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According to J. L. Austin, philosopher theorist of speech acts, and subsequent critical literature, Perlocution - one of three levels of speech acts - is less important than Locution and Illocution from a philosophical standpoint. Intentionality, conventionality, possibility of classification and linguistic nature are some of the factors that underlie this view. The purpose of this paper is to show both that perlocution is not devoid of such elements and that illocution does not always include them. Thus, for the author, the philosophical nature of perlocution confirms the unitary character of speech acts and supports a genuine pragmatic vision of the linguistic theory on performative utterances, also going beyond Austin’s point of view.

Both living in London for more than twenty years (1849- 1873), Karl Marx and J.S. Mill commented extensively on the features and contradictions of American society and politics. In particular, the two thinkers devoted a substantial number of letters, articles and systematic writings to the issue of slavery and to the events of the Civil War at the beginning of the 1860s. The literature has never compared their philosophical-political questionings of post-Tocquevillian America, nor has it investigated the continuities in and ruptures between their analyses of the slavery-based American economy and society. Consequently, the author focuses specifically on their American writings in an attempt to cast light on some significant similarities between the two philosophers when addressing their European readers on the American Civil War and the central issue of slavery. Although embedded within different moral and political languages, their understandings of slavery pursued a twin goal: to reveal how relevant the categories of "race" and "class" vis-à-vis State sovereignty and the development of modern democracy had become since Tocqueville, and to point out the very close linkage between the American events and the fate of Europe as far as labour movements were concerned. From such a perspective, in the author’s view, they urged their European readers to go beyond the military façade of the Civil War and develop a broader theoretical perspective on what was really at stake on the other side of the Atlantic.

The essay provides a reconstruction of the argument on moral progress expounded by Kant in §§ 1-7 of the Second Part of The Conflict of the Faculties (An Old Question Raised Again: Is the Human Race Constantly Progressing?). The reconstruction is carried out from a systematic perspective, that is considering the argument within the relationship between nature and freedom as it is developed in previous historical writings (especially in the Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View) and in the Critique of the Power of Judgement. The argument is shown to be the only one that can meet the conditions implied by the "nomothetic of freedom" described in the third Critique (§ 87) and, also, the only one that is able to justify Kant’s thesis, which appeared after the French Revolution, that the institution of the "rightful condition" (Rechtszustand) should necessarily be the result of a moral end. A further confirmation of the relevance of the argument is given by the analysis of the transition from the status naturalis to the status civilis in the Metaphysical First Principles of the Doctrine of Right (§§ 41-42).

In this essay, the Author outlines the genesis of Baumgarten’s idea of "extensive clarity" in Wolffian philosophy. Starting from Wolff’s analysis of examples and their singular clarity, the focus is on the rhetorical and philosophical achievements of Johann Peter Reusch. In particular, the aim is to show the importance of two dichotomies introduced by Reusch - the distinction between "sensual" and "intellectual" clarity and that between the extensive and the intensive perfection of cognition - in the development of Baumgarten’s more famous distinction between extensive and intensive clarity and, in general, in the foundation of modern aesthetics.

According to the predominant line of interpretation in the critical literature, Petrarch’s decision to move in June 1353 to Milan, at that time under Visconti domination, should be seen as deriving from uncommon political foresight. His awareness of an irreversible crisis in municipal civilization is thought to have led him to engage under a highly "modern" regime in intellectual activity that was still interlaced with high civil ideals. The author, instead, believes that this decision was the most evident factor in a deeply-felt rethinking of his own intellectual activity, which began around 1348 and culminated in the works of his maturity. A deliberate contrast can be noted with the centuries-old traditional thinking in respect of the social nature of man and it would have a profound influence on Humanism, characterized by significant pressure in the direction of disengagement from any civil involvement.