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Politici e parlanti? I Cinocefali, i Pigmei e un gigante
Get PDFThe human being is a political and speaking
animal. Other beings, even with monstrous features, like
Pygmees and Cynocephales in particular, seem to have
similar characteristics. This article analyzes some elements
of the debate on the humanity of these beings
Dai volgarizzamenti agli scrittori: “conversare” nel Convivio di Dante
Get PDFConversatio / communicatio in Middle Ages
means not a linguistic, but a moral condivision. By developing
this concept of conversazione, in the third book of
the Convivio, Dante reveals to the reader the real essence
of Aristotelian knowledge: the Wisdom beloved by Solomon
in the Bible. In Aristotelian terms, he says, Love is
the «form» of the relationship between man and Knowledge
because Wisdom loves the one who loves her (III
xi). Thus, the desire for knowledge quoted by Dante at the
beginning of the Convivio is not a mechanic impulse leading
to an actualization of human potential, because the
essence of Science revealed in the third treatise is the personal,
mutual relationship between the knowing subject
and the object known. This radically new essence of Science
proposed by Dante is based upon the Love-
Knowledge conceived by Saint Paul in I Cor 13, 12
Parole et stratégies de communication aux limites de l’humain
Get PDFThe medieval world is a universe populated by
monstrous creatures; thinkers aimed to establish whether
or not this throng of anomalous anthropomorphic figures
belonged to the human species. In this respect, the use of
language and speech is recognized as an important prerequisite
for developing the associative and political propensities
of human beings. The inability to communicate
thus becomes a fundamental yardstick for measuring the
savagery of the individual or people in question. This article
will analyse the relationship between the boundaries
of the human and language, firstly by briefly outlining the
metaphorical use made of expressions associated with devoration
and secondly by examining the relationship between
cannibalism, metamorphosis and speech. A special
focus will be placed on lycanthropy
Faire société avec les démons ? Le magicien et la question du pacte aux derniers siècles du Moyen Âge
Get PDFThis paper intends to confront the theology of
the magic pact with demons such as it is defined in the
XIVth century by the inquisitor Nicholas Eymerich – one
of the best advocates of the qualification of magic as heresy
– with the way the contemporary texts of ritual magic
defined for their part the relationship between the magician
and the devils. Indeed, the magic books that
Eymerich seems to know quite well give to see a much
more complex reality that the manichean vision of the
theologians between the demonic worship of the apostate
magician and the divine worship of the christian believer.
The magician who adresses the devils by words and signs
is the initiator of a true pact with God, who is the only
One who can delegate to him the potestas ligandi necessary
to subdue the evil spirits. This pact is based on his
faith and on his spiritual purity. But at the same time, and
without systematic mind, he turns to practices, such as the
sacrifices, which draw a more ambivalent relationship
with the spirits and seem de facto to define a kind of secondary
pact. Obviously, this type of practices could only
feed the traditional negative vision of magic shared by the
theologians and the inquisitors at the end of the Middle
Ages
Empatía y humillación: sobre La Violencia en Colombia
No full textThis text attempts an answer to the following question: How should we interpret the extreme and alarming conditions that characterize the rural war during the time of La Violenciain Colombia? I proceed first by analyzing the answer given to this question by the Colombian anthropologist María Victoria Uribe. According to Uribe, the sustained and sanguinary harm imposed upon the enemy’s body during the years of La Violenciais to be explained by the fact that the perpetrators didn’t truly seetheir victims as human beings. Taking into account the meanings of the terms “empathy” and “humiliation” proposed respectively by E. Husserl y A. Margalit, I move on to show how – given conditions of normality – it is not possible to attribute a determinate meaning to the idea of “seeing” employed by Uribe to support her own interpretation.  
Amanita, amarguísima amanita… (a propósito de Musa Paradisíaca de José Alejandro Restrepo)
No full textThe following text is a commentary by philosopher Bruno Mazzoldi of José Alejandro Restrepo’s most recent exhibition and montage of Musa Paradisiaca(Bogotá, FLORA, 2015). The installation was accompanied this time, in the third floor of the gallery, by a series of works that evoke the history of the conception of the original montage (see the images included in this article), together with the engravings of the lost paradise and photographs by the artist staging Adam and Eve with the “forbidden fruit” (in Restrepo’s work, a banana). Mazzoldi combines the reference to this ‘forbidden fruit’ to Restrepo’s use of hallucinogen mushrooms (Amanita Muscaria) as a frame and a framework for his commentary. 
Gli exempla monastici nel De vita solitaria. Sui Dialogi di san Gregorio Magno
Get PDFOn the basis of vernacularization of the Vitae
Patrum and of the Dialogi of Domenico Cavalca, we
examine the influence of hagiographic literature in the
debate between solitary life and community life. In the
Vitae the model of life is the solitary one, like the fathers
of the desert, in the gregorian Dialogi the community
model prevails, embodied by St. Benedict of Norcia. Petrarca
in the De vita solitaria theorized his ideal of solitude
as free choice of the subject devotes himself to the
study that he free from passions. Petrarca retrives in the
treaty many exempla of Vitae and Dialogi to create a
translation with which to legitimize their choice. Boccaccio,
to this mythizaton of solitary life, answers with two
novellas of the Decameron (III, 10 e IV, Introduzione), in
which the exempla of hagiographic literature are overturned
natural drives thriumph over moral impositions
Faire communauté, bâtir la société idéale. Aspects du silence dans la tradition monastique médiévale
No full textAlongside purely mystical silence, there is
another silence in Christian tradition, not unrelated to it.
This silence, which can be described as "disciplinary”,
was particularly important in the monastic communities
and was more or less precisely codified in many rules. In
contrary to what people generally think, it was for centuries
an instrument of communication which aimed at
building a collective identity directly prefiguring the heavenly
Jerusalem. All the texts used in this article show
that silence was not conceived as an absence of sound but
as an inversion of the profane speech. To silence did not
mean to be silent in solitude but rather to cultivate harmony
in a community that allowed the holy colloquium.
By reversing the values of the world and replacing the
word with silence, the monks claimed to build the heavenly
City together on earth
La inteligencia periférica. Fragmentos de la imaginación del borde en la obra de Ezequiel Martínez Estrada
Get PDFThe following paper develops some considerations around the ideas of border and frontier in the works of Ezequiel Martínez Estrada (Argentina, 1895-1964). His work Radiografía de la pampa(1933) is presented as a major cornerstone of thought in a via negativaapproach to the world, and the basis for a complex understanding of (Benjaminian) transits and residues in 20th century Latin America. 
Extending the Limits of Nature. Political Animals, Artefacts, and Social Institutions
Get PDFThis essay discusses how medieval authors
from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries dealt with a
philosophical problem that social institutions pose for the
Aristotelian dichotomy between natural and artificial entities.
It is argued that marriage, political community, and
language provided a particular challenge for the conception
that things which are designed by human beings are
artefacts. Medieval philosophers based their arguments
for the naturalness of social institutions on the anthropological
view that human beings are political animals by
nature, but this strategy required rethinking the borderline
between nature and art. The limits of nature were extended,
as social institutions were considered to be natural
even though they are in many ways similar to artificial
products