Onnipotenza divina e ordine naturale nel Medioevo

The present essay aims, on the one hand, to recall the reasons of anti-naturalism, intended in a metaphysical perspective, of a large part of medieval philosophical and theological reflection and, on the other hand, to show how the same type of problems, specifically those concerning the possible mutability or immutability of the past, can be employed in favour of various conflicting positions on the matter. To demonstrate this, reference was made to some thinkers who could represent emblematic positions on the theme, in particular: Pliny the Elder for the ancient world, Augustine of Hippo, Peter Damian, Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas for the medieval era.

La natura e gli stati abituali nell’Etica Nicomachea

According to Aristotle, virtue does not arise in us neither by nature nor contrary to nature. ‘Virtue naturalism’, as the possibility to ‘reduce’ virtue and virtues of character to physical or physiological entities and relations, seems consequently impossible. Nature and virtue differ mostly in respect of their relation with contraries. A moral agent can become either virtuous or vicious, while a stone can only move downwards. However moral habits, once acquired by the agent, seem to come close to nature’s uni-directionality.

Naturalismo e cosmopolitismo nell’Antichità

Cosmopolitanism in Antiquity is especially promoted by the cynics and by the stoics. The Epicurean Garden seems to adopt a very different view, according to which justice and laws depend on what is useful for a given political community at a given time. However, the epicurean Diogenes of Oinoanda (fr. 30 Smith) endorses a sort of cosmopolitanism, which contrasts, at first sight, with the traditional contractualism of his school. Nevertheless, in this paper it is argued that Diogenes’ cosmopolitanism could hardly be seen as a concession to other schools and that it is consistent with the main principles of Epicurus’ political doctrine.

Il naturalismo oggi

This paper tries to draw a map of the various versions of naturalism to which the current philosophical debate aims – from the most radical, or ‘hard’ ones, to the mildest, or liberal ones – and of the different projects of naturalization that are associated to them. In particular, in the first paragraphs, the present article will consider Timothy Williamson’s and Penelope Maddy’s attempts to inherit the demands of naturalism without declaring to be a naturalist (Williamson), or without making naturalism an empty slogan or a kind of masked first philosophy (Maddy). In the second part, the connections between epistemological naturalism and ontological or metaphysical naturalism will be analysed. The questions will be: (1) is it possible to be naturalist with regard to epistemology without being naturalist with regard to ontology?; (2) is it possible to be ontologically naturalist without being epistemologically naturalist?

Riflessioni sul concetto di natura in Lucio Anneo Seneca

The aim of this short paper is to highlight nature’s central role in the constitution and progress of human morality, by analysing nature’s multiple characters as displayed in various sections of Seneca’s work. First, the focus will extend to man’s fundamental propensity to good, which belongs to him by nature. Secondly, a virtuous and happy life will be presented as the life led according to nature. In conclusion, research on natural phenomena will be accounted for, as a building block towards moral perfection. The relationship between all the previous traits, mentioned in the cited passages, constitutes the heart of Seneca’s ethical naturalism.

Il linguaggio come collante tra menti individuali e socialità umana

The pragmatist tradition in philosophy has left a sound legacy in many contemporary research fields. John Dewey’s continuist and emergentist approach to the nature-or-nurture problem in relation to the individual human mind has been regained lately in evolutionist psychology and related disciplines. For Dewey, language plays a fundamental role in creating and maintaining this continuity between the individual mind and the social and physical environment humans inhabit. The present article will focus on a few contemporary lines of research that identify language as the ‘glue’ that bonds each individual to one another and to society, with a decisive impact on the development of one’s own mind.

Il naturalismo culturale di Dewey

The essay focuses on John Dewey’s pragmatic naturalism in order to show that the relatively recent naturalizing trend in philosophy should be considered a historically and culturally situated restriction of other forms of naturalism. Dewey’s cultural naturalism is based on a strong continuity between nature and culture, assuming that human intelligent behaviour arises from already existing organic and environmental resources in an entirely contingent manner. This kind of naturalism does not involve physical reductionism: more complex interactions between organisms and their environment, such as human mental behaviour, are seen as innovative, in the sense that they produce forms of organization that, on the one hand, are not reducible to the simple association of pre-existing elements. On the other hand, innovative modes of interaction between human organisms and their naturally social environment have consequence on the natural world: they produce changes within it. The second part of the text presents Dewey’s non-substantive conception of the mind, which has its roots in the non-reversible consequences of the advent of highly communicative and linguistic interactions in the human world as well as in the possibility for human organism to reconsider analytically or reflectively their primarily holistic, qualitatively felt experiences.

Naturalisme et scepticisme

Hume is qualified as a naturalist in two respects: on the one hand, because he sets himself to observe natural phenomena and more precisely those relating to human nature; on the other hand, because nature refers to a mental activity that eludes the grasp of the thought that tries to seize it. Hume’s dealing with the issue of personal identity creates a tension between these two meanings of naturalism – the power of nature seems to escape the understanding of the philosopher who tries to give reasons for it and both sides of Humian naturalism dissociate themselves. If this tension is not positively resolved, in the opinion of Hume himself, it is reduced through the use of a radical scepticism.

Nel tempo e nello spazio. Linguaggio e natura nella filosofia di Ludwig Wittgenstein

The paper focuses on some naturalistic aspects of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. Wittgenstein has often been considered a radical anti-naturalist philosopher, mainly because he does not endorse the thesis of the continuity between philosophy and science. However, it will be argued that Wittgenstein’s later philosophy incorporates a kind of naturalism without naturalization, i.e., a liberal naturalism, in virtue of the relation between human nature and language. It will be concluded that Wittgenstein’s liberal naturalism provides an example of a naturalistic perspective on language which avoids the limits of an intellectualist approach without leading to scientism: this is meant to express the irreducibility of naturalism to the mere scientific version.

Descartes aux limites du naturalisme

In order to appreciate the distance between the Cartesian theory of man and a naturalistic programme, it is necessary to ask what exactly Descartes means by “the soul’s power to move the body”. A precise examination of the Cartesian texts, especially the Treatise on Man and The Passions of the Soul, will lead to the exclusion of any direct action of the soul on the body. All the action of the soul goes through the formation of certain images in the brain, which determine certain flows of animal spirits, and as for the passions, the effectiveness of this action is mainly a matter of habit. The spontaneity of thought does not preclude considering the ‘force of the soul’ as associated with the ‘disposition of the brain’. Conversely, nothing in the Cartesian texts allows us to eliminate this spontaneity where we experience it.