Archives
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Kairos e Apparenza / Kairos and Appearance
Vol. 10 No. 1 (2022)Kairos and appearance are two rich notions, both from a linguistic and a conceptual point of view: unavoidable in philosophical reflection, they also represent fundamental crossroads of every human life, given that the “flourishing” of human life depends on grasping the opportune moment that requires to be expected but also realized.
These two notions are called upon to work as a pair, as the contributions contained in this volume show from various points of view.
Moreover, the same kairos is what stands in time, but it is also what has a spatial manifestation, and therefore “appears”, revealing itself, together, as “right time” and as “right space”, as shown by the Latin term occasio, which indicates what falls in front of us in an unexpected way and which therefore represents a visible manifestation of the kairos.
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Helmuth Plessner. Philosophy and Life
Vol. 9 No. 2 (2021)Helmuth Plessner’s thought is widely known in Italy, where today most of his work is translated and analysed by many experts, who underline the depth and novelty of his positions. This monographic issue dedicated to him gathers original contributions articulated along different paths, mainly focusing on Plessner’s effort to coordinate philosophical and scientific research on the nature of the human being in a multiform form.
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Eudaimonia socratica e cura dell’altro | Socratic Eudaimonia and Care for Others
Vol. 9 No. 1 (2021)Despite the appearances given by certain texts, the moral psychology of Socrates needs not imply selfishness. On the contrary, a close look at passages in Plato and Xenophon (see Plato, Meno 77-78; Protagoras 358; Gorgias 466-468; Euthydemus 278; Lysis 219; Xenophon, Memorabilia III 9, 4-5) suggests that the “egoist”’s welfare depends upon the welfare of others (i.e. family, friends or the whole city). Since the welfare of his family, friends and city is part of his own eudaimonìa, the “egoist” (phìlautos) has a direct and intrinsic motive to promote the welfare of these others.
This multilingual issue explores the role that other peoples’ welfare plays in Socratic ethics. Special attention is paid to test-cases in which the principle that moral action is always good only for the agent seems to have no validity. I.e., under which circumstances is the self-sacrifice for the sake of others (such as the soldier’s self-sacrifice on the battlefield) good for the agent (as in Alcibiades I 115a-116d)? Essays deal with contradictions or tensions of this sort, and relate them to more general views on eudaimonìa held within Socratic literature. Comparison between different Socratic authors is used as a means to identify the distinctive features of Socratic eudaimonìa if compared to other Greek theories of happiness, such as the Aristotelian theory of philautìa (NE IX, 1166a-1166b; 1168a-1169b).
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Morphology, Plasticity, and Transformation between Philosophy and Biology
Vol. 8 (2020)In biology, interest in form was the prerogative of developmental biology, while it was practically neglected by evolutionary biology. This situation has changed a lot in recent decades and has led to a reinterpretation of the concept of evolution and evolutionism focusing more on the problem of form and morphology. In Italy, especially Alessandro Minelli, one of the editors of this issue, has dedicated his studies to the need to communicate form to structure, to reconnect morphology and evolution. This theme is a highly relevant one for philosophy, inasmuch as the question of form and morphology, since the days of Goethe and Bergson, has always been considered as the starting point for a philosophy of the living being endowed with its own categories that cannot be reduced to those of physics.
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Psychopathology and Philosophy in Relation to the Existence of Human Being Part II
Vol. 7 (2019)This monographic issue of Thaumàzein is the second part of a research that aims to investigate the possible relationship between specific psychopathological symptoms and a series of crucial questions of philosophy, such as: Anthropogenesis and Phenomenology of Emotions; Intersubjectivity and Direct Perception of Expressivity of the Other; Phenomenology of Embodiment; Minimal Self and Plasticity of the Process of Human Formation (Bildung); Value-ception (Wertnehmung), Order of Feeling, Philosophy of Person; Atypical Social Cognition and Common Sense.
