RiMaflow autogestita: un esercizio di geografia sociale. Descrizione di un percorso mentale e fisico e della realizzazione di un ripensamento spaziale

The article aims to introduce the practices of social geography through the description of the conceptual and practical path on the territory that led to picking up the study case and the implementation of the research. After a conceptual introduction on the ethical motivations of those who want to do social geography and having indicated which tools the geographer can use and which practices are more useful, the article outlines the theoretical and geographical context of the identified case study, and then move on to the description of the concrete aspects of the observed experience. The conclusion is actually only an update of how the experience resisted the impact of the pandemic and how the expressed ideal references and the concrete experience maintain their continuity and coherence over time

El concepto de guerra justa. Especial atención a su doctrina en la China contemporánea = The concept of just war. Special attention to its conception in contemporary China

Resumen: Los razonamientos que llevan a justificar las guerras basan sus causas en motivaciones éticas análogas en diferentes religiones que exceden el marco occidental. Con el auge y difusión del marxismo, la ideología se convirtió en un elemento de cohesión social, ocupando posiciones anteriormente limitadas a la teología, permitiendo la delimitación de la guerra justa desde esta posición, la cual, asumida por la República Popular China, ha dado origen a una variante oriental en la que se conjuga la tradición de Sun Tzu con el legado marxista-leninista y su desarrollo posterior por Mao y sus sucesores. Palabras clave: Guerra justa, guerra y marxismo, guerra y leninismo, guerra y maoísmo. Abstract: The reasonings that lead to justify wars have certain origins in similar ethical motivations in different religions that exceed the Western framework. With the rise and spread of Marxism, ideology was changed into an element of social cohesion, occupying positions previously limited to theology, the delimitation of the just war from this position, which, assumed by the People’s Republic of China, has given rise to an oriental variant in which the tradition of Sun Tzu is combined, with the Marxist-Leninist legacy and its subsequent development by Mao and his successors. Keywords: Justwar, war and marxism, war and leninism, war and maoism.

Metaphysics or Metaphors for the Anthropocene? Scientific Naturalism and the Agency of Things

In this paper, I provide the outlines of an alternative metaphilosophical orientation for Continental philosophy, namely, a form of scientific naturalism that has proximate roots in the work of Bachelard and Althusser. I describe this orientation as an “alternative” insofar as it provides a framework for doing justice to some of the motivations behind the recent revival of metaphysics in Continental philosophy, in particular its ecological-ethical motivations. In the second section of the paper, I demonstrate how ecological-ethical issues motivate new metaphysicians like Bruno Latour, Jane Bennett, Timothy Morton, Ian Bogost, and Graham Harman to impute to objects real features of agency. I also try to show how their commitments lead to deep ambiguities in their metaphysical projects. In the final section, I outline a type of scientific naturalism in Continental philosophy that parallels the sort of naturalism championed by Quine, both conceptually and historically, and suggest that it might serve our ecological-ethical purposes better.

De l’utopie du dialogue de la Renaissance à l’institution de la conversation à l’âge classique

Cet article se propose de comparer ces deux moments forts de la simulation écrite de l’échange oral en France que sont le milieu du XVIe siècle pour le genre du « dialogue » (ou du « colloque ») et la deuxième moitié du XVIIe pour celui de la « conversation » (ou de l’« entretien »), et ce, afin de montrer que la relation de continuité postulée par Marc Fumaroli entre le « dialogue humaniste » et la « conversation classique » pose problème à plus d’un titre. Nous verrons qu’il serait même préférable d’envisager cette relation sur le mode de la discontinuité, voire de l’opposition. En conclusion, nous nous intéresserons brièvement à un « passeur », Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac, ayant joué un rôle majeur dans ce renversement, dont les fondements éthiques et politiques paraissent discutables. This article sets out to compare two high points in the written simulation of oral exchange in France: the mid-sixteenth century for the genre of “dialogue” (or “colloque”) and the second half of the seventeenth for that of the “conversation” (or “entretien”). The article demonstrates that the relation of continuity postulated by Marc Fumaroli between “humanist dialogue” and “classical conversation” is problematic for more than one reason. We will see that it might be preferable to consider this relation in terms of discontinuity, or perhaps even opposition. In conclusion, we deal briefly with a “middleman” who played a major role in this reversal, and whose ethical motivations and politics seem questionable: Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac.

Introduction

The introduction reads a poem by Chen Dongdong in order to think through the libidinal and ethical motivations for genre study. It balances the urge to intervene, categorize, and create against the responsibility to artists, editors, and readers, ultimately finding that this conflict is best engaged using methodologies from translation, specifically Yan Fu’s concepts of fidelity, fluency, and elegance. This justifies the translation practice of the rest of the book, as well as the book’s mix of literary analysis, sociology, and history. The introduction ends with a brief summary of chapters one through five.

Political Theology Reconsidered

All this leads, in the fourth chapter, to a re-examination of the problem of a “Political Theology” (see also Corollary II of this book), mainly regarding the link between “creation (ab aeterno)” and “political constitution”, the latter being considered in its profound ontological basis. The chapter shows how the Spinozan-Nietzschean hypothesis of “potency” cannot but exclude any modern form of “theological-political constitutionalism”, namely any modern mode of limitation – largely determined by ethical motivations, or by the primacy of ethics over ontology: ethics of will over ontology of potency – of actions exerted by potency itself. Here Spinoza and Nietzsche come into play as a team against Kant and against all of Enlightenment natural law, revealing the weaknesses of the latter.