Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics is an open access philosophical journal, being published only in an electronic format. The journal aims at promoting research and reflection, both historically and theoretically, in the field of moral and political philosophy, with no cultural preclusion or adhesion to any cultural current.

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The Globethics library contains articles of Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics as of vol. 1(1999) to current.

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  • La legge della fiducia e la fiducia nelle leggi. Considerazioni a margine del volume di Tommaso Greco

    Resta, Giorgio (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2023-05-08)
    This paper reflects upon the book “La legge della fiducia” by pointing out three main issues: a) the urgency of bringing back to the fore the ‘horizontal’ dimension of the law, looking at it as a precious form of social engineering; b) the need to overcome the unrealistic model of human personality embedded in the idealtype of homo oeconomicus; c) the usefulness of legal education reforms aimed at emphasizing the interdisciplinary dimension and the cooperative attitude of the law.
  • Sorgner on Freedom, Violence, and Privacy

    Blackford, Russel (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2023-05-08)
    In We Have Always Been Cyborgs, Stefan Lorenz Sorgner presents an entire philosophical system, blending Nietzschean scepticism with the transhumanist impulse to embrace technology. He integrates ideas that range from fundamental issues in epistemology, metaphysics, and metaethics to specific recommendations for new European institutions. Much of this is attractive and impressive, and Sorgner’s growing body of work makes an important contribution to debates over regulatory policy arising from new technologies such as digital surveillance, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, and techniques for genome editing. At the same time, there is room for concern at Sorgner’s use of a cluster of ideas related to the politics of emerging technologies. Sorgner usefully invokes the concept of negative freedom, but this alone cannot settle the boundaries of freedom in a liberal democratic society. He appears to embrace an expansive concept of violence and is quick to find violent elements in ideas and opinions that he rejects. Again, he appears to underestimate and understate the importance of privacy. These criticisms are cautionary rather than definitive, and they may not provide adequate grounds to reject any of Sorgner’s policy recommendations. Nonetheless, the analysis suggests a need for further philosophical work on key concepts in the politics of emerging technologies.
  • In Praise of Objectivism, Optimism and Utopianism: A Counterpoint to Sorgner

    Danaher, John (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2023-05-08)
    Stefan Lorenz Sorgner's ‘We Have Always Been Cyborgs’ is an opinionated and original take on what it means to be a transhumanist. Although I find myself in agreement with a lot of what Sorgner has to say, I nevertheless object to some of the core philosophical underpinnings to his views. In particular, in this article, I will argue that his relativistic, pessimistic, and anti-utopianist stance should be rejected. Instead, transhumanists should embrace objectivism, optimism and utopianism.
  • Oltre la logica dell’origine? Alcune riflessioni su L’origine e la storia di F. Toto

    Rustighi, Lorenzo (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2023-05-08)
    This essay raises three key questions concerning Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Second Discourse by building on Francesco Toto’s book L’origine e la storia: 1) the theoretical transition to the contractarian paradigm between the Second Discourse and the Social Contract; 2) the problem of arbitrary power vis-à-vis the Discourse’s analysis of despotic rule; 3) the status of capital with reference to the passage from wealth to property in the Social Contract. Through a brief discussion of these issues, the essay intends to stimulate a deeper investigation into both the continuities and the discontinuities between Rousseau’s earlier political thought and his mature contractarianism.
  • Sulle tracce dell’ineguaglianza

    Petrucciani, Stefano (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2023-05-08)
    The article reconstructs and discusses some aspects of the interpretation of Rousseau’s thought developed by Francesco Toto in his book L’origine e la storia. In particular, the themes touched upon are the following: the role of instinct and rational faculties in governing the behaviour of individuals in the state of nature; the law of nature and the question of morality; Rousseau’s condemnation of amour propre and the question of recognition; the value and meaning of the unequal pact.
  • Sulle ‘radici del diritto’, verso una sua fondazione retorica

    Puppo, Federico; Tomasi, Serena (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2023-05-08)
    The relational and trustful conception of law proposed by the author highlights, in the opinion of the commentators, the essential link between law, democracy, trust and persuasion. This paper focuses on these intersections and states explicitly the points of contact with a rhetorical perspective of law, arguing that Aristotelian defence of Rhetoric serves to defend a precise model of polis, of man and law, against the vision of sophistry, which is one of the sign of the modern ‘verticalist’ conception of relationship.
  • Itinerari della fiducia. Qualche risposta ai miei critici

    Greco, Tommaso (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2023-05-08)
    In this article I respond to the questions raised in the forum discussing my book La legge della fiducia (Laterza, 2021). I focus in particular on the role of the philosophy of law, as well as on ways to develop further our understanding of the relationship between law and trust.
  • Biopolitica, istituzioni e sovranità in Roberto Esposito

    Tedesco, Francescomaria (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2023-05-09)
    The immunity/community plexus has found an extraordinary and tragic bench test in the recent years of the pandemic. The idea that the community can only survive if it activates a problematic dispositive of immunisation touches, in these years more than ever, the question of democracy. The latter struggles between identity as immediacy and representation as transcendence. Roberto Esposito has tried to envisage a mediation between these two principles by means of the idea of ‘institution’, which serves to counter the furious identification of all in one. But does this idea of immanence and horizontality not risk evoking other forms of spontaneous morphogenesis of political-legal orders? Doesn’t the critique of sovereignty end up resolving itself in the vitalistic exaltation of the unbridledness of those powers that underlie it? Does the institution succeed in standing between these two perspectives (Weberian formalism and Foucauldian biopolitics)?
  • Eternal Hobbes: International Relations and Cyberwar

    Marrone, Pierpaolo (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2023-05-09)
    Is the Hobbesian state of nature a valid paradigm for international relations between states? Starting from the territory of ICT ((Information and Communication Technologies), this paper explores some issues related to cyberwar and cyberspace and their implications for international relations. My conclusion is that there are good reasons to be sceptical about the very existence of international law, just because this explanatory paradigm should also apply to this area.
  • Legislatore e socievolezza nel Contratto sociale di Rousseau

    Ciaccio, Guglielmo (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2023-05-09)
    The figure of the legislator is one of the most controversial elements of Rousseau's entire political system. It is a symptom of difficulties: safeguard the contents of the social pact from possible degeneration and ensure that the general will can be translated into effective criteria for the decisions of citizens, who are called upon to be their own legislators. In this paper, it is hypothesized that the legislator is called upon to carry out a work of transformation of mankind that finds its profound reason in the failure to develop sociability in human beings. For this purpose, an analysis of Rousseau's anthropology is indispensable. Furthermore, it is necessary to dwell on Rousseau's constant criticism of the Enlightenment. The issue reveals some peculiar profiles of Rousseau's thought such as, not least, a latent disillusionment.
  • Constructive Forms of Uncertainty in Spinoza’s Theological Political Treatise

    Vergaray, Alfonso V. (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2023-05-09)
    In the preface to the Theological Political Treatise Spinoza presents uncertainty as an intractable problem in political and social life. Scholars have indirectly examined uncertainty’s role in TTP, focusing on fear, hope, and superstition. This article takes a comprehensive view of the multiple parts of uncertainty, ultimately showing uncertainty to be both a problem and a source of social vitality. It argues that Spinoza’s central means of addressing destructive forms of uncertainty is through the advancement of what I call constructive forms of uncertainty. Instead of recognizing only the potential dangers and pitfalls accompanying uncertainty, this paper argues that uncertainty can constructively support political stability and a free state. This interpretation presents a fresh reading of the role of uncertainty in the TTP and points toward Spinoza’s abiding concern with uncertainty throughout his oeuvre.
  • Se la metafora si inceppa: “da qualche parte” tra Bergson e Heidegger

    Marra, Emilia (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2023-05-09)
    The article proposes an interpretation of the notion of familiarity through a cross-reading of the mode of philosophical enquiry in Bergson and Heidegger. The argument builds on two examples of short-circuited metaphors. The first metaphor, that of Bergson's swimmer, is structurally flawed, and for this very reason allows one to think of the impossibility of the passage from land to water. The second, that of the fish on dry land by Heidegger, appears in an unexpected place, namely precisely where Heidegger ontologically separates the human being from the animal. The need to think about the mode of questioning is shared by the two authors and is fruitful in identifying the difference between the adventure of philosophy and an adventurous philosophy. The figure of the Charlot, as Jankélévitch renders it, accompanies the investigation of the quelque part, which does not resolve itself in the identification of a spatial elsewhere, but rather in a reflection on interiority that does not leave temporality unscathed.
  • Distanze, limiti, movimenti del diritto

    Mancuso, Francesco (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2023-05-05)
    In Tommaso Greco's book, La legge della fiducia, a kind of double game is used to radically read the law: on the one hand, the verticality/horizontality relationship is observed, and on the other hand, the social and normative mechanisms of recognition are read as the result of a circular relationship between the subjects of law and institutions.
  • La legge della fiducia e la questione del privilegio

    Macioce, Fabio (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2023-05-05)
    The article comments on Tommaso Greco's book on trust, and specifically analyzes law's ambivalent relationship with trust. The article connects the issue of trust to some concrete cases, such as the relationship between the parties in the trial and informed consent in health care. Finally, the article explores a research perspective from Greco's book, concerning the relationship between privilege, oppression, and willingness to trust.
  • Deconstructing Tommaso: il dono della fiducia

    Andronico, Alberto (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2023-05-03)
    La legge della fiducia by Tommaso Greco is not just a good book: it is an important book. Its well-deserved success clearly testifies such a relevance. In my comment, however, I propose a reading of trust in terms of a gift, and not of a law. Crucially, taking up the work done by Jacques Derrida on his essay devoted to Marcel Mauss’s analysis of gift, I will attempt to show how trust can be interpreted as a pure – and not only as a ceremonial – gift.
  • Hannah Arendt e il cosmopolitismo “dal basso”

    Greblo, Edoardo (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2023-05-03)
    In the boundless literature dedicated to Hannah Arendt’s thought, interpreters and commentators have rarely focussed on cosmopolitanism, even for reasons that appear well founded at first sight. Taraborrelli's book finally fills the gap. It offers a clear, coherent and systematic reconstruction of her political thought sub specie: cosmopolitanism to demonstrate how the thesis - according to which Arendt voluntarily abstained from any cosmopolitan perspective for various reasons - does not have reason to exist. To the theses proposed in the book, the commentator adds a further thesis and namely that H. Arendt's theory of action allows to focus on a look that retrieves a vision of political notions such as “bottom-up” practices through the action of they who recognize themselves as politically equal on a common meeting ground. In this case the political sphere arises directly from acting-together and sharing words and deeds despite the different positions and the resulting variety of perspectives. The most important consequence of the perspective is that its field of application is not established by state borders or legal jurisdictions, but by political action itself, whose scope extends potentially to all citizens of the world.
  • Cosmopolitismo e migrazione nel pensiero di Hannah Arendt

    Taraborrelli, Angela (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2023-05-02)
    Arendt assigns to humanity as a political actor the ‘cosmopolitan’ responsibility to defend the right to have rights. A prerequisite for this to be at least possible is that a reform of the state and international organisation is initiated in order to establish a ‘cosmopolitan system of relations’, a system of federal entities based on the council system of government, where the right to have rights can be agreed upon and guaranteed and, at the same time, recognised by citizens and always actively defended locally. In anticipation of this reform, Arendt would be in favour of guaranteeing all residents, including de jure and de facto stateless people, the possibility of participating in political life in the country of arrival, and thus acquiring a political even before legal citizenship.
  • Agamben e Foucault: due modelli irriducibili di biopolitica

    Destasio, Alberto (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2023-05-09)
    In this paper, we discuss the foucaultian and agambenian concepts of biopolitics. This comparison between Foucault and Agamben is divided in three parts. First of all, we show how ontologistic and anti-historical nuances of Agamben’s concept of biopolitics don’t allow to grasp both the socio-economic contradictions and the positive aspects of biopolitics. In this section we reflect also on the theoretical aporia of Agamben’s interpretation of Aristotelian bios. In the second place, we show the agambenian misunderstanding of the relationship between subject and self in the last Foucault. In the end, we compare the foucaultian and agambenian concepts of public health.
  • Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics (2023) XXV/1

    EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2023-05-09
    Focus. Un'idea di cosmopolitismo nel pensiero di Hannah Arendt (?) - Symposium I. Tommaso Greco, "La legge della fiducia. Alle radici del diritto", Laterza, Roma-Bari 2021 - Symposium II. Francesco Toto, L’origine e la storia. Il Discorso sull’ineguaglianza di Rousseau, ETS Pisa 2020 - Symposium III. Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, We Have Always Been Cyborgs, Digital Data, Gene Technologies, and an Ethics of Transhumanism, Bristol University Press, Bristol 2021 - Varia
  • Rousseau e l’origine assente. Appunti per una discussione

    Marchili, Andrea (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2023-05-08)
    This article discusses Francesco Toto’s book, L’origine e la storia, highlighting its positive and problematic aspects. It first summarises the structure and content of the theses set out in it, and then, through a brief foray into Rousseau's texts, attempts to discuss the author's central thesis, according to which in Rousseau there is a ‘homogeneity’ between origin and history. The thesis presented in this article tends to defend the duplicity of the relationship established by Rousseau between nature and history. This duplicity manifests itself problematically in the idea of history as a negation of origin and in the idea that history is a genetic development from nature itself.

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