Firenze University Press: E-Journals
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Model-Building as a Philosophical Method
Get PDFThe method of building simplified formal models of phenomena under study is widespread in contemporary natural and social science; much scientific progress consists in the provision of better models. A model-building methodology has also been used with success in analytic philosophy, for example by Carnap in his development of intensional semantics. Arguably, philosophers have overlooked how much progress their discipline has made through their failure to conceive it in model-building terms. By using the method more extensively, they can overcome the fragility to error inherent in the naïve falsificationist methodology on which many analytic philosophers rely
The Shaky Social Citizenship of Early-Career Independent Professionals: Work Transformation, Career and Life Uncertainty, Unrepresented Rights
Get PDFThe combination of a segmented and flexible labour market and a fragmented welfare system has given rise to an unprecedented risk of uncertainty for the new generation of independent professionals. Independent self-employment frequently conceals precarious working conditions, low wages and limited protection; tasks, knowledge, networking and creativity are deteriorating, with an evident decline in autonomy often leading to entrapment in poor occupational careers. A qualitative research, involving 72 early-career I-Pros in Milan, argues that the new generation of professionals is undergoing a crisis of social citizenship – since social integration through labour market inclusion, structured representation of interests, welfare protection, are lacking – and it is also showing a “culture of uncertainty”, a day-by-day approach to life and career. Beyond a group of fully integrated I-Pros, most professionals show to suffer from economic and work vulnerability as well as relational fragility, whereas the weakest part of interviewed I-Pros experiences social and professional vulnerability, strong isolation at work and renunciation of personal objectives
Spinoza on Metaphysical Doubt and the “Cartesian Circle”
Get PDFThis article offers an analysis and defense of the solution proposed by Spinoza to the “Cartesian circle” problem. Taking into consideration Spinoza’s sound analysis of the epistemic conditions of an authentic doubt, it will try to show, against the interpreters who maintain that Spinoza’s most explicit and consistent solution fails, that his solution offers a perfectly coherent account of the self-justification of the objective value of reason. I will also briefly indicate the intimate connection existing between Spinoza’s solution to the “Cartesian circle” problem and his conception of truth as its own standar
Professions Within, Between and Beyond. Varieties of Professionalism in a Globalising World
Get PDFThis article introduces the monographic section on the varieties of professionalism in a globalising world. The monographic section aims to explore new theoretical perspectives and analytical approaches in the field of the sociology of professions, by collecting both theoretical and empirical contributions focusing on different professions (either established or emerging ones) and topics, from different geographical regions. In the first part of this introductory article, we discuss professionalism as a concept that needs to be theoretically redefined in the context of post-industrial society after the crisis. For this purpose, we propose to refocus the discourse about professionalism on the process of differentiation and the increasing heterogeneity it is bringing about, within and between professional groups. Additionally, the changed societal conditions imply a changing role for professionals in society, beyond professionalism, which is an area worth being explored. Thus, we outline possible developments of the academic debate in three main analytical dimensions, labelled as within, between and beyond. The second part charts the nine contributions included in the monographic section, while trying to reconduct them to the dimensions mentioned above. Three orders of themes have thus been identified, concerning: (1) the redefinition of the concept of professionalism as a “practice”, highlighting the practicality of the wisdom used by professionals in performing their everyday tasks; (2) the analysis of regulation processes, focusing on what happens when institutions shape professionalism; and (3) the investigation of the dynamics of transnational mobility, in the context of globalisation processe
Towards process-figurational theory in organization studies
Get PDFThis paper outlines the significance of Elias’s work as an alternative solution for many of the core conceptual problems in organization studies as well as the distinctive contribution of The Court Society, sketches the main elements of the ways in which his ideas have been taken up by organisation scholars to date, concentrating on a selection of studies drawing on Elias, and concludes with some reflections on the future directions that process-figurational theory might take in organization studies. The core line of argument is that Elias provides a range of powerful theoretical resources to transcend many of the problems usually addressed through the work of Foucault, actor-network theory, postmodernist and post-structuralist theory, especially the supposed agency/structure problem, constituting an alternative and effective analysis of organizational life that is anchored in the relational and processual strands of classical sociological theory
Mille choses de sa part. Hume, Ramsay and Beccaria
Get PDFAt the end of 1765 Morellet wrote to Hume: «I send you 3 copies of my translation of the book de’ delitti». A few days afterwards he informed Beccaria that Hume «desires me to tell you one thousand things for him». To justify his translation Morellet appeals to Hume’s authority: he «read the original and the translation with great care» and «approved of my freedom in translating it». In his works and letters Hume never mentions Beccaria: what about the «one thousand things» that he is supposed to have told Morellet about Dei delitti? Were they close to those that Ramsay mentioned to Diderot? What did Hume think about the theory of original contract and the abolishment of capital punishment
A member of the Accademia dei Pugni translates Frances Brooke’s. The History of Lady Julia Mandeville. From Giambattista Biffi’s manuscripts
Get PDFThe present essay intends to address an aspect of Biffi’s anglomania as it appears from his partial translation from the original English language of the epistolary novel The History of Lady Julia Mandeville (1763), found among his manuscript papers. The name of Frances Brooke, the author of the novel, is not given with the title in the manuscript and was probably totally ignored by Biffi and by the Italian readership at large. The paper explores the reasons that might have led Biffi to start such an enterprise, the kind of appeal Brooke’s novel could have to his curiosity, and also why he suddenly dropped the experiment and left the translation at a very early stage
Tra filosofia e diritto. Il pensiero critico-riformista di Manasseh Dawes, studioso di Beccaria
Get PDFConsidered as one of the staunchest supporters of the need to reform the eighteenth-century British penal system, the jurist Manasseh Dawes combines legal reflection with moral criticism. This union emerges from the reading of his works and in particular in a treatise published in 1782, entitled An Essay on Crimes and Punishments. In this work Dawes takes up and analyzes several aspects of Beccaria’s thought, paying special attention to the causes of criminal conduct in parallel with the theory of human freedom. Through other important English intellectuals such as Blackstone, Eden and Dagge, Dawes draws from Beccaria his critical and reformist approach to the study of criminal law