Metabasis N. 26
digital edition
peer review
Each essay of this journal is reviewed by two anonymous referees and their comments are sent to the authors .
Toleration, liberty and power
November 2018 - Year XIII - Number 26
Political reflections
The prism of violence and the Gorgon of Power: T.W. Adorno, V. Grossman, E. Canetti, W. Benjamin
Libero Federici
DOI: 10.7413/18281567128
Through the reflections of T. W. Adorno, V. Grossman, E. Canetti and W. Benjamin, this essay outlines how human relations and political space, with their asymmetries and hierarchies, are often characterized by strong prevarications and harsh coercions. When the affirmation of subjugating power and violence distinguish the interhuman and political dimension to the point of becoming its emblem, the human is shown to be anti-human.
Political rhetoric of disgust and the ambiguity of tolerance
Giada Fiorese
DOI: 10.7413/18281567130
As stated by Plato, there’s a strong link between words and thoughts: words become ideas and actions and they define the way a human being represent his own world. Which ideas and facts does the word tolerance evoke? This term seems ethically paradoxical: tolerance is a muddled concept full of contradictions, then there’s the need to clarify it in relation to the rhetorical strategies of political power, which through the use of a specific language, sometimes convey the idea of an Other, intended as a social and cultural alterity. Moreover, within a liberal democracy, where pluralism and free speech are founding values, political rhetoric can not be silenced and it sometimes ends up creating an ambiguity between tolerance and intolerance.
Worker's freedoms in contemporary society
Michela Luzi
DOI: 10.7413/18281567134
Capitalism has transformed the individual into commodity, without capacity to make claims of moral type. In fact there is no ethical responsibility towards a worker conceived as a commodity, become only one of the many factors of the production process, not very different from the machines. This inevitably led to a reduction in individual freedom, which is closely related to the increase in the uncertainties of everyday life. It follows a difficulty in thinking and building one's own future, which has one of its cornerstones in the stability of a dignified working condition.
The tolerance in democratic States
Bantchin Napakou
DOI: 10.7413/18281567135
Democracy is a political system in which the citizens decide themselves upon the way they want to be governed. It is founded on the recognition on the recognition of equal rights for all citizens without distinction. However the freedom, second democratic principle promotes through the tolerance the expression of diversity. The consideration of differences in the implementation of the principles of justice redefines the ethical and political challenges of the democracy. Admittedly, the tolerance is a vital requirement in a world marked by a plurality of identities by which the citizens are defined and are distinguished. However, it is through an identity rebuilding of the difference that the humanity of each one can open to others. The identity open to the diversity and diversity sensitive to our humanity are the basis for the ethics of identity. The ethics of identity reconciles the human unity and diversity from the point of view of a policy of the recognition through an right integration of the various identities.
The communicative foundation of Kant’s Republicanism
Flavio Silvestrini
DOI: 10.7413/18281567138
In order to define the foundations of political rationality, which is possible only in the framework of republicanism, Kant connects the communicative dimension of the vita activa – devoted to public recognition and protection of freedom, equality and independence – to the conclusions already reached about human reason. The transcendental principle of Publicität lies at the centre of the republican system of rights: if the public and intersubjective form of reason is the guarantee of its own validity, the same form, if it outlines the debate on public laws, is a guarantee of their coherence with pure principles of right. Investigating the intellective and political processes related to republican citizenship, Kant focuses on the public and communicative role of the philosopher, in supporting the synchronic progress of mankind towards enlightenment and republicanism.
The myth of tolerance in Western civilization. Reflections on its genesis and its symbolic-political value.
Erasmo Silvio Storace
DOI: 10.7413/18281567139
Tolerance, universally recognized as one of the cardinal values on which the West is founded, certainly established itself at the turn of the 17th and the 18th centuries, on the basis of the humanistic and Renaissance outbursts of the previous centuries. Nevertheless, the following article tries to show that this value has a much older genesis, which has its roots in Greek and Roman civilizations, and above all in the dimension of myth, which has always been the foundation and glue of the collective imaginary of a people, as the origin of its socio-political identity. Hence the need to restart examining tolerance as a dimension of power, inspecting its genesis and structure, but above all its symbolic value.
Philosophical Horizons
On the meaningfulness of self-referring sentences
Stefano Colloca
DOI: 10.7413/18281567127
The paper in the first place aims to clarify the concept of self-referring sentence through a revision of the standard account; in the second place it deals with the meaningfulness of the self-referring sentence ‘What I am hereby asserting is true’; in the third place it discusses the advantages and limits of the Rylean namely-rider approach to the problem of self-referring sentences.
Brainframe, technology and social relations: the trust in social networks age
Fabio Ferrara
DOI: 10.7413/18281567129
In our age, social relations are characterized by an increase in the technological mediation, that produces effects on the man’s brainframe, causing a change in personal relationships. This condition characterizes the postmodern society and encouraged the emergence of a new form of socialization based on a virtual dimension. This is evident on social media networks. These websites, have introduced new problems concerning the identity of individuals. In our opinion, this situation has led to a weakening in the relationship between people, especially with regard to the trust.
Melancholy in Racine's Phèdre
Karine Gauthey
DOI: 10.7413/18281567131
We’ll question the preconceptions about melancholy in the baroque. This melancholy has its particularities: it emphasises a particular physiological state which stems from the loss of psychological abilities, it is seen by Racine through the prism of Classicism, and it’s only considered from a moral perspective – one that highlights the character’s responsibility towards his behavior.
Political dilemmas of Modernity: routes of philosophic-sociologic debate
Francesco Giacomantonio
DOI: 10.7413/18281567132
The essay proposes an essential possible guide about some main questions that seem to characterize the philosophical-sociological debate concerning Modernity and politics. Just considering the problems connected with social effects of Modernity, with their extremism in the so called post-modernity, with the globalization and with the role of Europe, it’s possible to point out an useful basic contextualization of this kind of themes, in order to avoid the danger of ideological drifts about important concepts of contemporary culture.
The “Citizenship Law” in Euripide's Theatre
Anna Jellamo
DOI: 10.7413/18281567133
In 451/450 BC, under Pericles' proposal, a new law redefining the prerequisites for citizenship was approved in Athens: citizenship was confined to those individuals whose parents were both Athenians (Arist., Ath. Pol., 26, 4; Plut., Per., 37, 3-4); “bastard” sons (nothoi) were excluded. This law has been the object of heated debate concerning both its intended subjects and its possible effect on inheritance and adoption. According to many scholars, the new law only barred the offspring of foreign mothers from citizenship; according to some others, it also excluded the offspring of unmarried Athenian parents. The question of nothoi comes into play in three of Euripides' tragedies: Hippolytus, Medea, and Ion. As is widely known, Attic tragedy was closely associated with the juridical and political reality of Athens; with regard to the new citizenship law, Euripides' tragedies represent a precious clue to solve the above-mentioned issues.
Political symbols and realities of the body
Giuliana Parotto
DOI: 10.7413/18281567136
The article analyses the role of the body as a symbol of political order and source of legitimacy. The first part is dedicated to this symbol in classical thought, in which, although it is articulated in different ways, it shows how the body has an explanatory and legitimizing function of the political order. A second part is dedicated to the thematization of the body in Post-modern thought and the transformation of the relationship between body and political order. With this transformation the ancient paradigm is overturned and the body is interpreted as crystallization of the social order. A third point briefly analyses some of the theses of New Realism in relation to the problems of the body.
Politics and symbolics of the difference. Some considerations.
Fiammetta Ricci
DOI: 10.7413/18281567137
The choice of a symbolic reading that allows to understand the deep grammar of relationships between equality and difference, is the opportunity to retrieve parched meanings and identify reasons and values of commonality, subtracting them from artificial social organization. And in this sense the symbolic dimension, which, by its nature, involves and unifies the components of collective life in the rational and psycho-emotional dimensions, shows itself as the key to ethical thinking about sexual difference and as care and unification of a link between donation and subtraction, between parts and the whole, between reality and creative imagination.
Metabasis N. 26
digital edition
peer review
Each essay of this journal is reviewed by two anonymous referees and their comments are sent to the authors .
