What is the imagination’s role in human cognition and culture? This book explores the hypothesis that such role is larger than we commonly think: imagination is the key to understand many important domains of our lives – including religion, superstition, and ideology – that are often taken to be the province of belief alone. Combining traditional methods of philosophical inquiry with relevant findings from cognitive and social sciences, the author seeks to provide solid empirical support for that hypothesis, on the one hand, and to explore its important theoretical and practical implications, on the other. A novel, substantive theory of the imagination emerges as a result. Imagination, on this view, does not just allow us to escape from reality into fictional worlds, but plays a key, direct role in our representation of (and practical engagement with) the real world itself.

This special issue of Cinéma&Cie aims at pushing the discussion on the relationships between avant-garde arts and popular culture far beyond traditional scholarship on the topic, stressing the concept of cultural history more than the specificity of film, media and music histories. By adopting a global perspective, the authors will elaborate useful analytical and theoretical tools to re-assess the “avantpop connection” as a dynamics of two-way exchanges across several artistic and media domains and different geographical and historical contexts.

The postwar period in Milan was a time in which the transformational possibilities of the Lombard metropolis were palpable. Architects looked to the future in planning an ideal city onto a pre-existing one heavily damaged in World War II. In doing so, they looked back to the relatively young tradition of modern architecture in Italy, while simultaneously re-ordering its narratives. Concentrating on three major elements of the new city, skyscrapers, housing, and city planning, this book approaches Milan as an ideal city of the postwar period through architecture, film, and print media.

How does the future of the concept of the "Political" appear in a world marked by two apparently opposite trends: the tendency towards globalization and that of reconstituting new forms of sovereignty? The book represents the first theoretically updated contribution on the perspectives of politics in the current phase of "interregnum" between the "not-more" of the old international order and the "not-yet" of a new supranational or transnational order that is struggling to take shape.

Nishida, who was active from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th, was one of the first generation of Japanese philosophers who attempted to develop an original philosophy under the influence of (and in response to) Western philosophy. In Japan, he has often been interpreted in the context of Eastern thought and Zen Buddhism, as well as in relation to phenomenology (Husserl and Heidegger). This book presents an alternative reading of Nishida, by highlighting the influence of William James, Neo-Kantianism, and Henri Bergson on his thought, and by discerning in his ideas a line of development parallel to that of the mid-20th century philosopher Gilles Deleuze.

Sublime is the word that better summarises Led Zeppelin’s philosophy and aesthetics. By highlighting the distinctive features of the band members and their management, analysing the symbolism behind the albums’ paratextual elements and exploring the epic of the band tours, the book identifies the main features of Led Zeppelin’s philosophy, or at least those that are intentionally disclosed by the entity {Page + Plant + Jones + Bonham}.

Far from being the sole mode of explaining, explanation in terms of – mostly probabilistic – causes has nourished a wide debate addressing diseases, what produces them and how. Focusing on causal explanations involves, in turn, getting deeper into conceptions of causation, modelling, and control, and presents a range of relevant issues for research and clinical contexts. The aim of the volume is two-fold. In the first place, its purpose is to stress core features, differences and interactions between various theories belonging to, on the one hand, the mechanical and neo-mechanical approach to explanation, and, on the other hand, the interventionist approach, testing their suitability in medicine. In the second place, and related to the first, a form of pluralism is advocated which is grounded on a deep analysis of specific features of explanatory contexts in the health sciences, especially in cancer and mental health studies.

After a long absence from national political debate, the housing issue has forcefully returned following the protracted economic crisis of the past decade. In general, the significant impoverishment of housing policies in the wake of welfare restructuring decisions has deeply impacted the geography of social inequality. The present study analyses the housing issue in Milan in order to account both for the ways in which national austerity policies and the specific welfare model have influenced possible answers to such a crisis and for the specific local initiatives that have been or are being experimented (e. g. social housing, cohousing, urban regeneration). The inquiry confirms the hypothesis of the third sector’s leading role in the management of new social risks in this southern European metropolis, along with all of the questions that such a role entails in terms of a possible emphasis on the local territorial imbalances that could stem from it.

Should we blame our neighbour for forgetting to water our plants? To what extent are people responsible for the consequences of their actions? When is it fair to condemn a wrongdoer? Practical philosophy has a long-standing interest in the mechanisms that drive responsibility ascriptions (how and why should we hold people responsible?), and in the conditions that make those ascriptions legitimate (when is it fair to do so?). By default, healthy adults whose behaviour is interpretable by reference to their psychological makeup are held responsible for their actions. However, in the last few decades in particular, the scope and meaning of the notion of responsibility have been targeted by growing scepticism. In its first part, this volume explores and discusses the most promising accounts of responsibility emerging in the philosophical debate on the topic. In the second part, the book outlines a novel proposal about the enabling conditions, the meaning and the intersubjective role of responsibility ascriptions.

In its entire range of media and product worlds, Design is decisively involved in the cultural production and distribution of related images and interpretations of gender. This anthology examines why this is the case and what happens when it is changed from different perspectives and knowledge disciplines relevant to design. The contributions collected in this book enter into an interdisciplinary dialogue on the design of gender and provide theoretical and methodological approaches to understanding the social, cultural and political functions of design.

The art world has become a point of contention within a range of debates and yet, strangely enough, while art criticism has been discussed at length, very little is said about art critics. Following in the footsteps of Lionello Venturi’s History of Art Criticism, in the current volume Lorente provides an updated reassessment of the great art critics from the Enlightenment down to the turn of the millennium. Conceived as a didactic handbook with a recommended bibliography at the end of each chapter, this concise work tells the history of a profession in permanent crisis, while also paying homage to its most influential practitioners in different cultural contexts.

This book stresses the importance of returning to David Hume’s political thought, focusing on his ideas about the origin of government and political obedience, and his vision of the ideals of liberty, property, political stability, and moderation, all of which represent a precious source of inspiration for the development of political conservatism. Spartaco Pupo outlines the principle, counter-revolutionary features that characterise Hume’s conservatism: political realism; mistrust of sudden and violent innovations; scepticism toward abstractions; opposition to rationalist arrogance; respect for custom and institutional continuity; the need for the preservation of stability; rejection of ideological rhetoric, sectarianism, and dogmatism; constant denial of intellectual subsidies; and the defence of the national interest. In so doing, Pupo argues that Hume’s ‘sceptical’ and ‘secular’ version of conservatism – the fi rst to appear on the political scene of modernity – differs signifi cantly from the Anglo-American conservatism that was to arise a few decades after his death, in the wake of Edmund Burke’s writings.

Is there a connection between the increasingly widespread concept of Social Innovation (SI) and the success of today’s model of capitalist regulation? According to most studies focusing on SI, the existing relation is restorative in nature: SI intervenes to fix some negative effects brought about by the neoliberal regime. This volume is based on a different assumption, namely that SI is a dispositif inscribed in neoliberal govern mentality, functional in supporting the new production forms of cognitive capitalism. In light of this assumption, the transition from a production mode to another generates a series of contradictions in social relations that change the space in which they are inevitably inscribed. In this regard, SI practices are an ideal research field to observe the modes of production of subjectivity, along with the spatial practices of the subjects interested in/affected by SI.

Suspended between transparency and naturalness on the one hand, and opacity and artificiality on the other, colour is integral to the cinematic apparatus in an ideological as well as technological sense. This special issue of Cinéma&Cie aims to address colour in the middle decades of the twentieth century - from the 1930s to the 1960s - examining it as an analogue and material quality of still and moving images and, more broadly, of the intermedial cultures in which cinema was embedded. During the mid-century, colour gradually became the norm, and film and media from the era track this transition formally as well as culturally, showing a constant tension within colour between the display of its technical wizardry and its concealment, and between attempts to control it and its own autonomous resistance to regulation.

The present volume compiles translations of hitherto neglected texts in Asian philosophical traditions, along with several critical essays dealing with the philosophical issues of translating them into western languages. As the inaugural volume to a proposed series dedicated to making hidden primary sources of Asian philosophies available to the wider audience in western academia and beyond, this book treats diverse primary sources written by a broad range of thinkers from various historical periods and intellectual traditions, including the Indian, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese, among others. The translations, accompanied by critical essays, will shed light on major philosophical movements as Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism and others, thereby demonstrating multilayered development of intellectual traditions in Asia.

In most Western university studies, Greek philosophy is considered the most ancient kind of wisdom, but the Zoroastrian way of life can be traced back to the second millennium BC. The Gathas, hymns or songs attributed to Zarathustra, hold an existential and practical philosophy avant la lettre. It is based on mental exercises and on rituals that have survived thanks to the Zoroastrian religious communities. Not only does the Persian thinker unveil a mental wisdom for us; he also introduces us to an ecological concern and a social practice. There is a cosmopolite dimension to Zarathustra’s proto-philosophy that we can all apply in a personal way.