Umanità come utopia a più voci

In the complexe and multifaceted Heller’s works, the voice of the ideal and of the absolute constantly resonates. In the fifth chapter of Philosophy of History in Fragments (1993), we find an elaboration of the Enlightment’s ideal of Humanität as Kultur or civilisation. Such utopistic or “contrafactual” (Kant) ideal must not be realized, yet it is rescued through a polyphony, a “mosaic of differences”, whose model is the conversation among  equals, a sort of speech-act, a drama that creates niches of freedom and happyness in the world of “unsocial sociability”.In the complexe and multifaceted Heller’s works, the voice of the ideal and of the absolute constantly resonates. In the fifth chapter of Philosophy of History in Fragments (1993), we find an elaboration of the Enlightment’s ideal of Humanität as Kultur or civilisation. Such utopistic or “contrafactual” (Kant) ideal must not be realized, yet it is rescued through a polyphony, a “mosaic of differences”, whose model is the conversation among  equals, a sort of speech-act, a drama that creates niches of freedom and happyness in the world of “unsocial sociability”

Esperimenti in etica

The “neurosciences of ethics” are in many ways enriching with experimental dates the field of moral psychology, that is of the research that aims at understanding which emotions and which feelings, which capacities of ideations, imagination and reflection collaborate in sustaining and motivating a moral life. From this point of view, it becomes clear why the recent research on the brain are agitating the debate on ethics.The recent expansion of the interest of neurosciences to “not observable” aspects of the behavior, such as personality traits, emotions and moral reasoning, has led to the idea of experimental ethics (on the line of the experimental philosophy), with the right intent to correct the artificiality and of the universalism of much contemporary moral philosophy, by throwing a bridge between empirical and experimental research and normative questions. Many experiments provide however ambiguous and contradictory evidences in relation to the assumption of an original field of sharing, of an original relationality.    

Guido Davide Neri: filosofo della vita

Remembering and thinking the intellectual experience of Guido Davide Neri leads to face up to the philosophy issue: yesterday (not just Guido’s education and teaching period, but even his philosophical one to which he dedicated his most explicit book on the topic: Aporie della realizzazione) and today. Guido Neri found in Patocka and in Kosik especially a very living theoretical philosophy that had the painful chance to become active in a political way. Probably, Guido Neri has gone on testing this philosophical model, working on Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, until his last studies on Caravaggio, turning it into his work’s program: a phenomenology of perception is an essential part of a philosophy history. One thing is certain: nowadays for the uncertain philosophy it won’t be easy to forget this program

L’Antropocene o il mondo che ha ruotato il suo asse

The proposed naming of a new geological era, the Anthropocene, has not only enlivened the notoriously placid waters of geology, but has sparked artistic, political, anthropological, historical and philosophical imagination. Global warming challenges the imagination because it tests sensitive perception with its distribution on micro and macro scales in time and space, presenting itself as an accumulation effect and at the same time as geographically scattered. The limits of everyday language are great, despite the literary and poetic efforts to express the unprecedented experience of a nature that has become unnatural, of a world that has rotated on its axis. In question, even before language, is sensitive perception. In a data and visual culture, do the models, the diagrams, the satellite images, the statistics, the "numbers" that flood the media, make us "see" and "feel" something? The visual arts and the exhibitions dedicated in recent years to the Anthropocene have become an important source of experience and knowledge of the phenomena of the climate crisis. They manage to make the invisible visible, to provoke shock by intensifying sensitivity, favoring through an emotional-sensitive experience the knowledge of an elusive reality. The work of the photograph Edward Burtynsky is discussed as a striking example of representation of the Anthropocene

Europa perduta, Europa da ricostruire, Maria Zambrano

Maria Zambrano is one of the thinkers who, together with Simone Weil and Hannah Arendt, gave a fundamental contribution in order to the understand the historical-political events that marked the European history of the 20th century. Zambrano’s thought appears to many scholars to be divided between a reflection on history and democracy and a "knowledge of the soul" oriented towards existential themes. The Spanish philosopher not only reflected on the idea of ​​Europe, but personally experienced the most dramatic events of Europe during the 20th century.  From the historical-political tragedy of the Europe of her time Zambrano derives the intuition of a redemption, which is not an individual salvation, but is the possibility of hope, of a new idea of ​​Europe, fruit of its deepest crisis. Zambrano's thought on Europe highlights the need, today stronger than ever, for an experience of history lived in the tension between its dramatic, violent, destructive aspects and the opening to dreams, delusions of grandeur and the need for truth. Zambrano is a philosopher of hope who teaches the importance of a tragic vision of history

Pensare con il cuore

La filosofia contemporanea, in particolare la fenomenologia husserliana, e il tomismo ";possono intendersi"; secondo Edith Stein, che ripercorre la questione dell'essere, centrale nella dottrina tomista, facendo tuttavia ricorso all'immagine trinitaria proveniente dall'insegnamento di Agostino.Si delinea così il rapporto fra l'io e il tu che, nella persona umana, costituisce l'essere come amore, in quanto la persona si viene costruendo a partire essenzialmente dall'incontro, secondo la logica della relazione che si rivela appunto come logica dell'amore

BeppoSAX Observations of 1 Jy BL Lacertae Objects. I

We present new BeppoSAX observations of seven BL Lacertae objects selected from the 1 Jy sample plus one additional source. The collected data cover the energy range 0.1 - 10 keV (observer's frame), reaching ~ 50 keV for one source (BL Lac). All sources characterized by a peak in their multifrequency spectra at infrared/optical energies (i.e., of the LBL type) display a relatively flat (alpha_x ~ 0.9) X-ray spectrum, which we interpret as inverse Compton emission. Four objects (2/3 of the LBL) show some evidence for a low-energy steepening which is likely due to the synchrotron tail merging into the inverse Compton component around ~ 1 - 3 keV. If this were generally the case with LBL, it would explain why the 0.1 - 2.4 keV ROSAT spectra of our sources are systematically steeper than the BeppoSAX ones (by ~ 0.5 in alpha_x). The broad-band spectral energy distributions fully confirm this picture and a synchrotron inverse Compton model allows us to derive the physical parameters (intrinsic power, magnetic field, etc.) of our sources. Combining our results with those obtained by BeppoSAX on BL Lacs covering a wide range of synchrotron peak frequencies, we confirm and clarify the dependence of the X-ray spectral index on synchrotron peak frequency originally found in ROSAT data.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS. Postscript file also available at http://icarus.stsci.edu/~padovani/xrayspectra_papers.htm