The time of responsibility: [no abstract]

An ethics of musical aesthetics. Interview with Elio Matassi:

In this interview Elio Matassi talks about his studies on musical theory and aesthetics, with particular reference to his theory of listening.

Keywords: Ethics, Musical Aesthetics, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Karl Lukàcs

The subject is not enough. Jonas' "responsibility":

In this paper I will provide an analytical and interpretive reading of Hans Jonas’ masterpiece Das Prinzip Verantwortung, with particular reference to its first seven paragraphs, in order to show how the ontological roots of Jonas’ concept of responsibility allow a review of ethics beyond the purely subjective dimension, which is dominant in the tradition from Kant onwards. The objects themselves and nature as a whole become the moral referents in the era of technological civilization.

Keywords: Ethics, Responsibility, Hans Jonas, Moral Imperative, Subjectivity

A new conception of moral responsibility to face the problems of practical ethics in the XXI century:

My aim in this paper is to suggest a new kind of moral responsibility in order to face the challenges of current practical ethics. I will not consider all the ontological and metaphisical problems nor the legal implications of responsibility, but will focus on the level of individual responsibility in context of the interpersonal and public relations, where the matter is giving (and asking) moral reasons for actions. The main problems arising from such a point of view are related, as I will show, to bioethics, social justice and climate change.    

Keywords: Practical Ethics, Responsibility, Bioethics, Social Justice, Environment

Jonas' heuristics of fear facing the challenges of genetic engineering:

My attempt in this essay is to ask where and which are the limits of human manipulative power on nature: do we have to establish these limits a priori or it is better to derive them by practice? However, two solutions appear equally unacceptable: the Prometheic one, inspired by triumphant scientism, and the primitivistic one as well, opposing to scientific progress. I will refer to Hans Jonas’ philosophy to show that only on the hard way of an ethics of responsibility it becomes possible to find an appropriate solution to those questions.

Keywords: Ethics, Genetics, Moral Responsibility, Hans Jonas, Heuristics of Fear

Conceptions of Ethics:

In this paper I examine the concept of human practical ethics referring to the problem of the vacation of instincts in human beeings. Moral laws and prescriptions can be seen as the surrogates of instincts, and they can be studied in relation to the rest of animal kingdom. From such a point of view, the nexus between nature and culture needs to be put in the middle and examined with the help of genetics.

Keywords: Ethics, Genetics, Biology, Vacation of Instincts, Foundation of Morality

Ethics and sustainability:

The problem of sustainable development represents one of the most important challenges of our time. It immediatly points out the significance that a responsible behaviour gains in everyday life, since we are now completely responsible for the environmental protection. One of the main problems is that of information excess and confusion in popular science. In this paper I try to show this set of problems, referring to Max Weber’s vocabulary and concepts.

Keywords: Ethics, Sustainability, Moral Responsibility, Environment, Ecology

Media and ethics of responsibility:

My aim in this paper is to consider some cases of moral responsibility, that are particularly clear and revealing in relation to some dramatic events in recent history and news items. The way facts and events are described by press and information agencies is not neutral nor even lacking of consequences: it can clash against the principle of freedom of expression and open a moral and political dilemma, because it can have influence on historical processes and can reduce social moral claims. An example for this is the affair of the comic strip against Mohammed published by Danish journal “Jilland Posten” in 2005.

Keywords: Information, Ethics, Responsibility, Clash of Civilizations, Interculturality

A feminism without women:

In this paper I suggest the possibility of rethinking feminism beyond a substantialized gender distinction. In current economic system is the body active as well as passive subject of consume. This means that also our sexual choices involve an ethical significance: we have to refuse the concept of unindifferentiated gender as an excuse of capitalism to renew the commodification of (female) body.

Keywords: Feminism, Ethics, Gender, Judith Butler, Monique Wittig

Sincerity of litigants and ethics of narration in the civil process:

In my essay I consider the different meanings of “truth” and “sincerity” in Italian civil code, starting from the question of the obligation to the truth of the parties involved in a civil process, which had a complex history of interpretation and amendment. My aim is to determine if it is possible to find a matter of ethics and responsibility in our civil code.  

Keywords: Civil Process, Ethics of Narration, Moral Responsibility, History of Civil Process, Sincerity

Am I perhaps the keeper of myself? Responsibility of self as original responsibility:

Referring to Paul Ricoeur’s philosophy, I try in this paper to examine Jonas’ principle of responsibility in order to free the concept from its semantic overdetermination and its boundless expansive logics, which characterizes current definition of responsibility. With the help of Ricoeur’s categories, I focus on the concepts of personal identity and responsiveness: they underline responsibility as a stratified and open-ended task, that can only be performed on different levels of personal engagement.

Keywords: Ethics, Responsibility, Responsiveness, Paul Ricoeur, Self-Theory

Normative incompleteness, normative inconsistency and responsibility of agents in religious ethics:

The basic assumption of my paper is that religious ethics deriving from the covenant between God and the chosen people is an etheronomic one and that, more in general, every theory affirming an etheronomic motivation for those actions, that have to be relevant from a moral point of view, belongs to the etheronomic kind of ethics. Starting from this assumption, I try to determine, which theoretical resources religious ethics can count on.

Keywords: Normative Incompleteness, Normative Inconsistency, Religious Ethics, Responsibility, Etheronomic Ethics

Psychoanalythic ethics and the dialectic of the Law:

In this paper I consider Lacan’s reading and interpretation of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans (7,7), as we can find it in Lacan’s Seminar about The Ethics of Psychoanalysis. Here Lacan introduces the expression Das Ding in place of the original word, “sin”. We have to think very well about this replacement done by Lacan, and its meaning for the “ethics of psychoanalysis”.

Keywords: Psychoanalysis, Ethics, Jacques Lacan, Seminar VII, Moralilty