Matteo Galletti

What are the conditions for holding each other responsible for the actions we take? What is moral blame and how does it function? Can we hold ourselves morally responsible for actions that depend on situational influences? Can growing up in unfortunate circumstances be a reason to suspend our blame attitudes? These are some of the questions that have characterized the contemporary debate on moral responsibility. Building on the reflections on responsibility proposed by Peter Strawson, the author reconstructs some attempts in contemporary English-language moral philosophy to answer them. At the centre of inquiry there are the socalled "practices of moral responsibility", which divide two shores: the description of moral agents as natural agents and the normative expectations that generate reciprocal claims about respectful behavior.

COVID19 pandemic has clarified that public health policies are central for the future of human societies from several perspectives. As a matter of fact, they are based on certain premises that are practical-political (e.g., ensuring the health of citizens), moral (e.g., health is a value), or epistemological (e.g., certain ideas concerning expertise and shared knowledge). Indeed, effective policies require first and foremost not only to be based on reliable data and models (i.e., so-called evidence-based policy) but also to ensure that these policies are democratically accepted, shared (e.g., considering both cognitive and social dimensions), and hopefully formed after a deliberative process involving experts from various fields alongside citizens.

Monographic issue on the Philosophy of Emotions. Contents: Resentment, Empathy and Indignation; Jacqueline Taylor / Compassion without Cognitivism; Charlie Kurth / “I Don’t Want Your Compassion!”. The Importance of Empathy for Morality; Manuel Camassa / Making sense of emotional contagion; Carme Isern-Mas, Antoni Gomila / On Pride; Lorenzo Greco / Envy and its objects; Alessandra Fussi / Admiration, moral knowledge and transformative experiences; Maria Silvia Vaccarezza / Fear as Related to Courage: An Aristotelian-Thomistic Redefinition of Cognitive Emotions; Claudia Navarini, Ettore De Monte / On Courage. The Sense Of θυμός; Tiziana Migliore / Shades of Schadenfreude. A phenomenological account of pleasure at another’s misfortune; Danilo Manca / Concern and the Structure of Action; Alexander A. Jeuk / On Sexual Lust as an Emotion; Larry A. Herzberg / Emotions and Literature in Musil; Zeynep Talay Turner

The idea of an unchanging human nature has always had a special place in Western philosophical thought. Far from being uncontested, this idea has received criticism from different traditions of thought, which have seen it even as an obstacle to the understanding of ourselves. Now it appears in the shape of a renewed naturalism and the opposing forces are the same as in the past. This volume shows some lines of the current debate about human nature: the revival of Herodotus and Protagoras's humanistic relativism and tolerance; Darwinian ethics; the critical relationship between neo-Aristotelian and neo-Kantian moral theories and the results of empirical science; the assumption about the existence of a “moral mind” based on an innate moral grammar; the multicultural political debate which considers the idea of human nature as a product and a tool of Western hegemony; and, finally, the reflection on sex and gender in the theory of difference and on the idea of "living" nature in the contemporary biopolitics

The aim of this paper is to compare two reports on human cloning, one by the US President’s Council on Bioethics and one by the Italian Comitato Nazionale per la Bioetica. I shall focus on those arguments against human cloning, in both reports, which are articulated in terms of (a) the development of human identity, (b) the meaning of human reproduction, and (c) the nature of family relationships. My general conclusion will be that the arguments against human cloning put forth by both reports are not sound, because they are grounded on the dubious assumption that there is a “natural way” of thinking about identity, reproduction, and family relationships.

In this book, the authors provide a detailed discussion of some problematic of some critical issues of the philosophical research field known as “moral psychology”. The common thread that ideally combines the eight essays concerns the definition and demarcation of the “moral mind”, as a set of cognitive and affective capabilities, attitudes, psychological mechanisms that have practical relevance when we wonder how to act or we evaluate the of action of others. The subtitle (persons, reasons, virtues) means to focus on the vertexes that draw an ideal triangulation within which lies the practical space characterizing and nourishing the moral life of human beings.