Libri Online First - Rivista di filosofia neo-scolastica

The article compares Descartes’ and Spinoza’s theory of passions through an analysis of their treatment of pity or commiseration, envy, favor and indignation. By analyzing these affects, the article seeks to accomplish two objectives. on the one hand, it aims to show that complexities of the relationship between Spinoza’s Ethica and Descartes’s Passions de l’ame are ignored if the latter is considered simply as a polemical target of the former. on the other hand, it aims to clarify how Spinoza, starting from anthropological premises opposed to Descartes’, can present a model of a strong or generous man that has many elements in common Descartes’.

The aim of the paper is to address the main meta-metaphysical question i.e. whether is it possi- ble to do metaphysics and, in the case of an affirmative answer, how should we do it? With such an aim in mind, we will sketch the broad context in which these meta-metaphysical questions arose in the philosophical literature (§ 1); then, we will present what we take to be the three most widespread conceptions of metaphysics that are available in the analytic tradition: the neo-Quinean (§ 2), metaphysics as the science of possibilities (§ 3) and metaphysics as the study of the fundamental structures of reality (§ 4). throughout these paragraphs we will criticize these positions, before cashing out our proposal (§ 5). our interpretation seems to be a species of the recently proposed approach dubbed ‘naturalized metaphysics’; the difference that our proposal has with similar understanding of metaphysics will be clear in the last section.

The problem of the civil religion has received much attention and commentary from the historians of modern political ideas. Less attention has been given to the medieval frame and tradition on this topic. The article focuses on the civil role of the pagan religion in some medieval authors, and particularly in Marsilius of Padua’s political thought (ch. V, first Dictio of Defensor pacis)...

In this paper I will inquire the concepts of ἀνάγκη/Ἀνάγκη and πειθώ/Πειθώ in Parmenides’ lost Περὶ φύσεως. I will focus, in particular, on the fragments of the poem in which these words recur. I will focus, also, all the fragmets in which recur the substantive τὸ χρεών and the verb χράω...

This contribution aims at distinguishing between simplifying narratives and narratives of complexity and at showing their links with empathy and compassion, in order to make it easier to use narratives in a constructive, respectful of human vulnerability, and supportive direction...

In the 1960s Foucault designed a work entitled The Thought of Origin. This article aims to show how the book was written in various publications. In fact, the theme of origin is present in Foucault since the first research and continues throughout the 1960s, always faced by relating Husserl and Nietzsche. This path, characterized by ruptures and second thoughts, presents a progressive distancing from the phenomenological matrix present in the Introduction to Traum und Existenz and in the History of Madness, in which Foucault is under the influence of Merleau-Ponty...

The paper provides an interpretation of Putnam’s ontological pluralism as articulated in the Philosophical Papers and The Meaning and the Moral Sciences, with respect especially to Quine’s ontological relativity. The model-theoretic argument is usually taken to support an anti-realist ontological view analogous to Quine’s, on which determining the meaning of words univocally is impossible. Contrary to this view, the paper argues that Putnam’s criticism of the indeterminacy of translation shows that the rejection of metaphysical realism does not amount to an anti-realist view...

The reflection about cruelty and barbarism in a philosophical context sets itself as one of the most significant links in a debate which emerged in France at the beginning of the Eighties surrounding the Western civilization crisis. Such a reflection represents a long wave of a discussion originating in the first decades of the last century among the so-called «Literature of the crisis»...