Metabasis N. 40
Digital Edition
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Wird jeder Essay von 2 Referees anonym bewertet und ihre Kommentare werden dem Autor des Essays zurückgeschickt.
Geopolitik, neue Technologien und KI
November 2025 - Jahr XX - Heft 40
Politische Überlegungen
Geopolitica, IA e nuove tecnologie
Paolo Bellini
DOI: 10.7413/18281567288
Lo scopo di questo breve saggio è quello di descrivere la realtà e i fenomeni politici che la caratterizzano per come essi appaiono e per come si suppone che siano, celati dal luccichio della loro stessa manifestazione. Non intendiamo, infatti, indugiare in vane elucubrazioni sul dover essere, obbedendo a criteri arbitrari posti nella mente dell’osservatore che, di volta in volta, individua propri e ideologici parametri di lettura del reale.
Abstract
The purpose of this brief essay is to describe the reality and the political phenomena that characterize it, both as they appear and as they are supposed to be, hidden by the glimmer of their own manifestation. This text does not aim to prescribe a particular course of events, but rather to offer an interpretation of global geopolitical dynamics and their interaction with new technologies, particularly Artificial Intelligence.
Geopolitics, AI and emerging technologies
Paolo Bellini
DOI: 10.7413/18281567288
The purpose of this brief essay is to describe reality and the political phenomena that characterize it, both as they appear and as they are presumed to be, concealed by the glimmer of their own manifestation. Indeed, we do not intend to indulge in futile speculation about what ought to be, guided by arbitrary criteria within the observer’s mind, who periodically identifies his ideological framework for interpreting reality.
Abstract
The purpose of this brief essay is to describe the reality and the political phenomena that characterize it, both as they appear and as they are supposed to be, hidden by the glimmer of their own manifestation. This text does not aim to prescribe a particular course of events, but rather to offer an interpretation of global geopolitical dynamics and their interaction with new technologies, particularly Artificial Intelligence.
Polifemo: considerazioni inattuali sul solipsismo politico attuale.
Raffaella Sabra Palmisano
DOI: 10.7413/18281567289
In un periodo storico in cui ci troviamo continuamente a confrontarci con le creazioni tecniche e tecnologiche dell’uomo, il pensiero si volge principalmente al rapporto dell’uomo con nuove macchine e dispositivi capaci di realizzare processi computazionali adattivi simulando l’intelligenza umana.
Abstract
The paper examines the political dimension of human existence by focusing on the nexus between the recognition of otherness, social organization, and law. It argues that the ways in which the Other is acknowledged or denied have decisive consequences for the emergence of order and ordering, directly shaping political relations. This perspective is explored through the Homeric episode of the encounter between Odysseus and the Cyclops Polyphemus, taken as a paradigmatic case that reveals the inseparability between conceptions of alterity and the regulation of associated life. The analysis shows how the absence, refusal, or distortion of the recognition of the Other corresponds to the establishment of a specific order, or to its negation, thereby highlighting that every relation to alterity necessarily entails a normative choice. In this sense, the paper demonstrates that the relationship with the Other, insofar as it founds a particular order, possesses an intrinsically political significance.
Quale “comunità di destino”? Rileggendo Edgar Morin.
Fiammetta Ricci
DOI: 10.7413/18281567292
Come è possibile oggi avere “coscienza di essere comunità di destino”, cioè di appartenere ad un con-vivere che ci chiama alla responsabilità di un’identità comune? In un tempo come il nostro caratterizzato da un marcato individualismo, che sfocia non di rado in narcisismo autoreferenziale dei cittadini ma anche di chi li governa, è davvero possibile, come afferma Morin, sentire la “terra-patria” come destino comune, e riconoscere che l’unico nemico dal quale dobbiamo guardarci non è esterno ma interno ad essa, cioè interno a noi stessi?
Abstract
What does it mean to “teach terrestrial identity” and feel part of a “community of destiny”? According to Edgar Morin, these questions can be answered by revising the concept of human development, renewing anthropopolitical culture, and adopting polycentric thinking, in order to seriously acknowledge that what connects us also distinguishes us, namely a common planetary destiny. The problem with today’s globalization is that the world we live in requires complex thinking in order to reflect on and understand the relationship between the whole and the parts. But how can we achieve, with a view to reunifying the particular, a vision that captures unity without assimilating or reducing the complexity of reality and human experience? The symbolic path and hermeneutic intelligence act precisely as a means to rearticulate the totality of human experience in all its components—rational, imaginal, and instinctual—conferring a certain degree of unity to the myths, archetypal forces, contexts, customs, energies, and ideas of a people, and to the relationship of the subjects with themselves and with otherness, which is always dialectically constituted of identity and difference, of individuality and collectivity, of human and non-human.
Mimesis and Sanction
Fabrizio Sciacca
DOI: 10.7413/18281567291
It is worth saying from the start that any fair account of law must resist the urge to see it as nothing more than a set of commands backed by force. Law, in its fuller sense, is not just about rules or steps; it is a frame through which people shape their claims about order, strife, and fairness. At heart, law brings in a rule of restraint that turns raw force into the rightful hope of self-control. In doing so, it draws lines that would otherwise blur: between what is allowed and what is banned, kin and stranger, peace and turmoil.
Abstract
This essay examines the relation between vengeance, sanction and the symbolic form of law. It argues that the transition from private retribution to institutional justice does not abolish violence but reconfigures its role within a ritual grammar of social order. Drawing on Girard and contemporary analyses of digital contagion, it considers whether modern legal structures can sustain their normative force in the absence of coherent mediation. The essay concludes that law’s claim to meaning depends not on eradicating its archaic roots but on remembering the limits of what it can promise.
Biopotere e biopolitica. Tecnica e potere nella filosofia politica contemporanea, a partire da Foucault.
Erasmo Silvio Storace
DOI: 10.7413/18281567290
Per chiarezza terminologica, assumerò fin da subito la seguente convenzione — utile più a delimitare un campo d’analisi che a separare “epoche”: per biopotere intendo la forma storica del potere che prende in carico la vita, facendone oggetto diretto d’intervento, ottimizzazione e organizzazione; per biopolitica intendo l’insieme di dispositivi, pratiche e razionalità attraverso cui tale presa in carico si traduce in governo effettivo dei corpi e delle popolazioni, secondo l’impianto ricostruito da Michel Foucault nelle lezioni del Collège de France.
Abstract
This paper investigates the relationship between biopower and biopolitics in contemporary political philosophy, starting from Michel Foucault’s genealogical analysis of modern power. It argues that the politicization of life is not a rupture with the past but the result of a long transformation within Western modernity, in which life becomes an object of knowledge, administration, and technical control. By integrating perspectives from thinkers such as Agamben, Esposito, Deleuze, and Mbembe, the study highlights the coexistence of biopolitical governance and necropolitical dynamics in modern societies. The article also explores the role of technology and algorithmic governance in reshaping contemporary forms of power over life. Ultimately, it proposes that biopolitics should be understood as the historical horizon through which Western rationality governs life, revealing both the productive and destructive dimensions of modern political power.
Philosophische Aussichten
Du Golem à The Man-Thing. Explorer l’imaginaire des biotechnologies par les métaphores.
Marc Bernardot
DOI: 10.7413/18281567293
Nous invitons ici à un voyage dans les biotechnologies. Il s’agit d’explorer quelques pans de l’imaginaire des technosciences. Nous étudions les tropes et les images qu’elles génèrent dans les langues et les représentations esthétiques. Nous nous basons sur un corpus de termes propres à ces sciences, de textes scientifiques sur ce thème et d’œuvres artistiques notamment de bio-art.
Abstract
We propose to explore the imaginary of technosciences and biotechnologies, through the metaphors they generate in language and aesthetic representations, based on a corpus of scientific texts and bio-art images. The socio-political configurations and anthropological assemblages developing biotechnologies have used syntagms to conceptualize their models, finance their research, disseminate their results and facilitate their acceptance since the XIXth century. Because they involve the manipulation of living organisms, these innovations give rise to classic formulas such as “Pandora’s box”, “Frankenstein’s monsters”, or ‘‘Golem’’, but also new, hyperbolic syntagms that keep place with the rapid pace of technical advances particularly in the field of the genome. What are the main tropes used to describe biotechnologies, and what are their genealogies? What do these metaphors say about the imaginary of technoscience? To answer these questions, we analyze the terms of the elementary lexicon of these sciences (1.) We then study the dramatization of the formulas used by both promotors and detractors of biotechnology, oscillating between annihilation and fear (2.). Finally, we analyze the slogans for these technologies of life, combining powerful metaphors and spectacular art to promote their achievements and promises (3.).
Classical Liberalism and Behavioural Economics: Contemporary Restatements of Contractarianism and Evolutionism.
Giacomo Brioni
DOI: 10.7413/18281567295
The break represented by classical liberalism in the history of political thought can be summarised as follows. Liberalism attempted to provide a foundation for political coexistence that was not based on transcendent or absolute criteria, like the will of the deity or the unquestioned power of a monarch, but only on rational agreement between free individuals.
Abstract
This paper examines how traditional justifications of market liberalism have been updated to face the behavioural shift in economics. This is achieved by comparing the works of Robert Sugden and Vernon L. Smith, interpreted respectively as restatements of contractarianism and evolutionism. It is argued that, while these authors manage to elaborate market-oriented arguments that are based on a more realistic picture of human agency, they underplay the role of conflict and group interests in political relations.
Critica sociale dei processi culturali: il canone intellettuale di Adorno e Foucault.
Francesco Giacomantonio
DOI: 10.7413/18281567296
A partire dal corso del Novecento, a seguito dei sempre più articolati sviluppi tecnici, informativi e comunicativi, anche i processi culturali e il modo in cui essi vengono pensati e in cui attraversano il vissuto degli individui divengono più complessi e si espongono maggiormente a una serie di questioni e implicazioni.
Abstract
The essay considers the model of the social critique of cultural processes, developed through the XX century by the prospects of Adorno and Foucault. Pointing out the elements of their researches, the key-concepts of their works, and the styles of their reflection, the lecture of the two great intellectuals shows and defends the value of articulated social theory, that today, in a time of political and cultural regression, often disappears.
From Nature to Culture. Notes on the Philosophy of History between Plato and Lévi-Strauss.
Leonardo Masone
DOI: 10.7413/18281567294
Nature and culture as philosophical categories have innervated the debate within the intellectual landscape of the relevant epochs. Cultures are complex systems of compatibility and incompatibility, sets of sets that in so far as they collect and unite certain elements as they exclude and distance others.
Abstract
Through a rapid analysis of the concepts of nature and culture, this contribution aims to lay the groundwork for a research hypothesis that explores an unconventional comparison between a major thinker of antiquity, Plato, and one of the pioneers of 20th-century anthropology, Claude Lévi-Strauss. The goal is to outline possible future dialectical trajectories. The essay seeks to investigate the correlational logics that connect the idealized notions of the state of nature and the state of culture within the framework of theoretical philosophy, philosophy of history, and cultural semiotics. Drawing from these disciplines, it assembles a conceptual toolbox to examine the compatible and incompatible elements between the two authors’ theses. This interdisciplinary methodological approach revitalizes the heuristic potential of a systematic comparison between cultural manifestations from different historical periods through the theories of key thinkers, offering a critical perspective on those specific cultures .
Thematische Beiträge
Artificial Intelligence and Political Communication. The Human Mind as a Battlefield.
Luigi Di Gregorio
DOI: 10.7413/18281567298
Few years ago, George Lakoff argued that «the main battlefield of the culture war is the brain and, in particular, the functioning of the brain below the level of consciousness».
This statement is simultaneously the starting and ending point of this contribution. Why start with the human mind instead of technological progress and artificial intelligence? In short, because we are interested in the psychological, sociological and political effects of technological innovations.
Abstract
The essay outlines new trends in political communication, starting with two important innovations: political neuromarketing and the explosion of artificial intelligence. The thesis is that mass technologies (GPTs, General Purpose Technology) are by no means neutral: their impact on us as individuals and as communities is enormous. In the case of AI, this impact will be more widespread and powerful than ever before. This implies, in so many areas, the risks always associated with any technology: there will be positive uses, but also very dangerous ones. Political communication is no exception. And the combination with neuromarketing discoveries portends challenging scenarios in many respects.
Vulnerabilità e corpo politico: Una genealogia contrattualista dell’esclusione.
Alessio Panaggio
DOI: 10.7413/18281567299
La vulnerabilità rappresenta una delle nozioni più controverse del vocabolario filosofico, politico e giuridico contemporaneo. Lontana dall’essere un concetto univoco, essa si configura come una categoria aperta e indeterminata che riflette e al tempo stesso problematizza alcune delle assunzioni più radicate della modernità occidentale.
Abstract
This contribution aims to reconstruct a genealogy of the concept of vulnerability by tracing its origins within the modern contractarian tradition. It demonstrates how the theories of Hobbes and Locke contributed to the construction of a normative anthropological model predicated on the expulsion of vulnerability as a constitutive element of political subjectivity. Through an analysis of the metaphor of the body politic, the article highlights how the representation of sovereign corporeal unity operates through a metonymic logic that selectively renders visible certain bodies – those deemed capable of sacrifice, rationality, and self-discipline – while marginalizing and stigmatizing all others. Building on this reflection, the study critically engages with the work of Judith Butler to reconceptualize vulnerability not as deficit or violation, but as an ontological, relational, and embodied condition, a foundational element for rethinking political inclusion and justice.
Privacy e spazio. Dalla prossemica al cosmo, gli elementi spaziali e giurisdizionali della protezione dei dati.
Gianluigi M. Riva
DOI: 10.7413/18281567297
Nel panorama geopolitico contemporaneo, la fusione della tecnologia spaziale, dell’intelligenza artificiale (IA) e della protezione e gestione dei dati rappresenta un nuovo paradigma nelle strategie internazionali di sicurezza e difesa. Il 21° secolo ha visto una transizione significativa nell’esplorazione e nell’utilizzo dello spazio extra-atmosferico, passando da un modello stato-centrico a un dominio dinamico e sfaccettato che coinvolge entità private.
Abstract
This paper aims to assess the regulatory gaps concerning privacy and personal data protection in the context of space activities, with a particular focus on the applicability of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This paper first presents an examination of the extra-legal concept of privacy in relation to physical space and how this relationship gave rise to the legal notions of privacy and property. These elements are then considered in the context of extra-atmospheric space in order to assess the applicability of European data protection law in that context.
Il mito dei diritti e l’eclissi del logos. Su un libro di Fabrizio Sciacca
Marco Spada
DOI: 10.7413/18281567300
Nel panorama odierno della filosofia politica e del pensiero giuridico, Il mito dei diritti di Fabrizio Sciacca si impone come un intervento di rara precisione teorica. L’autore affronta qui il nodo più fragile e insieme più idolatrato della modernità occidentale: la credenza nei diritti universali come forma secolarizzata del sacro.
Abstract
Through a trajectory that intertwines genealogy and political theory, Sciacca analyses the language of rights as a form of new secular mythology and reconstructs its symbolic function within the civilisation of logos. The article seeks to highlight the work’s continuity with the European philosophical tradition – from Locke to Hegel, from Nietzsche to Heidegger – and to underscore its theoretical significance: restoring to legal thought the intrinsic connection between freedom, form, and limit, against the reduction of law to a merely technical instrument or to political moralism.
Metabasis N. 40
Digital Edition
peer review
Wird jeder Essay von 2 Referees anonym bewertet und ihre Kommentare werden dem Autor des Essays zurückgeschickt.
