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Tra memoria e melodia. Un commento a “Comme une chanson” di Pier Celeste Marchetti
No full textEnglish: This article offers an interpretation of Pier Celeste Marchetti’s poem Comme une chanson (Collage), identifying it as the work that most directly embodies the author’s spirit, sensibility, and worldview. Built around the guiding metaphor of life as a song, the poem weaves together memories of childhood, adolescence, and youth with an exceptionally rich musical texture that ranges across religious, popular, and mountain traditions, as well as twentieth-century popular music.
The poem constantly alternates fragments, refrains, nursery rhymes, and verses with scenes of play, adventure, nature, discovery, and first loves, generating a rhythmic structure that becomes both a formal and an existential principle: music is not a mere quotation, but an emotional device that marks and illuminates the foundational experiences of the author’s life.
A central focus of the analysis is "lightness", understood not as superficiality but as a gaze capable of wonder, gratitude, and luminosity—a quality that allows memory to rise, to become dance, to transform lived experience into a light and vital weave. Upon this rhythmic ground is grafted the broader rhythm of seasons and years, which accompanies the passage from childhood to adulthood without ever breaking the bond with an original joy.
The poem closes by returning to its opening line, within a framing structure that reaffirms the continuity between life and music: for Pier Celeste, to live meant to listen to, compose, and inhabit the world “like a song,” with the wonder and freshness of a child.
Italian: Questo articolo propone una lettura della poesia Comme une chanson (Collage) di Pier Celeste Marchetti, individuandola come la poesia che più direttamente incarna lo spirito, la sensibilità e la visione del mondo dell’autore. Il componimento, costruito attorno alla metafora-guida della vita come canzone, intreccia ricordi d’infanzia, adolescenza e giovinezza con un ricchissimo tessuto musicale che attraversa tradizioni religiose, popolari, montane e della musica leggera del Novecento.
La poesia alterna costantemente brani, ritornelli, filastrocche e versi a scene di gioco, avventura, natura, scoperta e primi amori, generando una struttura ritmica che diventa principio formale ed esistenziale: la musica non è semplice citazione, ma dispositivo emotivo che scandisce e illumina le esperienze fondative della vita dell’autore.
Elemento centrale dell’analisi è la leggerezza, intesa non come superficialità ma come sguardo capace di meraviglia, gratitudine e luminosità: una qualità che permette alla memoria di sollevarsi, di farsi danza, di trasformare il vissuto in una trama lieve e vitale. Su questa base ritmica si innesta il ritmo più ampio delle stagioni e degli anni, che accompagna il passaggio dall’infanzia all’età adulta senza mai spezzare il legame con la gioia originaria.
La poesia si chiude riprendendo il verso iniziale, in una cornice che ribadisce la continuità tra vita e musica: per Pier Celeste, vivere significava ascoltare, comporre e abitare il mondo “come una canzone”, con lo stupore e la freschezza di un bambino
Temporal Discounting and Climate Change
No full textTemporal discounting is a technical operation in climate change economics. When discount rates are positive, economic evaluation treats future benefits as less important than equivalent present benefits. This chapter explains and critically evaluates four different reasons economists have given for tying discount rates to the interest rates we observe in real-world markets. I suggest that while philosophers have correctly criticized three of these reasons, their criticisms of the fourth miss the mark. This is because philosophers have not taken heed of the distinct analytical framework in which the fourth reason arises
Forced Dissolutions of Religious Organizations: The Prevalence of the Issue, Impacts on Religious Communities, and Guidance from the Strasbourg Court
No full textUnder international law, states are granted allowances to dissolve religious organizations, but only for select reasons based on narrow circumstances. However, a trend over the last twenty years has seen state authorities over-exercise their margins of appreciation by forcibly dissolving religious organizations on baseless grounds while claiming the dissolutions were for legitimate reasons that comply with international standards. This article analyzes the prevalence of forced dissolution and its impacts on the freedoms of a range of religious communities, especially members of minority religions and new religious movements. It also considers the legitimacy of the reasons found permissible under international law for states to dissolve religious organizations. A spectrum is introduced to grade the rights violations faced by religious communities following the dissolution of their legal organizations, to better understand the implications for the conditions of freedom of religion or belief. Reviews of three relevant cases lodged against Azerbaijan and Russia are conducted to show how dissolution cases arise and what guidance the Strasbourg Court is dispensing on best practices for states when dissolving
religious organizations
Why ‘democracy’ is still a word worth using
No full textIn his 2023 book The Concept of Democracy: An Essay on Conceptual Amelioration and Abandonment, Herman Cappelen argues that we should stop using ‘democracy’ and ‘democratic’ (D-words). In this paper, I critically engage with Cappelen’s argument, focusing primarily on his contention that D-words likely fail us semantically, either by being meaningless or by having massively mismatched extensions. Against Cappelen, I argue for three claims. First, even if D-words aren’t fully semantically settled, they are likely at least partially settled. Second, even if D-words are only partially semantically settled, they can be useful enough to retain in our conceptual repertoire. Third, even if the extension of D-words is massively mismatched, this would be a serious consideration for their abandonment only under specific conditions that don’t seem to obtain in the case of the mismatches that Cappelen considers. I also address the objection that my defence of D-words is overly optimistic, as it underestimates the extent of their normative exploitation
Distributed remembering and cognitive philosophy
No full textThis chapter introduces the idea that remembering, as a cognitive process, is spread or ‘distributed’ over bodily and worldly resources as well as the brain. It sets this claim, natural enough in cultural memory studies, within a ‘situated cognition’ movement that has transformed the cognitive sciences and philosophy of mind from within over 40 years. After critically surveying broader debates in contemporary philosophy of memory, the chapter focusses on this ‘distributed remembering’ framework in theory and application. The approach demands insistently interdisciplinary methods, because the material, technological, and environmental resources that compose disparate ecologies of memory are heterogeneous and dynamic. Research on socially distributed remembering challenges assumptions in cognitive psychology that other people are sources of error or distortion in memory, instead identifying groups and microprocesses that produce benefits in collaborative recall. Our mnemonic interdependence with others and with diverse external scaffolding is one key source of our cognitive-affective vulnerability
Lecturers’ job satisfaction questionnaire (LJSQ): Development, construct validity, and bifactor modelling in Nigerian universities
No full textThere is currently a dearth of a culturally sensitive instrument for measuring job satisfaction among university lecturers in Africa, specifically Nigeria. To bridge this gap, we developed and psychometrically tested the Lecturers' Job Satisfaction Questionnaire (LJSQ) in two Nigerian universities. Content validity evidence was gathered through experts' ratings, with a quantitative approach followed in computing content validity indices at the item and scale level. The researchers refined and tested the Lecturers’ Job Satisfaction Questionnaire (LJSQ) through a systematic process. A focus group discussion with 10 university lecturers guided its initial development, followed by pilot testing with 3,122 lecturers divided into three subsamples: 262 for Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), 1,300 for Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), and 1,560 for bifactor modelling. Participants were allocated systematically across the subsamples to ensure a balanced distribution. Results of data analysis revealed a five-factor structure encompassing satisfaction with work conditions, workload allocation, remuneration, career advancement opportunity, and research support. The bifactor model demonstrated the best fit, among four competing models supported by reliability measures such as Cronbach’s alpha, Omega coefficients, and split-half reliability, alongside convergent and discriminant validity, confirming its effectiveness in assessing job satisfaction. Conclusively, the applicability of the LJSQ transcends disciplinary and institutional boundaries, providing a foundation for future cross-cultural validation and longitudinal studies. Keywords
Ethical Puzzles of Time Travel
No full textThis paper is dedicated to articulating the ethical puzzles that arise from the possibility of time travel. I divide the puzzles into three different categories: permissibility puzzles, obligation puzzles, and conflicts between past and future selves. In each category, I suggest that ethical problems involving time travel are not as dissimilar to parallel “normal” ethical puzzles as one might think
What Does Trans Inclusion In A Liberal State Require?
No full textOne of the most prominent minority groups today is trans people. Those who see themselves as fighting for trans rights have tended to take these to include a right to legal recognition by the state, and social treatment by fellow citizens, as the sex of identification. These rights claims have been given substantial legal and institutional uptake. If trans people's full inclusion in public life requires legal recognition and social treatment as the sex of identification, then this is merely a description of things being as they should be. But if trans people's inclusion within the liberal state does not require these things, then this may be a description of a violation of liberal neutrality, the enforcement by the state of a contested and controversial conception of the good; and a tyranny of the majority, the weight of social opinion being pressed against those who want to talk about (what they see as) the fact that things are not as they should be. One way to gain some clarity on whether things are as they should be or not is to carefully consider the principles that liberal democratic states have used to secure the full inclusion in public life of other minority groups, and their application to trans people. I'll consider in particular toleration, collective and individual exemptions, and full accommodation; as they have applied to religious minorities, women, sexual orientation minorities, black people, and people with physical disabilities
The Paradox of the Incarnate and the Transcendental Horizon: A Theological Cartography of Henri de Lubac and Karl Rahner in the Context of the Indian Church (1947–2026)
No full text"The dominance of Karl Rahner in Indian theology was a historical necessity; it provided the confidence for a local church to assert its identity. But the "transcendental" paradigm has reached a point of diminishing returns. It risks dissolving the distinctiveness of the Christian event and unintentionally colonizing the Hindu experience.
Henri de Lubac, the neglected partner, waits in the wings. His theology—steeped in the Fathers, obsessed with the paradox of the concrete, and fiercely protective of the social unity of mankind, offers the corrective needed for the next century. For an India grappling with the violence of abstraction, de Lubac’s insistence that "humanity is one" not by a vague concept, but by the concrete blood of the Corpus Mysticum, is a message of radical hope. The future of Indian theology may well depend on a "Return to the Center":a return to the paradox of the Incarnate that de Lubac so faithfully guarded.