RISULTATI RICERCA

The paper aims to examine the risks linked with the so called victimizing paradigm, which usually attributes the features of passivity and powerlessness to victims of injustices. The victimizing paradigm is one of the main ideological trajectories of neoliberalism: beyond providing powerful people the opportunity to self-representing as presumed victims of injustice, neoliberalism tries to responsibilize real victims of injustice about their social conditions. In order to avoid such tendencies, the article presents the main aspects of a negative theory of justice, which tries to give back real victims of injustice the power to transform asymmetrical relations of power within which they are involved

Judging by the quantity and quality of recently published work, the issue of recognition seems at the forefront of many epistemological, sociological, anthropological and political debates. And yet there is not much clarity on how recognition operates, on the kind of effects which the operation we perform when recognizing bring about. The purpose of my article is to shed light on a specific (and overlooked) form of recognition, situated between the cognitive one (identification, as discussed in the analytical debate over identity criteria) and the normative one (respect and esteem, as defined by Charles Taylor and Axel Honneth), a form of recognition I will call ‘descriptive’, because its function is not so much to identify a person as to describe her features.

Okin has been a distinguished political philosopher and a feminist. She is especially known for having defended a liberal conception of feminism, based on full equality between men and women. A liberal call for feminism had been politically maintained by John Stuart Mill, whose famous discourse to the House of Commons for female suffrage (1867) is sometimes indicated as the birthday of liberal feminism and explicitly theorized on his book The Subjection of Women, a fundamental book for Okin’ feminism. For all her life, in an everlasting debate with her critics, Okin defended her position both feminist and liberal, coming to develop a personal conception of liberalism. This presentation aims to reconstruct such a line of thinking

Anarchist groups played a relevant role in the anti-globalization movement. Many people reflect on this relevance thinking above all to the assaults and the violence ascribed to the socalled Black Blocs during the rallies and marches of the movement. In the libertarian milieu many thinkers have read the new activism as a return of anarchism to the values and tactics of its «classic» period, to radical and proletarian politics, to revolution and insurrection. In this paper I suggest that in the new movements prevail instead a concept of revolution in everyday life and an unpolitical stance that reflect the post-classical moment of anarchism and its peculiar ideas about resistance to capitalism.

Since some years, in the political philosophy realm connected with the anarchist thought, some scholars are elaborating a way to innervate into its theoretical corpus some suggestions coming from not strictly anarchist horizons, like French post-structuralism, deconstructionism, critical theory, and so on. These strategies of thinking are labelled as post-anarchism or newanarchism, and they are the task to renew the classic, anarchist narrative and criticism in order to understand in a way more crucially the present time and, furtherly, to individuate those lines of excess which are tending towards a libertarian affirmation of anti-authoritarian, nothierarchical and differential equalitarian practices of anarchism.

Rather original, within the Spanish anarchist movement, is the case of the activist and intellectual Federica Montseny (1905-1994). The economic and social conditions of the early thirties in Spain push her to have a full role in the rough debate within the movement. Shortly before the Civil War, she joins the FAI, the federation of revolutionary struggle with a considerable sympathy for individualistic views. In the summer of 1936, the outbreak of armed conflict transforms her anti-state attitude and Montseny assumes a ministerial role in the Department of Health. Here, she tries to implement reforms for the benefit of both poorer classes and women

The essay begins with a definition of anarchy (the anarchist Idea, the libertarian spirit) and anarchism (the anarchist thought and movement). Then, it focuses on some problematic issues of the contemporary reflection. In fact, the anarchist thought shows signs of renewal vitality, as soon as it accepts to tackle the thorny problem of the relationship within politics and democracy, that is, when it endeavors to trace the possible development of a science of anarchist politics.

The Scienza della Legislazione by Gaetano Filangieri (1752-1778) had a great influence in the European Enlightemment. The close relationship between Filangieri and Benjamin Franklin also influenced the elaboraion of the American Constitution. Filangieri’s approach to the poltical economy was completely at odds with Adam Smith consideration of self love and self interest as positive values. The essay points out the most valuable charcteristics of Filangieri’s analysis. It concludes proposing a parallelism between Filangieri’s abstract elaboration and the tragic turn that brought Robespierre, in the name of these principles, to theorize the "Terror" during the French Revolution.

One of most important effects of the recent economic crisis has been the decline of citizens’trust in political institutions. This effect was due to the inability of national governments and Parliaments to counteract the consequences of the reces sion. The lack of trust in institutions involves costs that cannot be underestimated. Therefore, for this reason, it is very important to study the relationship between changes in macroeconomic conditions and changes in the level of citizens’appreciation in national institutions. The aim of the paper is to analyse as changes in macroeconomic conditions (in particular, changes in inflation, unemployment and income inequality) have affected the level of citizens’trust in national institutions of European countries in the period 2001-20013. Using panel data method, empirical results show that the increases in unemployment and income inequality contribute to reduce the level of trust in national institutions while, as regards inflation, the results are ambiguous.

In this note, attention is focused on two essays, namely Myths and paradoxes of justice in taxation and Abstract hypotheses and historical hypotheses and on value judgements in Economic science, which are included in Luigi Einaudi’s Selected Economic Essays, recently published in English. The two essays are the most significant among the epistemological opus of Einaudi; thus, this note is devoted to discuss Einaudi’s problem of knowledge in economics.

The forewords by Keynes to the German, Japanese and French edition of the General Theory are in this paper under examination in order to consider, once again, some disputed topics, especially the real meaning that have to be attached to the adjective "general" which stands out on the book cover of his work and the reliability of the presumed support to totalitarian regimes that some of his statements would disclose, together with accusations of sympathies for, or indifference to, Nazi regime.

"Monopoly of Durable Goods": Coase vs. Pantaleoni This paper addresses certain issues of priority about the monopoly of durable goods. It argues that Maffeo Pantaleoni was the first scholar to address the topic: the monopolist has the possibility and convenience to sell the whole stock of durable goods he owns by applying a policy of price discrimination. It is worth noticing that Coase, similarly to Pantaleoni, recognises that the monopoly of durable goods sells the entire stock he owns. Nevertheless, on the other hand, he also denies that price discrimination can be pursued. As argued by this paper, Coase’s argument suffers of important flaws and, from certain points of view, is also contradictory. Moreover, in spite of the good it contains, his argument came after many decades since Pantaleoni understood the specificity of the question, addressed it convincingly, and wrote on it.