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Università G. d’Annunzio Chieti-Pescara, DdA Dipartimento di Architettura con P. Misino, M. Angrilli, S. Ferrini, R. Ottaviani
No full textPresentazioen del progetto elaborato dal gruppo dell'Università di Chieti-Pescara composto da P. Misino, M. Angrilli, S. Ferrini, R. Ottaviani, C. Varagnol
UMaine Mourns Passing of Patricia M. Collins
No full textEmail from University President Joan Ferrini-Mundy on the death of UMaine alumna and former System Trustee Patricia M. Collins
Transition to Spirit
No full text1.Logic, nature and spirit: their systematic relations 2. The truth of nature's externality in the 1807 Phenomenology; 3. Nature's liberation from externality in the philosophy of nature; 4. Why nature is not yet spirit.
From the editors' preface:
"Cinzia Ferrini treats one of the most difficult conceptual-systematic transitions in Hegel's philosophy: the transition from the world of nature to the realm of spirit. She outlines the internal connections between logic, nature and spirit, as conceived by Hegel. She then determines the meaning of 'external nature' in the 1807 Phenomenology. Finally, by considering Hegel's various lectures on logic, nature and spirit, as well as the Encyclopaedia Philosophy of Nature, Ferrini elucidates Hegel's challenging account of the separation of self-external nature from nature as the externalization of spirit"
110. Ferrini, M., Nuti, C., Vanzi, I., 1999. “Seismic Risk Assessment and Mitigation of two Existing Hospitals in Italy”. Proc. 11th WCEE, Oakland, NZ, 31.1.2000-4.2.2000
No full textRelazione per il Progetto per la Grande Villa Adriana - Piranesi Prix de Rome
No full textPresentazioen del progetto elaborato dal gruppo dell'Università di Chieti-Pescara composto da P. Misino, M. Angrilli, S. Ferrini, R. Ottaviani, C. Varagnol
Cinzia Ferrini, Dai primi hegeliani a Hegel (Napoli: Città del Sole, 1993)
No full textThis is an impressive book. It provides an informative introduction to Hegel’s
system and to the history of Hegelianism from its very beginning to most
recent times with a particular eye on Britain and North America. It is also
a thoroughly original work, and I may stress this aspect, given that today
too many colleagues apparently cannot resist the temptation to collect their
previously published essays and publish them in volumes with a doubtful
internal unit y. Acting in opposition to such a sign of academic decadence,
Ferrini subjected the manuscript of a course she gave in Naples (at the Istituto
Italiano per gli Studi Filosofi ci in the Spring Term of 1999) to a line-by-line
revision, with the eventual aim of publishing it in the present form. Again,
a proof of Ferrini’s virtuosity may be found in the fact that hers is exactly
the procedure that Edmund Husserl adopted for the publication of his Einführung
in die Philosophie (which he eventually, however, did not consider
worthy of publication) and of his Formale und transzendentale Logik (which
he did consider worthy of publication).
In the Preface (pp. 7–17), Ferrini makes her start from the question,
“Why Hegel? Why Now?” in the self-proclaimed epoch of difference and
postmodernism that was proposed by the editors of the Winter 2000 special
issue of Dialogue. She considers Robert Pippin’s remark that at the end of the
century, scholars fi nd themselves on a dividing line between contemporary
post-analytic philosophy and Heideggerian hermeneutics. The crucial point is
Hegel’s notion of the meaning and the intelligibilit y of experience that spirit
has of itself, as the result of human practices guided by norms or anchored
by rules and that tie together the members of a communit y.1 On the basis of
William Maker’s suggestions about “Rethinking Hegel,”2 Ferrini discusses the
following: fi rst, the appreciation (by Richard Rort y, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and
Jürgen Habermas) of Hegel’s critique of all subject-based epistemologies that
advance foundational claims; second, the recognition (by Gadamer, Alasdair
MacIntyre, and Rort y) of the role played by the history of philosophy in the
understanding of philosophy; third, the re-proposal of aspects of Hegel’s holism
by MacIntyre, Habermas, Rort y, and Paul K. Feyerabend; and fi nally, Paul
Redding’s interpretation of Hegel as a postmodernist thinker with whom one
can discuss post-Wittgensteinian problems such as the ones centered around
the ties between intellect, language, and social praxis (pp. 14–15).3
170 The Owl of Minerva 38:1–2 (2006–07)
Ferrini opens chapter 1 (pp. 23–68) with an analysis of the fi rst encyclopedia
article on Hegel (which appeared in 1824 and was presumably authored
by J. A. Wendt), a document whose importance had been pointed out by
Henry S. Harris in his Hegel’s Ladder.4 For her part, Ferrini points out that the
author (and Hegel himself, who participated in its writing) strongly underlines
Hegel’s double competence as a philosopher with a serious background in
natural and exact sciences, linking this characteristic feature to his constant
effort to distance himself from the formalism of Schelling’s (presupposed)
notion of the absolute identit y of being and thought. In this way, Ferrini aims
at integrating methodologically Hegel’s phenomenological recognition of the
absolute identit y in the path of science (through the concept itself) with his
philosophy of nature, against the background of his notion of the whole of
science as logical and dialectical exposition of the Idea (pp. 25–27). Referring
also to Terry Pinkard’s reconstruction of Hegel’s Berlin years,5 and to Toews’
reconstruction of Hegelianism in the fi rst decade after Hegel’s death, Ferrini
delves into the origins of Hegel’s own group of disciples who promoted the
fi rst edition of his works. While focusing on the philosophy of nature, she
provides a careful analysis of Karl Ludwig Michelet’s Preface to the 1841 edition
of Hegel’s Naturphilosophie. From the standpoint of the history of the
interpretations, she argues that, contrary to Hegel’s effort to distance himself
from Schelling, Michelet, by emphasizing their harmony in the Jena period,
gave rise to an endless stream of confusion and ambiguit y in the appreciation
of Hegel’s relationship between spirit and nature (pp. 38–50). In particular,
she concentrates on the issue of how to treat fi nite things by means of fi nite
predicates, i.e. of how the objects of the natural sciences receive intellectual
determinations that are posited from the exterior and are fi xed, i.e. that cannot
wholly partake of the dialectical development (p. 61).
Chapter 2 (pp. 71–115) is dedicated to the cluster of problems related to
the “form of consciousness” as exposed by Hegel in section 439, the very last,
of the Encyclopedia version of the “Phenomenology.” Ferrini critiques positions
such as those of M. H. Miller, Jr., and Robert Stern6 based on an English
rendering of Hegel’s Erfahren—according to which sense-certaint y “grasps”
and “fi nds” in experience both its apparent realit y and its one-sideness, thus
“learning” from it. Within this framework she refers to Kenneth Westphal’s
recent interpretation of sense-certaint y’s dialectic against the background
of the tragically cathartic path of Creon.7 She maintains, however, that
natural consciousness is not endowed with a self-critical awareness and that
Book Reviews 171
sense-certaint y is unable either to grasp or to fi nd anything of what actually
happens within its range of experience (p. 85). Therefore, she argues, it does
not know any progress within itself and is not capable of further accepting
what it excludes. For Ferrini, then, the phenomenological experience should
not be taken as a liberation of natural consciousness itself. Rather, the phenomenological
experience marks our liberation from natural consciousness
through the work of the concept. What is at the reach of sense-certaint y is
rather that the object appears as something external, extraneous, and rough.
In fact, sense-certaint y is always mere phenomenon (p. 97), and always restarts
its own movement afresh (p. 90).
Chapter 3 (pp. 119–59) considers the development of Hegel’s idea and
provides an analysis of the celebrated three syllogisms at the end of the Encyclopedia.
Ferrini gives special attention to the transition from logic to the
philosophy of nature. She notes that Übergang has two different senses. In
fact, on the one side, Hegel states that within nature there can be no passage,
because absolute freedom excludes any movement of the idea. On the other
side, however, Hegel mentions several examples of transitions that do not
involve a relation between absolute idea and nature—e.g. the transition from
the subjective notion in its totalit y to Objectivit y, as well as the transition
from the subjective fi nalit y of Teleology to the Life of the Idea (p. 155–56).
Chapter 4 (pp. 163–98) takes up the charge made against Hegel, fi rst
by Trendelenburg, Feuerbach, Marx, and Helmholtz, and then in more recent
years by Wolfgang Neuser and Alan White8 according to which Hegel
allegedly left the concrete diversit y of nature “outside” by reducing it to the
Self (p. 163). Ferrini remarks that Hegel’s Entlassung has, again, a twofold
sense. There is the sense of a necessary Entlassung, which is the most common
sense. There is also, however, the sense of a free Entlassung. This latter
sense is much less common, but it is nonetheless important, for it refers to
a movement that acknowledges a right to Verschiedenheit, a right to distinction
and alterit y insofar as it agrees with the realistic approach of common
experience, i.e., it agrees with what consciousness knows of its internal and
external worlds (p. 177).
The Appendix (pp. 201–34) addresses methodological issues in the
research on Hegel by identifying paradigmatic obstacles to inquiries. Ferrini
examines a series of crucial cases, all related to the comparison established
by Hegel in various stages of his development between Kepler’s and Newton’s
proofs of the laws of celestial mechanics. Mauro Nasti De Vincentis’s
172 The Owl of Minerva 38:1–2 (2006–07)
Afterword (pp. 237–54) also returns to the vexed question of Hegel’s Newtonianism.
Ferrini’s important work embraces a threefold perspective. First, it
accounts for the rationalit y of the author, i.e. it accounts for consistency
and coherence of Hegel’s texts. Ferrini goes beyond the texts on which she
comments and considers other writings by Hegel or by the interpreters,
whenever this helps the understanding of the former. The passages related to
Hegel’s philosophy of nature require an especially careful critical assessment,
for the kind of mathematical sophistication present in Hegel’s notations is
representative of then-contemporary physics in its proper form. Second,
Ferrini accounts for all of Hegel’s sources, from the textbooks he adopted
for his courses to the works he read for his own research. Without doubt,
Hegel belongs to the group of those mathematical laypeople who were able to
master the details of, say, Newton’s determinations of elliptic, parabolic, and
hyperbolic orbits, Leibniz’s integration of mathematical formulas, or Euler’s
mathematic-mechanical analyses of the movements of solid or fl uid bodies.
In sum, Hegel was neither a Newtonian, nor a Leibnizian, nor an Eulerian.
He rather found his stance according to his systematical interests. The good
thing, though, is that, notwithstanding the (at times) Byzantine differences
among the renditions with which he was acquainted, Hegel was able to
maintain a consistent and coherent stance. This brings up the third perspective
of Ferrini’s work, namely, Hegel’s intention to reply to his immediate
contemporaries. To name just one example, it is true that Hegel wrote very
little on the logics of the particular use of the understanding. If, however, one
considers his work from the point of view of the particularit y of its objects,
it is easy to see that each argument either contains or can itself be seen as a
contribution to a “particular logic” (as opposed to “general,” formal logic).
Referring cognition to the subject’s own world is obviously epistemic in origin.
For instance, the introduction of “Determination” in Book 1, chapter 1,
Section A, Sub-section (a) of the Lehre vom Seyn is epistemic, in a context that
presupposes the Aristotelian haplos, simpliciter, and ek’ prostheseos, secundum
quid distinction of the Posterior Analytics I, 38 (49a12–49b33). The secundum
quid, the modus considerandi, results from the positing of the knowing subject.
This, I think, is an interesting perspective, and one is thankful to Ferrini’s
book for its suggestiveness
Parametric analysis on external dissipative link system for seismic protection of low rise R.C. buildings
No full textThe seismic rehabilitation of existing R.C. and masonry buildings is a topical issue in Civil Engineering. A useful technique consists in the introduction of the external bracing system. This kind of intervention can be improved through the introduction of dissipative links, investigated here with the help of some examples. The links are made of common steel profiles: length, geometry and positioning are considered as design parameters. A general procedure of link-bracing optimization is proposed by applying a set of identical external restraints. The adopted dissipative links allow a cheaper and more effective design both in terms of ULS and of DLS: the damages are addressed in a small area allowing easy replacement of the links in case of an earthquake
Response to Fertilization of Different Tree Species in the Urban Environment
No full textThe influence of fertilization on shoot growth, leaf gas exchange, leaf chlorophyll content, and mineral content was monitored on sweetgum (Liquidambar stryraciflua L.), Japanese pagoda tree (Styphnolobium japonicum Schott), and European ash (Fraxinus excelsior L.) over a 3-year period after planting in the urban environment. The research was carried out on newly planted trees that were placed in different urban sites and fertilized after planting. Fertilization was repeated for 2 years after planting at the beginning of the spring. There were contrasting results according to the species and the year of measurements. Fertilization was to a limited extent effective in the first year after planting but failed to provide better results in the following years. Thus, the results of this research do not support the utility of fertilizer application as a method
to improve plant establishment, growth, or physiology after transplanting in the urban environment
The Importance of School Gardening for Urban Children : A Case Study in Milan, Italy
No full textContact with plants has become, in modern society, a rare experience for children and many horticultural programs concerning environmental education have been set up either for children with psycho-physical problems or simply to stimulate knowledge and respect of nature. The research carried out on this topic has underlined an increase of self-control, a deepening of the concept of nature, a better comprehension of the meaning of work, an increased sense of pride and accomplishment, an improvement in care-taking and nurturing behavior and, in general, a notable contribution to the mental development of the involved children (Adil, 1994). In this way, these children do not perceive themselves as passive subjects in the scolastic environment. In Italy, nursery or elementary schools that include alternative programs as plant care are very few and participating in horticultural activities is not really encouraged. Thus the aim of this paper was to propose a solution for a school in Milan that could stimulate a multi-disciplinary approach to fill the lack of programs and structure
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