Carla Danani

The text develops philosophical considerations on the “institutional” dimension of marriage. First of all, the meaning of “institution” is problematized, as it is so much disputed and controversially interpreted today. On the one hand, in fact, it is circumscribed to denote a repressive reality— restraining, delaying, even disciplining—considered necessary and rescuing by some scholars, yet harmful and dangerous by others. On the other hand, accentuating its verbal form, “institution” is also understood in terms of movement, as the novelty that results from the act of instituting, as a discontinuity that opens a field of possibilities. Paul Ricoeur considers institutions as part of the ethical tripod, i.e., of the ways through which human beings can flourish. In the context of these divergent understandings, this paper secondly considers the possibility to speak of marriage as an institution and to take marriage rituals as an example both of rite of passage and aggregation rituals. Bourdieu says that the separation achieved in rituals has a “consecrating” effect. Third, the paper questions whether functional and symbolic changes in marriage and marriage rituals can affect their institutional status and problematize their consequences.

The text considers “places” as a plot of conditions for the possibility for human existence, as interweavings of social, cultural, symbolic and material factors on which existence is nourished and which, at the same time, it transforms. Understanding vulnerability as an ontological characteristic of human beings, “taking care” therefore should be considered as the practical disposition to respond to the “event of place” moving towards an increase in being and good. Moreover, in the sphere of healthcare practice, treatments should be included in this broader perspective. This means that the treatment places become understood in reference to the overall conditions that promote health. The result is also a different self-understanding of medicine.

Dans cet article, après avoir souligné l’heureuse ambiguïté du terme d’utopie, dont nous avons de bonnes raisons de penser qu’elle a été remarquée par Thomas More, nous rendons d’abord compte de la large diffusion de l’utopisme au niveau historique et géographique. Nous examinons ensuite quelques-unes des critiques les plus importantes qui lui ont été adressées, soulevées notamment par Karl Popper et Hans Jonas. Examiner les différentes problématisations de l’utopisme permet de mettre en lumière ses différents aspects afin de différencier l’intentionnalité utopique des configurations utopiques. Ce qui précède nous permet, en dernier lieu, d’esquisser quelques lignes directrices pour une “critique de la raison utopique”.

Dans cet article, après avoir souligné l’heureuse ambiguïté du terme d’utopie, dont nous avons de bonnes raisons de penser qu’elle a été remarquée par Thomas More, nous rendons d’abord compte de la large diffusion de l’utopisme au niveau historique et géographique. Nous examinons ensuite quelques-unes des critiques les plus importantes qui lui ont été adressées, soulevées notamment par Karl Popper et Hans Jonas. Examiner les différentes problématisations de l’utopisme permet de mettre en lumière ses différents aspects afin de différencier l’intentionnalité utopique des configurations utopiques. Ce qui précède nous permet, en dernier lieu, d’esquisser quelques lignes directrices pour une “critique de la raison utopique”.

Returning to a long and fruitful anthropological tradition which has ripened from phenomenological-hermeneutical and metaphysical thought, we talk of the human being as “bodily consciousness” or “embodied consciousness.” Therefore, human beings, like things, have to be seen as entities that must “always be somewhere” and, so, it makes sense for them to question about the place they are in. But human beings and things have different relationships with the places that they occupy. Indeed, we must say that human beings inhabit: they are not in the world in the way things are, because the relationships they have with space are intrinsic to their existence. "Place consciousness" is therefore also one of the conditions necessary for building individual identities and communities that can establish long-lasting relationships with nature and humans. These can only be based on self-sustainability and awareness of our relationship with the environment we inhabit.The renewed place consciousness that comes from a new understanding of what places are, from renewed practices of inhabiting, and from the strengthening of the experience of links, connections and relations in which the conditions of life and the reproduction of life are given – also made possible by technologies of communication, too – requires an innovation of horizon.The paper aims to offer a contribution in that direction.