Science & Philosophy: an Interdisciplinary and Interpersonal Interaction Asking oneself what the scientist asks of the philosopher, and vice versa, allows us to set the question of interdisciplinary relationships in a new and intriguing way. Before entering into the merits of the question, it is opportune to methodologically set up the relationship between philosophy and science...
On Science and Philosophy Connection Science and philosophy sometimes fail to dialogue. This essay sheds some light on this controversial issue by considering some historical instances of their complicated relationship, since the mid-nineteenth century. We will examine intellectual trends, training processes, and most of all, the increasing knowledge we are nowadays witnessing...
Episteme, Sophia and the Muses This article is an attempt to demonstrate how the scientist, rather than following certain deterministic prescriptions of epistemologists, achieves his goals with an empirical imagination of an almost artistic nature. Based on the suggestions and the studies of Paolo Rossi, Alexandre Koyré and Gerald Holton, we examine some stages of 20th century...
A profile of Alexander Lowen between psychotherapy and philosophy This text is a revised version of a speech, given at a conference in Naples in memory of Alexander Lowen (1910-2008) on the tenth anniversary of his death. My remarks try to answer two simple questions, namely what philosophy learns from a system of psychology of personality and psychotherapy such as the one...
Hans Jonas: Ethics and Theology in the thought “after Auschwitz” Hans Jonas radically transformed the question of theodicy into the question of the justification of man, rejecting the notion of God's power in history. Starting from a speculative myth, he unfolded a process of theogony and cosmology for which God, in the course of evolution, withdraws completely back into himself...
Nothing personal? Tension and mediation of Personalization in Medicine Personalized medicine aims to develop tailored treatments for individual patients, linking biological knowledge with personal responsibility towards health. The aim of this paper is to analyze the tension and the mediation between these polar opposites. Taking into account the mediation theory by philosophy of...
Charles S. Pierce’s Pragmatic Maxim. Some epistemological issues In this paper, my aims to think over Misak’s opinion on Peirce’s pragmatic maxim. Firstly, I introduce the 1878 formulation of the pragmatic maxim in order to show its verificationist character. Secondly, I present the 1905 expression of the pragmatic maxim so as to exhibit its non-empiricist nature. Thirdly, I...
The Ambiguity of Cyborg. Rethinking the Body and its Prostheses This paper proposes a critical reflection about the body’s status, starting from Donna Haraway’s theorization on cyborg. Human corporeality is conceived in its relationship with technology, with the aim of remarking the importance of this link in the evolution of our species. The cyborg image rises as a critic...
The Paradox that heals. Communication and Therapy in Paul Watzlawick This article provides an overview of the epistemology on which Paul Watzlawick builds its innovative approach to psychology and communication. In the first paragraph, the analysis will introduce the basic concepts of cybernetic and the role it plays within the author’s work. It will also explore the nuances of...
The Future Eve between artificial bodies and natural bodies: Liberation Technology or Subjection? In the last thirty years the problematic relationship between body and machine has frequently been declined in the feminine, keeping the woman at the center, her specificity, her aesthetic characteristics, her reproductive capacity. This attempt of the overcoming the patriarchal...
Recognition, Care, impoverishment of the Experience. A Reflection from Nancy Fraser Starting from Nancy Fraser’s reflection on Recognition and Redistribution, this article analyses the consequences of the separation between economic production and social reproduction on the path of the identity construction and the impoverishment of the Experience
Reproduction work and machines: some considerations in times of Pandemia The reflections on the relationship that links human bodies, technologies and cyber-spaces often focus on the processes of “disembodiment”, while the reproductive work cannot be separated from the materiality of the needs of the care-dependent individuals. The changes in this type of work particularly affect...
Gender before Sex | Population before Subjects. Gender Selection and SDL (Sexualizing Division of Labor) vs TechnoQueer Futures The aim of this paper is twofold: to show how neoliberal reproductive technologies articulate life following a patriarchal economy of gendered otherness through the production of docile individuals and populations (Cooper, Waldby, Bathia, Clarke, Thomson...
Computer science: science, technology, market. What about women? The women percentage in the field of Computer Science is very low, in both universities and workplace, in comparison with the other scientific fields. Some explanations could be advanced: some questionable choices in teaching this matter, a difficult relation between women and technology, a social bias.
Crtical aspects of “gestation for others”. Freedom or limit of female self-determination: neo-patriarchy and technology This essay is focused on the theme of “gestation for others”. The GPA highlights some ethical problems in relation to the commercialization of the female body for reproductive purposes. In this perspective, the link between exploitation of the female body and...
The bubble-woman and the fetus-child: problems and public discourses on the reproductive body of women. Ideas on the Italian debate At what point in history the concept of birth begins to affect the State? The research identifies the 18th Century as a time when the social role of women was considered both a public interest and progressively marginalized and confined to the...
The Mother in the age of her technical reproduction. Feminine Motes on Spherology Using as starting point the analysis of the dyad Mother-Son faced by Peter Sloterdijk in Spheres I. Bubbles (1999), this article tries on one hand to show how pregnancy and the related experience of female body appear deeply transformed by the newest medical and genetical opportunities, and on the...
My Mother was a… Cyborg. New technologies and Hybrid Subjectivities This paper starts from the current querelle regarding the ethical and ontological status of techno-assemblages and embodied subjectivities. Critical aspects of New Technologies have been raised in a fertile debate from different perspectives, above all concerning the cutting-edge fields of life sciences and...
Pills for good, pills for bad. Drugs, bodies, desires This paper focuses on the non-neutrality of Science – Chemistry in particular – starting by the specific standing point: the relationship between (sexuated) bodies and drugs. The feminist analysis on social role of medicine has been deepened since the end of Sixties and has permitted to underlying the strong ambivalence of...
Trangender identities between body’s expression and constrictions. Self-determination in medicalized gender transition Trans identities, through their non-conforming bodies, undermine a natural order based on the correspondence between sex and gender, which is poorly questioned in the common discourse. Medicine and scientific-technological development play, toward gender...
Some thoughts about the concept of gender In this brief contribution I insist on the necessity to avoid the term “feminist epistemology”. On the contrary, “feminist epistemologies” should be preferred. Another term we should scrutinize is gender. Finally, I review some of the criticalities which arise from female predicament.
On the concept of human nature. Canguilhem, a third route between Chomsky and Foucault In 1971, Noam Chmosky and Michel Foucault publicly debated the issue of human nature. The latter exists according to Chomsky but does not exist according to Foucault. While the former considers that it coincides with the faculty of language understood as innate and a-historical capacity, the...
First italian edition of "The Sigh" by Erwin Straus ed. by Salvatore Giammusso EMOTION GIVES RISE TO THOUGHT. ON ERWIN STRAUS’ THE SIGH In this introduction I locate Straus’ essay on the sigh in the context of his work. The paper can also be read as a profile of Straus as a phenomenological psychologist and philosopher who reveals some affinities with authors such as Helmuth...
“Some fleeting glimpse of utopia”. Nonviolence and the challenge of ethical-political planning in Judith Butler The thesis at the heart of this paper is that, in her latest text, The Force of Nonviolence. An Ethico-Political Bind, Judith Butler presents a moment of reflection with original aspects compared to her previous thought. She inaugurates here a new point of view in her...