Philosophical Readings
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Il Convivio, ovvero il primo trattato filosofico in italiano
No full textThis article presents Dante\u27s Convivio not as a
compilation (an interpretation often still supported by several
scholars) but as a real philosophical treatise, the first
written in the Italian vernacular
Le bioart face aux problématiques socio-économiques du développement biotechnologique
No full textThe presence of artists in biotechnology laboratories
marks an important turning point in the history of
cross-art science relationships : henceforth, cooperation
between scientists and artists is no longer confined to the
representation of a scientific object, but touches on the
common creation of living beings. How to describe this
bio-artistic creativity and its relationship with biotechnology?
This paper will attempt to provide some answers to
this question. We will discuss the relationship between
biotechnology and society and the market to show that
this new “environment” makes possible and includes the
emergence of interdisciplinary practices such as bioart.
We will resume the previous analyzes to determine more
precisely the relationship between biotechnology and
bioart. Finally, we will ask ourselves what the ultimate
societal significance of this new bio-artistic creativity is
Biodesign, comment penser la production avec le vivant ?
Get PDFToday, a new kind of design is emerging. Biodesign,
indeed, refers to the use of living matter as a technology,
when living organisms are essential components
of the technology. These projects try to improve or upgrade
technology or to make it evolve in a more sustainable
way. Biotechnology is the use of living matter and organisms
to develop or make products, to create new possibilities,
new technologies. But what happens when technology
meets living matter to create one entity ? This article
questions the ethical impacts of such projects
through an overview of several projects in biodesign
Observations on the rece ption of the ancient Greek sophists and the use of the term sophist in the Renaissance
No full textThis paper presents some material for a history of the reception of ancient Greek sophistic in the Renaissance. First, it discusses what knowledge the dialectician and rhetorician Rudolph Agricola (1483-1485) may have had about the ancient Greek sophists by analysing two passages where Agricola explicitly mentions the ancient sophists. Second, it explores the meaning and use of the word ‘sophista’ in the context of the humanist-scholastic debate of the early 16thcentury and in the first comprehensive history of the Greek sophists in antiquity, Louis de Cressolles’ Theatrum veterum rhetorum, oratorum, declamatorum quos in Graecia nominabant sophistas(1620). It will be observed that Agricola’s views on the early Greek sophists, in so far as they can be reconstructed, stand in strong contrast with those of Cressolles
Vêtir l’humilité: de Bono Giamboni à Boccacce
No full textRepresentations of humility deserve far more
scholarly attention and analysis than they have thus far
received only by way of exception. This paper aims at
partially filling this historiographical gap by considering
topical accounts of humility in some Italian sources from
the late 13th - early 14th centuries, especially in Bono
Giamboni, Dante Alighieri and Giovanni Boccaccio. In
particular, the paper focuses on the recurring theme of
“dressing humility” in the works of the above mentioned
authors with the aim to study and contextualize semantic
shifts and usages of a literal and metaphorical juxtaposition
– that of humility and dress – which already knew a
long biblical and monastic tradition
“Io, Burnetto Latini”. Considerazioni su cultura e identità politica di Brunetto Latini e il Tesoretto.
No full textThis article examines some of Brunetto Latini’s
works written in the French and Tuscan vernaculars, in
prose or poetry, with particular attention to the Tesoretto.
The analysis casts light on his articulated, flexible political
agenda, one in which popular culture and the aristocratic
element are in a dialogic relationship; and Brunetto’s
unique form of Guelphism further complicates and
enriches the republican dialectic of his thought
“Panser d’or en avant a vous meismez seulement”: le récit du moi comme ressort de l’expression en langue vulgaire chez Jean Gerson
No full textThis article examines a group of interconnected
texts written in bilingual version (Latin-French) by Jean
Gerson between 1405 and 1408, as an example of the impact
that the exercise of introspection had on late- medieval
doctrinal expression. Although writing both in Latin
and in the vernacular is not unusual during the Middle
French period (1330-1500), Gerson is one of the rare authors
of this period to render a bilingual version of one
and the same work. The letter he addressed to Philippe de
Mézières shortly before the latter’s death along with a
collection of treatises on ars moriendi offer a privileged
framework to examine the way bilingualism operates and
the reasons leading to it. That the use of the vernacular
responds to pastoral preoccupations regarding the laity is
well attested in the Middle Ages; less obvious within a
context of clerical elitism is the hypothesis according to
which the vernacular responds to a penitential approach
freed from all logic of subordination. In this perspective,
the choice of the vernacular would be dictated by a discipline
of introspection seeking moral perfection
Peri Theon: The Renaissance Confronts the Gods
No full textThis essay traces the legacy of the ancient Greek sophists in the European Renaissance with particular attention to the study of religion as a human institution. Vernacular writers such as Niccolò Machiavelli and Michel de Montaigne follow the lead of the sophists in their effort to bring religion into the field of social thought. Montaigne himself offers a particularly interesting variation on the sole remaining fragment of Protagoras of Abdera’s Peri theon. In this way, these thinkers inscribe themselves in a genealogy of sophistic that continues from Classical Greece to the Enlightenment
Critical Bioart and Postcapitalist Ethics
Get PDFBioart, even in its most material definition, entails
a critical discourse on the use of technologies. The
aim is to produce an experience, an image or a discourse
that is able to decenter the viewers’ perception and, if
possible, bring them to question their own practice. As
Deborah Dixon’s framing of the critical stakes of bioart
with Jacques Rancière’s philosophy, aesthetics, by virtue
of their ability to «redistribute the visible and the sensible
», are inherently political. As far as biotechnologies
are concerned, their use, meaning and ethical limits are
drawn by the companies who use them and patent them.
Their participation in the capitalist economy can be questioned
from the point of view of recent postcapitalist theories,
that displace the Marxian concept of infrastructure
from capital to technics, following Jacques Ellul’s understanding
of the «technician system». Bioart’s claims for
paradigmatic changes and perceptual redefinitions are an
attempt at drafting a new ethics, one that is adapted to the
omnipresence of technics within our capitalist society.
Using a few significant examples, this paper examinates
how bioart relates to the current situation, and how the
«criticality» or modality of critique of bioart works both
undermines hegemonic discourses and offers alternative
visions for the individual and her or his relations with the
others and the world in a postcapitalist future
Transhumanisme : entre augmentation, esthétique et éthique
Get PDFBody hacking and transhumanism are about to
change the way we see the body. If we used to consider it
as a site for our identity and the expression of our culture,
it now merely seems to be an architecture that we can
change at will. In the field of biohacking, body hackers
enhance the body using new technologies in order to
introduce new capacities, new potentialities. For them, the
body is « obsolete », which means it should no longer
stay as it currently is. In the same way, transhumanism,
particularly extropianism, allows us to think about the
design of our future body. By the Primo Posthuman
prototype, Natasha Vita-More wants to show us what we
can expect for the future: a new body, «more comfortable,
more performing, more beautiful», that would be
enhanced, updatable and environmentally friendly. In
other words, it seems that we are about to change our way
of being, with the use of technologies and art. Biodesign
and bioart are not only used to modify specific
characteristics of a species, but also to create a whole new
type of body for the « elevation of the human condition »,
a posthuman or a cyborg. Creating the design of our body
would be a way to be more connected to the world and
also more ourselves. Human enhancement seems to be the
promise of being « truly » human and of improving
ourselves physically and mentally. But the process of
cyborgisation is not as simple as trans-humanists and
body hackers consider it. It is a way to redefine what it is
to be human, to think about what it is for us to be.
Can we really consider the body as «obsolete»? What does it
mean for us to be human? In other words, what are the
ethical and ontological issues that those projects are
revealing about personal and social identity? In this paper,
we will analyse the practices of the body hackers, and
then the way transhumanists imagine the posthuman.
Finally, we will examine the ethical issues that arise with
the process of hybridation between the body and new
technologies