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559Adam Smith. Skeptical Newtonianism, Disenchanted Republicanism, and the Birth of Social ScienceIn Marcelo Dascal & Ora Gruengrad (eds.), Knowledge and Politics: Case Studies on the Relationship between Epistemology and Political Philosophy, Westview Press. pp. 83-110. 1987.Both Adam Smith's epistemology and his politics head to a stalemate. The former is under the opposing pulls of an essentialist ideal of knowledge and of a pragmatist approach to the history of science. The latter still tries to provide a foundation for a natural law, while conceiving it as non-absolute and changeable. The consequences are (i) inability to complete both the political and the epistemological works projected by Smith; (ii) decentralization of the social order, giving rise to severa…Read more
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447The Malthus-Ricardo Correspondence: Sequential structure, argumentative patterns, and rationalityJournal of Pragmatics 31 (9): 1129-1172. 1999.Although the controversy between Malthus and Ricardo has long been considered to be an important source for the history of economic thought, it has hardly been the object of a careful study qua controversy, i.e. as a polemical dialogical exchange. We have undertaken to fill this gap, within the framework of a more ambitious project that places controversies at the center of an account of the history of ideas, in science and elsewhere. It is our contention that the dialogical co-text is essential…Read more
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355Les Lumières Écossaises et le roman philosophique de DescartesIn Yaron Senderowicz, Yves Wahl, Daniel Garber, Frédéric Cossutta, Georges-Elia Sarfati, Sergio Cremaschi, Anthony Kenny, Elhanan Yakira, Abraham Mansbach, Fernando Gil, Ruth Weintraub, Zauderer Naaman Noa, Keenan Hagi & Viala Alain (eds.), Descartes: Reception and Disenchantment. Réception et Déception. Edited by: Yaron Senderowicz & Yves Wahl, University Publishing Projects. pp. 65-88. 2000.The paper reconstructs the reception of Descartes's work by the Scottish Enlighteners, from Colin MacLaurin to Dugald Stewart. The Scots' image of Descartes was a byproduct of a scientific controversy; philosophical arguments were brought into the picture more as asides than as a primary focus of interest. As soon as the Cartesian physics withered away as a real alternative to Newtonian physics, only the philosophical arguments were left, with no memory of the context out of which they originat…Read more
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462Tendências neoaristotélicas na ética atualIn Sergio Cremaschi, Manfredo A. Araújo de Oliveira, Helder Buenos Aires de Carvalho, Zeljko Loparic, Pergentino S. Pivatto, Maria Cecilia Maringoni de Carvalho, Terence Kennedy, Sonia T. Felipe, F. Javier Herrero, Oswaldo Junior Giacoia & Oswaldo Cirne-Lima (eds.), Correntes Fundamentais da Ética Contemporânea. Araújo de Oliveira, Manfredo A. (ed.), Editora Vozes. pp. 9-30. 2000.I describe both the German Aristotelian revival and the Anglo-Saxon virtue-ethics approach and argue that there are some reasons why Grotus's dismissal of Aristotelian practical rationality had finally to be overcome. I suggest that such reasons in turn depend on deeper changes in the structure of the building of modern philosophy, first among them those carried by the critique of Cartesian foundationalism staged by such odd bed-fellows as Peirce, Wittgenstein, Husserl, and Heidegger, adding qu…Read more
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292Legge di natura e scienza economicaQuaderni Storici 35 (3): 697-730. 2000.I argue that the difference between the 17th century new moral science and Scholastic Natural Law Theory derived primarily from the skeptical challenge the former had to face. Pufendorf's project of a 'scientia practica universalis' was the paramount expression of an anti-skeptical moral science, a «science» both explanatory and normative, but also anti-dogmatic in so far as it tried to base its laws on those basic phenomena of human life that supposedly were outside the scope of skeptical doubt…Read more
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942Metaphors in the Wealth of NationsIn Boehm Stephan, Christian Gehrke, Heinz D. Kurz, Richard Sturn, Donald Winch, Mark Blaug, Klaus Hamberger, Jack Birner, Sergio Cremaschi, Roger E. Backhouse, Uskali Maki, Luigi Pasinetti, Erich W. Streissler, Philippe Mongin, Augusto Graziani, Hans-Michael Trautwein, Stephen J. Meardon, Andrea Maneschi, Sergio Parrinello, Manuel Fernandez-Lopez, Richard van den Berg, Sandye Gloria-Palermo, Hansjorg Klausinger, Maurice Lageux, Fabio Ravagnani, Neri Salvadori & Pierangelo Garegnani (eds.), Is There Progress in Economics? Knowledge, Truth and the History of Economic Thought. Stephan Boehm, Christian Gehrke, Heinz D. Kurz, Richard Sturn (eds), Edward Elgar. pp. 89-114. 2002.This paper reconstructs the ways in which metaphors are used in the text of “The Wealth of Nations”. Its claims are: a) metaphor statements are basically similar to those in the “Theory of the Moral Sentiments”; b) the metaphors’ ‘primary subjects’ refer to mechanics, hydraulics, blood circulation, agriculture, medicine; c) metaphors may be lumped together into a couple of families, the family of mechanical analogies, and that of iatro-political analogies. Further claims are: a basic physico-mor…Read more
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1368La rinascita dell'etica della virtùIn Franceso Botturi, Francesco Totaro & Carmelo Vigna (eds.), La persona e i nomi dell'essere. Scritti in onore di Virgilio Melchiorre. Volume 1, Vita E Pensiero. 2002.I argue that the idea of virtue has become central after the Fifties in both Anglo-Saxon and German moral philosophy and that this revival has come together with recognition of the legitimacy of discussion of issues in normative ethics, something that philosophers both on the Continent and in the Anglo-Saxon world used to overlook in the first half of the twentieth-century. I point at examples such as Stuart Hampshire and Elizabeth Anscombe as proof of the centrality of virtue ethics in the fir…Read more
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211Kant's empirical moral philosophyIn Boran Bercić & Nenad Smokrovic (eds.), Proceedings of Rijeka Conference "Knowledge, Existence and Action", Hrvatsko Drustvo Za Analiticku Filozofiju - Filozofski Fakultet Rijeka. pp. 21-24. 2003.I argue that Kant took from Moses Mendelssohn the idea of a distinction between geometry of morals and a practical ethic. He was drastically misunderstood by his followers precisely on this point. He had learned from the sceptics and the Jansenists the lesson that men are prompted to act by deceptive ends, and he was aware that human actions are also empirical phenomena, where laws like the laws of Nature may be detected. His practical ethics made room for judgment as a holistic procedure for as…Read more
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1080Ricardo and the UtilitariansEuropean Journal of the History of Economic Thought 11 (3): 377-403. 2004.The paper discusses Ricardo's relationship to Mill and Bentham. It discusses first the origins of the myth of Ricardo's dependence from Bentham through Mill, and Halévy's contribution to the freezing of such a myth. The paper reconstructs what were their shared political commitments and activities and the kind of specific political views and agenda that may be ascribed to Ricardo himself. The paper discusses then the question of Ricardo's adhesion to Benthamite ethics. It examines fragments in …Read more
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215On the very idea of a LeftSynthesis Philosophica 19 (2): 475-485. 2004.Starting with one of the last writings by Norberto Bobbio I discuss the origins of the idea of a political “Left”. I trace them back to historical circumstances of the French Revolution and, behind them, to ways of symbolical representation to be located within the wider framework of forms of symbolic spatial organization of the social space. It turns out that “Left” is, more than a concept, a symbol or a metaphor. That Left is connected in its very roots with the idea of equality. That the ver…Read more
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467L'etica analitica dalla legge di Hume al principio di KantIn Angelo Campodonico, Sergio Cremaschi, Massimo Reichlin, Roberto Mordacci, Alberto Pirni & Mario Ricciardi (eds.), Tra legge e virtù. La filosofia pratica angloamericana contemporanea. A cura di Angelo Campodonico, Il Nuovo Melangolo. pp. 9-46. 2004.I reconstruct a plot in the twentieth-century Anglo-Saxon ethical discussion. I discuss first the reasons why in the first half of the twentieth century the claim of a neutral character of metaethics vis-a-vis normative ethics was generally accepted; then I discuss the reasons for a U-turn that took place in 1958, which brought back to the forefront two traditional schools of normative ethics, Kantian and Utilitarian, and the reasons for criticism from the new school of virtue ethics. I conclud…Read more
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396Porter, Sarah RicardoIn Heinz Kurz & Neri Salavadori (eds.), The Elgar Companion to David Ricardo, Edward Elgar. pp. 415-418. 2015.A discussion of the life and work of David Ricardo's forgotten sister, Sarah, the author of a social novel for boys on poverty, work, self-reliance, emigration and the coexistence between different ethnic groups as well as essays on educational subjects.
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563Mill James and RicardoIn Heinz Kurz & Neri Salavadori (eds.), The Elgar Companion to David Ricardo, Edward Elgar. pp. 331-334. 2015.A discussion of Ricardo's sustained relationship with James Mill as well as of hypotheses by such commentators as Halévy and Hutchison on a decisive philosophical influenco by Mill (eithr Scottish or Benthamite) on Ricardo's eocnomic methodology
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237Belsham, Thomas and RicardoIn Heinz Kurz & Neri Salavadori (eds.), The Elgar Companion to David Ricardo, Edward Elgar. pp. 14-17. 2015.A discussion of the relationship between Ricardo and his Unitarian Minister Thomas Belsham, a New Testament scholar and the author of a philosophical treatise inspired by the Hartley-Priestley philosophy.
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2400The Malthus-Ricardo debateIn Heinz Kurz & Neri Salavadori (eds.), The Elgar Companion to David Ricardo, Edward Elgar. pp. 279-283. 2015.A discussion of the correspondence between Malthus and Ricardo and its bearing on their published works
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214Alcuni motivi della ripresa dell'etica economica nella seconda metà del NovecentoBollettino Della Società Filosofica Italiana (186 (nuova serie)): 5-19. 2005.I reconstruct a few themes of the early twentieth-century discussion that headed to the claim of a value-free character of economic theory and of the subsequent discussion that headed to a resumption of a rich discussion of economic ethics and of applied ethics with regard to economic practices. I examine the discussion on value-freedom from classical political economy to Robbins, the role played by utilitarianism in economic theory and the puzzles connected to the idea of utility and several re…Read more
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165Sidgwick e il progetto di un’etica scientifica: risposte a Greco e PellegrinoEtica and Politica \ Ethics & Politics 8 (1): 1-4. 2006.I clarify that Sidgwick was not a moral relativist; on the contrary he was heavily conditioned by ethnocentric prejudice: I add that Sidgwick did not believe a reform of common-sense morality to be viable; on the contrary he concluded that it was impossible and, besides, that there were important utilitarian reasons against the viability of any reform strategy.
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262The Mill-Whewell controversy on ethics and its bequest to analytic philosophyIn Elvio Baccarini (ed.), Rationality in Belief and Action,, Rijeka. pp. 45-62. 2006.In this paper I intend to reconstruct the weight of rational and non rational factors in ethical controversies and to highlight the mixed bequest this controversy left to 20th century analytic ethics. I argue that the structure of the controversy includes ‘Kuhnian’ factors, rhetoric and pragmatic dimensions, and that a consistent self-criticism of his own previous views may be detected in Mill’s writings published after the controversy. I argue that the controversy’s bequest for analytic ethic…Read more
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752Kant on Civilization, Moralization, and the Paradox of HappinessIn Luigino Bruni & Pier Luigi Porta (eds.), The Handbook on the Economics of Happiness, Elgar. pp. 110-123. 2007.The well-known Kantian passage on misology in the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals starts making fuller sense when located within the framework of Kant writings on philosophy of history where he contrasts civilization with moralization as two different phases in the growth of humankind. In this context, the growth of commerce and manufactures plays a distinctive role, namely that of means of fostering civilization, while pursuing a deceptive goal, namely happiness. Deception plays a basi…Read more
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2445Il relativismo etico fra antropologia culturale e filosofia analiticaIn Ilario Tolomio, Sergio Cremaschi, Antonio Da Re, Italo Francesco Baldo, Gian Luigi Brena, Giovanni Chimirri, Giovanni Giordano, Markus Krienke, Gian Paolo Terravecchia, Giovanna Varani, Lisa Bressan, Flavia Marcacci, Saverio Di Liso, Alice Ponchio, Edoardo Simonetti, Marco Bastianelli, Gian Luca Sanna, Valentina Caffieri, Salvatore Muscolino, Fabio Schiappa, Stefania Miscioscia, Renata Battaglin & Rossella Spinaci (eds.), Rileggere l'etica tra contingenza e principi. Ilario Tolomio (ed.), Cluep. pp. 15-46. 2007.I intend to: a) clarify the origins and de facto meanings of the term relativism; b) reconstruct the reasons for the birth of the thesis named “cultural relativism”; d) reconstruct ethical implications of the above thesis; c) revisit the recent discussion between universalists and particularists in the light of the idea of cultural relativism.. 1.Prescriptive Moral Relativism: “everybody is justified in acting in the way imposed by criteria accepted by the group he belongs to”. Universalism: …Read more
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660Utilitarianism and its British nineteenth-century criticsNotizie di Politeia. Rivista di Etica E Scelte Pubbliche 24 (90): 31-49. 2008.I try to reconstruct the hidden agenda of nineteenth-century British controversy between Utilitarianism and Intuitionism, going beyond the image, successfully created by the two Mills, of a battle between Prejudice and Reason. When examined in depth, competing philosophical outlooks turn out to be more research programs than self-contained doctrinal bodies, and such programs appear to be implemented, and indeed radically transformed while in progress thanks to their enemies no less than to the…Read more
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343La strana idea di applicare la teoria eticaIn Christoph Lumer (ed.), Etica normativa: principi dell'agire morale, Carocci. pp. 167-188. 2008.In this paper I argue that applied ethics is a phenomenon spontaneously emerged between the Sixties and the Seventies and resulting from interbreeding of theoretical discussion in ethics and public discourse of liberal-democratic societies. I contend that the phenomenon’s novelty is in a peculiar relationship it has helped in establishing between ethical theories and real-world issues, and besides that the true nature of applied ethics is that of deliberation, whose tool is the faculty of judgm…Read more
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344Newtonian Physics, Experimental Moral Philosophy, and the Shaping of Political EconomyIn Richard Arena, Sheila Dow, Matthias Klaes, Brian J. Loasby, Bruna Ingrao, Pier Luigi Porta, Sergio Volodia Cremaschi, Mark Harrison, Alain Clément, Ludovic Desmedt, Nicola Giocoli, Giovanna Garrone, Roberto Marchionatti, Maurice Lagueux, Michele Alacevich, Andrea Costa, Giovanna Vertova, Hugh Goodacre, Joachim Zweynert & Isabelle This Saint-Jean (eds.), Open economics. Economics in relation to other disciplines. Richard Arena; Sheila Dow & Matthias Klaes (eds), Routledge. pp. 73-94. 2009.In this paper I reconstruct the birth, blossoming and decline of an eighteenth century program, namely “Moral Newtonianism”. I reconstruct the interaction, or co-existence, of different levels: positive theories, methodology, worldviews and trace the presence of scattered items of the various levels in the work of Hume, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, Dugald Stewart. I highlight how Mirowski’s reconstruction of the interaction between physics and economics may be extended to the eighteenth century in…Read more
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296La teodicea social de Adam SmithEmpresa y Humanismo 13 (1): 333-374. 2010.I argue the existence of two tensions in Smith's system of ideas: the first is that between the postulate of an invisible noumenal order of the universe and the imaginary principles by means of which we connect the phenomena; the second is a tension between the noumenal order of the world where 'is' and 'ought' converge, and the various partial orders that may be reconstructed in social phenomena that leave room for irrationality and injustice. My first claim is that these tensions are dialectic…Read more
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686Elizabeth Anscombe e la svolta normativa del 1958In Juan Andrés Mercado (ed.), Elisabeth Anscombe e la psicologia morale, Armando. pp. 43-80. 2010.I discuss the three theses defended by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. I argue that: a) her answer to the question "why should I be moral?" requires a solution of the problem of theodicy and ignores any attempts to save the moral point of view without recourse to divine retribution; b) her notion of divine law is an odd one, more neo-Augustinian than Biblical or Scholastic; c) her image of Kantian ethics and intuitionism is the impoverished image manufactured by consequentialist opponents…Read more
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443As Boys Pursue the Rainbow. Whewell’s Independent Morality vs. Sidgwick’s Dogmatic IntuitionismIn Placido Bucolo, Roger Crisp & Bart Schultz (eds.), Atti del secondo Congresso internazionale su Henry Sidgwick: etica, psichica, politica, Universita Degli Studi Di Catania. pp. 146-235. 2011.I discuss Whewell’s philosophy of morality, as opposed to systematic morality, not unlike Kant’s distinction between a pure and an empirical moral philosophy. Whewell worked out a systematization of traditional normative ethics as a first step before its rational justification; he believed that the point in the philosophy of morality is justifying a few rational truths about the structure of morality such as to rule hedonism, eudemonism, and consequentialism; yet a system of positive morality …Read more
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214Moral traditions, critical reflection, and education in a liberal-democratic societyIn Peter Kemp & Asger Sørensen (eds.), Politics in Education, Lit Verlag. pp. 169-182. 2012.I argue that, in the second half of the second Millennium, three parallel processes took place. First, normative ethics, or natural morality, that had been a distinct subject in the education of European elites from the Renaissance times to the end of the eighteenth century, disappeared as such, being partly allotted to the Churches via the teaching of religion in State School, and partly absorbed by the study of history and literature, assumed to be channels for imbibing younger generations wit…Read more
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823Una popolazione sana, virtuosa e felice. Malthus dalla morale sessuale all’etica della procreazioneIn M. Loi & Roberto Mordacci (eds.), Etica e genetica. Storia, concetti e pratiche, Bruno Mondadori. pp. 3-22. 2012.I argue that Malthus’s Essay on Population is more a treatise in applied ethics than the first treatise in demography. I argue also that, as an ethical work, it is a highly innovative one. The substitution of procreation for sex as the focus makes for a drastic change in the agenda. what had been basically lacking in the discussion up to Malthus’s time was a consideration of human beings’ own responsibility in the decision of procreating. This makes for a remarkable change also in the approach, …Read more
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462Sarah Ricardo’s tale of Wealth and VirtueHistory of Economics Review 60 (1): 30-49. 2014.The paper reconstructs the life and activity of the author of a famous novel for boys as well as of a textbook of arithmetic and of essays on educational issues, who was also the sister of a famous economist. The bulk of the paper is dedicated to Alfred Dudley, a novel for boys about wealth, status, speculation, poverty, manual work, emigration and the role of virtue in making a decent society possible. Also the author’s educational views are discussed, highlighting her opposition to Benthamite …Read more
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280Sidgwick’s coherentist moral epistemologyThe Scientific Annals of Andquot;Alexandru Ioan Cuza" University of Iasi (New Series). Philosophy 59 36-50. 2012.I discuss the ideas of common sense and common-sense morality in Sidgwick. I argue that, far from aiming at overcoming common-sense morality, Sidgwick aimed purposely at grounding a consist code of morality by methods allegedly taken from the natural sciences, in order to reach also in the domain of morality the same kind of “mature” knowledge as in the natural sciences. His whole polemics with intuitionism was vitiated by the apriori assumption that the widespread ethos of the educated part of …Read more
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University of MálagaInternational Expert
Milano, Lombardia, Italy
Areas of Specialization
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Normative Ethics |
Economics and Ethics |
17th/18th Century Ethics |
19th Century Ethics |
Adam Smith |
Value Theory |
Areas of Interest
Value Theory |