Philosophy In Italy Research Articles

Greek Philosophy as a Religious Quest for the Divine

Philosophy has always been parasitic on other bodies of knowledge, especially religious thought. Greek philosophy in Italy emerged as a purification of Orphic religious traditions. Orphic votaries adopted various disciplines in the attempt to become divine, which led Pythagoras and Empedocles to define philosophy as a path to divinity. According to Plato and Aristotle, the goal of philosophy is to become “as much like a god as is humanly possible.” Classical Greek philosophy is not the study of the divine but the project of becoming divine, a project which it shares with Christianity. Greek philosophy and Christianity have different paths to the divine, but they share a common aspiratio

Country Report

After a brief presentation of the Italian education system, the article (a) describes the current situation of the teaching of philosophy in Italy, then (b) it presents the method and the laws that regulate this teaching. Moreover it illustrates the current compulsory philosophical curriculum in grammar schools and the situation of teacher training in philosophy.

Italian Theory and Feminist Materialism: A Reappraisal

ABSTRACT This article presents three general characteristics of Italian Theory: the ontological primacy of conflict in politics, the interrelation of nature and history, and the importance of work in any philosophy of praxis. The three represent the vital core of political philosophy in Italy, commonly grouped under the heading of biopolitics. I contend that, to achieve a better formulation of the relation between the three themes mentioned, we should not forget the work of materialist feminists such as Fortunati and Federici. Their work constitutes an original development of some of the central themes of Italian Theory. The article explores first the idea of an extension of the borders of work, taking reproductive labour into account. Secondly, it covers the idea of primitive accumulation as a continuous silent conflict underpinning society. Lastly, it addresses the idea that female oppression by males produces the reproductive body, which is simultaneously historical and material.

The two souls of Schopenhauerism: analysis of new historiographical categories

The Wirkungsgeschichte of Schopenhauerism is a complex mixture of events, encounters, influences and transformations. In order to orient oneself concerning such an articulated phenomenon, it is necessary to have valid hermeneutical tools at hand. In this contribution, I am going to propose a reading of the history of the effects of Schopenhauerism through new and effective historiographical categories that resulted from the research conducted by the Interdepartmental Research Centre on Arthur Schopenhauer and his School at the University of Salento. On the one hand, I will refer to Domenico Fazio’s studies on the Schopenhauer-Schuleand, on the other, to Fabio Ciracì’s research on the reception of Schopenhauer’s philosophy in Italy. This approach will reveal how the formulation of the so-called “two souls” of Schopenhauerism, the romantic and the illuministic, allows us to unravel the multifaceted panorama of the history of the effects of Schopenhauerian philosophy, in line with the subdivision within the Schopenhauer-Schule of metaphysical and heretical thinkers.

Princely Piety and Political Philosophy in Italy, ca. 1430–1530

Whilst it has become commonplace to acknowledge the political and public role of a prince’s investments in the religious sphere, little attention has been paid to contemporary theories of statecraft that discuss and throw light upon such activities, beyond the extensive treatment of magnificence within art history. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to describe two distinct but related strands visible in contemporary writings on princehood and rulership-one concerned with piety as a princely virtue, its instrumentalization and display; the other with the divine sanction of rule and its implications for the image and duties of the prince-which together amount to an illuminating theorization of princely piety. These two strands, extending our roster of contemporary terms and concepts beyond the now-traditional focus on magnificence, amount to a useful framework for any understanding of the practical deployment of princely piety, and of its reception in the encomiastic literature.

L’avvio della ricerca empirica in campo educativo in Italia: il contributo di Calonghi e Visalberghi

The Start of Empirical Research in Education in Italy: The Contribution of Calonghi and Visalberghi While the dominant philosophy in Italy at the end of World War II was not favourable to pedagogical experimentation, some initiatives aiming to innovate – in the activist sense – contents and methods of school teaching represented the remote causes of the start of educational studies with the positive method. These initiatives facilitated the action of empirical research pioneers in the field of education, which developed in Italy in the 1950s for three main reasons: 1) the influence of experiments conducted in US schools, 2) the spreading of Dewey’s thought, 3) the impetus given by the Institute of Pedagogy of the Salesians to the study of educational sciences. Calonghi and Visalberghi were the first to promote and organize two lines of empirical research on educational facts which contributed to the full scientific recognition of Experimental Pedagogy and Docimology in the mid-1970s. In order to avoid technicalities, the researchers who use the experimental method feel the need to frame their specialized studies within a vast pedagogical horizon.

From Kant to Croce. Modern Philosophy in Italy 1800-1950

From Kant to Croce. Modern Philosophy in Italy 1800-1950

Political Philosophy in Italy: The Influence of John Rawls

The article has three parts. The first is devoted to the analysis of some features of Italian philosophy that might be used to explain why analytic philosophy of politics, and analytic philosophy in general, has few practitioners. The second part gives an explanation of the relatively small audience Rawls has among liberals in Italy. Some features of the Italian liberal tradition might be helpful in explaining this fact; hence a short presentation of these features (as exemplified by Croce) is outlined. The third part deals with the reception of Rawls's ideas among the small group of analytic political philosophers in Italy.

M. F. Sciaccas’s Ontology and Philosophical Tradition

Michele Federico Sciacca (1908—1975) is little-known outside the Roman world. Meanwhile, he is the author of a comprehensive metaphysical system of a Platonic-Augustinian-Rosminian and, at the later stage, also of a Thomist, orientation. The reason for a seemingly insufficient interest to Sciacca’s philosophy in Italy may be that he has elaborated no particular histo- rico-philosophical methodology. Even his metaphysics, despite the renaissance of the metaphysical tendency among Italian philosophers, enjoys rather small popularity and is outweighted by the Padua school oriented towards the classical Aristotelean metaphysics and influenced by the Tubingen school (in the first place, by H.-J. Kramer ).

LA MUSICA NELLA FILOSOFIA NATURALE DEL SEICENTO IN ITALIA

Abstract<title> SUMMARY </title>The leit-motiv of the present description of the relationship between music and natural philosophy in Italy in the seventeenth century is a recurrent theme: the mathematical or « Pythagorean » approach to music as opposed to the experimental or « Aristoxenian » approach. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries this opposition, rendered pertinent by the cultural transformations that accompanied the consolidation of modern science, gained in complexity and took on original forms and meanings. The present paper, in the first instance, outlines the major traditions of classical musical thought and its medieval heritage. Secondly, it provides a survey of the more significant attempts at renewing musical theory that were carried out during the second half of the Cinquecento in the light of the Italian renaissance of mathematics of the XV and XVI centuries. It continues with an examination of the musical ideas of Galileo and offers a primary documentation of the interest displayed by representatives of the Galilean school in the science of sound during the first half of the Seicento.Finally it discusses, for the first time, the theories of sound of F. M. Grimaldi and D. Bartoli and the musical doctrines of P. Mengoli within the framework of the principal philosophical elements of Italian culture between 1660 and 1680.

Hegel's Political Philosophy in Italy

The political philosophy of Hegel, in particular his concept of the state, acquired new impulse early in the 1930a. The crisis of the perlimentary system in Italy or rather of its liberal cultural tradition was apparently the reason for it. Yet this return to Hegel also brought about an improved ability of Italian philosophers to face the mushrooming trends of historical materialism, sociology, socialism and, of course, nationalism. They were all legacies of the very end of the past century which became realities to be deal with just afterwards. They demanded a more appropriate hermeneutic than could be provided by the spiritualism of Platonic origin or by the neo-Kantism previously dominant. Quite simply, Hegel came to be the answer of the Italian academia to a period of intense change and crisis in both political and cultural spheres. Hegel supplied a systematic rational framework within which experience could find the deeper understanding that the time seemed to require. Nonetheless his philosophy unified and internationalised the Italian cultural scene. Unification here does not imply a homogeneity of interpretation. Hegel's system had not been thoroughly mastered and so a ‘true’ understanding could not be possible. Single parts of Hegel's philosophy were not read or interpreted in keeping with the whole system, and connection, when realised, coincided more with the belief of the reader than with the intentions of the author.

Philosophy In Italy

Philosophy In Italy

Philosophy in Italy

Philosophy in Italy

Philosophy in Italy

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Philosophy in Italy

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Philosophy in Italy

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Philosophy in Italy

Philosophy in Italy

Philosophy in Italy

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

Philosophy in Italy

After an interruption of seven years I take up once again my surveys of Italian philosophy. Many things have happened in the interval, but it is perhaps too soon for them to be susceptible of calm philosophical reflection. The problems that most interest the cultured public to-day are those of existentialism, of historicism and its limits, of German romanticism, and, more generally, of Germanic culture in relation to new spiritual orientations. The interest in existentialism is due, at least in part, to the fact that it is the philosophy in fashion. But there is in it nevertheless a depth of seriousness that is not overlooked. The tragedies of recent years have placed in the foreground the problems of immediate existence, of human personality and its place in the world, which the preceding idealistic philosophy had too easily absorbed in an impersonal and trans-subjective view of the spirit and its universal values. And, as has often happened in the course of history, there has resulted a reaction of individuality, in its most irrational and vital expressions, against the pretensions of reason to dominate it from above, and imprison it in the net of its concepts.But if, in this regard, existentialism represents a just demand, which can exercise a beneficial influence on philosophical thought, yet to many its claim to represent a new era in philosophy seems excessive. Its value is only that of an episode. Hence some interpreters of contemporary thought have been drawn to limit the importance of the new movement.

Philosophy in Italy

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