Stregoneria e utopia. Luciano Parinetto vent’anni dopo

Twenty years after his death, the reflections of Luciano Parinetto (1934-2001), who was associate professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Milan, remain, on the one hand, on the relationship between witchcraft and diversity, and on the other hand, on the value of utopian hope. Despite the fact that the course of history has preferred the path of integration to that of revolution, dialectics remains the picklock to criticize alienated social situations.

The Consumer Ideology and the Truth about Man

The formation of the human conscience is a controverted question in both philosophical ethics and moral philosophy. Conscience refers to one’s conception and understanding of the moral good. An especially significant manifestation of the problem of conscience in the 20th and 21st centuries is the impact of ideology on the individual person’s moral sense. This article considers the impact of two 19th century philosophies―Mill’s utilitarianism and Marxism―on contemporary moral thought insofar as the interaction of these two produce a powerful materialist ideology to determine the modern European and American conscience. We then turn to the thought of Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtyła), who in his encyclical Veritatis Splendor and in his earlier philosophical writings developed an account of moral truth by which the dangers of materialistic ideology can be overcome. It is argued, with John Paul II, that only in the context of truth can a coherent account of freedom of conscience under the moral law be developed.

The Missing Measure of Loneliness: A Case for Including Neededness in Loneliness Scales

Prominent tools used to measure loneliness such as the UCLA Scale and DJGS include no items related to being needed, i.e., neededness. More recent scales such as the DLS and SELSA do include items on neededness, but only within their romantic loneliness subscales. This paper proposes that new iterations of loneliness scales should include in all subscales two items on neededness: (a) whether a person feels important to someone else and (b) whether that person has good ways to serve others’ well-being. The paper surveys cognate studies that do not rely on loneliness scales but establish a link between neededness and feelings of social connection. It then highlights ways in which neededness items would improve the ability of loneliness scales to specify the risk profile, to delineate variations in the emotional tone and quality of loneliness, and to propose suitable interventions. The paper outlines a theoretical argument—drawing on moral philosophy—that prosociality and being needed are non-contingent, morally urgent human needs, postulating that the protective benefits of neededness vary according to at least four factors: the significance, persistence, non-instrumentality, and non-fungibility of the ways in which a person is needed. Finally, the paper considers implications for the design of appropriate remedies for loneliness.

Genesis of Moral Freedom in Kant

In Kant’s writings, we can discover four key moments in the realization of moral freedom: i) The original possibility of being free, ii) The act described by Kant as radical evil, iii) The opposite act, that is, an inner conversion to good, and, finally, iv) The long process of the self-development of virtue extending to immortality. There are further issues such as the double concept of moral evil, and practical temporality. Moral freedom is originally located (and presupposed in Kant’s transcendental deduction) in the individual, her decisions, and the maxims or principles that guide her actions, even though a community (as both a „kingdom of ends” and social reality) provides the scope wherein all this takes place and its socially and historically-situated shapes. This paper tries to systematize these crucial stages of Kant’s moral philosophy with the focus on the concept of virtue.

Buddhist Ethics

This volume is one of a series of monographs on Buddhist philosophy for philosophers. It presents an outline of Buddhist ethical thought, presenting Buddhist ethical reflection as a distinct approach, or rather set of approaches, to moral philosophy. The book draws on a range of Buddhist philosophers to exhibit the internal diversity of the tradition as well as the lineaments that demonstrate its overarching integrity. This includes early Pāli texts, medieval Indian commentarial literature and philosophical treatises, Tibetan commentaries and treatises, and contemporary Buddhist literature. It argues that Buddhist ethics is best understood not as a species of any Western ethical tradition, but instead as a kind of moral phenomenology, and that it is particularist in its orientation. The book addresses both methodological and doctrinal issues and concludes with a study of the way that Buddhist ethical thought is relevant in the contemporary world.

Bimal K. Matilal's Philosophy: Language, Realism, Dharma, and Ineffability

The article considers the theoretical and practical consequences of the so-called "soft" version of epistemological realism in Bimal K. Matilal's philosophical project. The author offers an analytical view on Matilal's philosophy, which helps to understand it in a broader prospective, comparing his arguments on perception and objectivity with contemporary arguments in Western analytical philosophy; in fact, it is possible to view Matilal not only as the proponent of revised Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika approach, but also as the follower of realistic view on language, following L. Wittgenstein, W. Quine, H. Putnam and M. Dummett. Despite the fact that such interpretation may sound diverse or multivocal, it nevertheless helps to better understand both lineages of argumentation: the critical review of the impossibility of private language can be compared in both Western and Indian philosophical discourses, which leads into the domain of social epistemology. The second part of the article discusses the ethical arguments on the vulnerability of moral virtues, and the place of Dharma as a term in moral philosophy. Poetical and metaphorical language appears to be a fruitful strategy to discover the ineffable - and also via negativa and catuṣkoṭi - which is shown by Matilal on the example of the unacceptability of lying. The ethical ineffability and its interconnection with Matilal's commentaries on practical wisdom play the crucial part in the interpretations of Dharmaśāstra texts.

Damaris Masham, Ralph Cudworth and John Locke: Some Philosophical Continuities

In this paper, I focus on Damaris Masham, to re-consider the relationship of her philosophy to the two philosophers with whom she was most closely associated: John Locke, and her father, the Cambridge Platonist, Ralph Cudworth. After considering some of the problems of interpretation which have arisen in scholarly debates, I focus her Occasional Thoughts to highlight continuities with both Locke and Cudworth in her epistemology, moral philosophy and metaphysics. I argue these show that Damaris Masham’s philosophy does not fit the received categories of empiricist or rationalist of the dominant narrative. Her position requires us to reconsider not just the relationship of her philosophy to that of Cudworth and Locke, but also of the relationship of Cudworth and Locke. Ultimately, therefore, reintegrating women into the history of philosophy challenges us to rethink standard narratives of the history of philosophy.