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Nel suo libro più recente, Jacques Le Goff dipinge e racconta scenari medievali che consentono di costruire una storia del denaro. Pur permettendo al lettore di notare alcune continuità con la nostra epoca, il testo sostiene e argomenta una sostanziale differenza tra la nostra società e quella medievale. Tale differenza emerge soprattutto guardando i diversi modi di intendere e gestire la dimensione economica. Lo studio storico, tra le righe, offre inoltre interessanti spunti di riflessione di tipo epistemologico, pedagogico e linguistico.

L’articolo analizza il saggio di Jakob von Uexküll, prima da un punto di vista storico, prendendo in considerazione le introduzioni alle tre edizioni italiane; poi da una prospettiva teorica, mostrando come alcune delle teorie del fisiologo, tra le quali il concetto di Umwelt, vadano oggi integrate nel contesto della riflessione ecologica, con enfasi sulle teorie della Ecological Hierarchy e della Niche construction. Per diventare, però, attuale strumento teorico, le teorie di Uexküll devono essere inserite in un contesto evolutivo e darwiniano.

Jakob von Uexküll not only helped provide the theoretical groundwork on which modern ethology rests, but today he is also recognized as the founder of biosemiotics. Biosemiotics uses the notions of semiosphere and model proposed by the socalled Moscow-Tartu School conferring to them a meaning derived from Umwelt theory. Semiotician Thomas A. Sebeok has a pivotal role in this semantic increase. The notions of "modelling" and "interrelation" - implicit in Jakob von Uexküll’s research - are pivotal in Sebeok’s "global semiotics", which presupposes that life and semiosis coincide. The concept of interrelation can be developed in terms of Bakhtin’s "dialogism", extending the concept of dialogism beyond the sphere of anthroposemiosis to all communication processes in general.

Every artist is the bearer of his own, innate, and original expressive logic (Weber, 2006). An archaic thought that, in taking shape and extrinsicity, brings out the innermost states of mind of those who choose to measure themselves with art, not only performance art. What emerges from such an approach is the possibility, in a process of self-identification, to represent a symbol for entire generations and segments of the population within a society. Artists can embody the “sense of community”, or what Sarason (1974) defined as the perception of similarity with others, the increased interdependence with others and the willingness to maintain this interdependence by offering or doing for others what is expected of them. The feeling, then, of being part of a fully reliable and stable social structure. This paper, by analyzing from a socio-psycho-pedagogical point of view the figures of three different global artists – James Dean, Paul Simon, and Madonna –, aims to emphasize how the rebellion and emotional impulse typical of the creative mind can also be associated with specific social causes, representing intergenerational role-models and figures with high pedagogical-emancipatory power.

James Harrington e la concezione del "commonweath" come organismo - This article aims to shed light on the link between Harrington’s political thought and his conception of Nature as an organic whole. Such a relation is reflected in the way mixed government and the representative system are designed to act as complementary institutions of a republic or commonwealth. Under mixed government, the popular balance of property - a political transposition of the fullness of natural life meaning the spread of landed property among the population - is tempered by a quarter of the entire territory being concentrated in the hands of a minority of big landowners. On this basis, the minority ensures for its members exclusive access to the Senate, as an aristocratic institution. In the context of the representative system, the fact that the Senate alone can deliberate, whereas a Popular Assembly can only accept or reject decisions made by the Senate, is moderated by periodical elections of both Houses of Parliament based on popular suffrage.

Key words: Natural law; Republicanism; Commonwealth; Mixed government; Separation of powers; Representative system.

La vita e l’opera di James Joyce coincidono e si corrispondono senza tregua, e si riflettono nel commento puntuale della sua ampia corrispondenza. E in questo gioco infinito di specchi e di rimandi dalla realtà al mito, alla storia, alla figurazione letteraria, dove la parola è sempre protagonista e strumento privilegiato, quasi eccessivo, di una sfida ai limiti del realismo e dell’inesprimibile, si delinea, nel tempo e nello spazio, un ritratto, sempre più inclusivo, dell’uomo e dell’artista, che, come i suoi personaggi, è uno, ognuno, nessuno: James Joyce, e poi Gabriel, Nora, Richard, Ulisse, Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom, Molly, Finnegan…