in Freud's theory of dream

Otto perle in cerca di un filo: frammenti di filosofia della comunicazione nell’antichità greca

Il concetto greco di “dialogo”. Come funziona l’insegnamento (i “princìpi” della comunicazione). Le forme rituali della comunicazione didascalica, da Pitagora all’aristotelismo cristiano; filosofia come concerto. Platone, Kulturkritiker e teorico della comunicazione; “filosofia sceneggiata” ed “educazione mista”. La comunicazione come responsabilità sociale. L’intimità come fuga dal mondo, nel declino della pólis. Aristotele: la comunicazione come ginnastica dell’anima. Epicuro: l’amicizia come mikrópolis. La kosmópolis degli stoici. Comunicazione, segreto. mistero

Life is now! Time discounting and crime: evidence from the Italian regions (2002-2007)

This paper tests the relationship between time preferences and crime rates as posited by Davis (1988), whose theoretical analysis suggests that individuals’ attitude towards the future significantly affect their propensity to commit crime. Our empirical analysis is based on a panel of Italian regions for the period 2002-2007. Various proxies for time preferences are considered: the consumer credit share out of the total amount of loans to households, the share of obese individuals out of the total population, and the rate of marriages out of the total population. In line with the theoretical prediction, our empirical analysis confirms that where people are more impatient and discount the future more heavily, property and violent crimes are higher. Results are robust to a number of alternative specifications including covariates drawn from the literature on the determinants of crime.Time Preferences, Property Crime, Violent Crime, Italian Regions, Panel data.

Assessing the real benefits of surgery for degenerative lumbar spinal stenosis without instability and spondylolisthesis: a single surgeon experience with a mean 8-year follow-up

Background: The degenerative lumbar spinal stenosis is one of the most commonly treated spinal disorders in older adults; despite its increasing frequency, it is not yet clear what the most effective therapy might be. The aim of this study is to investigate the very long term results of a homogenized cohort of patients suffering from lumbar spinal stenosis: the first subset of patients operated on with laminectomy and the second subset of patients was also advised to undergo laminectomy but never operated on. Methods: Patients from both subgroups were advised to undergo surgery, according to the same criteria, in the period between 2000 and 2010 and were re-evaluated in the period between January and December 2016. Results: Comparing the two subsets of patients, both suffering from clinically relevant LSS, the first subset returns a statistically significant clinical improvement at follow-up. The rate of excellent results decreases over years. Iatrogenic spinal instability incidence was found to be 3.8% in the present cohort. Conclusions: Although the improvement of the first postoperative years decreases over time and despite the lack of general consensus, the lack of established shared guidelines and the limitations of this research, the results support the utilisation of surgery for the management of this condition. Level of Evidence: 3

Homo oeconomicus. Paradigma, critiche, revisioni

Pantaleoni and Pareto re-established economic theory on the basis of homo oeconomicus which, despite criticisms, went on to become a strangely popular concept, not only among economists, but even in common parlance, where it has assumed a confusing variety of meanings. With a view to setting things in order, this book distinguishes: the methodological hypotheses, which could possibly be corrected on the basis of new economic psychology; the weak anthropologies, retrievable as 'given abstractions' within typical contexts; and finally the extreme versions, that reduce human nature to absolute egoism. The author makes a radical criticism of the latter, drawing upon the extensive tools derived from psychology, philosophical anthropology and political philosophy, and thus succeeds in demonstrating their lack of empirical foundation, their conceptual inconsistency and their ideological dangerousness