Massimo Vittorio

This chapter outlines Ortega y Gasset’s views on the role of culture in modern society and the malaises that affect it. The Spanish philosopher presents some flaws of modern culture in terms of bigotry and relates it to another phenomenon essential to modern science: specialization. The chapter shows how these traits of modern culture are the result of the emergence of a new kind of human being, a new anthropological category: the mass-man, as presented in his work The Revolt of the Masses. The idea of progressivism falls short: on the contrary, culture calls for problematicness, drama, danger, and uncertainty, all elements that also mark life. The chapter concludes by pinpointing the strict connection between culture and life.

This is a book about John Leslie Mackie’s ethics. Its aim is to offer an updated view on his thought and a global perspective on his philosophy, which has thusfar been seen from an exclusive standpoint within analytical philosophy. The book connects the main aspects of Mackie’s philosophy, which have basically been analyzed separately, and intertwines them within a consistent framework. The result is a new, wider perspective on Mackie’s thought, representing a precious tile within the puzzle of contemporary ethics and ontology. The book tries to render the whole of Mackie’s thought and its unity and, at the same time, it tries to locate it within a specific area between meta-ethics, logic, and ontology. "Principles and causes" should be of interest to a wide community of philosophy scholars, serving as a reference volume in contemporary ethics and ontology, a good connection to social ontology and essential reading for those interested in meta-ethics.

Here analyse I the problem of the relation between tradition and innovation through John Dewey’s most significant writings on this topic. In order to do that, I focus not only on the basic Darwinian background of Dewey’s thought, which is clearly stated in his works of the new century , but on two main dichotomies that mark a great part of Dewey’s interests: mind-body and philosophy-science. The first one, mind-body, let me show as Dewey’s idea of transaction conveys to the most recent studies, mainly those on the role of emotion and on the concept of interaction . The first dichotomy recalls the second one, philosophy-science, which it belongs to. And both the dualisms stand for a big one: old logic versus new logic. We could solve the perennial dispute between tradition and innovation assuming the new logic as the place where they can profitably merge, if we pay attention to the interactions between mind and body, that is between ambience and humans, otherwise none of those dichotomies can be solved. So, I end up by posing a capital question: are logic, education, politics, and ethics properly developed to foster a beneficial interaction between minds and bodies, between milieus and people, between tradition and innovation?