The Kyoto School was the most important philosophical current in Japan during the 20th century. In the context of a growing interest in Japanese philosophy, as well as in non-European philosophy in general, this essay represents the first attempt to set the political thought of Kiyoshi Miki (1897-1945) and Jun Tosaka (1900-1945) in dialogue with contemporary thought. Miki and Tosaka were both leftist thinkers interested in thinking through political action “from below. ” This book introduces their concepts of “basic experience” and “everydayness” through conversation with contemporary theories of speculative realism, especially that of Mark Fisher. According to Miki and Tosaka, social myths are not just fictions but political “objects” with a life of their own, capable of generating political subjects and subverting the dominant ideology.

Our historical period is characterized by a vision of liberal heritage and a capitalist economic path. But it is far from obvious what “liberal” really means here, and what connection it has with capitalism. The current volume thus first attempts to provide a clarification of the long-term genesis of “liberal reason” in the West, following its development in the seventeenth century down to the present day. Secondly, the text aims to identify the basic logic that feeds liberal reason, a logic that nourishes capitalist processes but goes far beyond them. This analysis provides a picture in which liberal reason no longer needs to be 'represented' because it has tacitly occupied the entire conceptual space of the political. It now plays all the parts in the political comedy, both majorities and oppositions, right and left, concealing the systematic operation of distortion that has taken place. The ramifications of liberal reason have also taken root among intellectuals and movements that consider themselves to be 'neutral', or even 'anti-capitalist'. Liberalism's occupation, as pervasive as it is unnoticed, lies at the basis of the perceived impossibility of conceiving alternatives, and therefore of the continual deadlock in which contemporary consciousness struggles.

The volume contains the proceedings of an international conference exploring the concept of 'contemporaneity' from different perspectives and in reference to different disciplinary fields (philosophy, literature and art theory). In the chronological motion of historiography, contemporaneity is conceptualised as simply being the present era, one that follows modernity. Such thinking overlooks a more complex understanding of the contemporary, which is, in its original meaning, the co-presence of different times, a disconnection of temporal continuity, a rupture in the present, which becomes a meeting point where the past and the future intersect. The contemporary is untimely and, in this sense, is just in time, as it relates to time through anachronism. It is more present than the present of actuality.

Unlike in English and French cultural fields, where fashion during WWII is widely debated, in Italy the relationship between fashion and Fascism is an under-researched topic, separated from the study of Fascist institutions and bureaucracy. The behind-the-scene history of the fashion magazine Bellezza, the Italian Vogue founded in 1941, has never been submitted to scholarly attention. Its utopian function in defining a new culture of fashion and code of glamour contributed to the totalitarian project of building a ‘new Italian woman’. The current volume fills this gap, using the case of Bellezza as a kaleidoscope through which to examine Italian history and culture drawing on new primary sources and extraordinary iconography.

This book highlights aspects of the spiritual culture within Islam that flourished along the 'Silk Roads' – the term coined by Ferdinand von Richthofen in 1877 to describe the web of caravan routes that connected China, South and Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe. The movement of goods and of people was accompanied by the circulation of ideas, bringing about a vivid exchange in the cultural sphere – sufism, or tasawwuf, was one such idea. Focusing on this theme, these conference proceedings draw attention to the multiple dimensions embraced by tasawwuf, both in its temporal (i. e. historical, ethnographical and social) context, as well as its atemporal one (i.e. concerning spirituality and the ways this is conveyed and transmitted, both in the past and in the present).

Eight essays on ethics, meta-ethics and normative ethics from John Rawls to David Gauthier, from Richard Rorty to Jonathan Dancy, from automatic concepts to Leibnizian ontology, from the end of work to cyber warfare

The current volume provides an interpretation of American pragmatism according to which pragmatism is not opposed to metaphysics but instead represents a vital, non-dismissive, non-deflationary attempt to respond to classical questions of philosophy concerning the nature of reality, truth, goodness, beauty, ideality, etc. American pragmatism has been often interpreted as a form of crass utilitarianism applied to all areas of philosophy – a precipitation of the “industrialist” spirit of the United States. This book demonstrates how such an interpretation is misguided. The chapters focus on different topics in the philosophies of Peirce and Dewey – what is ‘meaning,’ what is the human self, what is truth, what is consciousness, what ‘semiotics’ can add to realism – that articulate the unitary view that the ‘real’ is always inhabited by and open to the ‘ideal.’

One of the fundamental aspects of the cultural landscape of the last century has been the revival of philosophical anthropology, in the form of a radical examination of the humanum: an examination that has attempted to meet the primary challenge of an era which, in an increasingly radical way, doubts the very possibility of a semantics of humanism. This book argues that MacIntyrean thought can provide an important contribution towards rethinking a new semantics of humanism, on the basis that MacIntyre's contribution stands up to dialogue with and rational competition from perspectives belonging to rival research traditions. The volume emerged from the 2021 conference at the University of Bergamo, in collaboration with the International Society for MacIntyrean Enquiry.

What do we mean by moral freedom? What are the necessary conditions required for it? Do the exponential advances and pervasive applications of artificial intelligence (AI) promote it, or do they undermine it? Are we dealing with a new ethical challenge? If this is the case, how should we respond? These are a few of the compelling questions addressed in the current volume. These concerns are increasingly unavoidable in our contemporary computerized society, in which people increasingly depend on AI-based technology, inevitably exposed to its invisible but powerful algorithmic design. Providing a basis for the field of Ethics of AI, the volume helps us understand the new questions raised by AI systems, with particular attention to the challenge that machine-learning algorithms represents for moral freedom. Tiribelli provides both conceptual and practical tools to address these issues, producing a moral compass for navigating our complex world, increasingly structured and shaped by algorithmic technology.

Since the 1990s, deliberative democracy has been the focus of increased scholarly attention, as well as the locus of initiatives intended to directly engage the public in matters of public concern. Geared to bringing the core tenets of public deliberation to bear onto different contexts within the public sphere, deliberative processes have been implemented in a range of forms, from citizens’ juries to national issue forums, from deliberative opinion polls to participatory budgeting. Ever more frequently, public deliberation has also gained traction in the field of public bioethics. Seizing on their intrinsic dialogic nature, scholars have proposed to harness deliberative processes as a means to address moral disagreement in the public sphere, in order to manage the ensuing and often irreconcilable conflicts around topics of bioethical sensitivity that challenge contemporary liberal democracies. Building upon these premises, this volume aims to reconstruct the theoretical as well as empirical processes of cross-pollination between deliberative democracy and public bioethics.

At the heart of the present work is the matter of the date and path which lead to the ultimate decision to destroy European Jews (to paraphrase the title of the masterpiece written by Raul Hilberg, the first great historian on the Shoah). The author intends to introduce the topic in the clearest possible way with regards to language and arguments and to deal with the topic from the perspective of an intellectual historian, not that of a contemporary historian (which he is not). He presents it as an exemplary case for the comparison of ideas on contemporary history, society, and politics. Starting with an examination into the Nazi as an individual, he continues with an analysis and various portraits of intellectuals turned exterminators. A key item is the year 1941 as the turning point toward the Shoah. The final chapter is dedicated to the comparison between Intention and Function in the history of the Shoah.

The volume considers the theories of the passions in Hobbes, Descartes and Spinoza. Particular attention is given to the passion of fear, highlighting how these three writers considered fear as both an individual and a collective affect. Cerrato underlines the characteristics, relevance and usefulness of these affects, together with the strategies of control used to prevent their transformation into passions that can inhibit rational action. He then demonstrates the divergence of views between Descartes, Hobbes and Spinoza in terms of how they delineate these conditions. The second part of the volume focuses on analogies concerning rational strategies that a human being can assume in order to manage fear. Together Descartes e Spinoza, it is necessary to recall Hobbes’s Leviathan, since this work is a consistent and relevant source for Spinoza, as far as the conception of fear as a peculiar perception of past and present is concerned.

Il racconto di un Paese lontano e immenso, che gli italiani conoscono per sentito dire, per i suoi miti o per esserci emigrati. Il Canada come non lo avete mai letto, tra racconti di un viaggio che parte dai vicoli di Roma e termina dinanzi alla skyline mozzafiato di Vancouver. Il Canada che troverete senza averlo cercato, nelle avventurose storie dei suoi pionieri come nelle biografie dei suoi eroi contemporanei. Ma non solo questo, anche una Nazione giovane, nata francese per avventura, cresciuta inglese per via di una guerra settecentesca e diventata oggi laboratorio del futuro, chiuso nel suo splendore naturale ma aperto alla costruzione di un mondo nuovo. Paese poetico senza crederlo, ospitale verso i bene intenzionati e riconoscente verso i suoi “First Nations”, il Canada è un luogo del mondo dove ha ancora senso un’esortazione pronunciata da Pierre Elliott Trudeau: “Curare a volte, alleviare spesso, confortare sempre”.

This work integrates songwriting and academic research to explore the current challenges in managing (tourism) places. The emotional power of music propels a critical investigation into contemporary seaside, urban and rural destinations, and the ambiguities affecting their sustainable development. This journey frames tourism as a context where we can better scrutinise the contradictions of capitalism or overlook them, since we are distracted by the charming playfulness of travel consumption.

This book is based on findings from the Horizon2020 Project “Participation. Analysing and Preventing Extremism via Participation” (Grant Agreement 962547) funded by the European Commission. Its main goal is to provide an updated, well-informed and nuanced picture of the contemporary research into the factors influencing pathways of radicalization towards violent extremism in the European landscape. Different kinds of extremism are taken into consideration (far-right, far-left, separatist and religious extremism) through a mixed approach that combined a qualitative study with textual-statistical analyses. One of the most relevant outcomes of our research on current radicalization studies is that, for all types of extremisms analyzed, the process of radicalization is understood as an event that occurs at the intersection between a personal trajectory and a permissive, or enabling, environment. Cumulative extremism dynamics and new places of radicalization are also noted as further trends to be monitored.

Although little known, Richard Price’s A Review of the Principal Questions in Morals (1758) is one of the most important texts of eighteenth-century moral philosophy. Hastings Rasdhall described it “as the best work published on Ethics till quite recent times” because it “contains the gist of the kantian doctrine without Kant’s confusions”; C. D. Broad pointed out in this regard that “until Ross published his book The Right and the Good in 1930” there existed “no statement and defence of what may be called the ‘rationalistic type’ of ethical theory comparable in merit to Price’s”; and W.