The Mediterranean Legacy in the Concept of Sovereignty: A Case of Legal and Philosophical Hybridity

The ideas of centralized political power and monarchy that emerged from the Mediterranean world are among the most important philosophical bases for the concept of sovereignty. My thesis is that the normative idea of an absolute, independent, and exclusive center of power originates in a complex case of philosophical hybridity. It is the outcome of the alternation between the conception of the Sovereign as representing the supreme power (the indirect theory) and the conception of the Sovereign as directly containing that power (the direct theory). The former conception is usually associated with the history of Western political culture and the passage from Greek to Roman ideas of public authority. The latter conception is typically associated with the understanding of supreme political power found in Eastern culture, as exemplified in Persian kingship and the Byzantine theocracy. My intention is to show how the modern concept of sovereignty has emerged from a mixture of these two conceptions. In fact, the early philosophical structure of sovereignty in both its monarchical and its democratic versions can be summed up in the notion of secularized transcendence. The sovereign benefits simultaneously from both the conceptual model of subjectivity (the indirect theory) as a mask that represents a center of attribution (le Roi est mort, vive le Roi), and the conceptual model of a material supreme subject (the direct theory) who embodies the primacy of an authority that is beyond actual social relationships (l’État c’est moi)

Depressed Mood, Rumination, and Heart Rate Variability in At-Risk University Students

openBackground: Substantial evidence supports the association between rumination and depressive symptoms. Furthermore, autonomic dysregulation, as indexed by low levels of heart rate variability (HRV) is related to both maladaptive emotional regulation (e.g., rumination) and depressive symptoms. Aim of the study: The purpose of this study was to investigate the interplay between heart rate variability, rumination, and depressive symptoms. Specifically, this study focused on the possible moderating role of heart rate variability in the association between rumination and depression. Methods: 31 individuals took part in the study (10 males, 21 females). Self-report questionnaires were used to assess rumination and depressive symptoms (Ruminative Response Scale and Beck Depression Inventory-II, respectively). A time-domain measure of vagally mediated heart rate variability (rMSSD) was computed from short electrocardiogram recordings obtained through a smartphone-based photoelectric volumetric pulse wave assay. Results and conclusions: The findings of this study indicate that both rumination and vagally mediated HRV (as measured by rMSSD) are significantly associated with depressive symptoms. Specifically, those with greater rumination and those with lower heart rate variability exhibited higher levels of depressive symptoms. Additionally, the results demonstrate that the association between rumination and depression is moderated by heart rate variability: among individuals with greater rumination, those with reduced HRV had higher levels of depression. These findings highlight the complex interplay between autonomic dysregulation and cognitive dysfunctions involved in depressive symptoms. The study suggests the importance of considering both cognitive-affective (i.e., rumination) and autonomic (HRV) factors to improve the understanding of depression and develop targeted interventions for its management. Limitations of this study include its cross-sectional design, which restricts causal inferences and the assessment of predictive relationships, and the potential limitations introduced by conducting the study remotely, suggesting the need for future longitudinal research and replication in controlled laboratory settings

Some topics on Higgs bundles over projective varieties and their moduli spaces

In this thesis we study vector bundles on projective varieties and their moduli spaces. In Chapters 2, 3 and 4 we recall some basic notions as Higgs bundles, decorated bundles and generalized parabolic sheaves and introduce the problem we want to study. In chapter 5, we study Higgs bundles on nodal curves. After moving the problem on the normalization of the curve, starting from a Higgs bundle we obtain a generalized parabolic Higgs bundle. Using decorated bundles we are able to construct a projective moduli space which parametrizes equivalence classes of Higgs bundles on a nodal curve X. This chapter is an extract of a joint work with Andrea Pustetto Later on Chapter 6 is devoted to the study of holomorphic pairs (or twisted Higgs bundles) on elliptic curve. Holomorphic pairs were introduced by Nitsure and they are a natural generalization of the concept of Higgs bundles. In this Chapter we extend a result of E. Franco, O. Garc\'ia-Prada And P.E. Newstead valid for Higgs bundles to holomorphic pairs. Finally the last Chapter describes a joint work with Professor Ugo Bruzzo. We study Higgs bundles over varieties with nef tangent bundle. In particular generalizing a result of Nitsure we prove that if a Higgs bundle $(E,\phi)$ over the variety X with nef tangent remains semisatble when pulled-back to any smooth curve then it discrimiant vanishes